Rachel Maddow on Thursday joined fellow MS NOW hosts Symone Sanders-Townsend and Eugene Daniels on their podcast, “Clock It With Symone & Eugene,” and had some rather cheeky ideas about what to ask President Donald Trump during a hypothetical interview.
Maddow had joined the podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on the MAGA leader’s current second term, when Daniels acknowledged how difficult it can be at times “to find the hope” while covering Trump — and Maddow divulged how she really feels about the president.
“I don’t know what’s going on inside Donald Trump’s brain, but I feel like over this past decade or so, the thing that I have learned is what he most wants is for everybody to be thinking about him and talking about him all the time,” said Maddow.
She added, “People say, ‘Oh, if you could interview Donald Trump, what would you ask him?’ I don’t know. I would probably ask him, ‘Is Africa a country?’ Like, I would ask him, ‘How many R’s are in “strawberry”?’”
Maddow had noted earlier that Trump is the “archetype” of a “classic stereotypical wannabe strongman type” and that she’s thus “very disinterested in him as a person,” but continued cracking jokes after her first two questions left Sanders-Townsend and Daniels in stitches.
“I would want to do some version of the cognitive test,” said Maddow. “Like, I don’t know, who is the president of Mexico? Who’s your labor secretary? Who was your third wife? Like, I don’t know. I don’t have an interest in his opining on the world.”
She added, “I actually don’t have very much interest in what he’s saying and … putting him on camera all the time, and having you watch him mumble his way through interactions with reporters or pronounce things about the Iran war which make no sense, or whatever it is.”
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Trump has given multiple reasons for his war, including some that contradict each other, and does appear to cherish his image as a strongman leader and supposedly beloved success. While some view him as an object of accidental humor, Maddow certainly doesn’t.
After all, Trump has not only contested the results of the 2020 presidential election, resulting in the infamous Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, but repeatedly suggested that he might run for a third, unconstitutional term — and made serious efforts to change the voting process.
“I am very interested in whether or not our country is going to stay a constitutional republic,” said Maddow. “Whatever Donald Trump says each day is not material to that outcome. I know that Donald Trump wants to dismantle us as a constitutional republic.”
She noted, “The most important thing is what the country is going to do in trying to stop him.”
