This Man Is the President of the United States

Time magazine's latest cover story is about Donald Trump being a liar. That's not the way they're putting it, but it's the way they should be—and it's definitely the way I'm putting it. They way they put it is "the way he has handled truth and falsehood in his career." Sure.

In conjunction with their cover story, [CN: video may autoplay at link] their Washington Bureau Chief, Michael Scherer, did an interview with Trump. It is...something.

Throughout the entirety of the interview, Trump is exactly who we already know him to be, and yet simultaneously somehow even worse.

He brags relentlessly about being "right," even about things he was not even remotely right about. (Was he getting paid $5 by Nigel Farage every time he said the word Brexit?) And naturally he never admits to being wrong about anything.

Which is why I wonder: What is the point of giving him this platform? You know he's never going to admit to being wrong, so, going in, you know what you're handing him is a visible platform for more lying.

The decision to do and publish this interview strikes me primarily as evidence that the media continues to believe there's something "more" to Trump. No, there isn't. There's even less.

Anyway. Three pieces I want to highlight (the interviewer's words are in bold):

1. Trump is always right, the media is garbage, everything is a competition, and he is going to win.

I tend to be right. I'm an instinctual person, I happen to be a person that knows how life works. I said I was going to win the election, I won the election, in fact I was number one the entire route, in the primaries, from the day I announced, I was number one. And the New York Times and CNN and all of them, they did these polls, which were extremely bad and they turned out to be totally wrong, and my polls showed I was going to win. We thought we were going to win the night of the election.

So when you…

And then TIME magazine, which treats me horribly, but obviously I sell, I assume this is going to be a cover too, have I set the record? I guess, right? Covers, nobody's had more covers.

I think Richard Nixon still has you beat. But he was in office for longer, so give yourself time.

Okay good. I'm sure I'll win.

Kudos to Scherer for that dig which Trump didn't even recognize. But here is another reason to ask whyyyyyyy even indulge this guy? Every media outlet, aside from Fox News and Breitbart, has to know by now he'll talk shit about them and they'll be obliged to print it. And that he'll tell enormous lies and they'll be obliged to print them. This isn't actually helpful.

2. Trump won, so nothing else matters.

Hey look, in the mean time, I guess, I can't be doing so badly, because I'm president, and you're not. You know. Say hello to everybody okay?

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

That's how the interview ends—with Trump declaring that he's the president and you're not. Fuck off. Which is not the first time he's used "I won" to end a conversation about accountabililty.

3. As promised, Trump is going to put in "his own people" and fix all this business of people trying to hold him accountable.

But isn't there, it strikes me there is still an issue of credibility. If the intelligence community came out and said, we have determined that so and so is the leaker here, but you are saying to me now, that you don't believe the intelligence community when they say your tweet was wrong.

I'm not saying—no, I'm not blaming. First of all, I put Mike Pompeo in. I put Senator Dan Coats in. These are great people. I think they are great people and they are going to, I have a lot of confidence in them. So hopefully things will straighten out.

This is just the President of the United States saying that he's installing intelligence officials whose primary qualification is loyalty, in order to "straighten out" the problem of being investigated for potentially treasonous activities. Cool.

And such breathtakingly despotic behavior has already become so routine in 60 days that it won't even warrant major headlines.