Transcription
Well, the art of the Sunday morning interview reached a new dark low yesterday. Nothing has damaged the genre more than the Donald Trump Sunday morning interview. Donald Trump just desecrated that Sunday morning TV liturgy when he turned to politics. Donald Trump knows that the most important thing on commercial television is, of course, the commercial. The commercials are those immovable granite blocks that frame every television discussion, and Donald Trump knew that all he had to do to beat every Sunday morning TV interviewer at the game was to keep spewing nonsense until the so-called interview would crash into that immovable object. The TV commercial and the interviewer would be out of time, and the interviewer would lose once again.
When Donald Trump became a presidential candidate, he quickly became the most valuable Sunday morning guest one of those shows could have because the show that had Donald Trump that weekend would win the ratings race that weekend. And so the desperation to book Donald Trump knew no bounds. Donald Trump smelled that desperation and used it to become the first guest in the history of those shows to literally phone it in. Donald Trump became the first Sunday morning guest who didn't have to show up. We don't know if he was in pajamas when he was doing those phone interviews on the Sunday morning shows during his first presidential campaign, but we do know that we learned absolutely nothing from any one of those interviews, so-called interviews of Donald Trump. Every one of them was a failure, a complete failure. Not one moment in the Sunday morning interviews had the slightest impact on the presidential campaign. Donald Trump has become harder to get on Sunday morning, but the desperation remains and I guess deepens.
And so yesterday morning, CNN presented a so-called interview with CNN that they can't even prove was Donald Trump. They called it breaking news. They called it, quote, "an exclusive new interview with President Trump." That's what they called it. Before the interviewer said this, "The President answered my questions on text about his hopes for this nascent deal." What? You gave him the questions in writing? So now, instead of letting Trump hide in a phone call where we can at least know that it's him talking, Donald Trump gets to hide behind the black screen of texting. We actually have no idea who texted the replies in that so-called interview. CNN is unable to prove that Donald Trump was actually doing that texting. CNN has not revealed how long it took to get a reply to each of the five written questions that apparently got replies from someone who texted those replies, or someone who told Donald Trump what to text in those replies, or maybe, maybe it was from Donald Trump.
The first question was, "What happens if Hamas insists on staying in power in Gaza?" to which the text reply, and we don't know how long this took, well, and we don't know who did it, the text reply says, "Complete obliteration." The final slow-pitch softball question was, "How do you think the government shutdown is going to end?" That question got the empty answer it deserved. Someone texted this reply as an answer to that question of how the shutdown is going to end: "Good. We are winning and cutting costs, big time!" Exclamation point. The interviewer then said, "I asked a few other questions on text. Still waiting for a response on those, Mr. President." Okay, what were those questions? Exactly which questions did Donald Trump refuse to answer? What could be more relevant in reporting an exchange that is supposed to be with the President of the United States than including the questions he refused to answer? We have no idea. Any questions about Jeffrey Epstein? Or his sex trafficking friend, Elaine Maxwell? Any questions about Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, Elaine Maxwell? We don't know. We have no idea. We have no idea what the other questions were that Donald Trump refused to answer, or whoever was on the other end of that phone refused to answer.
When the history of Donald Trump's mental decline is written, it will no doubt include that so-called interview yesterday as a turning point in Donald Trump's White House dealing with the challenge of Donald Trump trying to answer questions during this period of obvious mental decline for Donald Trump. Donald Trump was allowed to become, by CNN, the first president in history to get questions in writing for an interview. Questions that he could take home, as it were, since he was at home. Questions from a reporter, and then Donald Trump was allowed to take, we don't know how much time, to reply to those questions. We do know CNN is still waiting for some of them. Something this particular interviewer would be outraged about if Joe Biden had ever done that, or someone pretending to be Joe Biden had done that. This particular interviewer wrote an entire book condemning Joe Biden because he didn't like the way Joe Biden answered questions. He thought Joe Biden wasn't up to the job of answering questions as a presidential candidate, particularly in the presidential debate. But in fact, every one of the answers that Joe Biden did give in that presidential debate, in content, was better than every answer given by Donald Trump, all of which were insane.
But this same interviewer apparently thinks Donald Trump is capable of answering such questions. This same interviewer has never doubted that. If Joe Biden had ever given the answer, quote, "complete obliteration," end quote, to what happens next in Gaza or anywhere else in the world, that same interviewer would have pointed to it correctly, I think, as proof of mental incapacity to do the job of president. But Donald Trump, or the person playing Donald Trump in that text game yesterday, took the time to carefully type out "complete obliteration." It wasn't a quick and ill-concerted reply. It was a carefully typed and written reply, a written reply. And in a world where, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, on the illegal Trump tariffs, Trump always chickens out. Anything Donald Trump says in response to a what-if question is always meaningless. And so the insane and reckless and inhuman phrase "complete obliteration" is also actually meaningless because Donald Trump said it, or the person playing Donald Trump in that text game typed it.
In the Sunday morning interview business, and it is a business, every time they lower their standards for Donald Trump, that becomes the new standard. And so the other Sunday morning shows, desperate to get Donald Trump, will, according to all their past practices in following each other into decline, accept written answers from Donald Trump, or a person impersonating Donald Trump, in reply to their written questions to Donald Trump. And they won't tell us how long it takes Donald Trump or his stand-in to deliver those answers, and they won't tell us what questions Donald Trump or his stand-in refuses to answer. The deviancy of Donald Trump only moves in one direction: down. People working for Donald Trump choose to go down with him. But apparently, they're not the only ones.
The White House press corps did their usual good question, bad question routine today. And as a group, they once again failed to exhibit that they know what a tariff is. In the Oval Office, surrounded by reporters today, Donald Trump said, quote, "I use tariffs to stop wars." And not one reporter challenged that madness in any way. Donald Trump also said this about tariffs, quote, "We make, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars." End quote. And the next question after he said that did not involve a reporter pointing out to the president that every single penny that is collected by the United States Treasury in tariffs is paid by Americans inside this country. Instead, the next question was the utterly pointless, "How long do you expect this shutdown to go?" That was it. Which got a bunch of words about crime in Chicago and Portland, and nothing about the shutdown, because that's the way it goes when they question Donald Trump.
The Trump Supreme Court does appear to do everything it possibly can for Donald Trump, but that is not necessarily the Trump Supreme Court's policy for Donald Trump's friends. Today, Donald Trump's old friend, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, did not get the Trump treatment in the United States Supreme Court. Today, Ghislaine Maxwell got what over 90% of litigants that go to the Supreme Court get: nothing, not even a hearing, not even a sentence. The name of her appeals case, Maxwell versus the United States, appeared in a list of 900 other cases that the Supreme Court refused to hear today. That is what happens to most people who try to bring their case to the Supreme Court. They don't get in the door. And so Ghislaine Maxwell has only one hope left of getting out of prison: her old friend Donald Trump. And today, CNN's White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins asked the best question of the day, which revealed that Donald Trump will consider pardoning his old friend, the sex trafficker.
"The Supreme Court is back, and they rejected an appeal by Elaine Maxwell to overturn her conviction. That means her only chance of getting out of prison is a pardon. Is that something you are talking about Maxwell?" "You know, I haven't heard the name in so long. I can say this, that I'd have to take a look at it. I would have to take a look. Did they reject that? Well, I'll take a look at it. I'll speak to... I will speak to the... I wouldn't consider it or not consider it. I don't know anything about it, but I'll... I will speak to the DOJ. I don't know. I mean, I'd have to speak to the DOJ. I'll look at it. I have a lot of people who have asked me for pardons. I call him Puff Daddy has asked me for a pardon. I'm going to have to take a look at it. I have to ask DOJ. I didn't know they rejected it. I didn't know she was even asking for it, frankly. I wouldn't consider it or not consider it." That's the kind of gibberish that comes out of his mouth all the time. That's impossible. You have to do one or the other. You have to consider it or not consider it. You can't do both. But that's what he says. And that's what they think are answers. "I'll look at it," he said. "I'll look at it. I'll look at it." But she was convicted of child sex trafficking. "Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna have to take a look at it." Why? Because she's an old friend. Because she told your former criminal defense lawyer in that phony so-called interview that he did with her that you're okay, that you, Donald Trump, she never witnessed doing anything wrong. She's the same person who said she never witnessed Jeffrey Epstein doing anything wrong.
So after that sequence of questions, Donald Trump then turned to a reporter who he correctly met would change the subject, and that reporter changed the subject for him, because that's the way it works with the White House press corps. So when you look at it, Donald, be sure to read the sentencing hearing transcript, which is the only time your old dear friend Elaine Maxwell spoke in court, and she never denied the charges that she was convicted of in that one opportunity to speak in court. If Donald Trump ever could summon the discipline to read the sentencing hearing transcript, which we know he won't, he would find the judge in full agreement with the jury's verdict that Ghislaine Maxwell was indeed guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of sex trafficking. The judge said, "The crimes for which I sentenced Ms. Maxwell today are the crimes for which a jury convicted her of committing following trial. I do want to emphasize that today the sentence is based entirely on those crimes and the harm done to those victims of those charged and proved crimes. The evidence at trial established that Ms. Maxwell directly and repeatedly and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme to entice, transport, and traffic underage girls, some as young as 14, for sexual abuse by and with Jeffrey Epstein." I will pause on those words for a moment. "By and with Epstein. It is important at the outset to emphasize that although Epstein was, of course, central to this criminal scheme, Ms. Maxwell is not being punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein. Like every other participant in a multi-defendant case, Ms. Maxwell is being punished for the role that she played in the criminal conduct. As to that role, the trial evidence established that Ms. Maxwell was instrumental in the abuse of several underage girls and that she herself participated in some of the abuse. And it is her conduct for which she has been convicted in the court under the laws of this country, and it is her conduct for which she must be held accountable."
And we know when Donald Trump pretends to look at it, he won't read what Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who took her own life earlier this year, said at the sentencing hearing. Virginia Giuffre could not bring herself to actually speak that day. Instead, her lawyer read a statement that said in part, quote, "Ghislaine, 22 years ago in the summer of 2000, you spotted me at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and you made a choice. You chose to follow me and procure me for Epstein. Just hours later, you and he abused me together for the first time. Together, you damaged me physically, mentally, sexually, and emotionally. Together, you did unthinkable things that still have a corrosive impact on me to this day. I want to be clear about one thing. Without question, Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible pedophile, but I never would have met Jeffrey Epstein if not for you. For me and for so many others, you opened the door to hell, and then you lay like a wolf in sheep's clothing. You used your femininity to betray us and you let us all through it. You could have put an end to the rapes, the molestation, the sickening manipulation that you arranged, witnessed, and even took part in. You could have called the authorities and reported that you were part of something awful. Ghislaine, the pain you have caused me is almost indescribable. Because of your choices and the world you brought me into, I don't sleep. Nightmares wake me at all hours. In those dreams, I relive the awful things that you and others did to me and the things that you forced me to do. Those memories will never go away. Ghislaine, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison, in a jail cell. You deserve to be trapped in a cage forever, just like you trapped your victims."
And today, Virginia Giuffre's family said in a statement, quote, "We, the family of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, we are grateful to the Supreme Court for denying Elaine Maxwell's appeal to invalidate her conviction. We are committed to ensuring that convicted child sex trafficker Maxwell serves out the entirety of her 20-year sentence in prison where she belongs. We remain hopeful that the DOJ will realize that she belongs in a maximum security prison, not the country club one she is currently in, the first human trafficker ever to have been afforded that privilege."
Today, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia, issued this statement after the Supreme Court refused to hear Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal: "Maxwell helped lead the Epstein sex trafficking ring and was directly involved in the abuse of women and children. The Trump administration's ongoing effort to pressure Maxwell into aiding their cover-up, including arranging an interview with Donald Trump's former attorney Todd Blanche, is outrageous and shameful. Maxwell has been subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee and must now answer our questions truthfully."