Matt Ford

@fordm

In a year featuring no end of Trumpian rogues, we honor the man who laid the groundwork for a constitutional crisis.

Democrats backed Trump's trade pact on the same day they introduced articles of impeachment. The optics don't matter.

The president and his defenders are ignoring the inspector general's findings and substituting their own.

Trump's allies are trying to reset the standard for "election meddling" so low that it would be hard not to meddle in an election.

House Democrats' report on Tuesday makes the case for protecting American democracy from further blows from the president.

The complexity of investigating Trump, lampooned in a legendary piece of satire, has been rendered moot (and it's not even Sunday).

Republicans who worried that the EU ambassador was going to flip were treated to a gymnastics routine.

With no coherent strategy beyond bare survival, the president's allies wildly pivot between defenses as the day slips away.

The president sends a message to his lawbreaking loyalists: Maintain silence and you'll earn your "get out of jail free" card.

One thing we're learning during impeachment hearings is that the president and his cronies are deeply invested in an uncheckable executive branch.

The House Intelligence Committee should give the president a chance to clear up this whole Ukraine matter with his first-hand knowledge.

Why didn't George Kent and William Taylor have firsthand knowledge of Trump's Ukraine activities? The president went around them on purpose.

Electoral losses in Kentucky and Virginia send conservatives down a rabbit hole of illiberalism.

As it turns out, it can be quite difficult to defend the indefensible.

A litany of naive decisions has enshrined a system in which the rot lives right out in the open.

They can't prove the president's innocence, so they're accusing Democrats of an anti-democratic, "Soviet-style" process.

The Sondland scandal should prompt lawmakers to end the practice of rewarding deep-pocketed cronies with plum overseas postings.

The Beltway pundit set should, perhaps, take his baseball-fan opponents seriously, not literally.

Lacking any defense on the merits, the president wants his allies to delegitimize the impeachment inquiry—and be seen doing it.

It's still unlikely he'll be removed from office but the president has not provided allies with anything resembling a cogent defense.