The Press Box - Emergency Trump-Ukraine and Impeachment | The Press Box

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker sit down for an emergency podcast to discuss the latest developments with the House of Representatives opening an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump and the summary of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here with a special emergency edition of the press box. And David, at this point, would it be easier for listeners if we just specify the Trump-related episodes that are not emergencies? Is that what we should do? No, can we just identify every episode by threat level? Like, this is merely a yellow episode, not an orange episode. Yeah, yellow is like two sports writers yelling at each other. that and then, you know, the Trump ones are dark red. This morning definitely qualifies for emergency status because not only do we have the news

that the House of Representatives is opening an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, but a summary of a July 25th Trump phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, the phone call which has been at the center of this scandal. And I guess one pedantic thing before we start, which is now all over Twitter, is that this is not exactly a transcript of this phone call. It's kind of a summary thing. There are, did you see, David, some very intriguing ellipses that appear

just as soon as Trump starts talking about the interesting stuff with Biden? Yeah. I don't know what to make of that, but I think, you know, the best way to treat this is there was really no reason for the administration to release this at all, and there's especially no reason

for the administration to release as clean and incriminating a transcript as possible. So I suggest we just take this for what it is and, you know, we might learn more about this call later and more stuff too. But let's get right to the meat of it. The call from July 25th begins with a long string of pleasantries between the two leaders. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine president, tells Trump,

Ukraine wants to buy more javelin anti-tank missiles from the United States. Then Trump says, I would like you to do us a favor, though. Trump mumbles something about an email server, more on that in a second. And then the real meat of it. After talking about the firing of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor during the Obama administration, Trump says there's a lot of talk about Biden's son that Biden stopped the prosecution. And a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the attorney general, that is Trump's attorney general,

William Barr, would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it, dot, dot, dot, dot, it sounds horrible to me. slightly later, Trump says, I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call, and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call, and we will get to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out. And slightly later than that, Trump says, I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. So there it is. The President of the United States urging the president of another country to investigate his political opponent. In its simplest terms, that's what this is.

about and David how is that not incredibly damning? Well, I mean, the short answer is it is incredibly damning. I think that the I mean, the more interesting question is whether or not the Trump and the Trump administration know that it's

damning or whether, you know, I mean, whether they're oblivious to the fact that it's damning or whether they know that it's damning and are making this deliberate play that if we, it's sort of like the Trump Jr., the Donald Jr. Trump Tower meeting. emails or they just released the files

or kind of fessed up to everything but then said and nothing that we did was wrong and just presumed that the majority of their voters would take them at their word. If you release the transcript and you say that we did nothing wrong then I think there's that sort of implication

that you're operating above board. So I guess that my question is are they oblivious to it or is this kind of a deliberate play despite the fact that they know that they're kind of catching themselves. There's this tweet from Robert Cost of the Washington Post today where he says,

several Senate Republicans I've spoken with in the last hour are stunned that the White House is releasing this transcript. They do not think it helps the president's cause. And I guess my only theory of the case here is that they have sort of internalized, you know, what the media has internalized, which is Trump benefits from all of us sort of. of getting way too excited about all these scandals. We expect Trump to be the Babe Ruth of corruption, and it turns out he's merely the Bryce Harper of corruption. You know, that's what happened with Russia, right?

Trump was not literally proven to be the Manchurian candidate with Putin whispering in his ear, so all the despicable bad stuff was just kind of swept aside. And I guess that's what they were thinking here, right? It's like, they were sort of thinking, like, look, if this summary comes out, and I am not saying explicitly, I am pulling USA to Ukraine away unless you investigate Biden. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? I am talking about quid pro quo, Mr. Zelensky. Do you hear me? If those sentences were not literally in the summary, that everything was going to be fine, I guess. That's the problem. I mean, that is the problem we keep coming back to on with this president

that like if you're actually kind of getting down to the to the details. you know, I don't think that the vast majority of people, even senators, Congress people, I think everybody finds it a little bit difficult to incriminate an addled old man like Donald Trump for talking about Bill Barr and Giuliani, throwing out those names when those names are inappropriate to throw out in that context, right? I mean, like, despite the illegality of that, that just, but that seems like, That seems for some reason our expectations have been lowered to the point by everything that's come before or by Trump himself for that to sort of feel like thin gruel, even though it's one of the most kind of shocking things any previous president could have done. Yeah. So let's, I think, and I do want to talk about Trump's motives in this, but I don't want us to race past just what is in this today.

Because it almost, it almost get too much into game. theory and you just forget what we've just seen. The first part, like I've said, is one, it is incredibly damning and incredibly wrong for the American president to ask another world leader to investigate his political opponent. Full stop, the end. It is mind blowing to also see the president dragging in his own attorney general, not to mention his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. We already knew the second part because Giuliani had sort of blurted it out all week.

but as the New York Times says of the William Barr's appearance in this, Mr. Trump's suggestion that American law enforcement be directly involved and in contact with Ukraine's government marks the first evidence that the president personally sought to harness the power of the United States government to further a politically motivated investigation. That's big news too. Really big news. Notice I haven't even said the words quid pro quo yet except comically. This stuff is the stuff that is just ironclad, it's in the documents. And again, I don't know about you, but just after, you know, a couple of days of kind of speculating, oh, they're in this whistleblower complaint that nobody's seen. Just seeing that was really, really amazing and really, really striking. Well, and it happened quick. I mean, I think the big difference between what happened, you know, with the Russian investigation in this is that it kind of went from whispered rumor to transcript in relatively short order.

So if you're of an open mind enough to be compelled by this, then what we've seen is really compelling. It's really damning. The constant invocation, like you just said, of Barr and of Giuliani, like two names, you know, from the entire Rolodex, the two names that Trump should not be uttering on this phone call, at least in the context at which he did, it's pretty wild.

and you know the quid pro quo obviously like you said before it's not there it's not there spelled out in some like hit you over the head with it sort of fashion but you know that's not for lack of swinging for the head

I mean they they cut off they cut off funding days before right I mean there's a reason why they're having this conversation at this time and and and I mean the fact I mean, the fact that, you know, these two politicians were canny enough not to say that out loud on a recorded phone call with many other people in the room, I don't think should be too shocking. No. And I hate to almost even bring that up because, you know, if you listen to Republicans today, they're saying, look, there's no quid pro quo. You can't, you don't see it.

There obviously is quid pro quo, first of all. If you just read that whole 2,000 word document, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's. pretty obvious the flow of events. I want this from you. Oh, well, I need a favor. Here are explicitly the favors I would like. That is quid pro quo in any universe. But again, I almost think you don't even need that. And you can just go with what you got.

But I agree with you. It's spelled out and they're having that conversation for a reason. Yeah. Someone with that level of power, I mean, that amount of power disparity between the two heads of state asking for a favor, I think is kind of almost. just explicitly problematic. But at least in the turn, at least using the language that he did,

I don't know. I mean, it just seems, it just seems really extreme. I, you know, I know you wanted to get away from game theory, but I do think that there's a degree, I just want to mention, I do think there's a,

you know, someone said, I think it was Max Boot in the Washington Post today, who said, at least Richard Nixon had the, you know, was smart enough to try to keep his, transcripts away from

the Congress or whatever but I do think there's a degree to which like it's easy one can imagine that like trying to keep these things secret for any longer than they did would have been self-incriminating more so than just

I mean it would have seemed more incriminating than the release of the transcripts and also we don't have what the whistleblower complaint which is really weird because one presumes that or or it One could assume that we have a lot of the information that the whistleblower would have put in the complaint by seeing this transcript. And that is exactly the angle that a lot of the voices on Fox News were going down, we're using today.

Brent Bear, of all people, were saying, well, listen, now we know more than the whistleblower did. I mean, that has to be said, you know, said that that was repeated amongst, I mean, and that was the rest of Fox, and I will say I only watched it for about half an hour was just sort of like gaffaing about I hope we don't need another special counsel and then concern trolling about like why would the Democrats go down this politically risky road speaking of impeachment

but I guess what's insignificant is they weren't cutting away to a dog show or your other random United Nations footage I mean this was this is a real story and and you can see from from I mean just like last when we talked about this earlier this week Trump's reaction I think to all this stuff has been has been pretty telling he he's he can he's gonna keep fighting I mean but this is I think he knows the degree to which he stepped in it this is all political

gamesmanship at this point I feel like well it was it was it was so interesting that they you know first Giuliani you know confirmed it on with Chris Cuomo in that Jack Nicholson in a few good men moment and then Trump kind of came out and said yeah Yeah, I talked to him about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and corruption, you know, sitting there standing on the White House law and talking to journalists. So it was sort of amazing like, why aren't you just stretching this out? What possible motive do you have to just come out with this? And then this transcript. And I really, again, I really think they thought because they thought they could squeeze by on a very literal reading of quid pro quo and be fine with it.

I mean, Trump's tweet this morning, will the Democrats apologize? after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian president. They should a perfect call. Got them by surprise. Not so much. And you mentioned Fox News. I guess I was pretty amazed at how easily and quickly the mainstream media, who often is really,

really cautious about things like this, right? And can get into the semantic weeds as well as anybody. How quickly they were, John Dickerson of CBS News, who will never be mistaken. mistaken for Virgil Texas said this on Twitter today. Am I reading this right? The president says the U.S. has done a lot for Ukraine, then says the relationship has not been reciprocal, and then asked the Ukrainian president to do a number of things, all of them politically related.

That's it. It's like, you know, people got to the nub of it pretty quickly. And, you know, there wasn't, again, I was watching a little bit of ABC, watching a couple of other things. there wasn't even, you know, kind of the straight-laced reporter guy going, well, technically, you know, George, it wasn't, he didn't exactly say this. Everybody kind of went with the common sense interpretation of what we read, which is, I guess, a good thing. I guess I was surprised by it, though, a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I think that this is a, it's just a very plain instance of corruption, right? I mean, it's like it would have been, it would have been real, it would have been a no, it would have been, it would have been the least difficult statement any Republican senator could have made.

If Lindsey Graham had come out a week ago and said, well, as long as he doesn't specifically ask for a favor to look after the Biden fan, you know, to investigate the Biden family to the Ukrainian president on the phone call, then it'll be okay. But if he does, that's a, if he had said those words, nobody would have been just like. like, man, why is he going after President Trump? You know, like, what does he know that we don't know? No, that's, it would have been like a real, that's like so obvious, right? That's a line that that's a line that we shouldn't be crossing. Yeah, that would have been seemingly him setting the lowest standard for Trump to climb over. But I'm guessing he didn't say that because nobody exactly believed that Trump didn't do it.

Well, and also, I think that's, I mean, that's the argument for why for for why you release the transcripts, or why you kind of err on the side of disclosure because you could, you can institutionally deny something, but that doesn't mean that the president's actually going to deny it when, when pressed by a reporter, right? So, I mean, so disclosure. So, so in some sense, Trump's own, uh, inability to follow a script sort of gives us a, or lends itself to a greater transparency than, then maybe would be anybody's first instinct. I think your, your point you made just 10 seconds ago, that was exactly right. It's like, what's what's stunning about today what makes today remarkable is oh that's what corruption looks

like that's what it looks like in its simplest terms this is not a murky you know close reading of a transcript this is not some battle over documents and we're never going to know the truth and trump's going to stonewall robert muller it's just like the white house released a document we read it and we were like oh that's corruption that's it We got it. Scoreboard. The game's over. Now, maybe the presidency's not over, but on this matter, he did what people thought he did.

It's funny that you mentioned the scoreboard, though. And I mean, I just mentioned Lindsey Graham. I believe that he's out there today trying to shift blame to the Biden back to the Biden family. I can't believe that. I cannot believe that. But the entire Biden's part. of the formula is a scoreboard issue, right? I mean, it starts off as near as I can tell with Trump, or Giuliani, you know, with Trump's blessing or encouragement, trying to

get Ukraine to investigate links, I mean, how leaks about Manafort came out of Ukraine and how, and whether the Hillary Clinton's, I guess, not campaign, but Hillary Clinton, her supporters sort of encouraged that, so there was corruption there. This led to this weird, not weird. I mean, it's actually very reasonable to look at the Biden family and Hunter Biden's work for, I believe, an oil company over there. And, and, and, but, but it's, it's all, it's all trying to sort of like paint his, for Trump trying to paint his political enemies with the same, um, kind of glaze of corruption that he's been tarred with, right? I mean, and so it's, it is a very scoreboard driven,

um, issue right from the start. Of course, none of that necessitates corruption or leads directly to it. Uh, that's, that, that's a, that, that was of Trump's own, own, own advice, I guess. It's going to be funny if all this effort, all this high-level diplomatic effort by the president himself, right, not by the White House plumbers, but by the president himself, was expended on a candidate who was already self-destructed. Joe Biden, who without any help from Trump, was delivering terrible debate performances, was plunging in the polls, is now regarded, no matter what anybody, you know, I think by, by elite media everywhere as someone who is somewhat unlikely or less likely to win the nomination than Elizabeth Warren.

That all that was expended on Joe Biden. You know, it may not be exactly like Nixon targeting George McGovern when he was going to beat him anyway in almost every state. But it's just a weird. It's wild. And I think an interesting piece of this that will be reported later is why Biden in particular scared themselves. much. You know, was it, was it just that they knew this story and they thought, oh, we can pounce on it in Ukraine is a place where we can get favors? Was it, you know, Joey from Scranton that scared them with the Midwest and with their people? I don't know. But if, you know, if Biden,

you know, again, implodes on his own without any help doesn't win the nomination anyway. and then Trump is carrying around this thing that leads to impeachment proceedings and or worse, it's just going to be, that is going to look back. We're going to look back and say, what a, what a choice that was of all the ways to be corrupt. You did it that way. I think that's right. I mean, part, I was toying with the idea that it's, you know, his fixation, Trump's fixation on Obama and the Obama legacy has led him to be fixated on Joe Biden. And maybe the idea that if he's bookended by Obama and Biden, then that sort of erases his, his presidency sort of in a more significant way, but I don't think it's that deep necessarily, right?

I mean, I think that probably one of the Scranton, I mean, I think that there's a lot of, there's a lot of more obvious explanations for it too. But it is interesting because, yeah, because of, you know, Biden's place right now in the campaign, obviously that wasn't the place where he was a month ago or even a week ago. But it is interesting. I should say, too, though, Like, we have not discussed Hunter Biden and the problems he presents his father's campaign on this podcast. But, like, this has been, you know, the New Yorker wrote about it this summer. Yes. At great length, this was that the New York Times has been touching, I've been writing about this subject in significant detail for years.

And it also should be said separately that everything about this story except for the specific transcript of the call seems to have been written about in the New York Times four or five months ago. So, I mean, it's interesting how much this has come out. We can come back to that. But I will say that the fact that all of this stuff was sitting, all this baggage was sitting there waiting to be exploited by Donald Trump or whoever else for if Joe Biden were to win the nomination is really disappointing for Joe Biden. Because there was not some national call for Joe Biden to run for the presidency this time. He came out as a frontrunner because of his name recognition. But, like, you know, the fact that he just walked. into the primary knowing that this shit was there to be exploited and to very conceivably lose

him the general election if he were there is really disappointing. I mean, just really, it's not like, like, it's just, it's an unforced error, you know, and I, and I, and I don't, it just makes me, yeah, disappointed is all. It's, it's very Bidenesque, because how many times have you heard Joe Biden apologize for something or, you know, do anything but bluster his way through everything, right? Yeah. And by the way, Biden is probably legitimately convinced that nothing improper happened there. And that, you know, his son has, his son has a lot of personal failings, right? Which are way beyond what happened in Ukraine and what happened with his prosecutor and all that stuff.

And Joe Biden probably believes rightly that what his son did shouldn't prevent him from being president. No more than what Trump's kids are doing should prevent Trump from being president. you know and and unlike in their case it's not even directly connected to Joe Biden right the the Trump the Trump kids are playing with trademarks and talking to the Russians and all this stuff so yeah but Joe I mean but Joe Biden I mean the overlap between the Bidens when when Joe was negotiating with the with the president of Ukraine during Obama's presidency I mean it doesn't matter if he helped his son materially but the perception is going to be there and like I've said over and over again I think I said the last podcast but I feel like I've said innumerable times since

the details of the Biden family story in the in Ukraine it hardly matters who's right or wrong it's really hard to write the the the non-incriminating version of the sentence that explains what happened with Hunter Biden in Ukraine and and his in his boardship in whatever his position on the board in Ukraine sounds damning to 99% of the people who are going to read it right it's just not it it's not some it it's a difficult story it's a twist too hard you know and and and Joe just like allowed that to be a campaign issue because by running, I mean, I'm not saying you could have avoided it some more artful way, but, you know, it didn't have to be. I'll put on our to do list to do a Hunter Biden segment, which I think is good.

And then also one about how this, how Ukraine and Biden was covered before we got into the impeachment portion of the story. Sure. All right, David, before we move on, let's take a quick break to talk about what's new from Stitcher, Lost at the Smithsonian, a pop culture history podcast exploring the little known stories behind iconic artifacts from the National Museum of American History. Follow host Asif Monvi, who you know from The Daily Show, inside the National Museum of American History, as he shares smart and fascinating insights into cultural items like

Fonzie's leather jacket and Dorothy's ruby slippers, which I want to know about because I love the Wizard of Oz. Along with the National Museum of American History, curators and celebs, Asif traces just how these special objects came to define our culture. Listen and subscribe to Lost at the Smithsonian right now in Stitcher Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast app that's Lost at the Smithsonian. Check it out today. A couple notes. Do David today from Capitol Hill. And the reaction, the reaction among Democrats is pretty much what you think. Among Republicans, I know you'll find it surprising that Mitt Romney finds this whole thing to be deeply troubling. So that was just kind of outside the box. GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia says, I don't think the transcript rises to the level of an impeachable offense at all. I was expecting much more from the pre-reports.

It sounded like the president, this department of low bars. It sounded like Trump. Yes, it did. Maybe not in a good way. The other thing here I want to do is spin it forward a little bit because now, you know, one is that by the way, how amazing is it that by the way, the House of Representatives is considering whether to impeach the president,

you know, only the fourth president in American history to even face impeachment proceedings at this level. How amazing is it that that's kind of second tier here? But that's next. One is, and the big parts of that are one, we're going to wait now for the whistleblower complaint and see if that comes to life. The journalist Dan Engber tweets today,

is it possible the White House will now back off its pledge to release the whistleblower's complaint after finding out this transcript wasn't understood to be as exculpatory as expected? I think the answer to that is yes. Is there any way they are going to part with that complaint? No. Outside of like, you know, Supreme Court versus Nixon levels. Like I said, like I said, the argument is now we know, the argument from the right is now we know more than the whistleblower did. so there's nothing left to see here, right? But all that leads me to believe is that there's certainly much more to see in that complaint.

Ben Rhodes, the former Obamaite, tweets, so the William Barr Department of Justice was suppressing a whistleblower complaint that apparently implicates Barr in Trump's Ukraine scheme. The corruption is everywhere in this administration. That, I think, is the other play at Ford part of this, which is this now seems bigger, doesn't it? Yeah. And, you know, there was a Jonathan Chake column in New York Magazine, which I believe is now owned by Vox today talking about how suddenly this feels like a Trump scandal and also a Giuliani scandal and also a Barr scandal and maybe also a Pence scandal because he's talked about this too a lot and talked about Ukraine stuff. So if anything, it feels like the investigation just got bigger today based on that transcript, does it not?

yeah I think so I mean I think that it's um yeah I think that in that in in in that way it's it's a little bit I don't know reassuring is the right word but it does feel like there's actually an investigation to be had and this isn't just an investigation for the sake I mean it's not this isn't a way of sort of um you know slow walking you know trying trying to get I mean it there has been times of the in the in the past month a couple of months where it's felt like like Nancy Pelosi and her contingent in Congress is trying to get us to the election without having to go through any sort of impeachment proceeding, right? I mean, that, yeah, I was saying, I was saying yesterday that it's difficult,

one of the problems that the Democrats are having right now is it seems like they're not even having, they're not even conversing with each other in good faith because there's clearly a bunch of people that just like very straightforwardly believe that it's a political misfire to go after impeachment and any, to even mention the word. and that's it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of Democrats that believe that very strongly, but none of them are willing to make that case. And listen, it would be really compelling if Nancy Pelosi or somebody else came out and said, I know this is unpopular, but my pollsters tell me that if we don't go for, if we just let, let everything lie, we have a 65% chance of winning the presidency. And if we go for impeachment, that drops to 48%, you know, like something like that would be really compelling. But no one's going to make that case because they know it's politically unpopular from the Democratic base to not to not, to not, to not want to impeach the president. Then you get to all this stuff with Ukraine. And the whole, I mean, and even the very, when this idea was first floated yesterday,

the first time I saw it was his Howard Feynman tweet where he said, very solid dim house leadership source just confirmed to me that Speaker Pelosi will announce a formal impeachment inquiry this afternoon and imply that she herself favors impeachment of President Trump. That is the most like, milk-toast way you could have possibly tweeted that thing. Like, listen, like, like, of quick, there's a, that, that is a very solid Democratic House leadership source because that is clearly someone, either Pelosi or someone directly tied to her that insisted that he used the phrase, the term, the phraseology, will announce a formal impeachment inquiry, which is exactly what they're doing, but they're being really precise about not saying we're pursuing impeachment here, you know? And, I mean, again, this is all, this has gone back to a conversation about gamesmanship and I apologize, but. All of this comes around to say that the point you are making is actually really intriguing and really, and I think reassuring. There is something to investigate here, right?

This isn't just pussy footing. This isn't just we're going to call it impeachment inquiry because we don't want to go and pursue impeachment. We're not really going to do anything. There's a lot to hash out, even though I think what we have at the base is a very simple story. And I think in some ways that kind of helps the narrative for those that are really concerned about it. your point about the polls, I'm really interested to see what those polls are going to do here over the next couple of weeks. Because I think those, you know, do Democrats want the president to be impeached or even the public want the president to be impeached are directly affected by the, you know, Lucy pulling the football out on Russia? And everybody getting so invested in that.

And then it turning out not to be exactly an impeachable offense or the Mueller report turning out like it did. And everybody's saying, okay, let's just stop. this and go beat Trump at the ballot box. You know, just being a purely a tactical decision. But after days and days of coverage of Ukraine and Trump, I just wonder if that's not going to flip a lot. And even if you're just going by polls rather than going by, should we, do we have a duty to, you know, to at least take a vote on impeaching the president of the United States,

given what we know for getting the political implications right now because this is what we should do? I wonder if those polls aren't going to change. I really do. And I'd kind of be shocked if they don't, if they don't at least move more in favor of, a little bit in favor of impeachment. I think the one thing we're going to hear the constant refrain of is the,

you know, the mantra we learned from Slow Burn podcast and everybody else who's talked about it since then is that, you know, the pro-impeachment numbers for Nixon didn't go above 50% until like the day before he left office or whatever. So, I mean, the numbers are going to be interesting.

I'm not quite sure how much. they how much they materially matter, but they will matter in terms of the way that are, that, that the, you know, opposition in Congress, you know, has the guts to react. Absolutely. Here's, here's the scariest play at Ford option. Michael Crowley of the New York Times, my old co-worker tweets, just noting that Trump still has a bunch of military options on the table for Iran. Imagine if he were to pull the trigger now.

Ooh. Want to talk about something scary? There you go. a couple of funny notes, David, to leave you on today, the lighter side of possible impeachment, if you will. I think one of the most remarkable things about that transcript was the amazingness of hearing this guy Zelensky kissed Trump's ass repeatedly because he needs his help. This was at the beginning. Zelensky, we talked about on the last show is essentially the Ukrainian Trump in a lot of ways. he was a television star who

television made people believe could be the president of Ukraine then he became president of Ukraine based on the show. It was like that was the that was the apprentice of Ukraine. Zelensky tells Trump in this call, I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you.

We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections. Zelensky mentioned staying at Trump Tower on his last trip to New York. I took to, you know, stayed in your luxurious building. He also says this, I will make sure that I surround myself

with the best and most experienced people, which is almost a verbatim quote of Trump from 2016 saying he surrounded himself with the best and most serious people. Yeah. Right before we recorded this, they were meeting at the UN and their conversation between the two of them

or press avail or whatever, was televised. And Zelensky seemed to be, you referred him as a comedian. He seemed to be kind of like doing a running gag where he was inviting, trying to compel Trump to say that he would come visit Ukraine. And Trump was just like kind of befuddled by the entire thing. I'm not quite sure. He seemed to be going in a little bit hard for like if he was just like a Trump wannabe. I mean, he was he was definitely using the, he definitely using the spotlight to his advantage. And I believe opened up the, opened up the public meeting by saying it was better to be on TV than talking over the phone to a mild round of applause from the gathered media. But anyway, I do not know.

I wish I knew his deep thoughts about our president, but it seemed like he was willing to have a little fun with him today. If politics doesn't work out for these guys, I'm seeing a perfect stranger-style sitcom where they get to know each other in. experience of rigors of American life. That'd be an interesting one. A couple tweets, Zach Schoenfeld, the writer had a funny tweet. I don't even know if it makes sense to read it, but it imagines Trump and Zelensky talking like Zelensky is interviewing Trump during a junket. Thanks for taking the time to talk. No problem, sir. Is this still a good time for a phoneer? Ha ha. Yes, it's great. Great. So the publicist said we have only 30 minutes. So that's funny. and then from our pal

Jay Kang this is while Trump was apparently transcribing the phone call about to produce the summary of the phone call

he says if Trump wants to ingratiate himself with the media he should do some tweets like transcribing now God I hate hearing

my own voice can't believe they even let me into the premium tier when I ask so many idiotic questions and then complain

about a bunch of airport delays so matching Trump as a long-form journalist transcribing his interviews is really pretty much my favorite thing about this whole scandal so far. He is David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Lov made a production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back next Tuesday. With more, Luke Warb takes about the media, Ukraine and possible impeachment. See you then, David.

See you later, Ryan. This isn't just pussy footing. I can't believe that. I cannot believe that.