Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Unseat Ted Kennedy Posthumously
The comradeship of American liberals and Soviet Communists lasted to the Soviet Union’s end. In May 1983, for example, in an incident widely reported at the time and confirmed by Soviet archives, former U.S. senator John Tunney visited Moscow and, on behalf of his friend and classmate—and prospective Democratic presidential candidate—Senator Edward Kennedy, proposed to KGB director Viktor Chebrikov that Kennedy work with Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov to “arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA” because “[t]he only real potential threats to Reagan [in the 1984 election] are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations.” Kennedy promised “to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews.” Collusion, anyone? Today, with the Soviet Union gone, its moral-intellectual imprint on our ruling class remains.
— Andrew Codevilla, “What’s Russia to Us?” in The Claremont Review of Books (Vol. XIX, No. 3, Summer 2019)
Codevilla gives no sources, but it is a dead certainty that he is reporting factually. Sounds like the “Lion of the Senate” would get canceled today, no? No. Because truth died with God. Only the Narrative survives. Still, “our side” should find a way to get such information out to the public at large.
Published in General
Of all the things I find unfathomable about the left, their alignment with the murderous Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China was (is) the most puzzling and unforgivable.
Yes. And the love of thugs continues.
I suspect Codevilla’s source is Paul Kengor, a student of the Cold War, who has written extensively about the topic. It is a subject that the MSM is completely incurious about and ignorant of.
Congratulations to Teddy.
10 years of sobriety.
Power at any cost.
Ouch.
If you want to know more, read Paul Kengor’s Dupes. He goes in to detail on so many who were tool of the Soviets.
Ted is buried at Arlington, which is an utter disgrace.
There was a reference to Kennedy contacts to the USSR in the book called “The Sword and the Shield” –
Ok, so what is the point: that this does happen? Well, yes it does. In 2008 candidate Obama made the famous sojourn to Europe to meet and be feted by the European leadership. As a chair of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on European affairs he had never traveled to Europe.
So he used this trip to shoe up his credentials and also as an advertisement for just how popular he was. This happens a lot. Presidential meet and greets with foreign leaders are photo-ops, and very little comes of them. Except to showcase leaders as leaders.
Here is the difference with what Trump did:
Trump asked a foreign country to investigate a US citizen. A foreign nation with a still looming corruption problem, and a nation in which said US citizen would have no rights whatsoever. This is the abuse of power.
Quid-pro-quo does not matter. Political advantage does not matter. It is this single abuse of power. And he doubled down with the very public appeal to China (what do you think the outcome would be?).
And what was done with the Soviets was bad. But it being bad does not make Trump right. If anything, it makes Trumps actions even worse. In a Senate trial, his defense council is going to say “yeah, but the others guys were just as bad”? Heck, that gets everyone grounded.
There is no defense for Trump. He has admitted to what was said, and what was said has been backed up by others. Attacking the “unfair” process is not a defense. It is political and there is no requirement to be “fair”. There simply is no defense.
Just a question of it it rises to the level of impeachment.
Trump will be impeached because he is Trump. They have been promising to do it since the day HRC lost and have broken every law, every convention to do it. So they will impeach him and remove him because he is Trump and the Right lives to lose.
Because you say so? It does not seem so to me. He did not ask them to arrest Biden. He asked for help in OUR investigation into interference in our election and (later) also into corruption by Biden. What Kennedy did seems far worse to me on the face of it. So the impeachment starts to look like a bill of attainder in that we are prosecuting “crimes” that never bothered us before but for this one person…
Trump might have abused power and we might find convincing evidence. So far, all I see is Kabuki.
It is bad enough when our own government comes after you. Usually you lose, but you have a chance. When it is a foreign government, you have no chance. The US prefers to apply US law and process to US citizens.
It is an abuse of presidential power. The constitution is there to protect citizens from government.
Are you sure it isn’t the other way around?
I must have missed the word “Trump” in the title and text of the OP. Could have sworn this was about Ted The Flatulent Load Kennedy.