Willful Blindness

Democrats are outraged that Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, but the sad fact is that there is no need to investigate him. Joe Biden has convicted himself out of his own mouth, repeatedly.

He tells us, “They’re walking out of the press conference and I said, ‘Nah, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars.’” The Ukrainian officials challenged him, reminding him that the president had authorized the money, and he says that he replied to them, “Call him. I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.” He tells them that he’s leaving in six hours and, “If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money.”  He then finishes the story by saying, gleefully, “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”

You do not need to know anything about the Ukrainian prosecutor or what he was investigating. You do not need to know anything about Joe Biden’s son, the son’s business dealings, or Joe Biden’s knowledge of the son’s business.

The facts needed to convict Joe Biden of a felony are contained in the words that come out of his own mouth. Joe Biden, acting in his official capacity as Vice President of the United States, interfered in the internal governance of Ukraine, using $1 billion of US foreign aid money as an instrument of extortion to do so.

Democrats are saying the Trump “pressured Zelensky by implication” because the actual threat of not delivering $350 million in aid was not made verbally in the conversation. Perhaps. Some would say the so-called threat was not made at all. Joe Biden’s threat was not implied. “If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money.”

What Trump did say in the telephone conversation was that, “What Joe Biden did was really shameful,” a statement with which I find it hard to disagree.

The media’s response to that, in their commentary following Trump’s news conference was, stunningly, unbelievably, “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong.”

The media is accusing Trump, on evidence that at best is thinner than a single strand of a spider’s web and in actuality is entirely fictional, of holding foreign aid money as a quid pro quo for favors from a foreign leader, but in the face of Joe Biden actually boasting of doing precisely that they say that, “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong.”

There can be no stronger evidence that the media has become an instrument of political manipulation and propaganda, and that it is is devoted to deposing an elected president by any means.