Donald Trump has galvanized Russiagate diehards lurking on social media, after mistakenly referring to Volodymyr Zelensky as the new leader of… Russia.
The US president made the slip-up while defending his relationship with Kiev, which is currently being scrutinized by Democratic lawmakers. The impeachment inquiry is trying to determine if Trump tried to pressure Zelensky to open an investigation into the son of Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden.
Trump told reporters on Monday that the accusations were based on a “false narrative” of a phone conversation he had with the Ukrainian president – adding that Zelensky himself had confirmed that nothing untoward had occurred.
“The Russian, as you know, the new Russian president, a good man, made a statement. There was no anything. There was no pressure put on him. No anything,” Trump said, mixing up Zelensky’s country of origin.
The error delighted devout disciples of the now-debunked conspiracy theory that Trump was (or still is) somehow in cahoots with the Kremlin.
In a similarly hot take, the Washington Post’s Moscow correspondent described the error as “the biggest insult one could throw at the leader of Ukraine.”
But people probably shouldn’t read too deep into the mix-up. Trump has a well-documented history of geographical blunders. In August, the president misstated the location of a mass shooting during a press conference to commemorate the tragic event, mistakenly referring to the city of Toledo, instead of Dayton, Ohio.
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