The effort to demonize House Intelligence Chairman Schiff (D-Calif.), who is leading the impeachment inquiry into the president, and create political fog for the president demonstrates Republicans’ deep reluctance to opine on whether it was appropriate for Trump to ask Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent. Trump’s allies in the Senate are trying to focus public attention anywhere but on Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

And without a centralized strategy from the White House, House Republicans are taking their cues from Trump, who is treating Schiff as a punching bag in the impeachment fight.

Trump and the GOP are targeting Schiff’s mid-hearing exaggerated rendition of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine to make it sound like a mob boss shakedown and invoking a New York Times report that the whistleblower sought guidance from an Intelligence Committee aide, which Republicans have used to allege without evidence that Schiff helped write the complaint.