Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Trump’s Bad Judgment Isn’t an Abuse of Power

The president’s clumsy bargaining during the pandemic is bad politics, not an impeachable offense.

May 1, 2020 at 11:49 AM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

It’s fine.
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OK, it’s time for some critics of President Donald Trump to take a deep breath.

Yes, Trump abused his power when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to do him a favor. For that, he was impeached — and while only one Senate Republican voted to remove him from office, several others agreed that what Trump had done was improper.