During the interview, Wallace told the president that recent polls reveal thathttps://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality Americans think Democratic candidate Joe Biden is more mentally fit to serve as president than Trump. In response, Trump referred to a cognitive test he took at the Walter Reed Medical Center earlier this month, claiming that doctors were “very surprised” by his results and told him: “That’s an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did.”
Trump also told Wallace that the test was “very hard” and that he didn’t think Wallace could do as well, to which Wallace laughed and said that he had taken a cognitive test online and that it was easy.
“No one should have much faith in the cognitive abilities of either of the candidates - I think Biden because of age, and Trump I think has been this way for a very long time,” Lauria told host John Kiriakou.
It’s really quite a performance when Wallace laughs there - he’s laughing at him. He [Trump] deserves to be laughed at, because Trump is such a chump. In this conversation, he really is proud of himself that he got all these answers correct, and this is a test for someone who is senile,” the journalist said.
“The pandemic has really thrown this guy off. He was running on the economy, and it didn’t help a lot of people. But the stock market was up, and unemployment was kind of down, and he could make a case that the economy was great,” Lauria noted. “But the pandemic threw him for a loop … the only way to defeat this virus was to continue the lockdowns around this country, for everyone to wear masks, to take this thing seriously, to not give in to these lunatic theories out there that this is just a flu, et cetera, and it’s all a government plot.”
During his interview, Trump also claimed that “Biden wants to defund the police,” which Wallace immediately refuted, saying: “Sir, he does not.” When Trump continued to claim that Biden’s “charter” with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which is supposed to bring together the left and centrist wings of the Democratic Party, supports defunding the police, Wallace responded: “It says nothing about defunding the police.”
According to Lauria, even Trump’s own base may begin to waver in their support for him if the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take many American lives and the US economy remains “in the toilet.”
“Only if they [Trump’s base] start getting sick and dying in big numbers and they come to the realization that he has not only screwed up the economy … if they start seeing that they’re sick and dying, and the economy is still in the toilet, then I think it will matter,” Lauria noted.
During his interview, Trump also erroneously claimed that the US has one of the lowest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world.
"But when you talk about mortality rates, I think it's the opposite. I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world,” Trump told Wallace. However, the latest data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the US has the 10th highest mortality rate globally.
“He's out of it,” Lauria said of Trump.
“But that didn’t matter before to his base, and again, I’m only saying it’s going to matter if the economy continues to be bad and people are dying a lot,” Lauria added.
