In Washington, former President Donald Trump spun a completely fictional tale during a Saturday event. He claimed he cleverly outmaneuvered his Democratic rivals by revealing “the tape” of a 2019 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This call played a significant role in Trump’s first impeachment.
At a campaign rally in Ohio on Saturday, Trump boasted that he allowed Democrats to escalate their accusations about his discussion with Zelensky. Then, he said, “we released the tape.” According to Trump, when Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Speaker at the time, listened to this tape, she was furious. She believed her colleagues had misled her with their inaccurate portrayals of the call. Trump claimed Pelosi confronted her team, asking, “What the hell did you get me into? You hear this call? He didn’t do any of this stuff!”
Trump went on to say that Pelosi was advised to act as if the allegations were true and proceed accordingly. He claimed that the Democrats were shocked upon hearing the tape, not realizing the call had been recorded. According to Trump, this was a prime example of the benefits of recording phone calls, suggesting that the Democrats were caught in their own deception.
However, Trump’s narrative is entirely false. There was never a tape of his call with Zelensky released. Pelosi couldn’t have reacted to a tape she never heard. Almost five years after the July 2019 call, there is no known U.S. recording of the conversation. What was made public by Trump’s White House in September 2019 was a rough written transcript of the call. This document supported, rather than contradicted, a government whistleblower’s main accusations about Trump’s words. Pelosi’s spokesperson, Aaron Bennett, dismissed Trump’s story as “fact-free nonsense.”
Presidential phone calls with foreign leaders are usually not recorded by the American side. They are instead captured in written form through a combination of software and notes taken by U.S. officials who listen in.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who listened to Trump’s call with Zelensky in his role as the top Ukraine expert for the White House’s National Security Council (and later became a key witness in the impeachment inquiry), confirmed in a text message to CNN that there is “no recording” of the call. “He’s lying,” Vindman stated.
Trump’s recent fabrication mirrors his past false claims made during his presidency. Since late 2019, Trump has attempted to alter the narrative surrounding the call with Zelensky. In the call, after Zelensky mentioned Ukraine’s desire to purchase weapons from the U.S., Trump urged him to investigate Joe Biden, his potential Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential race, and to look into an unfounded conspiracy theory about supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election (an election where Russia meddled). The false story Trump shared at his Saturday rally is an exaggerated version of the false narratives he spread over four years ago, which CNN had fact-checked at the time.
In previous accounts, Trump claimed he had outsmarted Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a prominent figure in the impeachment effort, by releasing the rough transcript of the call with Zelensky after Schiff had misleadingly summarized Trump’s words. Trump argued that Schiff wouldn’t have made his remarks if he knew Trump would release the rough transcript.
However, this claim by Trump was illogical because he released the rough transcript before Schiff gave his exaggerated account of it at a congressional hearing.
In Trump’s 2019 versions of the story, he suggested that Pelosi was upset with her allies after reading the rough transcript, not after listening to “the tape.” But even this claim had no foundation; after the rough transcript’s release, Pelosi issued a harsh statement condemning Trump for “lawlessness” and accusing him of attempting “to shake down other countries for the benefit of his campaign.” A Pelosi spokesperson informed CNN in 2019 that Trump’s portrayal of her supposed reaction was “complete fiction.”
At the Saturday rally in Ohio, Trump made several more false claims. He revisited the “tape” narrative while continuing to criticize Schiff, who is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat in California.