Inside the Trump Presidency

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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz from the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, filling in for Brian today who has a well-deserved day off. Coming up later in the show, we're going to talk about Governor Hochul's plans to put cameras in every single subway car. As she put it, big brother will be watching, she meant that as a good thing. Do you agree? Plus, we'll hear from the head of the Rutgers University Gun Violence Research Center on who owns guns in New Jersey and why they say they keep guns.

We'll round out today's show talking baseball. It's a good fall to be a New York baseball fan. Fox sports reporter Deesha Thosar will join me for a conversation about the Yanks, the Mets, Aaron Judge and his home runs, and your calls. First, now that he's no longer in office, there have been a lot of stories coming out about Trump's presidency. There's a new book out that offers quite a detailed account, more than 650 pages of the four years of the Trump administration and it's written by two of the most respected journalists in Washington.

Here with me now are the co-authors of the Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for MSNBC, and the author of Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of its weekly letter from Trump's Washington, as well as a CNN Global Affairs analyst. Peter and Susan also co-authored, The Man Who Ran Washington which was a New York Times bestseller. Hi there, Susan. Hi, Peter. Welcome back to WNYC. I'm so glad both of you were able to join us today.

Peter Baker: Hey, thanks so much for having us. We're delighted to be with you.

Matt Katz: Oh, wonderful, great.

Susan Glasser: Thank you so much.

Matt Katz: I want to get into the new book, of course, and we're going to tackle that. I want to first just get some news out of the way so you can help us make sense of what happened Wednesday night in federal appeals court. The US Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit blocked aspects of a lower judge's ruling essentially allowing the Department of Justice to continue investigating a certain number of classified documents that the former president was keeping at his Mar-a-Lago state. Two of the judges on the panel were actually appointed by Trump. Did I get all of this right? Can one of you guys give me a sense of why the court made this decision, what it might mean?

Peter Baker: Yes, it's a complicated legal situation. Basically, the appeals court said that the lower court went way too far on Trump's side in trying to hamstring the federal investigators. The appeals court said, "No, the federal investigators still can go ahead and use these documents, these important classified documents as part of their investigation." That was the most important thing with the Justice Department. They're still going to have to go through this special master process who will look through the other documents to make sure there's nothing that the government shouldn't have. That now frees the Justice Department to go ahead and proceed with this investigation.

Matt Katz: A special master will now look at the other documents. Do you know a little background about the special master, Judge Raymond Dearie or Dreary, I might be pronouncing that wrong, and what we should know about him and what that process is going to look like?

Susan Glasser: Well, it's a good question. I think it's Dearie. The one salient takeaway I have is that this is a classic example of Trump and his bubble, making a mistake in, I think, sense. The interesting thing is it was a Trump legal team that picked this judge to be the special master. The reason the federal court went along with it is because he was the one that the Justice Department also agreed to.

This is somebody with a very good, solid reputation as a jurist, independent. Somehow the Trump people felt that because he was involved in an earlier case that has been made much of in the conspiracy theories around the various investigations during the Trump presidency that this was going to be a judge favorable to them. I think the early read on that is that they were mistaken.

Matt Katz: That's because the judge doesn't appear to be buying Trump's argument that presidents can declassify documents just by thinking about them, which is what he said the other day in regards to Sean Hannity?

Susan Glasser: They're calling that the mental telepathy, capital of the Constitution.

Matt Katz: Oh, wow. Maybe that'll be an amendment to the Constitution. It appears reading the tea leaves that the Special Master is not in the bag for the former president, is that what you're saying?

Peter Baker: Yes, that's right. The special master has expressed skepticism of the Trump team's arguments, at one point said you can't have your cake and eat it too, in effect that they're trying to make contradictory arguments. He's also set a very aggressive schedule for reviewing these documents in a quick, timely fashion rather than letting these drag on, forever asked another judge infact to help him. I think that this is not what the Trump team expected or hoped for.

Matt Katz: One other question on the news this week, New York Attorney General Tish James announced the civil suit against Trump. Is the liberal dream of the walls closing in on Trump finally coming through? Is that what's happening here? Do you see the walls closing in on him?

Susan Glasser: Beware of predictions of this sort. I feel like for the entire four years of the Trump presidency, his critics had this fantasy of the transformative knockout punch, that moment when he was going to be hauled out in an orange jumpsuit in handcuffs. Obviously, that wouldn't happen even if Tish James succeeded in this because it is not a criminal case. She is making criminal referrals is what she said. Again, this is not a criminal case.

It is, however, a serious, very frontal attack on the Trump organization, which is synonymous with Donald Trump. Let's be clear, that the business was him and that was how he saw it, and that's part of the mindset that we write about in the book, frankly, is the idea of the hyper-personalization of any institution. That's how he ran his business. He transferred that way of thinking to the White House and thought that it was my generals, my military, and my Justice Department. I think there's really a through line there, but the case is very much about Donald Trump. It's not going to be the end.

Matt Katz: Right. Why isn't it criminal? Why is it a civil case? Is it just that what the law on the evidence led them to or is it a little bit of a safer bet for the state attorney general?

Peter Baker: Yes, that's actually what the state attorney general is charged with doing. The state attorney general, for the most part, doesn't do criminal matters. The jurisdiction is generally civil. It's doesn't fall under her ambit to do that. Now, some of these issues have been looked at in a criminal way by the Manhattan DA's office, which has not yet brought charges and in fact, the Manhattan DA has expressed skepticism about this that led to two of his prosecutors resigning in protest. There is a different point of view about whether this could actually be adjudicated a violation of the law. We'll see how the courts respond.

Matt Katz: Listeners, give us a call at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can also tweet us @BrianLehrer. If you have questions or comments for Peter Baker and Susan Glasser about their new book on the Trump presidency, it's called the Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. The number again is 212-433-9692. Susan and Peter, in the book, the book is described as the inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale.

Your book explains just how close the United States got to violence and an actual physical conflict with North Korea, a possible nuclear war. Can you tell listeners about some of these more frightening revelations in your book?

Susan Glasser: Yes, in many ways, I do think that the national security challenge posed by Donald Trump, the fact that actually the senior leadership of the United States military came to view the president of the United States in some ways as the greatest national security threat facing the country. Obviously, some of the most alarming reporting I think Peter and I has done in several decades of reporting here from Washington.

This was something I should point out that became much more clear in the reporting that we did after Trump left office. The book is based on 300 original interviews that we began after his second impeachment. Amazing that we got to say that, second impeachment. Of course, we had a sense throughout the Trump presidency, many journalists did great work. We tried hard to break stories as well. We had a sense during the presidency of close calls.

We knew that Trump was threatening to pull out of NATO. We knew that there was fire and fury before there was the love affair with Kim Jong-un. I think it's in doing this work and trying to put it all together that we gained more appreciation, I certainly did, for how close some of these close calls were. One of the ones that does stick out for us is the North Korean situation that some of the top advisors to Trump in that period of time like late 2017, early 2018, particularly January of 2018, might have been the high water mark when Trump through a combination of recklessness, ignorance, and machismo came very close.

He saw one of his favorite TV generals on Fox one day and essentially implying, he thought that he wasn't tough enough. He literally demanded that his advisors pull all US military American dependents out of South Korea. That move would've been a huge escalation because it would've signaled to Kim Jong-un that we are on the brink of an attack on North Korea.

Matt Katz: Wow.

Susan Glasser: Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, rushed to the White House in person to try to stop this. The order actually went out. In fact, Mark Esper later, secretary of defense, but at the time, secretary of the Army, heard about it in the middle of a meeting he was pulled out of because they were so alarmed. That was really a moment where as much as they didn't really think anything would come out of those talks with Kim Jong-un, they were embarrassed by Trump's "love affair language". The flip side was for many people, that was infinitely preferable to get Trump talking than to have him threatening an actual war with Korean.

Matt Katz: Just incredible. I want to go to the calls because we have a caller. Izzy in the Bronx who had a question and wanted to make a point about Trump and national security. Hi there, Izzy?

Izzy: Hi, good morning.

Matt Katz: Good morning.

Izzy: Thank you for taking my call. It was more of a comment. Listening to Trump and his rationalizations reminds me of something that [unintelligible 00:11:45] the famous Yiddish humorous wrote about somebody who asked his neighbor to return a pot. The neighbour says, first of all, I never borrowed your pot. Secondly, I returned it already and thirdly, it has a hole in it, so it's useless. The problem is when Trump said that he declassified those documents, that would mean they're available to anybody who wants to pick them up and read them. He still can keep them.

I think he still has to return them to the national archives, but if they're declassified, then anyone can walk in and ask to see them. That's what a declassification means. If somebody from Russia or any reporter, of course, and any spies that are coming from who cares where wants to see them they're available. That would be terribly irresponsible, I would think. Those documents were labeled top secret. That means they have very secure and very damning information that a foreign enemy can use.

Matt Katz: Right. That's a good point. Izzy, thank you very much for calling. I appreciate it. Peter, Susan, it's an interesting point that by declassifying with his thought process, which he said he was doing, didn't just mean he could keep them in his safe at Mar-a-Lago. It meant that anybody could access them. Do we know why he brought all these documents down to Florida with him? What was the point of all of this? Then what was in the documents that might have made him want to keep them?

Peter Baker: I think you're right to put your finger on that. That's the most important question that hasn't been answered. All this other stuff is a distraction. Declassifying, not declassifying, special master. The unanswered question is what on earth was he doing with the documents in the first place? What did he think he was going to accomplish? We don't know that. There's lots of speculation. Some more nefarious scenarios than others. He liked to think that documents like that belong to him, not the government and that he could do with what he will.

He used to, in the oval office, as we write about in the Divider, he would just flash copies of his letter from Kim Jong-un that basically any visitor who came along because he liked showing off. We don't know if it's just showing off or is there something more insidious, we don't know. He hasn't answered. He hasn't even given an explanation much less a plausible one and so far nobody has forced him to.

Matt Katz: Peter City. He likes showing off. I was curious about your reporting in terms of-- Obviously you spoke to so many people in the administration after the fact, and they relay anecdotes about what Trump said in the White House. How were you able to separate just Trump's fantastical, just spit-balling, almost talking out loud that we've seen him do so many times in interviews, at rallies, almost like off the cuff, off the top of his head with things that he was actually saying that were close to becoming reality? How do you distinguish between him just blabbering on in the oval office through a chief of staff to something that was almost going to become federal policy?

Susan Glasser: I'm glad you brought that up because this is actually Trump's MO and I think during the presidency at times, people discounted the seriousness of some of his more disruptive threats to things, because it seemed like he must just be rambling on or blabbing out loud, but what his advisors, in particular, very senior national security officials told us was that actually, this was Trump's MO and that he would circle around and around and around particularly disruptive or problematic ideas, probing, trying to make them happen, seeing what the system would bear, seeing who he could get to break onto his side.

That actually many of these things were genuine fixations that he really wanted to pursue, even if he wasn't able to execute them at the time. One example, I think that is really an interesting one is Greenland. Remember that controversy in the summer of 2019, it seemed like one of those Trump brain farts. This like crazy spat he got in with Denmark when he publicly came out that he was interested in buying Greenland. The real estate deal of the century.

Well, it wasn't just a idle, weird Twitter fight. In fact, it turned out in our reporting that he had actually been pushing this for years. There was an early cabinet meeting at which one of his officials was stunned. Like what on earth was the president of the United States talking about? It was one of his billionaire buddies from New York, Ron Lauder, apparently who got him interested in it, Ron Lauder, who then went to the national security advisor and said, "Well, the president has authorized me to pursue this. I'd like to be your secret Envoy to Denmark."

The national security advisor at the time, John Bolton had to find a way to politely decline that offer. In fact, the whole national security apparatus then had to jump and try to figure out how to turn this obviously non-starter of an idea into something. There were secret talks with the ambassador of Denmark, we were told by sources who were very familiar with them. This is an example of what you're talking about, that we might have dismissed it as the public circus of Trump, but in fact, he's moving the US government secretly towards some of these things.

Matt Katz: Wild, fascinating. It's interesting, you talked about some of the advisors who were talking to him and shocked by what he says. Your book describes some of the moral dilemmas faced by members of the Trump administration. John Kelly bought a book about the president's mental health to try to understand Trump's behavior better. Kirstjen Nielsen, the former Homeland security secretary made this packed with Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary that they'd both quit if one of Trump's more outrageous policies continued. Can you describe some of that and then describe that packed as well for our listeners?

Peter Baker: Yes. You're right to say that this is a through line for the book, almost everybody we interviewed and to repeat what Susan said, these are all interviews done after he left office, nothing was held back while he was in office. There's a reason why people were freer to talk after he left office, but they all described this conundrum that they faced. They felt like working for him-- These are not the true believers. These are the ones who are Republicans, but not true believers.

Yes. They felt that he was in some way dangerous or reckless or just difficult to work for and yet they often told themselves if I leave, then somebody who comes behind me will be even worse, be more willing to do the things that we think are not wise or a good idea, or even legal. Kirstjen Nielsen who became the public face of the family separation policy, even though she had privately resisted it ends up having this suicide pack with Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, because the president, even after he reverses it is still mulling how he can reimpose family separation.

They just basically said to themself, "Look, if he does that, we're out of here. You and I are going to jump together." It didn't happen obviously, but there were other suicide packs that have been formed over the years that didn't materialize because in the end, everybody kept trying to convince themselves it was better to stay as long as they could. Self justifying, yes but also in some ways they're probably was an argument to be said that the people who might come later would do things that they didn't find acceptable.

Matt Katz: Do you think some of those, you said people felt freer to talk. I'm just wondering how much do you think the folks that you talked to were also trying to clean themselves up a little bit for the historical account and putting a more positive spin on their role in the White House? The one thing standing between Trump and just sheer anarchy and that they were actually trying to do good in a bad situation. Do you think some of these folks are trying to just improve their status for history in a sense or were you able to suss that out when reporting this?

Susan Glasser: Yes. Look, that is a very important question. There's no doubt that a certain amount of, call it reputation washing is taking place. By the way in this or after any administration, but certainly, this one in particular because there is-- What John Kelly used to tell job applicants when he was discouraging them from working in the White House, the stench of Trump upon many of them. In fact, that is an important reminder.

Kelly is an interesting example as someone pointed out to us who actually did work in the Trump White House, there are no heroes here. That's the dilemma in writing about this and what makes it fascinating, of course from a historical point of view is that many of the enablers were also the resistors in the end, and life is complicated. We tend to reduce sometimes public figures to all or nothing. They're either all good guys or all bad guys. That's really not how it works.

First of all, the striking thing is that the most damning testimony of course comes from those who surround Trump. These people are all Republicans for the most part with the exception of some of the nonpartisan military officers or government professionals who worked around him. Largely, these are Republican officials who have emerged one by one broken with Trump or not even broken with him and yet, produced damning testimony. That's a very striking facet.

It's Republicans themselves making these claims about Trump and they're well documented. The other point that I would make is that it's fascinating to see when people get off the bus because Donald Trump loyalty is obviously a very one-way with him. He breaks with almost everybody. One of his top officials said there are two kinds of people Donald Trump likes, those who used to work for him and those who will work for him. When he talked about loyalty, he meant loyalty to him.

Look, if Bill Barr, fascinating character. He's one of Trump's biggest facilitators and enablers. Many people, many lawyers believe that he tainted the justice department with his going along with certain political prosecution, certain politicization of the department not to mention his framing of the Mueller report in the most favorable way possible to Donald Trump and yet in the end, even Bill Barr has now publicly written a memoir critiquing Trump.

He has broken with Trump unlike many of the other officials publicly after 2020 election said there was no widespread fraud to overturn it. Is he a hero? No, of course not but he's a very significant character and his allegations about Trump I think are all the more resonant because he was willing to serve Trump.

Matt Katz: If you're just joining us my guests are Peter Baker, chief white house correspondent for the New York Times, and New Yorker staff writer, Susan Glasser. We're talking about their new book on the Trump presidency. I want to go back to the phones, Doug in The Bronx. Hi, Doug. You're on with Peter and Susan.

Doug: Yes. Hi, thanks a lot. This is something that I never have heard really exposed much or talked about much but if you remember, I don't remember exactly what year it was or date but Donald Trump had a private meeting with Vladimir Putin, the recreator of the Soviet Union in a hotel room in Helsinki, Finland, where no one was present but Trump and Putin and a translator or two translators. I never even heard that there were any secret service agents in there. Do you know anything about it? What happened in that meeting with Putin?

Matt Katz: Thanks, Doug. Peter, Susan, do you have any insight on that?

Peter Baker: Yes. Now that is still one of the enduring mysteries. Why were they alone first of all and second of all, what did they say? One of the things we know they talked about was the idea of trading Americans for some of these Russians who had been accused of election interference. Putin basically came up with this idea of a fine. If you want to charge these Russians who were involved with that, why don't you give me some of the Americans I would like to question including Michael McFaul who had been the ambassador to Russia for the United States and Trump seemed to think this was not a bad idea.

His own staff was just outrage and apoplectic when they heard this. You're not going to trade Americans, especially public servants like a former ambassador to Putin. That was just outrageous and the fact that he didn't understand, initially that was outrageous shock to them. Then of course, his public comments in front of Putin that he believed Putin in effect over his own intelligence agencies about that election interference shocked not just the people in the room but even people back in Washington.

Dan Coats was the director of national intelligence, former Republican Senator, Republican ambassador appointed by Trump. He watched that and he was just shocked. He thought maybe in fact, Putin does have something on Trump. What is it that would make Trump say something like that? Even the head of his own intelligence agency who has access to all the information in the world thought it was possible that the president of the United States was in some way compromised by the Russians which I think tells you an awful lot.

Matt Katz: Wow. If I understand correctly, you talked to the former president twice at Mar-a-Lago. What was that like? Were those interviews for the book revulatory at all? Did you see any classified documents thrown about on the floor? Did those interviews help your research or confuse it?

Susan Glasser: They're not interviews in a conventional sense. It's not like okay I ask you a question, you answer my question. Obviously, that doesn't happen. We did not see any classified documents. We did in the second interview in November of 2021 go to the office, now famous the private office in Mar-a-Lago where the FBI search turned up some of those documents and that is familiar from that picture that was released.

What I would say is that it is always, of course, illuminating and important to see the subject of a book that you're writing about to see him in action, in person even if he's not giving you a lot of directly useful information. Of course, it's very valuable to see Donald Trump in action. One of the takeaways is that it was like seeing a live-action version of his now-band Twitter feed. He just rambles on ransom raves.

Our strategy going into the first interview was we're not going to ask right away about the 2020 election because otherwise, he'll just focus on that. Of course, it didn't matter. He started talking about the rig election and thousands of dead people voting within minutes of the conversation beginning. It's not really a conversation. Donald Trump, it's a run-on sentence. There's never a noun and a verb and a period. By the way, those Twitter insults not just calculated for public consumption.

At some way, he speaks in private too. He just threw out insults about almost every person that we asked about reserving particular bile I would say for Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader. Many Democrats see McConnell, I think, in some ways correctly as one of the arch bad guys of this whole plot that he was a facilitator of Trump that made a deal with the devil. Without him, Trump could have been removed from office, not once but twice, and yet, Trump hates nothing so much as a Republican who is not fully within his control.

McConnell is a real focus of his anger and disdain. I think that Peter and I didn't learn a lot of factual information because Donald Trump contradicted himself even interview to interview, even minute to minute. He literally changes his story so quickly. You can see why it was that his lawyers in the first impeachment in the Mueller case were so determined to make sure he never testified under oath because he'd be in big trouble because he doesn't stick with the story.

Matt Katz: Yes. Although, sometimes that helps him. I know you guys have to bounce in a couple of minutes, but I had to ask about this. You're co-authors, but you're also a married couple and like other people, I'm fascinated by the fact that Trump looms so large in all of our lives during his time running for president and leaving the White House. People just found themselves consumed by him.

Couples who did not talk politics before would just find themselves talking about politics because Trump was showing up constantly in all of our feeds everywhere we went. Then you guys are both covering this trumped, you're married, and then you're writing a book together about him. How do you not talk about Trump 24/7 through the writing and promotion of this book? How did you guys keep a life-Trump balance so to speak?

Peter Baker: Why do you think we did? I'm not clear that we did but you're right it is all consuming and it's all consuming for an important reason. A lot of the Trump show feels like entertainment but the truth is there's great consequence involved. Yes, we were willing to basically keep on doing it. Each of us spent four years covering the Trump White House for our different news organizations.

I think we emerged from it afterward thinking, well, we did as much as we could to investigate and turn up as much stories as we could, but there's still more to be told and it shouldn't be left to history not to tell it. We've found, I think our own personal balance in trying to pursue this project but you're right. Do any book, you eat, drink, sleep, live it. Then this one, in particular, is all-consuming.

Susan Glasser: Well that's right. Look as a married couple, obviously, the good news is that we've emerged from doing this. We're still on speaking terms. I also think that this maybe sounds a little horny, but I really think this. The Trump presidency is a big screaming crisis for American democracy and the crisis is not over yet. I think as journalists, it was a period, for me, at least a return to first principles. If you're not ready to suit up and just go all in on a story like this that has such consequences, this is why we became journalists and I can't imagine having more important material or a more important story to tell.

Matt Katz: Thank you for bringing us back to the gravity of this moment in history, much appreciated. My guests have been Susan Glasser, New Yorker staff writer, and CNN global affairs analyst, and Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, MSMN then MSNBC political analyst, their new book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is available now.

Susan and Peter will be speaking to historian Douglas Brinkley about The Divider next Wednesday, September 28th, 6:30 at the New York Hstorical Society. In-person tickets are sold out I understand, but live streaming tickets are available @nyhistory.org. Peter, and Susan, thanks so much for getting into this work and joining us today on the Brian Lehrer Show. Much appreciated.

Susan Glasser: Thank you.

Peter Baker: Thank you so much.

 

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