Ex-President Donald Trump spouted off with a spew of nonsensical vitriol in a new appearance on Fox News with host Sean Hannity. The interview was his first in-person appearance on national television since leaving the White House — up until now, he’s just been calling in to complain and rant on air. True to form, Trump seemed disconnected from the basic facts of the current political realities in the United States during his talk with Hannity.
Hannity unsurprisingly didn’t exactly ask Trump tough questions. Instead, he posed queries like a question about what Trump misses the most from his time in office, and the former president responded, in part, by claiming that he “helped [Americans] more than any president,” which is just laughably non-realistic. What about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died of COVID-19 on his watch? Did he “help” them?
Trump commented to Hannity as follows:
‘I miss the most, helping people. That’s why I did it. Look, this has been very traumatic. I had a great life, great company, great business, no problems and now all I do is, people go after you. It’s vicious, it’s horrible but you know what? I loved doing it because I helped people. And I’ve helped them more than any president.’
Did Trump “help” the everyday Americans whose tax burdens he barely touched while dramatically slashing tax rates for corporations? Did he “help” the immigrant communities who suddenly had to worry about whether they’d be punitively targeted by Trump’s racist goons at ICE? Did he “help” the Americans who went without basic needs met while he spent weekend after weekend at one of his own golf courses after spending taxpayer dollars to get there?
Trump also claimed during his time on Fox that he currently has higher approval numbers than he had “the day before the election,” but he left office with the overall approval of an average of under 40 percent of Americans, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted tabulations. Biden’s current average level of overall approval is over 10 percent higher, according to the same source.
Trump commented as follows when asked about potentially running again:
‘First of all, it’s [in] a long time. Look, I’ve got tremendous numbers… there is more popularity [for me] now than there was the day before the election, because they see how bad things are at the border. They see what is going on, they see that their guns are gonna be gone… their taxes are going up. Regulations are going through the roof. Job [losses] are going to go up. So, I say this. I am looking at it very seriously. Beyond seriously. From a legal standpoint, I don’t want to really talk about it yet. it’s a little too soon.’
Trump formally filed to run for re-election on the day of his inauguration in 2017, so it’s unclear what exactly he means by potential “legal” considerations.
