There was so much to consume and unpack in Chris Wallace’s brilliant interview with Donald Trump – for which he should win an Emmy or Murrow award – that one could spend the next week analyzing different portions, certain answers, how Trump looked, different interpretations to answers, and we likely will take all week. Because Trump is pure propaganda, never gives a straight and truthful answer, there is a bit of Kremlinology that comes into play, having to read between the lines, make guesses, look for clues – he’s not going to say it straight, but he might spit out something accidentally. But in this instance, we are asked to concentrate on the fact that Trump himself seemed unable to grasp the meaning of a line, in this case, a graph. Nor could he understand the concept or mortality, or remember what Wallace had said.

Jonathon Last begins his column by asking everyone to set all politics aside, and simply take the interview and video at face value, as if just two people were speaking. He asks the reader to focus exclusively upon Trump’s inability to retain information as seen in the opening portion of the interview. (Watch Video Below)

Helpfully, Last gives us a transcript:

WALLACE: Let’s start with the surge of the coronavirus across the country in recent months. You still talk about it as, quote, “burning embers.” But I want to put up a chart that shows where we are with the illness over the last four months.

As you can see, we hit a peak here in April, 36,000 cases —

TRUMP: Cases.

WALLACE: — a day.

TRUMP: Yes, cases.

WALLACE: Then — then it went down and now since June it has gone up more than double. One day this week 75,000 new cases. More than double —

TRUMP: Chris, that’s because we have great testing, because we have the best testing in the world. If we didn’t test, you wouldn’t be able to show that chart. If we tested half as much, those numbers would be down.

WALLACE: But — but this isn’t burning embers, sir? This is a firestorm.

TRUMP: No, no. But I don’t say — I say flames, we’ll put out the flames. And we’ll put out in some cases just burning embers. We also have burning embers. We have embers and we do have flames. Florida became more flame- like, but it’s — it’s going to be under control.

And, you know, it’s not just this country, it’s many countries. We don’t talk about it in the news. They don’t talk about Mexico and Brazil and still parts of Europe, which actually got hit sooner than us, so it’s a little ahead of us in that sense.

But you take a look, why don’t they talk about Mexico? Which is not helping us. And all I can say is thank God I built most of the wall, because if I didn’t have the wall up we would have a much bigger problem with Mexico.

WALLACE: But, sir, we have the seventh highest mortality rate in the world. Our mortality rate is higher than Brazil, it’s higher than Russia and the European Union has us on a travel ban.

TRUMP: Yeah. I think what we’ll do — well, we have them under travel ban, too, Chris. I closed them off. If you remember, I was the one that did the European Union very early.

But when you talk about mortality risks, I think it’s the opposite. I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: It’s not true, sir. We had — we had 900 deaths on a single day – –

TRUMP: We will take a look —

WALLACE: — just this week —

TRUMP: Ready?

WALLACE: (INAUDIBLE).

TRUMP: Can you please get me the mortality rates?

WALLACE: Yes.

TRUMP: Kayleigh’s right here.

I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world.

Do you have the numbers, please? Because I heard we had the best mortality rate.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: (INAUDIBLE) Dr. Birx points out and this is —

TRUMP: Number one low mortality fatality rates.

I hope you show the scenario because it shows what fake news is all about – –

WALLACE: OK, OK. I don’t think I’m fake news but I will — we’ll put —

TRUMP: Yeah, you are —

WALLACE: — put our staff on —

TRUMP: You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world — (NO WALLACE DID NOT!!!)

WALLACE: I said you had —

TRUMP: — and we have the best.

But the graph that Trump read from shows the United States coming in – at lowest – third, not “best” – and that was TRUMP’s graph that he triumphantly used as proof. 

As Last says, the entire exchange lasted 130 seconds and was almost unendurable. This was a conversation with the president of the United States, and it sounds like a conversation with a seventh-grader. Indeed, although Sarah Cooper is a brilliant comedian, part of why her act works so well is that Trump says the most ridiculous things – INSANE things – that we’re apparently numbed to hearing coming from Trump. In other words, we’re numbed to the president being an insane individual.

If you need proof, read Last’s summation:

Note how Trump can’t keep straight where he thinks the U.S. mortality rate ranks. He goes back and forth between saying it’s “one of the lowest” and “the lowest.” Trump then can’t remember what Wallace said. Wallace says the U.S. has the “seventh highest.” Trump then says, “You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world.” 

Why can’t he remember what Wallace said less than two minutes ago?

But the most worrisome moment comes when Trump hands Wallace the chart that the president claims shows “number one low mortality fatality rates.” Wallace shows the audience the chart. Clearly – without any doubt – there are at least two nations with lower mortality rates than the United States in the chart that Trump is using – that he just handed to Wallace, and was shown on the screen.

Trump couldn’t understand the chart, or couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the chart long enough to even care. Either he can’t read a chart, or can’t pay attention to a chart for more than five seconds!

As Last notes, Trump couldn’t remember whether the briefing book told him it was the lowest or one of the lowest mortality rates and kept flipping back and forth between both – he doesn’t know. Trump can’t interpret the graph handed to him. Trump couldn’t remember what Wallace had said to him just two minutes prior.

We reach the same conclusion that Last reached. When one views the totality of the exchange, one realizes that Trump is unable to understand what he’s talking about and it becomes obvious that Donald Trump isn’t running the country. It isn’t clear whether any one person actually is.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom