“I would like you to do us a favor.”
It’s a remark our president made to the newly elected president of Ukraine. And it’s a line from any number of classic mobster movies and shows, from Little Caesar and Public Enemy through Goodfellas, the Godfather films, and – of course – the saga of Tony Soprano and his extended crime family.
It comes when a lowly foot soldier in a mob leader’s army thanks him effusively for being given the opportunity to serve. The capo graciously accepts the thanks – and then tells the supplicant he would like a “favor.” Frequently, in gangster flicks, the favor is the “elimination” of an enemy (in such films, mobsters are addicted to euphemisms, apparently unwilling to call a murder a murder).
In this instance, President Trump had a long conversation with the fresh-to-politics new president of Ukraine, who spent most of the time praising the American president – his wise policies, his skills, his knowledge, his ability as a “great teacher.” He even said he stayed in a Trump hotel and praised it.
Trump, like any good godfather, accepts it as his due. “It’s nice of you to say that.”
Then the American president moved on to what he really wanted, why he called. He told Ukraine’s president that “a lot of people want to find out” about the activities of former vice president Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine and asked its leader to be in touch with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr.
Giuliani, it’s worth noting here, had already made numerous vain efforts to find dirt on Biden and his son. In this context we should remember that perhaps the most memorable line in the entire 2008 presidential race was Biden’s putdown of Giuliani and his candidacy.
After questioning the former New York mayor’s credentials, Biden proclaimed: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11.” Giuliani’s animosity runs deep.
Anyway, we now have the president of the United States, arguably the most powerful man on the globe, reaching out – offering a slim lifeline, mainly weapons – to the president of one of the world’s most vulnerable countries, nestled against its one-time captor, Russia, which would seize nearly any opportunity to retake it by force.
It should be noted that before this meeting Trump, acting unilaterally, had already quietly halted congressionally authorized funds for Ukraine’s defense.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s president, quite understandably and predictably told Donald Trump he would try to help the president’s emissaries find whatever they wanted.
And we know this from Trump, who is so ignorant of appropriate behavior on the international stage that he thought his seedy bargain with Zelensky was perfectly okay, even though presidential scholars and officials from past White Houses were unable to remember anything like this happening before. It’s said that our president wanted the story released – over staff objections – to rebut charges he’d offered the Ukrainian U.S. support in exchange for dirt on Biden.
This, of course, confirms that he did precisely that. Sometimes our leader seems oddly dense.
In fact, wiser presidential aides had kept info on Trump’s secret deal with the Ukrainian leader on the White House’s most secure data storage system, one used strictly for the most ultrasensitive information. The president overruled them and released it himself.
And as details of the scheme came out, it turns out that Trump and Giuliani had their facts upside down. It seems that the Bidens, father and son, had been forces of anti-corruption in their activities in Ukraine.
Joe Biden had been the Obama administration’s point man in our nation’s dealings with that once notoriously corrupt country, trying to ensure it kept new corruption at bay. His actions were taken in sync with the leaders of other European countries. And former top Ukrainian prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko said that Hunter Biden had been in fact part of a reform, anti-corruption board at the country’s top gas company.
By week’s end, as criticism of the loose-lipped president’s irregular attempt to get dirt on a possible rival mounted, White House staffers were reported to be “shell shocked,” staffers fearing “erratic and perhaps unmanageable behavior” by the president.
And – irony of ironies – the planning for the impeachment inquiry is now well underway because of this very incident. It is said to be the one thing the impulsive Donald Trump fears more than anything.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)