Whenever President Trump ventures off Fox and gives an interview on another major network, something is instantly apparent: His information diet.

I would argue it is an unhealthy, even poisoned info diet -- and Daniel Dale's fact-checks would back me up.

Whether healthy or not, almost everything about the Trump era can be understood through his sources of info. It was obvious during his Thursday night town hall on NBC, when Savannah Guthrie repeatedly pointed out that he was misinformed. And he responded with vague assertions like "I read it someplace" and "I've heard many different stories" and "people are saying."

Here's the thing: When Trump calls his friends on Fox and other right-wing channels, his evasions and excuses slip right through. Facilitators like Maria Bartiromo and Mark Levin don't second-guess his stats and smears because they subsist on the same info-diet he does. When Trump gives a rare interview outside his pro-Trump media universe, his falsehoods and flimsy sources are instantly exposed.

Thursday night was Trump's first time taking tough questions from a TV interviewer since his coronavirus infection — and from a former litigator no less. It was one of the finest moments of Guthrie's career. During and after the town hall, she was widely praised in journalism circles for prodding Trump with followups and pushing back at his distortions. And Trump's campaign was quick to issue a statement attacking her, which tells you everything you need to know. More on Guthrie's questions below, but I want to zoom in on Trump's answers first...

From Tucker's lips to Trump's lies

Trump's mixed messages about masks are a direct result of his poisoned media diet. On Tuesday night "Tucker Carlson Tonight" sowed doubt about masks and said, in typical Tucker-speak, "someone has been lying to us, many people, actually." The show ran a banner that shouted "PEOPLE THAT WORE MASKS STILL GOT CORONAVIRUS" and distorted the meaning of a small study so that Carlson could ridicule government experts. "Almost everyone" in the study, "85%, who got the coronavirus in July, was wearing a mask, and they were infected anyway," Carlson said. "So clearly this doesn't work the way they tell us it works."

Carlson "misrepresented" the study, as PolitiFact explained here. But the host doubled down on Wednesday night, and Trump brought it up several times on Thursday, including at the town hall. "Just the other day," he said, "they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it." That's a gross distortion of Carlson's original distortion!

Guthrie interjected: "They didn't say that. I know that study. That's not--"

"Well, that's what I heard," Trump said, "and that's what I saw. And regardless..."

That's how it always goes with Trump: "What I heard" and "what I saw." He brought up the 85% figure again a little bit later, and Guthrie was ready: "I looked at that report, it's not about mask wearing, it was neutral on the question of masks."

Trump then tried to reach an agreement with her, in what looked to