to accept black people. books by black writers give all peoples of the road the chance to see themselves in the face of the others. books by black writers allow us to see our common humanity and that's to break down barriers that separate us. we are struck by the conclusion in this remarkable book. he does not exonerate police officers who kill innocent young plan, but this is what he does. he blames the legacy of america history for a police department with the authority. books by black writers offer america the opportunity through the lens of black characters to see the eyes and to acknowledge

our common humanity is in diffuse the possibility of more violence to a more humane word. with our boat by black writers and a diversity of readers who read them, not simply black readers, there is a grim possibility of morning of the consequences of not being seen and not seen and it could be prophetic. thank you very much. [applause] >> this is a tv on c-span2. it is television for serious readers. here is our primetime lineup for tonight.

[inaudible conversations] >> why don't we get started? an executive editor of the "washington post" and we are really delighted that all of you came out this evening to the post. we are happy to welcome you here. tonight you are going to get the chance to meet some of the journalists and editors behind the book trump revealed as you know. this was an exhaustively researched book about the life and career of donald trump. you know, the post has a long tradition of delving deeply into the presidential nominees of each major party. this year, giving donald trump

shall we say novel and oversize presence in the political arena, there's an opportunity to do a book. we are especially grateful to scribner. all these folks who came in for making that possible. i'm not going to mention all of them but i will mention we have publisher nan graham. [applause] would have editor-in-chief colin harris in here. thank you for all you did. they work incredibly fast and incredibly hard and with impressive skill throughout and we are very grateful. from the posts, there were two dozen journalists who worked on this book. they needed to both work quickly and go very, very deep and that's likely to play such a large team. scott wilson, our national editor who unfortunately could

not be here this evening assembled by a team, drying throughout our newsroom from every department in our newsroom and all of this came together in a matter of months. this evening you will hear from five other people who work on this book. what the co-authors were michael cran issue this year and marc fisher right behind me. try to step away. they were the primary authors of trump revealed, but the entire team contributed to it and this represents a comprehensive examination of donald trump's life, his personality, business dealings of long-running encounters of politicians and politics. we believe this is the end of reporting that readers expect from the post. with that, it's a special pleasure for me to introduce tonight's moderator of one of the co-authors of the book, trump revealed, senior editor

marc fisher. [applause] >> thank you, marty. thanks for coming out. it's great to see such a big crowd. i think i understand why so many of you are here. there is one thing americans can't seem to find enough of these days it is information about donald trump. [laughter] actually, that is kind of sure because he's the worst major candidate in 60 years since dwight eisenhower who has not previously held elective office. that means he has not been vetted in the way most politicians are as a matter of course as they run for various offices. so obviously he has had the liberties for decades and celebrity is a different kind of attention from having your life and career and background rigorously examined in the way that would help voters understand how you think, how you make decisions and what you really believe them. as michael and i have been making the rounds on tv and radio appearances and promotion

of this book, we have found the single most effective way to sell this book was one single tweet from a guy named donald jay trump made the jamaica estates new york. the night before the book was actually released so he couldn't have possibly seen it, he put out a tweet saying he called the book a hit job and say that it was he shouldn't diet. of course there were tremendously grateful to them since he informed 11 million of his closest friends about the book. what was fascinating about that is that he obviously couldn't help himself. in a rational campaign adviser would've told him to ignore the thing but he couldn't help himself and so he did this. this is confirmation of the major theme in the book, which was this was the man who deeply believes the proper response to

anything that could be at all critical is to attack and to attack hard and retrace in the book back your touristic of donald trump which traces not only to his childhood and having a father to be a killer and warned him against being a nothing, but also to his relationship with the end of this new york attorney she was kind of his mentor in his 20s when he was just starting out on his own in business. marty mentioned the origins of this book. i want to give you a little more on that before we get going with the discussion. this book came together in late march. if you recall back to the primary season, it was only around that time they became very clear that donald trump was the likely nominee. and so at that point, this team of more than 20 reporters was put together.

the deal that we struck with scribner was assigned on a thursday and the plan was to announce to the public the following monday. the next day, friday, i called donald trump's press secretary as a courtesy to let her know this to be announced on the following monday and also to ask her we wanted to have a series of interviews with donald chon. we wanted to get as much of his time as the code because although we have this large team of reporters who would be digging into every aspect of trump's life, but cannot record and document, talking to everyone from clan friends and classmates all the way through the business associates partners, competitors, vendors, contractors and so on. we wanted as much time as we can so i explain the deal we made in the book would be doing and how a lot of reporters would be calling them.

before i could get the explanation now, chicago often said you are profiteering off mr. trump. which was kind of curious given that he spends a great chunk of the state talking to reporters which ideally institutions. she cut up a conversation that we will not be cooperating with this book. you are on your round. we have thought that the fairly likely outcome anyway and i didn't affect her plan for how to report the book. low and behold the following monday she called back and said that she had a chance to issue credit, tell mr. trump about your fabulous idea. [applause] she said that she actually liked the idea that he wanted us to come to trump towers as often as we like for as long as we like because he wanted this book to

be accurate and get the real story out about his life. so one interesting curiosity bear was that his own press secretary would work with him for a number of months didn't realize he would very much like the opportunity to talk about his favorite subject, himself. indeed, as we talked to trump in the weeks that followed, he regularly expanded our interview time, doubled and tripled the amount of time he spent with us. it took all questions. some of them he answered in more detail than others. he indeed had a time and again and spoke with reporters on the phone and in-person and they went into working on this and reporting on atlantic city on organized crime connections.

we had people who've looked into his brief experience as a sports franchise in the u.s. football league and so on all through every chapter of his life. one of our goals therefore was complete mess and another was transparency. we documented the boat that donald trump is a highly litigious person. in fact, he has sued the author of the previous biography for five william dollars and we asked -- michael and i had a certain curiosity but we were talking with trump and we asked about the case. he said that he had actually never read the book. so i was puzzled by that. how do you go about suing somebody for $5 billion have actually never read the book. he said well, you can say this a lot with me. people told me it was a bad book and a classic trump is some and

he didn't see anything untoward about that. he was ultimately very gracious, very generous with his time and yet every once in a while he would slip in a fret about how if it was a bad look as he put it, he would come after us and he would, after the post. so there was this kind of alternating graciousness and tension through the whole relationship we had with him. this binary approach was a good or bad book. shot through his life. one of the things that makes him decide whether it questions the well and there's several panic dose in the book about insensitivity to that question. he sued the author of the

biography, trump has lost twice in that lawsuit and what triggered was indeed a chapter of questioning whether donald trump is as wealthy as he claims to be. if in launching the campaign closely you know the number he gives her his wealth varies a lot. he sometimes has 9 billion, 10 billion, $12 billion. we don't have any way of giving you the definitive number of what he's really worth because he hasn't released his tax returns. for his coming to the conclusion that it's probably not worth as much as he says he is. he came to exactly that conclusion in those exact words. in a deposition in that case, which we have the archives, trump was asked directly how do, put this number that you bandied

about the work. he said, quote, it depends on how i feel on a given day. [laughter] there's actually something legitimate ... because his bread is his name and his name is what gives value to many properties and other businesses and so people decide to stay at his trump hotels or go to trump golf course in part because of that name. there is a clear value to it and putting a number to the value is more an art than a science. how he assesses himself with the properties and he adds the value that he can ask for a his reputation and his bread. so he is a tricky figure to write about in that sense. in fact, comedy central, that cable channel is going to do a

roast of donald trump some years back in the directions were not to the comedians who wanted to roast him that unlike most of these, his family is fair game. you can joke about his kids, his background and that is totally fair. only one thing they could not joke about and that was the extent of his wealth. ..

>> i'm thrilled to be here and working on this project. i want to tell you a story that explains, i think, why biography is so important in writing about a presidential candidate. we do fantastic stories, and biography is sort of the thread of all those stories that we try to put together. because in the case of donald trump, you have a man who has never run for public office or held public office, so there's an awful lot that we don't know about him, even though he's one of the most covered figures of our generation. so if you look at a person's life, how they've dealt with crises, that, to me, is one of the most important things. someone who has dealt with dark moments in their life, and certainly, donald trump fits that category very, very well. so i want to take you to the morning of october 10th of 1989 in atlantic city. it's a bright, sunny day, and three of donald trump's top a casino executives -- he's got two casinos at this moment, and he's about to open a third, the taj mahal. and these three executives are about to take a helicopter ride

to new york city to meet with donald trump and to promote a boxing match to be held at one of his casinos. so the three men get onboard the helicopter and take the flight to new york. they have a press conference at the plaza hotel in new york. they meet with donald trump at the trump tower on the 26th floor, and the meeting goes a little bit longer, and they can no longer take the helicopter back to atlantic city, so they book a charter flight, and they take an italian-made augusta helicopter. they board, and a few minutes into the flight they're over the garden state parkway, and they couldn't have known there was a small scratch on one of the rotor blades, and at 2200 feet, that helicopter basically burst apart, and the three men and the two crew are both killed, and it is one of the most tragic days in donald trump's life and certainly for the people who were killed in that tragedy. and for donald trump, i asked him about this. i talked to him extensively about this incident, and he does say aside from the deaths of his

parents and his brother, fred jr., that this was the most difficult day of his life, because these men were in charge of making sure that he would be successful. donald trump had built some buildings, of course, in new york city, trump tower, and he was taking a big gamble in atlantic city. at that time this was the only legal casino operation on the east coast, and donald trump wanted to be the biggest and best operator, so he had two casinos, was about to open a third, and suddenly the people who were in charge of that had perished. donald trump had not really focused himself on that business. at the time, he was having an affair with marla maples, and he had taken his eye off the a ball and suddenly he had to look at what was going on, and he realized he was in deep, deep trouble. so there was one person he got a phone call from shortly after the accident, john o'donnell, and o'donnell was supposed to have been on the helicopter ride, but instead he was in hawaii competing in an athletic event, and he'd sent a junior

executive. donald basically had all this operation on his shoulder, and donald trump met with him and he said, now it's your turn. and then he said, don't leave me. and donald later said that this was the first time he'd seen such fear and uncertainty in donald trump's eyes and in his voice. and long story short, because i want to give everybody a chance to talk and questions and so forth, what happened next was that things had gotten so bad, donald trump had gone so deeply in debt that there were great, great problems despite the public acclaim for the opening of the taj ma be hall. and pretty soon -- taj mahal. pretty soon all three casinos went into bankruptcy, and a lot of people were fired. donald trump and his profession that we're familiar with now said somebody running the casino had a type c personality, but he blamed others. he also told us he'd taken his eye off the ball. we tell the story in great detail about how he managed to survive the orr to deal of his -- ordeal of his career in atlantic city, and the fact that he did survive tells you

something. he basically had to look out for himself, and he said i was looking out for donald trump. i needed to survive, and that's what mattered at the moment. so you understand how he reached some depth and also why those who are underestimated him would do so at their peril. thank you very much. [applause] >> so we turn to some of the other reporters who worked on the book. bob o'hara was a reporter in the post investigations unit, and he did some of the very difficult document work on this book as well as finding some people who were willing to talk about that period that michael was just talking about in atlantic city, some very rough times for donald trump. and, bob, you leonard a lot about -- you learned a lot about trump's business style and about the kinds of characters he was willing to associate himself with in order to get a start in the very rough and tumble of atlantic city's casino world. talk to us a little bit about

that. >> it's actually a remarkable -- it was a long time ago, but it feels very fresh and, i think, predictive in some ways about the time of personality that he is -- the type of personality that he is. probably the most formiserable character he -- formidable character he connected himself was was roy cohn. he was the brains behind the mccarthy hearings in the '50s. and he was a brilliant, something of a prodigy as a young man and was pretty much a savage legal mind who focused on attacking as much as possible and never apologizing. and he ran into trump in the early '70s, and trump embraced him, and they became, they developed an interesting relationship that was both legal and friendship. and cohn sort of squired him around new york, introduced him to a lot of powerful people. and i think that that was

probably set the tone for much of rest of his career. cohn represented him through the '80s, and there are qualities that we see in donald trump now, some of the harsher qualities that are remarkably similar to roy cohn's methods and demeanor. >> and just briefly tell us a little bit about the assembling of the documents that gave us insights into trump's finances in that period. >> oh, there's a massive trove of information, and we probably tapped, well, we tapped a lot of it, but there's a lot of material to be examined. one of the things that we found is that donald trump has surrounded himself in complexity and kind of a cloud of obscurity throughout his career. deals are complex, answers are complex and vague often times, and the documents that we were able to compile particularly from the casino control commission in new jersey helped

us to cut through the fog of obfuscation and to get to particulars. and the one that was most striking to me, and it was so striking i actually did not believe it for a while until i reported it thoroughly and realized it was true, was that when donald trump was trying to get his third ca casino, the ta, he had to show that he was financially capable of managing himself and making it thrive. and he promised the regulators that he was not going to use junk bonds to finance the taj. and in his testimony which is in black and white, you can actually read it online, he says that people that use junk bonds are losers, in effect, and that they're stupid and that companies that use junk bonds are, in effect, junk. and it was only -- and they approved his move to go forward, and it was only a few months later that he could not raise

the money at the low prime rates that he had promised and used junk bonds. and in making that decision and in actually signing off on those junk bonds, he sealed his fate, and his whole empire was almost certain to go down the tubes as was predicted by a financial analyst who was watching everything closely. so that's the kind of detail we were able to mine to get to the particulars rather than the generalities that had surrounded him and that he had surrounded himself with. >> billy jordan is national reporter at the post who led the group of reporters who looked into donald trump's family, his relationship with his wives, three wives and his five children, and as part of that, we made an effort to talk to all of those people. talk a little bit about what that was like and what came out of it. >> so i got the women. [laughter] and taryn heller is here, another great reporter and, boy, was that interesting.

okay. there has never been a president who has three wives alive walking around. [laughter] it's never happened, right? and where are they? we know be everything. this guy is on the air all the time. where is his first wife, ivana, the famous one who was the one, in fact, she's from the former czechoslovakia the donald. she used to refer to him. she's also the one when they had a wicked, wicked public divorce on the cover of every day of the tabloids said don't get mad, get everything. [laughter] okay. this woman likes to talk, and she's just disappeared. never seen her. second wife, she's still alive. she's been married four times, and donald went to her fourth wedding. [laughter] but marla maples comes along, and he's still married inconveniently to the first woman, and so this was hidden for a while, but then there was this big scene in aspen at christmas time, and the two women were fighting over donald.

he loved it. it was in the paper. at that time he wasn't running for office, and he loved, loved that women -- he was on page 6 in the tabloids in new york. be in fact, many, many people we talked to said he cultivated this. he loved being in the newspaper about this woman. and now along came -- and that woman. and along came marla maples with a great name, former beauty pageant winner in georgia. it wasn't even, like, miss georgia, it was like miss peach. [laughter] but she was very, obviously, very good looking and younger, and in the end he got divorce offed from ivana, married marla. where is she? she's gone. you don't see her at all during this campaign. it is really stunning, especially -- and the last thing i just posted a story a couple hours ago, today, about his current wife, or i should say his third wife because if you

say current wife, sometimes people think there's more coming. [laughter] but anyway, so his third wife -- [laughter] melania trump. she was -- she has not been heard of since the republican national convention on the 21st of july. we're in the home stretch of a presidential campaign where if he wins, she is the first lady of the united states. she has an office in the white house, she has a public platform, and she is literally gone silent. it's very, very unusual, as many things in this campaign are unusual. okay. so three wives, all of them are not talking while the kids are are. but just if i could for a minute, let's go back, roll back a book on his life about what it used to be about donald and women. he used to go on howard stern, for instance, he's the shock jock, and he used to go on all

the time. and stern would say, donald, what do you think about diane sawyer, would you do her, you know, and all this kind of talk. and with much more graphic than that. and he was always talking about women, he was always talking about how princess diana got away from him, you know? the if he only had a chance really to go, you know? but women defined him. and i think when we talked to people who know him, or knew him in the '80s, the '90s, they said, you know what? there were a lot of rich people in new york. there were a lot of rich people who had buildings in new york, but there was only one donald trump who was always in the paper with some other babe who wanted him, and that was a direct quote from someone who knew him. so i think for a long time women got attention for donald trump. and for some reason, i think he liked attention. [laughter] and i think that he, when you go to his office, i've interviewed him in his office, and i've

talked to melania on the phone, it's very striking that there's only really good looking women in the office. he talks about women's appearances nonstop. i mean, he's 70 years old, and i know a lot of older people often, you know, when they see somebody, they say it, but it's very unusual to have a presidential candidate, and he's getting tripped up on this every so often because appearances do matter. so in contrast to the old days where he just loved talking about donald trump and women, we don't hear from them anymore. >> mary had an especially revealing interview with donald trump's lawyer about this question of how trump had spent years and years cultivating this playboy image and inviting reporters to come out and see him at a club when he would be there with the prettiest models, and yet his lawyer told you that when the cameras were talk turnd off, it was actually a very different kind of dynamic.

>> well, he would go to all the nightclub openings in institute owe 54 during the day -- studio 54. especially when he wasn't married, and he blitzed the scene. but he was very careful about how he spent his time because it was where there were cameras. and he was always with models. he would call model agencies up and, in fact, when he had parties, make sure his own parties had a ratio of 5 to 1, gorgeous women to men. and he would, you know, he was constantly surround aring himself with women -- surrounding himself with women at openings. so i said to his lawyer, i said, you know, how did he have time for this? he's always telling me that work -- how could i do all this stuff, mary? i mean, i'm working. i have all this money and responsibility. i have great buildings, have you seen my great buildings? [laughter] you know, this is how he talks. how could i possibly have been with all these women, and so i asked dick goldberg about this,

and he agreed completely. actually he really just likes to take elevator up and turn on the tube and watch tv. so i said this to the trump and trump said, well, you know, maybe it wasn't as glamorous as it was set out to be. you know, image, he was great at getting attention. how many women did he really have and how much tv did he have? i don't know. [laughter] >> robert sellers is a national political reporter at the post, and robert looked into the transition that donald trump made from celebrity to politician and roots of his interest in running for office. and, so tell us a little -- did he see this as a completely different kind of pursuit, or was it kind of a natural progression for him? >> right. well, one of the governing questions that i was really interested in finding was why is this man doing this? [laughter] and it was very clear from

speaking with people who knew him that at some point he didn't realize the phenomena and the movement that we've seen sweep across the country. what we know through his politics, through his political life and affiliation is that he didn't really have much stomach for partisan principles. between 1999 and 2012, he changed political parties seven times. [laughter] he's donated between 1995 and 2012, he donated $be 3.1 million by himself without looking at his companies to all sorts of politicians. he donated to clinton, he donated to carter. he loved ronald reagan. so what is this about really? and to do that, we started looking at lots and lots of footage and interviews that he's done over the years, and we talked some people into showing us the unaired, unedited versions of this, of these tapes.

and early on from his very first major network television interview in 1980, we see a theme that starts to emerge. he's talking about a building, and then he begins to rail on the idea that america's being laughed at, that there's something that's happening in the political system where leaders aren't strong enough like they used to be. and he begins to ponder whether or not politicians today can be like an abraham lincoln. and he says abraham lincoln could never win in 1980 because he was too ugly, he did not look good on tv, and he didn't know how to master the media. and the president of the united states in this modern era needs to know how to do these skills. and so what we see over the course of time is donald trump assessing politicians and presidents on their ability to affect messages, to communicate

messages effectively and to figure out whether or not they make the country feel great again. and everyone does a pretty okay job until obama who he considers a total disaster. by this point in 2012, donald trump has mastered the celebrity that he says those great minds in 1980 did not master. he's become the star of "the apprentice," he has this twitter following that everyone enjoys because he's talking about everything about whether or not barack obama's from the united states to whether or not katy perry's marriages are going to work out. and he decides that he is, in fact, the person who could best symbolize the greatness and tough leadership of america. and so there's a lot of -- there's been a lot of skepticism about whether or not donald trump wanted to do this, whether he wanted to run for president. but it is true that days after

romney lost that election, he was the one who filed an application to to the patent office, and he copyrighted one phrase, make america great again. so you see the thematics of his campaign starting from early on in his public persona, but it had been something he had been thinking about and toying around with for several decades. >> great. is there -- there's one piece of video that you got from, it was an old roe ma barrett celebrity interview from the 1980s which had never aired. you got parts that had never aired, and he was remarkably similar in the way he talked about political issues, but he was also very frank about the sort of dynamic of what was making him decide to run or not to run. >> it's interesting, and maybe it's because it was so early in donald trump's political career, but roma barrett really got

probably the best information out of trump than any interview that i had seen, us notwithstanding. [laughter] and you see, you see him going through -- he says, she asks him, do you want to be president? he goes, no, i love building. i'm an artist, i love building my buildings. and over time it really affects him. and he starts to take to this idea that, huh, maybe one day i could be president. particularly because people continuously ask him whether or not he wants to be the president of the united states. >> and he shows up in polls through the decades again and again not because he was running for anything, but because of his name recognition, people put him on polls, and he did very well, so it kind of built. i want to turn it over to all of you to take your questions, so if you want to raise your hand, one of the folks with

microphones will come by and start. go ahead. yep. >> could you discuss his personality? was he warm? did he look you in the eye? was he reserved? did you see him with melania? a little bit about his personality. >> sure. in our interviews at trump tower, they were in his office on the 26th floor with his glorious view of central park and fifth avenue, and he was very courteous and was, you know, as i said before, quite generous with his time. we never saw melania. we did see -- his kids would wander in, ivanka and eric would wander in from time to time and talk with him about a business trip they were going on or a problem at the property in miami. but he's very soft spoken in that setting. you get none of the bluster that we're familiar with from the rallies. and he, on the other hand, it is difficult to have a linear conversation with him.

you can ask him about stuff, and he knows his field extraordinarily well. if you ask him about business deals he made in 1978, he will remember building materials and subcontractors' names and the whole process of making, of working through a negotiation. but if you ask him anything that veers off of what he knows best, the knowledge base is very thin, and he tends to change the topic very quickly, a sentence or two and he's off on to something else. he has these sort of base topics that he goes back to when he's a little bit flustered about not knowing something, so all of a sudden start talking about his tv ratings. >> there was another thing that he would do was -- i spoke to him only on the phone several times. if he was pressed on something, he would almost seem to get caught in a groove, and he would repeat the same thing over and over and over again, and sometimes one of my colleagues,

drew, was especially adept at this. he would sort of say, mr. trump, mr. trump, and kind of bring him back -- [laughter] on course, and then we'd move on. but sort of joking aside, it was really a pronounced thing to be talking with someone who seemed to veer off and get caught in a groove. >> he's a completely different person, i think, in person. he's really charming, he's very nice, he knows your name, he looks at you. i mean, everyone says that. it's not this bombastic guy that you see on tv. and everybody that's worked with him over the years say i turn on the tv, i worked with this guy for 20 years, turn on the tv, i don't know who this is. >> this gentleman here. yep. >> most of -- i'm curious of the aspect of trump's life and his experiences that you researched, what of the challenges or situations were most analogous to the kinds of challenges a

president faces? and what can we learn from those? i mean, you've, your book has researched, and i'm looking forward to the chance to reading it, how he dealt with women, how he dealt with celebrity, you know, and business deals, but this is clearly not a direct analogy to what a president would face. >> right. >> and so what can we learn, what is most instructive in this in understanding what he would be actually like as a president? >> michael? >> well, you know, it's a great question. and the parallel is what he did running his businesses x. nearly all of the businesses that he ran were private businesses, so they're difficult to examine until you go through ancillary sources like casino control commission records which bob and other reporters did, for example. he did have six corporate bankruptcies. he has often said he had four

corporate bankruptcies. this is instructive to understand how he sort of thinks. clearly, there were six, and we asked him to explain when you say four, what do you mean? he said, well, i think of the three casinos as one bankruptcy. in fact, there were three separate court actions for prepackaged bankruptcies as they're called, and be they were three separate ones, but to him it's one, and part of it, he wants to put the best image out there. the answer directly to your question is that he was told by his father don't go deeply into debt. and he was in junk bonds, he was hundreds or millions or even billions of dollars in debt. time and again he thought that he was not going to survive. we talked to a person who was basically given the job of negotiating with bondholders and banks, and that person told us that he was very concerned. this was somebody who knew donald trump as well as anybody, and he was very concerned about donald trump at this moment. he said i'm looking at him, bankruptcy after bankruptcy, he's in the midst of a huge

divorce, he's being humiliated day after day on the front pages of the newspapers, and i worry that, you know, he might take his own life. it's a very striking statement for someone who actually feels affectionately about donald trump. and when he said this, but when i walked into the office of donald trump, there he is. suit looked perfect, his tie was perfect as well, and he would say, you know, what's next, what do we do next? and he had this ability to, for whatever reason, looking at, oh, my gosh, all these terrible problems, to be thinking positively. that could mean he's detached from reality if you look at it that way or that he just is so positive-oriented that he didn't want to think about some of the deep problems that he had. but the reality is that while he certainly says he's a great business person, that his businesses had trouble time and time again. a public company at one point,

one time only because he had to raise a lot of capital, and that company did do well at first. it paid donald trump millions of dollars. it had the stock ticker of djt for his initials, but the stock price went from something like $45 to 17 cents. there were lawsuits filed that we write about, but the bottom line is that trump was able to survive. being at the absolute depths and finding a way for himself to survive. and this is instructive. this is, you know, donald trump views it as, you know, i am there. his words are i'm a one-man army. and he talked in one of his books about the power of narcissism, for example. he said it's a very powerful thing. if you want to be successful, you have to think in that sort of tunnel vision way, you know, only about making sure that you do survive. and another one of his points in the book, think like a billionaire, he advises that you have a, quote, short attention span be, unquote.

so either he sees that as an attribute, or he knows he has in this particular disposition, and he tries to put it in the most positive way. examining that business career ask seeing, you know -- and seeing, you know, as we try to do in the book the peaks and the valleys and how he's operated, it seems as the best guide for how he might try to operate -- >> one huge question that comes up is he is the first person who has a lot of foreign holdings. he's expanding abroad. kevin sullivan went to azerbaijan, they're in panama, and we've never had anybody who would be in the white house who has their global business empire. and so your good question is how would this work, is he going to divest, and is it enough to divest himself? is trump organization with the kids? i mean, the value goes up of his holdings all around the world. and he is increasing his worldwide holdings. it goes up if he's in the white

house. >> i think, you know, if you talk about what do presidents do, they synthesize information and come to decisions, they persuade people of their positions, and they have a program of some kind. well, donald trump is not someone who takes in information very deeply. he -- we asked him about how he makes decisions, what he reads, and he says he doesn't read reports or brief beings or anything like that. he doesn't like to read anything of any length. he believes that he comes to decisions by gut, by stint. instinct. and so he very much wants people to come in and tell him about something orally, and he believes that he will get the nub of it in a matter of seconds. he's obviously very good at persuading people that he knows a way forward, but when it comes to persuading people individually in the way that the president has to to form coalitions and achieve compromises, that's something that he has done very little of in his career.

he talks about being a great negotiator, and and we've certainly spoken to some of his business associates who credit him for that, but we've also spoken to a lot of people who worked with him who say that he's all about getting his way, and he's not one to reach compromises. >> yes, over here. go ahead. no, right here. >> i just wonder, the strong anti-mexican narrative in this campaign which has pretty much defined the campaign, where does it come from? and did you have people in mexico researching or looking into his deals there? could it come from his frustration? apparently he didn't do very well down there? >> well, i was the bureau chief in mexico for five years with my husband, ken sullivan, and we --

kevin sullivan, and we went to interview the last two presidents to talk about this, fox and calderon, and as far as we can tell and especially having been at rallies, it comes from a lot of people in america like what he has to say, and he knows that. he gets reinforced every day. it may be the most popular thing he says. there's no hint that he's always, i mean, not liked mexico or anything. he, his gift is that he is saying, this is what we keep hearing at rallies and talking to millions of americans, they're fed up. and he says that he's a reflection of what people want, you know? he thinks that our immigration policies have been wrong. >> wanted to emphasize that. i think one thing that's a safe bet with donald trump, although we can't be sure of it, is that he's actually the embodiment of a populist politician, and we've had a history of those going

back 200-plus years. and they emerge periodically, and the patterns are very similar. they say what people want to hear, they try to, they try to appeal to people's anger and frustration, and it's possible that donald trump doesn't have any animus towards mexicans and that he's only playing the cards that he sees are out there for him to play with. and if that's the case, we should be troubled because what we need to some degree in our leaders, i suppose, is a general sense the they're telling us what they really feel and the truth and at least pursuing policies that are sort of generally in the interests of the country. >> to add to what bob's saying, i'd like to contrast his current position on mexicans with what he said in the previous time when he was really close to running for president in 1999 and 2000. up to that point, he was considering running as a third party candidate against pat

buchanan, you remember him? and donald trump said that the reason he'd be be a better reform party candidate than pat buchanan is he was all about inclusiveness, and he did not like the way pat buchanan spoken about numbers of people including jews, blacks, gays and mexicans. what you're seeing now and you go to the rallies and you experience that -- and he's seen it himself -- is that when the crowd gets low, he loves to bring out the issue of who's going to build the wall, because the crowd goes nuts. it's a way to add something to the political perspective that people can understand and that they have a very visceral response about. and for him, that's very important. in fact, we spoke to a number of people who are talking to him about the decision to run for president, and when he talked about the issues that were really important to him, the relationship with mexico didn't really come up. in fact, a number of them were surprised when he talked -- he

made the allusions to rapists and criminals crossing the the border in the first speech. >> one of the people who we spoke to who was closest to trump gave us some guidance and said, when you try to understand his motives, always go first to the idea that he thinks of himself foremost as a showman. and he will always choose the most provocative line of attack because he wants to get the response, the affirmation from the crowd. yes. sir over here. >> yeah. i wanted to ask about something that's really important in a president, and that's his temper. i want to let you know that in the '80s and early '90 i was in charge of promoting atlantic city, so i have a little bit of knowledge about this. when donald trump saw an article in the atlantic city press or worse an editorial, he pulled the newspaper off the newsstands in all of his hotels and

atlantic city magazine which they also owned. he didn't like what the casino association did, he stopped paying the dues which was 25% of the budget. so i always think of him as petulant, and i was wondering if you found in your research anything that would give you some guidance as to what his temper will be like if he gets elected. >> he said that he's, you know, said it many times that i can be a screamer, quote-unquote. and i'm familiar with the anecdote that you're talking about in atlantic city, and the person i referenced when i started talking this evening was john o'donnell who wrote a book called "trumped," exclamation point. and in that book he repeatedly cites these temperament issues. he ended up quitting, and he sent him a note and said, i'm leaving. trump said, no, jack o'donnell didn't quit, i fired him. so you go back and forth over this. [laughter] you do hear that from a number

of people, and trump himself has said that he is a screamer, those are his own words. as to how that would reflect, you know, bob mentioned roy cohn. roy cohn was the lawyer for donald trump when the u.s. government sued donald trump and his father, fred trump, for race bias in 1973. and roy cohn advise ared donald trump -- advised donald trump when you're hit, hit back a hundred times harder, and that is the root of his personality. he absorbed that lesson and actually settled that case eventually. but time and time again we see cases where there are a lot of lawsuits, and he has imbued that philosophy in himself. and that case always gave him an animus towards the federal government. >> he said of the case only after dragging it out -- he settled the case only after drag it out and attacking viciously the prosecutors through roy cohn. and that's an aspect that he's more than a screamer. he is very open about wanting to punish people who he often uses the phrase viciously attack me.

and, you know, a lot of politicians want payback, it can come now or later, so he fits into that mold. >> and it's worth noting that a lot of americans find this appealing. again, i think that there's a lot of people who think this guy, when he's hit, says he's going to hit ten times harder, and that's what he's going to do out there. they like his, you know, confidence, and he is clearly feeding off of an enormous amount of americans who like what they see on tv. >> and that pugnacious attitude is something that we trace in the book all the way back to his childhood. we have a number of examples, stories going back to elementary school of really kind of ruffian behavior, as he calls it. yes, sir. >> you guys are really amazing. [laughter] [inaudible]

[laughter] >> thank you. [applause] >> and. [inaudible] [laughter] >> okay. >> my question is, which is very scary to me, is that after 2000 the press said they fell down on the job in not going after bush's motives for going into iraq. and it wasn't until a day or two ago i have seen the press begin to say this isn't true. and not merely report on what he is saying, but some juxtaposition of it. he said in this this day, he sad that that day and actually confront him. i'm very scary about voters who, as you said, let their passions -- they like what they say.

but my credo is let's get the facts and argue about conclusions. what do you expect the press to do, what is the obligation of the press to hold him accountable? i'm not definitely calling out the washington post, but in general. to hold him accountable and say you can't, you can't make these allegations when the facts belie it. >> all right. we've actually -- i'd say everywhere we go, we get a question about in this sense that many people have that there's been light or not aggressive coverage of donald trump. we also get the same question about hillary clinton. and, yeah, i think the reporting that went into this book also said more than 30 major stories that appeared in the post over the last few months that go into great detail? pushing back against trump's own narrative, own version of his life and successes and career. but you're right, there are other aspects of the news media

that have not been as aggressive in doing the reporting that we think is our obligation in any presidential campaign, in any campaign. so, you know, i think particularly in television there are questions to bed asked about, you know, giving over vast stretches of time to running his rallies and so on, you know, greatly more time than was given to other candidates. but, you know, we can't control what they do. we decided that this was our obligation to do this deep reporting and commit enormous resources to this book and the stories that have appeared in the paper and will continue to appear in the post. >> i mean, the post has been banned by trump. i mean, he hates what we write. we have a fact checker full time, we've had all these big stories. but, you know, it is a key question. i think the debates and strong moderating in the upcoming debates is absolutely critical because that's when everyone's watching.

people look at one story, and then they call up -- they'll see one story about hillary clinton, and they'll say why aren't you going after donald trump, and then they'll say one thing about donald trump, and why this. so the debates are a rare time they're both there, and it's going to depend a lot on the moderators -- >> and just to be clear, he made the idea that, you know, hasn't been talked about except in the last couple of days. this has been written about for months by other organizations, by our organization. many times the fact checker mary mentioned, they do extraordinary work, but they check everything in almost realtime, and there's a story up today that, basically, they went over again what donald trump said. he did not -- he said that i was against the war from the beginning but, in fact, every fact check has said that's not the case, that he said on how'd stern -- he didn't say he was against the war at that time. so every time that statement is made, the fact checker puts things out to say, no, that's not actually correct. >> okay. all the way in the back. >> [inaudible] be do you think he means what he says, or is it all just part of

the show? >> it depends what he's saying. [laughter] i mean -- >> it's hard to believe sometimes when talking to him that he actually means what he says. >> i think it's also important to note that, you know, there's an accuracy question, and there's an honesty question more people. and for many people who support donald trump, it's not so much the facts, but it's the genuine passion that he elicits when he's speaking, and i think that's an important distinction to make, and it's an important distinction to acknowledge. the fact that he gets up there and he says something that aligns with people, it's an empowering feeling. for those who feel that the obama years have disenfranchised their ideas of how the country should operate and what a political leader should be. and one of the things that has been so important for its candidacy is that still is one skill -- that skill is one skill

that hillary clinton has acknowledged she really struggles with. so i think, you know, when you talk about this genuine question, i think a lot of voters are wondering whether or not the person, the candidates are genuinely listening to them. and on that front, donald trump is. >> yes. >> i am, i am impressed with how many of our institutions are being privatized, and i see this as potentially giving other people who have aspirations to enter into a power structure the chance. are we, are we looking to a day when we're going to profit from many of trump's spawn in our political system?

[laughter] >> i don't know where to start. i think, you know, i'm out there, i'm talking to voters a lot, and i think in some senses, yes. i mean, i think people have been drawn, i mean, it seems so far ago, but, you know, six months ago everyone was talking about bernie sanders and the impact that he was having on the democratic party and that process. and we're seeing a lot of different types of voices somewhere into the standard two-party system, and that will inevitably change who people pick and how they perform in terms of when they're trying to win votes. >> yes, sir. >> how did -- [inaudible] the thing that i've been pondering is building on this other question. a lot of people seem to say, well, he -- there's checks and balances. he's not really going to do what he says he's going to do. what reason do we really think with the forces that he's unleashed and the legitimates is

city by the attention -- legitimacy by the attention given to the bigotry and things like that, that forces unleashed on our society that the checks and balances we think exist won't exist. and i get really troubled when you see former members, senior officers on both sides get involved, and it -- i wonder what kind, at what point do we become close to a banana republic? at what point are we being too -- well, he doesn't really mean it. does it matter if he doesn't mean it if he's really about power and the forces that he's unleashed become bigger than him, and you have the essay out there or you have -- ..

we should keep writing not because that sentiment is that there appeared more than not coming to talk to people who say you support down. but how does that work exactly? we started talking about the money and how does that work. it's more that he's going to be strong against it. thinking about how he wants to keep that. you're like wait a minute. is 2000 miles. so again, he's getting the benefit of it because people shot at the rallies and yet they are like we've didn't really

expect he's going to build it. it is the sentiment. it that he wants to. he is telling a come i hear you coming you are fed up with all the immigration and a lot of people who think that nafta took their jobs. so better than his opponent cannot team with people through tv. >> there's another aspect that comes from the word unleashed. a long time before the election and it's really coming to a play in the last couple months, which is i think what we are seeing now had been developing an unfolding for about 15 or 20 years. maybe 25 years p.m. the separation, the lack of comity in congress, ironically with the rise of the internet we have seen a surge of anti-intellectual behavior.

i feel like it's come into play in this election. too me, those are the undercurrents that are more troubling because it is not who gets elected president necessarily. it is deeper trends in our society, which isis act will be explained after the election because they are not going to go away immediately. >> one cautionary note because there is an assumption about trump opponent that the rallies are gathering of extremist and racist and the one. there are crazies at his rallies to be sure. but there's also a lot -- i just heard a few weeks ago about obama trump voters. there were a lot of them. these are the hope and change voters and the people who saw him barack obama someone who proved exactly the kind of thing

mentioned and took that to heart and reflected the frustration in the trouble of the people going through. the same people see that in donald trump and those are not extremists. time for just one last question. yes, ma'am. [inaudible] they think about the own skills speak of the requirements. >> he knows he's good at every name. i mean, he would say that. he has said he will get really smart people around him and it's all about the confidence. he has not been wedded to let go yet.

>> are we did learn he would've caught osama bin laden before 9/11 today. >> i think the undercut of your questions are really important thing to explore. throughout this country is a big debate about what is the requirement for president. for donald trump, the requirement was 30 years ago and he reiterated it 20 years ago. that was the person who can reinvigorate the spirit of america, who has pomposity. those are his words. does he think he fits the requirement? absolutely. the question is a sort of values question on what the president should we do not is where things get interesting. >> is always that the small circle of people he can really rely on. usually a couple family members. paragraph should people who died in helicopter crash in time

and time again you see there is one or two vital persons who can really -- i tell them what to do. he doesn't like to be told that a strong. oftentimes these the people being fired. in his campaign has gone through two campaign managers already. as president he would have to tackle many issues that he doesn't know anything about and we rely on my device. that is one of the big questions. >> he talks about getting things done. the best way as an army of one. very hard to run a country with one person and i would say that's the key thing in the debate because of the clinton has all this experience in government. he will answer this than say he has the temperament. he is shown through his business is in hot confident to get people around him. >> if he's right, he will completely redefine what it means to be president given his

biography, track record, lack of experience in the public life. if he's right, he will be the first person to come misfiring election. if you select did he locally called the moors. >> your question has been installed right, he was fully prepared. he knew what to do and he takes all the credit. when things go wrong in various stages throughout his career come when things go wrong the system is rigged. we've heard these in recent weeks and minus the fact that the phrase he uses throughout his life when he faced with troubles. so when we hear that now, you can be he's not oblivious to his position and so he is preparing hams often all of us for the message you will have if he loses. i think we'll leave it there. thanks so much for coming out.

[applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> this photo sent in 2012 just weeks after her days after barack obama was really in 2012. it was at the top of an e-mail from the christian coalition of america and i was struck by it at the time because it came right on the heels between the election and thanksgiving and it had this caption underneath it did with their family in prayer, pennsylvania in 1942. the image here. of course it's a black-and-white photos. a white family saying grace before a meal and then add this line of tax further explaining

the transition from the photo to the message. it said this. they said we will soon be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first things giving them.has still not with all his blessings upon this nation. i believe that richly deserves such condemnation. we have a lot to give thanks far but we also need to pray to our heavenly father and asked him to protect us from enemies outside and within to want to see america destroyed. that is the message that comes attached to this image right after the reelection of barack obama in 2012. at the time i wasn't working on the book quite yet but i immediately saved it because it seemed to me an artifact and a symbol of visceral reaction to the reelection of barack obama and 2012. part of the book is unpacking what is that about when we see these reactions. this throwback imagery to that kind of previous time, and

mythical golden era of what is behind the sense of nostalgia and loss and grief. the book is called the end of white christian america and to prevent some confusion what i mean by white christian america is a metaphor for the whole cultural institutional edifice that was built not exclusively but primarily by white protestant christians in this country that we could set the tone for conversation and shape the lives of american ideals. you may applaud here, to walk very far without tripping over an institution started by white christian america, white protestant, ymca, boy scout. he would not be hard to find these things. and yet come of these in the world they were part of has passed the american scene.

you can see this in a number of demographic ways, architecture. i'll focus on demographics for the setup of the conversation. if i could show you one chart and i will show you a few more, but if i could show you one chart, it would be this one. it really shows us some real changes that happened over the last eight years. she'd been a slight grid appear to barack obama's president he peered this is all white christians together. the percentage that protestants, cap x, nondenominational, orthodox lumped together comprised of the american population. in 2004, 59% of the country. by 2008 when barack obama was running for president that number was 54%. today the number is 45. 47% in 2014 and in the next year of latest data shows about 45 on.

just during the last two election cycles during barack obama's president lee, we have crossed this amazing threshold. we have moved from being a majority white christian country to a minority way christian country in just a short amount of time. even if people don't know the stats that well, many white christians, particularly by conservative christians feel the shift in their bones and this is part of the reactivity readers been. just to put one more symbolic issue across the same time. come i put up your support for gay marriage over the same period of time. if you go back to 2008, what you see is only four in 10 americans supported when brock of almost running for president 2008. the number today is 53%. we've gone from a country where foreign 10 supported things that make marriage.