Become a sustaining member of the
Commonwealth Club for just $10 a month. Join today. Good afternoon and welcome to today's
Commonwealth Club event. My name is Adam Lashinsky. I'm absolutely to be delighted
to be back in person for the first time in three years and welcome as well
to our to our online audience. Before I introduce our guests, I want to tell people in the room
that I will be taking your questions. You will be rewarded for penmanship. The clearer you write,
the more likely it is that I'll choose your questions
and be able to read them. And I'm looking forward to your questions
even more than mine. It is my pleasure to introduce
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Peter is the chief White House
correspondent for The New York Times
and a political analyst for MSNBC. Susan is a staff writer for The New Yorker
and is global affairs analyst for CNN. And it is no secret
that they are married to each other. Sure. And I'm going to ask about that. I think everyone is fascinated
to know how that works. The club hosted Peter and Susan
virtually for their previous book, The Man Who Ran Washington
The Life and Times of James Baker the third, and is pleased
to have them in person this time around for their latest book,
which launched today and is number it was number nine this morning
on the Amazon bestsellers list. I don't know where it is right
this moment. The book is The Divider Trump
in the White House 2017 to 2021. Peter and Susan, welcome. Thank you. So much. Thank you guys for having us. I told Peter and Susan
that I'm going to ask every question to the two of them
and let them adjudicate how to answer. They'll figure it out because they've
figured out so much already working together. Let me ask you to start. We all know and
think we know so much about Donald Trump. What did you learn in researching and writing this book that you didn't know
before you wrote and researched it? Yeah, great. You know, all the tough questions. All tough questions. Well, first of all, let me thank
all of you for coming out in person. And you, Adam, this is actually not
only the launch day for the book, but our very first official book
event for The Divider. So we we're delighted to be to be sharing
that day with you and, you know, as you mentioned, this is not the first book
that Peter and I have written together. And so our first book
was about Vladimir Putin. Our second book was about Jim Baker. And our third subject is Donald Trump. So you can imagine,
you know, Jim Baker comes out pretty well in that in that trifecta. Right. You know, in a serious sound, Peter
and I really felt strongly, especially, you know, sitting in our home
in Washington, D.C., watching, as I'm sure the rest of you
were watching on January six, 2021, and seeing the capital of the
United States under attack by Americans in baring Trump flags and in the name of a president who refused to leave office peacefully,
who wanted to overturn the election. And I know that we've all spent, you know,
the good part of the last 18 months kind of hashing over those events. But I think I was really struck,
especially going back and thinking about what did we learn how to frame is
why do we do this book? The historian Michael Beschloss,
that very afternoon made the observation, you know, that this moment
was foreshadowed by every single minute of this presidency. And I think that Peter and I felt
there was a real urgency to establish
as much of the historical record as possible
and that you could really understand. Unfortunately, January six
is this sort of violent but inexorable culmination of the four year Trump
presidency. And, you know,
Peter and I have both been in Washington for every presidency
from Bill Clinton on down. We also wrote a book that covered
the Reagan and Bush president. And first Bush presidencies. And so I think we felt that
to try to understand the disruption in the context of what is the real legacy to the presidency, and, you know,
how can we reckon with this? We knew there is more to be learned. We conducted about 300 original interviews
for this book, all of them. After Trump left office, after his second
impeachment, in addition to trying to synthesize and analyze events
and the record that was already existing. So, you know, people are going to be
finding out new stuff about this presidency for decades to come. We're still writing books
about Watergate and Nixon. Right. But we felt that it was very important
to have a one volume, you know, first crack at history. So let me invite you to keep going. Either of you, there's there's been a lot of,
you know, many of the nuggets in your book have been reported
for even for people who haven't read them. So share with us something
something that was that was fresh. And that either well, either surprised you were confirmed
what you thought going it. Yeah thank you very much. And I thank you guys again for having us. It's a we learned a lot about events. We thought we knew already and discovered
how much more there was. And we learned about events
we didn't know anything about. One of the most, I think, important ones
was I think Trump's war with zone generals, the idea that he wanted
to use the military for what the generals perceive to be his political purposes,
and the generals who believe the United States military are supposed to be an apolitical force,
not an instrument of power, for a politician fighting back
and most most notably, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Mark Milley, who was so upset at what Trump was doing in his mind
that he wrote a resignation letter. Now, people reported at the time,
we knew at the time there was a resignation letter
that he had written and didn't submit. We found out after Trump left office,
we got a hold of this resignation letter for the first time.
And it's a real doozy. I mean, it's a remarkable document
in which he said that that number one military officer
in the country accuses his commander in chief of not subscribing to the beliefs
that Stand America stands for, of being against the values that America
went to war and World War Two for. He says,
you are ruining the international order. He says. You are a destructive force to the country
and I can't serve you now. He doesn't end up
submitting the resignation letter. What? He ends up doing, telling his staff and telling the people around is, I'm
going to stay and I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight this president. Now, he doesn't mean disobey orders. You know, a lot of people in the military
have discussed this. Where did Milley cross the line or not
crossed the line? In his mind, he wasn't disobeying
legitimate legal orders. What he was trying to say is, I'm
not going to let this military be used inappropriately,
improperly as a political force. And it all right up to the end,
he was worried about that. And I think he was most one of the most
compelling figures in that presidency, says a lot of stories like that, I think,
that were sort of known in general. And we managed to,
I think, bring a lot more to the table. I read that letter.
I read it in The New Yorker. Right. In your excerpt.
It is an extraordinary letter. It's sort of shocking. It's the sort of thing that that maybe you
or I might think or write. But we aren't the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He wrote it. Chosen by Trump. Yeah, and I do. Just to echo that,
I mean, Peter and I have both done, you know,
three decades of reporting in Washington, as well as reporting overseas from Moscow
and other places. I would say that I never encountered in a
in some ways, reporting that was more kind of mind
blowing to me than understanding the true nature and depth of the concerns
of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and, by the way,
the other military chiefs as well. This was not partizan. This is not,
you know, the stuff of cable news. Right? Like this is like
these are really hardcore, serious people who believed that the president
of the United States was the most serious threat to national security
in a way at that moment in time. And I want to. Let's stick with military for a while,
because you did so much reporting on it. What you're describing
strikes me as one of several potential constitutional crises
that could have happened but didn't. And I'm having trouble
wrapping my head around that. It's not just once, it's many times. So let's start high level.
Would you reflect on that? How close were we to a constitutional
crisis during the Trump presidency? Yeah, it's so funny. In my bureau, my bureau chief,
Elisabeth Bumiller, who is wonderful, had a sign on her desk that she brought up
when Trump took office. And it said The country is
is not in a constant crisis and we would like we would debate about
when we would flip it, you know, does it count
as a constitutional crisis or not? I'm not sure that was quite enough
for a crisis. A crisis today is a constitutional crisis. And you're right, because we pushed
and tested the Constitution in ways for four years
that we had never done before because President Trump came into office
as the first president in our history without a day in public office
or the military, not one day he treated the presidency
the way he did the Trump Organization, a family business with no shareholders,
no board, no accountability other than what he himself wanted
and he believed the presidency. Was that so? He believed people ought to be take orders
at the military, work for him. He'd do what he wanted
the Justice Department, if he wanted to prosecute his enemies,
doesn't matter if he's evidence they should be doing that. If he wanted them to let his friends go
who were committing crimes, they should do that, too. We saw it again and again and again. And I think that that's what Susan was talking about,
why January six is not an outlier. I mean, to understand January six, 2021,
you have to understand January 20th, 2017. And every day in between, because it was all building to that
moment, he was pushing, pushing, pushing every chance he got to see how far he could go
until we got to the inexorable conclusion. And what do you make of the fact that. Because you. Said something very interesting,
which is that Milley and others tried to distinguish between disobeying orders on the one hand, and I can't remember how you put it,
but trying to do the right thing. On the other hand,
they're trying to push back on what were bad orders or bad
policy, legal or illegal? Illegal. And I'm I'm still trying to I'm thinking
of how we'll look at it 20 years from now. We didn't get there. It didn't happen. I think it didn't happen,
if you know what I mean. And so why or how or what
do you make of that? Well, a couple of things. So, first of all, there is this question
still not fully defined about where we were,
weren't we, in a constitutional crisis? To my way of thinking,
that was a constitutional crisis. And actually we remain in it because
we have a situation where the leader of one of our two political parties
and Donald Trump definitely remains the de facto leader of one of our two
political parties, has not accepted the constitutional norm
of the transition of power, and continues to defy, in fact,
a lawful, constitutionally mandated process of transition and to make that
a litmus test for one of the two parties. So in my view,
we are in a constitutional crisis as a result of that that we don't
actually fully know how it ends. And related to that, as far as Trump
and the military, you know,
I think his testing of the boundaries throughout was a very interesting
essentially applying the Trump M.O. that he might apply to a real estate deal
or to any one of his business dealings before,
and laying that on to America's national security, the entire nuclear
weapons apparatus and so on. Because what he was doing and what we heard in interviews
with numerous senior officials and I should say that was
what was interesting to me to Milley's account has gotten a lot of attention
in our book and in others. But what I think our book does
that the other books haven't done yet is to show that that was a through line. Donald Trump was testing the military
and they were responding in a similar way almost from the very beginning
of the presidency. Joe Dunford was the much more low profile predecessor
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs to Milley. Trump pushed him out early ahead of time. But Dunford had the same concerns. And that shows again that it was Trump
looking for the weaknesses in the institution. But he would stop short
of giving an order. So it wasn't like Donald Trump. It's not a legal order. If Donald Trump is sitting
in the Oval Office at the Resolute desk and he says, you know, you F-ing generals. And by the way, that's literally
like a quote that he used. You're all f ing losers. I want to get out of Afghanistan
right now. Those are all things
he said again and again and again. You F-ing generals,
you won't listen to me. I would like to withdraw
all military dependents from Korea. Now, I'm sick of this. We're getting ripped off,
and I'd like to do it. So he said that not once. Not twice. Again and again.
Is that an order? A lawful order? No, not under our system of government. It is Trump's wish. He's probing and probing. The generals might then push back and say,
Well, sir, Mr. President, you know, if we withdraw
all of the military dependents, this actually happened in January 2018. And in some ways
it was potentially as close as we came to setting in motion
an actual war on the Korean Peninsula. Our national security leadership was completely worried about this
because had Trump followed through and made it a legal order
to withdraw all those dependents, that would have sent the message to Kim
Jong un in North Korea, we are about to attack you,
and that could have led to a real war. So you know, I think it was
really a crisis, not a crisis averted. And the interesting aspect about, if
I'm hearing you correctly, your opinion is a, at various points he could have said,
okay, we've we've discussed this and decided we're pulling the dependents
out of Korea to use one example. And he didn't show any insight into
why not? Well, in part
is because some of the people around him slow walked him or tried to talk him out of things or,
you know, found ways of circumventing him. You had a situation where you had,
for instance, a national security adviser, John Bolton,
who when when Trump wanted to do something he thought was reckless or unwise,
would find allies on Capitol Hill. He would go to Congress, say, can't you
stop him or go to overseas allies and work with overseas allies to try to talk
or maneuver Trump out of things? So people were trying constantly
to find ways of influencing him. A good example,
we see the queen's funeral yesterday. Well, when Trump went to see the queen,
he was very enamored of this. His mother was Scottish going,
oh, my gosh, the queen, this is validating for him
with his staff, wanted to use that opportunity, see if they could nudge him
a little bit on climate change. So his staff talked to Prince Charles
or his people and asked Prince Charles
if then Prince Charles, now King Charles, if he wouldn't raise the issue
with President Trump when they were there. And so he did. This is his own staff
trying to influence Trump through other people
because they figured he's more likely to listen
to other people's ideas, to listen to us, which is often the case. Although, by the way. He's right. Trump comes back from his meeting or lunch
or whatever it was with Prince Charles and oh my God,
all I do is talk about climate change. So I didn't 100% get through,
but that was what they were trying to do. Let me ask you one last question
on the military and then we'll move on. What sense
you're spinning it. Interesting. I don't know if you use these words,
but you're suggesting that Trump saw the military as yet
another example of the deep state that these the career government officials
who were who were against him. Yeah. There's a conventional wisdom
that the enlisted corps of the United States military is heavily conservative and heavily Trump,
if not MAGA. And you're suggesting that that's
certainly not true for the for the flag officers. But what's your sense of that
conventional wisdom? And what do you make of it? Yeah,
I think you've you've hit on something that's been very interesting, especially as the reports
about the division between Trump and his generals have become public
over the last year and a half. There's a great alarm, I would say,
at the leadership level of the Pentagon that it's a purposeful strategy
at this point, in effect, by Trump
and his allies, political allies, to separate the generals and divide them from the rank
and file of the military. And that, you know, that's part of why you
see, you can tune in to Tucker Carlson. And he often is now doing segments
on the woke generals and criticizing the generals and it looks to many of them with whom I've had conversations
that this is almost a purposeful political campaign
to, you know, of course, to tear down an institution that has enormous respect
in American society at a time when many institutions,
including, of course, the media, do not. And, you know, one of the reasons
we called the book The Divider was because this is absolutely Trump's playbook,
whether it's the military separate, dividing people,
finding the fault lines and fissures in American society,
even finding the fault lines and fissures within his own aides, his own family,
and exploiting them. That is Trump's personal M.O. It strikes me,
as well as his political M.O.. To tell everyone about your interviews with him, what set the scene
with telephone in person? Why'd he do it? What was your reaction? As much as you'd like? Well, we'll. Be briefer than he was. Yeah, we were. And hopefully more truthful
and factual. We. We. Look, I covered him for the Times
for four years. Susan wrote about him for The New Yorker. I'd interviewed him a number of times in office,
but we decided we would give a shot. Actually, he wanted to talk to us. He wanted to talk to authors,
which is interesting, because he knew wasn't going to be,
you know, some sort of sycophantic
book or anything like that. I also knew, excuse me,
that he probably wasn't going to read it. Right. Well, he would read parts of it
or people would read him parts of it. You know, in fact,
when Chris Christie wrote his book and sent it to the White House
with with stick, it notes on the pages he wanted Trump to read,
who said nice things about Trump ignoring the parts, who said bad things
about Trump and bad things about Jared and something we work, by the way. And when we went and talked to Maggie
Haberman, I went talk to Trump. We said,
What do you think of that, Chris Christie? Because as great and nice things about me,
he said, well, you know,
it said really crappy things about Jared. Yeah, it's
just nice things about me. Know. So that's true. And so we went to see him twice
after he left office in Mar a Lago in 2021 for this book. He was willing to see us. We give him credit for that. Obviously, anybody who's
willing to give an interview, we want to take an interview
and hear his point of view. But he's a he's a hard interview
because he's not a reliable fact witness. Right. You can't understand. Him. You can't go there to write a history
and try to get, you know, factual account of an event
that happened or whatever, because it's going to be
completely contradicted by everybody else in the room
or he maybe even contradicted by himself. Right. So he contradicted himself between our
first interview and our second interview. The first interview we were asking about the vaccine for COVID,
which should have been, in his mind, one of the biggest accomplishments
he had right. Is a pretty big deal, this vaccine,
this early on after leaving office. And he had taken himself, of course,
and we said, are you going to do a public service
announcement for that? Yeah. In fact,
they've asked me the by administrators, they've asked me to do a public service
announcement to talk to the people who are most resistant or concerned or
skeptical, and that would be his people. So he said, I'm going to do that. Okay. We showed up again seven months later
for our second interview. So. Well, how come you never did that public service announcement
you said you were going to do? Oh, I never
nobody ever asked me to do that. Well. Who told you that? You told us that you were our source. And that's that's the challenge
and trying to interview him. So the as Susan likes to say,
it's a random rambling kind of conversation
that always comes back to whatever it is he wants to talk about
and is usually not an answer. A question you specifically ask is often
not a what does he say at a noun, a verb, and a period
or not exactly in sequence there. So but it is revealing
at times of his mindset. Right. What is he thinking about? He wants you to hear all about
the stolen election, the rigged election. You can push back all you like
and say, sir, you know that's not true. Doesn't
matter. He's going to keep on going. And it just it doesn't matter to him in some way
whether you're listening or not. He just wants to talk to you. That's right. I'm having trouble now remembering
which figure of the many who commented about him,
who commented on his intellect. It was it was Comey who who commented
on his intellect or lack thereof. I think Comey said
he thought he was intelligent. I'd like to know what you two think. That's you. Because you're alternating. As I said, all the tough questions. In a way, it's hard to look inside someone's mind. What I would say
that's that's very striking goes to this point
about what Donald Trump knows, what he wanted to know, what he didn't know,
what he didn't know would fill many books. And, you know, he came to office
not only with without a single day of experience
in government or the military unlike any other president in American history. But it was his own staff who told us how shocked they were when they started
at the beginning of the administration in 2017 to understand
actually just what that really meant. And they're the ones who said there's an incredible quote
in the first chapter from a senior official in the White House saying, you know,
he knew nothing about most things. He did not. He confused the Baltics and the Balkans. And by the way, he did that in a meeting
with the leaders of the Baltic countries. He did not know that it is Congress that under our Constitution
has the power to make war. He did not know that
Finland was not a part of Russia, you know, and on and on and on. The list goes. How much does it actually matter? Well, it actually matters a lot in the case
of somebody whose supreme self-confidence meant that he did not actually care. Right. You know, it's not like, well,
I'm going to learn on the job. It said he didn't want to. He didn't
he wasn't interested in the facts as we now,
of course, all know all too clearly. And, you know, so what does it mean? I think Trump did have an incredible
I call it a survival mechanism, instincts
about people. I do think that he is
very one of his gifts is to identify the weaknesses in others and to exploit them very skillfully. Many people have asked. It's certainly a theme of the book
The Enablers Who Surrounded Donald Trump
and why did the people work for him? Well, one of the things is that Donald
Trump was expert at surrounding himself with people who were dependent upon him,
who never would have had the job if it weren't for him, you know, or
who had some character flaws or weaknesses that made them susceptible
to remaining in his influence. And that, you know, I wouldn't
I don't think I'd characterize that as intelligence,
but it's an extremely valuable skill. Obviously. There's no denying his political success,
for example. Yeah, yeah. I want to ask a sort of an unusual
or a warm and fuzzy question. But when we when journalists interview
people, we we can't help but either like or dislike them sometimes. How did you feel about him? Oh, we like you. But that's dodging the question. You guys dodged the question. Now, I mean, look. I like both of you. I mean, it's not our job
to like or dislike, obviously. And it's we try as hard as possible
to try to remain as detached and neutral is as we can. He has this interesting quality in person
where he tries to charm you. He is, as Susan says,
kind of when we saw him in kind of the cross
between Napoleon and Elba at a banquet hall greeter you know,
it's like a Coke and I get a Diet Coke. How's it going? And in the middle of the first interview,
which was conducted in the lobby of Mar a Lago, people kept coming by,
Hey, how are you doing? You rigged election, terrible elections. Hey, how's it going? Everything all right? Kimberly GUILFOYLE at one point walks in
and says, you're going to come to the event,
read it later, right? He says, Oh, yeah,
I'll definitely be there. And she walks away. What are things? I have no idea. It's just he he has this sort of, you
know, and some people find it charming. They will tell you that
they think he is charming. And I think it's partly because
his public persona is so bombastic, so harsh, that when he is anything
less than nasty to people in person, they find themselves like, oh, my gosh,
he didn't buy my head off. Well, that's
I that would be my minor asterisk. I agree. Absolutely. Like that
definitely was our experience. I think it's the use of the word
charming that I found. You know, I've heard that
from many people over time. They would say version. Many journalists would say, well,
we interviewed Trump and we found him to be more true in person. I think that's not the right word. And I got my word. I'm saying, yeah, no, I know. So I was a little surprised
because I had heard many accounts, you know, where they say, well, in person
he's not true. So guess what, guys? I mean, my take
is that he's exactly in person. What you think he's like,
okay, you know, like he's not at a rally. He's not like shouting hate
speech at you. Okay? So but with that caveat, like he's
it was like listening to a live action version of his Twitter feed, you know,
including like random insults at random people just thrown into the conversation,
you know? So we would just be asking about something
and be like, Mitch McConnell is the stupidest person ever, you know,
just like randomly thrown in, you know. And so it is true, like he would offer,
you know, would you like a Diet Coke or, you know, he
then insisted that we stay for dinner at Mar a Lago,
which was very interesting experience, because he does he's not inviting you
to have dinner with him. And that is what I found to be fascinating
and revealing about Trump. Right. Like, it goes to this point, you can't
think of who is even his friends, right? Almost all presidents,
including Richard Nixon. Right. You know, they had a friend or two,
you know, be room bozo or whatever. You can't name a friend,
a personal friend of Donald Trump. So Donald Trump says,
thank you for the interview. After the first one, I'd like you
to stay for dinner on the patio. Great. Then he says,
I can get you a good table, you know. So there's a whole stack right? So they take us to a table. Good table. It was a very nice table,
but it's just me and Peter sitting there. And then he goes down
and he performs at the charity cocktail event that Kimberly GUILFOYLE
that he had no idea who it was, but he just it's a
show and he rarely answer. He there's like women in hula skirts doing a hula dance. And then after that show, he comes
in, he welcomes and they clap. Then he comes upstairs and he makes
a grand entrance on the Mar a Lago patio. And all of the paying customers interrupt their dinners and they stand up
and they applaud him every night. And it's like he's like waves at them
as if it's a crowd of thousands. And then here's the very revealing part. He sits down by himself at dinner with the two young aides that he's
brought with him from the White House. And he spends the whole time. At the table
with. Ruby red velvet rope. And he he just talks on the phone
during the dinner with the two aides sitting there. And then when we leave,
you know, he, like, puts the phone on hold
and he smiles like this and he says, like, you know, do you have a good
time to have a good time? So let's let's talk about a larger group of people
than the the hundreds or thousands
cheering him at Mar a Lago, which is and you know where I'm going with this,
which is the 74 million people who voted for him
in November of 2020. They largely knew about his
most of what's in your book. They just didn't know the great details
that you have in your book. And yet they voted for him. What do you make what do you make of that? How should we think about them? Why? Look,
it's important to think about that, because this is this is our country. And they feel very strongly,
many of them, about him. They like him. They like his policies. They like in some cases,
they like his personality. Now, sometimes a different right
that you hear from some people. Look, I wish he didn't tweet so much. I wasn't I wish he wasn't kind of a jerk. But I like tax cuts or I you know,
I don't like socialism and I'm I'm against abortion
or I'm a, you know, whatever. If you are against abortion, he is the most successful
president in the history of the country. Right. He put three justices on the Supreme Court
and Roe v Wade was overturned. Every other Republican president
failed to accomplish what that part of the country
wanted to accomplish. So he did. So some people it's transactional. I don't like him, but he's doing
what I think is right policy wise. And then there are other people
who who couldn't care less about policy. It's not about economics or or anything
else. It's it's sometimes I mean, obviously,
there is a racial element to this. In some cases, he has tapped
into a great racial resentment and divide in this country,
and he has given liberty to people who responded to Obama's presidency
with a sense of, you know, this great replacement theory and oh, my gosh,
they're taking over, blah, blah, blah. He's played into that. And then there's a lot of other people
who just like him because he's a fighter, he's fighting for us.
We don't like them, whoever them is. That might be racial. It might be the elites,
it might be people on this stage. It might be the coasts,
it might be whoever. I think it's a metaphor. It's
those fancy pants. People who know the difference
between the Balkans and the bottle. Might be the people
who know what they're tired of. Exactly soaked in first thinking
that they should need to fight. And guys like Bush and McCain
and Romney told them not to,
you know, not to fight, in their view. And and Trump is channeling
whatever anger, grievance and resentment that they have. Will he run for president in 2024? And if the answer
is no, when will we know? I think that we will know very soon
after the midterm elections. I think that, you know, a year ago, Peter and I might have said, well,
maybe not. You know, that he has a vested interest. He's sort of created
a post-presidency business model. Right. And raising money off
of being a continued presence in politics and his grievance about 2020. He wants to remain relevant
more than anything else. And that the second he says he's
not running, of course, that goes away. Even the spectacle that we saw at Mar
a Lago, you know, sort of influence us. There was an element of pathos to it,
as if he really was sort of a, you know, a kind of washtub
wannabe strongman. That was the vibe, I would say. However, you know, the last year
suggested a number of things that make it possibly
more likely that he'll run. First of all, I think this sort of
metastasizing investigations of Trump and his perception of legal jeopardy
possibly encourages him to run. I think that he believes
that there would be a certain protection in being a presidential candidate. I think that sharing the stage
or ceding the stage to a new generation of Republicans
is infuriating to him. If you just look at his personality, he wishes to
be the all consuming center of attention. You can already see the friction
a little bit with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. A few times.
You see statements from Trump. Well, I made him he wouldn't have gotten
elected without me, things like that. But I think that he's
not ready to cede the stage. There's the legal jeopardy issue
and then there's the fact that he has, you know, done and said everything that a candidate for president
would do and say. So I'm listening to you very carefully. And if I had a takeaway, I would my takeaway would be that
you think he's going to run. I would not be surprised if he runs. And I do think that we'll know
quite quickly there is the possibility if Republicans were not to do as well as they expected to do
in the midterm elections. And there was a backlash
and a blame on Trump for basically pushing more extreme candidates,
especially in Senate races. And you could imagine a scenario where that is possible, but. That that would be a turn off for him.
Yeah. The bottom line, though, is that,
you know, if you have been waiting again and again
and again for the Republican Party for four years to make a jailbreak
from Donald Trump, you know, they didn't do so after January six, the ultimate,
you know, get out of jail free card instead. You know, they're the they doubled down,
to mix my metaphors hopelessly. Forgive me for that. But yeah. I believe you. And you two are experts on
Russia and Putin having written a book, having been co bureau chiefs
of four in Moscow for The Washington Post. So I'm going to ask you a question
that could take up an entire hour, but don't please take take up this hour,
which is number one is share with us what how do you analyze Trump's relationship
with slash affection for Vladimir Putin? And how do you handicap
the next six months in Russia? Yeah, I'll do the second 1/1. Politically, Putin showed his hand. He wants to have a referendum now
in Donetsk and Lugansk, the territories in the east that he already basically
controlled even before the invasion. He will have a referendum on them,
a ceding to Russia. So his hand now is,
I think, take the small territories that he can call a de say
I won, find a way to get out. That doesn't mean that that will end it. And he will face pressure at home
about that from the conservatives, the hardliners. He thinks he he's he's maybe mess this up
and Ukraine might not accept it because they're on the run right now.
Are they got him on the run right now. They got some momentum. Why would they
accept losing some territory? But I think that's where Putin seems
to think he's heading on Trump. And Putin is still the unanswered
question. Okay. You know, my Robert Mueller says there was no criminal
conspiracy between Trump and the Russians. Fine. That doesn't mean that there weren't an extraordinary
and still unexplained level of contacts between them and extraordinary
and still unexplained affection between Trump and Putin or Trump for Putin,
I would say, in fact, it was so striking. We found this out that after that Helsinki meeting
where Trump stands there next to Putin says basically,
I believe him and not my intelligence agencies. Back in Washington,
the intelligence chief, Dan Coats, had director of national intelligence
appointed by Trump, Republican senator,
Republican ambassador was so agog at
this that he told people at the time, he says, I don't know
what does he do now on him? The he himself thought the man who appointed him
was somehow compromised by the Russians and didn't know any better
and he had access to information than the rest of us do not. And if he thought that was possible,
that tells you something. Now, the other thing
I would say, though, that we learned in the process of this book is it
may have been a one sided street, a one side director wonder,
which was phrase my way to one way street, one way street. There is a meeting. We're having trouble with our metaphors
there. Our metaphorical troubles. Putin is meeting with Trump
at the sidelines of the Osaka summit. G20 summit, and Trump is being Trump
braggadocio. You know, Poland wants to name a Ford
after me and Israel wants to name a settlement
after me and Putin very dryly. And he says, Well, maybe they should just
name all of these really after you. Donald Wright mocking his pretensions and his narcissism
because Putin has his number. Putin gets him a frankly,
a lot of the foreign leaders did. But Putin wasn't sucking up to him. Yeah. He was mocking him. And that makes you think
that this is a really one way street. So a lot of people tell you, Michael Cohen, his lawyer, would tell you
it's about money. Russia was a source of money to him
when he needed it. Some of his NSC staff would tell you
it's just about this. Affinity for strongmen
is not just Putin, it's all them. And we'll never know because we don't have
a reliable source to ever tell us. Right? Well. He's not going to tell us.
So that's what I meant. One last question
before I I go to your questions. A little bit of journalistic inside
baseball. Two things. One, what do you make of this criticism
of the two of you for having withheld the juicy stuff in your book
and thereby denying your two employers that information? And secondly, explain
the marital division of labor on writing. I'm writing a book. Well. I'm sorry. Again, this isn't. You know. Really, it's okay. I'm not, you know, paranoid or anything. You know what it is a tough question. Peter and I obviously
are lucky to be able to work together. And I would say this, you know, we're still on speaking terms,
so it worked out okay. It's not an easy thing to write a book. But, you know, we're we're really lucky to have been able
to to work on three together. And each of them had its own challenges. But, you know, the day we wrote Kremlin
Rising after our four year tour in Moscow,
and this is actually a true story, but we finished it
the day that our son was born. The actual day I was born,
he was born early, I should say. So we weren't like late
with our deadline, but, you know, so that was really that was really
a tough project, obviously, you know,
and actually the reason we're here is because today was a day
that we had to bring our son to college. So it's like every. Book is somehow. There's some timing, right? You know. Some big life event. Right? We tried to get the publisher
to change the date, but they very sensibly said, no, we're we're locked in. So that's why we're here with you today. Yeah, but you know, Peter and I are super
lucky to be able to do it together. Do you write every chapter together
or do you do do alternate chapters? Or could you imagine sitting down
and writing a 700 page book with the two of us
sitting at the same pages? And it's not 700 people
that's just with the notes. Okay. So no, we have had different organizations
for different books, but basically we essentially did
what most collaborators would do. We came up with an outline,
we divided it 5050 in terms of who would write the first draft and then who would,
you know, edit it and write through it. That's great. So that's how we did it. To your first question, you know, no, we did not save any juicy bits for this,
as you all, I'm sure. No, we pretty much killed ourselves
to do everything we could during
the four years of the Trump presidency. I can tell you, Peter Baker was writing
stories for The New York Times. You know, from the time
we woke up in the morning often, he would have written three stories for the New York Times before he was
even able to get out of his pajamas. And, you know, he would still be writing
stories, you know, long after I had, you know, fallen asleep in exhaustion
because that was the Trump news cycle. We did this book because it's important
for the historical record that we keep going back at it
and find out more. And I think the fact that we have all this
new reporting, you know,
speaks to the urgency of that project. And we totally recognize
that there is a lot more still to be done when we first out
about some of the information involving Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, and his level of concern about a possible war with Iran. I wrote that in The New Yorker
more than a year ago based on the interviews
we had done for this book, because I found it to be such an alarming disclosure and felt that it needed to
become public at that time. Good. This is one of those things I'm convinced
that the public could care less about. I'd be voted out of the fraternity
for not asking you the thing that journalists care about. Okay, I'm going to race through a bunch
of your questions in the room and online. The first is, did Trump
having classified information at Mar a Lago surprise you at all? Well, we didn't see it when we were there,
but the file cabinets weren't. Yeah, we should have asked
because he might have showed it to you. All right, well, now he's his. He was always very cavalier about this
when we were when I interviewed him in the Oval Office
during his presidency, he would just pull out stuff,
you know, that you see, he was mostly interested in these love
letters from Kim Jong. And did you see these love letters? And they're really very pro forma stuff. It's the fact that he found them
flattering was rather striking. But no, we didn't know that.
Are we surprised by that? No, not surprised by that. He says he sees everything
as being his property. Why do you think lots of Republicans,
including James Baker, still support Donald Trump as president? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, Baker,
who we wrote our last book about, we were working on that book and writing it all
through the rise of Donald Trump. And so, of course,
it was a recurring theme in our conversation
since in so many ways Trump stood exactly opposite to everything
that Baker and, you know, the Republican establishment had stood for, including, you know, strong alliances and. NIETO and free trade and attention to budget deficits
and a sort of personal rectitude as well. And Baker
really did not like Donald Trump. He told us very openly
he thought he was crazy. You know, he thought he was, you know,
a terrible thing for the Republican Party. But it fascinated us that he could not he would not disavow him
in terms of the party. He said, you know, I'm a Republican and in the end,
that's where I'm going to stand. He was begged by many in his family
and who were close to him not to vote for Trump. He voted for him both in 2016 and in 2020, while saying
he didn't represent what he look for. And I think in a way
that was helpful to us in understanding the the partizan grip on probably many millions of Republicans. There are hardcore fan base
for Donald Trump in the Republican Party that I think approximately
about a third of the country. But then, of course, there's
a much higher number of Republicans who for whom Trump
maybe was not their personal cup of tea, but their partizan affiliation
was so strong. A friend of mine in Washington
calls this the anti anti-Trump vote and know those are people basically
for whom Democrats are so problematic and were so concerning or so opposite
to their core ideological beliefs that they're essentially willing to support any Republican,
even one they find distasteful. This question follows on that. Looking to the future. Is there anything Trump could do to raise
questions in the 50% of his supporters? Could his repeated
threats of civic unrest, if he is charged with any crime,
start a long breaking point? I think this is another way
of asking is what might change? Those are. Yeah. Well, look, he told us in 2016
he could go out on Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody
and he would lose any support. And we we quote Lindsey
Graham in this book. Lindsey Graham, of course,
became one of his closest allies, is, you know,
he could kill 50 people on our side and it still wouldn't make a difference. And that's Lindsey Graham saying. And so, you know, we thought
after January six, well, that has to be the moment
the Republicans were furious at him. You know,
they really were. And yet what happened? He they came back around him. So he has a power that, as Susan has put it, you
know, has the party in its grip right now. Could that change? Yes, it could. But what it will be, I don't know. I mean, the truth
is that his being searched by the FBI was seen as a political win
because that meant that he was a victim. Yeah, right. They're out to get him. They are political themselves. And so what will actually change
people's minds? I don't know. There was interesting number in the latest
NBC poll that came out this week. Let's ask Republicans, do you consider yourself
more of a supporter of Donald Trump or more of a support
of the Republican Party? And a number who said they're more
of a supporter of Donald Trump was 33%, which is the lowest number since
NBC had been asking that question in 2019. So maybe there may be a slow erosion. But as Susan says,
you know, don't bet the House on it. It may reflect that he's off Twitter
and the passage of time and what have you, the rise of rand.
I think there's a fatigue among people. Don't want to keep talking about 2024
who's to like it? But you'll see. The question from the audience, are people generally eager to talk to you? Well, you know, we're journalists, so. No, but, you know, it's very interesting. You know,
we were able to conduct around 300 original interviews for this,
and that included a wide array of, you know, certainly boldface names
that you would associate with the Trump administration,
but also people who would still be in pretty hardcore
Trumpist territory. You know, I was interested in that. Now, I think many of them, you know, wanted to find out
what what we were going to be reporting. You know, I wouldn't say some of those interviews
were like our most candid back and forth. But, you know,
we did have a wide array of cooperation with figures from the Trump
administration and the Trump White House across what I would call the different faction
lines and fissures. Right. So there were certainly the kind of internal resistance types. You know,
there were the people many, many people, of course, were fired
and cycled through the Trump White House. But there were also people who were there
with Trump till till the end. And to me, that's fascinating, too. I learned a lot more in doing this book. Also, I feel like I understand better
the very complicated internal factional politics
of the Trump administration. And just a few years time it was practically,
you know, like the early Soviet Union with the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks
and the you know, I mean, there was a lot of different factions
in that in that Trump world. When you say. So this is from this from online,
how does this book attempt to unite Americans on different,
different sides of the political spectrum? Has a book tried to unite Americans? Well, you know, look,
we called the book The Divider because he not because he invented this,
but because he came along at a time in our history
where we already were divided and he figured out how to exploit that. And then he it was a strategy for him. Other presidents have been divisive
because it's the nature of politics, but they at least aspire to the idea
that there was a responsibility, especially those who were elected
president, to bring us together at times. Right. George H.W. Bush wanted a kinder, gentler nation. Bill Clinton said he's going to be
a repairer of the breach. George W Bush said
he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider. Sort of foreshadowing where we are today. Barack Obama said there's not a red
America and a blue America. There's a United States of America. Now, all four of them didn't live up to those aspirations
all the time, but they at least recognize
that that was something we wanted to have as our ambition. Donald Trump
never gave voice to any of that. He didn't think it was his job
to bring us together. He didn't want to bring us together. So I don't know
if our book brings us together. I think our book
hopefully explains some of this to folks. And I think our book to those who might be skeptical of it, because they
they are very admiring of Donald Trump. To Susan's point,
all of our sources of all the stories that they're hearing
now are Republicans for the most part. Right. They're almost all Republicans. And then once all work for Donald Trump, at some point, those are the people
who are most concerned. So if you if you're skeptical of the book,
fine, it's up. That's fair. But but this is a book built on the
accounts of people who are in the room. To the to that previous conversation
about people being eager or willing to talk to you. I wonder if it is actually no coincidence
that, you know, the head of all of this is
somebody who leaked and talk to the press
his entire life. And even you wouldn't
get on the phone with Maggie Haberman. And you you always wanted to talk. And so maybe no surprise
that the entire administration wanted to talk because he did. Well, there's something to be said there. I think that it was a group of people led by the former president himself
that were extremely focused on appearances on the media. For all of Trump's
characterization of the media as the enemies of the people
and use of this sort of dehumanizing language and, you know, attacks
on the institution of the media. He was a uniquely media focused president
who bashed The New York Times that really, really cared
what The New York Times said about him. And I think that spilled over
to his aides. Trump, you know, hated CNN and yet couldn't stop myself from watching it,
you know? And that, I think, was who he was. He once told there's this
extraordinary moment in the book where he was overheard by one of his senior
advisers, once telling someone, not only the old New York adage, right,
there's no such thing as a bad publicity. He he amended that. And Donald Trump's version of it was, there's no such thing as bad publicity as long as
they don't call you a pedophile. You know, this man really believed
in talking to the press. Redefines a low bar to a friend. Friendly, friendly question. I think to your thesis, it seems Mark
Meadows did a disservice to Trump by being an enabler
instead of a real chief of staff. I'm comment on that
and share a little bit about your what you learned about Mark Meadows
and his role. It's a great question
because Mark Meadows was a mystery us when we started the book
because we could not figure out where he was coming from
because we'd heard a couple of inversions. One, he was on these phone calls
with Mark Milley and and others who wanted to land the plane. That's what they were call these land.
The plane calls after the election. They were worried about something
getting out of hand. And they wanted to make sure
that things were kept relatively stable. And he would tell people that he was trying to get Trump there,
don't worry, it's going to be okay. And then at the same time,
he was texting with Jenny Thomas and these congressmen, these Freedom
Caucus congressmen and saying, yes, this is a battle for good and evil
and the Lord is on our side. And and we have to, you know, have fake electors
and we have to do all these things. So you know, to the extent that we thought
for a while that he might be you know, we clearly tried to say
what everybody wanted him to say. Whoever he was talking to, he tried to say
what he thought they wanted to say. But in the end, if there was a question,
it was he really wanted to land the plane, guys, trying to keep things calm. Was he somebody who was as a Republican,
called him the matador, who was waving the flag saying,
come on in. It turns out he was a matador. You know, the guys like who who were saying,
let's seize the voting machines and let's declare martial law
and have fake electors unless pressure the Justice Department into
saying the things that they don't believe in order to overturn the free and fair
election were given the ability to do that by the White House
chief of staff, Mark Meadows. And so we had this great conundrum
in our book in a lot of ways about these people who debate
whether they should stay or not in, this administration, because they just
can't stand it any longer. But they always tell themselves, well, if it'll be worse if I'm not here
and in some cases self-justifying, right? Gosh, if it wasn't for me, bad
things would happen. But here's a situation
where you could see where that would be difference if John Kelly,
who came to really loathe President Trump, had been this White House
chief of staff, in the end, he might not have been able
to stop January six, but he would have thrown himself
on the doorstep stop of the Oval Office to keep some of these characters out,
if he could have. And that's a difference. I love
the next question because it shows that even in San Francisco,
we are not all of one mind. Given Biden's recent Philadelphia speech
where he called many Republicans semi fascists,
are you going to write a follow up book on Biden as the as the great divider or the I'm sorry. The question
is, as the divider in chief virtue. Yeah. I mean, look, this is a great challenge
for journalists because we're used to operating in a system
where we essentially look on our political system as like
we just have two political parties. And the bottom line is that that has been changed
pretty radically in the last few years. And it is our responsibility, you know, to to hold up the politics
in the country to a mirror. It's not to create the
that we want to create. That's hard to do. Many times there's a lot of noise,
but that is, in fact, our responsibility. It's not to say, well, these things are always equivalent,
and that's the bottom line. And there is just
that's a false equivalence. You know, there's only one party
in America today that is led by someone who has denied the legitimacy
of an American election, who has called forth a violent mob
of his supporters with a specific goal of obstructing the peaceful transition
of power on January six, 2021. That just that's never happened in
American history, Democrat or Republican. We've never had a president
in American history who tried to overturn
the legitimate results of an election. I think we're all still having
a hard time, in a way, critics and Lakers of Donald Trump together. We have a hard time processing that it's
never before happened in American history. That does not require us
as as independent journalists to say that calling out
that behavior is evidence of divisiveness. It just it's not the same thing. Joe Biden's speech is, not the same thing as what Donald Trump has been doing
to the country for four years. I really appreciate your use of the word
equivalence. I think it's the most important
where there's a big difference with Hillary Clinton
whining about the result of the election and Donald Trump for the very first time not attending his successor's
inauguration. Correct. He was shocking. Hillary Clinton. And there's lots of criticize
about Hillary Clinton that that's fine. But she did call to concede. She did show up for his inauguration. By the way, President
Obama didn't try to stay in office. He didn't talk to the military about what
to do about it. He didn't ask
the Justice Department to prosecute, you know, in order to stay in office. I mean, these are not equivalent. You can say that Hillary did or didn't do
good things are bad things. You criticize Barack Obama, Joe Biden. Fair enough. That's
and we write a lot of critical stories. That's our job is not the same thing. We shouldn't say it is. We have time for one last question. It's going to be mine. But before we go reflect a little bit,
one of the observations about your book is it it's it's
heavy in color and lighter on policy. What are your thoughts
about the about Trump's policy successes and failures
in his four years in office? Yeah, I mean, the bottom line
is that Donald Trump is light on policy. And if you. Want to write. A book
about his presidency. If you want to write a book
about Trump in the White House, you know, that's just that's. The way I look at it. Now. I get I heard that one for. I'm going to I'm going
to I'm going to agree there's go ahead. I'll give an anecdote, though. We we took we took seriously his number one
policy domestic policy goal was tax cuts. Right.
Let's just we said we take it seriously. We analyze it in the book and we talk to
guess who his top tax policy guy who told us, guess what? This had nothing to do with Donald Trump. That's an on the record quote on. The record, quote from the guy
whose job it was. He was brought in specifically
to do tax cuts and said Donald Trump
had nothing to do with this bill. It was all done on the Hill.
It was all done by. Congressional Republicans
Trump decided name to it. The only thing he cared about
was what to call it. And he wanted to call the Cut Cut Cut Act because he thought that was good branding,
but that basically he did nothing when it came to that. So as we see today's lineup policy, even the thing he cared about,
he really didn't spend time on it. As long as we have a moment,
just continue then. Ed, he had a foreign policy achievement
as well, which was the Abraham Accord. And talk about that. Also something really is, wasn't he
something he spent a lot of time on? Personally, I now give him credit. It was it happened on his watch
and he didn't get credit for what happens on their watch. But the Abraham Accords, in which Israel
established diplomatic relations with several Arab
countries was an important breakthrough. But it was
something was happening already, and it was something that if anybody got credit,
obviously Jared Kushner was the one who was pushing it
within his administration. And Trump showed up for the ceremony
with happily so. But even even with even without Kushner. I think this is already Susan will say this to Ari
starting to happen because there's reasons why the Israelis
and the Arabs see common ground. Well, what an interesting conversation. Our thanks, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser,
authors of The Divider Trump in the White House 2017 to 2021. Just a reminder
that Peter and Susan's book is available for purchase here
or at your local bookstore. If you would like to support the club's
ongoing efforts in making virtual and in-person programs
possible, please visit W WW dot Commonwealth Club dot org. Despite not having a gavel to call this
meeting to close, I am Adam Lashinsky. Thank you and take care. I would say that was fantastic
and it was great. Thank you for asking. Good luck to you.
