Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession

The impeachment inquiry is the first to involve an issue of geopolitical gravity: Whether the president was undercutting American national interests — containing Russia — to bolster his campaign.

The last two impeachment investigations of the past half-century began with a third-rate burglary and an extramarital affair. They quickly expanded to question the credibility and ethics of the president, but never touched on America’s national interests in the weightiest geopolitical confrontations of their eras.

The sober, just-the-facts testimony of two previously little-known diplomats on Wednesday left no doubt that the investigation into President Trump’s actions is fundamentally different. Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

View the complete November 14 article by David E. Sanger on The New York Times website here.