An Australian Interviews Trump

This morning, via The Washington Post, I read about the Axios interview with Trump.  Well, I read about a part of it—Trump not understanding Covid statistics. I became kind of obsessed—looking up the fatality rate stats. I actually used to look at those a lot but the past couple of months, I've been more focused on the per capita death rates.

Trump seems to think the United States is doing fabulous, because we're doing better than many countries in terms of case fatality rate. He tends to ignore the several countries doing better than us including Croatia, Chile, Norway, Zambia, Turkey, Japan, India, South Korea, Nigeria, South Africa, Russia, Kenya, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Jordan, Iceland, Singapore, etc.

Later this afternoon, I was talking to Jack and he asked me if I had seen the Australian interviewing Trump. I said I hadn't and asked if it was the Axios interview. He said it was.

I decided I'd watch it.

And then I decided I'd do a post about it.

It's been a long time since I've written about anything Australian-related. I feel bad about that sometimes, because this blog used to be an Australia blog.

So...maybe first I'll look into the Australian interviewer. 

Jonathan Swan....

Lord Wiki says he was born on August 7. His birthday is in a few days!  He'll be turning 34. 

Happy Birthday to Jonathan Swan. 

I hope he doesn't spend his birthday recovering from nightmares about his interview with Trump.

I am pretty sure I'd have nightmares if I had to be in the same room with Trump...worse if I actually had to speak with him.

Swan's father is Norman Swan. Norman Swan is a physician, journalist, and broadcaster.  

Lord Wiki says Norman Swan was born into a Jewish family. The way he says that makes me feel that they're Jewish in lineage only. Maybe? Otherwise, I would think Lord Wiki would say something like Norman Swan is Jewish.

But....maybe not.

Anyway, I'm not going to do one of my old biography posts. Because I actually wanted to watch the interview.

I should maybe add that Jonathan Swan started his career in Canberra, and it seems his thing is being a political journalist.  He started working for Axios in December 2016 and has covered a lot of Trump shit.

I'm guessing he's probably had to talk to Trump before. It's impressive that he didn't end up having a nervous breakdown from the experience. 

Okay...going to watch the interview.

I had actually already started it before deciding to do the post.

Swan began by asking about Trump following the positivity philosophy. 

I didn't know Trump was into that.

I'm definitely NOT into that. 

Trump is actually somewhat hesitant about being connected to the philosophy.  He says he also thinks of the downside, because only a fool doesn't.

I kind of think Trump doesn't understand what Swan is referring to.

Swan seems to be referring to the....

I forgot what it's called.

I had to look it up.

The Law of Attraction.  If you want something and visualize it, the universe shall provide.

Trump seems to be thinking more in terms of glass full vs glass empty kind of positive thinking. 

Oh lord.

I'm only at 2:02 in the video, and it's already incredibly stupid.

Swan asks whether a positive attitude is the appropriate way of approaching a pandemic.

Trump says...blah, blah, blah, blah....then... I think we've done an incredible job between the ventilators and stopping very infected people from China coming. 

It may be true that some people have a higher viral load than others. But I'm pretty damn sure that the Trump administration didn't have some kind of method of determining who these particular people were.

By the time, Trump took advantage of the virus to play his favorite game of travel bans....I'm pretty sure the virus was part of the blood stream of tourists from all over the world. If it's true that the virus started in China....and I'm sure it probably did. From what I understand, people from China travel a LOT.  They're big into tourism. So by the time, we even vaguely knew about the virus, the virus was probably all over the world.

And as Tim repeatedly reminds me in his rants, A) Trump banned Chinese nationals coming in from China. He did not stop Americans from going to China; then returning. B) The airlines were steps ahead of Trump and had already stopped flights from China.

Now Trump is bragging about the ban in Europe.  

This is like when we had rats in our house. 

The exterminator blocked all the entrances around our house. But that wouldn't have been enough, because we already had rats INSIDE the house. So he had to set traps in the attic. If he hadn't, if there happened to be a boy and girl rat, we'd have many, many more rats.

Now Trump is talking about how other countries are suffering more than us.

This is like a man who is accused of abuse and instead of apologizing and making amends, he points to men who are worse than him. 

Well, yes. I raped you. But only once. You should be feel lucky. Do you know how many men rape their wives on a weekly basis?

Trump is the president who pushed the American First agenda. So shouldn't that mean being focused on doing the best?

It's kind of cold and evil to turn a pandemic into an international competition. BUT...if we want to play that game....

If you're wanting to be successful at something, shouldn't you set your eyes on and your bar at those at the top?

If Trump wants this pandemic to be an international competition, he should be comparing America to places like South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

Marianne Williamson had the right idea....and this was before the pandemic. She pointed out that New Zealand is doing a fantastic job taking care of their people. So she suggested we have a little bit of friendly competition with them.   

Now Trump is ranting about how China started the virus AND that China is doing bad...overall. Not just with the virus but with everything.

Narcissists do my head in with their inability to handle criticism: Let's change the subject and talk shit about someone else.

I am wanting to scream.

Now Trump is bragging about closing the country down—talking about how we would have lost millions of people if we hadn't done this. 

And who was the fucking asshole who pushed for the country to reopen?

Who was the fucking asshole who cheered on the I-need-a-haircut protesters?

Oh. Swan is awesome.

I wish I could adopt him for our family chat discussions.

Trump says the people who truly understand about these things say that the U.S has done a fantastic job.

Swan asks, WHO says that? 

I'm eager to see how Trump will respond...and which I actually mean how will Trump avoid answering the question.

Well, they both kind of veered off. Swan didn't pursue it. Probably because he knew there wasn't an actual answer.

If I went through my family political chats, I think I'd find too many examples of questions I asked that were never answered.

Anyway, now Trump is bragging about crowd size at his rally. And this comes after Swan infers Trump wasn't taking the virus seriously enough; that he had plans for an indoor crowd of people.  

I mean Swan is complaining about putting six thousand people together in a pandemic. And Trump responds by correcting him. No. It was 12,000 people.

Yeah. Holy shit.

Really. I should have pushed harder with my whole dream of moving to Australia. 

Trump says Tulsa was doing okay then.

Swan says it wasn't.

Trump says it was bad...after.

Well, first of all. That wouldn't be good. Because if the surge came AFTER, that could be blamed on the rally.

If memory serves me right, though....the surge was happening before the rally. 

The rally was on June 20. Our wedding anniversary, by the way.

Here's historical data from Oklahoma. 

Well, it's hard for me to easily tell. Because it doesn't have day by day cases. Just totals. But it seems weeks prior to the rally, the cases went up less than a hundred a day. And as we get closer to the rally, they're maybe 200-300 new cases a day?

Trump is so dumb.

He talks about how cases started going up a month later.

It's like, No. This isn't my fault. The cases were fine when I was there. We had been gone a month before the cases started going up.

Maybe if his imaginary friends weren't so busy praising how good he's doing, they could tell him it probably takes about a month to start seeing the upswing in cases caused by an event.

People need time to get sick and/or contagious. It might not take that long. But it COULD take weeks or the virus to dig its claws into the people who will be sick enough to go get tested... and it has to spread to enough people that we'll all start to notice and say, Yikes. The numbers are going up.  

Now Trump has changed the subject from the spiking of cases in Oklahoma to the rally being broadcast by Fox and having the highest rating.

We have a president who cares more about rating numbers than virus numbers.

Jonathan Swan looks so depressed in the interview.

I was trying to do a screenshot. But I messed up. So I'm just going to forget it.

Anyway, Swan responds to Trump's bragging.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not criticizing your ability to draw a crowd. Are you kidding me? I've covered you for five years. You draw massive crowds. You get huge ratings.

I wonder if Swan has taken classes on how to interview a narcissist. 

Swan tries to bring it back to that pesty little pandemic. I'm asking about the public health. Then he blows more smoke up Trump's ass by telling Trump that his fans love him and listen to him.

But then it turns into a criticism. The fans love him and listen to him about the virus being under control and masks not being so necessary. 

Trump's message is we're dealing with a plague that China sent us. It is what it is. But the United States is doing a good job.

And some governors were good and some were bad.  That SHOULD mean some governors did a good job with testing, tracing, hospitals, closing things, down, etc.  But what Trump probably means is some governors licked my boots and kissed my ass. The others failed at that.

Oh! I love Swan.

I mean I already did.

But with every question, I'm loving him more and more.

He asks Trump when the rest of Americans will have access to the same day testing he has.

He asks for a date.

Trump diverts by talking about how much the US tests compared to other countries.  

Looking at the stats.....

In terms of total, the United States IS impressive. We're number 2...right below China.

Yay us. 

But when it comes to per capita, we're number 18.  If we were number 2 there, maybe we wouldn't be number 10 when it comes to death per capita.

Trump says there are people who say we test too much.

Swan asks who.

Trump says read the books and the manuals.

Swan asks what books and manuals.

Yeah. I really need this guy for our family political discussions.

Trump still hasn't answered the question about who said the thing about testing too much. Nor has he given a date to when all Americans would have access to the quickie tests.  Swan asked him again.

Oh wow,

I have to give Trump credit.

He finally answers and says he prefers not to answer, because he wants to get the answer right...rather than giving the wrong answer and end up missing a deadline.

That's somewhat mature.

Just like delirious people have their moments of lucidity, sometimes narcissists have their rare moments of maturity.

Too funny. Trump complains about us not having a test when the virus began.

Swan: Why would you have a test? The virus didn't even exist.  

I admire Swan for not doing what I'd be doing at this point...either going into hysterical giggle fits, crying, or getting up and throwing my chair at Trump.

Swan shows incredible restraint. People like him should win special medals.

I heard about this next part in the article I read this morning.

Trump takes out pieces of paper when Swan mentions deaths from the virus.

He then looks at a paper and says, We're lower than the world.

I guess that means we have less deaths than the world. 

Like if it's us against the whole world, we're not doing so bad?

Trump would be right. 

Worldwide, there has been 702,000 Covid deaths. The United States has had a total of 160,000. We're doing better than the world (which include the US, by the way).

Yeah. Why isn't Trump getting praised for this???

It's so unfair!

No wonder the Trump fans in my family get so mad about the liberal media picking on Trump so much.

It gets even more pathetic. 

Trump has a chart showing that the United States is doing the best in terms of case fatality rate. But there's like 4 countries on the chart.  Anyone can make a chart to make themselves look the best...by making sure to leave out all those that are doing better than you.

I can make a chart with my family being number one when it comes to number of times riding Rise of of Resistance by simply leaving out all the people who have been on it more than twice.

Well...now they're going to talk about other stuff.

I was most interested in the virus stuff.

And we're eating dinner soon.

I think I'm going to stop here.

I might watch the rest tomorrow. And maybe I'll write about it.  

Or maybe not.

I might just watch it in quiet horror.  

Edited to add: 

Figured out how to do screenshot...something I knew how to do in the past but then forgot.

But anyway....I think I will write a part II of this post tomorrow, because I'll have double fun with doing the screenshots.

Oh...and this isn't Swan looking depressed, by the way.  Or actually he does. But it's not the original one I had wanted before.   

Read my novel: The Dead are Online