What makes Armando Iannucci’s political satire funny is the contrast between perception and reality. When does any interview reveal something about Trump we didn’t already know?
You are browsing in private mode. To enjoy all the benefits of our website LOG IN or Create an Account When The Thick Of It first premiered in 2005, it felt like something different. Going against the grain of slick political dramas like The West Wing and the UK’s House of Cards, it satirised British politics as being low-budget, dour, and out of control; incompetency abetting incompetency. Shot documentary-style, each episode lifted the veil on British politics, showing how haphazard the functions of government can be underneath the authority and pomp. That revelation forever changed how its audience saw the British government, making them believe that every public-facing performance is likely disguising a shitshow. Yesterday (3 August), a video interview was published by HBO of Donald Trump speaking to Axios journalist Jonathan Swan – a reporter considered in the US political world to be incredibly well-connected to the White House. In the 40-minute interview, Swan speaks to the president about the different stages of the coronavirus pandemic and the way Trump has handled it at each juncture. One particular moment clipped for social media came over, bluntly, like a car crash, in which Donald Trump appears to misunderstand basic charts about death rates and the US’s ranking in the world for deaths (first). .@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.” Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39 — Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020 As the UK woke up to the clip on Twitter this morning, The Thick Of It almost immediately began to trend. Jokes about missing this episode, or the interview being an American version of the show, appeared thousands of times, calling the interaction “cataclysmic” and “a bollocking”.
