{"id":144346,"date":"2019-10-07T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=144346"},"modified":"2019-10-01T10:28:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T09:28:07","slug":"playing-the-trump-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/10\/playing-the-trump-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing the Trump Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

29 Sep 2019 – <\/em>Yes, we all detest Trump and would be gladdened and relieved to see the last of those orange-yellow tresses now defiling the pure White House! Therefore: impeachment – ol\u00e9!<\/p>\n

But does all such current enthusiasm have the same motivation? The reasons stressed by most of the media are Trump\u2019s attempts to buy Ukrainian assistance for his re-election campaign \u2013 by slamming Biden. The sum named in this attempt at bribery or blackmail is \u201cnearly $400 million\u201d. Of course, such methods are undeniably dastardly and crooked.<\/p>\n

But were they so unusual? In embarrassed side remarks, if at all, we find that in December 2015 Joe Biden did his own threatening of the Ukrainian government \u2013 and set a time limit of six hours to fire its undesirable chief prosecutor, who was then investigating a giant, crooked firm called Burisma.<\/p>\n

The famous journalist James Risen, writing in Intercept<\/em>, tries to undo his own past expos\u00e9s<\/a>, standing on his head to make the former vice president\u2019s threat now sound harmless. Yes, he admits, \u201cBiden did threaten to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Shokin was ousted\u201d, but then adds that his son \u201cHunter Biden\u2019s role with Burisma made his father\u2019s demands, however well-intentioned, appear politically awkward and hypocritical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed they did appear so, regardless of how \u201cwell-intentioned\u201d Joe\u2019s demands really were \u2013 for anyone beside the VP and his son. Biden, with zilch knowledge of the Ukraine, was pulling down about $50 million a month from that oil or fracking company while keeping his embarrassing (and cocaine-troubled) presence out of the US political scene. Nosy investigations were definitely not welcome!<\/p>\n

And, Risen adds (very lamely, of course, since he\u2019s standing on his head), half of Western Europe said that prosecutor was corrupt, especially the \u201canti-corruption\u201d outfit (which is led by a US Ivy League scholar and financed by the CIA and a dozen other equally impartial experts).<\/p>\n

The media is overloaded with gratitude for a courageous whistle-blower (rarely accorded to less favored whistle-blowers: like Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, Assange) but rarely looks hard at Biden\u2019s earlier ultimatum in Kiev. Of course Joe need fear no impeachment, but he\u2019s still a main contender for 2020. Are some people trying to preserve him as a block against such as Bernie?<\/p>\n

If any journalists dig even deeper – to December 13, 2013 – they might learn that Hillary Clinton\u2019s undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland, after three visits to Ukraine in five weeks, divulged that the USA was spending $5 billion to encourage businessmen and officials who wanted to break Ukraine away from any relationship with Russia and open it up for its \u201cwestern\u201d friends (via EU and then NATO). It succeeded. It was Nuland, during the bloody Maidan Square uprising, who said (on a bugged telephone talk with US ambassador Pyatt), \u201cI think Yats is the guy\u2026\u201d In the blink of an eye (and those billions) \u201cYats\u201d (Arseniy Yatseniuk) was indeed the guy, prime minister of a now US-friendly, Russia-hostile Ukraine. (Distance to Moscow 523 miles; think Cincinnati-Washington)<\/p>\n

In other words, the whole bloody Ukrainian mess blew up with the well-financed involvement of the Democratic administration, including Joe Biden. Donald Trump is only a late-comer.<\/p>\n

Of course, such entries fill the annals of both parties. Didn\u2019t Ronald Reagan beat James Carter in 1980 due largely to the latter\u2019s inability to win freedom for US diplomats held hostage in Tehran? Twenty minutes after Reagan concluded his inaugural address Iran announced the release of the hostages, after which his administration supplied Iran with weapons via Israel and unblocked Iranian monetary assets in the USA. That was called the “October surprise”. What will be 2019\u2019s \u201cOctober surprise\u201d?<\/p>\n

Will the efforts to impeach Trump center on his brutal actions against Mexicans and refugees, against Muslims, African-Americans and basically all working people while rewarding the super wealthy? His environmental disaster policies are sometimes chastised, thanks to the world\u2018s schoolchildren, but are rarely central to some loud critics, nor are his moves toward repression of all opposition.<\/p>\n

What about non-Ukrainian foreign policy? There seems to be far less discussion of weapons support for Saudi Arabia, the suffering in Yemen, Trump\u2019s long buddy-friendship with Netanyahu (as long as he\u2019s on top) and his hostility toward the Palestinians. Or his economic strangling of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran. Indeed, some of those attacking Trump, including leading Democrats, seem more worried or angered by his occasional awkward, brief forays in non-confrontational directions with North Korea, Afghanistan, even with Iran, Syria, China and Russia \u2013 forays which were perhaps stopped by fearful figures like Bolton (till recently) and the still menacing Pompeo.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the ingredients of anti-Trump cooking create a very mixed batter. Some spoonfuls may even contain a \u201cSave Biden as candidate\u201d flavor, outweighing the truly weighty reasons for baking a completely new kind of cake. Wise or not to begin with in electoral terms, the impeachment movement and the election campaign should be forced to skim off less important scandals and gather forces instead to achieve genuine health care, end the immense incarceration tragedy, win free tuition, fight racist police violence and armed militia dangers, win abortion rights, build the labor movement and alter stagnant or worsening labor conditions and housing for millions of working Americans. How to pay for all that? Anti-Trumpers must carve the funds from billionaire caches and from the skyrocketing billions and trillions spent on military spending, big stick threats and eternal wars around the world. Those issues, not minor shenanigans by Trump, Giuliani, or other corrupt sinners, offer the bet \u2013 and maybe only way to beat Trumpism and all the evils he shares with so many others.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Victor Grossman (born 11 Mar 1928) is an American journalist and author long time resident of East Berlin. While studying at Harvard University, he joined the Communist Party USA, whose platform claimed unequivocal opposition to racism, exploitation, and most importantly \u2014 Nazi Germany. Grossman defected to East Germany in 1952 and never looked back.<\/em> He is the author of Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany<\/a> (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), and\u00a0A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee<\/a> (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mronline.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 Sep 2019 – Analysis of the current Trump impeachment investigation in the context of repeated US bullying of other leaders and ruining of other countries’ economies for the personal gain of the ruling class. The whole bloody Ukrainian mess blew up with the well-financed involvement of the Democratic administration, including Joe Biden. Donald Trump is only a late-comer. Of course, such entries fill the annals of both parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":144347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[120,276,260,109,287,249,70],"class_list":["post-144346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-conflict","tag-democracy","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}