David Frum Calls Out Evolving GOP Impeachment Spin: They ‘Started Off With a Stupid Argument… Retreated to a Depraved Argument’

Former Bush speechwriter and adamant Never Trumper David Frum tore into his party’s constant backtracking and shifting spin to defend President Donald Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine.

Speaking with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Frum alluded to Republican messaging that began six weeks ago with strong pushback to House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry because there was “no quid pro quo.” But since then, the party’s talking points have quickly evolved to arguments that the White House was  too “incoherent” to pull corruption, that the damning sworn testimony “proved nothing” or was “a bunch of BS” , or that Trump’s solicitations to investigate his potential 2020 rival, Joe Bide, was perhaps acceptable after multiple witnesses have confirmed there was a quid pro quo.

“Right. Well, they started off with a stupid argument and partly maybe it was embarrassing. They retreated to a depraved argument,” Frum said of Republicans. “The stupid argument is not to see what’s in front of you. The depraved argument is to justify what’s in front of you.”

NPR White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe also weighed in on the GOP’s morphing defense of the president.

“At first they were trying to say that, you know, they were basically focusing on process, they were talking about the whistle-blower only had secondhand information,” Rascoe noted. “Then when you have all of these people coming out with firsthand information, now you have people on The Hill saying, ‘Well, is it really firsthand information? Does the top diplomat for this administration, Bill Taylor for Ukraine, does he actually know what was going on?’ He thought that — and from everything that he could see — that this was — that aid was being held up in exchange for these investigations. But now they’re calling even that into question.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.