Donald Trump just blinked

| 12:24 am EDT April 27, 2019
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This week Donald Trump made clear that he wants his underlings to illegally ignore any subpoenas that come from House Democrats. Accordingly, House Democrats have spent the past two days making clear that they’re going to fine, hold in contempt, and if necessary arrest Trump’s underling for refusing to cooperate. We’ve been watching to see which of these underlings would cave. It turns out it’s Trump himself who’s caving.

Even as the House Judiciary Committee prepares to handle the impeachment-oriented testimony of the likes of William Barr, Robert Mueller, and Don McGahn, the House Oversight Committee is handling a separate investigation into Donald Trump’s security clearance scandal. To that end, Chairman Elijah Cummings has subpoenaed Carl Kline, the guy who improperly issued clearances to Trump’s family members and allies. Earlier this week, the Trump White House told the media that Kline had been instructed not to testify. But that just changed – sort of.

In a sign that Donald Trump’s GOP House allies are worried about how ugly this is about to get for their side, Jim Jordan has asked the Trump White House to let Kline testify, with limits placed on what House Democrats can ask him about. This is precisely the moment where Trump puts his foot down and makes clear that “no means no” when it comes to his people testifying, right? Wrong. According to Politico and other news outlets, Trump has agreed to let Kline show up and give limited testimony.

This is obviously not acceptable as far as House Democrats are concerned. We’ll see if Elijah Cummings decides to go ahead and let Kline give this limited testimony before subpoenaing him for the rest of it, or if Cummings skips straight to the part where Kline is held in contempt. But either way, Donald Trump just blinked. He drew the line on letting his people testify, and now he’s immediately pulling partly back from it. If Trump has been trying to show resolve this week, he just showed the opposite. For all his bullying and bluster, Trump is a nervous weakling.