Thread by @LibertyAndTech

Thread. I'm going to live blog my viewing of the 60 Minutes Interview released by President Trump, with Leslie Stahl. I just watched it, took notes, and will make this thread about that. It's long so I'll post at once so it appears less like spam.

Stahl asks Trump what his best domestic policy wins were and he says the economy, unemployment, jobs, stock market price, and he was right Stahl wouldn't boldly tell Biden he's wrong in an interview. Trump gives stats and she says she won't "fact check" him.

She has already started to fact check him. It's too late to say she's not. Then she says one domestic policy win, when the economy is that one thing, as denoted by the indicators he just listed.

Greatest foreign adversary? China. Seh pivots to him having a "double migraine" of unemployment claims going up, covid cases going up. She's focusing on covid, which there was a sharp recovery after the sharp drop.

She says he denies cases are going up when he's clearly been saying that's tied to number of cases. Why the press keep "forgetting" this in every interview is crazy at this point. He cedes cases is up but notes the correlation. He even says testing is a good thing but misleading.

She says "we're turning a corner" and he agrees, but really quickly it becomes clear she's saying it's "getting worse" when he means "getting better." Rate of deaths is getting better.

Stahl says you said the other day to suburban woman "please like me" and he has to point out he was joking / kidding. He says she asked in a misleading way and she cedes that point she's representing it as a serious statement by him, tellingly.

She tries to bolster her argument "but you're behind with suburban women and he says he doubts it, and brings up his point (that he brought up in the speech, actually) that he would bring more safety than Biden, because police unions support him.

Trump says the models pointed to much higher death tolls than what was experienced. She goes back to the economy and circles back to what happened due to covid. She's trying to have a different argument than what she originally asked about.

She asked him what was his best achievement. He essentially said the economy up to covid, and the rebound through it. This is an interview of two ships passing through the night.

He points out H1N1 was mishandled under Obama/Biden and she pivots to Dr Fauci. She says he called him an idiot and he doesn't recall. She asks him if he thinks people should wear masks and he advises them to, but people can make their own decisions.

She switches to his rallies are small and he used to have bigger rallies. He refutes that and says they're bigger now. He points out she's so negative and he says they're the biggest rallies they've ever had. Then she says "tell me about the masks."

Then she pivots to the rose garden, asking incredulously about it. It was outdoors, people were given the choice to wear them or not, and many people did, just not everyone, and not always. He says they hand out thousands of masks. She says they don't wear them.

LOL she says she's not asking about the size of his rallies, but the masks. JFC she literally made both topics and interchanged them. She explicitly brought up crowd sizes, saying they're smaller, and then alternates back and forth on masks.

This is the dumbest interrogation strategy. I don't know if Stahl has fallen several pegs or a score, but this sort of back and forth is not conducive to a clean dialogue between them. You drill on one thing. You don't spray and pray. Good lord. Not even good gotcha questions.

He literally points out she commented on the size of his rallies and then she says "I know that." Then she says "I'm asking you now about the masks. Why aren't you getting up there and telling everyone to wear masks.

It appears her strategy was to get him boasting about crowd size and he isn't telling them to wear masks, but he's made it clear already at this point in the interview he recommends masks but lets the people decide to wear them.

Several minutes wasted on a solitary point of trying to get him to say wear masks at his rallies. This is aimless and inefficient questioning at its worst. She keeps circling around and he says "next question."

Another health question: "What's the health care plan?" Basically. He says it's developed but he wants to see what happens with Obamacare (because there's a SCOTUS case on it now). He says they've put out information on his plans already.

She switches to preexisting conditions and says how they will be protected. He says they will always be protected. They go back and forth on this repeatedly. He has to explain they've already come up with plans, chunks are finished.

Others are clearly dependent on what happens with SCOTUS. He explains they have many plans, and talks about the individual mandate being gone is a part of how they currently are. There are short and long term versions.

He's right about the individual mandate. She keeps circling back to preexisting conditions. Those are two different aspects of it, and she keeps countering one with the other. That's not how Ocare works. And plans change based on what SCOTUS does.

He switches from that to he would love to interview Joe Biden questioned that way by Stahl. She retorts with "but you like this" and that's clearly a dodge. That's not the point. Would she throw softballs at him if he didn't like hardballs?

He points out the media asks him question about ice cream in the midsts of a scandal. Stahl resorts to "c'mon" and tries to make a claim about a Republican Senate somehow not finding something.

He starts to go on about the specific types of corruptions he's involved, including the spying on his campaign, and she says none of that can be verified and tries to "tut tut" him over Russiagate and everything else.

She goes back to asking about a joke he made, as if he said it seriously. This is classic straw manning. Then she says he only uses "fake news" to discredit the press, and he retorts the press does that already.

He points out the focus on ice cream he's carrying, and not the allegations, the press discredits themselves. She's just magically somehow perplexed anyone could ask about scandals, and dismisses them out of hand.

She just keeps saying the laptop (and everything about it) is unverified. He says Biden has vanished for 5 days and she says he's preparing for the debate, and he pokes at that.

LOL she literally says Trump is _trying_ to discredit the press. As if they haven't been doing that for decades, and trying to make it seem like he's an outlier here. What sort of bubble is she in?

It got really derivative but she ends up with "do you take responsibility for dividing the country." He says perhaps everyone has to take responsibility, but he says he has to fight back from spying on his campaign, etc.

She's asking about him attacking all the time. He says it's defense against attacks. Everyone knows he fights back, and this schtick she's trying is hollow.

She asks him to characterize his supporters? He says people that love our country. Doesn't want to see stores looted and burned down. Don't to see riots and terrorists. Don't want to see police get shot. They like endorsements from law and order groups. Like to see thrive.

She asks about the lock her up chants and tells him he encourages it and he says if he just mentions her name they do that. Then he points out literally why people thinks she should be locked up, deleting 30K emails after receiving a subpoena for hosting a private server.

And the DOJ helped her. People don't like her so much, and she wants to lock everyone down. Stahl says if he goes after someone his supporters go after them. She's, at this point, trying to prevent him from criticizing political opponents, since he's president. Good lord.

She's trying to quibble about his language about saying businesses and cities opening up, when he's technically not in power, and again going back to her arguments 10-20 minutes ago where she keeps trying to get him to force people to wear masks, or always recommend them.

LOL Stahl try to push the context that somehow Trump encouraged locking up the governor of Michigan and at first he didn't catch it but within seconds he did, and pushed back, and she ceded that point. Pivoting back to his supporters.

Then she SERIOUSLY asks "so you _don't_ want to lock up the governor." Then she asks, seriously again, "well, what about the Bidens?" This isn't journalism. Reporters are supposed to at least have a grasp on reality here. She's asking absurd questions.

Then she asks about "do you want to lock up Obama?" ROFL. She's just going to match down the names until she gets to, I don't know, some janitor in an IHOP somewhere.

OH MY GOD. He asks her, do you want to know what they did to my campaign? Then he starts to bring up examples and she quickly interrupts: But that's never been verified. WHAT the HECK is she doing at this point? He seems incredulous that she doesn't know.

As in, I can't tell if he really thinks she doesn't know, if he's patronizing her for being willfully ignorant, or just playing dumb. But it definitely reads as, I'm not interested in arguing with someone who cannot be convinced.

It gets even more silly when it comes to Barr, but the gist of her question is "will you go after Obama if you lose?" And the look on Trump's face is just pure analysis. Straight face. He's trying to figure out this winding road, and it of course leads to Barr.

I mean, you have to give her credit. She's meandering, badly, but she's ending up places. But how she gets there involves running over everything and lying about every detail. He says Obama's team is very lucky because Barr is a nice guy.

He says he purposefully stays out of it, and he's left it to Barr. She boldface says she didn't want to bring these things up and he basically calls her out on it. She gave Biden softballs and he isn't treated the same. He's seen every interview, they're all soft.

She says "forget him" and he interrupts and says the way she said there would be tough questions was no way to talk to him. Like, the whole point, always, is 60 Minutes (and everyone else in the MSM) always play this game, and are shocked to be called out on it.

Someone off camera says 5 minutes until the Mike Pence interview and Trump says he thinks they have enough, and he wants to do other things. And that ends the interview. This is _hardly_ the "storming out of the interview" as originally sold as.

I'll wrap up with this. If this was an attempt to make Trump looked erratic, they should have tried with a real journalist with some skill in asking questions. The way she proceeded with realistically a handful of talking points, repeated tirelessly, is the stuff for interns.