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6 Revelatory Moments From the Video of Trump’s Private Donor Dinner

The video of the 2018 event made headlines for capturing conversations now tied to the impeachment inquiry. But it also showed remarkable exchanges that weren’t about Ukraine.

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At a 2018 dinner with donors, President Trump discussed a variety of topics, including golf, trade and politics.CreditCredit...Igor Fruman/Joseph A. Bondy

A video recording released on Saturday of President Trump speaking in 2018 to a group of donors at a private dinner, including two businessmen at the center of the impeachment inquiry, made headlines this weekend for capturing Mr. Trump saying that the ambassador to Ukraine should be removed from her post.

The video was recorded on the phone of one of the businessmen, Igor Fruman. It was made public by a lawyer for Lev Parnas, the other businessman. Both men have worked with the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to carry out a pressure campaign on Ukraine, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed not to know them.

The recording undercut those claims, providing fodder for Democrats trying to persuade Republicans to support their calls to expand the impeachment inquiry.

But it also provided a remarkable, inside view at how wealthy and politically connected donors interact behind closed doors with the president of the United States.

Here we look at six revelatory moments from the recording, which was captured at the Trump International Hotel in Washington on April 30, 2018.

Time stamp: 21 minutes

At one point, one of the guests asked Mr. Trump to hold his upcoming meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Songdo, a business district on the western coast of South Korea.

A New York-based firm, Gale International, is helping develop the district there.

“My family, specifically, and the Gales, as well, would be honored if you would consider it,” the guest told the president.

Mr. Trump responded, “We’re very far down the line, but I will,” and then quickly changed the subject.

“You know that Kim Jong-un is a great golfer. You know that, right?” Mr. Trump told the guests, who included Jack Nicklaus III, the grandson of the legendary golfer.

As the dinner party erupted in laughter, one of the guests said to Mr. Trump of Mr. Kim, “His goal in life is to meet you! It’s true! His whole goal in life! He wants to meet the president! He wants to be you! He would like to be you!”

Time stamp: 45 minutes

Mr. Parnas asked Mr. Trump, “Have you thought about allowing banking in some of these states that allow cannabis?”

Mr. Trump said, “What? You can’t do banking there?”

Mr. Parnas responded that “that’s the biggest problem” and later said “it’s a tremendous movement with a lot of the young people.”

“Do you think the whole marijuana thing is a good thing?” Mr. Trump asked the guests.

“No,” one woman responded.

Mr. Parnas said, “It’s something that is in the future, no matter how you look at it. I think it’s something that’s already so far out that you’re not going to stop it.”

Mr. Trump indicated he was not impressed with the results of legalization in Colorado.

“In Colorado, they have more accidents,” Mr. Trump said. “It does cause an I.Q. problem.”

Donald Trump Jr., one of Mr. Trump’s sons, said: “I will say this, between that and alcohol, as far as I’m concerned, alcohol does much more damage.”

“You don’t see people beating their wives on marijuana. It’s just different,” he said.

Mr. Parnas suggested that the president establish a bipartisan committee to study marijuana, “so you can know what’s going on, and make the right decision.”

“By just putting the committee together, it will give you such a boost in the midterm with a lot of the millennials,” Mr. Parnas said.

Time stamp: 54 minutes

Discussing one of his favorite topics, the 2016 election, Mr. Trump said he might have had a much more difficult time defeating Hillary Clinton if she had picked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to be her running mate instead of Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

“If Bernie were Hillary’s vice president, it would have been tougher,” Mr. Trump said, “because all those people that hated her so much who voted for me.”

Mr. Trump added, “You know I got 20 percent of Bernie vote. People don’t realize that, because of trade, because he’s a big trade guy, you know he basically says we’re getting screwed on trade, and he’s right, and I’m worse than he is, and we can do something about it, I don’t know if he could have.”

“Had she picked Bernie Sanders, it would have been tougher,” Mr. Trump said. “He was the only one I didn’t want her to pick.”

Time stamp: 23 minutes

An unidentified guest said they shipped 125,000 tons of material for the wall at the border.

Mr. Trump then said he wanted a “concrete wall, 30 feet high, very slick outside.”

Another individual can be heard saying that border agents have said that could be dangerous.

“They actually said these drug dealers, it’s so dangerous to have a solid wall because they take the drugs, it weighs 100 pounds, approximately, you know a satchel, they call it a satchel, they throw it over the wall, it goes over the wall, and it will land on a guy’s head and it kills him,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump clarifies that “our border guys” are the victims.

“It can hit people,” Mr. Trump says. “Can you imagine, you get hit with a hundred pounds of drugs?”

Laughs can be heard.

“Only in America,” someone says.

Time stamp: 16 minutes

At another point, Mr. Trump, while indulging a familiar lament — that other countries are not trading fairly with the United States — unleashed a tirade against the European Union.

“The European Union is a group of countries that got together to screw the United States,” Mr. Trump told his guests. “It’s as simple as that.”

Mr. Trump continued: “And frankly, they’re probably worse than China in a sense, just smaller. They’re worse than China in the sense of barriers.”

“But the European Union is really bad,” he said. “You know it doesn’t sound like it. You know, the European Union, we’re all sort of from there, right? But the European Union is brutal. But we’re changing that rapidly, too. They can’t even believe it.”

Time stamp: 1 hour, 7 minutes

Barry Zekelman, a Canadian citizen who owns a Chicago-based steel-tube manufacturing company that donated $1.75 million to a political action committee supporting Mr. Trump, urged the president to further limit steel imports to the United States, which he has said undermine sales for his American business.

Mr. Zekelman then questioned rules intended to prevent fatal truck accidents by using electronic monitoring systems to limit how many hours drivers can be on the road. The rules, he said, were having an impact on Mr. Zekelman’s ability to move the steel pipe he manufactures.

“Say someone is half an hour from home on their long haul truck — they literally have to pull over on the side of the road and stop,” Mr. Zekelman said. “They can’t go home. They don’t even want to do it anymore.”

Mr. Zekelman said they cannot get enough drivers to haul his products.

Mr. Trump did not seem to be aware of the rules.

“They have a method that you shut down a truck?” Mr. Trump said.

Since the dinner, legislation has been introduced in the House with the cosponsorship of 12 Republicans to allow smaller trucking companies to get exemptions from the rule.

Mr. Zekelman is not legally allowed under federal law to make a contribution to the political action committee. His company donated the money through one of its United States based subsidiaries, a maneuver that has generated a complaint with the Federal Election Commission that he might have violated federal election law, after The New York Times wrote about the donations last year.

Kenneth P. Vogel and Eric Lipton contributed reporting.

Aimee Ortiz is a general assignment reporter on the Express Desk. She previously worked at The Boston Globe.  More about Aimee Ortiz

Mihir Zaveri is a general assignment reporter on the Express Desk. He previously worked at The Houston Chronicle. More about Mihir Zaveri

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