Five bizarre moments from Trump's interview with Laura Ingraham

On Monday night, Fox News broadcast the first part of an interview between Donald Trump and Laura Ingraham. The primetime host is one of the president’s chief boosters, having spoken on his behalf at the Republican convention in 2016.

But things did not go entirely smoothly.

Echoing the fallout from recent one-on-ones with Chris Wallace of Fox and Jonathan Swan of Axios, much tougher interrogators, Trump’s rambling, confused, conspiracy-tinged answers swiftly dominated the news agenda. Even by his own standards, the interview contained some bizarre and outrageous statements.

Part two is due on Tuesday night. But according to the influential Politico Playbook newsletter, “very many people in the White House who would like Trump to win re-election are against the sit-down TV interviews the president has been doing.”

Here are five reasons why:

1. Biden and the shadow people

Amid an extended riff about the Democratic nominee being a “weak person” unable to deal with protests over racism and police brutality in many US cities, Trump said: “I don’t even like to mention Biden, because he’s not controlling anything. They control him.”

Ingraham gave Trump a chance to develop the thought: “Who do you think is pulling Biden’s strings? Is it former Obama officials?”

Trump didn’t think that.

‘People that you’ve never heard of,” he said. “People that are in the dark shadows. People that –”

Ingraham interjected: “What does that mean? That sounds like conspiracy theory. Dark shadows, what is that?”

“No,” said Trump. “People that you haven’t heard of. They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets.”