Conflicting accounts of first Trump-Zelensky call
WA SHINGTON» President Donald Trump released the rough transcript Friday of a congratulatory phone call he had with the incoming president of Ukraine, holding it out as evidence that he did nothing wrong. Instead, the memorandum shows how White House descriptions of Trump’s communications with foreign leaders at times better reflect wishful thinking than the reality of the interactions.
As the House opened its second day of public impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill, Trump released the unclassified record of his April 21 call with then President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky. The document bears little resemblance to the paragraphlong official summary of the conversation that the White House released the same day as the 16-minute call.
The discrepancy highlights the gulf that often exists between the message that U.S. national security officials want to deliver to world leaders and the one that is actually delivered by Trump.
For years, U.S. officials have stressed the importance of trying to support democratic norms and root out corruption in Ukraine, which has been fighting a war of attrition against Russian-backed separatists since Russia invaded and later annexed Crimea in 2014.
To that end, the official readout of the Zelensky call reported that Trump noted the “peaceful and democratic manner of the electoral process” that had led to Zelensky’s victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.
But there is no record of that in the rough transcript released Friday. Instead, it said Trump praised a “fantastic” and “incredible” election.
Current and former administration officials said it was consistent with a pattern in which Trump veers from — or ignores entirely — prepared talking points for his discussions with foreign leaders, and instead digresses into domestic politics or other unrelated matters.
In the Ukraine call, for example, Trump praised the quality of the country’s contestants in a beauty pageant he used to oversee and compared Zelensky’s election to his own in 2016.
“When I owned Miss Universe, they always had great people,” Trump told Zelensky of his country.
The original readout also said Trump “underscored the unwavering support of the United States for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” But there’s no indication of that in the rough transcript.
Likewise, the readout said the president expressed his commitment to help Ukraine “to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption.” The word “corruption” is not mentioned in the rough transcript of the actual call.
Corruption did feature prominently in Trump’s second call with Zelensky on July 25, the call that helped spark the impeachment drama.
It’s highly unusual for a president to release the rough transcripts of calls with foreign leaders, which are generated by voice transcription software and edited by officials listening in on the call to ensure it is accurately memorialized. The official readout, by contrast, is issued as a news release meant to further foreign policy aims. It is typically the only public account of the calls that presidents have with their counterparts.
Several current and former administration officials said the readouts of foreign leader calls often are pre-written, reflecting official U.S. policy and what National Security Council officials hope the leaders will discuss and the talking points they provide.
Those readouts are supposed to be revised after the calls to reflect what actually transpired.
But that doesn’t always happen, according to seven current and former administration officials.