{"id":329052,"date":"2019-11-20T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T21:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=329052"},"modified":"2021-04-05T12:52:35","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T16:52:35","slug":"trumps-attitude-on-ukraine-makes-perfect-sense-in-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/11\/20\/trumps-attitude-on-ukraine-makes-perfect-sense-in-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Attitude on Ukraine Makes Perfect Sense in Context"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: So Ambassador Gordon Sondland is testifying as we speak. He began his testimony this morning, and it\u2019s being regarded by the Drive-By Media as he “dropped bombs,” one “bombshell” after another, supposedly implicating Trump and implicating Rudy Giuliani. There\u2019s one thing… Before we get into the specifics, there\u2019s one thing that I think is missing in all it is, and Devin Nunes tried to get to it when it was his turn to question Ambassador Sondland.<\/p>\n

By the way, it might help people to know just who Ambassador Sondland is. There\u2019s just a couple things about him. You remember when Trump was first inaugurated and even during the transition, he was announcing various appointments and members of his staff. Do you remember me saying that some of these staff questions really puzzled me? Well, this one was one of them. Gordon Sondland was a Jeb Bush supporter, number one, and he broke from Trump.<\/p>\n

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He literally broke away from him. He denounced Trump over the Khizr Khan episode. You know, the Muslim Gold Star family that spoke at the Democrat convention. Sondland reacted to that. Sondland said it disgusted him, it was repulsive and so forth. But then he ended up donating a million dollars or some such thing, and that\u2019s how you buy an ambassadorship. But I never understood it. Somebody that\u2019s a pro-Jeb guy from that wing of the Republican Party and then publicly denounces the Trump candidacy after the Khizr Khan thing, ends up being an ambassador.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s things that I don\u2019t understand. I\u2019m not in that loop. There\u2019s just some things that remain puzzling to me and probably always will. But of all the things that have been said today and of all the things that have been reported, I want you to hear this. It\u2019s Ambassador Sondland being questioned by Adam Schiff, Pencil Neck. It\u2019s audio sound bite number seven on our roster. And the question:<\/p>\n

“Mr. Morrison and Ambassador Taylor have related a conversation that you had with the president following the Warsaw meeting in which the president relayed to you that there was no quid pro quo. But, nevertheless, unless Zelensky went to the mic and announced these investigations, there would be a stalemate over the aid. Is that correct? And was that an accurate reflection of your discussion with the president?”<\/p>\n

SONDLAND: I believe I just asked him an open-ended question, Mr. Chairman. “What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas and theories and this and that. What do you want?” And it was a very short, abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood, and he just said, “I want nothing! I want nothing! I want no quid pro quo! Tell Zelensky to do the right thing.” Something to that effect.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So, if you put that together with the testimony that occurred yesterday afternoon while this program was going on and afterwards, we had the witnesses yesterday, Kurt Volker and Morrison. Both of them were on the call with Trump. Both of them were on the Ukraine call. Both of them had firsthand knowledge of Ukraine decisions, and they both testified under oath that there was no bribery and no quid pro quo, and that aid was not held up as a bargaining chip.<\/p>\n

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And at the end of the day yesterday… Go read Michael Goodwin in the New York Post today<\/a>, and the Gallup poll is show Trump at new highs at this stage. So after the testimony yesterday, everybody watching had assumed that the bottom had dropped out of the Democrat case. Because the two guys that actually had firsthand knowledge who were on the call testified under oath there was no bribery, there was no quid pro quo, and that aid was not held up as a bargaining chip.<\/p>\n

You know why aid was held up? There\u2019s one thing that\u2019s missing: The context on all this. The major context that\u2019s missing — and as I say, Devin Nunes tried to get to it in his questioning of Sondland. Ukraine was a corrupt hellhole under the previous president, not Zelensky, but the president prior to him. During the Obama administration, Ukraine was a corrupt hellhole. And it was during that era that Biden arranged the deal with Burisma for his kid, which is $83,500 a month, three-point-some-odd-million dollars a year.<\/p>\n

And the kid doesn\u2019t know anything about natural gas or energy. So during that period, Russia had attacked Ukraine. We did not provide any aid whatsoever, despite being obligated to do so. The Obama administration refused to help Ukraine as Russia came in and literally took one-third of it, with no opposition. We had made a deal with Ukraine: If you will disarm to make Europe safer — if you\u2019ll disarm — we\u2019ll come to your defense if you\u2019re attacked.<\/p>\n

They disarmed.<\/p>\n

Russia attacked them to annex Crimea.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration did not come through with any aid.<\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t know why. The story is that he didn\u2019t want to irritate Putin. It was Obama who had this soft relationship with Putin, didn\u2019t want to make him mad, didn\u2019t to want disappoint him, what have you. So that all happens. Trump is elected. During the campaign, Ukraine is actively attempting to undermine the Trump campaign. They are working with the Democrats and they are working with the FBI and the DOJ to help concoct this scheme that Trump\u2019s colluding with Russia and all.<\/p>\n

Ukraine was up to their eyeballs on this. Ukraine was corrupt as it could be. So Trump knows that Ukraine is corrupt as it can be — and is depending on U.S. aid — and there\u2019s simply no way that he\u2019s going to provide the aid unless they straighten up. He\u2019s not gonna continue U.S. policy of funding corrupt regimes for whatever reason. He\u2019s there to clean it up. He\u2019s there to get the United States out of meaningless relationships.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the reasons he was elected. It\u2019s one of the big points that reverberated with the American people. And to do this, Trump had to take on the entire United States foreign policy national security apparatus, who were much in favor of the status quo. Trump wanted to upend it. So there were two things. Trump\u2019s not wanting to just, without any concerns or assurances, fund a regime that\u2019s not gonna reform itself.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t want to perpetuate corruption and all kinds of dangerous stuff being done with U.S. money. It makes perfect sense that he would ask for some sign that they were serious about reform before providing U.S. aid — which was ultimately provided, by the way. So the context of this is that Trump knows he\u2019s dealing with a regime, a nation that has just been led by a very corrupt bunch that\u2019s been voted out. That corrupt bunch was working to undermine his election working with the DOJ — the Obama DOJ, the FBI and all that.<\/p>\n

Of course he\u2019s not gonna trust these people. He\u2019s gonna have to see some indication that they are serious about reforming before they get U.S. aid. He\u2019s not just gonna provide it willy-nilly. And so asking for some kind of show that the Ukrainian new president, Zelensky, and serious is part of the deal. He\u2019s just not gonna write \u2019em a blank check. There was no quid pro quo.<\/p>\n

Two witnesses yesterday: No bribery, no quid pro quo. Aid was not held up as a bargaining chip. It was held up because Trump wanted to see serious signs of serious reform. Now we go back to Sondland testifying today. He asked Trump an “open-ended question: ‘What do you want from Ukraine?'” He says he wasn\u2019t in a good mood. Trump said, “I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing.” Bingo! What\u2019s the problem here?<\/p>\n

The problem is that the Democrats have crept up to this by creating this grand illusion that the only thing Trump cared about regarding Ukraine was somehow then engaging in action to penalize Joe Biden. What Trump was interested in in getting to the bottom, why in the world would…? In his mind, here\u2019s Donald Trump. He\u2019s overcome the odds and been elected president. Why in the world would he automatically without challenge send billions of dollars to this country that had just tried to sabotage his own campaign and may continue to sabotage his own presidency until he sees evidence that there has been change or reform?<\/p>\n

\"\"So now that\u2019s when Rudy Giuliani enters the picture. But we don\u2019t have… Even now, we don\u2019t have a single witness who can say that Trump demanded a quid pro quo. They\u2019re all saying that Rudy did it. They\u2019re all saying Rudy did this and he was speaking for the president. None of these guys wanted to work with Rudy. They didn\u2019t like Rudy. But once again, this is Trump not trusting the existing apparatus that had worked with and had permitted a corrupt Ukraine government to proceed. The Obama administration didn\u2019t care about it.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration was more interested in appeasing Russia. They didn\u2019t care about Ukraine. Why the hell were they not providing aid for Ukraine to defend itself when Russia attacked? So context here — and, to me, explaining why Donald Trump does what he does and why he did what he did is easy if you know him. You get some of these career ambassadors and these career State Department national security people who don\u2019t know him and who claim to be shocked by his very existence.<\/p>\n

You should have heard Sondland. “This guy, he used a three-letter word! He used the word ‘ass.\u2019 It was… (sputtering) I — I don\u2019t know if I can repeat that.” These guys supposedly offended by what is said to be raw language is wearing so thin on me. We\u2019re talking here about choirboys on the Democrat side, choirboys in the State Department, never even think of curse words? Give me a break. Donald Trump represents such, such a low aberration.<\/p>\n

But Schiff now thinks he\u2019s got his article of impeachment, and Ken Starr agrees. Adam Schiff thinks that he\u2019s got an article of impeachment based on obstruction. He even cited Richard Nixon\u2019s name, because Sondland testified today that he wanted all kinds of documents and he wanted all kinds of notes, but the White House and the State Department wouldn\u2019t furnish them and so he couldn\u2019t be sure of things. He\u2019s not a note taker, and he doesn\u2019t recall things specifically like other people who take notes and he\u2019s not given any cooperation.<\/p>\n

So Schiff has taken that and said, “See! Obstruction of justice! Exactly what Nixon did.” But to me, just to repeat this: The context of why Donald Trump approached Ukraine the way he did… What people are trying to say is that the only thing Donald Trump cared about regarding Ukraine was making sure that they investigated Joe Biden and his kid. That\u2019s what they want you to believe is the only thing Donald Trump cared about.<\/p>\n