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I got here armed with a fistful of blue playing cards, and nonetheless didn’t get to half the questions, however Donald Trump made a complete lot of stories in our Mar-a-Lago interview.
What’s revealing is how he selected to reply probably the most delicate questions, or to deflect them, and the way numerous media shops selected to border them.
Some, just like the New York Times, ABC and the Hill, performed it straight. Other operations, lots of them left-leaning, cherry-picked quotes to make Trump look as terrible as doable, whereas ignoring the reasonable-sounding issues he mentioned.
A traditional instance was once I requested the previous president in regards to the homicide of Alexei Navalny in a Siberian jail camp. I assumed he may duck due to his pleasant relationship with Vladimir Putin.
But I put it to him point-blank: Is the Russian dictator accountable for the loss of life of the opposition chief?
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Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump takes the stage to introduce a brand new line of signature footwear at Sneaker Con at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Feb. 17 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Perhaps,” Trump mentioned. “I mean, possibly, I could say probably. I don’t know. He’s a young man, so statistically he’d be alive for a long time…Certainly that would look like something very bad happened.”
Keep in thoughts that Trump has by no means even talked about Putin in the identical paragraph as Navalny, and now he’s saying “probably” accountable. Of course, Trump can’t show it, and neither can I.
Here are among the headlines:
“Trump Couldn’t Bring Himself to Condemn Putin for Alexei Navalny’s Death.”
“Trump Delivers Head-Spinningly Awkward Answer to New Question About Putin.”
“Trump: ‘I Don’t Know’ If Putin Was Responsible for Navalny’s Death.”
You get the thought.
Which brings us to Trump’s rhetoric. I requested why he makes use of phrases like “vermin” and “poisoning of the blood” to explain unlawful migrants – particularly for the reason that press says such language was utilized by Hitler and Mussolini.
Trump says he didn’t know that after which repeated “our country is being poisoned” – prompting a wave of headlines that he had doubled down on such dangerous language.
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I assume you might say that – and I’m not letting him off the hook – however the extra telling a part of his reply got here subsequent.
I requested the forty fifth president whether or not he makes use of “over the top” and “inflammatory” language to drive the media debate, which means a give attention to his phrases will get information shops spending days on his turf, on his most popular situation, within the arguments over whether or not he went too far. And Trump didn’t deny it, saying he wouldn’t restrict himself to “politically correct” verbiage.
“It also gets people thinking about very important issues,” he mentioned. “That if you don’t use certain rhetoric, if you don’t use certain words that maybe are not very nice words, nothing will happen.” My idea, based mostly on a long time of observing him, was right.
Then he went off on migrants coming from insane asylums and the way crime will double – neither of which has been proven to be true on a serious scale.
Migrants line up at a distant U.S. Border Patrol processing middle after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on Dec. 7, 2023, in Lukeville, Arizona. (John Moore/Getty Images)
The identical was true with NATO, when Trump brought about a world uproar by saying he’d encourage the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO international locations that don’t pay their justifiable share of protection prices.
That seems like somebody taking a pro-Putin stance, I mentioned.
“It sounds like somebody that wants to get people to pay money,” Trump mentioned. In different phrases, it was a negotiating tactic.
Half an hour earlier than airtime, the media had been awash in headlines about Trump saying there could be a “bloodbath” if he misplaced the election. So I watched that portion of his speech at an Ohio rally the night time earlier than.
There have been instances when Trump used loaded phrases to sign the potential for political violence. This wasn’t one in all them.
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Trump was occurring about Chinese automobiles and their affect on the American auto business. Then he mentioned if he wasn’t elected there could be a massacre – by way of the affect on jobs. Then he went proper again to speaking about electrical automobiles and business competitors.
Now some pundits mentioned the mere use of the phrase massacre was like a bat sign, telling his supporters to prepare for violence. After all, he was so Machiavellian that he added, “That’s going to be the least of it.” But as I mentioned, too many retailers had been so in love with the massacre story that they wrenched it out of context.
Trump additionally mentioned at the rally that some migrants had been “animals” and “not people.” That’s unacceptable language, in my view, however keep in mind what he mentioned about inflammatory phrases driving the media debate. I wished to decode his strategy for viewers.
Trump additionally made information on abortion. I requested him a couple of Times story that mentioned he’s discussing with advisers a nationwide ban after 16 weeks of being pregnant – not figuring out his marketing campaign had dismissed it as faux information – and figured he’d dismiss the story.
Migrants who crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico are lined up for processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Sept. 23, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
Nope. He basically confirmed the 16-week story – saying he’d decide “pretty soon,” which might clearly be in that vary – that had beforehand been attributed to unnamed sources. He mentioned, regardless of my skepticism, that he desires to “make both sides happy.”
When Republicans grapple with abortion within the post-Roe world, Trump mentioned, “you have to go with your heart. But beyond that, you also have to get elected.” He mentioned that opposing the three exceptions – rape, incest, lifetime of the mom – brought about Pennsylvania Republican Doug Mastriano to lose the governor’s race in a landslide.
Then Trump went off on the Democrats and late-term abortions – which I mentioned in one in all a number of fact-checks are exceedingly uncommon.
He additionally made information on topics starting from Israel to TikTookay.
The first time I met Donald Trump was in 1987, in New York, when he was selling his first guide “The Art of the Deal.”
And this, unprompted, is what he mentioned to me:
“When I go up to New Hampshire – I’m not running for president, by the way – I got the best crowd, the best of everything in terms of reception. The politicians go up and get a moderate audience. I go up and they’re scalping tickets. You heard that? They’re scalping tickets. Why? Because people don’t want to be ripped off, and this country is being ripped off. I think if I ran, I’d win.”
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I confess I didn’t then envision Trump, nonetheless a largely native actual property man, within the White House, however now he’s going to move the Republican ticket for the third straight time.
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