Republicans on the down staircase - A quid pro quo echo opinion!

Republicans descending the "down"political staircase

This echo opinion was published in the Chicago Tribune by Rex Huppke

Devoted diplomat saw quid pro quo, dishonest Trump says all was ‘perfect.’ Guess who we should trust?
HUPPKE- Trump says he never pressured Ukrainian officials to investigate Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden, or to (require) a chase down a harebrained conspiracy theory about interference in the 2016 election.

Taylor said that Trump absolutely did all of those things and, in fact, refused to release desperately needed U.S. military aid — money that had already been approved by Congress — until Ukrainian officials publicly announced an investigation into Biden and the harebrained conspiracy theory.

Former Ambassador William Taylor leaves a closed-door meeting after testifying as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Oct. 22, 2019. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

Trump is a 73-year-old real estate developer with a long history of dishonesty and a president who, according to the Washington Post’s fact-checking team, has made more than 13,000 false or misleading claims since taking office.

Taylor, on the other hand, is a 72-year-old diplomat who described his credentials, under oath, to Congress like this:

“I have dedicated my life to serving U.S. interests at home and abroad in both military and civilian roles. My background and experience are nonpartisan and I have been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985.

“For 50 years, I have served the country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an infantry officer for six years, including with the 101​st​ Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a member of a Senate staff; then at NATO; then with the State Department here and abroad — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and more recently, as Executive Vice President of the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace.”

That sounds good, but then the Trump administration released a statement following Taylor’s testimony describing people like him as “radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.”

Boy, I don’t know! Yup, it’s a tough call. Do you trust the Vietnam War veteran who has dedicated 50 years of his life to serving the country in military and civilian roles, or do you trust the inveterate liar who has dedicated his life to self-aggrandizement and thinks it’s fine to call an unimpeachable public servant a “radical” who is “waging war on the Constitution”?

What about the other evidence that Trump used taxpayer money and the office of the presidency to pressure a foreign country to interfere in the upcoming presidential election? (Wow, it sounds bad when you put it all together like that.)

Well, there’s the White House’s rough transcript of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president.

On one hand, people who can read words and understand what they mean can see that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asks Trump for more military aid, to which Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor though.”

Trump then says Ukrainian officials need to investigate a wholly debunked conspiratorial tale about a mysterious computer server that will prove Ukrainians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, not the Russians. And he also wants Zelenskiy to investigate another debunked scandal involving Biden and his son, who served on the board of an energy company called Burisma.

That sure sounds like Trump is pressuring Zelenskiy to do this “favor” in order to get the military aid and a possible meeting at the White House.

On the other hand, Trump, the aforementioned extremely dishonest person, says it was a “perfect phone call” and Republican lawmakers — at least those still able to speak while their integrity is exiting their bodies — say it’s clear there was no “quid pro quo,” and even if there was, who cares?

Hmmmm. Words released by the White House itself that clearly show a president with mob-boss envy pressuring another world leader to dig up dirt on his political opponent versus that same president and his slavish supporters saying, “Nothing to see here!”

It’s tricky.

Because on the one hand you have acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney standing in front of the press corps and admitting the president made military funding contingent on a Ukrainian investigation into the mysterious nonsense server.

In an attempt to clarify that admission, a reporter asked Mulvaney: “But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo: The funding will not flow unless you’re getting an investigation into the Democratic server.”

To which Mulvaney replied: “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”

On the other hand, Mulvaney later said that he didn’t say that. So who can you really trust in this scenario? The Mulvaney who said it, or the Mulvaney who said he didn’t say it?

This is a conundrum.

I want to believe Taylor, the West Point graduate and war veteran, who on Tuesday described under oath a September phone call he had with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union: “During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskiy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskiy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance.”

But then there are people like Trump who call war veterans like Taylor “radical unelected bureaucrats,” and those people all promise nothing bad happened and say we should just get over it.

Who do you believe in this situation?

Heck if I know.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com