Trump using this interview to blunder into a diplomatic incident with South Korea by accusing its gov't of fraud, and to say "it is what it is" about COVID deaths, is horrifying enough. Then he does this:
Well, I'm watching this interview in full now.
His petty racism is catastrophic, and the destructiveness of Trump's wilful incompetence--his solipsism more than anything else, his inability to conceive of a world outside of his own self-flattering delusions--cannot be overstated. This interview is all of that in miniature.
Beyond the farcical fascism, what's striking about this interview is just how much Trump sounds like...an ordinary politician. The same dissembling, for instance ("I never saw the brief"/ "when you say arming [what do you mean]?"/"it's never reached my desk.")
Time and again, his most ardent supporters claim he's not a "Washington insider" and yet he gives the same insulting answers as any career politico doing CYA.
Trump isn't like other politicians?
Trump isn't like other politicians?
Swan dwells on the question of mail in voting, quotes (and shows) a Trump campaign email encouraging Republicans to vote by mail, and quotes his own daughter-in-law's robocalls promoting postal voting, and Trump still claims dogs will vote.
I mean, look, we know why. Trump and the GOP as a whole are trying to get out their core voters while delegitimising everyone else's ballot--especially those cast by people of colour. It's painfully obvious. Interviews like this just draw out the lazy excuses.
Unexpected moment: Trump calling NBC's Lester Holt "a real beauty" almost...admiringly?
Evidently he also blames China for Black Lives Matter, because... if I can tease out the logic... the US was "becoming more unified" before COVID-19 hit. And he of course uses his pet racist name for the virus per usual and implies the Chinese government infected us. Me rn:
Wait, this interview is only 35 minutes long?
To sum it up: a lot of people get hung up on Trump's style rather than his substance. He *sounds* more selfish and foolish than past presidents. But in terms of policy, there's remarkable continuity. His racism, his buck-passing, his fetishisation of police... nothing new.
What is unique about him is how deeply he lives in his own head. That solipsism is the wellspring of his fascism; to protect himself and his delusions of grandeur he will fashion the state into a weapon to protect his family and secure legal immunity for himself.
America's nationalist and imperialist delusions, meanwhile, are easily adapted to support the fantasies of one overbearingly imperious man who fears humiliation as deeply as any other dictator.
But he is, as ever, a deeply pathetic man afraid of the truth. We have to keep speaking that truth: in the streets, at the ballot box, at the dinner table.
