Remember these quotes from a few months ago?

 “There was no quid pro quo, you’d have to have that if there was going to be anything wrong.” Senator Charles Grassley September 25.

When it was pointed out that in defense of Trump Mick Mulvaney had described a quid pro quo, he replied,

 “We do that all the time. I have news for everybody: Get over it.”

For those needing a memory jog these two defenses of Trump were related to the offer of a White House meeting with the new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump’s promise to stop blocking hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid if Ukraine pursued the investigation of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter and some speculations about the Democratic National Committee server having been used to influence the 2016 elections as opposed Russia and which is supposedly hidden somewhere in the Ukraine that he wanted.

This played a role in Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.

Trump did acknowledge that he held up the military aid, saying he wanted to encourage the country to tackle corruption in a broad sense, but in the summary of his July phone call to Zelensky, there is no mention of his having addressed that or made any mention of corruption, nor did he in the first call to Zelenskiy in April when he was first elected to the Ukraine presidency.

Coincidentally, when the quid pro quo was first mentioned at the end of last summer, Trump released the money on September 11.

Trump insisted that there was no quid pro quo, which is defined as something that is given or taken in return for something else, and he could be correct because obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority is called extortion.  

After he was acquitted by the Republican majority in the senate, Senator Susan Collins, in justifying her vote for acquittal in spite of previous comments, claimed,

“He was impeached. And there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.” 

When asked what he had learned from the impeachment, Trump said,

“That the Democrats are crooked. They’ve got a lot of crooked things going, that they’re vicious, that they shouldn’t have brought impeachment and that my poll numbers are 10 points higher because of fake news like NBC.”

So it is no surprise that, as Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time,” Trump is at it again, but this time domestically.

So what did Trump learn?

Because of COVID-19 and the quarantine to help reduce its spread with stores, and restaurants, except for essential ones, and entertainment and sports venues closed, people are not spending money, and that means sales taxes are not going into the coffers of the states that rely on them. These local taxes support the police and fire departments, as well as hospitals and other essential municipal and state services.

Since state money goes into the federal coffers, it would stand to reason that in these tough times some of that money would be used to help the states. After all, states are not amorphous entities, but the people who populate them.

In spite of this reality, this week Trump said that he could withhold federal aid from states that do not totally comply with Stephen Miller’s, excuse me, I meant the Trump administration’s, immigration policies. 

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At a White House meeting to discuss aid to businesses, he said,

“If it’s COVID-related, I guess we can talk about [aid], but we’d want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments.”

“It is one of the things we think about. If we are going to do something for states, they will want something having to do with sanctuary cities and other different points that we can discuss a little later on.”

You give me what I want, and I will give you what you need, or at least talk about doing that. So he is strong arming businesses to get what he wants so they can get what they need.

And, it must be noted, Trump did not say they would be paid for their cooperation by getting the aid, only that he might talk about and discuss it.

Quid pro Quo?

Extortion?

For those not sure, and for those who buy into the misrepresentations of what Sanctuary states and cities are, also referred to as Safe Communities, Sanctuary cities and states a have policies to refuse cooperation with the federal government’s immigration enforcement laws. Local money should go to local law enforcement not to an arm of the federal government. The feds should pay for that ICE agents who are federal not state or local, otherwise money to do federal work is taken away from what is needed for local work.

They do not have policies allowing undocumented immigrants to freely commit crimes and terrorize communities,

Trump doesn’t like this and, of course, claims that they shield migrant criminals from prosecution and deportation. 

What makes Massachusetts a ”Sanctuary State” is a ruling on the Lunn v. Commonwealth case where the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that state law “provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody.”

Local Law enforcement does not look for undocumented people, but if they find during an arrest for violating local law that the person is undocumented, ICE is notified to come get them, but they need to do so within a reasonable set time or the person is treated like any person according to law, If they meet bail, they are released, and if the person is found not guilty of the alleged crime in a court of law, they are released accordingly.

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington are also “Sanctuary States”, but within the rest of the states, there may be cities and towns that are Sanctuary Cities on their own within those states that don’t have this policy.

Of these states, all but Oregon pay more into the federal coffers annually than they get back which means they basically support those states that get more money from the federal government than they pay in, and all except for Vermont and Massachusetts have Democratic governors. In the case of Massachusetts, although he is a Republican, the governor is not a Trump fan, its state legislature is heavily Democrat, and in the 2016 presidential election the people voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, Trump only getting 33.5% of the overall votes,  as did the people of Vermont where he got only 32.6%.

So while both Democratic and Republican governors have called for federal aid to help states cover massive budget shortfalls because of the corona virus crisis, Trump is willing to play petty politics and use a quid pro quo, or extortion if you prefer, to get what he wants and to punish those he sees as political enemies. 

Adam Schiff was correct when, in a back handed agreement with Susan Collins, he admitted Trump had, indeed, learned something from this impeachment. 

“it’s very clear the president has learned nothing except that he can get away with anything.”