President Donald Trump made a series of head-scratching claims during a wide-ranging interview with Fox Business that aired early Wednesday.
At one point, the 79-year-old president claimed GOP Sen. Thom Tillis was no longer a senator, when he remains in office until January.
At another point, he suggested Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died right after he entered office, not in the final year of his first term.
It was a rambling interview that left even Fox Business host and Trump friend Maria Bartiromo looking confused at his responses and scrambling to move on.
Trump’s comments about the North Carolina senator came as the pair were discussing Trump’s nominee to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell when his term as the head of the central bank ends next month.
Sen. Thom Tillis, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, has said he would block the confirmation of nominee Kevin Warsh as long as the Justice Department’s investigation into Powell is ongoing.
Bartiromo challenged Trump on whether Tillis will give him the vote to confirm Warsh, to which the president gave his bizarre response.
“He might not, but that’s why Thom Tillis is no longer a senator,” Trump said.
While Tillis announced last year he won’t seek reelection, he remains a senator until January 2027.
As Bartiromo tried to move on, Trump cut her off with more of his incorrect claim, “You know, Thom Tillis is no longer a senator, right? He quit.”
She corrected Trump that Tillis was “on his way out,” but Trump kept going.
“Oh no, he quit, but he quit,” Trump said forcefully.
The Daily Beast asked Tillis’ office for comment on Trump’s claim.
In that same exchange, the president also claimed that if Powell doesn’t step down at the end of his term, the president would fire him, an untested move that multiple experts have argued Trump doesn’t have the authority to do.
At another point in the interview, Trump made a claim about late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that also glossed over the actual timeline.
While Ginsburg has faced great criticism for not retiring during President Barack Obama’s time in office, thus allowing him to nominate her replacement, Trump suggested she died right after his election.
“She decided that she was going to live forever,” Trump claimed in his interview. “And about two minutes after the election, she went out, and I got to appoint somebody.”
Ginsburg did not pass away right after Trump won. When he was elected, a seat on the Supreme Court was still vacant because Senate Republicans refused to confirm Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, to the bench ahead of the election.
Ginsburg did not pass away until the final year of Trump’s first term, in September 2020, at which time, Republicans scrambled to confirm Trump’s pick Justice Amy Coney Barrett before Trump lost his bid for a second term less than two months later.
At another point in the interview, while discussing Artemis II, the president took credit for the program and falsely claimed, “NASA was closed. It was totally closed.”
