Trump calls Fox News to push debunked Ukraine conspiracies in hourlong interview

Donald Trump spent an hour of his time Friday morning on “Fox & Friends” regurgitating falsehoods about the impeachment investigation and attacking witnesses who testified in the impeachment probe.

Among the lies Trump pushed during the interview was the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine has the hacked Democratic National Committee server — a claim that former Trump national security adviser Fiona Hill warned Republicans was not only false, but plays into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hands as he aims to sow discord in American politics.

“They have the server, right, from the DNC, Democratic National Committee,” Trump said, referring to Ukraine, later saying that the FBI “gave the server to Crowdstrike, or whatever it’s called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian, and I still want to see that server. You know the FBI has never gotten the server, why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?”

But many experts, including an Associated Press fact-check, have confirmed there is no evidence that Ukraine has the DNC server that Russians hacked and released emails from in order to hurt Democrats in the 2016 election. And Crowdstrike is an American company based in Silicon Valley in California. One of its co-founders is Dmitri Alperovitch, a Russian-born American citizen — with no ties to Ukraine at all.

Even the “Fox & Friends” hosts suggested they know Trump’s story is false, and tried to steer him off this claim.

“Are you sure they did that?” host Steve Doocey said, looking confused about Trump’s comments, later making a face when Trump continued to repeat the lie.

Trump also continued to go after former American Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who testified this week about the smear campaign that forced her out of her position.

“This ambassador that everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn’t hang my picture in the embassy,” Trump said. “She’s in charge and she wouldn’t hang it. It took like a year-and-a-half, two years to get the picture up. She said bad things about me, she wouldn’t defend me, and I have the right to change an ambassador.”

He went on to call Yovanovitch an “Obama person” — yet another lie as she was first nominated to be an ambassador by former President George W. Bush — and say that she “was not an angel.”

Trump also told an anecdote about how his aides told him he had to be nice to Yovanovitch because she is a woman. It’s unclear whether that story is true; however, Trump has a habit of attacking women.

In all, Trump’s rambling interview lasted an hour, and is unlikely to change the fact that he is staring down articles of impeachment.

All his interview did was force Republicans — who have vowed to stand by Trump no matter what — to answer questions about Trump’s conspiracy theorizing and personal attacks against career government employees.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.