Trump Is Extorting These American States To Win In 2020

[Celerity]

Trump Is Recycling His Ukraine Scam to harm Joe Biden and suppress the vote in 2020.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trump-is-extorting-these-american



WASHINGTON, DC -- Paraphrasing another Republican president: There he goes again. You’d think Donald Trump might’ve learned his lesson about extortion when he was impeached for it. But no. He keeps doing it, in public and in clear view of law enforcement. Specifically, it was only a few months ago when all that went down, with the president being impeached because he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by attempting to force President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden and, by proxy, Joe Biden. See, part of Ukraine was annexed by Russia, while pro-Putin forces continue to make incursions into the former Soviet satellite, requiring military aid from the West.

Despite all that, Trump threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless Zelenksy did what he was told by our clown dictator. Beginning last August, there were copious press reports, followed by congressional hearings, scandalous testimony showing the president did exactly what he was being accused of doing, and there was a successful vote to impeach the president on the floor of the House. The impeachment of the president was followed by a trial in the Senate. All because the president illegally extorted Ukraine in order to help Trump politically. Either he refuses to learn from that colossal blunder, or his brain worm situation is more advanced than we thought, because he’s at it again.

Before we dive into his latest attempts at extortion, it appears as though Trump has finally achieved his kangaroo court investigation of the Bidens. Moscow Mitch McConnell along with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted this week to begin issuing subpoenas related to Burisma, a Ukraine energy company that employed Hunter Biden on its board. So, where Trump failed to muscle Ukraine into helping him cheat in the election, Moscow Mitch has arrived to pick up where Trump and Rudy Giuliani left off with Ukraine. Yes, Trump is finally getting his Biden investigation and just in time for the election. As far as we know, there wasn’t any extortion of McConnell, chiefly because there doesn’t need to be any. The majority leader is just as spooked about election day as Trump is, so attacking Biden and Biden’s coattails is a win-win for Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Meanwhile, Trump is attempting to extort several swing states into doing his bidding. In the last day or so, the president has issued threats to three states: Michigan, Nevada and Virginia. Let’s start with the latter. During an event at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said, "We're going after Virginia, with your crazy governor, we're going after Virginia. They want to take your Second Amendment. You know that, right? You'll have nobody guarding your potatoes." He didn’t say specifically how he plans to “go after Virginia,” but I have two guesses. Either he plans to participate in a Second Amendment lawsuit against Virginia’s slate of recently passed gun laws, or he intends to withhold federal aid during a pandemic in order to punish Virginians until they vote to oust the Democrats controlling the legislature and the governor’s mansion in Richmond. Take your pick. I’m leaning in the direction of the second option: withholding aid, chiefly because this seems to be his tactic with states that aren’t sufficiently loyal to Trump.

And then there’s Michigan. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted:

Link to tweet

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