This is less than the $21000000.00 he raised in the 2nd quarter it's also far behind what binds top rivals have raised from us and are Bernie Sanders be buying by $10000000.00 after raising 25000000 since July South Bend Indiana Mayor people to judge brought in 1000000000 Massachusetts general is about worn by and closest rival in the polls has been announced for 3rd quarter fundraising totals yet meanwhile President Trump and the Republican National Committee reported raising $125000000.00 during the 3rd quarter just to tailor n.p.r. News Washington the trouble biggest ration is proposing changing the way food stamp benefits are calculated something that would result in a 4 and a half $1000000000.00 cut over 5 years Here's N.P.R.'s Pam Fessler the rule change is the 3rd that the administration has proposed that would limit Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits also known as food stamps this one of volves the way utility costs are calculated in determining a family's monthly benefit the administration says it wants to standardize the formula nationwide which would increase payments for some people but almost 20 percent of households would have their benefits cut also pending or proposed rules to impose more work requirements on food stamp recipients and to make other formula changes which would eliminate benefits for about $4000000.00 people the public comment period on the new rule and December 2nd Pam Fessler n.p.r. News Washington docs bounced back after some major down sessions this week the Dow was up 122 points the Nasdaq rose 87 points today you're listening to n.p.r. . French officials say an attack by a knife wielding employee inside a Paris police station has left at least 3 officers an administrator dead bears prosecutor Remi Hyde saying that 3 of the victims were men and the other was a woman a police official has earlier said that 4 officers were killed police say the 45 year old attacker was shot and killed though they did not address the motive in the case Prez's interior minister says another wounded police employee was undergoing emergency surgery Federal investigators say they are securing evidence from the crash of a walled War 2 era plane outside of Hartford Connecticut yesterday that crash killed 7 people and injured 7 others went on Public Radio's Joel Kaufman as more a security video help the National Transportation Safety Board determine the time the plane hit an airport maintenance building it was returning to Bradley International Airport less than 10 minutes after departure at a press conference the n.t.s.b. Is Jennifer Harman he said the pilot radioed air traffic control and reported an issue with one of the engines we identified that engine in the wreckage and we secured it for further examination the last major inspection of the plane was January Harman he said and the pilot who died in the crash had been flying this type of plane for more than 20 years for n.p.r. News I'm Joel Kaufmann activity in the service sector the broadest slice of the u.s. Economy slowed to a 3 year low last month is true for Supply Management says its service sector index was down nearly 4 points but shows the service sector is still expanding but at a slower pace the service sector includes a major swath of the u.s. Economy I'm Jack Speer n.p.r. News support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Semel family foundation supporting the National Center for Learning Disabilities which works to improve the lives of the one in 5 individuals with learning and attention issues learn more at n.c.l.b. Dot org It's 10 o 6. This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross the story that's been in the news about how one of President Trump's ideas to close off the border was to dig a moat and fill it with snakes and alligators that was 1st reported by my guest Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael share their journalist with The New York Times who've written a new book called Border Wars inside Trump's assault on immigration they write that for all its frustrations and failures attempt to up end the nation's immigration system has had its share of successes through little noticed rules and regulations his administration made it more dangerous and costly to be undocumented it's targeted undocumented immigrants who live in the u.s. For decades and tag them for immediate removal and now takes much longer to get a visa to come to America and the wait to become a naturalized citizen has doubled the number of refugees admitted to the u.s. Has plummeted to its lowest level in more than 3 decades share and Hirschfeld Davis also write the Trumps assault on immigration reflects deep truths about the most unconventional of presidents about who he trusts and how he governs and about the way in which he has impacted the country he leads Michael Shear covers the White House for The New York Times Julie Hirschfeld Davis covered Congress and is now a congressional editor with The Times Michael Shear Julie Hirschfeld Davis welcome to Fresh Air So let's start with something a lot of America is talking about alligators and snakes in moats around the Mexican American border this is one of the ideas that Trump had to have like basically a moat cross the border with alligators and snakes and who knows what else in the water it sounds so preposterous it sounds medieval What was the context of this proposal. Well President Trump has been just taken with this idea of a physical barrier of the wall for many years and he would talk about it and have very vivid descriptions of what he wanted it to look and feel like he considers himself a builder that's one of the reasons his advisers initially thought of the wall it was almost as in the monic device to get him to sort of remember to talk about illegal immigration and his plans for cracking down on it so going in he was thinking about the physical aspects of this structure but he came to really be frustrated with the inability to get the wall built quickly and he would sort of cast about for other ideas of how he could make it more effective or something else he might be able to do and so he would raise this idea of a trench and maybe we could have a water filled trench and he raised it so many times that actually his aides finally went and got a cost estimate for what a trench would cost and it was going to be $3.00 times more expensive as a wall but it didn't really deter him because he was so enamored with the ice idea of having countermeasures and so when they would have discussions about these things sometimes he would raise Well you could have snakes inside it or you could have crocodiles inside it or alligators inside it excuse me and even though it seemed preposterous to his advisors the 1st and 2nd times that he would bring this up they kind of got to the point where they couldn't really tell whether he was serious or not serious all they knew all he seemed to really know is that he wanted something that would be dangerous and threatening and a deterrent you know he wanted something that would be punitive that would like maim people or burn people cut them places this is what you write in the book so what are some of the more extreme ideas he had for a punitive barrier right so he talked about this constantly he the wall in his view should not just be kind of a structure that. Would that would stop people on the other side but that anybody who tried to climb it would be would be hurt severely so he talked about painting it black he would he would always say flat black Kiersten parking tickets to me also in his homeland security secretary did I want it to be black and that was because he wanted it to heat up in the sun in the you know along the border and it would become so hot that it would burn people and he wanted concertina wire the really sharp razor razor wire across the whole thing so people would be cut if they climbed and he always talked about spikes on the top of the wall that were sharp pointy enough that both would pierce human flesh and also so that it would deter birds because he always talked about the beauty of the wall the one of the wall to be beautiful and he thought that if birds landed on the wall they would poop on it and then it would look nice any more he wanted to let the fence electrified the wall electrified so the people would be shocked. And ultimately at one point he actually publicly said that when migrants would throw rocks at the at the military or the border guards that the military should just respond with rifles implying that they should just kill them in response the his aides said to him Look you can't do that sir they begged him they rushed to get the use of force policy for the federal government and showed it to him and said we can't respond with lethal force to somebody throwing rocks and his response to that was to sort of back down and say Ok fine we can't shoot to kill but then he suggested well why don't we just shoot them in the leg that'll slow them down. And we were told that there was a meeting where he said this and that sort of sat there kind of slack jawed and finally said to him No sir that's not you can't do that either. And he seemed to. Lose track of his own ideas he would know the example I'm thinking of is one cares to know was the head of the Department of Home Security she she had a mock up made of a steel wall just to distract Trump because he was all over her about crazy things that he wanted and she didn't intend this to be the real thing that was just meant to be like here is a possible example and then he tweeted it as if like this was the final proposal for the war would you describe what happened yes so the president would constantly sort of nag Kiersten Nielson about what he wanted the wall to look like and be like and he would often say to cures in the else and you know I thought of something else and here's a great idea let's do this and because he would become so absorbed in these ideas and it was hard to get him off of that and onto another topic oftentimes the solution that she'd come up with is just Ok take it down take notes and let's give him what he thinks he wants and then at least he'll be satisfied and we can go on to something else so that is what she did at the end of a meeting in the Oval Office with him where he was talking about his idea of a very detailed idea about the wall she started just taking it down she brought it back to the department she gave it to aides and said let's do a mock up of this I want a drawing of this she didn't really tell them what it was for but it was done and she sort of put it in her back pocket she put it in a folder and she had it ready for the next time the president really kind of went off in a rage about the wall wasn't getting built the way he wanted or immigration policy in general wasn't going the way he wanted it to. And during one of these moments right around the time the government shutdown at the end of 2018 she brought it out and she said oh you know it's just I I mocked this thing up the wall that you were describing here look at this and as she predicted the president was thrilled with it and he immediately wanted to tweet it out which became kind of a problem because again this was never supposed to be something that was going to be reality it was meant to sort of distract him so he'd move on to the next topic and but he did he ended up tweeting it out and. He said you know this is what we're building which it wasn't at that point but it was just another example of how you know he's very fickle with these things and toward the very end of her tenure he brought it up again in the last meeting that he had with curating else and before he basically told her she was fired he started bringing up a cement wall so he's back to where he started during the campaign and even though he had been told that a cement wall won't work it's too easy to that drill holes in it and the whole thing or and then just collapse and that was the exacerbate that was one of the many things that left aids for President Trump kind of exasperated was that he just they couldn't quite get ever get him off an idea they were never sure you know they would sometimes go through with him. The both the practical reasons Boffin the legal reasons or the moral implications of something that he wanted to do and they would walk him through why they why he couldn't or shouldn't do it and sometimes he would he would sort of nod and agree but inevitably. The next meeting you know the next week the next month the idea would resurface and I think one of the things that we think that shows is is not only his decision making in the context of immigration which is what our book is about but really more broadly kind of the way that he approaches decision making and policy making in the administration writ large which is to say not. You know very kind of disciplined and kind of logical methodical way but rather a kind of scatter shot ideas that pop into his head become the source of conversations at that moment let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more if you're just joining us my guests are New York Times journalist Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear their authors of the new book border wars inside Trump's assault on immigration We'll be right back after a short break this is Fresh Air and only as Charles Ives the respected American composer he's also Connecticut's native son on the next where we live we sit down with musicians and historians to examine Ives work and roots in our state and we want to hear from you what do you know about the life and legacy of today when the conversation on the next. Tomorrow morning at 9 support comes from new morning market the Metro Hartford alliance. This is Fresh Air and if you're just joining us my guests are the authors of the new book border wars inside Trump's assault on immigration Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear are both journalists with the New York Times. One thing I was thinking throughout your book because your book is filled with examples of what you just described impractical ideas illegal ideas that astound that shock members of his administration not all of them because some of the totally support him and are feeding him some similar ideas but I just keep wondering what was it like for the members of the administration during the period that you're writing about. Intil they resigned or were fired because there's several people in that position who were forced out or has decided they couldn't take it anymore and for the most part they still haven't gone public they'll talk off the record to reporters but. I'm just wondering if they feel if they're so disturbed by what they saw and thought that the president himself has all these impractical and illegal ideas and won't back off of them one told that they're impractical or illegal why don't they want to sound the alarm. I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of this for us and like Mike Mike said this cuts across all issues not just immigration but. You get the sense of a team of advisers that is very much many of them are sort of government professionals they've been in government jobs before they know that Trump hasn't so they entered this kind of administration understanding that a lot of what they were going to be doing would be sort of explaining what was possible and what wasn't and then they reached a point where they became accustomed to this sort of thing where he would bring up these ideas at meetings that seemed far fetched to the point of absurdity to the point of really being unacceptable and I think for many of them for a long time if not for their entire tenure there was a lot of rationalization that went on you know he doesn't know what he's saying he doesn't really understand. There there are not that many people who stayed on I don't think who actually would say you know he's a bad person these are bad ideas that he has he wants to hurt people I think many of them would chalk it up to you know just a complete lack of understanding of how these things work and a person who just had these gut instincts that were just off and that you know. He had grown up in government he hadn't grown up in public service he just didn't get it but I do think that around the time that the family separation policy became public and became a real flashpoint. People's patience started to really run out and they started to really question whether this was worth it whether staying inside the administration was whether there's any upside really because many of them sort of had the sense initially that if they stayed around things could only get so bad because he might not understand President Trump might under not understand the implications of what he was asking for but they did and that they would sort of be a check. Against the worst of his impulses but around the time of you know the middle of last year I would say that started to really become a challenging rationalization to maintain and I think that I think there was starting to be a lot of alarm and a lot more sort of introspection about whether this could continue you know I just would add that I think also there were we talked to about $150.00 people I think ultimately for the book and I think there were a lot of them that were inside the administration whose belief who sort of rationalized staying by by by thinking to themselves If I leave you know the person that he's going to get is going to only be more willing to do the kinds of things that that that we don't think he can do and you know and then they were complet these were complicated people who both agreed in some cases with the end goal that they that the president might want to achieve meaning for example reducing the level of immigration or making it harder for an asylum seeker to come into the United States they just were frustrated by the process in the means that the president wanted to sort of reached forward to to to do it and they sort of decided to themselves Well you know if I leave it's just you know more of a runway for him to do whatever the heck he wants and so I stay in and kind of be that that check Well they had a point because you write about how at some point Steven Miller who is the aide that basically heads up the immigration policy for the trumpet ministration and he's very extreme in his anti immigration views he basically purged the administration of people who are obstacles to the immigration policies that he wanted and replaced them with people more similar to himself right like I mean that's essentially when Kirsten Nielsen was fired and I think Nielsen's a complicated figure she was both a supporter and a supporter of some of his of the president's policies but also as we described over and over again in the book somebody. Who privately would try to walk the president back from the brink alternately her saying no to him enough finally convinced him to fire her at the end of. The beginning of April of this year and that started a cascade of these firings that Miller essentially had orchestrated to kind of finally as you say purge d.h.s.s. In the relevant agencies of some of these people who he thought were standing in the way and slow rolling and slow walking the president's agenda and what you see is that over the last several months. Many of the things that had been kind of stuck in the pipeline really restrictive policies governing who could who could apply for asylum some harsh policies about sending migrants back over the border to wait and wait in Mexico. You know of. Regulation on. Punishing essentially immigrants who are poor all of those things that kind of been stuck in the pipeline and all of them have sort of now moved through and been an active now some of them are being challenged in court and so they're not necessarily in place yet but from the president's perspective the purge worked because the people who are now in those roles are fully embracing what the president wants to do so one of the turning points that led Steven Miller to do this purge was a week in March when the president gave the command to just close the border by noon tomorrow just just close it and nobody was saying well you can't you can't do that I mean it's just like technically impossible I mean that. Can't be done and. Trample on it that it done anyways but the Steven Miller think that that actually was. Proposal that could be activated and accomplished No I mean I think like the other people in the room that day in late March in this scene that we recount where you know President Trump was just going absolutely berserk about the border numbers climbing with the crossings just you know going up and up and up. He understood too that that would be a disastrous. Thing to do but I think the difference is. He had been pushing a really aggressive agenda of ways to try to get the border numbers under control that not everyone else in that room really embraced and so I mean he some of these moments he understands as well as any of the skeptics in the administration that what the president is asking for can't happen in this particular case closing the border was going to be as he said a logistically impossible could be economically would be economically disastrous. There were all sorts of reasons why they couldn't happen but interesting Lee one of the ways in which Steven Miller is affective in this realm one of the reasons that he has survived where other aides have not is because he understands how Trump's mind works on this issue in particular that a lot of this comes from a place of deep anger and frustration that this is a broken system which pretty much everyone both inside this administration and outside the administration gree on and that the president has repeatedly being told he can't do this he can't do that that's not allowed either and so Miller kind of jokes that for strategic advantage to get his proposals in front of the president and to get you know a more aggressive approach sort of taken up by the various agencies but then you have him in these moments kind of caught up short because the logical conclusion of that is. The president is going to be left sitting there saying well why isn't anything happening the way I want it to be so even as Miller and others in the room that day explain to him why the border really can't just be shut down like flipping a switch tomorrow at noon which is what the president said he wanted he's thinking to himself Ok well this may be the opportunity that I've been looking for to really get rid of some of these people inside the administration who have been impediments to moving these things forward remember that Steven Miller is not a lawyer he's very sort of steeped in immigration policy but his background is as a communicator and so he views a lot of people in side of the administration who started out with a lot of the same goals that he has and the president has on immigration as almost sort of be training him because they are telling him all of the reasons why you know the actions that the president wants to take and that he wants the president to be able to take are just not feasible not allowable under the law and so he and he questions you know why these are my allies these are my friends why can't they deliver what we want to deliver I was just going to say also that Stephen is very cagey about making sure that if there are people who are going to say no to him that he doesn't seem like he's the one that's saying no right he lets other people do that and then uses that against them so he can still be the good guy he's never opposing Trump right. My guests are Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis authors of the new book border walls inside Trump's assault on immigration we'll talk more after we take a short break and just in Chang will review the new film Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix as Batman's most famous nemesis I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air 'd. The new bar Family Foundation supports w.h.y. Wise fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from l.d. 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Next time on the New York radio hour I'll talk with Jane Mayer and others about the impeachment inquiry and its impact on America and we'll visit with the writer Elizabeth Strout who's publishing a sequel to the bestseller Olive Kitteridge That's all next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour. Sunday morning at 10. Connecticut Public Radio's business desk is made possible by Bouvier insurance wasn't for the business reported 832 week days on Morning Edition This is Fresh Air I'm Terry Gross let's get back to the interview I recorded with New York Times journalist Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis authors of the new book border wars inside Trump's assault on immigration it's about how the president has tried to drastically reduce immigration it describes some of his more impractical absurd or illegal ideas and the divisions within his administration over his orders she covers the White House for The Times Hirschfeld Davis used to cover Congress and is now a congressional editor at The Times. One of the things you write about is how inside the trumpet ministration data was used very said selectively one when it came to immigration data was often used to support preordained conclusions here's the policy we want here's the data we're going to pick and choose that supports the policy we want we will exclude the data that does not support it or give us an example of that. In the book we talk a lot about how Miller targeted their refugee resettlement program and really had a goal of cutting down drastically on the amount of refugees that got admitted to the country every year and one of the ways in which he tried to do that was to talk up the costs of the program and sort of escalate and intensify all of the fears that were out there particularly among be anti immigration crowd about refugees and what threats they might pose to the country so within this process as the National Security Council debated what the refugee ceiling should be for the coming fiscal year Steven Miller wanted to have a study that showed that refugees cost the economy a lot of money and he also wanted data in there about the relatively larger threat they posed relative to other immigrants the problem with both of those was that there was not government data to actually back that up but he and his allies within the White House and in some of the agencies repeatedly would try to infuse the discussions with these kind of photo data points or twisted data points and the career professionals would often just push back and say we have to get that out of the discussion paper it's not right but it was very difficult to do that when you're you have someone like Steven Miller who has the kind of clout that happens at the White House Ok Terry can I just interrupt for a sec just to say he just he just tweeted about us oh no although he misspelled it so what Wait I just want to explain here we're recording this on Wednesday. Tobar 2nd so tell us what Stephen Miller just tweeted about you know this is the president the president himself so the president just now the press is trying to sell the fact that I wanted a he says moot I think he means moat stuffed with alligators and snakes with an electrified fence and sharp spikes on top of our southern border I may be tough on border security but not that tough the press has gone crazy fake news Ok it was a fake news has a Prescott crazy Have you got it right he's quoting your book so he's already we're not exactly quoting it but alluding to here we have not gone crazy we have we've gotten everything in the book from multiple officials but interestingly when we have presented you know detailed accounts of what we learned to the White House both you know right before the book was submitted and right before this article was ready to go into the paper we never got a denial we never got any kind of dispute the facts that we have in there and say oh and in fact the half hour interview that we had with the president in the Oval Office back in June came after we had submitted a detailed kind of list of scenes in the book including the moat and the alligators and the snakes to the White House so and he never raised it with us so it's interesting that you know that that obviously now he's taking issue with it do you have us from several sources. Yeah this is mean you know multiple people that we that we again we talk to about 150 people for the book you know obviously not all of them in relation to that particular anecdote but we are very comfortable that the information that we have in the book and the story was corroborated by by people directly involved in the discussions and the situations that we described. We were talking. Story before dinner a president interrupted with this tweet we were talking about the selective use of data when it came to backing up and the Gratian proposals within the trumpet ministration that was also true. With the t.p.s. The temporary protected status for refugees who had been fleeing natural disasters . Like earthquakes floods and give us an example of how data was selectively used in the attempt to end that program for several countries Yeah you know anything from several countries right I mean so the t.p.s. Program has been a sort of staple of American policy for a couple of decades now it is a vehicle for for bringing people in who are fleeing these disasters and there's a there's a whole process that the State Department especially goes through starting with the ambassadors in these countries to justify every 18 months or so is the you know do do these people still deserve to stay here or can they go home and so just like it had always been done when the Trump administration came in the bureaucracy the State Department or accuracy started that process of you know doing the valuation a regular evaluation of these countries and they they would use the data that they've always used they would gather up all the statistics about how dangerous the countries word that are or how devastated the country still were that made the case that these people couldn't go back the trumpet ministration Steven Miller and his allies especially were determined not to let those be the facts that guided the decision and so they repeatedly rewrote memos Xed out information that would justify why the program had to continue and the people had to be able to stay here they would ask for different kinds of information that would that had never been asked for before like for example you know were the t.p.s. Recipients the people who were the immigrants who were here because of t.p.s. Had they committed crimes before that had never been even considered because that wasn't part of the congressional law that was passed and so they essentially spent much. Of 2017 and leading into 2018 rewriting recasting trying desperately to kind of push back against the bureaucrats in the State Department who wanted to extend this program and ultimately succeeded I mean ultimately the the various programs for the for all of the major countries involved were terminated by the president though the courts have said sort of held that up for the time being but they succeeded ultimately in pushing back against the bureaucracy or one of the moments in the book that we thought was really telling us when they're getting together these memos about a particular country's conditions and whether or not the status that he p.s. Status should be revoked you have someone at d.h.s.s. Writing an e-mail to a colleague saying when you when I read this memo it reads like the one person wrote the top and then someone came up behind them with a club clock them over the head and somebody else finished it because what it basically had laid out was that the country conditions were such that t.p.s. Really should be extended but then the last paragraph was and therefore we should terminate it and so you see these kind of absurd outcomes where they're trying to engineer an outcome with rationales that just aren't there all right let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more if you're just joining us my guests are Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear who are both journalists with the New York Times their new book is called Border Wars inside assault on immigration will be right back this is Fresh Air. 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And from Capital One committed to reimagining banking offering savings and checking accounts that can be opened from anywhere Capital One what's in your wallet Capital One and a. This is Fresh Air and if you're just joining us my guests are Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear authors of the new book border wars inside Trump's assault on immigration they're both journalists with the New York Times based in Washington . Reading your book I kept thinking about the people and government taking orders from Trump and having to execute those orders when they know it's not going to work for example Kirsten Nielsen when she was head of Homeland Security was given the directive from Trump to do the family separation policy she knew that Homeland Security didn't have the resources it needed she knew the courts didn't have the resources it would need and that you know across the board that technically no matter what you thought of it morally but technically this Paul and practically this policy wasn't going to work but she issues the directive. She does and I think you know part of what I think we try to describe in the book is the way in which the president. Really it's like a bully and beat his own people into submission I mean she agonized over that policy to be clear not on moral grounds I mean it we did we found little evidence that she she struggled with whether it was right or wrong to separate families don't know what in fact she's struggled with as you say was whether it could be done whether it was practical whether there would be all sorts of problems in the end and you know the president and and his aides just relentlessly beat her to submission you know I mean not in literal sense but phone calls repeatedly urging her you've got to do this get off your you know get off your butt you know you know the president is going to you know the president wants this to happen and you are the one standing in the way. You know we documented a. A cabinet meeting in which she wanted to do all sorts of immigration things closing the border down and doing things that she kept saying to him in the middle of this cabinet meeting that that you know he can't do he absolutely relentlessly excoriated her in front of the entire cabinet for you know close to an hour. Leading to her almost resigning right after that and I think and I think that's what happened in so many cases is that they just they sort of they give up and they just say you know what fine I'm going to sign the order there's a remarkable person Nelson Donald Trump story that you tell in a book related to drone policy like would you tell the story yeah this was a great this is a fun story I mean it you know the like they don't use the word fun but that's the journalist Yeah the journalist in me you know this this was a moment where actually didn't have a lot to do specifically with immigration that she had she had you know the secretary of Homeland Security is in charge of all sorts of things beyond cyber security and all sorts of Homeland Security is broader than just immigration and she had been told by the folks in her office that. That they were trying to get legislation passed to give the government the authority to take down drones the problem was the court existing laws made that difficult because the sort of laws that would let you intercept wirelessly these drones kind of violated the wiretapping laws that exist and so he wanted to change this and so he she went to the president said please Mr President can you you know sort of tweet about this support this legislation because we really need it to pass and she's explaining to him the logistics of why they need it to pass and he just you know as he so often did he didn't want to hear the details he didn't want to be sort of burdened with all this and so all he heard was you know drones and we need to take them down and he cuts are off mid-sentence and says honey just That's fine honey just shoot him down sweetheart just shoot him down and she she stopped him and said No no no what I'm saying Mr President is we need legislation he just interrupted her again you know again using these sort of like you know mildly sort of sexist or sexist terms there you go and you know there's no no just shoot him out of the sky you have my permission and then you know and then it was clear the meeting was over like that was he was that he was done he didn't want to hear any of the details and the meeting ends and you move on. But that's it wait for us I think in addition to being kind of a fun story but it also just captures. The way in which he interacts with his staff Ok something else you report in the book when Jared Kushner learned from the commissioner of Customs and Border Patrol that a wall a border wall would cut illegal immigration by only about 20 percent Jarrett said so we've wasted the last 2 years so you got this from other people not from Jared Jarrett has never said that publicly charity Kushner believes that the wall is really a waste of resources because it will only cut immigration by 20 percent why is he not saying anything publicly. That's a great question I mean you know a lot of I think Jared sure does not believe in a lot of president Trump's immigration policy frankly more recently we heard him talk about the parts of it that he does agree with this idea of having a merit based system which is in legislation that has no chance of becoming law. But you know part of the problem here is that so many of Trump's advisers have views very well informed views in some cases about how you attack the problem of immigration and the things that really are broken in the system that they don't end up sharing or when they do they get shot down and it's not an option for Jarrett commissioner to resign as the president's son in law he's in a really odd spot in that regard so he has chosen it seems to. Day and try to do as much as possible to kind of reorient what the president is doing and saying on immigration but he does have this influential perch and he hasn't in most cases used it to really make any sense and have change at the White House one of the things that is true about Jared is that he doesn't have a background in any of this I mean he were in Washington where there are people who have been dealing with immigration policy and immigration changes and legislative proposals on immigration for decades and he comes in he has he has no experience with any of this and then the comment that he made that you just quoted about wasted the last 2 years comes after he's essentially given a kind of immigration one o one lecture for a couple of hours by the by some of the people in the administration I mean he he doesn't have the gravitas nobody in Washington. You know sort of sees him as somebody who is steeped in immigration policy really understands the issues he doesn't really have the gravitas and frankly to the 2nd question you asked about why haven't they sort of stood up the way to why doesn't he say that. Both Jared and Yvonne to have have demonstrated again and again that they're not willing to cross. You know her father his father in law I mean you know the same thing happened on the family separation thing where we're really whatever they might have thought privately they didn't really say publicly and I think and I think that is that is not likely to change anytime soon. You got to interview President Trump for about a half hour before you completed the book what did you most want to ask him. What we really wanted to hear him reflect on was whether he had any regrets about any of these policies or the way that they. Unfolded I mean this was at the time when we wanted to speak with him when the pictures were just being released of all of the shelters. With squalid conditions with children. And who were dirty and didn't have the right supplies at the border it was really sort of a horrifying set of images that were coming out and we really wanted to hear him grapple with what the results have been of his push for some of these policies and we wanted to hear him talk about that and about whether he had any regrets about the family separation policy and really whether he was at all concerned or afraid that his legacy on immigration was going to be one of having sort of totally reordered the country's. Values and made it a place that was not welcoming to immigrants and that instead had this you know very draconian approach and what was interesting was he was very unwilling to grapple with any of those ideas that he when he talked about the conditions at the border he talked about you know this is all Obama's fault and the family separation thing that was just a policy that President Obama had in place which of course is false but he was really seemed to be in some sort of a parallel universe when it came to what the real world results had been of his agenda and and he had no regrets about the way that it played out at least none that he he would admit to President Trump told you during your interview with him that if he likes your book he'll tweet it out judging from the tweet you read us earlier he's not going to like the book. You know I imagine he read the excerpt of the book in The New York Times the attic right I saw it too I don't think he seen the whole book and we would encourage him we'll definitely make sure the White House has a copy of the book if he wants to to read the whole thing. The president on the one hand wants to call us fake news and doesn't want to be you know to have bad stories written about him but he also him I mean he wants to be tough he wants to be seen as tough on immigration and I think sometimes again I don't think he probably will like the book in the end I think he and Miller and some of his allies secretly think yeah this is exactly what we you know that subtitle of the book is Inside Trump's assault on immigration I think I think that's how they see it too I want to thank you so much for talking with us and thank you for your reporting thank you for having us so much. Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis are the authors of the new book. Insight trumps assault on immigration they're both journalists with the New York Times after a break just in China will review the new film Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix as Batman's most famous. This is Fresh Air. Coming up on the. Afternoon. Did you know that you're watching t.v. Your t.v. Watching you. Science Friday how your sport t.v. Is collecting information about you and so are the other Internet of Things devices in your home plus. Tricks to enrich homemade bread recipes it's all on Science Friday. Afternoon at 2. This is Fresh Air the new film Joker is a rage filled origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix as Batman's most famous nemesis It opens tomorrow but there are some screenings beginning today security has been heightened at many theaters across the country because of fear related to the or rural movie theater shooting in 2012 which was at a showing of the Batman film The Dark Knight our film critic Justin Chang has this review of Joker Joker is only just now opening in theaters but it already seems to have exhausted its potential for hype and controversy you may have heard that it won the prestigious top prize at the Venice Film Festival and that its star Joaquin Phoenix is a likely Academy Award nominee for his astounding physical transformation you may also have heard that the movie is much more realistic and disturbing than the average comic book adaptation and that summer anxious that its protagonist a lonely white male misfit who starts killing people may incite real life acts of violence you can't blame people for feeling anxious in a country where mass shootings happen every week but while choker is far from a major artistic triumph it's not an irresponsible glorification either it gazes with both terror and pity on Arthur Fleck who's played by Phoenix as the saddest sack in all of Gotham City it's 1981 and he's working as a clown for hire he aspires to become a stand up comedian even though nothing about him or his life is remotely funny he lives with his mother in a cramped apartment and we learn that he once spent some time in a mental hospital. He suffers from a rare condition that causes him to burst out and noisy uncontrollable spasms of laughter he meets regularly with a social worker who has a month several different antidepressants into one day she tells him that the city is cutting funding for their visits there. As. This is the last time we'll be needing. His Allison day he. Is asked the same question as ever. Lose your job. Or you have ruined. It In. Between Arthur's clown get up and his maniacal laugh you can see the building blocks of the Joker's freaky funny persona sliding into place the director Todd Phillips who wrote the script with Scott Silver keeps pushing Arthur toward the point of no return 1st he's attacked by some kids in an alley prompting him to acquire a handgun and then he loses his job by the time he's getting smacked around by 3 smug Wall Street Bros on the subway something inside him snaps and he takes out his gun when we see him next he's dancing in dreamy slow motion relishing his newfound calling as a homicidal maniac Phoenix makes Arthur an exceptionally vivid mobster his performance is a symphony of scowls howls grins grimaces and of course those endless fits of laughter it's a big grotesquely showy piece of acting but you can't take your eyes off him Phoenix's work here suffers only in comparison to his own earlier performances in the master and you were never really here the men he played in those movies were Chinua only haunted figures and you had no idea from moment to moment what they would do next in Chokher By contrast you know what's ahead for Arthur Fleck his journey is doomed you might even say programmed to end in. Madness and violence Phillips is best known for making The Hangover movies old school and other comedies of male misbehavior and Joker feels in some ways like a comic book extension of his brand there's a beauty and lucidity to his work here that may surprise you and his vision of Gotham City has its own squalid grander but as convincingly gritty as it looks Joker falters in its attempts to conjure up a backdrop of social unrest we hear news of a rise in violent crime and anti rich sentiment aimed at billionaire tycoons like Thomas Wayne whose son Bruce Wayne will of course grow up to become Batman himself but these stabs at political relevance feel mostly call way and disengaged you can sense Joker trying to position itself as a triumph of comic book Real ism along the lines of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy but there are other movies overshadowing this one too one crucial subplot concerns Arthur's comedy idol a late night t.v. Talk show host played by Robert De Niro in an explicit not to Martin Scorsese's The King Of Comedy Joker also plays like an homage to another Scorsese to Nero classic taxi driver also a psychological thriller about a man who might just be as hopeless and unreachable as the city that spawned him. I've seen Joker twice now and my feelings about it remain unresolved although Phillips is thin skinned defenses of his movie haven't helped matters I can't deny my admiration of what he's accomplished a comic book picture that avoids computer generated spectacle and renders an iconic villain on an intimate human scale but if joker can be hard to watch at times in the end there's something a little too easy about its vision of a world tilting into madness after 2 hours charting a man's psychological destruction and a city's descent into criminal Anarky Joker finally ends with a sly wink and a maddening shrug as if to say stay tuned for the sequel. Justin Chang is a film critic for the l.a. Times if you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed like our interviews this week with Conan O'Brien actor Antonio Banderas or Jack Goldsmith whose new memoir is about his investigation into his stepfather's involvement in the disappearance of powerful union boss Jimmy Hoffa check out our podcast you'll find lots of fresh air interviews. Fresh Air's executive producer. Interviews and reviews are produced in edited by Amy salat. They a child Kelly from I'm Terry Gross. Support for n.p.r. Comes from the station and from Scribner publisher of ask again yes Marybeth novel about 2 families linked by fate forgiveness and abiding love I ask again yes is available in bookstores and online. And from Sony Pictures Classics with where's my Roy Cohn a new film from the turn our life and career of lawyer Roy Cohn from the execution of the Rosenbergs to McCarthyism to the mentor ing of a young Donald Trump starts Friday. Connecticut Public Radio is on n.p.r. One find it in the App Store a Massachusetts man spent 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit he sued the police officers who he claims violated his civil rights. They said 27000127. Does all that money matter to him plus the latest on the House impeachment inquiry tomorrow on Morning Edition from n.p.r. News listen from 5 to 9 so part comes from Smile Ok answer hospital at Yale New Haven. I'm David Folkenflik coming up next on point President Trump's inner circle under fire as the impeachment inquiry heats up Bernie Sanders sidelined by a heart procedure Facebook versus Elizabeth Warren the Round Table is here plus the role of the conservative media at the outset of the impeachment of President Trump that's coming up next on point from n.p.r. . This is Connecticut Public Radio p.r. And n.p.r. H.t. One marriage and at 90.5. 89.1. 88.5. 91.3 npr dot org It's a lot of in a clock. From n.p.r. And for the media it's left in the us a pasta today we break down this spell of emo sumac the famous prove the end diva known as the queen of exotica she was just huge after that 1st record I was nuts sold 800000 copies in 1950 with very little promotion so called princess was adored around the globe but she was criticized in her home country because of the stereotypes she portrayed she didn't mention that I guess that was her way of dealing with it was not to mention her at all in those years also on the show it's been over 30 years since he starred as Richie Valens in the film. My conversation with actor Lou Diamond Phillips all this coming up on that you know us a I might stay with us. Line from n.p.r. News in Washington Steven's nice present Mike Pence is wading into the controversy that sparked an in peace from an inquiry N.P.R.'s Frank or draw news reports that Pence is defending President Trump's request that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden's son Hunter the vice president is sticking up for President Trump as pressure in Washington mounts over his request that the Ukraine government investigate a potential 2020 rival speaking in Arizona Pence said one of the main reasons he and Trump were elected was to quote drain the swamp I think the American people have a right to know if the vice president of the United States or his family profited from his position as vice president during the last administration the administration has presented no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his family Democrats say the rush transcript of a July 25th call shows Trump repeatedly pressured his Ukrainian counterpart for his own political gain Franco Ordonez n.p.r. News the White House President from today said that Joe Biden and his son Hunter should also be investigated by.