IMPEACHMENT/SOCIAL MEDIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Under pressure over his possible impeachment, President Richard M. Nixon supposedly talked to the paintings in the White House. President Bill Clinton absently toyed with his old campaign buttons. President Trump punches out Twitter messages in the lonely midnight hour. Long after his staff has gone home, long after the lights have gone out elsewhere around the capital, the besieged 45th president hunkers down in the upstairs residential portion of the Executive Mansion venting his frustration and cheering on his defenders through social media blasts. This is a season of conflicting impulses for a president who often seems governed by them. As the House moves toward what even he says is an inevitable vote to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors, Mr. Trump toggles between self-pity and combativeness. He looks forward to a Senate trial that he seems sure to win and thinks that it will help him on the campaign trail when he travels the country boasting that he had been ‘exonerated’ after the latest partisan ‘witch hunt.’”
–Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, “For Trump, Impeachment May Be a Political Plus but Also a Personal Humiliation,” The New York Times online, December 13, 2019