Savannah Guthrie used her skills a former litigator to interrogate Trump. She did a great job.

The Today show co-anchor tapped to moderate the president’s town hall on NBC Thursday faced an uphill climb going in — a lot of observers were upset the event was happening at all. After all, it was the president who pulled out of the originally scheduled debate in the first place.

Ms. Guthrie reminded viewers of the context at the outset of the night — the president got Covid-19, the debate was changed to virtual, and then he withdrew — and then got to questioning. And she was relentless. No line of inquiry came without multiple follow-ups, no unfounded assertion was made without a pushback.

Ms. Guthrie asked Mr. Trump simple questions that one might pose around the dinner table. For instance, she pressed him to explain why he would amplify a conspiracy theory that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had orchestrated to have SEAL Team 6 killed to cover up the supposedly fake death of Osama bin Laden.

“Why would you send a lie like that to your followers?” Ms. Guthrie asked him of the theory he had retweeted.

“That was a retweet,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ll put it out there.”

“I don’t get that,” she said. “You’re the president. You’re not like someone’s crazy uncle who can retweet whatever."

[vox]

[msnbc]

[cnn]