What hearings? What telephone call?
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he was “too busy” doing the people’s business to watch the impeachment hearings that imperil his presidency, even as he laid out his many grievances against the process playing out on the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“I hear it’s a joke. I haven’t watched for one minute,” Trump said during a White House news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the day’s testimony had ended. “This is a sham, and it shouldn’t be allowed.”
Trump said that the impeachment process is illegitimate and that he did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine.
However, Trump had tweeted and retweeted complaints about the inquiry more than 30 times by late afternoon and criticized US Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat and principal political foe on Capitol Hill.
“It’s a witch hunt, it’s a hoax, I’m too busy to watch it,” Trump told reporters. “There’s nothing there. I see they’re using lawyers that are television lawyers. They took some guys off television. You know, I’m not surprised to see it because Schiff can’t do his own questions.”
Schiff is overseeing the impeachment hearings as chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Trump criticized the first witnesses to testify publicly, labeling Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and US Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent as “NEVER TRUMPERS!”
In one new development, Taylor said a member of his staff overheard Trump, during a July telephone call with another diplomat, asking about “the investigations.”
Trump was asked about the telephone call during the news conference.
“I know nothing about that,” Trump said, adding that he “did not recall” the conversation.
Among Trump’s tweets, the president circulated a video in which he deemed the impeachment proceedings “the single greatest scam in the history of American politics.”
“Our country is at stake like never before,” he said in the video. “They’re trying to stop me because I’m fighting for you. And I’ll never let that happen.”
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