Trump vows to get the drug that made him 'feel good immediately' into the hands of Americans suffering from Covid-19 for free. Video / Donald Trump via Twitter
Donald Trump today gave his first public interview since testing positive for the coronavirus, and it was quite something.
The US President phoned in to Fox Business for a live chat with host Maria Bartiromo, and ended up talking for 55 minutes.
"It was kind of, well, all over the place," Bartiromo's exasperated colleague Dagen McDowell remarked when Trump finally hung up.
In other words, it was the sort of rambling, unfocused Trumpian performance that defies concise description. But we're going to try to make some sense of it.
Normally I would run you through an interview like this chronologically. In this case, given how freely Trump jumped back and forth between different trains of thought, my feeling is that would just be confusing.
"And we're ready to go, I'm ready to go, except the quarantine situation that you have for a little while after you get tested, or whatever the procedure is.
These would be the political rallies where thousands of Trump's supporters stand in close proximity to one another, with no social distancing and not nearly enough masks.
He noted that the Commission on Presidential Debates – the nonpartisan body responsible for organising the meetings between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden – had announced it was going to make next week's second debate a virtual event.
"That's not acceptable to us," Trump said.
"I beat him easily in the first debate, according to the polls I've seen. I beat him easily. I felt I beat him easily. I think he felt it, too.
"He didn't answer any questions, and he had the protection of Chris Wallace all night long. I thought Chris Wallace was a disaster.
"But I beat him in the first debate. At the second debate, we have a Never Trumper as a host, but that's okay, because I'd beat him in the second debate also.
"But I'm not going to do a virtual debate.
"I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That's not what debating's about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate, it's ridiculous. And then they cut you off whenever they want.
"They have a host that I always thought was a nice guy, but I see he's a Never Trumper. It came out that he's a Never Trumper. We do have some of them, Maria, believe it or not, because they don't like to win."
Okay, there's a bit to unpack there.
First, the polls did not show Trump "easily" beating Biden in last week's first debate. In fact they showed the exact opposite.
CNN's one had Biden winning by 60 per cent to 28. CBS had it at 48-41, Data for Progress 52-39, and Ipsos 60-33, all in Biden's favour.
Post-debate polls do not matter one bit, of course, but Trump brought them up, so we are obliged to fact check him.
Second, I should note that the debate's moderator, Chris Wallace, has responded to the criticism of his performance, including the accusation of bias from Trump.
You can read Wallace's response at greater length here, but the short version is that he feels the president left him with no other choice but to intervene, because he would not stop interrupting his opponent.
Third, the second debate's moderator, Steve Scully, is the political editor at C-SPAN.
He is not known as a "Never Trumper", but he did interview the president once – maybe Trump felt his questions were too tough? – and interned for Biden decades ago, when the Democrat was a senator.
Biden being terrible
Donald Trump and Joe Biden exchange points during their first presidential debate. Photo / AP
Fairly early in the interview, Trump went off on a tangent about "the NBC disaster".
He was referring to a town hall forum the network held with Biden this week, which was supposed to feature questions from undecided voters, but instead had pro-Biden voters lob the candidate softballs.
"He went on the show with Lester Holt, it was meant for a child. It wasn't meant for a grown person," Trump complained.
He then accused Biden of wanting to ban fracking, but pretending otherwise. Fracking is a big issue in one of the most important swing states, Pennsylvania.
"He gets up and he says, 'We're not fracking. We're not fracking.' He was fracking for six months. He was fracking. He was raising his very thin hand, and he was fracking. And now all of a sudden he's not fracking," Trump said.
"It's ridiculous. He said he's not fracking. That's all he said. And then all of a sudden he goes to a fracking mode. And how about her? She committed her life to it. And all of a sudden she's a fracker, she's a big fracker.
"They're going to stop fracking the minute they get into office. They're lying to everybody, they're lying about so many different things."
The "her" in question here is vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who insisted a Biden administration would not ban fracking during yesterday's debate with Mike Pence.
Biden's policy is to allow existing fracking operations to continue, but to stop the federal government from issuing new permits for fracking on public lands.
The president eventually got around to repeating his frequent claim that Biden lacks the mental acuity required to do the job.
"He's not mentally capable. He's not mentally capable of being president. You know that. Everybody knows that. Everybody that knows him. He can't be president," Trump said.
The coronavirus
Bartiromo asked Trump about the worry he might be walking around the White House while still contagious with the virus.
"I don't think I'm contagious at all," the president said, before going on to cast doubt on the effectiveness of face masks.
President Donald Trump removes his mask as he stands on the Blue Room Balcony upon returning to the White House. Photo / AP
"I feel that I'm great. You catch this thing. A lot of people caught it. Look, you have the governor of Virginia, he wore a mask all the time. You'd never see the guy without a mask. He catches it.
"You have senators that wore masks all the time. Thom Tillis, a very good guy ... I think Thom Tillis is going to win his race, and he should win it. He's a good man. But he was known as a mask. Mask, we'd call him. He caught it.
"You catch this thing. You know, it's – it's particles of dust. It's tiny stuff.
"And remember this. When you catch it, you get better. And then you're immune, you know? As soon as everything goes away for me, you're immune."
Let's pause there for a moment.
When you catch the virus, you do indeed get better eventually – unless you happen to be one of the 215,000 Americans who have died, or one of the unknown number who have suffered permanent damage.
It is unclear whether patients build up immunity to the virus after recovering from it. There have been some reports of people catching it more than once.
And face masks, of course, are not guaranteed to stop you from catching the virus. But they do substantially reduce the chance of an infected person transmitting it.
"Face masks, these face masks, are the most important, powerful public health tool we have. And I will continue to appeal for all Americans, all individuals in our country, to embrace these face coverings," Trump's own CDC director said last month.
"We have clear scientific evidence they work, and they are our best defence."
Trump went on to claim that he was recovering from the virus so well because he was "a perfect physical specimen".
"I'm back because I'm a perfect physical specimen, and I'm extremely young. And so I'm lucky in that way. I don't have heart problems, I don't have diabetes, I don't have any of the problems that you read about," Trump said.
"Perhaps a couple of pounds we could lose here and there, but you know, a lot of people in that category.
"But what happens is, you get better. That's what happens, you get better."
He justified his decision to keep holding events without social distancing or compulsory mask-wearing amid the pandemic.
"I'm glad because I'm the leader. And I can't be like Biden where I hang out in a basement every day. Sure, if I wanted to hang out in a basement, I wouldn't catch it, but I meet a lot of people and I have to," the president said.
"Sometimes I'd be with, in groups of – for instance, Gold Star families. I met with Gold Star families. I didn't want to cancel that. But they all came in and they all talked about their son and daughter and father."
Gold Star families are the families of fallen American soldiers. Trump held an event with a group of them at the White House a few days before he tested positive.
"They come within an inch of my face sometimes. They want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I'm not telling them to back up. I'm not doing it," he said.
"But I did say it's like, it's obviously dangerous. It's a dangerous thing, I guess, if you go by the Covid thing.
"But I figured that probably, that probably at some point I'd catch it, and I'll get better. That's what happened. I've caught it. I could've been out of the hospital in one day.
"I feel perfect now, Maria, otherwise I wouldn't be able to speak to you."
Trump compared himself to Winston Churchill during World War II, saying the British prime minister "didn't sit in his basement for six months".
"I think at some point I would – it's a very, look, it's a tiny, tiny, linking it to a tiny little microscopic piece of dust and it gets into your nose or your mouth or your eye, frankly, or something else, or you touch something. So I understand, and then you get better," he said.
"I'll be tested pretty soon, but I'm – I'm essentially very clean."
His political opponents' 'crimes'
Trump spent a fair bit of time talking about his "Obamagate" conspiracy theory, which revolves around his belief that Barack Obama illegally directed US intelligence agencies to "spy" on his 2016 election campaign.
The president said Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton should all be charged with crimes, and put pressure on Attorney-General Bill Barr to follow through.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton speak during the presidential debate in 2016. Photo / AP
"Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we're going to get little satisfaction unless I win," he said.
"And we'll just have to go, because I won't forget it."
I'm going to admit, straight up, that I have no idea what that last sentence even means.
"But these people should be indicted. This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes, and it includes Biden," Trump continued.
"These are people that spied on my campaign. And we have everything. Now they say they have much more, okay, and I say, 'Bill, you've got plenty. You don't need any more.' We got so much, Maria.
"You know, to be honest, Bill Barr's going to go down as either the greatest attorney-general in the history of the country, or he's going to go down as a very sad, sad situation. I mean, I'll be honest with you, he's got all the information he needs.
"It's still not that easy. You have a deep state, you have a group of people that don't want to have documents shown, which tells you bad things, you know. But they, they have to give them, ultimately, and we're getting them."
We've been waiting for this supposed evidence to be revealed for some time now.
The president went on to relitigate the argument over Clinton's private email server from four years ago.
"I've never seen such liars as this. They're worse than crooked Hillary," he said.
"If people delete emails in a regular court case – [she] deletes 33,000 emails and nothing happens to her. Our justice system – nothing happens to her. With all of the pages of stuff, thousands of pages that we have on them, nothing happens to them. Nothing happens.
"But look, they're in the State Department. But Mike Pompeo is unable to get them out, which is very sad actually. I'm not happy about him for that, for that reason.
"Why isn't Hillary Clinton being indicted for terminating 33,000 emails that she got from Congress? Congress made a request to see them. Everybody else I know gets indicted when they don't give that."
The integrity of mail voting
Bartiromo asked Trump about his FBI Director Christopher Wray, who recently appeared in a video message to Americans contradicting the president's frequent claims that an increase in mail voting this year will lead to widespread voter fraud.
The message also featured Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency.
"I'm here to tell you that my confidence in the security of your vote has never been higher," Krebs stressed.
"Elections are going to look a little different this year. While this will change the way Americans vote ... Americans will decide American elections.
"Be patient. Because of changes due to Covid, on November 3, we might not know the outcome of our election. And that's okay, but we're going to need your patience until official results are announced."
FBI Director Christopher Wray put this video out to try to quell fears about the security of the election by foreign and domestic influences.
— Holly Figueroa O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) October 7, 2020
"He's been disappointing. He talks about, you know, even the voting thing, that he doesn't see the voting ballots as a problem," Trump said of Wray.
"There [are] thousands of ballots right there. You pick up any paper in the country, practically, and they're cheating all over the place on the ballots. So how is that not a problem? That's a much bigger problem than China or Russia.
"If you were running for office, and if you see thousands and thousands of ballots being thrown into rivers, and they have your name on it in some cases. In other words, people – we had military ballots where people voted for me. Military. The military's going to vote for me because I – I rebuilt the military."
The evidence is pretty clear on this issue. Mail voter fraud, like all voter fraud, is extremely rare in the United States. There is no proof whatsoever of any plot to "steal" the election, as Trump often puts it, which would likely require millions of fraudulent ballots.
The military ballots he referred to were, at least, a real thing.
Nine ballots – not 900, not 9000, nine – were thrown out because of a clerical mistake in Pennsylvania last month. An investigation found it was not foul play.
Anyway, the president is particularly hung up about the state of Nevada, which has a Democratic governor. He is convinced there is going to be fraud there.
"We have law enforcement watching him very strong. The US attorney is watching very strongly. The US marshal is watching," he said.
"In New Mexico, a state I think we can win, we have the US marshal and the US attorney watching him."
The polls show Biden leading by 15 per cent in New Mexico.
And while we're on the subject of states Trump can't win, he also claimed to be mounting a plausible challenge in New York, which has not voted Republican since 1984.
"She's a communist. Are we going to have a communist? And she's going to be it [president], in my opinion within a month.
"Look, I stood next to Joe and I looked at Joe. Joe's not lasting two months as president, Okay? That's my opinion. He's not going to be lasting two months.
"No, she's a communist. She's not a socialist, she's well beyond a socialist. Take a look at her views. She wants to open up the borders to allow killers and murderers and rapists to pour into our country.
"This monster that was on stage with Mike Pence – who destroyed her last night, by the way – this monster."
What will happen if he loses
We could keep going for some time here, but this thing is already more than 3000 words long and those were the main subjects of discussion.
I'll leave you with Trump's not-at-all-hyperbolic description of what will happen if Biden beats him and becomes president next year.
"This country will go to hell. Your taxes will double and triple and quadruple. Your stock markets will crash, we'll have a depression the likes of which we've never seen before."
