# Trump interview highlights

Source: https://x.com/trumpwarroom/status/1823143351555854472?s=46

THREAD: Stay tuned for real-time updates of the best moments from President @realDonaldTrump's interview with @elonmusk TONIGHT at 8PM Eastern on 𝕏.

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## Comments

**macbudkowski.eth**: It's shared by "Trump War Room," so take their picks of most important lines with a grain of salt :)

**danfowler.eth**: Some BBC fact checking - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jpn2q76n1o

**timdaub.eth**: > Some BBC fact checking - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jpn2q76n1o

Gotta say, if they really tried hard, then they barely have anything, haha. 

Even for the bacon thing, to look at the actual cost, I'm not sure how effective the fact-checking here is. 

With a claim like "bacon is five times more expensive," Trump is tapping into sentiment more than he is interested in creating awareness around a fact. Who cares about the actual increase in bacon? The fact of the matter is that all costs of living have, indeed, increased during inflation, and when Trump says, "Bacon is five times more expensive," and most people agree, then as hard as it may sound, this ends up being "truth" for most people.

The consideration is that we came out of an economic boom fueled by high asset prices and stimmi checks. So bacon was fairly affordable to people, and now, all things considered, inflation, higher costs of living, a less well-performing economy, it's not Trump's fault that people believe the "bacon is 5x" hoax, it's a problem that was, in part, caused by misaligned politics during the pandemic and by the pandemic.

**danfowler.eth**: The point is that words matter - if he will exaggerate and lie about the price of bacon and the numbers coming across the border (each by factors of 5x +), then you can't trust a single thing he says. This might be somewhat moot in the context of Trump with everything that has come before, but it's still important.

**macbudkowski.eth**: I agree with the principle here.

But... I don't think we should compare politicians with some ideal truth-telling people; I think we should compare them with other politicians because politicians lie a lot.

So, if the BBC found only a few minor things in a two-hour-long live interview, I think that's a good result for a politician. I wonder how Kamala would do.

**timdaub.eth**: > if he will exaggerate and lie about the price of bacon and the numbers coming across the border (each by factors of 5x +), then you can't trust a single thing he says.

He has not exaggerated. During the pandemic, everyone got stimmy checks, nobody went for holidays, and there were fewer services that people could spend their money on. So, everyone had excess capital. The BBC is nitpicking statistics here because people were significantly better off financially during the pandemic compared to today, so it isn't a stretch to say that from that point until today, bacon has become 5x more expensive. "Expensive" is relative to how the individual can afford it; it's not only the difference in percentages between two sticker prices in US Dollars. Of course, we can get really into the weeds here and discuss what he said, but IMO the intention is to communicate that Trump thinks that things have become worse, which they have.

IMO, this is the same with all the fuss about "misinformation" about Biden's dementia. You can feel culturally pessimistic about social media spreading the rumor about Biden losing it, or you can feel pessimistic about him being so old that making this claim catches on because its memetic reproduction potential is high. But in that case, the problem is NOT the people thinking it is plausible that Biden isn't capable of the job anymore; the problem is that he's actually so old, and people's experiences with him match so well with this statement that his behavior has become a liability for people to make the claim in the first place. That is the issue! If you don't wanna have rumors about a senile president, don't vote/keep a very old president in power, search for a younger person where this claim becomes unreasonable to make.

Now, considering that this "fake news" exists, it's, of course, anyone's choice where to cast the blame. You can say: "Oh, but as humanity, we should really find the actual truth, and so if Biden is old but totally capable of his job, then everyone should believe this." But pragmatically speaking, it would also be wise that if people wanna believe that Biden isn't capable of the job anymore, then we need to take this as a given and work around it, for example, by replacing him in office with someone more capable (which democrats ended up doing).

The same is true with the bacon thing. If you don't want people to make "false" claims about how their quality of life has deteriorated, maybe politicians need to actively work towards making people's lives better such that these types of claims become memetically unreasonable to make.