Tag Archives: Mick Mulvaney

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails

Quid Pro Quo? “Absolutely. No question about that….That’s why we held up the money.” — Mick Mulvaney

Exchange of the day as White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney renders inoperative weeks of denials of a quid pro quo — Congressionally-approved military aid would go to Ukraine only if Ukraine agreed to dig up dirt on Trump’s political opponents — first revealed in a ‘transcript’ released by the White House.

Mulvaney: “Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that.

But that’s it. That’s why we held up the money.”

. . .

Reporter: But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happens as well.

Mulvaney: “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”

Video from C-Span. Exchange begins at 21:07.

Two days ago the Washington Post reported on Mulvaney’s central role in this scheme. Each day, in spite of the White House’s blanket refusal to provide witnesses or documents to Congress, the testimony of witness after witness for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has been filling in additional details on the hijacking of American foreign policy to undermine free and fair elections in the United States and politically benefit Donald Trump.

But — so says Mulvaney — Trump’s concern in directing this quid pro quo wasn’t to implicate the Bidens! It was to prove (contra the Mueller report) that it was Ukraine, not Putin’s Russia, that interfered with the 2016 election and that a Ukrainian company had absconded with the Democratic National Committee server containing Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. (Check out Vox’s explainers regarding Ukraine conspiracy theories.)

So there, Nancy Pelosi, all roads don’t lead to Putin (or so the Trump White House wished to ‘prove’). And ignore the White House memo on Trump’s call to Zalensky, wherein Trump says: ” The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.“

2020 General Election, Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

“Infested. It sounds like vermin. . . . subhuman.” — Wallace; “It’s fair to have that conversation.” — Mulvaney

“There is a clear pattern here, Mick,” Chris Wallace says and goes on to describe Donald Trump’s dehumanizing language directed always at people who happen not to have white skin. “Infested. It sounds like vermin. It sounds subhuman. And these are all six Members of Congress who are people of color.”

Mick Mulvaney responds: “I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines.”

Wallace: “I’m not reading between the lines. I’m reading the lines.”

Mulvaney scrambles to divert attention from the pattern of Trump’s smears by raising the possibility that if Adam Schiff had criticized Trump’s border policies, then Trump could be directing these comments at Schiff.

Wallace interjects: “I don’t think he’d be talking about his crime-infested, rodent-infested district.”

Mulvaney plows ahead, insisting that if Trump were directing these insults at Schiff, this would not be because Schiff is Jewish.

Mulvaney: “This is what the President does. He fights. And he’s not wrong to do so.”

Mulvaney continues talking, still diverting attention from Trump’s vilification of black and brown Members of Congress and minority Congressional districts. Sticking to (the non-existent, but hypothetically possible) criticism of Schiff, Mulvaney castigates California: “The richest state in the nation. The richest state in the nation has abject poverty like that. A state, by the way, dominated for generations by Democrats.”

Mulvaney’s audience of one may have found this defense convincing. Then again, Mulvaney’s comments might be aimed much more broadly (“… Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.”).