A sitting president enjoys many perks of office, from use of Air Force One to free Washington, D. C., residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to unfettered access to anyone in America if not the world. But a most cherished perk, as demonstrated by Donald Trump for some 75 minutes Sunday night on “60 Minutes Overtime,” is the ability to ramble on, to filibuster, to conflate reality with falsehoods, to denigrate opponents, to inflate accomplishments and reject criticism, without fear of interruption or correction (https://share.google/cuR5gsIUSwZlvwiq9).
Trump scored 75 minutes of free propaganda. Norah O’Donnell tried to ask probing questions, but her deference to the office of the president, and Trump’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink responses made the interview an extended commercial for Trumpism.
Even easy retorts to his contention that the 2020 election was rigged—that more than 60 judges, including Republican jurists, found no such reality—and that Trump has promised a better healthcare plan than Obamacare for more than a decade without releasing any details, and that ICE raids have failed to seize dangerous illegal immigrants but have gone after hard working, productive, long-time undocumented family members with no criminal records, and that he was wrong to say the inflation rate under Joe Biden was the highest in our history (it was higher in the 1970s-1980s), hardly escaped her lips, and when they did he rejected the counterpoints.
CBS chose not to simultaneously fact check Trump’s numerous exaggerations, obfuscations and fantasies. Perhaps the White House insisted it would not do the interview if it were fact checked as he spoke.
I like Norah O’Donnell. But she was overmatched because Trump chose to dominate, not interact. You get to do that when you’re president. Norah was not there to debate. There was no independent commission setting ground rules.
Trump repeated his favorite talking points from staged events, time and again circling back on attacks that have been debunked while praising actions that have many independent observers worried they have destabilized our constitutional republic and our economy.
By their nature, politicians are rarely humble. In that respect, Trump is an uber-politician. His extreme bravado was on full display Sunday night.
