This is a big book. It is a big book. Its a Coffee Table Book and as advertised i went, oh okay, im going to look at it. Its going to be all pictures and there be little captions. No, this is a book, book. Yeah. You wrote the heck out of this book. They told me i would be writing some text for a picture book. I thought i would be writing captions. This literally, you could have written this as a regular book. Yeah, it is a relatively substantial history of his eight years as president , as told in the New York Times style journal. Except there was not a george w. Bush Coffee Table Book. There was not a bill clinton Coffee Table Book that im aware of. Admit it, youre nostalgic for this. Is that what it is . Well look, you know, what the truth is, we did a Coffee Table Book at the beginning of his presidency. When he took office because the election of the first African American president. Its a moment. Moment in history. Right. And so having done one in the front end, we just thought we should do one on the back end. Right, but of course, the last 11 months as we sit here, probably have made the eight years that proceeded it a little more interesting. [peter] they are definitely. Right from a contrasting point. [peter] from a contrast point of view. Hes been largely off stage. Do you think people fully understand him . You came back to the times, you came to the times probably in 2008. You came to the times, 2008. And you covered his administration. Right. You understand who this guy is from having been there in real time. Watching him emerge and evolve as the leader of this country. Do you think we appreciate who he is . Understand who he is and will we have an opportunity to evaluate or reevaluate him Going Forward . Its actually a great question. Please ask me why did i do this book . Its because i think in fact, in some ways, he is still a mystery to us. He came on the stage kind of out of nowhere. He was only a senator for two years before he started running for president. He was that guy with the funny name. He was the guy with the funny name and he was also the guy with the great speech right. And a great idea, the idea behind it. I think a lot of americans invested in him what they wanted him to be, what they thought he might be, not who he really was. And so, inevitably that led to some disappointments. Well that was both a feature and a bug, was it not . If hes a blank screen on two which you project your aspirations, your hopes, your dreams, youre going to be disappointed. He himself said, im like a rorschach test, right. In the campaign he was both on the one hand, avatar of a new aggressive progressivism, right. The idea that the government could be good in society. Thats sort of a new found fdr. On the other hand, he was a Bridge Builder right. Red american, blue america, no were the United States of america. Im going to be post partisan in fact. You cant be both those things it turns out. Its really hard and inevitably some people were disappointed. At the end of the eight years the country was divided. You cant necessarily say he divided the country. But there is no question that the country was divided. Outside of the federal elections, the state became, the states, pardon me, plural, became more and more red over those eight years. Democrats lost state legislations, they lost governorships, the lost all kinds of offices back home. And really the politics did not turn out after the eight years the way that he or the people that supported him would have wanted. No, its interesting. He was the most polarizing president since george w. Bush. And now donald trump is the most polarizing president since barack obama. We seem to be in a sour period in our history to some extent. And for the entire eight years that he was president , not once did the polls show a majority of americans saying were on the right track. And thats something that proceeded him. It was true for the last number of years in george w. Bushs presidency. Its still true. So were in a period where the country is sort of dissatisfied and our leaders have not been able to figure out how to bridge that divide. Now one difference between obama coming in behind bush and bush coming in following clinton is that it was not a campaign by the new guy to completely eradicate everything that the last person in the office had done. And really what the last 11 months have been as much as anything is whatever obama did, trump wants to undo it. Yeah, no question about it. Conscious decision. Is that going to cause us to look differently at obama as president at some point . Will that be part of the legacy calculation . It does mean the legacy is sort of unsettled at this point because we dont know what will survive. Will there still be a Healthcare System as obama designed it . Will there still be an opening to cuba as he did it . We already pulled out of the Climate Change treaty, their pact with paris. He pulled out of the tpp, the trade agreement in asia. And youre right, trump more than most president s ive seen is determine to sort of take a sledge hammer to the last guys programs. Its not just move in a different direction. Obviously they all move in a different direction. He wants to undo things. And thats different, theres no question about it. Do you think the public voted for that . Some of them did obviously. Because you know the public in the case of electing obama the election of obama it is said was often as much about the previous eight years as it was about what obama might do. They wanted to undo bushs legacy. Im not sure, maybe you have a different perspective on this that the election of trump was a repudiation of obama, so much as a repudiation of clinton. Well, to some extent, i think thats right. People were not happy with Hilary Clinton as their candidate. She had a lot of baggage obviously as a candidate. Obamas numbers have actually gone up right. They went up in his last months in office. He left office in a pretty good state. Hes certainly more popular now. Certainly more popular now, and part because of the contrast. So youre right, you can make the argument not necessarily a repudiation of obama. And in fact, a number of people voted for trump who had voted for obama. 9 of people vote, can you believe that, 9 of people voted for obama and trump. You would think that wouldnt be. [evan] couldnt have imagined that. Right, what are they thinking . I think those people were thinking we voted for obama as a change agent now were voting for trump as a change agent. Its not illogical because of ideology. Change is not the same, but it is change. Exactly. You covered obama in the white house. You covered trump in the white house. What was more fun . Which is more fun . Well ill tell whats busier, certainly trump. No questions about that. Yeah, is it not, stammering i had gotten to saying that its like a fire hose of news. Actually were being waterboarded in the end, right . laughter theres no way to catch your breath. You cannot look away. No you cant. For one second. No, you absolutely cant. The house is burning and you cant stop looking at it. In the morning, when its my duty week, i sleep with the phone in my bed because i know around 5 30 or 6, its going to start buzzing. [evan] there he goes. With the tweets, and im going to get up and start typing. I find myself, often written a whole story by 8 00 am and im still in my jemmies. I mean its intense, nonstop, 24 7 kind of presidency. Its possible to have predicted this, maybe i guess its not possible to have predicted at the beginning. There were so many aspects of it though peter, that probably if you go back, then you think we of course the predicate was there. The campaign was like this, why wouldnt the presidency be like this. What is funny, like we find so many things shocking and yet really it shouldnt be. I mean, he is who he is, you know. And hes done basically what he said he would do. The people who thought that he would somehow become more president ial or that he would get in the office and the office would change him. You say you are who you are. Yeah, hes 71, he doesnt plan to change. Not to say he hasnt changed some. The guys obviously, evolved in some ways. He is open to advice and he has changed on some of the positions hes taken. But in terms of who he is, his fundamental, the way he operates, it hasnt changed. His view is it got me here, why should i change . Do you have a principle audience youre writing for when youre covering this president . Is it for the web . Is it for social media . Is for the print edition of the paper . As we sit here today, theres a big Harvey Weinstein story in the New York Times, that posted last night. So i read the story that was online last night. And i walked in today and i was like Harvey Weinsteins on the cover of the New York Times. I basically forgot that they ever printed the story. It felt like such a long time ago right. You think that everything is just in the ether and thats it. What are you writing for . Who are you writing for . The problem is that were writing for all of those people and all those platforms, and we have to. Because we are unlike many news organizations that have gone very niche for one audience or another. We are still one of the last of the big general audience, general mass Market Audience publications. As much as your digital audience has famously grown in the trump era, you still have significant subscribers numbers for the print edition of the paper right . So we in some way, we are a newspaper reporter, but we are also an ap reporter, a wire service reporter. We are a magazine reporter. We are an audio radio reporter in effect. We are a tv reporter in effect. Because we do all these different types of ways. Well in fact there was a time peter, was there not, when the New York Times was like we dont really want our people on television. That would be gauche to have our people on tv talking about their work. And now i turn on any of the cable channels and here you all are. Were everywhere. I was mentioning you before we came out, that i enjoy seeing you on the Brian Williams program on msnbc at what airs in texas at 10 oclock but its 11th hour because it airs on the east coast. Talking about whatever the story is of that day and of the next day and that really allows for the New York Times to be the news brand of record. It puts you in front of an audience and they think, well the New York Times has the story. Theyre the ones. Yeah, the papers really had to shift and change about how it views these things. Your right, it used to be we would say, nah, thats not what we want to do. We want to be the old gray lady. Now we understand we have to evolve like everybody else. Its a new environment, a new type of audience, a new type of marketplace and we want to play it. We want to play in all the different platforms. Back to this point about the waterboarding or the fire hose. Given the news environment, it is literally the case that almost ever yday theres some major scoop that you or the Washington Post or both of you or the wall street journal, i mean it really, you hit five or six in the afternoon and its like scoop oclock. And you guys are putting out whatever the big thing of the day is. And so then you spend the entire night talking about it and breaking it apart and analyzing it on television. Ultimately thats good for the brand. Well it is. We have an old fashion newspaper war going on right now. Its actually very fun for the newspaper persons point of view. The post has really revived itself. It had a few bad years. Youre a former post guy. Im a former post guy, 20 years at the post. Love the post, grew up on the post. Do you feel competitive like, weve got to beat those guys brains in, kind of way or do you feel like, well im admiring of what they do. And theres not really competition so much as this environment in which we all. I think its both. I want to beat their brains in and i admire when they beat our brains in. When they have a good story you go, props. Absolutely, theyve done a fabulous job. And i think our guys have done a fabulous job, our investigative guys. And yeah, its a great, its good, its healthy. Its healthy for the newspapers. Were better newspapers as a result. Its healthy for society and democracy to have independent voices out there competing to provide readers with new information. And the competitive set is actually larger than just the post and the times. Though it often seems like it is. Theres a whole bunch of new players on the scene. Principally in washington, in terms of just covering daily political stuff, your wife susan glasser, is a magnificant journalist herself, was the editor of politico. Is now back to being a columnist and podcaster, she also writes for vanity fair. Shes a veteran journalist as you are. Its got to be nice to see how there are all these additional places to go get information because in the end if you believe in the Public Service function of journalism to inform the public, the public is pretty well informed right now. The public has the option of being well informed if they want to be. If they choose to be. Theres plenty of places now to go and get information. What worries me, and i think probably you, is that there are also ways of going to our own corners. Only going places confirmation bias. Exactly, they tell us, affirmation not information, right . They tell us how were right about things. And thats where, obviously, theres some worry. And the credibility of brands is important in a moment like that because people are all so often promoting facts that are not really facts. Right. Right, we understand the fake news environment that we hear a lot about is in part because of news brands that are not credible are existing side by side with brands like the New York Times. What you hope, especially younger readers and Younger Voters who are just starting out in the world, basically, and theyre getting everything, twitter and facebook and all these other places, is that when they see information, its not all equal. That they shouldnt just assume that the fact that this is on twitter and that is on twitter means these are the same, theyre not. Dont believe everything you read, the old adage turns out to be true. So youre the chief white house, White House Correspondent for the times. Youre the former Moscow Bureau chief for the post, right. Washington post. You wrote a book about bill clintons impeachment. Mhmm. Hello, gorgeous. I hope that you can explain to me now whats going on in the world. You touch all the bases as far as trump goes. Wheres this going with the president . The truth is, one thing we should learn from the last 12 months is, predictions are a very dangerous thing to make these days. [evan] right. 12 months ago, just a little bit over 12 months ago, none of us wouldve been predicting we would be here talking about donald trump. [evan] correct. So im not gonna predict where the investigations going. I will say that clearly hes been very methodical in the way hes conducting the investigation. He is mueller. He that is Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Hes building the Building Blocks of wherever hes going to piece by piece. Hes not leaking, clearly. I mean, thats a, stop there for one second. Thatd an important point. The flynn thing caught everybody flatfooted. The pappadopoulos thing caught everybody absolutely. Flat footed. Clearly hes doing a lot that were not seeing, absolutely. And somehow hes got a lid on it. Thats right. Because ordinarily, you guys would get leaks. This guy, george pappadopoulos, is a good example. This guy worked as a Campaign Advisor for donald trump last year. Pretty small fish, frankly. And when they announced that he had pleaded guilty, he had been in their control for 2 months. Right, hed been arrested 2 months earlier and cooperated with the prosecutor. Nobody knew, nobody knew nobody knew about it. Right, so its entirely possible that theres much more going on than we know. Right, right. And if you look at Michael Flynns guilty plea the other day, hes a former National Security advisor to the president , he lasted 24 days in office. He was charged and pleaded guilty to a single charge of lying to investigators. Even though they have accumulated all this different evidence of Different Things hes done that might be considered to be illegal. And theyre basically holding that over him, saying okay, were gonna give you a pretty nice deal to get out of all that. Why . Because they think theyre getting something out of it. And we dont know what, but they think theyre getting something out of it. The question that the average persons who is consuming the stuff that you and others and the Media Business now are producing on this subject. The question theyre asking, the average person, is why do they act so guilty if they have nothing to hide . Everybody in the administration, at every turn, is acting like theres something there. Yeah, its a great question, look, in washington, of course, theres a cliche to say is the coverup not the crime. Right. Youre right, theres nothing [evan] or the obstruction, not the collusion. I mean, theres nothing wrong with people meeting with russias ambassador. [evan] right. Inherently, in of itself, nothing wrong with that. So therefore, why do you need to lie about that . Because the presumption is, what you were talking about might be more incriminating, might look bad, might whatever. Because in fact, you know, a simple conversation, a desire to change foreign policy, thats a legitimate thing for a president to do. Maybe something people disagree with, but it is within the right of a new president to say im going to have a different foreign policy. So why, as you say, are people being caught out not telling the truth . Whos at risk here . Realistically . Well, you know. Its a good qu