Trump's Axios interview shouldn't have surprised us

If that measured assessment doesn't entice you, you also get to see some amusing facial expressions.

But the fact that the interview is being cited as a triumph of modern journalism is as good an indicator as any that things aren't functioning as they're supposed to be.

"Swan demolished some of Trump's most dishonest talking points with a powerful tactic that has rarely been used by the people Trump has allowed to interview him: basic follow-up questions," wrote CNN's Daniel Dale, a tireless chronicler of Trump's sins.

For what it's worth, I didn't find Trump's performance particularly jarring, at least any more so than those he's produced on other occasions he's obliged to converse in public. He may even have appeared a little more lucid than usual.

What was interesting about this interview was that it went on for as long as it did.

Trump is notorious for going to comical lengths to avoid follow-up questions. He'll start fights with reporters, walk out of press conferences, speak exclusively in the downwash of waiting helicopters. In one instance he cut short a one-on-one in the Oval Office, walked over to his desk and began wordlessly shuffling papers - giving us a glimpse of what he pictures a president hard at work must look like.

But this time he engaged with Swan's questions, armed with COVID charts and apparently genuine in the belief he had a case to make.

Trump: "Here's one. Well, right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We're lower than the world."

Swan: "Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea et cetera."

Trump: "You can't ... you can't do that."

Swan: "Why can't I do that?"

When asked why he'd sent well-wishes to accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, he doubled down: "I wish her well. I'd wish you well. I'd wish a lot of people well ... Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty."

And on the legacy of recently passed civil rights leader John Lewis: "He didn't come to my inauguration ... Nobody has done more for black Americans than I have."

Trump's positions, such as they are, aren't built to hold up to basic follow-up questions. A puzzled look and an uttered "Why?" from a reporter is vastly greater scrutiny than he's ever applied to his own beliefs.

To watch Trump engage with critics is to watch a man that seems, at any given point, to be teetering on the edge of a painful epiphany - that he is about as unfit for the position he holds as anyone in history has ever been for any position.

And so he tends to keep things moving.

In his often chaotic press conferences, with insults being hurled and reporters clamouring for time at the mic, this has the effect of making it look like no questioner has managed to cut through.

This effect is mirrored in the wider news environment. In many respects, the 24/7 news cycle has hamstrung thoughtful journalism, the surplus airtime and ceaseless competition incentivising manufactured conflict and permanent crisis. But with presidential politics during the Trump era, it feels like there aren't enough hours in the day for anyone to stay on top of what's going on - at least in any meaningful, constructive way.

I suspect that for those not paying too much attention (and how could you blame them?) it's easy to imagine the endless scandals must be largely frivolous - mountains made from molehills by a rabid media. That story was all over the news yesterday, but now they're talking about something completely different he's done. So that first thing can't have been that bad, can it?

But on the rare occasions Trump ventures out from that rapid-fire news environment and into the spotlight of sustained scrutiny - and it's worth noting he's not just a cable news star, but a committed viewer - his shortcomings become obvious to even the most disinterested observer.

A few weeks prior to his sit-down with Swan, Trump generated similar headlines out of an interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace, in which he asserted COVID-19 would one day "disappear" even without a vaccination, rejected the Black Lives Matter movement because "many whites are killed also, you have to say that", and boasted about his results on a cognitive test administered to detect signs of dementia.

Simply keeping track of it all - let alone determining which statements and actions to devote time and resources to scrutinising - is a full-time job for any media organisation. It's also exhausting for the average citizen. Trump moves on to the next grievance, the next gaslight, the next grift, without a second thought. They're left with the mental labour of squaring what they just witnessed with the fact that they elected him President of the United States.

The systems designed to hold a US president accountable - whether we're talking about the media, law enforcement, political consequences or just the way people discuss presidential politics - weren't developed with someone as shameless or disinterested in public service as Donald Trump in mind.

We still make concerted efforts to discern the reasoning behind his actions in conventional terms, shoehorning his latest lizard-brain reflex into comforting notions of policy positions, political strategy and doctrines of power, despite all the evidence being that he neither understands nor intends to learn how to discharge the most basic duties of the office.

There's a degree of inertia involved, but I suspect a good deal of the willingness to pretend things are largely normal is because it's much easier than confronting the alternative - that the nuclear codes were gifted to the host of Celebrity Apprentice, neither awed by the office nor the responsibility that comes with it, and apparently filled with enough casual contempt for the American people that he continues to get up every day and occupy such a consequential office for seemingly little reason other than a desire for praise.

It's remarkable how quickly some of the conventions designed to hold presidents in check have broken down. How do you convince a casual observer the Hatch Act is an important bellwether anti-corruption measure when the President is gleefully flogging snacks from the Resolute desk?

Almost four years since Trump's election, watching the clash between his personality and the requirements of the office play out is still a surreal experience. It produces a dissonance that defines his presidency.

For his detractors, it's exhausting. But it places demands on his supporters, too. It's why they have to invent increasingly fanciful narratives to explain his behaviour (ranging from "he was joking" to "fake news" to "he's sending us coded messages about his secret mission to bring down a global paedophile ring").

Does the fact that we lack the media conventions to adequately account for all this mean journalism is broken? I'm not so sure it does (don't get me wrong - journalism may well be broken. But to attribute that to Trump gives him too much credit).

Trump was elected, more or less, by millions of Americans who - as was their right - decided it was acceptable to centre their grievances instead of searching for a moral leader, a strategic thinker or even a competent administrator.

To blame journalism (or other systems of accountability) for failing to prevent that decision from having serious and unexpected consequences is to allow those voters to wash their hands of responsibility.

Things are going to get weird when systems stop working - and systems stop working when you force them to process inputs they were never designed to handle.

Perhaps Trump was encouraged by his previous chummy interactions with Swan - an Australian who has earned himself a reputation as a hard-hitter but is no stranger to access journalism or enabling Trump's worst impulses when he feels he needs to.

Perhaps the showman in Trump just wanted to one-up the Chris Wallace appearance.

For whatever reason, he let this interview drag on. Despite the White House setting and the natural advantage of the format (the very act of sitting down for a one-on-one brings his questioner into the deceit, supporting the notion he is either capable of or interested in playing out an argument to its logical conclusion) he chose to fight on Swan's ground.

I think what made people heap praise upon this interview in particular was that it could be packaged up and sold as a return to form for an old institution. The follow-up question - *gasp* - had gotten up off the mat and landed a blow.

Swan did well, to be sure. What he does is harder than it looks. How do you earnestly scrutinise a president who has little knowledge to impart, zero insights to share and no cause to advance beyond his own grievances, without descending into farce?

But I'm not so sure a blow was landed in any meaningful way.

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In the four days since the interview aired, there has already been extensive coverage of Trump's freewheeling attempt to shut down TikTok, his claim that Joe Biden wants to "hurt the Bible", a Saturday Night Massacre-style exodus at the post office intended to undermine mail-in voting, his lack of concern if Russians help him win re-election, his attribution of the explosion in Beirut to an "attack" without evidence (and his subsequent attempts to justify it), and even his mispronunciation of Yosemite ("Yo Semites", which WaPo's Catherine Rampell points out is "a common outer-borough greeting") and Thailand ("Thigh-land", which just makes me glad he didn't try to pronounce Phuket).

I'm almost certain to have missed some things. The point is, the Trump news cycle has already moved on - not due to some grand strategy, but because he's clinically unable to behave in a way so that it doesn't. He's churning out dead cats at a rate that would make Lynton Crosby blush.

Yes, in the Swan interview Trump's thin grasp of detail was on display again. If up until this point you thought he was across his brief, I don't know what to tell you.

But a true reckoning for this level of sheer self-service and incompetence demands a truly monumental television event, and this was not it. There was no moment of revelation, no rage-filled outburst, no tearful admission of inadequacy followed by an attempt to commandeer a jet to Moscow.

Frost/Nixon was a battle of wits. It wouldn't have worked if Nixon was the kind of guy who stares directly into a solar eclipse.