Frankly, Ukraine, we want to help them.
And I do like the new president.
You know why I like him?
Because he was honest.
Because he said there was no pressure.
Why, of all the things that have happened in the Trump
presidency over the last three years
has this incident, this Ukrainegate,
for lack of a better word, been the scandal that
has threatened Donald Trump's presidency the most?
Therefore, today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives
is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.
First of all it's important to remember
that impeachment and the impeachment process
is a political process, not a legal process.
So although there are other things
that a lot of his critics have charged
that Trump did that was illegal this
is now something that's explainable.
And in politics, being able to explain something
is very, very important.
You want to get the public and other members of Congress
on your side in this.
And being able to explain that the president of the United
States picked up the phone, called a foreign leader,
and asked him, in some ways threatened him, to dig up
dirt on your preeminent political rival,
is incredibly explainable.
This is something your average American can understand.
And what we've seen from polling now is that there is
- public opinion is shifting against the president on this,
for this very reason.
It's hard to imagine a set of circumstances
that would have alarmed the founders more than
what's on that call.
So to my Republican colleagues that
say there's nothing to see here, or, yeah, it's
bad but is it really something you'd
remove the president from office for, they're
going to have to answer: if this conduct
doesn't rise to the level of the concern the founders had,
what conduct does?
Now...
Again, it doesn't take a rocket scientist
to figure this one out, whereas in the Mueller investigation
with all the Russia scandal, it was incredibly complicated.
The number of players involved, and what was said,
and the he said/she said element of it,
that was a very difficult scandal
to explain to your average voter.
This one is not.
So as a political process, impeachment for this Ukraine
phone call is a much easier thing for the Democrats
to argue.
The actions of the Trump presidency
revealed dishonourable fact of the president's betrayal
of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security,
and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.
The second thing which I think is important to acknowledge
is that this happened while Donald Trump was president.
I guess it seems very obvious to say
that but remember, the accusations made against Trump
of soliciting help from the Russians during the campaign
happened before he was president.
So should the president of the United States
be held liable for things that happened before his presidency?
Again, it was a more complicated issue.
This one clearly happened in the Oval Office, on the phone.
Something that can be easily explained as an abuse of power.
And as a result, again, gets back to point number one,
much more explainable from a political perspective.
It's a whole hoax.
And you know who's playing into the hoax?
People like you and the fake news media
that we have in this country.
The question, sir, was what did you
want President Zelensky to do about Vice-President President
Biden and his son, Hunter.
Are you talking to me?