Three little words
by digby
In his testimony to the impeachment investigators, former State Department official George Kent got to the heart of what Trump wanted from Ukraine:
."Potus wanted nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton. That was the message. ... Zelenskiy needed to go to a microphone and basically there needed to be three words in the message, and that was the shorthand."
Sure, that's totally normal. Nothing to see here. He was just concerned about Ukrainian corruption.
On MSNBC today, the NY Times reporter Nick Confessore nailed exactly what was going on:
What happened in Ukraine, from US officials, is how gangster states work. Imagine the surprise of the president of Ukraine. He is trying to clean up his country, reform if from a gangster state into a free country, and here comes the president's son and his private lawyer who, by the way is working on some deals for himself, and essentially extorting him to get US aid in exchange for --- he has to basically invest a story --- and that is the key takeaway.
From Kent's testimony, he wanted three words in there: investigation, Biden and Clinton. It was almost like a Mad-lib, it didn't matter what they were going to say, the sole thing they wanted, was an announcement, a public announcement that there was something being investigated. It didn't seem to matter to them if it proceeded from there. What they wanted was a cudgel that they could take back home to the US and wave on the campaign trail.
I don't think people have properly absorbed just how mindboggling it is that Trump has gone out with a straight face to the American people and claimed that he was just trying to clean up Ukrainian corruption --- by bribing the new president to smear his domestic political rivals with desperately needed military aid. The extreme chutzpah, the utter gall of him claiming that he is a big corruption fighter even as he is the most corrupt president in history is enough to drive you mad.
I think that might be the point. How is it possible that anyone could be this utterly shameless?
.
