Whenever President Dementia J. Pumpkinface gives a lengthy interview, as he did with ABC's George Stephanopoulos last week, you know it's going to be the rhetorical equivalent of watching a morbidly obese nude man attempting to force his head over his gut to suck his own dick while at the same time reaming his ass out with a giant, fist-shaped dildo, and when he finally just cums on his face, he smiles at you, sweaty and jizzy, fully expecting your applause for this feat of self-pleasuring contortion when, really, you just wanted the whole thing to end before it started and you feel filthy and nauseous for even giving him the attention he wanted, regretting all the decisions in your life that brought you to this moment.
The interview had already garnered headlines for a clip where Trump pretty much invited foreign governments to give him information on his political opponents, which would be, you know, collusion, and he wouldn't report a thing to the FBI. But the whole interview is something to behold. It is a portrait of a criminal and a madman with all the power anyone in the world could possibly possess and he's so dumb that he just cares about how cool and tough he looks. Seriously, the only thing that's holding Trump back from going full Mussolini is how fucking lazy, physically and intellectually, he is.
It's hard to pinpoint the most enraging, pathetic part of the interview.
It might be Trump's response when Stephanopoulos is talking to him about whether he can trust North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Trump says, "Almost of any undeveloped country anywhere in the world, that country has the chance to be economically a behemoth." Stephanopoulos brings up how Kim is "imprisoning" and "starving" the people there. Trump scoffs, "I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about from an economic standpoint. He's between China, Russia...It's all in the oceans. It's phenomenal. It's-- it's a phenomenal location. That country can be so rich. And he knows that." You hear that and you gotta think that our motherfucking president is talking to Kim about building a fucking hotel there, enslaved and tortured people be damned.
It might be when Trump goes full Mamet talking about the fact that he was trying to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow. Stephanopoulos says that Trump was "pursuing it," which leads to this line that could be out of Hell's dinner theatre version of Glengarry Glen Ross: "Excuse me, excuse me. Pursuing, what does pursuing mean? You know because someone walks in, says, 'Hey we’re looking at...' Do you know that I don’t even think they had a site? I don’t even think they knew who was going to do the deal. It was a concept of a deal, more of a concept than anything else. It was a concept of a deal someplace in Russia, probably in Moscow." Yeah, motherfucker, that's "pursuing." Words have meaning. Or maybe they don't anymore. Who fuckin' knows.
It might be one of the many times that Trump loses his shit and spouts legitimate insanity about the Mueller report, about Robert Mueller, about James Comey, about anyone he perceives is trying to get him. He says, "Did nothing wrong, George. Did nothing wrong. There was no collusion. You don't even hear Russia mentioned anymore...There was no collusion. You don't even hear Russia mentioned anymore. Russ- Russia's not mentioned. Now, it's all about obstruct-- obstruction of what? They built up a phony crime. They hired a man that hated Trump. He hired 18 people that were Democrats that hated Trump. Some of them contributed to Clinton's campaign. A couple of them worked for Clinton. I mean, what kind of a rigged deal is this? And then on top of it, after two years and after being the most transparent in history, I gave them 1.5 million pages of documents, right? I gave them four or five hundred witnesses." Trump didn't "give them" witnesses. That's how many were interviewed. Trump sees himself as controlling every fucking thing. And goes to paranoia-land rather than just shut the fuck up, which he totally could do about this. "No comment" is an answer. Not this self-aggrandizing prick. He's like Nixon on Adderall.
Beyond the dictator worship and the mob boss/tough guy bullshit and the refusal to believe that words have definitions beyond what he gives them, one consistent thread through the interview is Trump being so goddamn arrogant about what he knows. "I know more about prosecutors than you'll ever know," he tells Stephanopoulos. "People don't understand tariffs, but I understand them," he tells Stephanopoulos right after demonstrating that he doesn't understand tariffs. And, of course, his complete knowledge of America's past: "There's never been a time in the history of our country where somebody was so mistreated as I have been." This doesn't even get into the multiple times that Trump says the Mueller report exonerates him on "collusion" with Russia, which Stephanopoulos challenges him on every single time, and Trump insists that he's read the report, which, you know, c'mon.
Yet my favorite moment might be when Trump insists that Article II of the Constitution gives him the broad power to fire whoever he wants, obstruction be damned. He tells Stephanopoulos to "Read it for your audience" as Stephanopoulos insists he knows what's in it and tries to question Trump about Article II. Trump interrupts a question that was no doubt going to require actual knowledge of Article II and not just an idiot's insistence that he read it. He says, "You know what? Let's get onto another subject." Yeah, maybe let's not talk about the Constitution with the Rhodes scholar who worked in the White House for four years.
It was just one obscene degradation of the presidency and the country after another, worse than most Trump appearances because he was so obviously faking it, so obviously lying about shit he's lied about over and over, so obviously relying on a moron's bullying bravado to get him through it, so impressed by the smell of his own shit that he couldn't help himself from shitting more.
When he was done, Trump asked Mick Mulvaney, who was choking on a cough, for a towel to wipe the spunk off his face, some of the orange skin dye coming off with it. Then he winked at Stephanopoulos as he undulated away. Stephanopoulos barely made it to the Rose Garden before he started vomiting in self-hatred for having forced himself to endure that performance and for whatever part he played in making it happen.
(Note: No insult meant to people who get sexual pleasure watching morbidly obese men attempt auto-fellatio while dildo-fisting their own assholes until they ejaculate on their faces. It's a niche kink, sure, but, hey, enjoy. However, if one did not sign up for that, it would likely be a bit disturbing.)
