Donald Trump didn’t collude with Russia to steal the 2016 election, he says. Okay. Even if Robert Mueller didn’t completely exonerate the president, he couldn’t find the evidence that he did—there was no cooperative witness, no smoking gun document.
This time it’s different. Did The Donald bully (#BeBest) Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election? We not only have a credible whistleblower, citing more than a half dozen potential witnesses, but we have a document released by the White House that backs up every accusation.
And keep in mind—the “transcript” provided by the White House only contains the sanitized version Trump and his cronies thought would be less damaging to share. The word for word transcript, which White House officials allegedly ordered to be buried on a “code word level” server intended only for the nations most sensitive secrets, is presumably far worse!
(One wonders how Mueller’s investigation would have proceeded if he had this evidence of a crime and coverup. It’s a question likely to be asked of Mueller by some enterprising journalist, and who knows, given Trump’s continued insults, Mueller just might drop his “no comments” to answer it.)
What’s more, it wasn’t only Ukraine. Rudy Giuliani, in his established role as most ghoulish spokesperson for the administration, has been on a world tour of sorts urging multiple countries to investigate Trump’s political rivals based on conspiracy theories launched on internet chumbucket sites like 4chan. If the standard for impeachment was working in concert with another country to influence the outcome of an election, then Trump’s transcript of his call proves we’ve reached that standard, and Giuliani’s actions make it all the more brazen. Trump defenders who move the goalposts further to say collusion requires a criminal act (like hacking) can’t make these actions sound any less treasonous or corrupt, as much as they may try.
The dizzying array of scandals, crimes and corruption emanating from the White House has been at times difficult to keep up with—one reason among many why I abandoned writing on this blog for a while.
This one though, is substantive. This one follows through on a narrative that has been ongoing since the very beginning of the Trump presidency:
Unable or unwilling to do anything that improves the lives of ordinary Americans, Trump colludes with powerful allies—Fox News, Russian propaganda outfits—to spread lies and misinformation that divide our country and secure his power.
This time, maybe, he won’t get away with it.
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