annieli 
One of the better Trump interviews, ever. This time with Jonathan Swan. Especially if you watch the entirety, you can fear for the future of the Republic. Excerpts have been made available but the whole interview shows how unhinged Trump actually might be.
Then again, Trump still thinks the 1918 flu epidemic happened in 1917, and now claims that his Tulsa speech crowd was twice the size. Swan just stays on target and doesn’t allow himself to be be bamboozled. Trump probably even thought it was a good interview, complete with lies.
TRUMP: “If you watch the news or read the papers, they usually talk about new cases, new cases, new cases.”SWAN: “I’m talking about death. It’s going up.”
TRUMP: “Well, you look at death. Death is way down from where it was.”
SWAN: “It’s 1000 a day!”
There are so many big issue discussions that make no sense in this interview, but a minor one that is just jaw dropping is that the President alludes to Epstein maybe being murdered in jail. Wonder what AG Barr has to say about this?
— Clint Watts (@selectedwisdom) August 4, 2020
Somebody should try to explain to Trump that Covid-19 didn’t exist until 2019. It’s not possible to develop a test for a disease that doesn’t exist. https://t.co/zk1Bb58nHP
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 4, 2020
Swan: “I understand what you’re saying, that people need to hear positive thinking. But for the past five months, it’s been, ‘The virus is totally under control.’ And the cases have been going up and the deaths have been going up. You’ve been saying it’s under control.”
Trump: “Look, look, nobody knew what this thing was all about. This has never happened before. 1917, but it was totally different, it was a flu in that case. But 1917 – there’s never been anything like this. And by the way, if you watch the fake news on television, they don’t even talk about it, but there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering. Some, proportionately, far greater than we are.”
Swan: “Very few worse.”
Trump: “Some, proportionately, greater than we are. Right now, right now, Spain is having a big spike. And there are tremendous problems in the world. You look at Moscow, look at what’s going on with Moscow. Look at Brazil. Look at these countries, what’s going on. This was sent to us by China, one way or the other, and we’re never going to forget it. Believe me, we’re never going to forget it. And we were beating China at every single point. We were beating them on trade. We were making progress like nobody’s ever made progress. They had, before the pandemic, they had the worst year, Jonathan, that they’d had in 67 years. You know that. With the tariffs and everything else I did.”
Trump: “Then all of a sudden, the game changed. And I had to close it down. I closed down the greatest economy ever in history. And then, I closed it down. And now we’re opening it. And we saved, by the way, by closing it, we saved millions of lives. If we would have gone to herd (immunity), and we knew very little about the disease, if we would have gone herd, we would have lost millions of people. Millions of people. One person’s too much. We’re at 140,000 people. One person is too much. We’re at 140,000. We would have lost millions of people. And those people that really understand it, really understand it, they said it’s incredible, the job that we’ve done. ”
Swan: “Who says that?”
Trump: “Again, the ban, banning China from coming in-”
Swan: “But it was already in here. It was already here. By the time you banned China, it came through Europe.”
Trump: “Nobody knew the extent. Nobody knew how contagious it was.”
Swan: “But the question is, Mr President, by June we knew. Things were bad. And you know, the last time I was with you was the day before your Tulsa rally. And you were saying, big huge crowd, it was indoors. These people, they listen to you.”
Trump: “Excuse me, Jonathan. We had a 19,000-seat stadium. First of all we had 12,000 people, not 6000, which you reported and other people reported. But you couldn’t even get in.”
Swan: “Why would you have wanted that?”
Trump: “You had 120 Black Lives Matter people there.”
Swan: “I understand, but why would you have wanted a huge crowd?”
Trump: “Excuse me, wait. And Tulsa – well, because that area was a very good area at the time.”
Trump. Is. A. Complete. Imbecile. https://t.co/OkdHQPu12D
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 4, 2020
