Will Matt Bevin Be The First Victim Of Ukraine-Gate? Just How Toxic Is Señor Trumpanzee?

One of Trump's closest allies, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin faces the voters in 6 weeks. He's in a fight for his political life and being attached to Trump at the hip might not save him. The most recent poll shows Democrat Andy Beshear beating him by 9 points-- 48-39% in one of the reddest states in the country. He just revamped his campaign staff, a desperate move this late in the cycle.

Trump is hardly in position to save anyone else and will likely be spending the rest of his term fighting impeachment. It probably didn't help his day when both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees announced they would be interviewing the mysterious whistleblower, likely within a week.

This will make it hard to do what Trump probably expected to do-- doctor the transcripts he now says he will authorize releasing. No one would ever do such a thing? Well, even if no one else would, how could you ever doubt Trump would? Besides, as the NY Times reported June 20, 1974, "House Judiciary Committee transcripts of some of President Nixon’s Watergate tape recordings differ extensively, and in many cases significantly, from the edited transcripts made public by the White House." Last night, Reuters reported that the transcript "isn’t likely to come from a recording or be verbatim, former White House and national security officials say. Instead, because of 'standard White House protocol' for handling phone calls between the president and other world leaders, a transcript is likely to be put together from written notes by U.S. officials who listen in." Well... what do you know!

Pig Man doesn't want to be impeached, and last night, Roll Call reported that Trump has threatened to shut down all governmental work. Needless to say, the White House, in a typically twisted Trumpian gaslight attack on the American people, announced that "House Democrats have destroyed any chances of legislative progress for the people of this country by continuing to focus all their energy on partisan political attacks. Their attacks on the President and his agenda are not only partisan and pathetic, they are in dereliction of their Constitutional duty."

He's voiced several bogus excuses for having withheld $400 million in desperately needed and congressionally approved military aid for Ukraine. One day he says he was afraid Ukraine's new government was too corrupt and the next day he was whining that the U.S. was giving too much aid compared to the NATO countries. He really is an asshole. "My complaint has always been, and I’d withhold again and I’ll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine because they’re not doing it."

Fox News legal analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano: "I think this is the most serious charge against the president, far more serious than what Bob Mueller dug or dragged up against him. If you are the President of the United States and you are making a conversation that you know your intelligence community is listening to, of course you’re not going to articulate a quid pro quo. You’ll just make the quid pro quo happen." Later, on Fox News, he added that "It is a crime for the president to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government." It must be people in the right-wing bubble to hear that kind of talk!

Writing for Vanity Fair yesterday, David Drucker noted that "After a long, hot summer of self-immolation, Trump’s 2020 prospects look bleak. But the president seems to enjoy sowing the wind. 'The question is whether the vortex, when it relents, let us back out where we started,' says a veteran GOP consultant. 'Or each time, does the party sink just a little bit lower?'...

It is as though the president has learned nothing. The Republican Party was pummeled in the midterm elections, losing control of the House of Representatives as voters in GOP-leaning districts showed up in droves to rebuke Trump. Yes, the Republicans expanded their majority in the U.S. Senate. But they lost two critical seats out west-- one in ethnically diverse Nevada and another in suburban-heavy Arizona. The Democrats had not won a Senate seat in the Grand Canyon State in 30 years.

“Do I think Trump a horrible person? Yes; but that’s so beyond the point. As a Republican, I hate him because he’s making us lose when we should be crushing it. It’s his stupid personality. If you were slightly less terrible, we’d be winning,” a veteran Republican strategist said. “The Democrats are nuts. They’re going to fundamentally [ruin] this country, all because some guy can’t control his two-year-old tantrums. This is what I hate about the guy.”

...Even for the Republicans not jumping ship, there’s a quiet sense of dread about the long-term damage they suspect this cycle of boom and bust is inflicting. Their jitters about hanging on in emerging swing states like Arizona-- and, possibly, someday soon, Georgia and Texas, tell the tale.

“The question is whether the vortex, when it relents, lets us back out where we started. Or each time, does the party sink just a little bit lower?” a veteran GOP campaign consultant said. “That is what everyone fears and probably knows in their gut, but wants and needs to deny in their brains because there is no alternative.”

Writing for the Washington Post this morning, Aaron Blake identified 7 takeaways from the "rough transcript" of the Ukraine-Gate call. Not surprisingly, Blake writes it in a way to put Trump in the best possible light despite the shocking revelations.

1- It mentions no explicit quid pro quo

The idea that Trump would proactively release a document that showed him engaging in an explicit quid pro quo with a foreign government was always far-fetched, but it’s worth noting that it’s not there.

2- Trump does suggestively mention the U.S. being ‘very, very good to Ukraine’

Reports had suggested Trump talked with Zelensky about investigating the Bidens but that there was no explicit quid pro quo-- and that Trump didn’t mention that he had been withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.

But the document indicates Trump made a point, very early in the call, of telling Zelensky how good the United States is to his country.

“I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine,” Trump says. “We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.”

Then Trump twice tells him the United States had been “very, very good to Ukraine” and suggests Ukraine hadn’t been living up to its end of the bargain.

“The United States has been very, very good to Ukraine," Trump says. “I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.”

That’s significant because, even in the absence of a quid pro quo, Zelensky might logically have believed aid or some other form of assistance was tied to his decisions. Trump’s comment that the relationship hasn’t been “reciprocal” certainly suggests Ukraine isn’t doing what it should.

3- Trump immediately launches into asking for investigations

After Zelensky responds, Trump’s very next comments deal with investigations he’d like to see. The first involves the Russia investigation by Robert S. Mueller III and CrowdStrike, a U.S.-based Internet security company that initially analyzed the breach of the Democratic National Committee’s servers in 2016 and pointed to two hacker groups believed to be linked to Russia.

“I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump said, in reference to those investigations.

“Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible,” Trump says of CrowdStrike.

Trump soon adds: “The other thing: There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can so with the Attorney General would be great... It sounds horrible to me.”

The proximity of Trump talking about these things and his comments about how “very, very good” the United States has been to Ukraine makes it even more suggestive.

4- An explicit threat would matter, but it’s not the whole ballgame

Plenty of ink has been spilled about whether Trump engaged in an explicit quid pro quo with Ukraine. And that’s an important question, both because the whistleblower has alleged some type of “promise” and because it might be especially damning for Trump.

But even without an explicit quid pro quo, consider where we are. Trump asked for what amounts to foreign assistance for his 2020 reelection campaign. (His personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani had been pushing for this by publicly noting it would be helpful to his client. So there’s really no disputing that.)

Trump also withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine shortly before the call took place. The United States is in a position of power relative to Ukraine, because of this aid and its stature in the world. And on the call, Trump repeatedly asks for Ukraine to do specific things.

It’s difficult to see how Zelensky could interpret that set of circumstances as something other than a strong suggestion and even a veiled threat. It’s equivalent to your boss repeatedly suggesting you do something-- while noting what your compensation is-- without explicitly making a demand. What are you going to do: believe it to just be a gentle suggestion? No, you’re going to think there could be some relation between your pocketbook/job status and your future actions.

And we shouldn’t be surprised if we never find an explicit quid pro quo. That’s not how Trump works, as Michael Cohen explained in his testimony. Cohen said when Trump is talking about unsavory things, he “doesn’t give orders; he speaks in code. And I understand that code.”

It’s difficult to believe Zelensky couldn’t decode it too.

5- This is hardly an exoneration, and it’s only a piece of the puzzle

The rough transcript indicates there is no quid pro quo, but it is not the exoneration Trump will claim it to be.

The first reason is that the whistleblower complaint involves multiple events and no single communication, as the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, testified last week. This is the highest-profile known event involving Trump and Ukraine, but there are many unknowns. We don’t even know what other events might be involved, much less what transpired in them.

Indeed, the fact that Trump released the call and not the whistleblower complaint (at least yet, though that could be coming) suggests this piece of evidence is perceived as being better for him than the rest. It could also be a trial balloon to see how the call is received before making a decision on the full complaint.

The second is that, as Philip Bump wrote Tuesday, the whistleblower reportedly wasn’t even privy to the call; they heard about it secondhand. And Atkinson reviewed their complaint and determined it to be both credible-- suggesting there was some corroboration-- and of “urgent concern.” So both of them seemed to be relying upon plenty besides this call.

Also to keep in mind, the rough transcript is not a verbatim account of the conversation. It is a White House memorandum that is based on the notes and memories of officials in the room. A disclaimer in the rough transcript warns that a number of factors “can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent.”

6- Zelensky brings up corruption first

The White House’s defense here has centered on the idea that they just wanted Ukraine to root out corruption-- even as the instances of alleged corruption they are focused on are entirely self-serving for Trump.

It’s worth noting, though, that Zelensky is actually the first one to bring up corruption, telling Trump, “Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country.” (Zelensky notably uses Trump’s “drain the swamp” mantra.)

It’s not surprising Zelensky would bring this up, given corruption in Ukraine has been a major concern in the West for years. But the White House will likely argue that Zelensky broached these matters first, at least in broad terms.

7- Trump appears to praise the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general

Viktor Shokin is the prosecutor general who was ousted in 2016 thanks to the efforts of then-Vice President Joe Biden and other Western leaders. The Trump team has argued that this was corrupt because Shokin at one point had been investigating a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, that employed Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. (U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said that investigation was dormant when Biden helped force Shokin out.)

But despite that prosecutor being widely criticized both inside Ukraine and elsewhere for being soft on corruption, Trump actually seems to side with him.

“Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair,” Trump says. “A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.”

Trump adds later: “I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.”

Trump also criticizes his former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Democrats have said was being targeted for removal by the Trump administration in a “political hit job.” She was recalled in May, two months before her scheduled departure date.

“The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that,” Trump says.

Also from The Post this morning, before the release of the incomplete and likely doctored transcript-- an interview with Larry Pfeiffer, the former senior director of the White House Situation Room from 2011 to 2013, who also spent roughly three decades in the National Security Agency and CIA. He described how a presidential phone call transcript with a foreign leader gets made and noted that "enough people are involved, that it would be 'foolish' of the administration not to release exactly what Trump has promised: 'the complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript.' He said that "If they release anything that looks less like a verbatim transcript there are a handful of people involved in this process who could be fact witnesses for whether what was released is what was actually said."