By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Savannah Guthrie doesn’t seem that scary to me.

The Today show anchor is smart. She does her homework and always comes to her interviews well-prepared. And she has the poise one acquires from spending many, many hours having people watch and critique her every move and gesture.

But it’s not like Guthrie arrives at her sit-downs armed with brass knuckles. Nor does she hold a gun to her subject’s head until the person squeals.

No, her only weapons are a set of questions and a willingness to listen.

The people who can answer her questions fare well. Those who can’t don’t.

That’s generally the way it works with all interviews.

President Donald Trump’s most rabid partisans have worked themselves into a state of high dudgeon because Guthrie supposedly was “mean” to their man during his NBC town hall meeting.

When I heard about their outrage, my first thought was one of bemusement.

Part of the reason the Trump crowd is supposed to love this president is that he is a tough guy’s tough guy – a swaggering street fighter who can take it as well as dish it out. If he’s actually the kind of guy who dissolves into a puddle just because someone asks him a few pointed questions – well, then, who’s the snowflake now?

But even that doesn’t quite capture how absurd the Trump chorus’s anger is.

I mean, it’s not as if Guthrie posed that many stumpers to the president. She didn’t ask him to establish the final value of pi or to sight-translate the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In fact, she didn’t ask him any questions that shouldn’t have been easy for him to answer. For any president, almost all her questions would have been softballs – slow pitches a Barack Obama or a George W. Bush would have hammered.

Trump whiffed.

Take the questions about his testing for COVID-19. Presidential health is a matter of national security, which is why commanders-in-chief have obligations to be honest about their medical troubles.

Not that Guthrie pushed that hard.

She wanted to know when he first tested for COVID-19 and when he last was tested. These shouldn’t be difficult for most people to answer.

Receiving news that one has contracted a disease that has killed 220,000 Americans and likely a million or more people around the globe tends to lodge itself in the brain. And, if Trump is being tested as often as he and the White House claim, then remembering the most recent time he had swabs shoved so far up his nostrils that they seem to touch the brain stem shouldn’t be difficult to recall.

But Trump said he didn’t know.

Either he was lying – always a likely possibility with this president, who seems to view the truth as the truly deadly virus – or he, not Joe Biden, is the one who has lost some steps mentally.

Then there were Guthrie’s questions about Trump’s finances.

She wouldn’t have had to waste time asking about the president’s books if he had done what every other president over the past 50 years has done – including those who were being audited – and put his business in a blind trust while releasing his tax returns.

But Trump chose not to.

Any other leader would have realized questions would be coming about his finances and been prepared to answer those questions – particularly after The New York Times had demonstrated, in convincing detail, that he owes massive sums to persons unknown.

Because, again, it’s a question of national security if the president owes money to the wrong people.

Other presidents have understood that.

But Donald Trump thinks he can bull or buffalo his way through anything, which is what he tried to do with Guthrie.

It didn’t work.

This brings us to the last big complaint about Guthrie’s “meanness” to the rough, tough president. She asked him about his tweets – about whether he understands that he is the leader of the free world and not someone’s “crazy uncle.”

This gets to the heart of the problems Trump has.

He doesn’t grasp that he must answer to the public, not the public to him. He’s our servant. We’re not his.

That’s why he fared so badly with Savannah Guthrie.

She did her job.

Donald Trump didn’t do his.

Because he doesn’t know-how.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.