← Deadline: White House
Deadline: White House
"Something that in normal times would be scandalous"
00:40:51
June 24, 2026, 4pm: Nicolle Wallace on a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan -- full of carefully reported accounts of Donald Trump pushing or ignoring norms and boundaries... as those in his orbit do nothing to resist his worst impulses.
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- [00:00]
Monday.com Narrator
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- [00:51]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
VGW Group Void where prohibited by law CTC's 21+ sponsored by Jumba Casino. Hi there everyone. It's four o' clock in the East. Power, Revenge, Vanity, corruption. Those are not the usual or normal words anyone thinks of to describe the United States President. But it is those prevailing themes that leap off every single page in a brand new book about Donald Trump's second term as president. Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. It is written by two New York Times reporters who have contributed enormously to what we as the public know about Donald Trump and his inner circle. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are those journalists on every page. The book reveals something that in normal times would be scandalous and big news kind of stories we'd talk about for the whole two hours on this show. And there are dozens of them in here, dozens of carefully reported accounts of Donald Trump pushing or ignoring norms and boundaries as those in his orbit do nothing over and over again to resist his worst impulses. Take, for example, the monumental decision to launch a war with Iran earlier this year. On that, Haberman and Swan report this. They write about how in February, Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inside the Situation Room, which was weird in and of itself. As they report, quote, the Situation Room had rarely been visited by a foreign leader in person for such a sensitive meeting. Inside the Sit Room, Netanyahu presented his case for attacking Iran, on which Trump was then sold. And when Trump's team met afterwards to discuss the plan's feasibility, here's how that went. Quote When Trump joined the meeting, Ratcliffe briefed him on the US Intelligence assessment of Netanyahu's presentation. The CIA director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister's regime change scenario, quote, farcical. At that point, Marco Rubio cut in, quote, in other words, it's bullshit, he said. Ratcliffe added that given the unpredictability of events in any conflict, regime change could still happen, but it should not be considered an achievable objective. Trump quickly weighed the assessment. Regime change, he concluded, would be, quote, their problem. It was unclear whether he was referring to the Israelis or the Iranian people, but the bottom line was that his decision to go to war against Iran would not hinge on whether parts three and four of Netanyahu's presentation were achievable. Trump remained very interested in accomplishing parts one and two, killing the Ayatollah and Iran's top leaders and dismantling the Iranian military. Donald Trump here not reckoning with the reality that his advisers presented to him, as well as the reality of how his decisions will play with the American people and the rest of the world. The war with Iran remains deeply unpopular and is ongoing. Just 24% of the public thinks it has been worth the cost. The war has also created an unprecedented rift inside Donald Trump's own party and political coalition. But there's only one thing on Donald Trump's mind, and that is power. That motivation is as clear as day. In another riveting story from the pages of Regime Change, Haberman and Swan report this quote. Trump gestured for his aide Natalie Harp to bring us copies of a two page document. He began reading from it, reciting the names of some of history's most powerful figures, explaining how each fell short of his own power as US President. Alexander the Great, the Caesars, William the Conqueror. They didn't have airplanes, right? You couldn't travel around Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, Napoleon, he said with relish. Hitler, Mao, Stalin. These leaders maintained power through fear, he said. Who would ever do a thing like that, right? Trump lingered on the document's central argument, that each leader, however fearsome in his day, had no global reach. Their power was local, but his was not. Donald Trump's gluttonous relationship with power, while growing increasingly detached from reality, is where we begin today with the co authors of that important new book, New York Times White House reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Hi there, guys.
- [05:26]
Jonathan Swan
Thanks for having us. Nicole.
- [05:29]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Maggie, let me start with you. And the Iran reporting, which is riveting and devastating. It represents the biggest broadside Trump has taken politically from key figures in his own coalition. And for all the bluster, there are Stories this week about subpoenas for reporters at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. I haven't seen anyone refute the facts of that account. Does the White House essentially stand by which you've reported?
- [06:00]
Maggie Haberman
Nicole, again, thank you so much for highlighting the reporting and helping us bring it to an audience that is interested in hearing it. Look, what the White House has to say for themselves, they can. But, yes, it is notable that so far the White House has said nothing. And we should note that that bit of reporting, actually, we first put in the New York times within, within five weeks of the war, six weeks of the war beginning April 7th, I believe, and I still have not heard any refutation of it. What it does show you, and what we tried to show readers is, you know, how decisions are being made at the highest levels of their government, the highest levels of the White House. And to be clear, not everything is black and white. Nicole, you know, yes, Netanyahu clearly was presenting Trump with a very specific set of points that could happen that appealed to Trump. We described Trump's reaction in that highly unusual situation room meeting. But Trump's own advisers did say to him, you know, here, here is what could happen here is possibly doable regime change, clearly not something that could be done, according to his own CIA director, his own secretary of state. And the most pointed voice among all of these advisers who did not want to see this Happen was, was J.D.
- [07:22]
Kelly (Trump Aide or Associate)
vance.
- [07:23]
Maggie Haberman
And the president got annoyed with his vice president for talking about this. Donald Trump is operating on pure gut in this term, really more than at any time we have ever seen him. And one of the things that was so surprising to us in reporting this book was just how unrecognizable this term has been. And we tried to show that at various points, but the Iran war decision was entirely Trump's and he wanted to do it. It was not just being strung along by Netanyahu.
- [07:55]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
I mean, I, I think, Jonathan, what's so interesting about the reporting which sort of reads like the stories that you're both known for, these inside the room tiktoks, is that there is. And the, I mean, the 200 pages on retribution and the Enemy within paint a totally different portrait of figures like Todd Blanche who are sycophantic and compliant. But inside the sit room, Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe, and I believe his top military advisor all tell him that what the Israelis have presented is farcical BS and not achievable. It does feel like an anecdote and a bit of reporting with dire Consequences not just for the 13 families who lost loved ones in this war. But it does feel like a different kind of piece of reporting in the book where people said no.
- [08:50]
Jonathan Swan
Well, publicly, Trump has said, you know, no one mentioned to him any of these dire scenarios about the Strait of Hormuz or munitions or what have you. That's just not true. He was absolutely warned about munitions. Dan Kane laid out what could happen with American supplies of critical long range weapons, God forbid that we might need in a war against a major power. We're now in a really bad position with our stockpiles of long range weapons because of this decision that Donald Trump made to go to war. He was absolutely warned in these meetings, but he had a gut instinct that this war would be over quickly. He thought this would be a rapid collapse and capitulation from Iran. And it was, as one aide described to us, magical thinking. He just had a feeling. And he, he was emboldened by some of his risks that he took over the last year. In particular, authorizing an operation to go in sending Delta Force into Venezuela in the dead of the night to snatch a sovereign head of state out of his bedroom in his pajamas and do regime change in Venezuela. Thank God no Americans died in that operation. But I think that that gave him the confidence to say, oh, I know what they're telling me, the intelligence community, but, you know, I know better because I have a gut instinct for it.
- [10:16]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
I mean, Maggie, it's that operation that starts the book with this incredible portrait that you paint of New Year's Eve. Just take us through that reporting.
- [10:25]
Maggie Haberman
Sure. So, you know, it seems like a lifetime ago, Nicole. At least it does to us. But on New Year's Eve, the Trump top levels of the administration were hanging out at Mar a Lago for Trump's New Year's Eve party, which he's been, you know, he's been throwing forever. Long before that he was president. But it's become something of a ritual since he took office where a lot of top officials go down there. And he's basically the top levels of his government, including those who were involved in this operation. Not everybody, but almost everybody were there. You have Todd Blanch, the deputy attorney general at the time, seated to Trump's right. I believe it was at the head table you had Kristi Noem, then the Homeland Security secretary, dancing to Ice Ice Baby. Stephen Miller was on the dance floor and they were preparing for this operation in Venezuela that was still very secret. Now, it's at the time it was clear that Trump was moving toward this. And his, his hopes that Venezuela was going to capitulate voluntarily, that Maduro would capitulate voluntarily, just weren't coming to fruition. And so they were moving ahead with this, this remarkable operation. But everything seemed terrific for Trump. Everything seemed to be moving in his direction that night. He was in his mind, you know, at the height of a year back, where he felt, you know, extremely powerful and people around him really believed that he could accomplish, you know, anything essentially, because they really believed his sense of himself that, you know, he has this ability to hear frequencies that other people don't, that he, they have an almost mystical belief in him, this group of aids. And, you know, the new year rang in and this Maduro operation happens a few days later. And then a few days after that comes the killing of Renee Good in Minnesota. And a few weeks after that comes the killing of Alex Pretty. And so what was this height of Trump feeling as if he was in this incredible moment of power and of this new presidency, this supremely powerful presidency where he has expanded executive power in a way, really no president in our lifetime. And it's hard to think of a true comparison to him and his approach in American history. It all began to get away from them very, very fast.
- [13:01]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
One thing, Nicole, ratings. Oh, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
- [13:05]
Jonathan Swan
I was just going to say one thing that I think people, it became really apparent to us through this reporting, and I don't, I think it's a misconception. Is this group of people around Trump, much more than the first term, is very good at keeping secrets. I mean, there is this phrase that they use where the most transparent administration ever, Trump says it all the time. It's a complete canard when they, to keep secrets. They're very, very good at it. And whether it's a secret about a Trump family invest, you know, investment from the Emiratis in their crypto business, or whether it's the memorandum of understanding to go to war to, sorry, to end the war in Iran, which very senior people in the US Government had no idea what was in that document. I'm talking about very, very senior people at the Pentagon, State Department intelligence community. When you're running, I think people quite grasp there's still a sort of a first term lens that people are looking at this administration, but there's really sort of, this is really a country being run by five, six, seven people sitting around. And when you're that concerned with secrecy, with limiting leaks, you're not allowing certain people in the room who might have subject matter expertise to offer. So one thing we report on in the book, which I think is astonishing, is the lead up to the war with Iran. They knew, because he'd been presented with this, they knew that there was a chance that they would create what ended up being the biggest global energy shock in history. The two people that would have to manage the fallout of that shock, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, they weren't in the room for the meetings leading up to the war. They weren't in the room. So when you're limiting your exposure, Trump is in a very tight and pretty small bubble. He does talk to outside people, but for the really critical issues, it is a tiny, tiny group of people. And that's why it's so hard when we were doing this reporting, it is so hard to get in and crack open and get that information out. It really just about killed us to do it, but we think it's very important.
- [15:14]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Well, and Jonathan, I would say from reading it, I didn't have the impression that they were good at keeping secrets. I got the impression that they were good at lying. I mean, Scott Besant is caught in a lie when it comes to what sounds like, you guys report out. Boris Epstein basically tries to extort, blackmail, or charge him. Choose your verb to represent him while he's a very public candidate to be Treasury Secretary. And when he's asked by Democrats if the story that he appears to be the source on is true, he says no. I mean, where is the line between keeping secrets and lying?
- [15:46]
Jonathan Swan
Well, two things could be true, and that's a great example of a very murky set of facts that we lay out. We basically show that this is what he claimed in this internal report that we obtained that was written by the White House counsel, Dave Warrington. And Boris Epstein has obviously claimed the opposite. He wouldn't say it under oath, but that's actually a very telling example because Trump's own White House counsel, Dave Warrington, produced a report early on warning Donald Trump not to be spending time around Boris Epstein, his personal lawyer, and, you know, warning about dire consequences, potential legal ramifications for that. And Trump, because of the sense of, you know, no one can touch me, I have immunity conferred by the Supreme Court, no one is going, there's going to be no mechanisms for accountability. Again, if this was the first term, potentially people like that would have been excommunicated, or at least kept at a very far distance, like he did with Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. It's not been the case in this term, but for your broader point about lying. You know, Maggie and I took an approach in this book of assume everything is false until proven otherwise. And that's why we get a situation where we left just a painful amount of material on the cutting room floor because we couldn't be sure it was true. And we went to great lengths to make sure that everything we put in the book, it's not some wispy. Donald Trump is thinking this thing, you know, it is anchored in, in this room on this day, at this time. And here are the people and here's what they said and that work. I think people just think this spills out and we hold like a swill bucket and catch it all. That might have been the case in the first term. It's certainly not the case now.
- [17:33]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
No, I mean, it's like, I don't know. I don't know enough about mining, but it feels like the process to make a diamond, squeezing something so hard till this thing comes out, that'll be around long after we're all gone. It's, it's incredible. I want to ask you about managing the Jeffrey Epstein fallout because that seems like another example where they may not like what's been reported, but no one has proven that what you report isn't exactly what happened on the inside. I want to read that Situation room also, a meeting that took place in THE SITUATION ROOM to you guys and have you fill in some of the details for our viewers. Also ahead for us, the US Intelligence community is in turmoil after Trump's friend Bill Pulte took the reins as dni, acting dni with officials fired or relocated in just the first few days since he's been there. The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Congressman Jim Himes, will join us. Also later in the broadcast as poll after poll shows Trump standing with the American people in free fall over his failure to address the things people care about, largely the cost of living. Donald Trump has canceled the signing of a bipartisan bill to make housing in America more affordable so that he can try to force through his voter suppression agenda. We'll have all those stories and much more when DEADLINE White House continues after a quick break. Maggie and Jonathan will still be here, so don't go anywhere.
- [18:58]
Monday.com Narrator
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- [20:12]
Kelly (Trump Aide or Associate)
economy once that you know Hitler did some good things, too. And of course, if you know history, again, I think he's lacking in that. If you know what his, you know, Hitler was all about, you'd be pretty hard to make an argument that he did anything good.
- [20:29]
Jonathan Swan
So what would you, what would you say when he said to you that
- [20:32]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Hitler did a lot of good things?
- [20:33]
Kelly (Trump Aide or Associate)
Well, I tell him that I said, you know, if you, first of all, you should never say that. But if you knew what history Hitler was all about from the beginning to the end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, you know, you know, philosophy. So that nothing he did you could argue was good. It was certainly not done for the right reason.
- [21:04]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
We're back with Maggie and Jonathan. Jonathan, I think when that, when Kelly breaks his silence and sort of confirms something that had been out there for a while, that Trump admired Hitler and wanted his generals to be more like the German generals. Which ones? Those ones people thought that was twisted and mixed up with Hitler's ideology, as Kelly says there. But his love of Hitler's power overrides, I guess, whatever, offense. And I don't know that he takes any offense or not from what Hitler did, but I've now read this so many times on the air since it came out because I find it both shocking and galling and clarifying. It's on page 411 of the book. And a golfer's caddy, I mean, Trump describes it in the section as a historian, but there's no evidence it's a historian. It's Gary Player's caddy. Is that right? Jonathan?
- [21:58]
Jonathan Swan
His former caddy. Yeah.
- [22:01]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Is he also a historian? Or does he want to be a historian, or was he once a historian?
- [22:04]
Jonathan Swan
I think he's a. He's an enthusiast about history.
- [22:09]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
He's a reader. He reads books. Me, too. Okay, let me read this section. The point of this story was not about golf. It was about a friend of players, a man Trump describes as a historian. They had attended an event honoring the golfer Gary Player. And Trump said. And the historian whose Trump named Trump doesn't recall, but we've established isn't a historian, gives him this document. He gestures to Harp, who you guys have some incredible reporting on. He pronounces her name in French for no reason. She doesn't appear French. Is she French?
- [22:40]
Maggie Haberman
Not that we know.
- [22:41]
Jonathan Swan
Not to my knowledge.
- [22:42]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
But he describes her. He says, natalie is just her first name. Just so, so weird if it wasn't all so ominous. But let me, let me read this from the book. Trump gestured for this aide, Natalie Harp, to bring us copies of the two page document. He began reading from it, reciting the names of some of history's most powerful figures, explaining how each fell short of his own power as US President. Alexander the Great, the Caesars, William the Conqueror. Quote, they didn't have airplanes, right? I have to stop you now that I had. Was he kidding about the airplanes?
- [23:15]
Jonathan Swan
You never really know with Trump. He didn't seem to be kidding. He was sort of making a point that they didn't have the ability to project power, that their power was confined to their geographic region. But he, as US President, can project power around the world and not just reshape America, but reshape parts of the world.
- [23:35]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Okay, let me keep going because I do think this is crazy. You couldn't travel around Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, Napoleon. He said with relish. Hitler, Mao, Stalin. He goes on to admire how they, quote, maintained power through fear. Over 200 pages of the book are sections called Retribution and the Enemy Within. Is there anything else that animates this second term in your view, Jonathan, other than retribution and the enemy and prosecuting and persecuting the enemy with them?
- [24:18]
Jonathan Swan
Oh, no question. I think Donald Trump wants to, like we say in the epilogue, reshape the world in his image, you know, according to his ideas. And it's interesting when you look at. He's a very visual person. And so when people present to him national security aides, they often present maps. He's made very clear that these large areas of territory that are sovereign nations but are in the, in the Western hemisphere he views as potentially American soil, Greenland, Canada. He told us, he admitted to us that he'd said we had reporting that he'd been telling people privately that Venezuela was essentially should be America's 51st state. That's more than a rhetorical flourish because that's the way he views the new leader, Delsey Rodriguez, essentially as an American puppet. And he views Venezuela as a giant oil field. It's a very sort of 19th century colonial type of mindset. But that's how he views the world. Raw power. Raw power. And look, that document, it wasn't that he was saying, you know, such and such terrible dictator did actually great things. It was more the morality didn't come into it. The only metric that was really assessed in that document was raw power. And that was what he was relishing, was that they had power, but he had more.
- [25:44]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Maggie, I want to ask you about another piece of reporting that you guys released before the book was published. And that is about the sit room meetings to manage the fallout from the Epstein file release. Just take us through how, I mean, I don't know that Democrats have seen the nipple allegation document that some of those crisis management meetings center around, but just take me inside what you uncovered and explain why they were in the sit room. Were they hiding from him?
- [26:17]
Maggie Haberman
So, Nicole, this was an extraordinary series of meetings that took place in the White House situation room, which you know, again is the most and you know this. It is a complex of rooms. It is a secure area. Cell phones aren't allowed. And it's been used this complex, not every single conference room the same way. But it's been used for President Obama to monitor the Osama bin Laden raid. It's where Lyndon Johnson monitored the Vietnam War. It because again to try to avoid leaks, it became the, the, the comms crisis center for how to handle the release or non release of files and documents and paperwork related to Jeffrey Epstein and the investigations into his crimes. And so there were a series of meetings in before the one that we first write about. There were four that we focus on specifically. But these meetings in particular that we write about were primarily, almost exclusively about how to deal with President Trump and his, his total lack of interest in releasing anything related to Epstein and how angry that was making his political base. And this was all coming right after he had expended all of his political capital passing the one big beautiful bill. Instead of talking about that they were on July 17, the top levels again of government to the vice president, White House chief of staff, White House Counsel, attorney general, deputy attorney general, FBI director, various comm staff. And that isn't even the full list, that's a partial list are in the situation room, in the conference room, because the base is revolting over the fact that the DOJ and the FBI had earlier that month put out a memo saying they had they looked at all the files. There was nothing left to investigate, no one was going to be prosecuted, they weren't releasing anything more. And Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. And they put out a video along with it from Epstein's prison. It was missing a minute, which several people did not realize in the Trump administration till it went out. And so that helped us fuel further anger. It was the first time that they had really seen Trump's base not listen to what he was saying, which was, hmm, don't talk about this anymore, it's a hoax by Democrats. And so a White House where not everyone thought that Epstein was a huge issue. Vance, Cash Patel, the FBI director, Dan Bongino, they had spent years talking about the Epstein files as a massive, likely cabal of child predators, and there must be a client list that existed and should be released. Several top Trump advisers were fairly blind to how potent this issue was within the MAGA base. And they really believed that this was not going to be a huge storm. So the blowback just caught them by enormous surprise. And the President didn't want to hear anything about it. He was snapping at everyone. This particular first meeting that we write about really was about how to deal with what they were looking at. This is where Vance proposes, what if we got Ghislaine Maxwell to talk to Congress? Todd Blanche talks about how she may want something in return if she speaks to officials. Dave Warrington, the White House counsel, without endorsing any of the options, but talks about what could be done. People are very adamant that she should not be pardoned in this meeting, which I think is of note, just because she later was moved to a lower security prison. The question that you're asking about came at a meeting in August and that at that point this had now been going on for weeks. And by then they were planning to put out a website, a public facing library of all Epstein related material. They were also facing a subpoena from the House to put out a range of material, not everything that we saw later in the Epstein Transparency act, but as they were talking about what could be on this website, this large volume, they were talking about, you know, do we put up things that have been public already? Do we put up civil suits, documents and Civil cases. There was a civil case in an unrelated matter not related to Donald Trump, but in it, one Epstein victim had made a secondhand claim in an email to a reporter a decade earlier that involved Donald Trump and a alleged nipple fetish. Now, this is person who it supposedly was about never came forward. This was uncorroborated. We certainly didn't learn anything to suggest it existed. And again, it was unsealed this claim in January 2024. So I just want to make very clear this was public, but somebody in Trump's world had done a search of what was in this Epstein library that they were preparing to make public themselves, and the nipple allegation popped up immediately. And so in this sit room meeting in mid August, again, they're talking about what to do, and J.D. vance is saying, release everything, even uncorroborated claims about the president. You know, this nipple, whatever it was, secondhand claim would fall into that category. And Vance says, you know, he didn't think the President would mind. He's been accused of worse. And Blanche argues that, you know, it would be very clear why something like this was not prosecuted. And again, it had been public, although most people in that room didn't know about it before. And Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, very quickly informed the Vice President that, no, President Trump would not be okay with it. And so that version of the Epstein library never went public. They still dragged their feet on responding to the House subpoena. And this crisis, again, I'm using the word crisis. This was not a national security crisis, but this. This sort of ongoing PR situation engulfed them. And officials described it to us as them being paralyzed by this, and it. Because they really couldn't figure out how to get out of it. And now, Nicole, what was shocking was we got hold of these memos, these internal memos by Trump's political team in March, focus groups were conducted, one of which was on the day that we saw the president. And he gave us that document that you were talking about, featuring what he called the top ten of histories, Monsters and Conquerors. And it showed that Epstein is still really breaking through to voters in these focus groups. They were bringing it up proactively. And so if you want to look back at a moment that really sort of froze this White House and this administration, it was the beginning of the meetings around Epstein and what to do.
- [33:06]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Yeah, I mean, I want to ask you guys to stick around through one more break, because I think since you two have been covering him, since I've been talking about him. He's at his lowest standing politically, and it just diverges from his sort of perception of himself as one of the greats. If that's even how we describe Stalin and Hitler. I guess it's how he describes him on page 411. But I want to try to understand that seeming contradiction between his political low point and how he sees himself. I'm going to ask you guys to stick around through one more break and we'll try to broaden the lens. And I want to ask both of you to gaze into your crystal balls about what November holds for the country. I also want to ask you about his health and why he can't stay awake in his own meetings at his own desk in the White House. Stay with us.
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- [35:02]
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- [35:35]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
we're back with Maggie and Jonathan. Jonathan Swan. Why is he always asleep behind the Resolute desk at his own meeting with his own carefully managed and supervised press corps?
- [35:47]
Jonathan Swan
Well, the short answer is we don't know because they're not fully transparent about his health. What we do know is that he doesn't sleep a lot. And we have a part of the book where aids one morning around 10 o', clock, you know, that needed to reach him and couldn't reach him, an aide went up, it turned out he was asleep. So it seemed like he had been up all night and then perhaps slept in the early sort of, you know, 5:00am through, you know, in that early sort of morning period. So we don't know. There's a lot we don't know. And that's a story that we're continuing to dig on because they put out, you know, that he saw 22 specialists. We don't know who those specialists were or what their specialties were. They put out very incomplete health information. He's an 80 year old man that we know has chronic venous insufficiency. The blood flow in his legs is not working the way it should be. We've seen the swollen ankles and you know, he's showing evidence sides of aging. But there's just a lot we don't know there,
- [36:57]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Maggie. The retribution campaign that is detailed focuses on all three parts of it, which we don't always do a very good job at here. The enemies which we see and we cover when grand juries refuse to indict, or in the case of Comey, when they do indict. But you also, you guys report out the retribution against media companies that seems psychically to be as central as the better publicized campaigns against perceived individual enemies and law firms.
- [37:29]
Maggie Haberman
Absolutely, Nicole. I mean, there are a couple of buckets of what we would describe as both a retribution campaign and a bullying campaign. And it is various industries and you have covered this and many of us have universities, law firms, individuals such as Chris Krebs or Miles Taylor, and yes, media companies. But he started with this lawsuit against abc, which we get into in detail how there had been a framework for a settlement worked out. And Trump's top legal adviser, Boris Epstein, encouraged him that he could get more money and tens of millions of dollars. And Trump liked the sound of that better. He then Trump agreed to, you know, an amount not as big as what Epstein was saying, but something more than what the original framework was. And then he decided he didn't want to do that. And it came up to the wire and they did settle. The Trump folks didn't get everything they wanted. But you have seen that it has had a chilling effect as he goes after CBS and other companies on A lot of aspects of media and other industries.
- [38:39]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Well, it is a pleasure to get to talk to you guys. That's something we get to do all the time. I've had this on my desk since I've had it for a couple of weeks, and I open it up and flip through it and there's, there's reporting to support just about everything in the news. So congratulations on an incredible, incredible body of journalism. Thank you. Both Maggie and Jonathan, thank you so
- [38:58]
Jonathan Swan
much for having us.
- [39:00]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
The book is called Regime Change Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. It is out now. After the break, an ominous sign from the office responsible for managing our nation's intelligence agencies. Their social media feed is suddenly pumping out pictures of Donald Trump. We'll talk about that next. We have a slightly better understanding today of the firings that are underway since Donald Trump's political ally, Bill Pulte, has taken over as acting Director of National Intelligence. CBS is reporting that more than 50 career and political staff have been removed from their roles. Six were fired and 45 have been sent back to their home agencies. Meanwhile, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is busy doing this posting and resharing various flattering photographs of Donald Trump on the official Office of the Director of National Intelligence Twitter page. I want to bring in the House Intelligence Committee's ranking member, Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. Congressman, what are you able to understand to be happening right now at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence?
- [40:12]
Jim Himes (Congressman)
Yeah, Nicole, the answer to that question is an ugly one, right? So, you know, everything I know is what's being reported by the press, which I guess is leaking out of odni. You know, there was a panic yesterday when the story was that hundreds of people were being fired. And let's be very clear, this is an entity that keeps Americans safe by tracking terrorists, by tracking cartel shipments of fentanyl into the United States. You name got to a point where I finally had to do something I'd never done before, which is pick up the phone and call the Director of the Office of Legislative affairs at odni. And they had nothing to tell me. So apart from having a completely unqualified person, you know, operating inside a very, very sensitive, very high stakes agency with no knowledge of what he's doing, they are once again showing incredible disdain to the representatives of the people who actually fund those agencies. So if you hear a little frustration in my voice, it's because it seems like every journalist on the planet knows more than the Congress of the United States knows right now about what Bill Pulte is doing at one of our most sensitive federal departments.
- [41:16]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
One of the stories that's been reported is that counterterror individuals in that office is being targeted. That's sort of a, on the other side of a red line. And I know in the time of Trump that sounds stupid, but in this area of active war with Iran and other American adversaries, certainly not any less mad at us than they've been in the last 20 years. What do you understand about depleting our resources and our footing in the counterterror space?
- [41:48]
Jim Himes (Congressman)
Yeah, you know, it's important that people understand because they often don't know what the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is. Amongst other things, it houses the National Counterterrorism Center. So I want you to imagine an operations floor with lots of very good and patriotic and capable and well trained people staring into screens, tracking terrorists, looking at plots to attack the American homeland, looking at plots to bring down airliners, you name it. And that is inside odni. Rumors were yesterday that maybe there were firings there again, because they are showing remarkable disdain to the Congress. I don't know that for sure. I will tell you. You were running the Pyongyang like Dear Leader tributes that Bill Pulte has been putting up on Twitter. He did take a moment out of those loving portraits of the President United States to say that he had met with the National Counterterrorism center and that he respected what they did. So again, I would like to imagine that the Congress United States would not be learning things from Bill Pulte's Twitter feed. But I got some tiny, tiny little bit of confidence that maybe he actually met with the National Counterterrorism center instead of firing it.
- [42:51]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
I know you have to go vote and I know we kept you waiting, so we will, one, let you go. And two, we apologize for being tardy. Please come back if you learn anything else. We're grateful to you for your time today.
- [43:01]
Jim Himes (Congressman)
Thanks so much, Nicole.
- [43:03]
Nicole (Host/Interviewer)
Thank you. Up next for us, Donald Trump's voter suppression push is dealt another blow in the courts. Stay with us for that. It has been legal setback after legal setback for Donald Trump and his attempt to make voting more difficult for Americans. Today, another federal judge delivered the death knell to Donald Trump's first anti voting executive order, permanently blocking key portions. Specifically, the ruling stops the provisions that would have forced new proof of citizenship requirements onto federal voter registration forms, restricted military and overseas voters, and pressured states to reject ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. But arrive after Election Day. One of the plaintiffs who originally sued over the executive order, New York Attorney General Tish James, said this quote, generations of Americans fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who tries to undermine it. Will stay on top of this story. Coming up next, Donald Trump makes an in kind contribution to Democratic midterm campaigns by torpedoing a popular bill with bipartisan support aimed at reducing the cost of housing. We'll explain why he did that after a short break.
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