This is the man Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison consults concerning the way forward in the current global pandemic

CNN Politics, 4 August 2020:

Washington (CNN) Jonathan Swan, a reporter for Axios, has revealed the magic words that expose President Donald Trump's lies for what they are. 

 Who? 
What? 
How? 
No. 

In an interview that aired Monday night on "Axios on HBO," Swan demolished some of Trump's most dishonest talking points with a powerful tactic that has rarely been used by the people Trump has allowed to interview him: 

Basic follow-up questions. 

Many of Trump's interviewers are right-wing sycophants who have no interest in challenging him. But Trump has defeated even his other interviewers by employing a strategy we can call the hit-and-run -- saying dishonest stuff, then darting ahead to other dishonest stuff before the interviewer reacts. 

Swan -- like Fox News' Chris Wallace, to a slightly lesser extent, in an interview that aired July 19 -- came armed with facts and prepared to use them, even if he had to interrupt Trump like Trump interrupts others. 

And Trump wasn't ready to respond. 

Take their exchange about coronavirus testing. Trump uttered a version of his now-familiar refrain about how testing is overrated -- attributing this nonsense to unnamed "those that say." Swan pressed for details. 

Trump: "You know, there are those that say you can test too much, you do know that." 
Swan: "Who says that?" 
Trump: "Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books." 
Swan: "Manuals? What manuals?" 
Trump: "Read the books. Read the books." 
Swan: "What books?" 

 Trump moved on without offering a direct answer. While Swan couldn't get the President to concede that he is making up these "manuals" and "books," he exposed him nonetheless. 

Swan had similar success when Trump returned to his laughably inaccurate claim that the virus is "under control," which he has now been making for more than six months. 

Trump: "Right now, I think it's under control. I'll tell you what --" 
Swan: "How? 1,000 Americans are dying a day." 
Trump: "They are dying. That's true. And you have -- it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it." 

Again, Trump didn't explicitly surrender. But Swan's basic follow-up -- a "how?" and a single key statistic -- forced Trump into a de facto surrender ("It's under control as much as you can control it") and another revealing remark, "It is what it is." 

Other false claims 

Trump made at least 17 additional false claims in the 35-minute interview. (We're still reviewing the transcript, so the final total might be higher.).....

Read the full article here.

The interview Trump participated in over the bodies of 4.7 million COVID-19 infected Americans and almost 157,000 dead:

Tony Abbott: from political rooster to feather duster in seventeen months?

Tony Abbott during his unsuccessful bid to rally backbenchers & voters behind him

National Press Council Address

2 February 2015 

The anglophile who only became an Australian citizen for personal financial advantage, the aggressive bully who thought his divine destiny was to rule the country, the intellectual lightweight who believes good policy is a quiverful of three-word slogans, the man whose sense of entitlement has him dipping his hand deep into the taxpayer's pocket, the right wing ideologue without a decent bone in his body, the sole author of his own misfortune  - has Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott  finally morphed into a political feather duster?

West Australian Liberal MP for Cowan, LukeSimpkin, signalling the party leadership spill scheduled for 10 February 2015:

@latikambourke, 6 February 2015

The Daily Telegraph, 6 February 2015:

An angry Mr Abbott yesterday called a press conference to stare down his backbench, before sending out cabinet ministers to back his leadership publicly.

Tony Abbott’s Press Statement, 6 February 2015:

As you know, two of my colleagues have called for a leadership spill of the two senior positions in our Party. They’ve called for a spill of my position as leader and they’ve called for a spill of Julie Bishop’s position as Deputy.
The first point to make is that they are perfectly entitled to call for this, but the next point to make is that they are asking the Party Room to vote out the people that the electorate voted in in September 2013.
I want to make this very simple point: we are not the Labor Party. We are not the Labor Party and we are not going to repeat the chaos and the instability of the Labor years.
So, I have spoken to Deputy Leader Julie Bishop and we will stand together in urging the Party Room to defeat this particular motion, and in so doing, and in defeating this motion to vote in favour of the stability and the team that the people voted for at the election.
We have a strong plan. It’s the strong plan that I enunciated at the Press Club this week and we are determined to get on with it – and we will.

Julie Bishop's position as deputy leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party will also fall vacant if the spill motion is successful.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February 2015:

On Friday evening, after a spill motion to oust the Prime Minister was moved, Channel Nine's political editor Laurie Oakes reported the Prime Minister's office "was so concerned about the optics of them appearing together looking like a unity ticket", it asked Ms Bishop to cancel her attendance at the fundraiser with Mr Turnbull but she refused.

UPDATE

Abbott blinks?