Speaker 1: That even his own staffers have grown uneasy about the
Speaker 1: inner workings of the White House, especially as they relate
Speaker 1: to a certain presidential staffer. Natalie Harp Let's discuss with
Speaker 1: New York Times reporter Maggie Haverman.
Speaker 2: She is the one of the co authors of.
Speaker 1: The new book Regime Change. It is a New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller. And Maggie, great to see you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been too long. We haven't caught up in
Speaker 1: a while as well.
Speaker 2: It's like old.
Speaker 3: Times congratulations on everything.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, and you as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I saw what it's now eight
Speaker 1: weeks now on the bestseller lists.
Speaker 2: Wonderful.
Speaker 3: Thank you. No, Jonathan and I were, it's gone beyond
Speaker 3: anything that we could have hoped. We're immensely grateful that
Speaker 3: people are reading it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's hard work putting a book out, I know,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it can be so stressful. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're already getting hit up with the ideas.
Speaker 2: Hey, can we do a second book? You know, the
Speaker 2: term's not over yet.
Speaker 3: And that's not just we're not going to go over
Speaker 3: great with our with our with our families. But that's okay.
Speaker 3: Here we are.
Speaker 2: I hear you, I know you.
Speaker 1: There's so many different places to start, Maggie, and you've
Speaker 1: been doing terrific reporting obviously on the second term, so
Speaker 1: as Jonathan Swan.
Speaker 2: You guys are both a great team.
Speaker 1: I guess we I guess we could start with the
Speaker 1: Natalie Harp stuff. I don't know it it is sort
Speaker 1: of is it symbolic of a lot of the problems
Speaker 1: that they have inside the White House?
Speaker 2: Uh? And I think what is really interesting.
Speaker 1: These days is the way that I guess other staffers
Speaker 1: have been leaking and in some cases showing reporters photographs
Speaker 1: of things that indicate that there may be a problem
Speaker 1: with Natalie Harp and uh. And she's of course the
Speaker 1: young stafford who has been sort of at Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: side here everywhere he goes.
Speaker 2: There's this ms NOW reporting.
Speaker 1: And perhaps you picked up on some of this too
Speaker 1: when you have your conversations with Staffords that it.
Speaker 2: Took her a year.
Speaker 1: I think it was to get a security clearance, and
Speaker 1: you know, just to kind of start with the news,
Speaker 1: I guess you declined multiple times over more than a
Speaker 1: year to seek a routine security clearance that you know,
Speaker 1: and I remember from my White House.
Speaker 2: Days that was supposed to be a pretty important thing.
Speaker 1: What do you make of I guess the thing that
Speaker 1: is disturbing is, yes, you know, she waited a year
Speaker 1: to get a security clearance, and I guess maybe she
Speaker 1: had to be talked into it by Donald Trump. But
Speaker 1: the fact that the staffers are leaking this and they're
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with this?
Speaker 2: What have you made of that?
Speaker 3: So we don't have the same reporting that MS now
Speaker 3: does that you know. Our understanding is that she was
Speaker 3: granted a temporary clearance the way that I think almost
Speaker 3: half of the current staff were and possibly all of
Speaker 3: them on January twentieth when they came in, and that
Speaker 3: she then did fill out her paperwork. But again I
Speaker 3: haven't seen the timing of the paperwork. I don't know.
Speaker 3: We just done the same reporting on this. But the
Speaker 3: concerns about Heart predate this White House. Jonathan and I
Speaker 3: get in depth in the book about how you know
Speaker 3: she was with Trump as a handful of staffers were
Speaker 3: when he was at his lowest. She came in and
Speaker 3: I think it was either twenty twenty one or twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two she started out doing press things, you know,
Speaker 3: things with media response, and then at some point she
Speaker 3: started accompanying him on the golf course, providing him with
Speaker 3: pieces of positive news. She started carrying around a portable printer,
Speaker 3: which is why her colleagues on the campaign began referring
Speaker 3: to her as the human printer because she was battery
Speaker 3: operated and so forth. When she would go to court
Speaker 3: with him for the Alvin Bragg trial in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four Manhattan, which was the one case in which she
Speaker 3: was convicted, criminally convicted, she would sit separate from the
Speaker 3: rest of the staff. There were a lot of tensions always,
Speaker 3: and I know that people would like to attribute it
Speaker 3: to a food fight. You know, obviously Trump is running
Speaker 3: something of a court, and how people react to that
Speaker 3: court is and engage in that court and try to
Speaker 3: hockey for position is reel. We saw it in term one.
Speaker 3: It's much more pronounced now. But it was also that
Speaker 3: this secret service was alarmed in part because she had
Speaker 3: left him these letters in his personal spaces that Jonathan
Speaker 3: about the book, one of which said, you know you
Speaker 3: are all that matters to me.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: They were very emotional, and she is the most devoted
Speaker 3: of his aids. So the way that I look at it, Jim,
Speaker 3: is that she is the purest distillation of how Trump
Speaker 3: has totally remade the presidency for term two. That there
Speaker 3: were elements of this in term one. There were people
Speaker 3: who could play some version of this role, not like this,
Speaker 3: and this is really her entire role is being able
Speaker 3: to respond if he needs something. And you know, there
Speaker 3: have been other people who feel similar, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of comfort blanket roles for him. Boris Epstein, his top
Speaker 3: legal living wit won Michael Cohen in his day was
Speaker 3: one at Trump Teler. But we haven't seen this in
Speaker 3: the White House this way way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this goes way beyond Hope picks in the
Speaker 1: first term. This goes beyond like Johnny mcintee. I remember
Speaker 1: him during the first term, and is it because does
Speaker 1: any even have to do do you think with his
Speaker 1: cognitive state, his state of mind, why does he need
Speaker 1: this this devotion, this cult like devotion during this second
Speaker 1: second go round.
Speaker 3: I don't think it has anything to do with with
Speaker 3: you know, age or anything like that. I think other
Speaker 3: than that when people become sort of a more pronounced
Speaker 3: version of themselves, the older, they get loyalty as we know,
Speaker 3: has always been the coin of the realm. You know,
Speaker 3: so has a willingness to do what he wants in
Speaker 3: terms of, you know, not just being prepared to provide
Speaker 3: positive information. But she is a conduit not just for
Speaker 3: him to reach other people who he sees defending him
Speaker 3: on television, but for other people to reach him through
Speaker 3: you know, not going through the press office, not going
Speaker 3: through the chief of staff, not going through official channels,
Speaker 3: not going through the staff secretary in the White House.
Speaker 3: And that is how he wants it. He wants information fast,
Speaker 3: he wants This has always been who he is. You
Speaker 3: know this, you covered him. He has rebuilt this White
Speaker 3: House in a tremendously personalist way. It trickles down to everything.
Speaker 3: And so to me, this is just a this is
Speaker 3: a living, breathing example of that.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's really fascinating. And I guess, you know, getting
Speaker 1: to his state of mind and where he is right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, one of the things that has
Speaker 1: been really strange to me this time around.
Speaker 2: Is, you know, he falls asleep.
Speaker 1: He seems to have physical problems, the bruises on the hands.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't recall him ever falling asleep in
Speaker 1: the Oval office I covered him during the first time,
Speaker 1: or really anywhere. He was kind of an energetic guy.
Speaker 1: You can say whatever you want about him, and he
Speaker 1: seems to be obsessed with I mean it not seems
Speaker 1: he is obsessed with remaking the White House, remaking buildings
Speaker 1: in the nation's capital, putting his name on things. I mean,
Speaker 1: just the other day he was talking about flag poles
Speaker 1: and other stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, the gold stuff that's everywhere. Just to get
Speaker 2: to one of the questions.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you, yeah, please, maybe more than
Speaker 1: anything during this, Maggie, do you think that he's all there?
Speaker 3: I have no indication that he's I mean obviously that
Speaker 3: I'm not a doctor, and we don't see him as
Speaker 3: often as we used to. I mean, that is that
Speaker 3: is very true what you said at the top of
Speaker 3: this about just this this bit that you were asking about,
Speaker 3: you know, physical problems. I mean, it's not there's no question.
Speaker 3: I mean, the bruising on the hand has been going
Speaker 3: on for two years, maybe a little under. The answer
Speaker 3: that we've always gotten when we asked about it is
Speaker 3: that you know, it's from handshaking and because he you know,
Speaker 3: gets marks on his hand. That's always been a little
Speaker 3: hard to understand. He takes a very large aspirin regimen.
Speaker 3: You know, AskMen can be used as a blood dinner,
Speaker 3: but he is taking a dose that, according to what
Speaker 3: I have read from experts, is quite large. There is
Speaker 3: the swelling of the ankles, there's the as you said,
Speaker 3: there's the eye closure, which is either sleeping or transcendental
Speaker 3: meditation or god knows what, but the I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: he also then can open his eyes and it's clearly awake.
Speaker 3: I don't know and heard some of it. I don't
Speaker 3: know quite what that is. I do know when he
Speaker 3: was in court in twenty twenty four, he was sleeping
Speaker 3: at times and then other times he was just closing
Speaker 3: his eyes, and it seemed to be just sort of
Speaker 3: putting himself somewhere else. But he's eighty and they are
Speaker 3: not transparent about his health. He had been taking more
Speaker 3: frequent trips to Walter Reed, and they have released less
Speaker 3: and less information. He said that he was seen by
Speaker 3: twenty two specialists. I don't even know who that could be.
Speaker 3: But these are all valid questions for a president. But
Speaker 3: I will say that Jonathan and I spent an hour
Speaker 3: with him in for a fact checking interview for this book,
Speaker 3: and we did not detect really anything different with him
Speaker 3: in terms of his engagement with us, in terms of
Speaker 3: the questions that he was answering, in terms of how
Speaker 3: this interview was going. Obviously, he tells stories that last longer,
Speaker 3: and he speaks his speaking style is slower, which happens
Speaker 3: when people get older. I did not notice a difference.
Speaker 3: But again we see it. We only see what we see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's true. And it was during that was
Speaker 2: it during that interview where.
Speaker 1: He started talking about Mao and Stalin and Hitler and
Speaker 1: antilobehont and all.
Speaker 2: What was I mean? What was that? I mean? Because
Speaker 2: I do think this time around, and it does tie
Speaker 2: to the theme of your book that yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that there's there's there's a want to be authoritarian autocrat.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to be diplomatic about it,
Speaker 1: you could just say he aspires to be, you know,
Speaker 1: thought of in that category of really bad people.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means? What what what do
Speaker 2: you take away from it?
Speaker 3: Well, so what happened in that in that moment is
Speaker 3: and that also actually involved Natalie Harp. We had been
Speaker 3: asking for this interview for a while, and we wanted
Speaker 3: a fact checking interview. We did not want to do
Speaker 3: Open Mic Night with Donald Trump. And he's given very
Speaker 3: few of these longer interviews this term. You know, he
Speaker 3: did many of them last time, but it's been much
Speaker 3: more of a controlled environment this time. He does take
Speaker 3: lots of phone calls from reporters, but those calls last
Speaker 3: a pretty brief amount of time and he generally sets
Speaker 3: the terms of them. So we started asking through the
Speaker 3: Press office in January, and we were really at the
Speaker 3: end of our reporting process, with the exception of a
Speaker 3: couple of pieces, and the main one would be the
Speaker 3: Iran War, but which hadn't begun yet. We were getting installed.
Speaker 3: The Press Office was not, you know, not complying, or
Speaker 3: I should say not complying, but they just were telling
Speaker 3: us this wasn't going to happen. So finally we went
Speaker 3: directly to him and we both texted him, we called him.
Speaker 3: He didn't actually respond to us, he did direct to
Speaker 3: his comms team to set this interview up. And so
Speaker 3: we came in March sixteenth, and it's the seventeenth day
Speaker 3: of the war, and neither Jonathan nor I had been
Speaker 3: in the Oval office. Actually this term, we have a
Speaker 3: pretty big White House team. We're not in the pool
Speaker 3: as often as we used to be. The White House
Speaker 3: controls the outlets they're there, so it's really a censorial
Speaker 3: kind of overload with all of the gold everywhere. It
Speaker 3: was really I mean, remember he put like nothing up
Speaker 3: last time. I think there was like a Ruster two
Speaker 3: and some pictures on the credenza behind him. There is
Speaker 3: not an inch of that office that is not covered
Speaker 3: at this point. And we had heard that he was
Speaker 3: putting up these old Challenge coins and indeed there they were.
Speaker 3: So it's weird. Well, he's you know, he is obsessed
Speaker 3: with design. He was in New York. That's what he
Speaker 3: likes talking about. He likes talking about construction projects and
Speaker 3: building and so forth. But to the extent that he
Speaker 3: is very determined to make it hard to sort of
Speaker 3: not make his presence felt this time. That was the
Speaker 3: exact sample. So that was he started talking to us
Speaker 3: about maple trees, and he didn't have he wasn't showing
Speaker 3: us maps of the Middle East or anything like that.
Speaker 3: He held up these pictures and he said, I'm picking
Speaker 3: trees for the White House. Maple trees. I'm good at
Speaker 3: picking trees, something like that. Then there were the you know,
Speaker 3: models of the ballroom. There were pictures of the models
Speaker 3: of the ballroom, and that are the columns. These are
Speaker 3: for Rome. These are evocative of Athens. So about fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes in we asked him a question about power, because
Speaker 3: we knew that he had been telling people that he
Speaker 3: was the most powerful president there had been, and he
Speaker 3: had said publicly that you know, no other president would
Speaker 3: do half the shit I've done, and so that was
Speaker 3: the quote. So we asked him, were you the most
Speaker 3: powerful he was president there has been? You know, do
Speaker 3: you see it that way? And he sat and he
Speaker 3: thought about it for a second and he said, you know, Natalie,
Speaker 3: go get the I'm paraphrasing, but it was get the
Speaker 3: pages from the historian. And she goes off and she
Speaker 3: comes back with these three copies of a two pager.
Speaker 3: I get one, Jonathan gets one. Trump gets one. And
Speaker 3: Jonathan was to my right and he says, do you
Speaker 3: know who Gary Player is? And we weren't really sure
Speaker 3: where this was going. And Gary Player is a famous golfer.
Speaker 3: He said that Gary Player had a historian who had
Speaker 3: all these thoughts about Trump the Trump presidency and wrote
Speaker 3: them up and wanted Trump to see it. And the
Speaker 3: first paragraph was Donald Trump is the most powerful person
Speaker 3: who has ever walked the face of the earth. On paraphsing,
Speaker 3: but again that was really it. And then it goes
Speaker 3: on to describe what Trump calls the top ten of histories,
Speaker 3: conquerors and monsters, Attila the Hunt, Genghis Khan now Stalin,
Speaker 3: Napoleon Hitler, Alexander the Great, I don't remember if by
Speaker 3: Sibilian the Conqueror, Tamerlane, the Caesars, and Trump was the
Speaker 3: thesis here was that Trump was more powerful than these
Speaker 3: people because he has the US military, because of the
Speaker 3: ability to travel, and because he's willing to use his power.
Speaker 3: And he was not talking about it from any moral dimension.
Speaker 3: It was literally just power, and with the hyperboleas side,
Speaker 3: it was in terms of the most powerful ever to walk
Speaker 3: the planet. He was really presenting to us essentially the
Speaker 3: thesis of our book, which is this massive expansion of
Speaker 3: executive power and the prison through which we were looking
Speaker 3: at this first fourteen months back. So he is he
Speaker 3: is in our reporting, Jim focused on being you know,
Speaker 3: a capital G grade man of history. You know, he
Speaker 3: is determined to be remembered. That is also what the
Speaker 3: monuments to sell for about. But that is not necessarily
Speaker 3: what voters elected him to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to bring in our Tommy Christopher
Speaker 1: here in just a moment.
Speaker 2: But just to button that up. You know, Maggie, you
Speaker 2: and I both are from Earth one. We understand what
Speaker 2: you know. You know how they things work.
Speaker 1: When great presidents come along in the United States, we
Speaker 1: build monuments to them, we remember them, usually after they're gone.
Speaker 1: Trump wants to do this while he's alive. Do you
Speaker 1: have any insight as to why that is? Because I mean,
Speaker 1: to me, I'm not there every day. I'm not reporting
Speaker 1: on him anymore, day in and day out. It just
Speaker 1: seems totally nuts to me. It's just and I you know,
Speaker 1: I do my thing now. I don't have to hear
Speaker 1: the standards office who says, how can you say he's
Speaker 1: totally nuts? But that just strikes me as totally nuts.
Speaker 1: What are your insights into why he does this?
Speaker 3: I don't think I don't think it's I don't think
Speaker 3: it's nuts because I actually think it's completely consistent with
Speaker 3: who he is. It's just he's always been Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it's like I just look at it slightly differently.
Speaker 3: There's absolutely no precedent in the US for a sitting
Speaker 3: president to dedicate monuments to themselves. In fact, presidents have
Speaker 3: historically not done that when people have suggested it. And
Speaker 3: in the case of the Kennedy Center, that was a
Speaker 3: a congressionally created memorial to an assassinated president, and it
Speaker 3: was partly intended to evoke and honor what John Kennedy
Speaker 3: focused on as part of his rebuke of control of
Speaker 3: the arts in the Cold War by by autocratic countries.
Speaker 3: In fact, it was about that, you know, we are
Speaker 3: we the US capital, We you know, are are inviting
Speaker 3: of of culture and and we are interested in different
Speaker 3: forms of art. And so putting his name on the
Speaker 3: Kennedy Center is, you know, is one aspect and and
Speaker 3: that really that really infuriated and upset a lot of
Speaker 3: people who have been cocted with Kennedy Center of over
Speaker 3: a long period of time. He took control of the
Speaker 3: board early on. He started talking about that during the
Speaker 3: transition and our reporting, and we get into this in
Speaker 3: the book. He has always put his name on everything.
Speaker 3: One of the one of the underappreciated and little remembered
Speaker 3: facts of his time in New York is as a
Speaker 3: businessman well as a real estate developer. I should say
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties he at least one occasion sued
Speaker 3: someone who or or an entity that had the name
Speaker 3: Trump on their storefront, you know, for like some kind
Speaker 3: of an infringement. It was just you know, it's somebody
Speaker 3: else's name. And he has used lawsuits, and he has
Speaker 3: put his name on his own tower, and he watched
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen as his name was taken down from
Speaker 3: buildings and in New York, he watched the City of
Speaker 3: New York take back possession of a golf course that
Speaker 3: he at least from the city in the Bronx. He
Speaker 3: actually ended up winning that back in a court fight.
Speaker 3: So you know, in our reporting, it's not just consistent
Speaker 3: with who he is and who's always been, which is
Speaker 3: seeing himself as separate from this presidency, but it's doing
Speaker 3: everything he can to make sure that that he can't
Speaker 3: be a waste this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can't be a racist. I think that's a big
Speaker 1: part of Let's bring in Tommy Christopher. Tommy does our
Speaker 1: daily newsletter now Former Media reporter but also former colleague
Speaker 1: of Maggie Abram.
Speaker 2: We were all colleagues. Yeah, that's right here and there
Speaker 2: over the years. And Tommy, did you want to what
Speaker 2: were some of your questions?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: First of all, I was such an honor to talk
Speaker 5: to you, Maggie. I want to dive right in because
Speaker 5: I know we don't have much time, and I do.
Speaker 5: I just had two questions that I want to hope
Speaker 5: I can get to them. Yeah. My first question is
Speaker 5: I've been wanting to ask you this. Trump has attacked
Speaker 5: you on many occasions and I hate to say it
Speaker 5: out loud, but we're all reporters here. He called you maggot,
Speaker 5: which is one of the most disgusting things I could
Speaker 5: think of the call of person. And I wanted to
Speaker 5: know have you confronted him about that and did he apologize?
Speaker 5: That's my first question.
Speaker 3: No, and no, and I don't I don't care he
Speaker 3: can say like never never came back.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 3: I mean it's I would rather hear him answer my
Speaker 3: questions about what I want before one instead of argue
Speaker 3: about you know, the name calling, which is is expansive
Speaker 3: and it's.
Speaker 5: Like you've known him for so long and he's known
Speaker 5: you for some I mean professionally, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just but you know what props to you for
Speaker 5: being able to not personalize.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not. It's just we have a job to do.
Speaker 3: He's going to do what he's going to do, and
Speaker 3: like I would rather use time to get information a questions.
Speaker 5: Let me be the first to say, for you stop
Speaker 5: that ship.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 5: So here's my other question, because I heard you talking
Speaker 5: to Jim and you know, he said, you know you,
Speaker 5: I hear you saying that you haven't seen a change
Speaker 5: in Trump's cognition. But I mean you're I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not a doctor, So like that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: That's yeah, so you have you have eyes and ears.
Speaker 5: You know, we all see Trump. He says crazy stuff
Speaker 5: all the time. He says race stuff, He tells insaying
Speaker 5: lies like hey, guys, remember that time all the TVs
Speaker 5: turned off because the wind stopped?
Speaker 3: So how is that different from what we were saying
Speaker 3: ten years I mean, I'm really being serious. This is
Speaker 3: my question.
Speaker 5: You're you're getting ahead of my question, which is right?
Speaker 5: I hear you're saying. Is it's not that he's not crazy,
Speaker 5: that he's as crazy as he's always been.
Speaker 3: I'm not doing a diagnostic, but I am saying that
Speaker 3: that this is he is exactly who he has always been,
Speaker 3: and he is exactly who you know I have always covered.
Speaker 3: I think is exactly who you guys have always covered.
Speaker 3: Do I think that he is eighty? And that shows yes,
Speaker 3: I do. I mean, that's but that's a different question.
Speaker 3: You know, the question that gets asked about cognition tends
Speaker 3: to be clinical about him, and I am not equipped
Speaker 3: to answer that. What I can say is that in
Speaker 3: my conversation with him in UH in the Oval office
Speaker 3: with Jonathan, and it was a small group, by the way.
Speaker 3: I mean often he and Jim knows this. He often
Speaker 3: would bring if you would go interview him, there would
Speaker 3: be like a phalanx of aids. He would roll very deep.
Speaker 3: It was just it was us and Caroline Leavitt and
Speaker 3: Stephen Jung and Natalie Hart. That was it. And so
Speaker 3: I didn't if there was opportunity, he wasn't. He wasn't
Speaker 3: hamming it up for other people, which you often would
Speaker 3: see in those situations. I really didn't detect a difference.
Speaker 3: I do think that that the insults are you know,
Speaker 3: far and wide, and he's doing it with more people,
Speaker 3: and I think that he whatever filter we write, we
Speaker 3: write about this in the book, whatever filter he had
Speaker 3: is pretty much gone. And some of that and some
Speaker 3: of that is you know, at least familiar to to age,
Speaker 3: at least from my experience, you know, the people who
Speaker 3: are you know, seventy five plus. But what that means
Speaker 3: for a broader question, I don't know, other than the
Speaker 3: fact that there's a legitimate conversation I have about whether
Speaker 3: eighty year olds or or or are wise to you know,
Speaker 3: keep electing.
Speaker 5: But I have two seconds to ask one more question.
Speaker 5: When we're on the subject, what do you make of
Speaker 5: the fact that he keeps bragging about passing this cognitive
Speaker 5: test that is basically for people who have had head injuries,
Speaker 5: And why doesn't anybody ever confront him about that and say, sir,
Speaker 5: this is not an IQ.
Speaker 3: Test, so the Mocha test Jiman, Yeah, I mean he's
Speaker 3: been talking about that since twenty twenty, and I don't
Speaker 3: know on the on the confronting him piece, there are
Speaker 3: so many things that people don't ask him about. And
Speaker 3: part of that is because my part of why he
Speaker 3: doesn't get asked. Is because they have taken control of
Speaker 3: the White House, the White House, which did not happen before.
Speaker 5: We lose Maggie there, Maggie, you know what, somebody doesn't
Speaker 5: want her to answer that question.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's it. But she froze for a second. There,
Speaker 2: Maggie froze for a second.
Speaker 5: Dog on it. This is and you know right now
Speaker 5: she's telling all I just oh, ship, Jimmy, you're frozen too.
Speaker 1: Now, guys know I'm here. I think we lost Maggie.
Speaker 1: Let's see him at her back in Maggie. Do we
Speaker 1: lose you there?
Speaker 2: Ah? I guess they say the curse of the live stream.
Speaker 2: We might have lost Maggie there.
Speaker 3: So you ask a real question and instead of getting
Speaker 3: back up from someone, it's you know.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're saying the same thing I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Yes. And this is the best part of the interview.
Speaker 5: Right here.
Speaker 1: Damn, she jumped back in Let's see here. She might
Speaker 1: have jumped back in here there, there you are, Maggie.
Speaker 3: Hey, all right, I'll try to finish that answer very quickly.
Speaker 3: Can you hear me? Okay, yeah, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 3: what happened. Sorry, my wife, I got weird, which keeps
Speaker 3: happening the the You don't get back up when you
Speaker 3: ask a real question anymore, and so instead you have
Speaker 3: like an influencer that's like, or you know, why are
Speaker 3: you so handsome? Or whatever. One of the things that
Speaker 3: I would love if somebody asked him about is why
Speaker 3: do you keep saying that NATO has never done anything
Speaker 3: for the US? The one time that art of the
Speaker 3: five has been invoked was nine to eleven. I mean
Speaker 3: we're a couple of weeks out from the twenty fifth anniversary.
Speaker 3: It's you know, the biggest number of deaths and destruction
Speaker 3: was in the city that Trump comes from. There are
Speaker 3: a lot of questions that I wish people would follow
Speaker 3: up on with him. The MOCA is not high on
Speaker 3: my list, but not because I'm not interested in his health.
Speaker 3: If there is an area of failure on the reporting
Speaker 3: on our part in this book, it is his health.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't for lack of trying. It's just that
Speaker 3: it is a huge black box. But hopefully we will
Speaker 3: at some point learn more about presidential health.
Speaker 1: And just very quickly, Matt, you before you go, and
Speaker 1: I know we've gone over so your publisher will have
Speaker 1: to forgive me. But I do want to show this
Speaker 1: one quote from the book that I think is so
Speaker 1: vitally important from regime change, and if we can just
Speaker 1: put it up on screen and show it says domestically,
Speaker 1: there would be no piece. I was the hunted and
Speaker 1: now I'm the hunter, Trump told reporters on the White
Speaker 1: House lawn in June twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: And the hunter didn't.
Speaker 1: Think twice about ordering up DOJ investigations of his enemies
Speaker 1: or using every.
Speaker 2: Tool available to get to his to get his own way.
Speaker 1: Maggie, that that part of the book I think speaks
Speaker 1: volumes about where we are. I mean, that's we spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about his cognitive stuff. He's
Speaker 1: cognitively well enough to carry out this this era of retribution.
Speaker 3: I do need to run. But I will say that,
Speaker 3: you know, there are a couple of defining characteristics of
Speaker 3: this administration, and the bullying campaigns across industries and the
Speaker 3: specific retribution campaigns coming from the DOJ, you know, are
Speaker 3: not like anything that I can recall in the modern presidency.
Speaker 3: There is just no post Watergate buffer between DJ and
Speaker 3: the White House anymore.
Speaker 1: No way exactly, that's right, all right, Well, the book
Speaker 1: is Regime Change inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Maggie, thank you so much, and thank you all right.
Speaker 1: By that was Maggie Heerman, and just she's just done
Speaker 1: an amazing job with this book. She and Jonathan's won
Speaker 1: eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Anybody
Speaker 1: in the publishing world will tell you that is enviable territory.
Speaker 2: So good for Maggie.
Speaker 1: And apologies for a couple of little technical hiccups there.
Speaker 1: Want to quickly go to to stay on the story
Speaker 1: of Natalie Harp and how she may have found her
Speaker 1: way into Trump's good graces and into this very close
Speaker 1: relationship with the President of the United States. Let's bring
Speaker 1: in Juliet Jesky of Decoding Fox News. Juliette, it is
Speaker 1: great to see you.
Speaker 2: As always.
Speaker 1: We were just we were peppering Maggie with lots of
Speaker 1: questions there, and as a very good reporter.
Speaker 2: She's stuck to the reporting of her book.
Speaker 1: But you know, even in our conversation with Maggie about
Speaker 1: one aspect of the book where he talks about how
Speaker 1: he thinks he's in the same category as people like
Speaker 1: Mao and Hitler and so apparently Natalie Harp was.
Speaker 2: In the room for that. So Natalie her she was
Speaker 2: sort of like the Forrest Gump of this administration. She's here,
Speaker 2: she's there, She's everywhere.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that you've been reporting on Juliette,
Speaker 1: and it's great to see the job you do it
Speaker 1: to coding Fox News is terrific. You've been looking at
Speaker 1: how she may have found herself in the good graces
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump by simply being an election denier like him,
Speaker 1: an election denier on steroids.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I covered OAN one American News Network, which is the
Speaker 7: channel that she used to work for.
Speaker 6: She used to be a correspondent. She had her own show.
Speaker 7: Somebody at OEN gave someone that young because she would
Speaker 7: have been like twenty nine thirty her own show right
Speaker 7: which she hosted. And I was covering OEN. She was
Speaker 7: not my focus. She was one of many people I covered.
Speaker 7: And when she started coming back in the news again,
Speaker 7: I went back through my archives from my capstone. This
Speaker 7: is all from grad school. All the clips I have
Speaker 7: of her are from five years ago, and nearly everything
Speaker 7: that she said had her main focus was election denialism.
Speaker 7: And it was every single show she would put at
Speaker 7: least seventy five percent of her focus on just talking
Speaker 7: about election denialism.
Speaker 6: And she didn't stop at just.
Speaker 7: Georgia and Arizona and Michigan. She would start talking like
Speaker 7: California was rigged, New Hampshire was rigged, any state was rigged,
Speaker 7: and she was completely committed. And another thing that she
Speaker 7: did that I thought was interesting is she'd always say.
Speaker 6: President Trump, President Trump, and of course he wasn't president
Speaker 6: at that time. This is twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, it's so true. And I think we
Speaker 2: have one of these clips to.
Speaker 1: Show the viewers where she's talking, you know, just speaking
Speaker 1: in Trumpian election denialism.
Speaker 2: Let's play a.
Speaker 4: Clip of that Colson Senate in twenty twenty two and
Speaker 4: the White Else in twenty twenty four. If we don't
Speaker 4: act on the fact that we actually did win the
Speaker 4: White House and the Senate in twenty twenty, we shouldn't
Speaker 4: be afraid to say that because it's true, and who
Speaker 4: exactly are these people? Will take a look at the
Speaker 4: breakdown the one hundred and one thousand, seven hundred and
Speaker 4: eighty nine obsolete voter files that will be removed include
Speaker 4: sixty seven thousand, two hundred and eighty six voter files
Speaker 4: associated with the National Change of Address form submitted to
Speaker 4: the US Postal Service.
Speaker 2: And she goes on about two hundred and twenty scent.
Speaker 1: This takes me back, Juliette, to the weird old days
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, where you know, Trump leaves office
Speaker 1: and disgrace we've had January six, and yet there are
Speaker 1: still people who will go on OAAN and talk about
Speaker 1: this nutty election denialism stuff as if Donald Trump actually
Speaker 1: won that election.
Speaker 2: And he still talks about this to this day.
Speaker 1: So he obviously has convinced himself of a lie. I mean,
Speaker 1: he used to know that it was a lie, and
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what it is now
Speaker 1: that's going on in his head. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: this is how this is how she got on his
Speaker 1: radar screen.
Speaker 7: I guess she did a number of things that were
Speaker 7: really nutty when she was on that show, because I
Speaker 7: was always taken with her, because she was very striking
Speaker 7: with the platinum hair, and she's very pretty, and she
Speaker 7: always had the nice outfits on and for that network,
Speaker 7: that was a little unusual. How polished she was. And
Speaker 7: she would go on and she would weave in Bible
Speaker 7: quotes and quotes from gospel songs and she'd say, and Trump.
Speaker 7: So she'd go writing too, and the apostle Mark said,
Speaker 7: and then she would give this quote from the apostle Mark,
Speaker 7: and then she'd go and remember what Trump said, and
Speaker 7: it was like what the And it was just there
Speaker 7: was no line. It was like Jesus Trump, Jesus Trump, Trump,
Speaker 7: Jesus Trump Jesus. And it was very much cultish. I
Speaker 7: called her the other day the personification of Maga, like
Speaker 7: she is the ultimate Maga and so and the other
Speaker 7: thing that was odd in her beginning, she had this intro.
Speaker 7: They didn't have a lot of money at oan very
Speaker 7: low budget. Yeah, and they would show the pictures of
Speaker 7: her in the White House and and then there'd be
Speaker 7: pictures of Trump and again he was not the president,
Speaker 7: So why are you showing It would be like if
Speaker 7: I had a promo for my show and Biden woil.
Speaker 6: Is go on the screen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for no reason.
Speaker 6: You know, It's like very odd.
Speaker 7: And she did seem like desperately obsessed with Trump.
Speaker 6: And again this is even five years ago.
Speaker 7: So and she attacked Ruby Freeman, who was that poor
Speaker 7: uh oh, Yeah, she went on this whole thing about
Speaker 7: Ruby Freeman and how Ruby Freeman was part of the
Speaker 7: conspiracy to rig Georgia.
Speaker 6: And of course this was the election.
Speaker 1: Worker in Georgia who I think she ended up suing
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani and there was that whole saga.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she got a lot of money out of Rudy
Speaker 7: ju Judy because the court sided with her because she
Speaker 7: hadn't done anything wrong. So yeah, she it was like
Speaker 7: the most and I mean I watch Fox, I watch
Speaker 7: people who love Trump all the time on Fox, and
Speaker 7: she's probably the most extreme maga person I've ever seen
Speaker 7: on camera ever. She's just all the way in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that takes me to where we
Speaker 1: are today. And when you see, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the things like Maggie Haberman has been reporting about these
Speaker 1: weird letters that she leaves around, you know, professing her
Speaker 1: devotion to him. And then there's the CNN reporting about
Speaker 1: her climbing in the back of an suv or the
Speaker 1: trunk or.
Speaker 2: Whatever it was, so she's in the motorcade.
Speaker 1: This apparently happened in twenty twenty three, and the most
Speaker 1: recent thing I'm seeing the MS NOW reporting where I
Speaker 1: guess she's stalled on getting a security clearance for a while.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just weird, strange behavior, and apparently Trump
Speaker 1: himself had to intervene and get her to fill out
Speaker 1: the forms. It's just it's really strange. But as Maggie
Speaker 1: was saying, there's never been anybody like this before, Like
Speaker 1: this goes way beyond Hopicks, This goes way beyond some
Speaker 1: of the others.
Speaker 7: In the first term, it's it's I know, she ties
Speaker 7: in she's a cancer survivor, and apparently she still has cancer,
Speaker 7: I believe, but she's using a treatment that's kept it
Speaker 7: at bay. And she attributes Trump's Right to Try program
Speaker 7: to saving her life. But there were other programs like
Speaker 7: that that already existed well before Trump renamed it and
Speaker 7: called it Right to Try, because I researched that before.
Speaker 7: So it's a bit odd that she attributes solely Trump
Speaker 7: and Trump alone to saving her life, which that's strange
Speaker 7: because like, there was a doctor involved, and you know,
Speaker 7: there were probably other healthcare workers who were involved. She
Speaker 7: also gave a very odd speech where she said, oh,
Speaker 7: people wanted me to die, and I'm like, you're in
Speaker 7: your twenties, are you a cancer?
Speaker 6: Nobody wants you to I mean, nobody wants you to die.
Speaker 7: Ever you cancer, But like, I don't understand where that's
Speaker 7: coming from.
Speaker 6: And I've seen interviews with.
Speaker 2: Her brother and her victimhood.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's very it's very odd. Her whole entire behavior
Speaker 7: is strange. And I was taken with her because she
Speaker 7: was kind of her own thing on OA.
Speaker 6: Nobody else. There are other people that were obsessed with
Speaker 6: the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 7: I would say that was primary a huge topic on
Speaker 7: the network at that time, but no one showed that
Speaker 7: level of just complete obsession devotion. Like she really wouldn't
Speaker 7: talk about anything else, and she kept having the same
Speaker 7: guests on over and over and they'd be, Oh, you
Speaker 7: work for the Make America Great pack, you know, and
Speaker 7: you work for Trump's campaign.
Speaker 6: There was no lie.
Speaker 7: I mean I joked that she was like the SNL
Speaker 7: version of Fox. I mean, it was just there was
Speaker 7: no attempt at like we're going to act.
Speaker 2: Had to clean it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had to basically stop doing it and run
Speaker 1: their our own corrections and every it's just been and
Speaker 1: I think we have another clip to show we should
Speaker 1: show another one of these clips, because you know, to me,
Speaker 1: it just typifies you know, if people were wondering how
Speaker 1: did she get in.
Speaker 4: But they wouldn't talk November third, or, as you said
Speaker 4: so perfectly, November fourth, because as we know, President Trump
Speaker 4: won November third.
Speaker 7: We'll just say I'm the only candidate in this race
Speaker 7: to say that President Trump one in twenty twenty, and
Speaker 7: I will work my artists every single day to ensure
Speaker 7: we get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 4: Awesome, you're right, Trump one. We'll see you later, Caroline.
Speaker 4: How complicit is Bill Barr in the crime of the Century? Well,
Speaker 4: Barr and McConnell started talking about this plan of action
Speaker 4: or non action mid November, even as thousands of witnesses
Speaker 4: we're still coming forward signing under penalty of perjury, Alpha
Speaker 4: davits testifying to what they saw go wrong on election
Speaker 4: night and election week. Guess and members of the Biden
Speaker 4: campaign and the DNC we're emailing before and after the election.
Speaker 3: You guessed it.
Speaker 4: They're friends at Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 7: She was like accusing every Yeah, sorry, go ahead, She's
Speaker 7: accusing everybody all the time. Yeah, And that was I
Speaker 7: barely scratched the surface because I found out because she
Speaker 7: was out my focus. So I had labeled all of
Speaker 7: my oan hours just an one through eighty, no kidding,
Speaker 7: And a couple of months ago when I first put
Speaker 7: the first montage together, that just went viral again because
Speaker 7: I've posted it twice on social media. I've I just
Speaker 7: I reposted it because she she became trending again. I'm like,
Speaker 7: I'm just gonna put that video back up, and it completely.
Speaker 6: It was so huge, that became.
Speaker 7: A trending topic on Twitter or x whatever, and it
Speaker 7: said like Natalie Harp blah blah blah, and it was
Speaker 7: quoting my video and I was like, oh, I can't
Speaker 7: believe I'm a trending topic. But anyway, I had to
Speaker 7: go through all eighty of those hours and just scan
Speaker 7: for her because when I was in grad school, I
Speaker 7: got whatever I could get because I didn't have a
Speaker 7: normal schedule and I couldn't use DVR for I had
Speaker 7: to get it live, so and whenever I would get
Speaker 7: home from my internship or from classes, I would.
Speaker 6: Just slap it and get away in get it now.
Speaker 7: So sometimes with her, sometimes another show, and I purposely
Speaker 7: tried to mix it up so I got a variety.
Speaker 7: So I had to go through all eighty hours and
Speaker 7: just manually put them in eyemovie where you can pull
Speaker 7: the whole thing out, and just whenever I saw her face,
Speaker 7: I'm like, Natalie cut and then just to the end cut.
Speaker 7: And then I made a separate Natalie list of clips.
Speaker 7: And I still have hours and hours and hours to
Speaker 7: go through with a fine tooth comb, which I'm planning
Speaker 7: to do because when I put all of them together
Speaker 7: in one giant file and I searched for election, it
Speaker 7: showed up three hundred and thirty six times in the transcript.
Speaker 7: Iran showed up like eighty times. I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker 7: having a field day with this. But it's you know,
Speaker 7: I have a regular job called decoding Fox News. It
Speaker 7: already kills me.
Speaker 1: So this this will probably be happening to sounds like
Speaker 1: something that would send you right over the edge.
Speaker 6: It's just because what was it funny about it?
Speaker 7: Is at least with Fox because Fox was sued, they
Speaker 7: are a little careful. Oh and they're like Facebook totally
Speaker 7: fixed this election.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, Well, and she's talking about this Bill Barr
Speaker 1: and Mitch McConnell working together. I'm like, I don't remember
Speaker 1: that ever happening, but I guess you can just like
Speaker 1: make stuff up.
Speaker 2: And that's what Donald Trump does. Donald Trump makes stuff up.
Speaker 1: And I can see him sitting in a dark room
Speaker 1: with the TV on and feeling very upset about losing
Speaker 1: the election and trying to figure out how do I,
Speaker 1: you know, line my way back into power. And it
Speaker 1: almost as it's almost as though she left the breadcrumbs
Speaker 1: for him to follow, to continue to talk about how
Speaker 1: he had this this big lie to talk about how
Speaker 1: he actually won the twenty twenty election, which he just
Speaker 1: kept saying over and over again until he got the
Speaker 1: Republican Party to say it ye and make that lie
Speaker 1: their lie.
Speaker 2: And it's just one of the damnedest things. It just
Speaker 2: really is.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, to me, you know, and this
Speaker 1: goes back to what I was talking about with Maggie Haberman,
Speaker 1: is it really typifies it. And it underlines the difference
Speaker 1: between term one and term two, that you can have
Speaker 1: this these sort of cult like people around the President
Speaker 1: of the United States. There wasn't as much of that
Speaker 1: the first time around.
Speaker 7: Well, and it scares me too, because I feel like
Speaker 7: he's trying to do the same thing with the war
Speaker 7: with Iran, he just says, oh, the strait is open,
Speaker 7: the straight we've got, we've got the straight closed, or
Speaker 7: you know, he just changes every day. He says, we're
Speaker 7: gonna we're gonna destroy them with you know, we're gonna
Speaker 7: unleash fury and destroy their country. And then he doesn't
Speaker 7: do that, and then he says it again, and then
Speaker 7: it's like every day it's like, are you just trying
Speaker 7: to bluff your way through a war?
Speaker 2: You can that is? That is what he's doing. That
Speaker 2: is it's.
Speaker 6: No, go ahead, No, it's just insane.
Speaker 7: And I'm like and again, because he surrounded himself with
Speaker 7: people like Natalie Harp who just echo, yes, yes, you're correct,
Speaker 7: You're amazing. It's like when you watch one of the
Speaker 7: cabinet meetings and they go around the table at the
Speaker 7: cabinet meeting and the yeah, they're like you, I just
Speaker 7: want to say, thank you so much for hiring me
Speaker 7: to do this work for you.
Speaker 1: For you, and they have to outdo one another when
Speaker 1: it comes to sucking up to them. It's so so
Speaker 1: creepy and crazy. The other thing I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: ask you about before you go is because you do
Speaker 1: devote so much coverage to Fox and what they're saying
Speaker 1: and what they're reporting. I shouldn't say reporting what they're
Speaker 1: dishing out over there on that channel. How are they
Speaker 1: covering Natalie Harp? Are they ignoring it? Are they they're
Speaker 1: ignoring it?
Speaker 6: No, kidding, agnoring it. I have not seen or mentioned
Speaker 6: on anything. No, because you know I would put it together.
Speaker 6: I would put it together. I'd have both of those
Speaker 6: clips in a clip and I'd be like, ah no,
Speaker 6: because that's what I love to do. I love to
Speaker 6: get them in something like that. They have not.
Speaker 7: As far as the shows that I cover, I don't
Speaker 7: cover everything I cover. The shows are the biggest audience
Speaker 7: Primetime and the five and of Fox and Friends. I
Speaker 7: have not seen one mention of her yet because I
Speaker 7: don't think Fox wants to touch this because it is I.
Speaker 1: Know Water said something about ASoft, did he says something
Speaker 1: about osof the other day.
Speaker 6: He might he might have.
Speaker 7: I might have missed if Jesse Waters said because I
Speaker 7: have been focused on her materials so much in the
Speaker 7: past couple of hours, the past couple of days, because
Speaker 7: I'm trying to get catch up. I'm like, literally gonna
Speaker 7: probably spend the next twenty four hours going through everything
Speaker 7: that I have.
Speaker 6: Because it's just been such a roller coaster.
Speaker 7: But I Jesse Waters might have and I might have
Speaker 7: missed it, But I have not seen yet anyone mentioned
Speaker 7: her on Fox and.
Speaker 6: Wow because I don't. I don't think they know what
Speaker 6: to do with it, because.
Speaker 2: It's they don't know what to do.
Speaker 7: They want to draw more attention to this twisted relationship
Speaker 7: with a woman who's thirty five with an eighty year old.
Speaker 1: And well, and they also feed into the cult uh
Speaker 1: personality that that that exists around Donald Trump. That I mean,
Speaker 1: they're part of that machinery. They're they're part of that
Speaker 1: propaganda that churns this out on a daily basis. But
Speaker 1: I will say, you know, just before you go, like
Speaker 1: I did see Laura Ingram going after John Ossoff, they
Speaker 1: do seem to have a bone to pick with John Osoen.
Speaker 1: They seem to be worried about John Ossoff.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like a.
Speaker 1: Tell every now and then, every once in a while
Speaker 1: they'll start talking about a prominent Democrat and it's not.
Speaker 2: Like ooh the squad or ooh AOC.
Speaker 1: You could tell that there's certain politicians every once in
Speaker 1: a while that they feel like they have to get
Speaker 1: you know, up in arms over because this person poses
Speaker 1: some sort of political threat to their world order.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a different thing.
Speaker 7: Yes, John Ossoff has kind of matured as into a
Speaker 7: stronger politician.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Incredibly good looking man, he's well spoken.
Speaker 7: He is successful in a purple state, which that's huge, huge,
Speaker 7: And they are scared of him now and so they
Speaker 7: will try to use anything against him. And I think
Speaker 7: it's been amazing to watch his transformation of the past
Speaker 7: few years and have watch how he's gotten stronger and
Speaker 7: more confident and who knows what his future holds. But yes, Fox,
Speaker 7: if they fear you, they talk about you much like
Speaker 7: they talk about you a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just like, keep coming, guys, where do I
Speaker 1: send the check?
Speaker 7: Thank you you and and and the other thing is
Speaker 7: Rosie o'donald. For some bizarre reason, they just have to
Speaker 7: any excuse. They just talk about Rosie o'donnald. And I'm like,
Speaker 7: she's laughing all the way to the bank too, because
Speaker 7: he's like, thank you.
Speaker 6: But yeah, for like no reason.
Speaker 7: Uh, especially yeah, for like no reason, uh, especially Jesse Waters.
Speaker 7: But I do think the Jesse Waters Uh, Jim Acosta.
Speaker 7: The situation is a little because when he's gone, they
Speaker 7: don't do it. When then they have a substitute host,
Speaker 7: suddenly you're not you're not You're not included in his
Speaker 7: little nightly look at these look at these terrible journalists. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, and and I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, thanks a voodoo doll of me on the road
Speaker 1: on family vacations. So very strange to think about, but
Speaker 1: he does. My goodness, well, Julia, I'm so glad you
Speaker 1: came on. We've been I've been meaning to do this
Speaker 1: for some time. And when I saw some of the
Speaker 1: compilations you were doing of Natalie harp Over at AN,
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, this is something that the public needs
Speaker 1: to know more about. This is not She did not
Speaker 1: just like apply for a job as an intern or
Speaker 1: something and then get elevated to this position. She auditioned
Speaker 1: for this job on o an is the way it
Speaker 1: looks to be. But yeah, great work as always.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Moore is coming to more's coming. I'll be posting as
Speaker 7: I go through all of it.
Speaker 2: A little teas there, very good.
Speaker 1: I check out Juliette on Decoding Fox News on substack
Speaker 1: everywhere else. It's terrific stuff. Thanks Juliette, good to see you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me all right, really appreciate it. I
Speaker 1: do want to dive into a couple of topics before
Speaker 1: we go. One is the fact that I guess my
Speaker 1: former colleague Scott Jennings wants to be the White House
Speaker 1: Press secretary.
Speaker 2: Have you seen this? This was in Politico Playbook this morning.
Speaker 2: He's making it.
Speaker 1: This is Dashah Burns over Political Scott Jennings is making
Speaker 1: a push to replace Caroline Levitt as White House Press Secretary.
Speaker 1: After clips of Jennings defending Natalie Harp made their way
Speaker 1: around the White House, including some he sent a senior
Speaker 1: staffers himself, he reached out to schedule a private meeting
Speaker 1: with Susie Wilds over the weekend. A person close to
Speaker 1: the White.
Speaker 2: House told me they just started just talking about each
Speaker 2: other all the time. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: No decision was made in no offer extended. The process
Speaker 1: to replace Levitt remains slow moving. Multiple people familiar to
Speaker 1: all playbook DC and apparently Scott is putting out clips
Speaker 1: of himself and he's telling people, look how great I
Speaker 1: do when I go on CNN and I trash everybody
Speaker 1: but Donald Trump, but I do want everybody to remember
Speaker 1: who Scott Jennings is. Scott Jennings obviously somebody who was
Speaker 1: on CNN and all the time.
Speaker 2: I like to bust as Chops because I think he's
Speaker 2: full of shit.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, more than anything else, he
Speaker 1: is somebody going back to election denialism in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty campaign. He is somebody who roasted Donald Trump for
Speaker 1: being a cry baby loser after he was defeated in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election, and after he instigated an insurrection
Speaker 1: on January sixth, Scott Jennings, I just want to in
Speaker 1: case this video somehow, in case Scott wants to clip
Speaker 1: this and send this over to the White House. He
Speaker 1: probably doesn't, but somebody should clip this and send this over.
Speaker 2: To the White House.
Speaker 1: Scott Jennings used to roast Donald Trump for being an
Speaker 1: election denier. He used to assign blamed to Donald Trump
Speaker 1: for what took place on January sixth, and Scott Jennings
Speaker 1: is going to be the White House Press Secretary. Scott
Speaker 1: Jennings is going to go up there at the podium
Speaker 1: and he's going to have reporters asking him. Scott, didn't
Speaker 1: you blame Donald Trump for what happened on January six?
Speaker 1: And Scott, don't you think that it's strange that you
Speaker 1: once did that and now you're up here pedaling his lives.
Speaker 1: Don't forget folks, it was just last month Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who was still not given up on the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 1: did a batshit crazy speech live from the White House
Speaker 1: that some of our networks of this country were intimidated
Speaker 1: to run and pick up, in which the President of
Speaker 1: the United States continued to repeat his cuckoo for cocoa
Speaker 1: puffs one flew over the cuckoo's nest lies about the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election, an election that he lost and that
Speaker 1: Scott Jennings knows full well that he lost.
Speaker 2: And the other.
Speaker 1: Thing that we should point out, and this is something
Speaker 1: that it's not just that our friend Miles Taylor, who
Speaker 1: comes on from time to time. According to Miles Taylor,
Speaker 1: and that he put out this tweet months ago.
Speaker 2: You know who's a perfect metaphor for the GOP.
Speaker 1: Miles tweeted at one time Scott Jennings, a pundit who
Speaker 1: mocks Trump with us during commercial breaks but fawns over
Speaker 1: Trump when the camera is rolling, brave enough to speak
Speaker 1: out in the green rooms. So and I remember at
Speaker 1: the time there were other folks who chimed in, and
Speaker 1: I remember this from my days. Scott would say not
Speaker 1: so nice things about Donald Trump when we were off
Speaker 1: camera during the commercial break and so on. So I
Speaker 1: don't understand why the White House thinks that Scott is
Speaker 1: going to be any different a human being. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe he's gone through the same soul removal
Speaker 1: process that others who work at the White House under
Speaker 1: Donald Trump who once were Trump critics, people like Marco Rubiat.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's had the same procedure done in which the
Speaker 1: soul is removed from the body. But my sense is
Speaker 1: is that Scott Jennings knows what he's doing, and he's
Speaker 1: trying to get inside to feather his nest, even more
Speaker 1: so than where he stands right now, and he knows
Speaker 1: that to do that, the best ticket to do that
Speaker 1: is to go and work for Donald Trump. It's why
Speaker 1: you're seeing people like Michael Cohen, I who used to
Speaker 1: be a Trump critic and come on this show and
Speaker 1: now he's sucking up to Trump again. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't under This is one of the things about
Speaker 1: Trump two point zero that I really don't understand, and
Speaker 1: that is how people can completely just sell their souls,
Speaker 1: sell their principles down the river, take things that they
Speaker 1: once believed something as exit essential as respecting the rule
Speaker 1: of law in this country, as respecting election results and
Speaker 1: honoring election results in this country, the peaceful transfer of power.
Speaker 1: That is one of the most sacred things that is
Speaker 1: associated with the constitutional democracy that we cherish here in
Speaker 1: the United States, the peaceful transfer of power, the respect
Speaker 1: for election results in this country. Does anybody think Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is going to respect the election results come this fall?
Speaker 1: Does anybody think that that's going to be the case
Speaker 1: come this fall in November, when he gets his ass
Speaker 1: kicked in the upcoming midterms, that he's not going to
Speaker 1: resort to election denialism once again, and that he's going
Speaker 1: to cow and intimidate the Republican Party into election denialism
Speaker 1: once again, and Scott Jennings is going to be the
Speaker 1: spokesperson for that. And the other thing that I pity
Speaker 1: anybody who's going to be the White House Press secretary
Speaker 1: these days, because you have to go to the podium
Speaker 1: and they don't do that many briefings anymore.
Speaker 2: Caroline Levitt.
Speaker 1: I think she's wised up and she understands that if
Speaker 1: you go to the podium in the White House briefing room,
Speaker 1: you're just going to look like an ass if you're
Speaker 1: working for Donald Trump. But Donald Trump, and I know
Speaker 1: that there are good reporters out there who don't want
Speaker 1: to go down this road. But I go down this
Speaker 1: road because I think it's important. The mental state of
Speaker 1: the President of the United States is damn important. Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: This was, and this was an overlooked thing revealed to
Speaker 1: the world and everybody that I guess is in the
Speaker 1: national security realm, both domestically and internationally that I guess
Speaker 1: we now know how many nuclear missiles, nuclear weapons North
Speaker 1: Korea has. Trump was talking about this as he was
Speaker 1: bragging about his flag poles and everything else.
Speaker 2: We should play this clip very much.
Speaker 8: I can't tell you're dead, but I get along with him,
Speaker 8: And you know what, the fact that I get him
Speaker 8: along with him, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Speaker 8: He has fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Very powerful uclear weapons.
Speaker 8: Should have never allowed it to happen. They should have
Speaker 8: never allowed it. I wouldn't but.
Speaker 2: He's got him. I get along with him very well.
Speaker 6: I can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 8: I know Kim Jong un very well, and he's going
Speaker 8: to be fine. As long as we have a smart president,
Speaker 8: he's going to be fine. If we have a dumb president,
Speaker 8: then he's probably not going to be so fine.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, whether Kim Jong un is fine or not,
Speaker 1: I can. I think based on my reporting experience, I
Speaker 1: could probably relate to the American people.
Speaker 2: Kim Jung un is definitely not fine.
Speaker 1: He's definitely not stable, and he is definitely a lunatic
Speaker 1: in addition to being.
Speaker 2: A brutal thug dictator.
Speaker 1: Why Donald Trump is buddies and like Butch Cassidy and
Speaker 1: the Sun Dance Kid with Kim Jong Un I will
Speaker 1: not understand. But did you hear Donald Trump say? He
Speaker 1: said it right there on camera to the press, that
Speaker 1: North Korea apparently has fifty seven nuclear weapons. Now, I
Speaker 1: know it's nuts that he put his name on the
Speaker 1: Kennedy Center, and I know it's nuts that he puts
Speaker 1: gold shit all around the Oval Office, and I know,
Speaker 1: you know it's crazy that he's obsessed with putting black
Speaker 1: granite flooring in over the what and all, and on
Speaker 1: and on and on and on. But does isn't there
Speaker 1: a Republican in the National security roum in Washington, d C?
Speaker 1: Who finds it a little peculiar that Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: revealed exactly how many nuclear weapons that.
Speaker 2: North Korea has. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it seems to me, if you're
Speaker 1: going to, you know, if you're gonna be the White
Speaker 1: House Press secretary and your job is to go out
Speaker 1: there and play clean up on Asle sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue,
Speaker 1: that one of the things you're going to be asked
Speaker 1: about by a pretty smart reporter who covers national security
Speaker 1: is that is it a good idea for the President
Speaker 1: of the United States to reveal the details of the
Speaker 1: North Korean nuclear program? It seems to me if I
Speaker 1: were in that job, that would be a question that
Speaker 1: I would not want to, not want to deal with.
Speaker 1: But Scott Jennings, you go for it, man, you know
Speaker 1: what have at it. I can't wait to see you
Speaker 1: get up there and explain why used to bust Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's butt for being a cry baby loser after the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election. But be my guest, do your thing,
Speaker 1: have fun, have at it. I want to thank Maggie
Speaker 1: Haberman for joining me today. Really appreciate it. Make sure
Speaker 1: you check out Maggie's book, A Regime Change. She co
Speaker 1: authored that with Jonathan Swan, A terrific piece of reporting there.
Speaker 1: And also want to thank another terrific journalist, somebody who
Speaker 1: I don't think it's enough credit for what she does,
Speaker 1: and that is Juliet Jessky to coding Fox News. Where's
Speaker 1: the New York Times a piece on Juliette. We need
Speaker 1: to have the New York Times piece on Julie. She
Speaker 1: does terrific reporting and she's not only reporting on what
Speaker 1: they do at Fox, but also Natalie Harp and how
Speaker 1: she rose to prominence inside Trump world by being an
Speaker 1: election denier over ATAM. All right, everybody, thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Until next time, Still reporting from Washington.
Speaker 1: I'm Jim Acosta. I'll see you next time.