I don't follow you. Are you suggesting they negotiate a maximum number of words instead?
No, not a suggestion. Mostly a joke about how Trump, once he starts talking and left to his own devices, goes on and on and spins through multiple topics and has to be cut off even by Fox and Friends hosts.
If a loquacious subject of an interview takes five minutes to answer a question that a typical subject, following his lawyer's suggestion, would tersely answer in thirty seconds or less and the interview is scheduled for a certain time length, you can easily see that the number of questions asked and answered would be dramatically different and the interviewer would be short-changed. Knowing the predilections of this subject, it would not be in Mueller's interest to negotiate a limited time.
I don't know how these things work, whether the interviewer has ways to force the subject to get to the point and then shut up or not. Or, in this case, given how Trump tends to say things against interest when he rambles, it might be better for Mueller to get in fewer questions and give Trump a chance to implicate himself or others.
Just saying that the negotiation over the conditions of this interview has an unusual factor. One can't just, for example, judge fairness by how long either of the Clinton's sat for an interview because they wouldn't have rambled and the interviewer would have been able to get in more questions during the allotted time. |
