Maggie Haberman: A Gross and Messy White House

It's a live fan, the wind is perfect for me, but the low name is not so good, and now comes our story from the field.

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Oh, the last two of the heroes of the Red Cross. The last two of the Red Cross. The last two of the Red Cross are the same, but we'll give you our best. It's a contoh, a tough contoh, a tough contoh, and the name's a trundoh. Hello, welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.

We got a double header for you today in segment two. It's the podcast favorite. Gen Z, by sexual, quasi-communist. We're assessing what's been happening with the DSA in the primary.

That's a main camera cascade, of course, but first,

she's in New York Times, White House correspondent, author of Confidence Man, and co-author of Jonathan Swan, of the new book, Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. It's of course Maggie Heyperman, what's up, girl? How are you? Thanks for having me. I'm doing great. It's been a minute, and it seemed like you guys have sold so many of these books.

Can I just say it? I'm just going to say it. This is we have this relationship, I can just be blunt. I don't get it. Okay. People want to relive the first year of the Donald Trump presidency in written form and long form.

“I mean, I understand why you need to watch Yellowstone reruns, you know, or the World Cup.”

But it's your magic. I appreciate your talk, having me on to talk about a book that you say you don't understand why people want to read, but I am grateful to you. I mean, I do. I understand after reading that, I just can't appreciate that.

There are very long cues at libraries, which is great in all seriousness. There's a very long, audible cable. I don't think it's about reliving it, Tim, honestly, because this book nearly killed us. And I know, you know, Jonathan's line.

My co-authors line is always we're not in Fallujah and we're not.

That's correct, but this was incredibly hard to do because this is not term one. This is not, you know, walking around with what Swan would call the slot bucket and you're waiting for, you know, your scoop to just drop into it because everybody was fighting, and everybody was leaking, and, you know, half of that government, if not more, half of that White House, if not more, view Trump as dangerous, or at least on more for some of them, and we're concerned about his behaviors.

This is a group of people who are relatively tight in it. They really believe in Trump. They want to see him succeed if they are concerned about some things that they see. They believe in his worldview, and they want to see his agenda implemented. So this took us a really long time, but this was, for us, this wasn't reliving last year.

This was trying to understand much more about last year, and it took a really long time. And we focused on various aspects of how Trump has transformed, you know, we'll see what aspects of it are permanent.

“I think more than people realize he has transformed the US presidency into something very different than we've ever seen in our lifetimes.”

And that was the impetus for the title regime change, because we are witnessing a form of it in our own country. Yeah, well, with the Supreme Court news yesterday, I mean, that's a good place to start about the way that he is changing the nature of the presidency. You have seen in the book where he is walking around saying, "I'm immune, I'm immune." And it does, like, that is another element of this, right? Like, it's not only that he has different staff, but it's this idea that he feels like he has, you know, card blanche to do it every once.

So there's no consequences for anyone who doesn't have to follow the laws. He can just make declarations by Fiat, and there is anybody that can stop. Well, there's a couple of aspects, and that you're right that it is not just one thing. There are many, many factors as to why this presidency has been the way it has. And why he has expanded executive power to a degree that I think, you know, it was foreseeable that there would be an expansion.

Exactly how it has gone has been at rapid speed and as maximalist as they've been able to do. You know, this, every president for decades now has incrementally expanded executive power.

Sometimes it's bigger increments than others, but obviously the biggest was right after 9/11 during the Bush presidency, Bush, second Bush presidency.

This is just, you know, orders of magnitude different, and it's a combination of factors. It's the fact that he became much stronger in, you know, within his own party. During the years at a power, the fact that being banned off of social media really did help him, frankly, because he was relegated to true social. A lot of people were not seeing his most caustic social media declarations. The whole premise of our case, and I frankly think it's hard to argue otherwise is that he is, he is in a much better position than he would have been with two consecutive terms.

But there's no reason to think that it would have been easier smooth. He became something of a mystical figure within his party and certainly for his staff.

And because of all of these things that he went through, you know, indictments a conviction, criminal conviction, civil suits, to assassination attempts. And onward, so many of the congressional Republicans are both in awe of him and in fear of him. And so he could not have accomplished a lot of what he has so far, at least in terms of keeping his party in line, had he not been wielding them with what he and his team proudly describe as an iron fist. And so various factors have led to why we are where we are.

Let's go to the start. You know, this stuff like the difference of the term and the immunity that he feels for himself and the immunity that feels for his his criminal fans was evident.

“As you're reporting, I think the first time, like from day one, he was contemplating, I guess, putting the J6 party in the inaugural address of the second term.”

We have this remarkable scene early on in the book actually where they were preparing for his inaugural address, which, you know, is obviously a very different inauguration than had been planned. It was in the Capitol Rotunda notable because this was where there was this riot on January 6, 2021 in this effort to stop an electoral college certification of Joe Biden's victory. So they had been discussing what to do about partens with people who were convicted in connection with the J6 riot for some time, and they were done this big evaluation led by Dave Warrant and now the White House Council on different groups.

Most people around Trump did not think that they were going to be partens of people who had, say, attacked police officers, but that did end up happening.

And Trump was planning to include a line saying that he was going to do sweeping partens for what he calls the J6 hostages. And an A and said to him, you know, there were these sessions preparing for the speech and one of the A and said, you know, this is going to be a bipartisan crowd. And if you do that, a bunch of the Democrats are going to get up and walk out, and it just may not be the visual you want. And so Trump said, okay, fine, you know, good call. And as we said, this was, you know, essentially his last concession to decorum, because he goes on and partens them all later that day.

But it was remarkable that he even wanted to put this in the speech. And that one of his first acts as president was issuing this roughly 1500 grants of clemency remains astonishing and exactly how he was thinking about doing it and how these discussions went gets almost lost in all of the activity of the first three months. So that ties kind of go JD was saying this week about Nixon for me on JD's talking about, you know, there's a written Nixon Renaissance and Watergate would only be a 12 hour story.

I thought that was just very instructive of their mindset.

You know, we're talking about this like Trump's luck around saying I'm immune day one, he's partnering the violent criminals or his supporters. Now that I can watergate's not that big of a deal. I mean, just kind of the unapologetic, we can do what we want laws that don't apply to us.

“I mean, I think pretty plain throughout the book.”

What I do think Vance was right about is that it would have been a 12 hour story, essentially, or a few multi days. That is true in this news environment. There's no question. Do you want to come out in your book, though? Get bent. I'm going to live in another 12 hours, then.

But look at, you know, what happened yesterday was also that, you know, president Trump filed his financial disclosures and that was actually on paper. How much money he has made off this presidency while in office, which is it's breathtaking. We haven't seen anything like it, but to your question about partens and the mindset. You're right that Trump goes into this term with a presidential immunity ruling that came out of one of his indictments, where they were.

“His team took it all the way up to the Supreme Court Supreme Court rules that all presidents have immunity for presidential acts.”

You know, official acts in office, exactly what that means. We still don't know, Tim, because that hasn't been tested, but the belief is it will be pretty broad for this president. You know what he thinks it means. Well, he's quite clear. We report on that in the book.

You know, I'm immune is what he says. And he has said that he is going to pardon and we report this. You know, many, many times he has said to people that he is going to issue a preemptive pardon to anyone who's come within 250 feet of the Oval Office. Sometimes he says 200. Sometimes he says 25.

But what's clear is there's like a pardon radius right around the Oval Office. And we spoke to several people who have said to us, you know, they're counting on their own pardon. They expect that they will get one. And so it does create a certain mindset. Good thing for state attorneys general.

A couple of the other early things that you get to in the book, I think it's worth just touching again is musk.

So we're going to have about a year now of the USAID getting shuttered.

“And I get almost feels like from a totally different era.”

But when we're going through the book, the must stuff is still in the top five of the most astonishing things that has happened. And the things all have the most consequences. And you paint the scene. I had not had this mental image in my head of musk. I guess took up an office slash residents in the EEOB Secretary of War suite.

And he had like big video games screens. He had set up all night playing video games and he called Trump and did like have a new thing for us to cut from the government. You're right that that entire period of time where musk essentially was a co-president with Trump. You know, wasn't officially a co-president, but was basically a co-president because he was just making these decisions by Fiat. And often Trump sounds staff would learn about it later.

“But it was really important for us to get inside these discussions and describe what was happening.”

And part because when you look back on it, Tim, it really did essentially divert or distract. I mean, I'm a lot of Trump's staff own staff actual staff from what they wanted to do in the first several months.

And there might have been some overlap between, say, Elon Musk and Stephen Miller, but there was not always, you know, clear lockstub.

There might have been overlap between Elon Musk and Russ Vote, but there was not always clear lockstub on how they wanted to do things and how they wanted to get to these ends. And so musk really was just sort of roaming free in office in the West Wing that he would describe as a hover. That's a quote. And so he moved to the grand Secretary of War suites in the Eisenhower Executive Office building. And it's really, they're remarkable rooms, but yes, this became his space.

He would sometimes man then. Right. And with a few others. And he would look at aspects of the federal government, according to our reporting. And again, according to our reporting, you know, he would call Trump and they would have these latent discussions.

And it would be about various entities that Musk wanted to get rid of, you know, one according to what we were told in our reporting was, you know, getting rid of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So that obviously can't just be eradicated. He focused very aggressively on ending USAID. A concretionally established agency and an agency that, you know, yes, there have been many complaints about it, particularly from the conservative spectrum of politics. But even if you got rid of certain pieces of it, it also delivered vital aid to a lot of countries.

And just got rid of it just gone, or, you know, created so much chaos that it became impossible to even continue with its mission. That gets sort of lost in the shovel, too. And the person who was left holding the bag on that and we, you know, described this in the book from our reporting was Mark Rubio, who was the Secretary of State at the time only. He wasn't dual-headed at that point as the National Security Advisor as well. But he wasn't, especially thrilled to have to be doing this mock-bub after Musk.

And it is really easy to track how there was this blitz of activity. And I shouldn't say easy, but we can track and we didn't our book. There's blitz of activity and just overwhelming Washington. And some of it was stuff that Trump wanted and some of it he would then later not be so thrilled had happened.

But the Musk era seems like a distant memory and it was so dominant for the first several months of this presidency.

So he said Mark was left holding the bag there and you say AD. The other reporting for the book is something I've been obsessed with on the show is what was happening in the original decision making around Sikat and the El Salvador prison. And you have a couple of scenes of Marco basically directly doing this deal with Bukela. And it's pretty relevant.

“I think obviously from the standpoint of, you know, the end up sending innocent people to a foreign Gulag, number one, and it's maybe the biggest human rights violation of the administration.”

You know, also number two of kind of the what Marco's role is going to be in the administration. So it's interesting because I agree with you that I think that that's gotten much less attention than I expected it would only because for people who know of Marco Rubio from, you know, a decade and a half ago. He was a senator who, you know, very young senator elected during that tea party wave as you know, who had been part of the efforts to do some kind of a comprehensive immigration reform bill. And to be clear, he didn't have this, you know, conversion on foreign policy, the year Trump was elected again.

And if you look at his speeches between 2020 and 2024, he'd actually been taking a much more intervention skeptic hemisphere specific approach to foreign policy.

And they're hashing out this proposal, which was initially supposed to be about.

“Some form of a of a safe third agreement. I'm I'm using the description for how these, these deals worked in Trump one.”

But instead, you know, Buckele offers a sea cut, which is this go log that is known as you know, essentially a horror show for people who are there. As an option for sending the worst of the worst is what this was supposed to be.

And you can see how this all gets set up.

Now, sea cut then ends up playing a very significant role in the first major effort to do some kind of nasty deportation, even though it was, you know, relatively small in terms of who were on these migrant flights. But people who were rounded up who were supposed to be, you know, according to the government, proven members of gangs because they had. And these people very rigorously and that rigor vetting proved not to be the case, but, you know, these men get sent to to sea cut and so much attention was placed on sea cut because one of the people who was sent there had a no deportation order to El Salvador.

And the administration then found itself wrapped up in this, you know, controversy for weeks and weeks and weeks last year. And I did find this image of Rubio sitting with Buckele, who is, you know, a notorious dictator and hashing out this plan to be emblematic of what this administration was going to look like.

“And I think that's not what the, because sometimes people try to use Marco as an exception of somebody that's not always emblematic of the administration.”

And he is the grown up in there. And for him to be the point person on this, I think, is, is particularly know what they, and I mean, he had a lot of Venezuelan represented, you know, as constituents and Florida. Yes. And it's like he sent innocent Venezuelans to a foreign prison and it's kind of unimaginable. Rubio has really thrown himself into the, and this was our reporting in the book, and again, it's, it's just all laid out there. He has really thrown himself into the Trump plan. And, and, you know, the Trump foreign policy approach. And so are there individual conversations? It's not all binary and it's not all black and white. Are there individual conversations where Rubio is, you know, more vocal about concerns on one aspect of foreign policy or national security than another.

Absolutely, but he is he's somebody who is blocking and tackling from some imagined, you know, version of what this would all look like, especially based on people's understandings of term one. No, he's not. I mean, again, this, this presidency, Tim, and this was really one of the things that became clear to us as John, if I were working on the book, it is unrecognizable to term one.

“And so there is, I think, this desire in the commentary around it, not the book around the presidency, the current presidency to say, you know, it's like those memes of Rubio sitting on the couch, right?”

And what I mean, like the John Kelly or Jim Maxwell from the first thing, which is like just not what's happening.

Yeah, there is, there is a big desire for people who are watching this administration who don't like Trump and who are hoping that there will be some kind of a constraint on him internally. To treat Rubio as if he is, you know, yes, John Kelly or Jim Mattis, both of whom consider Trump dangerous and both of whom believe that the country needed to be protected from him and they found his worldview. You know, there is just nothing about Marca Rubio and our reporting to indicate that that is where he is at all. And I'll tell you, Tim, just having been in the White House on upper press, which is where the press secretary's office is prior to them deciding that reporters could not walk around there without appointments.

Joe is just, he's in and out of Caroline Levitt's office all the time, you know, he looks like he is having the time of his life. I mean, he is enjoying being in this role. He rarely travels. He is almost always in the West Wing and often in the old office because, and this is something else that we describe in the book, these decisions in this government are being made by about a half a dozen people, depending on the issue, it's maybe eight people. But there are senior ranks of major significant agencies, the state department, the Pentagon, the CIA, where if you're not in the room with Trump, you have no idea what's going on.

And so Rubio does not travel the way we are used to seeing secretaries of state do, because he is both a national security adviser and the secretary of state, and he believes he needs to be in your Trump.

You're pointed about the six to eight people to make the decisions. One of the things that struck me about the book is there are a couple exceptions to that, which is like random people come up with some of their cockamy me plans. Like I was reaching through, this kind of, you know, not as important of one is it's a cop, for example, like Lindsey Halligan, I guess, got upset about, you know, one of the exhibits at the portrait gallery and this leads to some of the drama over fighting people at the portrait gallery.

“You know, Boris Epstein comes up with a random idea, like the arch, some of these ideas are just coming from random people and then Trump is running with them.”

I thought the government's running now, basically. I would cast it slightly differently, which is, I mean, look, to be clear, Trump has always been someone who, you know, if his official staff doesn't agree with something he wants to do, he'll go call people outside, right? And asked their opinion, but one of the things that's remarkable this time is that his information flow is, it's, it's much more bubbled than it was last time. He's not on Twitter anymore. He used to scroll Twitter a lot and he would look at the trending topics and he would look at the replies and he would get a little bit more of a sense of what a broader conversation was.

“Now he just looks at truth social. He gets this constant stream of positive news from his, his aide Natalie Harp, who we also talk about in the book, who is about his pure and example of a Trump devotee in this term as you will find.”

She's an almost every meeting sitting on the side of the Oval Office with her laptop open and she's known as the human printer because she used to carry this portable printer around with her battery charge to print him. She would literally follow him around on the golf course, sometimes on foot running after the cart and be able to, you know, give him information. Lindsey Alligan was actually an official government employee. She worked in the staff secretary's office. She was one of his lawyers when he was in the Interregnant period and he likes her a lot. He would often comment on her looks, but she was, I believe in insurance lawyer. I think that was her specialty.

She was not a criminal defense lawyer or she was not a prosecutor. She'd gone to one of the Smithsonian's institutions museums. She had seen something she didn't like and she flagged it internally and we, we describe in, in a chapter in the book that I do find pretty remarkable in terms of where the country is right now on the verge of celebrating at 250th anniversary. This chapter really lays out how Trump has tried to leave an imprint on every aspect of American life and has used this sort of bullying campaign, whether it's the media, whether it's law firms who hired people who went after him or worked on cases against him.

“Education harver museums and descriptions of US history. He was open that he thinks there's too much focus on slavery. I think that was an interest social post. So after Lindsey Alligan has this discussion about the National Portrait Gallery.”

Trump starts insisting and he has already done an executive order or a presidential memorandum about getting control of what is shown in these museums at the Smithsonian institutions museums and research centers. The Smithsonian is currently led by its first ever black secretary, Lonnie Bunch. Lonnie Bunch was a founder of the first national African American history museum. He is also a lifelong researcher, historian, has worked for the Smithsonian for a very long time on and off and so it's really been his identity.

And Trump already was not thrilled with Lonnie Bunch because Lonnie Bunch had written a chapter in his own book in 2019 about taking Trump to the African American Museum and taking him early on in Trump's first term to look at an exhibition about the slave trade. When they got to a portion about the Dutch role in the slave trade, the president's response according to Bunch was, you know, you know, they love me in the Netherlands and Bunch was very jarred by this response. Trump got obsessed with firing the head of the National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajit, was demanding she be fired.

The Smithsonian's were set up to be structured so that it would really be out of the direct reach of the White House. It had always been that way. Now the vice president gets a role on the Board of Regents Board of Regents is always led by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, currently John Roberts. There are senators who serve on it as supposed to be very balanced. In this term, Vance and a far more aggressive appointee Congressman Jimenez from South Florida made all kinds of demands on Sajit being fired, the head of the National Portrait Gallery on what kind of art was being shown.

That show was supposed to be coming from the Whitney Museum in New York to the Smithsonian's. Amy Sherald is a very, very celebrated artist. She did a portrait of Michelle Obama among other things, which really put her on the map in a broader way. And Moss sits there and says in front of this room, including John Roberts, you know, this is going to be a problem. This is not what Americans want to see. And there's this whole debate about what kind of art can be shown and politicizing art and it was, you know, look, it's not the first time in American history.

There's been a conversation of politicizing art, but I can't think of a directive like this coming from the White House ever before. And so all of this is indicative to us anyway, yes, of how one person can get in Trump's ear as you say and say go focus on that and we have seen lots of examples of that. In that case, it wasn't, it was somebody part of his government. I mean, again, I can't express to you how different this term is than last time, you know, Bill Polty, who features in the book pretty extensively to is now the director of national intelligence. So this is a government that just looks fundamentally different than term one.

“All right, we're taking back the fourth of July at the bulwark Donald Trump and magas trying to own July fourth and patriotism in general. And that's fucking stupid.”

We shouldn't let them do that.

All right, that's our country. It's here. We're here. We're clear. We're Americans. We love it. We're patriotic. We can wave the flag. That is about the values that we all share as fellow Americans. All right. It is about that creed. JD Vance and out on Trump, when I'm pretend like we're not a nation based on a creed or a nation based on like their whiteness and orangeness and that just ain't true.

“And so we're going to take back the holiday. I hope you join us and do it along with us. If you've been thinking about becoming a member in the bulwark community right now is the moment this week only fourth of July week.”

We've got a deal for you, a full bulwark membership or everything we offer on our website. 86 bucks a year. That's 14% off. So come on, do it. This is your moment. The bulwark.com/july4. Again, the bulwark.com/july4, but a link in the show notes. But come and board, class member, come hang, yell at me at the comments. It'll be great. USA.

You mentioned Natalie Harp, the printer. I do have to ask about this. You know, something the book that she leaves little mash notes for Trump around.

I was kind of the view that Trump is probably impotent now because he just doesn't talk about sex as much as he used to, but I don't know. It was eyebrow raising, the love notes that you included that. What we found in our reporting for the book is we got these letters that she had been leaving in his private spaces and they were, they were very raw. They were very emotional in one. She said, you are all that matters to me.

“Natalie Harp used to work for the far right O.A. and network spoke at the 2020 convention. Started working for him in, I think it was late 2021 or 2022.”

And became this constant supplier of good news. But these notes that she was leaving alarmed the secret service who were concerned about it, who raised issues about it at the time.

Trump has been open with people that, you know, she's the person who loves him on staff as much as his wife and children. And he'll say things like, you know, the rest of you will go off and make money. She will never leave me. So without commenting on your first lead in there. She is she reporting on the impotence. She is very, very focused on him and on being in his world. And I will just tell you that, you know, when he every day that he was going to court, for instance, when he was on trial in 2024 Manhattan.

Natalie Harp was always always always with him. She was among a very small group of people who would go with him. In this interview when Jonathan and I went in when our reporting was basically done for the book to to fact check specific pieces with Trump. There were very few aids in this meeting, which is unlike him, because normally he rolls very very deep and brings a lot of like half the government in. And it's like you and one other reporter, but in this case, it was just, you know, Caroline Levitt, Stephen Chong and Natalie against the wall.

I was interested in was this in your other interviews. Obviously, there was all the discussion and conversation around the BB meeting and the situation around is just so shocking those the first acts are from your book. But another thing that you talk about a lot is just that like Trump himself was actually much more adamant about going into Iran and much more hawkish on Iran, even before that and made people didn't kind of realize that. So, you know, basically you're partying from private conversations.

“And I'm interested in that reporting from the first year and how that squares with what we're seeing right now, which is him so desperate to get out.”

It's a great question and one of the things that we really did see in our reporting and we document in the book is.

Trump has always been more hawkish on Iran than his own team. Obviously, Trump had spent two campaigns, 2016, 2024, saying no new foreign wars. So there's clearly a reason why people expected he would not then go get into a war in Iran. But it was very clear if people were actually looking at what he was saying, looking at his conversations with Netanyahu. He was much more open. And we have this remarkable scene where Netanyahu goes right after Trump is shot at Butler and Netanyahu goes to Mara Lago to make peace with Trump because Trump had been furious with Netanyahu for years because Trump believed that Netanyahu had committed a sin by congratulating Joe Biden unwitting the election in 2020.

So Netanyahu goes to try to make up for this and during one of their conversations, Trump makes very clear that he is, if he comes back, he is going to be much more aggressive. He Trump will against Iran.

“And Trump already was more aggressive against Iran than some of his own advisors wanted to term one, taking out, you know, General Soleimani was not looked on favorably by some of Trump's own advisors at the time.”

They believed it was risky, you know, he wanted to do it. There was never a question. And it was fairly cold as cold blood. He went to do it.

The campaign was hacked by Iran ever since the Soleimani killing Iran has targeted Trump. Iran has targeted several aids around Trump. Now there's obviously a whole other side issue where Trump pulls the security from some of the people who are carrying out Trump's Iran policy in the first term. But beside that, Trump has a very, very dated view of Iran, which goes back to, you know, his formative years in the 1980s when Iran was the biggest threat when Jimmy Carter was embarrassed during the hostage crisis. So forth, okay. So it was quite clear to Netanyahu's team that Trump was going to be much more on board with this.

Then Trump's own aids believe Trump was fascinated by the page or attacks against Hezbollah. Trump is very capable as you know of telling different people what they, what he thinks they want to hear.

But he was very intrigued by the capability of the Israeli military.

But Trump believed this was going to be a quick war this time. He believed this would be over in a few days. He was flush off of what had happened in Venezuela. Going into Caracas and snatching foreign head of state, you know, in his pajamas and bringing him to the U.S. for trial. We're now American lives were lost or it was pretty whatever anyone thinks about what Trump did as a military operation. It went pretty smoothly. Sure. Trump believed this would be something similar. He had a gut feeling and he is operating on pure gut in a way that he would have liked to in term one.

“For various reasons didn't one of which was that he was under investigation as special counsel and I think that gets under looked a lot as a factor.”

But it obviously was not a quick war and it's not Tim one thing that's really important to remember he constantly says things like no one you know he wasn't warned about this he didn't know he was told what the risks were. Now the only one who really emphatically went out when at this with Trump in these meetings was JD Vance. But Dan Kane who is his top civilian well his top military advisors as well was very clear, you know, munitions could be really depleted straight to foremost could be closed. Trump went anyway and yes now he would like a way out.

The form of your thing is interesting about Iran because that's maybe kind of explains to now to like he kind of remembers how much this was a bar you know, you know, Helen over Carter and he's like, I don't want to deal with this. The JD thing you mentioned since the book is come out. I know that you have an extensive sourcing explanation in here and people can look at that. I just have to ask since the book came out the vice president said that he thinks that you have tapes from inside the situation room and like there's a lot of things that are sourced

I felt like that was maybe a lady-doth protest too much type comment from the vice president but I was wondering what you thought when he said that.

Just not going to discuss sourcing at all. Tim but one thing that I will say about our reporting process is we went to extensive lengths to check on conversations with a long sourcing note of the start of the book about not just how many interviews we did which was more than the thousand.

“But how we went about what we put in direct quotes what we did not and for many of these scenes we're describing, you know, expansive conversations among the top levels of government.”

But I'm just not going to discuss sourcing beyond that. Yeah, I wasn't asking. I'm just I mean the vice president accused you of like publishing information that was classified via tape. I know it's a pretty serious accusation from the vice president. They can say what they want and we're just not going to discuss it.

Okay. All right. Let's do more fun stuff. I don't know if people think this is fun, I'll think it's fun. You look like you're having fun. Yes, go.

I'm having a time of my life.

Not as much as Marco, but I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying myself. You say he's getting old. He seems to be getting old. People are noticing the aging.

“He fell asleep standing up on the campaign. Is that right?”

I mean, not in front of a crowd. I was asleep after some after some event. But yes, but that actually I think is sort of understandable. That was in the context of how he had been running nonstop at the end of that campaign. And he was what you're asking about in terms of the health piece.

And I want to be clear, if there's an area where we really just failed in our reporting efforts to try to learn more. It was on the health front and it was not for lack of trying. You know, his health is one of the black box secrets of this administration. And it is an administration that is very good at keeping secrets when it wants to, despite, you know, all protestations about, you know, the most transparent administration ever.

Some of it is visible. You know, he falls asleep or closes his eyes and does transcendental meditation or whatever you want to call it for a clock in the afternoon. Many of these events. He was outright falling asleep at his trial. And we reported that at the time, too, in 2024.

“His sleeping habits have gotten stranger.”

We described an episode where he had not been heard from by about 10 a.m. And so a trusted aid went up to the residents to see what was going on and Trump was still asleep. And what they summarized was that, according to our reporting, was that he had just been, you know, up either watching television or posting or doing whatever. And that, you know, he fell back asleep late in the morning. He's got this chronic venous insufficiency condition, which only got addressed because

photographer started taking pictures of his swollen ankles. And it raised questions. And he directed the press secretary Caroline Levitt to go out and talk about this because he didn't like the coverage. He didn't like the coverage of it. And there were a number of people in the White House who thought that talking about cancels from the podium was an unusual choice.

But, you know, he is very, very vain and concerned about his appearance. You know, I can't speak to the bruises on the hand. You know, we, we, like everybody else were told many, many months ago, this is from hand shaking, which seemed hard to, to understand. You know, they have released less and less information about his health as he is taking more frequent visits to Walter Reed. Beyond the fact that he's an 80 year old man, you know, and he looks 80.

We don't know more than you do. Cancels. I have to know interesting. It's an interesting development. The cancels in his room.

This was quite the picture. They're like empty ice cream tins and Starbucks wrappers everywhere. He's hoarding papers. I like what's happening in his bedroom. That's disgusting.

So, I just want to make one thing clear. It was star bursts and that was a typo and that has been fixed. But so, when they came back to the White House, the Trumps wanted everything the way it was before and says if he hadn't left. And the Biden's actually on the decor front didn't really change a ton of what the Trumps did.

But Melania Trump was not there for the first several months.

And so, Trump was picking items from the center hall in the residence that the staff believed she wanted, where they were. He was putting some in his own bedroom. Some in the oval office at the start of this sort of gilding of the oval office. We're now there's really not a square inch that is not covered in something that is gold colored.

And he would point to these what he calls the earns on the mantle. And he would say, you know, see that. When people see that, they see cash. Two people who worked at the White House, it seemed like he was competing to have a better bedroom than his wife.

And they don't have the same bedroom.

For whatever reason, he was a late night snacker,

potato chip bags, ice cream, cartons, starburst wrappers. Staff started monitoring the silverware because some was disappearing into the trash. He lives how he lives. And he would have those bankers boxes that they would refer to as the beautiful mind boxes. And they were stacked, which, you know, became a fixture of the Marlotte documents indictment.

And they were stacked so high that, like, there would be impressions left in the carpet when they were when they were moved. For some reason, it makes you feel a little better. For some reason, it makes you feel a little better. Yeah, it makes you a little better that it's starburst wrappers for some reason. I don't, I was picturing like those disgusting starbucks morning sandwiches or something.

So just, I kind of can de ice cream chips. No, don't not starbucks morning sandwiches. You know the criticism that you get from regular people. Not that much criticism since you sold so many books.

“They're like, hey, why do you save this stuff for a book?”

Why don't you just report it as you get it? I'm not particularly sympathetic to that. I think maybe there's some exceptions to it. Maybe in a campaign setting, which is this is not. But I just wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of address that.

And, you know, then I'll let you get back on your way. I appreciate you, Tim. So a couple of things.

This is a book on the first 14 months of this presidency that was published in month 17,

which is, and you know this because you do understand how books work. It's an extraordinary fast publication schedule. It was supposed to be published in the fall. Instead, it is, was out last week. So we published the Iran War reporting immediately in the newspaper.

It was five weeks into the war, I think. And it still remains the most comprehensive look at how Trump took the country to war, because it was, it was a vital public interest. We reported on, in the paper, again, on Trump's efforts to, possibly suspend habeas corpus for undocumented migrants,

which was known publicly that he had been talking about this. But we wanted to understand more about that episode. And so it became something of a white whale, and it took months and months and months. And we've got these secret memos that the staff Secretary had written to the White House Chief of Staff, that really reflected both the level of discussion and also the level of concern.

But again, this was reporting that took months to get done.

“And I think that not everything, there are magazine pieces for newspapers that take longer.”

There are investigative pieces for newspapers that take longer. Jonathan took a 10-month leave from the newspaper. I took five and a half. You know, this work is hard, and it took a, it was incredibly hard confirming this material. So I know there is this misconception about how this works.

And I think people think that, you know, the font, the hotline rings, and you just put it in your, your file, and then it goes in a book a year later. But not for us, that is not the case. All right. Do you dream about these people?

Like are these people haunting your nightmares? Oh, for God's. I don't dream. I don't dream. I don't dream.

No dreams. I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't sleep enough to dream. I don't, I don't, I don't get a rim cycle. I don't, but if that changes, I will tell you.

Promise. I will text you. That sounds right. Matt. I appreciate that.

Maggie, hey, everyone. You're the best. Thanks so much. The book is regime change. I got it right here.

It's got the pretty gold cover. And we'll be talking to you soon. All right. All right. We are back.

Here's the former co-host of FYPA to podcast. It was taking the nation by storm until he decided to run for Congress on successfully. And now he is advising somebody named Rokana. And he is a favorite of the pod. The person that we go to, the correspondent that we go to for all things.

Communism, socialism, bisexuality, and collicular. It's Cameron Kasky. What's up? I don't think there's any daylight between those four things.

“I think he said anyone of them and covered the whole spectrum.”

I wanted to grab you because there's a lot of conversation happened out there about what's happened with the DSA or the Tea Party. Are they taking over the Democratic Party? These are your people. You are of them. Ish.

And you've also been on the road a bunch with Roe. Yet you're in Maine. Seeing Platner and Michigan with SAE, you live in New York. And so I feel like you're pretty up to speed on what's happening.

But first, can we just do Colorado last night?

“We had three old timers up in the Democratic establishment.”

Michael Bennett ran for governor. He lost a Scott Weener. It was like a more progressive challenge. Are not really DSA. Pause.

Scott Weener. Oh. Thank you. Phil Wiser. Phil Wiser, thank you.

Sorry. Why is our Weener that's kind of close? I can see it. It's already general. He lost a Phil Wiser.

Thank you, Cameron. Lost a Phil Wiser, attorney general. More progressive. Not Scott Weener. And then in the Senate race.

John Hickenlipper, beat kind of a DSA estate senator. But not really overwhelmingly. And then in the House. Diana de Gett, who's been the Denver's representative in Congress since I was like eight. She lost to Millat Kiros, a DSA barista, who seems like she's kind of your type both politically and otherwise.

I don't know if you've if you've met a chance to meet that young lady. But I can't speak to that matter. It's a very interesting result. And I'm sure given your history with the state of Colorado, it's specifically interesting for you. You know, and then there's the really there's the really hot guy.

Hmm. Is that manny? Yeah, manny went and Colorado eight. He's handsome. He mugs like all of Congress.

Yeah, he's naturally looks maxing. Yeah, I remember I texted a friend of mine who's a pollster. Adam Carlson and I was like, hey, I know you're following this race. I know this guy is hot. Like one to ten.

How good are his politics? Because that I have been able to follow. But no, it's definitely interesting. What happened specifically with Millat's race. Because, you know, the immediate response after the, you know,

DSA comic corridor take over in New York City was, okay, well, this is in New York City thing. You know, you guys, the socialist around the country could get all hopped up on this adrenaline. That's fine. But this is not replicable elsewhere. And immediately after that, you have a DSA victory over and incumbent.

So that was very interesting to me. And obviously these races be it Millat's race or the ones in New York City. Israel has just been such a polarizing issue.

“And there are certain circumstances where that is definitely, I think,”

the defining issue that is the difference between the two candidates. And then there's other situations where it's being brought up a lot. But there's other factors at play. So Daryliesa, who's a famous Twitter user and is now a congresswoman or will be a congresswoman. She unceded SBA.

And it's my personal belief that SBA probably would have been able to squeeze through a victory. Had he taken the more, well, it is now considered to be progressive position on Israel Palestine. But there's also something that isn't really being talked about as much in the more national side of this conversation, that SBA neglected a lot of groups in his district because he was just skating through with his very robust Dominican base. That black people in Harlem and, you know, the white voters in the district, he wasn't really given them any time.

And between the labor groups and the tenants associations and everything, he was on certain things a little bit on autopilot. So I do think had he adjusted on Israel stuff that could have made the difference, but, you know, there was, there was more to it than that now. Yeah. You know, then there's the question of Goldman versus lander. Let's come back to Goldman lander.

I want to stick on SBA and I think his him and Dighet, I think are an interesting case if you put them together.

I just don't put a pit in there for one second and note.

In segment one, I asked Maggie Haverman if Donald Trump is impotent or if he's having an affair with the human printer. And she wouldn't quite answer that question. I thought her answer was interesting. But because she's Maggie Haverman, like I couldn't really press her on it. But you're my former podcast co-host.

So I noticed that you kind of Maggie Haverman's stiff arm to me when I asked if you and Malat, like, we're kind of flirting at all. And so I just wanted to follow up on that. Yeah, Malat and I are both flirting with something called generational change. And I think that's good. Good transition to what I wanted to talk about.

“Well, that's a generational change. You know, Israel, to me, I think about this.”

I'm watching this from the outside, like you're of the movement. So tell me you think how close I am on this. I see the Israel question is kind of like a table stakes thing.

It's like it's like in poker, it's like the ante, like if you were critical of Israel's actions in Gaza,

then the progressive voters are going to at least listen to you. Like you have the doors open, be listened to. From there, though, we've seen some success and from left challenges and some failures. And like what I see as most of the examples of the failures are just kind of old,

And like that's what you talk about about espiatti is only offering people to do it again.

“Based on it, again, has been there forever, like what is she done?”

I can't can't live for one last night, but again, for an incumbent senator, pretty strong protest vote against him. Like to me, a lot of this is like there's like this thing happening on the left, but there's also the establishment, like not offering exciting candidates to voters. And I feel like it would have gone differently in Colorado if there was maybe a more dynamic candidate running against your girl, a lot. Yeah, well, you know, my lot is, is the movement's girl. Sure. You know, I think I think two things can be true.

I do think Gaza is the sort of initial talking point. The other thing I'll say is like, you know, Zoran won the mayoral race because he was able to build a coalition by offering this vision of New York City, where there was a mayor who was putting every atom of his body into the job. And I think that that's probably the thing that's been most successful of him so far in office,

is the fact that even his biggest critics see him as this person who wakes up early, works all day, takes few breaks and goes to sleep late. I think that that speaks to what a lot of people see in the PSA challengers, are people who want to use every lever, a power they can find, and then if they can't find one, find new ones. So I definitely think that the kind of like old-of-flacid candidates weren't offering anything.

I think that's a very good point. Because the thing about the DSA challengers is due to the fact that they are movement powered, often for better, sometimes maybe for more complicated, but because of the fact that they are energized, like activists, they come off as people who are simply not going to rest, and who are going to put it on a lot of work.

“But the truth is like the Israeli issue, it really becomes a question of credibility for certain politicians,”

because just real quick, back to the land or a Goldman thing, the Israel situation dealt a critical blow to Goldman,

who was already vulnerable, even without the Israel stuff, because he was only able to get that seat by exploiting a split progressive field and a 2020-4, where there was an opaque challenger. And Brad Lander is somebody that everything-- How about 24% of the vote or something? It was something like that.

It was like a huge field. And I don't really know why there was a serious challenger for him in 2024, but he's just not a good fit for the district. I mean, if you had run him in the greatest congressional district in the country in New York 12, where there have been multiple borque contributors running for Congress within the past, I mean, seven months,

but if you had run Dan Goldman in New York 12, Dan Goldman would have won 99% of the vote, you know, even with people like Michael Asher and Alex Bores, who have good systems of support on the west side in the east side in general. Like Goldman is a perfect fit for New York 12. He's not the right fit for New York 10.

And that's with or without the question of Israel and Palestine. But it was a serious issue for him.

The broader Israel topic, because ultimately the issue of that was--

I mean, Arkham's razor would motivated him not to endorse Mayor Mamedadi. And him not endorsing Mayor Mamedadi really, really bit him in the ass. And it's also true that Brad Lander is an extremely familiar face in Brooklyn. He's been an elected official in the area for a very long time. It's not only Brad Lander is this guy who came out of nowhere,

the way that certain DSA challenges. I mean, Lander is not DSA. He's part of Zoran's cadre. So people talk about him like his DSA. He's not DSA.

“If you called him DSA to remember the DSA, I think they would kill you.”

But you know, so that's-- that was one issue. But the reason that I bring this up is Dan Goldman is very clearly ideologically, possibly religiously, I don't know, but ideologically asianist. So letting this Israel issue cause that problem for him makes a lot of sense, because even his biggest haters don't doubt that's what he believes.

That's something he believes at. So I don't agree with him on that ideology. But I don't call him the question the fact that it's what he considers to be the best thing. S-by-ot is a different story because I have no reason to believe that S-by-ot is religiously or personally tied to desiredist movement.

Politicians like him, and certain people around the country you see, who are kind of inexplicably just so dedicated to the Israel thing. And there's just certain politicians who are just extra-pro-israel. Like there's politics. And they're in the inverse.

I think that there are a couple of potentials who are concerning the extra. A million percent.

That's basically what I'm saying is I think there's a bunch of politicians

who back in the days where Israel was just very simply surface-level. Look, that's just like our democratic ally. And our friend in the Middle East, and they deal with a lot of problems. And we have to go out and support them. They started getting money from the pro-Israel lobby.

for the partnership between American and Israel. And I think a lot of politicians just got so used to it that they didn't even slightly rhetorically bend. And they didn't want to abandon a pack. Think about it.

Like in New York's 12th district, Alex Bores and Michael Lashore were running either where Nadler was on Israel Palestine or a step to the right on Israel Palestine. They are fundamentally pro-Israel candidates.

Now they're more critical of Israel than somebody like Richie Torres

and they support conditioning certain types of military aids. Sure. But generally speaking, they're fundamentally pro-Israel and they had all of the support, both of them, different pro-Israel groups.

“But again, both of them, and I think that this is really important.”

Both of them rejected a relationship with APEC because APEC's brand has become so toxic that even pro-Israel candidates are saying, guys, I got you, but please, so I don't lose my election. Don't give me money, even under those kind of like. Just for the, to get our facts right, I'm really good.

Dana Golden in 2020 to won with 26% of the vote in a huge primary. Our guy, my dear judge finished third in that one 18%. Here's the thing that some people have concerns about this. I mean, they're, they're million of them.

But I think it was most visibly apparent.

Like how some folks feel like maybe things are getting a little out of hand. When it comes to the anti-Israel anti-Zine movement, with what happened to Scott Weiner, aforementioned in California. I'm going to play this video for you of Scott Weiner being declared by some people. It looks like kind of in the mission in San Francisco.

Scott, I want to support someone who's so positive on trans rights, but you're a piece of shit. I got you. How could you do that? How could you betray queer's?

How could you impress people?

“The moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of shit.”

Okay, yeah. So if you missed out at the end, you stopped being queer or the moment you supported Israel, you piece of shit. A couple thoughts for me, and I'm interested in your take.

Number one, Scott Weiner looks amazing, 56 years old, unbelievable.

It's just testament to what being gay can do for you. Amen. And Moisturizing, thanks to our friends at one skin. So that's one. Number two, like you don't.

Just as a general manner, like setting aside the Israel part for a second, you don't get to de-queer somebody because you don't like their position on a foreign policy issue. That's just not how things work. We've learned subsequently that one of the guys yelling at him isn't even really gay. He sounds like he's a straight guy that likes to do kinky sex stuff.

And okay, and like that's fine. You know, we keep adding letters to the LGBTQIA+ community to us. And that's okay, I guess, but like technically speaking, if you're just a straight guy that has weird kinks and likes anime, like you're really on the edge of the coalition.

And so you really shouldn't probably be telling people, you know, who are actually gay, who had friends that died of AIDS, that they aren't welcome anymore. So that's just a quick aside by me. But you see why people get worried about this.

It feels like this is the movement getting out of hand. I mean, Scott Weener is like a progressive obviously pro gay has pretty left views on Israel. You need to kind of monitor yourself, but do some self-policing on what's happening.

“I think we should abolish the self-police.”

But, you know, this is a couple things. Obviously, I'm very upset about seeing that. It's a very unfortunate circumstance to see, especially given that this was something that was supposed to be in the trans community.

And that's, you know, there's a time in place to do certain things. But there's two things I want to bring up. Number one, he's moved on the issue. And there's a little bit of the old line. Yeah, this like take yes for an answer, kind of line.

Like this is the thing about Scott Weener. Scott Weener, I was coming around to the position that activists been asking for. And now you're like trying to like do homophobic slurs and shouting down on the street and men accept.

And it's like, okay, guys, that's not really, that's not really kind of how you win friends and influence people. You know, so I can't speak to the individuals who were involved in that bird dog. I don't know anything about them as human beings.

But what I can say is like, there's a lot of people in the larger and as I just movement who talk a lot more about how much they hate Israel than about supporting the people who are currently being killed by Israel. You know, when I talk to other Jewish and Zionists, there's a lot of talk about their own Judaism.

And there's a lot of talk about Israel and the greater Zionist apparatus. And a lot of them, I'm like, hey, what about the human beings

Like, what about the people?

I don't think the people who are like bird dog and Scott Weener who literally calls it a genocide. I don't think they're thinking right now like,

“how is this going to improve the material conditions of the actual human beings on the ground?”

I think it's a lot more about anger towards Scott than it is sympathy towards people on the ground. Last thing, like, just, I want to hear more like kind of putting aside, like, we'll be talking about and just like thinking more than the campaign, you know, focusing and moving ahead to November. Like, as mentioned, you've been, you know, with a dual campaigning and platner.

And like, there is this energy that is happening there in those campaigns. And, you know, that I think, and there's something that's happening, you know, from folks that might not fit that same portfolio, or that might not fit that same rather, you know, ideological frame or faction, uh, if you look at Talrico or whatever.

Like, Democrats are trying to figure out like how to do two things, right? Like, how do you channel the energy? And, like, also how do you win, right? And, you know, if you got platner right now, like, there's a poll that has them down three to Collins.

And so, like, platner figured out the energy part for the primary, and now he's got to figure out the wind part. And, like, having been on the ground, I'm just kind of wondering kind of how you assess how those guys are trying to do that.

I would say the first important thing to recognize is just like,

DC and New York's relationship with these races and Twitter's relationship with these races.

“You have to understand that every state is its own thing.”

And we look a lot at, you know, the media's relationship with certain candidates. And I think that there's a lack of understanding of some of the more state-specific elements. So, for example, when I went to Maine, you buried the lead a little bit. I was in Maine the day after the newest New York Times story dropped. And, because of an insurance issue, I did not have my anxiety medication.

So, I was with Gran Platner the day after the New York Times story. Basically, Feral, I mean, I was having a hard time sleeping. It was really tough, but the energy on the ground, if you were there, and I was with hundreds of mayors that day, interacting with the people who were at these events,

you wouldn't have had any idea that there was just a scandal. Like, everybody was just in a very positive mindset.

And that was interesting to me because I thought I was going to go there,

and there was just going to be utter chaos. But there's this guy who said to me, like, you know, there's the six degrees of separation in Maine. There's one or two degrees of separation. You either know the candidate or you know someone who knows them.

And all of these things that have come out about Gran, are things that everyone I know has known for years. So, that was an interesting situation for me. The adult situation is very different.

“I mean, I think the interesting case in that race is sort of the face plan”

that the McMurdo campaign saw, but just in general, in Maine, it really reminded me that the only things I truly knew about Maine were fish and Stephen K. Other than that, I mean, they... I think fish is Vermont actually, so I don't know that you knew anything. I know, but my dad has a t-shirt that's a guy saying fish, Maine.

Yeah. So that's what I say with it. Yeah. And then in Michigan, the interesting thing about adult campaign to me is that I think it was a lot more combative in the beginning

in terms of messaging. And there's been this crescendo of just kind of positivity and sort of this aspirational quality that they're going for. And I am interested in sort of in how organic that was, et cetera. And lately there's been a lot of positivity and a lot of sort of this aspirational message.

And it was fun. Both Graham and Abdul said to me, like, "Oh, man, I hope you were going to win." And I was like, "Well, I'm technically undefeated." Yeah, you quit. I feel like Abdul is actually doing this better than Graham at this point.

So, TPD, but like having lived through this on the T-party side, it's like, you know, sometimes that combat of part, that factional fighting part, is what motivates people at the beginning and so hard to deep program themselves. And it's like time to tend to program forward, like channeling the energy of the base and then using it towards Susan Collins,

rather than like Deoligarchy and Neil Liberals. Anyway, to be continued, Cameron, thank you for coming to see me in New Orleans, by the way. You've got a guy's Pope, boy. You know, I feel like we gave you the whole experience, you know?

I mean, if I lived in New Orleans, I would need to really re-structure my exercise routine because the flavor in that city is just unbelievable. Like, the food was just so great. Even the stuff we went to that was sort of just like this mid thing we were doing just because it was convenient with timing.

It was so good. We had a, was it, was it, was Pope eyes, right? Oh, we had some Pope eyes. I mean, that's not, I mean, Pope eyes of Jason Louisiana.

but it was nice to have you here.

Come see me again soon.

“And we're going to keep using you as the correspondent for all things.”

DSA, bisexuality, and looks maxing. DSA, am I right?

DSA, that's Cameron Kasky.

Thank you so much. What a show.

“I don't know if anybody noticed, but you know,”

if you're getting this podcast right now and you're hearing it,

you just got to thank Jason Brown, Katie Cooper and Katie loose and Ansley Skipper because both guests are in New York City. And one thing that Zora asked a fucking fix after the pot holes is the Wi-Fi. All right, Zora on to get out there. 100,000 holes filled.

And now we need some Wi-Fi.

“I'm in the mountains in North Carolina right now.”

Okay. Well, Maggie was in New York and makes sense why you don't have Wi-Fi. Zora on, get on it. Everybody, I appreciate you all very much. We back here tomorrow that I'm just going to show.

See you all then. See you guys. The Board Podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper. Associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Lutz and

audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.