Former Republican President Donald Trump has once again become a target of internet mockery following his petulant performance during an interview with National Public Radio.
When NPR's veteran reporter Steve Inskeep asked Trump a simple question about his repeated baseless 2020 election fraud claims, that was it for Trump.
He abruptly hung up on Inskeep.
See the moment below.
According to a tweet Inskeep posted, his interview with Trump had been six years in the making.
But though they had 15 minutes scheduled, the interview immediately went sideways and abruptly ended after just seven minutes. As Inskeep wrote:
"For about six years I've been asking Donald Trump for an interview. It never happened until the former president came on the line today."
"Tomorrow on @MorningEdition we'll hear what he said, up to the moment that he hung up on me."
Unsurprisingly, it was Inskeep simply pointing out that even many Republicans don't believe Trump's claims about the 2020 election that seemed to set the former president off. Inskeep referenced Republican South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds' recent comments in which he told ABC's This Week that Trump's claims are not only false, but dangerous.
As Rounds put it:
"The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election... And if we... tell our people don't vote because there's cheating going on, then we're going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage."
Trump of course vehemently disagreed, telling Inskeep:
"No, I think it's an advantage, because otherwise they're going to do it again in '22 and '24, and Rounds is wrong on that. Totally wrong."
He also called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a "loser" for agreeing with Rounds.
Trump then launched into a lengthy, rambling diatribe full of absurd lies about the 2020 election. Inskeep followed up by asking if Trump is requiring candidates to sign onto these "Big Lie" theories in order to get his endorsement in this year's elections.
Trump responded with another meandering soliloquy, this time about conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, the current Republican primary front-runner in Arizona's gubernatorial race. After claiming Lake is leading because the American people want to get to the bottom of the supposed fraud in the 2020 election, Trump hung up on Inskeep.
On Twitter, Trump's childish handling of Inskeep's very simple questions definitely struck a chord, and the mockery came in hot.
Inskeep and Trump also briefly discussed the pandemic, in which Trump once again repeated his recent recommendations that people get vaccinated but gave a subtle tip of the hat to his legion of anti-vaxxer supporters, saying that vaccination should be an "individual choice."
