President Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Axios on HBO, part of which was released on Wednesday. In the interview, he made himself look completely clueless, like he has absolutely zero idea what he is doing as president and is trying to use rhetorical word salads to hide his utter, glaring incompetence. Host Jonathan Swan asked Trump at one point if he’d brought up the allegation that Russia put bounties on American soldiers during a recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump — besides indicating that no, he did not — went on such a bizarre tirade in response that he even claimed he has better “comprehension” than anyone Swan had interviewed “in a long time.”
After Swan’s initial question of whether Trump had brought up the bounty issue with Putin, Trump replied:
‘No, that was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly, that was an issue that many people said it was fake news, I think it was a false…’
Swan then cut in to ask the president who exactly “said it was fake news.” After all, the president makes plenty of his own nonsensical claims. Trump replied:
‘I think a lot of people. If you look at some of the wonderful folks from the Bush Administration — some of ’em, not any friends of mine — were saying that it’s a fake issue. But a lot of people said it’s a fake issue. But we had a call, we had a call talking about nuclear proliferation, which is a very big subject, where they would like to do something and so would I. We discussed numerous things — we did not discuss that, no.’
Swan subsequently asked if Trump had so far declined to bring up the bounty issue with Putin because he doesn’t believe the intelligence reports that revealed the apparent scheme. Trump went on a rambling rant in response. He said:
‘Nobody ever brings up China. They always bring up Russia, Russia, Russia. If we can do something with Russia in terms of nuclear proliferation, which is a very big problem, bigger problem than global warming, a much bigger problem than global warming in terms of the real world, then that would be a great thing. It never reached my desk, you know why? Because intelligence didn’t think it was real. They didn’t think it was worthy. I wouldn’t mind — if it reached my desk, I would have done something about it.’
It never “reached [his] desk”? According to reports, that’s exactly what it did, because reportedly, the information was included in one of the president’s daily briefings earlier this year.
Trump subsequently told Swan, among other things:
‘I comprehend extraordinarily well, probably better than anybody that you’ve interviewed in a long time. I read a lot. I spend a lot of time at meetings — usually it’s once a day, or at least two or three times a week intelligence… talking about so many different elements of the world. The world is a very angry place, if you look all over the world. We call up — I see 22 soldiers were killed in India, with China, fighting over the border.’
“The world is a very angry place”? That’s the assessment of the current state of global affairs from the president of the United States? Does he have any idea what he’s talking about?
Watch an interview clip below:
NEW: President Trump tells @jonathanvswan on #AxiosOnHBO that he didn't raise the issue of alleged bounties on U.S. troops during his call with Vladimir Putin last week: "That was a phone call to discuss other things." pic.twitter.com/daISvMFUE1
— Axios (@axios) July 29, 2020
