The Trump impeachment inquiry’s focus on a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is reminiscent of the events surrounding the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, according to Brit Hume.
While there was much anticipation as to what the meeting produced and whether or not the participants did anything wrong, nothing came of it in the end, Hume told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday.
“Don Jr. expressed a desire and a willingness to receive dirt, information from these Russian representatives that came to see him at Trump Tower,” he said of the New York City meeting involving the president’s son, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and several other people — which had been arranged by British music publicist Rob Goldstone.
“Nothing came of it [but] it was considered to be Exhibit A in the collusion case,” he continued, adding that when the prospect of receiving “dirt” from Russia at the meeting came about, Trump Jr. remarked, “I love it.”
He added former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation looked into the aspects of the meeting, but ultimately concluded nothing untoward resulted from it.
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In that way, he said Trump’s phone call with Zelensky exhibited the former real estate mogul’s “bluster” and style conducting himself.
“It’s so like this president to kind of lay about himself and demanding this, and demanding that, and saying people are treasonous and saying they ought to be fired and they ought to go to jail and the rest of it. And a lot of it is just bluster,” he said.
“He’s on the phone with some leader and he has this rambling, kind of disconnected conversation in which he says ‘you need to do me a favor’ and then he mentions some things and then, later on, he says, ‘You need to investigate … the Bidens.’ Maybe he meant that as a quid pro quo — maybe he didn’t.”
“In the end, the [Ukrainian] aid was not withheld.”
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Earlier in the interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Hume said the impeachment inquiry continues to appear as if it is at least partially intentioned to “tarnish” Trump ahead of 2020.
“If they can’t get him removed, they can at least touch him up a bit in the hope that that will contribute to his not being reelected,” the Fox News senior political analyst said.
