There was more bad news for President Donald Trump on Thursday’s episode of the impeachment inquiring show, which guest starred the formidable Fiona Hill. She’s the senior director for Europe and Russia on Trump’s National Security Council, is widely recognized as the government’s foremost expert on Russia, and during her hours of testimony was remarkably well-spoken in an intimidating British accent.
Basically she just backed up what all the previous formidable witnesses had testified, that Trump had sought political help from the Ukrainian in exchange for $400 million of aid that Congress had appropriated to that beleaguered ally, the easily rebuffed the Republican members’ efforts to undermine her. She further further endeared herself to us when she also took aim at one of the more preposterous theories that Trump’s apologists are trying to peddle.
“Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security forces did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, for some reason, Ukraine did,” Hill said in her opening statement. “This is a fictional narrative the has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Well said, but we thought it a shame it needed saying. All of Trump’s appointees to head America’s intelligence agency have confirmed that Russia hacked Democratic computers and launched an internet disinformation campaign and attempted to alter voting totals, both the Republicans and Democrats on the Senate’s intelligence committee reached the same conclusion, and Trump’s own Justice Department is currently charging 12 specific Russians for pulling it off. At this point the only people who doubt it are Trump, who has Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s word that it didn’t happen, and the die-hard fans who somehow still believe anything Trump says.
The most die-hard of the fans, who seem willing to believe almost anything, are convinced it was Ukraine that meddled in the election in cahoots with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. It’s a neat theory with the virtue of explaining everything Trump has been accused of, but it has the unfortunate flaw of making no sense whatsoever.
There’s no denying that somebody hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s computer and selectively leaked the most embarrassing e-mails through Wikileaks at such convenient moments for Trump as when the “Hollywood Access” tape was released, and we notice that Trump advisor Roger Stone was recently found guilty for lying about his contacts with Wikileaks, and it’s hard to explain why Ukraine or anyone else would do that Clinton’s behalf. All of the foreign disinformation was to Trump’s advantage, too, and the executives at the internet platforms which disseminated the disinformation all testified to Congress that it was coming from Russia and was often paid for with rubles. The attempts to hack the voting machines apparently failed, but they did breach a couple of levels of security and were eventually traced to Russia.
If those nefarious Ukrainians were attempting to get Clinton elected they did a damned poor job of it, but they were astoundingly successful in framing those blameless Russians. According to the most die-hard die-hards those Ukrainians a wily bunch of schemers, though, and are in cahoots with Crooked Hillary and potential Democratic nominee Sleepy Joe Biden and his big-earner son, and is currently hiding that DNC computer server that surely holds all the the secrets of the satanic and child-molesting and globalist “deep state” conspiracy.
Biden’s son did a make a lot of money in Ukraine while his dad was Vice President and overseeing Ukrainian policy, and after many decades as a subservient vassal of the Soviet Union Ukraine’s path toward democracy has been fitful and often corrupt, but that’s hardly proof that Trump didn’t lean on an ally for dirt on a potential political opponent. Nor does it mean Trump was right to do so.
We’ve been Republicans far longer than Trump, and can well remember the pride we felt in our party when President Ronald Reagan’s leadership helped liberate Ukraine from the Evil Empire and tried to welcome it into the western world of freedom and democracy. For all its faults we don’t think Ukraine is the bad guy in all this, and for all the good it has done in the past we’re not taking much pride in the Republican party these days.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 