Something doesn’t add up here
As questions continue to be raised about the summary of his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Donald Trump has become increasingly unhinged, lashing out on Twitter and during press conferences. Yesterday, he snapped at Jeff Mason, who was trying to get an answer to a question he had asked, “Are you talking to me?” Trump the “taxi driver” appears to be driving his term off the cliff.
Trump claimed the released memo of the call was complete, stating: “This is an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation, taken by very talented stenographers.” However, the document itself states at the bottom that it’s a summary, not a transcript. Also, as Senator Angus King has shown, if the call was thirty minutes, the released summary is about twenty minutes short. Some of that time could be for interpreters, but other elements of the memo raise issues as well. What was released seems woefully abbreviated, incomplete and flavored with “Trump speak.”
In addition, the number of words in what was released are much less than Trump’s conversations with other foreign leaders even where a translator would have been involved. The language of what is released sounds very much like the beautiful, perfect words of the president. Trump is praised for all he has done for Ukraine and other places. We saw again at the press conference with Finland’s president how Trump jumped in to claim how well Trump’s administration has treated Finland and others.
Former State Department officials have indicated that the use of ellipses in an official document would be rare and not part of the norm.
Finally, Mike Pompeo first claimed he knew nothing, then finally admitted he was on the call. If the memo released is verbatim, one would expect the administration to own it, but their normal weaving and ducking suggests something else is afoot. Something just does not add up.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.