President Donald Trump sat down with the New York Times last week for an unprecedented two-hour interview — and buried in the 23,000-word transcript was one nugget that author and radio host Bill Press flagged Tuesday as being especially troubling.
“Am I the only one surprised at President Trump’s choice of words in his interview with the New York Times last week?” Press wrote in a column published Tuesday in The Hill. “And did he get it right?”
Held in the White House’s Oval Office, the interview saw Times reporter Katie Rogers ask Trump whether he saw “any checks” on his power “on the world stage,” and whether there was anything that could stop him from pursuing his policy agenda.
“Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good,” Trump answered.
Times reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs followed up on Trump’s response by asking if he considered international law to be a potential check on his power.
“I don’t need international law,” Trump answered. “I’m not looking to hurt people. I’m not looking to kill people.”
While Trump’s apparent disregard for international law was striking, Press instead was stunned by the president’s initial response, that he saw his “own morality” as the only true check on his power.
“My first reaction when I heard that was to laugh out loud. Either he got it wrong, or the Times headline got it wrong,” Press wrote.
“It must have been a slip of the tongue. Surely, he meant to say ‘mortality,’ not ‘morality.’ After all, anybody about to turn 80 in six months starts thinking about his own mortality. Half of all Americans die before 80.”
Upon further reflection, however, Press concluded that Trump had, in fact, meant to say “morality,” and called it not only a “strange choice of words,” but a terrifying omen for the remainder of his presidency.
“Honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility, kindness. There are many words to describe Trump, but ‘morality’ is not [one] of them,” Press wrote. “If it all depends on Trump’s morality, then we’re in trouble.”