Double standards, anyone? [UPDATED]

From today’s Washington Post:

Trump. . .falsely accused Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) of threatening to cut financial assistance to Ukraine over reports that officials impeded cooperation with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Trump cited a letter the senators sent to Ukraine’s top prosecutor in May 2018, but at no point in the correspondence did they threaten defunding.

Okay. But at no point in President Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s president (as reflected in the released “transcript”) did he threaten Ukraine with defunding or any other adverse consequence.

Like other Democratic partisans, the Post is quick to read into Trump’s utterances things that don’t appear on their face. When it comes to Democrats, its reporters become very literal.

Funny how that works.

UPDATE: As Marc Thiessen has explained, the letter from the Democratic Senators (Menendez, Durbin, Leahy, and Murphy) described their support for Ukraine and then expressed disappointment that “some in Kyiv” are standing in the way of investigations supposedly critical to Robert Mueller’s investigation. Then came the demand that the Ukraine prosecutor “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”

The Washington Post finds no threat here. It should follow that Trump made no threat, and that there was no quid pro quo, when he talked about U.S. support for Ukraine, and then said it would be great if Ukraine cooperated with the investigative work of Rudy Giuliani and the U.S. Attorney General.

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