Why Donald Trump failed his TV interviews
Opinion
Donald Trump
Why Donald Trump failed his TV interviews
The president selects his media appearances carefully – but has been skewered twice recently
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What is remarkable about an interview with Donald Trump that went viral last week is how much it has been remarked upon, given that – on the face of it – it is so unremarkable. Interviewer sits down with politician and asks questions; politician is evasive and makes baseless assertions, so the reporter, Jonathan Swan from Axios, asks him questions like “What do you mean?”, “What’s your basis for saying that?”, “Why?”.
Isn’t that what we do in interviews?
But it was exceptional because that is not how Trump is normally interviewed.
The American president is highly selective about who he allows himself to be interviewed by (declaration of interest: despite repeated efforts, and coming very close once, he has not done an interview with me – although has answered a lot of my questions at news conferences). I would say that he gives 90%-95% of his interviews to the Murdoch-owned Fox News network – and he always knows his interviewer well.
He knows Swan, too. The charming Australian is fabulously well connected and, though an outsider, has cultivated the White House key players like an insider. Trump thought he knew what he was getting when the two men sat down together. More
