I'm not moving the goalposts. The goalposts were in the wrong place to start with. If I could, I would tell all those on the right to stop with their claims because they can't be proved. Similarly you can't know or prove what Biden's motives were. The goalposts should always have been to just defend Trump from the claim of a quid pro quo because this is what's behind the charge of abuse of office, is it not?
The same goes for the Lev Parnas obfuscation. Parnas brought nothing new to the facts of the case. Whether or not Trump knew him, etc. is meaningless, don't you see? Trump wanted Hunter looked into and he wanted Zelensky to talk to Rudy and Trump admitted to these facts when he released the phone call.
I finally spent some time digging into this impeachment. I ignored it before now pretty much and watched little of the TV coverage. I learned some things that should seriously undermine the charge against Trump unless the GOP is feckless. Trump's opposition to foreign aid, in general, and to countries with a history of corruption, in particular, is almost radical and there's a long history of efforts made by him. Trump asked for big reductions in each of the last two budgets. He put in clear requests and was angered when Congress totally ignored him. In the middle of June, he started asking for legal ways to thwart Congress and get Ukrainian and Lebanese aid reduced. It led to lots of back and forth with the OMB and with his own counselors who tried to convince him that the status quo was important while Trump kept plowing ahead trying to come up with a legal way out of the obligation coming up next--Ukraine. On this he was almost irate because of the history of corruption and, as he frequently said, Ukraine should be Europe's problem.
There's no way to know what was in Trump's head when the phone call finally took place. His advisors had finally compromised and the OMB agreed to a temporary hold on the aid. A July 11 memo was released announcing it but even with this Trump didn't want to call Zelensky which his advisors had urged him to do if they put the temp. hold on. It would appear that Trump wanted most to just walk away from the whole thing. Maybe he wanted Rudy to have more time to investigate? At this point, only speculation follows, but it seems clear that Trump had more on his mind than a need to score political points by exposing Hunter Biden. After all, there was always Rudy back there gathering evidence of Biden corruption. All Trump had to do was stay cool and wait for Giuliani to come up with some opposition research. What I read, however, shows a Trump who'd been consistently peeved about foreign aid for years. If the history I read withstands scrutiny, I think Trump's attorneys will have a field day with it. |
