In his rally speech in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday, former president Donald Trump accused Democrats of telling lies about him. \u201cDisinformation and misinformation, they\u2019re masters at it,\u201d he declared. \u201cThey lie, they cheat. These people, they lie, they cheat.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then recounted the circumstances of his first impeachment with what can only be described as misinformation.<\/p>\n
Some of Trump\u2019s language echoes claims he made when he was president. But more than four years have passed, and memories have faded. Here\u2019s a refresher.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about this guy, he may end up being a United States Senator, right? Shifty Adam Schiff. Think of it. Can you believe it? He may end up being a senator. This is one of the most dishonest human beings. He made up my conversation that I had with the president of Ukraine. He made up the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Trump on Saturday<\/p>\n
Trump frequently makes up conversations and his own set of facts. But if someone else makes a mistake, he never lets go. As president, he attacked Rep. Schiff (D-Calif.) 90 times for supposedly making up a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The conversation \u2014 which occurred in a not-made-up phone call on July 25, 2019 \u2014 was at the center of Trump\u2019s impeachment.<\/p>\n
Trump later in his rally speech suggested he had hoodwinked Schiff by releasing \u201ca tape\u201d of his conversation and exposing Schiff\u2019s dishonesty. But Trump had it backward. The White House on Sept. 25, 2019, released a rough transcript, cobbled together from notes of participants, and then Schiff spoke about it at a congressional hearing a day later.<\/p>\n
Schiff\u2019s error was that he summarized the transcript for dramatic effect, rather than letting it speak for itself. Schiff told the hearing\u2019s audience that \u201cthis is the essence of what the president communicates\u201d and that he would describe \u201cin sum and character, what the president was trying to communicate.\u201d That was a signal to listeners that he was not quoting verbatim from the rough transcription. Nevertheless, Schiff included some eyebrow-raising embellishments.<\/p>\n
\u201cZelensky begins by ingratiating himself, and he tries to enlist the support of the president,\u201d Schiff said. \u201cHe expresses his interest in meeting with the president, and says his country wants to acquire more weapons from us to defend itself. And what is the president\u2019s response? Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most dramatically, Schiff put these words in Trump\u2019s mouth: \u201cI hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I\u2019m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent. Understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump was more subtle than that, according to the transcript. Trump asked for an investigation of Joe Biden, his potential 2020 rival, and suggested that without such a probe, Zelensky would not receive needed weapons. Zelensky also wanted a firm date for a White House meeting, which Trump dangled but did not deliver.<\/p>\n
No matter how often Trump spins this as a \u201cperfect\u201d call, this was not a typical presidential conversation with a foreign leader. White House aides who listened to the call at the time later told congressional investigators that Trump\u2019s language calling for a probe of his election opponent was \u201cwrong\u201d and \u201cunusual and inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, there were seven times quid pro quo. Remember that? Quid pro quo seven times. Now, think of it. That means you\u2019ve threatened somebody seven times. I want money, I want this. Then you say it again, I want money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schiff didn\u2019t use the phrase quid pro quo in the hearing. The rough transcript shows that Joe Biden or his son Hunter was mentioned three times, but there are eight distinct Trump requests for a favor or assistance with an investigation. Trump sometimes has claimed that the whistleblower who reported the call to Congress said \u201cquid pro quo\u201d eight times, but the whistleblower report never used the phrase either.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I let them go more and more. The stories got wilder and wilder. Then we released the tape.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is simply fiction. We\u2019d wonder if Trump\u2019s memory is fading, but in 2019 and 2020 he\u2019d also sometimes suggest he\u2019d played a trick on Democrats. As noted, Schiff spoke at a congressional hearing a day after the release of the transcript \u2014 which the Trump White House acknowledged was not verbatim. Republicans at the hearing were able to call out Schiff\u2019s embellishments precisely because they had the recorded words in front of them, not because the Democrats had been speculating, for their own advantage, about something that had yet to be released.<\/p>\n
\u201cNancy Pelosi, who\u2019s a major sleaze, by the way, a major sleaze, Nancy Pelosi, she said to her people, \u2018What the hell did you get me into? You hear this call? He didn\u2019t do any of this stuff.\u2019 You know what they said? \u2018Let\u2019s just pretend he did and keep going forward.\u2019 That\u2019s how that whole thing came. So she knew it was false because she heard it. But I will tell you this, after they made up the story and then after that they heard the tape, they died. They didn\u2019t know that phone call was taped. That was one good case of a phone call being taped. They were taped and they got caught.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Trump knocks Schiff for putting words into his mouth, he then puts fake words in the mouth of then-House Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.). In the 12 times he made this claim as president, Trump never offered evidence for his supposed knowledge of Pelosi\u2019s closed-door conversations. Pelosi\u2019s aides insisted Trump\u2019s account is fiction.<\/p>\n
Indeed, when the rough transcript was released, Pelosi\u2019s assessment was tough: \u201cThe release of the notes of the call by the White House confirms that the President engaged in behavior that undermines the integrity of our elections, the dignity of the office he holds and our national security. The President has tried to make lawlessness a virtue in America and now is exporting it abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump would routinely earn Four Pinocchios for his recounting of the Ukraine saga. He does so yet again. In his speech over the weekend, he exaggerated what Schiff said and falsely claimed he released a tape (not a transcript) after Schiff spoke. That\u2019s both wrong and backward. He then invents comments by Pelosi that are simply not credible.<\/p>\n
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In his rally speech in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday, former president Donald Trump accused Democrats of telling lies about him. \u201cDisinformation and misinformation, they\u2019re masters at it,\u201d he declared. \u201cThey lie, they cheat. These people, they lie, they cheat.\u201d He then recounted the circumstances of his first impeachment with what can only be described as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}