As much as Donald Trump feuds with the “failing” New York Times, he still appears to covet the approval of his hometown paper of record—especially, it seems, after a round of golf. On Thursday, the president spoke with Times reporter Michael Schmidt for 30 minutes, unscheduled and uninterrupted by aides, after Schmidt ran into him during lunch at the Trump International Golf Club. Schmidt himself seemed surprised that Trump didn’t mind the conversation being recorded, and a senior aide later expressed confusion about whether an interview had taken place at all. But Trump seemed more than happy to talk, mostly on the record, even without the usual polish provided by the soft glow of Fox News.

Other journalists criticized Schmidt’s interview, on Twitter and elsewhere, arguing that he should have done more to interrogate or push back on the president in what ultimately reads as one long Trump rant. But as Maggie Haberman countered, Trump’s “unfiltered” rants can reveal more about his mindset than a more confrontational interview, even if they can be less satisfying. Indeed, Trump stumbles into several revelations about himself, and his presidency, in the course of his diatribe with Schmidt. Here’s what we learned about Trump’s current thinking on Robert Mueller, the Alabama Senate race, how he views his relationship with the media, and more:

Trump is insistent that there was “no collusion.” The president repeated 16 times that he did not collude with Russia during his 2016 campaign, which seems somewhat excessive, if not desperate.

At the same time, he said that if there was collusion, it wouldn’t be a crime—an argument he noted had been voiced by “liberal Democrat” attorney Alan Dershowitz on Fox news: