ArgumentWhat Trump Really Wanted from Ukraine Was Not about Enemies

What President Donald Trump wanted most from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had les to do with Joe Biden and everything to do with exonerating Russia from 2016 election meddling and pinning the blame on the Democrats and Ukraine, the historian Allan Lichtman writes in The Hill.

Rather, Trump wanted Zelensky to do him the favor of investigating the debunked conspiracy theory that Russian intervention in the 2016 election on his behalf was a hoax fabricated by the Democrats and the Ukrainians.

Lichtman writes:

This conspiracy theory would serve the dual purpose of clearing Russian President Vladimir Putin from responsibility for intervening in the 2016 election and proving that Trump won the White House without Russia. No matter that the theory has found zero traction in the investigation of foreign meddling in the 2016 election conducted by numerous United States intelligence agencies, the special counsel investigation, and both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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It is not just far-right fabulists who have fed Trump this self-serving nonsense about 2016, but as Hill testified, backed up by the American intelligence community, it is also Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services.

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The mythology of a Democrat/Ukrainian plot to frame Russia for election interference and help Clinton feeds Putin’s propaganda machine, encourages his efforts to destabilize democracies across the globe, and weakens the alliance between the United States and Ukraine. For Trump, it validates his false narrative about 2016 and gives him a club to wield against Democrats. And, it opens wide the door for Russian intervention in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.