“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” John Kennedy, 1962 Yale Commencement speech.
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As more interviews are conducted and documents collected, sometimes it’s best to focus on the core allegation against Donald Trump, which is abuse of power.
Trump assume Joe Biden would be the Democratic candidate for president. He had a plan to show Joe Biden was corrupt by using his power as Vice President to enable his son to become wealthy. To support this claim, Trump wanted the newly elected President Zelenskiy to make a public statement that there was an ongoing investigation into the Biden’s activities in the Ukraine. In particular, an investigation focused on Hunter Biden’s consulting work and Joe Biden’s efforts to get the prosecutor at the time in the Ukraine fired. There is a lot more to this story which is laid out in the Wikipedia link below.
In return for the public statement made by the President, he would in turn, release the 400 million dollars in military aid approved by Congress. President Zelenskiy would be invited to the White House. This seems the basis of the deal.
In sum, it was a business deal, The President had attached conditions to the military aid. This didn’t work. The Ukraine got its military aid without making any public statement of an investigation. There has been no suggestion of re-opening an investigation which ended years ago.
Trump’s election strategy was to show the American people that Biden did not care about the US and could not be trusted. It went far beyond this claim. Trump wanted to tell the people he was the anti-corruption president and the Obama-Biden administration was the corrupt one. So, the 2020 election strategy was a lot like the 2016, except of chanting “Lock her up” it would be “Lock them up” to include the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, as subpoenas are ignored and court cases increase, the rhetoric and innuendo from Trump’s cabinet will soar. Mike Pompeo stated yesterday to the New York Post, “This is the administration that actually provided defensive weapons systems [to Ukraine]. I could not tell you why the Obama administration chose not to [arm Ukraine]. Was it because of Hunter Biden? I don’t know!”
Gee, I do, (Pompeo knows also by the way). From the Washington Post:
“U.S. assistance (and the threat of withholding it) has played a role in efforts to root out corruption and promote transparency in a country that has long grappled with cronyism. Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s notoriously corrupt president from 2010 to 2014, was convicted of treason by a Ukrainian court and sentenced in absentia in January to 13 years in prison. While in power, Yanukovych was widely seen as a pro-Russian puppet: The court ruled that he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine and that he violently quashed pro-Western democracy protests in Kiev.” (September 25, Washington Post)
Trump’s 2020 re-election strategy is to use the authority of the President to go dirt hunting along with the Department of Justice and US Attorney Durham and possibly the missing Maltese Professor Joseph Mifsud. We will soon pass two years since Mifsud went missing. Anything that will undermine the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Russian investigation in 2016 are fair game. Particularly juicy are claims that the Obama administration was spying on the Trump’s campaign to help Clinton. Please read again the JFK quote. This is all stuff which has a tiny element of truth, covered with a whole pile of s***. I’m stopping here but I’ve included some links on these topics for anyone who enjoys this nitty-gritty. My spell checker wants to change nitty to nutty, and I believe it has a point.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal
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