Transcripts For CSPAN2 Maggie Haberman Confidence Man 20221024

Welcome janitors ni im the director of the library, which is across the street, and thank you to our friends at first con for letting us have this event here. Were very grateful for both of you for being here. And congratulations as debut as a number one, the bestseller lists. When you share that with the fabulous. So open book open mine. Were really glad to have everyone here. Were really happy for the people who were able to bring the libraries into their home so we could do both ways. And first, id like to start by having my colleague jared here talk about the foundation of the Montclair Public Library foundation. Thank you, janet. So were so happy youre here for another exciting session of open book, open mind. Im personally excited as ive been following maggies work over the past few years on the daily podcast in print and on tv. Its an honor to have her here with us in montclair. Id like to welcome everyone on behalf of the Montclair Public Library foundation or a group of your friends and neighbors. And our mission is to raise money to fund the offerings that make our library so special, like open book, open mind. The Foundation Also funds staff development, access to digital resources and other needs that arent covered by city funding. Your donation support initiatives like laptop lending wi fi hotspots for montclair residents without internet access, Lifelong Learning classes, homework, tutoring and resume help. Childrens literacy programs, and Significant Growth in ebook and audiobook collections during the pandemic. In the last five years alone, the foundation has made distributions to the library totaling more than 700,000 to support these initiatives. But we need your help to continue this type of support. So after you enjoy this event, which i know you will, please consider making a donation through our website, montclair, plf dawg gifts of all sizes have an impact. Thank you very much and please enjoy the program. Thank you, jared. And thanks to all of you for supporting writers and readers in bookstores and libraries and Public Libraries in particular, and especially the Montclair Public Library. I just want to do a little housekeeping. Were going to do the questions will be through the index cards that you picked up on the way in. So if you have a question, please write it down and well collect it before the conversation starts. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce dave jones. He is. Do you prefer david . Do you prefer david . I just called you dave. Its either one. He is the cofounder of open book, open mind. And then he had this other little job at the New York Times as the assistant managing editor, fine. And he is now cochair of the Advisory Committee of open book open mind. So we appreciate his dedication, his generosity. I personally really appreciate his humor, too. So, dave, will you please come up. Thanks. Thank you, janet. I guess i have to tell a joke now. I cant tell you how delighted we are to have maggie here. Its quite an honor, and im sure you all recognize it, or you wouldnt be here this evening. Maggie is a new yorker who lives in brooklyn and is the White House Correspondent for the New York Times. You figure that one out and she she became a journalist in 1999 just after getting out of sarah lawrence. She worked for the New York Post for a while. Then she worked for the daily news for a while. Then she went back to the New York Post for a while, all of during time, during which she got acquainted with mr. Trump and then in about 2010, i guess it was, she went to work for politico. And in 2015, just before the election and 2016, the times stole her. And shes been a correspondent for the times since 2015. She was here in 2016. So this is a return visit, and we appreciate that very much. Her book, confident confidence is confidence man, and joe klein said in a recent review of her book that it is notable for the quality of its observations about trumps character. Axios said that her book is the one that trump fears the most, and he has already attacked her for the book. And i, joe klein, also said that she was fabulously formidable, an exemplar of her craft. And i will say that i think shes one of the outstanding journalists of her generation. So were delighted to have maggie here. This this is maggie. Were also were also delighted to have returning jon alter, whos in montclair, as a longtime montclair resident who has been here, both as a guest, as an author, and also as a moderator before. And hes going to moderate and have a conversation with maggie and handle the questions. Jon, i worked for 28 years with newsweek, 20 years as a columnist, and he is a bestselling New York Times author and Emmy Award Winning documentary film director. The cohost of alter family politics on sirius xm and the creator of the old goats substack newsletter. His most recent book is his very best. Jimmy carter a life, published in 2020. So, i dont know. Im glad jon could fit his head in all this all this work he does. And were delighted to have him with us again. Jon. Thank you. Welcome to mount claire. Maggie thank you. And were doing this. Were really happy to have you. And i want to is this is the audio . Okay. Im hearing a little bit of echo. Okay. Thats better. So i want to theres so much to cover. I want to focus mostly on the pre presidency because thats less well understood. And your book covers it all. But you are the, you know, the greatest authority on his prepresident ial life, i think, by far. But before i jump into you know, new york politics and business, just in terms of todays news, so the january 6th committee issued a subpoena. Is there any chance that he will appear . Theres a chance and thank you all very much for being here. There is a date for hosting. There is a chance that he will say, yes, i will appear. If you let me testify live and no constraints, no conditions. And i think that the chances that the committee would agree to that are are fairly slim because i think they would fear it would turn into a circus. In reality, it would it would probably be one of the smarter things they could do would be to just let him appear under under penalty of perjury in public. So i wouldnt say its completely out of the question, but its at the moment it seems a a ways away. Wont they look bad if they say, you know, we issued the subpoena. You answered the subpoena, and now we dont want to do it because its not going to be live. It wouldnt be the first time theyve done that. So i dont think that would be a huge concern of theirs. And i think that they would point to the fact that he has a rather wellworn history of turning big events like this into something of a spectacle. You remember that debate with biden where biden finally said, why dont you just shut up . And, yes, i do. And he interrupted chris wallace. I think literally a hundred times. It was a lot of the debate. Yeah, it was a lot. All right. There was Something Else that happened recently that really intrigued me. And im just interested whether. You shared this. So you write in the book about how he often says things in public, and thats a form of protection for him. Like if he had privately sought the help of russia on hillarys emails, it would have been a huge scandal. But by saying in public russia, are you listening . And he also projects onto other people things that hes done himself. So i believe it was last week in a speech he went back to his kind of o. J. Simpson defense. They planted the evidence at mar a lago and hes never argued this in court, which tells you in a way its not true. But he he public plea was saying that the fbi had planted evidence on him. But what interested me was the evidence that he used as an example, which was he said like they could plant a book on how do you make a nuclear bomb. It was very specific. It was very specific. And what did you take from that exactly what you did . I mean, there was. When you talk to people in in in trumps orbit, when they deny things because they tend to mirror not not all of them, but but a bunch of people in his world start to mirror his behaviors and i write about this in the book, but, you know, when you ask a question about whats what happened, youll often get that or a piece of information. Youll get back. Thats not true. Who told you that . Well, if its not true, what does it matter who told me . And so theres a theres a degree of, you know, its not true that they found anything like this for instance, its already been reported by the Washington Post that there were there was material related to another countrys Nuclear Capabilities that was found at mar a lago. I dont i dont know if there was only one such document. Right. Were talking about 300 individual classified documents. So it was doing the thing that he often does, which is Say Something in public that at least on the surface appears like it could be some kind of omission. I didnt think that that was necessarily a calculated way of, you know, ripping off the bandaid and doing it publicly. But it it may very well happen. And it may be that its about something more than just another countrys nuclear. Correct capability. And, you know, these these Nuclear Secrets are worth a lot on the market. If you were to use an intermediate grade to try to sell them, they are i i think the you know, there are a couple of buckets in which you could put the the big thing we dont know about why he had these documents is the why. And there have been a lot of theories that have been tested. You know, knowing him, there are a couple of possibilities. One is what you just described, which is monetizing that requires a level of. Competence and and people around him who could execute that that is a little harder to see at the moment. Its not impossible. And, you know, there are all kinds of people coming in and out of mar a lago. So who knows . One is that he loves trophies. And, you know, if anyone who has ever been to trump tower and goes to his office, gets the tour of his stuff, which includes a giant sneaker that was Shaquille Oneals and, you know, and heres some framed picture of scott walker and me that scott walker sent me and on and on and on. You know, and in the white house, he loved having trophies. The kim jong un letters were trophies. But ultimately, with him, so much of what he does and seeks is about leverage. And having leverage over someone else or Something Else. Other people, other, other, other entities. And i cant discount that either. And i and i dont know what that leverage necessarily is, but everything is about what have i got that you want and what can i use in some way. So he described you as his psychiatrist. What do you think he meant by that . And and how would you characterize, you know, your relationship . I dont think he meant much. I what he he had this line at the toward the end of one of our interviews, the last interview in september 2021. And and he said, i love being with her. Shes like my psychiatrist when he was sort of, you know, mental eating about something. And what i write is that it was a meaningless line, you know, certainly intended to flatter kind of thing. He has said about he has said that about other interviews. He has said it about his twitter feed. The reality is he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrists because he is working everything out in real time all the time. And in terms of relationship, i think thats the wrong word. Hes a subject who i cover and i covered Hillary Clinton and i covered Mike Bloomberg and i covered rudy giuliani. And at more of a remove, i covered three president s. You know, its just different with him because he interacts with News Coverage so differently and he has such a specific fixation on the New York Times. And im just the person who covers it most often for the times. Ben smith made an interesting point that he he argued that he needs you more than you need him. And i think one thing were talking about this in the green room that i think people who are not journalists dont understand is that getting the access to the principal, you know, whether its the president or someone, is not all its cracked up to be. Youre right. You dont really need their quotes when you do find something newsworthy. Contrary to some on on the internet, you put it in the New York Times in real time when he breaks news, which isnt that often. No. And the the. You know, the i think the misunderstanding of the reporter subject relationship is something that id like you to straighten out a little bit for people. Sure. And i and i appreciate that. And i do understand that the people dont understand it or have misconceptions of it. What you what you said about twitter. You know, i think one of the worst parts about twitter is that a lot of people get not only their news from twitter, these days, but they get their understanding of journalism from twitter and there are a lot of misconceptions about about the profession and about the way journalism works, particularly with donald trump. Its true with any you know, this you have interviewed more people than i ever will, but there are, you know, theres always depending on who youre interviewing, there is always going to be a spectrum of what youre likely to get out of it. With donald trump, you youre guaranteed that its its not going to be truthful throughout much of it. It is not necessarily going to be coherent throughout much of it because he talks like this. And so they, you know, going in and interviewing someone is not and making sure that theyre, you know, talking to you. I will cover him. Whether hes talking to me or not, i dont need his permission to cover him. And hes never actually understood that he he just fundamental he doesnt understand what journalists do, which is puts him in a in that same category. The way that i approached these interviews was they offered me the first one and i literally thought and they offered everybody basically who was doing a book, a first, an interview, almost everybody, because thats just how he is. And he kind of cant help himself, including michael wolff, who wrote the, you know, the sort of most initial book portrait of the trump white house. And when they when they offered it to me, at first i thought, im really not going to get this is im not going to get anything out of this. And then when i went down there, he was actually he said much more because i was talking to him about new york and the post than i had expected him to. So then i sought two subsequent interviews, one of which yielded, you know, not a ton. And then the second the third one yielded a little more. But it is, as you say, you know, youre talking to somebody who often who often doesnt tell the truth. And then you know, a print interview is different than a television interview. You know, youre trying to ask questions and get information. And its not a moment for television. So i thought it was great that in the middle of the book, you have, you know, his responses to some of your Fact Checking questions and some of the you know, the questions that you raise about parts of his past. But my problem with it is that he lies every time he opens his mouth. You know, he lies easily as he breathes. So what does any of that actually worth . Journalistic whats the value . I mean, i think this is the question that we struggle with daily, right. I mean, hes hes now a former president. Hes not donald trump, the developer. I think the time for people and ive thought about this a lot in the process of writing this book, theres been a lot of criticism of 2016 campaign coverage. And i think some of it is valid. I think some of it is less. So i dont think that the overall portrait of donald trump in 2016 was flattering from the coverage. I think in the aggregate it was i think voters had a pretty clear sense of who this guy was. I think there could have been more on his business ties. I personally think that was a big underexplored area, given that we just never had a president with these kinds of entanglements, particularly foreign entanglements, where i think there is a significant criticism of the media in terms of giving weight to his words is the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, when he is doing all of this mythmaking about himself and building this artifice brick by brick of himself as this massively successful tycoon, you know, commensurate with with, you know, jack welch and all of these other people who trump tried to pretend he was at the same level as. And often, you know, despite the fact that people knew that he didnt tell the truth, a lot of the time, his statements just went unchecked in some cases for years. And that, i think, is a problem now, hes a former president and hes got enormous sway in the Republican Party. Still. And at least when it comes to a book about his life, hes still the only person who can answer some of these questions. So i feel the need to go to him. The you know, my overall take on i and im wondering whether this is yours as well, is that just when you think hes touched bottom, he crashes through the floor. So so do you see because you have this youve been covering him for more than 20 years. Do you do you see the same progression in that . You know, you think that things have gotten as bad as they are and then you find out Something Else thats even worse. Ive never just ive never seen somebody whos desire to test the limits of transgressive behavior is so intense, as with him and so every time you i think think you put it very well, every time you think that there is hes hit a limit, you know, there is there is no limit. And i think the january six, 2021 really showed that coupled with you know, a few months later, he starts fomenting this idea that his supporter, mike lindell, was spreading, that he was going to get reinstated to the white house. So, i mean, but thats as you know, its its silly because theres no such mechanism, but there are supporters of his out there who dont realize that. And so it is something that is very dangerous to be engaging in and encouraging conservative writers to to spread, which is what he was doing in 2021. And when i reported this in real time that he was saying this, i got a lot of blowback from people who said we should ignore him. I dont think you can ignore that at this point. I think weve seen the impact of that kind of language from him on his when we should have ignored him. To your point is, is when he was on the way up and im as guilty of this as any new york journalist, i would go over to trump tower and interview him because he was always available. He was and he knew that we were you know, we needed copy, copy for yourselves, for tv. And he would feed the tv crew. Yep. I remember i went over there with an nbc crew at one point he had food for them. They loved it. You know, so he understood he might not understand journalism, but he when he ran for president , he was the most experienced. No question, candidate in the thing that counts the most, which is the media. And being on television, there is absolutely no question that his dexterity with being on tv was a huge value for him, and it gave him an enormous edge over everybody else. And he as much as he, you know, hates parts of the media, he he loves it and needs it. And that was just a contrast to every other person with the possible exact exception of mike huckabee, who he was running against at various points in that cycle. There was just nobody else who enjoyed it the way he did and who doesnt. I would put it slightly differently to jonathan. He doesnt experience News Coverage the way anyone else ive ever covered does, you know, stories that would humiliate other people or theyd be embarrassed to have out there. He revels in, you know, that famous New York Post front page that was allegedly said by marla maples and wasnt actually the best sex i ever had in in 1990, he loved it. He you know, he he was delighted by it. Most people would be cringing at that. One of the great things you do is over and over again, you give the back story of that. So, you know, you figure out that the the editor at the New York Post who basically concocts that whole thing out of nothing, that without unpacking all of the too many of those stories, im interested in his kind of mentors, the people that he modeled his behavior on. We know his reverence for his father, who was arrested in a ku klux klan demonstration in in 1925, gives you some idea of what fred trump was like. But lets talk about some of the others. Roy cohn, what did he learn from roy cohn . So roy cohn becomes trumps lawyer in 1973, when trump and his father and their business are being sued by the Justice Department for racially discriminatory housing practices. And cohn tells trump, fight like hell and trump learns a couple of things. One is that you can use the court system interchangeably with public relations. You can shout as loud as possible and try to keep whoever is challenging you at bay for a while. That way, you can threaten and intimidate and menace, even if you settle, you wont say youre settling. And most specifically, what he learned is that the role of a lawyer could be turned into something almost like a mafia don, like just something completely different than than what lawyers are supposed to do. A longtime trump friend has said to me on several occasions. Trump likes lawyers who are willing to do anything. Well, did he turned himself into a mafia don . I mean, he gave six apartments in trump tower to the mistress of a big mobster, and he flew john gottis top lieutenant on his helicopter to Atlantic City and then later claimed he didnt know the guy. So and he never keeps records like a mob boss, right . No email, no, no. No reference, no notes, no record. I mean, look, i think that its theres a theres a wannabe quality about it with trump. But there are there are certainly. And rogue one among royce roy cohns clients were mobsters. And then you know, the mafia was deep into the concrete industry in new york city, which was the material that trump chose to build trump tower with. And then he had interactions with with mafia linked folks when he was doing his casino projects, you know, at minimum, trump has no problem with it at at most i would say he hes he gravitates toward that. And he certainly adopts those kinds of behaviors in giving. And Michael Cohen talks about this all the time. You know that trump sort of speaks in a code and gives gives you a sense of what he wants you to do without openly saying it. So we know that he adopted this character, john barron, then he named his son barron. You know, wed pretend to be this other guy on the phone, but i learned from your book i had never heard of vinnie before. Who was vinnie . What was that about . So vinnie was the name of someone who called. This is a complicated story. Trump was in the middle of trying to get a tax abatement for trump tower and the the the housing commissioner in new york city who worked for ed koch and ed koch was not a donald trump fan. He he he encouraged tony goldman, this commissioner. And this is actually an important story in a couple of ways, encourages tony goldman, the commissioner, to reject the tax abatement. Trump ends up going to court. He ultimately wins. It takes years in the interim, Tony Lightman gets a call at his home. One morning from someone who identifies himself as vinnie. And vinnie is very upset that mr. Trump is not getting his tax abatement. And theres a theres a threat in this, goldman reports this to officials. He is given a security detail. It was, i think, the next day i dont have the book in front me. The next day, trump himself claims he, too, got a threatening call, which was so surprising and and that call became known many years later when the fbi files were undone. Theres no hard proof of who called trump, but there is widespread skepticism for people around tony goldman that that it was trump himself. The way this story ends is that trump gets the tax abatement. Eventually he wins in court. And its the details are a little dense, but ultimately, gladman, who has two children and a bad weight problem, gets a call from trump, inviting him to lunch and trump ultimately offers him a job and goldman takes it. And ed koch almost fell over when he found out that goldman was going to go work for trump. And i would argue that that was one of the very earliest examples, at least that i know of, of trump threatening someone and then them giving it right, bending them to his will, sending them to as well. And he told them hed only hire them if he lost weight. So he had to his way. It was one of the conditions sort of like saying to larry king on the air, youve got bad breath and scooting away from him. All right. So other people that he mightve behavior from George Steinbrenner similar so steinbrenner was this sort of avatar of hypermasculinity in the 1980s when the aids era was beginning and trump trump was terrified of aids and talked about it all the time. And after shaking hands with men, would, you know, call people, call reporters and say is blah, blah, gay . I just shook hands with them. And from start, you know, steinbrenner was this, you know, big, tough guy who had, you know, is also a child of privilege like trump and who had a healthy dose of of selfregard like trump and trump hung around him and hung around his crew. You know, he had he had friends like like a man named bill fugazi, who also was friends with roy cohn. Lee iacocca. There was this crew. And trump wanted to be like them and found himself emulating this hypermasculinity. Steinbrenner was famous for firing his managers, except he wasnt doing it by play acting when trump trump, who really doesnt like firing people directly when hes doing the apprentice, starts with youre fired. And it was pretty widely seen as an homage to steinbrenner, and that changed that show changed everything for him. I think most people are pretty familiar with that, but theyre not familiar. Many people with a man named meade esparza, who was he and what did trump learn from him . Maria esposito was the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss. When machine boss politics ruled everything in new york city. And trumps father, fred, was very close to meade and in that helped them hardwire all kinds of projects in brooklyn. And meade had enormous clout all over the city. And when trump first came into office and meade was was meade was ruthless. He was a criminal. He did not believe that rules and regulations applied. He, you know, to him, he made judges, he made district attorneys and and when trump came into office, you know, he would he would talk about a figure who sounded very much like me and aides had no idea who he was talking about because most of his officials who work for him in the white house werent from new york, but he would talk about meade swinging i think he described it as people thought it was a baseball bat. It was a cane and he told me this story in one of our interviews about Meade Esposito swinging his cane at people and he said meade ruled with an iron fist. And meade is one of the people who helped inform trumps idea of two things. One of how a political operator functions and rules, which is just top down. And the other is that meade fit trumps idea of strength and a lot of trumps idea of strength is informed by violence, violence and forms, which makes you strong. That, in turn informs what makes a good boss and meade very much falls into that category. He its almost like he is almost like a tammany hall correct kind of idea. 101 there is a nod to washington direct line. Yeah. So theres also, you know is display amicable, most despicable qualities the cruelty was also in evidence. Tell us what happened after the Helicopter Crash and what he said about the deceased executives. So a bunch of trump executives died in a Helicopter Crash in new jersey, i think it was on their way back from a meeting at trump tower. Two things happened afterwards. One was that somehow an item got placed. I believe it was on page six, suggesting that trump himself was supposed to be on this helicopter, which nobody believed because it was a least at least helicopter. And he didnt like to fly those himself. Roger stone has insisted it really was true. So do it. That what you will and the the widows and and one other girlfriend, her fiance, say there were three people involved of the the dead men were really aghast at this suggestion that trump himself was somehow in danger and he later on started to blame his his financial woes at the casinos on one of those debt executives. And he says to one of his officials, his name was jack odonnell. You know, hes dead. What does it matter what i say about him now . And that really stayed with jack odonnell, who actually wrote his own. But there is a, you know, a chronic in all of these descriptions from people who have been around him for a very long time. Just a chronic disregard for other peoples feelings, emotions, you know, decency in times of stress. So you say that he actually doesnt have that many moves and he uses them over and over again, in part because he understands the value of repetition, you know, which is very important in and especially democratic politicians are terrible at repeating things. In the case of both obama and clinton, it was because it bored them to say the same thing over and over again. But that made them less effective. So that is kind of an overall move that he has repetition. But then there are some specific moves. And i wanted to go over them and see if you could give us an example of each. So the first one you mentioned is the counter attack. So that is, you know, Hillary Clinton calls him a puppet of putin, no puppet here. The puppet. Its all just going right back at you with some form of projection. So strongest defenses, no offense. Yes. Or you write a story and he starts tweeting. You know, thats a good example, right . The quick lie. In one of our interviews, i asked him what he was doing during the january 6th attack, which at that point was not part of the the actual, you know, under oath public record, because House Select Committee hearings hadnt started. And he immediately said that he wasnt watching television, that, you know, he and that he rarely had the tv on so that would be a good example the shift of. I mean there are so many on those. You know, its its my Campaign Managers fault that im losing i threatening to sue his Campaign Manager because the poll numbers are bad. You know, finding finding some aid to to shoulder whatever crisis is going on. Nothing is ever his fault. The distraction. Well, that one is, you know. Theres a theres a theres a bunch in that in that category. But for instance. And this one, you know, people that these photos showed up organically. But when he was in the middle of a lot of questions right after the Republican National convention in 2017 or 2016, sorry about it, about russia and about his comments about russia. And this was after the email hacks of the dnc and suddenly these nude pictures of Melania Trump show up on the front page of the New York Post from a decade earlier. And donald trump, who does not like when people write about his life unless he wants to control it, appeared to have no problem with this. So that was a distraction. The outburst of rage. Well, thats i mean, i, i can lose count on that one. I mean, you can see that you can see that one all the time. But it is there is the screaming at people to get them in line is something that he has done throughout his life. And people in the white house when he was when he had just won, somebody who had worked for him years ago said to me, he is a screamer and people in the white house are going to have a really hard time with this. And indeed, they did. So the performative anger sometimes is not genuine those. So i will give you a for instance, some of the tweets and youll ask me for a specific one. And i cant right now, but some of the tweets that are all caps that we would all describe as him fuming. He would be laughing as he was sending them. Its a good example, just for the headlines. Claim, huh . Well, lets see. Obama tapped my phone would be a good example of that one in 2017 with no evidence other than some breitbart story that he was reading but knew he would get a headline out of it. Right. Or one that just got blown apart today. He said that pelosi didnt do anything to protect the capitol. Yes. Video came out today of her trying to, you know, get the National Guard there and, you know, in the middle and middle of the day, in january sixth. And trump, of course, is doing nothing. So. I think you call it in decisiveness masked by compensatory lunge. So so when he couldnt i mean, this is going to sound hard to believe, but he really couldnt after november 3rd, in 2020, when he lost. He could not decide what course of action to follow when it became clear that he was not going to be able to stay in office anymore and he was quizzing everybody, including the valet who brought him his diet cokes. You know, what do you think i should do . And then after he doesnt get what he wants from anybody and and it becomes clear that hes not quite ready to pull the trigger on this proposed Government Intervention that mike flynn, the former National Security advisor, is telling him he should do. He sees seizing the voting cracks like in a fascist regime in italy. Yes. Using executive orders to do so, he suddenly seizes on january six and throws all of his energy into it. And i would put that as an example. Why do you think so little stick it to him . Why is he the ultimate teflon president . I think a couple of things. I think the fact that he was part of the popcorn fabric for so long and part of this does relate to the apprentice, which you mentioned, not entirely, but what became clear in 16 was that voters felt very his voters felt very bonded to him in ways that they really didnt with previous candidates. There was this huge desire to win, and voters were willing to overlook a lot. And then they got in the habit of overlooking all kinds of things and i just think that the partizan divide is so hardened that there was half the country is now not interested in forgiving him much if hes the nominee again. I do think there are aspects of the Republican Party that have grown sick of him. I do. And i think we will start to see more of that in the coming months, because i think there are a lot of candidates who are going to run. I dont think its that nothing sticks to him. I think especially beginning of 2022, this issue with the documents and i do think that he was taking on some water in relation to that. Now i think its baked in, but i think with him there is so much and i do think during the presidency everything was sort of treated as if it was a four alarm fire and not everything was a four alarm fire. There were a number of them. But when everything is a is an emergency, then then voters start to feel like nothing is. So what do you think was the most blown out of proportion and harmful to the democrats by making too much of it i think that. I think that the im trying to think how to say this carefully the i mean i think a couple of things kids in cages huge deal and really you know and a humanitarian crisis. Every single tweet that he did not a huge deal did not all need to be treated as if they were they were all the same, you know, every every every gaffe he made every nonsensical answer he gave not all the same, you know, congratulating on winning his election when hed been told not to. Thats it. Thats important. His praise. Xi jinping. Thats important. But everything just became, you know, one big thing. And i think it became harder for people to see what was. So there was a crying wolf problem. And i know thats crying wolf, but its just crying outrage when at the same volume every time its not wolf because theres always something there. So its just the volume. The antitrump conservative writer david french wrote recently about what he calls the exhausted majority. I saw that, and which i thought was an interesting line. So it was part of it that he just wears everybody out. Yes. And and absorbed roy cohns lesson that he articulated to william safire, which is that he brings out the worst in his enemies and gets them to defeat themselves. And i think is something to that. So if you were breaking down his manipulative powers of sensing peoples weaknesses and then exploiting, is that is that his superpower that he has he has this ability to have sort of an xray vision of what somebody is, weaknesses. I think its one of them. I think the fact that he has an ability to to pick up on other peoples insecurities is one of them. And i think his shamelessness is another. I think his shamelessness has been a huge edge in politics. And i think thats it for him. And i think the fact and certainly in his in his Business Life and i think the fact that he is really really hyper focused on sort of the darkness of human emotions, you know, he is he is really, really attuned to bad things people will do. And tries to sort of play off of that. And he is aware of that. Other people experience shame and he tries to press that, too. And theres a power and shamelessness correct a big one. I mean, he has really used it to great effect for himself. And how transferable is it . And we see desantis is trying to go to his playbook theyre probably going to have a pretty bloody primary. How do you think his imitators will do . I think not that well. I think that, you know, including that im not convinced that theres going to be a desantis trump primary or not. Im not i mean, i think because i think that everybody talks about wanting to, you know, theyll be the ones to take him on. And its actually pretty unpleasant for everybody who does. And so stepping into that meat grinder is is more challenging than it looks. Well, in private, he says of desantis that hes whiny, fat and a phony. So that gives us some, i think, the warm material is definitely fanciful as well. And i dont and i dont think that. You know, desantis is in the middle of dealing with a hurricane and dealing with the natural disasters. Obviously very different for any governor. And we have seen a a tempering by desantis of some of the things that, you know, he appeared with biden. He is he been less combative, but he has had more he has had moments prior to hurricane and where he has seemed less than ready for prime time. And so i think that theres a very long history of republican donors and members of the media anointing someone as the next whatever. And it doesnt always come out that way. Scott walker, tim pawlenty. I mean, yeah, i mean, i can go down the list. And so we dont know yet. Ive wasted a lot of time covering those people and research. So did i. I mean, to be clear, i count myself among those reporters who who have done that. But you think that trumps heart really isnt in 2024. Why . Because i think that a couple of things. I think that i think hes really consumed by these investigations. I think that the the documents investigate in particular is really scaring him. I think that the press accounts by cnn, the New York Times, Washington Post are showing patterns of behavior that i think are alarming. Some of his own advisers that hes aware doj is paying attention to. I mean, the the main proof that he is worried is that he spent a 3 million upfront retainer on a lawyer whose advice he has completely ceased to listen to us. But he was worried enough that he hired the guy. And i got calls from people who worked for trump in the 1990s who said donald has never paid all that big a retainer. That tells you all you need to know. A lot of times it doesnt pay at all. Well, thats thats why this was so surprising surprising. So and he just doesnt seem animated by the rallies, the way he once did. Theyre really long, not a lot of new material. And so well see. I mean, maybe hell get into it if he does become a candidate. I do think he has backed himself into a corner where he has to run, because i think the investigation wins, you know, oddly compel him forward. But well see. So if you had to bet, would you say that he will be the nominee . I im not falling for that one again. No, i. I think that if he runs, he remains the overwhelming favorite to be the nominee. But that is obviously absent outcomes. And these investigations and i just dont know what that looks like. Does he actually believe in anything beyond his himself . He has a couple of core in like impulses on issues like trade or, you know, other countries ripping us off, you know, more broadly on alliances. But hes willing to sublimate those if theres some other reason to, you know. Mcconnell, i remember, was telling people during the transition in 2016, i mean, he was clearly just kind of stunned by this, just that he this guy has no way you would he would say this guy has no idea what he believes in. And i and i think to your point, he does know what he believes. And he believes in himself. And whats good for him. And so that can look like Different Things in different moments. And do you do you ever get the sense that he is untethered from reality, or do you think its all, you know, connected to his alternative universe in some way that you can kind of track how it makes a certain amount of sense in his arent those the same things . I mean, hes that hes untethered to reality and also theres sort of like the same thing to me is creating his own reality. I guess. But youre saying is he doing it knowingly and hes trying to bring you along or is it all instinctive . Sometimes its instinctive. Sometimes knows. I mean, one of the things about him that people came to realize over time working in the white house was, you know, hes not strategic at all. He cant do long term planning. But he is very calculating. And in a given moment. And so, you know, its more of what your second option is, which is that hes he is trying to create this reality and get you to buy into it more often than not. Now i think then sometimes he ends up really believing what hes saying. So i couldnt tell you if he actually believes what hes saying about the election or not. I have no idea. I dont know that it matters. But so since hes not strategic, what is his timeline . Is it just the next news cycle . Is it a week . Is it a month . Its it is literally, you know, an hour, hour by hour, basically. I mean, it it is he is he is existing in the now always. Im almost ready to get your questions. Hes got them. Youve got them over there. Yeah. Lets, lets, lets get your questions. I mean, i. Also. Good. I can. Oh, actually before we go these i want to go to race. The question of race. So you, you know, one of your big scoops came out a few months ago is in the book is that he was flushing documents down the toilet. But theres another toilet story in your book. Theres a lot of donald trump toilet stories, but just wanted to tell the one that really goes to his racial animus. So when he when he was first in the oval office, he would he would show people what he would call his secret bathroom of the oval office. And he would claim that he had renovated the entire space down to the toilet, which was not true, according to officials think they just customarily replace the toilet seat anytime theres a new president. But he would he would show he would show this space and and he would say, you understand what im talking about. And it was a very strange remark and, you know, open to interpretation. But, you know, one guest who heard it interpreted as not wanting to use his black predecessors bathroom and, you know, theres there is just there is a lot of that with him over a very long period of time. There was a i have reporting in the book about how the first time the first executive, the first person to work on the executive floor at trump tower was black, was in 1986, as if this was innovative. And it was the it actually was the woman who had been working as an assistant to the person we talked about before, tony goldman and trumps assistant, a woman named norma federer, was all aflutter that, you know, weve had a black person on the executive floor and then it was deemed that she was she was so pretty, she would fit right in. But its you know, its just it just it it is it is a reminder of a couple of things, but one of which is actually that as much new york city is seen as a progressive beacon there are aspects of it that really are not. I mean, some of the big public things like birtherism was pretty thoroughly racist. But there detail other details you have like i didnt know that he had a girlfriend before or just before melania fell, overlapping with her, overlapping with melania halfblood father was, white mother was black and he said he told say about her he met her parents and he told her that she got her beauty from her mom and her brains from her dad at the white side and so lets lets look at some of these questions from all of you. What do you think motivates the children . Do you think that they are politically ambitious . I think i think don jr certainly is. Ivanka, yes, but i would be quite frankly, be very surprised if she actually ever ran for office, given what it entails. I dont think eric trump is at all politically ambitious. So this question is. Sort of about his style. In an interview. You know, whats the feel you get from him when youre sitting right across from him . Is he is he charismatic in person . Is he does he try to bully you . Is a charming you . Yes. You know, i mean, he all of it he can be all of those things. I have interviewed him when he has been charming, which he was in the first interview i did for this book, and he was in salesman mode. And then ive interviewed him, you know, at other times, particularly one very memorable one in the white house in 2017 where, you know, we walked in and he had his hands jammed in his armpits and hes sitting behind the resolute desk and hes rolling very heavy with like 8 to 10 aides sitting around the this is not normal to do in an Oval Office Meeting with reporters. And so there are there are times when he tries to menace and intimidate and he doesnt. It just depends. And do you think it depends on his mood or is there calc correlation . Oh, is he is thinking it through a little bit like what do i want to try to do today in this interview . So that one was was that that one was definitely calculating. The second interview that i went to for the book, he was in a terrible mood and i found out later that he had been wandering around his property at mar a lago, like pointing out messed up plaster and various spots. And he was angry at how the club looked. And so that one was pretty organic. So. This kind of goes to the reality question, but and its, you know, it was the subject of todays hearing. How much do you think he accepts he lost the election . I dont think he accepts that at all. Whether whether whether he knows on some level that he did. I think he did at one point. I dont know if he does now, but he certainly doesnt accept it right. But i mean, theres a lot of testimony that he would say to people, how did i lose to this . Oh, no. And i of reporting on that in the book, i mean, he was it seemed pretty clear to people right after immediately after the election that he knew that he had lost. He would say to one eight, i thought we had it. You know, he seemed almost apologetic. Some of them. I think he was clear that that it was over. And then he decided it wasnt. How do you explain his relationship with putin . I cant i dont you know, i mean, theres the obvious. He he has admires strongmen and there is the obvious. He has been fascinated by russia for 40 years. But beyond that, i cant begin to explain it. I just want to go back to the question i just asked you about the election, because i think its a kind of a deeper psychological question than it might appear on the surface that. Okay. He you know, he agreed that he lost immediately after the election, but never accepted it. Did he then internalize it like, do you think this is in ways no longer fake on his part . Oh, yeah. I dont know whether he actually believes this. I mean, i think its very possible that he is convinced himself that he really did win because hes hes very good at i mean, you know, he he he has said to people a version of the same idea over many years, which goes to the repetition point, which is that if you Say Something often, often enough, people believe it and it becomes true. Thats true of himself, too. Thats joseph goebbels. I know. I know. I know, i know. I know. The heritage on it. But by the way, you mentioned the mein kampf. That ivana trump said that he had mein kampf and somebody else said he gave him a book of hitlers. It was the speeches, speech and his bedside table. What do you make of that . I dont think he read them, but i think that he but i think that he had a fascination with with hitler for a while. And i dont. You know, i hitler is not somebody who who who most people in in mainstream america admire. So. Okay, this is about you. How many hours do you sleep . A night . Not enough. Thank you for asking. So maybe tonights the night. This questioner wants to know if you have any management tips. No, i am not who you come to for that. It sounds like you. Do you think trump is evil . Thats a really hard question to answer. I think that he is is comfortable enough with behavior that is evil. And i think that thats thats probably about as far as i can assess that. Ill answer it. Yes. So you kind of address this, but lets go back at a little bit. This is how scared he is right now about his legal troubles and the questioner makes a very interesting point that maybe his malignant narcissist ism is, you know, is clear narcissistic personnel, a disorder that says that hes a better president than anybody. With the possible exception of abraham lincoln. But might that actually prevent him from feeling more vulnerable or does that not actually work . That is the narcissism, not help guard him against feeling he really understands legal problems. I would just put them in a very different category than almost any other. It is the thing that he has been most acutely attuned to all of his life and he has spent a very long time trying to cultivate prosecutors. Going back to robert morgenthau, a great figure of integrity. I was disturbed to hear that he was as close to trump as he was and and it is one of the reasons i think the trump felt kind of comfortable that nothing bad was going to happen to trump, but he i, i just think that he experiences legal issues on a different level. So it was he not that scared of the new york das investigation . Cy vance was investigating and alvin bragg basically dropped it. I mean, hes now he was active. He was very about it. He was. And then he didnt get charged. And so, you know, itll be very problematic for his company when this trial takes place, because there are charges against his company and an Allen Weisselberg cfo who pleaded guilty a couple of months ago is going to testify. But trump himself wasnt criminally charged. And that really has become how he looks at all of these things. I mean, as unhappy as he was with the tish james civil suit, the new York Attorney general. Its still a civil suit. Right. And thats the thing that they bear in mind. How about Fannie Willis and georgia . You know, that that one makes them nervous. Yeah. I mean, you know, hes he he is facing a lot of legal problems. He is legal problems are threats. He is acutely aware of threats. And so that is why he gets up. So a lot of democrats think, well, how are we skate . Hell always maybe he will figure out how to get away with it like he was. I mean, was different when he was president that the sitting president was going to get indicted and, you know, the the expectations around mueller became a little too great, not not by mueller. I think mueller was very, you know, sort narrowly focused on his work. But i think there were there were folks who had high hopes that that was going to end his presidency before, its expiration date, and that was just not likely. At any point because of the Justice Department opinion on indicting a sitting president. But now he is facing serious investigations. You know, somebody he called, he called someone very close to him at the time. Not anymore. Two days after the capitol riot and said, as he is wont to do about everything to pull test how everything is playing out. What do you think . I like . And the person said, i think youve made a real mess. And i think this is the first time he is facing several simultaneous messes. But the the the people who took to the january 6th committee, they really havent been before the grand jury. I mean, we would know if they had their lawyers would have. Which grand jury are you talking about in the january 6th case . Im not talking. Youre talking about the Justice Department jurors. I guess some of them happen. I mean, you know, today, short pences chief of staff was back before the grand jury. So, i mean, some of them have been. But i dont i mean, is Cassidy Hutchinson in front of the grand jury . I believe she has been interviewed. I dont know if shes going before the grand jury investigators. I dont know if its before. So if you again, i hate it when people ask us to get into the predictions business but you have fun but you know more than everybody else so you can make without making a prediction you can assess the odds more easily. So do you think hell be indicted on the documents case, and do you think hell be indicted on the january six case . I dont know if he will be indicted on either, but i think that the documents case presents a clearer threat because its just a a clearer case. You know, even though he is. And for those of you who watched the january six hearing today, bennie thompson, the chairman, said this over and over again, that, you know, trump was at the center of everything. And i think theyve really tried showing that hes the one person who had visibility into all these different activities. My understanding is that the Justice Department still doesnt feel like it has a clear sense of how to make that kind of case. So i know youre not a pollster and you dont spend a huge amount of time talking to voters, but why do you think hes had such staying power . And 17 Million People voted for him the last time time. So i think that i dont really know how to answer that other than the fact that i think that he. He has been very successful in activating a lot of people who either havent voted before or who have felt somehow left out of the process. And then i think theres a third issue, which is i think theres a really worthwhile study that wouldnt you know, we wouldnt do. But i think that pollsters should do is of why so many people are open to, you know, a sort of a type of strongman and leader in this country. And i would be curious to hear what comes back. The subtitle of your book is the making of trump and the breaking of america. How do you explain the latter part of it . What did he do to break this country . I think that he did not create and you would know this far better than i do. But i think that he did not create the partizanship that has cleaved the country into for a while, but he fueled it and. He exacerbated it, and he benefited from it. And he exported and i write about this, that one of his guiding ethos is, you know, he he he clearly expressed in the late 1980s, in new york city during a a terrible case, violence in which teenagers of color were arrested. And he took out an ad calling for the Death Penalty for them them that he clearly hate as a civic good. And i think he exported that to washington and i think he has exported it to his party. And i think that that has had a massive trickle effect. I think thats a good, if depressing place to. And thats all. Everybody, thanks for coming. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank. Im honored to be here tonight sharing the stage with commissioner bill bratton and ms. Odonnell family. Fellow rafael manguel. It is great to see so many of our friends in the audience,