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Trump's fist topping the arch_ New details from Trump's 2nd term · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: In October.
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  Speaker 2: He's showing a visitor a model of the ginormous arch
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  Speaker 2: he wants to build, and he's asking He asks, uh,
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  Speaker 2: should it be?
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  Speaker 1: For what should be on top of it? He said,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: should it be?
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  Speaker 2: He mused a large replica of his fight Fight Fight fist,
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  Speaker 2: So he was seriously thinking of having a giant replica
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  Speaker 2: of his fists.
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  Speaker 3: He asked someone whether they thought it was a good idea.
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  Speaker 3: He also was asking whether it should be bigger than
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  Speaker 3: the Lincoln Memorial. We have a scene in the book
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  Speaker 3: where he calls the French president Emmanuel Macrone to ask
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  Speaker 3: him about the Arc de Triomph. Tell me about your arch,
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  Speaker 3: Emmanuel to people jump off, as the point is he
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  Speaker 3: wants to put his physical imprint not just on America,
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  Speaker 3: but on the world.
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  Speaker 1: So how mu's where he came legacy?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, is that enormous. You have a pie chart
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  Speaker 4: of his brain. It's a huge slice.
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  Speaker 2: A paragraph from this which to me was kind of
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  Speaker 2: just an amazing paragraphs at page one sixty seven, you write,
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  Speaker 2: by midway through the year, a picture was emerging of
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  Speaker 2: how the Oval Office operated in Trump's second term. It
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  Speaker 2: was of a president spending his days at the resolute
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  Speaker 2: desk and a series of rolling bull sessions accompanied by
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  Speaker 2: a core group of intimates. These were supplemented by a
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  Speaker 2: rotating cast of extras, and on any given day they
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  Speaker 2: could be Republican lawmakers, titans of industry, former pro wrestlers,
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  Speaker 2: country musicians, Gulf royals, Crypto bros, or friends of Fellon
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  Speaker 2: seeking pardons. They would enter and exit the frame, with
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  Speaker 2: some invited to stay for meetings they had no business attending.
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  Speaker 2: The conversations ran fast, often string far from the point
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  Speaker 2: or from anything visitors imagined when they arrived at the
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  Speaker 2: White House. The President's sentences often began on one topic
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  Speaker 2: and ended far away.
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  Speaker 1: It's like the opening scene of an opera.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it would be an incredible stage play,
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  Speaker 2: just that visual.
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  Speaker 5: One of the moments that we describe, and we spoke
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  Speaker 5: to somebody who laid out this scene for us, is,
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  Speaker 5: you know, Trump having a highly classified briefing in the
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  Speaker 5: Oval Office and an incomes the guy with the stone
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  Speaker 5: samples for the Rose Guards.
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  Speaker 2: This was last year, and Tina, he's always talking about
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  Speaker 2: like their specific stones.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah right, and so these are these are these are
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  Speaker 5: moments that all sort of collide into each other. There
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  Speaker 5: is just this sort of sweeping meeting that takes place
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  Speaker 5: all day long, and it means that people are pulled
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  Speaker 5: into something as we say that probably they shouldn't be
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  Speaker 5: listening to. I mean, the stone guy, the paper guy
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  Speaker 5: had had essentially walk in privileges to the Oval. And
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  Speaker 5: that's just the way this White House works.
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  Speaker 4: But there's an interesting contrast.
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  Speaker 3: That's all true, of course, and and there's sort of
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  Speaker 3: this no no delineation, no structure. But what's also true
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  Speaker 3: is it's actually.
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  Speaker 4: A very secretive White.
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  Speaker 1: House, much more so than the first administration, but.
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  Speaker 3: Much more so in some ways than even the Biden
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  Speaker 3: and Obama administration. I'll give you an example, this memorandum
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  Speaker 3: of Understanding that has just been published in the in Iran.
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  Speaker 3: The number of people who had seen that document in
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  Speaker 3: the White House and US government microscopic, tiny number of
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  Speaker 3: people before it was published.
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  Speaker 4: People.
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  Speaker 3: You know, you have people in the intelligence community that
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  Speaker 3: we talk to who are essentially trying to monitor this
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  Speaker 3: White House almost like it's a foreign government. They have
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  Speaker 3: no idea what's going on. And there are conversations that
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  Speaker 3: are happening within such a small group that's running the
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  Speaker 3: government when you have people like Steve Wikoff and Jared Kushner,
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  Speaker 3: you know, doing business, they don't. They're really unstaffed, they
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  Speaker 3: don't rely on staff much. They basically are these sort
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  Speaker 3: of free agents, which is.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, is really unheard of from other administrations. Normally,
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  Speaker 2: if you're a negotiator, you would have a team of
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  Speaker 2: experts in the field traveling with you, going over documents
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  Speaker 2: behind the scenes.
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  Speaker 3: But that's how you get We have a scene in
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  Speaker 3: the book where Steve so Wikoff goes to meet Putin alone,
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  Speaker 3: which is right, He's sitting in the room with Vladimir Putin.
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  Speaker 3: Steve Witkoff has no experience in diplomat He's a real
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  Speaker 3: estate friend of Trump's, and he's suddenly the Russia. Spends
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  Speaker 3: three hours with Putin alone, and then we have this
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  Speaker 3: scene in the book where he's sitting with Putin in
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  Speaker 3: Moscow and Putin is drawing this doodle of a three
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  Speaker 3: plus two, which is the territorial arrangement giving territory to Russia,
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  Speaker 3: freezing certain territory, and Wickkoff says, can you sign that
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  Speaker 3: for me? And Putin signs his signature and Wikoff takes
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  Speaker 3: it home and gets it framed. But again it's this,
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  Speaker 3: there is a contempt for expertise, There is a contempt
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  Speaker 3: for It's deeper than contempt for the deep state. It's basically,
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  Speaker 3: anyone who's been doing this for a long time, you're probably,
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  Speaker 3: you know, not up to it.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it gets to the next paragraph, which I want
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  Speaker 2: to just read to the people. You say, to the
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  Speaker 2: extent he still cares. There's the difference of this term
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  Speaker 2: versus the last. The he still cared about polling at all.
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  Speaker 2: He was seeing far fewer polls than during his first term.
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  Speaker 2: His advisors knew he was not receptive to being briefed
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  Speaker 2: on harsh realities. In his second term, unlike his first,
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  Speaker 2: he was willing to take breathtaking risks, risks that could
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  Speaker 2: throw not only his presidency but the Republican Party in
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  Speaker 2: the entire world into chaos and carnage more than ever before.
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  Speaker 1: As president, he was operating.
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  Speaker 2: On pure gut instinct, which makes what happened with Iran
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  Speaker 2: it makes sense.
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  Speaker 5: Yes, I mean, and we really described that in great
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  Speaker 5: detail in the book just about the lead up to the.
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  Speaker 2: Iran Talk about what you've learned, because it's not as
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  Speaker 2: if you know there were all the we played endless
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  Speaker 2: montages of him saying nobody briefly on that.
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  Speaker 1: You know, nobody suggested that well he was. He was brief.
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  Speaker 1: It's not true.
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  Speaker 5: I mean he a couple of things are the case.
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  Speaker 5: Number one, he was always more hawkish than about Iran
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  Speaker 5: than members of his own team. Now we do not
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  Speaker 5: see a world where he would have gone to war
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  Speaker 5: against Iran in term one. But he has always been
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  Speaker 5: different about Iran. That's why there was the Sulimani strike
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  Speaker 5: in twenty twenty, which you know, many people around him
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  Speaker 5: did not agree with, not think was a good idea,
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  Speaker 5: thought it was too big a risk. Now he was
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  Speaker 5: much more aligned with Benjamin Netanya, who than members of
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  Speaker 5: his own team wanted to see and yet the evidence
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  Speaker 5: was there throughout twenty twenty four, and then afterwards he
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  Speaker 5: was informed of the options. There was really no one
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  Speaker 5: on his team who.
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  Speaker 1: Thought this was a great idea.
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  Speaker 5: The person who really was very vocal about it with
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  Speaker 5: the President was JD.
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  Speaker 1: Vance and it cost JD.
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  Speaker 5: Vance with the president. But the President was informed of
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  Speaker 5: various scenarios of what could happen and downsides by Dan Kane,
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  Speaker 5: the chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, one of
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  Speaker 5: which was munition's depletion, one of which was the possibility
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  Speaker 5: of the strait of Horrormus would have been closed. The
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  Speaker 5: President and the president's own Secretary of State and CIA
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  Speaker 5: director examined these scenarios about regime change that Benjamin Netanya,
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  Speaker 5: who had portrayed in this remarkable meeting in the Situation room,
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  Speaker 5: to President Trump on February eleventh, and one of them
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  Speaker 5: said it was farcical. The other said, I think we
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  Speaker 5: can say this on airs. Bullshit was of Marco Rubio's quote.
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  Speaker 5: The President knew all of this, and he still wanted
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  Speaker 5: to go ahead and try this.
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  Speaker 3: So you ask yourself the question, how do we get
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  Speaker 3: into the situation where we have dangerously low supplies of
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  Speaker 3: critical long range munitions. This is a national crisis, national
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  Speaker 3: emergency actually, in terms of our supplies of interceptors, missile interceptors,
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  Speaker 3: long range weapons. Well, if you're Donald Trump and you
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  Speaker 3: have a gut instinct, this war is going to be
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  Speaker 3: over like that, those questions become.
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  Speaker 4: Right, who cares?
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  Speaker 2: You asked the president if there had ever been an
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  Speaker 2: American president as powerful as him, you're kind of setting
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  Speaker 2: a nice layup, right, there, he brought out a list
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  Speaker 2: of historical figures. This is from the book Alexander the Great,
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  Speaker 2: the Caesar is William the Conqueror. They didn't have airplanes, right,
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  Speaker 2: You couldn't travel around. This is the president talking Genghiz Khan, Attila, Theahn, Tamberlaine, Napoleon.
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  Speaker 2: He said, with Relish Hitler, Mao Stalin, these leaders maintained
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  Speaker 2: power through theory, said, who would ever do a thing
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  Speaker 2: like that?
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  Speaker 1: Right?
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  Speaker 2: Trump lingered on the document's central argument that each leader
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  Speaker 2: whoever fears him in his day had no global reach.
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  Speaker 1: Their power was local, but his was not. It's remarkable.
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  Speaker 5: So we asked the question because number one, the war
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  Speaker 5: against Iran had started just a few weeks earlier. And
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  Speaker 5: number two, you know, he had been boasting publicly about
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  Speaker 5: how no other president would do the things that he
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  Speaker 5: had done, and he had said to Tucker Curlson, you know,
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  Speaker 5: at some point, I'm the most powerful president you know
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  Speaker 5: that ever lived, on paraphrasing, So we put the question
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  Speaker 5: to him about how he sees it.
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  Speaker 3: I think both of us found it one of the
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  Speaker 3: most astonishing moments we've ever had with Trump, because he
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  Speaker 3: hands us this document and he says it was written
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  Speaker 3: by a historian, and the opening line says, you know,
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  Speaker 3: Donald Trump is the most powerful man who's ever existed
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  Speaker 3: on the planet, and it goes on to compare him
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  Speaker 3: to all those people you named, some of the great
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  Speaker 3: monsters of history, you know, the most ruthless dictators and
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  Speaker 3: conquerors of history. And there was no moral dimension to it.
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  Speaker 3: The only point was power, and the point was he
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  Speaker 3: has power. But it was something he wanted us to
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  Speaker 3: understand a slightly more subtle point which was in the document,
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  Speaker 3: which was, it's not just that I control the US
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  Speaker 3: military and the most powerful economy in the world, the
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  Speaker 3: most powerful technology world.
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  Speaker 4: It's that I'm willing to use the power. And that
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  Speaker 4: was the.
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  Speaker 3: Assessment, and it was very interesting because he was relishing
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  Speaker 3: that company. And one thing that we've been toying within
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  Speaker 3: our reporting and sort of trying to understand as we
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  Speaker 3: go through this book is just to try to understand
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  Speaker 3: why is this term so different from the last term.
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  Speaker 3: And there are many reasons for that, but one of
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  Speaker 3: them is Trump himself is far less reactive to domestic politics,
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  Speaker 3: like his aides are trying to get him interested in
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  Speaker 3: the midterm, orless.
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  Speaker 1: He's not looking at Paul in the way he is,
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  Speaker 1: not the way he used to.
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  Speaker 4: It's a totally binaries, not black and whitebit.
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  Speaker 3: He really doesn't care that much. It's small stuff. He again,
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  Speaker 3: it was so he essentially told this.
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  Speaker 1: I mean it was by the way, the historian he's
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  Speaker 1: talking about.
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  Speaker 4: Is the golf cat golf caddy for the Gary golf player.
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  Speaker 2: I just a couple of the details. I just want
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  Speaker 2: to get in. He shows you go in to talk
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  Speaker 2: to him on the thirteenth day of the Iran War.
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  Speaker 2: What's on his desk? What is he pouring over?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think it was I think about seventeenth day.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah.
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  Speaker 5: But so when we walk in, he's got these these
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  Speaker 5: he's holding these pictures of maple trees, and he starts
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  Speaker 5: talking about how he's installing maple trees around around the
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  Speaker 5: I'm going to buying trees. Then he wants us to
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  Speaker 5: look at his ballroom designs, which he shows lots of people,
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  Speaker 5: and he starts talking about the columns, and you know,
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  Speaker 5: one side is in honor of Athens, another another is Rome.
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  Speaker 1: Uh, this is what he's focused on.