“This time it’s personal”, was the tagline to the fourth Jaws movie, called Jaws: The Revenge. (Cos that’s how sharks work! Not). It also fits well as the tagline to the Donald Trump impeachment hearings, which have just moved into their crucial public hearings phase. Because at the heart of Trump’s problems is his treatment of the US presidency not as a service to the public, but as a way to leverage power for his own, personal means.

Donald Trump is facing impeachment hearings, largely because of a phone call he made in July to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the pair discussed American military aid before Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to “do us a favor” and investigate Democrats. In particular, Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who had been on the board of Burisma Holdings Ltd, one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies. Although there’s no evidence of it, Trump and some on the right of US politics are convinced Joe Biden while vice-president improperly helped his son’s business interests in Ukraine.

During the July phone call Trump used the now famous 10 words that have so damaged – and could yet end – his presidency.

“I would like you to do us a favour, though,”

Trump has insisted it was a “perfect” phone call and he did nothing wrong. Zelensky has said he did not feel “pushed”. But those words suggest a quid pro quo; that aid money and a White House visit in return for initiating an investigation into the Bidens.

Republicans have rallied around the president, but in the past couple of weeks they have started toying with a new line of defence, one I had thought they might have embraced from the start.

The Washington Post reported:

“A growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to acknowledge that President Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family as the president repeatedly denies a quid pro quo”.

But wait. That’s not an admission of guilt, oh no. The article continues:

“The pivot was the main topic during a private Senate GOP lunch on Wednesday, according to multiple people familiar with the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the meeting. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) argued that there may have been a quid pro quo but said that the U.S. government often attaches conditions to foreign aid and that nothing was amiss in Trump’s doing so in the case of aid to Ukraine, these individuals said.”

And now some Republicans are actually using it. The New York Times this week reported:

“…some in Mr. Trump’s party are testing out a new refrain: Even if a quid pro quo existed, it is not grounds for impeachment. They are merely concerned.

“Concern is different than rising to the level of impeachment,” Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Look, if I believed everything the Democrats are saying, I would still say this isn’t an impeachable offense.”

So the Democrats can at least claim credit that the pressure of impeachment has fractured their opponents defence of Trump. But it could be a savvy move by Republicans.

At first blush this seems like a reasonable defence. Because let’s not be naive. The world of international diplomacy and aid is one constant stream of haggling. Quid pro quo is one of its foundation planks, even to the point of war. Phone calls between leaders are full of conversations of how they might scratch each other’s backs and what might be done in return.

But here’s the difference. Leaders use quid pro quo for their own national interests, not for their own personal interests. It seems to me where Trump has crossed the line is to use the presidency, not to leverage some gain for his country, but to use it s leverage for his own personal, political ends.

This is where Trump has reshaped the US presidency into some ugly facsimilie of what it’s meant to be. It still looks something like the presidency, except that it’s a gargoyle version of it.

Whatever different ideologies or politics a president follows, he or she is meant to act in the public interest. To represent the country and serve the interests of the nation as a whole. Trump though, has run the White House as the headquarters of a loyalty scheme, insisting on personal gain and loyalty to him above all else.

He is putting the US constitution under immense pressure.

Quite aside from the impeachment hearings, he is facing court action arguing that Trump’s business holdings violate the Foreign or Domestic Emoluments Clauses. His failure to divest himself of his conflicting business interests has been described by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as “the original sin of his presidency”.

They go onto say, for example:

“Foreign governments and organizations linked to foreign governments have hosted 12 events at Trump properties since the president took office. These events have been attended by at least 19 administration officials.

Second, the fact that Trump continues to profit from his businesses encourages those who want to remain in his good graces to spend money at those businesses.

Third, Trump has visited his properties 365 times at taxpayer expense during his tenure, sometimes visiting more than one of them in a single day. The president has spent time at a Trump-brand property on nearly a third of the days he has been president.”

As witnesses cycle through the hearing, this is to me the key point. Not that he offered Ukraine a quid pro quo per se, but that he offered it in return for dirt on his political opponents. His goal was not to benefit America, but to benefit himself and damage his personal enemies.

This is a woeful abuse of power that puts himself ahead of the people and nation he is meant to serve; and it seems Trump just doesn’t get it. This is the crux of the impeachment claims.

Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve University law professor and a member of Checks and Balances, says:

“The persistent efforts to use foreign policy as a means of advancing or protecting his own political interests" conflicts with the presidential oath. 

"'High crimes and misdemeanors' has never been understood to be limited to or consigned to things that are crimes in the narrow legal sense. They encompass actions that are violative of the solemn obligations that a public official takes."

But what the impeachment hearings seem to be showing once and for all is that Trump has never really been a public official. Trump has always had only one interest in mind, and it’s not the national interest. And that is the failing could be the undoing of him.