Last August, during the first presidential debate, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly confronted Donald Trump about his history of sexist comments. For the next nine months, Trump has waged war against Kelly, calling her a bimbo and suggesting she asked him a tough question because she was menstruating.
A truce was called tonight, just in time for Kelly to interview Trump for the launch of her new prime time interview show on Fox broadcast affiliates.
How did Trump start the interview? With a blatant lie.
It wasn’t a particularly big or consequential lie. It was a petty, puzzling, pointless lie. But it was indicative of how Trump operates.
In March, Trump retweeted an unflattering picture of Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz. It was a nasty tweet that seemed to serve no particular purpose.
"@Don_Vito_08: "A picture is worth a thousand words" @realDonaldTrump #LyingTed #NeverCruz @MELANIATRUMP pic.twitter.com/5bvVEwMVF8"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2016
Kelly started her interview by asking Trump if he had made any mistakes in the campaign. She noted that he had called the Heidi Cruz tweet a mistake.
Trump objected to Kelly’s description. “I said I could have done without it, to be exact.”
Kelly stuck to her guns, saying Trump called it “a mistake.”
Trump stuck to his gun saying that he “actually didn’t it say it that way.” He added that “you could say [Heidi Cruz is] fair game because she’s very much involved with the campaign.”
But Trump did call it “a mistake.” He did so in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
The moment isn’t likely to generate much attention, and there’s some justification for this. After all, this particular lie isn’t very important. But it also illustrates the difficulty of covering candidate Donald Trump. It’s not that he doesn’t tell the truth. It’s that he has total disregard for the truth.
Confronted with his own words by Megyn Kelly, he stuck to his guns. Kelly knew she was right and Trump was lying. She called him on it and he repeated his lie again. But eventually she had to move on.
So too will everyone else. Such is the nature of the 2016 presidential campaign.