‘I
think he’s a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks’
At
one of the most explosive moments of the campaign — and with a
month to go — Politico Magazine reconvened the top Trumpologists to
dissect The Donald’s final days as a candidate and what comes next.
By SUSAN B. GLASSER
and MICHAEL KRUSE 10/16/16, 6:06 AM CET
Back in early March,
Politico Magazine brought together five Donald Trump biographers for
a conversation over lunch at Trump Tower. At the time, the country
was just beginning to grapple with the reality that the presidential
nominee from one of the two major American political parties stood a
good chance of being a real estate mogul and entertainer. Wayne
Barrett, Gwenda Blair, Michael D’Antonio, Harry Hurt and Timothy
O’Brien knew him better than anybody, had studied him more than
anybody, had written an aggregate 2,195 pages in books.
So much has happened
over the past seven months: the crackpot conspiracy theories, the
rageful late-night Twitter tirades, the surges and slides in the
polls, an onslaught of investigative reporting that painted him as a
racist, sexist, selfish, uncharitable, lying predator. So we thought
it was time, especially in the wake of “grab them by the pussy,”
for an emergency reconvening of the Trumpologists.
In a conference call
on Monday with Barrett, Blair, D’Antonio and O’Brien, the
biographers were unanimous in their assessment of what we are seeing:
They are not surprised. Trump is who they thought he was. This, they
said, is not a show. It is not an act. This is the man they wrote
about. In 1992. In 1993. In 1999. In 2005. In 2015. This is a man who
has been one of the most famous people in America for going on 40
years. Only now, though, are many people, finally, really, getting to
know Donald John Trump.
He is, the
biographers said, “profoundly narcissistic,” “willing to go to
lengths we’ve never seen before in order to satisfy his ego” —
and “a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks.” And
after that? “This time, it’s going to be a straight‑out
loss on the biggest stage he’s ever been on,” one biographer
predicted. And yet: “As long as he’s remembered, maybe it won’t
matter to him.”
* * *
Susan Glasser: First
of all, I’m super grateful to everybody for this, what we’re
calling, “The Emergency Session of the Trumpologists.” Not only
has a lot gone on since our first conversation back in the spring,
but the last three days since the release of the Trump tape, the
second debate and the implosion of the campaign has really, I think,
led us all to want to talk with the people who spent the most time
studying and thinking about Trump. What does he do in his paramount
moment of crisis? Help us to make sense of the sort of tumult
unfolding around us.
Michael Kruse talked
to a few of you for a very good piece he did yesterday, trying to
take this into account, and he made the point that, on the one hand,
this seems all totally unprecedented in American politics; on the
other hand, it seems somehow utterly predictable in the context of
the personality of Donald Trump. I thought that was a good starting
point for this discussion today. Let the emergency session begin.
From left: Wayne
Barrett, author of "Trump: The Deals and the Downfall"
(1992); Gwenda Blair, author of "The Trumps: Three Generations
That Built an Empire" (2000); Timothy L. O'Brien, author of
"TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald" (2005); Michael
D'Antonio, author of "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit
of Success" (2015) | Photos by Jesse Dittmar for POLITICO
From left: Wayne
Barrett, author of “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall” (1992);
Gwenda Blair, author of “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built
an Empire” (2000); Timothy L. O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation:
The Art of Being the Donald” (2005); Michael D’Antonio, author of
“Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success” (2015) |
Photos by Jesse Dittmar for POLITICO
Michael Kruse: So
this past Friday when you all heard the hot mic tape from the gossip
show bus, were you surprised?
Gwenda Blair: No.
Michael D’Antonio:
Raise your voice if you were surprised.
Blair: Yeah. I don’t
think any of us were surprised.
Kruse: Why not?
Wayne Barrett: Well,
I would have to say that “grabbing by the pussy” was a little
surprising to me. You know, thrusting his tongue down whatever mouth
was available wasn’t much of a surprise, but “grabbing by the
pussy” was not something I had anticipated.
Timothy O’Brien: I
think he’s always been a skirt chaser. I guess, you know, in that
context, it didn’t surprise me. I think he’s always boasted about
the things that he’s the most insecure about, which is his wealth,
his intellect and his sex appeal. And, you know, he’s held James
Bond and Hugh Hefner out as role models. And I don’t think that’s
evolved for him much since the age of 12.
Glasser: But James
Bond didn’t have to force himself on women. So my question for this
group is: Is he merely a foul‑mouthed guy, or is it possible
that he is acting on these words in some way, that he is somehow
aggressive or violent toward women?
Barrett: They talk
about this as if this is locker room bragging, and really, I was in a
lot of locker rooms and I never heard anything like this. Men don’t
brag about forcing themselves on women. They want to paint themselves
as desirable, and, you know, he doesn’t look like a stud here. He
looks like a predator. I’ve never heard men talk this way. This is
boasting of something that shows your own weakness. It shows, you
know, that a woman doesn’t want you; whereas, most boasts in these
kind of scenarios are about women who do want you.
Blair: I think
that’s a super important distinction. I haven’t hung out in
locker rooms, guys, so I’ve got to take your word for it. But my
impression is it’s more like, “Women, you know, couldn’t wait
to have me,” not that “I was able to force myself on her.” But,
also, the frame of mind that women are objects, which, I mean —
this just in, that’s not new, but the degree to which that
permeates everything, I think, is stunning.
O’Brien: And then
that they’re objects that are there for his taking because he’s a
predatory personality…
Blair: Dominating,
an alpha male and having a woman as arm candy. She’s just arm
candy.
Glasser: Did any of
you spend time actually talking to any of the women who went out with
him or had sex with him? I mean, did any of these accounts ring true
for any of the actual reporting that any of you have done?
D’Antonio: I
didn’t come up with anything that anyone would go on the record. I
did interview women who confirmed some pretty aggressive, if not
violent — actually, I considered it violent sexual behavior — but
no one will go on the record with this.
And the thing that I
found consistent where Donald is concerned is that this kind of
language and act is in his mind. I mean, that’s the thing that
really shocks me is that he’s so predatory and so oriented toward
seizing what he wants rather than relating to a person that, you
know, it’s pathological. I’ve never heard anyone say this kind of
thing ever, and the way that he’s talking about it, as if it’s
locker room talk, is just ridiculous.
Barrett: You know,
if you look at the Jill Harth tale that Nick Kristof just recently
wrote about in the New York Times and that for some strange reason
even now, after the release of this video, still gets no mention in
all of these endless discussions on television about the video —
they don’t discuss this parallel example that a Pulitzer
Prize‑winning columnist from the New York Times took seriously
enough to write about. But it’s a very parallel circumstance with
the tape because Melania is pregnant at the time of this tape, and
Trump is talking about this kind of activity. And Marla Maples was
pregnant when this incident, the first incident happened between Ms.
Harth and Donald. And so it’s regardless of what his own home
circumstances are, regardless of what’s going on in his personal
life. In both instances, his wife‑to‑be in one case and
actual wife in the other, was pregnant with his child, and he’s
walking around either talking this way or actually behaving this way.
Now, of course, he’s
denied the Harth charges, but Kristof said he totally believed them.
He gives you every reason in the piece to believe that this is a
credible allegation, and it’s certainly consistent with the video.
You know, Erin Burnett went on CNN and told a very similar story, at
least about the kissing part of it and the Tic Tacs, about a friend
of hers. So it’s not like we have to search for examples of this
behavior. There’s at least two of them staring us in the face.
O’Brien: Graydon
Carter in Vanity Fair, in the most recent issue, recounted inviting
Trump to one of the Vanity Fair parties in the ’90s and seating him
next to Vendela Kirsebom, the Swedish model. And about halfway
through the dinner, she comes running up to him quasi-hysterical
because she can’t handle sitting next to Trump any longer because
of all of his lewd behavior.
“This has almost
nothing to do with sex. This is a total power move” — Wayne
Barrett
But the problem with
reporting all of these things is that the women involved often are
afraid to go on the record. I know that his ex‑wives, when I
was reporting, were very wary of being interviewed and running afoul
of him by doing so, at least when they spoke with me.
Blair: Aren’t they
nondisclosured up?
O’Brien: Well, I
interviewed with Marla, and Donald knew it. And I interviewed with
Ivana, and Donald knew it. But, in the course of interviews, they
were a lot of things they were nervous about that did involve just a
classic, you know, NDA. They were nervous about him.
Kruse: Do you all
think he is driven more by lust or by fame?
Barrett: I think
this is almost nothing to do with lust. This is subjugation.
O’Brien: Right.
It’s acquisition.
Barrett: This has
almost nothing to do with sex. This is a total power move if you’re
talking about “I can plunge my tongue down any mouth I see. I just
make my move quickly.”
O’Brien: After
doing a round of power Tic Tacs.
Blair: As we all
know, he is popping Tic Tacs all the time, but it’s just the analog
behavior to how he is with men in any room — looking to dominate,
being competitive, looking for a way to be in charge. And for women,
I think for him, there’s really only one way to be in charge, and
that is to dominate, and if possible, you know, some physical
aggression isn’t off the table.
O’Brien: And, you
know, he brought that into this political campaign. He’s really
destroyed a sense of decency or boundaries or civic behavior in the
course of this election that involved almost polluting everything
he’s touched in this process, and this is the sort of apotheosis of
all of that, unfortunately.
Glasser: Based on
what you know about his personality from having studied it and
written about it, how do you see him handling the next three weeks,
given that he’s now in this hole? To me, his combative behavior
since the release of the tape, his lack of remorse, his going on the
offense, his complaining that it’s not fair, essentially, his going
to war even against his own party seems very consistent with the
person that you all have done such a good job of describing. So what
does he do for the next three weeks? Is there a point at which he
gives up, stops fighting? How can he be a loser for three weeks
before the actual election?
O’Brien: I think
he is just going to wage a scorch‑the‑earth campaign for
the next three weeks. And if he loses, which I think he’s going to
— I think he’s going to lose badly — he’s then going to come
up with a scenario in which it was stolen from him, that the election
was rigged, because he’s survived by creating alternate realities.
And he’ll never say to himself he lost because he had a skeletal
campaign operation, which he did; that he lost because he’s
unappealing to a large swath of the voters; that he lost because he’s
willfully ignorant about public policy; that he lost because he’s a
nasty and unappealing bigot. He’ll never, ever acknowledge any of
that. He’ll just come up with an alternate reality that said, “It
was rigged against me.”
D’Antonio: Well, I
think that what Tim is saying is consistent with the guy who would
decide to have this campaign in the first place. You know, who would
proceed knowing that he has all of these problems in his background,
knowing how much audio and video exists, having been on “Howard
Stern” and said horrible things? He just doesn’t seem to
recognize his own issues and problems and how he’s perceived. So
maybe for the next three weeks, he’s going to be trying out, you
know, Breitbart TV and proving to the masses that follow him that
he’s as red in tooth and claw as he seems to be. And, as Tim said,
he’s already laid the groundwork to declare it was rigged in the
first place.
“He
now considers himself a victim of the national media, primarily, and
a bit of the Republican establishment that abandoned him”
— Wayne Barret
Blair: I think
that’s so on the mark, and that I was always kind of uncertain that
he would really go for it, running for president, because he would
have to do financial disclosures. What I didn’t realize was that he
wouldn’t do the financial disclosures and would barrel ahead, and
at least up until very recently, that he would seem to be getting
away with it. So that all those tapes that are out there, he knew
that, but he would just barrel over them — I think that has been
his M.O. that we’ve seen in every other realm, so why wouldn’t it
work in this one?
By the way, I wanted
to ask something else about the tax stuff, which is being played as,
you know, being a great business man. He lost all this money. You
know, what’s so great about that? But I’m wondering if that
wasn’t sort of like a strategic belly flop that he did. I’m not
sure that he saw that as some kind of string of bad judgment at all.
He knew he would be able to write it off against his personal income
for 20 years.
O’Brien: Yeah. But
I still think that that was really bad, bad decision‑making. I
think he didn’t enter into guaranteeing $900 million in personal
loans in order to engineer a write‑off six or seven years
later. I think he ended up getting a boost from the tax code, but
that $916 million write‑off is an emblem of how abysmal his
judgment is and what a bad deal‑maker he is.
Barrett: I think
we’ve got a very good preview of what the next several weeks will
be like in the debate last night. I thought when he literally prowled
the platform or the stage last night, we got a picture of what it’s
like in his bedroom while he’s tweeting at 3 a.m. He was barking in
the ugliest fashion, saying the ugliest things. And from the moment
he got out there, he played the role of a victim. He now considers
himself a victim of the national media, primarily, and a bit of the
Republican establishment that abandoned him overnight, and I think
he’s a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks.
We have seen what
kind of polarization he can evoke over the course of 15 or 16 months,
but I’m afraid that he’s going to attempt to deepen that in
profound ways in the coming weeks. As recently as the convention, he
tried to cool down those who said “lock her up,” and now he’s
saying he would lock her up and even describing the way in which he
would do it.
So I think that what
is really dangerous is, over the course of the next few weeks, he’s
going to push every button he can, and the primary button that he can
push is racism. That’s been the undercurrent of the campaign
throughout. Believe it or not, you can be more explicit about it than
he has been so far, and he may well go down that path. And it’s a
very dangerous time because he has still a substantial number of
Americans who support him, and where he takes them is really quite
threatening.
O’Brien: And, you
know, his danger throughout has been a danger by omission, I think —
you know, that he was ill‑informed about policy, that he didn’t
care to think things through, that he was shooting from the hip. But,
you know, he then starts to crawl into the realm of nuclear weapons
and has had off‑the‑cuff statements about re‑arming
Japan and South Korea, and China should just go ahead and invade
North Korea. And you first had that on the foreign policy front —
the actual parameters, how dangerous he could be, took shape there.
And then last night
in the debate, on the domestic front, when he said he’s be quite
happy to use the Department of Justice to settle scores with Hillary
Clinton and, you know, by inference, anyone else who he would regard
as a political opponent, and that gets back to an old kind of way of
politicking that the country has moved on from a long, long time ago.
Trump: the right man
to be in charge of nuclear weapons? | William Edwards/AFP via Getty
Images
Trump: the right man
to be in charge of nuclear weapons? | William Edwards/AFP via Getty
Images
D’Antonio: Well,
don’t you think this is a kind of thuggery, that this is a guy who
is playing to a mob when he talks about how he can say these things,
because he goes before crowds and they’re out for blood, and their
anger and rage is the justification he has for saying these thuggish
things? And now he’s going to plunge the whole country into an
authoritarian dynamic because the mob is telling him to do so? This
is beyond shocking, and it makes you think that he has no frame of
reference other than himself, that the country doesn’t matter, the
peace doesn’t matter. Hillary Clinton’s physical survival doesn’t
matter to him. You know, he’s going to take it all down, if he’s
going to lose.
Blair: Like Tim
said: “scorched earth.” That’s on the way to the thing that he
started at the very beginning by saying the U.S. was falling apart,
on the brink of disaster, inner cities are terrible, unemployment
rates are through the roof, all the rest of it. That justifies that
strongman thing.
D’Antonio: Well,
imagine if this was an African-American leader who is saying these
kinds of things. I think that the Republican Party would be screaming
for the man or woman’s arrest, but he gets cheered for saying these
things.
O’Brien: Well, he
gets cheers from his base. And if you look at the electoral map now,
he’s dug himself into a pretty big hole. It looks now, if the trend
line continues, he’s going to lose North Carolina and Florida.
There’s no way he’s going to win without those. Ohio is turning
blue. At the end of the day, he’s turned the electoral map solidly
against himself, and the kind of rage he’s stoking is regional
rage. And I think we’re going to live with that well beyond this
election. He’s really served to solidify the divisions regionally
and ideologically in the country, and I think he’s blown up the
GOP.
“It’s
going to be a straight‑out loss on the biggest stage he’s
ever been on, and how he handles that — I don’t think we’ve got
any precedent for that” — Wayne Barrett
Glasser: In many
ways, a lot of what Trump has done has been sort of predictable, at
least very consistent with his personality and with his past, as you
all have documented it. But what has gone on in the last few months
since we had our initial conversation, that has actually surprised
you about Trump? Michael has posited that the fact that Trump has
actually held it together this long, that we’re having the
implosion now in October of 2016, might be the surprise.
Kruse: And beyond
surprise, what have you learned about him that you didn’t know
before this all began?
Barrett: The
parallels between the period of time leading up to his downfall in
1990 and the campaign now are striking. And what he did last night in
standing up in this moment of crisis and being a victim — he
thought of himself as a victim in the downfall of 1990 and playing
the victim card and being as angry at others as he was in the ’90s
in the way in which he dealt with the bankers. It was very strikingly
similar to that period of time. But when you’ve dealt with the
bankers in 1990, you could figure out a way where both of you came
out with something and lost something. But in this case, there’s
going to be a winner and a loser. And so there’s some similarities,
but ultimately, he’s going to be a loser. He managed to survive in
almost an unbelievable way when his empire collapsed, but managed to
survive with the aid of the bankers. But this time, it’s going to
be a straight‑out loss on the biggest stage he’s ever been
on, and how he handles that — I don’t think we’ve got any
precedent for that.
Blair: How can he
pivot from that? I mean, for a little bit there was some thought that
they were going to start — he and Roger Ailes — another network,
but they don’t seem to have the resources to do that. Whatever
resources he has, he’s not going to put into that. I think Wayne’s
point is really well taken, but isn’t part of that — I mean, this
is sort of obvious, but during the primaries, with so many different
people on the stage, that same M.O. worked. But only one other person
on the stage for 90 minutes, it’s a totally different thing. And so
I both learned and didn’t learn anything new, I guess. I mean, it
is the same M.O. but in a different context and framed differently
with only one person, one other opponent, who, by the way, is quite
skillful.
O’Brien: Yeah. I
don’t feel like I’ve seen or learned anything new about him. I
think a lot of the way he’s approached this presidential race
parallels all of the strengths and weaknesses of his business career,
personally and professionally. He’s a profoundly narcissistic
person who has been insulated from the realities of his own bad
decision‑making by wealth and other people’s needs to kind of
glom onto him, and I think he really did repeat so much of his past
mistakes throughout this political season. He came into it with an
opportunity and an advantage that he could have really built
something on. But because of his myriad flaws — you know, he’s
financially undisciplined, he’s emotionally and intellectually
undisciplined, and he’s incapable of building teams and leading
other people, profoundly incapable of those things — he blew those
opportunities.
And I don’t think
he really cares. I think he’s been more than satisfied to be on a
big global stage and have everybody paying attention to him, and
he’ll never characterize himself as a loser in this process, even
if he ends up one.
I feel like I’ve
learned more about the country by virtue of this exposure to the
Trump virus than I’ve learned about Trump himself.
D’Antonio: About
the country, Tim is touching on something that’s really disturbing
to me: I don’t think I knew that the country would be this
receptive to his message, but among the things that I think I’ve
learned is that he’s truly the offspring of Roy Cohn and Joe
McCarthy. He’s more violent in his way of thinking than I
understood him to be. He’s less attached to reality than I thought
he was.
But the real thing
that I’m taking away is that he’s actually been telling us the
truth about himself all along, and that this is not a character he’s
been playing. It’s the real Trump. And I think a lot of times,
people have wasted lots of effort trying to figure out: Is he
serious, does he really mean this, is this all just one big joke? And
I don’t think it’s a big joke. I think that he really is this
horrible creature, and he has no regard for anything but himself, and
he’s willing to go to lengths we’ve never seen before in order to
satisfy his ego. And now we know.
O’Brien: Yeah. I
think the things we’ve learned about the country are that racism is
still a deeply troubling and embedded feature of American life, and
he’s exploited that. I think we’ve learned that American voters
don’t really care if they have a leader who is wildly ignorant
about foreign affairs and spins tales about foreign policy that don’t
correlate with facts or reality. I think we’ve learned that sexism
and chauvinism are alive and well in the United States, and in
institutional ways that are going to take a lot of work for the
country to overcome.
I think we’ve
learned that the leadership of the GOP lacks courage, that their
party’s internal division triumphed over any adherence to
conservative values, classic conservative values, and that the
leadership of that party waited until the eleventh hour to distance
itself from Trump and still hasn’t completely, that there’s a
complete lack of political courage in this country.
Kruse: What does
this next not-quite-a-month look like? What does he do? What is
best‑case scenario, or what is worst‑case scenario?
Blair: About what
Michael D’Antonio was saying — the whole kind of exercise of “who
is the real Trump?” and that what we see really is the real him.
It’s not Stephen Colbert. This is not a persona that’s adopted
for a performance. That’s really him. He thinks that’s still a
winning possibility for him, that he is a success. I think he deeply
believes that. He can’t countenance — you know, his brain won’t
take in that there’s like another possibility. He will continue to
call it a success, and at the same time pursue this scorched‑earth
approach that we’ve now seen on full display.
Kruse: So you think
this is what he was expecting? There is a school of thought that this
all began as sort of an opportunity to enhance his brand, and it was
only going to go so far or could go so far. And here he is, less than
a month away from Election Day, with not a good chance to win but a
chance. Do you think this is a — I’m struggling here. I mean, is
this a branding exercise that almost went too well, and now he’s so
far down the road that he is where he is and we are where we are as a
country?
Blair: After the
birther controversy, after he went after Mexico and Mexicans in his
announcement speech and he didn’t get called on it, he only heard
cheers — I think that was the, you know, that was the liftoff.
D’Antonio: I don’t
think he thinks. I don’t think that he is a guy who reflects on a
long‑term goal. As Tim was saying, he doesn’t lead groups of
people. He doesn’t know how to organize something complex. If you
look at some things that he says, a lot of them are the same things
he said in the 1980s, and there’s this crazy language about race
and “they’re laughing at us.” He’s used these terms since
1987, and he just gets out there and acts and does what Donald Trump
thinks Donald Trump wants to do. And there’s no concept of where do
I want to lead the country or what’s good for anything — anyone
else but him.
Glasser: I have one
question I’ve been dying to ask that’s a little bit — well, it
is related to this, which is the Putin affinity, obsession. This
weird theme of this campaign is not something that had really fully
emerged when we initially talked. And it gets to this question: Does
Trump see himself as a dictator? Is that why he is expressing this
fellow-feeling with Putin and others like him? What do you make of
that subplot of this campaign?
Barrett: I think we
saw the power of this last night in the debate. He openly
contradicted his own running mate about Putin. It’s the only issue
on which he would do that, and it has everything to do with the
WikiLeaks revelations, which is still, in my judgment, his hope for
the remaining several weeks, that there is more power in that.
You know, you got to
follow very bizarre people to diagnose this, but follow Alex Jones,
Roger Stone’s sidekick. Roger had predicted that the WikiLeaks
stuff would come out last Wednesday, and when it didn’t, Alex Jones
went on his show and absolutely denounced WikiLeaks and Assange in
the vilest terms. And then the next day, he went out — and you can
see the video — and apologized profoundly to Assange and said
Assange was a hero to all of the world. And voila! What happens?
Suddenly, WikiLeaks is dropping its stuff.
And I think the way
in which Donald has approached Putin in recent times — and again in
the debate last night — is all about the WikiLeaks revelations and
trying to induce them and induce even more of them, and Pence just
didn’t get the message. He didn’t get the memo, and he was out
there actually saying what made sense from a Republican standpoint.
He was basically opening the door to a war against Putin and Syria,
and Trump just openly contradicts that because Trump is playing the
Putin card to get the WikiLeaks revelations injected into the body
politic before Election Day. And we still don’t know whether or not
there’s some good bombs in there. So far, I don’t think it’s
added up to much, but there’s been some interesting stuff in there.
And I think that’s what it’s all about.
Pence "didn't
get the memo" on Wikileaks | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Pence “didn’t
get the memo” on Wikileaks | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
D’Antonio: I think
that that’s a really fascinating element to this, especially when
you consider Alex Jones. I’ve been wondering who Trump’s brain
is, whether it’s Roger Stone or Alex Jones, but it’s a pretty
dark personality that’s driving all of this.
Barrett: It’s
Roger. I mean, the interesting thing is when you saw him do the
number with the four Clinton‑associated women last night, that
is Roy Cohn orchestrated through Roger. Roger has been talking about
this forever. What is so interesting about what happened in the
debate last night with these women is that Roger is back running the
show in the person of those four women, and this is exactly what
Roger has wanted him to do. You know, Susan was talking about the
origins of the campaign. Well, you know, I’m always very upset
about the fact that the television people allow Rudy Giuliani and
others to say, “Well, you know, in 2005 [the date of the hot-mic
tape], Trump wasn’t running for president.” Well, as a matter of
fact, he did run for president for about four months in 2000, and
Roger was running the show. And so this has been a constant theme of
the Roger‑Donald relationship.
Look at Roger’s
own statements. The night that Donald was nominated, he said it was
the culmination of — I think he said 36 years of his life, the
night that Donald was nominated, and so they’ve been cooking this
and working this for decades and decades between the two of them.
D’Antonio: And
Stone does represent one of the most distorted aspects of American
political life. He’s so far out.
Blair: He’s a
protégé of Roy Cohn, isn’t he?
Blair: Yeah, the two
of them together. Whoa!
Barrett: Yeah. I
mean, just the fact that Donald Trump — with these two people as a
young man — that he bonded with them…
O’Brien: I don’t
think you can discount Ann Coulter’s role as an influence on his
thinking in this either. You know, his language when he rolled down
the escalator at Trump Tower, when he first announced, and his
descriptions of the evils of immigration closely paralleled things
Ann Coulter had written in the past. I think she had a big influence
on themes and images that he used.
But I think this
stuff with Putin has been wildly overblown. He’s always bragged
about his relationship with Putin and his business dealings in
Russia. The reality is he was never able to get anything done in
Russia. He went over there on little speculative ventures.
I think he, in years
past, talked up Putin when it was to his advantage to make it look
like he was getting things done in Moscow, but he never had a real
relationship with him. And the people in the Kremlin are laughing at
this guy because all of them are far more sophisticated and shrewd
than he is, and they would love for him to become president, not
because they have deep lending relationships with him and not because
he’s got a deep relationship with Putin, but because they know that
he could be their sock puppet because he’s ignorant and
overconfident. So I think that’s one part of this election that got
a little bit overblown.
Blair: One more
piece out of last night: I wondered what people’s responses were
when he called Hillary Clinton the devil. What was that?
O’Brien: Well,
again, he’s using it as another alt‑right thing. He’s
appealing to the evangelical conservatives.
Blair: That was a
real shout-out, wasn’t it?
O’Brien: You know,
that she’s the devil, that wasn’t an accident. You know, he hit
millions of themes in that thing last night that appealed to the
Breitbart coalition, and I think it’s a measure of what you’re
going to see in months and years to come from him and that part of
the Republican populous faction, that he’s channeling their anger
and their imagery.
Kruse: This question
that has existed for months at this point — “is this the media’s
fault,” quote/unquote — always sort of avoided the reality that
Alex Jones is the media, Ann Coulter is the media — for some just
as much as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico is the
media. Over these last seven months since we first talked, how have
you assessed — at the risk of sort of making this unbelievably
broad — how have you assessed the role of the media in helping,
hurting, influencing how the American public has met the presidential
candidate Donald Trump?
D’Antonio: Well,
don’t you kind of think that the media promoted this for ratings,
especially — I mean, I’m talking almost exclusively about
broadcasts and almost exclusively about CNN, that Jeff Zucker made a
ton of money putting this guy on the air. And I actually think that
people scared themselves, that at some point, they said, “Oh, wait
a minute. We’re journalists. We better start reporting on this
guy.” And that’s what’s happened since the convention is that
there’s been some serious reporting on him. Trump has been exposed
and revealed for what he is, but prior to that it was almost
entertainment-driven and with the journalism, especially on
television, really on the backburner.
O’Brien: I think
broadcast media was, for the most part, an enabler for most of his
run, and I think early on, both broadcast and print didn’t know how
to handle him. I think they mistakenly took him for a zoo curiosity
when the campaign began last year. I think by the time — it took
almost him getting nominated for most of the media to take him
seriously.
I think print took a
little while to get rolling, but once big institutions like the Times
and the Washington Post got their engines going, they really brought
a lot of force to bear on him. And even within broadcast and even
within CNN, there were people like Brian Stelter and Jake Tapper and
Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper who took strong shots and strong
looks at him, even if CNN was an enabler, you know, and that went
along with, I think, a really egregious mistake on CNN’s part to
bring Corey Lewandowski in as a quote/unquote, you know, “political
analyst.”
But I think TV
really gave Trump an early lift and that he was able to capitalize on
what other candidates didn’t get.
Blair: Wait. What
about Twitter in here? I mean, that’s hugely important, I think, in
the driving force fueling all of this that he was out there even, you
know, ahead of the media. The media kept always feeling like it had
to catch up to him, and Twitter was such an important tool and he
used it really so well. I think his ability to harness attention
through Twitter is a big piece.
O’Brien: And not
just harness attention but demolish his opponents. He really used
Twitter much more effectively during the primary season, I think,
than he has during the general election. But he’s certainly used it
during the primary season to label, diminish and then expel political
opponents like Jeb Bush and then Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio with
labeling and name‑calling. And he dropped that into the Twitter
echo chamber to great effect.
Blair: It’s a
perfect format for name‑calling.
“So
let’s say he loses, and let’s say he loses even by a lot. What is
the next act of Trump?” — Michael Kruse
Barrett: Maybe I’m
completely out of touch with technology, but I believe that
television news is still the canvas on which these campaigns are
painted. And I think that the broadcast news media — you know, I’m
a big sports nut, and they basically have covered the campaign the
same way they cover the NFL season, you know, promoting the game at
all times to encourage ratings and advertisers. I think they have not
really, until very recently — they had a moment there in August
when they were covering him pretty tough — but, you know,
especially when you get around the debate period, you got to build up
to the debate. You’ve got to have a close contest to get the tens
of millions of people you want watching it.
Mike McIntire wrote
an unbelievably brilliant story on the front page of the New York
Times that laid out the Trump SoHo [a Trump-developed building in
Manhattan] and even showed that the district attorney of Manhattan
had conducted a criminal investigation that included Ivanka and
Donald Jr., who made all kinds of false claims about how many units
had been sold, and, you know, that Trump had worked out a settlement
that included a specific provision with the depositors who bought
units in Trump’s SoHo. He had worked out a settlement in which they
agreed that they wouldn’t cooperate with the district attorney,
which sounds like obstruction of justice to, I think, anyone who read
the story. And it couldn’t get a minute of airtime. It never has
gotten a minute of airtime, and so you would have, I think, some
outstanding pieces of print journalism.
Michael Kruse just
wrote one about how Trump on 9/11, 15 years ago, started talking
about how he now had the biggest building in downtown Manhattan, the
very day that the bodies were still lying in the streets, and no one
on television even mentioned the story. And so these great pieces of
print journalism got no airtime and died, and I think that was a
conscious decision at the highest levels of the television news
networks. And they kept this narrative alive of a real campaign and a
real competitive race, and they kept it alive by not telling voters
what voters should have been told on this medium that I think still
controls presidential campaigns.
Kruse: So let’s
say he loses, and let’s say he loses even by a lot. What is the
next act of Trump? Is he still a businessman in the way he’s been a
businessman? Is he now some sort of much more active politician? Is
he a politician by that name? And he himself said it last night, said
it during the debate. He called himself a politician, I think, for
the first time. If he’s a politician now for the first time, I’m
wondering — where to from here for him, assuming he loses and
potentially loses badly?
O’Brien: I mean, I
think he’s going to start a media company, despite the fact that he
said he won’t. I think he and Sean Hannity and the Breitbart crew
and Roger Ailes will figure in that in some way, although Ailes has a
non‑compete with Fox. But I think Trump is going to try to
start a media company. I think it’s going to be impossible for him
to get advertising for it, except for maybe Viagra ads, and he’ll
just take this movement that he’s fomented on to digital and
broadcast media and build up, or try to build, a media movement
around it.
D’Antonio: I think
he’s addicted to this kind of attention and addicted to being taken
seriously, or at least in his own estimation being taken seriously.
So whatever he does, it will be devoted more to politics and media
than what he’s done so far, and the kids are going to pick up the
pieces of the real estate and branding empire. I’m working on a
piece with some people who are evaluating his business, and he’s
really suffered an erosion of his brand, even among the people who
supported it. So the kids may have seen some of their inheritance go
down the drain here.
Barrett: He’s had
an incredible tax loss on this campaign, Michael. [Laughter.]
Blair: Right, going
forward.
Kruse: So do you
think he expected any of this? Do you think — in his discussion
with himself way back when about whether to do this — do you think
he envisioned this scenario as it has played out, where he almost
does so well that his brand, his name, his ability to turn his name
into money has been sullied and compromised with not everybody,
certainly, but a wide variety of people, a good portion of the
electorate?
Blair: Well, 40
percent doesn’t get you to the White House — or whatever, 35
percent — but it gets you a lot of customers in the future.
Barrett: Well,
nobody who is going to vote for him can afford to go to one of his
places, you know? I mean, I shouldn’t say nobody, but his base is a
high school‑educated, white, working-class base.
Blair: They watch
TV. They buy wallets and ties and shoelaces and all the rest.
Barrett: Oh, yeah.
I’m talking about his current businesses. They certainly can’t
buy a unit in one of his buildings, or they can’t go to his hotels.
The remarkable thing is that the people who are his customers have
been so turned off by so much of what he’s done.
D’Antonio: But
business people do not want to stay in a hotel and have someone call
and hear the word “Trump” when they answer the phone. It’s
really poisonous right now.
Kruse: Is there any
scenario in which he does, in fact, win on November 8?
Barrett: No. I think
I just mentioned it. The WikiLeaks scenario, revelations through
WikiLeaks, I think, are his only hope, and we don’t know what those
could be. But we know they’re flowing, and I think that that’s
why he’s played such a strong Putin game. I think that’s what
he’s counting on.
O’Brien: I think
he’s done. I think it’s over. I think even if there are WikiLeaks
photos of Clinton with horns and a tail, the states that have allied
with her aren’t going to change because of that, and I think as
much damaging information about her that might sway voters is already
out there. You know, unless there’s WikiLeaks of her and Bill
taking huge bribes from the Saudis and other dictators that affect
State Department policy, I think short of that, I don’t think
anything WikiLeaks has is going to change anything in this election.
And I think she’s already got it nailed down, the Electoral
College.
Barrett: I don’t
disagree with that, Tim. I was just answering if there’s anything
that could possibly change the numbers, and that’s the only thing I
can think of. I agree with you that I doubt that it would change. I
mean, so far, as I said, the WikiLeaks revelations have not been
seriously damaging, and I don’t expect them to be.
D’Antonio: It
might be more likely that another horrible thing is going to happen
for Trump. There’s got to be more video and audio out there.
O’Brien: Yeah. I
guess I sort of think that the danger of leaked material now, it
feels to me like it’s a little more in his camp than hers, but I
could be wrong.
Kruse: So what would
his legacy — I’m not sure that’s quite the right word — but
what would his legacy have been had he not run for president and run
for president in this way, and what will it be now?
D’Antonio: I would
say that if he hadn’t run, he would have had a legacy of master
promoter and a guy who pioneered publicity and converting publicity
into cash. But now he may go down as the thing that he doesn’t want
to be remembered for at all, and that is as a loser in a landslide
election.
Blair: Yeah. From a
pioneer celebrity brand guy, I mean, he sure ran a good race with
that, and from that to the asterisk in the list of people who ran for
president and lost. And that’s a pretty big shift.
O’Brien: I think
he was somebody who would have been remembered as this curiosity of
reality television and casino gambling and real estate to somebody
who is likely to go down in history as having unleashed some very
hateful forces in American life, and I think that’s what’s going
to end up defining him.
Kruse: Is there any
part of him that knows this and that is embarrassed by it or ashamed
by it?
Blair: Not yet, but
—
Barrett: He was a
blowhard in business and then a blowhard in politics. You know, I
mean, there isn’t much difference. The Times [Trump Soho] story is,
certainly, just as one example, and I think Tim has written about
this too. It shows what a minor Manhattan developer he is in the
total context of things. So he was a blowhard as a developer too, and
he’s a blowhard as a politician. You know, I think if he had not
run, he would be an inconsequential developer who did a project or
two in Manhattan that seemed to matter for a moment, and maybe at
some level, he understood that and thought he wasn’t big enough to
go out. You know, he wanted to be bigger, so he went down this trail
to see what it would do. I think it was part grudge, part, you know,
him and Roger talking and taking a shot, and now it’s grown into
this giant thing.
I think Tim has it
perfectly correct that he would go down now as the man who embodied
more than he did in evoking the racism that Barack Obama’s election
and two terms of Obama conspired to bring to the surface in America.
“He
has not been able to rise to the occasion because he lacks the skill
and character to do that” — Timothy O’Brien
As long as he’s
remembered, maybe it won’t matter to him.
Kruse: That is what
I was thinking as you just said that, that he’s always had the
opinion that even bad publicity is publicity and, therefore, good
publicity, and that he has had, over these last six months
especially, just an incredible onslaught, such intensity of negative
publicity. But perhaps that doesn’t matter, and the fact that he
will go down in history is what he was after all along.
O’Brien: You know,
I think he has stumbled into this whole event. I don’t think he
contemplated being the nominee. I don’t think he thought he could
be the nominee. I think he just thought it was a moment of, you know,
put on a show, and then he got carried along by events. And I think
those events are far larger and more momentous than who he is as a
person, and he has not been able to rise to the occasion because he
lacks the skill and character to do that and instead has made the
worst sort of thing that he could out of this, which is, again,
unleash these forces of hatred and opposition. And I don’t think he
realizes probably how badly it taints him and his family — I mean
legacy. I think if he did realize it, he still wouldn’t feel
ashamed of it because I think he’s incapable of feeling shame.
Kruse: What about
his kids?
Blair: They seem to
be all in. I mean, they’re — that’s all we see. But I’m not
exactly sure if he unleashed those forces so much as became this
visible center for them to coalesce around. I mean, they were there.
Maybe that’s what you mean by “unleashed.” They were there, but
he became this visible, you know, central hub for all of that, and
that has been super dangerous. And her has whipped it into just an
astonishingly dangerous force.
Kruse: So this
sounds like his legacy. This is what it is.
Blair: Yeah. And I
also think it’s absolutely spot on that if it’s negative, I’m
not sure he cares. In fact, I’m sort of sure that he doesn’t care
because it’s big — or as he would say, “yuge.”
Barrett: Yeah. I
mean, in his eyes, he is larger than he has ever been.
O’Brien: And he’ll
go on to have influence through his kids. You know, Don Jr. is an
aggressive extremist, I think, who sees political aspirations of his
own, and Ivanka is a budding entrepreneur and has her own businesses.
So the kids are going to remain active in American life to some
extent. Whether he’s going to be happy living them is another
thing.
Barrett: Well, let’s
not forget Jared Kushner. I think Kushner has launched on what is
going to be a life worth tracking. News accounts from yesterday
indicate that he helped put together the Clinton women thing last
night, so he’s way out there. He’s just way out there. He’s got
a great deal of money of his own. He’s polished. He’s driven,
and, you know, I think he’s a serious player. At least in a New
York level, I think he will be a serious player going deep into the
future.
O’Brien: And I
think that Jared will be part of any media thing that Donald does.
He’ll be a key part of that, obviously.
Kruse: Is there
anything else before I let you all go — and I appreciate all your
time — but is there anything else that you think we should cover,
that we should put on this transcript that we haven’t touched on at
this point?
Barrett: I was just
not sure whether or not, when Tim was talking about Putin, whether he
was disagreeing with my assessment of it. You know, I think the two
things that we said could simultaneously be true, but Tim was saying
he thought the whole Putin thing had been overplayed in terms of
Donald’s real business interests in that part of the world. And I
defer to him on that, but I’m not sure whether he was saying that
he disagreed with my suggestion that Donald’s Putin strategy is
connected directly to WikiLeaks releases and that that was evident in
the debate last night.
O’Brien: Oh, yeah.
I mean, I wasn’t disagreeing with that. I think in and of itself,
Wayne, I was thinking more about, you know, all the stuff that came
up around Paul Manafort and whether or not the Kremlin was
bankrolling Donald’s business operations and, therefore, was going
to control in his president. That stuff, I think, got way overblown
into kind of a conspiracy theory that I think didn’t have a lot of
traction in reality. I meant that piece of it.
Blair: I think we
sort of said this, but just to be a little more explicit about it,
the through-line between that Department of Justice action against
the Trump organization in 1973 about not renting to African
Americans, Roy Cohn filing the $100 million lawsuit the next day? I
mean that aggressive counterpunch — all about racism. The
through-line between — and that was really Donald’s, pretty much
his debut in larger New York City to now — I think is just worth
underlining. We know that, but just to underscore that through-line
is kind of stunning.
Barrett: Well, and
then, you know, simultaneous almost with the hot-mic video, I think,
in the same day on Friday, he reaffirmed, as we all know, the guilt
of the Central Park Five. So talk about a through-line, yes.
Blair: Yes. Which,
of course, also got not much attention.
Barrett: Right. Now
that what little I’ve been able to read about what is supposedly in
the Apprentice tapes is that, supposedly, he uses the N-word. You
know, that’s been hinted at in stories.
You know, David
Letterman, I think, said in the last few days, “I was wrong. I said
I thought he was too smart to be a racist, and I was wrong. He is a
racist.” So there’s this racial undercurrent to everything that
the man has done in this campaign, and it’s been one of the hardest
things. It’s not only that the television news industry has, you
know, for business reasons and commercial reasons helped promote this
candidacy. They have refused to acknowledge the racial underpinnings
of this candidacy. They want to attribute it to everything but that.
It’s not like there’s been no illusions to it. There have been
some, but it is really a story of American racism. And I think that’s
understood in every newsroom, and yet it’s almost never presented
that way because it’s thought of as an insult to part of the
audience that they want to keep. So it’s like a commentary on part
of the audience that they’re trying to attract and retain, and so
the racial nature of this candidacy, which I think is so apparent,
almost axiomatic — it’s not like it’s never commented on. It is
sometimes lightly touched on.
Blair: I think
that’s called normalization.
Barrett: Yeah. It’s
not really examined.
Blair: Minimalized.
Kruse: Given that,
given that assessment — and this is something, Wayne, that you said
very explicitly the first time we got together — given that, where
do we go? Where do we, this country, go from here? Something ends on
November 8, but what begins on November 9, or what continues on
November 9, really?
Barrett: Well, if
it’s a substantial margin, it will be a repudiation, just as the
last two presidential elections have been a repudiation of racism in
America. This will be in some ways, strangely enough, without an
African-American candidate on the ballot. If Trump loses badly, it
will be a repudiation by maybe even the majority of white Americans
of that strategy. It could be a good day in America.
O’Brien: And that
the better angels of American society triumphed in this one.
Barrett: And it can
happen.
Blair: Let’s hope.
This conversation
has been lightly edited and condensed.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário