February 2, 2020

In His First Major TV Interview in Seven Months, the President Made Fun of His Rival’s Height

Welcome to 2020 hell.

Jeff Roberson/AP

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On Sunday, Fox News aired an interview between host Sean Hannity and President Donald Trump as part of the network’s pre-game Super Bowl show. It was mostly milquetoast, lame, and boring while trying to be special through pure belligerence—like Sean Hannity!

It’s telling that the most meaningful part was Trump making fun of Michael Bloomberg’s height (an echo of his tweets about “Mini Mike”) and that Bloomberg campaign recently shot back on the “Mini Mike” rhetoric by making fun of Trump’s spray tan, his “obesity,” and his hair.

This is hell. And this is probably 2020.

There are many serious ways to consider Trump’s policies, appeal, and rise. But after interviews like this, it’s clear that throughout this campaign we all—as a public trying to stay up on the future of our country—will be dragged into the petty mind of our president. Trump loves to label opponents with a single word. And charade interviews like this, which felt like watching someone compliment their boss, enable it.

Hannity gave Trump a “lightning round” of commenting on his opponents: Joe Biden (“sleepy”), Hunter Biden (corrupt), Bernie Sanders (“communism”), Elizabeth Warren (“fairy tale”), Nancy Pelosi (“nervous”), and—the one shown above—Bloomberg (“little.”)

The soft-balling was obvious coming in: “My job is to let people hear from the president, not from me,” Hannity told Fox last week. “And it’s the Super Bowl, so it’s also about the big game!” (Pin that up in a journalism school classroom.)

This is the first interview of Trump on a national broadcast network in seven months, according to Media Matters. There was a chance to ask something, anything. A pre-Super Bowl interview isn’t new or totally useless. Other presidents have been interviewed before the game, notably Barack Obama, twice, by Bill O’Reilly—they more often mix serious questions with a note at the end about who is going to win the game.

In this one, Trump got to say impeachment was a sham that no president should have to go through. He told Hannity he had made “a positive revolution” and should be up by 25 points because of the economy.

Hannity didn’t even push Trump on actual, relevant topics, like the fights the president has picked with the NFL and its players after Colin Kaepernick began to kneel during the national anthem to protest police violence, or his long grudge against the league after he was not able to buy the Buffalo Bills (after which Trump joined an upstart league called the USFL—and ruined it out of existence), or the time he said he wouldn’t have run for president in 2016 if he could’ve owned the Bills. Ask about that? Nope. And Trump didn’t even pick a winner in the game.

So here we are—watching someone make fun of other adults on TV.

In the words of Chiefs player LeSean McCoy, it is “really sad” that “our president is [a]n asshole.”

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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