President Donald Trump was up bright and early Thursday morning – calling in to Maria Bartiromo’s show on the Fox Business Network to riff on everything from Kamala Harris to Bill Barr to cows. (Yes, cows.)
I went through the transcript of the interview and pulled out the lines you need to see.
1. “Well, she’s radical left, now she tries to pretend she’s not, but she is the most liberal person in the US Senate, acknowledged to be.”
In a bit of a swerve, Trump starts the interview with a true fact! According to Govtrack’s 2019 ideology report card, Harris is the most liberal senator by voting record. And away we go!
2. “Think of it, we’re almost back to where we were and we’re still in the pandemic, which will be going away, as I say, it will be going away. And they scream, ‘how you can you say that?’ I said, ‘because it’s going to be going away.’”
There’s zero evidence the coronavirus is “going to be going away.” Like, none. In fact, there were more than 55,000 new cases on Wednesday alone, according to the CDC.
3. “You have to rebuild cities because too much light gets through the window, so let’s make the windows nice and small. Let’s rip down the Empire State Building and replace it with no windows.”
Trump’s allegation here has to do with a proposal within the Green New Deal that would aim to put more energy-efficient windows in large office buildings and homes. As far as I can tell, no one has proposed tearing down the Empire State Building. You’re shocked, I know.
4. “The cows – I don’t know if they actually put the cows in. They’re getting hit very hard by the animal rights groups but they don’t want to have cows, they don’t want to have any form of animals.”
Democrats want to ban cows??? Monsters! Oh wait, no they don’t.
5. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. And now you have a – sort of a mad woman, I call her, because she was so angry and so – such hatred with Justice Kavanaugh.”
In which the President suggests that former Vice President Joe Biden is totally out of it and leans on the oldest trope in the book – this lady is angry!! – to caricature California Sen. Kamala Harris. These words coming out of any other President’s mouth would lead a news cycle for days.
6. “These are seriously ill people.”
What, you ask, is wrong with Biden and Harris in Trump’s mind? He didn’t say – and Bartiromo didn’t ask. Great journalism!
7. “And I’ll tell you a good poll because the real poll – we’re doing very well on the polls, and they love the suppression polls.”
Waiter, I’ll have one word salad, please. Also, there are no polls out there where Trump is doing “very well” at the moment.
8. “And I got 306. Remember they said the night before the election there is no way he gets to 270. I didn’t, I got to 306 in the Electoral College.”
The 2016 election was 1,374 days ago. I counted.
9. “I mean it’s crazy. These people are crazy.”
How did Bartiromo follow up on these attacks on Democrats? This way: “It’s partly because you focused on jobs, and you made campaign promises to people about bringing the economy back which is exactly what happened after the tax legislation, the deregulation and your policies around energy.” Wow. Nailed it.
10. “Look, we got hit by the China plague and we’re not going to forget it. We got hit by the China plague.”
Yes, Covid-19 originated in the Wuhan province of China. No, it is not the “China plague.”
11. “I built the greatest economy in history, greatest job numbers, greatest stock market numbers, greatest economic numbers.”
Nope!
12. “Nobody’s ever seen it. I was cruising to election. They weren’t even going to be a factor.”
The idea that Trump was “cruising” to a second term before the coronavirus pandemic is farcical. How do I know? Polls. All of them.
13. “George Washington would’ve had a hard time winning, you know that.”
If I am reading this right, Trump is saying the father of our country couldn’t win this election because of the impact of coronavirus. So, does that mean he can’t win either, or …
14. “Nobody’s blaming me for the fact that the – call it whatever you want, the China virus, as you know there’s 20 names for it. You have your pick of names, right?”
Well, not really. It’s either Covid-19 or the coronavirus. Definitely not the “China virus” or the “China plague.”
15. “Came out of China, should have never been allowed to happen, but the fact is this plague came in and I closed it up, saved millions of lives, now we’re re-opening.”
This doesn’t feel like exactly what happened …
16. “And we’re coming back and coming back strong and my biggest headwind is Biden because everyone knows that if Biden gets in, this market’s going to crash.”
“Everyone.”
17. “AOC was a poor student – I mean, I won’t say where she went to school, it doesn’t matter. This is not even a smart person, other than she’s got a good line of stuff.”
So, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a “poor student” who Trump insinuates didn’t go to a prestigious college? (She went to Boston University, which ranked as the 40th best college or university by US News.) And she is “not even a smart person” too? How does Trump know all of this? He doesn’t! He’s just slandering her.
18. “I mean she goes out and she yaps.”
The President of the United States saying that a female member of Congress “yaps.” Not misogynistic at all!
19. “So these people are scaring, and Schumer’s going to get beaten. Yes, and Schumer’s going to get beaten by her, she’s going to run against Schumer. And he knows that and he’s going to get beaten by her unless he can talk her out of doing it, he has no chance.”
No one has been more of an advocate for AOC to primary New York Sen. Chuck Schumer in 2022 than Trump. Will she actually do it? She might!
20. “They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent, that’s election money basically. They want 3.5 trillion – billion dollars for the mail-in votes, OK, universal mail-in ballots, 3.5 trillion. They want $25 billion, billion, for the post office. Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots.”
Yes! Democrats do want more money for the US Postal Service, so that they are able to handle what is expected to be a large rise in mail-in ballots due to concerns about in-person voting given Covid-19.
21. “But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
He said the quiet part out loud! The White House won’t let any legislation for coronavirus relief go through that has money for the Post Office because Trump doesn’t want them to have the ability to effectively conduct a largely mail-in ballot process.
22. “And you see how bad it’s been with this Carolyn Maloney scam, she scammed her way into an election. She probably lost, but they said mail-in ballots, it’s all mixed up.”
There’s zero evidence that Maloney, a New York congresswoman, “scammed her way into an election.” Like, none.
23. “Yesterday, Virginia, 500,000 applications for ballots got sent to everybody, nobody even knows. Got sent to dogs, got sent to dead people, nobody has no idea what happened. They said, ‘oh, we made a mistake, I’m sorry.’”
At issue in Virginia was a third-party group that sent ballot applications to several million people – 500,000 (or so) which had the wrong return address. The issue was on the return address, not who the applications were sent to.
24. “You know, there’s nothing wrong with getting out and voting, you get out and vote. They voted during World War I and World War II, and they should have voter ID, because the Democrats scammed the system.”
To be clear: Neither World War I nor World War II was contagious. Covid-19 is.
25. “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it. So, you know, sort of a crazy thing. Very interesting.”
In case you missed it, he said it again! He doesn’t want a coronavirus relief package with Post Office money in it because he believes that is his best chance to block mail-in balloting.
26. “This will be the greatest fraud in history. This will be the most fraudulent – this will be almost as fraudulent as Obama spying on my campaign, but not quite. This will be the greatest fraud in history.”
Former President Barack Obama didn’t spy on the Trump campaign. And Trump is very much laying the ground work to contest the election if he loses – and never admit he lost.
27. “It’s called vote ID, it’s the greatest thing there is. Everybody knows it.”
“The greatest thing there is.”
28. “I’m very friendly with all the people and they know, they smile at me when I look at them.”
Same.
29. “I’ve been pretty good, you have to say, Maria, at predicting things I’ve been pretty good, including saying I was going to win the election.”
Donald Trump has gone bankrupt at least four times.
30. “We’re going to continue cutting regulations.”
This is Trump’s answer to the question of what he will do in a second term. Which, well, uh, OK?
31. “We’re going to take the House. I believe we’re going to take back the House because Nancy Pelosi is stone-cold crazy, and I think we’re going to take the House.”
No campaign handicapper thinks that Republicans are going to win the House. In fact, everyone who knows expects that Democrats will gain seats. Also, what evidence does Trump have for calling the Speaker of the House “stone-cold crazy?” Oh, none.
32. “And that’s upon – you know, I don’t make a statement like that very easily, but we’re going to take – otherwise, I’ll look very bad, but we’re going to take back the House. We’re going to hold the presidency, and we’re fighting very hard in the Senate.”
“I’ll look very bad.” [nods head]
33. “The Senate is tough. We have a couple of people that aren’t as supportive of Trump as they should be and those people are going to lose their elections. If they don’t support Trump, they lose their elections.”
This is the exact opposite of what is happening. Lots of incumbents – Arizona’s Martha McSally, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Maine’s Susan Collins – are being hurt by their support for Trump. Not their lack of support for Trump.
34. “You look at all of the things that have happened, but the ones that don’t support – and I’m just talking – take a look. The ones that don’t support, and you have a few people that want to be cute, and I think they’re going to lose their elections and that’s a problem for the Senate.”
Just. Flat. Wrong.
35. “Joe doesn’t even know he’s alive, but the unions own Biden.”
The former vice president of the United States “doesn’t even know he’s alive”? Wow. Big claim. For which Trump offered zero evidence.
36. “I’m the only one to get impeached on a perfect phone call, like a perfect phone call.”
[narrator voice] It was not a perfect phone call.
37. “They spied on my campaign, which is treason. They spied both before and after I won.”
38. “Bill Barr can go down as the greatest Attorney General in the history of our country, or he can go down as just an average guy. It depends on what’s going to happen.”
In which the President threatens his attorney general in regard to an ongoing Justice Department probe into the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Normal stuff!
39. “I have a friend who is a very sophisticated man, one of the most successful people, you know him very well, he said, you have to be the most honest person in the world to escape the greatest witch hunt ever perpetrated in the history of our country.”
This “friend” feels a lot like the “girlfriend” I had in seventh grade. She lived in Montana so you couldn’t meet her but she was smart and funny and also beautiful. Believe me.
40. “So, Christopher Wray was put there, we have an election coming up, I wish he was more forthcoming. He certainly hasn’t been.”
Wray was “put there” (as FBI director) by none other than Donald Trump.
41. “We have a debate a month after the ballots start going out, so people are voting without seeing the debate, so I think they should move one debate forward or have an extra one put in, but I want to do the debates and they are trying to get out of the debates. There’s no question about that. You know, I have people that are very good at this stuff. So am I.”
“I have people that are very good at this stuff. So am I.”
42. “I sometimes think [Democrats] don’t love the country but they’re doing the wrong thing. But in the meantime, I do love your show and I think you’re fantastic.”
Yeah, this feels like a good place to end.
