all free presumptuous to say it, but we think we got much closer to the truth in this book than we're getting in our government reports that are being. and i would just say also you don't mind the the knowledge about the the inaccuracy of the poverty measures. now well accepted and agreed to. and there's just no way left for people who use that official measure to go and not sound like they're using it to advance their own agenda. dishonestly, is my view. so well, it's been a great discussion. thank you, gentlemen, very much. thank thank you. welcome janitors ni i'm the director of the library which is across the street and thank you

to our friends at first con for lending as have this event here we're very grateful for both of you for being here and congratulate shine's debut as a number one. the bestseller lists want to share that with you fabulous. so the open book open mind, we're really glad to have everyone here. we're really happy for the people who were able to bring the libraries into home so we could do both ways. and first, i'd like to start by having my colleague jared here talk about the foundation, the montclair public library foundation. thank you, janet. so we're so happy you're here for. another exciting session of open book, open mind. i'm personally excited as i've been following maggie's work over the past few years on the daily podcast, in print and on tv. it's an honor to have her here. us in montclair. i'd to welcome everyone on behalf of the montclair public library foundation. we're a group, your friends and neighbors and our mission is to raise money to fund the that

make our library so special, like open book, open mind. the foundation also funds staff development, access to digital resources and other needs that aren't covered by city funding. your donations initiatives like laptop lending, wi fi hotspots for montclair residents, internet access, lifelong learning classes, homework tutoring and resume help. children's literacy program aims and significant growth in e-book and audiobook collections during the pandemic. in the last five years alone, the foundation has made distributions to the library more than $700,000 to support these initiatives. but we need your help to continue do this type of support. so after you enjoy this event, which i know you will please consider a donation through our website montclair platform. org gifts of all sizes have an impact. thank you very much and please enjoy the program.

thank you, jared and thanks to all of you for supporting writers and readers in bookstores and libraries and public libraries in particular, especially the montclair public library. i just want to do a little housekeeping we're going to do the questions will be through the index cards that you picked on the way in. so if you have a question please write it down and we'll collect it before the conversation starts. and now it is my great pleasure to introduce dave jones. he do you prefer david? do you prefer david? i just called you dave. it's either one. okay. he is the co-founder of open book, open mind. and then he had this other little job at the new york times as the assistant managing editor, fine. and he is now co-chair of the advisory committee of the open book open mind. so we appreciate his dedication. his generosity. i personally really appreciate his humor, too. so, dave, will you please come up.

thanks. thank you. janet, i guess i have to tell a joke now. i can't tell you how delighted we are to have maggie here. it's quite an honor, and i'm sure you all recognize it or you wouldn't be here this evening. maggie is a new yorker who lives in brooklyn and is at the white house, a white house correspondent for the new york times. you figure that one out and she she became a journalist in 1999 just after getting out of central. she worked for the new york post for a while. then she worked for the daily news for a while. then she went back to the new york post for a while, all of during time, during which she got acquainted with mr. trump. and then about 2010, i guess it was she went to work for politico. and in 2015, just before the

election and 2016, the times stole her. and she's been a correspondent for the times since 2015. she was here in 2016. so this is a return and we appreciate that very much. her book, confident confidence, confidence man and joe klein said in a recent review of her book that it is notable for the quality its observations about trump's character. axios said that her book is the one that trump fears the most, and he has already attacked her for the book. and i joe klein also said that she was fabulously formidable, an exemplar of her craft. and i will say that i think she is one of the outstanding journalists of her generation. so we're delighted to have maggie here.

this this is maggie. we're also we're also delighted to have returning jon alter, who's a montclair rose, a long time montclair resident, been here both as a guest, as an author and also as a moderator before. and he's going to moderate and have a conversation with maggie and handle the questions. jon worked for 28 years with newsweek, 20 years as a columnist, and he is a bestselling new york times author and emmy award winning documentary film director. the co-host of alter family politics on sirius xm and the creator the old goats substack newsletter. his most recent book is his very best. jimmy carter a life, published in 2020. so don't know. i'm glad jon could fit his end in all this, all of this work he does. and we're delighted to have him with us again.

jon. thank you. welcome to montclair. maggie thank you. and we're doing this. we're really happy to have you. and i want to is this is the audio? okay. i'm hearing a little bit of echo. okay. that's better. so i want to there's much to cover. i want to focus is mostly on the pre presidency because that's less well understood. and your book covers it all. but you are the you know the greatest authority on his pre-presidential life. i think by far. but before i jump, you know, new york politics and business, just in terms of today's news.

so the january six committee issued a subpoena. is there any chance that he will appear? there's a chance. and thank you all very much for being here. there is a day for hosting. there is a chance that he will say, i will appear if you let me testify live and no constraints, no conditions. and i think that the chances that the committee would agree to that are are fairly slim, because i think they would fear it would turn into a circus in reality it would it would probably be one of the smarter things they could do would be to just let him appear under under penalty of perjury in public. so i wouldn't say it's completely out of the question, but it's at the moment it seems to a ways away. won't they look bad if they say, you know, we issued the subpoena you answered the subpoena. now we don't want to do it because it's not going to be it wouldn't be the first time they've done that.

so i don't think that would. a huge concern of theirs. and i think that they would point to the fact that he has a rather well-worn of turning big events like this into something of a spectacle you remember that debate with biden where biden finally said, why don't you just shut up? and, yes, i do, he interrupted. chris wallace. i think literally a hundred times it was a lot of the debate. it was a lot. all right. there was something else that happened recently that really intrigued me. and i'm just interested whether you shared this. so you write in the book about how he often says things in public and that's a form of protection for him like if he had privately sought the help of russia on hillary's emails, it would have been a huge scandal. but by saying in public russia,

i listening and he also projects onto other people things that he has done himself. so i believe it was last week in a speech he went back to his kind of o.j. simpson defense. they planted the evidence at mar a lago, and he's never argued this in court, which tells in a way it's not true. but he he publicly was saying that the fbi had planted evidence on him. but what interested me was the evidence that he used as an example, which was he said, like they could plant book on how do you make a nuclear bomb? it was very specific. it was very specific. and what did you take from that exactly what you did? i there was when you talked to people in in trump's orbit when they deny things because it they tend to mirror not not all of them but but a bunch of people in his world start to mirror his

behaviors. and i and i write about this in the book, but, you know, when you ask a question about what's what happened, you'll often get that or a piece of information, you'll get back. that's not true. who told you that? well, if it's not true, what does it matter who? me. and so there's a there's a degree of, you know, it's not that they found anything like, for instance, it's already been reported by the washington post that there were there was material related to another country has nuclear capabilities that was found at mar a lago. don't i don't know if there was only one such document. right. we're talking about 300 individual classified documents. so it was doing the thing that he often does, which is say something in public that at least on the surface appears like it could be some kind of omission. i didn't think that that was necessary really a calculated way of, you know, ripping off

the band-aid and doing it publicly. but it it may very well have been and it may be it's about something than just another country's nuclear capable party. and, you know, these these secrets are worth a lot on the market. if you were to use an intermediary to try to sell them. they are i i think the you know, there are a couple buckets in which you could put the the big thing we don't know about that why he had these documents is the why and there have been a lot. theories that have been tested. you know knowing him are a couple of possibilities. one is what you just described, which is monetizing that requires a level. competence and and people around who could execute that. that is a little to see at the

moment, not impossible. and, you know, there are all kinds of people coming in and out of mar a lago. so who knows? one is that he loves trophies. and, you know, if anyone who has ever been to trump tower and goes to his office gets the tour of his stuff, which a giant sneaker that was shaquille o'neal's and, you know, and here's some framed picture, scott walker and me that scott walker sent and on and on and on. you know, and in the white, he loved having trophies. the kim jong un letters were trophies. but ultimately with him, so much of what he does and seeks is about leverage. and having leverage over someone else or something else. other people, other, other, other entities. and i can't discount that either. and, and i don't know what that leverage necessarily is, but everything is about what have i got that you want and what can i use in some way.

so he described you as his psychiatrist. what do you think he meant by that? and and how would you characterize, you know, your relationship? i think he meant much. what he i he had this line at the toward the end of one of our interviews the last in september 2021. and and he said, i love being with her. she's like my psychiatrist but when he was sort of, you know, ventilating about something. and what i write is that it was a meaningless line, you know, certainly intended to flatter kind of thing. he has said he has said that about other interviews. he has said it about his twitter feed. the reality is he treats everyone like they are his psychiatr rests because he is working everything out in real time all the time. and in terms of relationship, i think that's the wrong word. he's a subject, too. i cover and i covered hillary

clinton and i covered mike bloomberg and i covered rudy giuliani. and at more of a remove, i covered three presidents. you know, it's just different with him because he interacts with news coverage so differently and he has such a specific on the new york times. and i'm just person who covers him most often for the times. ben smith made an interesting point that he argued that he needs you more than you need him. and i think one thing we're talking about this in the green room that i think people who are not journalists don't understand is that getting the access to the principal, you know, whether it's the president or someone is not all it's cracked up to be, you're right. you don't really need their quotes when do find something newsworthy contrary to some -- on on the internet. you put it in the new york times in real time when he breaks news which isn't that often.

no and the the. you know, the i think the misunderstanding of. reporter subject relationship is something that i'd like you straighten out a little bit for people. sure. and and i appreciate that. and i do understand that the people don't understand it or have misconceptions of it. what you what you said about twitter. you know, think one of the worst parts about twitter is that a lot of people get not only their news from twitter days, but they get their understanding of journalism from twitter. and there are a lot of misconceptions about about the profession and about the way journalism works, particularly donald trump. it's true with any you know, this, you have interviewed more people than ever will, but there are, you know, there's always depending on who you're interviewing, there is always going to be a spectrum of what you're likely to get out of it.

with donald trump, you you're guaranteed that it's it's not going to be truthful throughout much. it it is not necessarily going to be coherent throughout much of it because he talks like this. and so they, you know, going in an interviewing someone is not and making sure that they're, you know, talking to you. i will cover him whether he's talking to me or not, i don't need his permission to cover him. and he's never actually understood that. he just fundamentally doesn't understand what journalists do is puts him in a in that same category. the way that i approached these interviews was they offered me the first one and i literally and they offered everybody basically is doing a book, a first an interview. almost everybody, because that's just how he is. and he kind of can't help himself, including michael wolff, who wrote the you know,

the sort of most -- initial book portrait of the trump white house. and when they when they offered it to me at first i thought i'm really not going to get this is i'm not going to get anything out of this and then when i went down there, he was actually he said much more because i was talking to him about york and the post than i had expected him to. so then i saw it to subsequent interviews, one of which yielded, you know, not a ton. and then the second the third one yielded a little more. but it is, as you say you know, you're talking to somebody often who often doesn't tell the truth. and then, you know, a print interview is different than a television interview. you know, you're trying to ask questions and get information. and it's not a moment for television. so i thought it was great that

in the middle of the book, you have, you know, his response to some of your fact checking questions and some of the, you know, the questions that you raise about parts of his past. but my problem with it is that he lies every time, opens his mouth. you know, he was easily he breathes. so what is of that actually worth journalist? what's the value? i mean, i think this is the question that we struggle with daily, right? i mean, he's he's now a former he's not donald trump, the developer. i think the time for people and i've thought about this a lot in the process of writing this book, there's been a lot of criticism of 2016 campaign coverage and i think some of it is valid. i think some of it is less so i don't think the overall portrait of donald trump in 2016 was flattering from the coverage. i think in the aggregate it was i think voters had a pretty clear sense of who this guy was. i think there could have been more on his business ties.

i personally think that was a big underexplored area. given that we just never had a president with these kinds of entanglements, particularly foreign and tangled, that's where i think there is a significant criticism of the media in terms of giving weight to his words is the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, when he is doing all of mythmaking about himself and building this artifice brick by brick of himself as this massively successful tycoon, you know, commensurate with, you know, jack welch and all of these other people who trump tried pretend he was the same level as. and often, you know, despite the fact that people knew that he didn't tell the truth a lot of the time his just went unchecked in some cases for years. and that, i think, is a problem now, he's a former president and he's got enormous sway in the republican party. still and at least when it comes to a book about his life, he's still the only person who can answer some of these questions. so i feel the need to go to him,

the the you know, my overall take on i mean, i'm wondering whether this is yours as well. is that just when you think he's touched bottom he crash is through the floor. so do you see because you have this you've been covering him for more than 20 years. do you do you see the same progression that, you know, you think that things have gotten as bad as they are and then you find out something else that's even worse. i've never discussed i've never seen somebody whose desire to test the limits of transgressive behavior is so intense. as with him. and so every time you i think, think you put it very well, every time you think that there is he's hit a limit. you know, there is there is no limit. and i think the january six, 2021 really showed that, coupled with, you know, a few months

later, he starts fomenting idea that his supporter, mike lindell, was spreading, that he was going to get reinstated at the white house. so, i mean, but that's as you know, it's it's silly because there's no such mechanism. but there are supporters of his out there who don't realize that. and so it is something that is very dangerous to be engaging in and encouraging conservative writers to to spread, which is what he was doing in 2021. and when i reported in real time that he was saying this, i got a lot of blowback from people who said, we should ignore him. i don't think you can ignore that this point. i think we've seen the impact of that kind of language from him on his when we should have him to your point is is he was on the way up and i'm as guilty of this as any new york journalist i would go over to trump tower and interview him because he was always available. he was and he knew that we were you know, we needed copy, copy

or else for tv. and and he would feed the tv. yep. i remember i went over there with an nbc crew at one point he had food for them. they loved it. you know, so he understood he might not understand journalism, but he when he ran for president, was the most experienced. no question candidate in the thing that the most which is the media and being on there is absolutely no question that his dexterity with being on tv was a huge value for him and it gave him an enormous edge over everybody else. and he as much as he, you know, hates parts of the media, he he loves it and needs it. and that was just a contrast to every other person with the possible exception of mike huckabee, who he was running against at various points in that cycle, there was just nobody else who enjoyed it the way he did and who doesn't. i.

would put it slightly differently to jonathan. he doesn't experience news coverage. the way anyone else i've ever covered. does you know, stories that would humiliate other people or they'd be embarrassed to have out there. he revels in, you know, that famous new york post front page that was allegedly said by marla maples and wasn't actually the best sex i ever had in in 1990, he loved it. he you know, he he was delighted by it most people would be cringing at that. one of the great things you do is over and over again, you give the back story of that. so, you know, you figure that the the editor, the new york post, who basically that whole thing out of nothing nothing but without unpacking all of the too many of those stories i'm in his kind of mentors the people that he modeled his behavior on we know his reverence for his father who arrested in a ku klux

klan demonstration in 1925 gives you some idea of what fred trump was like. but let's talk about some of the others. roy, what did he learn from roy cohn so roy cohn becomes trump's lawyer in 1973 when trump and his father and their business are being sued by the justice department for racially discriminatory housing practices. and cohn tells fight like hell and trump learns a couple of things. one is that you can use court system interchangeably with public relations. you can shout as loud as possible and try to keep whoever is challenging you at bay a while. that way you can threaten, intimidate and menace. even if you settle, you won't say you're settling in. most. what he learned is that the role of a lawyer could be turned into something almost like a mafia don, like just something completely different than. than what lawyers are supposed to do. a long time trump friend has

said me on several occasions. i trump likes lawyers who are willing to do anything. well, did he turned himself into a mafia don? i mean, gave six apartments in trump to the mistress of a big mobster, and he flew john top lieutenant on his helicopter to atlantic city and then later claimed he didn't know the guy. so and he never keeps records like a mob boss, right? no. no email, no, no reference, no notes, no record. i mean, look, i think that it's there's there's a want to be quality about it with trump. there are there are certainly and rogue one among choice roy cohn's clients were mobsters and then you know the mafia was deep into the concrete industry in new york which was the material that trump chose to build trump tower with. and then he had interactions with mafia linked folks when. he was doing his casino

projects, you know, at trump has no problem with at at most would say he he's he gravitates toward that and he certainly adopts those kinds of behaviors in giving. and michael cohen about this all the time you know that trump sort of speaks in a code and gives gives you a sense of what wants you to do without openly saying so we know that he adopted this character, john barron, that he named his son barron. you know, way pretend to be this other guy on the phone. but i learned from your book i had never heard of vinnie before, who was vinnie. what was that about? so vinnie was. the name of who called. this is complicated story. trump was in the of trying to get a tax abatement trump tower and the the housing commissioner in new york city who worked for ed koch and koch was not a donald trump fan.

he he encouraged tony goldman commissioner and this is actually an important story in a couple of ways, encourages tony goldman, the commissioner, to reject the tax abatement. trump up going to court. he ultimately wins it takes years in the interim tony goldman gets a. at his home one morning from someone who identifies himself as vinnie and is very upset that mr. trump is not getting his tax abatement. and there's a there's a threat in this goldman reports this to officials he is given a security detail it was i think the next day i don't have the book in front of you the next day trump himself claims he too got a threatening which was so. and and that call known many years later when the fbi files were undone. there's no hard proof of who called trump, but there is widespread for people around

tony goldman that that it was trump himself. the way this story ends is that trump gets the tax abatement. eventually he wins in court. and it's the details are little dense, but ultimately, who has two children and a bad weight problem gets a call trump inviting him to lunch and trump ultimately offers him a job and goldman takes it. and ed koch almost fell over when he found out that goldman going to go work for trump and i would argue that that was one of the very earliest, at least that i know of of threatening someone. and then them giving him right bending them to his will, bending them to his will. and he told them he'd only hire them if he lost weight. so he had to his way. it was one of the conditions sort of like saying to larry king on the air, you've got bad breath and scooting away from

him. all right. so other people that behavior from george steinbrenner similar. so steinbrenner was this sort of avatar of hypermasculinity, the 1980s when the aids era was beginning and trump trump was terrified of aids and about it all the time. after shaking hands with would, you know, called people call reporters and say is blah blood gay? i just shook hands with. them. and from start, you know, steinbrenner was this, you know, big, tough guy who had, you know, he's also a child privilege like trump and who had a healthy dose of self-regard. trump and trump hung around him and hung around his crew. you know, he had he had friends like like a man named bill fugazi, who also was friends with roy cohn. lee iacocca there was this crew, and trump wanted to be like them and found himself emulating this

hypermasculinity. steinbrenner was famous for firing his managers, except he wasn't doing it by play. acting when trump trump, who really doesn't like firing people directly when he's doing the apprentice, starts with you're fired and. it was pretty widely seen as an homage to steinbrenner and that that changed that show changed everything for him. i think most people are pretty familiar with that, but they're not familiar. many people with a man named mead esposito, who was he and what did learn from him? mead esposito was the brooklyn democratic party boss. when machine boss politics, everything in new york city and trump's father, fred, was very close to mead and in that helped them hardwire kinds of projects in brooklyn. and mead had enormous clout all the city and when trump first came into office know and mead

was was mead was ruthless he was a criminal he did not believe rules and regulations applied. he, you know, to him he made judges, he made district attorneys. and when trump came into office, you know, he would he would talk a figure who sounded very much like me. aides had no idea who he was talking about because most his officials who worked for him in the white house from new york. but he would talk about mead swinging. i think he described it as people thought it was a baseball bat, it was a cane. and he told me this story in one of our interviews about meet swinging his cane at people and he said mead ruled with an iron fist and mead, one of the people who helped inform trump's of two things. one of how a political operator functions and rules which is just top down. and the other that mead fit trump's idea of strength and a

lot of trump's idea of strength is informed violence, violence and forms, which makes you strong. that in turn informs what makes a good boss and very much falls into that category. he it's almost like he is almost like a tammany correct kind of idea. 101 there is a washington direct line. yeah. so there's also, you know is despite gabor most despicable qualities the cruelty was also in evidence earlier. tell us what happened. the helicopter crash and what he said about the deceased executives. so a bunch of trump executive has died in a helicopter crash in new jersey. i think it was on their way back from a meeting at trump tower. two things happened afterwards.

one was that somehow an item got placed, i believe it was in page six suggests in the trump himself was supposed to be on this helicopter, which nobody believed because it was at least at least telecom gear. and he didn't like to fly those himself. roger stone has insisted that. it really true. so do that way you will and the the widows and and one other girlfriend, her fiance say there were three people involved of the the dead men were really aghast at this that trump himself was somehow danger and he later on started to blame his his financial woes at the casinos. one of those debt executives and he says to one of his officials his name, jack o'donnell, you know, he's dead. does it matter what i say about him now? and that really stayed with jack o'donnell, who actually wrote his own book.

but there is a, you know, a chronic in all of these descriptions from people who have been around him for a very long time, just a chronic for other people's feelings, emotions, you know, decency in times of stress. so you say that he actually have that many moves and he uses them over and over again, in part because he understands ends the value of repetition. you know, which is very important in politics and especially politicians are tear at repeating things. the case of both obama and clinton, it was because it bored them to say the same thing over and over again. but that made them less effective. so that is kind of an overall move that he repetition. but then there are some specific moves and i wanted to go over them and see if you could give us an example of each. so the first one you mentioned is the so that is you know

hillary clinton calls him a puppet of putin. puppet. you're the puppet. it's all just going right back at you with some form of projection projection. so strongest defenses, no offense. yes or you write a story and he starts tweeting, you know, that's a good example, right? the quick lie is one of our interviews. i asked him what he was doing, the january 6th attack, which at that point was not part of the the actual under oath public record because the house select committee hearings hadn't started. and he immediately said that wasn't watching television that he and that he rarely had the tv on so that be a good example the shift of blame i i mean there are so many on those. you know it's it's my campaign managers that i'm losing i threatening to sue his campaign

because the poll numbers are bad. you know finding findings aid to to shoulder whatever crisis is going on. nothing is ever his fault. the distraction. well, that one is, you know know, there's there's a there's a bunch in that in that category. but, for instance and this one, you know people insist that these photos up organically. but when he was in the middle of a lot of questions right after the republican national convention in 2017, 2016, sorry about russia, about his comments about russia and this was after the email hacks the dnc and suddenly nude pictures of melania trump show up on the front page of the new york post from a decade earlier. and donald trump, who does not like when people, write about

his life unless he wants to control, appear to have no problem with this. so that was a distraction. the outburst of rage. well, that's i mean, i can lose count on that one. i mean, you can see that. you can see that one all the time. but it is there is, the screaming at people to get them in line is something that he has done through out his life and people in white house when he was when had just won somebody who had worked for him years ago said to me he is a screamer and people in the white house are to have a really hard time with this and they did so the performative sometimes is not genuine. those are. so i will give you a, for instance, some of the tweets and i you'll ask me for a specific one and i can't right now, but some of the tweets that are all caps that we would all describe as him fuming, he.

would be laughing as he was sending them. it's a good example just for the headline claim, huh? well, let's see. obama tapped. my phone would be a good example of that one in 2017 with no evidence other than some breitbart story that he was reading. but knew he would get a headline out of it. right. or one that just got blown apart today. he said that pelosi didn't do anything to protect capitol. this video came out today of her trying, you know, get the national guard there and, you know, in the middle and middle of the day. and january sixth. and trump, of course, is doing. so. i you call it indecisiveness masked by compensatory. so when he couldn't, i this is going to sound hard to believe but he really after november 3rd in 2020 when he lost he could

not what course of action to follow when it became clear that he was not going to be able to stay in office anymore and he was quizzing everybody including the valet who brought him his diet, you know, what do you think i should do? and then after he doesn't get what he wants. from anybody and and it clear that he's not quite ready to pull the on this proposed government intervention that mike, the former national security adviser, is telling him. he should do he sees seizing the voting cracks in a fascist regime in italy. yes, executive orders to do so. he suddenly seizes on january six and throws all of his energy into it. and i would put that as an example. why do you think so? little sticks him? why is he the ultimate teflon president? i think a couple of things. i think the fact that he was part of the pop culture fabric for so long and part of this relate to the apprentice, which

you mentioned not entirely, but what became in 2016 was the voters felt very his voters felt very bonded to him in ways that they really didn't previous candidates. there was this desire to win and voters willing to overlook a lot. and then they got in the habit of overlooking all kinds of things. and i just think that the partizan divide is so hardened that there. half the country is now not interested, forgiving him much if he's the nominee again. i do think their aspects of the republican party that have grown sick of him. i do. and i think we will start to see more of that in coming months, because i think there are a lot of candidates who are going to run. i don't think it's that nothing sticks to him i think especially beginning of 2022, this issue with the documents. and i think that he was taking on some water in relation to that now i think it's baked in but i think with him there is so

much and i do think during presidency everything was sort of treated as if it was a four alarm fire and everything was all on fire. there were, a number of them. but everything is a is an emergency. then then voters start to feel like nothing is. so what do you think was the most blown out of proportion and harmful the democrats by making too much of it? i that. i think that the i'm trying to think how to say this carefully the i mean i think a couple of things i've kids in cages huge deal and really you know and a humanitarian. every single tweet that he did not a huge deal did not all need to be treated as they were they were all the you know, every every gaffe he made every nonsensical answer he gave not

all the same, you know, congratulating putin on winning his election when he'd been told not to that's it that's important. his praise xi jinping that's important but everything just became you know one big thing and i think it became harder for people to see what was so there was a crying wolf problem. i know it's crying wolf. it's just crying outrage when at the same volume every it's not wolf because there's always there. so it's just the volume. the anti-trump conservative writer david french wrote recently about what he calls the exhausted majority. i that and which i thought was an interesting line. so is part of it that he just wears a video and and absorbed roy cohn's lesson that articulated to william safire, which is that he brings out the worst in his enemies and gets them to defeat themselves. and i think there is something to that. so is if you were breaking down

his manipulative powers of censor on people's weaknesses and then exploiting is that is that is superpower that he has he has this ability to have sort of an x-ray vision of what somebody is weaknesses i think it's one of them i think the fact that he has an ability to to pick up on other people's. insecurities is one of them. and i think his shamelessness is another. i think shamelessness has been a huge edge in politics and i think the fit for him. and i think the fact and certainly in his in his business life and i think the fact that he is really. hyper focused on sort of the darkness of human emotions, you know. he is he is really, really attuned to bad things. people will do and tries to sort

of play off of that. and he is aware that other people experience shame and tries to press that, too. and there's a power in shamelessness. correct? a big one. i mean, he has really it to great effect for and how transfer is i mean we see two santas is trying to go to his playbook they're probably going to have a pretty bloody primary. how do you think his imitators will do? i think not that well. i think that, you know, including that i'm not convinced there's going to be a decent trump primary or not. i'm not i mean, i think because think that everybody talks about to, you know, they'll be the ones to take him on. and it's actually pretty unpleasant for everybody who does. and so stepping into meat grinder is is more challenging than it looks. well, in private, he says of the santas that he's whiny, fat and

phony. true. that gives us some, i think, the warm up material. definitely fanciful. yes. well, and i don't and i don't think that. you know, desantis is in the middle of dealing with a hurricane and dealing with a natural disaster, obviously very different from any governor. and we have seen a a tempering by desantis of some of the things that you know, the appeal of a biden he has he has been less combative, but he has had more he has had moments prior to hurricane and where he has seemed less than for prime time. and so i think that there's a very long history of republican donors and members of the media anointing someone as the next whatever. and it doesn't always come out that. scott walker. tim pawlenty. i yeah. i mean i can go down the list. and so we don't know yet. i've wasted a lot of time covering those people.

so did i mean, to be clear, i count myself among those reporters who who have done that. you think trump's heart really isn't in 2024? why? because i think that a couple of things think that i think he's really consumed by these investigations. i think that the the documents in particular is really scaring him. i think that the press accounts by cnn, the new york times, washington post are showing patterns of, behavior that i think are alarming. some of his own advisers and that he's doj is paying attention to. i mean, the the main proof that he is worried is that he spent a $3 million upfront retainer on a lawyer whose advice he has completely ceased to listen to us. but he was worried enough that he hired the guy. and i got calls from people who worked for trump in the 1990s, who donald has never paid all that big a retainer that tells you all you need to know. a lot of times it doesn't pay at all. well, that's why this was so surprising.

so and he just doesn't seem animated by the rallies the way he once did. they're really long with not a lot of new material. and so we'll see. i mean, maybe he'll get into it if he does become a candidate. i do think he is backed himself into a corner where he has to run because i think the investigations, you know, compel him forward. but we'll see. so if you had to bet, would you that he will be the nominee? i i'm not falling for that one again. no, i. i think that if runs, he remains the overwhelming favorite, be the nominee. but that is obviously absent outcomes of these investigations. and i just don't know what that looks like does actually in anything beyond his himself he has a couple of core id like impulses on issues trade or you know other countries ripping us off, you know more broadly on alliances. but he's willing to sublimate

those if there's some other reason i you mcconnell i remember was telling people during the transition in 2016 mean you know he was clearly just of stunned by this just that he this guy has no way you would he would say this guy has no idea what he believes in. and i and i think to your point, i think he does know what he believes in. he believes in himself. and what's good for him. and so that can look like different things in different moments. and you do you ever get the sense that he is untethered from reality? do you think it's all, you know, connected to his universe in some way that you can kind of track how it makes a certain amount of in his own heart does the same thing i mean he's that he's untethered to reality and he's also that's sort of like the same thing to me was creating his own reality i guess but you're saying is he doing it knowingly in his yeah.

bring you along or is it all. sometimes it's instinctive. sometimes knows. i mean one of the things about him that people came realize over time working in the white house was, you know he's not strategic at he can't do long term planning but is very calculating and in a given and so you know it's more of what your second option is which is that he's he is trying to create this reality and get you to buy into it more often than not. now i think then sometimes he ends up really believing what he's saying. so i couldn't tell you if he actually believes he's saying about the election or not. i have no idea, i don't know that it matters. but so since he's not strategic, what is his timeline is, it just the next news? is it a week? is it a month? it's it is literally you an hour, hour by hour basically i mean it is it is he is he is existing in the now always. i'm almost ready to get your

questions for somebody who's got them you've got over there. yeah let's let's get your questions. i mean i. also. good. oh actually before we go to these i want to go to race. the question of race. so you you know of your big scoops came out a few months ago is in the is that he was flushing documents down the toilet but there's another toilet story in your book there's a lot of donald toilet stories that tell the one that really goes to racial animus. so when he when he was first in the oval office, he would he would show people what he would call his secret bathroom of the oval office. and he would claim that he had

renovated the entire space down to the toilet, which was not true according to officials. i think they just customarily replace the toilet seat anytime there's a new president. but he would he would he would show this space and and he would say, you understand what i'm talking about. and it was a very strange remark, you know, open to interpretation. but, you know, one guest who heard it interpreted as him not wanting to use his black predecessor's bathroom and, you know, there's there is just. there is a lot of that with him over. a very long period of time. there was a i have reporting in the book about how the first time the first executive, the first person to work on the executive floor at trump tower, who was black, was in 1986, as if this was innovative. and it was the it actually was the woman who had been as an assistant to the person we talked about before. goldman and trump's assistant, a woman named norma federer, was

all aflutter that, you know, we've never had black person on the executive floor. and then it was deemed that she was she was so pretty, she would fit in. but it's you know, it's just it just it it it is a reminder, a couple of things, but one of which is actually that as much as new york city is seen as a progressive beacon. there are of it that really are not. i mean, some of the big public things like birtherism was pretty thoroughly racist. but their detail, other you have like i didn't know that he had girlfriend before just before melania over overlapping with her overlapping with melania half black. my father was white mother was black and he said he told say about her he met her parents and he told her that she got her beauty from her mom and her brains from her dad on the white side and. so let's let's look at some of

these questions, all of you. what do you think motivate the children? do you think that they are politically ambitious? i i think i think don jr certainly is ivanka. yes, i would quite frankly be very surprised if she actually ever ran for given what it entails. i don't think eric trump is at all politically ambitious. so this question is. sort of about his style. in an interview. you know, what's the feel you get from him when you're right across from him is he is he charismatic in person? is he does he try to bully you, charming you? yes. you know, i mean, he all it he can be all of those things. i have interviewed him when he has been charming, which he was in the first interview i did from this book and he was in salesman mode.

and then i've interviewed him, you know, at other times, one very memorable one in the white house in 2017 where, you know, we walked in and he had his hands jammed in his armpits and he's sitting behind the resolute desk. he's rolling very heavy with like 8 to 10 aides sitting around the this is not normal to do in an oval office meeting with reporters. and so there there are times when he tries to menace and intimidate and i'm sorry he doesn't it just depends and do you think it depends on his or is there calculation oh is he is he thinking it through a little bit like what do i want to try do today in this interview. so that one was was that that was definitely calculating. the second interview that i went to for the book was in a terrible mood. and i found out later that he had been wandering around his property at mar a lago, like pointing out messed up plaster in various spots. and he was angry at how the club looked. and so that one was pretty organic.

so. this, this of goes to the reality question. but and it's, you know, it was the subject today's hearing how do you think he accepts he lost the election. i don't think he accepts that at all whether whether he whether he knows on some level that he did i think he did at one point. i don't know if he does now, but he certainly doesn't accept it right. but i mean, there's a lot of testimony that he would say to people, how did i lose to this? i don't know and i of reporting on that in the book mean he was itme pretty clear to people right after immediately the election that he knew that he had lost. he would say to one eight, i thought we had it, you know, he seemed almost apologetic to some of i think was clear that that it was over. and then he decided it wasn't. how do you explain his relationship with? putin i can't.

i don't you know, i mean, there's the obvious. he, he admires strongmen and there is the obvious. he has been fascinated by russia for 40 years. but beyond i can't begin to explain it. i just want to go back to the question. i just asked you about the election because i think it's a kind of a deeper psychological question than it might appear on the surface that he you know, he agreed he lost immediately after the election but never accepted. did he then internalize it like do you think this is in some ways no longer fake his part. oh, yeah. i don't know whether he actually this. i mean i think it's very possible that he has convinced himself that he really did win because he's he's very good at i mean, you know, he he he has said to people a version of the same idea over many years, which goes to the repetition point,

which is that if you say something often, often enough, people believe it. and it becomes true. that's true of himself, too. that's because of goebbels. i know. i know, i know, i know. i know. the heritage on it. but by the way, you mentioned the mein kampf. ivana trump said that he had mein kampf and somebody else and he gave him a book, hitler's. it was the speeches. speeches and his bedside. what do you make of it? i don't think he read them, but i think that he but i think that he has had a fascination with with for a while. and i don't. you know, i hitler is not somebody who who who most people in in mainstream america admire. so. okay. this is about you. how many hours do you sleep a night? not enough. thank you for asking.

so maybe tonight's the night. this questioner wants to know if you have any time management tips. no, i am not who you to for that. it sounds like you do. do you think trump is evil evil? that's a really hard question to answer. i think that he is he is comfortable enough with behavior is evil. and i think that that's that's probably about far as i can assess. well, i'll answer it. yes. so you kind of address this, but let's go back at this a little bit. this is how scared is right now about his legal troubles and the questioner makes a very point. maybe his malignant has. you know, it was clear,

narcissistic personality disorder that says that a better president than anybody with the possible of abraham lincoln. but might that actually prevent him from feeling more vulnerable or does that not actually work? does the narcissism not help guard him against feeling he understands legal problems? i would just put them in a very different category than almost any other. it is the thing that he has been most acutely attuned to all of his life and he has spent a very long time trying to cultivate prosecutors going back to, you know, robert morton morgenthau, a great of integrity. i was disturbed to hear that was as close to trump as he was and is one of the reasons i think that trump felt kind of comfortable and nothing bad was going to happen to trump, but he i just think that he experiences legal issues on a different

level. so it was he not that scared the new york da's investigations. vance was investigating him and alvin basically dropped it. i mean, he's no he was active. he was very concerned about it. he was. and he didn't get charged. and so, you know, it'll be very problematic for his company when this trial takes place, because there are charges against his company and an allen weisselberg cfo who pleaded guilty a couple of months ago is going to testify. but trump himself wasn't criminally charged. and that really has become how he looks at all of these things. i mean, as unhappy as he was with the tish james suit, the new york attorney general. it's still a civil suit. right. and that's the thing that they bear in mind how fannie willis and georgia, you know, that that one makes them nervous. yeah. i mean, you know, he's he he he is facing a lot legal problems. he is legal problems are

threats. he is acutely aware of threats. and so that why he gets up. so a lot of democrats, well, he'll always skate. he'll always maybe he will figure out how to get away with it. well, he was president i mean, it was different when he was president. the sitting was going to get indicted and, you know, the the expectations around became a little too great not not by mueller think mueller was very you know, sort of narrowly focused on his work. but i think there were there were folks who had high hopes that that was going to end his presidency before, its expiration date, and that was just not likely at any point because of the justice department opinion on indicting a sitting president. but now he is facing serious investigations. you know, somebody he called, he called someone very close to him at the time, not.

two days after the capitol riot, and said, as he is, to do about everything, to pull test how everything playing out. what do you i like and the person said i think you've made a real mess and i this is the first time he is facing several simultaneous messes. but the the people who talk to the january committee, they really haven't been before the grand jury. i mean, we would know if they had their lawyers would have. which grand jury are you talking about in the january 6th case that you were talking about justice department generally. so some them happen. i mean, you know, we today marc short, pence's chief of staff, was back before the grand jury. so i mean, some of them have that, but i don't i mean, is cassidy hutchinson in front of the grand jury? i believe she has been interviewed. don't know if she's been employed by investigators i don't know if it's before they're gone. so if you again i hate it when people ask us to get into the predictions business you have fun but you know more than everybody else so you can make

making a prediction. you can assess the odds more. so do you think he'll be indicted on the documents case and do you think he'll be indicted on the january 6th case? i don't know if he be indicted on either, but i think that the documents case presents a clearer threat because just a clearer, you know, even though he is. and for those of you who watched the january six hearing today, bennie thompson, the chairman, said this over and over again, that, you know, trump was at the center of everything. i think they've really tried showing that the one person who had visibility into all these different activities, my is that the justice department still doesn't feel like it has a clear sense of how to make kind of case so i know you're not a pollster and you're you don't spend a huge amount of time talking to voters, but why do you think he's had such staying power?

and 70 million people voted for in the last time. so i think that i don't really know how to answer that than the fact that i think that he. he has been very successful in activating a lot of people who either haven't voted before or who have felt somehow out of the process. and then i think there's a issue which is i think there's a really worthwhile study that. wouldn't you? we wouldn't do. but i think that the pollster should is of why so many people are open to, you know, a sort of a type of strongman leader in this country. and i would be curious to hear comes back the subtitle of your book, the making of donald trump and the breaking of america. how do you explain the latter part of it? what did he do to break this country? i think that he did not create and you would know this far

better than i do. but i think that he did not create the partizanship that has cleaved the country into for a while. but he fueled it and he exacerbated it and he benefited from it and. he exported and i write about this, that one of his guiding ethos is, you know, he he clearly expressed in the late 1980s in new york city during a a terrible case of in which teenagers color were arrested. and he took out an ad calling for the death penalty for them. that he clearly saw hate as a civic good. and i think he exported that to washington and i think he has exported it to his party. and i think that has had a massive trickle effect. i think that's a good, if