Don’t Impeach Trump: He Puts America, Not Ukraine, First
Impeachment over a campaign promise kept.
American Spectator, Nov 27, 2019, Betsy McCaughey

Democrats are trying to impeach President Trump for holding up military aid to Ukraine after Congress voted to provide it. Trump put a hold on the aid on July 18, and it wasn’t released until September 11. What the Dems and the media are not telling you is that Trump also delayed aid to Pakistan, Gaza, three central American countries, and 10 aid projects involving Europe or the United Nations around the same time.

A senior Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official says reporters consistently ignore Trump’s broad strategy of getting America’s allies, including NATO countries like Germany, to pay their fair share for foreign defense. Trump was looking ahead to a meeting of these countries on August 24–27, when he held up the aid to Ukraine.

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Sunday, the media unveiled internal White House emails they claim show chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and officials at OMB trying to “reverse engineer” a legal justification for holding up the Ukrainian money. That’s nonsense. Once Congress votes to spend money on foreign aid, the executive branch is obligated to release it, but the president has substantial discretion as to timing, and delays are routine. The president also is obligated to stop aid if there’s evidence the money would fall into corrupt hands.

That was a concern with money destined to Ukraine. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) spoke to Trump on August 31 to find out why the aid was delayed, Trump explained that money sent there tended to end up in secret bank accounts, and that NATO wasn’t doing its part, making Americans the “schmucks” stuck with the bill.

Good luck convincing the American public that delaying the aid endangered American security, as Democrats try to claim. Russian incursions into Ukraine are more a threat to Europe than to America, but NATO countries won’t pony up. The U.S. picks up 70 percent of the NATO defense budget.

Schiff brought in a parade of career diplomats to testify how urgently the Ukrainians need aid. These U.S. diplomats attested to their devotion to Ukraine. Sorry, but it’s nauseating. Truth is, diplomats stationed in a country like Ukraine want aid because it makes them bigshots who deliver checks and get the best seats at official functions. It elevates them at cocktail parties.


Read more: https://spectator.org/dont-impeach-trump...-ukraine-first/