The right way to interview Trump. [View all]
Not all mass media is cowed into compliance about leaving his idiocy alone.
Washington (CNN)
Jonathan Swan, a reporter for Axios, has revealed the magic words that expose President Donald Trump's lies for what they are.
Who?
What?
How?
No.
In an interview that aired Monday night on "Axios on HBO," Swan demolished some of Trump's most dishonest talking points with a powerful tactic that has rarely been used by the people Trump has allowed to interview him:
Basic follow-up questions.
Many of Trump's interviewers are right-wing sycophants who have no interest in challenging him. But Trump has defeated even his other interviewers by employing a strategy we can call the hit-and-run -- saying dishonest stuff, then darting ahead to other dishonest stuff before the interviewer reacts.
Swan -- like Fox News' Chris Wallace, to a slightly lesser extent, in an interview that aired July 19 -- came armed with facts and prepared to use them, even if he had to interrupt Trump like Trump interrupts others.
And Trump wasn't ready to respond.
Take their exchange about coronavirus testing. Trump uttered a version of his now-familiar refrain about how testing is overrated -- attributing this nonsense to unnamed "those that say."
Swan pressed for details.
Trump: "You know, there are those that say you can test too much, you do know that."
Swan: "Who says that?"
Trump: "Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books."
Swan: "Manuals? What manuals?"
Trump: "Read the books. Read the books."
Swan: "What books?"
Trump moved on without offering a direct answer. While Swan couldn't get the President to concede that he is making up these "manuals" and "books," he exposed him nonetheless.
Swan had similar success when Trump returned to his laughably inaccurate claim that the virus is "under control," which he has now been making for more than six months.
Trump: "Right now, I think it's under control. I'll tell you what --"
Swan: "How? 1,000 Americans are dying a day."
Trump: "They are dying. That's true. And you have -- it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it."
Again, Trump didn't explicitly surrender. But Swan's basic follow-up -- a "how?" and a single key statistic -- forced Trump into a de facto surrender ("It's under control as much as you can control it"
and another revealing remark, "It is what it is."
snip
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/politics/fact-check-jonathan-swan-axios-hbo-interview-trump-coronavirus/index.html
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