Trump Official Asked Brazil's President To "Do Us A Favor" And Help Re-Election Chances

Impeachment proceedings were undertaken against Donald Trump after it was alleged he sought information from the president of Ukraine that would help him win re-election.

While Trump denied the allegation (or claimed his actions were legal), he admitted the crime on live television once the impeachment process was rolling, requesting information again from Ukraine, and adding he would also accept information if it came from China.

Now we have reports a Trump administration official has pressured Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to lower ethanol tariffs in an effort to increase Trump's chances of re-election.

Proper journalistic practice may require using the word "allegedly" when discussing unproven actions, but considering our knowledge of Trump, and the fact that he has committed this exact crime at least twice before, can anyone doubt these latest "do us a favor" conversations occurred?

A president can be impeached multiple times, but I don't expect the Democrats to do anything about this charge, which is identical to the one that so upset them that they impeached him earlier this year. Consider all of Trump's illegal, immoral, and inhumane (and idiotic) actions during the pandemic, which is still raging out of control more than eight months after Trump received his first warning, consider all of it and realize the Democrats have never once publicly discussed impeaching him or taking steps to remove him from office. (And that's regarding his performance with the pandemic only. There's also, to mention only one other example, his extensive unconstitutional use of military forces to assault peaceful protesters.) Has even one Democrat in 2020 publicly called for Trump's resignation? Why not?

The Democrats' stance appears to be clear: Trump will be allowed to run amok and cause the deaths of however many more Americans he can manage to kill in the next five months (at a minimum), and commit scores of other crimes, until January 19, 2021, and then things will be okay because Trump will be gone.

That ignores several facts, two of which are: (1) Trump may win the election, which will (like all US elections in our lifetimes) be crooked to some degree; and (2) Trump can do an unimaginable amount of damage in five months. On March 3, 2020, there had been nine US deaths and Florida had three cases of COVID-19.

Perhaps Trump was right all along, referring to his impeachment as a "hoax". I've labelled it "political theatre", which may be a less crude term, but perhaps more euphemistic (and, therefore, actually worse description). But is it really any different?

Anya van Wagtendonk, Vox, August 1, 2020:

The Trump administration has been accused of attempting to pressure another foreign country into helping Trump's reelection prospects, according to a letter from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

That letter cites Brazilian news articles that report US Ambassador to Brazil Todd Chapman pressured members of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's administration to lower ethanol tariffs in order to support President Donald Trump’s reelection efforts.

In the letter, Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Eliot Engel demands Chapman explain an article in which the ambassador is said to have asked for the tariffs to be lowered as a "favor" from the Brazilian government to the Trump reelection campaign.

"Iowa is the largest ethanol producer in the United States…and could be a key player in Trump's election," an article in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reads, according to the letter. "Hence the importance – according to Chapman – for the Bolsonaro government to do the U.S. a favor."

Beyond the report in O Globo, the New York Times notes, another Brazilian outlet, Estadão, published a similar story based on its own reporting, with its journalists finding that Chapman had made the request, and was rebuffed by government officials.

Alceu Moreira, a Brazilian congressman, also told the Times that Chapman "had made repeated references to the electoral calendar during a recent meeting the two had about ethanol." ...

If the reports are accurate, the letter states, Chapman's actions could be in violation of the Hatch Act, which prevents federal employees from engaging in certain political activities, such as partisan campaigning for candidates. ...

The reports are also of concern because of how closely they echo the request that led to Trump's impeachment.

Last July, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to "do us a favor" during a phone call in which he asked the leader to look into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of then-candidate, now presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In that call, Trump appeared to condition military aid badly needed by Ukraine on Zelensky's willingness to search for information that might be used to discredit Biden. ...

This warning follows intelligence reports that find Russia has actively worked to disrupt November's elections — as well as the Democratic presidential primary. But politicians and experts have warned that the US is not as prepared as it ought to be to combat such interference, leaving it vulnerable to meddling attempts not just by adversaries, but by also by Americans who, as Engel writes, "should know better."