2020 Vision Friday: Will Trump's $10 million ad onslaught bury Biden?

Welcome to 2020 Vision, the Yahoo News column covering the presidential race with one key takeaway every weekday and a wrap-up each weekend. Reminder: There are 122 days until the Iowa caucuses and 396 days until the 2020 election

It’s clear, at this point, that President Trump should be very worried about Ukraine, with a flurry of damning details emerging Thursday: a report in the Wall Street Journal that he ordered the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after months of complaints from his allies that she was obstructing efforts to investigate Joe Biden; a report in the New York Times that two of Trump’s top envoys to Ukraine drafted a statement for the country's new president in August that would have committed Ukraine to pursuing such investigations; and a trove of newly released, smoking-gun-like text messages showing that U.S. ambassadors pushed President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden as a condition for a White House visit.

So, yes, Trump should be worried. But how worried should Joe Biden be?

For the record, before we proceed: As the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine, Biden pushed for the removal of a prosecutor who was failing to pursue corruption and who both the administration and the international community wanted out. The prosecutor was not investigating Biden’s son Hunter, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and Biden was not freelancing for personal reasons. In fact, Ukrainian officials have said the Burisma probe was focused on the years 2010 to 2012, before Hunter Biden joined the board. Removing the prosecutor actually made it more likely — not less — that corruption would be investigated, including any involving Burisma. End of story.

The problem for Biden is that while he didn’t do anything wrong, Trump and his allies have spent the past 10 days throwing up smoke and saying he did — including publicly calling on China to look into the Bidens. And now they’re putting a ton of money behind their allegations.

Earlier this week, the Trump campaign announced a $10 million national TV buy centered on impeachment and Ukraine; yesterday, the campaign revealed that $1 million of that sum will be spent on anti-Biden commercials in the key early primary states of Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada. Called “Biden corruption,” the ad in question is so misleading that CNN has already refused to air it.