Donald Trump knows there are potential traitors in his midst. His presidency could depend on keeping them at bay.
From the moment Francis Rooney expressed alarm to his House colleagues that Donald Trump might have abused presidential power in his dealings with Ukraine—and more dramatically, that an impeachment inquiry could be warranted—the Florida Republican was a marked man.
He made for a most unusual suspect. A silver-haired business tycoon, former ambassador and card-carrying member of the GOP establishment, Rooney had reliably played the role of good soldier for the party since easily winning his Naples-area congressional seat in 2016. He had kept his head down. He had dutifully gone about his business as a policymaker and a politician. He had, like so many of his fellow Republicans, muffled his trepidation over the president’s behavior, recognizing that to cross Trump was to commence the extinction of his own political career.
Venting privately about the president has become a hallowed pastime in Republican-controlled Washington, a sort of ritualistic release for those lawmakers tasked with routinely defending the indefensible, and Rooney had long indulged without consequence. Certainly, his friends noticed, the Florida congressman had grown more animated in private over the past year—railing against the improprieties detailed in the Mueller report, decrying the Trump family’s brazen attempts to enrich themselves off the presidency, wondering aloud what the president needed to do before voters would turn on him. Still, there was no real risk. To the extent GOP leaders heard echoes of Rooney’s discontent, they dismissed it as just another member blowing off steam.
View the complete November 8 article by Tim Alberta on the Politico website here.
The impeachment inquiry spotlight is starting to shift toward Secretary of State
President Donald Trump is in full meltdown mode. Thursday morning the man purported to be the leader of the free world, the post powerful person to hold elected office in this country, tweeted witness testimony in the House open impeachment inquiry hearings 
Transcripts of closed-door testimony in the Trump impeachment investigation show a disturbing pattern of behavior by Republican lawmakers, not one of whom expressed concern about our national security or about White House undermining of our diplomats or their safety.
House Democrats on Wednesday released the impeachment inquiry’s full 
Days after a decorated Army lieutenant colonel offered damaging testimony about President Trump’s conduct on a July phone call with Ukraine’s leader, Mr. Trump stood on the South Lawn and issued a vague but ominous warning.