With the Democrats marching steadily toward impeaching President Trump over the “call from hell,” some amped-up Trump critics are already moving on to the next target: the leftist-loathed Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence.
What has the folks over at HuffPost spinning up spirited headlines about “President Pelosi” is Trump’s comments about Ukraine. He made the comment shortly after his administration released the transcript, in which he “dragged Vice President Mike Pence’s name into his growing Ukraine scandal,” as the left-leaning outlet put it.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration released a summary memo containing a transcript from his much-analyzed July 25 call with Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky. The administration followed that on Thursday by releasing the complaint filed by the thus-far unnamed whistleblower (who, according to the New York Times, worked for the CIA) alleging that Trump attempted to “to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election” by “pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”
In a press conference in which he addressed the Ukraine accusations on Wednesday, Trump pointed out that Pence also had “a couple of conversations” with Ukraine.
“I think you should ask for Vice President Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple of conversations also,” Trump said, as reported by Politico. “I could save you a lot of time,” he added. “They were all perfect. Nothing was mentioned of any import other than congratulations.”
Trump noted that the July 25 call was actually the second time he spoke with Zelensky, and that he’d gladly hand over a transcripts of Pence’s call and his first call with the Ukrainian leader if prompted.
“The word is they’re going to ask for the first phone conversation,” Trump said. “You can have it anytime you need it. And also Mike Pence’s conversations, which were, I think, one or two of them. They were perfect. They were all perfect.”
The comments, HuffPost notes, sparked a new resistance hashtag campaign — #PresidentPelosi — with anti-Trumpers hoping aloud that Pence will now join Trump in impeachment purgatory.
“Critics of the administration are now envisioning a scenario in which both Trump and Pence end up impeached,” HuffPost reports, before lightly raining on the Impeach Pence parade. “While it would take an unlikely sequence of events for that to happen, the reaction caused #PresidentPelosi to trend Wednesday night and Thursday morning, given that the speaker of the House would be next in the line of succession.”
In the transcript released by the Trump administration Wednesday, Trump did ask Zelensky to “look into” Biden and his son but, as team Trump maintains, never offered any direct quid pro quo for investigating his political rival.
“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 would be great,” Trump told Zelesky on the call that sparked the Democrats’ latest impeachment push. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”
Prior to bringing up Biden, Trump mentioned cybersecurity company Crowdstrike, which was contracted by the Democratic National Committee to look into the potential hacking of its emails. The company concluded that two Russia-based hacking groups were the culprits, though the DNC would not allow further confirmation of its findings.
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” said Trump. “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it.” Trump then specified that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr would be in contact with the Ukraine to help “get to the bottom of it.”