#ідеальний телефонний дзвінок

[tomorrowusa]

Exactly five years ago today, 25 July 2019, Donald Trump phoned President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and threatened to withhold US aid unless Zelenskyy could provide "dirt" on Joe Biden.

That's a nice little country you have there. It would be a shame if my buddy Vlad rampaged through it with his war criminals and took away all your washing machines and toilets. Sad!

This attempted Mafia style shakedown of a friendly power led to Trump's first impeachment.

Trump later defended his conversation with Zelenskyy by calling it a "perfect phone call".

Trump has since made other phone calls of varying degrees of perfection.

We recall the two calls he made to Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger to try to overturn the 2020 election results in that state. In case anybody has forgotten the context...

Jimmy Kimmel's reaction on 05 January 2021 belongs in the Smithsonian.

Donald Trump's perfect phone calls continue to the present time. Over a week ago he called anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. with whom he traded bizarre conspiracy theories and seemingly offered him a place in his administration if Bobby would drop out of the race. Yeah, imagine Trump as president with RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS; their campaign slogan should be "Make Pandemics Great Again!".

If you'd like to mark Perfect Phone Call Day today, call vote slackers or low information voters and remind them that Democrats have a reality-based presidential candidate who is 18.3 years younger than Trump.

Trump will not be defeated without extra effort from all of us this year. That means real world volunteering, vote registration, and contributions. Take it upon yourself to be the virtual pro-democracy precinct captain to your group of friends and colleagues.

[tomorrowusa]

Of course Trump would have let Putin take part or all of Ukraine. He was basically Putin’s vassal in Washington. And if Trump ever stepped out of line, all Putin had to do is rattle those pee tapes.

During a radio interview with Fox News host (and longtime confidant) Sean Hannity on Monday, the twice-impeached ex-president finally revealed how he personally would have prevented the war. According to Trump, all he needed to do was let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine.

Saying that Russia was going for the “whole enchilada” with Joe Biden as president, Trump added that Russia “took over nothing” while he was in the White House because Russian President Vladimir Putin “understood” that “he would have never done it.”

The former president then added: “That’s without even negotiating a deal. I could have negotiated. At worst, I could’ve made a deal to take over something, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could’ve worked a deal.”

It’s clear that Putin underestimated Biden. Perhaps Putin’s intelligence (I use that word very loosely) on how the US would react came from Trump and other pro-Russia sycophants in the US.

If Vladimir Putin “took over nothing” during the Trump administration it’s because he was hoping NATO would simply implode under a second Trump term and that he would just be able to walk into Ukraine. When Trump was defeated and Biden moved to renew US ties with NATO allies, Putin panicked and launched his militarily incompetent invasion.

For Trump to imply that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine earlier because he feared Trump is hilarious self-delusion. Putin is no more afraid of Trump than he is of his stooge Lukashenka in Belarus. 

Trump has always been willing to throw Ukraine under the bus. Remember the “perfect phone call”?

White House acknowledges strings attached in Trump withholding Ukraine aid

Anyway, why Fox News would edit something out of a Trump convo with Hannity which makes him look bad is puzzling. Fox has been trying to boost the presidential campaign of Trump’s rival – Florida gauleiter Ron DeSantis. It’s possible that Fox thought that Trump’s comment might remind viewers of DeSantis’s own odious views on Ukraine.

[tomorrowusa]

It’s amazing to see Zelensky speaking to a U.S. Congress that impeached a president over a 2019 conversation with him.

Michael Crowley at the New York Times.

Yep, this has been another terrible week for Trump. Seeing President Zelenskyy get more applause than he ever did in the House chamber may have particularly irked him.

It was Trump’s attempt to extort Zelenskyy during the 2019 “perfect phone call” which led directly to the first impeachment.

[tomorrowusa]

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, once the recipient of a “perfect phone call” from Donald Trump, has warned Ukrainians about interfering in other countries’ elections.

President Zelensky has fired a shot across the bow of Russia-friendly elements working on Vladimir Putin’s behalf to help the Trump campaign. Republicans have been sagging in the opinion polls lately.

Of course Zelensky can’t shut these people down completely, but he can use the apparatus of the state to investigate the activities of such people. And if those investigations lead to evidence of Russian involvement, that would do Trump more harm than good.

Zelensky has clearly had it with Trump but can’t publicly say so. For now, this is the most diplomatic way to tell Trump to fuck off. If Rudy Giuliani shows up again in Kyiv to dig dirt, he’d better bring his own shovel.