Democrats and their media minions were once again rubbing their hands in glee – as they have done so many times before – over the latest revelation sure to finally bring down President Donald Trump. To borrow a famous quote, it is déjà vu all over again.
This time, the final nail in the coffin of Trump’s tenure as president is the acknowledgment by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney that the temporary hold on aid to Ukraine was tied to the president’s request that his Ukrainian counterpart order an investigation into the unresolved question of the allegedly hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) server.
Quid Pro Quo or No?
Ukrainian officials played a role in the origination of the FBI’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Additionally, the DNC in 2016 dispatched a contractor to acquire compromising information on Trump campaign associates from Ukrainian officials. During a phone call with the Ukrainian president, Trump had asked that the matter of Ukraine’s alleged connections to the hacking of the DNC and the origins of the Russia collusion hoax be looked into.
The president always insisted that he had not demanded a quid pro quo. The president of Ukraine and other officials from that country backed Trump up on that assertion. During an October 17 press briefing, however, Mulvany indicated that aid to Ukraine was held back because President Trump wanted that country’s government to look into the matter of the DNC server.
The Democrats’ impeachment case against President Donald Trump is based largely on the idea that aid to Ukraine was withheld until the Ukrainian President agreed to have his people investigate US presidential candidate Joe Biden. The story behind Biden’s shady dealings with the Ukrainians, which involved his son landing a highly-paid directorship with a Ukrainian energy company and then the killing of an investigation into that same company, is well-known.
It’s All About the Democrats and 2016
What neither the Democrats nor the leftist media are mentioning, though, is that Trump’s real focus, with regard to Ukraine, is not Biden at all. There have been rumors and allegations swirling for some time that uncorroborated information provided by corrupt Ukrainian officials fueled the Russia investigation and, in particular, the investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. There are also rumors that Ukrainian officials had knowledge of the alleged hacking of the DNC server.
In reality, then, there is no real quid pro quo here. Trump was merely acting in the way so many other first-world leaders do: He was concerned about sending aid to a country that may not be doing enough to investigate corruption. As Mulvaney put it: “There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy. That’s going to happen.” It should not be forgotten that, as vice president, Biden told the Ukrainians that he would withhold more than a billion dollars in US assistance unless an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor was fired within six hours.
Additionally, the president has expressed concerns that, while the US sends massive aid to Ukraine – a European country – western European nations are doing little to assist their regional neighbor.
Mulvaney later clarified his comment about Ukraine aid: “The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server. The only reasons we were holding the money was because of concern about lack of support from other nations and concerns over corruption.”
The acting chief of staff’s words are being touted as the latest indictment of Trump that will seal his fate, but, of course, this is an assertion that has been made a hundred times since November of 2016. File it with Stormy Daniels, the Access Hollywood tapes, Russian collusion, and several semi-fiction tell-all books as another nothingburger.
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