President Donald Trump revealed in an interview published on Thursday that he was considering reading aloud the transcript of the phone call that sparked the ongoing impeachment inquiry, reminiscent of the fireside chats that former President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave while he was in the Oval Office.
“This is over a phone call that is a good call,” Trump told The Washington Examiner, while discussing the impeachment investigation. “At some point I’m going to sit down, perhaps as a fireside chat on live television, and I will read the transcript of the call because people have to hear it. When you read it, it’s a straight call.”
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives announced in September that they would be moving forward with impeachment proceedings. The move was in response to a whistleblower’s testimony accusing Trump of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for using his position as vice president to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into his son’s business dealings there.
The reports were not confirmed at the time of the announcement, and it was not until a day later that the White House released a transcript of Trump’s exchange with Zelensky. After the transcript was made public, many have argued that it fails to show the direct quid pro quo agreement initially alleged.
Democrats, however, have vowed to move forward with impeachment proceedings, and have subsequently followed through on that pledge. On Thursday, the House voted on a resolution establishing the process for the investigation into the president. The measure passed largely along party lines, 232-196, with only two Democrats defecting on the vote.
Democratic leadership, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), has been touting a slew of witnesses who have corroborated much of whistleblower’s testimony in closed-door hearings. But, as Trump and many of his supporters have repeatedly acknowledged, the White House has already released the transcript outlining the conversation.
Schiff, who is leading the impeachment charges against the president, has received massive backlash for a distorted and inaccurate retelling of the telephone call that kicked off the impeachment inquiry. The released transcript arguably failed to align the actual phone call with Schiff’s description of the call.
“Everybody knows I did nothing wrong,” Trump continued to The Washington Examiner. “Bill Clinton did things wrong; Richard Nixon did things wrong. I won’t go back to [Andrew] Johnson because that was a little before my time, but they did things wrong. I did nothing wrong.”
He further defended himself by explaining that as president of the United States, he has an obligation to look into corruption prior to providing a country financial or military aid. He also noted that he was aware of the many other individuals who were listening into the phone call, and questioned why he would do something criminal with that knowledge.
“I got stenographers and all these other people on the line,” he said. “I am going to make a statement that is illegal or bad? Who would do a thing like that?”