In a bilateral meeting with Donald Trump, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former comedian, tried to make light of the impeachment investigation they're now at the centre of.

Mr Zelenskiy said it was better speaking on TV than on the phone. Both men know what they previously discussed will be pored over for months to come.

He insisted nobody "pushed me" when asked if Mr Trump had lent on him to investigate Joe Biden. Mr Trump followed up, declaring "in other words, no pressure".

Image: Joe Biden is a former vice president and Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 race

In a weary voice at a news conference later in the afternoon, he repeated his claim that he did not push his counterpart.

"I didn't do it. I didn't threaten anybody," he said, adding that the "so-called" whistleblower didn't have "first class" or "first rate" information.


"It was perfect," he said of the call, insisting there was "no quid pro quo".

Donald Trump thought the summary of his phone conversation would silence his critics, prove he didn't do anything inappropriate and perhaps even illicit an apology from Democrats.

But if anything, Democrats are even more alarmed than they were.

Image: The front page of a White House memo describing the call

In a joint statement from the heads of four Democratic committees, Democrats said: "The transcript is an unambiguous, damning, and shocking abuse of the office of the presidency for personal political gain.

"This is a clear breach of trust placed in the president to faithfully execute the laws and to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution."

What is somewhat surprising about this call is how ready the White House was to release it.

At very least, it puts Mr Trump on very uncomfortable ground.

The Democrats believed the transcript would prove he lent on the Ukrainian leader to investigate his political rival. Even from the notes of that call (it's not a verbatim account), it would appear they were right.

Image: Donald Trump talked up the potential of Ukraine to the country's president.

The US president repeatedly pushes the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden and his son Hunter and repeatedly asks him to speak to the US Attorney General William Barr about it.

Just to be clear, Barr is supposed to defend the legal interests of the US - not Donald Trump.

There is no explicit reference evidence in this five-page document of a quid pro quo though. Mr Trump's team believe that vindicates him.

US House Speaker says Trump will face an impeachment inquiry over Ukraine call

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already tried to get ahead of that, saying on Tuesday you don't need a quid pro quo in order for the president's actions to be considered wrong.

She said: "If the president brings up, he wants them to investigate something of his political opponent that is self-evident, that it is not right. We don't ask foreign governments to help us in our elections.

"There is no requirement there be a quid pro quo in the conversation."

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Some of this will come down to tone and subtext. Was there an underlying message?

In the call, Mr Trump talked about how much the US does for Ukraine and then went on to ask Zelenskiy to do him a "favour". Some won't see anything malign in that, others will view it as an implied threat.

Image: President Trump told his counterpart 'we do a lot for Ukraine'.

Senator Lindsey Graham described it as a "nothing burger". Mitt Romney is currently the only Republican to state that he finds it "deeply troubling".

What we do know is that when the leaders spoke, they knew hundreds of millions of dollars worth of foreign aid had been withheld. There was big money at stake.

The political stakes for the president couldn't be higher. This impeachment investigation will likely further divide the country. It could also reshape the presidency.

Partisan divides are already apparent. Some Republicans, like Mr Graham, say Mr Trump was right to pursue Biden's possible "conflict of interest" and that a lot of people thought the prosecutor was corrupt.

And it seems his supporters are on the defensive, too. Three hours after Pelosi's announcement, the Trump campaign raised $1 million online for the "Official Impeachment Defence Task Force".

Democrats, though, now have a far more concrete piece of evidence to investigate than they did with the Russia investigation and we still haven't seen the full whistleblower's report or heard their evidence.

The public may quickly grow weary of this inquiry, but many on Capitol Hill will spend months discussing it. For better or worse, it will dominate the 2020 election.

The call in and of itself may not be explosive enough. Will the whistleblower have anything to add beyond it?

What we've seen so far is either damning or just divisive, depending on who you speak to. It is not yet deadly.