The application and non-application of the Gricean Cooperative Principle in the context of political discourse are examined in this study. In order to find examples of flouting and violating the principles of Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner, the study specifically examines a selection of interviews with former U.S. President Donald Trump with TIME (2020) and AXIOS on HBO. The data is analyzed using a qualitative and quantitative mixed-methods approach to ascertain how political personalities handle delicate questions and the ensuing perlocutionary consequences on the audience. The results show that the maxims of Quantity and Relevance are most commonly broken, frequently as a tactic to avoid responsibility, reroute the story, or give too much information to obscure the reality. The study comes to the conclusion that non-cooperation is a purposeful rhetorical device employed in political communication to control public opinion and steer clear of confronting difficult facts head-on.

Keywords: Gricean Maxims, Cooperative Principle, Flouting, Violating, Political Discourse, Political Speeches, Pragmatics, Conversational Implicature, Political Communication, Discourse Analysis, Rhetorical Strategies, Audience Perception.