The White House has a new lackluster line of attack on Democrats over the impeachment inquiry: They’re bad at scheduling things.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone noted in his letter informing House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (R-NY) that Trump wouldn’t attend the hearing this week that Democrats appeared to have purposely scheduled while Trump is out of town for the NATO summit in London. While the hearing is set for Wednesday when Trump is still gone, the invitation was extended just as earnestly to Trump’s lawyers as it was to the President himself.

But Trump parroted that talking points while speaking to reporters before his departure Monday, calling the NATO summit — an agreement he routinely derides as irrelevant — “one of the most important journeys that we make as president.”

“The do-nothing Democrats decided when I’m going to NATO, this was set up a year ago, that when I’m going to NATO that was the exact time that — this is one of the most important journeys that we make as president, and for them to be doing this and saying this and putting an impeachment on the table, which is a hoax to start off with,” he said. “If you noticed there was breaking news today, the Ukrainian president came out and said very strongly that President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong, that should be case over.”

President Trump on impeachment inquiry: "It's a disgrace for our country…The whole thing is a hoax." pic.twitter.com/YCzAcBvk0u — CSPAN (@cspan) December 2, 2019

While the White House declined to attend the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee this week, Cipollone left the door open for Trump’s counsel to attend in the future, laying out a list of demands the White House would like to see met before it considered the option. One of the requests involved allowing Republicans to call in their own witnesses, citing specifically House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was just further implicated in the evolving Ukraine scandal early last week.