The Trump team has not learned any sort of lesson from the Russia scandal, and they continue to seek foreign help in their now re-election campaign. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s leading the pack of Democratic presidential primary contenders, has no tolerance for the behavior, which has targeted his own family. Although he’s cancelled an actual trip to the country, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has been pressuring Ukraine to up the ante of an investigation into corruption surrounding a case against Burisma Holdings, which Joe’s son Hunter has worked with.
The elder Biden shared:
‘I can’t remember any lawyer representing the president, conferring with the president, deciding to go overseas, where a government relies on U.S. largesse to try to get them to do something that everybody knows never happened.’
In New Hampshire for his first #FITN of the 2020 cycle @JoeBiden responds to @RudyGiuliani’s planned (but now canceled) trip to Ukraine #nhpolitics #WMUR pic.twitter.com/pUxN5pZ2Qr
— Adam Sexton (@AdamSextonWMUR) May 13, 2019
The standing allegation is that Joe engaged in corrupt behavior while on the job as vice president because he pressured Ukraine to dump their top prosecutor, who had been pursuing a Burisma case, although according to an account of a former top official, it was already “shelved” at the time of his firing. That former top prosecutor had faced serious allegations of corruption, and Biden’s push squared right up with that of the Obama administration’s overall aim. There’s not even any evidence to suggest that Joe and Hunter discussed the case during a relevant time period or that Hunter was even in contact with anyone in the Obama administration at all about it, making this a case of correlation, not causation, although facts are surely not about to stop the Trump team.
Biden recognizes that his case reflects a broader tendency on the part of Trump and his associates to go to outlandish ends to get their opponents thrown under a bus. After all, Giuliani sat on national television and insisted that it would not as a rule be inappropriate to take information from the Russian government to help with a re-election campaign.
Biden noted:
‘It’s sort of Giuliani’s style and this administration. It is inappropriate. Unrelated to me, it’s just inappropriate to send your lawyer to a foreign government to try to get them to do something that has no bearing except to try to embarrass.’
Even with a year or so to go until the Democratic presidential primaries conclude and months after that until the general election in which the winner will face Trump, Biden has quickly begun contrasting himself with the Trump administration, holding little back. In the early days and weeks of his campaign, he’s gone after the president’s record on everything from racism to trade — scoring an endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters in the process.
Biden has consistently been polling ahead of every other Democratic presidential contender, which there are about two dozen of at this point. His closest competitor is Sen, Bernie Sanders, who’s an average of more than 20 percent behind him in polls, averaging out at about 16.3 percent of the support. Poignantly — Biden also polls consistently well in hypothetical general election match-ups against Donald Trump, finishing an average of about seven percent ahead at present.
Featured Image via screenshot
