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If you haven't seen @jonathanvswan's wild interview with @realDonaldTrump, it's a #mustwatch. Here is the full 35-minute interview which will make your mind boggle. Never ceases to amaze me that this guy is president of the world's most powerful country 1/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Look, @jonathanvswan, who is a good friend of mine, has been getting lots of deserved praise for this interview - as did Chris Wallace before him. But ask yourself why other/previous interviewers haven't been able to do interviews like this? Why not?? 2/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
To be clear, in my view, Jonathan could have been tougher at times, and I tend to be a tougher interviewer. Everyone's style is different. But the fact that polite, smiling, non-aggressive Jonathan was able to expose Trump in this way speaks volumes. 3/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
What was great about this interview - and again, I know, I know, by Trump interview standards, a low bar! - is that Jonathan actually brought follow-ups, brought facts, brought genuine incredulity in his facial expressions when Trump said mad stuff. 4/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Still, Jonathan's much nicer than me. He still let Trump talk over him on multiple occasions (how many times did you hear Jonathan say "Please let me finish my question") and Trump takes advantage of people's manners & exploits them to steamroller them 5/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Trump told so many lies & @jonathanvswan tried to challenge some of them but the lies per sentence ratio with Trump is off the charts & it's just not possible. How many times in this single intv did he claim cases were up because testing is up?? FFS. 6/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
The way to deal with Trump, I think, is just to stop. Slow down time. Wait for him to stop ranting & then just re-ask the question. E.g. Jonathan asked him if he thought the Civil Rights Act was a mistake & Trump rambled & never answered that question. 7/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Another example from the @jonathanvswan interview: Trump was asked about the Navy veteran (Christopher David) beaten by the police in Portland & he called it 'fake news'. I'd like to have seen Trump be forced to deal with specifics of the David incident 8/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Did you all notice how Trump refused to say Jeffrey Epstein's name in this @jonathanvswan interview? Kept referring to him as Ghislaine Maxwell's "boyfriend"? Also - that's twice now he has wished an accused child sex trafficker "well". Astonishing. 9/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
I know this is kinda random, given how many lies Trump told, but for the nth time he referred to the Spanish Flu as having been in "1917" when it was in 1918. Surely he's been told this/corrected before? Is his brain broken?Weird cc: @RobertMackey 10/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
My favourite part of the interview was when Trump tried to school @jonathanvswan by sternly telling him that Russia was once the "Soviet Union" and then it became Russia again after the Afghan war. Pretty sure it didn't stop being Russia at any point. 11/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Trump is also his own worst enemy in these interviews - the embarrassing clip with the Covid death charts, for example, that went viral was after Jonathan had tried to move on but Trump insisted on showing the charts. What a gift to @jonathanvswan lol!
12/
 axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Anyways, respect and kudos to @jonathanvswan for getting this (mad!) interview and using his time to press Trump on important issues and following up where/when he could and showing others that it can be done. This will be long remembered... 13/
axios.com/full-axios-hbo…
Last point: if former Trump campaign manager @parscale got demoted after the Tulsa humiliation, should we expect White House @PressSec to be demoted or fired once thin-skinned Trump discovers what a laughing stock this @axios interview has made him? Just wondering...
*ENDS*
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Mehdi Hasan
@mehdirhasan
I'm 40, about to turn 41. If you'd asked me over the past two decades what the worst political decision/crisis of my lifetime was, I'd have said, without hesitation, the invasion of Iraq.

Until now.

Now, it's the (mis)handling of the coronavirus. Without a shadow of a doubt.
I never thought I'd see world leaders top the extreme combination of horrific lies, blunders, delusions, mistakes, crimes etc of Bush/Cheney/Blair/Aznar/Howard on Iraq.

But Trump/Johnson/Bolsonaro et al seem to have managed it.
(And btw, I'm obviously not talking about the Iraq war itself, which had its own specific crimes and monstrous Iraqi death toll. I'm talking about the global political decision-making which led to the invasion vs the global political decison-making on the coronavirus now.)
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Mehdi Hasan
@mehdirhasan
Ilhan Omar made a misjudged remark about "Benjamins" & for weeks we talked about her alleged antisemitism, the left's bigotry, & Congress passed a resolution.

Trump told the president of China he was ok with him locking up a million Muslims in concentration camps.

Silence.
Nobody gives a damn about Muslims or Islamophobia, part 774.
To be clear: before the pedants get in my mentions, yes, people are tweeting about it, including some journalists, but it's not leading the news, or on any front pages right now, and will be forgotten by tomorrow.

The US president taking a pro-genocide-of-Muslims position! FFS.
Read 4 tweets
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Mehdi Hasan
@mehdirhasan
"Bolton recounts numerous private conversations Trump had with other leaders that revealed the limits of his knowledge. He recalls Trump asking Kelly if the nation of Finland is part of Russia." One for @gtconway3d's Trump/geography Twitter thread.
washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
"He also describes a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey where Trump says journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags,” Trump said, according to Bolton's account."
"the main goal of [Trump's pro-MBS] missive was to take away attention from a story about Ivanka Trump using her personal email for government business. “This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump said... “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”
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