Trump Crashes Out: You Haven't Asked "One F'ing Positive Question"

Hey, everyone. I'm Catherine Randpell, economics editor here at the Bullwork joined by my friend and colleague Andrew Egger to talk about this very bizarre Donald Trump interview that just dropped with Time magazine. So Trump did an interview with Time on Monday that was published today, Thursday, and he appears on their latest cover, which of course he is very psyched about. In fact, the White House made sure to tell that Trump has been on Time's cover more than any other person in history. Some of these are not exactly the most flattering of cover stories or cover images. I would argue some of the ones with the hair on fire or looking flattened or sad or otherwise, but Trump does not discriminate. He's very excited to get the attention of the cutting edge news publication that is Time magazine. Before we get into some of the totally nuts things that Donald Trump said in this interview, Andrew, do you have thoughts on why this has such a resonance for Donald Trump to appear on the cover of Time magazine? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that. This is one of my favorite things about Donald Trump is the way that his view of the media is still so frozen in sort of the social scene that he came up in, right? I mean, so much of Donald Trump's political power is tied up in independent media and podcasters that like him, all of these little shows and things like this, upstart news networks like One America News, but that is not what Donald Trump likes. Donald Trump likes the big guys, the classics, Donald Trump likes Time magazine. Donald Trump would give an interview like this to the hollowed out shell of Newsweek if they ever asked him to do this. He likes the New York Times, he likes the tent poles, because it's a prestige thing for him. Honestly, this is a record that will never be broken. There's never again going to be, who even knows how long Time magazine will be around for. There will never again be probably an opportunity for another world leader to appear on that cover 56 or 57 times. Even if we do get another guy as sort of news-shakingly large as Donald Trump sometime in the future, this is going to be one of those Joe DiMaggio-type streaks, I believe. Well, I hope we do not have another great man theory of media covers coming ahead of us because if there is someone else who warns this much coverage from the legacy publication that is Time magazine, it probably does not portent anything good. Just as evidence of that, let's dig into this interview. I want to start with Donald Trump's other favorite bragging right, which besides being the most frequently featured person on the cover of Time magazine is his uncle. So here is a little bit from this interview, where the interviewer asks, do you trust Sam Altman? Sam Altman, for those who are listening or watching, is the leader of OpenAI. Donald Trump says, I like him. Do I trust him? Who do I trust? I like Sam Altman. Smart. Dario Smart. That's the anthropic guy. They're all smart. We're dealing with a very high level of IQ, very, very high level. That's a good thing. I like that. I like it. Did you see the story about my uncle? Interviewer asks the one who taught at MIT. Trump says, I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. I'm fine. And I understand that stuff. You know, my uncle was at MIT for 41 years. And you know, I'm a, I believe in genetics, frankly, and I understand. I understand it much more than I think any president would, because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers. Andrew and I were lamenting before this that we don't have video of this interview. We only have this transcript, which in some ways is very frustrating, because like we want to show you the actual video. But in some ways, I think it is actually quite useful to just look at the words, because some of the lunacy and the incoherence gets lost when you see the actual, like when you, when you have all of the sensory inputs, you get to see him performing and speaking and, you know, gesturing when you just look at the show, right? Yeah. We kind of expect him to behave a certain way. Right. But when you look at the words, it is just the most bizarre thing. He's asked about the AI leadership, the C-suite and at these AI companies. And his response is, did you see the story about my uncle? I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. And I don't even know, like again, this is beyond parity. How do you SNL your way out of this, right? It's like, this is too ridiculous. So this is a story that Donald Trump has brought up many times. Obviously, he likes to talk about how smart he is. He likes to bring up, you know, his, the smartest person he ever was in his family. The big brains. This MIT professor for 41 years, as evidence that he himself is, is, you know, particularly wise, he can hang, he can hang with the big dogs, Sam Altman and Dario Amade. It's silly. It's dumb. I mean, we all know that it's, it's preening, it's posturing. It doesn't make sense. Donald Trump is not, you know, going straight out of the White House into one of the frontier labs as an AI developer. That's not going to be happening. But it's also, particularly, chilling, honestly, in this context, when you consider that this is the single thing that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, conceptualizes as being our big bulwark against all of the AI development risk that these companies have started to warn about in which we've started to see play out in terms of these, you know, agentic AI attacks on internet infrastructure. I mean, we have had a summer of more and more alarming AI behavior from companies like Sam Altman's and Dario Amade's. And we've seen these companies say, we actually would really like to start seeing some federal regulations, some federal curbs on our development. We can't slow down unilaterally, because then we're just handing an advantage to the guy who doesn't slow down. But globally, worldwide, we need to pump the brakes on some of this AI development. We're moving too fast. Donald Trump has responded to that by saying the only guardrails that you need are a really smart high IQ president like me in charge. And he's left it at that. So it's very weird to see this long time stupid brag of the president's about his good brain genetics expressed in this really alarming way on this really crucial piece of federal policy toward this exciting and alarming new field of AI development. Right. It's silly. In a vacuum, it would be very silly and easy to laugh off. Oh, Donald Trump likes to talk about his uncle as somehow proving the fact that he has big brains himself loves to talk about his big brains and very high IQ. It goes all the way to 11, I'm sure. I bet I bet. I think that's an IQ north of 11. He loves to talk about those things and it's silly and it's clownish in a vacuum. But then you apply it to the real world problems and policy challenges that the country faces, maybe the human race faces, who knows. And it looks a little less silly and a little more consequential that that's his fallback plan for dealing with anything. He's just real smart big brains. He deserves his second scoop of ice cream or whatever. And therefore, none of us have to worry. Thank you to Donald Trump's uncle. Beyond that, he had a lot to say about the war in Iran. He was asked a few different questions about that. One of the questions was about why is it taking so long, which seems like a reasonable question. And his response, I'll read parts of it only because I wanted to go further. I took them out. I could have stopped them, but I wanted to go further. But I met my timeline, blah, blah, blah. When I said I was going to be there for a short period of time, I was. And then I decided I wanted to go further than that, because I didn't want to have them come back in some different form. Then the interviewer asks, do you think the American people misunderstood that? I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks. And Trump says, no, I think the press fed it to them. So that look, we were in Vietnam for 21, 20 years. We were in Afghanistan for many years. We were in Korea for many, we're everywhere for many years. I'm in there now for six months. And I have destroyed their nuclear capability. So Donald Trump says the American people were lied to by the media when they were told to expect four to six weeks. Here is what noted Donald Trump, critic Donald Trump had to say about the expected duration of this war. I would say that within two weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe three, we're hitting a very hard last night. We knocked out tremendous amounts of missile making facilities. We're already substantially ahead of our time projections. But whatever the time is, it's okay, whatever it takes, we will always, and we have front, right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks. President, weeks that the US now has been involved with Iran, you would initially say it would be four to six weeks. But I also took a little break, I gave them a break. If Donald Trump is the media as he would like to be, then he is correct. It was the media who told the American public that it would be four to six weeks. Yeah, I mean, it's, what do you even say? What do you even say about this? Donald Trump lives in the eternal present. He is, he is unburdened by what has been in terms of the past things he has said on any given subject. All that exists is him and the person he's trying to spend or the group that he's trying to spend in the narrative that he is trying to sell them and anything else is just fake news and lies. But I'm sorry, it's, it's true, you know, this is, this is turning into a much lengthier conflict than the president expected, it is crushing him in the midterms and he, I mean, the idea that he can spin that away now by trying to say, you know, nobody ever really thought this was going to be a short conflict is just, I mean, it's just really remarkable. Now, who knows how long this thing will last. Donald Trump was also asked about some other verbiage he has used about the Iran War. He was asked, quote, last week, you said, you might annihilate Iran. That was the word you used, Trump says, yeah, I would do that. It's possible. Questioner asks, you've made versions of that threat before. You've also called yourself the president of peace. Yeah. Donald Trump says, how can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people, aha, Trump, the wise man responds, because by annihilating Iran, we've created peace in the world with Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace. So this is like real Yoda level wisdom here. I think Andrew, do you think he had this one prepped? I don't know. I mean, we have been seeing really remarkable statements from the president about sort of the ultimate destiny of Iran throughout this conflict. A whole civilization will die tonight was his threat posture at one other point in this conflict. He's been talking about bombing them back to the Stone Age. This is about as chilling and just insane of a statement as you could imagine. I mean, the idea that these guys, this civilization, not the political leadership of Iran, but the entire people of Iran are the single soul impediment to universal brotherhood and world peace. I don't even think Donald Trump believes that, but that's the case he's laying out here. This is like final solution talk about not only that we could go in and bomb the entire country into a parking lot into one solid pane of glass and wipe out all of the population there, but that in fact, maybe we have this moral duty to do so. It's the sort of thing that nobody who actually is sort of self evaluating the truth content of their own words, whatever say, let alone just as sort of this like tossed off just sort of well, I have to say something to answer this question of how do I reconcile my own self image as a president of peace with my own actions in Iran? And maybe I'll just say this again, it just comes back to his own just perfectly amoral truth, agnostic spin that doesn't really think about anything other than just how to sort of put a narrative together here. But if he actually believed this stuff, it would be some of the most, you know, horrible man of history stuff we've ever seen from any leader, I mean, certainly any leader of the 21st century. Yeah, I know that the word or wellian gets overused a lot, but in this case, he is almost quoting from 1984, which had this famous line about war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance of strength. He is literally saying war is peace. He is bringing us peace through war, in fact, not just war, but annihilation. And this has been just one other thing on that. I mean, with Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace. This is of a peace with the ridiculous line that they have been throwing around that, you know, since the beginning of this war, which again, has basically just been spin, but them saying, you know, we didn't declare war against Iran. Iran has actually been at war with the United States by its very fact of existence since the founding of the Islamic Republic 47 years ago. And again, like, that's just kind of a slogan. That's just kind of a thing they've been saying, but the implications of that as the President lays them out here are extraordinary. And again, I really don't think he actually believes this. I really don't think the President sits up at night thinking, "If I don't kill every last Iranian and bring an end to them as a people, we just can't move forward as a world, as a civilization, as a community of humanity." I don't think he thinks that. But it's what he's saying. It's what he's telling the press in public in this interview right now. Yeah. It's troubling on a number of fronts, I would agree. And whether he believes it or not, I don't know if he may believe it. I think he is able to will himself to believe things that are in his interest to say or that he believes maybe in his interest to say. He wanted to strike a deal with them this summer, right? I mean, like, he would have been happy to take the ball and go home this summer with Iran intact as a civilization if he could have declared victory then and reopened the Strait of Hormuz and gotten some concessions on their nuclear program. If they give him some concessions on his nuclear on the nuclear program now, he will take that deal. He's not going to say, "Well, sorry. I haven't wiped you out as a civilization yet and that's the impediment to world peace." So, again, I just don't think you can square this with any posture he's taken so far. But the fact that he would say it is so deeply diseased at the intellectual and at the moral level. Yeah. And of course, he had lots of horrible rotten things to say about other parts. Okay, breaking news, as we were recording this, Andrew and I were recording this, our producer, Matt Marshall jumped in to let us know that Donald Trump is actually, again, contradicting Donald Trump who contradicted Donald Trump on the four to six weeks timeline. Donald Trump tweeted post-Donald True Social, quote, "I stated numerous times that it would take four to six weeks to get rid of the Iran nuclear threat." And I did it in one night. The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way, President Donald J. Trump, which of course is not how he presented that four to six weeks timeline, right, Andrew? Complete, complete fabrication. During the four to six weeks, everybody knew that was in March and early April. Everybody knew he was talking about the present tense that we had just embarked on the four to six weeks. We just played the clips in which everybody is obviously clear that that's what's happening. But again, it's the eternal present with Donald Trump. All that matters is that people misremember that now and then he can kind of say these things and try to sell you on it. And so yeah, not that surprising to see him try to pull up even so shamelessly as this. All right. Amid lots of other conversation in this wild and unruly interview, the interviewer from time asked some questions about the legislature. So he was asked, you mentioned the Democrats will come after you if they win, are you considering pardoning members of your administration prior to the end of your term? Trump says, yeah, sure, I do that. The interviewer says, is that something you would consider doing? Trump says, well, sleepy Joe Biden, he gave pardons to everyone. He holds up pictures of the White House. They're actually, see, this is the way it looks now. And then the interviewer says, have you seen the videos of Mitch McConnell back in the Senate? Do you think he should resign because of his health condition? Then Trump just kind of like crashes out. I don't even know how else to characterize it. He says, again, this is in response to the question about Mitch McConnell, who looks kind of comatose. Trump says it was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans. So that's just, well, sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody, he gave them to Fauci, he gave them to this. By you mean, I'm not allowed to give them, but sleepy Joe's allowed to give them the same going to be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven't asked me one fucking positive question. All of this, what about this? What about that? What about that? What about this all negative? Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? You know how I do. I do that out of my back pocket. I pay for a lot of it. But I fix it because the White House should look like that. It shouldn't look like if you would have stood in that balcony and looked at that wall, half the wall was falling. It's actually dangerous. People are walking under a crap, was falling off of it all the time, every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it's perfect. And I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I'm also doing very well with the war. I'm doing very well with another war that we've already won Venezuela. Do you notice? Someone asked me a question about Venezuela, and in fact, he was asked several questions about Venezuela. So that's my interpretation of what happened there. I should say, if we have any actual talented and the actorly way listeners and viewers out there, like Bob De Niro or Alec Baldwin, if you're out there and you want to give a better interpretive reading of this interview, we would certainly welcome it. So you don't have to listen to the two of us reenact it, but I also think time magazine should come into the 21st century and set up a video camera, pull out your phone, something. I mean, come on, we're killing ourselves over here. Can I give you my-- my interpretation because I think this is the moment Trump plainly has these he's got these pictures of the White House you know he holds them up himself he's got these visual aids and we talk a lot about how the Trump administration continues to push forward like crazy on all these different policy areas that Trump was pretty interested in last year when he first retook office things were going fast he was he was you know remaking the country according to as well as that is all slowed down so much of this year has been Iran and the boondoggle that has been and then these silly building projects and this is constantly reported you know people around the president are saying those are the two things he cares about it cares about this war in Iran and winning that and then he cares about the beautification stuff he cares about his little hobbyist projects and plainly at this point in the interview Trump has talked about the one thing Iran he's he's hit his marks on that he's done a lot of fibbing and said a lot of insane things as we've talked about he is so sick of questions about anything else he's like we're going to get to my stuff now we're going to get to my projects we're going to get to how you know up until now the the the floors at the White House were Tarazzo or whatever I mean you know who the heck knows what specific things he's holding up here but he's like have you seen have you seen all of the awesome construction work I've done around here you know fuck you for not caring about any of that fuck you for wanting to ask about you know these pardons that I may or may not be giving my cabinet members which he just said he would by the way he's like yeah sure I do that so of course they're going to talk about it of course he's going to keep asking or Mitch McConnell you know yeah yeah he really did just blaze right by that one right I mean who knows who knows again these some of these things would be easier to to figure out with video but yes I mean it's just a complete refusal to engage on on any of these things other than to just sort of pout and say you know well what what what a terrible interview you're you're so negative you're so mean all the time and then to turn around and be like aha but you're putting me on the cover I mean it's so weird it's like so thirsty on the one hand and so petulant on the other hand and the entire time through he's like making stuff up and lying and telling all these silly self aggrandizing stories and hallucinating and like it's just it's just such a little vignette of of where we are in the year of our Lord 2026 year two of Trump to I mean we have we have so much just run into the wall and it's just so hard to see how things would continue to deteriorate in terms of the president's own state from here but I kind of think they will I think we'll keep getting worse we'll find out I guess that's that's the that's the beauty of it we all get to live through it and see and I'm sure time magazine will be there every step of the way to document it and to slather Donald Trump's face on their cover as he continues to deteriorate and he will eat up every every little pixel of it I can't not come too much right I mean he's in he's in so many of my newsletter yeah you got to cover him he's the president you got to cover him I don't blame time magazine time magazine has been a storied institution for many years does not have quite the same reach that it used to but apparently that doesn't matter to Donald Trump he will he will continue to sit for interviews with them as long as they put him on the cover even if they occasionally ask him mean and unfair questions like why are we still fighting a war all right well what a great time to be alive isn't it Andrew thank you so much everyone for watching for listening if you don't already please like and subscribe to the bulwark you can find us on youtube on spotify apple podcasts wherever you get your podcasts if you don't already by the way I recently launched a new podcast called receipts please listen subscribe to that we're really trying to get it in front of new audiences again you can find it on apple podcasts spotify wherever you get your podcasts but for more from me from Andrew from the rest of the bulwark fam please continue to tune in here and and and add us to all of your feeds receipts bulwark takes the bulwark.com all of the above and until next time have a great ready to go.