It's been another tough week for the Trump administration, but nobody's having a worse week than Mick Mulvaney.
The (acting) chief of staff decided on Thursday to just outright admit to quid pro quoing the living shit out of Ukraine! After confidently announcing a new emolument charge (G7 in Trump Doral!) and telling everyone to "get over it" about abusing the power of the presidency, Mulvaney enjoyed 1.5 seconds after the press briefing before Trump surely yelled at him worse than when he coughs in his presence. Ever since then, Mulvaney has been trying to shove the impeachment genie back in the bottle with varying degrees of failure.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Mulvaney once again tried to Jedi mind trick the world into somehow forgetting what it had just seen after Chris Wallace asked about his public admission.
MULVANEY: Again, that's not what I said. That's what people said I said. Here's what I said, I'll say it again and hopefully people will listen this time. There were two reasons that we held up the aid. […] The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine -- by the way, Chris, it's so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed a law making it -- making us -- requiring us to make sure that corruption was moving in the right direction. So, corruption is a big deal, everyone knows it. The president was also concerned about whether or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to the Ukraine as well. We talked about that for quite a while now.
We have no idea which 2014 law Mulvaney is trying to reference. The only thing we found was the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 (H.R.5859) which states "it is U.S. policy to assist the government of Ukraine in restoring its sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to deter the government of the Russian Federation." It does mention corruption, saying it is about helping Ukraine "counter government corruption and improve accountability." This coincidentally is EXACTLY what Joe Biden was doing when he (on behalf of the United States and the EU) addressed the Ukrainian Parliament in Kyiv on Dec. 9, 2015, and dangled the prospect of future US aid if the country rid itself of corruption, resulting in corrupt prosecutor Viktor Shokin submitting his resignation in February 2016 and being removed a month later. The law was not meant to be used to ADD corruption to Ukraine, MULVANEY.
Wallace also pointed out Mulvaney's obvious omission of one of the stated reasons for holding up Ukraine aid:
WALLACE: Not only did you say that investigating the Democrats was one of the three conditions, not two, that you just said that you would talk about, investigating the Democrats was part of the quid pro quo. [...] Everybody thinks that that's what you said and you didn't. You said right there --
MULVANEY: Right.
WALLACE: -- three points, not two.
MULVANEY: Well, and a couple different things. You again said just a few seconds ago that I said there was a quid pro quo. I never used that language, because there is not a quid pro quo, but --
WALLACE: You were asked by Jonathan Karl, is -- you described a quid pro quo, and you said, that happens all the time.
MULVANEY: Well -- and reporters will use their language all the time. So, my language never said quid pro quo.
Mulvaney seems to think that as long as he doesn't use the actual phrase "quid pro quo" he's somehow beat the impeachment Lament Configuration puzzle box. Wallace was having none of that and pointed this out.
WALLACE: But you -- in your first answer which I gave, you said that's why we held up the money. First, you just said here, that it was for two reasons. Now, you're acknowledging it was for three reasons. If you held up the money for three reasons, that was -- that's a quid pro quo.
Mulvaney tries futilely to continue this lame defense until the subject of the G7 location being held at Trump Doral (before Trump took it back) comes up. Mulvaney then accidentally admits the conflict of interest.
MULVANEY: […] He was honestly surprised at the level of pushback. At the end of the day, you know, he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business and he saw an opportunity to take the biggest leaders from around the world, and he wanted to put the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could. […]
WALLACE: I just have to pick up -- you say he considers himself in the hospitality business.
MULVANEY: Sure.
WALLACE: He's the president of the United States.
MULVANEY: Yes, but he's -- that's his background. It's like, I used to be in the real estate business. I don't know what you used to do before you were in the media.
WALLACE: Nothing. That's all I've ever done.
Mulvaney then finally caps it off with exactly why Trump originally ran and why he's been totally unqualified for president.
MULVANEY: Yes. But he wanted to put on a show. He wanted to take care of folks. That's the business -- he's in the hotel business or at least he was before he was the president.
Reality tv "star" is gonna reality tv, I guess. To watch Mulvaney flail, watch the video below.
We truly cannot underestimate how lucky we are this confederacy of dunces is so ineffectual at times.
Same Logic as Trump AdministrationGiphy
Have a week!
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