The Guardian followed Trump’s Fox News interview with Chris Wallace.

The interview was recorded on Friday, however. Wallace said he did ask the president about the pandemic and efforts to tackle it. But they were speaking a day before the Washington Post and then the New York Times reported that as Congress and the Trump White House negotiate the next stimulus and relief package for an economy and a nation hammered by Covid-19, the White House is seeking to block funding for testing and tracing efforts, and other key areas of the pandemic response.

Meanwhile Trump is out playing golf again.

Trump is asked about his top infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci. Reports indicate the White House is looking to discredit Fauci. Trump denies he has fallen out with Fauci, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. “I spoke to him yesterday at length, I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci” he says. He also says Fauci, who has emerged as a frank public voice on the pandemic, is “a little bit of an alarmist.”

By which he means Fauci doesn’t tell cheer-up lies.

Trump adds that he believes Covid-19 will “eventually disappear”.

Ah yes, “eventually.” No doubt it will, like for instance when the sun explodes, but we don’t live in “eventually.”

Trump is asked about enforcing a nationwide mandate for masks to be worn in public. “No, I want people to have a certain freedom,” says Trump. He later says he believes masks can help stop the spread of Covid-19 though.

That’s not a kind of freedom that matters though. That’s a cheap, selfish, dime store freedom. Besides which, he doesn’t in fact want people to have a certain freedom. There are a lot of people he wants to see in prison forever; he says so himself.

He is asked about rising crime in US cities in recent weeks. “I explain it very simply by saying they’re Democrat-run cities. They’re liberally run. They’re stupidly run.”

That is “very simply,” and very crudely and very inaccurately.

How about those Confederate flags sir?

“When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the south,” says Trump. He then equates Black Lives Matters flags with Confederate flags, a staggering and offensive claim given that the latter represents a system that thrived on slavery.

It doesn’t “represent the south” – it represents the slave-owning south, the south that tried to secede in order to continue slavery, the south that reinstated racial oppression in the 1870s, the south that fought the civil rights movement every step of the way. It does not, for instance, represent the huge proportion of the southern population that is descended from slaves.

Then he talks a lot of nonsense about Biden.

Disturbingly, he then refuses to say he will accept the result of the election. “Can you give a direct answer you will accept the election?” asks Wallace. “I have to see … I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes,” says the president.

Oh brilliant. The law and order guy says yes he might well try to overthrow the government.