With the House voting to hold televised impeachment hearings, Donald Trump s presidency is desperately fighting for survival.

So far, at least five government officials and diplomats have come forward to corroborate what an anonymous whistleblower first exposed this past August: The president sought a quid pro quo with Ukraine, threatening to withhold $391 million in military aid unless the country investigated his political rival Joe Biden .

But without a coherent defense from the White House, Trumps supporters have been wildly pinballing across a range of unconvincing arguments.

The presidents defenders have alleged the impeachment investigation is a deep-state conspiracy , a violation of due process , a lynching and more. Trump has also sputtered in his defense, bringing back many of his talking points from special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian election interference tweeting on Thursday that he faced The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!

But while the secrecy and slow pace of the Mueller report allowed for right-wing media to spin the investigation with little pushback, the Ukraine scandal has effectively been unfolding in public with more allegations of misconduct emerging on a near daily basis.

A Familiar Pattern

The White House has faced weeks of damaging testimony since the whistleblower complaint forced officials to release a summary of Trumps July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

What Trump described as a perfect conversation showed that he asked Zelensky to investigate Biden and brought up a groundless conspiracy theory about a U.S. cybersecurity firm. Numerous reports about Trumps effort to pressure Ukraines government have also directly contradicted the administrations account of events, including Trumps claim that Ukrainian officials didnt know that the aid was being withheld.

Meanwhile, Trumps defenders have followed a familiar pattern when it comes to explaining the presidents actions: denying that a misdeed ever took place, claiming that even if it did happen there was nothing wrong about it, and finally arguing that the wrongdoing is actually a perfectly good and fine thing for the president to have done.

In fact, most of the presidents defenders have entered the phase of reframing his misconduct as a virtue. Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney argued earlier this month that quid pro quo arrangements with foreign powers are a common and useful tool of U.S. foreign policy. Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Fox News last week that abuse of power is not a crime.

Neither argument makes any sense. Quid pro quo arrangements with foreign powers exist to further U.S. interests, not to target domestic political rivals for personal gain and damage a potential opponent in the next election. Whether abuse of power is a crime depends on the context and nature of the abuse, but impeachment doesnt require a criminal act and can include wrongdoing that may not be strictly against the law.

Shoot The Messenger, Throw A Tantrum

Unable to explain away Trumps call with Zelensky and Trump attorney Rudy Giulianis very public influence campaign , some of Trumps defenders have taken the alternate approach of going after the still unnamed whistleblower.

Initially, this involved focusing on the fact that the whistleblower was not directly listening to Trumps call with Zelensky and therefore had no firsthand knowledge to base the complaint on. But the release of the July 25 call summary showed that the whistleblowers account was an accurate representation of the conversation. Conservative media outlets have now shifted to claiming that the whistleblower is politically motivated and linked to Biden.

Republican lawmakers have recently accelerated the focus on the whistleblower, with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Thursday accusing the person of having bias against the president and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeting a link to a right-wing outlet that purported to have found the whistleblowers identity. A top aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is also allegedly leaking the whistleblowers name and spreading misinformation about them, according to The Daily Beast .