Remember how, just yesterday, House Republicans were threatening to investigate Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for election interference because he visited a Pennsylvania weapons factory?
Wonder what James Comer thinks of ex-president Donald Trump literally using Zelensky as a campaign prop today?
“He said, President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong, he said it loud and clear, and the impeachment hoax died right there,” Trump said, misrepresenting – big word there for lying – about his first impeachment, which involved Trump’s attempt in 2019 to strongarm Zelensky into giving him dirt on Joe Biden, holding U.S. aid to Ukraine over his head as leverage.
Zelensky, in fact, never said Trump “did absolutely nothing wrong,” and in fact, the U.S. House voted 232-196 on Dec. 18, 2019, to send two articles of impeachment on the Ukraine matter to the Senate.
The U.S. Senate voted 52-48 and 53-47 on Feb. 5, 2020, to acquit Trump.
The votes were party-line in nature: the partisan makeup of the Senate was 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents.
The reason Republicans voted against acquitting Trump was simple politics, not Zelensky saying anything.
You’re not, of course, going to hear anything from Comer, the chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, or House Speaker Mike Johnson, about the Trump-Zelensky Friday photo-op.
Their issue, such as it was, with the Zelensky weapons factory event was that it involved Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.
That’s literally it – Zelensky did a public event with a Democrat.
The Ukraine president met privately with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, pushing for support from the U.S. for permission to fire American-made missiles farther into Russia, which is to say, his meeting with Biden and Harris was about substantive, strategy-type stuff, not the photo-op that Trump arranged for himself today.
It’s hard to imagine that the Zelensky-Trump meeting will be anywhere near as productive. Trump, a Vladimir Putin ally, has made it clear that, if he’s elected president, he will pressure Ukraine to negotiate a peace with Russia that would allow Putin to maintain control over Ukrainian territory gained in the two-plus-year-old war.
Trump basically reiterated this stance at Friday’s photo-op.
“We have a very good relationship,” Trump said, motioning to Zelensky “and I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin. And I think, if we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly.”
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Chris Graham
