Trump’s ‘trash heap of corruption’ has festered for so long that he can’t ‘recognize the stench’: Ex-Bush speechwriter
27 September 2019
Michael Gerson, a one-time speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, has written a scathing column that marvels at how President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand that asking a foreign leader to investigate his political opponents is wrong.
Writing in the Washington Post, Gerson explains why it’s particularly stunning that Trump made the election interference pitch to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the day after special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress about Russia’s efforts to help Trump in the 2016 election.
“Trump gloated about beating the charge that he conspired with a foreign government to win an election, during a call in which he proposed to conspire with a foreign government to win reelection,” Gerson writes. “The man is immune to ethical instruction.”
He then expresses amazement that the president believed releasing a transcript in which he pressured Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden would somehow exonerate him.
“Trump thought that releasing the readout of the call would somehow be exculpatory,” Gerson writes. “He has spent so many years in the trash heap of corruption that he can no longer recognize the stench.”