NPR showed us the best way to interview a totalitarian liar

TRUMP: When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don’t know what his game is…

He maligned one of his own lawyers, and didn’t even bother to address the fact that 10 of his own judicial appointees had ruled against him in case after case (including his Hail Mary in Pennsylvania). All told, NPR accurately observed: “Repeatedly in the interview, Trump presses his party to adhere to his point of view and false claims…That’s a typical strategy among purveyors of disinformation and misinformation.”

And this was a fun exchange, Trump being unable to fathom how Biden won without drawing huge crowds in the midst of a pandemic:

TRUMP: How come Biden couldn’t attract 20 people for a crowd? How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden, he got 80 million votes? Nobody believes that, Steve. Nobody believes that.

INSKEEP: If you’ll forgive me, maybe because the election was about you.

The interview was scheduled to last 15 minutes. But at the nine-minute mark, when Inskeep started to bring up the Capitol insurrection, Trump hung up. Inskeep exclaimed, “Whoa whoa whoa, I have one more question!” Alas, his guest had cut and run to the MAGA cocoon.

Granted, the MAGA crowd doesn’t listen to NPR or read its website. But journalists who have a laudable bias for facts have no rational choice but to do their jobs.

As veteran Washington reporter Barton Gellman said recently, “What we’re for as journalists is truth. And what we’re for as journalists is democracy. We are unambiguously in favor of our democratic system and of allowing the people to choose their own leaders. And the conundrum is that right now we have a political party that is bowing to authoritarian forces, that is systematically lying about the political process, about the election process itself.”

The only way forward – as Inskeep demonstrated – is to hold those forces accountable.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com