WASHINGTON — Offering his own take on five long days of public hearings, President Donald Trump brushed off the impeachment inquiry as “total nonsense” on Friday and bad-mouthed a number of the U.S. diplomats who testified to Congress about his Ukraine pressure campaign.

In one breath, Trump said House Democrats looked like “fools” during the hearings on Capitol Hill. In another, he offered a window into his political strategy ahead of an expected House vote to impeach him. If that happens, the Senate would hold a trial on whether to oust him from office.

“I think we had a tremendous week with the hoax,” Trump said at the White House.

At the same time, he talked up debunked conspiracy theories that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, speaking just one day after a former White House adviser testified that the claim was a “fictional narrative” that played into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump also repeated claims that Obama administration officials spied on his campaign and underscored the need to keep Republicans unified against impeachment.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen support in the Republican party like we do right now,” he said.

In a 57-minute, animated phone interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump said he did not expect to be impeached. But he added that if the House did vote to impeach him, he would welcome a trial in the Republican-led Senate.

“Frankly, I want a trial,” he said.

A trial, he said, would give Republicans a chance to question Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the hearings as chairman of the House intelligence committee. Procedures for a Senate trial still are being worked out, but Republicans may well be hesitant to adopt Trump’s idea of turning a lawmaker into a witness.

“I want to see Adam Schiff testify about the whistleblower, who is a fake whistleblower,” the president said, adding that he knows the identity of the whistleblower whose formal complaint launched the impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s professed confidence came after impeachment witnesses testified under oath that the president withheld aid from Ukraine to press the country to investigate his political rivals. Trump insisted he was trying to root out corruption in the Eastern European nation when he held up nearly $400 million in military aid to help Ukraine battle Russian aggression.

“I think it’s very hard to impeach you when they have absolutely nothing,” Trump said.

He denied there was any quid pro quo, extortion or bribery. He also denied holding up a White House meeting or military aid to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s dealings in Ukraine.