https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6k8ADT_3XU
Transcript
Speaker 1: Welcome to House Politics. How are you, John Carl?
Speaker 2: Doing great. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. So talk to me about this book.
Speaker 2: Look, as you know, and I never would have thought this would have been my destiny,
Speaker 2: but this is now the fourth book I've written on the Trump era,
Speaker 2: starting with when I was covering him the first time around,
Speaker 2: and I wrote Front Row at the Trump Show, and it just keeps going.
Speaker 2: This, Molly, is the, I think, the most important of the books I've written,
Speaker 2: And certainly it was the most challenging.
Speaker 2: This is the longest book.
Speaker 2: It's the most heavily reported book.
Speaker 2: And I think it's, you know, it's called Retribution.
Speaker 2: I chose that name the day after Donald Trump won in November last year.
Speaker 2: And I chose it for a reason.
Speaker 2: And I see it playing out right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of shocking.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing on the campaign trail was where they'd be like, well, you don't really
Speaker 1: want to exact retribution on your enemies. And he'd be like, no, no.
Speaker 2: I do. I do. Yes. I mean, we probably figured that out when he did his first official rally
Speaker 2: of the campaign in Waco, Texas. And at that rally, as you recall, he played on the big screens
Speaker 2: behind the stage, those huge jumbotrons, images of the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Speaker 2: And, of course, played the J6 choir singing the National Anthem.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I would love you to just talk to us about, like, why, what we can learn from this.
Speaker 1: We are watching Retribution in real time, but what are the sort of lessons from this book?
Speaker 2: Well, there were two moments that really drove my desire to do another one of these books.
Speaker
2: The first was going to see Donald Trump on trial in New York in that
dingy 100 Center Street courtroom where he was forced to appear four
days a week, compelled to be there, had to sit silently while people on
the stand said, you know, terrible things about him, embarrassing things
about him.
Speaker 2: Stormy Daniels testifying about Trump wanting to spank her with a magazine with his face on the cover.
Speaker
2: And also being there as Joe Biden dropped out of the race. It just
occurred to me that we were watching a campaign, a presidential
campaign, unlike any other that we have ever seen in American history. I
mean, maybe you have to go back to like 1912 to find something remotely
as chaotic and unpredictable. And also in this case, something so high
stakes.
Speaker
2: So I started, you know, obviously I'm reporting day to day for ABC
News. I'm doing my day job. But as I'm doing it, I was coming back to
what I would want to try to tell the larger story of what was really
happening in this campaign with the benefit of a little bit of hindsight
and the time to do some more in-depth reporting about what was
happening.
Speaker
2: And that's the product of this book. I mean, it's been, frankly,
working on this has been an obsession of mine for over a year. There's a
lot that it tells you about how Donald Trump came back to power and
what his intention was from the start to do with that power, which is in
large part to get even at all of those who he believes have wronged
him.
Speaker 1: Where does it end?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know where it ends.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what all of us are thinking all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker
2: Yeah. And I, you know, I feel like I've known Trump for more than 30
years. I've spent so much of my professional life now, you know,
chronicling him. I can tell you a lot about Trump, how it ends. I can't
really tell you. Obviously, you have all this talk now that he doesn't
want to leave the White House.
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon talking about, you know, him running again in 2028. Donald Trump's not ruling out,
Speaker 2: trying to, I mean, constitution, what constitution, you know, staying in power. I don't really think
Speaker 2: that's where he's going, but here's the thing, Molly, how does he pass the baton? At what point
Speaker 2: does he stand up and make it official? I'm out. I'm not running. JD, it's yours. Marco, it's yours,
Speaker 2: or you two get to fight it out and whoever else.
Speaker 2: But, you know.
Speaker 1: RFK Jr.
Speaker 2: RFK Jr., believe me, I don't know how that happens
Speaker 2: because the minute that happens, he becomes a lame duck
Speaker 2: and the attention goes to someone else.
Speaker 2: I covered the Obama White House.
Speaker 2: And let me tell you, 2015, 2016 at the Obama White House,
Speaker 2: it was often like a ghost town.
Speaker 2: I mean, they were still doing things,
Speaker 2: but nobody was paying any attention.
Speaker 2: You know, poor Josh Earnest, who was the press secretary
Speaker 2: at the time would have these hour and a half briefings. Hardly any of the regular correspondents
Speaker 2: were in there covering them. And they weren't really making any news because the attention
Speaker 2: was all on at first Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton and the next, you know, who would be the next
Speaker 1: president. And then, of course, eventually Trump. That is the tension, right? If he admits he's not
Speaker 1: running again, all of a sudden the man behind the curtain. I mean that gone. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: What really drove the reporting in this book is seeing how Donald Trump left office, disgraced, a pariah.
Speaker 2: He was banished on social media.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about that.
Speaker
2: He was banished on social media, and most of the major companies in
this country announced that they would not be donating money, not just
not to Trump, but to anybody who was aligned with Trump in challenging
the 2020 election.
Speaker 2: He was gone.
Speaker 2: He was a pariah.
Speaker
2: This is why when Kevin McCarthy went to visit him shortly after he
left office, it was such a huge story. Oh, my God, what's Kevin McCarthy
doing? And, you know, he managed to recapture the Republican Party in a
way that he had never captured it in the first place.
Speaker
2: This is entirely, you know, he has this power and, you know, how he
managed to do that and how he wants to use that power, I think, points
to a very different second term than what we saw in Trump's first term.
Speaker 1: Does he ever call you?
Speaker 2: He does. He calls me. I call him.
Speaker
2: I tell you, one of the strange things that I started to do during
the campaign was during the fall campaign, I would sometimes call him
every two or three days.
Speaker
2: And there was a much higher percentage chance of him answering the
phone than, say, the deputy press secretary of the Kamala Harris
campaign.
Speaker 2: Mostly it's me calling him, but there were occasions and there are occasions where he calls me.
Speaker 2: And it's a highly unusual thing.
Speaker
1: I want to go back to the sentence you just said, that it's more
likely to get Donald Trump on the phone than it was to get the deputy
press secretary of the Kamala Harris campaign on the phone.
Speaker 1: because I think that is part of why Trump won.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think there's any question.
Speaker 2: You know, we were talking about Jeb Bush a moment ago.
Speaker 2: It actually kind of brings back memories of Jeb Bush
Speaker 2: back in those salad days when he was the Republican frontrunner.
Speaker 2: He was very hard to get through to.
Speaker 3: And he did precious few interviews.
Speaker 2: His campaign events were tightly choreographed,
Speaker 2: just like Hillary Clinton's were.
Speaker 2: And certainly, I think Kamala Harris did that even more so than those.
Speaker 2: I mean, when you think about her, she and I track, keep in mind that this book is about
Speaker 3: what happened to Biden and about Harris's quick rise and fall.
Speaker 2: And, you know, Harris gives the sense that 107 days, she ran out of time.
Speaker 2: She didn't have enough time.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was the reverse.
Speaker 2: In fact, what happened is she was strongest during those first, say, 30 to 40 days.
Speaker 2: And then tapered off.
Speaker
2: And part of it was this intensely careful, precious few interviews,
precious few interactions with the press when Trump was out there for
everybody.
Speaker
1: And if you do that, if you do very few interviews, then every minute
you talk to anyone is scrutinized within an inch of its life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, you remember the first interview, which was with Dana Bash.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 2: And it was she comes in, she effectively wins the nomination.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no convention yet, but she's effectively won the nomination and does absolutely nothing.
Speaker
2: And for a period of a couple of weeks, the best answer that I could
get is that, you know, she was spending much of her time preparing for
this big first CNN interview.
Speaker 1: That was the August when she disappeared.
Speaker 1: Because August, I remember in August thinking, where is she?
Speaker 1: Why is she not out there?
Speaker
1: And you know what's so interesting is that Hillary Clinton had a
couple weeks, too, in August where she's effectively disappeared.
Speaker 1: You'll remember Hillary's house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: And maybe she was sick.
Speaker 1: Maybe she was not sick.
Speaker 1: But it didn't matter because if you create a vacuum, anyone who's around will fill it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, to be entirely fair here, Harris had a tremendous first couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Tremendous.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was people who had thought that she didn't have what it takes or was going to be a terrible candidate.
Speaker 2: We're like, wait a minute, where was this Kamala Harris?
Speaker 2: She's good.
Speaker 2: She's got it down.
Speaker 1: And then it was disappearing.
Speaker 1: And then it was disappearing and she does the CNN interview.
Speaker
2: And because, to your point, she hasn't been doing interviews, not
just as a candidate, but really not even as vice president.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was not a strong interview.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 1: And picked apart within an interview.
Speaker
1: It's like because if you're Donald Trump and you're doing, I mean,
like, I think about how much media Donald Trump does in a day when he's
not calling journalists.
Speaker 1: And, you know, I mean, three, four hours a day.
Speaker 1: I mean, a pool spray, a this, a that, a press conference.
Speaker
1: And then those like insane cabinet meetings that are televised,
which are like, you know, a little North Korea, but you still have a
visual of the guy out there.
Speaker
1: And so if you say something crazy, if you've said 7,000 other things
since then, it becomes sort of hard to keep track.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's that, you know, it's that Bannon-esque flood the zone.
Speaker 2: You know, he may do five things that are completely crazy and are, you know, would get picked apart and get hit.
Speaker 2: But he does 25 other things.
Speaker 2: So you forget about those things he just did.
Speaker
2: I mean, and it's as a journalist, you're just you've got not just a
fire hose coming at you, but you have 10 fire hoses coming at you.
Speaker 2: By the way, also why to me it was so important to write this book is to try to get a little bit of a step back.
Speaker 2: And what did we just go through?
Speaker 2: What did we just live through?
Speaker
2: And to go through and take the time and to pick apart the key
moments that brought us to this point in American history and to try to
go back and see what was really happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: That's what I tried to do with this book.
Speaker
1: This is a very different White House than Trump 1.0, like very
different, different priorities, different everything, different
unfetteredness. So explain to me what you see as the sort of main
players in this White House.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing that makes it entirely different is he is actually trying to fundamentally change things.
Speaker 2: He's going to have an impact on this country.
Speaker 2: And by the way, also on the physical layout of the White House that he never had in the first term.
Speaker 1: You don't say.
Speaker 2: I mean, the first term, all the chaos, all the attention, all that took place.
Speaker 2: When he left office, he left office.
Speaker 2: It was ephemeral.
Speaker 2: He was there was not that much of a lasting impact.
Speaker 2: That is not the case already just, you know, less than a year into this White House.
Speaker 2: And the two other biggest factors are he comes in with an agenda that was part of what he
Speaker 2: was into last time, but it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Not really.
Speaker 2: Which is which is to get back at the people that screwed him over in his minds.
Speaker 2: I mean, he he faced an election where he was either going to maybe go to prison or become
Speaker 2: the most powerful president that we have seen in our lifetimes. Thanks to a Supreme Court immunity
Speaker 2: decision, thanks to a Congress that is entirely obsequious and going to do whatever he wants,
Speaker 2: the most powerful president of our lifetime. So he becomes that and he's going to use that power
Speaker 2: to get back at everybody that investigated him, that attacked him, the Republicans who tried to
Speaker 2: reign him in. So not just, this isn't just prosecutors and democratic opponents who impeached
Speaker 2: him or any of that. This is also the Republicans that tried to reign him in. So that enemies list,
Speaker 2: high on that enemies list are people like, well, Jim Comey. I wouldn't be surprised to see people
Speaker 2: like General Kelly on that list, Mark Milley on that list, people who served in his administration.
Speaker 2: Bill Barr. You had Bannon the other day saying that Barr should go to prison, that Bill Barr
Speaker 1: should be prosecuted. Think about that. No, I don't want to think about that. How much
Speaker 1: is Bannon world talking to Trump world? Well, I don't know about Bannon world or Trump world,
Speaker 2: but Bannon is talking to Trump. Absolutely. Wow. All right. And there is absolutely a line there.
Speaker 2: And also Bannon, two things. One, he does have an influence on Trump. He makes sure that his show,
Speaker 2: he's on for four hours a day on the war room.
Speaker 1: Man, better him than me.
Speaker 2: And when he has the key messages that he wants, they go to Natalie Harp, Trump's assistant,
Speaker 2: and they go to Trump and Trump watches them. And also, I recount...
Speaker 1: And Natalie prints it out, right?
Speaker 2: Well, these are video clips, so she sets up the video clips.
Speaker 3: I know, I'm just kidding. The human printer.
Speaker 3: The human printer, yeah.
Speaker 2: But I describe a scene in the book that is really kind of mind-blowing,
Speaker 2: It helps you understand what happened when Zelensky came to the White House in February.
Speaker 3: And you had that big confrontation.
Speaker 2: Well, in advance of that, there was a national security meeting with Vance, Hegseth, Rubio,
Speaker 2: Witkoff, Besant, then the national security advisor, Mike Waltz.
Speaker 2: And they're meeting at the White House with Trump.
Speaker 2: And they're going over that minerals deal that we're going to sign with Ukraine.
Speaker 2: And Trump says, get Steve Bannon on the phone.
Speaker 2: Waltz calls Bannon anyway.
Speaker 2: They go back and forth.
Speaker 2: Bannon puts Waltz to voicemail.
Speaker 2: Then Trump calls Bannon himself on his phone, and Bannon takes the call.
Speaker 2: And for the next half hour, Bannon is basically lecturing the national security team on how
Speaker 2: they can't trust that punk Zelensky, which is what Bannon calls him, and how if you do
Speaker 2: a securities deal, he's going to want a natural resources deal.
Speaker 2: He's going to want security guarantees.
Speaker 2: You cannot trust him.
Speaker 2: You cannot do him.
Speaker 2: And that really, again, this has never been reported before, but I think that that incident,
Speaker 2: and I've talked to many people that were involved in that, set the stage for the confrontation
Speaker 2: with Zelensky.
Speaker 2: And that was Bannon.
Speaker 2: He's not in the White House.
Speaker 2: He's not on the national security team.
Speaker 2: But in that moment, he had more influence than the national security advisor or the secretary
Speaker 2: of state.
Speaker 1: John Call, thank you.
Speaker 2: Molly, I love talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.
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