President Donald Trump threatened to donkey kick the fuck out of his Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney for coughing during a taped interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, which aired Sunday.
President Trump was in the middle of the interview when Mulvaney had a little tickle in his throat. That tickle became a full laugh and Mulvaney committed the grave sin of coughing while the boss was speaking. Trump stopped the interview to unload on Mulvaney.
“Who’s coughing?” Trump said. “I should punch that bitch in the face!”
“Let’s do that over. He’s coughing in the middle of my answer,” Trump said, pointing toward Mulvaney, CNN reports.
“Yeah. OK,” Stephanopoulos said.
“I don’t like that, you know, I don’t like that,” Trump said, as Stephanopoulos points out that it’s Trump’s “chief of staff.”
“If you’re going to cough, please leave the room. You just can’t, you just can’t cough,” Trump said, shaking his head. “Boy, oh boy.”
The camera moves to change the shot and a crew member tells the grumpy old dick-tator, “We just changed the angle.”
Trump then finishes his answer: “So at some point—so at some point, I look forward to, frankly, I’d like to have people see my financial statement because it’s phenomenal.”
OK, let’s back it up a bit. First off, shoutout to George Stephanopoulos, who is petty AF and I’m here for it. Not only did Stephanopoulos sign off on including the moment in the final product, he also snitches on Mulvaney for being the cougher. He literally points out that it’s the president’s chief of staff who is the guilty party and then sits back, like, “What did I do?”
The entire interview was bizarre, considering no matter how many times Stephanopoulos pushed Trump on the truth, Trump not only couldn’t be swayed, he was so defiant that Stephanopoulos could literally be seen looking at the camera like, “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?”
At one point, Trump and Stephanopoulos had to agree to disagree on the fact that special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find there was “no collusion” and “no obstruction of justice,” as Trump insisted. Trump keeps telling Stephanopoulos to read the report, to which Stephanopoulos replied, “I did, and it didn’t say that.”
At another point, the two get into a disagreement about polling numbers, which showed Trump was losing in key battleground states to Democrat frontrunner Joe Biden.
Trump not only didn’t believe the number, he argued that the polls were lying. The president actually believes that the polls are being conducted by agenda-driven pollsters who don’t want him to shine.
Trump also famously noted that he’d take information from a foreign government about an opponent, a statement he’s since tried to walk back since clips of the interview aired.