I have heard several newsbreak NPR items on aid to Ukraine that have repeated that Trump’s first impeachment was about the Trump admin/campaign wanting to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid to Ukraine. I guess they’d have liked to have had dirt, but that the record indicates somewhat otherwise.
It was testified that Giuliani said in 2019 that Ukraine didn’t even have to investigate Biden to get the aid, that he just needed someone high up to go on CNN and say they would investigate. We’ll take it from there, was the message. Give us a sound byte and we’ll wag the dog.
That took me 56 words to explain, before any editing. I get that Impeachment I is kind of dwarfed next to Impeachment II, but it is am important distinction. Everything connects to the sick world of loud, angry falsehoods from a man whose syphilitic dementia is as constant a thread through the GOP’s 25 year war on democracy as Nixon’s weird social anxiety was a connective thread through his own.
But repeat. Just as “Stop the Steal” was never about facts, tying aid to Ukraine had little to do with actually investigating Joe Biden. It was a need for a sound bite that didn’t have to even involve telling the truth. You don’t have to investigate. Just say so for CNN.