- [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas community. - i'm evan smith. she's a pullitzer prize winning columnist for the new york times whose latest book is the year of voting dangerously the derangement of american politics. she's maureen dowd, this is overheard. (upbeat music) (applause) let's be honest, is this about your ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa and elsewhere? you could say that he'd made his own bed but you caused him to sleep in it. you know, you saw a problem and over time took it on and-- let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually.

yeah, this is over. (applause) maureen dowd, welcome. - thank you evan. - nice to see you. - thank you. - here we sit a few weeks from the election. please tell me it's going to be okay. (laughter) what reassurances can you bring me? - i can't bring you any. - [evan] no? - i think we're headed for a zombie apocalypse here. - do you? and that's regardless of the outcome? - no, i'm teasing. i just think that we've never had two candidates who were so unpopular and everybody is trying to decide who to vote against rather than who to vote for. not everybody, but many. - well a lot of people are saying this is really gonna be about the non-loser. - yeah. - right, as opposed to the winner. - right. it's depressing when you covered 2008 where there was this wave of positive feeling, not in the clinton camp but just people really wanted to vote for people. - [evan] right. - and now it's all against. - yeah let's take them one at a time.

you know both of them. - yes. - you've known donald trump, hillary clinton. you've written about them, you've interviewed them. you have a perspective on them that we don't have. we only get the filtered view of them. - it's like the revenge of the 90's here. (chuckles) - yeah, exactly. that's exactly right. well we'll talk about that because everything old is new again, that's true. - right. - what's he actually like? - you know, i went out with him on his first foray. - you didn't go out with him go out with him? - no no no no no. (laughing) - you're welcome. - yeah. - yeah. (laughing) - no, melania was with us. they were dating then. - [evan] okay. - and it was in 99 and he, every once in a while, every few years would test the waters to see if he could run and we went to miami where he made a speech to cuban americans and he was well received. but i don't think he could really wrap his head around the idea of running then. and he went up to his first presidential rope line and he was very sorta shy when he saw a trump for president 2000.

he kinda scampered back to his plane with a fake french impressionist star and the big bed and all the gilt fixtures and the junk food. and, you know, but i think this time he was 69 and he figured now or never and he didn't, i think no one is more surprised at where donald trump is than donald trump. i think he, you know, thought he would test it and then it's like a bank robber who goes into the bank and finds all the doors unlocked. - yeah, he can't believe it. - yeah. - and yet we have been, as you say, at a point at which he considered running for any number of consecutive cycles. and the assumption was always, well he's doing it because he has a book. or he's doing it because he wants the ratings for the apprentice to go up. maybe he thought he would lose and then once he realized he was winning it was too late to not, i mean is that possible that he just couldn't get out of it? - yeah, but i don't agree. some of the times reporters think he's being intentionally self-destructive

but i just think he's being himself. - which may be, by the way. - yeah, which can be-- - self destructive. - confused for the same thing with a narcissist. - right. you've written about him a bunch of times, essentially as an outgrowth of interviews. - [maureen] right. - but he also attacks you. he attacked you as we're sitting here not long ago as wacky and i think he called you a neurotic dope. - yeah. he called me a wacky crazy neurotic dope and i was deeply troubled by that, evan. (laughter) - were you maureen? - because i felt like he didn't really put time into it. (laughter) - well in fact don't i remember he called mika brzezinski some of those same things? - yeah he just used the same generic words he uses about other women reporters like megyn kelly and mika brzezinski which is wacky and crazy. and i wanted something more personalized. like chuck todd has sleepy eyes and elizabeth warren has pocahontas and i just got a generic crazy woman one.

- well let's see the courage people, if they're watching this, she's @nytimesdowd. tweet the nickname at her that you think should be her nickname. (laughing) is he dangerous? i mean, this is the question that we typically ask of presidential candidates running against donald trump, whether it's hillary clinton or some of the people in the primary. do you consider him from your vantage point to be a dangerous person and would he be dangerous for the country? - well, he has, you know two qualities that are deeply problematical which is a total estrangement from the truth. you know, the times has had to change it's policy. - now you're publishing the word lie in a headline right? - right. right. so, we have never done that and during the iraq war i can't tell you the number of times i went to the thesaurus.com to check synonyms for liar about dick cheney. so now we can-- - now you can say it. - yeah you can say it so i might have to start writing about dick cheney again. because all that's changed policy. - speaking of old is new right? (laughing)

yeah that would be a good column actually. - yeah and then, so he has that and then he, you know, it's this merger of politics and social media and reality tv. so, reality tv, so it's like he's the kim kardashian of politics. you know there was a story the other day that kim kardashian went on a vacation, a four day vacation in mexico and took 8,000 selfies. and so, in a way, running for president is the new selfie. - it's the ultimate selfie right? - and we're selfie nation and he's using the press as a selfie stick. (laughter) - wow. that was a very good series of things wasn't it? that was actually excellent. so, the assumption here, going into this election was that it was hillary clinton's race to lose. she seems to be doing a pretty good job of it. - well, you know, often i look at her and i feel sorry for her cause it's sort of in 2008 she comes in

and she thinks it's gonna be a carnation. and then it was like a game of thrones plot. the handsome young african american prince usurps the queen. and so then she comes in in this time after working dutifully for barack obama and thinks it's gonna be a carnation. and then this 74 year old cranky loner socialist who shouts comes in and almost usurps the queen. and now she's in a dead heat with the short-fingered vulgarian. (laughing) - well, you're right. she has to be thinking what's going on here? well, in fact, she just said not long ago i should be winning by 50 points and there are probably a bunch of people around the country, they don't have to be democrats, who are going yeah, you should be. - yeah well it's funny because you know i did a vanity fair cover story on tina fey, a profile of her in 2008.

and i think she could not act so she brought in like the best actors like alec baldwin so she could learn and she became a better actress. but it's funny that hillary has been around the two best politicians of the modern, you know, century and she doesn't really seem to pick up tips, i don't know. - isn't it possible that we, i try to figure out what happened in 2008. - yeah. - i think she was inevitable, that's what we were told and that may in fact have been true and then all of a sudden president obama, then senator obama comes along and he's a combination of zeus and pele and jesus, right? - [maureen] right. (laughing) - once in a lifetime kind of candidate and so she was gonna be the one and then suddenly this phenomenon happens and then that's it. - well you know mac dowd has this interesting point that she got it reversed. she ran as a man in 2008 when she should of run as a woman. - [evan] switched. right. - and then a woman when she should of run as a man.

because mark penn wrote a memo and said they're looking for the father of the country not the mother so she was just trying to be all tough and she didn't show, you know, herself and her humanity and then when she cried in new hampshire people were like yeah well that's, she's a human being, she's great. - that's what we wanted. - but she is still trying to prove she's a human being. i mean her aides were on tv today and in the book i talk about how in '92 her aides, when she was running as bill's wife, were sending her memos saying this week we're gonna, you know, convince people, we're gonna reintroduce you and convince people that you're a mother, you care about children, and so after she had pneumonia last week, you know, she came back and she said, i've had a few days off. and the campaign tried to introduce her as someone who's a mother and grandmother and cares about children. but it's a very strange phenomenon that for a quarter of a century she's trying to reintroduce herself.

- well and at a certain point people just get their impression of you fixed in their heads and they're not gonna change. - right. - and again i had it in my head in 2008 that it was all gonna go well except for obama, when it turns out that actually she wasn't a very good candidate in '08. you roll forward to 2016, why isn't she doing better? it may just be because she isn't a very good candidate. it seems to me that somebody who spent her life so long and so much in public would be a little better at the retell part of this. - right. - but she seems to have some impediment to getting there. - i don't know, it's weird. i think she's charismatic and-- - you do? - yeah i do. i'm surprised when people say she's not. - one on one or-- - just in a room, you know, your eyes would gravitate toward her. and obviously she's super smart. and i know there's been a lot in this campaign that we can't laugh about. - [evan] right, funny if it wasn't so serious. - there's been a lot of bad things. but i do have to laugh at the difference in their debate preparation, cause he's the king of winging it and she's the queen of homework. and so she's getting ready with like huge, voluminous stacks of archenia.

and he is, you know, eating cheeseburgers at his golf club with roger ailes and coming up with zingers like some 16 year old boy. you know, with cokes. - right, but this is a campaign in which, actually, preparation may be a negative. i mean, everything that we know about politics, everything that we've seen about presidential campaigns has been turned on its head. beginning with what you said earlier, most unpopular candidates in history as you say in the book. he may be the only one she can beat. she may be the only one he can beat. the winner of this election will go into office on january 20th with more than half the country wishing somebody else had been president. but this is the year in which lies no longer matter. - right. - this is the year in which qualifications no longer matter. this is the year in which preparation no longer matters. i don't know that we, thinking through a conventional election cycle can understand this unconventional election cycle. - i think that trump voters understand he doesn't know anything. - [evan] and they don't care. - don't care. - they've decided, even if he doesn't tell the truth. i'm thinking about all the lies he's told

over this cycle and my mind keeps going back to the nfl sent me a letter, supporting my decision to complain about the timing of the debates because they're up against an nfl game or two. and the nfl came back and said we didn't send him a letter. i mean, it was like a basic lie. he claimed, they said no. nobody cared. i couldn't believe that, but that's been the whole election hasn't it? that lies by anybody in this election cycle have been ignored. - well in art of the deal he coined a term for what he does which is truthful hyperobole but it's not that. - this is more than that, right. - and it's not stephen colbert truthiness, it's just a, you know, i've been trying to think of the right term, wishful thinking i'm thinking but that's not harsh enough. but what he does is like with iraq he might of thought in his head that he didn't think it was a good idea but what he actually said was different so he wishes he had been against it before. - [evan] right. - so we he just says it. (laughter) - [evan] right.

- it's like wishing will make it true, the disney song or something. - doesn't happen. but you said earlier what is absolutely the case that the media has had to rethink its stance on calling bs on people who tell lies. - right right. - time just had to change its headline policy. there is this incredible transformation on cable news where now they're putting the word lie in the chyrons. - [maureen] right. - and they're coming out after trump makes his 30 word statement about obama's birthplace. and they say two lies in that 30 word statement. - right. well that's why nbc wanted to showcase matt lauer in the commander in chief forum. but in this election it's kind of too important to really use it as a showcase for an entertainer. you've really gotta have the people who can fact check in real time. - [evan] in real time. - who have it in their head like chuck todd and andrea mitchell and jake tapper. i mean those have to be the people when you have a big moment like that. - right. well let's continue down this path. so we're very happy to be hard on trump and hard on clinton.

let's be hard on ourselves. - okay. - let's be hard on our profession. maureen, this campaign, i am more convinced than ever, we suck. (laughing) i've just lost confidence in a lot of the people who do the kind of work we do. am i being too hard on us? - well, the press is in a period of deep self-adulation, and it's merited in some cases. if the press doesn't know by now that when they go down to a donald trump hotel for a press conference he's gonna try and turn it into an infomercial for that hotel, you know they need to buy my book. (laughing) cause they should know that by now. - they get what they deserve at this point. - but on the other hand, i think the press you know, we've been a little too harsh on the press because in the times and the washington post there has been amazing coverage of donald trump. and david farenthold, evan and i were talking, should get a pullitzer for his work on the trump foundation. - [evan] foundation, amazing work. - which makes it clear that it's corrupt as opposed to the clinton's foundation blurred lines.

but, you know, the times has had amazing coverage. so, i think, matt taibbi has a piece in rolling stone this month where he says a lot of people who are upset about false equivalency really just want censorship. and i see this with my own friends. they will not read a trump interview and people got really mad at jimmy fallon for mussing his hair and making him seem human. which, actually, you know, is sort of a problem because lorne michael at saturday night live told me he thinks will ferrell's w impression helped w win the elec-- - it normalized him, right? - yeah, and helped him win the election. - right. - so, these are things to worry about but we also can't censor because hillary clinton is running to be the most powerful person in the world and just because trump does things that we have to reproach, and he does plenty, that doesn't mean she's above reproach.

and so the subtext of some of this is we have to give her a pass cause otherwise we'll get the apocalypse. - right. - but i think you can't give someone running for president a pass. we have to criticise her issues and we have to criticise his insanity. - i'm thinking of ted. (laughing) i'm thinking of ted cruz's endorsement of donald trump. - right. - on the grounds that she would be worse. you know we have to accept bad from him and almost not talk about the bad because she would be worse. that's the reverse argument that you hear. right, yeah. - well that's why everything is so screwed up. so i have essays from my siblings. - yeah talk about that, that's great. - who i like to call my little basket of deplorables. (laughter) in the book about agonizing over trying to vote for donald trump because they don't want hillary clinton and they, you know, want to vote republican but then they keep jumping on and off the train when he does something appalling. so after the khan gold star family thing at the democratic convention when he said

to me also, why was she, the mother, just standing there. and, you know, my brother called and he goes can i kill my essay in your book? and i said no it's already, like, in print but, you know, you can see what paul ryan is going through if you read these essays. cause it's just this agony of not wanting to switch over and vote for hillary clinton and wanting to be a republican but not being able to deal with the hate and the bigotry. - well the whole idea that we've had a campaign cycle in which people have said i endorse but don't support or i support but i'm not voting. - right it's all, yeah, all this twisted rhetoric. - this linguistic gymnastics just to justify it. - right. - it's crazy. but of course, i want to come back to the question of the media because just as the media made be worth or susceptible, worth criticising or susceptible to criticism, this is the first campaign i can remember in a very long time where the media is like punched and targeted at political rallies. it's become a dangerous time to cover american politics.

- right. - it used to be dangerous to cover foreign politics. - right. i have some, you know, personal experience of this cause two of my assistants who are now reporters, you know, have been involved. so alex thompson who was my researcher until very recently, got a job at vice news and he went to cover a trump event in houston last weekend and suddenly i'm looking at the news and he's been arrested. so the campaign had told him he could, you know, maybe get into this event so he was just politely asking if he could and he's a nice mormon kid from california who called me miss dowd the first two years he worked for me so there's no way he was being obstreperous. so, then the hotel manager and a policeman came up to him and he ended up being cuffed. and when he asked what the charge was they said it's houston.

- right, this is houston. - this is houston, yeah. - this is houston. so great. - yeah, so i emailed him-- - unless you're the one in jail. - yeah. - otherwise it's great. - i emailed him in a panic and he was in jail until midnight in a four bunk cell. and i emailed him and he said they asked him when they were questioning him if he was a gang member. he's like a harvard water polo player. (laughing) and so he said to them, no but i was in a chess club. (laughing) and, you know, but he was looking on the bright side and saying that he had a really good mugshot so he was gonna use it on tinder. (laughing) - that is almost the most perfect anecdote start to finish i've ever heard, yeah. - yeah, and then my other former researcher ashley parker who's a times trump reporter got assaulted, not assaulted, verbally by a trump person yesterday and who said, you know, take your twisted headlines and shove them somewhere and she tweeted about that.

and, you know, i asked trump about this. because i said reporters are getting pushed around and people at rallies and there's this violence and aren't you scared about this? and he paused and he goes, no, i think it adds an extra level of excitement. so, you know, he's missing that empathy gene where he doesn't understand that even though the trump campaign may not have been involved in alex's arrest, he's creating an atmosphere. - it's an environment. right. - this is the other thing alex said to me when he got out of jail. he said the trump people at this rally, when he was being arrested, were looking at him with such hatred. he had never felt that much hatred. and, you know, i just think he's creating a dangerous atmosphere. - well and a lot of places in this country, at the moment, if the choice was between us as an industry and them, it would be them. we have come to a place now where, i heard a statistic this morning that 9% of the country i think it was in nick kristo's column,

- right. - that 9% of the country support or have respect for the media. so, you know. - well, you know, when i covered bush sr.'s campaign you know, for his reelection campaign, his slogan was reelect bush, annoy the media. - [evan] annoy the media, right. - but it was all in fun because basically he really respected the times and in the book i have some of his notes that were really funny about that. - well i want to mention that because you bring the bushes, i mean this book is about trump and clinton but actually the bushes come back to life in this book too again. - well i wrote an original essay about my 30 year relationship with the family. - yeah. - and, you know, i have some of his letters in there which, as he himself says, he's no thomas jefferson when it comes to letter writing but he his own hilariously unique style and i re-reported the whole thing because i wanted to make sure i was right about this oedipal, not edible. - [evan] oedipal. - oedipal rex loop de loop that the father and son were in

that i think led to the worst foreign policy mistake in history. - but of course the thing about the bushes now it seems like so long ago, doesn't it? - right. did you see, i mean, the picture of michelle and w which was-- - at the african american museum of culture, right, magnificent. - yeah which was just an amazing picture. and, you know, my sister volunteered for w and came to the convention to volunteer. and she showed up at my hotel room and she didn't have a hotel, they were all sold out. so, she was holding a sign that said w stands for women and she came and she said could i stay with you? and i said okay you can stay but the sign has to stay in the hall. - outside. (laughter) and we had lunch with the venerable johnny apple. - right. who was our chief political correspondent and my sister said to him, is w gonna win? and johnny said i think he'll win and i think he'll be a very popular president. and if it hadn't been for 9/11, who knows? he could of been a bipartisan popular president. when you see that picture with michelle. - [evan] right.

- you know, you think of what could of happened. but unfortunately what happens, and this is why i quoted harry truman in the book saying you never know how a man will accept the responsibility of being president because the white house tends to bring out gremlins and insecurities and then you don't know what historical event is gonna hit. - [evan] right. - and, you know, mix in with those gremlins and insecurities. and that's why you can really never predict. - well, in fact, that even extends to the current president. you believe that barack obama, in some ways, as president, has shown some of those same gremlins and insecurities right? - no, i don't think he has gremlins and insecurities but what happened was in 2008-- - i might call them that. - yeah well in 2008, i don't think we realized because, it was, you know, he seemed like luke skywalker with the force, that really he didn't like politics. - [evan] right. - so, you know, politics is the art of persuading people to do something they don't want to do.

and he really doesn't like that. he doesn't like selling. he had to let bill clinton kind of sell his agenda in 2012 with that convention speech and he called him explainer in chief, which is weird cause he had such amazing communication skills. and he doesn't like the fray. so, you know, as one of the clinton's hollywood donors said to me, you know, you just really it would be good if, and obama donor, said to me it would be good if you had someone who really liked to do the job description. and this other donor in hollywood said something funny. and bill clinton is like a warm bath. even if it's insincere, it feels better than a cold shower. - right. (laughter) the other point you made to me, not today, but you made previously is that barack obama not liking politics is like bill gates not liking computers.

- oh yeah neera tanden on democratic activist said that and then james carville reiterated it to me and said it's as though you found out peyton manning didn't like football. it's just confusing when you can do it so well why you stay on the mountain top. - [evan] right right. - and don't wanna mix it up and when you see the american experience has been playing biographies of presidents and lyndon johnson's and when you see he would just spend every minute of every day. - [evan] yep. - you know, doing it and obama just really doesn't like to do that. - he's not into it. - no. he's just not into it. - it's so fun to talk to you. - ahh thank you evan. - thank you so much for coming by and good luck with the book. - okay. - i just, i want you to explain the rest of the campaign thing so get back to work. maureen dowd! - thank you. (applause) - [narrator] we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q and a's with our audience and guests,

and an archive of past episodes. - my older brother michael said angrily, you know, if there was a hurricane you'd blame it on w. and then there was a hurricane. (laughing) and i blamed it on w. so, you know, i kind of make light in my columns but it's personally hard cause if your family are all conservatives they're angry at you for a lot of years. - [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy and by klru's producer's circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interest of the greater austin, texas community. (soft music)