President Trump’s detractors are quick to seize on anything they can to disparage him, twisting ordinary acts that any President might undertake into evidence of his diabolic nature. The latest Ukrainegate non-issue is yet another example of that.
Trump’s opponents were quick to point out that the “transcript” President Trump published of his call with the Ukrainian President wasn’t actually a transcript, it was a memo recollection of those who listened in on the call. Thus, in their minds, this was evidence that Trump was trying to cover something up and that he was definitely guilty.
They then pointed to the existence of a whistleblower within the intelligence community and a memo from that whistleblower that started this whole mess. And what did the whistleblower say in the memo? “I was not a direct witness to the events described.”; “I do not know which side initiated the call”; “I do not know whether anyone was physically present with the President during the call.”; and similar statements.
In short this “whistleblower” is someone who received at best secondhand information from unidentified White House officials presumed to have been knowledgeable about President Trump’s phone call. And because many of them were saying the same thing (because they were all talking about it with each other?) and because some of the information was being reported publicly (by media with an agenda to push, possibly talking to the same White House officials?), the person decided that something nefarious must have been going on.
Reading through the report, it’s clear that it’s the thinking of a person who believes that his or her own policy agenda is more important than that of the officials in charge. Policies change, personalities conflict, and personnel changes may occur for personal reasons, political reasons, or for no reason at all. That doesn’t mean that anything criminal or impeachable has occurred, just that things have changed.
God help this country if water cooler gossip can be taken so seriously by people in the intelligence community that it can be spun into something that can impeach a President. Rather than implicating President Trump, Ukrainegate is a far more damning indictment of the intelligence community, the people it hires, and the people in Congress who continue to take it seriously.
