The Corruption Issue

One of the things that has been warned about for the entirety of the Trump presidency was that people were going to Trump properties to curry favor with Trump. President Zelenskyy laid that bare in his call with Trump:

President Zelenskyy: ... Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.

To the Defenders of All Things Trump, there is nothing wrong with that. But imagine, if you will, that Barack Obama owned a share of a Hilton hotel franchise. If foreign leaders had stayed in that hotel, the Republicans would have gone batshit. Devin Nunez, who would begin an investigation if a stapler had gone missing from Obama's West Wing offices, would have tied himself in knots investigating that hotel.

Oh, Republicans would deny that, now. But it is true. What is also true is that Republicans never investigated President Obama's personal finances because even they knew there was nothing to find. Obama released his tax returns, unlike, say, our current Grifter-in-Chief.

But let's be clear: Republican presidential candidates using their campaign staff to "work with" foreign governments to do things that sometimes have crossed the line into outright treason is nothing new. Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Paris Peace Talks, for which he should have been put on trial and shot. Similarly, Ronald Reagan sabotaged the negotiations with Iran in 1980, which may be why he was so willing to later enter into the "arms for hostages" deal with Iran, when it turned out later that the Reagan administration began shipping weapons to Iran in 1981.

So by Republican standards of "When Our Guy Does It, It's No Big Deal", Trump's shakedown of Ukraine and his taking of disguised bribes is, in comparison, small potatoes.

That's why Trump is astonished that he's being impeached for it.