Television personality "Dr. Phil" McGraw was called out after releasing a bizarre interview with former President Donald Trump with awkward cuts that appeared to mask the former president's gaffes.
Trump has often been criticized for his freewheeling speaking style, which contains any number of rambling and disconnected thoughts, usually containing falsehoods and lies. In fact, a Calvin University historian who has done a comparative study of Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speaking styles once said that Trump's "speeches are full of non-sequiturs."
His speech pattern has also been a regular subject of discussion among those who question whether he was ever cognitively prepared to hold office—and Dr. Phil's move isn't exactly helping to counteract this narrative.
Democratic activist Harry Sisson brought the strange cuts to the attention of his followers on X, formerly Twitter, noting that the interview contains "many weird cuts and jumps, likely to remove his frequent gaffes. It’s happening in every interview Trump does now."
He added:
"Seems like his team knows he’s unwell."
You can watch the edit below.
And not long afterward, the campaign of President Joe Biden seized on them and stated the obvious:
"Dr. Phil’s interview of Trump appears to abruptly cut out Trump’s gaffes and confusion."
You can see the post below.
Dr. Phil was swiftly criticized and accused of attempting to cover up Trump's behavior.
Dr. Phil is indeed sympathetic to Trump, the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes, found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to illegally influence the 2016 election.
He and CNN's Abby Phillip had a heated on-air disagreement Thursday evening over Trump’s trial, culminating in Phillip expressing confusion over McGraw’s perspective. She said he is "clearly sympathetic to Trump" and asked him if he believes Trump should "drop this talk of revenge" against his political opponents.
Remarkably, Dr. Phil told Phillip that he felt he had "made some headway" with Trump and convinced him not to pursue retaliatory moves against his political opponents. I guess now that that's solved we can all sleep at night.
@BoLoudon/X