(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said his impeachment taught him that Democrats are “crooked” and that his approval rating improved, after Republican Senator Susan Collins said she thought he had learned a lesson from the experience.
Trump was asked during a meeting with Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno at the White House on Wednesday what he had learned.
“That the Democrats are crooked, have a lot of crooked things going. That they're vicious, that they shouldn't have brought impeachment,” he replied. “And my poll numbers are 10 points higher because of fake news like NBC which reports the news very inaccurately, probably more inaccurately than CNN if that's possible.”
After voting to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial, Collins said in an interview on CBS News that “I believe the president has learned from this case” and that Trump “will be much more cautious in the future.”
Since then, Trump has ousted government officials who testified in the House impeachment inquiry and publicly criticized a seven-to-nine-year prison sentence federal prosecutors recommended for his former associate Roger Stone. Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and other charges stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Department of Justice overruled prosecutors and moved to reduce the recommended sentence after Trump's criticism on Tuesday, prompting four prosecutors to resign from the case. Trump said he wasn't concerned by the resignations and that the prosecutors “ought to go back to school.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net
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