Trump and Ukraine
As a kind of time capsule, today the big news is that Trump may have pressed Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden (Joe Biden's son), possibly in exchange for military aid, intelligence, or other inducements. This is all extremely speculative at this point. Here is the New York Times story, here is a good background post from Just Security, and here is Giuliani ranting about it:
I predict that more details will emerge and that the debate will essentially boil down to shouting about whether it's appropriate to pressure another country to investigate one of your citizens. I want to sound a note of caution on that front. While I think it's flagrantly wrong to do so (at least in this manner—more on that later), this isn't going to be intuitively obvious to a lot of people, and I think Trump might brazen it out. I'm sure we've pressured countries before (e.g. we've certainly pressured countries not to shelter Assange and Snowden), and so it's going to be easy to muddy the water.
Of course who knows, maybe this speculation will all turn out to be wrong.
I do want to make one additional observation, which is that in 2012 many Republicans were utterly convinced that Benghazi was going to sink Obama's reelection if only the media would report on it. This was good for a chuckle at the time, as were Trump's flailing efforts on behalf of Romney. But both jokes turned extremely sour in 2016, and I still haven't quite figured out to my own satisfaction how the right did it.
And so assuming the speculation turns out to be true, I'm very curious which way it will go. Will the right's obsession with meritless investigations finally backfire? Or will it yet again pay dividends in our increasingly broken political system?
[edited for grammar]
And here's Giuliani's tweet:CNN's @ChrisCuomo: "Did you ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?"@RudyGiuliani: "Of course I did"— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) September 20, 2019
President Trump's attorney says he had spoken with a Ukrainian official about Joe Biden's possible role in that government's dismissal of a prosecutor who investigated Biden's son. pic.twitter.com/hqmqtmx2VW
I predict that more details will emerge and that the debate will essentially boil down to shouting about whether it's appropriate to pressure another country to investigate one of your citizens. I want to sound a note of caution on that front. While I think it's flagrantly wrong to do so (at least in this manner—more on that later), this isn't going to be intuitively obvious to a lot of people, and I think Trump might brazen it out. I'm sure we've pressured countries before (e.g. we've certainly pressured countries not to shelter Assange and Snowden), and so it's going to be easy to muddy the water.
Of course who knows, maybe this speculation will all turn out to be wrong.
I do want to make one additional observation, which is that in 2012 many Republicans were utterly convinced that Benghazi was going to sink Obama's reelection if only the media would report on it. This was good for a chuckle at the time, as were Trump's flailing efforts on behalf of Romney. But both jokes turned extremely sour in 2016, and I still haven't quite figured out to my own satisfaction how the right did it.
And so assuming the speculation turns out to be true, I'm very curious which way it will go. Will the right's obsession with meritless investigations finally backfire? Or will it yet again pay dividends in our increasingly broken political system?
[edited for grammar]
posted by James | 12:16 AM
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