By Margaret Kimberley
In 2014, the United States culminated a decades-long project to realize a so-called “color revolution” in Ukraine. Along with partner non-governmental organizations, they assisted far-right forces in overthrowing that country’s elected president. Ukraine is a failed state with an ongoing civil war because of this effort to pry it away from Russian influence and include it in NATO, the European Union and any other U.S./ European axis configuration.
NEWSWORTHY AGAIN
Ukraine is in the news again, but for all the wrong reasons. The same people who covered up the deadly power grab are now making hay out of Donald Trump’s foolishness. Trump is nothing if not consistent. He is a vindictive, thin-skinned, dimwitted bully who always sees himself as the aggrieved party.
His sense of victimization prevented him from appreciating that he defeated the charges of Russian collusion meant to continue the anti-Russian foreign policy consensus. On July 24, Russiagate lost much of its political potency when Robert Mueller’s disastrous testimony proved that the narrative was a fraud.
On July 25, the bull in the china shop president created an “in” for his enemies when he raised the issue of Joe Biden’s conflicts of interest in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected president of Ukraine. Biden’s son was given a $50,000 per month position on the board of a Ukrainian fracking company after the coup. The obvious conflict of interest was just one aspect of the Ukraine story that the media covered up.
DEFEAT FROM VICTORY
Just one day before the phone call, the Democrats put the nail in the Russiagate coffin when they forced Robert Mueller to testify. Mueller had clearly and publicly made clear that he did not want to appear. Russiagate was a ginned-up scandal and Mueller’s stumbling performance proved it.
Trump had won a significant victory. Instead of letting sleeping dogs lie, he asked a foreign head of state to investigate another presidential candidate.
Joe Biden is a walking disaster on his own. He is nearly as stupid and graceless as Trump, but the Democratic Party is desperate to win with a neoliberal candidate who will please rich party donors and Wall Street. Biden’s disastrous debate performances and dubious activities should disqualify him, but the Democrats are sticking with him for now.
A TALKING POINT
If Biden ended up winning the nomination, the Republicans could have easily raised the issue of his son’s business dealings and his own foolishness in publicly bragging about his role in dismissing a Ukrainian prosecutor.
Instead, Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with an act that was at the very least inappropriate and possibly illegal. The defeated Democrats are thus able to resurrect an impeachment effort because of Trump’s gift to them. Unlike the Russiagate narrative, they have Trump’s own words and bad judgment to use against him.
