President Trump made an unscheduled visit at the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Monday after being expected to skip the event.
Trump took a seat in the auditorium as Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India took the stage while the president leaned forward intently to listen.
There remain deep differences between Team Trump — who pulled the US out of the Paris climate accords — and much of the Western world over the threat posed by climate change and what actions are needed.
On his way into the UN, the president asserted that he only wanted to ensure that the US wasn’t sending millions to a corrupt government when he spoke to Ukraine’s president about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“What we are doing is we want honesty and [when] we deal with a country, we want honesty. I think with a new president, you’re going to see much more honesty in the Ukraine,” the president told reporters as he was heading to the UN for the first day of the General Assembly.
Trump’s call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was one of several issues that prompted a whistleblower to file a complaint with the intelligence community’s top watchdog.
“That’s what we’re looking for. We’re supporting a country. We want to make sure that country is honest. It’s very important to talk about corruption. If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?” he asked.
“One of the reasons the new president got elected is he was going to stop corruption. It’s very important that on occasion you speak to somebody about corruption, very important.”
And he once again described the call with Zelensky as “perfect “ and accused the former veep of corruption without offering any evidence.
“The one who has the problem is Biden. Biden did what they would like to have me do except one problem, I didn’t do it,” he said, though it was unclear what he was referring to.
“What Biden did is a disgrace. What his son did is a disgrace. The son took money from Ukraine and from China, a lot of money from China. China would like to see Biden get in because they would take this great deal we’re about to make and really have themselves a deal for themselves. Let me just tell you, let me just tell you, what Biden did was wrong.”
The president finally dismissed the issues raised by the whistleblower as part of an ongoing plot by Democrats out to get him.
“We had a perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine. Everybody knows it’s just a Democrat witch hunt. Here we go again. They failed with Russia, they failed with recession and now they’re bringing this up,” he said.
The president has repeatedly asserted that the investigation into Russian election meddling was a hoax cooked up by his enemies, and that Democrats and the media were warning of a recession to harm his re-election prospects.
And he scoffed at the growing number of calls for his impeachment, saying he was taking it “not at all seriously.”
Trump has said during the weekend that he would like to release a transcript of the call, but then cited reasons he couldn’t do it, including that the Ukrainian officials could object.
Trump repeatedly pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son during a July phone call in which he urged him eight times to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on a probe, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump did not mention withholding foreign aid to Ukraine or any other quid pro quo in exchange for probing the Democratic presidential front-runner’s son.
Biden in 2016 reportedly threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Ukraine removed a prosecutor who was probing a gas company that had named Hunter Biden to its board.
The prosecutor was later voted out of office amid a corruption probe, and a Ukrainian official earlier this year said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.
Meanwhile, the top Senate Democrat on Monday called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to investigate the whistleblower’s complaint.
Chuck Schumer said in a letter to McConnell that the Republicans’ “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude toward the president’s actions “is unacceptable and must change.”
The New York Democrat called on McConnell to take five specific steps to probe the situation, including issuing a subpoena to compel delivery of the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress.
Schumer also said Republicans should tell the White House to release transcripts of Trump’s conversation with the Ukrainian president and identify who in the White House sought to delay $250 million in aid to Ukraine.
Intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern,” a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.
Trump was also expected to address the UN’s event on religious freedom.
“The United States of America calls upon the nations of the world to end religious persecution. Stop the crimes against people of faith. Release the prisoners of conscience,” Trump was expected to say, according to excerpts released by the White House.
“We must all work together to protect communities of every faith. True tolerance means respecting the right of all people to express their deeply held religious beliefs,” he said.