Wednesday morning, I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing. Stay tuned

after the show for a message from pharma. And I'm Jake Sherman. Are you confused by impeachment?

Have no idea what's going on. Well, welcome to the club. Everyone is all over the place. Let's be

perfectly clear. At this point, it seems as though Donald Trump will be impeached by the House and the

White House has struggled mightily with how to handle this.

The administration operates at the whims of Trump and on an issue as politically and legally complex as impeachment,

that seems like a foolhardy play. They first tried to scare Democrats out of impeachment with an angry letter by the White House counsel.

That quite predictably fell on deaf ears.

Now, the White House has a chief of staff who seems like he's on the brink of being fired.

Their plan to hire Trey Gowdy never panned out.

Their communication strategy seems to be the president angrily tweeting about never-trumper's

and a, quote, perfect phone call.

Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, is in his own legal jeopardy. The White House

has griped about having no visibility into the closed-door proceedings on Capitol Hill.

Even the Republicans are keeping them in the loop. Trump said Tuesday he didn't know the

NSE's top expert on Ukraine, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the most recent official to testify,

which would seem to be curious for a president who has professed his intent on curing corruption

in the country. Capital Republicans are no less lost. They mounted a week's long defense on

process, only to be told publicly that by the president, they should drop that argument and

focus on defending him on the merits. Meanwhile, Democrats spent all week trumpeting and explaining a new impeachment

resolution, missing an opportunity to ride the wave of Vindman's damning testimony. That much-heralded

impeachment resolution, by the way, enacts modest tweaks to the arcane rules that govern committee

...