From "I Interviewed Trump For 5 Hours. Here’s What He Told Me About ‘Stupid F—er’ McConnell, McCarthy’s Bromance With Luntz, And The Fake News That Bothered Him The Most" by Mollie Hemingway (adapted from her book "Rigged: How The Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections").
She's saying she accepted that he jumped around and did not try to foist her orderly approach on him, but I think that fails to credit him with deploying a technique. It's easy to assume he's got an attention deficit and insufficient appreciation for other people's preference for order, but I would presume that he is shifting around as a way to gain an advantage over his interlocutor. It's something lawyers do in cross-examination to trip up a witness.
Hemingway's husband was "almost shell-shocked"? Maybe that was the idea. It would be hard — if he were lying or distorting or had a hidden agenda — to get the better of Trump. And notice how Trump did not merely hop around, he moved from professional to personal. It's disarming — no pun intended! — to suddenly be talking about Mollie's arm. He sees the bandage — there's a whole story under that bandage, and why merely talk about it, make up a story about it — is that a tattoo?
That opens up so much potential. He can learn a lot about her by how she reacts to that. Hemingway doesn't tell us what she said, but she could have overdone denial — of course she's not that kind of person — or she could have playfully thought up an answer that could amuse him — Oh, yes, it's a tattoo of you!
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Molly Hemingway is one of the few commentators that I will read all the way through. Totally grounded and uncompromising. If you haven't read her book on Kavanaugh, then you don't know what happened there.
Basically, Trump is a real person, in a way that lifelong politicians are not. That's part of what inspires the extreme good and bad reactions to him.
Trump is legion; he contains multitudes (and not of devils). Careerists of the lap-top class, laser-focused on power and advancement, simply cannot understand him. Other people do, and a few journalists including Hemingway.
Ann:
I really hope you read Mollie’s book and blog about it. Like you, she’s a brilliant thinker and clear communicator. I put her in the same category as the late Charles Krauthammer and Rush Limbaugh.
BTW, I read and watch the Left’s so-called best and brightest. Not one that I respect intellectually.
pious agnostic: "Molly Hemingway is one of the few commentators that I will read all the way through. Totally grounded and uncompromising. If you haven't read her book on Kavanaugh, then you don't know what happened there."
Unsurprisingly, pro-marxist pro-CRT LLR Chuck absolutely despises Molly H. whilst lauding Rachel Maddow as "brilliant" and praising Tater Stelter and Don Lemon and Joy Reid and claiming the NYT and NPR and the Washington Post as paragons of virtue and "truth".
So at least you know where LLR Chuck is coming from....
What's amazing to me is what a mystery Trump still seems to be to some people. He's been a high profile public figure for quite a long time. He's no enigma. To write about him as if he's a great mystery exposes that the author either works for NYT and is therefore twenty or they have their own agenda(s).
Trump echoes my exact thoughts on the Time magazine story by Mollie Ball, “They just couldn’t keep it in. You know what I mean? They just couldn’t keep it in. They had to let it out a little bit,” he said.”
A five-hour interview with Joe Biden would include two naps and at least one challenge to a push-up contest.
Mollie, I am convinced, is the cleverest of all of the conservative commentators who sold out to Trump. And in case there is any doubt, I mean that in the least-complimentary way possible.
She takes Trump seriously, and not literally. Indeed, she takes only the parts of Trump that she deems favorable, or at least explainable, and ignores or minimizes the rest.
“Trump told me a story about how Sen. Ben Sasse annoyed him right after the 2016 election by being unduly hostile at his initial meeting with the Senate GOP conference. “Terrible senator.“
Agree 100%. Sasse is from blue collar Fremont but he is an Ivy Leagurer. He lost my vote when he called 1-6 an insurrection.
I used to say that Twitter worked for Trump because it allowed him to fire off thoughts one after another, and if he got a response that he liked he could work with it, whereas if he didn't he just moved on. It sounds like he does the same in real life.
Nice interview. But Judas Priest, these DC insiders can't ever get over the "mean tweets" can they? This constant understone of "Trump's not the vulgar meanie you think he is". At least she spared us the standard "While I don't approve of Trump's tweets/manners/insults/comments about our beloved immigrants...."
I don't give a damn about Trump's way of speaking or his manners. Its what he did for the country that matters. As for Sasse, I understood Trump's deliemma. Its 2020, he's fighting COVID, fighting the D's, and trying to get re-elected and he doesn't have time to fight with Sasse and get him primaried.
And Sasse is a piece of shit. He's another Republican Senator who plays the Conservative one year before his election, then goes back to being a "Maverick" after he wins. Look for Romney pull the stunt in 2023. It works for Miss Lindsey, but maybe the R's in Utah aren't such gullible Rubes.
lankford is another mook, and oklahoma is possibly the most republican state, and yet he fell for 'muh russia' was against building the wall, etc etc,
'A five-hour interview with Joe Biden would include two naps and at least one challenge to a push-up contest.'
It's go time...
Mandelbaum!
Listen to Trump with your conscious mind and you’ll go nuts.
Because he isn’t speaking to our conscious mind. He’s speaking to our subconscious. Whether you believe that style is right or wrong or believe Trump is right or wrong - we cannot deny us capacity to connect with people at a deep, core, emotional level. He seems to know what the American people are feeling better than any politician of my lifetime. While Reagan was the most strategic thinker I’ve ever witnessed in the White House, Trump is also strategic in a visceral way.
narciso: "lankford is another mook, and oklahoma is possibly the most republican state, and yet he fell for 'muh russia' was against building the wall, etc etc,"
By the end of 2017 every elected republican in DC knew LLR Chuck's beloved democraticals had made it all up and weaponized their allies in the deep state to use the lies against Trump and his voters...and then 90% of these elected republicans collaborated with the democraticals for the next 3 years (and beyond) to cover it up in order to get rid of Trump.
"Listen to Trump with your conscious mind and you’ll go nuts."
I can do it and not go nuts. You just have to be coolly distanced or view it as humor and performance.
It’s not that he doesn’t have ADD, it’s how he’s channeled that aspect of his neurology into his personality. Most ENTJ ENTJ ever?
He’s found a way to shape and share his inner monologue with the world as opposed to the rest of us, who think and filter before we speak. He’s as true a person as I’ve seen, and like Adams, I think it’s more he’s a natural than building a conscious, calculated persona.
Mollie Hemingway and Selena Zeto are among a very few journalists who deserve our respect and to be taken seriously.
Mollie Hemingway is a national treasure. The write up was enjoyable to read. It was entertaining while also delivering Inside the Beltway gossip. So many gossipy pieces are just strident and mean.
I think it's worth noting that Mollie Hemingway's husband is Mark Hemingway who wrote for the Weekly Standard until its demise. Though he was NeverTrump in 2016 and thereafter, he was definitely punished by Conservative Inc. for his wife's beliefs. It took him awhile to land another job.
On a Federalist Radio Hour podcast, Mollie indicated that she fell into the Russian collusion hoax on accident. She was included on an email between journalists that she shouldn't have seen. Whatever the contents were, she knew immediately that Trump was being set up. She said that knowledge kept her on the story in the face of immense pressure to go along with the rest of the crowd.
I love her.
I bet most of his persuasion technique if not all of it was just being himself and noticing what seemed to work with people and what did not, and he’s just really good at noticing.
Journalistic interviews are a genre unto themselves. Most journalists seem to look upon them as a vacation from moral restraints.
There is also an inescapable tendency to distill many hours of conversation into the one or two sentences that were the "big get", where the interview subject said something off-message of potentially embarrassing. that will probably be the fate of the HemingwayTrump conversations.
In the 1970's I was a young low level federal agency employee who was given a chance to sit in on two interviews of the agency chief by a NY Times reporter. The conversations were friendly, the banter was charming, and I expected a generally positive article. Was I surprised! Apparently my agency's boss was a churlish tool of Nixonism. There was no hint of the utterly pleasant human encounters in the underlying interviews. This was a helpful learning experience for me. I pass it along to help others.
Trump is a complex speaker. Not unlike the F.J. Stimson quote I posted at the semicolon post yesterday. You have to pay attention because of all the twists, turns, detours, etc. I believe this this why so many of the "journalists" had trouble with him. They, graduates of elite schools, had been hand fed by professors all their lives. Other politicians speak predictably, but Trump required discipline of intellect and regulation of emotions to maintain attention to him. If you were taking notes on his lectures, your notes would be a jumble and require significant ordering right after class.
It is this complexity in speaking that I believe causes some of Trump's unpopularity with the "educated strata".
Chuck is the commenter no one takes seriously.
hombre: "Mollie Hemingway and Selena Zeto are among a very few journalists who deserve our respect and to be taken seriously."
That is precisely what makes our pro-marxist pro-CRT LLR Chuck attack them so viciously.....well, that and they are conservative women.
Chuck really hates conservative women....as in "qualifies for a therapy or session or two or three" kind of hate.
So the party of the elites prefers a politician who can’t complete a sentence without a teleprompter and when he speaks off the script makes no sense, to the politician who can speak authoritatively about every policy off the cuff in rapid succession while weaving in personal stuff. And Trump’s policies actually benefit the American people while Biden’s benefits China and the global elites.
It would be hard — if he were lying or distorting or had a hidden agenda — to get the better of Trump. And notice how Trump did not merely hop around, he moved from professional to personal. It's disarming — no pun intended! — to suddenly be talking about Mollie's arm. He sees the bandage — there's a whole story under that bandage, and why merely talk about it, make up a story about it — is that a tattoo?
Yes, it is disconcerting and could be seen as a tactic, but it seems like Trump isn't necessarily that good at concealing his intentions. Things slip out. Plus, I don't think he's playing the long game -- three dimensional chess -- that his fans credited him with. If he was, he'd still be in the White House. Everyone in politics is -- has to be -- devious and has to put a positive spin on what they do, but as politicians go, I don't think Trump was one of the more devious.
I'm a big fan of Mollie Hemingway.
Meanwhile, our current President has dementia, our Vice President is a cackling example of the intersectionality of the Dunning-Kruger Effect & the Peter Principle, our House Speaker is an octagenarian elitist authoritarian shrew led by her handlers, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate is Chuck Schumer, who shouldn't be a dog catcher, let alone a senator. God help us all.
Just bad governance, but no mean tweets. And a guy who spent 50 straight days of live, hour-plus press briefings on his rapidly evolving and highly successful COVID response before giving up in the face of uniformly antagonistic and purposefully negative press coverage of anything he said - he is criticized as having problems with his communication style. Got it.
Blogger David Begley said...
BTW, I read and watch the Left’s so-called best and brightest. Not one that I respect intellectually.
What about Glen Greenwald? He's very much a man of the left, and very worthy of respect in my opinion. And I don't just mean when I happen to agree with him. He is consistent and smart.
Oh, and one more thing David Begley; thanks very much for The Cloisters!
Now I'm wondering what ethics in journalism has to say about playing unpublished interview footage for anyone besides your editorial staff and then publishing their reactions.
"I really hope you read Mollie’s book and blog about it. Like you, she’s a brilliant thinker and clear communicator. I put her in the same category as the late Charles Krauthammer and Rush Limbaugh."
Tell me specifically why there's anything in that book that gives me something I didn't get reading the damned news every single day through the entire rise and fall of Donald Trump?
I used to read this political books, but I stopped, because I already read so much news on a daily basis. I do something else with my mind when I read books. Not one particular thing, but *something*. To give you an idea, some books I read recently: "150 Glimpses of the Beatles," "The Lost City of Z," "The White Darkness," "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," "I Married a Communist," "The Human Stain," "Klara and the Sun," "Never Let Me Go," "Notes From Underground," "First Person Singular," "Earthlings."
I can't think I'm better off reading somebody's collection of Trump stories and musings. I just lived through that.
1. Glen Greenwald is of the Old Left. Today's Left is authoritarian.
2. I should have learned by now. Ann doesn't like to be told what to read or blog.
But the author's game is that the "good" and "juicy" stuff is usually left for the books. Think Bob Woodward.
I'm intensely interested in learning the FULL story of how the Left stole the election and seeing it told in one book. If election theft isn't stopped next time, we are totally and completely fucked. Fucked so bad, we never recover.
I will buy and read the book.
Election cheating is our central problem and the idiots in the GOP won't face up to that fact. We'll piss away trillions on CAGW, CRT, equity and all that other crap as long as the Dems can steal elections.
And it drives me nuts how the Left goes on that it is all a Big Lie about how the Dems stole the election. Fuck! They bragged about it in Time magazine.
And since you live in Madison, I'd think you'd have some interest in the vote cheating that went on there.
I read the briefs in the PA case and it is crystal clear that the Dem elected PA Supreme Court just ignored the law. They didn't even hide it all that well in their decision. It was a fucking Soviet-like decision written by party hacks in robes. A complete fucking disgrace.
The Dems have cooked up the perfect political crime. You can see it in the Fake News coverage of the AZ audit. Fake News won't even report on how the election was stolen in AZ.
This is serious fucking business. People can hate Trump all they want, but if we don't have fair elections we are done.
3. Might want to listen to the MartyrMade podcast by Daryl Cooper and the episode called "Note on Notes from the Underground." Cooper claims he's read "Notes from the Underground" 20 times.
AMZN book description says Mollie interviewed SCOTUS Justices.
Wow!
I can't think I'm better off reading somebody's collection of Trump stories and musings. I just lived through that.
Come on, guys. A closed mind knows all it need to.
Or maybe Trump has a mind that instantly makes a lot of connections that ordinary people don't see, a mind that could easily be labeled ADD, but maybe he sees others as horses with blinders.
Mollie is no Rush Limbaugh, who was a subtle thinker, and of great insight, at his best.
"I can't think I'm better off reading somebody's collection of Trump stories and musings. I just lived through that."
This is why i have trouble reading history books on anything past 1980. Or biographies about the Bushes, or Clinton, or Obama. I live through it, I don't need to read about it. The only reason I read any of that stuff is discover WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. Or things that we didn't know at the time. Otherwise, I skip or just don't read.
Its the same with Sports or Entertainment. Other than skimming to see if there's some juicy behind the scenes factoids, who care? I alread know all about Tom hanks, Larry Bird, or Arnold.
"I live through it, I don't need to read about it."
You didn't live through EVERYTHING that happened after 1980. I'm sure there were a few stories you missed or didn't get the whole story about as you were living your life. A book about a particular event you have lived through might, just might, give you a better understanding of what was really happening.
I don't know how much this would weigh as incentive for reviewing Mollie Hemingway book : from comments by others - Chuckles will hate you and may stop coming in here?!
or Professora could pretend she is giving viva voce exam to Trump and grade him on presented answers / evasions / wider grasp of issues?
"I live through it, I don't need to read about it."
Interesting, my father in law was an infantry 1LT in Korea (2 inf div, 38th inf rgt) and read every book about the war available because he knew little beyond his own Division. My earlier father in law was a B24 Navigator in the Mighty 8th AF. He was little interested in war books because he said he knew everything that was going on in the theatre. He went to all his Group reunions though.
Good golly Ms Molly
"I understood Trump's deliemma. Its 2020, he's fighting COVID"
He sort of gave up that fight in November, didn't he. No mas. Never got off his stool.
tim in vermont said...
"Or maybe Trump has a mind that instantly makes a lot of connections that ordinary people don't see,"
"The county has, for whatever reason, also refused to produce the network routers. We want the routers, Sonny, Wendy, we got to get those routers, please. The routers. Come on, Kelly, we can get those routers. Those routers. You know what? We're so beyond the routers, there's so many fraudulent votes without the routers. But if you got those routers, what that will show, and they don't want to give up the routers. They don't want to give them. They are fighting like hell. Why are these commissioners fighting not to give the routers?"
A claim in this thread suggests there actually IS a person on here who does things like “...lauding Rachel Maddow as ‘brilliant' and praising Tater Stelter and Don Lemon and Joy Reid and claiming the NYT and NPR and the Washington Post as paragons of virtue and ‘truth’”
I must call time out here, and state my considered opinion about this outrageous and egregious accusation. There actually COULD be one individual on the planet, and maybe even a handful of them, holding these thoughts and opinions. Extremely unlikely, mega-doubtful, yet not mathematically impossible.
But, wait. What are the odds that this individual, the one having such peculiar thoughts, would show up right here on Althouse where people are intelligent and reasonable. C’mon man. Ain’t happenin’.
I was gobsmacked the first time I saw Trump speak. It was a promise to the people. And bemused, amusing, entertaining and clever. Clintonesque, if one removes the content. And the audience. And history.
I’ve written speeches for politicians. I saw at that moment they were all terrible.
I know media perfidy, but the distance between the man and the way he was reported was staggering. I remembered he was on Larry King and some other talk radio way back when and found it on YouTube, and there was the intelligent, performative, competent Trump again. Not my personal taste, but hardly a fascist buffoon. A loyal American and pleased as punch New Yorker.
But I’m with Ann Coulter on the many failures of his administration. The spook tribe is powerful in Washington and came at him from one side and the libertarian GOP from the other side: the Democrats just had to dial it in. That scared the hell out of me.
I’m a fan of Philip Roth and loved The Human Stain. If Roth interests you, you might like Assymetry written by a former Roth girlfriend, much younger than he.
Mollie, like me, is Missouri Synod Lutheran, and I recall quite a few years ago now that there was some hubbub over hear appearing on a TV news segment with a dark cross on her forehead.
It was Ash Wednesday. And I hadn't realized how, apparently even in other Christian circles, the traditional ritual of wearing the ash cross on your forehead had gone by the wayside.
So now I have a visual of Mollie getting some very orthodox, traditional Christian symbol as a tattoo. Which I very much doubt she would do (Missouri Synod Lutheranism doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, say anything about tattoos one way or the other, but the Germanic culture is generally rather conservative socially, and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is about as German as Americans can get).
Mollie, like me, is Missouri Synod Lutheran, and I recall quite a few years ago now that there was some hubbub over hear appearing on a TV news segment with a dark cross on her forehead.
It was Ash Wednesday. And I hadn't realized how, apparently even in other Christian circles, the traditional ritual of wearing the ash cross on your forehead had gone by the wayside.
So now I have a visual of Mollie getting some very orthodox, traditional Christian symbol as a tattoo. Which I very much doubt she would do (Missouri Synod Lutheranism doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, say anything about tattoos one way or the other, but the Germanic culture is generally rather conservative socially, and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is about as German as Americans can get).
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