Ohio Senator Rejects Claims That Trump Offered Quid Pro Quo to Ukraine

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday night, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) rejected the claim that Democrats have floated about Trump offering a quid pro quo scenario to the Ukrainian government: You provide me with dirt on Biden, and I’ll make sure you get the weapons you want to buy. When the transcript of the call was released, Portman said that the text of the phone call didn’t quite match up to the hype from Democratic leaders.

“I don’t see the quid pro quo that the Democrats are claiming. In fact, I actually believe that if Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats had taken another 24 hours to make their decision and actually looked at the facts — which is the transcript itself — they might not have moved forward because there is no quid pro quo,” Portman said.

Exactly. For all the guff they gave Attorney General Bill Barr for releasing a summary of the Mueller report weeks in advance of the actual report, Democrats turned around and did the exact same thing this week. Rather than simply wait for the facts to come in, Pelosi jumped the gun, initiated impeachment proceedings against President Trump, and committed her party to what can only turn out to be a colossal political error. As Portman said, if she’d just waited to put her eyeballs on the transcript, she might have realized that – much like they did with Russia – Democrats have leaped without looking.

Surely she realizes that now, but it’s a little too late. It will be a cold day in hell before Pelosi or any other Democrat comes to the public, hat in hand, and admits, “Yeah, we got this one wrong, sorry.” If they were inclined to apologize, they damn sure would have done it after the Mueller investigation was finished.

“I don’t see it. I just don’t understand how they can say it’s because there’s a quid pro quo. And then we find out there’s not a quid pro quo that they’re still proceeding,” Portman continued.

Only a fool could read that transcript and come to the conclusion that Trump had committed an impeachable offense. Somehow, Democrats think that any steps towards investigating one of their own is a wrong in and of itself. You hear all of these calls of “it’s like a banana republic!” Only in these tinpot dictatorships do leaders conduct investigations of their political opponents. Meanwhile, 2020 Democrats can’t go a week without insinuating that they’ll sic the Justice Department on Trump the minute they’re sworn in.

The hypocrisy is fascinating, if only in its brazenness.