SAY WHAT? Just Whose Foreign Policy Is This?

Editor’s Note: Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.

Tim Donner: If you had to pick two words to summarize the commencement of the official impeachment inquiry, which moved from a secret room in the Capitol to the House chamber last week -- and that also would neatly encapsulate the entire Trump presidency -- they would be irregular channel.

The Democrats supposed bombshell witness -- the star witness, the guy Democrats hoped would captivate the nation on opening day of impeachment season, Ambassador Bill Taylor -- spoke of the regular channel of diplomacy, the kind he and his fellow career diplomats are accustomed to, and an irregular channel, which translated means Trump's personal initiatives, which so often are at odds with official, longstanding diplomatic protocol.

And that tension drove this entire exercise: between the way things have always been done around Washington and the Trump way, which is to upset the establishment apple cart, the very thing he was elected to do. Taylor appeared as a respectable establishment figure but betrayed the usual Swamp sensibilities when discussing Trump bypassing him and other foreign policy experts.

Amb. Bill Taylor: I wrote that withholding security assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in the United States would be crazy … Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland on what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.

Tim: So there you go. Trump is crazy. And then later Taylor heard from a staffer or through an ambassador who overheard a phone call that Trump cares only about investigating Biden. It's like Taylor heard it through the grapevine thirdhand and is shocked. Shocked. In fact, the whole narrative, the whole impeachment inquiry, is nothing more than a glorified he said, she said. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) effectively revealed this in questioning star witness Taylor about the phone call that's supposed to be the basis for reversing the 2016 presidential election.

Rep. Jim Jordan: Ambassador, you weren't on the call, were you? You didn't listen in on President Trump's call and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky's call?

Amb. Bill Taylor: I did not.

Jordan: You never talked with Chief of Staff [Mick] Mulvaney?

Taylor: I never did.

Jordan: You never met the president?

Taylor: That's correct.

Jordan: You had three meetings, again, with Zelensky, and it didn't come up.

Taylor: And two of those, they had never heard about as far as I know.

Jordan: And president-

Taylor: There was no reason for it to come up.

Jordan: President Zelensky never made an announcement. This is what I can't believe. And you're their star witness. You're their first witness, but you're the guy, based on this, based on ... I mean I've seen church prayer chains that are easier to understand than this.

Tim: So then the question becomes, was there a legitimate reason for Trump wanting Biden investigated? Hello, the guy's son profited hugely, $50,000 a month at least and a spot on a board of Ukraine's biggest energy company, despite no experience in Ukraine, no experience in energy. A deal cut right after Biden left Ukraine. And then Biden threatened to do exactly what Trump's being accused of. Cut off funding for Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor investigating -- wait for it -- Hunter Biden's company. No basis for investigation? Yeah, right. No basis.

Another question, how do you impeach a president for something he might have done but didn't? They claim there was a quid pro quo. Lethal aid and a White House meeting for Ukrainian President Zelensky in return for a publicly announced investigation of Joe Biden.

But the investigation didn't happen, and the lethal aid was delivered. But it's more than enough for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and the Democrats to ignore the transparent corruption of their leading presidential candidate. Ignore the fact that aid was delivered to Ukraine by Trump and ignore that no investigation was announced. And go ahead and pull the trigger on impeachment anyway, less than a year before a presidential election, with not a single Republican vote in the House and no prospects for conviction in the Senate.

In contrast, 33 Democrats voted for the impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton, and every Republican except four voted for the impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon.

Now, Schiff understands that he may get impeachment, but he's not going to get a conviction and removal from office barring new bombshell information, which would have long since been leaked to the impeachment-obsessed elite media if it was there. So Schiff's already trying to lay the groundwork for the same charge the Democrats came up with when the Russia collusion hoax was laid bare: obstruction.

Rep. Adam Schiff: If the president can simply refuse all oversight, particularly in the context of an impeachment proceeding, the balance of power between our two branches of government will be irrevocably altered.

Tim: See what he did there? And that was in his opening statement. Emphasize Trump's refusal to let his closest advisers testify so when outrage over the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president dissipates, as is already happening, he can always fall back on obstruction. But when the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes (CA), delivered his opening statement, he talked about the Russia collusion hoax and the endless witch hunts against Trump that have come up empty.

Rep. Devin Nunes: We're supposed to take these people at face value when they trot out a new batch of allegations. But anyone familiar with the Democrats' scorched-earth war against President Trump would not be surprised to see all the typical signs that this is a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign.

Tim: Everyone in D.C. knows who the alleged whistleblower is but pretend that they don't, including Schiff, who specifically denied knowing the whistleblower, even though he contacted Schiff's staff first with his complaint. Such a bald-faced lie. So, the lawyer for this guy called for Trump's impeachment the same month Trump was inaugurated, almost three years ago. That would be January of 2017. But never mind that.

Here's a question no one seems to be asking. Democrats still claim to this day that Trump is an agent of Russia and Vladimir Putin. If that's true, why in God's name would Trump be sending lethal aid to the country Russia's trying to overrun? Lethal aid for Ukraine, by the way, was denied by the Obama administration for all eight years.

But you know, we've seen this swamp revolt against a prior president's irregular channels before. Take you back to President Ronald Reagan, whose most famous single statement was, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." The State Department repeatedly tried to remove those words from Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, but he persisted, and the wall came down two years later. Likewise, official Washington was appalled when in Reykjavik, Iceland, Reagan walked away from a deal that would have eliminated U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons because he would have had to dismantle his much-vaunted Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars, which had the Soviets on the run and, to keep up, killing their economy. The State Department was outraged. A few years later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

That, my friends, is the politics of personal -- or Lone Ranger, if you will -- diplomacy, from Reagan to Trump. And that is the resistance we will witness in perpetuity from an unelected foreign policy and domestic establishment that truly believes they, not the elected president, are the repositories of wisdom. They, not the elected president, know best. And they, not the elected president, should decide what America's foreign policy should be. Problem is, that's the exact reverse of what the victorious voters cast their ballots for in 2016 and may well reaffirm in 2020.

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