Trump news – live: Support for impeachment rising nationwide as Pompeo vows to block officials from testifying

Trump has now posted this and made it his pinned tweet in place of the cutesy animation:

If it looks familiar, it's because it was tweeted on Saturday by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who was taken to task by historian Kevin M Kruse, among many others for misrepresenting the 2016 election map to make it look more Republican red.

Here's more from Indy100.

Now he's back to bashing House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff.

You will recall that yesterday he called for Schiff to be arrested for treason, after accusing him of misrepresenting the wording of the Ukraine transcript before Congress last Thursday.

Trump has long had it in for "Liddle" Adam Schiff, previously selling a campaign T-shirt featuring a cartoon of him as a pencil topper in clown make-up, riffing on his childish "Pencil-Neck" nickname.

Yesterday at the White House, following the swearing-in of Eugene Scalia as the country's new labour secretary (replacing Alex Acosta, ousted over his role in the 2008 Jeffrey Epstein plea deal), Trump was asked whether he knew the identity of the whistleblower at the centre of the Ukraine scandal.

"We're trying to find out," he answered.

The informant's lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, quickly took to Twitter to remind the president his client is "entitled to anonymity" and any attempt to expose them "is a violation of federal law".

An aide to Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly has told CNN the president was once so unprepared for calls with foreign leaders that staff would have to coach him in advance on what to say as a matter of course.

"Kelly always wanted a bunch of us to be there in the Oval [Office]... to just babysit on these calls," the source said, adding that his old boss (below) would often mute the phone on the Resolute Desk to allow staffers to offer guidance or prevent the president speaking unwisely.

"He would go on random tangents about the Mueller investigation with foreign leaders... it was unnecessary and unhelpful," the source said.

"And sometimes he just wouldn't have his facts straight and he would really rattle some of the foreign leaders with whom he spoke. Eventually they figured it out and they adjusted, but those calls were nothing like what a normal call would be between presidents."

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The aide in question left the White House in December 2018 with Kelly's departure so could not say whether the practice is still in play in the West Wing but the network reports that, these days, only four peope typically listen in following fears about leaking: the national security adviser, the National Security Council director and the deputy director for the region in question among them. 

"We were there to coach him in real time, because he was so impervious to coaching ahead of time," the source said, but admitted that, "if the president was determined to say something, you couldn't really press mute."

"There was no stopping him. But when there was a lag because a long translation was going on, Kelly would mute the call so that staff in the room could give guidance," they added.

Trump's biggest problem, the aide suggested, was being "diplomatic": "He was so direct and blunt about trade deficits. No one would ever talk like that... Sometimes what he would say wasn't earth shattering, but it would be very different from the public messaging or positions." 

“There is enough evidence of an abuse of power, a breach of his oath of office,” Richard Nixon's White House counsel, John Dean, has told The San Francisco Chronicle.

“What they need to do is get evidence that fleshes it out. They need to show exactly what was going on.”

Dean was, of course, Nixon’s counsel in June 1972 when burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in DC and participated in the cover-up of that crime before ultimately urging his boss to come clean and testifying before the Senate in dramatic fashion. Nixon later resigned before he could be impeached in August 1974.

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Dean expresses a hope that his successor Don McGahn, so frequently cited in the 446-page Mueller report, could still come forward in defiance of White House stonewalling and likewise electrify Congress.

“Maybe McGahn will come forward,” Dean says. “He’s got to understand it is not a pleasant route. No one likes to be a tattletale. No one really wants to be a whistleblower unless they’re deeply offended.”

Dean also draws a parallel between the White House moving the Ukraine call onto “electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature” with the Watergate tapes.

“The question is, why would you put them there if there wasn’t very damaging material on them?” Dean said. “Why wouldn’t you put them in a normal filing system? The Nixon White House had filing systems upon filing systems upon filing systems for that very reason.”

If you're feeling baffled by the pace of developments in DC - understandable given that it's still only Tuesday - this summary on where we're at from CNN's New Day is as timely as any.

Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night and had this to say on her successor Mike Pompeo's role in the Ukraine call.

Here's her interview in full - along with daughter Chelsea. The conversation naturally touches on impeachment.

In case you missed this yesterday, New York Republican Chris Collins, the first congressman to endorse Trump for the presidency back in 2016, has resigned his seat the day before he was reportedly set to file a guilty plea over felony charges accusing him of insider trading.

Chris Riotta has more.

Trump is back and continuing to obsess over the idenity of the whistleblower, using inverted commas without rhyme or reason at this point.

Another Trump to have blurted out an ugly secret is Don Jr, who has revealed the ghastly nickname of the president's former press secretary Sean Spicer in seeking to drum up support for the lad's surely ill-fated run on Dancing with the Stars.

Narjas Zatat has the gory details for Indy100.