94 Comments

While you make good points, I contend that the entire thing was a colossal mistake by NBC by having the newest moderator of Meet The Press (the oldest news show on TV) to 'interview' the most inveterate, degenerate liar and psychopath who has ever graced our country.

She was out of her depth, Trump was out of his mind and NBC is out of their ratings game. It was a slam dunk of a disaster and I pointedly went to the network's web page and made an official complaint.

I hope the network cancels MTP because it is no longer even credible. Trump's lying is not news. It is not even worth an interview. By giving him one more time to lie to the heavens, they've given him one more time to bullshit his followers.

Enough of the free publicity for this son of a bitch. I don't ever want to watch another one with him in it, be it MTP or Sixty Minutes. He's outlasted his 15 minutes of fame 40 years ago.

All I pray for is for the juries to convict him quickly, the judges to sentence him even faster and the prisons to put him away forever.

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RIGHT ON!!! I guess you are right, also. But if she gave Jack Smith more ammo, I guess it was worth it. He looked like hell, too! No wonder he said Joe Biden's age was not an issue!

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Even Criminal Defendant Trump knows better than to invite a comparison of physical ability with a man who is in far better shape than he himself is or ever was.

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yeah, but isn't he still challenging Biden (along with Murdoch and all his sons) to an "acuity challenge?" or has he forgotten about that already?

first POTUS to "ace" an elaborate mental status exam. a funny thing is that, typically in a Mental Status exam, you're supposed to ask who the President is...

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Mary, I could not agree more. And the real problem here? Yeah, we saw him for the bloviating lying dangerous deranged sack of shit that he is but we already knew that. For his base, the people who think he’s the alpha male among men? They saw him trampling all over the dumb bitch. They saw him asserting that he really won the election that the liberals are out to get him. They learned nothing. Stop giving him free airtime. There is no such thing as an interview with him. And I hate to say this, but the evidence has piled up it’s plain to see and he’s doing his usual act right now throwing everything he can at the people trying to hold him to account and I have lost faith that he ever will see justice. So again quit giving him free air time. He takes up enough room in all our heads and has been for years and will continue to for years.

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Beautifully said, Mary. Thank you!!!

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You hit the nail on the head. I wonder if the next big interview will be with Benito Mussolini. Oh wait a minute that was IL DUCE .

As for MTP it never was a great news show. Never was there ever a follow up question when a politician lied. 60 minutes the best of all those shows. Instead of watching MTP I suggest reruns if you could find it of “Homicide Life on the Streets”. The wire before there was the “Wire”.

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NBC should send him the bill for that air time. It was nothing more than free publicity. I didn't watch. I refuse to waste MY time on anything this mob boss full of hot air has to sputter. That she had an impossible assignment, I will agree. If this helped their ratings, I would be surprised.

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Well said Brother Truscott! Sadly, all “ interviews” with TFG sit in the shadow of the CNN tongue bath he was given. Welker’s subtleties are hard to parse thru the stink of that experience! I agree for the first journalist to ask him, “Mr. President sir, with all due respect...what the fck is wrong with you?” A Pulitzer is waiting!

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Merrill, Good one! 😂

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Agreed! (Although, the mental image of tRump being given a tongue bath--even if the phrase was merely a metaphor and a darn good one--was just a bit unsettling. Ick!)

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And why does she honor him by calling him “Mr. President?” Why not, “Mr. Twice Defeated, Four Times Indicted, Ex-President”?

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Because she's a professional?

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Welker's approach reminded me of all the nonviolence training I did back in the day (and have made good use of in the decades since). When dealing with a disruptive or belligerent person (I'm assuming the person isn't armed), usually the best thing to do is nothing. Don't argue, don't try to talk reason -- that just gives the person energy to keep going. Kirsten Welker couldn't do that because she was conducting an interview but she came pretty close.

If you've ever done live theater, you probably know how challenging long monologues are -- because you don't have the lines and business of other actors to riff off of and help keep your energy up. (A one-person show is by definition a tour de force.) Trump can evidently keep going forever, but Welker didn't give him much to work with. I'm guessing he said more than he meant to say, and that this is part of the reason: she wasn't giving him enough prompts to keep him on his usual track.

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👍🏼 👍🏼 👏🏻

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She served him up to Jack Smith on a silver platter. You go, Grrrl!

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Welker may have sounded dense, asking the same question over and over, but she got to Trump just enough to get him to blurt out that he --- and nobody else --- ordered the Code Red.

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What Ms. Welker did is use a sophisticated lawyers technique for cross-examination. Essentially soft questions allow you get a lot out of the witness that hard questions where the cross-examiner is the narrative and the witness the victim does not. The clips and the transcript are telling. His essential narcissism is on full display. He is absolutely certain that as the emperor of MAGA his new clothes are made of the finest gossamer.

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Thanks for that take, Lucian. I’ve seen all these people criticizing her. I’d like to see them do a better job with a firehose of BS coming at them.

She got plenty out of him that can be used as evidence against him in a court of law. In case they didn’t have most of it already. His lawyers must’ve given up by this point and begun drinking Rudily.

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I couldn’t watch but if it helped the case Jack Smith is putting together I’ll consider forgiving her - and whoever the the sadistic gollum was who produced this program from hell.

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Just why would anyone, any network, agree to interview TFG for any reasonable purpose?Why?Why?Why? There would never be an iota of truth and consistency to be gained by doing so. He never gives his interviewers a chance to discuss anything.He dominates and bloviates the entire conversation.He is not a credible candidate.He a liar and a conman trying to hijack our democracy and the sooner that our msm realize this than the sooner we will not be thrown full speed ahead into fascism .He is evil.He will never stop.He must be crushed.

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Crushed. YES- exactly. He will never cease to be a menace until he’s dead.

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Victoria, I totally agree, but if you listen to Michael Moore, dump is doomed. He’s history. Just keep doing what you are doing to stay sane. We must all ride this one out!

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Doomed because Michael Moore says so??? I’d need a lot more proof than HIS opinion!

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Michael's been correct when others were completely wrong. Listen to him. He makes sense!

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I like Michael Moore and often agree with him, but I keep remembering how overly optimistic he was about Obama’s presidency—like he was the Messiah!

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You totally nailed it. WHY?

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One word: RATINGS. That ratings=$$$$$ is a now a basic tenet of our 'infotainment' media (there are very few purveyors of honest news left these days). Interviewing Trump is, most unfortunately, a shortcut to high ratings and NBC shamelessly took that short cut.

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The why is NBC's history with Trump. He's made them a lot of money. They like him.

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I like that you gave Welker a thumbs up. I wish, however, (as Mary Hilton writes) that he not be given space and time to lie and irritate people. I think the political situation would improve if Trump were ignored by the media. Nothing he says is of value (or true) so close him down, I say.

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I can’t watch the interviews. I could barely read your excerpts of it. I think I’ve hit the sorry brick wall.

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We are unanimous in this

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Lorraine, me too 😢.

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I want to pay attention, I do. I am dumbfounded beyond human limits.

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Don't despair. We're watching your back!

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In my opinion Kristen Welker’s ability, success, or lack of success interviewing Trump is not the issue. The issue is why would NBC act like he is a legitimate presidential candidate? Why would he be given an hour and a half of airtime. He is responsible for an insurrection, he stole classified documents( who knows what he has shared or sold) He has been indicted on 92 counts, he has declared that he will put his political rivals in prison. And the list goes on and on. He stands for and is working towards the end of our democracy and the rise of fascism. So wtf is he doing in an interview on Meet the Press??

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Lucian I totally agree with your defense of Ms. Welker. I suspect, however, that the network decision to interview Trump was more of an attempt to drive viewer interest in her inaugural show rather than to expose his predictable lies.

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2 words are key, John Malone, he controls CNN, and he supports the insipid clown that lost the election to President Biden.

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Could be...

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Let's play the long game on this interview. I can't bring myself to watch a full amount of time he's ever lying and lying and lying but the big patches of sniglets and snaglets out of the interview looks to me like Welker did a great job. I predict this interview is going to wear well and one day Welker will be given the credit she deserves and not all this and some of it very weird criticism. This is disturbing in other ways. The chaos and trauma of having Trump in our lives in the way he's been since he started campaigning for 2016 is turning many of us into the same doubters and angry people with no faith in anyone across the aisle or anyone disagreeing with us. We're all just angry and reactionary all the time now, both sides and I do attribute that in large part to the Trump creature. I don't understand how anybody could believe a word he says.

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If you interview an insane, deranged person, you’re going to get insane, deranged answers. If his lips are moving, he’s lying 😡❤️

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He really belongs in a hospital for the criminally insane, wearing a straight jacket. That would keep his fat fingers off of TS and and his vomitus of lies off the air.

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I gave up on MTP years ago, and all the other Sunday morning so-called ‘news’ shows. I couldn’t watch any interview of *Rump regardless. His lies and narcissism are so predictable at this point that any national TV platform he gets we know he’ll turn into a mind-numbing campaign speech. It was journalistic malpractice except to the extent she got him to incriminate himself further. Perhaps her bosses saw it as an initiation rite, but judging from the criticism she’s getting I don’t think she comes out of it as a dragon slayer. Or MTP as the must-watch program it may have once been.

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Yes...even when Tim Russert was the host on MTP, softball questions I could watch Russert a little; Chuck Todd not at all. We seldom watch any network stuff all, any more; only local news and weather.

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Can you tell me your secret?

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I think she did very well considering who she was interviewing. She just let him talk to admitting things that could be used in court, I assume as I am not an attorney. I imagine it's very difficult to interview DT!

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