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(CNN) — Jonathan Swan, a reporter from Axios, he has revealed the magic words that expose the lies of President Donald Trump for what they are.
¿WHO?
Than?
How?
No.
In an interview that aired on Monday night in Axios on HBOSwan demolished some of Trump’s most dishonest talking points with a powerful tactic that has rarely been used by people Trump has allowed to interview him: Basic cross-questions.
Many of Trump’s interviewers are right-wing flatterers who have no interest in challenging him. But Trump has even defeated his other interviewers by employing a strategy that we can call hit and run.: Saying dishonest things and then launching into other dishonest things before the interviewer reacts.
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Swan -como Chris Wallace de Fox News To a lesser extent, in an interview broadcast on July 19 – he came armed with facts and prepared to use them, even if he had to interrupt Trump as Trump interrupts others. And Trump was not ready to respond.
Let’s take your exchange on coronavirus testing. Trump delivered a version of his now familiar saying about how evidence is overrated, attributing this nonsense to “those who say” without naming who. Swan pressed for more details.
Trump: “Sabes, some say you can test too much“.
Swan: “Who says that?”
Trump: “Oh just read the manuals. Read the books“.
Swan: “Manuals? Which manuals?”
Trump: “Read the books. Read the books“.
Swan: “What books?”
Trump went ahead without offering a direct response. Although Swan could not get the president to acknowledge that he is inventing these “manuals” and “books,” he did expose it..
Swan had similar success when Trump returned to his ridiculously inaccurate claim that the virus is “under control”, which it has been doing for more than six months.
Trump: “Right now I think it’s under control. I’ll tell you what …”
Swan: “How? 1,000 Americans die per day“.
Trump: “They are dying. That’s true. And you have to … it is what it is. But that does not mean that we are not doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it“.
Again, Trump did not explicitly surrender. But Swan’s basic follow-up with a “how?” and a key statistic forced Trump to surrender de facto (“It is under control as much as you can control it”) and another revealing observation, “It is what it is.”
Other false claims
Trump made at least 17 additional false claims in the 35 minute interview. (We are still reviewing the transcript, so the final total may be higher.)
An incident in Portland: When Swan mentioned “disturbing images of people in uniform hitting the Navy veteran” in Portland, Trump repeatedly said “no” and then said “Fake News.” (There was nothing false about what Swan said. As Swan noted, the beating of protester Chris David was captured on video.)
NBC and Portland: Trump claimed that Lester Holt’s NBC news program misleadingly described Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s visit to a protest site on July 23 by portraying Wheeler as a friend of the protesters. (The segment of NBC Nightly News That night he explicitly noted that protesters were unhappy with Wheeler: “Ted Wheeler, who is also a Portland Police Commissioner, was booed by protesters, who criticized his leadership in the Portland Police.” There is no evidence that protesters of Trump’s claim “would have killed him” if not for his security team.)
Portland Courthouse: Trump claimed that the federal courthouse in Portland, which has been damaged by some of the protesters in the city, is a “$ 600 million building.” (The court cost about $ 129 million reported to build in the 1990s; even with inflation, that’s about $ 200 million today. Trump claimed last week that it was a “billion dollar building.”)
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Penalties for damagesyou in court: Trump stated: “Now we have a 10-year rule. You knock down, you try to knock down, our court, you touch our court, you go to jail for 10 years. ” (There is no “rule” that anyone who touches or damages the court goes to jail for 10 years. This is the maximum penalty a judge can choose to impose, under a decades-old federal law, for destroying property In June, Trump issued an executive order stating that people who damage federal monuments or property will be prosecuted “to the fullest extent” under existing laws, but did not create any new laws.)
Coronavirus cases: Trump claimed that “we have cases” of the coronavirus “because of the evidence.” (Tests don’t create cases, they just reveal their existence, and indeed tests are a pandemic-fighting tool that’s supposed to help reduce the number of actual cases.)
Death toll in South Korea: Trump questioned Swan’s correct claim that South Korea has 300 deaths from the coronavirus, saying, “You don’t know.” When Swan pressed him on whether he believes South Korea is falsifying its statistics, Trump said: “I am not going to go into that, because I have a very good relationship with the country. But you don’t know. ” (South Korea had exactly 301 confirmed deaths as of Tuesday; there is no basis to claim that the country is falsifying its data. Many countries, including South Korea and the United States, probably have more actual deaths from coronavirus than confirmed until the date, but Swan was correctly using the available numbers.)
The presence of the United States in Afghanistan: Trump claimed that the United States is “largely out of Afghanistan.” (“Largely” is vague, but as Swan pointed out, the United States still has more than 8,000 troops in Afghanistan.)
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The number of troops in Afghanistan: Trump told Swan “you’re wrong” for saying that the current number of troops in Afghanistan is approximately the same as when Trump took office. (Swan was right).
Margen de Trump and 2016: Trump claimed that he beat Hillary Clinton “306 to 223” at Election College in 2016. (Clinton got 232 electoral votes; we know this is a small thing, but Trump has said “223” 12 times since July 2019).
The history of voting by mail: Trump stated that “we have a new phenomenon. It’s called a vote by mail. ” (As Swan noted, Americans have voted by mail since the Civil War. Trump clarified that he was saying that voting by mail will now be used more than before, which is fair, but that doesn’t make it “new”)
Vote by mail and fraud: Trump stated that “there is no way you can vote by mail without cheating massively.” (There is no evidence of massive mail voting cheating, and five states, including the conservative Utah, have conducted fair elections almost entirely by mail.)
Absentee voting: Trump again argued that the “absentee” vote is fair, but other mail ballots are not. (There is no real difference; many states, such as Florida, where Trump himself votes by mail, make no distinction between people who vote by mail while in-state or out-of-state.)
Travel restriction: Trump claimed that he imposed a “ban on China” and a “ban on Europe.” (It imposed pandemic travel restrictions in both China and Europe, but it was not a complete “ban” either; it exempted citizens and permanent residents, many of their families and entire European countries.)
China and trade: Trump suggested that China is paying the tariffs on imported Chinese products (American importers make the actual tariff payments, and studies show that Americans are bearing the cost) and that China had its worst year in “67 years” before the pandemic (China’s official GDP growth in 2019 was 6.1%, the lowest in 29 years).
African Americans: Trump claimed that he has done “more for the black community than anyone with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not.” When asked specifically by Swan if he believes he did “more than Lyndon Johnson, who passed the Civil Rights Act,” Trump said yes. (We give Trump ample freedom to express opinions, but this is ridiculous. Lincoln, who emancipated slaves and won the Civil War, is a certain exception, not a possible exception; the monumental Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act of Johnson clearly dwarfed the impact of any of Trump’s policies.)
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