I’m watching the President now. He’s giving a speech in connection with a meeting with the Italian president. An observation:
“We’re sending some additional troops to Saudi Arabia, that’s true. I appreciate the fact that I negotiated for a short period of time, a matter of minutes, with Saudi Arabia and they’ve agreed to pay for the full cost of all of that deployment and more, much more. Is a very rich country, they should be paying and so should many other countries be paying if they want this kind of protection.” – President Trump
Good lord. Does he not think about how these things will sound before he says them out loud? The world needs to pay the US for protection?
Beyond the context of the call itself, and the president’s phrase of “…a favor, though” there is not any additional hard evidence that it was actually being witheld, I agree.
Although the timing of the sale approval announcement (after the call was released), and the refusal of the admin to comment about said timing is somewhat suspicious.
I’ve already told you that there are a number of ways, aside from the $391M, that the US was assisting Ukraine, and I don’t see any reason to conclude that some generalized “we do a lot for Ukraine” and “the United States has been very very good to Ukraine” language is specifically referencing that $391M in aid money. Aside from the $391M, just off the top of my head, the USA has:
imposed sanctions
condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea and the quasi-invasion of eastern Ukraine
sold Javelin missiles to Ukraine
provided loan guarantees (Biden’s infamous $1B, among others)
I must say, I really do appreciate this thread, as it points out with startling clarity just how far some folks are willing to go to justify repugnant, unacceptable behaviour. They can deny facts staring them right in the face, and do so with nary a qualm.
If Trump tweeted tomorrow that he was selling Alaska to Russia for one dollar, because Russia is our friend… They would have no problem - NONE - in telling us what a wonderful statesmanlike decision this was.
Not surprising really, but all in all, quite educational.
So at the time that Trump was putting a hold on military aid to Ukraine – which at one point after this came to light, Trump explained that the hold was to try to get other countries to give more aid to Ukraine – Trump was NOT referencing the military aid the Congress had approved for Ukraine, but WAS referencing the huge loan guarantee package that Joe Biden had given.
Plus, when Trump said that Europe was “all talk,” you assert that “condemning the Russian annexation of Crimea” (not something Trump really condems, BTW) is evidence of U.S. generosity?
I don’t think I’m denying facts, nor wearing a blindfold nor earplugs. For example, YamatoTwinkie and I have, I think, come to fairly substantial agreement on some significant factual matters while maintaining fairly divergent opinions on some of the more subjective / opinion-based issues, all while being respectful of each other.
Do you deny the very simple fact that Trump was withholding aid to Ukraine, and do you deny that he asked Ukraine for a favor, while withholding those funds? You seem to think that Ukraine didn’t notice that the money was not in their bank account, as that is the only way to make the claim that Ukraine would not have had very good reason to try to please Trump in any way they could in order to get access to these funds that they were already allocated and expecting to have recieved.