Trump’s Defenders Have Plenty of Lame Excuses

[Billy_Kinetta]

This is from National Review, the nation’s leading conservative publication. The author is highly respected (on the right, anyway) Ramesh Ponnuru.


Trump’s Defenders Have Plenty of Lame Excuses

No quid pro quo! It’s just politics! Democrats did it too!

View attachment 281710
Punching back


*snip*

Those of us who consume a lot of conservative media are, however, seeing even more flawed arguments in defense of Trump. Here are a few of the leading ones.



There was no quid pro quo in Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. It takes willful naiveté to read the memorandum of the call released by the White House that way – especially given that the Trump administration had held up some aid to Ukraine at the time of the call. In the conversation, Trump said that the U.S. had been good to Ukraine, noted that the relationship was not reciprocal, and then asked for “a favor” and an “other thing.”



The “favor” concerned Ukrainian cooperation with an effort by Attorney General Bill Barr to look into a conspiracy theory involving Ukraine and the 2016 elections. The “other thing” was to help Barr and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, “get to the bottom” of whether Vice President Joe Biden had intervened to stop a prosecution affecting his son.

It’s fine for the president to ask for Ukrainian help in uprooting corruption. It’s the administration’s right to set its foreign-policy priorities, and fighting corruption has been a low one. The president’s interest here was obviously personal. Otherwise there would have been no reason to involve Giuliani, a private lawyer, who had already said that he was “meddling in an investigation” to help his client.

The news media has edited the memorandum of the phone call to make Trump look worse. This is correct. Some outlets have used ellipses to jump from Trump’s request for a favor directly to his comment about Biden. In skipping over the conspiracy-theory part of Trump’s comment, they made the evidence that Trump was pressuring Ukraine over Biden look stronger than it is. An accurate recounting of the memorandum, though, is strong enough.

Democratic senators interfered with Ukrainian prosecutors, too. Not really. Three Democratic senators sent a letterurging Ukraine to cooperate with an ongoing investigation by the U.S. government rather than to succumb to any pressure from Trump to withhold cooperation. There was no threat of U.S. policy changes adversely affecting Ukraine, either. So no quo, and a less problematic quid.

It was just a phone call. There’s no reason a phone call can’t be enough to be worth investigating, or even removing an official from office. But what’s under investigation isn’t just a phone call anyway. We need to know the motives for the administration’s temporary withholding of aid, which are disputed. And Giuliani’s comment about meddling came more than two months before the phone call.

The “whistleblower complaint” contains a lot of hearsay. That’s true, but the allegations are of sufficiently troubling acts as to be worth investigating.

Russiagate was a hoax, and the same people who spread it are yelling about this. Russia interfered in the 2016 election; the president has repeatedly denied that point; and top aides expressed their willingness to get election help from the Russian government. The idea that there was something worth looking into was no hoax, even if Robert Mueller was unable to show that Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy.

The multiplicity of grounds Trump’s enemies have cited to call for impeachment shows they are just after him for partisan reasons. Partisanship is definitely playing a large role, just as Hamilton predicted. Note, though, that this defense of Trump is similar to one Hillary Clinton’s fans made over her emails: They’ve alleged one thing after another about her for decades, so why take this one seriously? It wasn’t wrong for Clinton’s defenders to point to Republican partisanship. But Clinton also had a history of ethical corner-cutting that kept leading to accusations, some of them justified and some of them unjustified. Trump seems to have a habit of confusing his interests with the country’s, and it too is leading to scandal after scandal.

Trump’s enemies are trying to annul an election; they can’t accept his legitimacy. Trump is the legitimate president, and some of his opponents have foolishly denied it. He was elected fair and square under the process our Constitution lays out. If he’s removed from office after an impeachment trial, he’ll have exited the presidency under another process the Constitution lays out. And Hillary Clinton won’t become president.

*snip*

 

[jknowgood]

President Trump doesn't need defending. It would be nice if the Democrats stopped acting like a hostile foreign power and start working for the American people again.

They’ve passed a lot of bills that the vast majority of Americans want. Moscow Mitch won’t bring them to the floor.

So you’re lying again.

What? Raising taxes, free healthcare for illegals? No that's not what sane Americans want.

 

[Anathema]

Look libs we simply don't give a shit what you say or think, defeating you is our purpose in life.

... and ending the existence of people like YOU is ours.

 

[jc456]

There was nothing wrong with that phone call.

“It was a perfect phone call!”

Who the **** says things like that? What the **** is “a beautiful call”?

You elected a moron.

Economic growth has been wonderful and you fkwad hate that. You just admitted it. You’re pathetic as a human ptthhh at your fking evil

 

[jc456]

Look libs we simply don't give a shit what you say or think, defeating you is our purpose in life.

... and ending the existence of people like YOU is ours.

We know fkwad. Cone and get us internet tough guy

 

[Anathema]

We know fkwad. Cone and get us internet tough guy

When the time is right we will appear out of the brush and overwhelm you folks like a plague.

 

[eagle1462010]

President Trump doesn't need defending. It would be nice if the Democrats stopped acting like a hostile foreign power and start working for the American people again.

They’ve passed a lot of bills that the vast majority of Americans want. Moscow Mitch won’t bring them to the floor.

So you’re lying again.

Awe......Sounds like a Reed Graveyard thing................imagine that.............

Getting a taste of your own medicine...........good.

 

[Synthaholic]

There was nothing wrong with that phone call.

“It was a perfect phone call!”

Who the **** says things like that? What the **** is “a beautiful call”?

You elected a moron.

Says a moron like you who apparently has trouble with the English language. We didn't elect a moron, but you sure act like one.

You’re drooling.

 

[Synthaholic]

This is from National Review, the nation’s leading conservative publication. The author is highly respected (on the right, anyway) Ramesh Ponnuru.


Trump’s Defenders Have Plenty of Lame Excuses

No quid pro quo! It’s just politics! Democrats did it too!

View attachment 281710
Punching back


*snip*

Those of us who consume a lot of conservative media are, however, seeing even more flawed arguments in defense of Trump. Here are a few of the leading ones.



There was no quid pro quo in Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. It takes willful naiveté to read the memorandum of the call released by the White House that way – especially given that the Trump administration had held up some aid to Ukraine at the time of the call. In the conversation, Trump said that the U.S. had been good to Ukraine, noted that the relationship was not reciprocal, and then asked for “a favor” and an “other thing.”



The “favor” concerned Ukrainian cooperation with an effort by Attorney General Bill Barr to look into a conspiracy theory involving Ukraine and the 2016 elections. The “other thing” was to help Barr and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, “get to the bottom” of whether Vice President Joe Biden had intervened to stop a prosecution affecting his son.

It’s fine for the president to ask for Ukrainian help in uprooting corruption. It’s the administration’s right to set its foreign-policy priorities, and fighting corruption has been a low one. The president’s interest here was obviously personal. Otherwise there would have been no reason to involve Giuliani, a private lawyer, who had already said that he was “meddling in an investigation” to help his client.

The news media has edited the memorandum of the phone call to make Trump look worse. This is correct. Some outlets have used ellipses to jump from Trump’s request for a favor directly to his comment about Biden. In skipping over the conspiracy-theory part of Trump’s comment, they made the evidence that Trump was pressuring Ukraine over Biden look stronger than it is. An accurate recounting of the memorandum, though, is strong enough.

Democratic senators interfered with Ukrainian prosecutors, too. Not really. Three Democratic senators sent a letterurging Ukraine to cooperate with an ongoing investigation by the U.S. government rather than to succumb to any pressure from Trump to withhold cooperation. There was no threat of U.S. policy changes adversely affecting Ukraine, either. So no quo, and a less problematic quid.

It was just a phone call. There’s no reason a phone call can’t be enough to be worth investigating, or even removing an official from office. But what’s under investigation isn’t just a phone call anyway. We need to know the motives for the administration’s temporary withholding of aid, which are disputed. And Giuliani’s comment about meddling came more than two months before the phone call.

The “whistleblower complaint” contains a lot of hearsay. That’s true, but the allegations are of sufficiently troubling acts as to be worth investigating.

Russiagate was a hoax, and the same people who spread it are yelling about this. Russia interfered in the 2016 election; the president has repeatedly denied that point; and top aides expressed their willingness to get election help from the Russian government. The idea that there was something worth looking into was no hoax, even if Robert Mueller was unable to show that Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy.

The multiplicity of grounds Trump’s enemies have cited to call for impeachment shows they are just after him for partisan reasons. Partisanship is definitely playing a large role, just as Hamilton predicted. Note, though, that this defense of Trump is similar to one Hillary Clinton’s fans made over her emails: They’ve alleged one thing after another about her for decades, so why take this one seriously? It wasn’t wrong for Clinton’s defenders to point to Republican partisanship. But Clinton also had a history of ethical corner-cutting that kept leading to accusations, some of them justified and some of them unjustified. Trump seems to have a habit of confusing his interests with the country’s, and it too is leading to scandal after scandal.

Trump’s enemies are trying to annul an election; they can’t accept his legitimacy. Trump is the legitimate president, and some of his opponents have foolishly denied it. He was elected fair and square under the process our Constitution lays out. If he’s removed from office after an impeachment trial, he’ll have exited the presidency under another process the Constitution lays out. And Hillary Clinton won’t become president.

*snip*

Like I said, they’re the leading conservative publication in the United States.

 

[pyetro]

As long as you and the left are crying, everything is good in the world.



.

The national review is the left?

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

This is from National Review, the nation’s leading conservative publication. The author is highly respected (on the right, anyway) Ramesh Ponnuru.


Trump’s Defenders Have Plenty of Lame Excuses

No quid pro quo! It’s just politics! Democrats did it too!

View attachment 281710
Punching back


*snip*

Those of us who consume a lot of conservative media are, however, seeing even more flawed arguments in defense of Trump. Here are a few of the leading ones.



There was no quid pro quo in Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. It takes willful naiveté to read the memorandum of the call released by the White House that way – especially given that the Trump administration had held up some aid to Ukraine at the time of the call. In the conversation, Trump said that the U.S. had been good to Ukraine, noted that the relationship was not reciprocal, and then asked for “a favor” and an “other thing.”



The “favor” concerned Ukrainian cooperation with an effort by Attorney General Bill Barr to look into a conspiracy theory involving Ukraine and the 2016 elections. The “other thing” was to help Barr and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, “get to the bottom” of whether Vice President Joe Biden had intervened to stop a prosecution affecting his son.

It’s fine for the president to ask for Ukrainian help in uprooting corruption. It’s the administration’s right to set its foreign-policy priorities, and fighting corruption has been a low one. The president’s interest here was obviously personal. Otherwise there would have been no reason to involve Giuliani, a private lawyer, who had already said that he was “meddling in an investigation” to help his client.

The news media has edited the memorandum of the phone call to make Trump look worse. This is correct. Some outlets have used ellipses to jump from Trump’s request for a favor directly to his comment about Biden. In skipping over the conspiracy-theory part of Trump’s comment, they made the evidence that Trump was pressuring Ukraine over Biden look stronger than it is. An accurate recounting of the memorandum, though, is strong enough.

Democratic senators interfered with Ukrainian prosecutors, too. Not really. Three Democratic senators sent a letterurging Ukraine to cooperate with an ongoing investigation by the U.S. government rather than to succumb to any pressure from Trump to withhold cooperation. There was no threat of U.S. policy changes adversely affecting Ukraine, either. So no quo, and a less problematic quid.

It was just a phone call. There’s no reason a phone call can’t be enough to be worth investigating, or even removing an official from office. But what’s under investigation isn’t just a phone call anyway. We need to know the motives for the administration’s temporary withholding of aid, which are disputed. And Giuliani’s comment about meddling came more than two months before the phone call.

The “whistleblower complaint” contains a lot of hearsay. That’s true, but the allegations are of sufficiently troubling acts as to be worth investigating.

Russiagate was a hoax, and the same people who spread it are yelling about this. Russia interfered in the 2016 election; the president has repeatedly denied that point; and top aides expressed their willingness to get election help from the Russian government. The idea that there was something worth looking into was no hoax, even if Robert Mueller was unable to show that Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy.

The multiplicity of grounds Trump’s enemies have cited to call for impeachment shows they are just after him for partisan reasons. Partisanship is definitely playing a large role, just as Hamilton predicted. Note, though, that this defense of Trump is similar to one Hillary Clinton’s fans made over her emails: They’ve alleged one thing after another about her for decades, so why take this one seriously? It wasn’t wrong for Clinton’s defenders to point to Republican partisanship. But Clinton also had a history of ethical corner-cutting that kept leading to accusations, some of them justified and some of them unjustified. Trump seems to have a habit of confusing his interests with the country’s, and it too is leading to scandal after scandal.

Trump’s enemies are trying to annul an election; they can’t accept his legitimacy. Trump is the legitimate president, and some of his opponents have foolishly denied it. He was elected fair and square under the process our Constitution lays out. If he’s removed from office after an impeachment trial, he’ll have exited the presidency under another process the Constitution lays out. And Hillary Clinton won’t become president.

*snip*

National Review, the nation’s leading conservative publication. The author is highly respected

 

[Synthaholic]

President Trump doesn't need defending. It would be nice if the Democrats stopped acting like a hostile foreign power and start working for the American people again.

They’ve passed a lot of bills that the vast majority of Americans want. Moscow Mitch won’t bring them to the floor.

So you’re lying again.

What? Raising taxes, free healthcare for illegals? No that's not what sane Americans want.

You don’t even know. Sad.

 

[Bruce_T_Laney]

President Trump doesn't need defending. It would be nice if the Democrats stopped acting like a hostile foreign power and start working for the American people again.

They’ve passed a lot of bills that the vast majority of Americans want. Moscow Mitch won’t bring them to the floor.

So you’re lying again.

You mean like Mitch " I stole Harry Reid playbook " McConnell...

 

[pyetro]

But Jojo ACTUALLY THREATENED UKRAINE....DID TRUMP...NOOOOO !Fire the prosecutor or NO BILLION FOLLARS...AND HE HSS NOW IMPLICATED THE SURRENDER MONKEY BY TELLING THE PM TO CALL THE CORRUPT JUG EARRED LUNATIC!

In Libtardia, it's Trump words that matter. Real wrong doing by Democrats just didn't happen.

BUT even the PHONY, DemonRAT polls show Trump's approval improving....even the lame stream media can't hide that FACT for too long......NO MORE RED LINES IN THE SAND....THAT OUR ENEMIES WALK OVER!!!!

Rassmussen isn't a Democrat poll.

 

[NotYourBody]

No need for excuses...."Whistleblower" is still a gossip, with absolutely no direct knowledge of what he is talking about.

Everything after that is GIGO.

Not according to Trump's Director of National Intelligence. The report checks out. It is credible. So far, nothing the whistle blower said has been proven to be false. In fact, it's turning out to be truth.

 

[sartre play]

Could I please see the information & where it came from on Biden, and Trump

 

[MeBelle]

President Trump doesn't need defending. It would be nice if the Democrats stopped acting like a hostile foreign power and start working for the American people again.

They’ve passed a lot of bills that the vast majority of Americans want. Moscow Mitch won’t bring them to the floor.

So you’re lying again.

links to those bills that help Americans, please.

 

[Mike473]

Trump is well on his way to being one of the greatest Presidents in US History.

 

[lantern2814]

There was nothing wrong with that phone call.

“It was a perfect phone call!”

Who the **** says things like that? What the **** is “a beautiful call”?

You elected a moron.

Says a moron like you who apparently has trouble with the English language. We didn't elect a moron, but you sure act like one.

You’re drooling.

No, and sure as hell not over a cow like you. You're the one melting down here. Again, you project your inadequacies onto others. Now clean up the mess you just made on the floor.

 

[Wyatt earp]

President Trump doesn't need defending. It would be nice if the Democrats stopped acting like a hostile foreign power and start working for the American people again.

They’ve passed a lot of bills that the vast majority of Americans want. Moscow Mitch won’t bring them to the floor.

So you’re lying again.

Once again


Pay back is a ***** after Harry Reid huh?