One thing that came through in many of the House Intelligence Committee’s interviews with Ukraine experts was the symbolic importance to President Zelensky of having an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump. It was widely understood that he would be strengthened both at home and in his upcoming negotiations with Vladimir Putin. The meeting with Putin occurred in Paris on Monday. Zelensky entered the summit without the benefit of an Oval Office meeting.
Not only that, Zelensky lacked anything resembling unified American support. The whole world now knows that President Trump does not like Ukraine and accuses them of trying to “take him down” in 2016. They know he sees the country as irredeemably corrupt and uniformly unsupportive of his political future. They know that Trump put Ukrainian military aid on hold and only released it reluctantly when he realized that he was about to face down a scandal that could (and will) cause his impeachment.
Meanwhile, some in the Republican Party have now embraced a debunked theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. They adopted this theory because it’s the only way to defend Trump’s demand that Ukraine blame themselves for the hacking of the Democrats if they wanted to receive a formal visit in the White House. For those who can’t quite embrace this level of craziness, they simply argue that Ukraine was almost as guilty of Russia because some of them objected publicly to Candidate Trump’s opinion that Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia.