Donald Trump speaks before presenting the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal to eight recipients in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on 21 November 2019

Donald Trump gave a wild, 53-minute long interview with Fox and Friends on Friday morning, attacking the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry and spreading debunked conspiracy theories.

A group of Senate Republicans met Thursday with White House officials to discuss how a potential trial on articles of impeachment of Mr Trump could happen. “Frankly, I want a trial,” the president said during the interview.

Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman has meanwhile told Newsweek that Gordon Sondland‘s explosive appearance on Wednesday represented a “tipping point” that will bring about the demise of the Trump presidency.

The comments came as the first daughter, Ivanka Trump, was ridiculed online for attempting to defend her father with a quote from 19th century diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville. The quote she shared said: “A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.”

As The Week noted, Tocqueville never said this, a judge named John Innes Clark did. Worse still for Ms. Trump, the quote was part of a larger passage explicitly defending the practice of impeaching the president for wrongdoing; Clark called impeachment, with its risk of partisan misuse, “justly though preferable” to leaving the president immune from consequence between elections.

Meanwhile, former National Security Adviser John Bolton made a dramatic return to Twitter following his unexplained hiatus since his resignation in September. Mr Bolton said the White House had blocked access to his account, suggesting the administration is fearful of what he might say. On Friday afternoon he tweeted: “To those who speculated I went into hiding, I’m sorry to disappoint!”

Mr Trump was asked whether he was involved in blocking Mr Bolton’s Twitter account. He replied: “No, of course not, I had a good relationship with John.”