Susan Jones devoted a Nov. 13 CNSNews.com article to pushing a pro-Trump talking point as impeachment hearings were about to begin:
According to witnesses quoted in the Mueller report, even before he was elected president, Donald Trump was leery about the United States getting too involved with Ukraine.
During platform committee meetings in July 2016, before the Republican National Convention, a proposed amendment endorsing “lethal assistance” to Ukraine was watered down to read “appropriate assistance.”
According to the Mueller report, J.D. Gordon, a senior Trump campaign advisor on policy and national security, diluted the proposed amendment. Instead of supporting “lethal” assistance to Ukraine in response to Russian aggression, Gordon requested that the platform committee revise the proposed amendment to state that only “appropriate” assistance be provided to Ukraine.
Gordon said he sought the change because he believed the proposed “lethal” language was inconsistent with Trump’s position on Ukraine.
This talking point might have been more effective if CNS hadn’t undercut it the day before by touting Trump surrogates bragging about Trump giving that “lethal assistance” to Ukraine. Patrick Goodenough wrote in a Nov. 12 article:
The fact that President Trump – unlike his predecessor – sent lethal military aid to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression is “the real story that’s been lost in all this,” National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said Sunday, in reference to Democrats’ drive to impeach the president.
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” O’Brien recalled visiting Ukraine as an election monitor in 2014 and being asked by Ukrainians why “the arsenal of democracy” would not provide their country with military aid.
[…]O’Brien said “the Obama-Biden administration” had provided “no military aid” to Ukraine, but “when President Trump got into office, he sent military aid.”
“So I think what people ought to be focusing on is the president has been helping the Ukrainians defend themselves by sending them lethal – lethal military aid to stand up to the Russians,” he said. “That’s the real story that’s been lost in all this.”
At the center of the impeachment push are allegations that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, in an attempt to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.
“President Trump is the first president to send lethal military aid to Ukraine,” O’Brien reiterated. “I think it’s very important. And I think that’s something that’s been lost in – in all the hullabaloo about the – about the telephone call [between Trump and Zelensky on July 25].”
Jones did reference Goodenough’s article in the final paragraph of her article — even highlighting the O’Brien “hullabaloo” statement excerpted above — but she did not address the fact that his surrogates promoting the aid Trump gave to Ukraine undercuts her talking point about Trump being “skeptical” of foreign aid. And it doesn’t make for a suitable excuse for Trump putting a hold on that aid when it’s become increasingly clear that he did so over his scheme to force Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.