At least he is banned off social media for lying…..right?
Anything?
Is this about this?
Trump’s tweet misses a significant point. Schiff explicitly said that he was trying to describe "the essence" of Trump’s message "shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words." He never tried to read the president’s remarks in full, nor did he pretend to offer Trump’s words.
On the July
call, Trump urged Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential challenger in the 2020 presidential election. Trump and his allies have charged,
without evidence, that Biden forced Ukraine to remove its
lead prosecutor in order to protect his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian company that had been under investigation.
It’s worth noting that the
readout released by the White House of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky is "not a verbatim transcript," according to the document. Still, we wanted to look at Schiff’s comments in the context of the hearing and relative to the text of the readout.
For example, Schiff said Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had already "made it abundantly clear to Ukrainian officials over several months that the president wanted dirt on his political opponent."
Then, Schiff
gave his interpretation of what Trump said on the call, which he said "reads like a classic organized crime shakedown."
Despite Trump’s claims, Schiff’s statement was not entirely made-up. His summary of the
readout was mostly accurate save for a few strays and exaggerations.
"The United States has been very very good to Ukraine," Trump continued. "I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine."
Later in the call, Trump said, "I would like you to do us a favor though." Trump asked Zelensky to look into a cybersecurity company called
CrowdStrike and a "server" he
believes is in Ukraine. He said he would have Attorney General Bill Barr call Zelensky.
Zelensky responded that one of his assistants had spoken already to Giuliani and promised Trump that "all the investigations will be done openly and candidly." At that point, Trump steered the conversation to the Bidens and Ukraine’s ousted former prosecutor general.
"I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair," Trump said, according to the readout.
"The other thing, 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," he continued. "Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me."
So, Trump never explicitly asked Zelensky to "make up dirt" on Biden, as Schiff said.
But Trump did, however, urge Zelensky to investigate Biden on the basis of an
unsubstantiated allegation. He mentioned the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor twice, and he repeatedly said he’d get Zelensky in touch with Giuliani and Barr.
Finally, Trump did not say Zelensky could not call back until he’d satisfied Trump’s demands, as Schiff said. In reality, the call ended with Trump congratulating Zelensky on his election.
President Donald Trump has been railing against Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for the way Schiff described Trump’s phone c
www.politifact.com