- Retired US Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a former Fox News contributor, described President Donald Trump's controversial communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as "disastrous on many levels," during an interview with MSNBC host Ari Melber on Wednesday.
- Peters likened the president to characters from the Academy Award-nominated 1988 romantic comedy, "Married to the Mob," starring actress Michelle Pfeiffer.
- "I've heard people on your show and many others comparing trump to a mob boss," Peters said of Trump. "He's a cartoon of a mob boss. This isn't 'The Godfather.' It's 'Married to the Mob,' without Michelle Pfeiffer."
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Retired US Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters described President Donald Trump's controversial communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as "disastrous on many levels," during an interview with MSNBC host Ari Melber on Wednesday.
"We've seen presidents do foolish things, but nothing quite like this," Peters said. "You know, Ari, we make this all about us, everything is about us. But this is also about Ukraine. A newly independent state struggling to fight corruption, now they're caught up in American corruption."
Peters, who worked as a former intelligence officer specializing in Russian affairs, said he sympathized with Ukraine, which declared its independence in 1991 but has been struggling with pro-Russian separatists following the annexation of Crimea.
"They've never asked us for direct military support, just defensive weapons," Peters said. "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has dismembered their country, invaded it. The Ukrainians have put up a heroic struggle. And Trump just turns it into this grotesquerie."
Read more: Former Fox News contributor calls Trump a 'draft dodger' who is 'playing with our troops'
Peters downplayed the comparisons between Trump and a mob boss, and likened the president to characters from the Academy Award-nominated 1988 romantic comedy, "Married to the Mob," starring actress Michelle Pfeiffer.
"I've heard people on your show and many others comparing trump to a mob boss," Peters said. "He's a cartoon of a mob boss. This isn't 'The Godfather.' It's 'Married to the Mob,' without Michelle Pfeiffer."
Trump's communications with President Zelensky have been the focus of a growing number of calls for impeachment from Democratic lawmakers. In a summary of a phone call in July, Trump was said to have asked Zelensky for a "favor" in investigating a conspiracy theory about the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US presidential election. Trump had also requested Zelensky to "look into" unproven allegations of misconduct from former vice president and 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, according to the summary.
The phone call has come under intense scrutiny due to a whistleblower complaint from an intelligence official filed in August, prompting the White House to release the summary of the conversation on Wednesday.
Trump denied there was a "quid pro quo" arrangement during his discussions with President Zelensky, who met the US president at the United Nations building in New York on Wednesday. Zelensky publicly echoed Trump's description of a cordial call, and he said he did not want to be involved in the "democratic, open elections of USA."
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