Out of office and having shut down his revolutionary communications site blog, former President Donald Trump has lost much of his ability to drive the daily national political conversation.
But he still has a telephone! And that means he can, whenever he wants, call into friendly outlets to spout his latest, um, observations on the state of the country and world.
Which is what he did on Wednesday night, chatting with Fox News’ Sean Hannity about, well, everything. Below the lines you need to see.
1. “Well, I guess the overall is, we didn’t get anything. We gave a very big stage to Russia, and we got nothing.”
This is Trump’s analysis of President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Which is sort of ironic because when Trump got together with Putin in Helsinki in 2018, he undermined America’s intelligence community by saying that “both sides” were to blame for Russia interfering in the 2016 election. And away we go!
2. “And performance art, you will take a look at how various people performed, namely, the two people. And you have to form your own judgment. It’s not for me to say.”
Uh, you literally just said that “we got nothing.” Also, “performance art?”
3. “I think it was a good day for Russia. I don’t see what we got out of it.”
But, wasn’t it “not for (you) to say?”
4. “Look, for five years, from the day I came down the escalator, we have been under investigation, and it turned out to be all false stuff. It was a terrible thing with the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ which actually made it difficult to deal with Russia.”
Just to be clear here: Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation did not conclude that the allegations against Trump and his 2020 campaign were “all false stuff.” Here’s exactly what Mueller wrote: “(I)f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. … Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
5. “And now it’s up to 19 different things where we were accused, and it turned out to be absolutely false, whether it’s the Wuhan lab, the good old Wuhan lab. When I mentioned that, it was like a firestorm. Hydroxychloroquine, now great reviews are coming out on that.”
While the Biden administration has said that the possibility exists that the coronavirus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, neither it nor anyone in the scientific community has said that’s where the virus definitively originated. Trump’s claims about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine to combat Covid-19 appears to be rooted in a false reading of emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci.
6. “But it’s all coming out. I think the people understand it. I think that, in many ways, we’re stronger now than ever before. They understand that deception and the horror that these people put this country through. It’s really very sad, actually.”
Strong. But also sad.
7. “But literally, from the day of that wonderful ride down the escalator, from that moment on, investigation after investigation.”
Trump’s fascination with a 15-second ride down an escalator is both fascinating and utterly weird.
8. “But you know what? I left that up to DOJ. I left that up to the people running DOJ. And I wasn’t involved.”
HA HA HA. White House counsel Don McGahn testified under oath last week that Trump told him to lean on deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was sending emails to the attorney general asking him to investigate a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites had changed votes from Trump to Biden. Come on, man!
9. “Everyone still waiting for Durham, what happened to Durham? How was that allowed to go into another administration? It’s just – it’s shocking.”
The John Durham probe, looking into the origins of the FBI counter-intelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is ongoing. We know little about it other than Durham and his team spent $1.5 million on the investigation between October 2020 and March 2021.
10. “But hopefully, you have an attorney general now that will be fair. But I will say that the people running the justice – and the people in it, don’t forget, you have tens of thousands of people, and they were put there by Obama.”
The people who oversaw the creation of the Durham investigation and the timeline of its progress were ALL appointed by Trump.
11. “There was such guilt and such a horrible thing happened. They were spying on my campaign. You know, if you think about it, all the way back, almost at the beginning, when I – when I made a statement that my campaign was spied on, it was one of the biggest moments. It was – nobody could believe it.”
[narrator voice] They weren’t.
12. “Then it turned out that I was more than spied on, much worse than being spied on. But they didn’t do anything about it. And to me, that’s a terrible thing for our country.”
Again, no.
13. “How many Chevrolets are being sold in Berlin? Not too many. How many Chevrolets are being sold in Paris? Not too many. Maybe none.”
Trump was criticizing the lack of reciprocity of certain countries in selling American goods here. But for the record, from what I could find, there were more than 200,000 Chevrolets registered in Germany in 2019. In the first half of the last decade, roughly 20,000 Chevrolets were being sold in France a year. Both of those numbers are larger than “none.”
14. “And then we got hit by the pandemic. And nobody did as good a job with the pandemic as we did.”
In an October 2020 CNN poll, 6 in 10 Americans disapproved of the way Trump and his administration had handled the coronavirus pandemic. So …
15. “I got along really well with [Putin]. Nobody was tougher on Russia, he would say that. But nobody was tougher on Russia.”
Just a reminder: The Mueller report, as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded that Russia meddled in the election to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton because they believed the billionaire businessman would be better for their interests.
16. “I think we had a, you know, great shot at having an unbelievable relationship with Russia. It could have been fantastic. It could have been really beneficial to both countries.”
Well, other than the myriad of human rights abuses, the ransomware attacks and the interfering in an American election and then lying about it …
17. “They’re making windmills all over the place to ruin our land and kill our birds, to kill everything.”
Trump is consistent about very, very few things. His hatred of windmills is one of them.
18. “The money from Russia, $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow – the former mayor of Moscow.”
Trump appears to be referring here to an allegation that a firm affiliated with Hunter Biden received $3.5 million in 2014 from the wife of late Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. BIden has denied it. CNN fact-checkers rate the claim “false.”
19. “We no longer have a fair and free press. Whether you like it or not, and I hate to say it to you, because you’re a big believer in the press despite what you go through, but we no longer have a free and fair press.”
Ah yes, Sean Hannity, paragon of the free and independent media.
20. “Now, when you look at China, and you look at the military apparatus, which I was really doing a big job on.”
A “big job,” you say?
21. “I really hope and I believe it was an accident, it was incompetence. I guess some people don’t necessarily agree with that. They think maybe there was purpose to it, which would be absolutely terrible.”
This is Trump floating the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was purposely released from a lab in Wuhan. Hannity, in case you were wondering, didn’t call him out on that. Oh, you weren’t wondering? Right.
22. “Look, countries have been destroyed over what they did, and whether by accident or not. And I would hope that it was accident. I hope that it was through incompetence or an accident.”
See above.
23. “I can tell you from personal experience, Canada is very, very tough. Canada is as tough as anybody.”
24. “Now Canada treats this country very, very badly.”
I can’t help but think Justin Trudeau’s lustrous mane has something to do with this. Somehow.
25. “And shockingly, we were supposed to win easily at 64 million votes, and we got 75 million votes, and we didn’t win. But let’s see what happens on that.”
Joe Biden got 81 million votes.
26. “You know, they talk about me with Russia, I get along with Putin. I had a good relationship with Putin. But I was so tough.”
Yes, yes, you’ve have said that.
27. “So, I’m very honored to say that my endorsement means more than any endorsement that has ever been given by anybody.”
More than anyone ever?!!? Well, at least he’s “honored” to say it.
28. “So, I’m working on ’22, getting a lot of good senators and a lot of good congresspeople elected.”
Mitch McConnell grimaces.
29. “But if you look at the numbers, people are liking me more now than ever before.”
Can you imagine actually saying this sentence out loud? Also, he’s not getting more popular.
30. “I am under siege. I agree with you on that.”
Yeah, this feels like a good place to end.