Trump's stream of subconsciousness becomes a
torrent in car-crash interview
John Crace
The president’s incoherence and unchecked narcissism
were given full rein for 40 long minutes in a TV evisceration
@JohnJCrace
Tue 4 Aug
2020 18.01 BSTLast modified on Wed 5 Aug 2020 04.36 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/04/donald-trump-tv-interview-john-crace-sketch
I take it
all back. I regularly mock British politicians for their lies and hypocrisy,
not least Boris Johnson, the UK’s Donald Trump-lite, who only last Friday had
hit a new low for cronyism, corruption and nepotism with his appointments to
the House of Lords.
But all
this was amateur hour compared with Donald Trump’s interview with Axios’s
political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, that was broadcast on HBO on Monday
evening.
Here we had
the US president in not just a stream but a full torrent of subconsciousness.
Incoherent, deluded, out of his depth. An object lesson in unchecked, X-rated
narcissism. The only wonder was that Swan managed to keep a reasonably straight
face throughout the best part of 40 minutes.
Swan began
by asking whether the president’s positive thinking had necessarily been the
right approach to the coronavirus when the US death toll was now past 150,000 –
and rising.
Cue a long
rant from Trump about how there had been nothing like this since the 1917 flu
pandemic – actually it was 1918 – how he wouldn’t forget that China had brought
the virus to the US – in reality it also arrived from Europe – and how there
had been 12,000 people at his rally in Tulsa and not the 6,000 that the Fake
News media had reported. All the more people to hear his positive message that
the virus was near enough under control and that face masks were for lefty
wimps.
“We’ve
tested more people than anyone had thought of,” Trump continued. “Sixty
million. There are some people who are saying we have tested too much.”
“Who?” Swan
asked reasonably.
“Read the
manuals. Read the books.”
“What
books?”
Trump
ignored that question and Swan didn’t press him for an answer. The lie spoke
for itself. No scientist has yet advocated less testing as a solution; still
less has anyone written a book about it.
Things
rapidly became even more surreal. First Trump insisted that children with runny
noses were now testing positive and that the only reason the US was showing
more cases was because of its level of testing. Brilliant. Obviously the way to
beat the virus is to do no tests whatsoever. That way no one would ever die of
it.
“When I
took over, we didn’t have a test,” Trump said. Swan’s logic that the reason
there was no test a year or so ago was because the virus did not yet exist
rather passed the president by. Trump then tried to claim the virus was under
control.
“How? A
thousand Americans are dying a day,” Swan insisted, trying to keep the
interview more or less on track.
“They are
dying. That’s true. And it is what it is.” You win some, you lose some.
At this
point, Swan tried to wrap up this part of the interview, more than happy he
already had ratings gold, only for Trump to reach over to the table for a few
sheets of paper. “Let’s look at some charts,” the president said. Be my guest,
thought Swan, fairly certain it was odds on that The Donald would be holding
them the wrong way up.
“Right
here, we’re lower in various categories. The world.” Trump had started, so he’d
finish.
“The
world?” Swan thought it wise to check that the president knew that the USA was
actually part of the world and not some parallel universe.
“Europe.”
Now Swan
got it. The president was trying to measure deaths by number of cases diagnosed
rather than per capita of population.
“You can’t
do that,” Trump insisted.
“Why not?”
Swan asked. Almost every other country had.
Because you
couldn’t. That’s why. Swan pointed out that South Korea had a death toll of
just 300 out of a population of 52 million. Donald gave him one of his “Fake
News” death stares. The Koreans couldn’t be trusted, he said, but he wasn’t
going to say that because the US was friends with them.
The rest of
the interview was every bit as much a car crash. The president hadn’t seen any
intelligence that the Russians were paying the Taliban to kill US military in
Afghanistan. Even though it had been covered by virtually every media outlet.
“Why can’t we talk about China?” He couldn’t even do the maths to work out that
there were as many US personnel in Afghanistan now as in 2016.
Asked why
he had said that he might not accept the results of this November’s
presidential election, Trump said that Hillary Clinton had not accepted the
2016 result.
“Er … she
conceded on the night,” Swan interrupted.
Yeah but no
but yeah but she had grumbled. Besides, it was different this time round, as
there was a newfangled phenomenon of postal voting that was wide open to
corruption.
“But postal
votes have been used since the civil war,” Swan observed. Trump merely blanked
him.
Swan
changed the subject. Ghislaine Maxwell. “I wish her well,” Trump said.
“You wish
an alleged child sex trafficker well?”
Donald
nodded. He was feeling benevolent as her boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein, had either
killed himself or been killed in prison. He wasn’t that bothered which.
Nor was he
too concerned about the veteran civil rights activist John Lewis, who had
recently died. Mainly because he had snubbed an invitation to his presidential
inauguration. No slight, however small, ever gets forgotten by this president.
Swan dabbed
his brow and brought the interview to a close. Though in reality it had been
less an interview and more an on-screen breakdown.
A
collector’s item. But not for those of a nervous disposition
'They're dying … it is what it is': key takeaways
from Trump's shocking interview
President floundered in conversation with Axios,
claiming Covid-19 was ‘under control’ and attacking mail-in voting
Amanda
Holpuch in New York
@holpuch
Tue 4 Aug
2020 19.53 BSTLast modified on Tue 4 Aug 2020 20.27 BST
Donald
Trump stumbled through his second damaging interview in as many weeks,
floundering in a conversation with the news website Axios over key issues he is
tasked with responding to as president.
It’s been
just over two weeks since the president made a series of shocking statements in
a one-on-one interview with Fox News, but he packed another host of
extraordinary claims into a 37-minute interview released on Monday night by
Axios.
Here are
the eight most glaring things Trump said to reporter Jonathan Swan.
‘It is what
it is’
In a
lengthy discussion about the US’s poor response to coronavirus, Trump described
the pandemic as “under control”.
Swan
responded: “How? A thousand Americans are dying a day.”
“They are
dying. That’s true. And you – it is what it is,” Trump said. “But that doesn’t
mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can
control it.”
‘You can’t
do that’
The
president then appeared unable to distinguish between different measurements of
coronavirus deaths.
Trump
brandished several pieces of paper with graphs and charts.
“United
States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than
Europe.”
“In what?”
Swan asked. As it becomes apparent that Trump is talking about the number of
deaths as a proportion of confirmed Covid-19 cases, Swan said: “Oh, you’re
doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion
of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany,
South Korea.”
Trump
responded: “You can’t do that.”
‘He didn’t
come to my inauguration’
Trump
downplayed the work of the congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis,
whose funeral was held last week in Atlanta, Georgia. Instead of Lewis’s
legacy, Trump focused on Lewis in relation to himself.
“I never
met John Lewis, actually,” Trump said. “He didn’t come to my inauguration. He
didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches, and that’s OK. That’s his
right.”
Lewis’s
fight for racial equality includes having his skull broken by state troopers
during the 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Alabama. As a congressman he worked
across the aisle.
‘I did more
for the black community than anybody’
Swan
pressed for an analysis of systemic racism. Trump said: “I have seen where
there is a difference and I don’t want there to be a difference.”
When asked
why black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police, the president
spoke about how many white people are killed by the police.
Then said:
“I did more for the black community than anybody with a possible exception of
Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not.”
When asked
whether he did more than Lyndon B Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights
Act in 1964 (and the Voting Rights Act in 1965), Trump didn’t really answer the
question.
‘I do wish
her well’
Trump stood
by a 21 July comment where he said “I wish her well” of Ghislaine Maxwell, a
longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who faces federal charges for allegedly
enabling the disgraced financier’s sex trafficking of minor girls.
Asked for
his thoughts on Maxwell, Trump said, “Yeah, I wish her well. I’d wish you well.
I wish a lot of people well.”
Promotes
Epstein conspiracy theory
He also
promoted the conspiracy theory that Epstein was murdered when he died in a New
York jail last August. This has been disputed by the attorney general, William
Barr.
“Her
boyfriend died in jail and people are still trying to figure out how did it
happen, was it suicide, was he killed?” Trump said. “I do wish her well. I’m
not looking for anything bad for her.”
‘Lots of
things can happen’
Trump again
attacked mail-in voting, which is expected to occur at higher rates in the
November election because of the pandemic.
“It could
be decided many months later,” Trump said. “Do you know why? Because lots of
things will happen during that period of time. Especially when you have tight
margins, lots of things can happen. There’s never been anything like this …
Now, of course, right now we have to live with it, but we’re challenging it.”
Trump said
reports that Russia had been offering bounties to the Taliban for attacks on US
forces in Afghanistan were “fake news”. When Swan asked whether Trump had ever
discussed the bounties with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump said
he had not.
When Swan
asked Trump about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, the president
asserted: “I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk.”
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