This is one of the most deceptive pieces of reporting I have ever seen. Literally.@KatyTurNBC, you're better than this. This is deliberate misleading of an audience. My gosh, issue a correction.pic.twitter.com/E3J5BP86CZ — Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) September 25, 2019

What there is proof of and what there is a paper trail of, because the White House just released it, is a summary or notes of a conversation the President had with the man that was sitting to his right, the president of Ukraine. Where he said, “will you do me and investigate Vice President Biden’s son? Will you do me a favor and get involved in the 2020 election, Vice President Biden is my chief political opponent. At that point he was leading Donald Trump quite a lot in the polls…

Let’s take a look at what was actually said:

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor bf New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call yotu along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to_let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.

So no, Trump does not ask for Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son. Rather clearly and unambiguously he asks for Zelensky to assist Attorney General Bill Barr’s ongoing inquiry. We don’t know what that is but Joe Biden using his office to stop the investigation of his son’s rather blatant grifting.

Let me take a brief side trip. I was on this site with Erick for a decade. And as much as I respect Erick, this analysis is simply nuts:

Should Joe have recused himself? Absolutely. Did it make a difference? Only in coo-coo for cocoa puff conservative conspiracy land. Every major western power on earth wanted that guy fired and Obama sent Biden to be the hatchet man. To suggest otherwise is flat out bullshit. — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) September 25, 2019

Of course it makes a difference when you carry out an action that is of direct benefit to you. Did it not, we would not have conflict of interest laws. Beyond that Biden was not some random flunkey, he was the vice president of the United States and Obama had publicly anointed Biden as his “point person” on Ukraine policy. Biden clearly had plenary authority it that area and was not merely passing on orders. Even were he just passing on orders he had a criminal level of conflict of interest because his son was a subject of an investigation by the guy he had fired. In fact, under federal law the creation of an appearance of conflict of interest is an actual conflict of interest. This is not rocket science. This is very basic stuff from annual mandatory training.

Back to Katy Tur. Not only did Trump not ask Zelensky to investigate Biden, Tur says Trump asked Zelensky to get involved in the 2020 election. That is simply false. And even if you are making a rather bizarre extrapolation of events (no one at MSNBC ever showed the slightest qualms about Hillary Clinton’s campaign employing an asset of British intelligence to pay Russian intelligence sources to create an FBI investigation of her political opponent), stating that sick little fantasy as though it is a quote is a level of dishonesty that we expect only of Brian Stelter and Chris Cillizza.

The best responses to this are in reply to Jason Howerton’s plea: “@KatyTurNBC, you’re better than this.”

She is not actually better than that. — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) September 25, 2019

Actually, she's really not — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 25, 2019

They are right. She’s not better than that. In fact, she’s worse than that.

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