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'Thank you, darling': Trump storms out of interview with NBC News
NBC News
US president Donald Trump had yet another major clash with the media at the weekend, as an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press – which aired on Sunday – showed the 79-year-old cutting the conversation short by storming out of the room and telling host Kristen Welker he had “had enough”.
The major tantrum happened when the interview turned to the topic of the 2020 presidential election, which the Republican claimed – yet again, and without evidence – was “rigged”.
After Welker said there was “no evidence” of what he was claiming, Trump fumed: “There’s a lot of evidence … There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence. The election was rigged, it was a dirty election – and it’s happening again right now in California.”
Pressing Trump on his claim that the Democrats are “cheating” in the election for California governor, Welker asked: “Do you have evidence to support that?”
Trump replied: “All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look, and I listen, I listen to people, and let’s see what happens.”
“That’s not evidence,” Welker responded. “State and local officials they are slow, they are urging the votes to be counted.”
The convicted felon snapped: “They’re crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked … You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this and you know that these elections are rigged, your network knows that they’re rigged.
“You know that I won an election in a landslide, and I got 94 per cent bad press. You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.
“There’s more evidence than ever presented. The elections in this country, we’re like a third-world country. The elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked, and so is NBC, and CBS and CNN. You’re one-sided, crooked networks. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough.”
Welker pleaded with Trump to continue the interview, saying that she travelled “all the way to Wisconsin”, but the president called on her to “straighten out” the press because “the country can never be great with a dishonest press”.
As people flooded X/Twitter with their criticisms of the president’s “out of control” behaviour, some noticed one particular detail around a microphone which can be heard towards the end of the interview:
“Him ripping off the mic and crushing it underfoot is extra unhinged even by his standards,” commented one account:
Another wrote that it was “by far one of the most pathetic displays of childish temper-tantrum fury that we have ever seen from ANY public figure”:
Joe Gallina, of Call to Activism, pointed out Trump stepped on the microphone and described him as a “thin-skinned, insecure man-child”:
And left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker reacted on a livestream by declaring that the US president is “a f***ing baby”:
The White House has been approached by indy100 for comment.
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