TRUMP HOLDS NOTHING BACK
From ‘fake polls’ to ‘mentally shot’ Joe, he lets loose
PRESIDENT Trump went toe-to-toe with Fox News host Chris Wallace in a wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday and tackled the coronavirus, the 2020 race, challenger Joe Biden’s mental capacity and more. The often-heated sit-down played out, appropriately enough, outside the White House — at the president’s request— on a day that saw both Trump and Wallace remark on the summer swelter.
“I want you to sweat,” Trump cracked to Wallace at one point during the interview.
“Well, we both are,” Wallace replied.
These are the highlights of the chat with the commander in chief:
ON COVID-19
For much of the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has now been reduced to “burning embers,” Trump said, contending that new cases of the contagion are surging only because of the nation’s abundance of testing.
Wallace pointed out that new daily cases had surged from a previous peak of 36,000 in April to more than 75,000 by the end of last Thursday amid a spike of infections in Southern states.
“Chris, that’s because we have great testing, because we have the best testing in the world,” Trump responded. “If we tested half as much, those numbers would be down.”
Wallace also took issue with Trump’s portrayal of the plague’s current state as “burning embers,” arguing that it is more akin to a firestorm.
Continuing the metaphor, Trump conceded that some states are currently in “flames,” but he vowed to keep the nation’s cases in check.
“I say flames. We’ll put out the flames. And we’ll put out in some cases just burning embers. We also have burning embers,” he said.
“We have embers, and we do have flames,” Trump added. “Florida became more flame-like, but it’s — it’s going to be under control.”
Noting that he’s taken heat for
his prediction that the virus would simply go away, he said, “I guess everybody makes mistakes. I’ll be right eventually. It’s going to disappear and I’ll be right.”
ON DR. FAUCI
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases and a respected member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is a “bit of an alarmist,” said Trump — while insisting that they still have a “very good relationship.”
Fauci became the focus of attacks last week when two administration officials — trade representative Peter Navarro and White House aide Dan Scavino — questioned the decisions he has made and whether he was leaking information on the federal coronavirus response to the media.
“Well, I don’t know that he’s a leaker,” Trump told Wallace.
He pointed out, however, that Fauci has “made a few mistakes.”
“Dr. Fauci said, ‘Don’t wear masks.’ Dr. Fauci told me not to ban [travel from] China,” Trump said. “I did it over and above his recommendation.
“Dr. Fauci then said, ‘You saved tens of thousands of lives.’ More than that.”
ON JOE BIDEN
Former Vice President Joe
Biden won’t succeed in his quest to unseat Trump in November because “he’s mentally shot,” the president said.
“You know why I won’t lose? Because the country, in the end, they’re not going to have a man who — who’s shot,” Trump prognosticated. “He’s shot, he’s mentally shot.”
Trump chided Biden for his thus-far low-key campaign and accused of him simply following a teleprompter when he does surface for an appearance.
“He doesn’t even come out of his basement. They think, ‘Oh, this is a great campaign,’ ” Trump said. “I’ll then make a speech. It’ll be a great speech, and some young guy starts writing, ‘Vice
President Biden said this, this, this, this,’ ” Trump continued. “He didn’t say it. Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t know he’s alive.”
But Trump stopped short of responding in the affirmative when asked by Wallace whether he believed Biden was “senile.”
“I don’t want to say that,” Trump said. “I’d say he’s not competent to be president. To be president, you have to be sharp and tough and so many other things.”
That said, Trump expressed doubts that Biden could hold up under such an intense grilling from the press.
“Let Biden sit through an interview like this. He’ll be on the ground crying for mommy,” Trump said. “He’ll say ‘Mommy, Mommy, please take me home.’ ”
ON POLLS
Trump’s personal estimation of Biden notwithstanding, a new Fox News poll unveiled by Wallace showed him trailing Biden by an 8-point margin.
But Trump — who overcame underwhelming poll results to win the 2016 presidential election — dismissed the new results as “fake” and predicted he would serve four more years.
“First of all, I’m not losing because those are fake polls,” he insisted. “They were fake in 2016, and now they’re even more fake.”
The president instead said he and his re-election campaign have their own polls that show him leading the race.
“We have polls where I’m leading,” he said. “I have a poll where we’re leading in every swing state.”
Trump, who was elected in 2016 on his first run for office, said he doesn’t like to come out on the losing end.
“I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose,” he said. “I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.”
He wouldn’t say whether he would accept the results of November’s election, citing possible fraud with mail-in ballots.
“You don’t know until you see. It depends,” Trump said, adding that voting by mail — which Democrats have suggested to protect people from the coronavirus — would “rig the election.”
ON CAMPAIGN RALLIES
Democrats are keeping schools shuttered and preventing large gatherings — like campaign rallies — amid the pandemic to undermine his chances in 2020, Trump alleged.
“The Democrats are purposely keeping their schools closed, keeping their states closed. I called Michigan. I want to have a big rally in Michigan,” he told Wallace. “Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Michigan?”
The shutdown wasn’t limited to Michigan but other potentially key swing states as well, Trump said.
“Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Minnesota? Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Nevada?” he continued. “We’re not allowed to have rallies in these Democratrun states.”
Wallace questioned whether the states weren’t justified in worrying about allowing rallies with thousands of people amid a public-health crisis.
“Some people would say, fine,” Trump responded.
Trump said that even if his campaign had proper precautions worked out, “they still wouldn’t allow it. They’re not allowing me to do it. So they’re not allowing me to have rallies.”
Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada have cumulatively seen nearly 8,000 coronavirus deaths.
ON MILITARY BASES AND CANCEL CULTURE
Trump threatened to mull a veto of a massive military spending package if it includes a provision that bases named after Confederate generals must find new monikers.
“I might. Yeah, I might,” he told Wallace, who pointed out that top military leaders backed the potential name changes.
“I don’t care what the military says. I’m supposed to make the decision,” the commander in chief said. “Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two world wars — nobody even knows [Confederate Army] General Bragg. We won two world wars.”
The National Defense Authorization Act sets aside $1 million to change the names of 10 bases named after Confederate soldiers. It also includes a pay hike for members of the military, a raise that Trump said they would still get if he vetoed the bill.
But he refused to budge on the name changes at any cost.
“What are we going to rename it?” Trump said. “You going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton? What are you going to name it, Chris? No, I’m not going to go changing them.”
Trump similarly weighed in on Confederate flags and the renewed push against them since the racially charged Minnesota death of George Floyd.
“When people proudly had their Confederate flags they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag. It represents the South. They like the South,” he told Wallace. “I say it’s freedom of many things, but it’s freedom of speech.”
He said the Black Lives Matter movement is also a First Amendment matter.
“I’m not offended . . . by Black
Lives Matter. That’s freedom of speech,” he said. “You know the whole thing with cancel culture — we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the North and the South fought.”
ON NIECE’S TELL-ALL
Trump blasted his niece’s tellall book about the family as “stupid and so vicious” — and said he was most hurt by the accusations against his parents.
“She was not exactly a family favorite,” he said of Mary Trump. “We didn’t have a lot of respect or like for her. I would’ve never said that except she writes a book that’s so stupid and so vicious, and it’s a lie. My father was a great, wonderful man.”
In the book, Mary Trump described the president’s father, Fred, as a “hard-functioning sociopath,” a characterization the commander in chief bristled at.
“I think he was the most solid person I’ve ever met. And he was a very good person. He was a very, very good person. He was strong, but he was good,” the president said, calling his niece “scarred.”
Separately on Sunday, Trump took to Twitter to weigh in on recent anti-police protests in Portland, Ore., as well as the investigations into his presidency.
“We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE,” Trump wrote. “These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!”
Trump was defending the hardline actions of federal agents in the city one day after a riot was declared because demonstrators torched a Portland police-union building.
The president also repeated his allegation that both his Oval Office predecessor and 2020 challenger were conspiring against him as a candidate.
“So we catch Obama & Biden, not to even mention the rest of their crew, SPYING on my campaign, AND NOTHING HAPPENS? I hope not!” he wrote.
“If it were the other way around, 50 years for treason. NEVER FORGET !!!! ”