Mike Johnson Demands Firing of Ukraine's Ambassador After Zelensky's Campaign Swing Through Pennsylvania
House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recall Ukraine's US ambassador in a sharply worded letter made public Wednesday.
I demand that you immediately fire Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova.
As you have said, Ukrainians have tried to avoid being “captured by American domestic politics,” and “influencing the choices of the American people” ahead of the November election. Clearly that objective was abandoned this week when Ambassador Markarova organized an event in which you toured an American manufacturing site.
The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because – on purpose – no Republicans were invited. The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference. This shortsighted and intentionally political move has caused Republicans to lose trust in Ambassador Markarova’s ability to fairly and effectively serve as a diplomat in this country. She should be removed from her post immediately.
Additionally, as I have clearly stated in the past, all foreign nations should avoid opining on or interfering in American domestic politics. Support for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to be bipartisan, but our relationship is unnecessarily tested and needlessly tarnished when the candidates at the top of the Republican presidential ticket are targeted in the media by officials in your government.
These incidents cannot be repeated. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter, and I trust you will take immediate action.
The incident Speaker Johnson refers to was a visit to a US munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The factory makes 155mm artillery ammunition used by the Ukrainian Army. Zelensky took the occasion not only to thank the workers for their diligence and acknowledge the vital work they are doing but to criticize statements made by Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on how to end the war in Ukraine (the criticism was on point but the thought process behind the statement was definitely suboptimal). Adding to the aura that Zelensky was campaigning for Kamala Harris on American soil were the fact that:
- Pennsylvania is a critical state for Trump and a must-win state for Harris, where she appears to be flailing about; see Game On: Big Warning Signs for Kamala HQ in Pennsylvania After Release of New Susquehanna Poll.
- Zelensky was hosted by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, the runner-up in the beauty contest to be Kamala's running mate.
- Democrat Senator Bob Casey and Representative Matt Cartwright were invited, but no Pennsylvania Republicans were on the list. In fairness, Scranton is in Cartwright's district, but the Democrats-only vibe created was troubling.
The media tried to run interference for the visit with a healthy helping of "bothsidesism." For instance, "Zelensky’s visit to Pennsylvania mirrors a trip to Utah in July, where he met with Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and signed a memorandum of understanding with state leaders. In both cases, state leaders expressed support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia."
Not to belabor the obvious, but Utah is not a swing state, the governor is not a Trump surrogate, and that visit was not 40 days out from a presidential election.
The immediate effect of the kerfuffle is that neither former President Trump nor Speaker Johnson plans to meet with Zelensky while he's in the US (Republicans follow Trump’s lead of icing out Zelensky | CNN Politics). For good measure, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman, Kentucky Republican James Comer, has opened an investigation into the whole affair; see Republicans Would Kindly Like Some Answers About the Legality of Zelensky's Visit to PA – RedState.
“In 2019, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives impeached President Donald J. Trump for abuse of power under the theory that he attempted to use a foreign leader—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—to benefit his 2020 presidential campaign, despite a lack of any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of President Trump. The Biden-Harris Administration recently flew the same foreign leader—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—on an American-taxpayer-funded flight to Pennsylvania, a battleground state in the upcoming 2024 presidential election, which has been described as the ‘trickiest battleground for Vice President Kamala Harris to win.’ The Committee seeks to determine whether the Biden-Harris Administration attempted to use a foreign leader to benefit Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign and, if so, necessarily committed an abuse of power,” wrote Chairman Comer.
I'm not a huge Comer fan, but this is definitely a sauce-for-the-goose-is-sauce-for-the-gander moment; see What the Biden-Harris Administration Just Did With Ukraine's Zelensky Should Be Impeachable – RedState. If Trump could be impeached for attempting to protect Ukrainian prosecutors investigating Biden Crime Family corruption in Ukraine, Harris should get the same treatment for using a foreign nation to meddle in a US election.
Legendary French Diplomat Charles Talleyrand is supposed to have said, "C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute." It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.
That is certainly the case here.
For the last two years, a large part of the English-speaking (though not necessarily American) pro-Ukrainian crowd on social media has struggled to change support for Ukraine with fairly deep bipartisan support in Congress and with the public into a partisan political issue with the Democrats staged as the supporters of Ukraine. So much so that when this war winds down, I plan on blocking 99.9% of the sources I use for Ukraine news on "X," formerly Twitter. It is hard to conceive of a more stupid and pig-headed position unless it is the alleged conservatives who keep claiming Russia's invasion was justified, a point of view that is totally at odds with reality and implausible to anyone not six sigmas to the left of the center of an IQ Bell Curve. Somehow, Zelensky either allowed himself to be roped into a "Great Idea," or he's internalized the leftist talking point Ukraine's independence is a Democrat issue.
Speaker Johnson is correct. The Ukrainian ambassador either knowingly or unknowingly embroiled her president and her nation's struggle for self-determination in a US presidential campaign on the side of the probable loser. Zelensky should take the "L," fire his ambassador, apologize, and get Hillary Clinton to make him a huge red button labeled "RESET."
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