Everyone is talking about what Donald Trump did to Ukraine. They're framing it as though Trump had merely tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky into fabricating dirt on Hunter Biden, or "finding" a server with Hillary Clinton's emails on it.
Trump had just withheld about $400 million in funds Ukraine desperately needs to fight its war against Russia, and to get that money Trump wanted "reciprocity" from Ukraine and for Zelensky to "play ball."
But the unspoken threat was really this: "Come up with dirt on Hunter Biden or I'll have Russia invade you." Everyone knows that Trump is in Vladimir Putin's pocket. Zelensky knows this better than anyone, and it's why he emphasized that he stayed in a Trump hotel when he traveled to New York (and that's a perfect example of Trump's conflicts of interest and his violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution).
Trump is a mob boss threatening to have Vito kneecap guys who won't play ball. Trump has always talked like a mob boss and now he's acting like one. He can't spin this implicit threat as playing hard ball to get a better deal for the United States. Because letting Ukraine fall to a Russian invasion would make us -- and Trump -- look even weaker than we already do.
Yet Trump made that implicit threat.
And since Zelensky is president of Ukraine, a Russian invasion means certain death for him. That's why Zelensky is playing patty-cake with Trump. Trump, in essence, threatened to have Zelensky killed by the same Russian war criminals who shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine unless Zelensky "investigates" the Bidens.
This is clearly a misuse of presidential power for partisan political gain, the very definition of the high crimes and misdemeanors the Constitution refers to in impeachment proceedings.
If Republicans let Trump get away with this heinous, they will never be able to complain about a future Democratic president's actions on something as innocuous as, say, extending health care benefits to Americans who aren't covered by insurance.
That was the horrible executive overreach that Republicans said Obama was guilty of.
Impeach. Trump. Now.
More than ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment