President Trump ripped the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings Wednesday before leaving the NATO meeting in London and flying home on Air Force One.
“I saw it, and it’s a joke. Everybody is saying it,” Trump, referring to unnamed “legal scholars,” told reporters after a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
“It is a uniform statement pretty much right down the road that what they’re doing is a very bad thing for our country. The word impeachment is a dirty word, and it’s a word that was only supposed to be used in special occasions, high crimes and misdemeanors” he said, adding that there wasn’t even “a little tiny crime.”
He contended that he had gone “way up in the polls” in swing states and called Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intel committee, a “stone cold loser.”
He then wondered whether Democrats loved the US.
“You almost question whether or not they love our country and that’s a very serious thing: Do they love our country?” Trump said.
“This should never happen to a president again what’s happened here. It’s an absolute disgrace to our country. There was no crime whatsoever, and they know it.”
The president was particularly angry about the timing of the hearing during the NATO summit, which coincided with a meeting in the UK commemorating the 70th anniversary of the alliance.
“To do it on a day like this, where we’re in England and some of the most powerful countries in the world having very important NATO meetings. And it just happened to be scheduled on this day. It’s really honestly, it’s a disgrace,” he said.
He said he had “two perfect calls” with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and that his Ukrainian counterpart “said no ‘pressure, no nothing.’”
He also referred to “Nervous Nancy” Pelosi and predicted that Democrats would pay at the polls in 2020 for launching impeachment proceedings.
He defended his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, after the House case for impeachment cited a flurry of calls the former mayor made to the White House, allegedly regarding Ukraine.
“Somebody said he made a phone call into the White House. What difference does that make? They’re only after him because he’s done such a good job,” he said, calling Giuliani “a great crime fighter” who was targeted because of his work defending Trump during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
“Rudy is a great gentleman, and they’re after him only because he’s done such a good job. He was very effective against Mueller and the Mueller hoax,” the president contended.
Giuliani himself dismissed the revelations on Wednesday morning as no big deal.
“The mere fact I had numerous calls with the White House does not establish any specific topic. Remember, I’m the President’s attorney,” he tweeted.
The president had earlier canceled a planned press briefing.
“There’s no reason to have press conferences because you had about eight of them,” he said after his sit down with the Italian PM.
