Jack Hassard, having taught science education for many years, is scrupulous about evidence. So he took seriously Trump’s demand that everyone read the transcript of his “perfect” phone call with the president of Ukraine.
He gives a close reading to that transcript here.
What transpired, he says, based on the transcript, was not a “quid pro quo.” A this-for-that can be completely legitimate: You mow my lawn, I’ll trim your hedge. You take my dog for a walk, I will do your dishes.
What happened, he says, is bribery.
Read the transcript yourself.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump demands that everyone read the transcript of his “perfect” phone call with the president of Ukraine.
“I don’t recall at all. Not even a little bit,” Trump told reporters, and “I don’t know a thing about that. First time I heard it.”
First this is a perfect call and then it is a call Trump didn’t know a thing about. It can’t be both.
Different calls.
The released “transcript” is his “perfect” call wut Ukrainian President.
The one he doesn’t remember is the cellphone call with Amb Taylor’s associate, in a restaurant.
TPM has an article titled, “Absolute Must Read”. The reporter wrote that Trump and Rudy thought they had a deal with President Poroshenko to get info helpful to Trump’s campaign. After Zelensky was elected, Trump and Rudy scrambled to get Zelensky to honor the deal.
Certainly words do matter, and so does intent. In addition to bribery, Trump is inviting a foreign power to interfere with an election. He is using foreign aid that had already been voted on by congress as the payoff.
I think it is very important (although it is depressing to see that it is already too late) for those of us who believe in truth and evidence to not start with the assumptions that the right wing wants us to start with.
This is NOT a transcript. This is a version of the conversation that DIRECT TESTIMONY already proves has intentionally left out the most incriminating parts.
This is the version put out by the very same people who – after hearing Trump’s conversation – acted entirely improperly to lock up the transcript of the call in a place reserved only for the most top secret information.
We have no idea what Trump said, but whatever it was bothered William Barr and his minions so much that they acted improperly to hide it.
Since Republicans now make it clear that this transcript wasn’t bad enough to cause those whose job is only to protect the President to cover it up, that means – by the Republicans’ own logic – that what was left out of this “reconstructed under the direction of William Barr transcript” is likely as incriminating as the parts that were conveniently erased from the Nixon tapes.
Yes, it is true that what is here is bad enough. But what is left out of this “Republican-approved” version of the call is going to be similar to what William Barr left out of his letter that described the Mueller Report as 100% exonerating Trump.
^^I am adding to this with an update.
Trump’s “new transcript” just released today was ALSO not a transcript but the Republican White House edited version of whatever they wanted to include.
And, most notably, there is not one single word about “corruption” in this version that the White House has convinced everyone to keep calling a “transcript.”
However, back in April, before the White House was in cover-up mode, they provided reporters of a summary of the call right after it happened. As the NY Times states: “In that summary, provided to reporters shortly after the call took place, the administration said that Mr. Trump promised to work with Mr. Zelensky “to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity and root out corruption.”
So given that in April the White House clearly described this conversation as including a mention of rooting out corruption but the memo they just released has a conversation that had no mention of “rooting out corruption”, anything the White House decided made Trump look bad was removed again.
So we can only imagine how much was removed from the second phone call summary that was so incredibly corrupt that the White House immediately locked it in a top secret server to cover up Trump’s wrongdoing.
It’s not bribery, it’s extortion.
If Trump Were Anyone Else
By Nicholas Kristof
The president would be fired and perhaps subject to a criminal investigation.
As the impeachment process unfolds, President Trump’s defenders will throw up dust clouds of complexity. But as the first day of open hearings suggested, it’s simple. Forget about Ukraine and diplomacy for a moment.
Suppose that a low-ranking government official, the head of a branch Social Security office, intervened to halt a widow’s long-approved Social Security payments. The widow, alarmed that without that income she might lose her home, would call the branch director to ask for help.
“I’d like you to do me a favor, though,” the director might respond. He would suggest that her Social Security payments could resume, but he’d like the widow to give him her late husband’s collection of rare coins.
Everybody would see that as an outrageous abuse of power. Whether we’re Republicans or Democrats, we would all recognize that it’s inappropriate for a federal official to use his or her power over government resources to extract personal benefits. The Social Security official could say that the payments eventually resumed, or assert that the widow’s son had engaged in skulduggery — but he’d be out of a job in an instant and would face a criminal investigation.
Likewise, imagine that a high school principal expelled the police chief’s son but offered to readmit the boy if the police department would just open a criminal investigation into his ex-wife before their child custody hearing.
Or suppose that the head of a public hospital offered to provide free medical care to employees of a construction company if it remodeled his kitchen?
Or what if I suggested to a university president that I was planning some glowing columns about his great institution and then asked for “a favor,” noting that my child was applying for admission.
In every case, we might disagree about whether to call this bribery, extortion or a quid pro quo, and might disagree about precisely which statute was violated, but there is no doubt this would be a firing offense and perhaps lead to a criminal investigation…
very well said.
I thought Kristof was going to write, “suppose the Social Security official said to the impecunious widow, ‘I won’t release your benefits unless you step into the back room and have sex with me.'”
That would have been a graphic but apt description of what Trump is doing to Ukraine.
Adding that when asked if the event occurred, the widow, who was compelled by external forces to appear with the official, felt forced to deny the occurrence in public because she still hoped to get the Social Security for her family.
Imagine if a Social Security official had said “I won’t release your benefits unless you step into the back room and have sex with me” and he went in the back room and the widow was preparing to go in to have sex with him.
But then a hero steps in who tells the Social Security official’s buddy (who always looks out for him) that he is going to get a policeman to investigate this. And while the hero is getting a policeman, that buddy tells the Social Security official that the police are on their way to investigate. So instead of raping the widow as he has planned, the Social Security official finally releases her benefits.
If a Republican judge is given this case, he would say “since the Social Security official only held up the widow’s benefits until he could rape her, but then honorably refrained from raping her and released her benefits once he knew the police were coming, that official is not just innocent, but must be praised and celebrated for doing the right thing and not raping the widow.” “After all”, the Republican judge would say, “the only thing that matters is that the widow eventually got the Social Security benefits she was entitled to get, even if they were late.”
And the judge, being a Republican, would say “Bring that hero to me so I can throw him in jail for the crime of stopping the Social Security official from raping the widow. Because we Republicans believe that stopping someone from raping a poor widow is the real crime, and the real victim here is the attempted rapist – the Social Security official we admire so much – who was thwarted from committing his crime and was forced to do the right thing against his will. If being forced not to rape a widow is a crime – and we Republicans believe it is – then this hero is guilty! Lock him up.”
When I wonder how the Republican Party can be this corrupt, I remember that there were unlimited numbers of men and women in Nazi Germany who had no problem directing tens of thousands of young children into gas chambers and then cleaning up their remains afterward.
I have no doubt they were very similar to the Republicans we saw on display yesterday — especially the one who was a college coach who was supposed to be protecting students and somehow didn’t notice how many of them were being raped by the doctor he said was a very fine man.
nycpsp, I think your twist makes the analogy spot-on: “since the Social Security official only held up the widow’s benefits until he could rape her, but then honorably refrained from raping her and released her benefits once he knew the police were coming, that official is not just innocent, but must be praised and celebrated for doing the right thing and not raping the widow.” Not sure a Republican judge would take this slant, but it sure sounds like Faux News’ version!
Agree with Bethree, NYC’s analogy is spot on.
Based on personal experience, Trump relates to both sides of the transaction. His son said Trump’s business financing comes from Russia and it appears Putin makes demands that Trump complies with and keeps quiet.
Zelensky is coerced by a briber/extortionist and he delivers but, he does it to help his country, not for personal gain.
Trump, an unprincipled, self-serving bully who was elected to lead a world power – what else could have been predicted, except criminality?
Republican Kentucky governor and hedge funder, Matt Bevin, conceded today.
We can hope that the publicity about the indictment (multiple child porn charges) of a family values’ Kentuckian, infamous as a principal who banned books that addressed issues harming gay kids, gave Bevin a heads up. Insight by Bevin and the Bluegrass Institute into the stirred up citizen loathing for the pompous, pious, hypocritical, defenders of the entitled would be welcome.
“Read the transcript” is a pretty clever move on Trump’s part, since his base is certain not to read it, and simply trust the implication that it’s exculpatory. Even if they did read it, given average reading comprehension ability in the USA, many wouldn’t know what to make of it. Kinda like the myriad Bible studiers who really have no clue what they’re reading: the Bible is just a totem to them.
Exactly. Read the transcript! The transcript is damning of Trump.
There is no transcript to read. There is only a summary that the very same Republicans who improperly locked up the transcript to prevent people from seeing what Trump said released when they got caught and couldn’t hide it anymore. Since the very same people who locked up the transcript were absolutely free to include or not include whatever they wanted in the summary, we can only imagine how bad the part that was left out is.
Remember, the people at the White House who believe their one job is to cover for Trump immediately and improperly locked up this transcript. That point has been lost, but it is not the Democrats who believe the transcript is a problem — clearly the people who Trump hired at the White House because he knew they’d cover up his crimes believed that what Trump said was so incriminating that they were willing to act completely improperly to hide it.
That’s the thing — can you imagine how worried William Barr’s underlings were that they decided to take a chance of breaking the law to hide this conversation in a place for the most top secret material only?
Given the Republicans’ response, we know that what is on the “reconstructed summary” was not something they considered a problem. But they admitted did think the transcript was a problem as that is why they hid it. So what was in the part that the people who locked it up took out? How bad was it?
Given what William Barr thinks is perfectly fine (everything in the Mueller Report), the fact that his minions locked up the transcript tells us that what Trump REALLY said that is missing from this Republican-approved version must have been very very bad indeed.
That’s their dilemma. The Republicans can’t say “we hid it because we knew how corrupt it showed that Trump was” and then say “there was nothing there” because the lawyers who work for Barr read it and decided it was so bad that they had to hide it.
I understand Hassard’s blog post is directed at “words count” – “quid pro quo”—etc, specifically relating to Trump’s July telecon with Ukraine prez. But also in MSM media, I see most impeachment analysis directed at this alone. Perhaps it’s because they think it’s a slam dunk, legally/ Constitutionally. But I would like to hear equally on the “endangering national security” angle. As I understand it, Trump held up this Congressional appropriation for three months – monies targeted by Congress for Ukrainian defense against active, ongoing Russian invasion of its eastern border [not to mention, they’d already grabbed the Crimea].. Ukraine may not be a NATO nation [yet], but NATO responded positively to its 2008 application [shelved when Yanukovych was elected], & populace is now reportedly 70% in favor [since Russian invasion of Crimea & E Ukraine]– & it’s obviously in US natl security interest to have a pro-Western border state as buffer zone & to squelch Russia’s efforts to re-take Iron Curtain territories. “Obvious” that is to everyone but POTUS & his sycophants. Seems to me there’s an important constitutional issue here: does POTUS get to single-handedly do a 180 on govt-consensus foreign policy? Is he allowed to give away the farm just cuz he’s prez? He got away w/it in Syria because he’s Commander in Chief of the armed forces. But that doesn’t apply here.
Here is part of the letter sent by Senator Mike Braun [R-IN]. I wrote him a letter telling him why I do not support Trump. I told him he needed to quit his job in the Senate and go back to his business. We need people in Congress who seek out the truth, not defend a criminal.
……..
President Trump has done nothing wrong. This entire trial is another attempt by Adam Schiff and his liberal allies to smear our President and undermine the results of the 2016 election.
I was inspired to leave my business and run for the US Senate by President Trump. I knew that he needed strong supporters in Washington and that is what I am to do. Can we count on your support?
I fully support the Senate taking up these sham articles of impeachment so we can have a full and open trial that exonerates President Trump, once and for all.
First the Mueller Investigation. No Quid-Pro-Quo. Democrats will not stop until President Trump is removed from office.
WE MUST PROTECT PRESIDENT TRUMP
We are fighting in Washington to protect our President and follow through on our promises to Hoosiers.
Thank you for your continued support,
Senator Mike Braun
gag
“WE MUST PROTECT PRESIDENT TRUMP”
That’s the most accurate description of what the Republican Congress believes is their only duty. Trump did already tell us that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would protect him from any prosecution.
I find it interesting that the Republicans don’t want to protect this country or its citizens or even a US Ambassador that served 4 Republican Presidents, as well as 2 Democrats, with distinction.
Nope, Senator Mike Braun makes it clear that everyone else is cannon fodder because his only job and the only job he is willing to do is to protect President Trump.
I LOVE Borowitz!! It’s hard to tell when its satire and when its reality. [Borowitz is a comedian. Love his work.]
From newyorker.com: “Everywhere She Went Turned Bad,” Says Man with Six Bankruptcies
“She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” tweeted the man, who paid twenty-five million dollars to settle fraud charges against a fake university bearing his name.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a blistering tweet on Friday, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was accused of leaving a trail of destruction by a man with six bankruptcies and multiple business failures.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” wrote the man, who ran the now defunct United States Football League into the ground and paid twenty-five million dollars to settle fraud charges against a fake university bearing his name.
“She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” tweeted the man, whose lengthy roster of bankruptcies includes the Trump Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (1992), the Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Castle Hotel and Casino (1992), Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (2004), and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009)…
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/everywhere-she-went-turned-bad-says-man-with-six-bankruptcies