The Best Words: Trump, Zelensky and a Very Explosive Phone Call

Talk to Rudy Giuliani, President Trump instructed — “highly respected man,” “very capable guy,” the best.

Get with Bill Barr — “there are a lot of things that went on,” Mr. Trump said, and he can “call you or your people” to sort it out.

But most importantly: “I would like you to do us a favor.”

Just a favor. Just see what you can swing.

“Whatever you can do,” the president said, “it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Much is remarkable about the reconstructed transcript of Mr. Trump’s July phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which was released by the White House Wednesday following the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry. Not least is the unambiguous finding that Mr. Trump urged a foreign leader to investigate a political rival.

But in a presidency pocked with the less-than-regal vocabulary of this Washington moment — tweets about witch hunts and hoaxes, liars and leakers — the document is also striking for its window into the singular verbal tics and strategic instincts of the executive speaker: part flattery-laden banter (“Your economy is going to get better and better I predict”), part foreboding ambiguity (“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation”).

This is the new language of American diplomacy, a high-level conversation between two world leaders that can feel lifted from a Manhattan real estate deal — or from a B-movie script about Manhattan real estate deals.

“He’s trying to make it look like he’s not asking,” said Barbara A. Res, a former executive vice president of the Trump Organization. “It’s not ‘I want you to.’ It’s ‘it would be good of you,’ ‘it would be helpful.’ And I’ve seen him do that before. He did that with his people when he wanted you to do something that was questionable so that he could say that he didn’t say it.”

To surmount this obstacle, Mr. Trump seemed to rely in his call on a well-worn sleight of attribution: insisting that the thing he wants to talk about is actually a thing that everybody is talking about — in this case, the would-be corruption of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky, “that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that.”

“A lot of people are talking about that,” he said at another point, explaining that he had heard about a Ukrainian prosecutor “who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair.”

On the other end of the line, Mr. Zelensky proved himself a capable Trump scholar, affirming the American president’s positions and showering him with kindnesses.

His lodging of choice in New York? “The Trump Tower.”

Mr. Trump’s airplane? “Probably much better than mine.”

Optimal electoral strategy? “I had an opportunity to learn from you,” Mr. Zelensky said. “We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge.”

At times on the call, Mr. Zelensky seemed to echo Mr. Trump’s own words as a candidate, pledging to surround himself with “the best and most experienced people” and “drain the swamp” in Ukraine.

The five-page memorandum of the conversation includes a note of caution on the transcript’s precision, saying it is not verbatim but rather based on “notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty officers” and national security staff members. But officials said voice recognition software was used in producing the document, which includes several lengthy direct quotations. And for anyone fluent in the president’s conversational rhythms, little in the document sounds discordant.

“This is the style of conversation that President Trump uses,” said Joseph Borelli, a Republican New York City councilman and vocal supporter of Mr. Trump. “Occasionally informal, buddy-buddy. I think it’s worked for him.”

In past episodes of self-inflicted peril for Mr. Trump, allies have occasionally invoked his plain-spoken hometown as a kind of de facto defense. In 2017, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey suggested that the president’s demands of loyalty from James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, amounted to “normal New York City conversation.”

Last year, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative Democrat who has often aligned himself with Mr. Trump, called the president’s reported wish to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, “New York talk.” (In fact, rare is the overheard Q train conversation from locals seeking to fire their special counsels or sic foreign powers on their enemies.)

On Wednesday, though, Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky set off on New York talk of another sort, convening in the city where, by happenstance, they had traveled this week for the United Nations General Assembly.

Speaking to reporters, hands folded on his lap, Mr. Trump allowed that his relationship with Mr. Zelensky had become at least somewhat reciprocal. “He’s made me more famous,” Mr. Trump said. “And I’ve made him more famous.”

Mr. Zelensky affected a smile. “It’s better to be on TV than by phone,” he said.

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