TRUMP PREPARES FOR THE WORST IN CHARACTERISTIC FASHION -- BY FINDING OTHER PEOPLE TO BLAME

The president needs a coping strategy as impeachment looms, and the Daily Beast reports that he's found one that's characteristically Trumpian: He's proclaiming that other people are to blame for his troubles.

President Trump, his advisers, and his most fervent media allies have grown increasingly irritated with Senate Republicans for failing to counterprogram the Democratic-led House impeachment inquiry.

... the president’s close advisers have pushed for the Senate GOP to hold hearings and call witnesses of their own in a broader effort to put Democrats on the defensive.

... The complaints have come from the top down. One source who spoke to Trump in the past two weeks said that the president wondered aloud why Republican lawmakers couldn’t be more like people such as Tom Fitton—the Judicial Watch president who Trump regularly watches on Fox and often excitedly tweets about—when defending him against the impeachment inquiry. And in public, Trump has increasingly let his dissatisfaction with Republican Senate leadership and others be known.

Yup. There was this moment:

President Donald Trump on Democrats: “They're vicious and they stick together. They don't have Mitt Romney in their midst. They don't have people like that. They stick together. You never see them break off, you never see somebody go out and [do their own thing]” pic.twitter.com/TWSXGdSd5r

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 21, 2019

A longer version of that quote:

Well, I think the Democrats fight dirty. I think the Democrats are lousy politicians with a lousy policy. They want open borders, they don't care about crime, they want sanctuary cities, they don't care about drugs. They don't care about almost anything. They don't care about USMCA. How about that? I think they're lousy politicians. But two things they have, they're vicious, and they stick together. They don't have Mitt Romney in their midst. They don't have people like that. They stick together. You never see them break off.

Trump is angry at Romney, but, hilariously, the president and his allies have also been lashing out at one of his most servile sycophants, according to the Daily Beast:

... there is growing frustration that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has not yet called hearings into the issues that sparked Trump’s interest in Ukraine: Joe Biden’s alleged and unfounded attempts to aid a business whose board his son sat on as well as a conspiracy theory that links Ukraine with 2016 election meddling....

“Think about this, nothing is happening in the U.S. Senate… nothing!” Lou Dobbs, a Fox Business host and top informal Trump adviser, said on his show Monday evening.... “For nine months, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [Lindsey Graham] has not lifted a finger to help this president. He blathers little soundbites one side or another for or against the president every week, it seems, but has done nothing for the American people or truth, justice, and the American way.”

... Tucker Carlson, another pro-Trump Fox personality who has privately advised the president on foreign policy, also took aim at Graham on Monday night. Speaking with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Carlson grumbled that Graham wasn’t upholding his promise to get to the bottom of whether or not “top DOJ officials plotted a bureaucratic coup to overthrow the elected president.”

Paul, one of the president’s most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill these days, suggested that Graham and other Republican senators were more loyal to the so-called Deep State than to Trump, adding that the South Carolina senator may want the Deep State to “maintain their power and maintain the intelligence community’s enormous grip.”

Poor Lindsey -- he toadies so much, but it's never enough. He probably toadies too much. Now he's the one Trump wants to throw him under the bus.

Trump wants Graham and other Senate Republicans to do more, but it's not as if Trump himself has a strategy.

... Hill Republicans ... have watched warily over the last few weeks as the White House has struggled to mount a defense to the damaging allegations emerging from the House proceedings....

“It’s amazing that people are attacking Senate Rs,” texted one top Senate GOP aide. “The White House has literally no pushback to what the House is doing. No war room, nothing.”

Hey, just because Trump believes Senate Republicans aren't doing enough doesn't mean he has to do anything. Effort is for other people.

If all this goes very badly for Trump, he'll walk away believing that he did nothing wrong. Trump can't fail -- he can only be failed.