The art of interviewing Trump

Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey met for breakfast Tuesday in a hotel across the street from the White House to review a list they’ve been compiling and updating for months: questions for President Trump.

The Post learned the previous night the pair would only get 20 minutes to interview the president after several months of negotiations with the White House.

“We don’t get time to sit down with the president very often, and so when we do we want to make sure we’re maximizing that opportunity and that we’re asking important questions for our readers,” Rucker said.

Rucker and Dawsey settled on their big topics of focus: climate change, the economy and the brutal killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi – knowing some questions would be cut for time.

In the Oval Office, the president was charming and charismatic, Rucker said. “He’s always wanted to impress journalists. I think that’s his demeanor. … When he’s in front of the entire press corps at a press conference, he can be very combative. He knows he’s performing.”

In the interview, Trump falsely claimed the country’s air and water are “record clean,” blamed the Federal Reserve chairman for economic woes and took credit for falling oil prices.

Instead of correcting him in real time, Rucker said it was more productive to keep the conversation going and get to the important questions before time was up. After the interview, The Post fact-checked Trump’s statements and posted the full interview.

“We don’t think it’s our job as journalists to be accusatory or to get into an argument with him,” Rucker said. “We’re there to ask important questions, to hold him accountable to the public, and to get information from him — to get answers —to bring to the public new information.”