Trump says the lesson he learned from impeachment is that 'Democrats are crooked'

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It turns out Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was right — President Trump said he did, in fact, learn some lessons from his impeachment.

Trump was asked Wednesday if he had any takeaways from the experience now that he's been acquitted and he certainly did, though his answer was probably not quite what Collins had in mind when she said she believed the process would prove to be a teachable moment for the commander-in-chief. The president said, first and foremost, he learned congressional Democrats are "crooked" and "vicious," and that they should not have "brought impeachment." So, not much in the way of self-reflection.

Additionally, he said he learned his poll numbers jumped up, which he attributed to what he baselessly called the "dishonest" reporting of news outlets like NBC.

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Trump has repeated these claims many times throughout and even before his tenure in the Oval Office, though, so it's worth wondering whether he really gained this perspective because of impeachment.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.