Today's Ukraine news, with all its wild characters, crooks, and conspiracies — just to narrow it down to the Democrats — is reminiscent to me of the 1957 Apalachin meeting, the secret, grand conference of the American mafia, which the local police raided and exposed, all to the great discomfiture of the country's establishment.

Despite furious resistance from their media allies, our new mafia, the Deep State, is being exposed as well, thanks to the ongoing mess in Ukraine.  Recall, it was mostly with the help of the Obama State Department and various Soros-backed NGOs that the old Putin-aligned leader in Kiev was kicked out in 2014 and the subsequent regime was pretty much put at the beck and call of D.C. Democrats — getting Hunter Biden his dough, helping out Fusion GPS, etc.  They even had a scheme for international lefties to take over Eastern Orthodox churches, starting with the one in Ukraine.

Our old ambassador, Marie Yovanovich, was very much part of this Obama/Soros axis.  That's why the new Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelensky, so bluntly told President Trump, "Her attitude toward me was far from the best as she admired the previous president and she was on his side.  She would not accept me as a new president well enough."

The reason our Deep State and its allies do not like Zelensky and backed the corruption-plagued Poroshenko is that they know that Zelensky, while no Russian stooge, wants to make peace with Putin.  Since his election, the shooting has abated in the Donbas, and it was reported just recently that the two sides may be close to a real peace settlement.  This is something Trump has long encouraged but is what the Deep State hates, because it would lead to most of the current sanctions on Russia being lifted.

What complicates matters for Trump is the question of arms assistance to Ukraine.  Far from having anything to do with pressuring Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, the president may have been "slow-walking" arms deliveries to Ukraine to encourage Putin to make a peace deal.  Almost two years ago, we already had stories of Trump wanting to downplay Ukraine assistance so as to not aggravate Putin.

If that's really the reason, we can understand how difficult the media case is going to be.  Trump can hardly say, "I didn't hold up weapons in order to get info on the Democrats; I did it to facilitate a peace treaty with Putin."  If you think Trump's enemies are hysterical now, the calls of "Putin's spy and traitor" would become deafening.

That's too bad, and the double standard under which Trump suffers is particularly obvious.  We trust every other president to make foreign policy deals — even Obama, with his noxious secret payoff deal to Iran — in the hopes they might know something we don't, but not Trump.  In Ukraine, Trump may have just been following a course of action in agreement with what the new president there, and the vast majority of Ukraine voters, wants.  Make a deal with Putin, even if we must let him save face as well.

This is too much for Official Washington, the Deep State, and all its media allies.  They want to bravely fight the Donbas War to the last dead Ukrainian, or Donald Trump's impeachment, whichever gets the best ratings.    

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, Ky.