Friends, Adam Schiff has sold half the country a bill of goods, and not for the first time either. He's claiming that, if a "quid pro quo" can be proven in the Trump administration's outreach to Ukraine, that would justify the impeachment and removal of the President. My latest article, soon to appear at WND, explains why this is pure bunkum.
Quid Pro What?
As Democrats
pursue their “impeachment inquiry” into President Donald Trump's
efforts to induce Ukraine to investigate the alleged corruption of
Joe and Hunter Biden, on every American's lips these days is a Latin
phrase: quid pro quo.
Does the fate of
the Trump presidency really rest on a Latin saying that few citizens
have ever heard, and which only a small percentage understand?
Possibly, but, as I will explain, there's no reason why it should.
In
simple terms, quid pro quo means “you scratch my back, and I
scratch yours.” It refers, therefore, to a transaction from which
both parties expect to derive benefit. The flip side of a quid pro
quo is an assurance, spoken or unspoken, that, if you refuse
to scratch my back, I certainly won't
be scratching yours.
Given
the seemingly innocuous nature of quid pro quos, we might reasonably
ask: why are the Democrats concentrating on proving a quid pro quo in
President Trump's outreach to Ukraine? Why do so many deep state
denizens, including the whistleblower, view it as scandalous that a
quid pro quo may have been at issue? Why, moreover, have even some
Congressional
Republicans
hinted that, if a quid pro quo could be proved, then President Trump
would be in serious trouble?
Everyone seems to
be assuming that the real issue at stake in these impeachment
proceedings is a quid pro quo. Since impeachment is an inherently
political and therefore subjective process, in a sense they may be
right: a quid pro quo is, or can be, impeachable, if Congressmen
believe it to be so. The truth, however, is that the presence of
absence of a quid pro quo in the Trump administration's relationship
with Ukraine is utterly irrelevant to the legality or even the
propriety of President Trump's behavior. No one, in fact, should care
whether there was a quid pro quo at all.
Why do I say
that? It's simple: quid pro quos are the very substance of foreign
policy. Countries are constantly negotiating with one another, and in
the process of negotiating they routinely offer to do favors for one
another on a transactional basis. They offer quid pro quos.
Let
us not forget that in many ways the current Ukraine crisis has its
origins in former Vice-President Biden's boast
on tape
that he demanded that Ukraine fire its chief prosecutor, or else it
would not receive a $1 billion loan from the United States. That's
what we call, if we're inclined to Latinized pomposity, a “quid pro
quo.” Biden didn't conceal the terms of the deal he was offering to
Ukraine, because he was proud of his accomplishment. Ukraine wanted
its money, and we wanted a prosecutor fired. Thanks to the magic of
the quid pro quo, we both got what we wanted. Marvelous!
Why,
then, are Democrats, the media, and all too many Beltway Republicans
prepared to assume that, if President Trump engaged in a quid pro quo
with Ukraine, he is therefore in violation of his oath of office and
liable to impeachment? The answer is simple, but deeply disturbing to
any Trump supporter: all these groups fault President Trump for a
quid pro quo not because they are opposed to quid pro quos in
themselves, but because they assume,
almost entirely without evidence, that Trump's core motivation in
advocating for a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens was corrupt.
They assume
in the process that the Bidens are innocent of any wrongdoing. They
assume
that Trump knows that the Bidens are innocent. They assume,
moreover, that Trump's only possible reason for pursuing a “bogus”
investigation of the Bidens is to slander them and thus to gain
advantage in the 2020 presidential election.
These are, in case you haven't noticed, some mighty big assumptions!
As
far as I am aware, Democrats like Adam Schiff haven't wasted a single
minute trying to validate any of these assumptions, and nor has the
media upbraided them for their omission. That's because the ill will
and corrupt motives of Donald J. Trump are taken for granted in
almost all quarters in Washington, D.C. But you and I know better: we
know that, if the really substantive charge in this impeachment
inquiry is that President Trump conducted a foreign policy motivated
not by the national interest but by his personal, private interests,
then we have a right to expect that this all-important contention
will be not simply assumed,
but amply proven with evidence. Thus far, it hasn't been. Not even
close.
It
bears repeating that the same Democrats who are scandalized by
Trump's attempt to involve Ukraine in an investigation of the Bidens
are not troubled in the least by the intelligence community, the
Justice Department, and the Obama administration seeking the help of
a wide
network of foreigners
— Australians, Brits, Italians, Russians, and Ukrainians, among
others — in spying on and digging up dirt regarding Donald Trump
and his 2016 presidential campaign.
Just
as the Democrats, the media, and many establishment Republicans
assume
Trump's corruption in 2019, they assumed,
and continue to assume, the Obama administration's and the deep
state's patriotism, professionalism, and even-handedness in 2016.
Moreover, anyone who looks critically at those efforts to undermine
Trump and his campaign — anyone such as Bill Barr and John Durham —
is assumed to be engaged in a witch hunt, or to be peddling
“conspiracy theories.” But how would we ever know that the
“conspiracy” against Trump was merely theoretical, and not real,
unless we investigated the matter fully?
In the end, Democrats in Congress are chasing their tails, and in
more ways than one. They have set themselves the task of proving that
Donald Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine, presumably
because proving a quid pro quo, which is a commonplace in politics
and in life, is easier than proving corruption or “treasonous”
intent. It certainly looks, though, as if the Democrats will fall
short even of their self-appointed and minimal task of proving a quid
pro quo. The evidence is murky at best that any such transaction ever
occurred, or was suggested in an intelligible way to both sides. For
this reason, the quid pro quo is a dud, and the impeachment inquiry
will fail.
What's more, though, the Democrats, by starting their inquiry with
an unspoken but deeply inappropriate assumption — that the
President of the United States is corrupt and unpatriotic — have
invalidated and tainted all their subsequent efforts. Adam Schiff and
his ilk, by starting with the assumed guilt of President Trump and
working backwards to try to find the “evidence,” no matter how
flimsy, to substantiate it, have turned American justice on its head.
They have made a mockery of the very Constitution which they profess
to revere. They have, in short, sunk the S.S. Impeachment before its
keel was ever laid. The sooner they realize this, the better.
I
have, therefore, a quid pro quo to offer the impeachment-happy
Democrats in Congress. Resign now, and we, the American people, will
assume
(in a fit of generosity) that you regret your betrayal of our
constitutional system and your repeated calumnies against our duly
elected President. We will therefore forego exacting justice on you,
which will, should you foolishly reject this offer of clemency, come
swiftly and surely in the form of your ignominious defeat in 2020.
There it is. Take it or leave it.
You can't say we didn't warn you.
And, if you get through all that and still have an appetite for more, check out this superb article on the myth of Nazi German invincibility in WWII. Most people don't like the Nazis (imagine that!), but many still assume that they were hyper-efficient and master strategists. The truth is that they made innumerable blunders which cost them the war. There's very little in this analysis with which I would disagree.
