Impeachment has put Trump in a different place. He's showing it every day.

President Trump delivered a characteristic performance Thursday night in Minneapolis. His 100-minute rally speech was complete with scattered vulgarities, caustic attacks on political opponents, including former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and an accusation that Democrats who have begun an impeachment inquiry are carrying out “a brazen attempt to overthrow our government.”

For the president it was all in a day’s work, and ever since the first stories broke three weeks ago about Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to help find damaging information about the Bidens and about Hillary Clinton, there has been some version of the Minnesota performance virtually every day.

Many Americans have become inured to the president’s volatile behavior. Yet even by the standards of this presidency, Trump has been operating beyond his often-untethered bounds. His Twitter feed has been more frantic, his public comments angrier and more abusive, his sense of victimhood more on display than ever. Including his attacks on the investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, there may be no period in the entirety of Trump’s presidency comparable to the behavior now on display.

Along the political spectrum, there is a shared sense that the country has entered into a new and more worrisome phase of Trump’s presidency. To some who have long been critical of the president, Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine and his call to China to launch its own investigation of Biden and his son have brought a heightened sense of alarm. Others, who have been more measured in their assessments of the president over time, see the country in a period of crisis that will test the strength of America’s constitutional democracy and its institutions.

“The crisis of the last few weeks over President Trump’s unlawful and unethical behavior is different and more damaging than any other involving past presidents over the past half century,” Nicholas Burns — a retired career diplomat, former undersecretary of state and Trump critic for some time — noted in an email exchange. “Trump’s behavior in the Ukraine scandal is qualitatively different and more challenging to our democracy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-has-put-trump-in-a-different-place-hes-showing-it-every-day/2019/10/12/b3cfe8d4-ecfa-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html?wpisrc=al_trending_now__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1