The many cold ironies of Trump's 'Fox & Friends' interview

Analysis: 'I learned a lot by watching Richard Nixon. ... And there are no tapes in my case,' says president, revealing re-election backup plan on live TV

The irony, however unintended, was cold and cringe-worthy.

Donald Trump's latest wildly meandering call-in interview with his favourite morning news talk show, "Fox & Friends", was bookended on the front end by a country music singer performing a song about past-due bills and a newly broken washing machine and on the back end by an ad urging military veterans to refinance their home loans.

The president ranted and raved about an Obama administration conspiracy to take him down for nearly 20 minutes at the top of the interview, just minutes before the Labor Department announced 20m more Americans lost their jobs in April. That's the steepest drop in employment since the Great Depression.

The US unemployment rate, so low a few months ago it was the backbone of Mr Trump's re-election sales pitch, climbed to 14.5 per cent, according to Labor Department data released as the president was on live television. Even some of his own top economic advisers, Larry Kudlow and Kevin Hassett, have said a 20 per cent unemployment rate is possible in a few more months as the Covid-19 pandemic will keep much of the economy either shackled or shuttered.

That means, as Americans pay their bills with what's left of their savings or max out their credit cards doing so, it soon will become more difficult for them to address what Phil Vasser crooned in a song he performed from his home in Nashville on "Fox & Friends" just minutes before Mr Trump called in a "stack of bills, overdue."

"There goes the washing machine," Mr Vasser sang a few bars later, celebrating his career on the show by performing the hit that launched it. More irony as the country – and world – remain in a perpetual Covid Groundhog Day in their homes, some without income flowing in and wondering how they'll fix appliances if they stop working before new jobs are found: It's titled "Another Day in Paradise."

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But was the leader of the free world pressed on how newly unemployed folks will avoid losing their homes or defaulting or loans or even going bankrupt before the coronavirus, in his word, "leaves"?

No.

"Those jobs will be back, and they'll be back very soon," the president said, predicting a major economic recovery in 2021.

Was he asked to provide supporting data or cite any projections from prominent government, private-sector or academic economists?

No. Even though the foursome, for the first time, couldn't even fill a full hour. By the end, they were awkwardly chatting about Mother's Day and other, more banal topics, than the global pandemic or the presidential election.

'It's no surprise'

The "Fox & Friends" crew did have the surreal opportunity to announce the bleak new unemployment figures as they were interviewing the president of the United States. In any other White House, the staff would have been able to convince the boss to allow the country – read: stock markets – to absorb the latest economic haymaker to its chin before speaking publicly.

Not in the Trump White House, where The Donald is the president, the communications director, the chief strategist – and, as he made contended again Friday morning, the "top law enforcement officer in the country." (Some legal experts and former federal law enforcement officials, echoed by senior Democratic legislators, however, dispute that claim.)

"It's fully expected. It's no surprise. Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that," Mr Trump said, shrugging off 20m job losses and shifting blame to the Chinese government, the World Health Organisation and even top Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Mr Trump wasn't pressed on the cratering American economy because that's not why he was booked, or booked himself, on the mostly friendly morning show.

The "Fox & Friends" anchors spent the morning interviewing guest after guest about the Justice Department dropping all charges against Mr Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and documents released by the House Intelligence Committee they say shows the Obama administration cooked up a phony plot about the Trump campaign and Russia to first try to derail his 2016 campaign and then hinder his presidency.

It was a narrative Mr Trump was happy to amplify when he called in at promptly 8 o'clock. The president showed a card or two as he and his campaign team retool their re-election strategy. With the economy crippled and many of the core supporters he needs to vote in big numbers in a handful of battleground states now out of work, Mr Trump needs Democratic boogeymen.

He and his allies on the right, including Fox News, think they've found just that in the pages and pages of House Intelligence Committee documents from its Russia election meddling probe. An extreme thinker who is willing to stretch the facts well beyond their limits, Mr Trump unveiled a conspiracy theory that no doubt he intends to repeat daily from now until Election Day.

"Sleepy Joe was involved in this, also," he said of the former vice president who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. "Other people around president Obama were deeply involved, also," Mr Trump said, also implicated former President Barack Obama in what he agreed with a Fox host is the "greatest political scandal of all time."

That means bigger than his request that a foreign government (Ukraine) investigate Mr Biden, who was at that time (last June) the Democratic frontrunner. That means bigger than the 1921-1923 Teapot Dome bribery scandal that so damaged Warren Harding's presidency. That means bigger than the Iran Contra scandal that forever will be an asterisk on what most historians call the otherwise successful presidency of Ronald Reagan. Even bigger than the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency.

Victim in chief

Mr Trump has taken political victimhood to new levels – but he is simply a master at weaponizing any legitimate criticism or truth-busting conspiracy theory to fire up his base and remain a viable candidate for a second term.

His approval rating has not cratered despite at least 75,670 coronavirus deaths and at least 1.25m confirmed cases in the United States, according to The Johns Hopkins University. It likely will stay that way until Election Day, even as he continues, as he did Friday morning, to spout false statement after false statement like his contention that he released a "transcript" of his call with Ukraine's president after House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, unwisely performed a parody of that call at a public hearing.

Fact check: Mr Schiff's spoof was based on the White House-prepared summary of that phone call that it released prior to that Intel panel hearing.

But that correct timeline is of no political use to the president. With millions more Americans now out of work and that "stack of bills" looking more and more ominous, Mr Trump needs a backup plan. He's found part of an emerging one in the House Intelligence papers.

As Americans wonder how they will pay their bills, Mr Trump is turning not to lessons taught by Franklin D. Roosevelt or Reagan or Bill Clinton or Obama or any other US chief executive who steered the country out of economic doldrums. Rather, he is, as always, focused on his own political future.

"I learned a lot from Richard Nixon: don't fire people. I learned a lot by watching Richard Nixon," Mr Trump said. "I did nothing wrong. And there are no tapes in my case."