THAT was “the BIG plan?”
The explosive revelations from Lev Parnas on the Rachel Maddow show corroborate what many of us already suspected. What made his revelations so extraordinary is that they gave the interstitial detail that turns a puzzle into a full picture; in this case, into a Netflix high drama motion picture of mafia-style criminal intrigue.
The White House tells us that we should disbelieve Parnas because he’s a criminal co-conspirator who is lying. That position misses two important points: (1) that Parnas is THEIR co-conspirator. He was Trump and Giuliani’s guy. They picked him, not us. And (2) HE BROUGHT THE RECEIPTS! We don’t have to take his word for it. There are texts, letters, emails, pictures, voicemails, hand written notes etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and we have only seen a small sample of the whole trove. (There’s also the fact that Trump is a serial pathological liar and the WH is a perpetual peddler of “alternative facts”). But let’s put all of that aside for a moment.
What’s really fascinating is … THE UKRAINE ESCAPADE WAS “THE BIG PLAN!” I want to explore that for a bit. Feeling some serious worry about Joe Biden’s electoral prowess, Trump concocted a plan to try to make Joe look bad; to undermine his credibility; to create a fog of suspicion around him; to smear his good name. And what Trump came up with was “let’s make it look like he abused his power as VP.” THAT was “the big smear.” Make it look like Joe overstepped his bounds.
Now I want you to contemplate that. After 40 years in public service, and a bottomless pit of money resources, the GOP had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE on Joe Biden. Nada. Zilch. Bubkus. Stone cold ZERO. And so they were left with having to fabricate something. And what they chose to fabricate—and what they knew would receive equal coverage in the media as Trump’s many many scandals (see e.g., Hillary Clinton’s emails)—was a loose, nondescript allegation of abuse of power, tinged with nepotism.
Let’s first ponder that they weren’t even contemplating trying to frame Joe for something in the ballpark of what Trump has done. They didn’t send a honey pot to falsely accuse Joe of rape. They didn’t create a fake bank account to accuse Joe of money laundering or tax evasion. They didn’t gin-up some phony emails so they could claim Joe defrauded his business associates or took bribes. They didn’t create a fake charity to claim Joe stole from it, or some fake university they could call a fraud machine. They couldn’t even convince a porn star to claim she slept with Joe while he was married. Those kinds of schemes would be equivalent to what Trump has been up to, but let’s be honest…no one would believe those kinds of things about Joe. Too out of character. So the frame-up had to be something in the realm of the possible to be believable. That’s when they landed on “abuse of power” as their ticket to mucking-up the election.
The GOP was counting on the cooperation of the media to whip up righteous indignation and outrage over the notion of Biden overstepping his bounds while he was VP, and I have no doubt that had the scheme worked, the media would have gladly obliged. The media undoubtedly would have jumped on the whiff of impropriety around Joe’s actions, while ignoring the first-of-its-kind rank nepotism of Ivanka, Jared, Jr. etc, and the many many things Trump has done to advance his and their personal interests. It’s a sad state of our political journalism and discourse that false equivalencies and “balance” take the place of “truth” and “facts,” but even THAT is not what I want you to focus on.
No…. what I want to highlight is the ABSURDITY of trying to extort a foreign nation with the help of …THAT GROUP OF WANNA BE LOSERS! International extortion is serious business. And they sent RUDY & HIS GOONS to do that? Seriously? I mean…. That’s just WILD. And what’s wilder is that they got the whole team to sign off and participate in this IDIOTIC scheme. Pence, Pompeo, Perry, Barr, Nunez the list goes on and on. They all thought that using THOSE GUYS (Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman, Firstash, Toensing, DiGenova & Robert Hyde (for crying out loud)) to strong arm a country at war with Russia, using THAT scheme to try to frame, defame and malign a presidential candidate, was going to work, and that all those CLOWNS would pull it off without misstep or, more importantly, without implicating them? They seriously bought that?
Sadly, shockingly, horrifyingly…. but-for the whistleblower… they would have been right.