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This is, as the analogy suggests, not a very healthy system for interrogating a potential repeat US president (nor is the sitting president’s preferred approach of conducting very few interviews). But just as you might be more comfortable eating pizza at home with friends than at a fancy dinner with your boss, it creates plenty of scenarios in which Trump might let his guard down.
On Thursday, Trump had the former kind of conversation, but without the pizza, when Phil McGraw, the rare psychologist whose name is often preceded by both “Dr.” and “TV,” traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a lengthy discussion with the former president.
Dr. Phil is currently the star of a show called Merritt Street Media, and runs a streaming service centered mainly around former Oprah Winfrey regulars. It’s similar to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s streaming service, but less Mike Lindell and more sophisticated. However, it’s the same when it comes to politics, and recent episodes of his show have been titled “The Trump Verdict: A Travesty of Justice,” “Immigrant Crime in America,” “Campus Chaos: A Dangerous Agenda,” “Is Blue-Collar Stigma Plaguing America?” and the timeless classic, “Congress Has a Problem.”
McGraw began the conversation by denouncing Trump’s recent felony conviction in New York, a notion he claimed to have particular expertise in running trials, but which was widely rejected. (His comment that it was unheard of for someone who had done business with the government to testify against their partner was particularly odd.) Trump responded with a tirade of accusations and excuses that anyone with even a passing knowledge of his grievances would easily be able to muster.
But one interesting moment emerged from the debate: Trump attempting to explain why he ended up not testifying (which he almost always does in these situations) despite saying he wanted to (which he almost always does not).
“I had about 25 guys over the course of two months tell me not to testify no matter what,” Trump said of his lawyer friends. “If I said anything out of line I’d be charged with lying and perjury. These are evil people. Sick, evil people.”
It will be interesting to see if President Trump accepts the House Republicans’ petition this week calling on President Biden’s family to file criminal charges against the president’s son and brother for perjury. Are the House committee chairs also sick, evil people?
The conversation was scattered, and McGraw didn’t refute Trump’s most ridiculous claims, such as that border arrests hit a record low the week he left office. McGraw did what Trump allies do in these interviews: show his mastery of MAGA lore by asking questions that would allow Trump to complain about the left and by probing Trump’s worldview. For example, McGraw showed Trump a map that suggested large swaths of California had been bought by China, allowing him to talk about how bad China is.
Trump praised McGraw both personally and for his interviewing skills — he was struck by how much the interview resembled a counseling session, and challenged McGraw to “I don’t think I’ve ever said that on air before” — and said McGraw was running for reelection because the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn’t).
This is how it works. This is why Trump feeds on the media. He is a salesman by nature and by avocation. He is good at ingratiating himself with both mainstream and non-mainstream media. More broadly, he is good at getting people into his game and making them feel like they are working with him, mostly because he can’t forget how great and important they are. Trump and his interviewer often come away from the interview feeling close to each other, but this is not how a good, informative interview tends to work.
But it also means that Trump’s guard is down, which allows him to offer unusually honest opinions (and not just performatively proclaim them).
About 50 minutes into the interview, McGraw, in a move he does regularly on his show for personal revelations, asked Trump what his most trying moment in national politics had been.
“You’re fighting the forces of evil, and they are very smart forces,” Trump said. “There are people who are controlling Biden. Totally in control. I think we know pretty much who they are. But there are also people who are controlling him. They’re very smart, they’re very energetic. They may be true believers. You know what their ideology is.”
Um, okay? McGraw didn’t ask any follow-up questions.
But he spent the final minutes of the conversation trying to get Trump to give up on retaliation against his political opponents, as if Trump’s conviction for covering up hush money payments to porn stars was part of a cycle of revenge that Trump could break if he were given another term in office.
Trump’s well-honed instinct is to simply agree with the person asking the question, so he tweeted a sympathetic response, praised McGraw’s question, and told the doctor it had been an “honor” to be there. The interview was over.
There was a bizarre moment of heated microphone as the credits rolled, when McGraw asked Trump if he thought current president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was “really going to run.” (Trump essentially said he was skeptical, but that it seemed like it.) Why wasn’t he asked this as part of the interview? Why did he have to ask it after the debate had officially ended?
McGraw later appeared on CNN to discuss the interview, telling host Abby Phillips that he had made “a lot of progress” in getting Trump to stop calling for retaliation.
But two hours after posting about his interview with McGraw, Trump called on Truth Social to “indict a non-select committee,” a reference to the lawmakers who ran the House Select Committee investigating Trump’s efforts to stay in power beyond 2020.
McGraw made no progress, but Trump made him feel like he did, because that’s how Trump works: He uses his celebrity and history to build trust, which in turn builds more supporters.
The next time a real journalist interviews him, they might ask a few more questions about the sinister forces allegedly manipulating a sitting president.
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