The president has said this was a perfect call.
Do you think this was a perfect call?
If, in his mind, he thinks it was a perfect call—
What do you think?
You know, I think it’s never a good practice for us to ask a foreign country to investigate
an American.
It’s just not a good practice.
Having said that, there’s no insistence on that call, there are no demands on that
call.
It is a conversation between two presidents that’s casual in nature.
And it’s just hard to find anywhere that the president of Ukraine would’ve thought
funds were being held and that he had to do this.
Well, I mean, as a backdrop, and you of all people know how important these funds are
to Ukraine.
You were one of the leading voices on behalf of Ukraine against Russian aggression.
They always know that the funding of their military is hanging over their heads, do they
not?
But they also know that president Trump has been very strong for Ukraine, by giving anti-tank
missiles, by going against Russia, holding the sanctions, expelling—
Aid was on hold at that moment.
The aid did go on hold.
Eventually it was released.
You know, you can have those hypotheticals.
It was released.
That’s a fact.
The aid was held up.
That is not a hypothetical, right?
Was the aid released?
It was.
Okay.
You know, one of the things, when we talk about the call, and you’ve said, you know—I
think, I won’t put words in your mouth.
I think you’ve said it was not advisable to have someone asking—a president asking
for a political favor like that, asking for an investigation into an American citizen.
You know, I went back actually and looked at your resignation letter, and you said,
through it all, we were always placing America first.
How is asking a foreign country to investigate your political rival putting America first?
Well I think— Who’s interest is that in?
Is that in America’s interest or is it in the president’s personal interest?
I mean, Ukraine has always been an issue with corruption.
That was the case, that we always knew there was corruption--
Okay but the corruption mentioned by the president here has to do with Joe Biden and the DNC
server.
Those are the two very specific examples.
And Americans should want to know the answer of did Biden pressure the prosecutor to, you
know, to do what he did.
And I think there’s a real question there.
You can question the president.
But you also have to question what Biden did.
Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley isn’t in the administration anymore.
She doesn’t HAVE to run cover for a president embroiled in the biggest corruption scandal
in modern American history.
And yet that she still chooses goes to show exactly what kind of a person she is.
But the credit goes to Savannah Guthrie for not letting her spew her usual baseless talking
points unchecked.
Right off the bat, Nikki Haley claims that Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Zelensky
might not have been good practice, but that there were no demands or insistences on that
call.
And this is just straight gaslighting, because Trump was withholding badly needed military
assistance at the time.
In other words, when Trump makes a request, knowing full well that military aid is on
the line, it’s a demand.
That’s how it works.
Only one party here has any leverage, while the other party is fighting for its survival.
And anyone not acting in bad faith is able to recognize that.
But what makes this especially bad is that, as Guthrie points out, Nikki Haley was one
of the leading voices on behalf of Ukraine against Russian aggression.
So for her, then, to not only ALLOW but DEFEND Trump holding that military aid hostage until
he could exact personal demands shows that either Haley never actually cared about protecting
Ukraine or she just turned into such a partisan hack that she was willing to allow them to
be extorted because that’s what Donald Trump wanted.
Either way, the trajectory hasn’t been a good one.
Haley goes on to claim that Trump has been quote very strong for Ukraine.
But according to reports from THIS WEEK, former White House official Catherine Croft testified
that Trump’s Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on the delivery of anti-tank
missiles called javelins to Ukraine in 2017 because of concerns that their delivery would
upset Russia.
And that was the United States’ first delivery of lethal aid to Ukraine since Russian separatists
seized Crimea.
In other words, from the very first foray into the Russian-Ukraine saga until now, when
the administration used their military aid as a bargaining chip to get a talking point
for Trump in 2020, this White House hasn’t been so much quote “very strong for Ukraine”
as they have been primarily concerned with everyone BUT Ukraine.
And then, of course, without fail is Nikki Haley’s excuse that the aid was ultimately
delivered to Ukraine so there’s really no issue here.
In other words, it’s totally fine that Trump TRIED to extort a foreign country to do his
political bidding since it was unsuccessful.
Nikki Haley must be under the impression that you can go into a bank and try to rob it,
but if you’re ultimately not able to get any of the money, then everyone walks away
free.
The fact is, Trump’s own incompetence at committing crimes isn’t justification to
exonerate him!
He’s still guilty of trying.
One of Nixon’s articles of impeachment was ENDEAVORING to obstruct justice.
In other words, it’s still illegal to TRY and break the law, which is exactly what happened
here.
But the worst claim that Nikki Haley gave throughout the entire interview was this backwards
idea that there’s an equivalency between the already investigated and adjudicated conspiracy
theory about Joe Biden and Trump’s admitted efforts to extort and bribe a foreign country
for his own personal gain.
On no planet are those two things the same.
And just because the GOP is looking for some excuse – any excuse – to counter Trump’s
blatant corruption, doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that we have to elevate
whatever BS excuse they cook up to be equal in severity to Trump’s crime.
That’s not how this works.
This isn’t a tit for tat.
We don’t have to accept these absurd stipulations from the right IN EXCHANGE for holding Trump
accountable.
He’ll be held accountable not because we’ve allowed them to dictate the terms of their
OWN SIDE’S corruption but because in this country, no one is above the law.
So whether it’s because this is Nikki Haley’s way of thanking Trump for tweeting out an
endorsement of her book or if she might by vying to replace Pence on the 2020 ticket
or if she simply wants to stay in the good graces of a political party that has devolved
into a cult of personality around Donald Trump, her attempts to justify this glaringly criminal
behavior are going to be her only legacy.