Lying takes a lot of effort, telling the truth is easy. When you start lying you have to remember which lie you told which person, and as the truth begins to creep out, as it always does, you find yourself scrambling to twist it to fit back into your lie. Democrats, both in Congress and the media, are finding this out the hard way this week with their latest “Trump is corrupt and must be impeached” lie.
Most people learn that honesty is the best policy when they’re kids, but politicians and journalists are now overgrown, overpaid kids. There are maybe a handful of honest, mature people currently working in politics, but none have seen the business end of a TV camera since the 90s.
Almost everything about the allegations that have Democrats moving toward impeachment of the President is a lie, a proven lie. And they don’t care.
The call with Ukrainian President Zelensky did take place, so that part is true. From there, the lies begin.
“There was a quid pro quo” they said. The President threatened to withhold aid money from Ukraine unless Zelensky investigated Joe and Hunter Biden, we were told. The transcript showed that did not happen.
That fact did not stop any Democrat from saying it did. It did not stop anchors at CNN and MSNBC from saying it did.
On MSNBC, Katy Tur summarized the transcript this way: “Will you do me a favor and investigate Vice President Biden’s son? Will you do me a favor and get involved in the 2020 election? Vice President Biden is my chief political opponent.”
On CNN, Brianna Keillor said President Trump told Zelensky, “’I would like you to do us a favor…’ the President asks Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden and his son, Hunter.”
The only problem is the President said nothing of the sort. The President was asking for Zelensky’s help investigating attempts by the previous Ukraine government’s meddling in the 2016 election. Read the transcript for yourself. To get to any mention of Biden you have to skip 540 words, fully three quarters the length of an op-ed. But CNN and MSNBC simply erased those words and created their own version of the conversation.
There was a time when the media reported on Ukraine’s attempt to influence our election made news. In January of 2017, Politico ran a story with the headline, “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.”
In that story, by the way, Politico reports, “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.” (Emphasis added.)
If seeking aid from foreign governments for political campaigns is a crime, there’s some right there. But that’s of no interest to liberals, they’ve memory-holed those inconvenient truths.
Also memory-holed is the truth about withholding US aid to Ukraine. For there to be a “threat,” for there to be a quid pro quo, Ukraine would have to be aware of the fact that the aid was put on hold. But the New York Times, of all places, noted that Ukraine did not know the aid was put on hold until a month AFTER the call. Leverage only works when both sides know one of them has and is using it.
There is one reporter on both that 2017 Politico story and this Times story – Ken Vogel. He also reported, “When U.S. officials urged TRUMP to meet with ZELENSKY, & to support the new Ukrainian government against Russian aggression, TRUMP said of Ukrainians: ‘They’re all corrupt & they tried to take me down.’”
This bolsters President Trump’s claim that he decided to delay aid because of the history of corruption in Ukraine, corruption no one disputes. When President Trump said that’s why he did it, cable news talking heads dismissed it in favor of the “leverage” narrative. But again, there could be no leverage because Ukraine didn’t know of the decision.
The so-called “whistleblower” account gets all of this wrong. Whoever this person is admits they had no firsthand knowledge of any of it, they’d played the child’s game “telephone” with a couple of people who allegedly had knowledge and felt compelled to file a complaint. If it was so disturbing, why didn’t anyone actually directly involved file the complaint?
Then there’s the charge of a “cover-up!” It’s one of the left’s favorite buzzwords because it evokes a visceral reaction when you hear it. But when you think about it, and look at what they’re using to back it up, it’s another in a long list of scams.
The story goes that the White House tried to hide this story because the transcript was on a different server, a more secure server than the one transcripts used to be stored on. This was another bit of info the “whistleblower” found disturbing in the complaint. But those transcripts were moved to the more secure server at the behest of White House lawyers AFTER two transcripts were leaked to the press early in the Trump administration (perhaps by the whistleblower, who seemed to know and care about where they were stored). Classified material was leaked by anonymous, untrustworthy government agents, so it makes perfect sense that you’d secure that information going forward. That Democrats are trying to make something out of this tells you something about their priorities and character.
The other aspect of the “cover-up” is ridicules it’s surprising adults aren’t embarrassed to make it. How can anyone claim the White House is withholding information when the President declassified every piece of paper associated with the call? The transcript, the whistleblower complaint, the Inspector General’s report, all of these are classified and could have been held back with a perfectly valid claim of executive privilege. That didn’t happen. The President released the information so quickly that Democrats were still calling for their release after they’d already been released.
What is odd is how Congressman Adam Schiff, weeks before Democrats allegedly heard about this whistleblower complaint, laid out the exact narrative Democrats are using. “Trump is withholding vital military aid to Ukraine, while his personal lawyer seeks help from the Ukraine government to investigate his political opponent. It doesn’t take a stable genius to see the magnitude of this conflict. Or how destructive it is to our national security,” he tweeted a month ago like a kid with a secret they just can’t wait to tell.
What did Schiff know and when did he know it? And if Schiff knew, who else knew?
It was weird how everyone got on the same page so quickly, with the same (bad) information and false claims, and just after the intelligence community changed their whistleblowing requirements that information be firsthand, not hearsay. Even self-righteous alleged conservatives who hate the President were quick to get on board.
None – not the Democrats, the “journalists,” or never-Trumpers – seem remotely bothered by the fact that every claim they’ve clutched their pearls over turned out to be false. When you embrace and repeat something you know to be false, you are lying. If the evidence were there, if it’s on their side, why lie?
It’s precisely because the truth is not on their side that they have to lie.
This was a coordinated coup attempt. Democrats were tipped off about the whistleblower complaint and pot-committed themselves to it being the silver bullet they’ve desperately been seeking. But the President was holding all the cards. He released everything to the public and authorized everyone to testify. By the time Democrats realized they’d gotten it all wrong it was too late.
They knew the other stories they been feeding their supporters were garbage. LIberals simply used stories like “Russian collusion” to keep their base riled up and on the line. But this one, this time they thought they had him. Only they didn’t, there was no “there” there.
You only get one bite at the impeachment apple, they have no choice but to plough forward with it anyway.
Journalists and pundits, on the other hand, do have a choice. They’re sticking with their team and ignoring the facts, ignoring the truth.
All these people are going to fight till the end, go down with the ship. They hate the President so much they are not going to let a little thing like having to lie deter them. They want him gone and are willing to lie to make it happen. Trump Derangement Syndrome is the Kool-Aid at Jonestown.
For all their insistence that Donald Trump is corrupt, it is his opponents who are willing to pervert reality to get what they want. They deserve every bad thing that happens to them.
Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.