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Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media’s Approval Ratings (Rightly) Keep Sinking

24 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 1 Comment

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Fox News, Gallup, globalism, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, journalism, Mainstream Media, media bias, MSM, news media, Sean Hannity, Trump

Some RealityChek readers have noted (and kind of griped) that I spend a lot of time here attacking the performance of the Mainstream Media (MSM) – and they’re right. This focus stems from two related reasons: First, this performance (as I’ve documented extensively*) has not only been genuinely terrible when it comes to getting facts and their obvious implications straight, but it’s been genuinely terrible in an overwhelmingly pro-globalist vein, including on trade, immigration, and foreign policy issues, and of course on the highest profile of all critics of these views – President Trump.

Second, media performance deserves attention because they’re supposed to play such a crucial watchdog role in our democratic republic. Yet their biases have been so flagrant, and even so deliberate, that these news outlets are no longer serving as a source of reliable, trustworthy information, and consequently keep weakening the foundations of accountable government.

Anyone skeptical should take a look at a new Gallup poll that tries to measure how Americans view the ethics of major occupations. I know that pollsters didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory during the last presidential election, but journalists coming in tenth of the fifteen categories mentioned has “epic fail” written all over it. The only occupations ranking lower? Lawyers, business executives, advertisers, car salesmen (apparently new and used) and Members of Congress. (They came in dead last.)

To be sure, Gallup didn’t single out MSM journalists in its survey, so reporters and editors with a less America First-y outlook, as with many (but by no means all) newspeople in conservative outlets like Fox News were undoubtedly included in the ranks of the mistrusted. But the highly skewed partisan divide reported strongly suggests that it’s the MSM (which, being mainstream, is by definition the media that reach the biggest audiences) that’s got the biggest problem.

If this wasn’t the case, why would only 28 percent of Americans considering themselves political independents give journalists “very high” ratings for ethics and honesty? (The figures for Republicans and Democrats were five percent and 48 percent, respectively.)

It would be great to think that, with Mr. Trump out of public office (if not necessarily the limelight), the MSM might recover some of its integrity. But the timid coverage of apparent president-elect Joe Biden so far, and of the worrisome foreign business dealings of his son, Hunter, don’t justify much optimism. 

As Fox News-talker Sean Hannity (not my favorite) complained during the presidential campaign, the MSM in effect put Biden into a “candidate protection program.” If this approach continues into his likely administration, the next Gallup report could show media trustworthiness sinking further – and America’s democratic republic under even greater strain.

*During my long tenure at the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC), I first began going after news coverage of trade and globalization issues (as well as policy decisions and proposals) in 1997 or so in two series of reports sent around by fax called “Globalization Follies” and “Globalization Factline.” Eventually, they were all posted on the organization’s AmericanEconomicAlert.org website. But shortly after I left USBIC, in 2014, the website seemed to have gone dark, and the only decent set of surviving records is in my computer files.

Making News: Podcast Now On-Line of Today’s Wide-Ranging NYC Radio Interview

02 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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America First, Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, China, conservatism, election 2020, Frank Morano, globalism, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Making News, Populism, Republican Party, Trump, voter fraud, WABC-FM

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my interview this morning on WABC-FM radio with Frank Morano on headline issues including President Trump’s future in American politics, the prospects of conservative populism staying nationally competitive whatever his plans, the real foreign policy lessons of the Trump years, and yesterday’s post on disturbing charges that apparent President-elect Biden’s financial connections with China didn’t end with his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Go to this website to listen and click on the play button on the “The Future of NYC and Trumpism” episode. My segment begins right about the 24-minute mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Another Possible Biden-China Connection

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, Bill Clinton, China, Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative, Department of Education, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, National Legal and Policy Center, NLPC, Obama administration, University of Pennsylvania

Remember the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative? Because these ostensibly charitable endeavors set up by the former President and the former First Lady, Secretary of State, and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate turned out to be such blatantly income-padding and pay-to-play schemes, contributions have dried up dramatically under the glare of public scrutiny and since Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, and her White House run was clearly undermined by the evidence of access selling.  (Here’s a good account of its offenses and its demise. And according to this report, the latest figures show that the Foundation has negative cash flow.)

Although practically unreported by the Mainstream Media, apparent President-elect Joe Biden has his own group of foundations, and the refusal of one in particular to disclose information about its budget and donors raises major questions about Biden’s own possible grifting – especially with regard to China. It’s the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

The Center describes its mission as engaging University of Pennsylvania “students and partners with its faculty and global centers to convene world leaders, develop and advance smart policy, and strengthen the national debate for continued American global leadership in the 21st century.” Although affiliated with the University, the Center is run out of a Washington, D.C. headquarters.

Given its lofty goals, you’d think that the Center would be eager to showcase the funders helping to achieve them – and that the funders would be just as eager for the good publicity. But not only is no information publicly available either about the Center’s budget or its donors. The Center has stonewalled requests for the names and numbers. And so has the University, to which it’s referred reporters.

What is publicly known, though, is a big problem, because a private watchdog organization called the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) has discovered, by combing through U.S. Department of Education Records, that the University as a whole began receiving many more donations from Chinese sources once the Biden Center’s establishment was announced in 2017.  Indeed, these contributions increased greatly once the Center opened its doors in Washington in February, 2018 and continued after Biden announced his presidential bid on April 25, 2019. Moreover, in clear violation of federal law, more than 40 percent of the $54.05 million in 2018 and 2019 Chinese contributions came from anonymous sources.

Now as surely known by many RealityChek regulars who follow U.S. politics closely, the NLPC is a decidedly conservative group that’s no friend of Biden or any Democrats or liberals. At the same time, if you doubt these numbers, you can verify them for yourself (as I did) by examining the data base on Foreign Gifts and Contracts to U.S. higher education institutions maintained by the Education Department. (The link to database can be found at this Department website.)

Throughout the presidential campaign, Biden and his aides brushed off questions about his son Hunter’s business dealings with Chinese individuals and entities (all of which are controlled in various ways by the Chinese government) clearly based on his strategy of cashing in on the Biden name. Moreover, many of these relationships date from Biden senior’s years as Vice President, when he helped formulate an Obama administration China policy rightly described as squishy. And the Trump era deals took place during a period when a Biden 2020 presidential run was always a distinct possibility. 

In addition, the entire Biden family’s finances are known to have been shaky until his Vice Presidency ended, and that Hunter has been identified as the main Biden family breadwinner during the lean years. 

It’s bad enough that so many gaps in this record remain. Even less excusable is the unexamined (except by the NLPC) evidence of large anonymous (as well as identified) Chinese contributions linked at least chronologically to a Biden organization.  Both the Biden Center and the University could answer the crucial question – how much of the Penn China money found its way to the Biden Center –  instantly by opening up their books. Why won’t they?

Im-Politic: My (Hopefully Wrong) Election Prediction

03 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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battleground states, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2016, election 2020, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, masks, Nancy Pelosi, political ads, polls, shy Trump vote, suburban women, suburbs, Trump, Wuhan virus

One big reason I’m not a betting person is that I hate a major difference between what I want to happen and what I think will happen. And that’s exactly the case with this year’s presidential election. In other words, although as I explained in a recent post and then amplified in a recent magazine article, I voted for President Trump (and by no means reluctantly), I’m convinced that his time in the White House is just about up.

Not that I’m certain of this outcome. To repeat a conclusion I’ve made to friends, family, and others in various circumstances, I completely accept the idea that the race has tightened substantially in Mr. Trump’s favor in recent months, and especially in toto in the six most discussed swing or battleground states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). But today, as throughout the fall campaign, I’d rather be in Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s shoes.

In fact, I’m sticking with this position even though I’ve become somewhat more impressed with claims of a “shy Trump vote” – i.e., the notion that many Trump voters reached by pollsters don’t reveal their true preferences for various reasons or, similarly, that the same pollsters simply aren’t reaching a significant number of Trump supporters. My main reason? In an era of spreading Cancel Culture at the workplace and elsewhere, it’s entirely plausible that many Trump supporters fear expressing their actual preferences to strangers.

But to me, the most telling poll results stem precisely from those six battlegrounds, however increasingly close the race may be. And that’s because, even though the President carried them all in 2016 (generally by slim margins), and even though he’s the incumbent, they’re now thought to be up for grabs at all. In other words, even though Mr. Trump is now a known quantity (or because he’s a known quantity), and has had nearly a full term of presidential abilities to extend favors to these states, they’re still a heavy lift for him.

I sense, moreover, as just suggested, that his troubles in these “flyover America” regions stem from a political malady that he’s never been able to overcome – and perhaps has never wanted to overcome or dispel: Trump Fatigue Syndrome. I fully accept his insistence (and that of many supporters) that his tweets and other verbal brickbats have built and maintained a large and intensely loyal base (indeed, big enough to elect him President once). I also agree that his combative instincts have enabled him to survive ruthless opponents who, astoundingly, have even filled his own administration and other levels of the federal bureaucracy since his inauguration.

At the same time, it’s hardly a stretch to suppose that even a significant slice of Trump-world is anxious for a return of some semblance of normality to American politics, and that four more years of the President are sure to mean four more years of (partly needless) tumult. Most revealingly, even the President seems to accept this analysis. Why else would he be pleading (only half-jokingly) for the suburban women supposedly most offended by his style to “like him,” and defensively making that argument that his roughness has been the key to his survival? (I can’t find a link, but heard it when listening to one of his rally speeches yesterday.)

And what’s especially frustrating for a Trump supporter like myself: He could have been just as forceful and cutting a champion of his “forgotten Americans” constituencies, and just as much of a scornful scourge of the elites, with a just a little more subtlety and a little more selectivity in his targets.

Some appreciation of nuance, in fact, would have been particularly helpful in dealing with the CCP Virus. In between the kind of fear-mongering and consequent shutdown enthusiasm dominating press coverage and the rhetoric of Never Trumpers across the political spectrum, and the pollyannish optimism and mockery of modest mitigation measures like even limited mask wearing that was too often expressed by the President, could always be found a vast store of effective and actually constructive messaging strategies.

Collectively, they have represented a test of the kind of leadership deserving of political support, and have amounted to acknowledging squarely the difficulties of formulating effective pandemic policies and vigorously supporting targeted counter-measures while staving off the panic that Mr. Trump has (rightly) stated he wanted to prevent. Just as important: The President could have conveyed to the public the admittedly inconvenient but bedrock truth that forces of nature like highly contagious viruses can long resist the powers even of today’s technologically advanced societies. But this was a test that Mr. Trump flunked.

Speaking of forces of nature, the weather across the country today isn’t likely to help reelect the President, either. It looks to be bright and sunny nearly everywhere, with moderate temperatures. Those conditions figure to translate, all else equal, into high turnout, which tends to favor Democrats (even given the astronomical levels of early in-person and mail-in and ballot box voting).

Mr. Trump also faces an opponent who hasn’t been nearly as easy a mark for him as was Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden’s lack of hard edges unmistakably helps here. But so, too, has his performance in the two presidential debates. As I’ve argued, they’ve belied Trumpist charges of mental and physical frailty. Even better for the former Vice President – he’s also held up more than well enough on the campaign trail. Sure, he’s given himself plenty of rest. But Biden’s increased pace of activity in the last two weeks or so should be enough to fend off a critical mass of doubts among undecided voters about his capacity to serve.

In addition, the Democratic nominee has clearly benefited from the Mainstream Media’s decision to suppress news about the possibly whopping corruption of the entire Biden family. However outrageous I or anyone else considers this cover-up, it’s had the undeniable effect of keeping from huge swathes of the electorate weeks worth of just about the worst news any political candidate could fear.

The Trump campaign might have partly filled this gap, and offset other vulnerabilities, with better advertising. But throughout this election year, most of the Trump ads I’ve seen have been as professional and reassuring as those cable spots for Chia Pets or Sham-Wow – complete with hucksterish voice-overs. Moreover, where on earth are high impact graphics like clips of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi childishly ripping up copies of the President’s last State of the Union address? The videos recently aired at Trump rallies highlighting Biden’s dangerously clueless statements and policy record on China have been very effective. But boy, are they coming late in the day.

Also possibly revealing on the ad front – I see a lot of anti-Trump and pro-Biden ads on conservative-friendly and even transparently pro-Trump shows on Fox News. That’s clearly a sign of playing offense. According to this report, however, the Trump campaign hasn’t taken the fight to hostile territory like CNN and MSNBC to nearly this extent.

I’m not by any means arguing that “It’s over” for President Trump – much less than it has been for weeks. I’m convinced that he’ll be helped by an enthusiasm gap. I take seriously the reports of strong new voter registrations by Republicans, particularly in the key states, along with the evidence that minorities aren’t turning out for Democrats in places like south Florida. Nor, as mentioned earlier, is my faith in the polls remotely complete. But toting up the President’s relative strengths and weaknesses still places him in my underdog category. And unless Election 2016 repeats itself almost exactly, that ‘s no place for a winning political candidate to be.

Making News: New Article on Why I Voted for Trump

01 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, censorship, China, Conservative Populism, conservatives, Democrats, economic nationalism, election 2020, entertainment, environment, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, George Floyd, Hollywood, Hunter Biden, Immigration, industrial policy, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, journalism, Mainstream Media, Making News, Marco Rubio, police killings, regulation, Republicans, Robert Reich, Russia-Gate, sanctions, Silicon Valley, social media, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, technology, The National Interest, Trade, trade war, Trump, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ukraine, Wall Street, wokeness

I’m pleased to announce that The National Interest journal has just published a modified version of my recent RealityChek post explaining my support for President Trump’s reelection. Here’s the link.

The main differences? The new item is somewhat shorter, it abandons the first-person voice and, perhaps most important, adds some points to the conclusion.

Of course, keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Why I Voted for Trump

28 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 6 Comments

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Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, censorship, China, Conservative Populism, conservatives, Democrats, economic nationalism, election 2020, entertainment, environment, free expression, freedom of speech, George Floyd, Hollywood, Hunter Biden, Immigration, impeachment, industrial policy, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, journalism, Mainstream Media, Marco Rubio, police killings, Populism, progressives, regulations, Republicans, Robert Reich, Russia-Gate, sanctions, Silicon Valley, social media, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, technology, Trade, trade war, Trump, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ukraine Scandal, Wall Street, wokeness

Given what 2020 has been like for most of the world (although I personally have little cause for complaint), and especially Washington Post coverage of endless early voting lines throughout the Maryland surburbs of the District of Columbia, I was expecting to wait for hours in bad weather to cast my ballot for President Trump. Still, I was certain that Election Day circumstances would be a complete mess, so hitting the polling place this week seemed the least bad option.

Hence my amazement that the worst case didn’t pan out – and that in fact, I was able to kill two birds with one stone. My plan was to check out the situation, including parking, at the University of Maryland site closest to my home on my way to the supermarket. But the scene was so quiet that I seized the day, masked up, and was able to feed my paper ballot into the recording machine within about ten minutes.

My Trump vote won’t be surprising to any RealityChek regulars or others who have been in touch with on or off social media in recent years. Still, it seems appropriate to explain why, especially since I haven’t yet spelled out some of the most important reasons.

Of course, the President’s positions on trade (including a China challenge that extends to technology and national security) and immigration have loomed large in my thinking, as has Mr. Trump’s America First-oriented (however unevenly) approach to foreign policy. (For newbies, see all the posts here under “[What’s Left of] Our Economy,” and “Our So-Called Foreign Policy,” and various freelance articles that are easily found on-line.). The Biden nomination has only strengthened my convictions on all these fronts, and not solely or mainly because of charges that the former Vice President has been on Beijing’s payroll, via his family, for years.

As I’ve reported, for decades he’s been a strong supporter of bipartisan policies that have greatly enriched and therefore strengthened this increasingly aggressive thug-ocracy. It’s true that he’s proposed to bring back stateside supply chains for critical products, like healthcare and defense-related goods, and has danced around the issue of lifting the Trump tariffs. But the Silicon Valley and Wall Street tycoons who have opened their wallets so wide for him are staunchly opposed to anything remotely resembling a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies and especially technology bases

Therefore, I can easily imagine Biden soon starting to ease up on sanctions against Chinese tech companies – largely in response to tech industry executives who are happy to clamor for subsidies to bolster national competitiveness, but who fear losing markets and the huge sunk costs of their investments in China. I can just as easily imagine a Biden administration freeing up bilateral trade again for numerous reasons: in exchange for an empty promise by Beijing to get serious about fighting climate change; for a deal that would help keep progressive Democrats in line; or for an equally empty pledge to dial back its aggression in East Asia; or as an incentive to China to launch a new round of comprehensive negotiations aimed at reductions or elimination of Chinese trade barriers that can’t possibly be adequately verified. And a major reversion to dangerous pre-Trump China-coddling can by no means be ruled out.

Today, however, I’d like to focus on three subjects I haven’t dealt with as much that have reinforced my political choice.

First, and related to my views on trade and immigration, it’s occurred to me for several years now that between the Trump measures in these fields, and his tax and regulatory cuts, that the President has hit upon a combination of policies that could both ensure improved national economic and technological competitiveness, and build the bipartisan political support needed to achieve these goals.

No one has been more surprised than me about this possibility – which may be why I’ve-hesitated to write about it. For years before the Trump Era, I viewed more realistic trade policies in particular as the key to ensuring that U.S.-based businesses – and manufacturers in particular – could contribute the needed growth and jobs to the economy overall even under stringent (but necessary) regulatory regimes for the environment, workplace safety, and the like by removing the need for these companies to compete with imports from countries that ignored all these concerns (including imports coming from U.S.-owned factories in cheap labor pollution havens like China and Mexico).

I still think that this approach would work. Moreover, it contains lots for folks on the Left to like. But the Trump administration has chosen a different economic policy mix – high tariffs, tax and regulatory relief for business, and immigration restrictions that have tightened the labor market. And the strength of the pre-CCP Virus economy – including low unemployment and wage growth for lower-income workers and minorities – attests to its success.

A Trump victory, as I see it, would result in a continuation of this approach. Even better, the President’s renewed political strength, buoyed by support from more economically forward-looking Republicans and conservatives like Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, could bring needed additions to this approach – notably, more family-friendly tax and regulatory policies (including childcare expense breaks and more generous mandatory family leave), and more ambitious industrial policies that would work in tandem with tariffs and sanctions to beat back the China technology and national security threat.

Moreover, a big obstacle to this type of right-of-center (or centrist) conservative populism and economic nationalism would be removed – the President’s need throughout the last four years to support the stances of the conventional conservatives that are still numerous in Congress in order to ensure their support against impeachment efforts.

My second generally undisclosed (here) reason for voting Trump has to do with Democrats and other Trump opponents (although I’ve made this point repeatedly on Facebook to Never Trumper friends and others). Since Mr. Trump first announced his candidacy for the White House back in 2015, I’ve argued that Americans seeking to defeat him for whatever reason needed to come up with viable responses to the economic and social grievances that gave him a platform and a huge political base. Once he won the presidency, it became even more important for his adversaries to learn the right lessons.

Nothing could be clearer, however, than their refusal to get with a fundamentally new substantive program with nationally unifying appeal. As just indicated, conventional Republicans and conservatives capitalized on their role in impeachment politics to push their longstanding but ever more obsolete (given the President’s overwhelming popularity among Republican voters) quasi-libertarian agenda, at least on domestic policy.

As for Democrats and liberals, in conjunction with the outgoing Obama administration, the countless haters in the intelligence community and elsewhere in the permanent bureaucracy, and the establishment conservatives Mr. Trump needed to staff much of his administration, they concentrated on ousting an elected President they considered illegitimate, and wasted more than three precious years of the nation’s time. And when they weren’t pushing a series of charges that deserve the titles “Russia Hoax” and “Ukraine Hoax,” the Democrats and liberals were embracing ever more extreme Left stances as scornful of working class priorities as their defeated 2016 candidate’s description of many Trump voters as “deplorables.”

I see no reason to expect any of these factions to change if they defeat the President this time around. And this forecast leads me to my third and perhaps most important reason for voting Trump. As has been painfully obvious especially since George Floyd’s unacceptable death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, the type of arrogance, sanctimony and – more crucially – intolerance that has come to permeate Democratic, liberal, and progressive ranks has now spread widely into Wall Street and the Big Business Sector.

To all Americans genuinely devoted to representative and accountable government, and to the individual liberties and vigorous competition of ideas and that’s their fundamental foundation, the results have been (or should be) nothing less than terrifying. Along with higher education, the Mainstream Media, Big Tech, and the entertainment and sports industries, the nation’s corporate establishment now lines up squarely behind the idea that pushing particular political, economic, social, and cultural ideas and suppressing others has become so paramount that schooling should turn into propaganda, that news reporting should abandon even the goal of objectivity, that companies should enforce party lines in the workplace and agitate for them in advertising and sponsorship practices, and that free expression itself needed a major rethink.

And oh yes: Bring on a government-run “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to investigate – and maybe prosecute – crimes and other instances of “wrongdoing” by the President, by (any?) officials in his administration. For good measure, add every “politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled” the Trump “catastrophe,” as former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich has demanded. Along with a Scarlet Letter, or worse, for everyone who’s expressed any contrary opinion in the conventional or new media? Or in conversation with vigilant friends or family?

That Truth Commission idea is still pretty fringe-y. So far. But not too long ago, many of the developments described above were, too. And my chief worry is that if Mr. Trump loses, there will be no major national institution with any inclination or power to resist this authoritarian tide.

It’s reasonable to suppose that more traditional beliefs about free expression are so deeply ingrained in the national character that eventually they’ll reassert themselves. Pure self-interest will probably help, too. In this vein, it was interesting to note that Walmart, which has not only proclaimed its belief that “Black Lives Matter,” but promised to spend $100 million on a “center for racial equality” just saw one of its Philadelphia stores ransacked by looters during the unrest that has followed a controversial police shooting.

But at best, tremendous damage can be done between now and “eventually.” At worst, the active backing of or acquiescence in this Woke agenda by America’s wealthiest, most influential forces for any significant timespan could produce lasting harm to the nation’s life.

As I’ve often said, if you asked me in 2015, “Of all the 300-plus million Americans, who would you like to become President?” my first answer wouldn’t have been “Donald J. Trump.” But no other national politician at that point displayed the gut-level awareness that nothing less than policy disruption was needed on many fronts, combined with the willingness to enter the arena and the ability to inspire mass support.

Nowadays, and possibly more important, he’s the only national leader willing and able to generate the kind of countervailing force needed not only to push back against Woke-ism, but to provide some semblance of the political pluralism – indeed, diversity – required by representative, accountable government. And so although much about the President’s personality led me to mentally held my nose at the polling place, I darkened the little circle next to his name on the ballot with no hesitation. And the case for Mr. Trump I just made of course means that I hope many of you either have done or will do the same.

Im-Politic: Biden’s Massive China Fakery

20 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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2020 election, Biden, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, China trade deal, coronavirus, COVID 19, currency, currency manipulation, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Obama, Trade, travel ban, WHO, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, WTO, Wuhan virus, xenophobia

Imagine the gall that would’ve been required had Republican nominee Mitt Romney campaigned for President in 2012 by blaming incumbent Barack Obama for the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2007-09. Not only did these economic disasters erupt well before Obama took office, but the White House at that time had been held for eight years by the GOP. (The Democrats did win control of the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, but still….) 

Multiply that gall many times over and you get this year’s presumptive Democratic candidate for President, Joe Biden, charging that Donald Trump is largely responsible for the devastating hit the nation is taking from the CCP Virus because Mr. Trump has been too soft on China. The Biden claims are much more contemptible because whereas Romney played no role in bringing on the Wall Street meltdown and subsequent near-depression, Biden has long supported many of the China policies that have both greatly enriched and militarily strengthened the People’s Republic, and sent key links in America’s supply chains for producing vital healthcare-related goods offshore – including to a China that has threatened the United States with healthcare supplies blackmail.

The Biden campaign’s most comprehensive indictment of President Trump’s China and CCP Virus policies was made in this release, titled “Trump Rolled Over for China.” Its core claim:

“We’d say Trump is weak on China, but that’s an understatement. Trump rolled over in a way that has been catastrophic for our country. He did nothing for months because he put himself and his political fortunes first. He refused to push China on its coronavirus response and delayed taking action to mitigate the crisis in an effort not to upset Beijing and secure a limited trade deal that has largely gone unfulfilled.”

More specifically, the Biden organization claims that even long before the pandemic broke out, Mr. Trump has “never followed through” on his 2016 campaign’s “big promises about being tough on China” and simply conducted “reckless trade policies that pushed farmers and manufacturers to the brink” before he was “forced to make concessions to China without making any progress toward a level playing field for American industry.”

I’d say “the mind reels” but that phrase doesn’t begin to capture the mendacity at work here. Not to mention the sheer incompetence. After all, the trade deal was signed on January 15. It was only two weeks before that China told the World Health Organization (WHO) that an unknown illness had appeared in Wuhan. On January 3, China officially notified the U.S. government. It was only the day before the trade deal signing that WHO broadcast to the world China’s claim (later exposed as disastrously erroneous – at best) that no evidence of person-to-person transmission had been found. It wasn’t until the very day of the deal signing that the individual who became the first known American virus case left Wuhan and arrived in the United States. It wasn’t until January 21 that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed him as the first American victim.  (See this timeline for specifics.)

So evidently the Biden folks don’t know how to read a calendar.

Meanwhile, in early January, The New York Times has reported, CDC offered to send a team of its specialists to China to observe conditions and offer assistance. China never replied. On January 7, four days after Washington received its first CCP Virus notification, but two weeks before it identified the first U.S. virus case, the CDC began planning for tests. We now know that it bungled this challenge badly.

But did Trump coddle China in order to keep Beijing from terminating the agreement? Surely Biden’s team isn’t calling that failure an effort to appease China. It’s also true that on February 7, the Trump administration announced its readiness to provide Beijing with $100 million worth of anti-virus aid to China (and other countries), and had just sent nearly 18 tons of medical supplies (including protective gear) to help the People’s Republic combat the pandemic. But is the Biden campaign condemning these actions? From its indictment, it’s clear that its focus instead is on the numerous Trump statements praising China’s anti-virus performance and transparency, and reassuring the American public that the situation was under control.

Where, however, is the evidence that these remarks amounted to the President treating China with kid gloves, and stemmed from desperation to save the trade deal? Just as important, here we come to a fundamental incoherence in Biden’s treatment of the agreement – descriptions that are so flatly contradictory that they reek of flailing. After all, on the one hand, the Phase One agreement is dismissed as a fake that fails to safeguard American trade and broader economic interests adequately. On the other, it assumes that China has been eager from the start to call the whole thing off. Yet if Phase One had accomplished so little from the U.S. standpoint, wouldn’t Beijing actually have been focused on sustaining this charade?

But even if the Biden read on trade deal politics is correct, how to explain the January 31 Trump announcement of major restrictions on inbound travel from China that went into effect February 2? Clearly China didn’t like it. Or were these reactions part of a secret plot between the American and Chinese Presidents to snow their respective publics and indeed the entire world?

How, moreover, to explain such Trump administration policies as the continuing crackdown on Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, and its effort to kick out of the U.S. market  Chinese services provider China Telecom? Or the ongoing intensification of the Justice Department’s campaign against Chinese espionage efforts centered on U.S. college and university campuses? Or yesterday’s administration announcement that although some payments of U.S. tariffs on imports would be deferred in order to help hard-pressed American retailers survive the CCP Virus-induced national economic shutdown, the steep tariffs on literally hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of prospective imports from China would remain firmly in place?

In addition, all these measures of course put the lie to another central Biden claim – that Mr. Trump is not only soft on China today, but has been soft since his inauguration. A bigger goof – or whopper – can scarcely be imagined.

Unless it’s the companion Biden insistence that the Trump trade wars have devastated American agriculture and manufacturing? When, as documented painstakingly here, U.S. farm prices began diving into the dumps well before the Trump 2016 victory (when Biden himself was second-in-command in America)? When manufacturing, as documented equally painstakingly, went through the mildest recession conceivable, when its output was clearly hobbled by Boeing’s completely un-tradewar-related safety woes), and when every indication during the pre-virus weeks pointed to rebound? When the raging inflation widely predicted to stem from the tariffs has been absolutely nowhere in sight?

Which leaves the biggest lies of all: The claim that Biden is being tough on China now – the promise that he’ll “hold China accountable,” and the implication that he’s always been far-sighted and hard-headed in dealing with Beijing

According to the campaign’s Trump indictment, the former Vice President “publicly warned Trump in February not to take China’s word” on its anti-virus efforts. But this Biden warning didn’t come until February 26. As to making China pay, the campaign offers zero specifics – and given Biden’s staunch opposition to Mr. Trump’s tariffs (and silence on the other, major elements of the Trump approach to China) it’s legitimate to ask what on earth he’s talking about. In addition, Biden insinuated that the Trump curbs on travel from China were “xenophobia” the very day they were announced – before pushback prompted him to endorse them.

Finally, the Biden China record has been dreadful by any real-world standards. In the words of this analysis from the Cato Institute, “he voted consistently to maintain normal trade relations with China, including permanent NTR in 2000” – meaning that he favored the disastrous decision to admit China into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which gave Beijing invaluable protection against unilateral U.S. efforts to combat its pervasive trade predation. He did apparently vote once for sanctions to punish China for its currency manipulation (which has artificially under-priced goods made in China and thereby given them government-created advantages against any competition), but many such Senate trade votes were purely for show. (I apologize for not being able to find the specific reference, and will nail down the matter in an addendum and post as soon as possible.)  

Revealingly, once he was in the Obama administration, he failed to lift a finger to continue the battle against this Chinese exchange-rate protectionism, and served as the President’s “leading pitchman” for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose provisions would have handed China many of the benefits of membership without imposing any of the obligations. More generally, there’s no evidence of any Biden words or actions opposing an Obama strategy that greatly enriched the People’s Republic, and therefore supercharged its military potential and actual power. 

For good measure, despite constant bragging that his personal contact with numerous foreign leaders during his Senate and Vice Presidential years, he completely misjudged Xi Jinping, writing in a 2011 article that the Chinese dictator (then heir apparent to the top job in Beijing) “agrees” that “we have a stake in each other’s success” and that “On issues from global security to global economic growth, we share common challenges and responsibilities — and we have incentives to work together.”

There clearly are many valid reasons to support Biden’s Presidential bid.  But if China’s rise and its implications worry you (as they should), then the former Vice President’s record of dealing with Beijing just as clearly shouldn’t be one of them. 

Im-Politic: Why It’s Time to Probe the Bidens

10 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Tags

Burisma, corruption, election 2020, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, Mykola Zlochevsky, Obama administration, The New Yorker, Trump, Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, Yuriy Lutsenko

Yesterday morning, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made clear his determination to investigate the activities of Hunter Biden in Ukraine. That’s good news for two closely related reasons. First: The decision by the son of former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to work for a big, politically connected company in that notoriously corrupt country was pretty central to the recently concluded (for now?) Trump removal effort, and there are still lots of loose ends that need tying up.

Second, no one has yet adequately explained why Biden Junior continued to earn tens of thousands of dollars monthly from Ukraine energy company Burisma, and why the company remained in business, for the entire time that Senior was supposedly pushing hard on behalf of the top stated Obama administration priority of ending the graft and similar abuses that had long hampered Ukraine’s economy and transition to real democracy.   

Junior’s lucrative service on Burisma’s board strongly influenced the impeachment effort because of the major role it played in spurring President Trump to seek Ukraine’s help in probing a matter that was certain to affect the Biden Senior’s chances of winning the White House. 

The President and his supporters claim that looking into the Bidens was justified because the big bucks Junior he made from Burisma at the least looked like a classic conflict of interest, and at the most could have corruptly influenced American policy while Senior was running the Obama administration’s operations toward the country on a day-to-day basis.

And as I’ve noted, far from Senior’s presidential candidacy justifying shielding him from official scrutiny, it actually calls for special attention – unless Americans aren’t supposed to care that a future chief executive might be in some foreign oligarch’s hip pocket. That would be quite a position to take for those who have portrayed President Trump as Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s compromised puppet. The Biden connection of course logically also warrants similarly special Trump attention to Burisma, rather than to Ukraine’s many other unmistakably corrupt entities.

For their part, Trump opponents insist that the President was simply trying to smear a possible rival in this fall’s general presidential election.

It’s true that impeachment and removal supporters leveled other Biden-specific charges at Mr. Trump – for example, attacking his decision to use his personal lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as his main Ukraine sleuth, rather than going through standard Justice Department channels. But the first Article of Impeachment, the one alleging abuse of power, focused tightly on the claim that the President endangered America’s national security (by delaying military aid needed for Ukraine’s defense against Russia) for personal gain (improved reelection chances).

In this regard, the President’s opponents have noted that there’s no evidence indicating that the Ukraine policy of Biden Senior and the Obama administration permitted Junior’s job to influence American statements or actions. Indeed, they maintain that throughout his time as Ukraine point man, Senior championed exactly the kind of Ukraine corruption fighting efforts that threatened whatever dirty work they acknowledge Burisma was up to. And specifically, they point to Senior’s demands – clearly, by the way, reflecting U.S. policy –  that Ukraine fire a prosecutor thought to be soft on corruption and replace him with someone they considered truly committed to cleaning up the system – including the situation at Burisma.

But this is where the pro-Bidens story gets fuzzy, at best. The reason? Because more than four years after Biden demanded the canning of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, and after Yuriy Lutsenko came on the job, Burisma is still open for business. Moreover, the co-founder widely fingered as its corruption mastermind, Mykola Zlochevsky, is still in charge. The only price the company has paid for its alleged misdeeds was a small ($7 million) fine for tax evasion. And this four-year period of course includes the year-plus that passed between Biden’s December, 2015 ultimatum and the Obama administration’s last day in office.

As a result, Junior was paid handsomely (some $83,000 monthly at least for some period of time, according to this Reuters report) from the time he joined Burisma (in April, 2014) till his departure (August, 2019). When was Senior put in charge of Obama administration Ukraine policy? Early 2014. And Mr. Trump’s opponents truly believe that there’s “nothing to see here”? And that it’s not the slightest bit fishy about Senior huffing and puffing about corruption in Ukraine but never actually blowing that house down (or at least actually denying Ukraine the $1 billion in international loan guarantees – including to the energy sector of which Burisma was a part – he threatened to cut off unless Shokin was pink-slipped) – which left Burisma free to keep stuffing Junior’s bank account?

Then add in this tidbit from The New Yorker (not a publication often favorable to Mr. Trump). In an article leaving no doubt that Senior had long been financially stressed despite his political prominence, author Adam Entous reported, “Hunter saw himself as a provider for the Biden family; he even helped to pay off Beau’s law-school debts.”

Therefore, it’s easy to see how it would have been easy for Senior “to deal with Hunter’s activities by largely ignoring them” – as stated in the New Yorker piece linked above.  Except he didn’t just ignore them.  His aides actively rejected numerous attempts by Obama administration officials to raise concerns about the subject – including by Geroge Kent, one of the State Department officials who testified at the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachement hearings.  That sounds like they worked for someone who actively didn’t want to know.   

It’s still possible that Senior was simply an ineffective Ukraine corruption fighter when it came to Burisma, rather than one who was conveniently indifferent. But since that question remains unanswered, since Senior is still running for the White House, and since Junior’s dealings with China during Senior’s Vice Presidency also seem to have contributed to the family’s considerable rise in net worth (see that above-linked New Yorker story for these details, too) how could anyone reasonably object to the proposition that it’s time to probe the Bidens?  

Im-Politic: The Case Against Impeachment (So Far)

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Adam Schiff, Burisma, Devin Nunes, Gerald R. Ford, Gordon Sondland, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, impeachment hearings, Joaquin Castro, Joe Biden, Laura Cooper, Marie Yovanovitch, Office of Management and Budget, Rudy Giuliani, Trump, Ukraine, whistleblower, William Taylor

As a public service, herewith a handy-dandy guide to those widely touted Trump impeachment charges or insinuated charges that hold water so far, and those that don’t. Spoiler alert: The single alleged presidential transgression that I believe would warrant impeachment – and removal from office – comes at the end of this post. And not just because I want to create a teaser. It’s mainly because this specific transgression has received almost no attention as such. Revealingly, moreover, many of the President’s defenders have been just as seemingly inept as his assailants at focusing on what would legitimately satisfy the Constitution’s impeachment and removal requirements and what wouldn’t.

Canard Number One: Mr. Trump’s focus on investigations of the Biden family reveals a simple determination to smear a political rival. Two problems should consign this allegation to the dumpster. First, as I’ve previously noted, it can only be based on the assumption that Americans (and especially sitting or previously serving politicians) should be immune from corruption investigations simply because they decided to seek office – or seek it again. Unless you want to illuminate brightly a formula for green-lighting massive corruption, you’ll recognize the dangers of this proposed standard.

Second, this claim ignores (a) the distinct possibility that, given the Obama administration point-man role played by Vice President Joe Biden, the Ukrainian energy entity Burisma was seeking to influence peddle when it handed his son, Hunter, a highly lucrative position, and (b) the troubling questions raised both by Biden senior’s knowledge of this development and by the former Vice President’s failure to act to end a situation that at the very least created the appearance of conflict of interest.

Canard Number Two: Mr. Trump’s strong interest in investigating the Biden situation – and his statements to the effect that he cared more about these probes than about Ukraine – shows that he cares more about his own political fortunes than about U.S. national security. Anyone holding this belief apparently considers the fate of a country whose security or independence was never a prime American concern even during the Cold War is (ipso facto?) more important than possible foreign influence peddling at the highest levels of a previous administration. I’m glad I don’t have to make this argument.

Canard Number Three (Similar to Canard Number Three): The President’s assertion that Ukraine interfered against his campaign for the White House in 2016 reveals that he selfishly cares more about his own political fortunes, or about further discrediting the Russia collusion charges that have dominated his presidency so far, than about U.S. national security. As contended above, Ukraine was never regarded as a significant national security interest even when completely controlled by a Soviet regime that for decades was classified officially as a paramount threat to both U.S. and global security. Why it should be regarded as more important today is anything but clear. Moreover, Americans have spent most of the first half of the Trump presidency hearing that the greatest threat to not only their security but their democracy itself is foreign government interference in elections.  Therefore, it’s at best odd to start hearing that Ukraine interference doesn’t matter at all.

Canard Number Four: There was no Ukraine 2016 election interference. As I’ve previously pointed out, anti-Trump statements from Ukraine’s then ambassador to the United States and its powerful Interior Minister are on the record. Just as important: Nor does it withstand serious scrutiny to counter that these statement were isolated and therefore trivial – a claim made by fired U.S. Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during her open impeachment testimony last Friday. Would senior officials like these felt free to speak out so blatantly if their views weren’t widespread Ukraine governing circles? And does it stand to reason that no one reporting to them played any such roles?

Canard Number Five: President Trump was trying to “bully” Ukraine. Unfortunately, international relations still remains a realm where the law of the jungle is much more common than the rule of law as Americans know it. So tough tactics are both nothing new and often needed.

Canard Number Six: President Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukraine. An alternative description of this charge: “President Trump wanted Ukraine to do something for the United States in return for the United States doing something for Ukraine.” It’s actually true that many of Mr. Trump’s critics strongly oppose such an approach to U.S. foreign policy, denigrating it as “transactional” and presumably not worthy of a truly great nation. But this position – a hallmark of the globalism that the President ran strongly against, and continues to oppose strongly in word and often in deed – stems from a belief that the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve the alliances, institutions, and other relationships whose creation defined so much of post-World War II foreign policy.

That’s an entirely legitimate point of view. But it’s just as legitimate – and, as I’ve written, far more realistic – to seek to ensure above all that these arrangements continue promoting American interests on net, to monitor them on an ongoing basis, to press for change when they fail this test, and to abandon them when their potential to do so is judged to be exhausted. So not only is there nothing intrinsically wrong with seeking quid pros quo in foreign policy. The world as it is makes them unavoidable.

Canard Number Seven: Mr. Trump was bullying Ukraine and/or seeking a quid pro quo by threatening to withhold military aid approved by Congress and signed into law. Here we get closer to impeachment charges that do deserve scrutiny. But this allegation still qualifies as a canard – to date, anyway – because it leaves unanswered the central questions of whether the “bullying” or any type of improper pressure took place or the “quid pro quo” was pressed for reasons that “rise to the level of impeachment” or not – or that even come close. And most of the President’s opponents and supporters have done an equally poor job of keeping their eyes on these balls.

Revealingly, even the answers presented that seem to sink the President deep into hot water don’t support a serious impeachment case. Here, for the reasons stated above, I’m deliberately leaving out the allegations that Mr. Trump was illegitimately trying to find some dirt on Biden, and/or reinforcing the legitimacy of his own 2016 victory.

Nevertheless, what gave Mr. Trump the authority to establish even substantively legitimate conditions – however explicitly or implicitly – on the Ukraine aid package? To which the first response is, “What’s meant by ‘established conditions’?” Let’s say that the President’s accusers are entirely correct and that the disbursement of the aid was delayed. So what?

In the first place, there’s nothing in the law stipulating any specific date for releasing the funds other than the end of the fiscal year, which fell on September 30. And as all agree, they were released by then. In other words, from all appearances, there was no Ukraine aid suspension in the first place.

Moreover, all the evidence available so far also demonstrates that the Trump administration’s aid delay decision itself followed the law – although somewhat belatedly. According to Defense Department career official Laura Cooper – in remarks that have not yet been challenged – in her closed door testimony to House investigators, a suspension of Ukraine aid would not be illegal either if the administration had formally notified Congress of a “rescission” of the funds or of a decision to redirect (“reprogram”) them for other purposes. She added that she made these points to Trump administration officials at a July 31 meeting. By late August, though, the Associated Press reported, House Appropriations Committee staff members received this notification from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

In the second place, what’s intrinsically illegal or even improper about Mr. Trump either asking for an add-on, or even threatening to deny the aid if the Ukrainians didn’t agree to conduct the investigation?

One explanation I found compelling was offered by Yovanovitch’s replacement as chief U.S. envoy to Kiev, William Taylor, in his closed door October 22 testimony to House of Representatives investigators. Taylor stated that he was told by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland – an Oregon businessman and major Trump campaign donor – that the Trump decision owed to a practice from the President’s business career:

“When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check. Ambassador [Kurt] Volker [another long-time diplomat, who had served as a special Ukraine envoy in the Trump administration] used the same terms several days later while we were together at the Yalta European Strategy Conference.”

Not that Taylor himself found the reasoning compelling. But although he claimed that the “the explanation made no sense” because “the Ukrainians did not ‘owe’ President Trump anything,” and certainly has a right to this opinion, it sounds like more a reflection of what might be his own overly precious view of the proper way to conduct American diplomacy than like an objectively devastating critique of Mr. Trump. Someone with a less gentlemanly perspective might well have concluded that the President was simply trying to press an advantage to secure an objective he believed furthered U.S. interests that were at least as important as helping Ukraine resist Russian designs.

Which is where one widely cited problem with the anti-Trump narrative comes in. To begin with, it’s been difficult to figure out when the Ukraine aid hold was actually put into effect, but the reference in this article in Politico (an early account of the decision to “last summer” (the summer of 2019) seems about right. (The New York Times subsequently pegged the date as “early July,” but neither claim has been confirmed.) While questioning Yovanovitch during her public appearance at the House of Representative impeachment hearings, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes identified July 18 as the start of the hold). The Times also contends that the Ukrainians found out about the freeze “by the first week of August.”

Even if this finding is correct, however, it’s clear that one of the strangest episodes in the history of blackmail and quids pro quo in general must have taken place. For the President evidently had decided to hold Ukraine’s military future for ransom but never told Kiev it was being extorted. Indeed, the Ukrainians didn’t even learn at that time – roughly a month after the suspension had gone into effect – that they were being placed over a barrel through any official administration channels. They seem to have found out via leaks, at least according to The Times story linked above. It was not until September 1 that the policy was communicated officially to its supposedly intended target– by Sondland in a meeting with a top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. And even Sondland’s language was strangely vague.

Now it’s true that starting in early August, the Ukrainians could have begun taking these leaks, put them together with whatever they knew about Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani’s activities in their country and Mr. Trump’s unmistakable interest in a Biden probe, and detected a message about a gun being held to their head. But the surreptitious nature of these efforts could have also indicated that the administration’s resolve on this matter was anything but firm, and that some modest gestures would have gotten them off the hook. In fact, in his closed door testimony, Taylor himself indicated at his closed door House appearance that he would have been satisfied with Ukraine making the public investigations announcement sought by Mr. Trump through its Prosecutor General, rather than its President. So despite his later headline-making characterization of the link as “crazy,” he was obviously prepared to let it slide for a pittance.

Which is where a second widely cited problem with the pro-impeachment narrative needs to be considered: The aid went through on time, and no one in the Ukraine government made any investigations-related announcement at all.

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff from California, who’s leading the impeachment efforts, has a ready retort: As he stated at the open impeachment hearing he chaired last Friday, the Trump administration had no choice, because it was being pressured by members of both the House and Senate to release the hold, and because it had received the whistleblower’s report and realized that the (impeachment?) boom was about to be lowered. And Schiff’s Texas Democratic colleague, Joaquin Castro, argued at the October 22 public hearing that “attempted freeze” (my phrase) should be considered a crime because attempted murder is a crime.

But again, the legislation appropriating the aid mentioned no deadline other than the September 30 deadline for all appropriations measures. That deadline was met – by September 11, meaning that the delay lasted at most a little over two months. What the President’s critics are calling blackmail might have been nothing more than a case of trying to take advantage of leverage over a foreign country to achieve a goal (investigating high level corruption by a previous administration) understandably viewed as legitimate by the President – a practice prohibited by exactly no U.S. law. Schiff’s charge is also easily rebutted with the distinct possibility that the Trump administration saw the September 30 deadline coming and decided that securing a public Ukraine commitment to investigate the Bidens simply wasn’t worth the candle.

But however flawed these widely used anti-Trump arguments, based on what’s known so far, the President’s critics do have one potentially stronger impeachment arguments to make. The first would involve a charge that the President was knowingly persuaded by Giuliani to fire Yovanovitch as ambassador to Kiev in May because she was in the process of finding out about Giuliani’s own efforts to make money in Ukraine for his other clients (or even for the President?) in illegal ways.

A big problem with this charge is that, although Yovanovitch did impute these motives to Giuliani in her opening statement at last Friday’s public hearing, she offered no evidence to support her allegation. Indeed, she agreed with a Republican staffer’s question that she was replaced by a Trump administration appointee who was a “man of high integrity” who would not “facilitate” Giuliani’s supposed objectives – none other than William Taylor. She also testified that she had never met the Giuliani associates whose motives she denigrated, and didn’t know whether their ostensibly crooked ambitions were being “frustrated” by whatever anti-corruption policies she says she was pushing.

In addition, it must be noted that this personal corruption charge has received almost no attention from impeachment supporters in Congress or elsewhere in American politics and society.

All of which appears to mean that pro-impeachment and/or removal arguments depend on proving a proposition from Schiff that itself is convoluted and confusing enough to verge on incoherence and even flim-flammery – whether we’re talking purely legal/criminal standards or not.

Specifically, even though the hold was lifted in time to meet the statutory requirement, the President reversed course only involuntarily (either for fear of being exposed by the whistleblower’s complaint or of dangerously antagonizing influential House and Senate members who supported the aid). Therefore, for either some of the two months, or most of the two months, or all of the two months during which the aid suspension lasted, Mr. Trump demonstrated that his intent was uninfluenced by any legitimate concerns (like ferreting out non-Russian 2016 foreign election interference or Biden family corruption) and as a result was solely corrupt – and met impeachment and/or removal standards.

Of course, no one can rule out further discoveries of significantly worse Trump deeds. But unless they’re made, a House vote to impeach would amount to nothing more than an affirmation of former President Gerald R. Ford’s 1970 contention (when he was House Minority Leader) that “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

And the all too likely result? A normalization and weaponization of this process that even the Trump-ly Deranged shouldn’t want to see.

 

Im-Politic: Impeachment and the Mind of a Diplomat II

13 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2016 election, 2020 election, Burisma, election interference, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, impeachment, Joe Biden, Rudy Giuliani, Trump, Ukraine, William B. Taylor

Monday’s post detailed one reason for viewing skeptically the upcoming public impeachment testimony of supposed prosecution star witness William B. Taylor – evidence of his inability or unwillingness to make the crucial distinction between President Trump differing with him on a policy issue (dealing with Ukraine), and the chief executive committing an offense that warrants a House of Representatives indictment and possible removal from office by the Senate.

Today I’ll air a more serious challenge to his credibility – which I hope is highlighted into the testimony he’s scheduled to give this morning at the first session of open impeachment hearings. For whatever reason (the above failure, his crush on Ukraine), Taylor’s views on the crucial issue of uncovering U.S. campaign interference by Ukraine resulted in his taking an unacceptably one-sided position.

I can’t go so far as to accuse Taylor of deliberate partisanship – because I can’t read his mind. But his closed-door testimony to House investigators October 22 and answers to their questions showed unmistakably that his allegation of a Trump administration Ukraine military aid delay for partisan political reasons results from criteria that were capable only of producing partisan results.

Specifically, in his testimony last month, Taylor continually portrayed himself as a non-partisan career public servant who had single-mindedly pursued American objectives that lay beyond any legitimate controversy, and who was therefore determined to keep domestic politics out of U.S. foreign policy. That’s also how he’s been described by his admirers. But when it came to two such policy imperatives – uncovering election interference from a foreign government (Ukraine’s) and fighting the corruption that has crippled that country’s economy and democracy building efforts, and undermines American aid programs – Taylor’s record unquestionably skewed in favor of the Democratic party.

Despite pretty much universal American public support for preventing future foreign meddling in U.S. politics – which of course requires identifying as many sources of such previous interference as possible – Taylor not only displayed no interest in learning more about clearly documented meddling from Ukraine officials (including those remaining in power). By his own account, he seemed to refrain actively from learning anything about it.

/For example, Taylor acknowledged a deep “emotional” attachment to Ukraine and – in his words – “stayed engaged” with the country while serving in private sector positions for a decade before returning to Kyiv as a Trump administration envoy this past June. Yet he claimed that when he resumed an official role, he knew nothing about that country’s efforts to prevent Mr. Trump’s election even though the country’s ambassador to Washington had published an op-ed in The Hill newspaper in August, 2016 opposing Mr. Trump’s election bid (which was featured prominently on his embassy’s website), and even though these and other similar developments had been reported in August, 2016 by the Financial Times and in January, 2017 by Politico.

In addition, Taylor testified that he was never briefed on these matters when he took charge of the U.S. embassy in the country, and evidently never sought a briefing, either. The only meddling-related subject he had some prior knowledge of, and was briefed on, was the successful effort by a Ukraine political reformer and parliamentarian to expose off-the-books cash payments in 2005 to future Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort when he was advising and lobbying for the pro-Russian political factions.

Even so, Taylor proceeded to justify his ignorance by insisting that these activities were only undertaken by “some Ukrainians, a couple of Ukrainians….none of those were in” the country’s current administration with one exception – the powerful Interior Minister. (Actually, the envoy who published the 2016 anti-Trump article stayed in office through this past summer.) And when asked “isn’t it fair to say that, if you’re aligned with the Trump administration, isn’t it legitimate to have a good-faith belief that Ukrainians were operating against you in the 2016 election?” Taylor replied diffidently, “You could have that opinion, that some were.”

Stranger, and flimsier, still were Taylor’s stated reasons for dismissing as “help with a political campaign” and a bid for “domestic political gain” Trump administration efforts to the probe Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son’s lucrative dealings with a Ukraine energy firm while the former Vice President served as the Obama administration’s point man for the country.

These included a bizarre claim that rather than focusing on “individual cases” – like Hunter Biden’s service on the board of the Burisma company – America’s longstanding anti-corruption policies in general concentrated on “the importance of honest judges, of the selection process for judges, the selectjon process for prosecutors, the institutions.” And evidently, he saw no reason to make an exception even when the individual case raised the possibility of influence-peddling at the highest levels of an administration only a few years out of power.

They included the even more disturbing contention that the “irregular channel” of Trump administration Ukraine policy headed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was illegitimate because it, in his view, it “wanted to focus on one or two specific cases, irrespective of whether it helped solve the corruption problem, fight the corruption problem” – meaning that Taylor ruled out chance that a “specific case” involving the family of the former Vice President of the United States and the government of a country he insists is a vital strategic partner of the United States could warrant any special attention.

They included the confidence that Giuliani’s sole interests were strengthening influencing the upcoming presidential election rather than corruption fighting based largely on a New York Times article reporting “that Giuliani was interested in getting some information on Vice President Biden that would be useful to Mr . Giuliani’s client,” along with Taylor’s refusal to answer the question of whether it’s “possible that the request to investigate interference with the 2015 election was not to influence a future election?”

They included Taylor’s additional statement that the Trump-Giuliani probe was ipso facto inappropriately political “Because as I understood the reason for jnvestigating Burisma was to cast Vice President Biden in a bad light” – which amounts to the unacceptable position that corruption suspects should be immune from official investigations if they decide to run for office.

And they included Taylor’s attempts to avoid opining on whether “A reasonable person could conclude that there ‘is a possible perceived conflict of interest” raised by Hunter Biden’s employment at Burisma. His performance is so comically evasive that it’s worth presenting in full (starting on p. 316 of the hearing transcript and beginning with a question from a Republican committee staff member):

Q: “ You would agree that, if Burisma – if their motivation for engaging Hunter Biden for their

board was not related to his corporate governance expertise but, in fact, was hoping to buy some protection, you would agree that’s worthy of investigating, right?

A: …I don’t know why Burisma got him on the board.

Q: But if Ukrainians were engaged in misdeeds or wrongdoing with regard to putting Hunter Biden on theirboard, that could be something that could be worth investigating, right?

A: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know the relationship that he had with the board. I don’t know.

Q: Okay. And, at the time, the Vice President had a you know, policy supervision of Ukraine on some respects.

A: He was very interested in policy with Ukraine, yes.

Q: Okay. So do you see a perceived conflict of interest there?

A: I’m a fact witness. I ‘m not giving opinions on –

Q: Okay.

A: – this thing, but – so I –

Q: Is it reasonable to see a perceived conflict of interest there, or is that crazy?

A: I’ve said other things are crazy.

Q: A reasonable person could conclude that there is a possible perceived conflict of interest there, right?”

At this point, one of Taylor’s personal lawyers interjected:

“You asked him that question earlier, at the beginning, about 7-1/ 2 hours ago. It was one of the first questions you asked him. He’s already answered it.” 

Again, Taylor has every right to prefer Biden’s views on Ukraine to Mr. Trump’s, and essentially to define that country’s unmistakable interference with the 2016 U.S. elections out of existence.  But holding these positions while professing political neutrality take gall and sanctimony to an entirely new level.  And Americans will have reason enough to be thankful for the impeachment proceedings if they indicate how widespread these views have been lately among the nation’s so-called foreign policy professionals.       

 

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  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
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  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
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  • Uncategorized

Our So-Called Foreign Policy

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Im-Politic

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Signs of the Apocalypse

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

The Brighter Side

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Those Stubborn Facts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

The Snide World of Sports

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Guest Posts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

Marc to Market

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Alastair Winter

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