Takes Valium...

Impeachment hearings putting Trump through emotional wringer

At different times, Trump has been "calm," "cheery" and "pissed," according to those around him. On Wednesday, he was frustrated and uncharacteristically terse.

By ANITA KUMAR and DANIEL LIPPMAN

One day, he’s up. One day, he’s down. Other days he’s just angry.

President Donald Trump has gone through a range of emotions since House Democrats started their public impeachment hearings last week about whether he threatened to withhold Ukrainian security aid unless the country opened politically advantageous investigations, according to more than half a dozen people who have spoken to Trump in the last several days.

On Wednesday, Trump was frustrated, defiant and uncharacteristically terse.

Running more than an hour late, the president emerged from the White House shortly before noon, carrying a few notes he jotted down on White House stationary. For once, he stuck his talking points.

“I want nothing! I want nothing!” Trump told reporters, responding to the eye-opening testimony of Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who had just told lawmakers that everyone understood there to be a quid pro quo regarding Ukraine, even if the president had never told him directly.

“I want no quid pro quo,” he reiterated. “This is the final word from the president of the United States. I want nothing.”

With that, Trump got in the waiting helicopter and lifted off.

It was the latest in a series of ever-shifting Trump reactions — which can change by the hour — to the public portion of the impeachment inquiry.

“Sometimes he's super calm and cheery and other times he's pissed when he sees something,” a White House official said. “His reactions are human.”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham has repeatedly insisted the president is busy working and doesn’t have time to watch the testimony. Other people around Trump say he has watched some of the witnesses, while getting a readout on those he doesn't watch before responding the way America has come to expect — via Twitter.

“President Trump is like Babe Ruth: doesn’t practice, ignores advice, but hits more than his share of home runs,” said Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor and CEO of the drilling services company Canary, LLC. “The impeachment hearings have had their ups and downs but Sondland is basing his testimony on presumptions regarding President Trump’s witnesses.”

Democrats portrayed the matter differently on Wednesday. They seized on Sondland’s comments, arguing that his account was crucial to their case that Trump abused his power.

Sondland told lawmakers that his understanding — one he said everyone shared — was that both the security aid and a White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were conditioned on Kyiv opening investigations into both former Vice President Joe Biden, a possible Trump 2020 rival, and possible Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election.

“Was there a ‘quid pro quo?' The answer is yes," Sondland said. “It was no secret."

Instead of merely tweeting, Trump decided to speak to reporters after watching a slice of Sondland’s testimony in the White House residence. Before meeting the press, he worked with Grisham and the counsel's office on a few notes, essentially writing down Sondland’s own recollection of a phone call with Trump, during which the EU ambassador said the president insisted he didn’t want a quid pro quo, just for Zelensky to “do the right thing.”

A senior administration official said Trump latched on to the language because it was a recollection of his own communications.

Trump’s language mimicked a talking point Trump’s team was circulating on Wednesday. The bullet points were developed in war rooms across Washington that brought together staffers from the White House, Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.

“Ambassador Sondland said in his opening remarks that he followed President Trump’s direction,” read one bullet point. “This would include, by Sondland’s own testimony, the President’s insistence on no quid pro quo.”

Another senior administration official said the White House anticipated from the start that Sondland would be the most challenging witness, given his shifting testimony in recent weeks.

“There’s been a lot of work to prepare for today and how to handle: from Hill coordination; to facts and questions; to rapid response and messaging; to what [Trump] should consider saying, and when,” the official said.

And while the president himself avoided attacking Sondland, the White House sought to undermine his testimony by saying he “acknowledged that much of his testimony was based off presumptions, guesses, inferences, beliefs and assumptions.”

And internally, White House aides said they were livid as Sondland implicated nearly every member of Trump’s inner circle, including Vice President Mike Pence, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

A person close to the president said Trump is unsure if Democrats or Republicans are winning the public perception battle over the last two weeks.

“I think he's in a decent mood under the circumstances,” the person said. “He's frustrated and irritated but he's not overly frustrated and irritated given the situation he's in.”

Trump had been privately and publicly fuming for weeks that Republicans weren’t doing enough to defend him. But that changed last week when the hearings started and he could watch the full-tilt defenses from allies on Capitol Hill, including Reps. Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio).

"I think when you're trying to issue somebody the death sentence politically, even a guy with a constitution as strong as his ... that's got to bother anyone,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). “But mostly they're building the case for why he's going to get re-elected because the American public doesn't like it either."

Still, Trump’s feelings have risen and fallen based on the story of the moment.

On the first day of public hearings last week, Trump was feeling more optimistic because he thought William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, was a weak opening witness, given that he had little firsthand knowledge of the situation, said two people with knowledge of the president’s thinking.

But on Friday, the second day of hearings, he felt frustrated after multiple people inside and outside the White House told him he made a mistake by criticizing a Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, as she was testifying. Democrats immediately accused him of trying to intimidate a witness.

House Democrats expect to wrap up their public Ukraine hearings on Thursday.

“There are good days. There are bad days,” said a former Trump campaign adviser. “He fully expects that. He knows in a big rolling production like this there are going to be both.”

On Wednesday, Trump’s production was all about the notes. After touring an Apple plant in Texas, the president pulled them out again when he got another question on the subject.

“I want nothing,” he said.