The official transcript of Trump's call to Zelensky

As released by the White House.

The transcript itself carries this caveat:



Ever since Nixon, there's been a fear of recording.  This needs to be revisited.  All calls by the president to a foreign leader should be recorded.  If they want to classify them, okay, but they should be recorded.

Some excerpts of Trump's call to Zelenksy:



We're your pals.  Europe isn't.  Especially Germany.  We note, however, that you don't reciprocate.  "Things are happening that are not good."





We don't know what's missing at the ellipses, but from the rest of the statement, it's obviously related to things covered by the Mueller report.  In other words, Trump's concern about himself. *UPDATE:  It appears to be Trump still obsessing about Hillary's emails!

He's telling Zelensky you can fix that reciprocal issue by talking with my fixer Bill Barr about the Witch Hunt and your country's involvement.

And here's Zelensky's bizarre response:



Again, we're missing something where the ellipses are.  Could be something very telling, as the rest of the response is Zelensky assuring Trump that he wants to be "friends", and saying he'll recall the current ambassador and replace him with someone he hopes will "have personal relations with" Trump.  Since when do ambassadors skip counterpart ambassadors and go straight to the president?

Then Trump says he heard about the Ukrainian Attorney General being canned and says the previous US ambassador to Ukraine was "bad news".   He says he'd like Zelensky to talk to Giuliani and Barr, dropping this gem:



Again, what's in the blank space?  Whatever it is, what's there is bad enough.

And Trump thought this was a very nice conversation that had no implications of wrongdoing?

Here's Zelensky agreeing to Trump's request:



Trump repeats that he'll send Rudy and Barr to talk with Zelensky, and then Zelensky tells Trump that when he was in New York, he stayed at Trump Tower.  He then says he wants to "ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation."   That's not, as Trump said, a general conversation about corruption.  That's about investigating a specific case:  the Bidens in Ukraine.

As the conversation wraps up, Trump again says he'll tell Rudy and Barr to call Zelensky.

There's another thing about this conversation that's choice Trump. He starts the conversation thusly:



And then he ends it like this:



LOL.  Jesus wept.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



It's not like Trump hears what other people are saying, but it could be read that way.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:



Does he not know what he said in that call?

UPDATE:  Further info re: Trump's remarks about Crowdstrike.