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I Was Wrong About Ukraine
I have been really wrong about the Ukraine thing in several respects.
(1) I assumed that Giuliani and Trump were just making a seat of the pants request to the Ukrainians to look at Biden and I found that irritatingly stupid but not unlawful. Turns out that Giuliani had compiled a fairly detailed record of evidence of malfeasance and coverup and that the Ukrainians were already looking into it. Characterizing the call as some kind of spontaneous browbeating to start up an inquiry was spectacularly dishonest.
(2) I paid no attention to the story back in April about US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and her role in blocking Ukranian investigators from coming to meet to the USDOJ about several issues, including Burisma. At that time, I could not tell (or, to be honest, care) whether these were the corrupt anti-corruption officials or the non-corrupt anti-corruption officials and paid no attention. The bleating by State Dept career types outraged that Trump fired such a sterling professional seemed like background noise.
Now it looks like Ambassador Yovanovich may be the most brazen deep-state player since Andy McCabe. Hip-deep in the efforts to go after Manafort while many (protected) Democrats fed at the very same trough, it now appears that she made every effort to stonewall efforts to reveal extensive corruption involving American (Democrat) political and financial interests. It also appears likely that resentment over her firing may be a causal event in the development of the Schiff Circus and its “whistleblower(s).”
(3) I completely missed the fact that this offensive regarding Ukraine is clearly a calculated pre-emptive strike because the more we get to look at the origins of Russiagate, the more all roads lead to Kyiv and a very broad pattern of both political and financial corruption by the minions of Barack and Hillary. I had just assumed this latest it was just another random attack on Trump.
I will be looking for bulk popcorn deals on Amazon today because I think fun stuff is about to unfold that Ricochetti can sit back and enjoy.
Published in General
The more I hear, especially from the Democrats, about Ukraine the more I think Ukraine is the hub of the Democrat corruption from Biden and Clinton family finances to the Russiagate farce. Democrats have been using the Ukraine as their corruption management service!
To say it’s “about to unfold” assumes that what you’ve learned will be reported by our news media and received by their viewers.
My take is that America has been dumping a bunch of money in Ukraine and a bunch of corrupt political types have flocked there to feed. It seems to have a lot of Dems, so much so that they started feeding the Republican corrupt politicals to the wolfs (jail) to free up space so they can feed more. Now they want to dump this corruption on to Trump.
The dilemma as I mention in another post is that we will likely hear nothing, or a distorted representation, of what has happened. All those reports, investigations and other information that we are looking forward to will simply be shoved into a deep, dark abyss. We’ll be able to look at the information ourselves, but will anyone outside of conservatives care?
OldB,
This is exactly what Schiff’s little improv and now this second pseudo-whistleblower are up to. Blow enough smoke and false accusations in everyone’s face so nobody notices just how dirty Biden & Sonny Boy are.
Regards,
Jim
It will get out because (a) Trump will tweet it; (b) The Renfields who comprise the Twitter mob (AKA the”base” of the Democrat Party) will reply in sputtering rage and thus transmit Trump’s message within the tribe (c) The MSM will feel compelled to spin, deny and the fact of doing so draw attention (d) Enough people will turn to Rush, Fox etc that many will know.
In diners and social halls where conversation is permitted (unlike, say, Oberlin or Harvard) it will get out.
I think we can resent the MSM’s lack of balance, professionalism, and integrity without buying into their version of themselves in which there are no voices but theirs.
Except I don’t think protecting the Bidet family was at the top of Schiff’s list. He really saw this crap sandwich as a clean kill of the Trump presidency. If the Senate were 70-30 Democrats, it would likely work.
In reality, the likely consequence of Bull Schiff’s gambit is vastly more attention to Ukraine which can’t end well for Democrats. This is the same idiot who promised smoking gun proof of Russian collusion. That wins the news cycle for 24 hours but then what and what about when it’s showtime and you ain’t got it? There is no Mueller this time and this is entirely a Schiff production so his habit of short-term thinking will likely be his undoing.
Was that deliberate or a typo? If it was deliberate, well played. If it was a typo it is positively Freudian.
I saw some bloggers using it and I stole it, as all great writers do.
This is what concerns me the most. I’m not convinced that the news media would really report it. But even if it did, I can’t help wondering how many would believe and accept it.
Note the few times the New York Times ends up reporting something that makes Democrats look bad, their readership immediately attacks the Times as being Trump-Shills.
No, I’m afraid that the people who watch the leftist news media (which is pretty much all of them) are so completely brainwashed that even if the media suddenly became neutral purveyors of the news overnight, their viewers would turn on them and call them Trump propagandists.
That is exactly what I fear.
It will be very hard to ignore. If the lemmings send a bill of impeachment, McConnell & the White House can tap dance on the broader context and the MSM will have to cover it.
The other variable is Barr and Durham. They can complain it is biased and wrong but they will still have to report what they find.
It is important for the country that the GOP win big in 2016 so that grownups on the center-left can take back the Dem Party and also cleanse the media. The American people hate PC and would prefer not to be spun and lied to. We can debate the scope and role of government but not in the current insane climate.
Again? ;-)
Evan Thomas, a classic liberal establishment WASP writer (Phillips, Harvard, UVa Law) and a staple at Time and Newsweek for many years famously observed that media support for Democratic presidential candidates was worth 10-15%. [I always enjoyed though usually disagreed with his panel show commentary and I especially liked his book on the Battle of Leyte Gulf Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945]
I think that edge is far less even though (or partially because) the bias is more overt. There are no more responsible liberals like Thomas in the media. The trust is gone. Even those who still watch/read know they are being spun. Clinton and Obama could be sold as compassionate centrists by a generally, seemingly trustworthy MSM. That is over. The Green New Deal, Open Borders, Infanticide and frothing anger is a recipe for a shrinking, not a growing coalition.
From your lips… However I have three troubling data points that worry me.
I hope I am wrong about this; however, where I am sitting, admittedly in very blue Austin, this looks like it is going to be a close run thing.
If the Senate were 70-30 Democrats Trump, Pence, Kavanaugh, Thomas and Roberts would all be impeached.
The Ukraine connection is extremely complicated. One way that might help to make sense of it is to listen to a recent podcast on the John Batchelor show where, in four different podcasts, a reporter named Aaron Klein connects the dots: https://podbay.fm/podcast/589864479/e/1570594609
As we are all just beginning to discover, the Russian Collusion was incorrectly named; it should have been called the Ukraine Collusion. How all this escaped the Mueller Report, not to mention the MSM or even Fox, is beyond me as it was hiding in plain sight for years.
1. The suburban antipathy for Trump will continue to be a problem. Fortunately the Democrats propose the complete destruction of the suburban lifestyle so there’s that.
2. The Schiff bump cannot be sustained. It is based on a very contrived set of premises and exists in the absence of a defense which is yet to come.
3. Economy etc has not changed. If Trump shows resilience, these numbers also reset.
Here is a report from The Hill, on the Ukrainian connections.
Now, before you run off with the pitch forks, consider this part of the report:
“Ukraine is infamous for corruption and disinformation operations; its police agencies fight over what is considered evidence of wrongdoing. Kulyk and his bosses even have political fights over who should and shouldn’t be prosecuted. Consequently, allegations emanating from Kiev usually are taken with a grain a salt.”
And also that Juiliani was involved at this time.
“Ukrainian officials say they don’t want to hand the evidence to FBI agents working in Ukraine because they believe the bureau has a close relationship with the NABU and the U.S. Embassy. “It is no secret in Ukrainian political circles that the NABU was created with American help and tried to exert influence during the U.S. presidential election,” Kulyk told me.”
“More recently, President Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani — former mayor and former U.S. attorney in New York City — learned about some of the allegations while, on behalf of the Trump legal team, he looked into Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.”
The whole point of the Mueller investigation was to create a narrative that the sleazoid record of the Obama Administration with respect to Ukraine was really about Trump. Mueller selected certified integrity-free attack dogs to do what was done to Ted Stevens and peripheral innocents in the Enron disaster—find a crime where there wasn’t one, crush anyone in the way and cover the slime trail of allies and enablers. Missing big truths was a feature, not a bug.
Attack? Yes. Random? No.
The left has been on the offensive against Trump 24/7 since he took office. Sometimes their accusations takes days, weeks, or in the case of Mueller, years to be resolved.
My fear is that the general public just won’t take the trouble to look into the weeds the way we do on Ricochet. This this a very complicated story, and the Dems are experts at soundbites making their version more believable. For a prime example, just listen to Schiff’s “paraphrasing” of the Trump phone call which was carried by the networks but explained by few that it was an inaccurate representation. Schiff knew exactly what he was doing, BUT do Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public realize it was a blatant effort to misrepresent the call? I don’t think so.
@oldbathos, don’t feel bad. Ukraine appears to be more lethal than a pit of vipers. It’s difficult to tell the corrupt from the not so corrupt because it appears that everyone in that country has some level of patina.
Some of us here look into the weeds and find disgusting things on both sides.
Trump’s biggest problem isn’t the democrats, it’s Trump. The dems have been gunning for him since Nov. 2016, but Trump keeps giving them ammunition.
A few posts above I put in a link to a column from The Hill (written in April). Now, I am sure someone in the WH read this, and all they had to do was send it to Barr and Pompeo, and ask for answers. And dump Juiliani, if your attorney has to hire an attorney, then you have the wrong guy.
I have some concerns about the two Ukrainians arrested today by the FBI for campaign finance issues. They were supposedly Guliani associates who were helping him find information in Ukraine.
Gee, it’s too bad the FBI wrecked their reputation trying to get Hillary elected and then trying to destroy the President. Because I don’t trust ’em at all now.
I think (although no one from the White House corresponds with me, so I’m guessing) the White House has been aware of this for some time. As for Giuliani, I can’t tell whether he’s an asset or a liability as we have a very fast-moving story here with new occurrences on a daily basis.
Elliot Ness is turning over in his grave.
Agree in large part. Giuliani has been working on the Russia thing since it was weaponized. Trump has a lot of faith in him. On the one hand, he is a fighter and a political pro but he also has a lot of the same verbal discipline problems that plague Trump.
One of the after-effects of the post-election bitterness and sustained Mueller assault is that nobody in the WH was willing to go after Russian or Ukrainian sources/events for fear of accusations of interfering with Mueller, that great honest broker who would look at all these matters.
So Barr/Durham/Giuliani got a late start in this fight. We will see how they do now that the shackles are off.