Democrats never supported Ukraine, and never resisted Russian aggression.

As California Republican Devin Nunes pointed out, Wednesday’s impeachment hearing was not a one-off but a televised sequel to the bogus Russia probe that tagged Donald Trump as an agent of Russia. When that one flopped, Democrats quickly ginned up the low-rent Ukrainian sequel, produced and scripted by Democrat intel boss Adam Schiff, who now claims he did not know the identity of the anonymous “whistleblower.”

“Same Schiff, different day,” as Fox News dubbed him, did trot out star diplo-witnesses George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary for Europe, and ambassador William Taylor. Despite long experience, neither had met with president Trump, and neither was on the Trump call to Zelensky in July. Everything the pair presented had trickled down through multiple layers of hearsay, which Democrat Mike Quigley contended was better than direct evidence.

Taylor and Kent could cite nothing in the president’s call that amounted to a high crime or misdemeanor that would justify impeachment proceedings. The bow-tied Kent did confirm that all U.S. aid, including security assistance, is conditional. Taylor was dismayed that President Trump had established an “irregular channel,” to pursue his foreign policy goals. As Tom Jones put it, such back channels happen all the time.

Taylor knew that, and in his openings statement, following his secret audition with the Schiff squad, the ambassador laid out the broader back story to the hearings. “We must support Ukraine,” Taylor said, “Russian aggression cannot stand.” As the television audience was to understand, like the expert diplo-witnesses, the Democrats have always defended Ukraine and deployed against Russia. As it happens, they haven’t.

POTUS 44’s hot-mike aside to Dimitry Medvedev that he would soon have “more flexibility” emerged several times in the hearing. Schiff said it didn’t matter because it happened in 2012 and Russia didn’t invade Ukraine until 2014. This was hardly the only issue.

One of POTUS 44’s first actions in 2009, Democrats failed to recall, was to cancel missile defense for U.S. allies Poland and the Czech Republic. Those defenses were the subject of Russian complaints, and in her vaunted Russian re-set, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the Russians virtually everything they wanted.

When Russia did invade Ukraine, they got only blankets and MREs. As the late Charles Krauthammer said, the arsenal of democracy had become the wardrobe of democracy. If veteran diplomat William Taylor was proclaiming “we must resist Russian aggression,” Democrats weren’t listening.

During the 1980s the Polish Communist regime imposed martial law, and Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger accurately called Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski a “Russian general in a Polish uniform.” Under President Reagan, the United States backed the Solidary movement, supported dissidents across the Soviet empire, and launched the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Democrats such as Sen Kennedy derided such defense as “Star Wars” and Kennedy even sought to enlist help from Communist Russia to defeat Reagan in 1984. That bid failed, Reagan won a second term, and in 1989 the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

Back in 1972 nobody heard Democrat George McGovern say “we must support Ukraine, Russian aggression cannot stand.” Presidential candidate McGovern sought to appease the Russian Communist dictatorship and never took up the cause of anti-Communist dissidents or subject states such as Ukraine.

In the 1930s, as part of his collectivization program, Josef Stalin engineered a man-made famine that took millions of Ukrainian lives. Guardian correspondent Malcolm Muggeridge broke the story but Walter Duranty of the New York Times wrote that all was well and no famine was taking place. Those articles, for which Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize, played a role in U.S. recognition of the USSR under the administration of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt.

During World War II, FDR claimed that Stalin only wanted security for his country and “I think if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.” It didn’t work out that way, and contrary to FDR hagiographers, FDR did in fact acquiesce in the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe without a struggle.

From that day forward, Democrats never supported Ukraine in any meaningful way and few Democrats challenged Russian aggression. Long after Khrushchev’s revelations of Stalin’s mass atrocities in 1956, Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders honeymooned in the Soviet Union. As Mark Levin has noted, Sanders’s cherished “right” to “free” health care and such comes right out of the 1936 Stalin Constitution.

About that time, Stalin was staging show trials of potential rivals featuring wild charges, coached testimony, and the verdict determined up front. That is the pattern of Adam Schiff’s impeachment show, a cavalcade of lies with a Stalinist stank wafting far and wide. This fraud is what must not stand if the republic as we know it is to survive.