Donald Trump v Fox News Sunday: extraordinary
moments from a wild interview
Facing a feared interviewer, the president ended up
insisting that identifying an elephant proved his mental capacity
Amanda
Holpuch
@holpuch
Mon 20 Jul
2020 03.00 BSTFirst published on Sun 19 Jul 2020 21.09 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/19/donald-trump-fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace-interview
Nearly four
years into his wild and unlikely presidency, Donald Trump managed to shock the
world again.
An
interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday included a claim not to care
what the military has to say about renaming its bases, and an argument about
whether identifying an elephant was strong evidence of mental stability.
Part of the
interview’s shock value lay in which network broadcast it: Fox News, which has
only recently seen its cozy relationship with Trump start to erode.
But Wallace
is known as a Fox News outlier, comfortable breaking ranks to ask tough
questions of the president and members of his administration.
His Trump
interview, which was taped at the White House on Friday, was a textbook
example. At one point, Wallace referenced “mean tweets” that Trump posted about
him, and asked if the president understood his responsibilities as a reporter.
“I’m not a
big fan of Fox, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said.
It was one
of several surprising comments.
‘I’m not
losing’
Wallace
unveiled the results of a Fox News poll that showed Trump losing by eight
points to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. Trump was also behind
Biden on the response to the pandemic, on race relations and on the economy. He
trails in other polls too.
Trump said:
“I’m not losing, because those are fake polls.”
Not only
did Trump deny the hard data, he also refused to say if he will accept the
result of November’s presidential election if he comes out the loser.
“I have to
see,” he said. “Look … I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m
not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.”
Anthony
Scaramucci, Trump’s former director of communications, tweeted: “The Chris
Wallace interview is Biden’s campaign ad.”
‘It’s an
elephant’
The same
Fox News poll showed that when asked if Biden and Trump had the mental
soundness to serve as president, 47% of respondents said Biden did and 43% said
Trump did.
More were
certain Trump did not (51%) than Biden (39%).
Trump, 74,
responded by asking that Biden, 77, immediately take a cognitive test. The
president said last week that he “aced” an unspecified test. It is assumed he
is referring to a cognitive assessment from 2018. Wallace, 72, said he had also
taken the test, after seeing the president had.
“It’s not
the hardest test,” he said. “They have a picture and it says ‘What’s that’ and
it’s an elephant.”
Trump said
Wallace was misrepresenting the test, a screening assessment widely used by
doctors.
“I’ll bet
you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions,” he said.
‘I don’t
care what the military says’
As global
protests continue over racial inequality and police brutality, the Pentagon is
considering renaming military bases that honor Confederate leaders. Trump, the
commander-in-chief, said: “I don’t care what the military says. I’m supposed to
make the decision.”
He also
seemed to claim that the federal government could not find other names.
“We’re
going to name it after the Rev Al Sharpton?” Trump asked, referring to the
civil rights leader. “What are you going to name it?”
‘I’ll be
right eventually’
The
interview was especially combative when it touched on Covid-19, which has
infected 3.7 million and killed more than 140,000 people in the US.
Wallace
repeatedly pressed Trump about the death toll, which the president attempted to
deflect by pointing to mortality rates in other countries and saying the US had
“one of the lowest in the world”.
“That’s not
true, sir,” Wallace said, correctly.
The
argument continued, and Trump asked his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, to
“please bring me the mortality rate”.
“You have
the numbers, please?” Trump asked. “Because I hear we have the best mortality
rate. Number, number one low mortality rate.”
Waving a
paper, Trump said: “I hope you show this on air, because it shows what fake
news is about.”
“I don’t
think I’m fake news,” Wallace said.
Wallace
then showed a montage of Trump’s comments minimizing Covid-19, by saying it
will “disappear” at some point.
“I’ll be
right eventually,” Trump said. “It is going to disappear. I’ll say it again,
it’s going to disappear and I’ll be right.”
Wallace
asked if Trump’s past comments about coronavirus disappearing, which have not
been borne out, discredited him.
“I don’t
think so, you know why? Because I’ve been right probably more than anybody
else.”
Trump went
on to say masks can cause problems (they do not) and to say an increase in
testing is why the US has such a high number of cases. It is not.
Trump also called
White House expert Dr Anthony Fauci “an alarmist” and when asked about a daily
death toll around 1,000, said: “It is what it is.”
A surprise
for Congress
Trump also
made the astounding claim that in two weeks’ time, he will sign a new
healthcare plan.
On the
campaign trail in 2016, he promised to overturn the Affordable Care Act,
commonly known as Obamacare, which provides health insurance to those who
cannot otherwise afford it. An effort to do so in Congress failed. Late last
month – during a pandemic – the White House wrote a brief in support of a
lawsuit seeking to bring the ACA down.
Wallace
pointed out that in three years, Trump has not unveiled his promised replacement.
Trump
responded: “We’re signing a healthcare plan within two weeks, a full and
complete healthcare plan that the supreme court decision on DACA [an
immigration decision which went against the administration] gave me the right
to do.
“So we’re
going to solve – we’re going to sign an immigration plan, a healthcare plan,
and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next
four weeks.”
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