Trump says what he learned from impeachment is that ‘Democrats are crooked’

President Trump told reporters Wednesday that he learned from his impeachment that Democrats are “crooked” and “vicious.”

Trump was asked by reporters in the Oval Office what he had learned from his impeachment by the Democrat-controlled House.  

“That the Democrats are crooked,” Trump replied. “They’ve got a lot of crooked things going, that they’re vicious, that they shouldn’t have brought impeachment and that my poll numbers are 10 points higher because of fake news like NBC.”

The president was acquitted of charges he abused his power and obstructed Congress in two votes that fell almost strictly along party lines last week in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump made the remarks during an Oval Office meeting with Ecuador’s president Wednesday afternoon. 

Some Republican senators who have been critical of Trump’s conduct at the center of the impeachment case while voting to acquit him said they hoped the president would learn a lesson as a result of his impeachment. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asserted last week that Trump had learned a lesson from impeachment, a remark she later said was “aspirational.”

Trump has repeatedly insisted that his phone call with Ukraine’s president that the impeachment case centered on was “perfect.” On the July 25 call, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden with Ukraine.

The House of Representatives subsequently approved articles of impeachment accusing him of abusing his power by pressuring Kyiv for politically motivated investigations and of obstructing the congressional inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine. House Republicans were united in opposition to impeachment when it was put to a vote in December.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was the lone GOP senator to vote with Senate Democrats in favor of removing Trump from office over the abuse of power allegation in the vote last Wednesday.

Trump’s legal team sought to poke holes in Democrats’ case while arguing that the articles fell short of alleging impeachable offenses and that Democrats were motivated by partisan interests in their decision to impeach Trump in the first place.

Trump has celebrated his acquittal in recent days while eviscerating his opponents, including Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was a central figure in the decision to move forward with impeachment in the lower chamber.