When you sit down to conduct an interview with Donald Trump and he lies to your face – repeatedly, constantly – you have a choice. You can either just let it go, or you can address it.
Letting it go is the coward’s way out – and, sadly, it’s what Time reporter Eric Cortellessa and editor Sam Jacobs did during most of their April 22 “100 days” interview with Trump. It wasn’t a terrible interview; they questioned him forcefully about a few topics.
But journalists who have the rare opportunity to actually sit down with Trump and ask follow-up questions should have the integrity to stop him when he lies. They should then correct the lie — and then ask him why he says things that aren’t true.
Time ran a fine “fact-check” article after the fact. But the fact-checking needs to take place in real time.
As I’ve been arguing since at least 2017, sitting down for an interview with someone who lies all the time — and not addressing that credibility problem, front and center — is enabling, no more and no less.
It is a journalist’s duty, as the only member of the public with this kind of access, to burst Trump’s protective bubble of sycophants and confront him with the realities he refuses to accept.
It’s incumbent upon those journalists to make it clear to their audience that he is lying to them.
And it’s worth trying to figure out why he does it.
Because Trump is not a normal president, and the single most abnormal thing about him is that he lies all the time about almost everything.
Here are some excerpts from the Time interview, and how I wish he had been confronted:
TRUMP: We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade, and you can’t do that. I mean, at some point somebody has to come along and stop it, because it’s not sustainable. We were carrying other countries on our back with, you know, with trade numbers, with horrible numbers, and we’ve changed it.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Mr. President, surely you know that $2 trillion figure is wrong. The entire U.S. trade deficit with the world is less than $1 trillion. And that doesn’t mean we’re “losing” the money; we’re buying things with it. Do you understand that?
TRUMP: Many criminals—they emptied their prisons, many countries, almost every country, but not a complete emptying, but some countries a complete emptying of their prison system. But you look all over the world, and I’m not just talking about South America, we’re talking about all over the world. People have been led into our country that are very dangerous. If you were walking down the street, and if you happen to be near one of these people, they could, they would kill you, and they wouldn’t even think about it. And we can’t have that in our country.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Mr. President, there is no evidence whatsoever that any country is sending criminals to the U.S., not to mention emptying their prison systems. Most immigrants are coming here either for political asylum or to find work and a better life. Do you disagree? If so, based on what information?
TRUMP: The prices of groceries have gone down.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Grocery prices are up since you entered office, not down. Eggs, meat, fish, and poultry are all up. Gas prices are essentially stable. Who is giving you incorrect information?
TRUMP: I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I’ll tell you what they think, they think what I’m doing is exactly right.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: In fact, as journalists have reported, the CEOs warned you that your tariff policy could disrupt supply chains and lead to empty shelves in the coming weeks. How do you interpret that as saying they support you?
TRUMP: Apple is investing $500 billion in building plants. They never invested in this country.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Of course they invested in this country before. Why did you say that?
TRUMP: You have to understand, I’m dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We’re meeting with China. We’re doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I’ve made all the deals…. I’ve made 200 deals… 100%.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: That is obviously not true. You have not made 200 deals – there aren’t even that many countries in the world. You appear to have made zero deals – unless you’re talking about secret deals you’ve made with companies. Is that what you’re talking about? And China says you’re not meeting with them.
TRUMP: [On Kilmar Abrego Garcia] And in fact, he had a tattooed right on his—I’m sure you saw that—he had it tattooed right on his knuckles: MS-13.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Are you referring to this picture? You do realize that the MS-13 part was photoshopped onto the picture of his knuckles, right?
TRUMP: I’ve watched in Portland and I watched in Seattle, and I’ve watched in Minneapolis, Minnesota and other places. People do heinous acts, far more serious than what took place on Jan. 6. And nothing happened to these people.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Dozens of people were convicted and imprisoned for criminal acts during the George Floyd protests. Nothing they did was nearly as heinous as attacking the United States Congress and the police officers defending it. How can you possibly defend that action?
TRUMP: Nobody mentions the fact that the unselect committee of political scum, the unselect committee, horrible people, they destroyed all evidence, they burned it, they got rid of it, they destroyed it, and they deleted all evidence. And we went in looking for evidence, and they said, I’m sorry, we don’t have it anymore. It’s been destroyed.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Almost all the evidence is available online. Who told you it had been destroyed? Because they’re wrong. Do you believe everything you hear on Fox News? Where are you getting this stuff?
TRUMP: DOGE has been a very big success. We found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. Billions of dollars being given to politicians, single politicians based on the environment. It’s a scam. It’s illegal, in my opinion, so much of the stuff that we found, but I think DOGE has been a big success from that standpoint.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: DOGE has made huge cuts across swaths of the government, mostly through wholesale firings of federal employees — some of whom they had to unfire – and by cancelling things like food programs for starving people. And even then, it’s not hundreds of billions, it’s at most $150 billion — and that’s before you factor in how much these cuts are costing us. They’ve found minimal waste, fraud and abuse. How is this a success?
TRUMP: A lot of the money like Stacey Abrams got $2 billion on the environment. They had $100 in the account and she got $2 billion just before these people left—and had to do with something that she knows nothing about.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Stacey Abrams had nothing to do with that grant, which went to groups like the United Way and Habitat for Humanity, to reduce housing costs and utility bills. She at one point advised one of the groups that got the money. Why would you single her out? Are you still angry with her about losing Georgia in 2020? Is it because she’s a Black woman?
TIME: You said you would end the war in Ukraine on Day One.
TRUMP: Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Going forward, how are we to know when you are making a claim in jest, rather than seriously? Because you seemed serious at the time.
TRUMP: Tremendous anti-semitism at every one of those rallies. Tremendous, and I agree with free speech, but not riots all over every college in America. Tremendous anti-semitism going on in this country.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: When you say “riots all over every college in America” that is complete hyperbole. Why engage in hyperbole? What’s the point? And do you think that protesting against the way Israel has conducted the war on Gaza is inherently antisemitic?
TRUMP: I’ve gotta be doing something right, because I’ve had a lot of law firms give me a lot of money…. I think they felt that the election was rigged and stolen and they didn’t want to be a part of it. You think they gave me $100 million each for nothing? You know these law firms gave me $100 million worth of work, et cetera, and other things. And do you think they gave me that because I’m a nice guy? I don’t think so. They gave it to me because they knew what they did wrong and they didn’t want to get involved with it. And that’s okay. That’s the way it works, unfortunately.
WHAT TIME SHOULD HAVE SAID: Wait, I’m sorry, are you saying that you interpret these agreements with law firms as their admission that they were involved in stealing the 2020 election from you? Because that’s not what they would say, not even close.