David Cay Johnston Reveals the Real Donald Trump

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we're pleased to welcome David Cay Johnston who is the author of the making of Donald Trump it's the bestseller and also appeals her prize-winning journalist good to see David good to be here we're doing this in the spring of 2017 and we are not a program that looks at where the president is today but we try to make sense of who he is as a man as a person as as a leader what did you conclude in this book because as a fascinating book at war I understand that I've known Donald for almost 30 years and have followed all these years even the years I wasn't writing about him minute I met Donald I thought he was an absolutely fascinating character I met him in June of 1988 in Atlantic City and I said this guy is going to be a significant force in American culture he understands how to manipulate the news media he is full of bravado and nonsense and and he's eager to put himself out there he's PT Barnum he's our PT Barnum and what astonished me very quickly was finding out from his competitors like Steve Wynn and casino executives and law enforcement people and even some big gamblers they all said Donald owes knowing about the casino business and I'm like what man owns two casinos how could he not know this and then I started talking to him about it and began to realize anything about the casino business it was all bluster and that's what you see in him as president Donald Trump doesn't know a SUNY from a Shia and why it matters to our policy in the Middle East it gets an awful lot of people to vote for him he certainly did and he's masterful as a salesman about issues where he wants to focus you and he's very good at getting the news media confused and distracted and covering what he wants and we often don't see reports pointing out that in a 90 second period Steve you can see Donald and videotape say something and then deny he said it that's a skill oh yeah yeah to pull it off and get with Donald is in my view the greatest con are in the history of the world he's president is it a character issue oh sure yeah Donald this man who you know all of his biographers the great Blake Wayne Barrett was the first reporter on some I was second Tim O'Brien the Village Voice from in the air yes Tim O'Brien whom I worked with him to earth the New York Times Gwen to Blair everybody very hurt they will all say the same thing Donald has no moral core there is nothing there's no moral core at all there's no philosophy except the greatness of Donald Trump and it's astonishing he's gotten as far as he has and I think it says a lot about the news business so let me ask you this at the core I mean I appreciate what you're saying people will decide for themselves but when Donald Trump sees a night with this is we're not trying to be timely at all because this will be repeated many times when he sees those children right that are in Syria and decides I'm moved by this yes there were previous statements he made that said we should not be involved he says he's moved emotionally that anyone would be and decides to act how is that a man with no sense of because oh because Donald Trump at the very same time and my organization DC report reported this his administration was approving the poisoning of American children scientists the EPA said you should not continue to use a particular insecticide it makes kids stupid it's a neurotransmitter that interferes with neurotransmission and reduces kid's IQs and so Dom's crazy you're not correlating that solutely Assad is doing it absolutely let me explain why the Steve hurry out what Assad there have been numerous chemical attacks by Assad assuming Assad did this we don't actually know that for sure there been numerous chemical attacks and you don't make foreign policy in the basis of your emotional reaction that's why we spend well over a hundred billion dollars a year on a huge intelligence apparatus so that we can make sound judgments not that we always do but you don't do about emotional reactions but this administration ignored the science and said we're going to allow this poison that the science says makes children in the womb and small children less intelligent there's no rhyme nor reason what Nami do that I don't think it's your old son yeah I know he cares about his son and and oh come on listen you roll your eyes at that Steve Donald Trump is a man who has publicly humiliated his wife who in that his own children previously now they're close to him said they would have nothing to do with now no no his his first wife in his second and his own children wrote themselves you know they would have nothing to do with their father then they grow up and then they went to work for daddy who pay very low everybody else and became very loyal to him and and my point is that non Trump is someone to whom everything is a transaction everything is the translation ships yes everything is transactional everything and and all of his biographers you could have them all I'm here as a panel and David I'll tell ya everything is transactional what we're deeming qualities you Sam I admire Donald's incredible brilliance at developing himself as a brand name I mean he's he's the gold champion for making yourself I make my living off being a brand name I'm not yeah I'm with Campbell he's the son over here he's really been masterful that he's focused on it he's worked on it very hard he when he decides he wants to do something and he's focused on it he works right at it and you'll notice he ran this very unconventional campaign Hillary Clinton couldn't figure out how to respond to it well one of the basics of you know love and war is you've got to pay attention to the how the other sides play in the game he played it better and he played it very well he played it very well I mean you know you were on with our good friend Rachel Maddow and and there was a lot made about what was gonna be released as it relates to Donald Trump's tax returns people will decide we're gonna go along around this guy's I see the signals so you know people will decide how much was released and how relevant it was but you understand more than most about Donald Trump's finances what should we understand about it well the one year we have that return for 2005 is almost certainly his best year in a number of years and as yours meaning in terms in terms of the amount of incomes yes yeah it almost certainly is his best year we know that his minimum annual income on average for the private prior ten years was eighty one and a half million dollars so he said a huge income I don't think anybody would question that Donald has an enormous income Donald is not a wealth builder though Donald's basic business deal which applies to every deal I've ever looked at except one to the Trump University is he puts up no money he gets a fee up front either from a loan or from a partner and he then draws cash out as fast as he can so while other casino owners in Atlantic City were upgrading their properties and their software and doing other things Donald was just pulling money out of the place as fast as he could he's not a wealth builder he's a cash extractor how is he sustained not just the brand but the businesses if in fact he's got these flaws serious flaws yeah well first of all he came back from the abyss financially from us failures in Atlantic City the helicopter or the plane that is to that so what happened in Atlantic City he got the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to take his side against his bankers all but two of them were outside of New York State 70 banks two of them are in the state the rest aren't and if the government takes your side against your bankers and says you don't pay back close to a billion dollars you can sort of you can come back from them he hires good talented people he doesn't keep him around as soon as they stand up to him but he does hire them he has a good eye for spotting Talent yeah and he is intensely aware of how to manipulate politicians to get the favors he wants when he built his first major project he turned the derelict Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station 40 years no property taxes that's effectively a gift of 400 million dollars of welfare Texas I I agree it's a smart deal it's terrible public policy but it was a smart deal for him and he got it because mayor a beam was very close with his father was fast forward he will say he uses though skills he will use those skills to make great deals for America you say what deal has he made so far in his he hasn't had no legislative accomplishments he as we speak at the end of April doesn't sit through the first roughly hundred days Donald had no legislative accomplishments whatsoever he said things that make no sense because he isn't familiar with politics on the inside when he didn't get the changes he wanted in the Affordable Care Act he said well they can deal with Democrats you know and and I'm sure bunny it's just not gonna happen so tell me how you by the way you've interviewed him face to face oh yeah many times many time tried to give tax advice once and he couldn't follow my advice yeah I read that in there he likes you know Donald only likes those journalists who print what he says and don't do what good journalists do that he follow so sorry for interrupting do you think he follows what you say about him at least some because of some of the comments he's made publicly yes yes so how about this how do you think this is going to play out with him in terms of his not just persona but how I'm a student of leadership I'm a student of how people evolve as leaders and what they learn could you see him learning from the mistakes that all presidents make all leaders make and you know what making the adjustments Oh Steve Donald wants to be the greatest president in history right he wants to be the fifth person in stone up there at Mount Rushmore okay but he doesn't have the management skill and the political knowledge to pull it off does he have the emotional intelligence oh no Goldman likes it yeah he certainly has some skills I don't know if their emotional intelligence and identifying weak points or those people and how to get them to go where he wants them to go that's why is the introspective no no Donald is a life unexamined he's absolutely a life but examine so so you're saying this is it I I don't think this is likely to get much better and by the way don't forget that Donald has not done the work out of 700 important federal appointments he's made about a hundred as we speak at the end of April he there are federal agencies that don't have any politicals as they're called who make the policy decisions we don't have ambassadors in almost every country in the world we don't have US attorneys because not letting you out of here without the silver lining where is it III have a hard time the silver lining is it may be that first with the Tea Party movement and now with the resistance movement that we are undergoing an awakening of our democracy for too long since Watergate particularly people have said I don't lean to a politics all right people are now recognizing they need to be involved in politics I have another book coming out about Donald Trump for in at the end of the year and then my next book that I've delayed is I've written an entirely new federal tax code you don't have to file a tax return in almost all cases it'll be simple efficient it'll be less than a hundred pages long not the 6,500 pages of the current federal tax code David thank you so much for joining us we appreciate it thank you always looking for the silver lining check yet next time thank you one on one with Steve Adubato has been a production of the caucus educational corporation celebrating over 25 years of broadcast excellence funding for this edition of one on one with Steve Adubato has been provided by investors bank New Jersey Resources MD advantage insurance company 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Channel: Steve Adubato

Views: 128,092

Keywords: Donald Trump, David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize, The Making of Donald Trump, President

Id: 3-JGF1ne8Ec

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2017