I am Mari Karppinen MTV News Finland and I have one question for President Trump and
one question for President Niinistö.
First, Mr. Trump, how will this political storm affect the US foreign policy, especially
its relationship with Finland?
And second for President Niinistö, because this is the biggest issue here at the moment,
I have to ask what sort of favors has President Trump asked from you?
Or the other way around you mean.
Good favors I asked-- I think you mean the other way around.
Both ways-- okay.
So he political storm I have lived with it from the day I got elected.
I've done more this administration has done more than any other administration has done
in the history of this country in the first two and a half years.
I'm used to it-- for me it's like putting on a suit in the morning.
People have said to me, how does he handle it?
Rush Limbaugh said, I don't know if any man in America can handle it, Shawn Hannity said
the same thing, others have said the same thing.
I don't know any man in America-- because it's all a fraud and because of that and because
I know that I'm right because I'm doing a great job for the American people.
I'm very, very happy living the way I'm living.
I thought that I would finish off the first term without the threat of people making false
claims but this one turned out to be incredible, all because they didn't know that I had a
transcript done by very, very talented people, word for word, comma for comma, done by people
that do it for a living.
We had an exact transcript and when we produced that transcript, they died.
Because you look at the whistleblower statement and it's vicious, vicious and that whistleblower--
there's no question in my mind that some bad things have gone on and I think we'll get
to the bottom of it.
I think it's going to be a total reversal but I've lived with this, I've lived with
this cloud now almost three years, more than that.
It probably started even before and I think nobody has done what I've done.
This is Trump during a press conference with Finland’s president and you know you’re
in a bad situation when other country’s reporters are now casually asking whether
the president of the United States has conspired yet today with another leader of a foreign
country.
And this might seem like an easy dig—but it’s completely warranted.
Even MORE so because, as we’re just now finding out, it wasn’t JUST the country
of Ukraine that Trump conspired with to interfere in the 2020 election.
Only days ago, it was revealed that Trump called Australian prime minister Scott Morrison
and asked for his help discrediting the Mueller investigation by looking into its origins.
This, after it was reported that attorney general Bill Barr is now in Italy working
to potentially undermine the Mueller probe.
And just today, it was revealed that Trump ALSO personally contacted the UK prime minister
Boris Johnson to ask for help discrediting the Mueller investigation.
At this point, if we’re trying to figure out all of the countries that Trump has attempted
to conspire with to help himself politically while hurting his Democratic opponents ahead
of 2020, it would probably be easier to identify the countries that Trump’s HASN’T contacted.
Trump goes on to pat himself on the back for being the only president who’s had to handle
this treatment.
Leave it to Trump to congratulate himself on weathering a storm that he’s created
for himself by being physically incapable of not breaking the law.
No one ASKED Trump to call up every leader of every foreign nation to get their help
to hurt Democrats; in fact, it was the opposite.
Trump survived a 2-year investigation by Robert Mueller after conspiring with the Russians
in 2016.
He basically got away with it; he got a literal get out of jail free card.
If I’m Trump, and I lived through THAT, the ONLY thing I definitely, definitely don’t
do the next day is start conspiring again.
But because it’s Trump, that’s what he did.
The next day.
Literally, the DAY after Robert Mueller testified to Congress about the Trump campaign’s cooperation
with Russia and his subsequent instances of obstruction of justice, Trump got on the phone
with Ukrainian president Zelensky and asked him to investigate Joe Biden.
So when Trump clutches his pearls about the massive heap of trouble he’s found himself
in, it… doesn’t take much to figure out who’s to blame.
And Trump continues to deteriorate from there.
He tries pointing to the summary of his call with President Zelensky as a way to absolve
himself by claiming that it was done “word for word, comma for comma—an exact transcript.”
But a) it wasn’t an exact transcript, and I know that because the readout of the phone
call ITSELF SAYS OUTRIGHT that it is “not a verbatim transcript of a discussion.”
And b) even if it was a word-for-word transcript, it’s still devastating for the president.
It shows, conclusively, that Trump made it clear that we give aid to Ukraine but that
he didn’t feel like he was getting enough in return, before immediately broaching the
idea of reciprocity and pressuring Zelensky eight separate times to work with Giuliani
to investigate Joe Biden, framed specifically as a favor.
And THAT’S the document Trump is pointing to to absolve himself of guilt?
Come on.
He then goes on to attack the quote “vicious” whistleblower complaint and, yet again, does
himself no favors, because the complaint has been completely corroborated.
Besides showing that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden, the whistleblower complaint
asserted that the Trump administration withheld $250 million in military aid to Ukraine.
That turned out to be true.
The complaint asserted that Giuliani had been circumventing national security protocols
by acting as his OWN State Department to facilitate the investigation into Biden.
That turned out to be true.
The complaint asserted that the White House intervened to “lock down” all records
of the call, placing them in a separate electronic system that’s reserved for classified information,
of which this was not.
That turned out to be true.
If the complaint was vicious, it’s because it accurately outlined the criminality committed
by Trump.
And by the way, none of this was lost on Finland’s president, who gave a warning of sorts to
Trump in the wake of his endless scandals to undermine our democracy—
Mr. President, you have here great democracy.
Keep it going on.
Now, I should note that the president of Finland didn’t offer anything incriminating in response
to this reporter’s question, so it’s possible that Trump has finally learned his lesson.
And all it took was nonstop investigations, an avalanche of news stories, destroying our
reputation around the world, undermining every tenet of our democracy, brainwashing 40% of
the population, and an impeachment inquiry.
So Trump will try to play the victim because no other president has endured what he’s
going through, but that’s only because— nobody has done what I’ve done.