Ukraine Should Be Investigating How Trump Is Corrupting Them
November 17, 2019
Volodymyr Zelensky being sworn in as president of Ukraine (U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
Until Friday, November 15, the two narratives of the Trump administration — one factual and one composed of administration-generated “alternative facts” — co-existed as if they were separate realities. In fact, most of the media largely accepted the alternative reality created by Trump as the prevailing narrative. The actual political, financial and governmental corruption that has spread throughout Trump’s administration has been reported on but quickly lost in the ever-shortening churn of news cycles.
Even the basic premise that Trump has, perhaps until now, been able to get away with claiming a concern about corruption in Ukraine is ludicrous considering that his administration is steeped in rampant corruption including but not limited to foreign policy often based on Trump’s personal and financial self-interest, the profiteering of The Trump Organization (of which Donald Trump is still the sole owner) through use of Trump’s position as president (particularly enriching his children, which the media has largely ignored as Trump accuses Hunter Biden of trading in on his father’s position as then Vice President), the enrichment of Trump’s capitalist cronies, the use of foreign powers — particularly Russia — to assist in his election, campaign finance skulduggery and the degradation of the basic foundations of democracy.
The full list of duplicitous and fraudulent conduct is exhausting, including the corruption of of cabinet members and appointees and six of his campaign officials convicted of felonies.
The reality is that the Trump White House is riddled with corruption that has metastasized into every nook and cranny of his administration. His very elevation to the presidency, while still owning The Trump Organization, is an inherent conflict of interest.
But until Friday, the media generally surfed through news cycles echoing Trump’s latest false claims, vitriolic attacks, juvenile smears, and more than 13,000 lies (according to The Washington Post). Trump is so skilled at diverting the media into his government by chaotic and shock spectacle that his endemic corruption is eclipsed by Trump’s steady stream of diversionary and false narratives.
Given the stakes of impeachment, this was never more true than in an inquiry in which Trump’s assertions about his being concerned about corruption in another country should have been dismissed from the get-go, given how fundamentally corrupt Trump is as president.
That is why it is something out of an absurdist play to have an alleged enabler of sexual abuse when he was assistant wrestling coast at Ohio State University, Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), declare that Trump was genuinely interested in corruption because Ukraine is “one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet,” when the man he has been appointed to be an attack-dog for, Trump, qualifies the US to be one of those nations in his position as head of our government. In fact, William Taylor, Chargé d'Affaires at the US Embassy in Ukraine, may have been obliquely referring to this when he testified on Wednesday that every country has corruption, “including our own.”
There is a glimmer of change, however in terms of the lens through which Trump is reported on. Friday was a threshold point, for at least some major media, in recognizing Trump’s false narratives, including his claim of concern about corruption in Ukraine (but seemingly in no other country) being in direct conflict with his own corruption in plain sight.
Several events on Friday, building upon the foundation of the impeachment inquiry hearings and transcripts, catapulted some of the Trump transcriptionist media into no longer letting the Trump alternative reality narrative dominate. First, there was the moving, heroic, dignified, patriotic testimony of former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Second, there were the witness intimidation tweets by Trump vitriolically attacking Yovanvitch in real-time while she was testifying about being smeared — and seamlessly introduced into the hearing by Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Third, there was the defanging of the GOP Trump enablers by Trump’s tweet, who were forced to enhance Yovanavitch’s credibility by lavishly praising her to offset their authoritarian leader’s tweets. Fourth, there was the conviction of Roger Stone for, in essence, protecting Trump from perjury charges and exposure of his lies regarding the roles of Russia and WikiLeaks in leaking hacked DNC emails to the Trump campaign. Finally, there was the closed door hearing in which a State Department staffer confirmed that he personally overheard Trump discussing a shakedown of Ukraine with Gordon Sondland on an unsecure cellphone in a Ukrainian restaurant.
On Friday, the media’s failure to hold Trump accountable collided with the reality of his corruption and resulted in CNN, for example, running a story online headlined, “A day that underscored the corruption swamping the Trump presidency.” CNN proclaimed, “A fateful convergence of events Friday reflected a culture of corruption and intimidation endemic to the circle of a President who vowed to drain the swamp but instead became its incarnation.”
The Washington Post ran a scathing article entitled, “Roger Stone’s conviction, and Trump’s ugly response, further demonstrate the president’s corruption.” The articles stated:
At the center of this whole saga all along has been a simple truth: Trump never thought there was anything wrong with benefiting to the greatest degree possible from a foreign attack on our political system, because, well, he was personally benefiting from it, which made it a good thing.
Trump wants to do it again. The president blithely told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that he’d gladly seek to gain from more of the same. And literally the day after the special counsel’s testimony persuaded him that he’d gotten away with it, Trump held his call with the Ukrainian president, and sought to extort a new round of foreign assistance in rigging the next election, something for which he will likely be impeached….
Trump’s constant use of disinformation warfare, and his serial attacks on the justice system, are all about trying to erode people’s ability to make this basic distinction, that is, to erode their faith that the justice system can actually parcel out real justice.
Trump has long sought to turn law enforcement loose against his political enemies, especially those listed in his tweet. Simply through force of propaganda and serial lying…
What Trump, like all demagogues and totalitarians, has nearly achieved is the annihilation of the truth. He has skillfully lied and created a false narrative with such bravado that facts no longer matter to his base. He is forever leading the media on a wild goose chase of startling statements and vicious attacks that even his steady stream of pernicious policies hardly get reported upon.
It may not last, but at least for this weekend, after the tumultuous developments on Friday, some of the media is recognizing that the real overriding corruption problem the US faces is squatting in our White House. And, similarly, Trump is the major corruption problem facing Ukraine right now with his extortion scheming and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) profiteering in the Ukraine by Rick Perry and Rudy Giuliani’s cronies. It would not be surprising to find that a sizable chunk of these Ukrainian LNG contracts make their way back to Trump in the form of campaign contributions.
Trump is a fundamental corrupting force in Ukraine, as the brilliant Masha Gessen — a scholar and author who is Russian-born and educated and now lives in the US — wrote this weekend in The New Yorker:
We use the word “corruption” to describe abuses of power, especially those motivated by profit. We also use the word “corruption” to describe something that is transformed, corroded beyond recognition. When the word “corruption” is used by an evidently corrupt politician—such as our self-dealing, profit-seeking, mendacious President—to describe something that other people do, the word “corruption” itself becomes corrupted. But it is not only language that can be changed and turned into the opposite of what it originally means. The same can be done with foreign policy, and with government itself. This is the essence of the story that the impeachment inquiry is telling.
Will the US media be able to be guided by the truth in plain sight beyond a few news cycles? Or will we be condemned to return to Trump projecting his lawlessness onto others with impunity? Will the likes of Rep. David Nunes (R-CA) and Jim Jordan be allowed to present their risible defenses of their despotic leader without aggressive challenge by the media as the press engages in reporting by false equivalencies? Will the corporate media expose Trump’s bottomless pit of corruption and recall it when he accuses others of corruption or return to the craven reporting of Trump’s fabulist savior/victim narrative?
Democracy and the Republic hang in the balance.