The Trump Interview That Broke The Internet

[0:00] There have been dozens of interviews with the president since his election, but until now, none has caught the attention of the universe. [0:06] Australian journalist Jonathan Swan of Axios did what no journalist has successfully done to date, push back hard with fire and facts. [0:16] Axios on HBO bills itself as documentary news, often featuring one-on-one interviews with prominent people. [0:24] Jonathan Swan's 35-minute interview with the president first aired Monday, and it was this exchange that caught everyone's attention. [0:32] And, you know, there are those that say, you can test too much. You do know that. Who says that? [0:38] Oh, just read the manuals, read the books. [0:40] Manuals? [0:41] Read the books. [0:42] Within hours, a three-minute clip posted on Twitter had three million views, and by morning, Jonathan Swan was a household name. [0:49] So remarkable in what he said, you should hear it for yourself. [0:53] CNN ran the entire interview at least twice, and Swan later appeared as a guest. [0:59] I wasn't trying to score a point or a gotcha. What I was trying to get him to do was grapple with the question of why. [1:06] Specifically why America has more deaths per capita than most other countries, a fact Trump refused to accept. [1:13] Take a look. Right here. Here's case death. [1:18] Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. [1:23] You can't do that. [1:24] The interview made headlines around the country, brought praise to Swan for his fact-based pushback, and at the same time created a popular new meme, the puzzled face. [1:35] He doesn't normally encounter this type of interview. [1:38] Look, I give him credit for doing it, and we have an invitation out to Joe Biden. [1:42] We hope he accepts Jonathan. [1:44] Hey, John, you've done a million of these kinds of interviews yourself, and I have to say, Jonathan, there's a little bit of you and Jonathan Swan, I should say, or the other way around. [1:54] Anyway, what did you think of the interview? [1:55] Well, that's high praise. I thought he did a great job, and keep in mind, this was closely preceded by another similar interview that Chris Wallace of Fox News did with Trump. [2:08] So maybe what we're seeing is less the emergence of the hero journalist and more the complete meltdown, the complete blubbering meltdown of the human formerly known as Donald Trump. [2:20] But look, you're not there as a journalist, particularly a political journalist, questioning people in power to make friends and to set up a lunch later or to curry favor. [2:35] It's hard for beat reporters, and I don't believe Swan is specifically a White House beat reporter. [2:41] I think it's harder for beat reporters who have to constantly be interacting with the same people. [2:46] They walk a fine line, but there's no reason why you can't go in there. [2:52] You don't have to be shouting and yelling at the person and berating them, but you should know your facts, as Swan did, and be ready to rebut garbage, and that's all he did. [3:04] Absolutely. I mean, Jonathan Swan really did a terrific job, as John said. [3:08] What I found a little disconcerting about it is that as good as Swan was, you really wouldn't call it a back and forth. [3:18] I mean, President Trump was kind of in full pour-it-on mode, and Swan would just kind of sit there and occasionally try to interrupt him and steer him back on track and fact-check him in real time. [3:34] And so as good as Swan was, it was nothing like any sort of a normal interview with anybody, but I don't think with President Trump you can have a normal. [3:45] I'll tell you what I found interesting about it. [3:49] Part of it was Swan's body language, sitting in that chair. [3:53] Trump was, he had that forward posed in the starting blocks kind of a position, which he likes to take. [4:00] Swan was sitting back, his coat was open, he had his papers. [4:03] And, you know, John, to use the word you did, and I think was very important, is he was completely there in the moment, there in listening and ready to have a conversation. [4:16] That seems to me, you know this far better than I do, to be very difficult if you're an anchor, say, on television, where you may have a producer in your ear saying, [4:26] we're counting down the seconds, or there's something else you have to think of, and so forth. [4:31] With Swan, he had the luxury and has the luxury in that show of really just focusing on that moment, on the President's words, and wherever he can, sit back. [4:42] And he used that line, he said, just keep asking, why this? [4:47] Why that? [4:48] Why the most powerful question, I think, in all of journalism, but it demands an answer, and rarely do we see it, as well as he was able to get it there. [4:57] I think that one reason why this interview seems so remarkable to so many people is we are so used to these fawning celebrity interviews with softball questions [5:08] that are intended to simply portray the guest in a positive light. [5:12] And with this particular guest, we see far more interviews like that on his favorite news outlets, and on his favorite news shows. [5:21] We see a lot of interviews with shows that aren't news shows, like Fox and Friends. [5:26] So it was really remarkable to see someone ask the tough questions and try to hold their guest accountable, try to get them to explain where they're sourcing their information from. [5:37] And I also think it was a great example to a lot of young reporters on why you need to do your prep, why you need to know everything inside and out, [5:45] why you should anticipate what your guest is going to say, so you know what the follow-ups are, instead of trying to sit there in the moment, coming up with an interesting follow-up. [5:54] So I hope this is an interview that J School professors show their students, because it had some really great tactics and showed a lot of great prep work that you don't necessarily see as much anymore. [6:06] You know, somebody made the comment that these are the kinds of things that he doesn't normally do, because he likes to pick predictable people. [6:12] Anybody know why he, I know Jonathan Swan's covered him for a long time, but anybody know why he granted him a one-on-one? [6:18] I think he heard HBO, Axios on HBO. Maybe he was thinking ratings and audience reach. [6:26] I mean, he does know how to play that angle with the media. [6:32] And if you think back, access to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, and that rarely goes well for him. [6:38] And if you think back, he's had a number of these one-on-one pre-taped disasters. [6:44] Think of the Lester Holt interview, where he started blabbering on about how he had to get rid of Comey, and it was all about the Russia thing. [6:51] That led to his impeachment. He just can't handle a direct exchange with someone with a clue who's not a psychophant. [7:01] He's a fan.