You’re moving the goalposts. I don’t believe I claimed that the actions Trump was manipulated into by foreign agents had a direct bearing on what’s happening in Ukraine now.
There are two specific actions that Trump was manipulated into taking that were intended to damage the pro-Western Ukrainian government. There may be others, but I’ll focus on these two for now.
The first was the campaign to get Marie Yovanovitch removed from her position as ambassador to Ukraine. Somewhat ironically, the two Russian agents, Parnas and Furman of the esteemed company Fraud Guarantee, involved in this initially tried to do it the old-fashioned way - they funneled Trump a bunch of Russian money ( they were arrested and charged for this) and asked him to fire her. Trump said yes. This is on tape. But Trump didn’t do it then .
Trump’s not traditionally corrupt in the quid pro quo way, because once he has his quid, you’re probably not getting your quo.
So they had to resort to the things that work with Trump……that Ambassador, she’s a Never-Trumper. She said bad things about you. She didn’t want to hang your picture in the embassy. .
And it worked.
The other was the disinformation campaign run by Russian agent Andriy Derkach, which was ultimately responsible for Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine. Derkach was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for running a disinformation/ misinformation campaign intended to turn Trump against Ukraine. You remember………Ukraine is in cahoots with the Bidens! Ukraine cheated in 2016 for Hillary!
Was it completely successful? No. But it was successful enough to unjustly deprive Ukraine of much needed military aid at a crucial time. And it turned Trump against Ukraine, or as you said, steered him into an anti-Ukrainian position. I don’t know if it qualifies as manipulating US foreign policy, because that implies official channels and a connection with reality, but those are your words, not mine.
Did these things affect Ukraine in 2022. Who knows? I never said they did. I don’t really think Congress, in 2019, should’ve said ”Well, these things Trump did might not hurt Ukraine much when Russia tries to start WW3 in a couple of years, so nothing to see here”
Just a reminder, I’m pushing back against your contention that all this was so right and so normal that it was crazy to even think about investigating it, as evidenced by your framing of any investigation of Trump as a witch hunt. You haven’t come anywhere close to defending this point.
And since, in your subsequent posts, you seem to want to deflect with Biden sucks, he couldn’t stop the war ….I dunno. From where I sit on Sunday morning, it seems the strategy of giving Ukraine just enough help so that they can kick Russia’s ass by themselves, letting Zelensky emerge as the savior of Western Democracy while NATO unifies and rallies and goes wild with sanctions — is making Biden look pretty good.
I really think Putin thought his disinformation campaigns, portraying Ukraine as woke Neo-Nazi Hillary loving fascists committing atrocities on democracy-loving Russians, would buy him the support of most of the Republican Party - but it seems only to have grabbed the craziest of the crazies.