Continuing my from previous post on Trump directing Giuliani…
Since as far back as the NATO kerfuffle in 2018, where if you remember Trump briefly considered, or at least brought up, the idea of leaving NATO because countries weren’t paying their fair share, we’ve known Trump has an aversion to other countries “cheating” the U.S. out of money. Trump is happy as president pretty much ignoring the rest of the world except when he has to go to a global summit, or lay a wreath at Flanders Field. But then he gets wind of the fact that Ukraine might be getting millions of dollars in military aid, and his ears perk up.
Mark Sandy, the only person from the OMB to testify behind closed doors to impeachment investigators:
Suppose, just suppose, that after hearing about this, Trump sees a way to actually do something as president, and it’s based on the one thing he measures his worth by: money. He demands a hold be put on the aid until he can look into it, and being the master of the art of the deal, can then decide whether it’s a good idea and makes sense for the U.S. Only after this does Giuliani come to Trump with his master plan to take down Biden. Trump thinks, why the hell not, and then has his call with Zelensky. He is both truly concerned about a corrupt (in his head) Ukraine maybe getting aid it doesn’t deserve, and now interested in political advantage that can be gained with the whole Biden thing.
A key thing here is when did Giuliani go to Trump with the Biden angle? If it was before Trump heard about the aid, then that delivers a huge blow to the above. Ah, but what if it was after?!
Is this completely far-fetched? I’ve only put about as much time into thinking about it as it took me to write it down. But I would not say the answer to that question is a definitive “yes”. One way of course to know more about what happened is to get others involved to testify. But no, in the rush to get the impeachment over before Xmas, the Dems decided to only go through the motions to a pretty big degree, and to just look like they were doing there job vis-a-vis impeachment. I’m pretty sure of one thing though: even if the above is totally nuts, it’s what we’re gonna here once the senate trial (hopefully) starts.