Donald Trump and his good buddies seem to be having a really hard time figuring out how to address the question of whether or not there was a quid pro quo in the Ukraine situation. I mean, its kind of amusing to watch them bouncing around trying to figure how to talk about it.

“There was no quid pro quo!“

Trump has said it, Giuliani has said it, Mulvaney, Sondland, Pence. They’re all saying it.

Until they get confused and say something entirely different. Something along the lines of “Sure we refused to give Ukraine any money until they did what we wanted. We do that all the time!”

But “There was no quid pro quo!”

The problem, of course, is that the phrase ‘quid pro quo’ means “The giving of one valuable thing for another.”

Why are the Trumpsters having such trouble with this phrase?

I have a thought about that.

I think it goes something like this:

There’s Donald, seated behind the “resolute desk”, seething and stewing about Hillary’s emails and Pelosi’s walkout. He grinds his teeth, glances up at the TV, then hits the call button on his desk.

“Bring me my quid pro quo!”, he snarls.

“Sir?” the befuddled secretary asks.

“My quid pro quo! Bring it to me! I’m pretty sure it’s in my sock drawer.”

“But…..”

“Just do it!”

A hasty conversation ensues between the frantic secretary and the Acting Chief of Staff. Mulvaney enters the Oval.

“Mr. President,” he begins.

“I want my quid pro quo. I heard that many past Presidents have refused to use theirs. I heard that some people say you can’t use it. But I’m gonna use mine!! I want my quid pro quo. I’m gonna use that thing so much, like the world has never seen! It’s made gold, right?”

“Ah….well, see, it isn’t actually an object, sir. A quid pro quo is a Latin phrase. I think it means something about withholding food from foreign guests.”

“That’s it! We’ll quid pro quo the shit out of them!!! We invite Shifty Schiff and Screamin’ Nancy over for dinner, and then……bam!!! We refuse to give them cake!!!”

“Sir, I don’t…….”

“We’ll see who wins the quid pro quo then, won’t we?”

He gleefully rubs his hands together.

Mulvaney walks out, scratching his head and muttering, “no, it means foreign guests……”

An hour later, Rudy Giuliani appears on CNN, his beady little eyes darting left and right as he waits for Chris Cuomo to introduce him.

When Cuomo asks about the quid pro quo, Giuliani starts to spit out words as fast as he can think of them.

“Here’s the thing, here’s the thing, why aren’t we looking into the DNC and what they did and Joe Biden and Hunter, here’s the thing, there was no quid pro quo! There was golf and there was talking about it, great talking, talking and it was on the phone, and yes, why aren’t we investigating Crooked Hillary because she probably asked the Ukrainians to hide her own quid pro quo, who by the way, was here illegally while golfing with Bill Clinton and anyway, everyone had cake!”

Cuomo looks immediately outraged and begins to shout over Giuliani which makes the little lawyer twitch and spit.

It made the rest of us turn off the set and pour a drink.

I wish this story seemed a little more farfetched.