Donald Trump in a clip for the interview
(Picture: Piers Morgan Uncensored / Twitter)Piers Morgan’s launch interview with Donald Trump on TalkTV was a cross between Celebrity Apprentice and the WrestleMania shows Trump loved to stage at his old Atlantic City casino — full of flouncing, sparring, smackdowns and insults galore. They both emerged victorious from the battle of the egos: Trump peddling his lies about the “stolen” election; Morgan by calling Trump a loser to his face, not something I have heard from any American television host.
Off-stage, there was a third victor, too: Vladimir Putin, whom Morgan cheekily suggested would be watching their encounter. If he did tune in, the Russian president would have been well satisfied by what he heard, even though Morgan — clever interviewer that he is — pushed Trump to say his harshest words yet about the invasion of Ukraine.
Trump did not repeat his compliments about Putin being “savvy” or a “genius”, but he did delight in calling President Biden “stupid”. Under pressure from his host, Trump agreed that the Russian leader was an “evil, genocidal monster” but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “Yeah, sure, I do, who wouldn’t?” Trump shrugged. “What happened was horrible.”
He then turned back to his favourite topic of conversation: his own monstrous sense of grievance. “Isn’t it a shame all these people are dead, all because of a rigged election?” he asked. In Trump’s humble opinion, the Democrats are to blame for Russian war crimes, not Putin — since Biden was too dumb and incompetent to deter the aggressor. “It’s such a stupid war,” Trump sighed. “Such a horrible waste,” as if it were merely a passive event that was visited upon the Ukrainians. How the Russian president will have enjoyed this twist. At 69, Putin is an old man playing a long game. Unlike the even older Trump, 75, and Biden, 79, he can rig elections to his heart’s content and stay in power indefinitely.
Putin is convinced he will be president longer than Biden — and that all he has to do is sit tight and wait for the US midterm elections this November to deliver an expected Republican victory and the 2024 presidential election to play out.
The Russian has every reason to believe he can have the last laugh. An article by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s former pollster, in Monday’s New York Times spelled out the dismal situation for Democrats. “America’s voters are not merely unhappy with their political leadership but awash in fears about their economic security, border security, international security and even physical security. Without a U-turn by the Biden administration, this fear will generate a wave election like those in 1994 and 2010, setting off a chain reaction that could flip the House and the Senate to Republican control in November and ultimately the presidency in 2024.”
Biden’s approval rating hovers around 41 per cent and has dipped as low as 35 per cent recently. If he is not toast yet, he is certainly feeling the heat.
In New York, that most solid Democratic city, they are deserting the subway because of fear of crime. Vice president Kamala Harris has caught Covid just as the pandemic death total nears the one million mark in the US. Disney, the land of eternal childhood, is at war with Republicans over a so-called “don’t say gay” law in Florida.
According to a Harris poll, nearly half the country (48 per cent) believes they are worse off than before and over half (59 per cent) think the US “effectively has open borders” under Biden. And when Trump wasn’t venting about the election and calling Morgan a “fool” for insisting he lost, he landed some solid punches on these issues.
Trump pounded Biden over 8.5 per cent inflation, rising immigration, gas prices and America’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan. He was also able to claim that Putin did not launch a war on his watch. According to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, this is only because the Russian president thought Trump might “well have withdrawn” the US from Nato if he had won a second term in office.
“I think Putin was waiting for that,” Bolton explained, but many Americans are inclined to believe Trump’s more self-serving version of events. Trump also played up growing US fears about being sucked into the Ukraine conflict. “This is already a world war,” he said, implying he would have threatened Putin with nuclear retaliation.
If he returns to office, a future President Trump will boast “I alone can fix it” and try to reach a deal with Russia which could carve up Ukraine. And Putin will have a big smile on his face.
