Trump Tells Zelenskyy He’s Gambling on World War III – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

WASHINGTON — This column is about how Washington and Kyiv got to that moment Friday when President Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to leave the White House after a contentious meeting.
The rift between Trump and Zelenskyy, according to the usual media narrative, erupted during a July 25, 2019, phone call. Short take: President Trump tried to bully Zelenskyy to go after campaign rival Joe Biden, but valiant whistleblowers inside the intelligence community brought Trump’s heavy-handed ways to light. (RELATED: The Mendacious Media Coverage of Zelensky’s Stunt)
That’s just wrong.
As Fred Lucas, manager of investigations for the conservative Daily Signal and author of Abuse of Power: Inside the Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump, put it, “The Democrats were desperate to find a reason to impeach Trump that year, for something, anything, and so they glommed onto this.”
Alexander Vindman was the top Ukraine expert in the National Security Council at the listened-in-on 2019 call. Shortly thereafter, a whistleblower wrote a memo about an administration official who asserted Trump used the call “to persuade Ukrainian authorities to investigate his political rivals” — Joe Biden and his family.
The memo also said that Zelenskyy “reluctantly agreed” to a meeting with then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
But a reconstructed transcript of the 2019 call released by the Trump White House told a different story.
On the call, the two presidents were chummy. “I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often,” the Ukrainian leader told the American president.
Both presidents agreed that western European nations were weak allies to Ukraine. “They are not enforcing the sanctions,” Zelenskyy observed. “They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine.”
Remember that the next time you watch the likes of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer glad-handing Zelenskyy.
Another tidbit from the transcript: …