Thursday 21 November 2019

Trump and Ukrainegate. Who cares?

After endless impeachment hearings at the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives I doubt there is anyone but the president himself who does not believe that Donald Trump asked the former comedian-turned president of Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden as a quid pro quo for arranging a visit to the White House AND ensuring Kiev got the fat chunck of military aide from the US which it needed to fend of those pesky Rusian mercenary troops in the eastern part of the country. So many witnesses have now revealed in the public hearings that this is what happened that I'm sure it's true. But the next question is: does anyone really care? Well the Democrats do because they think they have a tiny chance of actually getting Trump impeached which might give their party a better chance of moving back into the White House with a President Biden or Warren or Sanders or Buttigieg or even perhaps after her excellent performance at the latest TV debate, my favourite, Kamala Harris. With Trump frogmarched out of the Oval Office, Mike Pence would be sworn in and no one wants Mike Pence, the very creepy vice president, to take charge of the United States. So President Biden etc etc would be voted in. But I really don't believe Ukrainegate is going to be the smoking gun to remove Trump. And not just because the Republicans will vote against impeachment in a Senate trial. The quid pro quo "bombshell" as the American newspapers and broadcasters like to describe it, is inceasingly becoming less and less explosive. One witness was sure he heard someone else say that Trump had said bla bla bla. Another witness said he had been ordered to set up a quid pro quo agreement. Another witness was scandalised when he heard Trump indicate to President Zelensky of Ukraine that if he wanted a fancy red-carpet visit to the White House he better dig some real dirt on the Bidens and their involvement in a Ukrainian gas company. The quid pro quo definitely happened. But, excuse me, who ever thought politics was a pure and gentlemanly/ladylike business? There's rough dirty stuff going on all the time, isn't there? How many similar quid pro quos went on in, say, Richard Nixon's time, or Bill Clinton's, or George W Bush's or even Barack Obama's? Were they all clean and above-board? I don't know if other presidents have rung foreign leaders and told: "Do this or else...." But I would be surprised if they didn't. Politics can be a dirty game and superpower politics can be the dirtiest of them all. This is not to excuse Trump, and his behaviour, if proven, sounds like bullyboy tactics, not the conduct of a president of integrity. But impeachable? I don't think so.

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