The “PERFECT” Call: Congressional Representation by Tweet in the Midst of the Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal

• Author: Seth C. McKee,Heather K. Evans,Jennifer Hayes Clark
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211041922
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 50(1) 30 –44

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211041922

American Politics Research

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211041922

journals.sagepub.com/home/apr

Article

Not long after the national media began reporting on the

Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal (UWS), President Trump

tweeted that the phone call at the heart of the alleged wrong-

doing was, in all capital letters, “PERFECT.” Beyond being

a curious word for describing a conversation, in hindsight it

was far from perfect; at least in the minds of the Democratic

House majority, who made their explication of an imper-

fectly transcribed copy of the call grounds for impeaching

the 45th President of the United States. In a nutshell, on July

25, 2019 President Trump called the Ukrainian President

Zelensky and (among other things) asked for a favor, which

amounted to soliciting the help of a foreign country (Ukraine)

to: (1) announce the investigation of a political rival, former

Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter who served on

the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and (2)

look into the possibility that (instead of Russia) the American

security firm CrowdStrike was actually in cahoots with

Ukraine in hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails in the 2016 pres-

idential election (a debunked conspiracy theory; see Gramer

& Mackinnon, 2020). In return for delivering on these

requests, the nearly $400 million in American military aid to

combat Russian aggression in Ukraine would be released

and President Zelensky would be given a highly coveted

White House meeting with President Trump.1

Three days after President Trump’s fateful call, Politico

ran a story on his action to hold up the critical military aid

to Ukraine (Emma & O’Brien, 2019). On the heels of volu-

minous early reporting on the scandal, the House of

Representatives began investigations on September 9, and

on the 18th anniversary of 9/11, President Trump lifted the

military hold. By mid-September the Democratic-led House

of Representatives was in high-gear tracking down leads to

get to the bottom of this scandal, which naturally fueled

tremendous media coverage. Indeed, given the basis of the

charges leveled against President Trump, it would have

been astounding if he managed to escape being only the

third impeached American President. Closed-door House

interviews with material and fact witnesses were followed

by nationally televised hearings with many of these same

individuals. Of course, it was a fait accompli that Democratic

Speaker Pelosi’s September 24 announcement of a formal

impeachment inquiry would ultimately end in a vote to

impeach President Trump, which happened on December

18, 2019.

1041922

APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211041922American Politics ResearchMcKee et al.

research-article

2021

1Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, USA

2University of Virginia’s College at Wise, USA

3University of Houston, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Seth C. McKee, Oklahoma State University, Department of Political

Science, 220 Social Sciences and Humanities, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.

Email: mckee@okstate.edu

The “PERFECT” Call: Congressional

Representation by Tweet in the Midst

of the Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal

Seth C. McKee1, Heather K. Evans2, and Jennifer Hayes Clark3

Abstract

In this article we examine every tweet congresspersons sent from the time the media broke the news of President Trump’s

fateful July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky up to a week after House Speaker Pelosi announced a formal

impeachment inquiry. Our aim is to understand the type of rhetoric Members of Congress (MCs) engaged in with respect

to what we call the Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal (UWS). It is evident from our analysis that Democrats were more likely

to sound off on the UWS, which comports with the fact that it was a Republican President who got into trouble. Further,

there are characteristics of MCs that make them more likely to frame and discuss the UWS in certain ways, like House

Representatives holding law degrees or serving on one of the House committees investigating the UWS. Finally, in this age

of hyper-polarized parties, party affiliation was consistently the most important factor shaping representatives’ Twitter

statements on the UWS. In historical perspective, the overriding importance of party affiliation is lamentable since the

charges against President Trump were solemn and serious.

Keywords

Ukraine, scandal, impeachment, Trump, polarization