If you love your "Make America Great Again" hat, you'll really flip for the latest item from President Trump's fall collection: a "Read the Transcript" T-shirt.
During an interview with The Washington Examiner on Thursday, Trump defended his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a conversation that sparked the House impeachment inquiry. He revealed that his strategy to fight back against the accusations of quid pro quo involves releasing a shirt that says "Read the Transcript" and talking directly to the people, FDR style.
"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," he said. "When you read it, it's a straight call." In late September, the White House released a reconstructed transcript of the call, which Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified was incomplete and missing key words and phrases, The New York Times reports.
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Trump's phone call with Zelensky raised eyebrows, as he used the time to ask Zelensky to launch an investigation into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. "Everybody knows I did nothing wrong," Trump told the 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." When asked if he would cooperate with subpoenas, Trump responded, "You are setting a terrible precedent for other presidents."
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