President Donald Trump continued to dismiss a story of a federal intelligence whistleblower raising the alarm of a questionable conversation he had with a world leader.
“It’s a partisan whistleblower; it shouldn’t have even happened,” Trump said. “It’s just another political hack job.”
He taunted the press for building up the story, as congressional Democrats continued to demand more details.
“Keep playing it up because you’re going to look really bad when it falls,” he said, and added, “Keep asking questions and building it up as big as possible because you can have a bigger downfall.”
When asked whether he discussed former Vice President Joe Biden in the conversation, Trump did not confirm or deny it.
“It doesn’t matter what I discussed,” he said. “But I will say this, somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement because it was disgraceful.”
The president discussed the story during a meeting with the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the White House.
Democrats have seized on the story after reports said that the conversation in question had to do with Ukraine, speculating that Trump inappropriately discussed Biden in the conversation, colluding with a foreign government to win re-election.
Trump suggested that the press investigate Biden’s actions in Ukraine.
“Somebody ought to investigate, but the fake news doesn’t investigate Joe Biden because he is a Democrat,” he added.
When he was vice president, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine if the government did not fire a prosecutor that was also investigating an energy company, of which his son Hunter Biden was serving on the board.
Trump defended his conversations with world leaders calling them “always appropriate.”