The 44 must-see lines from Donald Trump's wild Bloomberg interview

Whoa boy.

On Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump was at the Economic Club of Chicago where he was interviewed on stage by Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait.

It was either the best interview in the history of interviews or a total disaster.

Stephen Miller, longtime confidante of the former president, was, not surprisingly in the former camp.

Rolling Stone saw it, uh, differently, declaring in its headline on the interview: “Trump Crumbles When Pressed on Economic Policy in Tense Interview.” The Bulwark was even more blunt: “The Delusions of the Donald.”

So which was it? Triumph or disaster?

I went through the transcript line by line below. You get to be the judge.

A lot of people ask why I keep doing these sorts of posts — and why I focus more on Trump than Vice President Kamala Harris in them.

On the first question, I do them because I really do believe it’s important to closely document what the people who want to lead us are saying about how they would do so. The best way to know what they would do in office is to see what they say they would do.

On why I go through more Trump speeches and interviews than I do of Harris, there’s two reasons. First, Trump just talks more publicly than does Harris — so there’s more volume from which to choose. Second, Trump is FAR more unpredictable in what he will say (and, therefore, what he will do) than any politician I have ever seen. The radicalness of his approach and his promises of what he will do if he gets elected necessitate more attention be paid to him.

This is a paywalled post. You can read some for free but to get the full, uh, experience, you need to become a paid subscriber. I think the insights, facts check and, I hope, humor in these posts make it worth your while. It’s $6 a month or $60 for the year!

To the lines!

1. “I like that crowd. That's a nice group of people.”

Trump got a standing ovation when he came into the room. And, yes, it’s always about the crowd size — and the reception they give him.

2. “To me, the wor- -- most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it's my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm just to help it.”

My favorite word in the dictionary? “Cattywampus.”

3. “Then COVID came, and we had a -- which, you know, we -- because I'll tell you what -- I did a very good job on COVID. Nobody knew what the hell it was. I call it "the China virus" because I like being a little more accurate.”

Oh he refers to it as the “China virus” to be “accurate.” Riiiiight….

4. “I said, ‘If I run this country, if I'm going to be President of this country, I'm going to put a 100, 200, 2,000 percent tariff.’”

2000%!

5. “So I just see the guy. By accident, I see him. He says, ‘Sir, they've abandoned the’ -- and by the way, they've built foundations. They were really rocking. They were going to do it. They thought that I was going to win or, you know, maybe they just told him -- I'll tell you this -- if I don't win, those factories are going to wipe out this country”

“Sir” alert!

6. “I know how committed you are to this and it must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong.”

Trump is talking to the editor of Bloomberg here. Remarkable.

7. “I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they're not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they're probably not going to build the plants, OK?”

“Deere Says Trump Didn’t Stop Mexico Plans as He Claimed” — Wall Street Journal

8. “Nope. Nope. Because the countries will pay.”

So tariffs won’t amount to a sales tax on U.S. consumers because “the countries will pay”?

9. “I was always very good at mathematics.”

Uh huh.