According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a “quid pro quo.” But President Trump did insist that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskyy should want to do this himself.Donald Trump may have insisted he was not asking for a quid pro quo, but does his assertion fit the facts? Here's Taylor's description of Sondland's conversation with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy subsequent to Sondland's 7 September call with Trump.
The following day, on September 8, Ambassador Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he had talked to President Trump as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was adamant that President Zelenskyy, himself, had to “clear things up and do it in public.” President Trump said it was not a “quid pro quo.” Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelenskyy and Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelenskyy did not “clear things up” in public, we would be at a “stalemate.” I understood a “stalemate” to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance."Stalemate" only makes sense if there's some kind of interaction. In business and diplomacy, negotiations stalemate when neither side is willing to change its bargaining position.
Trump knew Ukraine needed the military assistance Congress had approved but that he was refusing to disburse. If Trump had a different reason for holding up that aid, a reason that would stand public scrutiny, he would have told Zelenskyy.
The only reasonable conclusion is that Trump was holding up the assistance in order to extort a public announcement that President Zelenskyy would "investigate" Joe Biden in order to dig up "dirt" that Trump's campaign could use in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. (Trump also wants whatever flimsy vindication can be conjured up for the nonsensical conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.)
"Give me dirt on Biden and I'll give you your military aid." That's the message Trump was sending Zelenskyy.
In the truth-telling world, we call that a quid pro quo — literally, this for that.
Whether Trump was lying or being an imbecile, his insistence that he wasn't asking for a quid pro quo is simply false.
Trump's defenders will repeat until the end of time that he never asked for a quid pro quo. Sondland himself tried to parrot that line, not just in the 8 September phone call with Taylor but in subsequent text messages to Taylor. Taylor, not being a fool, saw through that bullshit.
So do the rest of us.
Yes, it was a quid pro quo. And no amount of bullshit from Trump or his defenders can change that.
Is it an impeachable offense? Different question but as long as I'm writing — yes, it goddamned well is impeachable, too.
Trump leveraged the power of the presidency to extort a foreign head of state for personal gain. He wasn't acting in the interests of the United States. That's a violation of his oath of office, which requires him to act in the nation's interests, not his own.
You may love Trump, you may think he has gotten a raw deal from those of us who didn't vote for him, but you goddamned well ought to see what a terrible precedent his extortion sets for future presidents — including those you might loathe.
He has grossly abused the power of his office in exactly the way some of the Founders worried a president might. He must be impeached. I would also urge Senate Republicans to give serious consideration not just to convicting him but to removing him from office. There are a ton of reasons he is unfit to be president (and Congressional Republicans will privately concede most of them) but this incident alone is sufficient to justify that extreme step,
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