August 3, 2020: Trump's Amazing Interview - And not in a Good Way

 

8/3/20: We had hints today from the Manhattan district attorney’s office that prosecutors may try to make a broad case against the president, possibly against some of his children, and the Trump Organization.

 

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“They are dying. It is what it is.” 

President Donald J. Trump

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Citing what they call “public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,” investigators are asking the courts to compel Trump to give up his tax records. These records might support an indictment. They might even bring the probe to a close and clear the president’s “spotless” good name. 

This blogger is not one to count his chickens before they are found guilty and sent to prison. But if investigators suspect “tax and insurance fraud,” as reported, he can think of no man who would be more inclined to delve into all flavors of fraud than the current occupant of the White House.

 

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THAT WASN’T even the worst news of the day for Donald Trump. The full interview he gave to Jonathan Swan of Axios has finally aired.

 

You can watch the entire 37 minutes if you like. Or Mr. Blogger can hit the high points – which are really lows – and save you the time and brain damage that results from listening to this president. 

When the video begins, we glimpse “Birther” McEnany lurking in the shadows. Her job will be to hand the president ridiculous charts to glance at and pass to Swan – who will view them skeptically. Because he’s not an imbecile. 

The interview begins pleasantly. At the 1:58 mark, Trump begins defending his handling of the health crisis. “I think we’ve done an incredible job, with the ventilators” and “putting the ban on China, which, frankly, no one wanted me to do, practically nobody.” Had he not put in place that travel ban, we “would have lost hundreds of thousands of lives more.” In other words, he’s not the bumbling fool he seems. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. 

 

A subtle example of how ill-informed he is. 

He says “nobody knew” what this pandemic would be like, and notes that we haven’t seen anything like it since 1917. He repeats the date, twice. It’s a recurrent mistake, and a subtle example of how ill-informed he is. The Spanish Flu killed millions round the world, starting in 1918. 

As he often has of late, the president cites countries he thinks are doing worse than the U.S., as if to say, “See, I’m not so bad.” At the 3:40 mark he cites Spain, as having a big spike, and Brazil. Brazil is doing badly. He doesn’t mention that the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, is a virus-denier too. And if Spain is spiking, Italy, Germany, Japan, and South Korea are not. 

At the 4:30 mark Trump says that by shutting down the economy when he did, “we saved millions of lives.” In just minutes, his claim has gone from saving “hundreds of thousands” of lives to “millions.” 

We’ve seen this guy in action now for years. No one would be surprised if he claimed he saved “billions” before the interview ends. That’s how Trump Math works. What the president wants everyone to know is that he’s a hero. The people “who really understand it,” he tells Swan, say “it’s incredible the job we’ve done.” 

“Who’s they?” Swan interjects. 

Trump figures if he keeps gibbering, he can avoid answering any pointed questions. So, for another half hour we get a torrent of baloney spewed from his lips. Swan tries repeatedly to pin him down. In June he interviewed Trump, right before the president went to Tulsa for a rally. He tries to point out that experts knew then the disease was spreading far and wide. 

“Why have 6,000 people crowd together at that rally?” he wonders.

 

Trump bristles and says the rally drew 12,000, but the “Fake News” people won’t report it. (Neither would the Tulsa fire marshal, who said 6,200 people were in the arena when the president spoke.) 

As far as COVID-19 goes, Trump says Oklahoma was doing great when he visited. Cases “spiked a month, a month-and-a-half, two months later.” He doesn’t really know. He says that no one wants to talk about it, but “Fox had the highest ratings” ever for a Saturday night speech when it broadcast his Tulsa rally. 

Americans may be dying by the thousands. Trump is boasting about ratings. “I’m talking about public health,” Swan says, voice rising. 

At the 7:00 minute mark, the journalist bores in. “Your people,” he says, “they love you. They listen to you.” He points at his own head. “They listen to every word you say, they hang on your words. They don’t listen to me, or the media, or [Dr.] Fauci. They think we’re fake news. They want to get their advice from you. And so, when you say, ‘everything is under control, don’t worry about wearing masks,’ these people…many of them are older.” 

 

“I think it’s under control.” 

“Right now, I think it’s under control,” the president says, defensively. 

“How?” asks Swan. “A thousand people are dying a day.” 

“They are dying. That’s true,” the president responds,” his voice also rising, along with his ire. “It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague.” 

Swan asks, quite reasonably, if the president really believes this is the best we can do as a nation. 

Trump says that his administration has given the governors everything they need. Then he blames the governors for any problems. He says some have been “great” and others “not so great.” He cites Arizona, Texas, and Florida as states where case numbers are going down. On the day the interview is conducted, numbers in those states are not going down, at least not in Texas and Florida. 

Swan tries to point that out. 

Trump deflects. “It should have been stopped by China,” he says of the virus. “It should have been stopped by China.” 

That would be relevant if we were talking about the situation in January. Swan interjects, “But now it’s here.”

 

Trump isn’t going to let facts stop him, or nuance slow him down. He says the U.S. has done more testing than all of Europe. That’s why we have so many reported cases. He says we’ve done more testing than all of Europe, “times two.” 

That’s a claim he makes around the 9:48 mark on the tape. It takes me 30 seconds to pause the interview, go to Worldometers, do some quick estimating…and…okay…Trump is full of guano. 

Actual testing numbers: USA 61.6 million tests administered (as of August 3). 

Russia 29.4 million

United Kingdom 16.9 million

Spain 7.1 million

Italy 7 million, etc. 

And that doesn’t include France or Germany or Ukraine or Croatia, or most of the other countries of that continent. 

So Trump is lying again. 

 

“There are those who say you can test too much.” 

At the ten minute mark, the president makes the claim that stuns Swan and anyone watching. At least any viewers whose frontal lobes have not been irreparably damaged by whacks with a hammer. “You know, there are those who say you can test too much. You do know that?” the president asks. 

Swan’s pained expression says it all. 

“Who says that?” he responds.

Swan almost appears to be in pain.

 

“Read the books, read the manuals,” Trump says. 

“Manuals?” 

“Read the books,” Trump says again. 

“What books?” asks Swan. 

The president doesn’t answer. He tries to explain how hard it was to deal with the virus because “we didn’t have a test” when it reached our shores. Swan isn’t buying. “Of course,” he responds. You can’t have a test for a disease no one has ever seen.

 

Trump reverts to his more testing, more cases defense. Some kid gets sick, has “a little runny nose,” it’s a case, he whines. 

Swan’s not talking runny noses. “The figure I look at is deaths,” he says. “Deaths is going up now. It’s a thousand a day.” 

At this point the interview becomes embarrassing. Trump has some charts handy, thanks to McEnany. He offers to show them to Swan. Swan says he’d love to have a peek. Trump has trouble reading the first chart, clearly confused by what it shows. “The United States is lowest in numerous categories,” he offers. He squints at the chart like Mr. Magoo, only dumber, and says, “We’re lower than the world.” 

“The world?” Swan is incredulous. 

Watching, so am I, because the chart Trump has in his hands doesn’t show “numerous categories” with the U.S. lowest in all; it’s not even set up to show numerous categories.

Trump hands the chart to Swan, who realizes it shows deaths as a proportion of reported cases. This is the essence of stupidity, and he knows it. “I’m talking about death as a proportion of population,” he says. He notes that deaths in this country are much higher than South Korea and Germany. 

Trump responds, “You can’t do that.” 

It’s an amazing moment for anyone watching who isn’t blind to reality. And it’s easy to check. Per million, the U.S. has one of the highest death rates of any nation on Earth. As of noon, on August 5, when I post, our country has suffered 485 deaths per million. South Korea: 6. Germany: 110. 

 

The “ice cream” chart. 

The next chart Trump waves around looks like something a third grade teacher would provide to students to help them learn to read simple graphs. The pink bar might be the percentage of students that said they like vanilla ice cream. The blue bar might be the percentage that liked strawberry. If this weren’t the president we were watching, we might pity the fool.

 

Swan points out that South Korea has a population of 51 million and only 300 deaths from the coronavirus. 

“You don’t know that” Trump says. 

I check again. Yeah, we do. 

Trump waves around his ice cream chart for emphasis and says, “Look, we’re last. Which means we’re first.” 

Swan knows that talking to Trump is like trying to convince a three-year-old that he has to put on socks and shoes if he wants to go to McDonalds. Trump goes back to bragging about how we lead the world in testing. Which is also terrible. Swan says that would be great if deaths and hospitalizations were going down. But they’re not. “Sixty thousand Americans are in hospitals,” he exclaims.

 

At the 16:30 mark Swan switches topics and asks about reports Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Watching, my head is about to explode. I start taking fewer notes. 

I can’t take much more of this. 

This portion of the interview had already been released. It did not add luster to the Trump star. Swan notes that Trump talked to Putin in a call on July 23. Did he bring up the topic? Trump says he didn’t because “many people said it was fake news.” 

“What people,” Swan inquires. 

A president, one prepared, would respond with something like, “Secretary of Defense Esper.” Or cite the head of the C.I.A. Trump switches subjects. He says no one ever brings up China. It’s always, “Russia, Russia, Russia.” He says nuclear proliferation – and he says he hopes to get a deal done with Russia soon – is a bigger issue than “global warming, a much bigger problem than global warming, in terms of the real world.” 

(This, too, is wrong, since every person riding the globe around the sun is going to be or has been negatively affected by climate change.) 

Besides, the president insists, the intelligence on Russia and the bounties, “never reached my desk.” 

Swan can be heard protesting, “It was in your written brief.” 

“If it reached my desk, I would have done something about it,” the president says. This is odd, since he just argued that many people told him it was “fake news.”

 

In other words: 

Step 1: Ignore the “fake news.” 

Step 2: Do something about it if it reaches your desk. 

 

“We supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too.” 

When Swan points out that our commander in Afghanistan warned in 2017 that the Russians were supplying the Taliban with weapons – and shouldn’t that have been enough to bring up the matter in a call with Putin – Trump gives an astonishing answer. “Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too.”   

It’s as if he doesn’t really care that American troops might be getting killed. He says he didn’t ask General John W. Nicholson Jr., our commander in Afghanistan, because he was there before Trump took office (and still there until September 2018) and “didn’t do a very good job.” 

In other words: 

Step 3: Blame the general.

 

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SWAN TURNS to the election in November and asks if the president will accept the results. It’s another stunning moment. 

Trump says he can’t be sure. He starts talking about the dangers of mail-in balloting, which he says is new. Swan points out that it’s been around since the Civil War, when Union soldiers mailed in hundreds of thousands of ballots from the front lines and helped ensure Lincoln had a second term. 

Trump claims a friend of his got a ballot for a son who died seven years ago. “Somebody got a ballot for a dog,” he adds. “Absentee balloting is fine. You have to apply.” 

Swan notes: “You have to apply for mail-in ballots.” 

I find myself hoping Swan will say, “Sir, you are a numbskull. Mail-in ballots must be signed. Signatures are compared against signatures on file. Fido won’t be making his mark with a paw print…” 

Trump grumbles about California sending out millions of ballots. 

“No, applications,” Swans interjects. 

He points out that the Trump campaign is urging supporters to vote by mail. Swan holds up an email. Lara Trump, he notes, has been making robocalls in the state, urging Republicans to request those ballots, get those ballots filled out, lick those stamps, and get them mailed in time.

 

I might point out helpfully, that the president’s obsession with California is clearly not good for his mental health. In the most recent poll conducted, 67% of Californians said they planned to vote for Biden. 

Trump got 28%. 

 

“Well, he didn’t come to my inauguration.” 

The interview doesn’t get better before it gets worse. Trump defends his previous good wishes, extended to Ghislaine Maxwell. She’s the alleged accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, and herself accused of abusing teen girls. The president says he does wish her well. He’s emphatic. “I’m not looking bad for anybody,” he claims. That’s a laugh in itself. Trump is the most skilled hater to sit in the White House since Andrew Johnson in 1867, if not since the birth of the republic. 

It never dawns on Trump to mention sympathy for Epstein’s victims, and there were hundreds. 

(This is the president’s second chance; he also failed to mention the victims on 7/21/20.)

 

The last ten minutes or so, Swan tries to get him to answer a few questions about the protesters in Portland, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Trump will only talk about “Antifa,” “anarchists,” “terrorists,” and how the Antifa crowd wanted to kill the mayor of Portland. 

Trump hates the mayor, too. 

He claims again that he has done more for black Americans than “any other president, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.” 

“More than Lyndon Johnson, who passed the Civil Rights Act?” Swans inquires. 

Trump replies, “Civil Rights Act didn’t work out so well.”

 

He’s right for once. Whether or not he realizes – and, of course, he doesn’t – he just admitted that systemic racism has long been a problem in this country. His fans won’t notice either. Swan doesn’t have a chance to ask about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Team Trump has done nothing to extend. 

Swan ends by asking the president about Rep. John Lewis, recently deceased. Why not attend his funeral? 

Trump says simply, “Well, he didn’t come to my inauguration.” His pettiness could not be clearer. 

Was Lewis an impressive figure? Swan tries again.

 

Trump says he doesn’t know his story. He knows a lot of impressive people, some not so impressive. 

Here, I must point out that Lewis, as a young man, shed more blood fighting for justice than all the Trump clan combined, going back to 1885, when the first Trump landed on these shores. Lewis had his head bashed in 1961 during one of the “Freedom Rides.” Four years later he had his skull broken when he and others tried to cross the Edmund Pettis bridge into Selma, Alabama. There they hoped to register African Americans to vote. 

Finally, Swan wonders if Trump would approve of a move to rename the bridge. 

“I’d have no problem with that,” he says. He’s not enthusiastic, of course. Not like he gets all excited when people talk about taking down the statues of Confederate generals and/or slave owners. 

The two men smile at last. Swan thanks Trump for being “so generous” with his time. The camera pans the room, showing President Jefferson’s portrait. Then: John Adams. Jimmy Carter. John F. Kennedy. Truman. Teddy Roosevelt. Lincoln. Richard M. Nixon. FDR. George Washington. Mercifully, that’s the end of the tape, before my eyeballs melt out of my head.

John Lewis, left, and James Zweig, after being beaten by a mob in 1961

 

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IN OTHER STUPID NEWS, Mayor Barry Presgraves of Luray, Virginia garners widespread condemnation after he posts on social media: “Joe Biden has just announced Aunt Jemima as his VP pick.”