[ZeroGravitas]

We have proof that Trump tried to blackmail Zelensky into framing his political opponents by witholding aid they needed to defend themselves from Russia.

When Putin started his invasion, Trump praised him for being smart, then praised him again, suggesting he'd captured a whole country for a small cost in sanctions.

What do you think you're expressing when you say that Trump isn't a Putin puppet? That he's not made of wood?

[lenkite]

You mean the claim that the Ukrainian President himself denied ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-s...

And what about Joe Biden's proud public boast that he threatened to withhold aid if a Ukrainian prosecutor wasn't fired ? (who was investigating Burisma - the company whose board Hunter biden was on.)

https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-t...

Anyways, it's pretty clear that there are different standards for different people for news that gets published/censored/suppressed and most importantly amplified.

As Elon Musk said just today: "All news sources are partially propaganda, some more than others" - when he was told by governments (not Ukraine) that Starlink should block Russian news.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1499982913949081600

[ZeroGravitas]

Yes, the person being blackmailed, said that the person blackmailing him, who was still in a position to blackmail him about the (now realised) invasion of his country, which is likely to end with his and his family's death, and potentially could be in the same position for four more years said there was no blackmail and specifically said

"“I don’t want to interfere in U.S. elections,”"

I don't find that decisive on the facts given everything else.

Stormy Daniels denied sleeping with Trump, because someone threatened the life of her child. It was and is still a true thing that happened.

[lenkite]

The transcript was released by the White House and there are no threats made to withdraw Ukrainian aid - quite unlike the explicit and damning public statement made by Biden to withdraw aid, which is also captured on Video - but fails to get any publicity whatsoever as its deeply embarrassing for the favoured media darling. You can continue to speculate further but evidence doesn't fit your claim.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/25/trum...

[ZeroGravitas]

> Although the United States did withhold government aid to pressure Ukraine into removing the prosecutor,[5] this was the official and bipartisan policy of the federal government of the United States, which, along with the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, believed the prosecutor to be corrupt and ineffective, and too lenient in investigating companies and oligarchs, including Burisma and its owner.

You've got the vice-president on tape repeating the official government line in public? And you want this to be front page news? Why?

And why did Trump disagree with all those people, in the blackmail transcript you posted he seems a real fan of this person who is linked to Oligarchs and corruption. What's that all about?

[lenkite]

I want this to be front-page news because Biden explicitly threatened the withdrawal of aid unless a prosecutor of a sovereign nation investigating his son's company was fired. This was the same threat that you accused Trump of and everyone castigated Trump for - which was proven false. But Biden gets a complete media-free pass for the same bald faced threat.

Biden's own words below:

In December 2015 -- he told Ukrainian officials: "We're leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money."

"Well, son of a bitch," Biden continued. "He got fired."

A classified US State Department email from 2016 shows a leading diplomat warning that Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with a Ukrainian energy company “undercut” American efforts to fight corruption in the Eastern European country.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/us-diplomat-warned-about-hunte...

I don't care what Trump agrees/disagrees with or who he is a fan of. Irrelevant to this discussion which started with a verifiably false accusation. The media has noticeably different amplification standards depending on who they do or do not favour.

[Talanes]

>I want this to be front-page news because Biden explicitly threatened the withdrawal of aid unless a prosecutor of a sovereign nation investigating his son's company was fired. This was the same threat that you accused Trump of and everyone castigated Trump for - which was proven false.

Do you legitimately not understand that it was the perceived motivation and not the action that people dislike? No one cares about the Biden scenario because it takes five minutes of Googling to find out that the whole thing was over the British being mad the prosecutor didn't turn over documents potentially indemnifying Burisma to UK authorities when requested. Why would Biden be personally mad at a prosecutor for NOT indemnifying his son's employer?

>A classified US State Department email from 2016 shows a leading diplomat warning that Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with a Ukrainian energy company “undercut” American efforts to fight corruption in the Eastern European country.

I mean, yeah, I don't think anyone has ever claimed that Hunter Biden is someone who only makes smart choices that help advance his father's aims. Unless you're aiming to criticize Joe Biden as a parent instead of as a political figure, that's not relevant by itself.

[coolso]

Whatever Trump was doing to handle Putin certainly seemed to prevent Putin from doing any Ukrainian invading. I think Zelensky and the entire world would prefer more Trump phone calls and less Putin aggression right about now.

[ZeroGravitas]

You know that the Russian army have been in Ukraine for Trump's entire term, right? One of his early big gaffes when running was to say "Russia won't invade Ukraine if he wins" and the journalist pointed out they already had.

[_-david-_]

Putin invaded in 2014 and 2022. Putin did not do additional invasions when Trump was president, he remained in the part of Ukraine he took when Biden was vice president.

[coolso]

You know that’s not what I meant (and likely not what Trump meant either) by “invasion” right?

You can prove anyone “wrong” by playing with definitions or getting super technical about things.

[Eupolemos]

According to Bolton, he believed that Trump would withdraw the US from NATO in a second term and that is what Putin was waiting for.

https://news.yahoo.com/john-bolton-putin-waiting-possible-13...

[VikingCoder]

Yes, because Putin was too busy enjoying the other things President Trump let him do.

Taken from someone else:

Trump had the US military abandon their bases in Syria and Russia promptly captured them.

Russia was caught paying bounties in Afghanistan for killing American soldiers. Trump did nothing.

After Putin seized Crimea, Obama put sanctions on Russia. Trump promptly got rid of those sanctions for his buddy, then declared that Crimea belonged to Russia, recognizing the legitimacy of their invasion.

Russia keeps creeping advancing the border with Georgia. They just literally move fences and markers at night and take land a few hundred meters at a time.

This happened during Trump's administration. Trump did nothing.

Belarus, which is a puppet for Putin, as he wants Ukraine to be, is run by his puppet dictator Lukashenko. Lukashenko won a clearly rigged election in 2020, leading to mass protests. A similar situation happened in Ukraine during Obama's administration, and we backed the protests and they ousted Yanukovych, and Ukraine was able to elect a free government that wasn't Putin's puppet. So when a similar situation arises while Trump was President, guess what he did?

The Trump Administration has gone AWOL on Belarus.

Guess who ran Putin's puppet, Yanukovych's campaign in Ukraine? Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Then they became Trump's campaign manager and deputy campaign manager.

Putin invades Ukraine, Trump calls him a genius.

He's a Putin puppet. Putin had a puppet President of the US. It's fucking insane that this happened. But it did. Wake the fuck up.

"We don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia." -Eric Trump, 2014

[coolso]

Sorry, what administration did Putin start a war with Ukraine under? Interesting that the one who was Putin’s supposed puppet, ended up being a better puppet master than the elder experienced statesman we supposedly have in office currently.

I repeat: I think Ukraine, and the world, could do well with some mean tweets and mean phone calls in place of what we have now!

[VikingCoder]

Cool, so we 100% attribute problems to whomever was President at the time? So George W. Bush is entirely to blame for 9/11, and Donald Trump is entirely to blame for Covid-19. Glad we cleared that up.

Or, maybe, prior administrations are at least partly to blame? And maybe you didn't even bother to read the list I gave you, of things Trump allowed Putin to do?

Cheers.

[Talanes]

Trump was useful to Putin, sure, but the amount of actual leverage Putin has over the leader of a rival nation is vastly less than he does over his smaller neighbors who share land borders.

The obvious gulf between how Trump was useful to Putin and how his actual puppets are useful to Putin is all people not disposed to agree with you can see. It doesn't matter that your tangible points are correct if people immediately discard it over your emotional appeal.

[ZeroGravitas]

Latest update: Trump's National Security Advisor says that Putin was waiting for Trump's second term, as after being re-elected he was going to withdraw the US from NATO:

https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-tru...