Trump’s Axios interview on HBO was a catastrophe

President Donald Trump’s interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios started with him telling a dizzying string of lies about his coronavirus response and the state of the pandemic within the nation. It ended with Trump making the loss of life of civil rights chief John Lewis about himself. It didn’t go any higher in between.

For the second time in a month, Trump’s try to take a seat down for an interview with a journalist keen to problem him led to catastrophe. Over the course of 37 minutes, Swan repeatedly uncovered Trump’s incapacity to answer probably the most fundamental of follow-up questions.

Trump’s problem with push-back is commonly hid when he solutions questions beside a loud helicopter or within the pleasant confines of Sean Hannity’s present. However the Swan interview, which got here out simply two weeks after Trump’s equally disastrous efficiency on Chris Wallace’s present, highlighted the diploma to which Trump is unable to defend his document within the face of even mildly difficult questions.

Trump’s coronavirus feedback proceed to be a humiliation

Maybe probably the most terrifying a part of the interview got here early on when Swan peppered Trump with a string of questions on why he isn’t doing extra to struggle the coronavirus and why the virus has hit the US a lot tougher than different comparable international locations.

Requested how he can say the pandemic is underneath management when roughly 1,000 People are dying from Covid-19 every day, Trump stated, remarkably, that “it’s what it’s.”

“They’re dying. That’s true. It’s what it’s. … It’s underneath management as a lot as you’ll be able to management it.”

On the subject of America’s struggles with coronavirus testing, together with lengthy wait instances for check outcomes that render testing nearly nugatory, Trump resorted to creating stuff up.

“There are those who say you’ll be able to’t check an excessive amount of. You realize that?” Trump stated at one level.

“Who says that?” Swan responded.

“Learn the manuals. Learn the books,” answered Trump.

“What books?” Swan challenged, however no reply was forthcoming. As a substitute, Trump stated that “after I took over we didn’t also have a check” — as if the Obama administration was alleged to develop a check for a virus that didn’t exist till almost three years after Trump’s inauguration.

A couple of minutes later, simply as he did on Wallace’s present, Trump waved round items of paper with charts and graphs in an unconvincing effort to make it appear as if the US coronavirus loss of life toll of greater than 150,000 isn’t as unhealthy because it appears.

“Proper right here, the US is lowest in … quite a few classes … ah, we’re decrease than the world,” Trump stammered, which prompted Swan to reply, incredulously, “decrease than the world? In what?”

“Oh, you’re doing loss of life as a proportion of instances,” Swan continued. “I’m speaking about loss of life as a proportion of inhabitants. That’s the place the US is de facto unhealthy. A lot worse than South Korea, Germany, and many others. … Take a look at South Korea: 50 million inhabitants, 300 deaths.”

Trump responded by suggesting South Korea is faking its numbers. However when Swan challenged him on that time, Trump rapidly modified the subject again to his items of paper.

“Right here’s one proper right here. You are taking the variety of instances. No, look. We’re final. Which means we’re first,” Trump stated.

“I imply, 1,000 People die a day,” Swan responded. “If hospital charges had been taking place and deaths had been taking place, I’d say terrific, you need to be praised for testing. However they’re all going up!

Watch the change:

Within the minutes that adopted, Trump failed to clarify the contradiction between his claims about being a voracious shopper of intelligence reviews and that he was by no means knowledgeable about intelligence that Russia was providing bounties for US troops in Afghanistan that was reportedly in stated briefs. “I learn so much. I comprehend terribly nicely. In all probability higher than anyone you’ve interviewed in a very long time,” the president claimed.

He additionally revealed whole confusion concerning the distinction between absentee and mail-in voting, struggled to clarify why he lately prolonged his well-wishes to accused intercourse trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell (“Yeah, I want her nicely. I’d want you nicely, I’d want lots of people nicely. Good luck.”), and dismissed video footage of federal legislation enforcement officers utilizing a baton to beat a Navy veteran who was protesting in Portland.

“I believe that really, antifa needs to be investigated, not the legislation enforcement,” Trump stated.

Trump’s race relations remarks pour gasoline on the hearth

However maybe Trump’s most tone-deaf remarks had been reserved for the top when Swan requested him a string of questions on racial inequalities and his response to the loss of life of John Lewis.

Introduced with a statistic that succinctly illustrates systemic racism within the nation — “Why do you suppose Black males are two and half instances extra more likely to be killed by police than white males?” Swan requested — Trump dodged with an equivalency.

“I do know this: that police have killed many white folks additionally,” he stated.

After Trump claimed he’s carried out “extra for the Black group than anyone with the potential exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether or not you prefer it or not,” Swan requested him: “You consider you probably did greater than Lyndon Johnson, who handed the Civil Rights Act?”

“How has it labored out?” Trump responded. “When you check out what Lyndon Johnson did. How has it labored out?”

The interview closed with what ought to’ve been a softball — “How do you suppose historical past will keep in mind John Lewis?” Swan requested. However as a substitute of paying lip service to Lewis’s document as a Civil Rights icon, Trump denigrated him for the pettiest of causes.

“I actually don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He selected to not come to my inauguration,” Trump stated.

“Taking your relationship with him out of it, do you discover his story spectacular, what he’s carried out for this nation?” Swan adopted up.

“He was an individual that devoted lots of vitality and lots of coronary heart to civil rights. However there have been many others additionally,” Trump demurred.

The interview was recorded final Tuesday and aired Monday night on Axios’s HBO present. In an indication of the way it went, Trump — who often promotes softball interviews he does with the Hannitys of the world within the hope of getting as many individuals as potential to tune in — didn’t point out it on Twitter or elsewhere.

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