Jan. 11, 2024, 12:05 p.m. ET
So … how did you like the big Donald Trump interview on Fox News? Missed it? Boy, you know your ex-president, don’t you? A guy who’s famous for his weird, off-the-cuff comments still has a professional politician’s ability to sound pretty darn boring when he’s answering questions on camera.
Live! Fox News had been shying away from spontaneous, on-air interviews with Trump ever since his followers’ rants about phony voting machines wound up costing his favorite network $787.5 million.
But Wednesday night was a good time to get back in the game. Trump’s two main primary opponents were having a debate on CNN, which he had absolutely no intention of joining.
It was more fun for him to hang out with Fox’s Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum and reminisce about his term in office when the country had “the greatest economy in history.”
The hosts wanted to hear just what our former president was thinking. And — surprise! — nothing much. No insights into current affairs more thrilling than a few vague references to Hunter Biden. Certainly no quotes you’d want to pass on to your friends. That sort of thing tends to come out spontaneously at rallies, where he feels relaxed and happy to theorize that Lincoln should have just “negotiated” his way out of a civil war.
It’s amazing that Fox News let its guest get through an hourlong interview without prodding him about the Jan. 6 riot. Or the civil trial he’s dealing with in New York. Or the bazillion other charges he’s facing here, there and everywhere for, you know, attempting to change a presidential election result and stuff like that.
The current D.C. case, brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, is about whether Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election results. There, the defense claims that Trump couldn’t be charged with any crimes since he was the president at the time. Really — the argument is that you can’t prosecute a guy for trying to overturn the government while he’s in the government. Trump’s attorney even told a judge that if Trump ordered a SEAL team to murder a rival, that crime wouldn’t count unless he’d already left office.
This will go on and on. The bottom line is whether Donald Trump can get away with everything, from starting a massive riot to making up American history to giving a boring TV interview.
That last charge, you know, is the one that would drive him really nuts.