By now, you’ve probably seen the (astonishing for those of us who still consider the U.S. president somewhat capable of doing his job) interview the fantastic Jonathan Swan just did with Donald Trump. “Why did it take an Australian to expose the American president in this fashion?” I’ve seen some of my fellow Americans asking. In order to understand that, we have to understand our own delusions about our country, of course.
If you’re interested in some of the choicest bits of the interview, this exchange is particularly on point:
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39
— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020
It’s all fairly horrifying — and impressive, when you consider how well Swan does his job — but the real gut punch is when the journalist states the number of South Korean fatalities from the Covid-19 pandemic. “Well, look at South Korea, for example. Fifty-one million population. Three hundred deaths.”
There is nothing the president can offer in response except for a, “You don’t know that.”
Naturally, the defenses that guard his ailing mind and bloated, yet fragile ego kick in just then. The instinct is not just merely to deny, but to introduce a note of confusion. Leaders like Vladimir Putin do this purposefully. Trump does that because he lives in a parallel reality — and anything that would challenge said reality is not just filtered out, it is transformed in the funhouse mirror of his mind.
The thing about us Americans, though, is that for too long, too many of us have constructed a separate reality too. Even if we dislike or criticize Donald Trump, we hold on to the idea that we are exceptional and that what he is doing to this country simply “can’t happen here,” even as it happens right before our eyes.
Sometimes, it takes a person who’s a little less invested in one’s national myths in order to expose what’s really going on. Swan’s interview should serve as an example for all of the smarmy access journalism gurus whose desire to retain said access has caused them to be far too soft on the president as American lives continue to be lost.
Of course, I’m not implying that Swan is the only individual who has asked the president tough questions. Consider the work of Yamiche Alcindor, a Black woman, who Trump insulted when she got tough on him. There is a reason why Trump was less hostile to Swan, and it has to do with gender and race, and it would be foolish to deny that.
But when it comes to lengthy sit-down interviews, something that Trump is unlikely to grant to Alcindor, a journalist who is both critical of him and pushes his buttons as a Black woman who does not submit to his inflated sense of authority, Swan stands out, because he is able and willing to puncture illusions, to not hold back.
As I’ve argued before, it’s not just naive, it’s pretty much irresponsible to deny the fact that the president is not in touch with reality, and does not care to be. To trust his outlook on the pandemic, or to believe that it is coming from a rational place, is to willfully endanger ourselves. Is he also simply a bad leader? Absolutely. But he is a bad leader who is furthermore unable to deal in facts. That’s dangerous at any point in time, but it is catastrophic during a pandemic.
We have to adopt Swan’s methods. And by “we” I don’t just mean the media. On the macro level, on the granular level, we have to come to terms with what is happening — that is, to finally admit that no one’s flying this plane.
Image credit: Alisdare Hickson