Trump on Whistleblower: 'Is He on Our Country's Side?'

President also blasts Biden
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 23, 2019 1:31 PM CDT
Trump Blasts Whistleblower, and Biden, Too
President Trump speaks during a meeting with Pakistani President Ashraf Ghani at the InterContinental Barclay hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Monday, Sept. 23, 2019, in New York.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

As criticism mounts on President Trump over his Ukraine call, the president fired back Monday at the whistleblower whose report started the controversy. "Who is this so-called 'whistleblower' who doesn’t know the correct facts," Trump tweeted. "Is he on our Country’s side. Where does he come from. Is this all about Schiff & the Democrats again after years of being wrong?" In additional comments to reporters at the UN, Trump sought to dismiss the controversy and shift the focus to Joe Biden. "What Biden did was wrong," he said, per USA Today. Asked about the growing talk of impeachment, he added, "The one who's got the problem is Biden." Trump is pushing the theme that Biden, as vice president, tried to shield son Hunter from a Ukraine investigation. (PolitiFact looked into all this and found no evidence that either Biden acted inappropriately.)

The White House has not released the transcript of the call, but one of the biggest issues is whether Trump threatened to withhold financial aid unless Ukraine's leader agreed to investigate the Bidens. When asked Monday about the contents of the call, Trump again maintained that everything was proper in context. “It’s very important to talk about corruption,” Trump said, per the Washington Post. “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country you think is corrupt? One of the reasons the new president got elected is he was going to stop corruption, so it’s very important that on occasion you speak to somebody about corruption.” (More background on the Trump-Biden-Ukraine triangle here.)

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