Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jonathan 20240705

Networks sunday new sunday morning newsmaker show. She played a key role in cnns 2016 president ial primary debates, serving as a questionnaire in six of the networks seven primetime primary debates on both sides of the aisle. Also, as coproducer on the set of cnn Election Center for all Election Night specials and importantly, from our perspective, graduated cum loud with a bachelors degree in political communication from the George Washington university and also has an honorary doctorate from gw, which is interestingly not on your cnn bio. I couldnt help noticing you. Yes, we updated the other. One of the other things we do in the school of meaning Public Affairs is have a handful of fellows, distinguished leaders in journalism, politics and communication who join us. Join our faculty or staff and our students. One of those fellows is named by is the tucker fellowship, endowed by bruce tucker and cindy tucker, the parents of 2013 smp graduate jennifer tucker, the turk. Her fellows are leaders in communication and journalism who come guest lecturing classes, hold informal conversations with students, hold brown bag lunches and various occasionally write bestselling books and are interviewed on on our stage about those books. We happen to have one of those people with us this evening. Were very honored to be joined tonight by Jonathan Karl, chief, washington correspondent for abc news coanchor of this week. His broad experience covering u. S. Politics, foreign policy, the military hes reported on and reported from more than 30 countries. The reporter from the white house under four president s and 14 press secretaries, which is an impressive survival record. I have to say, when several of the most prestigious awards in journalism, including the Walter Cronkite award, the National Individual achievement and the National Press foundations Everett Mckinley dirksen award, the highest honor for congressional reporting. And hes the author of a bestselling new book, tired of winning donald trump and the end of the grand old party, which is getting a lot of press for a lot of good reasons and some pretty interesting and disturbing stories. So heres whats going to happen this evening. Im going to stop talking and invite dan and jonathan up to the stage to join us where they will talk for just about an hour. At some point, someones going to wave at me. I will come back up and say thank you all very much for joining us this evening and invite you to to join us in the lobby. Well be selling copies of jonathans new book and hell be happily signing them until his hand cramps or theyre all gone. Whichever comes first, is my understanding. Please help me. Welcome dana bash and Jonathan Karl. Right. Excellent. Its like a living room. I know. It is like living room. High, everybody. Okay, so heres a fun fact before we start. Back in the day when frank sesno was the cnn bureau chief in d. C. , Jonathan Karl was the cnn capitol hill correspondent. And i was the capitol hill producer. I was his producer. Yeah, the best producer i ever had. Okay. He says, i mean. We we had a lot of fun. Seriously, this is if i if im sorry to already started interrupting. No, but i have to say massively awesome to be here with you, because you and i Work Together through a very intense time in American History. And included an impeachment of a president. Could you imagine a. September 11 terrorist attacks and all the aftermath of the anthrax attacks on the us capitol . And seriously, i its great to be with you again. Its been a while and its really, really good. No, its true. Its true. And by the way, do you know that back then there i was thinking about this and we were kind of barely had cell phones. Yes. There was no there were no blackberries. There were no clearly no iphones. Yeah. Like, how do we beepers . We had beepers on on september 11 and we were communicating back and forth the beepers. And i had a really high tech advanced beeper id just been given where you could actually tap out like morse code. You could tap out little short messages. Yeah, but yeah, sorry. Anybody even born then youre probably not. Okay, so lets talk about this amazing book, tired of winning. Jon karl is a great not only is he a great reporter author, hes a great writer. And, you know, one of the things i remember and i always thought i need to do this and i literally havent done it once is hes to watch you. You had one of those stand up books. Do you still do this . Yeah. I love the black and white and new edition book. Yeah. And you would take notes on things, so you didnt forget it . Yeah. Yeah. Thats like, oh, thats such a good idea. And a few times in this book, you refer back to your notes. Yeah, i. Including on 911. Yeah. Yeah, i. And thank god i did that. I havent done enough of it. My advice for any of you, you know, aspiring to do any of this type of stuff is just keep a regular journal. And i have not done it regularly enough. But but those notebooks were the raw material for all three of of the books. Ive written. And, and i looked back at what i wrote on september 11th, because this book kind of concludes with a look back to being on the capital that night. And i hadnt gone back to read what i wrote, you know, in all those years. And, i mean, it was just because you cant, you know, you you think you may remember, but what youre what you were thinking through such a huge moment. And i so, yes, no, its great stuff. Okay. So lets talk about this this book, which has i mean, it tired of winning. It speaks for itself. The title. But you really go through some of the the moments that we heard about through the january six committee, some of the things that we didnt hear about. And then the moments that you were while the interviews that you did with the former president. Yeah. After that, in march of 2021 and beyond, the one thing i just want to start with is just to kind of since we are in the News Business is to start kind of towards the end of your book, because weve seen a lot in the last really 24, 48 hours. A lot of people writing about, what, a second trump term would look like. And you kind of end there in your book and you talk about the people who were left in his orbit. And we were just talking about this in the green room. And im not going in chronological order, but im just because i think this is really fascinating. One of the people who was one of the last man standing was a guy named johnny mcentee, who in. 2020 was 30 years old. Yeah, he just turned 20. I mean, just it just turned 30 when he took the job back as the President Trump Personnel Office director right before that he was the the bad carrier. I mean, he was really the guy that carried the president s bags. Yeah. Yeah, a little. He had a desk right outside the oval office. So you you go outside the oval office. Theres an area called the outer oval, and there are a bunch of different desks there. His desk was right up against the wall that separated the outer oval from from the oval office. So he could be called in by the president at any moment to grab something, take something you know, go with him. If he was going to be traveling. And then he left. And then he came back with a with a really big job, which is office of personnel. I know it doesnt sound very sexy or important, but it really is. I mean, its basically hiring and firing of every executive Branch Appointee from the director of the cia to the secretary of state down to, you know, any number of positions throughout the federal government. By the way, he didnt just leave. He was fired. Fired because of issues that came up with his fbi background check. So he was fired as the bagman and he came back as the head of the most important Human Resources department in the federal government. And so he and hes still in i mean, you know, he has a little has a business now, which we can talk about in a second. But hes still very much in trumps orbit. Yeah, hes part of project 2025. Hell be in there. Yes, therell be help. But hes very much in. Yes. Okay. So lets talk about him for a second, because i do want to start by looking ahead the there are two things. One is, i think one of the most important stories you tell here is at after the election. And as theyre getting ready to leave, he decides that its important to completely change the American Military posture globally. Yes. And takes it which he knows nothing about. And takes it upon himself with one other person inside the pentagon to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Tell the story. Well, first of all, when mcentee had been doing prior to the election was instituting an effort to ensure that everybody who worked for trump was thoroughly loyal. There were lots of concerns that to tell the taylor swift story. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, things like that that his team and he had a theres a team of like 30 people that work in the president ial Personnel Office. He basically got rid of everybody that was there before, brought in his friends. Most of these people in their twenties. And they set about trying to find this loyalists in the in the in the white house and in the agencies. And they discovered at one point that there was a young woman who worked in the office of ben carson. Remember dr. Penn garth, ben carson, who was the head of housing and urban development . Well, it turned out that this young woman had liked an Instagram Post of taylor swift, as maybe ever done, that. Yeah. Saying, okay, everybody. And theyd be on to you. But this wasnt just any Instagram Post. This was an Instagram Post that featured taylor swift holding a plate of cookies. And the cookies were emblazoned with the Bidenharris Campaign logo. So this was immediately brought to the attention of the chief of staff in the white house, who immediately reached out to the chief of staff at the department of housing and urban development to raise this very serious issue. And he did it on a postit note. Yes. And by the way, it was pointed out that she turns out she was actually a taylor swift fan. I guess they existed even back then. Oh, they definitely did. Now, the postit note was that was the was the military thing. Yeah. So. So, look, the. But but but seriously, what this was this was an effort to make sure that people were sufficiently loyal. And after the election, he did his first major move, which was to fire the entire top leadership, civilian leadership at the pentagon, on the top of which was the defense secretary, mark esper. If you remember, mark esper had refused to something a little more serious than an instagram like when trump wanted to invoke the insurrection act to send active duty u. S. Military troops into the streets of american cities, to put down unrest and riots. He wouldnt go along with it. And so mcentee had prepared a whole list. Mcadoo and his team, a whole list of the sins of this defense secretary, which included that refusal to use active duty u. S. Forces on the streets of american cities, but also included things like has vowed to keep the department of defense apolitical. This was how this was. So so these are all get fired replaced by people that mcentee and his team have chosen and their first order of business is what would have been the Biggest Movement of u. S. Military personnel around the world, probably since, you know, maybe, maybe the iraq war, maybe maybe in such a short period time, maybe even you have to go back further than that. And it was to take all u. S. Personnel immediately out of afghanistan, all u. S. Military personnel out of iraq and syria, and all u. S. Military personnel out of germany, where theres a long standing as a major natos presence in germany. And and mcentee basically sent this over. There was that order was that simple was also troops out of somali air and sent the order over with this new acting defense secretary that he had put in place. But it was pointed out that you needed to have an executive order to do such things. So he drafted the executive, he was in his team, 20 somethings, drafted the executive order by going on google to find out what executive orders look like. He was told by a colonel at the pentagon to look in the file cabinet, youll find an old executive order. You can you can go on a copy of that. And they got trump to sign it and it caused chaos at the pentagon because there were no there was no preparation for any of this. Youre moving tens of thousands of u. S. Personnel on a moments notice. It takes a little bit of preparation of what youre doing, not to mention what the implication is are. And i describe in detail its all based on sworn testimony, how this one order written by a 30 year old, you know, guy who had been on the job, you know, the Personnel Office for just a matter of months, never had any military experience at all. And eventually it ended up getting rescinded because it was it was going to cause chaos, by the way, at the very time when trump was doing things like meeting with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn about, you know, overturning the election and Michael Flynn is doing things like suggesting we should impose martial law in america to rerun the election. This is when thats all happening. So, yeah, quite a story. And so what is this . Tell us about. A second trump term from your from your reporting. I mean, you talk a little bit about it here, but what is your what is your sense of this . Because, i mean, one of the questions is how much trump has. Well, there are two things. One is the marc millers of the world, the mark esper of the world. I mean, the bill bars of the world. Theyre theyre not going to go anywhere near a second. Trump white house or a trump administration. So hes going to have the jonnie mac and cheese and people like that around him and he knows he understands more because hes been in the white house for four years. A little bit more about how it works. Look, i think that i firmly believe that we were on the precipice of a much greater disaster in the end of of of 2020. The beginning of 2021. And that trump had become so desperate to overturn that election, was willing to do anything, and he was stopped by good people that were around him, people who supported him, republicans, Trump Supporters within that administration, who are the kind of people that mcentee wanted to weed out. You mentioned a few of the names. There were others as the white house counsel, you know, pat cipollone, top lawyer in the white house, who felt it was his job to keep the president from breaking the law. Hes very high on the list of people. We dont want anybody like that again or people who wont. Does somebody like pat cipollone, who doesnt want to go anywhere near that point . Yes. There were there were people there was another guy named Chris Liddell that id written about in my previous book, betrayal, who had been like secretly, you know, secretly in terms not briefing the president about it, but running what i call the clandestine operation from the second floor of the west wing, where he was working with the incoming biden administration, because a president ial transition is complicated and, you know, it doesnt its not like one day you hand the keys over and there you are. So so you had people that were doing things to kind of stop or mitigate what the damage that trump was prepared to do. Those people are gone in a second trump term. So mcentee, isnt there with it, by the way, doesnt literally need to be mcentee, but its somebody to play that role. Hes already preparing to play that role. Hes working on this thing called project 2025, which is to set the terms for the personnel and the agenda of the next republic in president ial administration. But they arent going to be weeding out people that are insufficiently loyal. Theyre going to make sure that only people that are hired are those that are totally loyal to donald trump, as one of mcentee is lieutenants who i quote in the book said, you know, the funny thing is, loyalty is more important than policy. You can teach people policy, this guy said, but you cant teach loyalty. So the first criteria, if youre coming in for any job, whether its in the west wing of the white house or whether its in any of the cabinet agencies, is are you sufficiently loyal to donald trump . So that has tremendous implications for, what, a second trump term would look like. Yeah, huge implications. Okay. So lets talk about a few more of the scoops that you have in this book. Well, actually, you mentioned the transition. And i had heard ron klain tell this franklin was joe bidens first chief of staff. Tell the story of how he had like 5 minutes with mark meadows the day of the biden inauguration. I didnt know why until i read this. And its about a pardon for somebody related to a fox news host. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Tell that story. No, its its amazing. So by the by the time january 20th comes along, as you remember, trump left the white house at about and it was about 830 in the morning. So that he wouldnt, you know, he had already announced he wasnt going to the inauguration. I reported earlier that he was actually on the verge of being disinvited from the inauguration because Mitch Mcconnell was leading an effort to disinvite him, didnt want him there. But anyway, he decided on his own not to go. And he leaves and. Mark meadows, who had been communicating and a couple of phone calls with with clayton during this insane transition that we had all we were all witnessing from afar said, you know, come in in transition. You remember its 1201 is when the new president takes over. Come in at 10 00, well meet at the white house. Ill show you around, you know, and you can get a head start on the day. I mean, how generous is that . I mean, my god, this is amazing. So, so clean. Clean shows up at 10 00, you know, and they let him in because hes on the list. And he goes to the chief of staffs office. He knows this area because hes got about as much government experience. Even before he started working for biden as as anybody that you and i have ever known recovered and the door is locked and theres no mark meadows. So hes waiting around. Waiting around. He talks to some other people because hes you know, hes ron klain and he knows meadows doesnt show up until 1130 and and hes all harried and frazzled. The unlock unlocks the doors and comes in. Okay. So heres is the office, you know, where it is and and i but i dont really have time to meet because i got i got to they got something i got to do. And he was holding in his hand the part for jeanine pirro. Do you know her on fox news, her exhusband. That was the very last her exhusband. Exhusband. Yeah, it was very last. Very last pardon. Issued by trump. He actually did it while he was on air force one. But the paperwork had to be transmitted and taken over to the Justice Department to make the last guy left to do anything. It was the chief of staff. So we only had 5 minutes. But theres one little detail i let that which i love, which so ron said, well, thank you. You know, i mean, see you later. And theyre looking at hes looking around the office and the chief of staffs office is i think, is it the second Largest Office in the west wing . I believe i must i believe it is. Its its a its a very nice office. Its got a fireplace on one side. Its got a patio on the other side as rahm emanuel said, its beautiful. The patio is beautiful. Fireplace is great. And its hell in between. But but its you know, but its this place. And hes looking around. Its like, wheres the desk . There was no desk. There was a big. Couch. Theres a you say, im not a desk guy. Yeah. And i know he said im not that kind of chief of staff. And then he left and claims wandering. What kind of chief of staff doesnt have a desk . What does that mean when thats literally running around with his hair on fire . All didnt sit. And when you heard Cassidy Hutchinson testify for the january six committee, hes always on his couch, on his on his phone. So you kind of real. But yeah. Okay. So january 6th, the you talk to trump yeah after and he tells you that not only did he is it true that he wanted to go he wanted the motorcade to turn around and take him right then and there after his rally to the capitol . Yeah, but that when he was in the white, he was not responding to anybody for hours and hours and hours allowing that horrible riot to happen. Murders right to happen. He wanted the secret service to take him to the capitol during the insurrection. Yeah, so i have to confess, i didnt believe him at all. So i did. This was an interview. I did just a couple of months after he left the white house. And it was a very it was i wrote about it extensively in betrayal, because it was it was in this interview i did. He justified the chance of hanging mike pence because i asked him about, you know, god, this is terrible, this is awful. And he said, well, the people were angry. You know, its common sense, john. Its common sense. I mean, how do you pass on a fraudulent vote . So hes hes offering a justification for the people who want to murder his vice president. So thats basically what was the focus of that interview as far as i saw. He had also said in the interview, he told me, i asked him, did you really want to go up to the capitol . Because he said in his speech, and im going to come with you and he didnt go. And i dont know what you thought, dana, but i had covered trump a long time. I thought it was. Im sorry. Can i say that . Yes, i. I thought it was just he didnt, you know, he was just trying to say that to sound tough. Yeah. And he never intended to go up there. And amidst all that. So i kind of ignored it. And then i heard Cassidy Hutchinson testify in graphic detail about how trump was infuriated. The secret service wouldnt allow him to go up. So i went back to kind of look at it again. And he describes not only wanting to go up to the capitol, but he says, as as you mentioned, that during, you know, during the attack, he asked he wanted to go up. Then. And the secret service, he told me, wouldnt allow him to do it then either. They didnt think it was a good idea, i guess. I mean, i couldnt believe that. But but it was what he said next that blew me away. He said, and ill tell you this, if i had gone up there, i would have been very well received. So hes telling me that if he had gone up there during the attack, he would have been very well received. Its an admission that those were his people, that they would have responded to him. And it makes it all the more that those hours went by and he did nothing to call them off because hes acknowledging that they would have listened to him. Yep. So sometimes he can be incredibly candid and transparent when you ask him questions. When a person asks him questions, he usually actually just answers the question. I dont think people realize that. I mean. Kevin mccarthy okay. So now we have liz. Youre kevin. Now we have liz cheneys book out and in which she says that mccarthy told people that he had to go to mar a lago after this, later in january, after january 6th, because trump was depressed and he wasnt eating. Yeah. In your book, you say that he just happened to be in florida and whats the big deal . And that trump pulled one over on him by saying, lets take a picture and been putting it out there. Yeah. By the way, on the yes vote could be true on the eating thing. I also reported that every chapter in this book called dark days at mar a lago, which talks about when he when he showed up after leaving the white house and universally described as depressed and out of sorts. And, you know, just just a bizarre particularly the first, like couple of weeks. And one of the things i mentioned is like he get up in the middle of the dinner on the patio in mar a lago and just leave, which is highly unusual. So maybe he wasnt eating, maybe he wasnt eating. Maybe that was the issue. I dont know. But but Kevin Mccarthy, what i report is Kevin Mccarthy told people so he goes, whats lets just lets just remind ourselves of the scene. Its january 28. Its eight days after the end of the trump presidency. Trump is a disgraced former president and about to face an impeachment trial in the senate. Hes been banished from twitter. Fox news is basically pretending he doesnt exist at this point. Hes not youre not being interviewed anywhere. Hes not a presence anywhere. Hes down in mar a lago against dark days at mar a lago and the ray of strong sunlight that comes down is Kevin Mccarthy, who we all saw that picture youve seen at mar a lago. You know, posted standing next to you, next to trump. It set off a fury. A lot of republicans were outraged. Why do you give this guy a lifeline . Why didnt you do that . So mccarthy told people private lee, im giving you some vision. Yeah. Yeah, thats the visual. Exactly. So mccarthy told people privately that that that he was just down there doing a fundraiser there. And you know, they asked if he could go and, you know, have a quick meeting with them. And he went and he and that he was surprised when the photographer jumped out and took that shot. And at the end that it leaked that he was having the meeting even before it was over. Mccarthy insists he had nothing to do with that. It was the trump people wanting the word to get out immediately, and that photo was quickly sent around again by the trump people. Actually, if you look at the picture, dana, mccarthy does look a little bit like what the hells going on here . Hes like, we got to do a photo here. I mean, its like he yeah, he actually does. Yeah, yeah. But so its its its its consistent with what liz cheney is describing. Kevin mccarthy telling her at that moment, which is he went there because hes depressed. He did. You know, hes not even. But by the way, trump has put out a statement correcting liz cheney on this. Have you seen that yet that he actually. A lot. Yeah. The problem was he was eating too much. He said anyway and it wasnt depressed. I was angry, he said, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thats actually kind of believable, you know. Okay. Im jumping all over the place, but im just trying to. Im going through the things that i thought were so. Fascinating. I love the way that look how this book is marked up. I know im such a dork. You can take the girl out of gw, but you cant get the gw out of the girl. Okay, so reinstatement. Oh, yeah. Wow. This was this was an actual thing. Yeah. That people on the web or the web. I sound like im 100 people on the internet. World wide web. What member would ted stevens used to say . The tubes and the tubes. Yeah, that too. Okay. So that people sort of was out in the web and the dark web that he would be somehow reinstated in march of 2021. But it wasnt just that. It was something that he obviously enjoyed. And you say, im going to read this because i read the book here. Yeah, this is you to jump. You dont really think theres a way you would get reinstated before the election next election, do you . I asked. Im not going to explain it to you, jonathan, because you wouldnt either understand it or write it. This is another one of those things. I was like, what . So by the way, so you wrote it. Now explain how you understand it. So, so i want to say this may be to me, theres a lot of shocking things that i discovered in the process of of reporting for this book. This, to me, was the single most bonkers. So there was this crazy theory out there. We all saw it because it would it would kind of emerge. And in whacko land that did, trump was going to be reinstated as president. The first theory was that he would be reinstated on march 4th of 2021 because that was the true inauguration date, the true or not because you know, president s until which amendment you what whether they they they changed the date of the inauguration to shorten the transition period used to be on march 4th. Most president s in American History were inaugurated on march 4th. This was changed around fdr, right . Yeah. Okay, sure. Lets go with that. Okay. We have a professor out here that will make sure we get it. So this theory was a hybrid. So january 20th was just a joke. March 4th is the real date anyway. So there was kind of wacko stuff out there and then it went mainstream, went wacko when mike lindell you guys know him . The the mypillow guy started talking on Steve Bannons highly rated podcast, the war room, saying that trump was going to be reinstated on august 13th of 2021. I mean, when you have it that specific, you kind of have to believe it, right . I mean, hes got the beat. Hes not saying later this year, hes its august 13th and and lindell was he had a he had a this big symposium held out in sioux falls, south dakota. It was presenting all the terabytes of data and information and showing out the chinese and various other foreign actors that switched all the votes and the supreme court, while at the end of this conference, was going to realize they had to, you know, change the anyway crazy stuff. Right. So not nobody really paid any attention except that kind of joke about it. But what i found out is trump was obsessed with it and was talking incessantly to people around him about it and seemed to truly believe that biden was going to be evicted and he was going to be sent back into the white house. So that quote you just read is from july. So a little bit before august 13th, the july 20th was the actual date where i was calling trump to ask about a whole series of other things. I wasnt asking about that because thats bonkers, but he he started the conversation out so strangely, telling me that all this stuff is coming out and youre seeing and youre going to see and youre probably not going to write about it. But all this stuffs coming out about the election and all these states are going to be recertifying decertifying, you know, and hes talking like a little crazy. And i had remembered that a few days before this phone call, this was a phone interview that he had put out, a statement, a long, rambling statement that was primarily about snl. And he didnt like he didnt like alec baldwins portrayal and various. But anyway, it was a long statement, but he ended the statement with the words 20, 24 or before. Now again, trump is off twitter. Truth social hasnt been started yet and nobodys really paying much attention to him. So this didnt get but i you know, i had seen this and filed it away. So i, i just said by the way, you said 20, 24 or before, you dont really think you could get reinstated. And thats when he came out with this. You know, you just wouldnt understand it. But youre going to see this. Dont understand. You may not write about it, but what i found out is that this effort to reinstate the get reinstated, it continued past august 13 and into 2022. In the last year. And that at one point he reached out to a guy named mo brooks, you know, former congressman from alabama, a guy who wore body armor to to the sixth rally outside the white house and said, were going to fight. Were going to fight. I mean, he gave the most the single most incendiary speech, even more so than trumps on january six. He was the first one to object to the Election Results in congress. He is as protrump and as hardcore as any republican, but trump reached out to me hes running for the senate 2022. This was in february, march of 2022. And trump reached out to him and, asked him because trump had said nothing about this publicly besides that cryptic 2024 before thing. And he said, look, if you if you want to keep my endorsement, you need to go out and call for me to be reinstated, for biden to be ejected, and for a rerunning of the 2020 election. And mo brooks basically said to donald trump, he told me this on the record. Its all quoted on the record. Basically, youre nuts or any. He refused to do it. He said, i cant do that because its unconstitutional. Be against the law. Yep. And then he took his what was that when he took the endorsement away or was it because he actually said he actually said out loud, mo brooks said out loud that joe biden was president. It was it was it was it was a few days after that conversation, he took away the endorsement. What what mo brooks said was not so much that biden is president. I dont think he ever actually went that far. Thats an outrageous thing. He had he had he had said in a rally before all this which what prompted that to all these Trump Supporters at a trump rally, moveon. Moveon. You know, we we have to move on from 2020. We have to we have to win in 2022 for the midterms. And that prompted booing and hissing and, you know, fix it now. Fix it now. And now i realized what fix it now was all about. Yeah, fix it now means reinstate him. Get trump. Get trump back in the white house before an election, which is whats the one thing when like crazy he went on went but when this this is the former president now leading president ial contender truly had had had taken this on this quote was just amazing. Im not going to explain it to you, jonathan, because im not going to do it like alec baldwin, because you wouldnt either understand it or write it. Its just so great. Can you just talk about when he hung up on Kim Kardashian . Oh, yeah. Speaking of phone call. Yeah, this this this is really something, you know, Kim Kardashian besides being a, you know, reality tv star and extremely successful entrepreneur, maybe a true billionaire. I think thats her sister. Shes okay. I mean, its im out of the jenners is that right . So, you know, shes taken on this cause of criminal Justice Reform and has sought to get clemency for people were either excessively or wrongly convicted. And she on the case after trump had left the white house of julius jones, who was on death row in oklahoma and had been convicted, i think as a 17 year old. And some evidence had come out raising questions about the conviction. And he was on death row and the oklahoma pardon board had recommended clemency. But in oklahoma, the pardon board can recommend clemency. But only the governor can grant clemency. So it was a republican governor, Governor Stitt, and and and Kim Kardashian reached out to Governor Stitt on behalf, you know, to advocate for clemency. And he said, look, i mean, basically, this my understanding the conversation was this, look at office, real political blowback here. If you can get donald trump who youve gotten the past, youve got to pardon alice johnson. That was that was a Kim Kardashian thing. You know, if you can reach out to donald trump and if he publicly endorses this, it makes it a lot easier for me to have political cover. So she called trump at mar a lago and well, first just called and got to whoever. And then trump called her back very soon after and was a mediately before she could start explaining the case just started berating her and saying essentially you voted for joe biden and now you want me to help you and how dare you done it . And hung up on her and thats the last time that they spoke, because its about him, not about a person whos about to be killed on that to be. But but the interesting thing is that Kim Kardashians thought on this was oh, my god, how did he know who i voted for . Because she never said she voted for. And i was i dont i dont im not sure he really knew, but anyway. Yeah, its its about him, by the way. Thats the one specific story. Yeah. In this book, the one and only story that donald trump is disputed. Oh, really . He put out a statement on this. Oh, i missed that. Oh, it was a you guys. It was a quite a statement was a long statement. Okay. And what he said was, is did he actually disputed or he just a third rate reporter . Well, he actually what he said is i work on abc fake news and on his website he said so little talent. Yeah. No, no, no. Im sorry. Im messing it up. He works so hard but has so little talent. Some people have it and some people dont. So that was kind of, you know, its like you try at least to try, as you say to the kids, right . Yeah. Yeah. You didnt win the game, but youre trying. But was there any that never happened in there . No. No, it wasnt that. So what he said is that he would never have done anything for Kim Kardashian. That the only thing only for kanye west, the great one, was. So kanye west, as you may know, has praised adolf hitler and said a whole bunch of other, you know, blatantly semantic, antisemitic things, but Kim Kardashian, it was rumored, had voted for joe biden. So kanye would do something for but he would never do something for while were on the air, while were on the sort of endorsements im going to help you. Im not going to help you. The two stories that you tell about Dave Mccormick. Yeah, republican who was running in the primary for the senate in pennsylvania, who had a lot of former trump people around him. Yeah, including his wife. Yeah dina powell, the Deputy National security adviser. Trump, tell that story. Yeah. So its a Dave Mccormick who is army veteran government experience, a successful business guy. I had kind of the perfect resume, you know, to run for senate as a republican candidate in pennsylvania and it was going to a crowded primary. But he you know, he seemed to be in a very good position to win this primary. And he went to meet trump a couple of times, as i understand it, not because he wanted to endorsement, although he certainly would have welcomed it, but he wanted to be sure that trump wouldnt endorse one of the other candidates. And by the way, hope hicks was working on this campaign who had worked for trump for all four years. He didnt want obviously to want trump to do it. Dr. Oz. He didnt want trump in a dr. Oz or you know, he wanted to be sure, either be neutral or endorse me. So in a couple of meetings, the second meeting, they go up into Trumps Office at mar a lago, which has a by the way, it has a basically a replica of the resolute desk, and its got a mount of a little Mount Rushmore and that and behind there was given to him by kristi noem and believing on his five heads this Mount Rushmore. Thats shocking. Yeah. Who and who is the and and trump is before mccormick can kind of make his case for why hes running and what hes trying to do. I he he breaks out a video of of an art of an interview that mccormick had done on Bloomberg Television on like right after january sixth. Its like this obscure, you know, i mean, i dont even know how he got ahold of the tape is obviously probably somebody from dr. Oz, you know, who helped to make sure he at it. And in this interview, mccormick is basically suggesting that trump could have done more to stop the violence. I mean, its not not an outrageous thing to say. Its just a verifiable fact. And and and bemoaned the fact that the country was so divided. So how could. You say such terrible things about me . And then he tells him that you need to come out and say the election was stolen, which mccormick had not done. The 2020 election and mccormicks like i you know, i really cant do that. And again, the same thing a couple of days later, trump endorses us and oz wins that primary, very close primary, and loses, by the way, another one of the trump endorses who loses. Now, interestingly, oz never actually endorsed the idea of the election being stolen. Sure. Yeah. I thought he had gone in, not in a fully in trumpian way. Oh, okay. But it didnt really matter, because if youre a celebrity. Thats true. Thats a whole doctor, you get a little bit of a pass. Yeah. Okay, this is another. And he had never said anything bad about trump. So im going to read this part because this is another senate race in the 2022 midterms. And this is Herschel Walker. Mm. You guys remember Herschel Walker . He was really good football player. He was not as good of a politician and he was a great football player. He was a really good football player. So hes hes struggling and hes running against Raphael Warnock and trump calls him and says to Herschel Walker about Raphael Warnock, quote, just call him a child molester, trump said, suggesting walker make an entirely unfounded allegation against his opponent didnt work. But i got no evidence of that. Walker said. Just do it. You can say there was sexual abuse on his watch. Just call him a child molester. So the critical thing is when this happened, it was they only had one debate and that and that in that race. And it was right before the debate. They were having a debate prep session and its walkers cell phone that goes off. He puts it on speakerphone. So the entire walker team hears this conversation, which is, you know, why i was able to get confirmation of exactly happened in this call and whats whats amazing is that walker, who was willing to say a lot of terrible things about Raphael Warnock, actually like says, whoa, dude. Yeah. I mean, im not going to go that far. Exactly. You know, but its like, you know, whatever you have to do, just say what you have to say. He said, just say it, just do it. Just say matter. Doesnt matter. Total recall. Yeah. Well, speaking of cohn, and i guess this is sort of looking ahead a little bit as we as we get close to the end of our time, you do start by talking about the first indictment. I think it was the first indictment. One of them. I cant really keep track anymore. Theres been theres been 91 counts. Yes. So lets see which one it was for. But but that, you know, because cohn you guys all know who roy cohn was. He was his who was a longtime lawyer. He was Donald Trumps lawyer. He was the lawyer for the for mccarthy during the mccarthy hearings, not Kevin Mccarthy, no. Yeah. The original mccarthy and and his whole m. O. Was you never apologize. You never back down. He taught trump all of that. But one of the things that he said was, you got to stay out of the Legal Process because you cant control it once youre indicted you cant you lose control of control. And you say that the indictment, at least the first one, i dont know, maybe all of them was the manhattan of the manhattan d. A. Yeah. Which almost weve forgotten about right now, because theres so many other so quaint that when i that it really did rattle him. Yeah, it really did. And you could see it. And i describe in detail i went youll see it in this book. I spent a lot of time trying to get behind the scenes with trump when he was at the critical moments during during the these these criminal cases. And his lawyers. And one of the scenes which i was able to get a pretty blow by blow account of was his very first trip to a courthouse to be arraigned, arrested and that was that was the manhattan d. A. Case. He stayed overnight in trump tower. He comes down to Center Street to the to the courthouse in new york. And its he rode in the car alone, which is kind of interesting. And then he which is which something he replicated to these other ones. Trump is a creature of habit, but he rode in the car alone because his lawyers had been having a bit of a fight amongst themselves over who would go with him. And they couldnt all fit in one car. I could use bill barrs clown car, but i wont do that. Yeah. So. And. And he gets there and trump is full of bombast and bravado. Before this and after it. But during his time in the courthouse hes very somber and he gets into the courtroom and he he says, like, i think i counted number of words. Its like nine or ten words in response questions from the judge. So this is a judge that he would he would go on to call kinds of terrible things to insult his wife, insult the prosecutor, mean all the stuff youve heard him say, but while hes there, hes hes freaked out because hes in a courtroom. He is not free to leave. Hes the president , foreign press, the united states, hes not in cuffs, but he is not allowed to leave. I mean, he is technically under arrest through the arraignment when they set up the terms of his release. He has to sit there and wait for the judge to arrive. Trump never waits for anything. I mean, i tell you, you know, i mean, just it just and and any room he walks into, hes in charge. Hes not in charge here. He has to wait. And when the trump finally shows up after several minutes and he was a little late, he you know, trump has all rise. They have to rise for the you know, for for the judge. And and i i think it truly freaked amount and id give some more of the behind the scenes they have to go by they actually see the Holding Cells on the way and when he gets he flies tomorrow ago after for this arraignment and then he gives a speech and then its all back to the, you know, attack, attack, attack. But hes definitely off now. I think hes gotten a little used to this now. Yeah, well, now its like cheating. And now hes a regular part of the courtroom. But but definitely that that that that first appearance, i think clearly and people very close to him believe it really rattled him. Well, i dont know about you, but im exhausted from winning. Its such a great title. This is a really good book. We went through several of the scoops, but theres a lot more in here, so i encourage everybody to read it. You dont have to do what i did and get little postits and rip them up and put them in. But you can, if you want. Its really, really good. Thank you. Thank you for being such an amazing journalist and writer and friend and thanks for inviting me to do so. And thank you. And im so proud of of all that you have accomplished since we were running around together as, you know, breaking crack on capital. I mean, we and and i think that the book is the its the most important work that ive done, aside from some of the stuff we did on a day to day basis in around september 11th. But it its more than a collection of the scoops and news breaks and the most heartfelt thing and the most difficult thing ever written is the conclusion which hearkens back to our time together, which is why i was so eager to be here with you. But around that time around. September 11th and dana bash, who you guys are so lucky to have as part this institution. You have such an appreciate passion for what that Capital Building means, what it symbolizes, what it is. In actuality. And we were there when it was felt like it was truly under attack, but under attack by foreign terrorist forces, as you describe being on the east side of the capitol, on the steps on september 11th, when they briefly brought us back in for a statement of the Congress Kind of getting together, the building was closed and and the members of congress gathered on the steps and the leadership made a few statements vowing that we were going to reopen and we werent going to let terrorists, you know, intimidate us. And then before they left, they spontaneously started to sing god bless america. Its funny because i mean, that is something that i will never forget. We were there together and after the sixth, i, i played that several times on the air because i wanted to people to see the difference. And when people get together, when something really horrible happens and when they dont. Yeah. And those were some tough times because that was not far after the 2020 election, which really divided this country in a very profound way. And i went back just like you, to look at it again. And one thing you notice is a guy like in the third row singing away and its mike pence and he had just been elected to congress and and then to think that you know 20 years later that building would become under under attack by, you know, americans and that that guy, mike pence, would have to, you know, basically run for his life and be holed up in the basement of that of that building. So i you know, and you and i both were up there when earlier in the day, when we all believed that that plane that ultimately down in shanksville, pennsylvania, was headed to the dome with the capitol and i remember i describe another scene being with todd beamer widow. Todd beamer was aboard that that flight. And, you know, it was hard to say, lets roll. When they when they went to ask you into the cockpit to bring that plane down to wouldnt it wouldnt they saved the capitol . Yeah, they saved the capitol. They may have saved your life and they may have saved my life. Yeah. So i took it personally when that building was under attack. And i frankly, i take it personally, i when i see people today deny what happened less than three years ago that we all saw on their very many, many video. Yeah. Video with their own eyes and on television. So anyway, thank you. And its great to be here with you again. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody every im on about books. We delve into the latest news about the Publishing Industry with interest in insider interviews with