- President Donald Trump privately did not believe a controversial phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was cause for concern, and led a group of people that included Republican lawmakers to joke in a meeting that it was “one of his better” calls with a foreign leader, according to a Washington Post report.
- Trump recounted to reporters a conversation he had with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina about the diplomatic call, who he claimed to have said, “‘I can’t believe it. I never knew you could be this, really, nice to a person.”
- “‘I didn’t think you had that in you to be so nice,'” Graham said, according to Trump.
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President Donald Trump privately did not believe a controversial phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was cause for concern, and led a group of people that included Republican lawmakers to joke in a meeting that it was “one of his better” calls with a foreign leader, according to a Washington Post report Wednesday.
Trump, who was in New York with foreign leaders for a three-day United Nations meeting, reportedly called into a meeting with aides and Republican lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday morning. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the imminent release of a summarized transcript of a phone call between Trump and President Zelensky — a topic which has engulfed the White House in controversy and emboldened Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry.
Trump was said to have been in a relatively good mood, according to The Post, but was also on edge about some parts of summary. His aides and senior officials also appeared to be divided on the public release of the summary. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were hesitant about releasing the private conversation; whereas Attorney General William Barr and Trump’s attorneys advocated for him to release it, The Post reported.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Trump said he “hated” to release the memo due to national security concerns, but added that he was forced to because “folks were saying such lies, such horrible things about a call that was so innocent and so nice.”
Trump recounted to reporters a conversation he had with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina about the diplomatic call, who he claimed to have said, ‘I can’t believe it. I never knew you could be this, really, nice to a person.'”
“‘I didn’t think you had that in you to be so nice,'” Graham said, according to Trump.
In the publicly released summary of the Trump-Zelensky phone call in July, Trump was said to have asked the Ukrainian president for a “favor” in investigating a conspiracy theory about the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US presidential election. Trump had also requested Zelensky to “look into” unproven allegations of misconduct from former Vice President and 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, according to the summary.
The existence of the call was brought to light after a whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official filed in August. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill on Thursday, and the anonymous whistleblower has also indicated that they want to testify about the potential misconduct, according to information obtained by CNN.
Trump denied there was a “quid pro quo” arrangement during the call with President Zelensky, who met the US president in New York on Wednesday. Zelensky publicly echoed Trump’s description of a cordial call, and he said he did not want to be involved in the “democratic, open elections of USA.”
Trump’s re-election campaign said it believes the ongoing scandal will inevitably fizzle and hurt Democrats ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.
“Democrats can’t beat President Trump on his policies or his stellar record of accomplishment, so they’re trying to turn a Joe Biden scandal into a Trump problem,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The misguided Democrat impeachment strategy is meant to appease their rabid, extreme, leftist base, but will only serve to embolden and energize President Trump’s supporters and create a landslide victory for the President,” he added.
