Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the house of representatives, appeared to learn about the most controversial part of Donald Trump’s call with Volodymyr Zelensky during a television interview.

In the impeachment furore following the discussion, Democrats have seized on the word “though” as a key element of Mr Trump’s side of the conversation and claimed it proves he was trying to strong-arm his Ukrainian counterpart. But Mr McCarthy appeared not to have been fully aware of what the president said.

The 54-year-old was interviewed for CBS’ 60 Minutes programme by Scott Pelley, who read out parts of the White House summary of the call during the exchange. He focused on a point where Mr Zelensky, the Ukranian leader, discussed a defence deal.

“We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next ... specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins [missiles] from the United States for defence purposes,” Mr Zelensky told Mr Trump during the call.

The US president replied: “I would like you to do us a favour though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it.”

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“You just added another word,” Mr McCarthy told his interlocutor during the interview, appearing to refer to the word “though”.

“No,” Mr Pelley said. “It’s in the transcript.”

“You said, ‘I’d like you to do us a favour though’?” Mr McCarthy said, with apparent surprise.

“Yes, it’s in the White House transcript,” Mr Pelley said.

The controversial exchange in the phone call refers to CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company which investigated the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

CrowdStrike was one of three firms that led US intelligence officials to conclude Russian intelligence had hacked the DNC, former FBI Director James Comey told Congress in January 2017.

Mr Trump appears to have been talking of an unfounded conspiracy theory, which alleges that Ukraine stole the DNC emails and framed Russia for the hack.

Democrats have alleged that the word “though” is damning for the president.

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They believe the word shows Mr Trump asking for a favour from a foreign power, in order to assist with his re-election campaign.

Mr McCarthy went on to defend the president’s remarks, despite his surprise about the call.

“Why would we move forward with impeachment? There’s not something that you have to defend here,” he said.