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>> welcome. i'm a jana, director of the library which is across the street, and thank you to our friends at first for letting us have this event here. we're very grateful for believing here and congratulations, debut as number one bestsellerer list. we share that with you. paperless. my blood ofen everyone here. we're really happy for the people who were able to bring the library's into their home. so we could do both ways. first i would like to start having my colleague jared here talk about the foundation, the montclair public library foundation. >> thank you, janet. so we're so happy you are here for another exciting session of open book open mind. i i am personally excited as i been following magis work over the past few years on the daily podcast, in print, and on tv. it's an honor to have her here

with us in montclair. i would like to welcome everyone on the otherla montclair public library foundation. where a group of your friends and neighbors and our mission is to raise money to fund the offerings that make our library so special, like open book open mind. the foundation also funds staff development, acts as a digital resources and other needs that are not covered by city funding. your donations support initiatives like laptop lending, wi-fi hotspots for montclair residents without internetet access, lifelong learning classes, homework tutoring and resume help, children's literacy programs, and significant growth in the bookan and audiobook collections during the pandemic. in the last five years along the foundation has made distributions to the library totaling more than $700,000 to support these initiatives. but we need your help to continue this type of support. so after you enjoy this event, which i know you will, , please consider making a donation through our website, montclair,

gets of all sizes have an impact. they give very much and please enjoy the program. [applause] >> thank thank you, jared. and thanks to all of you for supporting writers and readers in bookstores and libraries and public labors in particular, and especially the montclair public library. i want to do a little housekeeping. we're going to do the questions will be through the index cards that you picked up on the way in. so if youou have questions pleae write it down and will collect it before the i conversation starts. and now it is my great pleasure to introduce david jones. he is -- do you prefer david? do you prefer david? i just call you day. either one, okay. he is at the of open book open mind and then had this other little job at the "new york times" is assisting managing editor. fine. and he is the culture of the advisory committee of openbo bok open mind. so we appreciate his dedication, his generosity.

i personally really appreciate his humor, , too. dave would you please come up? [applause] thanks. thank you, janet. i guess i could tell a joke now. i can't tell you how delighted we are to have maggie here. it's quite an honor and ensure you are 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, white house correspondent for the "new york times." you figured that one out. and she became a journalist in 199999 just afterer getting outf sarah lawrence. she worked for the "new york post" for ake while and then she worked for the daily news for a while, then she went back to the "new york post" forim a while, l time during which she got acquainted with mr. trump.

and then about 2010 i guess it was, sheti went to work for "politico." in 2015, just before the election in 2016, the times stole her and she's been a correspondent for the times since 2015. she was here in 2016, so this is aa return visit. we appreciate that very much. her book, "confidence man." joe klein said in a recent review of her book that it is notable for the quality of its observations about trump's character. axios said that a book is the one that trump fears the most, and he is already attacked her for the book. and joe klein also said that she was fabulously formidable, and exemplary of her craft. and i will say that i think she

is one of the outstanding journalists of our generation so we're delighted to have maggie here. [applause] >> this is maggie. we are also delighted to have returning john altered whose longtime montclair resident who has been here both as a guess, as an author and also as a moderator before. he sort of moderate and have a conversation with maggie and handle the questions. john worked for 28 years with "newsweek," 20 years as a columnist,se and he is a best-selling "new york times" author, and in the award-winning documentary film director of the cohost of altered family politics on sirius/xm and the creator of the old goat substack newsletter. his most recent book is his very best jimmy carter, a life published in 2020.

so i don't know, glad jon could fit us in and all this work he does. we're delighted to have him with us again.. jon. [applause] >> thank you. welcome to montclair, maggie. >> thank you. >> were really happy to have r you. and ii want to -- is the audio okay? i'm hearing a little bit of echo. okay, that's better. i want to, there's so much to cover. i want to focus mostly on the pre-presidency, because that's less well understood, and your book covers it all, but you are the greatest authority on his pre-presidential life, i think by far. but before i jump into new york

politics and business, just in terms of today's and news, so the january 6th committee issued a subpoena. is there any chance that he will appear? >> there's a chance -- thank you very much for being here. there is, and thank you for hosting pfizer's chance that he will suggest i will appear if you let me testify live, and no constraints, , no conditions. other think the chances that the committee would agree to that are fairly slim. because i think they would fear it would turn into a circus. in reality it would probably be one of the smartest things they could do would be to just let him appear under penalty of perjury in public. so i wouldn't say it's completely out of the question but at the moment it seems a ways away.

>> won't you look bad if they say we issued a subpoena, you answered the subpoena and now we don't want to do because it's not quite if i? >> itin would be the first time that the nets i don't think that would be a huge concern of theirs. and i think they would .2 the fact that he has a rather well worn of attorney big events like this into something of the spectacle. >> remember that debate with biden or biden finally said won't you just shut up? >> yes, i yes, i do. >> and interrupted chris wallace i think literally a hundred times. >> it was a lot, yes. >> are right. there was something else thatt happened recently that really intrigued me, and a 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 help of rush on hillary's emails that would've been a huge scandal, but by say in public russia, are you listening? and also projects onto of the people things he is 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 you why it's not true, but 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 a book on how to make a nuclear bomb. >> very specific, , wasn't it? >> very specific. what didid you take from that? >> exactly what you did.i there was, when you talked to

people in trump's orbit when they deny things because they tend to mayor, not all of them but a bunch of people in his word start to bear his behaviors, and a right about this in the book, but when you ask a question about what happen, you often get that, or piece of information you will get back, that's not true. who told you that? will, if it's notot true why dos it matter told? so there's a a degree of, you know, it's notot true that they found anything, like this, for instance. it's only been reported by the "washington post" that there was material related to another countries nuclear capabilities that was found at mar-a-lago. i don't know if there was only one such document. we are talking about 300 individual classified documents. so it was doing the thing that often does, which is say something in public that at least on the surface appears

like it could be some kind of relation. i didn't think that that was necessarily a calculated way of ripping off the band-aid and doing it publicly. but it may very well have been. >> and it may be that it's about something more than just another countries of nuclear -- >> correct. >> capability. these nuclear secrets are worth a lot on the market if your to use an intermediary. >> theyy are. there are a couple of buckets in which you could put, the biggest thing we don't know about is this why he has a stock that is the wide. there a lot of theories that have been tested, knowing him the areon a couple of possibilities. one is what you just described which is monetizing. that requires a level of

competence andro people around m who could execute that. that isee a little harder to see at the moment. it's not a possible. there are all kinds of people come in and out of mar-a-lago, so who knows? what is that he loves trophies and if anyone who's ever been to trump tower and goes to his office gets theof tour of his stuff, which includes a giant sneaker that was shakeel o'neills and, you know, and you're some framed picture of scott walker and me that scott walker sent me, and on and on and on. and in the white house 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 entities. and they can't discount that either. i i don't know what that leverae necessarily is but everything is

about what if i got that you want and what can i use. >> so he described you as his psychiatrist. [laughing] what do you thinkhe he meant by that, and how would you characterize your relationship? >> i don't think he m meant muc. he had this line toward the end of one of our interviews, the last interview september 2021. and he said i love being with her. she's like my psychiatrist when he was sort of ventilating about something. and what i write is that it was a meaningless line, certainly intendedai to flatter kind of thing you said about, he said that about other interviews. he said it about his twitter feed. the reality is he treats everyone like they are his psychiatrist 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 is the subject i cover and a covered hillary clinton and i covered mike bloomberg and a covered rudy giuliani, and that more of a removal i covered three presidents. it's different with him because he interacts with news coverage so differently and ds such a specific fixation on the "neww york times." i'm just the person who comes in most often for the times. >> host: ben smith made an interesting point that he argued that he need you more than you need him. i think one thing we're talking about this in thet green room, that i think people who are not journalists don't understand is that getting the access to the principal, whether it is the president or is not all it's cracked up to be. you don't really need their do findhen you something newsworthy contrary to

some bullshit on the internet. you put in the "new york times" in real time when he breaks news, which isn't thathe often. i think thehe misunderstanding f the reporter subject relationship is something that i would like you to l straighten t a little bit for people. >> guest: sure. and i appreciate that. and i do understand that people don't understand it or have misconceptions of it. what you said about twitter, you know, i think one of the worst part about twitter is that a lot of people gettt not only the nes from twitter these days, they get theli understanding of journalism from twitter, and there are ans lot of misconceptions about the profession and about theut way journalism works, particularly with donaldti trump. it's true with any, you know this, you've interviewed for people than i ever will, but

there's always, depending on who you area interviewing, there's always going to be a spectrum of what you're likely to get out of it. with donald trump your guaranteed that it's not going to be truthful throughout much. it is not necessarily going to be coherent throughout much of it because he talks like this. and so going in an interview, anything someone and making sure they're not talking to you, i will cover whether he's talking to me or not, i don't need his permission to cover him,al december actually understood that. he just fundamentally doesn't understand what journalists do, which puts them in that same category. the way that i approached these interviews was they offered me the first one, and i literally thought, and it offered

everybody who's doing about an interview, almost everybody. because that's just how he is. he kind of can't help himself, including michael wolff who wrote the sort of most damning initial book portrait of the trump white house. and when they offered it to me at first i thought i'm really not going to get, i'm likely to get anything out of this. and then when i i went down te he was actually, he said much more because i was talking to him about new york and the past than i'd expected into. so then i sought to max of two interviews, one of which yielded not n a ton, and then the secon, the third one yielded a little more. but it is, as you say, you're talking to somebody who often doesn't telles the truth. and then a print interview is

different than a televisionu interview. you're trying to ask questions and get information. it's not a moment for television. >> host: i thought it was great that in the middle of the book you have his responses to some of your fact checking questions, and some of the, the questions that you raised about parts of his past. but my problem with it is that he lies everyh. time he opens hs mouth. he lies as easily as he breathes. what is any of that worth journalistically? >> guest: this is a question we have struggled with david, right? he is now a former president. he's not donald trump the developer. i think the time for people, and i thought about this a lot in the process of writing this book. there's been a lot of criticism of the 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. coverage. i think in the aggregate it was i think voters had it pretty clear sense of who this guy was. i think there could've been more on his business ties. i personally think that was a big underexplored area, given that we just have had a a president with these kinds of entanglements, particularly foreign entanglements. i think there was significant criticism of the media in terms of givinge weight to his words s a 1970s, 1980s, 1990s when he was doing all of this mythmaking about himself ands building this artifice brick by brick of himself as this massively successful tycoon, commensurate withit jack welch d all of these other people who trump tried to pretend he was at the same level as. and often despite the fact that people knew that he didn't tell the truth a lot of the time, his statements just went unchecked, in some cases for years. that i think is a problem. now, he's a former president and he'smo got enormous plate in the

republican party still prerelease when it comes to book about his life, , he still the only person who can answer some these questions i feel the need to go to him. >> host: my overall take on them, and in wondering whether this is yoursha as well, is that just when you think he's touched bottom, crashes through the floor -- [laughing] -- soou do you see, because you have this, you've been covering him for more than 20 years, do you see the same progression that you think that things have gotten as bad as it are and then you find out something that is even worse? >> guest: i've never seen somebody who's desire to test the limits of transgressive behavior is so intense as with him. and so every time, i think you put it very well, every time you think that he's aa limit, you know, there is the limit.

and i think the january 6th, 2021, really showed that, coupled with a few months later he starts fomenting this idea that his supporter mike lindell was spreading that he was going to get reinstated in the white house. but that's, it's silly because there's no such mechanism, but there are supporters of is out there who don't realize that. so it is something that is very dangerous to be engaging in an encouraging conservative writers to spread, which is what he was doing in 2021. and whenn i reported this in rel 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 at this point. i think we've seen the impact of that kind of language from him. >> host: when we should have to your point, its wings on the way up and i'm as guilty as t is of any new york

journalist. i would go over to trump tower and interview because he was always available. he knew that we were, you know, we needed a copy and he would see the tv crews i member i went over there with an nbc crew at one point. he had food for them. they lovedey it. so he understood how he might not understand journalism, but when he ran for president he was the most experienced -- >> guest: no question. >> host: -- candidate in the thing that counts the most >> guest: there's actually no question that his dexterity with being on tv was a huge value for him, , indicating an enormous ee over everybodyy else. as much as he hates parts of the media, he loves it and needs it. and that was just a contrast to every of the person with the possible exception of mike huckabee who he was running

against c at various points in that cycle. there's just nobody else who enjoyed it though the wad who doesn't, i would put slightly different, jonathan. he doesn't experience news coverage the way anyone else i've ever covered does. stories that would humiliate other people or they would be embarrassed to have out there, he reveled in. that famous new posts front page that was allegedly sent by marla maples and wasn't actually, the best sex i ever had, in 1990, he loved it. he was delighted by it. most people would be cringing at that. >> host: one of the great things you dove is over and over again to get the back story of that. you figure out that the editor at t the "new york post" who basically concocted that whole thing out of nothing, but without unpacking all of the too many of those stories, i'm interested in this kind of mentors, the people that he

modeled his behavioron on. we knoww his reverence for his father who was arrested at 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.y, roy cohn. what did you learn from roy cohn? >> guest: soy roy cohn becomes trump's lawyer and i can send a third wind trump and his father and a business are being sued by the justice department for racially discriminatory practices. and why tells trump fight like hell. trump learned a couple of things. one is you can use the court system interchangeably with public relations. you can shout as loud as possible and try to keep wilbur isham junior at bay for a while that way. you can threaten and intimidate and menace. even if you settle you won't say youu are settling. and most specifically what u learned is that the role of a lawyer could be turned into

something almost like a mafia don, like to something completely different than what lawyers are supposed to do. a longtime f trump friend has sd to me on several occasions, trump likes lawyers who are willing to do anything. >> host: well, did he turn himself into a mafia don? i i mean, he k-6 apartments in trump tower to the mistress of a big monster, and it flew jon god he's top lieutenant on his helicopter to atlantic city. >> guest: and then claimed later he didn't know the guy. >> host: and he never keeps records like a mob boss, right? >> guest: no records, no notes. i mean, look, there's a one of the quality about it with trump but there's certainly, and one of roy cons clients were monsters. a mafia was deep into the concrete industry in york citye which was a material trump chose

to build trump tower with. and then he had interactions with mafia linked folks doing his casinoo projects. at minimum trump has a problem with it. at most i would say he gravitates towards that and he certainly adopts those kinds of behaviors and giving, and michael cohen talks about this all the time,rt that trump sort speaks and a code and gives you a sense of what he wants you to do without openly saying it. >> host: so we know that he adopted this character, jon bayern, , and he named his son bayern. that we could pretend to be this other guyuy on the phone. but i learned from a book, never heard of the t knee before. who was many? what was that about? >> guest: so vinny was the name of someone who called come this is a comitatus toy. trump was in the middle of trying to get a tax abatement

for trump tower. and the housingfo commission in new york city who work for ed koch and ed koch was not a donald trumphe fan. he encouraged toni, this commissioner, this is important couple of waste or encourages tony and the commissioner to reject the tax abatement. trump is a good court. he ultimately wins, , takes yea. in theer interim, tony gets a cl at his home one morning from someone who identifies himself as vinny. and then he is very upset that mr. trump is not getting the tax abatement, and there's a in this. tony reports this to officials. he is give it a security detail. it was i think the next day, i don't have the book in front of me, the next day trump himself claims he, too, got a threatening call, which are so surprising. and that call became known many

years later when the fbi files were undone, now, there's no hard proof of who called trump, but there's widespread skepticism for people around tony that it was trump himself. the way this story ends is that trump gets the tax abatement, eventually. he wins in cit court and its, fr details are a little dense, but ultimately tony who has two children and a bad weight problem gets a call from trump inviting him to lunch and trump ultimately offers him a job, and tony takes it. ed koch almost fell over when he found out that tony was going to go work for trump. and i would argue that that was one of the very earliest example set at least i know of of trump threaten someone and then them giving in drama right. bending into his will. and he told he would only hire

him if you lost weight. >> guest: he had to lose weight was one of the conditions. >> host: like saying to larry king on the air you have got bad breath. >> guest: and then scooting away from the tremont to other people he modeled behavior from, george steinbrenner. what did you learn? >> guest: steinbrenner was this sort of avatar of hyper masculinity in the 1980s when the aids era was beginning. trump was terrified of aids, and talk about it all the time. after shaking hands with men would come you, call report and say is loblaw gay? i just shook hands with him. steinbrenner was this big tough guy who's also a child of privilege like trump and you had a healthy dose of self regard, like trump. and trump hung around him and hung around his crew. he had friends like a man who's

also friends with rochon. lee iacocca. trump wanted to be like them and himself emulating this hyper masculinity. steinbrenner was famous for firingng his managers, except he wasn't doing it by playacting. when trump, trump really doesn't like firing people directly, when he's doing the apprentice starts with your fired. and it was s pretty widely seens an a montage to steinbrenner to run with that. that show change for him. people are not familiar, many people come with a man named need esposito. who was he and what did trump learned from them? >> guest: he was a brooklyn democratic party boss when machine boss politicsit ruled everything in new yorkyo city. and trump's father federal circuit close to meade and that

help them hard for all kind of projects in brooklyn and meade had enormous clout all over the city. and when trump firstmp came into office, o and meade, meade was ruthless. he was a criminal. he did not believe the rules and regulations apply. to him. he made judges. he made district attorneys. and when trump-kim in office he would talk about a figure who sent a very much like me and aids had noo idea who is talking about because most of the officialsyo who worked for him n white house didn't know who is talk about your i think he described it as people thought of his baseball bat. it was a cane. he told me this story in one of our interviews about trento swinging his cane at people. he said wrote with an iron this entrance was one of the people who helped informs trump's idea of two things. one of how a political operator

functions and in rules, whis just top-down. and the other is that meade fit trump's ideah of strength. and a lot of trump's idea of strength is informed why violence. violence is what makes you strong. that in terms informs what makes a good boss. meade very much falls into that category. >> host: it's almost like most like a tammany hall kind of idea. >> guest: correct. direct line. >> host: there's also, you know, his despicable, most despicable qualities, the cruelty, was also in evidence earlier. tell us what happened after the helicopter crash and what was said about the deceased executives. >> guest: so a bunch of trump

executives died in a helicopter crash in new jersey. i think was on the way back from and be theap net trump tower. to make happen afterwards. one was that somehow an item got place, i believe it was in page six, suggesting trump himself was supposed to be in this helicopter, which nobody believed because l it was a leat helicopter and needed like y those himself. roger stone has insisted that it really was true, so do with that what you will. and the widows and one i the girlfriend or fiancé, there were three of the people involved of the dedman were really aghast at this suggestion that trump himself was some out in danger. and he later on started to blame his financial woes at the casinos on one of those dead executives.d andy says to one of his

officials, his name wase, jack o'donnell, you know, he's dead, what does it matter what i say about him now? and that boosted with jack o'donnell who who wrote his own book. but that is, dinner, a chronic and all of these descriptions are people of been around for very long time just a chronic disregard for other people's feelings, emotions, you know, decency in times of stress. >> host: you say that he actually doesn't have that many moves and uses them over and over again, in part because he understands the value of repetition, which is very important in politics, especially democratic politicians are terrible at repeating things. in the case of both obama and clinton was because it more than 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 has, repetition, but then there is some specific

moves and io wanted to go over them and see if you could give us an example of each pics of the first one you mentioned is the counter attack. >> guest: so that is hillary clinton calls him a puppet of putin. no, you're the public. it's all going right back at you with some form of projection. >> host: so strongest defense is -- >> guest: yes, or you're right the story and he starts tweeting at you. >> host: the quick ally. >> guest: in one of our interviews i asked him what he was doing during the january sixth attack which at that point was not part of the actual under oath public record because the house select committee hearings had not saided, and immediate he that wasn't watching television, and that he rarely had the tv on. so that would be a good example. >> host: the shift of the blame. >> guest: i mean, there are so many on those.

it's my campaign managers fault that i'm losing. threatening to sue his campaign manager because his poll numbers are bad. you know, finding some a to shoulder whatever crisis is going on. nothing is ever his fault. >> host: the distraction. >> guest: well, that when is, you know, there's a bunch in that category, but for instance, and this one, people insist that these photos showed 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 and about his comments about russia, and this is after the e-mail hacks of the dnc. and suddenly these new 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 it, appeared to have no problem with this. so that was a distraction. >> host: the outburst of rage. >> guest: well, that's i mean, i can lose count on that one. 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 throughout his life. and people in the white house, when he was, when he had just one comes someone who'd worked four years ago said to me, he is a screamer and people in white house article never really hard time with this. and indeed they did. >> host: performative anger, sometimes genuine rage. >> guest: advocate here for instance. some ofce the tweets, and you wl pass before specifically at a camp right nowt but some of the tweets that all caps that we

would all described as him fuming. he would be laughing as he was sending those. >> host: just for the headlines claim. >> guest: 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 headline out of it. >> host: or one that just got blown apart today, he said that pelosi didn't do anything to protect the capitol and peter came out today of her trying to get the national guard there and, you know, in the middle of the day on january 6th. trump of course is doing nothing. i think you call it indecisiveness masked by compensatory lunch. [laughing] --

>> guest: so when he couldn't, this is going to sound heartedly but he couldn't as of november third in 2020 when he lost, he could not decide what course of action to follow and it became clear that he was not going to be able to stay in office anymore. and he was quizzing everybody including the valley abroad in his diet cokes, what you think i should do? and then after he doesn't get what he wants, from anybody and it becomes clear that he is not quite ready to pull the trigger on this proposed government intervention mike flynn, the former national security adviser is telling he should do, -- >> host: seizing the voting machines. >> guest: as he suddenly sees january 6th of those all its energy into it. that's an example. >> host: why do you think so little sticks to him? why is he the ultimate teflon? >> guest: i think a couple of c

things. i think the fact that he was part of the pop-culture fabric for so long as part of this related to the apprentice, you mentioned, not entirely but what became clear in 2016 was voters very his voters felt bonded to him in ways that the religion with the previous candidates. there was this huge desire to win, and voters were willing to overlook a lot, and then they cut in the habit of overlooking all kinds of things. i just think that the partisan divide is so hardened that there is half the country is now not interested, and forgiving and much, if he's the nominee taken. i do think there are aspects of the republican party that are sick of him, i do. i think we'll start to see more of that in the coming months because i thinkar there are a lt of candidates who are going to run. ii don't think it's that nothing sticks to them. t i think 2 a special beginning of 2022, this issue with the documents, and reducing that he

was taking on some water in relation to that. now i thinknk it is baked in. but it think with him there is so much and it do think during the presidency everything was sort of a a treated as if it a four alarm fire and not everything was a four alarm fire. there were a number of them, but when everything is an emergency, then voters start to feel like nothing is. >> host: so what do you think was the most blown out of proportion and harmful to the democrats by making too much of it? >> guest: i think that, i think that to think how to say this carefully. i mean, i think a couple of things. kids in cages, huge deal. really, and a humanitarian crisis. every single suite that he did, not a huge deal. that not alls need to be treatd as if they were. they were all the same.

every gaffe he made, every nonsensical answer he gave, not all the same. you know, congratulate putin on winning his election when he been told not to come that's important. his praise of xi jinping, , thas important. but everything just became you know one big thing at a think it became harder for people to see, so there was a crying wolf problem? >> guest: i don't know ifju it is crying wolf but it is just crying outrage at the same volume every time. it's not wolf because it's always something there. it's just the volume. >> host: the at the trump conservative writer david french wrote recently about what he calls the exhausted majority. >> guest: i saw that. >> host: which i thought was an interesting line. so is part of it that he just wears everybody out? >> guest: yes. and absorbed roy cohn said n that he articulated to william

safire was that he brings up the worst out of his enemies and gets them to defeat themselves at a think there's something to that. >> host: so if you are breaking down his manipulative powers of sensing people's weaknesses and then exploiting them, is that his superpower, that he hasas disability to have sort of an x-ray vision of what somebody's weakness is? >> guest: i think it's one of them. i think the fact that he has an ability to pick up on other people's insecurities is one of them. and i think his shamelessness is another. i think his shamelessness has been huge edge in politics. and i think the fact and certainly in his business life, and i think the fact that he has really hyper focused on sort of the darkness of human emotions.

he is really, really attuned the bad things. people will do. and tries to sort of play off of that. and he is aware that of the people experience shame and he tries to press that, to. >> host: there is a power in shamelessness, correct? >> guest: a big one. he has really used it to great effect for himself. >> host: and how transferable is it? we see desantis is trying to go to his playbook. they're probably going to have pretty bloody primary. how do you think his imitators will do? >> guest: i think not that well. i think that, including that are not convinced there's going to be a desantis/trump primary. i'm not. because i think that everybody talks about wanting, they will be the ones to taking on and is actually pretty unpleasant for

anybody who does. so stepping into the meat grinder is more challenging thai it looks. >> host: in privatehe he says a desantis that he is whiny, fat and a phony. >> guest: true. >> host: does that give us -- >> guest: i think that's warm-up material. at adult, i don't think that, you know, the santa's is in the middle of dealing with the hurricane and dealing with natural disasters, obviously very different from any other governor in embracing a a tempering by desantis of some of things that he appeared with biden. he has been less combative, but he has had moments prior to hurricane the end where he has seen less than ready for prime time. 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 way. scott walker, tim pawlenty. i can go down the list. and so we don't know yet from what i wasted a lot of time covering those people traded so did i come to be clear. i count myself among those reporters who have done that. >> host: do you think trump's heart really isn't in 2024, why. >> guest: because i think, a couple of things. i think, i think is really consumed by these investigations. i think that the documents investigation in particular is 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 ofat his own advisors and that he's aware doj is paying attention to. the main proof that he is worried is that he spent three millions of upfront retainer on a lawyer whose advice he completely ceased to listen to yet. but he was worried enough that he hired the guy. i got calls from people who work fordo trump in the 1990s who

said donald has never paid that big a of retainer. what you need to know from a lot of times he doesn't pay at all traded that's why it is so surprising. and it just doesn't seem animated by the rallies the way he once did. they are belong with not a lot of new material, and so we will see. maybe we'll get into it if he does become a candidate. i do think he has backed itself into a corner where he has to run because the investigations compel him forward, but we'll see. >> host: if you had to bet, would you say that he will be the nominee? >> guest: i'm not falling for that one again. no. i think that if he runs he remains the overwhelming favorite to be the nominee but that is obviously absent outcomes in these investigations i just don't know what that looks like. >> host: does he actually believe in anything beyond himself? >> guest: he has a a coupleup of core in like impulses on issues

like trade or other countries ripping us off, you know, more broadly on alliances. but he's willing to supplement those is there some other reason to. m mcconnell i remember was telling people during the transition in 2015, he was clearly just kind of stunned by this, just that this guy has no idea, he would say this guy has no idea what he believes in. i think to your point, i think he does know what he believes in. in. he believes in himself and what's good for h him. so back and look like different things at different moments. >> host: and do you ever get the sense that he is untethered from reality? or do you think it's all connected to his universe in some way that you can kind of track how it makes a certain amount of sense in his own --

>> guest: aren't those the same thing? it if these untethered to realy and is also, seems like the same thingis to me. >> host: he is creating his own reality. >> host: is he doing it knowingly? trundle or is that all instinctive sometimes it's instinctive. one of the things about him that people came to realize over time working in the white house was that is not strategic at all. he can't do long-term planning but he is very calculating in a given moment. it's more ofec what your second option is, which is that he is trying to create this reality and get you to buy into it more often than not. now, i think sometimes he ends up really believing what he is saying. i could tell he is the action please what heha saying about te election or not. i've no idea. i don't know that it matters. >> host: so since he is not strategic, what is this timeline? is it just the next new cycle? >> guest: it is literally, you know, an hour, hour by hour basically. i mean itt is, he is existing n

the now, always. >> host: i almost ready to get your questionsr if somebody has got them. yeah, let's get your questions. i mean, i -- >> these are also good. >> before we go to theseo i t t to go to race, the question of race. so, one of your biggest scoops came out a few months ago is in the book that he was flushing documents down the toilet, but there's another toilet story in your book. tragic there's a lot of donald trump toilet stories. [laughing] >> host: tell the one that really goes to his racial animus. >> guest: so when he, , when his first in the oval office he

would show people what you would call his secret bathroom off the oval office. and he would claim that he had renovated the entire space down to the toilet, which was not truein according to officials. i think they just cuss a replaced the toilet seat anytime there's a new precedent. [laughing] but he would show this space and he would say, you understand what i'm talking about, it gives a very strange remark and open to interpretation, but one guest who heard it interpreted as an not wanting to use his black predecessors bathroom. youyo know, there is just, there is a lot of that with him over a very long period of time. i have reporting in the book about how the first time the first executive him the first person who worked on executive for a trump tower who is black was in 1986,6, as if as if this was innovative, and he was

actually it was the woman who would been working as an assistant to the person we talked about before, tony gliedman and trump's assistant a woman named norma fedor was all a flutter that we've never had a black person on the executive floor. .. 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, i didn't know that he had a girlfriend lajust before melania, overlapping with her . half black. father was white, mother was black >> we met her parents and

told her she got her beauty fromher mom and her brains from her dad, the white side . >> let's look at these questions for you. what do you think motivates the children? do you think they are politically ambitious ? >> i think don junior certainly is. ivanka, yes but quite frankly i would besurprised if she ever ran for office . i don't think eric trump is politically ambitious. >> this question is sort of about his style in an interview. what's the feel you get from him when you're sitting right across from him? is he charismatic inperson? does he try to bully you,

charm you ? >> yes, you can be all those things. i interviewed him when he was charming, which is the first interview i did book, using salesman mode and you one time in the white house in 2017 where a walk in and he had his hands jammed in his arms and he's rolling very happy with it to 10 days sitting around. this is not normal to the oval office e meeting with reporters. so there are times he tries to mess and intimidate. it just depends. >> you think it depends on his mood for it on populations? is he, what do i want to do in thisinterview ? class that one was deadly captivating, and he was in a terrible mood he had an wondering he asked mar-a-lago

looking at various spots and he was and how is club looked so that was happening. >> so this kind of goes to the reality question and it was the subject of today's ct hearing. how much do you think he accepts that he lost the election? >> i don't think he accepts it at all. where news on some level that he did, i don't know but he certainly doesn't accept it. >> there's a lot of testimony that athe would say to people how tolose ? >> i did on that and we'll see you in action that he knew he lost. he was 81 he hounded music, he was on to some.

it was clear that it was over and he decided it wasn't. >> how do you explain his relationship with? >> i can't. there's the obvious. he has admires storm and at the obvious, he is has been intimidated by russia for 40 years butbeyond that i can . >> a lot back to the question i just asked you about the election. i think it's the kind of deeper psychological question on the service that he agreed that he lost immediately after the election but never accepted, has he internalize it? do you think this is ein some ways no longer be onthis point ? >> i don't know whether you believe this, it's possible he said this is you really

getting because he's very good. he has said to people a version of the same idea over many years . which is that he could say something often, people believe it becomes true. that's true of his two. i know that. but. >> you mentioned the mind, that transcendental said he had mein kampf. >> on his bedside table. >> what you do that? >> i don't think you read. he has fascination with that letter for a while. hitler is not somebody who most people in mainstream america and my.

>> this is about you. how many hours usually? >> nine, thank you for asking. he is. >> this? do you have any time management is. >> know i am not so. >> do you think from is evil? >> that's really hard question to answer. i think that he is comfortable with that is. and that's probably as far as i can assess that. >> i'm going to answer yes. so you kind of address this but let's go back this little bit. this is how scared he is right now about legal files and the questioner makes an

interesting point that maybe his malignant narcissism, his clear narcissistic personality disorder that he's a better president than anybody with the possible exception ofabraham lincoln . might that actually prevent him from feeling more vulnerable or does that not actually work because the el narcissism doesn't help guard him? >> he really understands legal problems, i would just put that in a different category. it's something he's been most acutely attuned to all of his life and he has spent a long time trying to cultivate prosecutors, going back to robert morning call. >> great figure of integrity. i was disturbed to hear he was as close to trump as he was. >> and it's one of the

reasons i think got comfortable letting that happen. but i just think he experiences legal issues on a different level. >> so is he not that scared of the new york da investigation? cy vance was investigating him and alvin bragg dropped it. >> he was very concerned and he didn't get charged. it would be problematic for his company when this trial takes place if there are charges against his company and alan wise over cfo was who pled guilty is going to testify but trump himself wasn't criminally charged and that have become how he looks at these things. as unhappy as he was with the civil service suit, the new york attorney general, it still is a civil suit and that's the thing. >> how about sonny willis gin georgia?

>> that one makes him nervous. he is facing a lot of legal troubles. he is legal problems are correct, he is acutely aware of threats so that is why he gets them. >> without a lot of democrats think he will escape. >> maybe he will. it was different, when he was president when he was indicted. the expectation around mueller became too great. not by mueller, i think mueller was sort of narrowly focused on his work. but i think there were folks who had high hopes that was going to end his presidency before expect expiration date that was just not likely. at any point because the justice department opinion on indicting a sitting president but now he is facing serious

investigations. it's somebody, call someone very close to him at the time. not anymore. two days after the capital alliance and said as he had wanted to do about everything while the trial is playing out what do you think? and the person said i think you've made a real mess. and this is the first time t he is facing several times in his messes. >> the people who talked with the january sex committee have been afforded the grand jury. we would know if they had any lawyers. >> which grand jury are you talking about? >> in the january 6. >> some of them have been. today mark sure was there before the grand .jury so some of them have been. >> cassie hutchinson has she been in front of the grand jury ? >> i believe she has been. >> if you again, i hate it

when people ask us to get into the productionsbusiness .ou but you know more than everybody else so you can make predictions. you can assess the odds more easily so do you think it will be indicted on the documents case, or do you think you'll be indicted on january 6? >> i don't think he will be indicted on either the documents case presents a clear. >>, a clearer case. even though he is and for those of you who watch the january 6 hearings, he said this over and over again that trump was in the llcenter of everything. they tried showing he's the one person who had visibility into all these different activities. my understanding is that the justice department has a clear sense of how to make that kind of case. >> so i know you're not a pollster and 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 him. >> so i think that i don't really know how to answer that. but i think he has been very successful at activating a lot of people who haven't voted before or who felt somehow left out ofthe process . there's a third issue which is really worthwhile study that we wouldn't do but i think oupollsters should do why so many people are open to a sort of a type of strongman leader. in this country. i would be curious. >> the subtitle of your book is making of donald trump and the breaking of america.

how do you explain the latter part of that, what did he do to break thiscountry . >> i think he did not create and you would know this far better than i do. he did not create the partisanship that has cleaved the country into for a while. but he fueled it and he exacerbated it andbenefited from . and he exported, and i write this that one of his guiding ethos is that he clearly expressed in the late 1980s in new york city lduring a terrible case of violence in which teenagers of color were arrested and he took out an ad calling for the death penalty. that he clearly saw hate as acidic good and i think he exported that the washington and he's exported it to his party.

and i think that that has had a massive trickle-down effect . >> i think that's a good if depressing place to end h. >> that's all everybody, thanks for putting you. >>. [applause] >> this week enjoy book tv on c-span2 along with our featured programs every sunday with leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books li sunday at nn stern on index, th and pulitzer prize-winning journalist this case it was book tv toak your calls on political revolutionnincarceration in america . his books include: the farewell to her, our class: trauma and stress in most recently the greatest evil is more.