Tipsheet

Did President Trump Just Accept an Invitation to Show Up at His Impeachment Trial?

On his way back from Davos, Switzerland Wednesday, President Trump retweeted an invitation from Republican Senator Rand Paul to join him in the Senate chamber for his impeachment trial. 

During a press conference this morning, President Trump called Democrat House impeachment manager Jerry Nadler a sleaze bag. He also said it would be “beautiful” if he showed up to the trial and “sat in the front row.” 

"First of all, Jerrold Nadler, I have known him a long time. He is a sleaze bag," Trump said.  

He also addressed a question about whether former National Security Advisor John Bolton should testify and explained why he wants to protect presidential executive privilege. 

"I would rather interview a lot of people. The problem with John is it's a national security problem. You can't have someone who is national security," he continued. "If you think about it, he knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it's not very positive and that I have to deal on behalf of the country, it's going to be very hard. It's going to make the job very hard." 

"I don't know if we left on the best of terms, I would say probably not. So you don't like people testifying when they didn't leave on good terms and that was due to me, not due to him. So we'll see what happens. But when you have a national security, you could call it presidential prerogative, you could just call it, the way I look at it, I call it national security. For national security reasons. Executive privilege. John would certainly fit into that," he continued. "I just think it's very hard. I've always gotten along, I've actually gotten along with John Bolton. He didn't get along with other people, a lot of other people but when he knows my thoughts on certain people and other governments and we're talking about massive trade deals and war and peace and all these different things we talk about, that's really a very important national security problem."

President Trump will be back in Washington Wednesday evening.