“President Trump on Thursday excoriated an unidentified whistleblower and the White House aides who informed their complaint as “almost a spy” and likened their work to treason — part of a scorched-earth strategy he is directing for the Republican Party at the outset of an impeachment showdown,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump has acted impulsively and indignantly as he wages an all-out political war to defend himself from allegations that he abused his power to solicit foreign interference in his 2020 reelection bid.”

“The coming weeks will test whether Trump’s familiar blame-the-accuser-and-counterattack playbook — while floating dark conspiracies to divert attention — will be successful in the face of mounting evidence that he asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on potential 2020 Democratic opponent Joe Biden.”

“They’re animals actually… They’re scum, many of them are scum. You have some good reporters but not many.”

— President Trump, quoted by the New York Times, on the news media.

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein said President Trump was going through “an unraveling” because there is evidence of his “corruption” outlined in a whistleblower complaint about his call with the president of Ukraine, The Hill reports.

Said Bernsein: “We are seeing both in real time, with the President’s remarks and also through documentary evidence, his corruption. We’re watching, too, an unraveling in front of us, both factually and also temperamentally, in terms of the conduct of the President of the United States.” 

James Risen: “Donald Trump just barely avoided prosecution earlier this year when special counsel Robert Mueller pulled his punches and refused to indict the president for either obstruction of justice or campaign finance violations in connection with the Trump-Russia investigation. Mueller’s decision not to indict Trump came despite overwhelming evidence in Mueller’s own final report that the president of the United States was guilty of a crime.”

“Most people who survive that kind of legal threat would lie low, at least for a while, and try to get back to some level of normalcy. But Trump is a habitual criminal, and his reaction to escaping Mueller’s investigation was to go on yet another crime spree.”

“In fact, Trump has been acting like a bank robber who beat one rap because of a technicality, and so decides to rob every bank in sight.”

A new Morning Consult poll finds 43% of Americans support the start of an impeachment in inquiry, up 7 points from a weekend survey. Meanwhile, opposition to beginning an impeachment inquiry dropped 6 points, to 43%.

A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds 49% of Americans support an impeachment inquiry, while 46% disapprove.

However, Stuart Rothenberg warns: “Polling in the middle of a political hurricane is ridiculous.”