Why Would You Interview Donald Trump?

For the most part, every interview with Trump goes the same way. The interviewer will say, in some form or another, “many people think this thing you’re doing is bad.” And Trump will respond with “no, it’s actually good, in fact it’s one of the best things ever.” And this will go back and forth until either the interviewer runs out of questions or Trump gets too frustrated to continue, whichever happens first.

Earlier this week, ABC aired a “First 100 Days” interview with Donald Trump, which followed the same basic formula. In the middle of it, there was an exchange that perfectly encapsulates just how bad the mainstream media is at handling Trump, even in 2025.

Interviewer Terry Moran asked Trump about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran gulag. Trump very matter-of-factly states that Abrego Garcia “had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed.” Moran points out that this isn’t true. Abrego Garcia had several symbols tattooed on his knuckles: a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. The Trump administration, in a desperate ploy to smear him, claimed that these symbols stood for MS-13, and released an image with “MS-13” superimposed above them. 

Trump appears to believe that the superimposed lettering was Abrego Garcia’s actual tattoo, to the point where he seems genuinely incredulous when Moran suggests otherwise. He goes so far as to suggest that they take a look at the photo together. If you’re a journalist, this should be a golden opportunity. You are interviewing the President of the United States, and you have the opportunity to pin him down on some obvious bullshit. This is, surely, what you dreamed of back in journalism school.

But instead of pressing the issue, Moran looks to change the subject. He declines Trump’s invitation to look at the picture and says “we’ll agree to disagree.” Which brings me to a very important question, one that journalists like Terry Moran need to think a little harder about: what’s the point of interviewing Donald Trump?

I think many journalists would say that the point of interviewing Trump is to inform the public about his policies. That is an admirable goal, but it’s also an incredibly stupid reason to interview Donald Trump, because he’s not a reliable source of information about his policies. He’s not a reliable source of information about anything at all. If you interview him with the intent of exhuming some information from his brain, you are making a category error. Trump lives in a reality of his own careful construction; if he possesses any information about our actual reality, it is mostly by coincidence.

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