Rudy Giuliani and his band of crooks may have been meddling in Ukraine in the run-up to their presidential election, but President Trump’s first call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky contains nothing resembling or even hinting at an extortion scheme.
Released by the White House the minute that ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch sat for her public impeachment investigation testimony, the transcript of the April 21 call between Trump and Zelensky is perfectly straightforward. Zelensky attempts to curry favor with Trump, and Trump humble brags about once owning the Miss Universe pageant; Zelensky fawningly asks for Trump to attend his May 20 inauguration, and Trump promises that “at a very minimum” an American official “at a very, very high level” will attend.
Trump also crucially invites Zelensky to the White House for an undefined date in the future.
Most notable is not what’s in the call but rather what isn’t.
The original official readout of the call from the White House claimed that Trump committed to work with Zelensky “to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption.”
But despite the lip service Trump pays to Ukraine in the transcript — Ukraine was always “very well represented” when he owned Miss Universe, he made sure to mention — Trump makes not one mention of corruption on the call.
We know that Giuliani and the Ukrainian backchannel’s actions prior to the call and Trump’s actions after it belie the unconditional support expressed in the call, so much so that Zelensky convened his advisers on May 7 with the specific intention of strategizing how to circumvent Giuliani’s attempts to rope Ukraine in the American elections. But on its face, and most importantly for Trump, his first call to Zelensky wasn’t the trigger for Ukrainian anxieties.
