POLITICS

Swan’s Trump Interview

Capturing on film the rambling, incoherent bleatings of a demented and narcissistic mind

Jonathan Swan has been getting applause for holding the President of the United States’ feet to the fire. Swan is an Australian journalist who worked with AXIOS and HBO to capture an interview which, less than 12 hours after publication, has already itself captured more than one million views on YouTube. Find the interview here.

Swan dives right in with the President, initially beginning with a discussion of the pandemic, about which Trump himself seems to have absolutely no idea how badly he’s done. Instead, the demented President tries again and again to argue that it could be worse. From the outset, it is entirely clear that retaining the office of the Presidency is the only thing he cares about.

After making the (false) point that “because we have more tests, we have more cases,” Trump switched gears to autofellatio, attempting to argue that he reads more than anyone. Then he went on to claim, baselessly, that the Russia/Taliban alliance had not reached his desk. This blatant admission of incompetence is quickly followed up by a discussion of mail-in voting in which it is patently obvious that the president does not know how mail-in voting works.

By the time Trump explains his bizarre well-wishing of Ghislaine Maxwell, the girlfriend of the late Jeffrey Epstein, who is being held upon child sex trafficking charges, the conversation has illuminated the inner workings of a deeply troubled mind. The continuous remarks about the police which follow show an unbelievable level of denialism. Trump seems incapable of even attempting to understand why anyone would have a problem with policing in the United States.

At one point, Swan ignores an inflammatory remark by Trump in which he claims that the US has been “hit by China with the virus.” It seems Trump is uncomfortable discussing civil rights and wishes to return to the pandemic and possibly play the blame game with the Chinese government here.

Swan later edges in with the question “What does systemic racism mean to you?” and Trump responds with his typical incoherence: “Does anyone answer that question accurately?” It is entirely likely that the natural and honest move for him here would have been to deny the existence of systemic racism. Then Trump attempts to claim he has done more for Black Americans than anyone since President Abraham Lincoln, a blatant falsity which is immediately seized upon by Swan.

The interview ends with LBJ’s Civil Rights Act disparaged by Trump in a blatant attempt to take credit for the economic benefits which have accrued to African Americans as a direct result of Barack Obama’s presidency, as nonsensical as that sounds. The president is suffering from narcissism to the point of dementia. Swan trusts the camera to catch this and moves on to discussing the recent death of John Lewis, a true civil rights hero. Trump grabs at the air and manages: “He was a person that devoted a lot of energy and a lot of heart to civil rights,” a statement that is true but only in a trivial way. It is clear that Lewis and the Black Americans he stood for are meaningless to Trump in exactly the same way COVID-19 bodies are, in precisely the same way as the demands of the protesters are. Trump has once again proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in this interview that he is a lunatic hellbent upon pushing his own agenda and deaf, blind, and dumb to the wishes of the majority of Americans. Jonathan Swan has done excellent work in capturing this disconnected incoherence on camera for the American people to see.

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Thomas Dylan Daniel is an existential philosopher, professional ethicist, author, and biophysicist. Connect via his website or Facebook, or have a look at his books.