This is, as the analogy would suggest, not a terribly healthy system for interrogating someone who might once again be president of the United States. (Nor is largely abstaining from interviews, the incumbent president’s preferred approach.) But it does create a lot of scenarios when Trump lets down his guard, just as you might have a more carefree attitude eating a pizza at home with a friend than at an elegant dinner with your boss.
On Thursday, Trump sat down for a conversation that was the former, sans pizza. Phil McGraw, the rare psychologist whose name is generally preceded by both “Dr.” and “television’s,” traveled down to Mar-a-Lago for a lengthy discussion with the former president.
Dr. Phil is now the star of something called Merit Street Media, which operates a streaming service that seems largely to center upon programming from the former Oprah Winfrey regular. It’s like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s streaming service, but with more polish and less Mike Lindell. Same politics, though; recent episodes of his show were titled “Trump Verdict: A Judicial Travesty,” “Migrant Crime in America,” “Campus Chaos: A Dangerous Agenda,” “Is a Blue-Collar Stigma Crippling America?” and the evergreen “Congress Has Problems.”
McGraw led off the conversation by disparaging Trump’s recent felony conviction in New York. He asserted that he had particular expertise in the operation of trials before undercutting that idea significantly. (His suggestion that it was unheard of for someone who’d cut a deal with the government to then testify against his partner was particularly weird.) Trump responded with precisely the blizzard of allegations and excuses that anyone with even a passing familiarity with his complaints might rattle off easily.
There was one interesting moment that emerged from this discussion, though. Trump was trying to explain why, despite saying that he wanted to testify (as he almost always does in such scenarios), he ended up not doing so (as he almost never does).
“I had probably 25 guys over the course of a couple of months say, whatever you do, don’t testify,” Trump said, referring to friends who were attorneys, “because you’ll say something that’s a little bit off and you will be indicted for lying, for perjury. These are evil people. These are sick, evil people.”
It will be interesting to see whether Trump embraces the referral brought by House Republicans against members of President Biden’s family this week, a call for criminal prosecution of the president’s son and brother for perjury. Are those House committee chairmen also sick, evil people?
The conversation meandered, with McGraw offering no pushback on even the most ridiculous of Trump’s claims (like that border apprehensions hit a record low the week he left office). McGraw did what Trump’s allies do in these interviews: He asked questions that either allowed Trump to complain about the left or he explored the arcana of Trump’s worldview, demonstrating his familiarity with MAGA lore. For example, he showed Trump a map suggesting that enormous portions of California had been purchased by China, which let Trump talk about how bad China is.
Trump rewarded McGraw with praise both personally and for his interviewing prowess. He marveled that the interview was akin to a counseling session and offered McGraw something that he didn’t “think I’ve ever said this on air before”: he only ran for reelection because the 2020 election was stolen (which, of course, it wasn’t).
This is how it works. This is why Trump has the media diet that he does. He’s a salesman by nature and by avocation. He is skilled at ingratiating himself to members of the media, both in the mainstream and out. He is skilled, more broadly, at bringing people in on the game, at giving them a sense that he and they are working together — mostly because he can’t get over how great and important they are. Both Trump and his interviewers often come out of the interview feeling closer, which is not how good, useful interviews tend to work.
But this also means that Trump’s guard is down, so he offers unusually honest observations (and not the ones that he performatively declares to be unusually honest).
About 50 minutes into the interview, McGraw — seeking the sort of personal revelation he’s used to eliciting on his shows — asked Trump what the hardest moment of his time in national politics had been.
“You fighting over evil forces, and they’re very smart forces,” Trump said. “There are people that control Biden. Totally control. I think I know who they are, largely. But there are people that control him. They’re very smart, very energetic. Possibly they’re real believers. You know what their ideology is.”
Uh, okay? McGraw did not ask a follow-up question.
He did, however, spend the last few minutes of the conversation trying to get Trump to forswear trying to seek retribution against his political opponents. He framed Trump’s conviction for having covered up hush money payments to an adult-film actress as though it was part of a cycle of revenge, one that Trump could break once he was reinaugurated.
Because Trump’s well-honed instinct is to simply agree with the person asking the questions, Trump offered sympathetic murmurings and praised McGraw’s questions, telling the doctor that it had been an “honor” to sit with him. The interview wrapped up.
As the credits rolled, there was an odd hot-mic moment in which McGraw asked Trump whether he really thought Joe Biden, the incumbent president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was “really going to run.” (Trump said, in essence, that he had been skeptical but it seemed so.) Why not simply ask this as part of the interview? Why did this have to come after the discussion had formally wrapped?
McGraw later appeared on CNN, where he talked about the interview and told host Abby Phillip that he had “really made some headway” in getting Trump to back down from seeking retribution.
But two hours after posting about his interview with McGraw, Trump demanded on Truth Social that someone “INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE” — that is, the legislators who ran the House select committee investigating his efforts to retain power after 2020.
McGraw made no headway, but Trump made him feel like he did. Because that’s what Trump does: He uses his celebrity and background to build a rapport that then builds his audience.
The next time a real journalist is interviewing him, perhaps they will ask a few more questions about those evil forces who are purportedly controlling the sitting president.
