There is a particular twee Britishness that compares everything to The Thick Of It, which misses the point that (while still of course being shocking and sort of funny) that interview will not be viewed as a car crash by American Trump supporters

This lifting of the veil you think you're watching, a la TTOI, is likely not happening for the people who it matters to most. I'm not saying it doesn't have value, but acting like it's a hilarious slam dunk misunderstands that this is how he acts literally all the time

Like, it'd be easy to harken back to the Andrew Neil/Ben Shapiro interview, where it was able to be edited to make it look like Shapiro had "won" to his supporters, but that's not even it. You can show this as is and a Trump supporter will say it was an "unfair media hack job"

Anyways, it's a bad interview for Trump (and again, it's funny!) But the way the UK treats American politics is grating at the best of times, and thinking you understand it through the lens of your TV shows and memes is something to reconsider

Getting my "I'm from the Rust Belt", "my district flipped blue to red in 2016", "Ohio" lines ready for when the Debate Me types rush in

Just popping this in at the end of this thread https://www.newstatesman.com/international/places/2020/08/trump-axios-interview-the-thick-of-it-america-politics