Throughout his life, Donald Trump’s two greatest assets have been his mental stability and being, like, really smart. We all know that because he told us three months ago.

In fact, when you think about it – and Donald Trump has – if you consider his business life, and his TV stardom, and his presidential victory, you’d have to say he was not smart, but genius. And a very stable genius at that.

So we can only assume that the blithering, paranoid egomaniac who somehow hoodwinked his way onto Fox News Channel’s morning show was an imposter. Someone pretending to be the very stable genius who is the 45th president of the United States.



Talk about a crank caller. In just 30 glorious minutes of live television, the person known as “Donald Trump” proceeded to demolish two of his lawyer’s arguments about client-attorney privilege and paying hush money to a porn star, as well as his own pee tape alibi that he never stayed overnight in Moscow.



Along the way, he indulged in more conspiracy theories about the FBI, promised to fire people at the justice department, and made it clear he was doing nothing to celebrate the birthday of his long-suffering wife.



Before the morning was over, the US attorney for the southern district of New York (a Trump appointee) was already citing the TV interview in a letter to the judge in the case of Michael Cohen, the president’s once-trusted fixer and personal lawyer.



It began, innocently enough, with “Trump” wishing the first lady a happy birthday. “Do you want to tell us what you got her?” asked the Fox host Brian Kilmeade, in what was clearly designed as a trap question.



“Maybe I didn’t get her so much,” he said. “I got her a beautiful card. You know, I’m very busy, to be running out looking for presents.”



Nice touch, the birthday card. No wonder Melania seemed so happy to hold his hand in public when the French president arrived.



Talking of Emmanuel, as “Trump” called him, he has apparently changed his mind about this whole Iran nuclear deal after spending some quality time with the man who once told us that a nuclear holocaust that would be like no other.



“He is viewing Iran a lot differently than before he walked into the Oval Office,” said the guy pretending to make America great again.



That wasn’t quite how Macron himself put it, telling reporters that Trump was making “insane” changes to international agreements, including his likely scrapping of the Iran deal.



The Fox News interview was clearly the work of an evil genius determined to undermine the otherwise unblemished first year of the Trump presidency. Was it a coincidence that it happened just a few minutes after Trump’s nominee for Veterans Affairs secretary pulled out amid a firestorm of allegations about passing out drunk, over-prescribing opioids, wrecking cars and harassing women?



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Our dogged Fox interviewers tried to ask “Trump” about who he might nominate to succeed Ronny Jackson, but instead he indulged in an extended defense of the man whose reputation was now on life support.



There were so many moments where the man claiming to speak for Trump made literally no sense, as if he was trying to make himself look like a self-contradictory buffoon. All it took was a reference to former the FBI director James Comey to prize out this pearl on Russia: “There’s no collusion with me and the Russians. Nobody has been tougher to Russia than I am. You can ask President Putin about that,” he said, before mumbling something about an aluminum tax.



Yes, let’s ask Putin about all that collusion. He’s been so very helpful with the inquiries into the nerve agent they casually sprinkled around England.



Protesting his innocence, the interviewee insisted that Comey’s famous memos were fabricated. Especially about the pee tape, which for some reason was uppermost on his mind.



“He put a lot of phony stuff,” he explained. “For instance, I went to Russia for a day or so, a day or two, because I own the Miss Universe pageant. So I went there to watch it because it was near Moscow. So I go to Russia. Now I didn’t go there. Everybody knows. The logs are there, the planes are there. He said I didn’t stay there a night. Of course I stayed there. I stayed there a very short period of time. But of course I stayed. Well his memo said I left immediately. I never said that. I never said I left immediately.”



Well that sounded totally convincing. He was there. Kind of. But not very much. And he never lied. Not at all. Who would?



Yes, let’s ask Putin about collusion. He’s been so helpful with inquiries into the nerve agent sprinkled around England

This kind of clarity is going to be super helpful to Michael Cohen, who declared that he paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels on his own, just before the 2016 election, with no assistance or knowledge of the president, no sireee.



When asked why Cohen was invoking his fifth amendment right to refuse to answer questions so as to avoid self-incrimination, this version of Trump managed to dump him on the sidewalk.



“Michael is a good person. Let me just tell you that Michael is in business. He’s really a businessman. Fairly big businesses, as I understand it. I don’t know his business. But this doesn’t have to do with me. Michael is a businessman. He has got a business. He also practices law. I would say probably the big thing is his business. And they are looking into something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business,” said the crank caller.



“But isn’t his business being your attorney,” asked Kilmeade, perhaps the softest questioner on any television show anywhere in the world.



“Just so you understand, I have many attorneys. Sadly I have so many attorneys you wouldn’t even believe it,” replied the caller.



So just how much of your legal work did he handle, asked Doocy.



“As a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction but Michael would represent me and represent me on some things. He represents me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me. And from what I see he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign funds going into this, which would have been a problem.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump on Michael Cohen: ‘Just so you understand, I have many attorneys. Sadly I have so many attorneys you wouldn’t even believe it.’ Photograph: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

At this point, the man calling himself Donald Trump sounded curiously short of breath. Perhaps he was on the treadmill during the interview. Or perhaps he was a tad nervous. Even then, his anxiety levels were nowhere near the blood pressure of Cohen, who says the FBI can’t touch his precious legal work for the president.



To echo our genius-in-chief, “many people” have said that Fox and Friends is not a serious journalistic enterprise. Between Doocy and Kilmeade, you might cobble together the bread for half a sandwich in a picnic on any other channel.



However, “many people” might just be wrong. What other show could have suckered Donald Trump into destroying the legal case of his own lawyer? What other show could have wrapped up such a compelling interview by telling the president that he was probably too busy to continue?



Seriously, this show is a pioneer in so many unexpected ways, it truly deserves its own corner in the Smithsonian, somewhere between the first margarita machine and the first pigeon-guided missile.



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When “Trump” was mid-way through a rant about Comey not getting busted for crimes by the justice department, Doocy stepped in.



“It’s your justice department,” he declared. “Mr President, Mr President, you’re the Republican in charge. You’ve got a Republican running it.”



Even the slice of white bread called Doocy knows how ridiculous this sounds.



The answer was, like, really smart: “Because of the fact they have this witch-hunt going on with people in the justice department that shouldn’t be there, they have a witch-hunt against the president of the United States going on, I’ve taken the position – and I don’t have to take the position and maybe I’ll change – that I will not be involved with the justice department. I will wait till it’s over.”



That’s at least three self-contradictions in one short answer. What kind of genius accuses his own justice department of a witch-hunt in the same sentence as insisting that he won’t take a position on the same justice department, while still promising to do just that?



A very stable one.

