 So by now unless you're living under a rock, then I'm sure you've heard about Donald Trump's epic interview with Jonathan Swan on Axios It's about 35 minutes long. It was posted to HBO's YouTube channel and I've got to say this was Thoroughly entertaining. I didn't watch it like directly I kind of had it on in the background while I was playing Ghost of Tsushima great game by the way And there were moments where I paused the game like mid-battle because I had to like go back and Listen to what Trump said again because what he said was so stupid and like the things that he said they ranged from being hysterical Like genuinely funny to downright disturbing where I was angry So I mean in this interview you're taking on a ride, right? You go through all the range of emotions at one moment You'll be pissed the next moment. He'll say something stupid and then you'll laugh I've got to give credit to Jonathan Swan because he did a phenomenal job at pushing back on Donald Trump and honestly from a journalistic standpoint, this is one of the best interviews I think I've ever seen he really did a good job at bringing statistics at challenging Donald Trump He didn't let Trump get by on anything But at the same time like he didn't he didn't come off as overly combative like he tried to give Trump credit where it was Do but he also called out the lies and it would really what was a fantastic interview So if you haven't seen the interview I would encourage you to stop watching this video watch the entire thing It's long. I get it, but it's worth it I mean, it's so long you could have it on in the background But I swear to God every time I turned around and like stop playing the game to look at what Donald Trump had said His hands were like that like the entire time. So, you know, whenever he's doing this he's like really struggling to collect his thoughts and He's like really concentrating The interview was bananas. So we're gonna start off, you know on a lighter note because I want to definitely talk through these highlights here So contrary to popular belief according to Donald Trump, he does in fact read So he was asked by Jonathan Swan whether or not he reads his daily briefings. Um, his answer here was It was it was weird like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give you any more setup. Just watch. I read a lot They like to say don't read I read a lot You're reading your daily tellers great extraordinarily. Well Probably better than anybody that you've interviewed in a long time Who says that I comprehend extraordinary well Probably better than anybody you've ever interviewed in a long time. Who says things like that? Donald Trump is such a weird person like I don't Like I swear to God if Reptilians were actually a thing Donald Trump is definitely a reptilian Who's like still trying to learn the ins and outs of like humanity and how they function and the things that they say because I mean Like a normal well-adjusted human being doesn't say something like that. Like what a weird hyperbolic statement to make oh No, I actually do read and I comprehended better than anyone you've ever interviewed I mean that's so strange like we did way to suck himself off The next thing that I want to go over is what he said when he was asked about the late John Lewis civil rights icon Because of course he found a way to make John Lewis's legacy about himself because why wouldn't he? John Lewis is lying in state in the US Capitol. How do you think history will remember John Lewis? I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know. I don't know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my Inauguration, I mean that's exactly what you'd expect from him. Additionally. He had this Piping heartache. I did more for the black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln whether you like it or not people say oh, that's you really you believe you did more than it Lyndon Johnson who passed the Civil Rights Act. I think I did. Yeah, because I got criminal justice reform done I got prison reform. Lyndon Johnson. I've done things. I've done well He passed the Civil Rights Act. How has it worked out if you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did? You think the Civil Rights Act was a mistake? That's a big yikes from me big yikes Goddamn He's confident He's such a dumbass Okay, so those were I think the most funny parts in the interview I think that Jonathan Swan himself deserves credit for being Funny because he was clearly animated like you can read What he was feeling on his face And uh like whenever I was like watching Him like as I was going through trying to prep for the segment like I'm scrolling through and you can see like Jonathan's facial reactions and he's clearly like just puzzled by things that Donald Trump said So moving on that was kind of the more lighthearted entertaining aspects of the interview But there are some elements of the interview where uh, it was downright disturbing that the president said this like some of What he says he can get away with it because it's funny and he's just a stupid person but things like this where um, it comes to covet 19 And the deaths that it's caused he inadvertently revealed his callousness And this is where the interview, you know, it takes a turn for The disturbing and this is where I got pissed off, you know, I've covered you for a long time I've gone to your rallies. I've talked to your people. They love you. They listen to you They listen to every word you say they hang on your every word. They don't listen to me or the media or fouchy They think we're fake news. They want to get their advice from you And so when they hear you say everything's under control, don't worry about wearing masks I mean these are people many of them are older people. Mr president Yeah I think it's under control. I'll tell you what how a thousand americans are dying a day. They are dying That's true. And you have it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can It is what it is. That's literally what he said About people dying americans dying under his watch due to covet 19 I mean he is Revealing his callousness. He genuinely doesn't care that people are dying And you know that he doesn't care because he's trying to reopen schools If he was actually concerned with the health and well-being and the safety of americans He wouldn't be urging them to reopen schools. He wouldn't be using this pandemic to privatize public education But I mean he is he's ruthless. He does not care about human beings Which is why you'd say something like that it is what it is in response to the deaths with regard to covet 19 Now jonathan swan pressed him on the deaths a little bit more And trump tried to debunk the facts that jonathan was bringing to his attention and he was Fumbling through these papers to try to show him statistics. This was Bizarre um, but watch what donald trump is trying to do basically He's trying to present skewed information Select statistics that make him not look as bad, but jonathan swan was not having it He was calling him out on everything with actual data The figure I look at is death and death is going up now And it's a thousand a day if you look at death. Yeah, it's going up again That's daily death. Take a look at some of these charts. I'd love to we're gonna look. Let's look and if you look at death Yeah Started to go up again Well, right here the united states is lowest in numerous categories We're lower than the world lower than the lower than europe in what in what take a look Right here Here's case death Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population That's where the us is really bad. Well much worse than south korea, germany, etc You can't you can't do that. You have to go you have to go by You have to go by where look here is the united states You have to go by the cases the cases why not as a proportion of population What it says is when you have somebody that has where there's a case Oh, okay, the people that live from those cases It's surely a relevant statistic to say if the us has x population and x percentage of death of that population Versus south korea go by the cases look at south korea for example 51 million population 300 deaths It's like it's crazy. You don't know that. I do You think they're faking their statistics south korea? I won't get into that because I have a very good relationship with the country But you don't know that and they have spikes. Look, here's germany. Lo. Here's one. Here's one right here united states You take the number of cases. Okay. We'll last meaning we're first. I don't know what we're first in Take a look again, it's cases. Okay. Um, and we have cases Because of the testing a thousand americans are dying today, but I understand I understand on cases It's different. No, but you're not reporting it correctly jonathan. I think I am but if you take a look at this other chart Look, this is our testing. I believe this is the testing. Yeah, yeah, we do more tests No, wait a minute Well, don't we get credit for that and because we do more tests we have more cases In other words, we test more we have a take a look the top one That's a good thing not a bad thing the top jonathan if if if hospital rates were going down and deaths were going down I'd say terrific. You deserve to be praised for testing, but they're all going out. They very 60,000 americans are in hospital if you watch the thousands are in the papers They usually talk about new cases new cases new cases. I'm talking about death Well, you look at death is way down from where it was It's it's a thousand a day. It was two that half thousand. It went down to 500 now. It's going up again Excuse me where it was is much higher than where it is right now went down But now it's going down again. It's going down in arizona. It's going down in national. It's going down in texas Take a look at this. These are the tests. It's going down in florida Yeah, it's going it leveled out and it's going down. That's my report as of yesterday completely unhinged Now unsurprisingly, he once again repeated the lie that the reason why we're seeing an increase in Cases is because we're doing more testing completely disregarding the positivity rate and on top of that He wants you to only look at a specific metric When it comes to deaths he wants you to look at the proportion of deaths Compared to the amounts of cases. So what is the fatality rate? Among people who have COVID-19 now ask yourself. Why does he want us to look at this specifically? Well, let's simplify it. So let's say 100 people got COVID-19 and 10 people died Uh, what would the fatality rate be in that instance? It'd be 10 percent obviously, right? So let's say that uh cases went up. There were a thousand cases and a hundred people died Well in that instance the fatality rate would remain the same. It's at 10 percent So if the fatality rate remains the same or preferably it goes down That makes donald trump look better But specifically looking at that metric ignores the fact that deaths overall are increasing It ignores the fact that in that hypothetical we went from 10 deaths to 100 deaths Even if the fatality rate among people who have COVID-19 remain the same So that's why he told jonathan swan. Oh, you can't look at that. You're not reporting that correctly Because when you look at overall deaths Based on population it makes him look bad. Now as jonathan swan conceded like you can look at You know the fatality rate, of course like we're we're looking at all metrics We're not trying to hide information and data. That's what trump is doing But he's selectively trying to select data that makes him look better and it's insane And thankfully for the first time he was actually called out to his face for lying Now moving on he was asked about the afghanistan war and jonathan swan called him out and you know basically pressed him to explain why if you campaigned As an anti-war politician back in 2016 Why are we still in afghanistan? The answer here was uh really telling because trump he was backed into a corner and he didn't know what to say Because he clearly looked like a fraud The us troop level in afghanistan right now is roughly the same as it was when you you're wrong. No, mr. President I'm sorry. We have to do. Okay. Are you ready? No, no, we'll be down in a very short. It's already planned Well, well, that's that's a different question. We'll be down in a very short period of time to 8 000 Then we're going to be down to 4 000 when negotiating right now. We've been there for 19 years 19 years If you just let me finish my question. We'll be getting out. I understand Look the when you came in it was 8 800 you boosted to 14 000 and now you're back down to 8 500 We're now my question to you in 4 000. I'll give you the exact very soon very soon What will be the number very soon 4 000 very soon like how soon? I don't want to tell you that I don't want to tell you that's big news What is that going down to 4 000 isn't it? I've always said well, what about what about election day? We will get largely out on election day. How many american troops will be in afghanistan? Uh Probably anywhere from 4 to 5 000 That's almost as many as when you came into office. No, it's not 8 000 We had much more. We had a lot of people over there too 8 800 a lot of people and we did a good job We wiped out isis. Have you thought about going down to zero? Let me just tell you what you don't say We took out in syria. We took out isis. We 100 of the caliphate So, I mean are you getting us out of these never-ending wars or not? You campaigned as an anti-war libertarian-esque candidate back in 2016 and um, we're still not out of the wars Almost four years later. You've been president. We're still there. So, why isn't the number of troops in afghanistan zero? Why are you still conducting illegal drone strikes in other countries? It's because donald trump is a fraud sometimes, you know, he'll use that libertarian-esque Anti-war rhetoric, but then other times he sounds like a bloodthirsty saber-rattling Wormonger because he is so I mean the inconsistency there He has to address it and when he tries to address it when someone asks him about this He's clearly clueless. He doesn't know what to say Now another area where he's inconsistent is mail-in voting and jonathan swan asked him Why are you railing against mail-in voting when your campaign is instructing republican party voters? How to safely vote by mail and donald trump here unraveled because again, like when you were called out and confronted in this direct manner with facts You have no idea what to do, especially if you're donald trump So all he does usually is when confronted He just lies or he pivots to the great job that he's doing or you know, um He in this instance, he actually did try to defend himself by saying well I have to promote mail-in voting because I have no choice But that defeats the purpose of his arguments against mail-in voting nonetheless. Take a look and uh, we'll come back and discuss this So we have a new phenomena It's called in it's called mail-in voting where you send we're a governor It's been here since the civil war in terms of the kind of the kind of millions and millions of ballots They've never it'll be bigger this year because of the pandemic bigger not bigger massively bigger Yeah, because it's so they're gonna send tens of millions of ballots to california all over the place Who's gonna get them? I have a friend lives in westchester county. They send applications His son passed away. He had a beautiful wonderful son young man passed away seven years ago. He called me. He said I just got a I just got a ballot Probably Robert He died seven years ago Somebody got a ballot for a dog somebody got a ballot for something else You got millions of ballots going nobody even knows where they're going You look at some of the corruption having to do with universal mail-in voting Absentee voting is okay. You have to apply. You have to go through a process. You have to apply for mail-in. It's the same thing Look, let's do concrete. Let's do concrete. They're sending out applications Millions of ballots. No, they're not there is applications There is no way you can go through a mail-in vote without massive cheating I honestly don't understand this topic with with you The republican party has an extremely well funded vote-by-mail program Your campaign puts out emails telling people to vote by mail correct your daughter-in-law laura trump She did robo calls in california saying it's safe and secure mail-in voting Let me tell you the republic. We have no choice. That wasn't all mail-in rates. Let me tell you you're ready We have no choice because right now we have but we have many court cases That we're waiting. We have one filed in western pennsylvania We have many court cases where we're trying to end it. Well, you see, I don't like mail-in voting personally But since we're doing mail-in voting anyway, then I have to instruct my republican voters To vote by mail let them know how they can safely vote by mail from home except If you're maintaining that position doesn't that undermine your entire argument because if mail-in voting is so insecure makes us so vulnerable That the entire election will be the most fraudulent election in american history according to him Then wouldn't it not matter like if mail-in voting is so bad and it's not going to matter It's going to delegitimize the entire election Um Wouldn't that mean that according to you using your own logic that the votes that republicans cast by mail Isn't going to matter either. I mean if there's so much fraud what's stopping Officials from this like throwing out all of those republican party ballots. I mean if you use his logic His position is all over the place. It's all over the place. He can't keep his lies straight And I mean it's because he knows that there's nothing wrong with vote by mail He doesn't want vote by mail because if more people vote by mail that means that turnout will likely be increased And when turnout is high what happens republicans lose elections because they count on suppressing enough votes to win But at the end of the day, you just have to watch the interview for yourself to see it truly was, you know, a spectacle It was bananas Donald trump honestly like it's going to take a lot of time for us to digest What happened when he was in office like once he's out of office because it's such a bizarre timeline that we're currently living through That you're not going to be able to fully like appreciate what's going on until after we're out of this weird era in american politics