There is a three or four minute clip of an interview that Donald Trump granted to Jonathan
Swan and Axios reporter.
And it is the stuff of legend.
It is the stuff of horror.
It is the stuff of nightmares.
Donald Trump saying during this interview that not only does he read a lot, but he comprehends
what he reads, what he reads really, really well, better than anyone that Jonathan Swan
has ever interviewed, or at least recently, which is quite a statement.
Take a look at this.
I wouldn't mind if it reached my desk.
I would have done something about it.
It never reached my desk because to read your recent brief.
I do.
I read a lot.
You know, I read a lot.
They like to say.
I read.
I read a lot.
You're written.
He had extraordinarily well probably better than anybody that you've interviewed in a
long time.
I read a lot.
I spend a lot of time with at meetings.
So is there anybody in my audience who's willing to defend Trump on this?
That his reading comprehension is really, really good by most reports.
Donald Trump has not read a single entire book in decades in his entire adult life,
which is like the last 50 years.
I am not aware of any book that Donald Trump has actually read cover to cover people I
know who have really good reading comprehension skills.
They never brag about reading comprehension.
Put quite simply, like anybody who has good reading comprehension skills talks about the
math.
The subject matter of what they read rather than the fact that they're really good at
reading and understanding stuff.
And this was only the tip of the iceberg.
A bunch of other strange moments in this interview and the story really in the interview, other
than Trump claiming he can read well, which is a strange thing for presidents to ever
have to defend.
The real theme of this interview is Trump bending over backwards to defend, not confronting
Vladimir Putin about anything.
Take a look at Trump here explaining why he did nothing about that entire Russia Russian
bounty story, which I continue trying to bring up.
I did nothing about Russia arming the Taliban, did nothing about anything related to Russia.
Take a look.
I have so many briefings on so many different countries, but this one didn't reach my desk.
The reason I say this is, is even if you don't believe the intel, this particular piece of
intelligence and there is dispute, no doubt there is disputing intel she made about it.
Your former John Nicholson, former head of forces in Afghanistan, said this when he was
working for you, that Russia is supplying weapons to the Taliban.
Isn't that enough to challenge Putin over the killings?
Well, we sold those weapons when they were fighting Russia to, you know, when we were
when they were fighting with the Taliban when Afghanistan's a different era.
Well.
I'm just saying.
So Trump just radically brings up a completely different situation unrelated to him as president
and Putin now as president and their relationship.
This, by the way, doesn't have to be anything more than Trump is enamored with Putin.
You know, you have now there's this slice of the left who's getting a lot of mileage
of saying, oh, the Russia gaiters, the Russia Gaiters.
They were crazy.
All, you know, you don't you don't have to be alleging anything here other than Trump,
we know, is really impressed with authoritarians.
The people he's impressed with our Putin do today, Kim Jong un, Aradale one, et cetera.
And there's no conspiracy being alleged.
Other than Trump's enamored with dictators.
And he seems particularly enamored with Vladimir Putin.
And he seems to be finding any way he can grasping at straws to defend not being tough
on Putin, not confronting Putin.
That's all that this has to be.
You don't have to allege some bigger conspiracy.
Now, later in the interview, Jonathan Swan pushes Trump an insanely sort of ends up having
to explain to Trump what's going on.
It's very bad and it exposes Trump's complete lack of knowledge of even basic foreign foreign
policy realities.
You surely heard that, right?
I mean, it's well known in the US that they are arming the Taliban in Russia.
I don't know when you say arming, is the Taliban paying or they do Russia ossified weapons
and money to the Taliban.
I have heard that.
But it's never right again.
It's never reached my desk.
And he said on the record when he was in Russia, doesn't want anything to do with Afghanistan.
Let me just hear about Russia.
Trump has access to the not that he necessarily is taking people up on it, but Trump has access
to the latest and greatest intelligence in the world.
And you can tell that he seems to be hearing much of what Jonathan Swan is bringing up
for the first time from a reporter or at least hearing it in a way that he has to react substantively.
Then Trump, knowing that he's flailing and failing, tries to give Jonathan Swan a history
lesson.
And it gets really awkward.
Russia used to be a thing called the Soviet Union because.
Afghanistan.
They went bankrupt.
They became Russia, just so you do understand, OK?
The last thing that Russia wants to do is get too much involved with Afghanistan.
They tried that once.
It didn't work out.
How wild is that?
Right.
But but to focus on the primary topic here.
Donald Trump has not confronted Vladimir Putin about supposed Russian bounties for Taliban
killing U.S. troops.
Trump hasn't talked to him about it.
And Trump clearly has no interest in talking to Vladimir Putin about it, despite the fact
that they've now had at least one conversation since that story came out.
It's a sort of jaw dropping lack of self reflection or even an interest in understanding what
the circumstances are and just how bad it looks.
And it's hard to fathom that this is the president of the United States, at least for a few more
months, and hopefully no longer sort of like a sixth grader.
Listen, I remember there were times, maybe not in sixth grade, but in middle school where
I wrote a book report about a book I didn't read, OK?
I admitted there were times when I did that.
That's sort of the equivalent of what Donald Trump is trying to do here.
Now, the very last thing Donald Trump says it never reached his desk, that this story
of of alleged Russian bounty's never reached his desk.
That definitely seems to be a lie.
There has been widespread and specific New York Times and other reporting which claims
that indeed Donald Trump was briefed multiple times about this and he just did nothing.
Now, I've given you the timeline in the past, arguably as many as three or four different
times over the last year and a half or so where Donald Trump was briefed about this.
New York Times reported that Trump got written briefing in February of 20/20.
And that's just, you know, five, six months ago in a presidential daily briefing.
Trump in this interview claims he reads it.
So a sort of clever question, because Jonathan Swan gets Trump to at least claim he reads
his PDB, as we know that this was in his PDB in February.
Now, CNN says that Trump was briefed somewhere in the area of March, April, May on this.
And then Associated Press sources quote, top White House officials who say Trump was made
aware of this in early 2019, a full year earlier than The New York Times and CNN say.
So it's it's not just lies.
It's not just being enamored with Putin.
It's also either incompetence or a complete lack of memory about the fact that he was
allegedly briefed about this multiple times or a sort of all of the above scenario.
But there's no I mean, it's you know, either you care about this stuff or you don't.
Either you're concerned about having an incompetent buffoon as president or you're not.
Tens of millions of people are not.
And they're going to be voting for another four years of this in just a few months.
So if we want to prevent that from being the outcome, we know what to do.
There's no I don't have to give you any.
You don't have to understand mechanical physics or string theory or anything to understand
what the thing is.
You've got to vote.
Everybody's got
to vote.
That's it.