[redacted] re Ukraine government: “They are horrible, corrupt people. They tried to take me down.” (Why does he hate the Ukrainians? A few thoughts.)

(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)

This quote comes courtesy of the Washington Post and an article about the irrational hatred of a certain president for the country of Ukraine.

The president* of the United States has believed in a conspiracy theory regarding the Ukrainian government since early in his administration and possibly even before his election.  Notes taken by FBI agents of interviews with Rick Gates, the deputy to Paul Manafort, show that key figures around the candidate* pushed the unsupported theory that the Ukraine government was responsible for the hacks of Democratic servers.  This included campaign advisors who became, at least briefly, national security advisors.

The interviews with Rick Gates also revealed that high level figures like the sons of the candidate speculated as to how they could obtain copies of the purloined emails.  Again, the man who briefly became national security advisor was tapped, “because of his Russian connections”, to try to obtain emails not yet released and information as to when they would be released.  There was apparently no definite evidence that advance knowledge was ever obtained except in the case of the Republican National Committee (RNC), which might have learned ahead of time when releases might occur.

These interview transcriptions were released on a judge’s order, as part of a gradual release of most or all of the Mueller investigation unpublished transcripts.  The releases are still heavily redacted to remove the names of current subjects of investigation and other key leads.  This was the first release, and it happened to contain most of the interviews with Rick Gates; releases will continue monthly for the next eight years, according to the judge’s order.

The degree and duration of [redacted]’s apparent visceral hatred of Ukraine and its government has never been made public before.  It is truly shocking, in an age of shocks, that this animus against Ukraine is so deep and so long-lasting, and what is worse, so resistant to change.  The result of this bias is the naked abuse of political power against the Ukrainians.

From his point of view, [redacted] has done nothing wrong by openly twisting the Ukrainian arm for his personal political gain.  The fallback position of the Republican majority in the Senate will be that it was wrong, but not so bad as to be impeachable.  Sort of like the fallback Democratic position in the Clinton impeachment: wrong, but not impeachable because it was personal, not government business.  Except that this fallback is saying that the use/abuse of political power by with-holding vital military aid to a front-line democratic country to demand the announcement of an investigation into his political rivals isn’t such a bad  thing.  Not so bad?  When Ukrainian soldiers have been killed because they don’t have enough Javelin anti-tank missiles to fend off Russian militia attacks, not so bad?  I beg to differ.