David Cay Johnston in conversation with Terrence McNally at Live Talks Los Angeles

when David Cay Johnston was nineteen years old the San Jose Mercury hired him as a staff writer his investigations over the next four decades appeared in that paper the New York Times the Detroit Free Press the LA Times for a number of years the Philadelphia Inquirer he exposed LAPD political spying and brutality he solved a vicious murder by confronting the real killer and winning freedom for an innocent man he explained the economics of former GE CEO Jack Welch's retirement perks prompting wealth to relinquish them and he has probably covered Donald Trump for as long and as much as any other journalist and in late 2016 David found a DC report an online journal covering the president's administration their actions and it also leads you to actions you can take in response to them his books include free lunch how the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense and stick you with the bill and that one won no is the book before perfectly legal how the tax system was right for the super-rich that won the medal from Ayari is the investigator book of another you can see the theme here the fine print a big companies use plain English to rob you blind and then recently the making of Donald Trump and his latest this one it's even worse than you think what the Trump administration is doing to America thank you thank you David um I've said you've covered him for a long time how did you first encounter Donald Trump and how did it how did it happen that you've covered him ever since well in the fall of 1987 the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that Native American tribes which are vanquished nations could have casinos and I immediately said to myself well the casino the company the to the big casino companies are owned by Holiday Inns and Ramada ins and there are no more four-leaf clovers to build motels at so they're going to want to expand the casino and so we're gonna see casinos all across America within 20 years told this to the editor an editor at the LA Times who looked at me and said you can't possibly know that that's ridiculous I mean it hasn't happened and I said but of course it's going to happen look at the Supreme Court decision whatever the red man has the white man will take away it's our history so I went to the Philadelphia Inquirer to cover Atlanta city because they were interested in this story and almost immediately upon arriving there in 1988 I met Donald and my first impression of him we only spoke for a few minutes but my first impression was PT Barnum come see the Fiji mermaid and the amazing two-headed woman except of course PT Barnum never hurt anybody and only tricked little children Donald turned out to be quite different yeah and because he had two casinos and was the dominant force in Atlantic City was a big part of the story I started asking about him and his competitors said Donald is no I mean what the casino business oh come on okay it's two casinos that can't be true go to the government officials you need to understand Donald is not an operator and then I went to his own guys and went oh yeah Dom model he doesn't think about the business he's messing it up so I went to interview him for the first time at length I with the connivance of his own people asked for questions that had falsehoods in them about gambling games and he incorporated them back to me and my immediate thought having just come from here was where California psychics if your boyfriend's really true to you well we know because we're California psychics they just he was just feeding back to me what he thought I wanted to hear he's a con artist and I also decided that among a small group of people I kept files on for years Barron Hilton for ripping off the the charity for his own benefit although at the end the charity did fine well Jack Welch Daryl gates a few other people I said you got to pay attention to this guy keep files on him because he'll be important for years to come and he's going to be a major cultural force even though I knew he was already talking about running for president back then I dismissed back to them the idea he would be President when he announced and to that fifteen I was the only national journalist who said might happen you need to pay attention yeah this time right you tell us just a little bit about the writing and the sort of the reception and so on of the making of Donald Trump and then we'll move to the new book so as soon as Donald made his announcement I started writing pieces many of them aimed at my fellow journalists one of them was called 21 questions for Donald Trump and things like tell us about you know ask him about his deep involvement with this major cocaine trafficker involvement that makes no sense unless they were in business together in which case everything he did makes perfect sense and none of this was covered and I was just appalled and I would call editors I knew who were still there at the New York Times and the LA Times and friends I had the Washington Post another place and I say you know you guys you need to cover at this is a joke it's a vanity project nothing will happen by the time was clear was gonna get the nomination my efforts to get my book publisher and other publishers to do a book on him because it publishes usually takes about a year had not worked my agent had just said they're not gonna do it nobody believes he's going to get the nomination and then all of a sudden out of the blue I get a call from a publisher little publisher who specializes in QuickBooks and they said you know can you do a book in 21 days and I said no but I could do one in four weeks and I spent 27 insane days writing so I couldn't see straight and then going to sleep and making sure with the help of one of my grown children that we had 40 plus pages of notes in the back and only from the public record about who Donald is about how he put a baby's life in jeopardy over money and said you know he didn't bother him at all the child had died it's his own grand nephew of the ways he had cheated on his income taxes and sales taxes and all these other stuff that are in the public record that was not being reported on relationships with the mob oh well not just the standard Italian mob but russian-language mobsters from Russia Ukraine Kazakhstan Azerbaijan Georgia and many others criminals and you know hiring illegal immigrants and then refusing to pay them and starting out we got this book out in August of 2016 it's in 11 languages now around the world that we may soon have a 12 anybody here has connections to a Farsi publisher I really would like to get a first language edition because I'm pretty confident it would sell well in Toronto and so I'm you want me to go forward to the next book er well no no I was gonna then say what happens in the middle is actually DC report yes so I want you to so Donald wins the electoral college and that's the language I encourage people to use Donal did not win the election he lost the election he won the electoral college by the way you know why the fat framers of our country created the electoral college they wrote about it its purpose was that if the mob us somehow became impassioned and put somebody who was unqualified or crazy into the White House the electoral college was supposed to be the check on that and to make sure that the residency was denied to such a person but after 200 years of not being needed well I don't know there was Andrew Jackson the in atrophy and so on the night that he won the electoral college I said boy we need to do something so with the help of my friend David crook who used to also work at the LA Times and Adam Leipzig who was a studio executive here for many years and runs cultural weekly website we started this nonprofit you know I put money into it I don't take money out of it no advertising and depend entirely on donors project DC report and our mission was very simple we cover what Trump we don't cover with Trump tweets we cover what he does we don't care what congressmen say we cover what they do and we got some journalists who for you know nothing or maybe $100 an article would do yeoman work for us to report on what they're actually doing to our government and then I said you know we need to I need to do another book and I need to do the story that the washington press corps I didn't think frankly the Washington press covers gonna do a very good job of covering the White House they'd doing a great job of that I'm very impressed with the quality and the depth of the work that's going on in the nuance in it but I was correct that they're not going to really cover what's happening to our government and so this book is about our government and what's happening to you to your income to your future to your health to your safety to your children and grandchildren's well-being because of what they're doing to the government remember that Steve Bannon when they came in said I'm a Leninist yeah I'm here to destroy the existing order and we're going to deconstruct the administrative state which means we're gonna deconstruct or destroy the federal government and they're doing it and if you have read my book you don't know about it you may know a little about it here none of this crowd does things up but generally audiences do I hold a little test how many of you will come back to stare how many of you have heard I hope you come back you later how many of you have heard of the RCEP yeah that should get you to read because it's important okay I'm just gonna tease with it yeah oh my will later on just let it sit there yeah and one thing by the way DC report is singular DC report orj if you're gonna go look for it one of the things you say right at the start of the book which surprised me a little bit because I thought we're gonna get right into these policy things that's going on was something about his character and what you said is that he's the first president that as far as you can tell has his condition if you will yes yes well in fact and I called presidential historians particularly Brinkley for and talked to him you know every president of the United States if there been a homo on shall we've had great ones we've had terrible ones we've had middling ones we've had utterly corrupt ones we've had ones who couldn't get any focus we've never had a president whose presidency is about the president it's not about making America better and and when you look in the context of their times every president tried to make the country better I mean Chester Arthur completely corrupt New York politician who becomes president by accident because his president dies 31 days into the administration calls up all his corrupt political cronies from New York brings him to the White House and they're expecting how boy are we gonna get rich and he says gentlemen I am now the President of the United States he will not darken the door of the White House leave and he got us the Pendleton Civil Service Act that in the speech tonight Donald Trump made clear he wants to undo because he wants a patronage government so Donald's presidency is about one thing it's about Donald . . it is about the glorification of the genetically superior smartest person in the world who is the world's leading expert on 20 subjects greatest memory except when I don't recall saying that and then they play the video Donald Trump and then you also say that one of the other things that makes him unfit is his love of revenge yes so Donald Trump goes around saying he's a Christian and Jerry Falwell Reverend Jeffers and all these other preachers of the God wants you to make me rich school go around endorsing him well Bob trumped in speeches in a book that he wrote in numerous forums that there are records of videotapes etc over many years in different places has said that his philosophy of life is revenge if someone just declines to do you a favor hit him in the face 15 times and he says he gets pleasure from destroying the lives of other people I don't know how more anti-christian you can get than that and when it comes specifically to turn the other cheek which comes from the Sermon on the Mount Trump says anybody who does that is a fool an idiot or a schmuck and he means the last word in the most vile Yiddish sense of it he's not being redundant and once we get beyond Trump and his character another big thread in the book is termites yes so Trump comes into office Donald is not he's lazy not a hard worker we now know and the White House doesn't dispute that he comes to work like an 11:00 in the morning leaves at 4:00 and has lunch during that period he said he during the campaign he'd never leave the White House he spends one third of his days and his properties and playing more golf than Tiger Woods and so it's the people he brought with him that matter here but those people the bannon's the disloyal michael flem the general who's going to end up going to prison presumably and others brought into our government what I call political termites if you have termites in your house you're not gonna know it until you know you put your foot through the floor and then you're gonna get a huge bill to fix it and these are people who they're not cabinet secretaries they didn't have to go through any hearing many of them were appointed under a federal rule that allows you to put a federal executive in place for a hundred and thirty days and you want to have a rule like that I mean if suddenly the somebody dies and they're in an important position you'd be able to replace them temporarily take and get someone who's fit well we are now into season two of Trump the White House reality show a political farce and a lot of these people are still in place and who are they well at the EPA that the people that came from the coal industry in the oil industry in the fracking industry at the Education Department they're the people who came from the companies that made the student predatory student loans all the way through the government he brought in people who hate the government and they are doing serious long-term damage and that's a lot of what the book is about and this is not just to be clear those of you haven't read my books I don't write I write policy books but they're not professorial this so that there I find people and I use them to tell the stories of what's happening to illustrate what's happening and then you back it up with a lot of notes long notes about where it comes from and documents because I want there's so much I have people who call me all-time why aren't you writing about this that and I go why do you need to speculate about Donald Trump the public record is so robust you just need to cite it so um let's talk not necessarily about the termites but maybe the people who are at the level of other termites some of the cabinet members and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you a name and tell us either the worst thing they've done or the thing we don't know not a Rorschach test okay right so start with Scott Pruett wants to be senator from the oil and gas industry from Oklahoma sue the EPA 14 times wants to destroy it has required different offices and I tell about a specific government executive story has required government officials to write extensive detailed reports on every weakness in enforcing the environmental laws makes them come in and explain everything about it and then they leave without telling you anything and presumably of course all these here's how to not lose a lawsuit when you're polluting records have been turned over to the polluters okay Ryan's Inc suppose it Montanan champion of open skies who has worked in numerous areas to advance things like allowing the uranium mining industry with what appeared to be Russian oligarchs in the background to him intrude into bad ears and thinks basically and I'm gonna interpret abut here but you know if there's oil in the middle of the Grand Canyon hey what's an oil well here there yeah Betsy device deep believer in Christian corporate education if you talk to people in the charter school movement and where I live now in Rochester New York we have a lot of charter schools and you say well let's talk about Detroit it's like could we talk about the weather because complete disaster and she was deeply involved in that and she's the one who brought in of course the folks from the student loan industry to fix the student loan problem I will say one nice thing about Betsy DeVos born with a platinum spoon in her mouth married a guy with a platinum spoon in her mouth and when she travels on behalf of the US government private jet she does not bill us right it's her own private it's her own jet she doesn't bill us yeah Rick Perry I'm trying to remember which agency oh they're thinking about Rick Perry that's fascinating is he thinks the energy department is about energy the budget of the energy department is primarily for something else it's the atomic bomb making division of our federal government it does collect statistics and data on energy but it's really the bomb making division of the government something for which Rick Perry who nuclear physics is beyond his kid is totally unqualified for Steve minutia well I remember Donald Trump ran Donnell ran for office on the economics in my trilogy about how Washington's ripping off and he specifically ran against Goldman Sachs so who do we have a stretchy secretary well a guy who you know had people thrown out of their houses over less than a dollar short falls on their mortgage payments and got terribly rich off the financial crisis by taking over one of the failed SNL's here in Southern California for which to be fair not only did the Obama administration fail to prosecute all these criminals but I nailed in Newsweek Eric Holder for knowingly lying about what he was doing which was nothing but Steve minuchin you know this is a guy who he's about money and he loves money and I gotta tell you it's a great warm relationship his wife by the way her most famous role is an actress or she played Marie Antoinette my least favorite actually I both got Pruitt's awfully high but Jeff Sessions uh yes Jeff Beauregard sessions there is no racism in Alabama I don't know what you're talking about he's not a racist he's never been a racist and you black people just remember you don't vote sessions is very well-liked by the Senators he's a very nice person a guy and you know I once had in my house here in LA Harry collar Doris the mobs number two hit man in LA and Harriet was a wonderful Ida you got hit drinkin with Harry you would talk about the rest of your life unless of course you were a mob person he'd been assigned to kill the rest of your life would just be short well only if their mob person is no threat to ordinary folks and and sessions is like this you know Jeff sessions is turning the civil rights department into the anti civil rights Department and that's a fundamental principle of the Trump administration Donald who is a racist through and through has been family visual proceedings to be a racist of course it's going to turn to Jeff Sessions to be the Attorney General because one of the principal goals of Donald Trump and he doesn't put this in policy terms but it's to make America white again and what about the war on drugs and judicial reform well Trump in the State of the Union tonight which I watched a little bit of said we have appointed more federal circuit court judgments than any other administration yeah because you wouldn't let Obama have the appointments he was entitled to and Mitch McConnell discovered that you know previously unknown section of the Constitution that a president is last year in office may not appoint someone to the Supreme Court even if he's someone that under normal circumstances a white president made the appointment would get through the Senate because he's eminently qualified Merrick garland they are doing the functional equivalent of what FDR did when he tried to pack the court the problem is they're packing the court with friends of corporations and enemies of ordinary people and of your rights and young ones now very young because the they do get the game that John Glover Roberts is playing John golfer Roberts appointed in his 50s is if if you read his opinions and I've read each of them as they've come out he is laying out a path for the future to create in America where you will have far less individual liberty the state will have more power and corporations will have a lot more power it's on his watch that corporations which by motion are statement issued by the United States Supreme Court reporter that's an official position of the court in the 1880s gave corporations property rights which makes sense because that's what a corporation is we then gave corporations under Rehnquist political rights including Vallejo and Buckley and now Citizens United and then three years ago under john glover roberts we gave corporations religious rights so dear ma'am and we pray for profits and to step below the cabinet level Mick Mulvaney Mick Mulvaney well he is in charge of the federal budget I'm sure Donald has never looked at his own proposed first federal budget called the skinny budget because it was really skinny on information now when they did the full budget Mecca Malini really produced the truthful colors about himself disabled veterans who are getting about thirty five thousand dollars a year and I grew up the son of a hundred percent disabled veteran World War two so I pay attention to this nobody is a disabled veteran and did their service for the country gets treated particularly well thirty five thousand dollars the budget proposed cutting them at retirement age to thirteen thousand dollars plunging them into poverty now that's not going to become law so people have criticized me for not emphasizing they won't be come along my point wasn't that it's not going to become law it's if you're all for the vets would you do that second proposal from his office all bets checks they want to round down not round neutrally not round up round down now it's probability of dollars a year I think the numbers in the book for the year it's infinitesimal amount of money but the symbolism the principle here of what it says about what a fraud the Trump presidency is and then in his role as I don't know they're it's interim or his he's temporarily running the consumer finance Protection Bureau Elizabeth Warren's Elizabeth Warren who I've known almost 30 years and is I think the finest most dedicated public servant I have ever met in my life gets this agency created it's recovered more than 12 billion dollars so far with there was more in the works on behalf of people have been ripped off and it's about four times its budget if you just want to think of government in business terms if you're bringing in four times your budget and doing good you'd sort of like hey can we throw more money at you now he wants to zero them out of the budget and he's already put in place basically allowing predator companies to make loans to people who don't understand what they're doing and by the way eighty five percent of Americans can't calculate compound interest I'm just gonna read something that you wrote that right on this which is the payday the payday loan think what you're speaking about our nation has more payday loan stores than McDonald's eighteen thousand payday loan stores in America they make about forty six billion in loans each year and collect more than seven billion in fees each year I mean that is big business and they're financed by goldman sachs and it's bet and Wells Fargo friends yes yeah they're on buffets Wells Fargo Warren Buffett you know champion of the little guy my previous books you can read about Warren Buffett champion of the little guy he didn't get all that money by being kind and gently gentle the way he appears on seeing a bug killer right what are they doing with OSHA shortly after occupational safe Safety and Health Administration in the Labor Department shortly after Trump came into office they stopped posting press releases about companies where workers died where there's fines and it's clear that the death of the worker was not you know there are accidents there really are but these are ones that good practice would not have led to someone's death and there was a way of shaming these companies that was started under the Obama administration they stopped that we wrote about it at DC report they then went back to putting them up and I can't tell you and causally that happen but that's the order of events and then they stopped doing it the federal government used to post every single worker death and 4800 Americans died on the job every year from accident and so it's kind of important to know that at which industries and there's statistical data here that's useful they stopped posting that in August and now when they're asked for okay just give us the statistical information you know so many workers from electrocution so many from bricks falling on them the way to categorize them no you can't see that information let's turn to the military I think one of the points you make is that his very attitude about the military is the opposite of anyone who's really responsible within the military well you know Donald his grandfather came here as a draft dodger from Germany and lied to get a citizenship think about that one for a moment and who got five deferments the last one for bone spur although Donald can't remember which foot and who asserts I know more about Isis than the generals and I can learn everything that you need to know about nuclear missiles in 90 minutes his proposing bizarre things for our military in March he flew out to the most expensive ship ever built in the world the Gerald R for aircraft carrier thirteen billion dollars for a ship to take out with a nuclear missile and when he got on the ship he asked about its features while this ship will cost several billion dollars less to operate over its lifetime because they got rid of steam when we launched ships off off of aircraft carriers we use a steam catapult this one has an electromagnetic catapult of the exact time you'll see it knots very far more six flags and Donald two months later and every with time said tells the story that he was told by a navy the guy well we got real problems with the Terr you know it doesn't work very well and when you read the quotes in the book you will see he clearly did not understand what he was told and he keeps calling it digital it's electromechanical and then he says well you're not you're not gonna do stitch Atal digital you know yet I mean Einstein nobody understands you're going back to steam you're gonna use goddamn steam this man I mean what better example of what a complete ignoramus Donald Trump is I decided not to put in the book because I didn't interview him one of his Penn professors said that a lot of other people had reported which is he referred to Donald as the dumbest student I ever met and I mean he doesn't understand anything and by the way with electromechanical systems we can fling off of these floating Air Corps airfields planes that way military won't tell us exactly I suspect and I got all the RFPs I could find it but it looks like four times as heavy on the other hand Donald then says we need to have more aircraft carriers he wants to build more of them I'm sorry you want to do what do you not know about the Belgrano at the bottom of the South Atlantic and when you build an aircraft carrier aircraft carrier basically is the centerpiece of a very sophisticated killing machine that's its purpose is to kill and it comes with the TAC submarines underwater and with guided missile cruisers around it and destroyers and a whole flotilla of ships and the problem is that you can take it out a lot of military stuff that's been written about no we need to have more land-based aircraft like that and the nature of warfare is changing you know we're we're being attacked constantly by Vladimir Putin in other countries and we're doing this to them using cyber warfare I tried to sell the idea of a movie about ten years ago I've written about electricity and the electricity regulation my whole life because every one of you pay an electric bill every month and I can make it interesting you promised you I wrote five stories that made the top five New York Times stories of the day about electricity and the idea was that we were buying Chinese switches for our electricity system and the Chinese military had figured out how to put in these switches something so that when they were ready to attack us the entire grid goes down across the country and we have no like this is a movie this is yes and I was told that's not plausible but there's something else I'm gonna read something you wrote here the standard in the Army Field Manual for which military officers from further promotions there's a set of standards do you have empathy do you take responsibility do you listen to others do you consider options and as you say if Donald Trump had not dodged the draft he would never have promoted above junior lieutenant he's one of those four officers it might have been fragged but yeah it you know there's always all these psychiatrists sort of trying to judge him more from afar well you don't have to be a psychiatrist to know he's a narcissist but forget about medical diagnosis here is the Army Field Manual you know we spent a lot of money on the warfare and planning and we got a military that's very very sophisticated about these things and this is a great way to measure someone and so you know one of the things junior officers are taught is your job is to throw up ideas to more senior officers what does Donald say he said it tonight we have no other choice that's the language of a dictator that is not the language of an American president and as you point out that the military and all of diplomacy State Department and so on there's a there's a there's a approach that you take to things which is that war is a last resort yeah military officers do not want to go to war if we need to go to war they'll die if necessary but they don't want to go to war and lo and behold there's been some surveys now of our military officer corps which unfortunately since 1980 has gone from being 50/50 Dems and and reps to heavily Republican especially in the Air Force which is basically at the top become an evangelical Christian organization and the survey data show that officers do not support what Trump wants to do they think he's gonna get us into war unnecessarily with good reason because during the campaign Donald said he was going to get us into war and he said well of course we're going to use nukes of course we're gonna use nukes and after he became president reporters in the press room were chastised by the White House press secretary who said you folks don't seem to understand we will fulfill every single campaign promise without exception um can you say just a little bit more about the evangelical influence in the military I have a friend who's a quite high up at West Point and he said that is the thing that scares him the most about all of the military you know all institutions need to have a broad array of people when I start out in journalism was all white males the reason I got hired as a staff writer at 19 at the San Jose Mercury they had one other candidate for the job much better qualified than me at the time but the mercury had a policy you could have an Hispanic name but 100% no Mexicans in the newsroom and organizations when they get into things and begin promoting people it matters so the LAPD at one point was full of people who were into an sidelines of s21 er I heard zest called racing forum or something like that and one church in Glendale if you want to be promoted you wanted to belong to this church in Glendale and the same thing is happening to our military it is not by accident that Dobson who used to be at USC and I think it's about 800 other evangelical organizations decided to move their shops or set them up in Colorado Springs Colorado where the Air Force Academy is where at one point they had a special backdoor entrance to the place so that you could go to these religious activities and this is is very troubling let's talk a little bit about the Russia situation okay right you it at one point quote an email from Rob Goldstein to Donald Ott's Junger picot goldstone rob gall stones this PR guy from Britain who represents entertainment people and he writes an email to Donald Trump in June of Donald Trump jr. Jim's 2016 and and in July of 2016 Jake Tapper on CNN asked have you had any dealings with the Russians I mean stations in the office well absolutely not when the New York Times eventually sus ins this out Donald Trump jr. puts out the emails if you read the first one in the fourth paragraph it says as part of Russia's effort to help this is not as they've characterized it in six different lies they've told this is not you know would you be interested this is we're already in business together you want to do something new and this was not surprising to me because Donald Trump has been doing squirrely deals with Russians and by that I mean broadly speaking people come from russian-speaking countries since 1983 he has done deals that make no economic sense whatsoever but as with his dealings with the cocaine trafficker in this case make perfect sense if Vladimir Putin is looking on him in political terms as an investment and in venture capital you know you find 100 projects and pitches you find 100 projects 95 of them to lose everything four of them make back the money that the 95 lost and one of them turns out to be Amazon or alphabet and Vladimir Putin got his 1 in Donald Trump and the evidence that they were in a conspiracy with the Russians is just overwhelming at this point I don't understand all this very what was their collusion collisions not a crime conspiracy is a crime if you get a phone call from a hostile foreign power offering to help elect someone to an American government position whatever it is there is exactly one thing paetynn any patriotic American does you pick up the telephone you call the FBI and you say I need to speak to someone in counterintelligence remember Donald Trump told stuff to the Russian foreign foreign minister and ambassador in the White House only allowed a Russian news person quote news person who works for the government news agency Tass into the room Donald Trump is not a loyal American finally something which you've written about over the years is taxes you have written books about them it's what you wrote about for the New York Times and so on my next book is of proposing a whole new tax system for America right as we said had Trump not been elected that would be the book we'd be talking about tonight that's exactly right yeah um but so talk what what again what don't we know that's in that tax bill in a tax bill yeah okay well how many of you read a story about how Apple and a bunch of other companies are paying billions tens of billions of dollars in taxes read that was on the news 38 38 William knowledge yeah go to DC report what they got was an extension of their zero interest loans of the taxes that lasts till 2025 and they pay 50% of the bill in 24 and 25 it's not at all what was presented for the simple reason that the reporters who did this they listen to what the companies and the politicians said they didn't do what we do we read the bill and then we did with the help was done by the former chief economist from McKinsey who writes for us a detailed economic analysis that you can read of what this means they're gonna make money off this well let me do I mean you went over pretty quickly but what he said is that when they agreed if they bring you know if they bring money back are they able to bring it back they don't have that's right they would pay it as big tax well it turns out they have eight years to do it at no interest and as you say the first year they're only compelled to 8% and some of this money they've stashed off store as far back as 1987 when the law was changed that allowed all this and what I originally reported in the New York Times that these companies were shifting profits and moving them offshore through the devices that Ronald Reagan unknowingly I think signed into law because he thought corporations should pay significant taxes individuals shouldn't but corporations should you know we're all sorts of people who call the New York Times called my editors who's this crazy communist what the heck he doesn't know he's talking about him and Congress did a study they had subpoena power 1800 page studied the biggest study ever done by the Congressional Joint Committee on taxation and it turned out not only was I right but something I predicted but couldn't report because I had no way to prove it Enron literally stamped its tax department documents profit center many big companies and wealthy individuals in America make a profit off the income tax system you and I are burdened by it they make money off of it because they're allowed to earn money now and pay their taxes in 20 30 40 years which means the government gives them zero interest loans equal to the amount of their taxes open-ended so we've heard a lot of bad news what at this point and it's a wonderful point being that it is just following the first State of the Union by Donald Trump what gives you hope what are you an optimist anybody in this society who has eight children has to be an optimist yes I mean we will we will get through this the Constitution is that was designed to be an enduring document and we survived the Civil War we survived Andrew Jackson whose painting looks down on Donald Trump in the Oval Office there is no good ending to the story of when Donald Trump leaves it will it has to end badly it's not gonna happen at the 25th amendment that only works with cooperation or the president is under the knife as Ronald Reagan was after he was shot and I certainly don't want any bad to happen to Donald Trump secondly what if he's impeached convicted and removed well that will only happen if the Democrats take control of Congress and I believe that the most important domestic meant in American history more important than what happened in 1932 are the fall elections because either we will get a Congress that will do its duty with Donald Trump or we will begin to move in the direction of losing your individual liberties because people who share Donald's autocratic kleptocratic views who don't have his deficits will come forward and they will deceive the people and we will lose our liberties if the Democrats take control of Congress and Trump is removed if it's because of the Russians can Mike Pence be allowed to become president he's beneficiary of Vladimir Putin if you decide Mike Pence must also be removed then you face a constitutional crisis imagine how many were at Fox News this is a coup d'etat to make Nancy Pelosi president and the Speaker of the House presumably Nancy will have to say I believe I am a caretaker I will not be involved in the election and behave like Caesar's wife if Donald is not impeached and we come to the elections in 2020 he may lose in the parameters he might and there will be people who want to remove him in those primaries and if that happens and remember in states like California you can easily switch to the other party people did that with Thomas Keiko in 1966 and he's voted out by his own party well they stole the election it's all fraud you know it's it's the it's the George Bush Republicans and they stole the election and let's assume he gets Reid Amin ated and he doesn't win and he might win if he gets Reid Amin ated despite what you're seeing in the polls what will he say they stole the election because he tells us Hillary lost the election and when he leaves office if it isn't at the end of two terms and assuming he doesn't then insist we need a constitutional amendment to make him president for life what will he do if he's removed for any reason he will do exactly what you saw him do in the campaign when he would say beat that person up and I will pay your legal bills he was trying to get votes when he said that if removed from office don't be no restraints in Allah he will foment violence and revolution against the government the United States because Donald Trump is not a patriot unlike Richard Nixon he is not a man with any respect for institutions he is a man who is no respect for his family he is a man who has respect for one thing and that is the glorification of the genetically superior smartest person in the world greatest memory in the world Donald Trump Ted all right so it's that time of the evening when we invite questions from the audience just a quick quick around here questions typically start with a dollar or an H they are generally short only Terrance McNally gets to ask follow-up questions and we do not believe in two-part questions excuse me our first question and always they all come back to this really isn't that critical but the smartest man in the world spent his first two years at Fordham University in his last two years being extraordinarily absent yeah you're being charitable and and I'm tottering how did somebody who is just the opposite of what he thinks he is get into a place like University of Pennsylvania where I thought you had to have a brain did his father write a great big fat check do we have any idea how he got in there and she's from Pennsylvania the first time I was invited insulted that man went there as somebody if somebody grew up as a relatively poor kid the first time I got invited to Yale they had four classes in a big auditorium and that's a great deal and then I got to ask the question that was so incredibly dumb I thought to myself that shouldn't be smart to get in yelled no you just have to have daddy write a check Donald studied in the don''t Lee in the book I don't know how this happened I say he earned a degree at Penn he didn't he was given a degree at Penn and he studied in the real estate economics department which had one professor a real estate guy almost nobody remembers seeing him at the time I called Candace Bergen who for various reasons and she's coming to my story since I was 20 years old and she saw my name on the thing and went oh god what is it this time and I said I'm sorry to trouble you Saul right what is it and I said I understand you went on a date with Donald and Candice Bergen was a woman who enjoyed being a young woman in college and I was expecting to hear something interesting and she said it ended early but Donald did not mean the fact I tell in both books stories that show that he doesn't know anything about economics under oath he gives answers that show that on his claim that he's the world's greatest expert on taxes and I'm not the world's greatest expert but I am a world recognized authority on taxes I've been invited to tax seminars to be the keynote speaker on several continents Trump says I know nothing of accounting well if you don't have any of accounting and you think you understand tax that's like saying I'm a pilot but I know what a wing is high over here um my question is what keeps me up at night is that if Trump wants to do something that's against Putin or the Russians and puts out compromising information on him something that could get them arrested or wound his businesses I don't even care about the sexual stuff if that even exists yes do we think that there is something out there that the the Russians can bring out that will that is forcing Trump to do what he's doing I got first of all this is what I want to keep you up at night reading okay and when you finish it I got six others ah.the and one on the way and one on the way yes Putin is is has lots of compromising information on Trump here's the good news about that robert muller has put together an incredible team if those 17 lawyers and Muller were to go create a white-collar defense law firm it would just blow away everybody else in America some of these guys who came to work for him back to the government we're making well more than a million dollars a year millions of dollars a year Christopher ray the FBI director made 17 million dollars in the year and a few months before he was appointed yeah well defending banks that are ripping people off is a very lucrative business and we know at the molar level what the Russians have we have who came to us and with the first warnings that trumpeting be loyal from intercepts the Dutch the British and the most loyal country America has Australia and presumably other governments we haven't heard about you can't move money unless you use what's called the hawala system that's in the Middle East and somewhat here you cannot move money electronically without a record of it every deal can be hunted down with enough money and time and effort to sift through trillions of dollars change hands every day you can find hundred thousand dollar items if you're willing to do the work and so Putin has stuff on Trump he's got compliment on Trump Trump has led a very indiscreet life you know stormy Daniels and the Playboy Playmate it was paid off by National Inquirer to quote Donald trust me they're not the only ones and so there's plenty of stuff I don't know if it will have any effect I mean you know you still have when on national TV the other day Jerry Falwell Jr was asked about sharmee daniels he said well you know that was 10 years ago and he's he's a changed man and and and he's different and I thought yeah 10 years ago I'm almost Donald's age 10 years ago how was I different oh I had more black hair nope I'm so excited to see you David K John oh it's been I've been following you for a long time right and also Terrence on KPFK my question is about the tax cuts that money's gone wouldn't you see us potentially being in a recession cuz Jerry Brown says we're gonna be going towards them well do you agree yes when when the George Bush tax cuts were passed what happened was job growth in America stopped and in the first eight years of this century the population grew at five times the rated jobs and that's because the tax bill didn't require reinvestment nor does this one they can keep the money I think keep it offshore if they want think it's bringing home and they want they can invest it offshore if they want they can use it for stock buybacks which narrow the base of stocks and push up executive compensation because so much of its based on stock options so yes I expected the short run this tax cuts gonna have a stimulant effect because the bottom 90% of Americans had a smaller income adjusted for inflation in 2012 than they had in 1967 90% 90% of Americans lower income in 2012 the 1967 basically they lost a half a week's pay and at the top the top 400 from 1961 because we happen to have data from back then on this little fine point that I found to 2014 bottom 90% our wrote went up a little bit they came they took 25 cents on the dollar more home and paid one penny more in taxes out of their income but the top 400 well if we measured it their income against this group and made this group one one foot this group over here the top 400 their stack of feet of management shoe boxes would go through the ceiling of this building and it would reach up 28,000 feet into the sky to one over here and this tax cut because suddenly people who haven't had income gains they're gonna have ten or twenty or thirty or forty dollars a week more good for them they need it but we're gonna borrow money to allow plutocrats to pay less political ads by the way and I said everybody over here is paying one penny more they're paying 20 cents on the dollar laughs I think that'll make you rich if you have a 20% tax cut and your income starts at 30 million dollars and there's no reason to encourage investment we will see look at what we saw all these companies and apps were paying thousand dollar bonuses in December when they got a 35% tax deduction and then come January many of these same companies fired tens of thousands of workers when had they given the bonuses then or real pay raises they would have had a deduction of only 21% 60% as much so I expect to be a short-term positive effect the whole goal of this tax bill is to get past the November election to deceive the 90% into believing that is good for them and by the way the founders warned about this the framers of the country you can go to go to the internet put in my name in quotes don't drop the tea new this week and Thomas Jefferson and read what the founders wrote about what they thought would lead to the end of America and then look at what's happening today and the the small tax cut they go to the middle class and the working class those expire correct yes they have an end date and the corporate one stuff but as a practical matter you know Congress keeps changing the tax law all the time so I mean this is this tax law particularly the international provisions is a full-employment act for accountants and tax lawyers right hi um what I'm wondering about is what's going on with the Republicans but particularly those who now have nothing left to lose right right or the two or three they needed on the House Committee I got I got Souter I mean 35 35 had said they're not gonna run that's right and those are all flippable districts it's very hard to change a district when the incumbent runs an either party but an open seat you can flip well there's been just a fundamental breakdown in the Republican Party by the way I've long decades-long registered Republican emphasis on the word registered the the the Republicans have simply lost their they've lost ideas they have no moral front Paul Ryan's behavior in all of this is is the behavior of a political coward certainly not a leader in and there are plenty of Republicans I have some members of Congress in both parties who periodically will call me and ask me to explain something about taxes that they don't understand and I you know long as it's just technical explanation I'll do it and but I I have asked a couple of the Republicans about this and you know they know who they're dealing with they know this guy's unqualified but if you move against him look what happens to you who is the first family of Arizona the flakes they made the town after Flake and Jeff Flake can't run for another term because he'll be destroyed john mccain stood up to trump but when he came to the tax bill you know his blast important vote before we're gonna lose him soon he caved corker spoke up against Trump and then he backed down and that's because if you speak against Trump on the Republican side they'll run somebody like Mike Lee against you and ask senator Johnston no relation who was a principled Republican about what happened to him this is a real fundamental problem and it goes to the heart of this goes to after Nixon we passed these campaign finance laws I was in there reporting on him in Michigan where I was a reporter then we passed the toughest campaign finance law in the country and they backfired instead of cleaning up politics they have enhanced the power of what I call the political donor class and the Republicans are responding to the market that's what they're doing and it's unprincipled and it's Craven and it's gonna damage the Republican brand for a long time but I think it's clear what they're doing here and he stopped by the way cops not a Republican one of the first times I talked to Donna last and what do you thing about health care health care should be like the roads when you need it you just use it and I said well like you pay up tall he said mansion painting you just get the health care it's a good German The Geysers but I have to tell the lady and the white blouse here has been she was the first person with a hand up okay I'll be quick um I wrote a piece entitled is Donald Trump mentally ill about a year ago in The Huffington Post and that explains pretty much every bit of his behavior narcissistic personality disorder but the question I had David was even if we take back the house and we win every Senate seat we're not going to have 67 senators to convict him so there's no way he's getting impeached if in fact the Republicans continue to support him as much as bright and so you raise a good point and here's what I think is important about that about having a trial of Donald Trump and the result Watergate took 26 months and Richard Nixon had a hostile Congress and he wasn't liked by a lot of people because he was an unbelievably unlikable character Donald can be when he wants to be incredibly charming that's why he's successful and we have not had public hearings if the Democrats start running public hearings and they have Mulder's report and everyday Americans go home to turn on PBS at night if the Republicans haven't cowed PBS even more into not running things and we watch these hearings the tide will turn on Trump and people will realize that he not only is he manifestly unfit but he is not a loyal American and that should be one of our principal focuses we have a traitor in the White House and we you will see eventually if Muller is not completely shut down the evidence of this I am totally confident in saying this and I know perfectly well history's gonna judge whether I'm right or wrong here okay I have a really good track record I mean write about things and and history is going to show this and if we if the evidence that Mahler's team has put together gets into the public record and it's presented day after day after day of hearings where someone who recognizes there suddenly have an important role in history the way Sam Ervin did the the senator who ran the hearings people will turn around and they will realize how truly awful this man is and you know it's we got to have Toto pull back to the the screen on the wizard yeah we don't have any Sam Evans anymore by the way no I don't know I can't think of some people who might do might do a good job but okay yeah I believe it was the Mayo Clinic that put out the mental health planning to put out the 10 points that constitute a narcissist and I thought you might be interested that number six or seven was extremely envious and revengeful yeah yeah your profile here's the problem I have with the psychiatric analysis of Donald I'm not a psychiatrist I can observe things about someone but I'm not a medical doctor but in the case of the Army Field Manual here you have a standard that's intended for anybody to be up to use who just has a brain and critical judgment and you're not you cannot rise to officer without you really yeah you will not rise in the US Army and I you know I've interviewed lots of general officers the United States and in my lifetime and I I've never met some people I really didn't like I met some people I didn't particularly find that I wanted to trust with the safety of my country because I thought they were a little volatile but I've never met a stupid senior general officer of the United States who did not demonstrate as I spoke to them leadership skills not once the system actually works on who gets promoted thank you what do you think will happen I'm over here Here I am I'm not throwing my voice come back um what do you think will happen if his son and son-in-law are indicted or go down do you think I mean you said he's not loyal to anyone even family what happens well think back to when he was divorcing his first wife Ivana the mother of his children and he planted stories about what a horrible person she was I mean I've been divorced could say horrible things and divorces right the things they may deeply regret later though I don't think Donald regrets anything a man who will throw the mother of his children under the bus he has to choose between Jared Kushner and himself between Don jr. and himself I don't think for Donald that there's any question what the choice will be he will try first however to stop the process and one of the things about the rule of law she don't get to pick your prosecutor and what Donald Trump really is proposing out there is very simple I want to pick my prosecutor no way we cannot allow that if he fires robert muller if people are not in the streets and shutting down the whole country then you know kiss your individual liberties goodbye let me ask a quick one the vote in in Congress for the Russian sanctions was 515 to like 10 yeah yeah and he is said I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna do it yeah well we if here's the thing to think about I've read and listen to lots of tapes of mobsters talking about their boss and somebody says pardon this is gonna be a little sexist okay but somebody will say you just see that skanky woman with the boss they go oh no that's his new girlfriend you know oh wait oh she's fabulous she's so beautiful God how lucky the boss is Donald Trump talks about Vladimir Putin the way mob soldiers who don't know the FBI the local police are listening you know and talk about their boss it's just astonishing and the Russians have been investing in people like Donald Trump in the West for years the Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine democracy if you read his own words democracy is a joke you need to have a strong leader he thinks it's perfectly okay to you know jail your opponents and as we all know one of them was shot to death within camera vision of the Kremlin and dhama Trump admires this man well you know fine people up here yeah here's a question about the housing discrimination what can you tell us about the value to the Trump's over the years of selling white people the ability to not have to live near black people say well in my previous book the making of Donald Trump the Woody Guthrie family very nicely for not much money allowed me to quote from Woody Guthrie song about Fred Trump and housing discrimination because he lived in one of Fred Trump's Brooklyn housing projects and Fred Trump very much was keep his projects white they own some buildings where they would target black and Puerto Rican renters and in so you know housing you notice the internet is decimating all sorts of businesses it's decimating the news business because it's destroyed the model bringing buyers and sellers together travel agencies all sorts of businesses what's the one business that is thriving in the Internet age real estate because it's all based on race you know what neighborhood you're gonna live in and I like the digital market would undo that and so by doing what the Trump's did they read a lot of money they got government subsidies to build housing Fred Trump ripped off the federal government's much the President Eisenhower threw a fit in the White House that I tell about in the previous book and there were more than a hundred investigators put on Fred Trump for ripping off the taxpayers on housing for GIS coming back from the war Donald and his father had had coding for applicants so the US government after the Act the Fair Housing reacts is passed right after Martin Luther King was murdered they sent out matched teams of people and so they send out a black couple or a Porto Rican couple who were financially qualified to rent an apartment and they would have their bona fides with them and then we talk don't have anything but why don't try this building over here that we also want then the white couple with the same finances would show up oh yes we got lots of permits we got six of them come take a look and then Roy Cohn Donald's mentor the notorious Roy Cohn tells Donald the way to address this as you call a press conference at the New York Hilton you get the press there and you say the federal government's trying to force welfare people into our buildings complete lie absolute fabrication sold out worked with the public the government assigned a freshman lawyer a woman who barely had the ink dry on her law license meaning they weren't gonna really fight him and she immediately produced evidence that made the trumps cave and they agreed to be supervised for two years there was no discrimination for two years then the court lifted the sanctions and guess what happened with color coding rental applications after that it's made them a fortune Donald Trump's racism has made Donald Trump rich we have time for two more questions my question is if the Democrats are able to win the house and possibly the Senate do you see any chance the Trump would actually resign rather than go through them now is there's no chance in the world that Donald Trump will resign even if Muller comes to him and says hey I can put your whole family in jail he's not going to resign his ego would ever love it the only circumstance under which I can see Donald resigning is that he has had some horrible medical event which I certainly hope does not happen to him and he cannot function and even then I'm very doubtful that he would he would resign his this man's ego I mean everybody runs for president has a big ego but this guy is is way off the chart I mean he Donna literally believes he should run the world you know of course he should be president how could you possibly have come to someone to listen to me who thinks he shouldn't be president what is wrong with you fake news and remember that Omarosa said we will all Bend our knee to him and was never rebuked for that and our final question for the evening my question is can the damage be undone and can the Democrats undo damage boy that's a really good question yes a lot of the damage that's been done can be undone as soon as we have a competent qualified loyal American in the White House but a lot of his gonna last the appointments to the Circuit Court those are lifetime appointments to the court of appeals and kneeled were searched you know a man who wrote an opinion in which he said that a worker was properly fired because he chose not to die on the job I mean you want to talk about about bad judgment I have a word for Neil Gorsuch as opinion in that case it's very simple and comes right out of the Bible evil and that stuff will last a long time we're gonna have terrible problems with civil rights voting rights worker rights investor rights because of the people Trump has put onto the court as to the longer the issue and the Democrats you know right now you would think given the what the polls show about Donald Trump that the Democratic National Committee is rolling in contributions and the Republicans are having a hard time it's the exact opposite it is the exact opposite look what happened in the election that recording the news reports stolen here on the leadership of the Democratic Party in this state the Republicans have spent more than 40 years paying attention to their knitting they have built a bench strength by electing people to all sorts of offices for mosquito control districts on up they have put in place laws that allow a minority party to be in control and to invalidate ballots the Michigan law that very easy to invalidate ballots most of which validated were in Detroit and Flint they have developed strong fundraising networks and they have a clear philosophy of control my way or the highway the Democrats who I often call Republican light they seem to have lost their way I mean first of all the Republicans have a clear economic agenda they wouldn't say it in these words but think about their agenda and I think you will agree even if you love their agenda with my description the reason we don't have more jobs and more income for ordinary people in America is the rich don't have nearly enough they don't have enough to invest and we need to get them more in the way we're gonna get them more is we're gonna cut their taxes we're going to give them subsidies we're gonna let them use tax dollars some of them taken from their own workers to build factories and offices as that we do in 20 states instead of their own capital and you know it's easy to get rich or the government gives you the capital and how are we gonna pay for this well we're gonna take it from the children the disabled the elderly and the poor the people who can't fight back and what tell me what is the economic agenda of the Democrats yeah what is the but what is the economic agenda the Democrats you know my brother who's a disabled manual laborer he was the guy making sure that the tree and the culvert was pulled out in the rainstorm so you could get to work and now he's all busted up and he can't sit up straight he I asked him one day about his neighbors in Oregon he lives in a manufactured house out in the woods I said they all have these this was back when Romney was running these Romney stickers he's a pork wrap and he he said to me well you know ask yourself like I do what had the Democrats done from me and I can't point to anything they've done for me they constantly are taking things away and giving in to the Republicans so if I believed in God loved guns or hated gays I'd vote for Republicans too and the Democrats have got to develop here is what we stand for and the platform should be broad prosperity collective bargaining new trade rules Trump has some points about trade rules strengthening Social Security universal no out-of-pocket medical care and using Donald Trump's on words and by the way if we had the German or French universal health care systems which are almost not out of pocket I'll tell how much money it would save because I analyzed this every year and write about it currently from 2016 15 so 2015 the latest data it's the functional equivalent the statistical equivalent of eliminating the income tax or everybody makes less than five hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year that's how much money we're talking about and they've got to have a platform they can't say we're against Trump that will get you nowhere they've got to say here's what we're for and I don't see any indication that they can do it Nancy Pelosi is a great legislative tactician I have great respect for her but you know I don't I spoke to the Democrats once and referred to the democratic leverage Congress says you guys twice and Nancy walked over and her Christian Louboutins and her $4,000 dress and said I was being disrespectful and I said Nancy you guys need to be taken down and not you you're our employees you are not our our masters you're you guys she didn't like that one bit thank you okay thank thank you haven and thank all of you [Applause]

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 67,194

Rating: 4.7479191 out of 5

Keywords: David Cay Johnston, Terrence McNally, Simon & Schuster, Donald Trump, Live Talks Los Angeles, Trumpocracy

Id: gK_rQOqZ2ks

Length: 72min 1sec (4321 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 01 2018