By all available accounts, President Trump treated since-ousted Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch abysmally. Lev Parnas likely lied to Trump that Yovanovitch disliked the president and wouldn’t advance his administration’s interests because Parnas saw some financial opportunity in her exit.
Rather than simply fire Yovanovitch, a consummate career diplomat who served at the pleasure of the president, Trump then enlisted his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and son Don Jr. to orchestrate a prime-time smear campaign against her for months. Only after months of publicly humiliating her did Trump finally use his presidential power to fire her.
It was disrespectful. It was shameful. What it was not was a prelude to violence.
That’s what some have gleaned from an ABC report that an audiotape recorded at an April Trump Hotel dinner. It depicts Trump telling Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman, “Get rid of her!”
“Get her out tomorrow,” ABC claims Trump says on the tape. “I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”
It’s obviously highly unprofessional to try and outsource your executive authority to random career criminals because they’re buddies with Giuliani. What it is not is a thinly veiled order for said henchmen to inflict violence against Yovanovitch.
Apparently, Ilhan Omar didn’t get the memo.
Threats of persecution and violence is the fate of any intelligent/powerful women who stand up to Trump.
The similarity to the fate of women around the world standing up to dictators here is alarming. #LockHerUp#SendHerBack #TakeHerOut
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 24, 2020
The notion that Trump would order a violent attack against a subordinate is ludicrous enough, but even more so when you consider the timeline.
ABC reports that the conversation happened on April 30, 2018, six days after Trump ordered her recall from Ukraine. Yovanovitch returned to D.C. on April 25, one day later, and the recall went public on May 7. She was officially fired on May 20.
Would Trump have really ordered a physical attack against Yovanovitch after she was already recalled from the job and back on U.S. soil? Probably not, especially considering that Don Trump Jr. had been tweeting about firing Yovanovitch as early as March and that Giuliani had torched her on Fox News earlier in April.
No matter how low an opinion you think of Trump, the notion that he’d be evil enough to order violence against someone he could just fire (and dumb enough to do it after he already made her loathing of her public knowledge) is just idiotic.
