Poor Donald Trump. He agreed to go on the Charlie Sykes show on WTMJ radio in Wisconsin. As is the case more often than not, The Donald does not seem to have done his homework before agreeing to the interview. Oops. Bad mistake.
Unbeknownst to Trump, Charlie Sykes has taken the #NeverTrump pledge. He was happy to have an opportunity to speak with The Donald, as you can hear in this interview. He wanted to clear a few things up before the Wisconsin primary on April 5th. After the two men greeted each other with a few friendly words, the Sykes takedown began:
“Welcome to Wisconsin. I know that you realize that here in Wisconsin we value things like civility, decency, and actual conservative principals.”
From there the radio host jumped right into a series of statements where he called Trump out for his various hateful and obnoxious actions. It was a pretty unusual interview, given the bravado that The Donald has shown throughout this campaign, and given the difficulty that other interviewers have had in standing up to him.
Sykes went on the attack, starting with Trump’s threat to “spill the beans” on Heidi Cruz and then Tweeting out an unflattering picture of her. In a rare show of media backbone, Sykes asked Trump if he thought it might be a good idea to start out his campaign in Wisconsin by saying that attacks on wives should be off limits. He even suggested that Trump might want to apologize for his bad behavior.
True to form, Trump launched into a whiny round of “He hit me first” that did nothing to address either an apology or his bad behavior. In a typically rambling response, Trump jumped around from topic to topic. He insisted that Cruz had been responsible for the sexy picture of Mrs. Trump that started the latest feud, then assured us of the tastefulness of his wife’s photo. He stumbled on with several “believe me”s and “by the way”s.
He underestimated Charlie Sykes. I know this because Sykes interrupted the meandering monologue to say that neither Cruz nor his campaign had put up the picture. As Trump kept insisting that “He started it,” Sykes jumped in to ask:
“So is this your standard? That if a supporter of another candidate, not the candidate himself, does something despicable that it’s okay for you, personally, a candidate for President of the United States to behave in that same way?”
And that’s when it got really good. At last, at long last, someone called Donald Trump exactly what he is. Sykes went on to say:
“I mean, I expect this from a twelve year old bully on the playground. Not from somebody who wants the office held by Abraham Lincoln.”
Whoah! How many times have I wished that someone would say those exact words to this guy?
The interview went on for a full 17 minutes. And no matter what he was asked, Trump kept to his script. He rambled, he stumbled, he repeatedly told us how many millions of supporters he has. He assured us that polls show him far, far ahead of everyone in either party. He talked about what a big celebrity he is and how incredibly good he is at business. Believe him, he is pretty fabulous.
So. Twelve year old bully or grown man? Give the interview a listen. You decide.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons License 2.0.
