Fox News anchor Shep Smith said the real Ukraine scandal is not anything Joe Biden might have done: “There is no known evidence that Biden did anything wrong.”

He added: “The real issue here is the phone call. The claim that the President pressured a foreign leader to investigate a political rival and the failure to pass the whistleblower complaint to Congress.”

“If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair right now.”

— President Trump, quoted by CNN, without specifying what exactly Biden “did.”

David Graham: “More details remain to be uncovered… Yet the basic story is now out in the open, with Trump’s assistance, even as Democrats continue their probe into the complaint. Usually the drama of an investigation lies in finding out what happened, but the drama of this investigation lies in finding out what happens next. There’s hardly a need to ask what the president knew and when he knew it; Trump has told everyone. The question is what Democrats intend to do about it.”

“In theory, Trump’s admission ought to place him in a tight bind. The president makes it hard to defend himself when he’s already said he did it. (The administration’s response has been to claim misconduct by the Biden family, but there’s still no evidence to back that up, never mind the blatant hypocrisy of the accusation.) But Trump has seen that Republicans, both voters and crucially elected officials, have shown that practically no abuse is too much to bear.”

“And he knows that Democrats have been too timid to act. The Democratic leadership of the House has pursued a strategy of moving just enough toward impeaching Trump that it can say it’s moving, but little enough that it can say it’s not impeaching him, and can run out the clock on his term.”

Jonah Goldberg: “What offends me most about the whistleblower-Ukraine-Biden story isn’t the obvious corruption of it all. It’s the way members of Team Trump assume we’re all idiots who won’t notice they’ve abruptly shifted their narrative.”

“There was no pressure put on them whatsoever. I put no pressure on them whatsoever. I could have. I think it might probably, possibly have been okay if I did, but I didn’t.”

— President Trump, quoted by ABC News, on his phone call with Ukraine’s president about investigating Joe Biden and his son.

Michael Kruse: “That Trump would so quickly in the wake of the Mueller investigation commit a brazen act some critics say represents an egregious and impeachable abuse of power has mystified many observers. How could he have so blithely ignored the lessons of the nearly three-year investigation?”

“But those who know him best say this is merely the latest episode in a lifelong pattern of behavior for the congenitally combative Trump. He’s always been this way. He doesn’t stop to reflect. If he wins, he barely basks. If he loses, he doesn’t take the time to lie low or lick wounds; he invariably refuses to even admit that he lost. Regardless of the outcome—up, down or somewhere in between—when one tussle is done, Trump reflexively starts to scan the horizon in search of a new skirmish.”