How Unfit? Dangerously Unfit
In a cover story and two interviews, Time magazine gets the malignant ex-president on the record. We can't trust a word he says.
Time magazine put Donald Trump on its cover this week with an unavoidable title: “If He Wins.” What readers find inside and online is a detailed article that largely matches the dangers plotted by “Project 2025” and its authoritarian agenda to move the country toward dictatorship.
That includes mass deportations and detention camps for migrants, a once-independent Justice Department turned into a weapon of Trump’s whims and a once-nonpartisan civil service devolved into a cadre of loyalists. Time reporter Eric Cortellessa heard Trump’s plans to pardon January 6 insurrectionists, deploy the National Guard in American cities at will, give police immunity from prosecution, close the White House office responsible for pandemic preparedness, and permit red states to monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute abortion ban violators.
If you read the article you may be led to believe that Donald Trump has a systematic plan to pursue his darkest desires. But TIME also makes available a transcript of Cortellessa’s two interviews with Trump. Honestly, I barely survived the reading because it vividly displays how profoundly unfit this man is—morally and particularly intellectually—to be anywhere near the levers of power.
They reveal a deeply untrustworthy man untethered from reality, swarming in lies, absorbed by grievance, unable to grapple with policy nuance and dependent on empty slogans to motivate himself. None of this is surprising, but when you read through the hours of interview material, you can see just how shallow his thinking is, how unreliable are his pronouncements and equivocations, how utterly ill-equipped he is to confront the complexities of our modern world—and, really, how crazy it is that serious people are forced to take this man seriously. My mind drifts to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, privately calling his boss a “fucking moron.”
(This was later confirmed in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, but when asked about it Tillerson chose a more careful alternative: “It was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil corporation, to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘This is what I believe.’”)
I often argue with myself over whether I should devote more space here to raising doubts and describing the dangers of this malignant man. But as Time puts it on the cover, fate has required us to address a reality “if he wins.” The consequences are real and require maximum seriousness and attention, especially at a time when so many other issues are roiling the body politic and could motivate Democratic voters to misunderstand their duty to their country. I’m thinking particularly about young protestors who imagine that their commitment to the Palestinian cause is a reason to reject President Biden, thereby increasing the possibility of a Trump win.
Consider a few samples from Time’s Trump transcripts:
On complying with the law over migrant deportations:
I'll be doing everything on a very legal basis, just as I built the wall. You know, I built a tremendous wall, which gave us great numbers. I also was willing to do far more than I said I was going to do. I was also and am willing to—they should have completed the wall. I completed what I said I was going to do, much more than I said I was going to do. But as you do it, you realize you need more wall in different locations, locations that, at one point, people thought you wouldn't be able to—you wouldn't need.
On the decline of violent crime and the FBI releasing statistics of a 13 percent drop in 2023:
The FBI gave fake numbers…I don’t believe it. No, it’s a lie. It’s fake news…There is no way that crime went down over the last year. There's no way because you have migrant crime. Are they adding migrant crime? Or do they consider that a different form of crime?
On presidential immunity:
If they [Supreme Court] said that a president doesn't get immunity, then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes, because he's committed many crimes. If they say, on the other hand, that a president has immunity, and I happen to think a president has to have immunity, because otherwise it's going to be just a ceremonial position. But Biden has done so many things so badly. And I'm not even talking the overt crime. I'm talking about the border, allowing all of the death and destruction at the border…I wouldn't want to hurt Biden. I'm not looking to hurt Biden. I wouldn't want to hurt him. I have too much respect for the office. But he is willing to hurt a former President who is very popular, who got 75 million votes. I got more votes than any other sitting president in history. And I have probably eight cases right now that are all inspired by them, including my civil case.
On his attack on the peaceful transfer of power:
Number one, I made a speech that was peaceful and patriotic that nobody reports. Nobody talks about it: peacefully and patriotically. Nobody talks. You know, the committee never used those words. They refused to allow those words. Number two, I had like five tweets that were, go home, blah, blah. I got canceled because of those tweets…when you read my tweets, and when you see the speech that I made, and when you see the statement that I made in the Oval Office in the Rose Garden, during this very dramatic and horrible period, I'm a very innocent man. Nancy Pelosi is responsible, because she refused to take the 10,000 soldiers or National Guardsmen that I offered. She refused to take them. The mayor of Washington refused to take them too. And they're responsible, you know, for the Capital.
On litmus tests for GOP employees to say the election was stolen:
I wouldn’t feel good about it, because I think anybody that doesn't see that that election was stolen. It just—you look at the proof. It's so vast, state legislatures where they didn't go through the legislature. They had to go through the legislature. You look at it, it’s so vast, all of the different things. I could give you report after report on state after state of all of the fraud that was committed in the election, and if you had a really open mind, you would say I was right.
On how his statement that he would be a dictator on day one could scare people:
I don't understand why it would. Everybody. Anybody that saw it would say I was laughing. He was laughing. The whole place was laughing. You know, it was a town hall? And the town hall, they were laughing like hell. That was said in jest…Remember “Russia, if you’re listening”? That was said in the exact same vein. “Russia, if you're listening.” Everybody knows that was said sarcastically. But they cut off the laughter. You know, they cut it off immediately. As soon as it was—immediately, it was cut off. But that was said, sarcastically, a joke, it was in jest. This is the same thing.
So much more of this blathering. Even though Time’s reporter worked valiantly to push Trump, to get at the truth and pin him down, the overall effect is that virtually anything he says is unreliable. There’s nothing to hold him to—since nothing he says can’t be changed a day or a minute later if it serves him.
Never has our country suffered a man who lies so freely and who millions of voters have chosen to reward anyway. As if—in this upside down world—his rejection of factual reality is a badge of honor.
One last thing: Asked about all the former aides and cabinet secretaries who refuse to endorse or openly criticize him now, Trump either rejected them as incompetent or rejected the premise altogether.
Look, when people think you don't like them and you're not going to bring them back. I'm not going to bring many of those people back. I had some great people. I had some bad people. When they think they are not in favor and they're not coming back, they're not inclined to endorse…If I call up 95% of those people that you say, if I made one phone call, they’d be endorsing me in two minutes.
But the truth, of course, is otherwise. In the coming months, it’s critical that many of those who know and worked for him speak out—not just once, but again and again, as the election draws closer. Remember a few from the list of two dozen chronicled by CNN last October:
Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense: “I think he’s unfit for office.…He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”
Mike Pence, Vice President: “The American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution. … Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”
Gen. Mark Milley, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman: “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America—and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
John Kelly, Chief of Staff: “A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”
It will take more than divine intervention to ensure a man like this never sees the inside of the Oval Office again. It will take all of us—and tens of millions of others who decide that they will vote and do everything they can to ensure the survival of American democracy, the promise of America, basic human decency and the primacy of factual reality.
Please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $50 a year or just $5 a month, if you’re not already. This helps sustain and expand the work of America, America, keep nearly all the content free for everyone and give you full access to the comments sections.
More than moronic, an existential danger to us all. It’s unbelievable that we even have to debate this.
When you actually read what he said to the Time magazine reporter, he sounds like a blithering idiot. Like you, Stephen, I don’t understand why anyone would support him or his wishy-washy policies. He’s just a wannabe dictator that we shouldn’t even have to take seriously. Unfortunately, so many Americans still do take him seriously despite his non-stop lies, major character flaws and many criminal indictments! I weep for my beloved country.