Trump Knocked As ‘Incoherent’ In Fox News Interview
Former president swings from one excuse to another over federal documents
Donald Trump was roundly criticized — even on Fox News itself — for the constantly shifting answers he gave during an interview he gave Monday on the right-wing network.
Specifically, the former president was knocked for his inconsistent answers as to the sensitive and classified federal documents he kept in his possession after he left the White House.
Trump this month appeared in a federal courtroom in Miami, Fla, to answer for more than 30 felony charges against him related his retention of those documents.
Trump sat down Monday for an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, who asked Trump about the documents, and why he didn't give them back when the federal government demanded them.
Trump bounced from claiming — falsely — that he had declassified the documents, to saying that he was too busy to separate the documents from articles of his clothing that he stored with the documents, to saying that there were no documents at all.
At one point, Trump even seemed to suggest that the only way that the federal National Archives and Records Administration could get the documents back would be to beg for them.
The result was across-the-board criticism and mocking, even on the very right-wing network which hosted the interview.
“A couple of things. One is that his answers on the matters of the law seem to me to be — to verge on incoherent. He seemed to be saying that the documents were really his and that he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so, and when he was subpoenaed, he wasn’t ready to because he hadn’t sorted them and separated the classified information or whatever from his golf shirts or whatever he was saying,” said Fox News host Brit Hume. “It was not all together clear what he was saying, but he seemed to believe that the documents were his, that he had declassified them — we have evidence to the contrary — and therefore he, you know, he could do whatever he wanted with them, which I don’t think is going to hold up in court.
“Secondly, when you asked him what his pitch was to the kind of suburban female voter that he had lost in 2020, his answer was to talk about how he didn’t lose the 2020 election,” Hume added. “I don’t think that’s an appealing message for the future and I’m sure his legal and political advisers were wincing all the way through his answers on both those points.”
Things went even worse for Trump — currently the far-away frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president in a bid to return to the presidency — Tuesday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe program.
“And by the way, saying he had golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes — really? And then Bret Baier, to his credit, goes, ‘Iran war plans?’” co-host Joe Scarborough said, to on-set laughter. “Because Trump was saying, I don’t know if you picked that up, he goes, ‘I had golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes.’ And Bret interrupts and goes, ‘Iran war plans?’”
“Yeah. It was a good interview, Bret Baier,” added Scarborough's co-host and wife, Mika Brzezinski. “So, to just put that into perspective, Trump bounced between defenses there, sometimes saying the documents had been declassified, sometimes saying there were no documents at all, maybe there were some.”
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