The White House has released the transcript of Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What it reveals is damning, but only for former Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the establishment media.
Instead of being some threatening phone call where the U.S. president holds aid or other threats over the head of the Ukrainians, the call actually displays Trump’s commitment to one of his key 2016 campaign pledges: draining the swamp.
Contextually, the remarks are in fact pretty tepid.
The pair exchange pleasantries about Zelensky’s recent election results. They exchange unpleasantries about German leader Angela Merkel. Then Trump asks the Ukrainian president to look into what really went on with the Democratic Party’s email hack of 2016. (RELATED: Get Ready To See Trump’s Face On Mount Rushmore)
This is no different from what six Democratic senators (and one independent) did in March 2016 when they visited Ukraine.
If anything, the president is guilty of trying to root out corruption. Why shouldn’t he be, given the damning evidence confessed by Biden during an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018?
Biden sat on stage and literally said, “I remember going over and convincing our team, others, to convince that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from [former president Petro] Poroshenko and from [former Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.
“So they said they had — they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b—. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Of course what Biden neglected to mention in this anecdote was that the state prosecutor he was using a $1 billion threat to get rid of was actually investigating his son Hunter Biden’s company. (RELATED: Did Trump’s Ukraine Call Violate Campaign Finance Law? Not By A Long Shot)
Biden the younger had joined the board of the Ukrainian national gas company, Burisma, in 2014.
As The Federalist notes, this was “while his father was managing the United States’ Ukraine policy and despite zero personal experience in the field. At the time Hunter Biden joined its board, Burisma was embroiled in allegations of corruption, allegations serious enough that Ukraine’s prosecutor general launched an investigation into the company.”
The White House transcript between Trump and Zelensky makes a passing mention of Biden: one word over five pages.
But the Democratic Party of America as well as their allies in the media already started banging the impeachment drum, a day ahead of seeing any actual evidence on the matter.
How they row this back now will be a sight to behold.
There’s clearly no evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of President Trump. The implication — especially given the Ukrainian president’s agreement in rooting out any potential corruption surrounding Biden — is that it was indeed Barack Obama’s former vice president who should be answering the tough questions.
Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) is a former adviser to Brexit leader Nigel Farage and author of two bestselling books: “No Go Zones” and “Enoch Was Right.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.