that first impeachment to downplay, excuse, and even embolden the disgraced former president s attempts to cheat in the 2020 election and undermine its result. his aim since he made that phone call to ukrainian president zelensky in july of 2019 was singular, to beat joe biden at any cost. it remained the underpinning for his pressure on election officials to find the votes he would have needed to win the 2020 election, to galvanize his supporters, to storm the capitol on january 6th, and to lie to the american people on an ongoing basis, falsely claiming their votes aren t safe at the ballot box, so that maybe, he seems to hope, he can find a way to grab power back for himself again. it is against that backdrop that today the warning lights are flashing red. the republican party having surrendered its identity and ideals to a twice-impeached disgraced one-term ex-president,
reality check on the campaign that has unfolded in the wake of that first impeachment to downplay, excuse, and even embolden the disgraced former president s attempts to cheat in the 2020 election and undermine its result. his aim since he made that phone call to ukrainian president zelensky in july of 2019 was singular, to beat joe biden at any cost. it remained the underpinning for his pressure on election officials to find the votes he would have needed to win the 2020 election, to galvanize his supporters, to storm the capitol on january 6th, and to lie to the american people on an ongoing basis, falsely claiming their votes aren t safe at the ballot box, so that maybe, he seems to hope, he can find a way to grab power back for himself again. it is against that backdrop that today the warning lights are flashing red. the republican party having surrendered its identity and ideals to a twice-impeached
statement and how this statement came about. . the statement was never released by the ukrainian government. but did president zelensky and his aides understand it to be if i come out publicly and say, yes, i will investigate burisma, ei the bidens, ie president etrump political opponent at the moment, then i will get my military assistance? why would he be compelled to do it in the first place and why didn t he do it? from reading of the text messages it seems far clearer that what was at stake was not the military aid in exchange for the assistance, it may have been an oval office meeting. it may have been they would come to the united states to meet with trump. if they put that statement out, it would where have made that meeting a lot easier. the interesting thing about what the ukrainians did is they realized how sensitive of it was to get more deeply involved in american politics and ultimately decided against doing this.
summary of the phone call on july 25th between president trump and president zelensky, then put that with the whistleblower complaint, there s a lot of crossover there. you put this together with text messages we see from american political appointees and diplomats talking about all of this, and then add in yesterday the president of the united states standing on the south lawn and saying, yes, i believe ukraine should investigate the bidens and, by the way, china should do the same. what does that story tell you? you know what this tells me is that, you know, you ve got this sort of idea that trump supporters have that there s a twitter trump and then there s this difference between twitter trump and american policy. and american policy is solid even though trump can t put down the phone. this is twitter trump operationalized into american diplomacy. this is one part corruption, which is the requesting a foreign government without any real foundation to investigate a rival, and then
seriously not merely as an instrument in washington domestic re-election politics. on the morning of president trump s july 25th phone call with the ukrainian president, vul volker texts zelensky s aide wrooid writing this. heard from white house, assuming president z convinces trump he will investigate get to the bopt tom of what happened in 2016, we will nail down a date for a visit to washington. then on august 9th, volker texts rudy giuliani writing mai, mr. mayor, had a good chat with yermak. he was pleased with your phone call. mentioned z, zelensky, making a statement. can we all get on the phone to make sure i advise z correctly as to what he should be staying? want saying? want to make sure we get this down right. the next day, he wants to get a date for the white house visit before committing to a statement about investigating the bidens and a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. the aide texts back, quote, once we have a date, we ll call for a