White House Spills Own Tea by Emailing Ukraine Talking Points to Dems

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump. Today, the president's future grew even more precarious when the White House released notes of a call he made to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. In the readout, the president dangles aid to the world leader in exchange for opening an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company years ago. Trump asked Zelensky to "do us a favor," and Biden's name is specifically mentioned numerous times in the call.

If that's wasn't bad enough, White House officials accidentally emailed private talking points about the Ukrainian matter -- to House Democrats.

The talking points attempt to portray the phone call as something other than a "quid pro quo," but common sense and the call's notes belie that. Trump himself says to Zelensky, "The United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily, because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine."

Trump later says, "I would like you to do us a favor. ... I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine." Trump then says he will connect Zelensky with his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr. "The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution [of the energy company] and a lot of people want to know about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it. ... It sounds horrible to me."

"Your economy is going to get better and better, I think," Trump says later.

The White House's talking points, now available for the world to see, seem to want to tell people to not believe their lying eyes. The talking points also attempt some "what-about-ism" and try to direct scorn toward Biden, though previous investigations about his son's dealings in Ukraine turned up no misdeeds.