DONALD TRUMP IS A WEAK LOSER (updated)

No, this won't hurt Donald Trump with his base. The fans will say he got the better of Piers Morgan by (eventually) walking out. But he let himself look weak before finally stopping the interview.

Trump walks out on Piers Morgan during contentious interview pic.twitter.com/NKUTBblGDS

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) April 20, 2022

Trump didn't approach Morgan the way Alex Jones did a decade ago. Jones took the first question and launched into a vein-popping shoutdown of Morgan. That's the kind of red meat that would have delighted Trump's base.



Instead, Trump was lulled into going ahead with the interview despite knowing that Morgan had written many negative things about him. He then allowed the conversation to continue for more than an hour before expressing his anger, after which he stuck around even longer -- all because Morgan flattered him on the subject of golf.

Here's what apparently happened:

Former “Good Morning Britain” host Piers Morgan described a meltdown former President Trump had at Mar-a-Lago after he was handed a list of nasty things the British reporter had said about him just before an interview in an op-ed for The New York Post.

In the op-ed, Morgan says a producer for his new show “Piers Morgan Uncensored” told him the list was “a collection of quotes you’ve apparently said about President Trump in the past two years. Someone sent it to him in the last hour, and the quotes are not good. In fact, they’re really bad.”

The quotes included Morgan, who was Trump’s first “Celebrity Apprentice” winner, saying Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was wrong for his election fraud claims and should be barred from office.

In the op-ed, Morgan alleges the document was sent by British politician Nigel Farage, who works at Morgan’s rival UK network GB News and met with Trump three days before the interview. Trump did not reveal the identity to Morgan but said the document was sent from someone in London.

According to Morgan's op-ed, "It looked for sure like Trump was about to can the interview" -- but he didn't. Morgan salved Trump's ego by changing the subject to the his recent (alleged) moment of golf glory:

”I’d love to talk about your recent golf hole-in-one,” I stammered. “Your playing partner Ernie Els was raving about it.”

Trump sat bolt upright.

”He was? Where?”

“In a newspaper interview I read. He said it was a brilliant shot and you played really well.”

“I did, I did.”

“Was that your first hole-in-one?”

“No! I’ve had seven!”

I'm sure that's seven more holes-in-one than Trump has actually had. But this was Trump being embarrassingly weak. Never mind the fact that he should have known that Morgan has been (often but not consistently) critical of him. Once he knew, he either should have called the interview off or he should have used the interview to stir up his fans' rage. Being the one who dominates is his brand.

He didn't do this. Morgan says they talked for 75 minutes (the interview had been scheduled to run for 20) before the subject of the election came up. And even then, Trump didn't stop the proceedings.

Now abandoning any pretense at cordiality, Trump ranted that he was far more honest than I, and again sneered that I wasn’t “real” before haranguing me for exceeding our 20 minutes....

Incensed Trump tried to end things by declaring, “That’s it!”...

Wait for it:

Incensed Trump tried to end things by declaring, “That’s it!” before I reminded him that we hadn’t discussed his hole-in-one, which he then sat down again and did — briefly....

And only then did he walk out. He couldn't bear not to talk about his golf game! What a loser!

I know that Morgan and Trump go way back. I know that Morgan won Celebrity Apprentice. But Ron DeSantis wouldn't have let that kind of connection dictate his actions. He'd have been the bully or he would have refused the interview altogether.

I still think Trump will remember how to be a bully if confronted with a direct challenge in the 2024 primaries, or he'll run in the primaries unopposed. But here he just looks sad and weak.

*****

UPDATE: A follow-up from NBC News:

An audio recording obtained by NBC News appears to show that former President Donald Trump’s highly publicized interview with Piers Morgan did not end with Trump storming off the set, as edited promotional video clips suggest.

Instead, according to the recording, which was provided by Trump's spokesman, the two men thanked each other and laughed at the conclusion of the interview for Talk TV, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

... the audio of the end of the interview appears to tell a different story. The two men laughed and thanked each other, the recording shows. There are no signs of Trump's storming off set.

"That was a great interview," Morgan says in the audio at the end.

Trump agrees with a "yeah."

"Thank you very much. I really appreciate it," Morgan says.

That's when Trump says, "Turn the camera off." By then, the former president had already risen from his chair, according to his communications director, Taylor Budowich, who supplied the audio to NBC News.

Actually, this makes both men look weak -- Morgan because he (apparently) mischaracterized what happened, Trump because he's laughing and joking all the way to the end of the interview with someone who called him unfit to serve. But while I don't trust Trump's account, if Morgan really was being deceitful, then he seems like the bigger loser, because he put out a deceptive story and got caught.

Weirdly, Trump's fan base doesn't care that he regularly sits for interviews with reporters he describes as "the enemy of the people." Mostly that's because the fans don't see his interviews with, say, Maggie Haberman or Bob Woodward on TV. Also, they can't grasp the fact that their manly hero does these interviews out of a near-crippling neediness. So they'll watch this and think Trump did the interview because he's a lion who can't be bothered to kill Piers Morgan, an ant. They have no idea that he does this out of a desperate need to be admired and loved.