The Democrats are trying to make the case that Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a quid pro quo deal and that Trump would withhold military aid if Ukraine did not investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. That narrative has been destroyed by none other than the New York Times, hardly a conservative bastion. The NYT investigated and found out that Ukraine did not even know about the delay in military funding until a month after the phone call.
The NYT reported:
“Mr. Trump did not discuss the delay in the military assistance on the July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky, according to people familiar with the conversation. A Ukrainian official said Mr. Zelensky’s government did not learn of the delay until about one month after the call.”
So what evidence do Democrats have that Trump actually offered a “quid pro quo” to his Ukrainian counterpart for dirt on his political rival? In a series of tweets Thursday, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro looked at the evidence and found the charge of Trump’s “aid-based quid pro quo” to be “pretty weak tea.”
“There are some serious questions about the ‘quid pro quo’ story,” Shapiro wrote in a thread Thursday (tweets below). “And those questions come from both the whistleblower report and the NYT reporting AND the blown ABC story today. Let’s begin with the whistleblower report.”
Shapiro then provides the following excerpt from the whistleblower’s complaint:
On 18 July, an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official informed Departments and Agencies that the President “earlier that month” had issued instructions to suspend all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. Neither OMB nor the NSC staff knew why this instruction had been issued. During interagency meetings on 23 July and 26 July, OMB officials again stated explicitly that the instruction to suspend this assistance had come directly from the President, but they still were unaware of a policy rationale. As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned it.
“Notice, the WHISTLEBLOWER is stating that Ukraine may not have been aware that military aid was threatened at the time of the infamous phone call (they learned in early August, apparently),” Shapiro writes. “So how can there be a quid pro quo when the target DOESN’T KNOW HE’S BEING THREATENED?”
Shapiro then points to a report published by The New York Times earlier this week. “A Ukrainian official said that Mr. Zelensky’s government did not learn of the delay until about one month after the call,” the Times reported.
“This confirms the whistleblower report,” Shapiro states. “Again, if the Ukrainians didn’t know that Trump was threatening aid, with what, precisely was he threatening them? More importantly, why haven’t the media been focusing on this angle? (I think we know the answer.)”