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A week of multi-pronged setbacks tests Trump's resilience
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IANS | 19 Oct, 2019
US President Donald Trump has had a bad week of setbacks testing his resilience.
His
Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged that aid to Ukraine
was held up to force a political investigation; several diplomats defied
the administration to testify before Congressional investigators; and
his decision to pull US troops out of Syria was criticised by his own
party leaders.
The statements of Mulvaney and the diplomats gave
the Democrats ammunition against Trump whom they have accused of
pressuring a foreign government to interfere in US politics to help his
re-election bid and using aid as a weapon to influence Ukraine and as a
result, launched an impeachment inquiry.
Turkey's invasion of
Syria and its attacks on the Kurds, who had fought the Islamic State
terrorist with US support, brought a House of Representatives resolution
supported by many Republicans condemned the troop withdrawal.
It
was also the week that he burned the tenuous bridge to Speaker Nancy
Pelosi by seeming to question the strength of her opposition to
terrorism.
A tone deaf Trump also announced that the next G7
Summit of leaders of major economic powers will be held next year at a
resort he owns in Florida raising ethical and legal questions.
Trump
has denounced the impeachment process as a witch hunt and on Thursday
he told a supporters' rally in Dallas: "They come after me, but what
they're really doing is they're coming after the Republican Party, and
what they're really really doing is they're coming after and fighting
you."
The impeachment, which will likely happen given the
Democratic Party's majority in the House of Representatives, is only the
equivalent of framing a chargesheet for a prosecution.
But Trump
being found guilty and removed from office is unlikely as of now
because the Republican-controlled Senate will hold a trial based on the
charges and vote on a verdict.
The Republican Party holds a slender majority of three in the 100-member Senate and Trump has to hold on to the lead.
There have been murmurs of dissent in his party after Mulvaney's revelation before the media, although he later took it back.
A
senator from his party, Lisa Murkowski said: "You don't hold up foreign
aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative."
But so far his base seems intact.
An estimated crowd of 30,000 supporters provided vocal support at his rally on Thursday night in Dallas.
His support in polls has slipped only marginally.
According
to RealClear Politics (RCP), an authoritative aggregator of polls, the
average for Trump's job approval slid from 44.7 per cent on September 22
to 42.6 on Friday. In all the 10 polls it monitored, Trump's
disapproval rating was higher.
But impeachment is yet to get the
support of the majority: RCP's average showed 49 per cent of Americans
were for it, while 45.1 per cent were against it and in three of the
seven poll it tracked, those against impeachment outnumbered those for
it.
The impeachment process began after an intelligence officer
working in the White House reported that he had heard that Trump
pressurise Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a phone call on
July 25 to investigate the dealings of the son of former Vice President
Joe Biden with a Ukrainian gas company and made promises to him.
A
reconstruction of the phone call provided by the White House did not
show Trump pressuring Zelensky or making promises. The Ukrainian leader
also denied that he was pressured.
Biden has denied that there
was any wrongdoing or illegality in his son Hunter's involvement with
the company that made him a director with a monthly payment of $50,000,
while as Vice President he was himself involved with Ukraine and made
its leaders fire the chief prosecutor investigating the company.
In
a related development, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent,
who testified before the impeachment investigators, said that he had
raised concerns about Hunter Biden's business deals in Ukraine but his
misgivings were brushed aside.
Mulvaney provided a smoking gun
for the allegations that Trump used aid to pressure Ukraine when he told
reporters that military aid was withheld to persuade Zelensky to
investigate if the Democratic National Committee's computers were hacked
from that country and not Russia.
Secret emails of the
Democratic Party leaders were released publicly by hackers, who the
Democrats say were Russians bent on sowing dissent within the party, but
some Republicans have claimed it was the Ukrainians who broke into the
party's computer system.
Mulvaney declared: "Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy."
But
later he backed off from his assertion before the media saying there
was no quid pro quo, that Trump hadn't asked him to withhold the
military aid and it was held back only because of concerns over
corruption.
The defiance of the diplomats began on October 11,
when former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, testified before
House investigators that Trump had her removed from the post as she did
not go along with Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who was trying
to get Ukrainian leaders to conduct investigations into the Bidens'
activities in Ukraine.
This week, Kent told investigators that he was ordered to defer to political appointees on Ukraine matters.
Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo's former adviser Michael McKinley told the
investigators that ambassadors were being made to "advance domestic
political objectives".
Ambassador to the European Union Gordon
Sondland testified that Giuliani tried "to involve Ukrainians, directly
or indirectly" in Trump's re-election bid.
Giuliani, who tried to
get the Ukrainians to reopen the investigations into the company Hunter
Biden was associated with, is facing problems of his own.
Four
of his associates, at least two of whom reportedly helped his Ukrainian
foray, have been arrested on charges of making illegal election
contributions.
A common tactic of US prosecutors is to bring
charges against associates of the person they are after and lure them
into incriminating that person in exchange for leniency.
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Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
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66.20
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64.50 |
UK Pound
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87.50
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84.65 |
Euro
|
78.25
|
75.65 |
Japanese
Yen |
58.85 |
56.85 |
As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
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Daily Poll |
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