Ukranian Conspiracies: Birtherism 3.0

Ukrainian Conspiracies: 3.0

Now we have another Trump conspiracy charge cooked up by the rabid right wing, with no other purpose than to derail Joe Biden’s presidential bid.  We’ve seen this act before, in Trump’s ludicrous birther cabal that in 1961 President Obama’s mother’s falsified her son’s Kenyan birth—apparently, possessing foreknowledge that her son would run for president in 2008—by claiming he was born in Hawaii where she resided at the time of this birth.  Just coincidentally, in the midst of the 2016 Republican primary season, Trump raised an equally nonsensical suspicion that Ted Cruz’s father had a close association with Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald in the fall of 1963.  Trump’s source?  Why the National Enquirer, of course.  

And now we have the debunked story accusing then Vice President, Biden and his son, Hunter, of bald-faced corruption in Ukraine.  The reality is that Hunter Biden held a post on a Ukrainian gas company while his father handled the Obama administration’s effort “to rid Ukraine of corruption,” in part, by putting pressure on their government to fire a top corrupt national prosecutor.  While any wrong doing by either of the Biden’s was widely dismissed—and the Obama administration’s plans were part of a broader Western effort to end corruption in the Ukraine—some Obama administration officials expressed concern that Hunter’s involvement with the company “could potentially undermine” the VP’s role in this matter (New Yorker, 10-04-19).  The deposed prosecutor contended that Biden intervened to impede his investigation of the company with which his son was associated. In addition to the widespread clearance of both Biden’s of any such charge, it is absurd on its face, since Obama set the policy, not Biden, in consensus with our European partners.

That, of course, did not prevent the right-wing media to create a conspiracy narrative picked up by Trump and his co-conspirator, Rudy Giuliani, to get the dirt on the Biden’s and derail the VP’s presidential run.  It is this story that is garnering most of the media’s attention.

Even more pernicious is the Trumpian effort to find additional evidence aimed to derail the primary claim of the Mueller Report that Russia intervened in the presidential election of 2016 for the express aim of helping the current occupant of the White House.  Instead—according The Trump-Fox New narrative—corrupt Ukrainian officials conspired with Clinton campaign operates who hacked the DNCC server themselves, to create a false narrative that the Russians intervened in the election in Trump’s favor. According to Trump, the fact of the matter is that Ukraine rather than Russia intervened in the election with the intent of expressly assisting the Clinton campaign. 

What makes this latter conspiracy especially dangerous, and potentially treasonous, is that in putting the blame for electoral meddling on Ukraine rather than Russia, Trump is playing directly into Putin’s hands.  Such favoring of Putin reflects a three-year trend of Trump’s to believe the Russian president more than this nation’s foreign intelligence services, which uniformly confirmed Russia’s direct involvement in the election. 

It is in support of these two conspiracies that the current occupant of the White House held back congressional approval of military aide to Ukraine. Specifically, Trump expected a “favor” that Ukrainian officials would cooperate with Giuliani and Attorney General Barr in finding evidence in support of these two investigations. The Democratic party initiated an impeachment investigation based on the actions of Trump and his cronies in their effort to derail the Biden campaign by putting direct pressure on a sovereign nation in making their dubious case.

According to Trump, his motives are not political.  He simply wants to root out corruption in Ukraine. The irony is that in his unconscionable gas lighting, corruption is the overarching factor underlying the Trump administration.  In short, Trump and his associates are the epitome of corruption.

Such corruption is at the source of several impeachment articles that the House should consider—along with one or more articles on the Ukrainian situation—namely obstruction of justice, as documented in the Mueller Report, possible emoluments violations based on his continuing profiteering from his properties, and in his obstruction of the impeachment inquiry, itself.  Trump’s extremely cozy relationship with Russia, also deserves a close look.  This could include a possible article of treason based on his effort to exonerate Russia of their involvement in the 2016 presidential election and in weakening the hand of Ukraine in its own defense against a potential Russian onslaught of the eastern portion of its country.

The challenge for our democracy is whether this nation has the political and moralwherewithal to stand up against the Trumpian assault on the very fabric the democratic republic upon which this nation is based. I contend that the jury is still out on this central question. We may still be some distance from an American form of fascism in this country, but I maintain what we have in the Trump administration is closer to an authoritarian impulse in the executive office than we have ever had and that our institutions may be weaker than we think in combatting this onslaught.  There is no arc of history bending inevitably upward.  There is only us and whatever resources the One who judges rightly provides.

2019

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