Inside Trump’s push to rack up political victories as impeachment looms

On Tuesday, President Trump and House Democrats announced a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada. On Wednesday, the House passed a military authorization package that included paid parental leave for more than 2 million federal workers and the creation of the president’s proposed Space Force. And on Thursday, top congressional negotiators unveiled a deal in principle to approve a $1.3 trillion federal spending bill for 2020 that will likely avert a government shutdown next week.

By Friday, even as the House Judiciary Committee passed two articles of impeachment against Trump, the president had begun telling allies that maybe impeachment wasn’t so bad after all.

All week, in fact, at White House holiday parties and in phone calls with allies, Trump privately mused about trying to prolong the impeachment process because he says it helps his reelection prospects.

“It’s a very sad thing for our country, but it seems to be very good for me politically,” Trump told reporters Friday, seated next to the president of Paraguay in the Oval Office.

Even as he faces the largest crisis of his presidency poised to become only the third president to be impeached Trump joined with Democrats over the past week in a frenzy of agreements and deals that amounts to a kind of counter impeachment campaign. He and his allies trumpet the victories as the work of a disciplined president continuing to focus on the needs of the public, while Democrats argue they have forced Trump to hand over sweeping concessions on liberal priorities.