Even though their continued devotion to failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump is dragging down Republicans in the polls, they simply cannot help themselves when they’re asked a question about the Donald. They always defend him, frequently looking like complete fools as they tie themselves in rhetorical knots.
That’s exactly what happened to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House minority whip who was asked about Trump’s infamous 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the then-president attempted to extort Zelensky by suggesting he’d agree to release military aid to Ukraine in exchange for damaging information on Joe Biden or members of his family.
Rather than admit Trump had been wrong to do what he did, Scalise desperately tried to suggest that Zelensky had praised Trump for his “leadership.”
“You look at that conversation. President Zelensky had called President Trump to thank him for the leadership he provided. When Zelensky got elected, he said he modeled after President Trump’s, and ultimately, he got the relief money he wanted.
“President Trump stood with President Zelensky. In fact, the two of them had a really good relationship. In fact, when President Zelensky was asking for things like the Javelin missiles that the Biden and Obama administration said no to. President Trump said yes, and actually helped Ukraine get those tank-busting missiles that they needed and frankly have been using.”
Nope. That’s not what happened. Not even close. And we know that because we have the White House transcript of that conversation which was read into the record as part of Trump’s first impeachment:
“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. 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. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
In other words: Sure, we can send you the military aid you need to defend yourself from Russia, but first you’re gonna have to play ball and help me win reelection.
Scalise was hit with a brutal fact-checking on Twitter.
