‘Evil and sick’: Donald Trump denounces enemies in defiant speech after acquittal in impeachment trial
Emboldened by his acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial, Donald Trump unleashed an extraordinary tirade against his “evil and sick” political enemies.
ANALYSIS
Donald Trump is not sorry.
Today the US President held an event at the White House to celebrate his acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial. It made a mockery of claims from some Republicans that he had been humbled by the experience.
“I believe that the President has learned from this case,” Senator Susan Collins, who voted to acquit Mr Trump, told CBS News earlier this week.
“The President has been impeached. That’s a pretty big lesson,” Ms Collins said, explaining her decision.
“I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.”
That may be wishful thinking.
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When former president Bill Clinton was acquitted in his own impeachment trial back in 1999 – despite the fact that he’d been caught lying under oath and obstructing justice to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky – he tried to strike a conciliatory tone.
“I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events,” Mr Clinton said at the time.
“This can be and this must be a time of reconciliation and renewal for America.”
Mr Trump, however, remains defiant.
“We went through hell, unfairly, did nothing wrong. Did nothing wrong,” he said at today’s event, where he spoke for over an hour.
“I want to apologise to my family for having them have to go through a phony, rotten deal by some very evil and sick people.”
In remarks that were wide-ranging, freewheeling and sometimes difficult to follow, Mr Trump railed against his political enemies and thanked a number of key allies.
It was a truly wild performance. We’ve pulled out the most striking quotes below – and where necessary, added a little context.
“We’ve been going through this now for over three years. It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops, it was leakers and liars. And this should never, ever happen to another president, ever. I don’t know that other presidents would have been able to take it.”
The impeachment inquiry actually only started late last year. It came in response to Mr Trump’s attempts to pressure a foreign country, Ukraine, into launching an investigation of his political opponent, Joe Biden, and Mr Biden’s son Hunter.
The original catalyst was Mr Trump’s now infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which happened in July. More on that later.
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It is pretty clear that Mr Trump does not see the impeachment saga in isolation. He feels it was merely the latest in a long line of attempts to delegitimise his presidency, starting with the Mueller investigation, which was sparked by his decision to fire FBI director James Comey in May of 2017.
Speaking of which …
“Had I not fired James Comey – who was a disaster, by the way – it’s possible I wouldn’t even be standing here right now. We caught him in the act. Dirty cops, bad people. If this happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail for a long time already, many, many years.”
It is easy to forget the original reason Mr Trump gave for firing Mr Comey – that the FBI director had mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State.
The President undermined that explanation within days of the firing, admitting on television that “this Russia thing” was the real rationale.
In short, Mr Comey refused to drop the FBI’s Russia investigation, which had already resulted in charges against the Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.
This quote from today lays it out pretty explicitly. Mr Trump thought Mr Comey was trying to take him down for political reasons, and that’s why he fired him. It is the sort of admission that would have qualified as a bombshell a couple of years ago, but barely registers anymore.
It’s unclear exactly who Mr Trump thinks should be in jail, or what crimes he thinks those people committed.
“With all that we’ve gone through, we’ve done, I think, more than any president and administration … we’ve done more than any administration in the first few years, you look at all the things we’ve done.”
This is one of Mr Trump’s favourite claims, and he repeats some variation of it at most of his political rallies. Often it’s accompanied by a complaint that he is not given enough credit for his achievements.
He does have some significant things to brag about.
Mr Trump has overhauled the US tax code, appointed two Supreme Court justices, established a new branch of the US military (the “Space Force”), killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and passed an important bill attempting to address one of America’s most pervasive problems, mass incarceration.
Whether he has done more than any other president … well, the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan might have a thing or two to say about that.
“We were treated unbelievably unfairly. And you have to understand, we first went through ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’. It was all bulls***. We then went through the Mueller report. And they should have come back one day later. They didn’t. They came back two years later, after lives were ruined, after people went bankrupt, after people lost all their money.
It is fair to say some people’s lives were “ruined” by the Mueller investigation. The reason, of course, is that those people committed crimes.
Mr Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, deputy manager Rick Gates, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, personal lawyer Michael Cohen, political adviser Roger Stone, and General Flynn were all indicted because of the probe. Five of those six men struck plea deals with prosecutors in which they admitted their guilt.
Mr Mueller also indicted a number of Russian nationals on conspiracy charges over their efforts to influence the 2016 election.
The President can certainly argue the allegation that he colluded with Russia in 2016 is “bulls***”, as he so eloquently puts it, because the Mueller investigation concluded there was insufficient evidence to support the idea.
But to call the whole thing “bulls***” is a little on the melodramatic side.
“Tremendous corruption. Tremendous corruption. So we had a campaign – little did we know we were running against some very, very bad and evil people, with fake dossiers, with all of these horrible, dirty cops that took these dossiers and did bad things. They knew all about it. The FISA courts should be ashamed of themselves. It’s a very tough thing. And then we ended up winning on ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”
This is a particularly colourful summary of the President’s “deep state” conspiracy theory, which assumes all sorts of things about US intelligence agents colluding with Democrats to surveil and investigate the Trump campaign in an attempt to stop him from winning in 2016.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz – the official watchdog for Mr Trump’s own Justice Department – shot down this theory in an extensive report last year.
Mr Horowitz chided the FBI for making “many basic and fundamental errors” in its Russia investigation, but said the agency was justified when it launched the probe in July of 2016 and dismissed the idea that officials’ decisions were motivated by bias against Mr Trump.
In short, did the FBI make mistakes? Yes. Was there a vast, politically motivated conspiracy to sabotage Mr Trump? No.
“I’ll tell you, Chuck Grassley, he’s looking at Comey. ‘Well, you tell me, what did you say?’ Now, he wasn’t being rough. That was just the way he talked. And that was when Comey, I think that was when Comey announced that he was leaking, lying and everything else, right? He choked because he never heard anybody talk like that.”
This is a reference to a congressional hearing, in which Republican Senator Chuck Grassley grilled Mr Comey on whether he had every leaked classified information to the media.
It is also a rather weird misreading of what happened.
“Have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?” Mr Grassley asked.
“Never,” said Mr Comey.
“Have you ever authorised someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?” the Senator followed up.
“No,” Mr Comey replied.
“Has any classified information relating to President Trump or his associates been declassified and shared with the media?” Mr Grassley asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” said Mr Comey.
It’s unclear how Mr Trump arrived at his version of the exchange, which bears no resemblance to reality.
“You have some that use religion as a crutch. They never used it before. An article written today, never heard him use it before. But today, you know, it’s one of those things. But you know, it’s a failed presidential candidate, so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president.”
This is a clear dig at Senator Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict Mr Trump and remove him from office.
Mr Romney, a devout Mormon, cited his faith as a major factor in his thought process.
“As a senator-juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential,” he said.
The description of Mr Romney as a “failed presidential candidate” is true. He lost the 2012 election to incumbent president Barack Obama, winning 98 fewer electoral votes than Mr Trump four years later.
In Mr Romney’s defence, he did win a higher share of the popular vote than Mr Trump, with 47.2 per cent to the President’s 46.1 per cent.
“They’re vicious and mean. Vicious. These people are vicious. Adam Schiff is a vicious, horrible person. Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. And she wanted to impeach a long time ago. When she said, ‘I pray for the President, I pray for the -,’ she doesn’t pray. She may pray, but she prays for the opposite. But I doubt she prays at all. These are vicious people.
Adam Schiff was the Democrat leading the prosecution of Mr Trump in his impeachment trial. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House.
She’s a figure of particular derision among Mr Trump’s supporters at the moment after ripping up her copy of his State of the Union speech on camera earlier this week.
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“You could be George Washington, you could have just won the war and they’d say, ‘Let’s get him out of office.’ And they stuck together, and they’re vicious as hell. And they’ll probably come back for more.”
“They” is obviously referring to the Democrats here.
Mr Trump is probably correct that they will “come back for more”. There is already talk that Democrats in the House of Representatives will attempt to subpoena Mr Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton – continuing their investigation of the President, despite losing in the impeachment trial.
Mr Bolton’s upcoming book about his time in the White House reportedly includes a claim that Mr Trump told him he wanted to continue a freeze of $391 million in military aid for Ukraine until the country announced an investigation into Mr Biden.
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If true, that would directly contradict the President’s impeachment defence. His lawyers repeatedly argued the congressionally approved aid was not linked to Mr Trump’s push for the investigation.
Of course, the trial is over now, so it is unclear how useful Mr Bolton’s testimony would be now.
“From my family’s standpoint, it’s been very unfair for my family. It’s been very unfair to the country. Think of it. A phone call, a very good phone call. I know bad phone calls. This is a phone call where many people – I think Mike Pompeo was probably on the call. Where’s Mike? Mike Pompeo was on the call. Many people were on the call. I know that many people – they even have apprenti – bringing up an old favourite word of mine, The Apprentice – they have people on these calls. And I know there are many, when I speak to the head of a nation, and they have many people on. I mean, all of a sudden, do you think they just – in the case of Ukraine, he’s a new president, he seems like a very nice person, by the way. His whole thing was corruption. He’s going to stop corruption. We even have a treaty, a signed treaty that we will work together to root out corruption in Ukraine. I probably have a legal obligation to report corruption. But they don’t think it’s corrupt when a son that made no money, that got thrown out of the military, that had no money at all, is working for $3 million upfront, $83,000 a month. And that’s only Ukraine, then goes to China, picks up $1.5 billion, then goes to Romania I hear, and many other countries. They think that’s OK. Because, if it is – is Ivanka in the audience? Is Ivanka here? Boy, my kids could make a fortune. They could make a fortune. It’s corrupt.”
Hoooo boy, there’s a lot going on here.
First of all, this quote confirms that Mr Trump still feels he did nothing wrong in his phone call with Mr Zelensky. That will dishearten Republicans like Ms Collins, who have explicitly said the call was “wrong” and Mr Trump “should not have done it”.
The rest of it is largely an attempt by Mr Trump to justify his conduct.
It is true that the United States has been trying to root out corruption in Ukraine – that is the reason Mr Biden, on Barack Obama’s behalf, pushed for the country’s prosecutor-general to be fired. Mr Trump has shown relatively little interest in corruption – except when the accusation happened to involve Mr Biden and his son.
Mr Trump’s claims about Hunter Biden’s money-making efforts are, shall we say, dubious – the allegation he got $1.5 billion from China has been very thoroughly debunked – but there is no doubt Hunter did benefit from his surname in a pretty unsavoury fashion.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that Ivanka currently is making a fortune – reportedly well over $100 million in 2018, for example – and the President’s children have continued to do lucrative business overseas despite their father’s position. So there is an element of hypocrisy here.
“Think of what we could have done if we had the same genius – because it’s genius, I will say. It’s genius on the other side, maybe even more so, because they took nothing and brought me to a final vote on impeachment. That’s a very ugly word to me. It’s a very dark word, very ugly. They took nothing. They took a phone call that was a totally appropriate call. I call it a perfect call, because it was. And they brought me to the final stages of impeachment. But now we have that gorgeous word. I never thought a word would sound so good. It’s called ‘total acquittal’. Total acquittal.
“Total acquittal” is two words. I’m sorry, it’s pedantic, but I can’t let it go.
The broader point at the beginning of the quote is that the United States has paid an opportunity cost for its focus on the Russia investigation and then impeachment. Mr Trump argues Congress could have spent that time focused on other, more useful things.
“The spirit for the Republican Party right now is stronger, I think, than it’s ever been in the history of our country. I think it’s stronger than it’s ever been. And that includes Honest Abe Lincoln. You know, a lot of people forget Abe Lincoln. I wish he were here, I’d give him one hell of an introduction, right? But he was a Republican. Abe Lincoln.”
Having attended school in the United States, I can tell you literally no one forgets about Abraham Lincoln, who is pretty much universally seen as the greatest US president.
“This guy. So he’s the NCAA – meaning a couple of years ago when he was in college – wrestling champion. NCAA. That’s the big deal. That means in all of college you’re the champ. You’re the best. His record was ridiculous. Nobody could beat him. And I see it. You know, every time, I see it. When I first got to know him, Jim Jordan, when I first got to know Jim I said, ‘Huh, he never wears a jacket. What the hell’s going on?’ He’s obviously very proud of his body. And they say where he works out, you know, where the congressmen work out, they say, ‘When Jim works out, even though he’s not as young as he was, but he works out, the machine starts burning.’ You know, it’s a different form of a workout than us, right? And there he is. Look at that guy. But one day I’m looking, and he looks tough, and I’m looking, and I’m looking at those ears, and I say, ‘Those ears have something going on there.’ I said, ‘Did you ever wrestle?’ ‘Yeah, I did.’ But he doesn’t talk, but I checked. This guy was a champion, top, top wrestler.”
This whole thing is in reference to Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman who did, indeed, spend some time as a college wrestler.
I only highlight it because I want an excuse to tell you his nickname, “Gym Jordan”, which never fails to make me smile.
“A man who’s braver than me and braver than all of us in this room, he got whacked. He got whacked, my Steve, right? I went to the hospital with our great First Lady that night. Right, honey? And we saw a man that was not going to make it. He was not going to make it. He was – the doctor – and I told him his wife, I said, ‘She loves you.’ ‘Why do you say that?’ Because she was devastated. A lot of wives wouldn’t give a damn. A lot of wives, a lot of wives would have said, ‘Uh, yeah.’ I said, ‘How’s he doing?’ She couldn’t even talk. She was inconsolable. Most wives would say, ‘Not good. Listen, I’m going home now.’ But the doctor came in. The wife is like, she was a total mess. She was really devastated.”
Another Republican politician, Steve Scalise, was shot during a congressional baseball game in 2017. Thankfully, he survived the attack, which Mr Trump went on to describe at some length, blow-by-blow.
I’m fascinated by Mr Trump’s assertion that “a lot of wives” wouldn’t care if their husbands had been shot, which seems like a fairly grim assessment of marriage.
“They, two lowlifes, they can’t take the risk. They can’t take the risk. Think of it. And that’s where it came up, the greatest word of all, ‘insurance policy’. So he says, ‘But I’m afraid we can’t take the risk she may lose.’ It’s like an insurance policy. In the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 – in other words, if I won, they were going to do exactly what they did to us. They were going to try to overthrow the government of the United States, a duly elected president. And if I didn’t fire James Comey, we would never have found this stuff. Because when I fired that sleazebag, all hell broke out. They were ratting on each other, they were running for the hills.”
Again, “insurance policy” is two words, not one.
Technicalities aside, this paragraph is mostly referring to two former FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose text messages expressing disbelief at the result of the 2016 election sensationally became public knowledge a couple of years ago.
Mr Strzok and Ms Page were both involved in the Russia investigation. Mr Trump and other Republicans have accused them of being biased against the President.
Again, we should note that the Inspector General found the investigation was not driven by bias, but it is undeniable that Mr Strzok and Ms Page did not like Mr Trump. The President frequently refers to them as “FBI lovers”, because they had an affair together.
Ms Page has sued the Justice Department for violating her privacy by releasing her personal information.
The full transcript of Mr Trump’s remarks is available here, courtesy of the White House, if you would like to read it. You’ll find plenty of equally juicy parts we didn’t have time to mention.
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