Speaking Friday morning during the live broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” President Donald Trump laid out personal attacks against former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom he had fired earlier this year.
Trump’s dismissal of Yovanovitch came about after a smear campaign against her, led by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, convinced him that she was no longer working with his interests in mind.
On the program, Trump labeled Yovanovitch as supportive of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
“She’s an Obama person,” Trump said.
Although Yovanovitch did work under Obama, she did not start her career there. In fact, most of her work in the Foreign Service, which began in 1986, was under Republican presidents, she noted in testimony she gave to House impeachment investigators. She has also been appointed to ambassador positions on a total of three separate occasions: twice under Republican President George W. Bush, and once under Obama.
Trump goes after Marie Yovanovitch, who has served presidents in both parties for decades: "She's an Obama person. I said 'why are you being so kind?' 'Well, sir, she's a woman. We have to be nice.'" pic.twitter.com/LVEwKUrGIg
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 22, 2019
Trump also stated on Friday that Yovanovitch was being treated better than she deserved in the impeachment inquiry due to her gender.
“I said ‘why are you being so kind?’ ‘Well, sir, she’s a woman. We have to be nice,'” Trump said, recreating a conversation he implied he had been a part of.
Zelensky was someone that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t like, Trump claimed in the interview. He suggested that, in a memorandum that detailed a conversation he had with Zelensky on July 25, the Ukraine president “brought up her name, and he didn’t like her at all.”
In actuality, Trump gets it half right: Zelensky did in fact mention qualms he had with Yovanovitch, stating that “her attitude towards me was far from the best.” But it was Trump who brought her up first, and had more ill words to say about her.
“The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just want to let you know that,” Trump said to Zelensky, per the released memo of their conversation.