Donald Trump thinks his call to Ukrainian President Zelensky was “perfect.” So perfect, in fact, that he wants everyone in America to hear it. But there is no recording of the call—or at least, we’ve been told there is no recording of the call—so what to do? Trump has a solution: He wants to have a “fireside chat.” Except without the fireside or the chat part. In a Thursday interview, Trump suggested he he was going to sit down, and “read the transcript of the call, because people have to hear it.”
Which is, without a doubt, a brilliant idea. He should absolutely read the not-an-actual-transcript.
He should do the part where Trump says former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is “bad news” and is “going to go through some things.” And the part where Trump complains about “a man named Robert Mueller.” He should do the whole head-scratching conspiracy theory section where he asks Zelensky about an American cyber-security company and says “They say, say Crowdstrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation ...” And while he’s doing that, maybe Trump could fill in a few of those ellipses to explain to the American public how he is pressing a line meant to exonerate Vladimir Putin.
Most of all, Trump should definitely do the part where Zelensky says his country needs more anti-tank missiles and Trump replies by saying “I would like you to do us a favor though.” And Trump explains, “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.” And also where Trump says “I will have Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.”
But the best part won’t be Trump doing Trump. Because we’ve all heard him tell those stories about himself. In fact … he only tells stories about himself. The best part will be Trump reading Zelensky’s part. Will he do a comedy voice? Will there be a funny accent? Because everyone knows that Trump does great imitations.
