US President Donald Trump gave an extensive interview to Time magazine. The magazine’s Slate desk analysed the full 11,000-word transcript of the 75-minute interview. The interview was conducted by correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs.
The conversation began with a question about Trump’s Sunday evening with Daria Amodei, the chief executive of the AI company Anthropic. Trump stated that he was ‘president of the golf tournament at the President’s Cup in Chicago’, or that the tournament took place ‘last year in Chicago’. However, the President’s Cup is played in Medina, Illinois, takes place every two years and was not held last year.
A large part of the interview was devoted to the war Trump launched in February. So far, at least 19 Americans and thousands of Iranians have died in the conflict, which has been ongoing for more than seven months. Trump promised that the war would end in a matter of weeks, stating that he ‘stuck to the plan’, but then ‘decided to go further’. He has not officially explained the military escalation to the nation, nor has he sought approval from Congress for it. He blamed the media for the public’s confusion over the length of the war, claiming that journalists ‘served up the story’.
In response to questions about the war between Israel and Hamas, Trump stated that the fighting had stopped, despite Israel’s daily air strikes. He stated: ‘My decisions are correct. This country is thriving in the midst of the fire... Some would say it is war, others would say it is not war. If we have a war this year – you know, nothing has happened in the last two weeks, has it?’
In response to questions about why the central bank had raised interest rates, Trump stated that it was not due to inflation, but solely because the Federal Reserve was seeking to harm him politically. On the question of falling support among voters, he declared all polls to be fake, and pollsters ‘corrupt, just like the media’. He added that he would beat any opponent by 20 per cent.
In an attempt to justify the duration of the war in Iran, Trump suggested that the media should ask John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, two former US presidents who have not been alive for decades, about it. One of the time’s journalists replied to this: ‘I would have asked them if I had the chance.’
According to media reports, Trump has increasingly sworn in public. He swore on this interview as well, saying that ‘no positive questions were put to him’.
