Friend,

Did you happen to catch Donald’s Meet the Press interview over the weekend? We did. But if you didn’t, you truly missed nothing. The hard hitting “takeaways” being echoed from every news outlet in the country are nothing new. In fact, they’re incredibly old.

Trump said he wants to pardon the January 6th rioters on day one. He’s been saying this since day one of his campaign. Even the ones who pled guilty and tried to murder cops over a fake narrative about the 2020 election will be freed. Come on, who better to relate to a bunch of criminals than a man convicted on 34 felony counts just a few months ago.

Trump also said he wants to deport millions of immigrants. If you didn’t know Trump’s feelings towards people not from this country (other than his wife) from day one of his presidential campaign back in 2015, you must live under a rock. Trump hates one of the things that make this country great. In short, he’s a racist. How many different ways he has to say it before people understand it? His deportation plan sounds brutal and unnecessary. It will demonize minority groups and instill more division. Of course Trump’s in favor is this. He always has been.

The Donald pretty much verified a hunch that we’ve had for years, which is that he doesn’t understand how tariffs work. Like, at all. He said he can’t guarantee that prices will remain stable (or come down) after he executes these massive tariffs on our biggest trade partners. Why can’t he guarantee it? Because he has no idea how any of this works. This is going to crush the same people who just went out and voted for him. Despite what he promised on the campaign trail about prices, they will go up, and consumers will pay more. That’s how insanely high tariffs work. We wouldn’t expect a guy who tried to sell steaks out of a mall storefront to understand that.

The only mildly surprising moment from this interview was when Trump said he wouldn’t use the Department of Justice to punish his political enemies. Oh, wait, it was immediately exposed as a lie by… his own words? Immediately after saying this, he talked about throwing Liz Cheney in jail for investigating his conduct on the day he asked a bunch of people to storm the Capitol and try to hang the Vice President. Is it just us, or does that sound like using the DOJ to publish a political enemy?

Even though this interview was somewhat of a nothing-burger filled with information we already knew, we’re not surprised by the amount of media attention it’s getting. Trump hypnotizes the media. No question about it. He has for the last nine years, and we seriously doubt that changes over the next four. But you know what, we’re ok with that. He has control over the three branches, he has a cabinet full of kooky yes men, and he’s still incompetent. He’s going to make a fool out of himself while in the White House, and the media won’t miss it. Our goal over the next four years is to make voters see why they should regret casting a ballot for Donald Trump, and why voting Republican in the next cycle is a mistake. So far, we think we’re on track to do that. Just look at how his appointments are going. Help us stay on track >>

-The Lincoln Project