He called out more than a dozen other Republican defenders, including Representatives Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader; Jim Jordan of Ohio; Mark Meadows of North Carolina; and Elise Stefanik of New York. Noticeably absent, and unmentioned by the president, were Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer at the center of the Ukraine pressure campaign, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of his most outspoken allies.
“This is sort of a day of celebration, because we went through hell,” Mr. Trump said. “But I’m sure they’ll try and cook up other things,” he added of the Democrats, “because instead of wanting to heal our country and fix our country, all they want to do — in my opinion, it’s almost like they want to destroy our country. We can’t let it happen.”
In the wake of Mr. Trump’s acquittal, Republican senators pressed their inquiries into Hunter Biden’s finances, seeking to prove that the president was right to insist that Ukraine investigate him and the former vice president.
A spokeswoman for Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the Treasury Department had readily complied with a request by the Republican majority for documents related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine, contrasting with the administration’s refusal to provide papers for the House impeachment inquiry.
For their part, Democrats were still seeking investigations, too. Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut asked the Government Accountability Office to review whether the Trump administration misused classification power to hide information about the president’s Ukraine pressure campaign. And House Democrats have already said they will probably subpoena John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, to ask about Ukraine.
Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said Democrats should be made to answer for what she called a dishonest attack on Mr. Trump. “Maybe people should pay for that,” she said on Fox News. Asked to elaborate, she equated Mr. Trump with the United States. “People should be held accountable for anything they do to hurt this country and this president,” she said.
Mr. Trump’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast was as overtly political as any president has delivered at the annual event, traditionally a bipartisan affair marked by talk of faith and common ground. He triumphantly held up newspapers reporting his acquittal, cited rising stock markets, boasted about his approval rating and urged the audience to vote in the fall.