Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / Maggie Haberman _ Jonathan Swan - On _Regime Change_ _ Inside The Trump Presidency _ The Daily Show

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Maggie Haberman _ Jonathan Swan - On _Regime Change_ _ Inside The Trump Presidency _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Now, this is, it's out now, yes? No. It is
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: not out now.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: You have a secret copy.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: When does it come out? Tomorrow. Tomorrow. So when this airs,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: we'll be jumping the embargo.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: It's kind of broken, right?
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're well past that.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Make me feel special, just for tonight. So it's not embargoed.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: How.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Ish. How many people did.
• 0:26
  Speaker 4: You have information in here from inside the Situation Room
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: where they're having a meeting to discuss the damage from
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: the Epstein files.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: There's only five people in the room, six? How many
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: people were in the room?
• 0:40
  Speaker 5: There were a couple of meetings that we describe in
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: the book. And so there is one, which was about
• 0:46
  Speaker 5: half a dozen people. And then there were others with
• 0:48
  Speaker 5: multiple people, the senior levels of the White House, the DOJ,
• 0:51
  Speaker 5: and so forth.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: So you have information. Six people are in the room.
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: without giving away the secrets, who's the rat?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Tell me the rat.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Who is the, who is it, Besant? It's, it's Lutnik.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: You sound like Trump right now.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, really.
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: Can I ask, when I read the book, honestly, there
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: was a part of me that thought, I bet Trump
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: called them.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Like he, some of this, Is a lot of this
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: information from Trump?
• 1:29
  Speaker 5: He wasn't in these meetings.
• 1:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, they had the Epstein meetings without him because they
• 1:33
  Speaker 6: knew he didn't want to talk about Epstein.
• 1:35
  Speaker 5: This was to protect against him not wanting to discuss
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: this and leaks.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Those were the reasons that these meetings happened.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: How'd that go?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I hope you're enjoying the book, John.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I am enjoying it, but.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: I am baffled that this administration, who is, they are
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: so tight-knit and so loyalist, that you would be able
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: to glean this info? Did you have, was it on tape?
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: Is that, people have suggested it might be on tape.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not gonna speculate or talk about it.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not asking you to speculate. I'm asking you
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: to tell me.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I'm asking you to give me how.
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: We appreciate you. We're not gonna talk about sourcing.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: No, and I wouldn't, and I wouldn't ask you to.
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: Would you tell me to, or would you tell him to?
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: What I would do is, I'm going to say a name.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Are you even surprised at the level of access and
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: information that you got? When you went into this, did
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: you think you would get people to grant you the
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: kind of inside information that you were granted?
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: It was really hard.
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: This presidency, for lots of reasons, is almost unrecognizable from
• 2:57
  Speaker 6: his first term.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: It's almost unrecognizable as a presidency.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Well, it is, actually.
• 3:03
  Speaker 6: I mean, that's really the premise of our book. We're
• 3:05
  Speaker 6: seeing a form of regime change in our own country.
• 3:08
  Speaker 6: We haven't seen anything like this. But in the first term,
• 3:11
  Speaker 6: there was prolific leaking. And one of the biggest pieces
• 3:15
  Speaker 6: of nonsense in this term, and there's a lot of it,
• 3:18
  Speaker 6: is that they're the most transparent administration there is. Actually,
• 3:22
  Speaker 6: they're very good at keeping secrets when they want to.
• 3:25
  Speaker 6: The perfect example most recently is this memorandum of understanding
• 3:28
  Speaker 6: to end the Iran war. Very senior people in the
• 3:31
  Speaker 6: government had not seen that document. Very, very senior people.
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: Only the tiniest number of people had seen it. So
• 3:36
  Speaker 6: this almost killed it. I mean, this was really hard.
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: We've both covered him for a long time. I think
• 3:41
  Speaker 6: people feel like this stuff spills out.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: It's hard. It's hard reporting.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: How do you, when you're reporting on something like that,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: here's something that crosses my mind. One thing that you
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: do glean from the book is every move they make
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: is intentional, including the misinformation and access that they give you.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: So they might have a scenario where, you talk about
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: it when the USAID or the Musk memos were coming out,
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: and they thought, oh, OK, we need something to distract this.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: Why don't we announce that I'm going to prosecute Obama?
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: To reopen Gitmo.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: To reopen, that's what it was, to reopen Gitmo.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: So if they are purposefully misinforming, How do you guard
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: against that finding its way into your reporting?
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: It's a good question, and it's a fair question.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: You know what? Thank you. I'm a f * *
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: * ing journalist.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: But what do you do?
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: Part of it is the fact that we've been covering
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: his world for so long. We actually have a sense of...
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: who is telling the truth, who is not, but we
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: don't just take one person's word for it. This is not,
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: you know, I was just in this meeting and let
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: me tell you about, you know, the heroics. We spent
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: an enormous amount of time verifying what is in this book.
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: If we were at all, it pained us how much
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: we did not put in the book. We either didn't
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: put it in because it really wasn't relevant anymore or
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: because we couldn't confirm it to our satisfaction. And there
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: are things we are still trying to confirm, but what
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: is in here, we are confident of. That doesn't mean
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: that I'm not confident that the White House will at
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: some point say we're wrong.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they will. But that's certainly correct.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: But even that's purposeful. Well, for sure.
• 5:32
  Speaker 6: But we assume, I mean, we've gotten to a point
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: where we just assume false until proven otherwise. I mean,
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: you assume what you're being told is false until proven otherwise.
• 5:41
  Speaker 6: You don't take anyone's word for it. There's no, what
• 5:43
  Speaker 6: is it, Reagan, trust but verify? There's no trust.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: You have, there's a story in here that Donald Trump
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: called Howard Lutnick a pussy.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not here to speculate.
• 5:58
  Speaker 6: I'm not saying it's accurate he is a pussy.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you issued that correction.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: But so then do you call a bunch of people
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: and have to go, hey, I heard Trump called Lutnick
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: a pussy.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 6:22
  Speaker 6: True?
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the thing about this book.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: You asked him that?
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we asked him directly, and he certainly didn't push
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: back on it.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: He didn't say, yes, that's true.
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: We had other confirmations, but it wasn't something he was
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: racing to deny.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: The thing about this book is you can.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of.
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: Reporting historically over Trump, which is sort of I would
• 6:45
  Speaker 6: call it wispy. I'm not making Like it's hard to
• 6:49
  Speaker 6: get inside the room.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: But when I say wispy, it's like.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: Trump is thinking this Trump is saying this You know
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: we say on this day at this time in this
• 6:58
  Speaker 6: room and here are the people around the room This
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: was said and right that was either that either happened
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: or it didn't happen you can like there's an element
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: of you can check our work a little bit more
• 7:07
  Speaker 6: than if we just said Donald Trump amorphously was thinking
• 7:10
  Speaker 6: this thing, or on this Air Force One flight, this
• 7:13
  Speaker 6: was said. We tried to do that in this book
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: because we think it's important that you can anchor something
• 7:19
  Speaker 6: in a scene and a setting, and people can hopefully
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: have a bit more faith in the reporting.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: What would you like this to, because one thing that
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: you don't do is psychoanalyze or make judgments about why
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: it operates this way or the psychology behind any of it.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: So do that now for me. Because here's what's very clear.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: He understands the power of bending reality. And he does
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: it with great ease. So this would be the type
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: of question. Does he truly believe that the Democrats rigged
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: the 2020 election vote-wise?
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about when he gets into atmosphere.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Is that something he actually believes, or is it something
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: that he strategically proffers because he knows the reality-distorting effects
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: that that has on the larger game he's playing?
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: It's hard to know often, which is why we don't
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: get into psychoanalysis, other than the fact that we're also nuts. psychiatrists,
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: but it's hard to know when he actually believes something
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: or if he is just saying something over and over
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: again because he is very aware of the power of
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: repetition and the effect that it has on voters, on
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: the media, on the general public, on other world leaders.
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: In terms of the 2020 election, there are many people
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: around him in our reporting who think he has convinced
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: himself of that, that he does now believe that. I
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: also don't know that whether he believes that really matters
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: because so many of his own government in 2020 said
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: this was not the case.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: And why he flees interviews when he's asked to litigate it.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: What do you think is the best way to... You
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: did this.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: In 2020, you sat down with Trump and you were
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: talking about COVID deaths. And he was making the case,
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: I think, about the minimization of it. And you brought
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: out facts and figures and you showed them to him.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: And it was like the world stopped.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: Like people went crazy for it because they hadn't seen
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: him litigated. Is that the way to report on him?
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: Because we really don't do that very often.
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: It's interesting you use the word litigated because the way
• 9:38
  Speaker 6: I thought about that interview was I was litigating reality
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: with Trump. And it was actually the opposite of what
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: you said. He handed me the sheet of paper.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: He handed you the sheet.
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: But it was important because Thing that drives me crazy
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: often watching certain interviews with Trump is the, the tendency
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: to move on and it just drives me it drives
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: me really crazy because don't move on no stay stay
• 10:09
  Speaker 6: yes and so this was.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: It stay yeah yeah yes yeah.
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: So this this was a moment where I could have
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: moved on. I actually had planned to move on. We'd
• 10:18
  Speaker 6: spent about 20 minutes talking about COVID and I was
• 10:22
  Speaker 6: ready to go. There was a lot of other things
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: to talk about. I only had half an hour technically,
• 10:25
  Speaker 6: but then I could tell he wanted to hand me
• 10:26
  Speaker 6: this document.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: I was like, what the, what's this document?
• 10:29
  Speaker 6: So he hands me this document and it took me
• 10:31
  Speaker 6: a moment to understand what it was, but it looked
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: like it had been put together by an intern. And
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: it was essentially this chart where he was trying to
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: argue to me that we're winning on death, basically on COVID.
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: And it was really preposterous, but you have to sit there,
• 10:51
  Speaker 6: absorb it, and then pop the reality bubble with a needle.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Why is that so challenging?
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: It seems very basic, and yet even it's very difficult
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: to execute it.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So why is that?
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: Well, it used to be somewhat easier, although I will
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: say that Jonathan did the single best television interview with
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: Trump that has existed. They have structured this White House,
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: the press corps, so that it is primarily people or
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: half people who they consider to be friendly to them.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: They control the media pool that is in there now.
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: They control the seats. Routinely, the only person really challenging
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: him aggressively, and not rudely or unprofessionally, is Caitlin Collins.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Collins, kills him. Yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: And she takes an enormous.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: No question.
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: And she takes an enormous amount of shit, and she
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: keeps a total straight face.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: But she doesn't have backup.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: In the old days, when we would be in the pool,
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: even in the term one, and they made it harder,
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: but it was still doable, you'd ask a question, somebody
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: else in the pool would follow up on your question.
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: Now it is, you ask a question about Ukraine, Iran,
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: I can go on and on, and he turns to
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: the reflecting pool, and it's 20 minutes of him just talking.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: And so it is much more challenging.
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: It is also why, you know, this has come up
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: a lot as we've been talking to people about this book,
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: We don't, a lot of reporters have a cell phone
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: number now, obviously, that's like, you know, it's.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, I got it right here. I totally would delete that.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Do you have a cell phone number?
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, I have a cell phone number.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Can we call him right now?
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Let's not. This is probably a little up.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: And you guys are professionals, but what if I call
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: him as his pool guy? And I just call him
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: and I'll be like, sir, I'll tell you, this thing
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: just stays green.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: There's nothing I can do. I can't even tell you.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: A lot of people have his number.
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: And for reporters, it's, you know, wow, I have the
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: president's number and I can speak to him directly.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: There's a flattery to it.
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: And he controls the terms, right? There have been some
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: pieces of news that have come out, but generally speaking,
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: it's him setting the agenda. He says one thing here,
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: he says something totally different 15 minutes later, and it's
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: just him flooding the zone. And it's what he did
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: in New York when he was a tabloid guy.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: No question.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: But this gets to the heart of its weaponized access.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: But we're not doing this.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no.
• 13:24
  Speaker 6: I'm not.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: You guys are great. I'm talking about the other people.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about these other people.
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: The other people also, there are many who do a
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: good job. But yes, we don't engage in this phone.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, everybody's doing a good job. I don't know
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: what I was thinking. I'm just saying. Let me explain why.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Because this is the gist of it. Judith Miller, right?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: You remember Judith Miller, New York Times. So... She went to.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: The White House, and they fed her information that Saddam
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Hussein had aluminum tubes that could only be used for
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: enriching uranium.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: He was making a nuclear weapon.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: And she wrote in the New York Times, I have discovered,
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: me and my partner, through our diligent reporting, that Saddam
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Hussein has these tubes. Dick Cheney goes on Meet the
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: Press the next day and says, the New York Times,
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: no friend to this administration. But she was being used,
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: or was a willful participant, in a manipulation. And If
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: that's the case, that the phone number, they understand that
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: it's his terms, then that access is actually worth less
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: than journalism.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: It's actually abetting.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: It's aiding and abetting in the crimes that they commit.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: How does that end? How do we stop that? And
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: is that something that you believe is a problem? Because
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: it seems.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Like It's a dangerous, dangerous problem with this administration.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: We don't find it useful.
• 14:54
  Speaker 6: The reason we don't call him on his cell phone
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: is because it's not useful.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, what's he gonna do?
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: It's a two minute call and he's gonna say how
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: everything's great and whatever. And again, like the book, you're
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: not going to get a detailed scene inside the Situation
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: Room that potentially includes information that's damaging for the White
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: House and the administration from Donald Trump.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: On a two-minute call.
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: So the type of reporting we do, it's not actually
• 15:20
  Speaker 6: possible to get that from a phone call with Donald Trump.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: I'm talking more about the cadence reporting, the 24-hour reporting,
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: that where it's.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Not possible to have the kind of....
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: Reflection and analysis that you might have over the quality
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: of the sources.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: But we don't do it for our daily reporting either.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, I can't speak to, I mean,
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: I can speak to, but I'm not going to speak
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: to how every single person in this White House press corps.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: Or in D.C. now does their jobs.
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: The media environment is very different. Donald Trump obviously has
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: taken advantage of that. He came back to Washington, and
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: we talk about this a lot in the book, to
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: a very different set of power dynamics where you have
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: media companies that are terrified of him. We are very
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: fortunate to work for one that is independent and which
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: he has no levers over.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And yet cares deeply about.
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: As much as he talks about the New York Times,
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: he seems to care deeply about what you guys think
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: of him.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: He has a.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Specific relationship with the New York Times.
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, in his head, I don't mean actually. For
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: anybody who wants to understand how he looks at the
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: New York Times, there was an episode of the Daily
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: Podcast that the Times does where AG Sulzberger, our publisher,
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: went to the Oval Office with me and Peter Baker
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: in 2019.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: I think it was.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: And AG only went because Trump had invited him to
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: come off the record. And AG said, I'm not going
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: to come off the record, but I will come if
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: my reporters can interview you.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: And so he joined us.
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: And he used the opportunity to directly say to Trump,
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: the language you are using about a free press is
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: being used to embolden despots around the globe. And Trump
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: just kept saying, I think I'm entitled to a good
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: story from my paper. and my hometown paper, some version
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: of that. That is how he sees it, and that
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: is totally different. It is not useful to us. We
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: did sit with him for an interview. We requested repeatedly,
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: but we made very clear it was a fact check interview.
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: to sort of sit for open mic night.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And by the way, in that.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: Interview, he hands you a list of people from history
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: that he's been told he's more powerful than.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And the list is Mao, Stalin, Hitler.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: Like, he doesn't go with, like, George Washington.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He goes with despots and tyrants and is like... Fuck
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: those guys. I'm bigger than them.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: Top ten is what he said to himself.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: The top ten.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: The top ten, yeah.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Is America too small for him now? Does he now
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: view this as I'm Alexander the Great?
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Something to that, actually. I mean, Jonathan has a.
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: It was an extraordinary moment because throughout the reporting of
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: this book, we had basically come to a thesis that
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: he was far less responsive to domestic politics than he
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: was in the first term. In the first term, if
• 17:52
  Speaker 6: polls went down, stock market gyrations, he'd be much more reactive.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: It's not to say he doesn't think about that at all.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: He definitely thinks about stock market.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: He definitely does. It's not black and white, but he
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: thinks about it far less.
• 18:03
  Speaker 6: One of the questions we're asking, why is he willing
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: to take much bigger risks this term than last term?
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: I don't think he would have gone to war in
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: the same circumstances. I don't think he would have taken
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: America to war in Iran last term in the same circumstances.
• 18:16
  Speaker 6: I'm not sure he would have authorized the operation to
• 18:18
  Speaker 6: snatch a sovereign head of state in his pajamas out
• 18:21
  Speaker 6: of his bedroom. You know, that was a very risky,
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: American service members could have died in that operation.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Thank God they didn't.
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: He, when we sat across from him and he handed
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: us that piece of paper that he said was written
• 18:33
  Speaker 6: by a historian, it turns out it was written by
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: a former golf caddy for Harry Potter.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Harry Potter. Don't brush over that. He thought it was
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: written by a historian. It was written by a golf caddy?
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: What, a golf caddy just came up and said, like,
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: this Ken Burns handed me this.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Sort of.
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: He was golfing with Gary Player, who he's known for
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: a very long time. We asked him a question about
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: power and presidential power. and he immediately said, he sent
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: his all-purpose aide, Natalie Harp, out and said, Natalie, get
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: the documents, and he said, do you know who Gary
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: Player is?
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: We weren't quite sure where this was going.
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: And then he described golfing with Gary Player, and Gary
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: Player had this historian with him named David King, and
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: we spent a while trying to figure out who David
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: King was. They sent us the text. They said he's
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: a presidential historian. We tracked him down. Jonathan tracked him down,
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: and he's a businessman, and Gary Player's former caddy, volunteer caddy,
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: and he's a history buff, sure, but.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: He's not a historian.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I get that, a lot of buffs out there.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of buffs, yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker 6: It was interesting because the document itself basically just said
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump's the most powerful man who's ever existed ever
• 19:45
  Speaker 6: on the planet because he's in charge.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Of the US military and technology, but also willing to
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: use the power.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: And he has planes.
• 19:53
  Speaker 6: The people that compared him to, as you mentioned, Mao, Stalin, Hitler,
• 19:56
  Speaker 6: there was no moral dimension to it. It was just
• 19:59
  Speaker 6: expressed in terms of raw power. And he was reading
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: it out to us. We're sitting across the Oval and
• 20:04
  Speaker 6: he's like.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: He's like, Napoleon.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: It was delayed out.
• 20:08
  Speaker 6: And it's very clear that what he wants to do
• 20:12
  Speaker 6: is reshape both America, but also the world. He does,
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: I think, want to be a Napoleonic type of figure.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Has he read the whole book, though? I mean, it
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't end that great for Napoleon.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: No. But we're still talking about Napoleon, aren't we? Well,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: that's true.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. We are still talking about him.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: But this is maybe the most, and I'll get to,
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: what I took away from the book is, you know,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: there's always people who are going to want palace intrigue
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: and those kinds of things. What I took away was process.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: That the process of this White House is very much
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: The Apprentice or Shark Tank. People come into his office
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: and compete with an idea. And he chooses the one
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: that he thinks has the most pop for this episode
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: of the show.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And they do it.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: And no one follows up in a future episode. So
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: the tariffs go out there. And it's like, that's great.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: And then when it tanks the economy, nobody's like, hey,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: we should probably revisit that. He's like, that's an old episode.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: It's all trailer, no movie.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: It's all advertisement and no follow through. And so what
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: you're seeing here, the Iran war is a great example.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: Obama's JCPOA was 18 months of very tough negotiations and
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: all those things. And Trump comes in and he's like,
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: how about I just bomb them and we take a week?
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And there's no follow through. Is that what you've found there?
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: That it's- It's a slightly different cast on that, I think.
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, look, it's definitely a White House that does
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: not like process. He doesn't like process.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Or competence.
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: One of the things that he and.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: You can say it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: One of the things.
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: One of the things that he and Stephen Miller spent
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: a lot of time on.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Ooh, did you feel that? It got cold all of
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a sudden.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Did you feel that?
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Did you feel that on the back of your neck?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: That was weird.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: One of the things that he and Stephen Miller spent
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of time on, and obviously.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Say it three times. Let's see if he comes.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Let's see if he comes for this episode.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Um.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: was essentially how to do things quickly and how to
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: claim powers that weren't actually the executive branches, either because
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: you could declare national emergencies. Interaction Act.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: But it's across the board. It's a fentanyl emergency. It's
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: a border emergency, even though the border crossings were down.
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: There is a refugee emergency, so we have to change
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: asylum status and so forth.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: And Trump.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Isn't really thinking about these processes. He just wants things
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: to be done fast. Stephen Miller was thinking about both.
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: And then Trump has other people who can offer to
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: get him things quickly. On the tariffs, the reason I'm
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: interested in that being the thing you pointed to is
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: this was something he's kind of wanted to try for decades.
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: He did not have an economic theory of the case
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: about how tariffs would work.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: He thought tariffs were.
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: An incredible tool and weapon and blunt instrument. And that
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: is exactly how they were implemented. What you do see
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: is him saying things like jacking up the tariff rate
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: to China, on China, for 145%, and then saying, holy shit,
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: or some version of that, when he learns that's how
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: high it is. And his whole government was quite scared
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: as they were not just approaching Liberation Day, but blowing
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: past it.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: But don't you think because the litmus test isn't competence.
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: It's loyalty, and the loyalty has to be given through
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: humiliation rituals. Everybody that works for him has to go
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: through a humiliation ritual. Those cabinet meetings are not discussions
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: of policy. They are public humiliation rituals of anyone who
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: wants to be in that office.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And they're very long. There's no question about that.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Well, because there's so much ass to kiss.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Respectfully.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Respectfully. I.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: How does this, as you watch this careen down the hill,
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: as you project out, we've got two and a half
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: more years of this. If he thinks he's Mao and
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Stalin now, where are we going?
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: Well, part of the book is really a story of hubris.
• 24:15
  Speaker 6: I mean, he came in this second term. Actually, it's
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: a little deeper than what you were saying because a
• 24:22
  Speaker 6: lot of the people around him There's an almost mystical
• 24:26
  Speaker 6: belief in him, particularly the ones that went through the
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: campaign with him. It's Donald Trump is a figure of
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: destiny that survived four indictments, two assassination attempts, somehow won
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: this election. Maybe in the first time when you would
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: talk to senior aides, A lot of them had absolute
• 24:44
  Speaker 6: contempt for him and they would mock him and say,
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: you know, this guy's dangerous, we're trying to stop him.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: You never hear that. These are people who... Oh. Oh,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: you never hear that. You never hear that.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: There's none of the backbiting now on that.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: These are people who believe in him and actually, even
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: when he says something that they think, well, maybe that's
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: kind of out there, well, maybe he's picking up on
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: something that we're not picking up on. There's a deference
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: to his judgment.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: And the Iran war... The Iran war is actually sort
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: of a perfect example of that.
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: We have in the book this incredible sequence of events
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: where Bibi Netanyahu comes down to the Situation Room.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Great guy. Comes down to the Situation Room.
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: He gave Trump this presentation about regime change. Here's how
• 25:41
  Speaker 6: it's going to work in Iran. Here's the people who
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: might take over and whatever. Anyway, the CIA goes away
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: overnight and does some analysis. They come back the next
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: day in the Situation Room. The analysts come in and
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: they say this is total bullshit. This is like divorced
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: from reality. The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, tells Trump it's farcical.
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: Rubio tells him it's bullshit. And Trump says, you know,
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But he had a
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: gut feeling. Again, this was a gut-driven decision.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Trump thought this would be a fast war, that they.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: Would collapse quickly, that this regime was a paper tiger.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: And he was wrong. He was wrong.
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: And what he said to Tucker Carlson, I think, actually encapsulates.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: What Jonathan was saying.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Great guy.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: Which is.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: Which is most of what this presidency is now, which
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: is everything's going to... Carlson was trying to talk him
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: out of it during this war, and Trump says something
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: to the effect of everything is going to be okay.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Everything's going to work out. It always does. It always
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: is okay.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: And that is how he thinks, and so.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: Well, because for him, it's that Norman Vincent Peale power
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: positive thing, but it works out for him. But this
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: brings us... So we'll bring it around full circle and
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: end on this. So they have a mystical belief in
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: his gut that allows him to do this.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: So he does it. And it shits the bed.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: And we end up in a more dangerous, weaker position.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: We elevate this theocracy to a level of power in
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: that part of the world that they have never had before.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: And they are now at that position.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: So in terms of litigating reality, now that this has
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: come down, did they go, hey, you took a swing.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Some of them work. Some of them don't.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: Do they still believe in the mystical, messianic powers of
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Napoleon II? Do they ever go, like, maybe that's Waterloo? Like,
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: how does reality not ever permeate this reality distortion field?
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: I think it's more nuanced than that, I do.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Of course it is!
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: There were many people on.
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: His team who thought this was a bad idea to
• 27:41
  Speaker 6: start with, the war. There was really only one person
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: who actually said that to Trump in a forceful way,
• 27:46
  Speaker 6: which was Vance. And that actually irritated Trump to some extent.
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: A lot of them didn't make the argument to him.
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: It's very obvious to them, and actually, I think, to
• 27:54
  Speaker 6: him as well. That's why he's doing such a fast reverse,
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: basically saying, BB, you know, you're out of control.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: We've got to get out. Willing to take this deal.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: But he's going to say this is the best deal
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: that anybody's ever gotten, and nobody's ever gotten it, and
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: Iran is weaker.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Who's still buying that in the White House?
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: I don't think that many people still buy it in
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: the White House, but I also don't think that you're
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: going to see a lot of them quitting en masse.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: I mean, one of the things that we wrote about
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: in the book was that some of his advisors were
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: talking last year about how the most disastrous thing for
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: his presidency would be if he got into a war
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: with Iran and one of them said, you know, I
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: will resign if that happens. And I can tell you
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: without telling you who that that person is still there.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: So J.D.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Vance is still there. That's what you're telling me. Remarkable.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I've enjoyed this. Please get this book. It is out tomorrow.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: It's called Regime Change. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.