Jonathan Swan: We Only Know 5%

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[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to the Boorg Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted welcome to the show. It's been way too long.

White House reporter for The New York Times. Co-author of regime change. You might have heard of it inside the imperial presidency. It was number one for like 19 weeks. I've got my trusty copy right here.

9 weeks. Maybe 19 weeks. Eventually. You might be back up this week. We got so long while you're competing again.

We'll learn tomorrow. But who knows? You might mock in the New York Times rankings. We'll see. Andrew, you have a child now.

That's pretty. Actually, but yeah, I have a new one.

The third is when things go really downhill I hear.

That's what it feels like so far. Okay. Well, you're looking fresh. That's good. Praise for Caesar.

I was expecting, you know. I don't know. Rinkles. You know, bags. Nothing.

Well, I've seen your commentary about various men's. That skincare routine. So I did it all up. I'm just going to serve us to straight men. Yeah.

I'm trying to offer a service to straight men. You can moisturize too. That's all.

And I feel like sometimes I do that via positive feedback.

And occasionally negative feedback. I've only seen that. I'll take your word for it. That's positive advice. I want to start here.

There's a story about JD Vance, my another one of my favorites. A sweet device president. Another anonymous source is saying that he has skepticism about the Iran war.

“And I know you're not going to talk about the sourcing, right?”

So I don't, I don't, I shouldn't ask you whether JD is calling the New York Times. Well, I sort of find the, the reaction to that kind of. A musing slash phasical because we reported in April. Maggie and I would do the big take out for the New York Times. That was an extract from our book, which was a big piece on the probably the most deeply reported piece,

in modestly on the lead up to the Iran war, which we opened with that scene of Netanyahu coming down to the situation room and pitching Trump on the war. And in that piece, we report in detail about how Vance was really the only one in the in a circle to argue against the war in those meetings in front of the other aids. Now, as far as I'm aware, every significant outlet who's done any reporting on the war and what happened

in the lead up to it and behind the scenes has confirmed that reporting and supported. And the reason for that is it's true. And we've heard it from people who hate JD, don't mind him, like him, support him. It just happened. It's just the fact.

And the other part of that I would say, like, you know, where obviously limited in what we can say about sourcing, but the other part of that that I find like odd is to people actually think that he's incentivized right now to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump when his single goal between now and January of 28 is to have Donald Trump's endorsement, which Donald Trump has quite theatrically declined to give so far. Like when he when he opposed the war early on, it did not endure him to Donald Trump.

Trump was complaining about him as we've reported. He was pissed off about it. This was not like some wonderful experience that the played out really well. It actually empowered some of his opponents both on the outside and on the inside. So, yeah, I mean, this is, this is kind of an interesting question about how to deal with that because yeah,

let's explore it because I don't, I don't like talking about people behind their back. On Friday's podcast, you're busy guy, you're not listening to every boy daily podcast. Most of them, not all of them, but we've meditated T-Jill a little bit about this line from that article, where it's at Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from the outset. And like this is like the challenging part of that, which is, okay, that could be true.

Like, I don't have any reason to doubt you're reporting. You've had the best reporting on this. But then simultaneously to that, like publicly, he's talked about how Trump is not going to allow us to get into a multi-year war. Trump's a smart president, not a dumb president, in July. He said Trump's been successful.

He said we created economic diplomatic and military leverage. Let's use that leverage to go accomplish and even bigger win for the American people. It's not over yet so far, so good. And he said so far, so good in July.

“It's kind of hard to, you know, how do you grapple with that?”

Like on the one hand, saying that he's a prozoor on the other hand, publicly he's like so far, so good. Yeah, the way we grapple with it is in the same story.

I presume they read the story because in the subhead of the story and in the body of the story,

we say that he's been saying one thing privately and a different thing publicly. The fans has been out there endorsing the war, supporting it, defending it, whereas privately, as we've reported, as the Atlantic's reported, as the Wall Street Jones reported, as the Washington Post's reported, presumably I don't know if you guys have reported on it. But if you have, I assume you've found the same thing.

The sourcing for the poor side inside the White House is pretty shaky at these tests. It is what it is. I mean, it's like, that's the fact. But like, I didn't know how much more prominent you can have than, you know, the subhead of the story and in the body of the story.

Yeah, I guess it's kind of like, the question is,

“that's like a tough thing for people to navigate, right?”

At some level, why is that tough for people to navigate?

Yeah, because you can just read it, right? Well, it's in the subtext. Well, because it's like, is that true though? Like, I mean, is it true in the sense that is this game's been shipped from him? Right?

You know, it's hard to, you know, it's fine. You're trying to say, well, we should trust what's like that there's behind the scenes, the privately he's criticized it. But like publicly, all people see is then supporting it, you know? Yeah, which we say in the story.

But like, again, what I'm saying is, these meetings happen. I mean, we reported on them. They were in front of multiple people and anyone who's done any reporting on it has verified the same thing. So, I don't know, you could not. How did that happen?

I mean, how do you think he wasn't like, it wasn't like we were reporting on like, secret 101 conversations between JD events and Trump. These were meetings with the court in the circle team in the White House situation room in the Oval Office. Just as we reported on a whole bunch of it.

And the future guys of tearing up. Oh, I'm saying is like, I mean, he accused you of having to say people on the could say, well, how do you know that Netanyahu meeting happened? Well, we know it happened because we reported it. We did our work.

We verified it and we reported it. You could trust the reporting or not. But you don't have to trust our reporting.

“You have to then question the Atlantic's reporting,”

the wash of journals reporting. Nobody's not trusting the reporting. reporting. The question is like, no, no, no, it doesn't. I'm sorry. It sounds like that. I don't want to sound like that. I believe what JD is saying is privately is what you're reporting. The question is that like, you have the situation that is very unique to this administration,

right? Which is very often, like they will call you guys and say something on background or I'm not saying the JD call. You put whatever. There's reporting. They're talking to people. They're trying to spin things on background. And then publicly, they say the opposite and they call you fake nits. And then they call you a liar. And so it's like tough to know. Like who is getting flat? You know what I mean? Like in this situation. In this situation, two things

happened and we described both of them in the story. One is in meetings with the Trump's court team and Trump in front of other raids, which include people who are big fans of vans and people who are less so, vans made an argument against the war. It pissed off Trump complained about it to people. This happened on multiple occasions. That's a thing that happened. That's a true thing that happened. Also at the same time, he has been publicly saying that he

supports the president supports the war, defending the war and television. That's also something that's happened. And we wrote that in the story that he's saying one thing about, I don't know. I mean, yeah. Is that working? Do you think for him? Like in terms of, like in terms of what it's right with Trump? Yeah. I just think. As we say in the story, it cost him a trade. This is not something that's helpful to him. Like the existence of this story. This is why I find it

absurd. It's like, Jamie Vance has one job between now and January of 28 in terms of his political future. It is to get Donald Trump's blessing and endorsement. The notion that he would be thrilled or excited about stories that drive a wedge between him and Donald Trump is like

“interesting to me that people think that. But, you know, I'm limited to that. I mean, I think”

this is why this is why it's so interesting to like think about like the way the political machinations of him, the way he's trying to manipulate things because he's trying to do both actually. Right. I mean, like I understand what you're saying, the number one thing is number one priority is for Trump to give him the blessing. But it's like number two priority is to be the most America

first. First team, but team D. He's trying to do both. Well, anyway, okay. And is that not true?

You don't think he's trying to do both of those things? I think that's right. I think that's right now. Let's talk about this, Sean, and give a speech just last week. Right. At the midterm convention, with the only time that he brought up the Iran war, was he created the straw man where the ghost of Charlie Kirk had been alive, would have opposed the Iran war, but still voted for Republicans. Right. And so like that was publicly. That wasn't private. That's not him kind of navigating

things behind the scenes. Like in his speech at the so-called convention, he basically tried to alibi like it's okay to be against the war, but and also for Republicans. Right. Do you think it's possible that he just is against like was against this war and and that what everyone has reported is accurate. Well, sure. That he was dead against this war and he's been trying to walk this

for him to have stories that are elevating a division between him Donald Trump at the same time

that he's trying to. I think, you know, I think that's possible, but I also think that's possible that he wants to do both again. Okay. If that was if it was not exciting for him, I don't understand why that would be his strategy for the midterm convention. Like his Trump has ears. Like he was able to watch the midterm convention speech and would say he talked about how Charlie Kirk would have opposed the war. I think that's a slightly different thing. That's that to me, he talks

people internally that they are trying to use him whether it'll be effective or not. I'm skeptical as an emissary to that disaffected alienated younger part of the coalition that has really felt the truth. This is a different thing then, which is kind of like maybe it's just a

baby. Yeah, maybe it's okay with Trump. That's different. I'm trying to figure out what I think

but Tim let's be clear. Like I don't think the piece that we did most recently in the New York Times serves that purpose. It's already on the public record in our reporting in the Atlantic Supporting in the Walsha General Supporting in the Washington Post where like the J.D. fans opposed the war. What does Jonathan, I'm trying to say you're serving J.D.'s purpose. I'm not saying you're just killing person. I'm not. No, I mean, I think that it's interesting the J.D. It seems to me that he wants to

try to have both but but maybe you're saying he doesn't. That's an that's interesting and also in itself. I don't think it's obvious that he doesn't want those stories out. I think that he's trying to keep in Trump's good graces while also positioning himself is like kind of winking and nodding

“at people and saying I'm more with you guys on this. I think he's trying to do both. What do I know?”

Yeah. Maybe. I didn't realize that you were going to like, you know, feel that strongly that the article was out contra J.D. V. No, I just saw this. It's like, it's a weird experience as a reporter when you write a story and you know how the story is you write coming down and you see all these people like comment on it and then you also know that in the same story, people like, well, how could you save this when he's saying this public? It's like, yeah, bro,

it's in the it's in the subhead and the main body of the story. Like is this like a literacy problem? Yeah. Well, then like this is so we reported it in April. To me, this is just Javanka all over again, though. So you can know you separate yourself out for that because you weren't doing that, you know, you're in a different role than, but like we lived this, right? Like is that not true? Like Jared was trying to stay in the father and those good graces and also he was like leaking about how he's

a little bit concerned about things. For for like is this not this the same thing, but that's that. I don't think it's the same thing, but um at all, um in fact, couldn't really be further from it, but anyway, it was a further do you think? Because what I just told you is true, which is that privately. You think it's worried, you think Javanka is probably, I think Jared and Ivanka didn't like some of the stuff in the first term, but you know, they're trying to do it. No, no, no, no,

what I'm saying is the vast stories, the reason everyone's reported that he's against the war is because there were meetings where he argued against it aggressively to Trump. That happened. I understand if people don't like that or whatever, but it's just a fact, we reported it. And the Javanka stuff was more as far as I'm aware, it wasn't actually me, I mean, I covered it. It wasn't there was this big meeting in the sit room in the Ovoz, where Jared and Ivanka said,

you know, dad don't do this. And then all these other aids were like in the room. It was always

Ivanka went off privately with her father and said, like, I don't recall a big scene.

“That's what I'm saying. There was like Jared's fan and there was something. These things”

either have, well, that was true. I'm Jared's in a war against it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, things can be true. Like, I guess, I'm sorry, I don't know if I'll leave the labor in the point, but what I'm trying to say is that things can be true and also political, strategic, and machinations, right? Like, you can choose to oppose Trump and try to keep it as quiet as possible and like say things to him behind the scenes. Or you can try to

do it and then also kind of signal to Tucker your friend Tucker that like you're still on side. And like, I think he's, I think he's trying to signal to both people that he's still on side. That's, but maybe that's wrong. I don't, maybe that I'm looking, I'm hoping to be wrong. I can't be in JD. No, the challenge I mean, the challenge I mean is we just don't talk about sources. So I can't say to Tim, that's wrong. Actually, the way we got this story is XYZ.

“You know, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, you might be wrong. That's what I'm telling you.”

I might be wrong. I might be wrong. Yeah. He's mad at you. Hold hold, hold open the possibility in your mind. Jay, I've got a joke. What you think about the origins of this story might be, in fact, because no, Jay, I, I, I look, I'm running over time. So I, I, I am holding open the possibility. Yeah. I also, I also watched, Jay, I guess, I just, I keep going back to, I watched,

like, the sources could be the generals that call it. I don't care, like who the sources are. My point is that JD is trying to have it both ways, because he wants to stay in Trump's good grace as his anti wants to be the nationalist. And I think that tension is probably the big tension of the next two years. I think that's right. I think that's right. But I do think that he's not trying to, in those speeches, drive a wedge between him and Trump. He's trying to,

keep open. He's trying to drive a wedge between Trump and the dead Charlie. Yeah. All of, put down all of Branch, those people who feel betrayed by them. I'm skeptical

“it will work. But that's what he was trying to do.”

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You guys were the first on this NBC is now at this week and others with the Inspector General's

report, like basically confirming your reporting. You also reported there's polygraph testing. After 50 members of the US military's joint staff had to take a lie detector about whether they're telling people yourself in particular that, you know, we're running low on weapons. Take a little bit behind that, like with the level of alarm. Well, we started reporting on this in the spring and to be fair to the Trump administration, it's not a problem that

suddenly came out of nowhere that there were problems with the weapon supply before the

“Iran war, but it has gotten dramatically worse. And it's gotten worse in two key areas. One is”

long-range missiles and the other is air defences. And we started to learn pretty early on in the war that they were raiding the supplies of U-com, European command stocks, and also Indo-Paycom,

the Pacific command stocks. So basically weapons that would be potentially used to deter

Russia and China would be pulled into sentcom to fight the Iran war. And they were running very, very low on all kinds of low-range weapons, including attackers, precision strike missiles, tomahawks, the Patriots supply is low. And of course our defense industrial base is not up to speed. So you keep hearing these projections from the defense companies saying, we're going to produce, you know, these huge numbers. It's not actually the case. So you're seeing some instances where

they're using, you know, a month supply of Patriots in terms of the production in a day or two of heavy fighting. It's really bad. It's of great, great concern within the military and the national security community. And the president is and pretty much every member of his administration publicly is pretending that this is not an issue. But it's a very serious issue. And it could have really serious strategic and tactical implications.

“And what did it really do you think of the relationship between that and Driscoll resignation?”

Another, I guess, just ties us back to dance a little bit, since he was the answer's friends. Summer, summer, summer, yeah. I think it's a small part of it. I think the larger part of it was

war, maybe just like, you know, Gulf War one and Pete Hankseth came out victorious. Maybe. For now, and it's interesting that Pete's, it's only was reading the book, Trump does this thing. And this is something that's hard for us to kind of interpret from the outside, right? Where he likes to pick on people inside, right? Like he picks on cash, he picks on Pete from time to time, and yet like Pete's still there. That's interesting that Pete won that one that

internal war, right, because he's kind of losing the public war. Like what do you make of why

why that is? Well, when you say losing the public war, yes, he's getting a lot of critical

coverage in the mainstream press. But I don't know that that would be considered, you know,

“in Trump's sort of way of thinking about Hankseth. I think he definitely was lowest on Hankseth”

in our reporting after Signal Gate, and he did this appearance on the White House lawn, which looked very erratic at the time, and Trump was very low on him. But since then, we haven't had any reporting. We've seen lots of rumors kind of being floated, you know, Hankseth's next to go and what have you, I've never verified any of that, and he survived through months and months and months. Cash Patel kind of the same. Last summer was a real low point for him. I thought as the

new year was approaching that he potentially was going to be one of the people that Trump replaced,

and he ended up surviving. So the short answer is, I don't know what to say beyond the obvious, which is that these are two men who ostentatiously flattered Trump publicly privately do what he wants. I mean, Trump has in Pete Hankseth the defense secretary that he really wanted in term one. If he had a version of his term one, defense secretaries, there would have been objections raised when he said, you know what, I'm deciding in my mind that these people who are writing on fishing

boats with cocaine are actually enemy combatants, and instead of it being a law enforcement issue, instead of sending the coast guard to introduce them, we're just going to kill them. And there's no

appeals process. You were just going to kill them. Hankseth enthusiastically supported that

people like Espo would not have. So the other thing that Hankseth has in his corner is he's got a

“really strong ally in Stephen Miller. They are very, very close, and Miller has seen Hankseth as a key ally”

in using the defense department to help with immigration enforcement and some of these operations. So again, another issue where another area where people like Madison Espo through up roadblocks and wouldn't have gone along with it. That's interesting. I mean, so in that sense, is it too simple to say that like Driscoll was trying to like raise concerns about the way that the war is being prosecuted and like Hankseth is just, you know, telling Trump

what he wants to hear? Is that too simple? Do you think about why Hankseth? I don't know the extent to which Driscoll ever raised any concerns to Trump. Based on our reporting, he certainly was concerned about the mediation stockpiles and various other things. So that could have been part of it, and I'm sure some of that filtered back to Trump. But I also think part of it was, there was a period of time where there were lots of media stories coming out that, you know,

Driscoll's going to be the next sector, and all of this. And I suspect that that may have had an effect as well on the way that Hankseth viewed him. Again, it has the JD thing and like man,

“this stuff two and a half years left, and who knows? And I think that you've reported others that”

Trump would love for this war to be magically over, but like Iran has a vote in that, and you go through a period next year where you have JD has expressed concerns of the inside. Driscoll is now out. Things are going badly. That's a challenging thing that they're going to have to navigate. Huge, hugely. And the public is heavily against this war. They can see a linkage between the war and their own lives and the cost of goods, gas, in particular, and it doesn't seem to be any

way of spinning that Trump has tried pretty much every method of spinning ahead in the public, just isn't buying it. The public, I think it's kind of crazy. And it sort of reminds me of meet the factors a little bit where you have, you know, De Niro, giving Ben still or the public. It like, it feels like you're losing control of the situation when you've resorted to that. I don't know. And I was talking to someone, I was talking to someone, I'm not aware of a single example of

but I'm not aware of it. And they're famously, you can game them. Certainly, people we've spoken to,

“who have been polygraphed and have expected to be polygraphed, view it as a tool of intimidation.”

Yeah. At the beginning of the term, I mean, there is a lot of reporting, his exit has been using this from the start, the polygraph technique. And this seems like the most expansive version on this specific story, but like that caused blowback. And it like he takes out loss, like one of his good friends, like quit early. And he does seem, you know, while he might be not doing so well in the war in Iran, he seems to have clamped down on that a little bit internally. I don't know.

What do you like is that? Sorry. It's still right to explain what you mean. Clamped down on like the pushback. I don't, you know, like there was a moment at the beginning of the administration where it felt like people were like, this is clownish. Like this is not serious, the way he's handling this. There are some, there are some resignations, but like, I mean,

“it seems like, no, he's not just kind of on that battle. No, yeah, exactly. I mean, again,”

this most recent polygraph, mass polygraph in the way we're going around 50 members of the joint staff and others, by the way, other senior people in the panic on, we're not aware of any precedent in modern history for this scale, in modern US history of this scale of polygraphing. I'm not aware of anything. And we've spoken to your people who serve in the military and serve in this area. And they're not aware of any precedent for it. It's wild.

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skin.co/bowlwork. That's 15% off. One skin.co with code bowlwork. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. I went to the AI stuff, which is like really hot in the news right now. And you guys covered

this in the book. I think they've done the first round of the book tour. We weren't in AI

doomsday mode. So probably we weren't asked about it as much. But you have this kind of remarkable

“scene and it's in Vegas. I'm going to remember. I think it's in Vegas where Greg Brockman from”

Open AI goes and briefs Trump about Chatchy BT. Just regale the listeners with that. If they haven't made it to that part of the book, yeah. You know, there's actually been, I think, relatively little reporting on this area in terms of Trump's own interaction with AI compared to the importance of the topic. I mean, when we look back on the Trump administration, this may end up being one of the most consequential things that he did. His policy of basically go for it, essentially. Unleash the

growth of these AI companies. And I'm going to put myself firmly on the side of the AI acceleration us. The interesting thing about that story, which we get into in the book, is that Trump is, I would say, the most extreme version of a tech later dopeder. He only began text messaging in 2022. I mean, that's like, you know, 20 some years after most of us began text messaging. And he had, he really knew nothing about AI and really hadn't ever interacted with it to any

where the open AI executives meet with Trump in this hotel. And he's with his team. And they

give him this demo of chat GPT. And he's like he's really tired. It's the end of the day. He's like been campaigning. He's kind of exhausted. And they put it up on the screen and he's eyes kind of like, but he's like, oh, you know, it's a sort of magic. Yeah. And they start putting in prompts. And for

“memory, one of them was like, they got the chat GPT. Remember, this is 2024. Chat GPT was not that great”

in 2024. They get chat GPT to turn an executive order on AI into poetry into a poem. Yeah. And Trump said, oh, man, this is beautiful. It's like he's reading the poetry because the poet these words, they're so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. He was just thunder struck. It was like he was reading words worth or something. And he turns to one of his eyes, he's like, you know, this is going to take your job. And he went from being uninterested, tired, whatever, to immediately asking,

you know, it was like for zero to a hundred. He immediately started asking these executives, what do we need to do? One of the obstacles to you guys growing, how much energy do you need, what regulations can we get rid of? He went from sort of extremely skeptical, asking them questions about, well, what happens if there's a deep fake of me declaring nuclear war? You know, he's all worried about that it was all on the risk side and he's skeptical, whatever, to

full on David Sachs, Jensen Huang, how can we put this thing on turbo charge? And that is the

“posture that he has continued into this administration. I think what's really interesting about it”

is Trump won both times as a populist. And he is squarely on the side of the the wealthiest,

most powerful tech elites and against the coalition that you see with Bernie Sanders and others,

saying no data centers, you know, against public opinion. You have a lot on this, and the book that really struck me, he started to be interested in operation warp speed for data centers. To such a funny thing to think about, that that's where his head was in 2024 versus where we are now, and just this week, he called Jensen Huang while he is on stage at the all-in podcast. Jensen is like, "I'm here with the besties, Mr. President." So I mean, he is just both feet in.

Both feet in, and one thing we also write in the book, which we've heard from except several people around Trump is that, you know, if you think back to the first term, his whole promise was, "I'm going to bring back sort of Norman Rockwell America and these old heavy industries. I'm going to bring back the coal mining jobs. I'm going to, you're going to see an industrial revolution in America." Obviously, that didn't happen. And, you know, he obviously

pretended it happened, but it didn't happen. And he knows, on some level, it's not going to happen. So what we had been hearing from people around him is that when he started to hear these investment figures from people like Zuckerberg and these others, you know, "I'm going to invest a trillion dollars for your hundreds of billions of dollars." In his mind, this became the way to create a new golden age in America. And, you know, each time he would look at the valuation of Nvidia,

it seemed to have gained a new trillion. And Trump himself is a shareholder, by the way, in Nvidia.

So he became seduced by these figures, Jensen Huang, who had never really had much of a Washington

“presence, realized Trump is a personless leader. You need to engage directly. He started to call”

him, he started to drop in at Mara Lago, Zuckerberg is on the phone with him. So they all played the game, and you're seeing that defects of that now. I have to now, but Giovanni says the JD disagrees with him on any of this, and JD seems pretty aligned with this world too. It's interesting just from that populist framework that you talked about, because you are seeing this as we're taping right now, ban and as having a press conference with Bernie Sanders against this. Is there any

sense that there's dissension inside the administration on this? I think it's going to be a really challenging area for events in 2028, because in some of his public statements, he has indicated that he's not entirely comfortable with the flourishing of AI. He described it in one of his interviews, elements of AI. It's certain uses of it as satanic, which is very much ban and ask, Zuckerask language. At the same time, he's told the line with Trump in terms of we need to

stay ahead of China. He hasn't broken with Trump in any meaningful way on this issue, and his

Right, so I don't expect that it's going to be feasible for him to run as a pure populist on this

issue. You've lost over it. Do you have any reporting on Trump's personal AI use? I see doing the meat. Sometimes it seems like he might see. I don't know. It's both you talk about how they he was with Doug Bergum, and they asked it to do an image of his wife on a horse or whatever, and you see some of these Trump's Jesus. Obviously, he's taking a lot of them from just random people in the country's social, but we'll try to do some of them. If you're inspired by his

“true socials feed, I would say you have to give a lot of credit to Bill Palty, because yeah,”

he, so on the weekends these days, Trump is essentially unstaffed. I mean, he really, the main

most of his staff are not with him at the golf clubs or Natalie's. Natalie's there often, but Bill Palty is usually there, and he brings these phone boards, and often what you see Trump truth out on the weekends originated as a Bill Palty phone board. Just so people would know, you're, I'm sure you'll listen to the familiar Bill Palty, of course. Yeah, okay, fine, you guys are hardcore, but you know, I just talk about Bill Palty's obviously good. Well, no,

but Palty would bring in these boards that would have, you know, the fraud stuff in all caps, and it would have just like photo of Lisa Cook's face blown up and, you know, diagrams of how frauds are supposedly committed. That's the kind of stuff that he's serving up for Trump and often it turns into, I mean, but something comes to prominence, like during COVID, over meme stocks, and like doing that, you know, game stock and all that, so he knows how to create it.

He's good at the meme economy, TVD on the rest, things are great in the interest rate department. We're going to talk about the library, that's another thing that I feel like just people miss and kind of, you know, I've ever really realized that there's kind of a lot of a lot of money sloshing around in Trump world, but like just how kind of direct is, is it overstated to say quid pro quo, do you think, and some of these donations? I mean, it's, it's one half step short of it,

if not, and how would you describe it? If you are a company in America, major company in America, you understand that when a request comes in from the Trump team for money and they come in, very directly. You either have to play ball or risk Donald Trump using the government to punish you, or not to reward you, and he's made very clear that he's willing to do that with scene it. I mean, when you do things like demand, the resignation, the firing of the head of Intel,

and then he comes in and flashes you and tells you his life story, and then you say at the end, well, very nice. I don't think you're a Chinese spy anymore, but I'm going to need a cut of your company. And then he gives you the cut. Yeah, 10%. That was one of the things in the book, you said that this is the Trump announced as privately to people he should have asked for more of Intel.

“I think Dick Cheney used to have a phrase, you know, the educational use of power,”

the instructive use of power, something like that. This is Trump's version of that, and we have reporting in the book that his fundraiser, Meredith, would sit with him with a list of companies or individuals, and Trump would literally write next to them the dollar figure that he wants.

It just comes out of his head, you know, whatever he feels, you know, 20 million, whatever he's

really 5 million, this is what I think is person, and the asks come in. It's created this cycle whereby the companies are afraid they give money to Trump entities. The Trump entities are mass huge war chests, and then they use that money to intimidate and defeat Republicans who step out of line people like Thomas Massey, Bill Cassidy and others. And so it's this cycle, really. It's fear to raise, fear to spend, fear creates fear, fear begets fear, it's a cycle. With the library,

“I think this is another area just because there's been so much of this money sloshing around”

Trump family entities, Trump political entities, you can lose sight of different elements of it. But the library, we had two parts in the book that we thought were very interesting. One was the Trump's have been soliciting from the Gulf Arabs for the library, including the Saudis.

sons making money, Lutnik gave 25 million dollars to the Trump library. This is the Commerce

Secretary. And Trump, in meetings in front of Lutnik and others would say, you know, the only reason I'm putting up with Howard's bullshit is because he gave me $25 million. You know, he'd also say, how great is Howard, you know, I asked him for the money he gave it straight away, what have you. But I'm not aware of a cabinet secretary doing something like that. Maybe it's been done before. But maybe after. But in general, in the middle of the administration. And the most

telling thing to me about that anecdote is, is like Trump acknowledges basically that the Lutnik family is drifting off the administration, right? I mean, kind of, he's like, hey, well, you throw some money at my library. And, you know, I'll look the other way at this, at these problems that you're causing me. I mean, it's very mafia-esque. The Trump doesn't like to hear about other people making money, obviously. And during the interactive period, I was talking to a source and they were

with Trump and Trump was complaining about Brooke Rollins, who is now his agriculture secretary. And he's like, you know, she's got this group. It's called America First Policy. Because, you know, they do policy stuff, like, very dismissive. Because, and people think, you know, I told to do those. They think they're giving to me. But they're not giving to me. They're giving to

“this group. And he goes, you know, I think she, she owes me, like, she should give me, like, half.”

And he thought she had, like, 50 million sitting in this account, which, of course, was a true.

So he had this idea that she was basically, you know, taking money that rightfully belonged to him. And that's the mindset, I think, across all of these areas. Can I ask you a question from the Trump derangedments syndrome crowd on all this? She'll hear these stories. And it does make you wonder. Can you afford to give this up when you think about like this succession plan? I mean, like, the degree and the scale of the of the grift is as hard to even wrap your head around.

And it's hard, you know, usually people don't give that away. I guess, would be one way to put it. It just elaborate. Well, I mean, the kids are making a lot of money, Trump's personally making money, like the idea that he would, like this kind of go again goes back to the JD. The idea that he had

passed on to a successor that would basically, you know, in on the game, if you will,

is a little hard to imagine, or I don't know, or maybe not, maybe he sees that this is a sprint for, you know, him to cement his legacy, as you guys talked about your interview as the next hotel of the hunt and his kids make as much money as they can in the next two years and then it's over. But I don't know, that doesn't really seem like him. I mean, if a Trump ally, like, JD Vance is the next president, would the Trump kids, you know, how much would their money making

diminish? I don't know. They've made so much money during this term that they're obviously set for life. I mean, that enough money that they can fund their own second wedding, I guess.

“I think the sense I have from people around Trump is that he feels the 2024 is his”

big victory. And since then, he's essentially untouchable. Yes, he doesn't want to lose the house. He doesn't want to get impeached again. But ultimately, it's not the greatest fear for him. We have reporting the book that he said he's going to pardon anyone who came within 250 feet of the Oval Office. His family's wealthier than it's ever been by orders of magnitude. He's building monuments to himself. He has sweeping immunity conferred by the Supreme Court.

I mean, what does he have to worry about? The light's turning off. Same thing, everybody has to worry about his in the public sphere. I mean, he's been, yeah, I think that's the big thing. I think the lack of attention is actually, I think that when that drug goes away, I think that's probably going to be the biggest. I'm sorry to keep talking with you back to JD,

“but I think that's another worry that you have over the next year. It's like somebody asked me”

yesterday that he gets asked us about who the neck, you know, whether he's going to endorse a successor. He gets annoyed. He gets visibly annoyed at the question. That's my point. That was my whole point to the start is that Vance is not in the secure. It's not like he's like cruising in cruise control right now. He needs Trump's blessing and Trump is very ostentatiously holding that back. And we have a lot of reporting in our book. I mean, we have a scene in our book

where Rupert Murdoch comes to dinner at the White House in the blue room and Vance and Rubio at the table. And Trump essentially does a beauty pageant with Murdoch. Do you like JD? Do you like Marco? Who do you like more? So, you know, Vance has one job. Yeah. I mean, this is going to mention though, because Marco just, you know, they're Marco talking about the war that much.

a secretary of state and national security advisor, has actually not been that engaged on two of the

biggest foreign policies around and Russia Ukraine. And on Iran, you've had Whitcoff and Vance and Kushner lead the negotiations, not Rubio. And then on Russia Ukraine, you've had Whitcoff and Kushner. And again, Rubio, step back. He is much more focused on Western hemisphere in Cuba, in particular, as the next one, obviously Venezuela. So that's an absolutely accurate observation. Again, I don't know that it's so much political. I don't have any sense that Rubio's preparing for

2028 campaign. In fact, I don't think he is. But he has certainly been willing and happy apparently to let others stepping to that void. Yeah. And you're reporting. I talked to this

“about what to Maggie, which she has a lot about. And Rubio, I think people have a misunderstanding”

of what Rubio is doing and what he cares about in the administration. And you guys have that he was the point person for the Sikot negotiation with Bukele. I mean, he was like the foreign dulog deal. Like Rubio was the person that made that deal. He's the reason that Az Turk, the tough student, is jailed. He is on board with the bombing of the boats. You mentioned the Caribbean. Ivan covering this week. There's Iranian family that's been in six months in the daily detention

center. They did nothing. He took their green card away. They had a family member. It was part of the hostage shakers in the 70s. So I, Rubio, it's funny. There's this perception that he is not on board with some elements of the maga part of the agenda. But it's like he is fully bought in and the point man. I'm a lot of the immigration stuff. And if nothing else, neutral are on board with the rest of the foreign policy agenda, be that Greenland Iran pressure.

Besides Pete Hakes, there may be no cabinet secretary who is closer to Stephen Miller than Marco Rubio. Now, which is incredibly interesting, given that Stephen Miller was his arch enemy. As you know, very well, Tim, during the the gang of eight immigration era when Stephen Miller worked for Jeff Sessions. It was trying to kill that bill. And Rubio was at the center of it.

“We reported in our book that in an email to a Breitbart reporter, and I think it was 2015,”

Stephen Miller referred to Rubio as pathological. So that relationship is now extremely close. They work very closely together. And Milo's told people that Rubio has been a great ally. Yeah. People like it when you bend the need of them, like Marco did, to Stephen Miller. So I understand. I mean, it's not like they met in the middle on their big fight

from the gang of eight. Marco basically looked at the Stephen Miller wing and said, "I'm on board."

No, Stephen Stephen's vision prevailed. And it has become the prevailing vision of the Republican Party. I'm not going to let you go without asking about Natalie just a little bit. I mean, the match notes, the love notes. Maggie did have Maggie did duck the question that I had about whether Trump is in position or not. No, I just do. Do you have any reporting on what? Well, say that again. Whether Trump is in position. I have for the longest time,

“I've been trying to, when you how it's done, what is this? Well, I think it's not worthy that Trump”

spent his whole career sexually assaulting people for like 30 years. He has like dozens of women of accused of sexual assault and now none. But now he has Natalie, right? I wasn't actually going to speculate. I was wondering if you had a report. I certainly did have a new reporting. So then what do you think's happening? What do you think's happening with Natalie? Just I kind of think it's weird. This is my point. It's weirder

than than that other more pre-rea thing. I think it's more like that. I think it's, I think it's the story of a young woman who is completely devoted and obsessed. Well, if you don't have any reporting on whether her story is real, like the back story? You mean about her health and stuff. I haven't got any reporting to contradict her version of it. When you had those mesh notes, you had that head to tickle you during the reporting.

Is that the part of the reporting that made you do your Aussie laugh the most when you, when you go?

I mean, it's always good when you have something on paper. It makes it harder to deny

if it's something happened. And so yes, it was very good to have these documents. Because if people tried to claim that they weren't true, we had them. We have to. Could be Howard Stern. Why did you say that, negatively? Howard Stern is a huge success. Was he just like that sort of great program? No, he just does a particular thing. I didn't realize that was your thing. I tried to touch all, a good podcast for me, Jonathan.

Just laughter, crying, anger. You know, you try to touch all the whole kind of emotional color wheel.

Do you think I've been overly emotional at times in this podcast? I don't. No. You don't. No, do you feel like you have? Oh, yeah, I just, I feel like you got a little hug. Maybe I probably got a little, um, a little on my high horse. No, that's okay. We're pals. This happened with Maggie too.

Well, let's just to break the fourth wall. Let's just break the fourth wall for a second.

I love you and Maggie. And we talk a lot. And like all of the comments in the Maggie section, I, you know, sometimes you don't know your audience as well as you think. I thought the comments were going to be mean to her like access journalism. You do see this sometimes. And that's our audience. All right, it's this great audience was mad at me. So like why were you so mean to Maggie? Why were you so mean to me? It was your little rude to you. And I was like,

“it's worth how mean Maggie should talk. Like, that's fine. That's how we show love, you know?”

So anyway, we're good, right? You're not. You weren't. Oh, I did. We're totally good. I just worry about a little defense. That's okay. You're doing real fucking reporting out there. The government is still like this. The president is calling

your co-author ugly and a maggot. People are trying to go out. They're targeting your reporting.

They're targeting alleged people they think are sources, I guess. But it's silly then. That's a, that's a challenge. That's a challenge. It's also a challenge. Like, I mean, I didn't do, I didn't go on TV for a really long time because when you're doing this type of reporting, you have to be so careful about the way you talk about anything to do with sourcing because everything we do almost every story that involves anything to do with munitions or

national security results in a leak hunt. Some of my colleagues have the FBI show up at their front door, um, subpoenas are going out, they're so in the, you know, all of this stuff. And so you're sort of powerless. You sit there watching a public conversation about your story. You know exactly how a story came about. But you can't actually, so it's like, it's sort of down if you do, down if you don't, and you just have to like take the hit. And it's like,

“you know, it's a little different than that. I mean, then the first term, right? How is it?”

Oh, unrecognizable. Completely different. Just from a source. Completely completely, completely. Because they were leaking to you and shit talking. So this was my, this is kind of why it's tough. And it is beyond. They do, and this one I was trying to get to at the start and say this is the nicest way. Like, how they do business is just different. And it's like, how do you adapt to it? And you and Maggie have adapted as well as anybody. But like, you know, when I,

I would spin you guys when I was in that world for Jeb, like I would sometimes tell you things

that weren't fully true. But I would never like give you something. I would never like give you a

story about Marco or whatever. And have you report it? And then go on Twitter and be like Jonathan Swan is an ugly prick. And this is fake news. Right? Like that is like it's, it's, it's a different animal. Like the way they do business is different. And now it's kind of one of the first term way. And now this time, I feel like they, you know, just bully, right? I was saying, I come over to say this to the first time, like, kind of looks like the Eisenhower administration at this point. Yeah,

it's just, you can't even draw any type of comparison. So this, that takes me a final question for you, which is like, I felt in the first time we kind of knew everything. I mean, there are like some secrets, but like, there is so much fighting, right, that things just like leaked out. And like eventually and sometimes you had to kind of navigate like what was true is not because sometimes they lied and leaks like they lied to each other, right? Like for the most part, like, shit got out. What is your

sense for that this time? Like, I don't know, like the one story that comes to mind is you mentioned like the Gulf States and like the amount of business that Eric is doing and Jared is doing. And there's a great extra focus story in the New Yorker this week, but I was reading it and I'm like, there's more than that. I just, I'm reading this story and I'm just like, how much more do you think

“there is? I think we know very little. I think we know five percent. I think I think it's going to”

take a lot of reporting and digging over probably years, not months to get to the bottom of it. I mean, I think we just know so this is what and what areas I think, I think in almost every area, but in particular, national security and anything to do with money making and self-dealing. I think in those two areas and also probably in the way what's going on actually going on at the DOJ and investigations that we're probably not aware of and other things like that, you know.

Like, I don't think when you started this administration, you wouldn't have thought that the book would be like the big excerpt would be about deliberations about the Iran war, right? I mean, that was unexpected. I mean, so like what, what projecting out like do you have sense for like, what the next big one would be? Well, I also didn't think that the other big excerpt would be his top team, including his attorney general sitting in the White House situation room, talking

about the Jeffrey Epstein firehouse and how to spin them. I have no idea what the next big story is. I still think the Iran war is right now a huge story. I personally want to a lot more reporting

really prepared to wrap its arms around this technology and very real concerns about

national security, public safety, jobs. It's such an enormous issue and I just think I've been quite deficient in my reporting on it. So that's an area I really want to dig into.

“I think everybody's feeling that way right now. And especially with Trump, I mean, just like,”

that I was saying that in the in the nice way, I feel that she didn't as well. No, no, I'm not saying

who 100%. Like the idea that Trump would end up being the biggest cheerleader for it,

even in this moment is to me, there's the money there too. That ties to the money store, right? Because it's like Operation Warp Speed and this, the Operation Warp Speed for AI, those are the two times that he has been the most out of step with the base, I guess, an Epstein. Yeah, COVID vaccine. Yeah. It's true. It's your and Iran and Iran.

“Although to be fair on Iran, I think it's more complicated. I think today's a part of the”

base that's against it. Yeah. And I think that it had it been like Venezuela or had it been like solar money. I had it been like last year, it had been fine. And he just got in over his head. All right, Jonathan, if you're going to attack, make fun of me. Do you have any, any critiques, any anything about my look that you don't like right now? I should look great. You look great. All right. Joe, come down and visit me sometime. Can we hang out? Sure.

“Three children, do you have a lot of free time for that? You do a lot of issues.”

I'm always going to let. Yeah, it's great. It's one big vacation is my life.

I love your life. Thanks for coming to Howard Stern, high praise and I'll just talk to you again soon. All right, give your life on. I'll be a squeeze for me. All right, we'll see everybody. I'll see you back here tomorrow. See you. Peace. See you. Bye. Go into Ferrari and sing my blues. Believe that Clapton was the second comment. ♪ Fuzz of art. We all got a word to do. It gets dark. We all got a word to do.

♪ Fuzz of art. We all got a word to do. It gets dark. We all got a word to do. ♪ Fuzz of art. We all got a word to do. It gets dark. We all got a word to do. ♪ Fuzz of art. We all got a word to do. It gets dark. We all got a word to do. ♪ Fuzz of art. We all got a word to do. It gets dark. We all got a word to do. ♪ Fuzz of art. We all got a word to do. It gets dark. We all got a word to do.

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