On Donald Trump, The Late Shift, and The War for Late Night: Observational Consequences of His Murmurs
Donald Trump is the leading candidate to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016 and he is also a subject of multiple criminal investigations. A book about him is being published tomorrow, and I have been covering him for years. She often broke stories in The Times that she uncovered while reporting for the book.
Some of the details of their relationship are obvious, but many of them are less so. It shows that if he believed the lies he told, he would not want to talk with her. He’d stop. Even though he trashed her, he still respected her, a sign that a moral person’s conscience isn’t always present.
He’ll do anything to survive. And he’ll do anything for an audience. The other reporters who he publicly insulted were a constant source of attention, with their notepads, audio recordings, and television cameras a conduit to ever, as well as their ponderous thoughts about the puzzle of him. There was danger in letting them in, peril in having them around, but the alternative was worse. They might give prime real estate on the evening’s newscast to some other circus act. They might write a book about a clown.
Editor’s Note: Bill Carter, a media analyst for CNN, covered the television industry for The New York Times for 25 years, and has written four books on TV, including The Late Shift and The War for Late Night. His own opinions are expressed in this commentary. CNN has more opinion on it.
I know that Bob Woodward has written at least three. So has Michael Wolff. Sean wrote one, but was it two? “Mooch” – that is, Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s White House communications director ever so briefly – wrote one. For heaven’s sake, so did Omarosa.
Of course, that number doesn’t even include the surge of books covering the surreal post-2020 election period, which has pushed Trump-lit to the forefront of publishing over the past two years.
The robust sales for many of these books attest to the hunger among readers to hear every gobsmacking detail about a real-life character who is beyond the imagination of most fever-dreaming fiction writers.
The Fate of the Bombshell: Trump’s Big Bad Days at the White House and His Personal “Bombshell” Phenomenology
There can be even higher levels of hunger that can be sated. After seven or eight – or 12 – courses, a bit of bloat is likely to set in. With Trump books, it has begun to feel like a never-ending Thanksgiving dinner with more than enough for the family, the cousins, the in-laws and the lonely old neighbor next door – every night.
Every book seems to contain a sufficient number of “bombshell revelations” to drum up media coverage, along with some combination of amusing, enraging or revolting personal details (previously unreported, of course, and almost always disputed by the former president).
Trump lied about trivial details but also about consequential moments such as misrepresenting that it had rained during his inauguration and lying about how much he stole the 2020 election.
Although no consensus has arisen in the “bombshell” category yet, early reviews show Haberman providing all the usual ingredients in “Confidence Man.” Her father was a colleague of mine at the Times. Perhaps he wanted to blow up Mexican drug labs? Maybe that he claims to have kept in contact with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? He might have been suspected of pretending to be a reporter while he was president.
From the toilet practices, Trump thought about firing his daughter and son- in-law, he called the German Chancellor a “b-word”, and he thought he could “sue” Congress.
What Do We Really Know about Donald Trump During His Life? A Conversation with Maggie Heberman, C.A.S. Woodward, G.G. Milley
Heberman: People were afraid of getting on the wrong side of them. You know, it became clear that even they had limited influence over him on policy. And so they started focusing on personnel. They would constantly identify this one or that one as a leaker to him – leaker being the word even though it sometimes was not true. It was a problem.
It’s completely understandable if people are outraged by journalists deliberately sitting on major news to enhance later book sales. That sounds antithetical to the first principle of journalism: get the news out.
On the other side, non-fiction books are usually an account of past events. They are mostly about context and narrative. Having written books like this myself, I know the difference between breaking news and book news.
Woodward has been walking it, precariously, his entire career. The revelations in “Peril” about Donald Trump being assured that the US wouldn’t launch a surprise attack on China and Gen. Mark Milley calling the Chinese to tell them that was the biggest howl from the book. It was revealed that a number of Trump allies were in a “war room” on the night before the attack on the US Capitol.
Given the world’s exposure to Trump in recent years, it seems unimaginable that one more “revelation” of any magnitude could alter the perception of him.
In order to serve a Trump book, the pro forma statement of denial from his camp is always included. “Fake news!” – or some version of it – is the claim.
There is so much work going on here that it is critical to ask what could be described as unbelievable about Trump after hundreds and hundreds of books.
For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Maggie about what she’s learned, about how much the media should cover Trump and about what’s likely next for him.
Back when you worked for the New York Post, you were one of the few people who could have witnessed Trump’s true personality. You pointed out that he lies a lot. I was wondering how interviewing him can help you capture reality when he is not confined by reality.
The Boom of Florida in the 1910s: How many lives were lost during hurricanes? CNN takes the survey of the best opinion columns of the week
Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.
Variously attributed to Mark Twain and Will Rogers, the advice fits well with the national fixation on real estate, home values and location, location, location. The scarcity of land that can be developed drove the US median home price over $400,000 for the first time last quarter as interest rate hikes started cooling the market.
Low taxes and a warm climate helped fuel a boom in Florida as it became the third most populous state. There were a lot of people and property who were damaged last week when Hurricane Ian roared through the state. At least 66 people died and homes and businesses were destroyed in the storm.
Florida tightened its building standards after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but even with stronger structures, there’s little chance of avoiding catastrophic damage when 150 mph winds, torrential rain and steep storm surges hit a populated area.
“The simple fact is that when more people are exposed to a natural hazard such as a hurricane,” wrote Stephen Strader, an associate professor of geography and the environment at Villanova University, “the odds for a major disaster to occur are greater. We are more willing to put ourselves in harms way due to the growth and expansion of our population. The wetlands and mangroves that once acted as natural ‘buffers’ to the rising waters and waves that come with hurricanes are now shrinking or gone. subdivisions have been used to replace them.
The boom of Florida in the early 1910s was led by a man known as the automobile magnate who decided to take a vacation on what is now known as Miami Beach.
He decided to buy, clear and fill in thousands of acres of swamps and mangroves to make way for a new waterfront property where investors would line up for a long time to build homes and hotels for those who wanted a piece of paradise.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/opinions/piece-of-paradise-lost-opinion-column-galant/index.html
What Happens When a Rock Is Shattered: The Hurricane-Lost-Opinion Column-Galant of Puerto Rico
“There are very few things that test political leaders like natural disasters,” Julian Zelizer pointed out. When Mother Nature wreaks havoc, presidents, governors, and legislators must use their resources to address dire needs of those affected.
“At the federal level, President Joe Biden needs to demonstrate he has the leadership and rigorous governing skills that are necessary to help Florida out of this mess,” Zelizer added. The governor, who is being viewed as a potential Republican presidential nominee for the same year, needs to prove he can achieve more than just political stunts, like the one he did this month when he sent migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.
SE Cupp noted a Vanity Fair report that lifted the curtain on the rivalry between DeSantis and Trump, which included this description of Trump attributed to the governor: “A TV personality and a moron, who has no business running for president.”
“Nearly five years to the day since Maria slammed our island, on September 18 of this year, Hurricane Fiona delivered yet another knockout punch,” wrote Brenda Rivera-García, senior director of Latin America and Caribbean programs for Americares.
We thought we had experienced a flood for 100 years. After only a half-decade, it seems we’ve got another century of water to contend with, as Hurricane Maria dumped more than three inches of rain in some parts of the island over the course of two days last Thursday and then Hurricane Fiona drowned us with 31 inches in about 72 hours According to the government of Puerto Rico, nearly 20% of the island was without water and more than 50% still had no power a week after the storm. Our air is filled with the sound of generators.
“More and more,” Rivera-Garcia added, “I hear from family, friends, neighbors and people on the street saying, ‘I’m tired. It’s one crisis after another. I can’t take it anymore.’ With multiple generations often living together, family members have always been each other’s rock. What happens when a rock is shattered?
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/opinions/piece-of-paradise-lost-opinion-column-galant/index.html
The bluff of the British Prime Minister: a case of decisive need for NATO to intervene in the world’s nuclear power crisis
The huge question is how NATO should react. Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, former commander of the UK & NATO Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Forces, said that “the West must make it absolutely clear to Putin that any use of nuclear, or chemical or biological weapons is a real redline issue. That said, I don’t think all-out nuclear war is at all likely.”
“This is the time to call Putin’s bluff. He is holding on by his fingertips and we must not give him a chance to regain his hold. We should negotiate with NATO from this position of strength since Russia’s forces are now so degraded that they are no match for the alliance.
The UK’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng played starring roles in a week of market turmoil around the globe.
The plan to slash taxes, particularly for the wealthy, in the midst of a wave of inflation that is battering the world and causing central banks to raiseinterest rates in hopes of cooling inflationary pressures, amounted to a firehose filled with gasoline. The pound tumbled, nearly reaching parity with the dollar, and the Bank of England had to announce it would buy bonds to restore confidence.
“Economists and politicians left and right largely agreed that, if not the policy itself, the abrupt rollout and the timing could not have been worse…”
They came when the world stands on a knifes edge, with Russian President V. Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons as his invasion of Ukraine continues, and the United States preparing to shoot down a warplane. With mysterious explosions causing leaks in the Nordstream pipeline applying further anxiety just ahead of a dreaded winter with gas supply shortages across Europe, all of this is happening when democracy finds itself under pressure the world over.”
The prime minister’s policy is not the only thing scaring investors, as central banks around the world aim to tame inflation with rising interest rates, a strategy that could choke off economic growth.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/opinions/piece-of-paradise-lost-opinion-column-galant/index.html
The Highest Court in America and the Case for a Healthy, Stronger Future: A Commentary on Covid-19 and the Effect of Demographic Disparities
The court has weakened its own legitimacy by moving in that direction. It might be an appropriate time to start a national discussion about how to make it less divisive and more trusted by the vast majority of citizens. After all, that is the only way its rulings will be truly accepted in a diverse democracy of more than 330 million people.” You can watch the report at 8 p.m. on Sunday.
It is partly because of the way in which the highest court in America is structured that no other major democracy gives members of its highest court life tenure.
“I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with Type 2 diabetes. He told me that if I have vision loss, I might have my driver’s license revoked and that I might have nerve damage in my fingers.
After googling “reversing diabetes,” he connected with “Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn at the Cleveland Clinic, who told me I could treat my diabetes with lifestyle changes, including overhauling my diet and exercising.
I was skeptical in the beginning. But reducing meat and dairy consumption in favor of fresh produce and grains made an immediate difference in my health … Within three months, I lost significant weight, lowered my cholesterol, restored my vision and reversed my diabetes.” Not everyone can afford expert medical advice to turn their health around.
“The disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on Black and brown communities was tragically compounded by existing diet-driven health disparities. Low- income communities of color are more likely to live in areas with fewer grocery stores, higher concentrations of processed foods, and shelf-stable products, as compared to higher-income neighborhoods.
“Now is the time for our country to make the shift from treatment to prevention, from feeding the illness to giving people the tools to build sustainable lifestyles and healthier, stronger communities.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/02/opinions/piece-of-paradise-lost-opinion-column-galant/index.html
The New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge had no sex with or without a female friend: The story of Bonds and the Washington Post
To fans of the New York Yankees, there’s an almost mystical connection uniting the team’s pantheon of heroes – including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Derek Jeter. And now by hitting 61 homers in a single season – tying Maris, who bested Ruth’s record of 60 home runs – Aaron Judge has arguably joined those ranks.
We knew that when Bonds broke Mark McGwire’s record with 73 homers. Not some of us – all of us. This was a man at 36 years old with big muscles and a skull size that had actually increased in the past few years without the help of human growth hormone. I was in San Francisco the night Bonds passed McGwire, and it was…stupid. Just so damn stupid. The local fans stood and cheered, but it felt like meaningless and embarrassing. Like seeing a magician’s fake thumb.
In May 2016, The Washington Post ran the story of how Donald Trump, in his real estate days, would call reporters, pretending to be his own spokesman, to brag and leak nuggets about nonexistent romances with famous women. I thought that would hurt him in the race.
The next day, The Times splashed a piece on the front page reporting that dozens of women had accused Trump of “unwelcome romantic advances” and lewd and “unending commentary on the female form.”
I did not learn my lesson. I thought he couldn’t survive as leader of the party because of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump bragged about kissing women and trying to have sex with them.
A Funny Story About a President’s Failure to Break the Art of Spinning Narratives and Other Algebra: The Case of Joe Haberman
The fictions of Mr. Biden are not close to that scale. But they are emblematic of how the president, over nearly five decades in public life, has been unable to break himself of the habit of spinning embellished narratives, sometimes only loosely based on the facts, to weave together his political identity. And they provide political ammunition for Republicans eager to tar him as too feeble to run for re-election in two years.
His stories have been repeatedly and publicly challenged, as far back as his 1987 campaign for president, when his attempts to adopt someone else’s life story as his own, and his false claims about his academic record, forced him to withdraw.
Her book has plenty of new information and detail. This is one of the best stories I’ve heard. When Trump got well after he got sick, he wanted to be wheeled out of the hospital, then unbutton his shirt and reveal a Superman logo on his chest. He instructed his aide to buy a Superman shirt, but was told that wasn’t the right idea. But as Joe Klein wrote in a review in The Times, Haberman’s book is more notable for the quality of its observations about Trump’s character than its news breaks. Haberman has known and reported on Trump for decades for the New York Post, the New York Daily News and Politico before the Times. She writes that if you want to understand Trump’s temperament and conduct, you can learn a lot from his and his father’s careers in real estate and their interactions with New York’s political bosses.
HABERMAN: My colleague Annie Karni reported on this habit of his when she worked at Politico and I think it was last year. The important aspect of the story was the fact that we learned that presidential records are very serious and therefore people have to tape them back together. It’s a serious thing when a president handles materials. The ripping it up was a habit he had of his own. And he saw no reason to change once it was the government’s documents. I do know from reporting that he was very suspicious of burn bags. He would use them, but burn bags are the method by which you get rid of paper in White Houses, whether it’s for the president or for staff. He was always questioning whether the material would actually be gotten rid of or if people would be going through it.
We welcome you back to FRESH AIR. He took documents to Mar-a-Lago, and you’re covering the investigation of those documents, as well as the litigation arising out of that. You know, you note that he has managed to escape the consequences for so much of his behavior over the years. I mean, I know you can’t predict things, but I wonder, does it feel like he’s in greater legal peril now than he has ever been to you?
MAGGIE HABERMAN: I think the answer is definitely yes. The scale and nature of the investigations that he’s facing now are more significant than almost anything else he has faced, especially since he avoided being charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in connection with the case in which his business was involved. There are two Justice Department investigations on him, one related to the documents, which was a much clearer case than the January 6 cases. There is a state investigation in Georgia. I think they pose a threat.
Fred Trump during his presidency: The Brooklyn DNC, ruled with an iron fist, and his father, David, was a star before becoming a filmmaker
DAVIES: You know, speaking of documents, you write in the book that when Donald Trump was in the White House, he had a habit of tearing up documents, scattering pieces in trash bins or on the floor or flushing them down toilets, which sometimes clogged the pipes. Did you speak to the sources to understand what he was doing or why he did it?
A person named Haberman. There’s no question. Fred Trump was notorious for his connections with the Brooklyn political machine. He worked them and cultivated them. He, you know, established a relationship with Abe Beame, who later became the city’s mayor, which was very fortuitous for a young Donald Trump as he was trying to get his start in Manhattan. He had connections with the state’s governor. He had a fundraiser to the state’s governor who was working with young Donald Trump. Fred Trump forged these connections that he then gifted on to his son. The way the world works is how Trump came to understand it. I mention in the writing that one of the figures in Trump’s experience is the deeply corrupt Brooklyn DNC machine boss, helmed by Meade Esposito. And Trump said to me that Meade – and I asked him about Esposito and if he had thought that being president was going to be like that. He said Meade, quote, “ruled with an iron fist.” It’s the same language as the one Trump uses to describe the Chinese leader. You know, strength is sort of flat and the same in any context, in his opinion. He believed government worked that way. People made decisions, and what they said, and people were afraid. Trump believed that Washington would work.
But he was not like the other kids. A lot of the kids who spoke of him are angry now that they’ve grown up. And then he went off to college where he left scattered impressions on the people he encountered. He seemed like a hypercompetitive person who wanted to get into real estate or he was interested in being a star. He talked about how he was able to bring show business to the real estate industry in an interview before the presidency. You know, he had toyed with the idea of going to USC film school. He has been watching movies all his life. And I think part of it is just creating this alternate reality for himself.
DAVIES: Right. And on the other hand, they both dealt with government in terms of making connections, making political contributions. Was the transactional approach he took into politics created by this?
A man with a sword. The deals were delivered by Kushner after he got his bearings. The staff at the White House and Trump’s relatives had an ongoing problem. And it came up – in almost every interview I did, someone mentioned what problems they were.
HABERMAN: Roy Cohn was a both singularly New York figure and a singularly Washington figure as somebody who was a right hand to Joe McCarthy. He was a closeted gay man who was very judgemental of gay people. He was an aggressive lawyer who represented celebrities, mobsters, and had many clients with these names in their names. You know, he was part of what the journalist Marie Brenner described as the favor economy in New York City. He became Trump’s lawyer in 1973, and he was also a child of privilege in New York. He started to work for Trump after the DOJ sued the Trumps.
DAVIES: It’s funny. I’m not from New York, so I observed Ed Koch from a distance. But I sort of remember him delivering this stuff with kind of a wry smile from time to time. There’s no lightness in Trump’s use of insults, really.
Heberman: It absolutely is. And I actually – I wrote about it. One of the people who he clearly studied the behavior and tone of was Ed Koch, the mayor, with whom he – you know, he would fundraise for him, and he would donate to him. Sometimes they had to deal with each other. Ed Koch wasn’t a fan of Donald Trump. And Ed Koch came into city hall as a reformer. He left it after a series of scandals, and Rudy Giuliani was the federal prosecutor in Manhattan at the time.
Ed Koch was not afraid to call people names, and he had a combative style. Ed Koch compared Trump to a pig when the two were fighting over his request for a tax abatement from the city. And Trump, in his responses, was nowhere near, you know, this sort of 140-character warrior that we came to see him as on Twitter, you know, or the person coining the term low-energy jab; he seemed to really struggle. And as you know, there’s this – I’m sure you know. One of Trump’s former advisers used to talk about, let Trump be Trump. There was literally a line in a Times story about Koch saying – you know, his advisers go with, let Koch be Koch. And I think Trump absorbed a great deal of that. He wouldn’t admit that.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
Confidence man: The making of Donald Trump and the breaking of America – a remarkable thing that I learned from his first interview with Maggie Haberman
DAVIES: The New York Times has a senior political correspondent named Maggie Haberman. Her new book is “Confidence Man: The Making Of Donald Trump And The Breaking Of America.” Onmorrow’s show, we’ll speak with the author of a cookbook. Known for crafting original and tasty recipes, she writes a weekly column for The New York Times food section and produces cooking videos. “Dinner In One: exceptional and easy one pan meals” is her latest cookbook. I hope you can join us.
One remarkable thing that was in your book that I hadn’t heard before was – you know, he personalizes everything. The city that Donald Trump grew up in had suffered a terrible loss in the 9/11 attack and he had only given his first interview around that time. What did he talk about in this first interview?
HABERMAN: He talked about how he now had the tallest building in New York, which was not true, by the way. But his first impulse was to brag and talk about himself and talk about a building as opposed to the fact that it was very obvious that there were several thousand people dead. And at that point, just as somebody who grew up in New York – and I covered that day, and I was down in Lower Manhattan that day. The projection initially for what the death toll was going to be was much higher because it was not clear at all how many people had escaped. He thought about how it impacted him, and his first impulse was to talk about himself.
They are calling it daemons. You know, you write that he’s been interested in running for the presidency – right? – for a long time. You followed him to New Hampshire, I think, in – early in the 2012 cycle, am I right?
He was a Hebrew man. I think before he moved to the US, the level of smash mouth in American politics changed a bit. The Tea Party era helped bring that about and I believe he accelerated it and benefited from it. And I think it is – you know, it is defining the Republican Party in large measure right now. I think, you know, all of our politics are defined, not just the Republicans at this point, by who you hate and who hates you back. He does very well there because he sees hate as a civic good, and that’s what I said in the book.
It is difficult to tell if a celebrity is getting attention or if they are just getting the attention because of their fame. But he was starting to do something. There was a lot of Republicans who were members of the conservative base that wanted to see a candidate go right at the president. And Trump at that point looked to them like the person who would do it.
HABERMAN: I think it’s instinct, I don’t think so. I think the saying is that the refusing to be precise is his calling card. I believe that he lucks into these situations because he didn’t have a better word. I would make the point, to your point, about how he ends up making himself a victim – you know, this was weeks before he proposed an entire ban on Muslims. So the idea that we were having a back-and-forth over, you know, whether he was open to or called for a Muslim registry when he then wanted to ban Muslims entering the U.S., it seems like a pretty meaningless distinction. And yet he generated a lot of controversy with it.
It wasn’t a very responsible thing to say. We wrote a story about it. I tried getting clarification from him on what exactly he was talking about. He wouldn’t give me a statement about it. I used an “imprecise word,” to describe what he had said in the story. It was used to drive a truck through the story. You know, he wrote a column about me on the topic of social media. And I think his tweet was, it’s so nice when media properly polices media.
The reporters in question said that they didn’t remember – or at least one of them said they didn’t, you know, recall this ever coming to pass and being true. Serge Kovaleski, my colleague who is restricted movement in one of his arms, was that reporter. Serge had covered Trump before the launch of the Trump shuttle, and he had interacted with him. It was probable that Trump remembered him because he started making fun of him at the rally and appeared to make fun of his arm. It was just a single day of news coverage after another about Trump reacting to himself, and it ate up the entire campaign.
DAVIES: So this is a process by which Trump offers a provocative, maybe muddled, statement about something and you can’t get clarification. There’s something he and his supporters can attack when it’s reported. So he ends up making himself the victim…
That was sort of vague and confusing to begin with. The question is, is this by design? Is this a strategy? He has an instinct for finding a path to Grievance in all of it.
There is a song called “DAVIES.” You did three interviews with him for the book, and that’s interesting, you did one with him. And in one of them, he said – he talked about Sidney Powell, the attorney on the Stop the Steal movement, who made some of the most outrageous claims. He was saying that she was facing legal action from voting machine manufacturers. Her biggest mistake, according to him, was being precise?
You obviously, as – over the years, had a lot of contact with Trump and a lot of on-the-record interviews and, I imagine, other kinds of conversations. And there were times he went after you, I mean, called you third rate and dishonest and all that stuff. You know, when I would – was reporting and a politician would get really angry about something I’d written, I would generally, you know, reach out to them and say, do you want to talk this over, have me explain why I wrote what I wrote? Would you try and patch things up with him or just let it blow over? Was there a single one?
HABERMAN: You just let it blow over because he treats everything as grist. There is a risk that he will use it as a weapon, you know, so you can’t have that kind of conversation with him.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
Donald Trump and Maggie Haberman: He understands the legal period, but when does he realize that the Bible is up? DAVIES: Donald Trump at a rally in Warren, Mich
Theirs are COMMENTS: OK. I wanted to play some sound from a recent rally. Donald Trump always was comforted to get back out on the road, surrounded by his supporters, and do his thing. And this is a piece of a rally recently in Warren, Mich. And it’s actually – I saw it on your feed. Somebody else posted it and you commented on it. And this is – you know, lately in the rallies, he’s been including music underneath certain parts of his talk. Let’s just listen.
DONALD TRUMP: I had heard that afterwards and, actually, on the late side. I was having meetings. I was also with Mark Meadows and others. I was not watching a show. I didn’t have the television on.
DAVIES: Donald Trump and our guest, Maggie Haberman, discussing Donald Trump. Clearly that’s – there’s a lot of reporting that says he was certainly watching television that afternoon, which you knew when you heard this. How do you deal with it when he tells you something that you just know isn’t true?
The Dalai Lama has said that the people who are doing things are doing something. A moving target, right? Protesters had been there. And they were kind of pretty violently cleared out ahead of that. Trump came up with a weird moment where he held the Bible up. The defense secretary and Milley were angry about it.
HABERMAN: That’s right. That’s correct. They felt tricked, and Milley and Esper felt that way as well. They were very, very angry. Milley got away when he peeled off. Kind of trapped with Trump, that’s what Esper ended up being.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
Comment on “The Psychiatrist’s Outburst” by D.C. Donald Trump in the Oval Office
DAVIES: In one of these interviews, he said to you that when he is giving a comment for an interview for print, as opposed to television, he will repeat it over and over again. What was his point?
The man is Asherman. It doesn’t beat it into my brain. But it certainly does show his emphasis on the thing. I just thought it was just a fascinating window into how he operates.
DAVIES: One of the other things he said in the interview was he – I think he turned to someone else in the room and said, I love being with her, meaning you. She is like a doctor to me. In your reporting, you point out that he treats everyone like his Psychiatrist. What are you talking about?
DAVIES: You post a lot on social networking sites. And when you do, whenever you tweet anything about him saying it, you know, you get grief, you know, certainly from his supporters but also from people on the left who think that, you know, you shouldn’t give any exposure to anything Donald Trump utters others who think that you are trading access for favorable treatment I’m not sure how they would think of that looking at your coverage. Some times, these are accompanied by a photo of Donald Trump in the Oval Office with his arm around you, and he’s grinning. You’re smiling, and he has his thumbs up sign. You don’t reply to these since you can’t do this all the time. What are you going to say to people who don’t understand what a White House correspondent is supposed to do? What do you want them to know?
Heberman is from the area. Sure. So there’s two things, actually, that I want to – I want to answer your question, and then I want to talk about that photo, if that’s OK by you…
The question on the picture – that picture – I’ll work backwards on this – was tweeted out by my colleague Mike Schmidt after yet another attack by Trump on me over a story that I wrote – I think it was a story in early 2018. I’m pretty sure it was connected to theMueller investigation. And I think it was – again, I – forgive me if I’m wrong on this, but I think it was the one about Michael Cohen and whether Trump’s former fixer was going to turn on him when Cohen was under investigation. And I basically wrote Cohen probably will. And Trump didn’t like that. And in fact, Trump’s attacks on me became an example of possible obstruction of justice in the Mueller report. Trump tweet said something like, I have nothing to do with her. I don’t know who she is. Mike thought that it was easy to lie to catch him. I’m going to tweet this picture. OK. In hindsight, it’s very foolish because no one knows what that picture is. I do not blame them. You know, when you’re seeing that picture, it looks like something other than what it is.
That picture was me going to the White House to visit a Trump aide when they had first – to talk to them for a story when they had first come into office. It was in the first few days. And the person said, the president, you know, wants to say hi or something. And I get – I was with a colleague, got brought to the Oval Office. Trump said, as he often does, let’s take a picture. Now, his goal in taking a picture, I think, is normally to have it for some purpose of his own. At the very last minute, he threw his arm around me very hard, and it really startled me, and I reacted with the look on my face how I reacted. Trump is interested in dominance. And that seemed to me that’s what it was like. So I don’t think that’s going to calm people down about what they think that is, but that is what that is.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
The daemons: a dialect that nobody sees in a writer’s work, and what we look at in their work
There is a dialect called daemons. It is nothing to me. I mean, you cover people and you’re in their proximity, and sometimes you get in a picture with them. You know, look at the content of your work. That’s what it’s – what you look at.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
The DAEMONS Case: Donald Trump in the midst of a terrible time — he wasn’t afraid of the Secret Service
HABERMAN: One of the reasons is that, at the time, there was a lot of bad attention to him by the public. When he gets bad press, Trump doesn’t like it. And, you know, if Kushner left, Ivanka was going to leave. You know, they were in a constant fight with Steve Bannon, and Steve Bannon was targeting them. Donald Trump’s son-in-law was working against Priebus, who he didn’t like. And Trump had kind of had enough. And he looked to his second chief of staff, John Kelly, and Don McGahn, the White House counsel, as a means to do what he didn’t want to do, which was get rid of them, and make this happen because Trump is incredibly one-on-one conflict averse and just didn’t want to deal with this himself. At least one time he was going to say they were leaving. It was going to be that they were going to leave the White House, so I don’t know if it was going to say they were fired or not. And Kelly wouldn’t let him send it because you don’t deal with your relatives that way. And then Trump would never have the conversation directly.
Heberman: It’s funny. The people from Vice President Mike Pence’s office firmly reject the idea that he was afraid of going to the car with the Secret Service because of their concern. If he left, the proceedings to certify the Electoral College were going to take so long that it would create an opening for Trump. But I don’t think his concern was Secret Service agents. I think his concern was what was happening at the White House.
DAVIES: Wow. It’s possible that the events of that day could have been affected if Pence had gotten in a limo that was going to take him. No?
There is a group of people called daemons. I want to explore the future here. You know, it’s been reported that Donald Trump is closely following the Jan. 6th committee’s work. What is the impact they have on his mood and how he feels about his future?
HABERMAN: Because the documents case connects more directly to him. Because there’s, you know, a clear throughline where he was being told to return these boxes, and he wouldn’t – and that there were three different efforts to recover documents, and they kept finding classified documents with each interaction. It’s difficult to blame someone else. I think he is careful not to go over certain lines in his speeches, but I believe he believes that he did.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
TRUMP Meets Daves: What Happens When America Comes to an Airport, Measuring the Quality of Life, and Tells Me What You Need
TRUMP said that thieves are allowed to go into stores and rob them, beating up the help and killing people. They kill people at will, even if it’s not necessary. There is no revenge. We are a nation whose once-revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess where you sit and wait for hours and then are notified that the plane won’t leave. They don’t know when you will be delivered or when they will deliver you to your destination. It’s a nation where ticket prices are through the roof. They don’t have the pilots to fly the plane. They don’t want to receive qualified air traffic controllers. And they don’t know what the hell they’re doing.
They called them “DAVIES.” Former President Trump at a rally in Warren, Mich. You remarked that the pivot from murder to flight cancellation was interesting. What’s going on with these rallies? Do you believe that it’s feeding him what he needs? What is going on with him?
There is a Hebrew word for “hell.” I don’t. And I’ve noticed that they’re getting much longer. And I think that’s partly that he’s still looking for the fix that he wants and testing out new material and so forth. But it was quite a pivot from, you know, American carnage to, you know, Delta is charging me too much and delaying me. It just all feels very unfocused right now. Maybe that will change when he declares a candidacy. But that’s how it feels right now.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
Does Donald Trump Understand the Legal Period of Hes in Times? The Case of a Man Who Was Sorry About His Mother and Getting a Limo
I covered machine politics for a long time in Philadelphia. And I dealt with a lot of people who did a lot of shady stuff. I saw them as more complicated as I got older. Like, nobody’s all one thing. Even the people who abused their office and went to jail tried to do good things in their public life, they didn’t have a lot of money but they did have lives and families. People are complicated than they seem. And I wonder, with all the time you have spent with covering Donald Trump, did you ever feel any empathy for him?
But he also had this other side of a relationship with her where he – you know, she calls him at one point and is trying to – she’s trying to get a taxi somewhere, and she can’t. And so he shows up driving his own limo, wearing the cap. That was an image that surprised me a little bit. I find with him, people who really like him tend to rate the behavior of him much higher than they would with someone else, because they’re not taking the bad behavior into account.
The man is called Heberman. Correct. You know, he asked how my mother was. You know, he – you know, he said he was sorry my parent passed, that kind of thing. This is not unusual human behavior. But with him, people tend to elevate it as if it’s, you know, an enormous act of kindness. People tend to lean on him when he’s capable of those things and that’s because he has a tendency to rationalize other behavior.
DAVIES: Yeah. I should just clarify, when I was saying before how, you know, I would see these sometimes corrupt politicians as human, it never softened my coverage. I mean, they’re still responsible for their actions. But you just see them in a more complex way.
A person named Herman. You do. I think that it’s the fact that voters think that these people are humans, right? So I think that seeing them through that lens is instructive as to what they’re seeing.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
The Making of Donald Trump and The Breaking of America: DAVIES on the FRESH Air-Producer: Danny Miller, Mike Bentham, Alexis Madden
DAVIES: The title of your book is “The Making of Donald Trump and The Breaking of America”, that’s the subtitle. And, you know, he spent seven years as a candidate, president and now ex-president, you know, breaking all kinds of norms of discourse and behavior and not really suffering any legal consequences for it. How did this affect American politics and how long has it lasted?
DAVIES: FRESH AIR’s executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Interviews and reviews are edited by the following people: Amy slait, Roberta sturrock, Lauren Krenzel, Theachaloner,Heidi Saman, and Susan Nyakundi. Molly Seavy-Nesper is a digital media producer. The show was directed by Therese Madden. For Terry Gross, I’m Dave Davies.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127470845/trump-understands-the-legal-peril-hes-in-times-journalist-maggie-haberman-says
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