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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
Hilarity will ensue for the second season of Funny youy Should Mention debuting both in this here channel on the gist and as its own feed on Funny you should mention. Funny you should mention Season two features my conversations with such comedians as Rosebud Baker, Michelle Buteau, Alex Edelman, TJ Miller. Where we sit down and I ask them to do you really believe that? Is that why you said it? Is it the funniest way to say it? Is it the truest way to say it? Sometimes we describe it as unpacking the profundities and punchlines. Yeah, I know that's alliterative. But what I'm trying to get at is comedians are like the modern philosophers of our time, so I asked them about their philosophy. Funny you Should Mention, like I said has its own feed. Subscribing there will give you bonus materials and make sure you never miss an episode or, or every other week in the gist, starting on April 4th. It's Wednesday, March 26th, 2025. From peach fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. The House hearing today into the functioning of NPR and PBS could have gotten somewhere. Instead, the Republicans on the committee chose a different path. Two minutes in, here was Doge committee chair Marjorie Taylor Greene ripping into a drag queen.
- [01:23]
Alex Eisenstadt
As a mother, if I had walked.
- [01:25]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
In my living room or one of.
- [01:27]
Alex Eisenstadt
My children's bedrooms and seen this child predator and this monster targeting my children.
- [01:37]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
I would become unglued.
- [01:39]
Mike Pesca
Become unglued. That episode was produced by the local affiliate in New York, not pbs, and funded by New York City, not federal dollars. And also it never aired. It wasn't the high water mark for childhood literacy.
- [01:53]
Child (possibly a character or a voice)
Hips on the dragon go. Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.
- [01:57]
Mike Pesca
But it also had nothing to do with what we're talking about.
- [02:00]
Child (possibly a character or a voice)
The hair on the dragon goes up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
- [02:05]
Mike Pesca
Were we even talking about in this hearing, I wondered. Here's CEO of npr, Katherine Marr and Kentucky Republican James Comer.
- [02:14]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
One of the first things that I did in coming in in May was to beef up our editorial standards. Who, by the way, why is NPR even doing editorials? I'm sorry, do editorials. I don't mean editorial in terms of opinion. Editorial. Do you even need opinion? What does it matter with the. If you're, if you're, if you're a federally funded entity that's supposed to provide.
- [02:36]
Mike Pesca
The news, editorial standards or editorial policy refers to the construction of news content for publication or air. I guess it's high falutin for me to think a congressman might know that. Here was the Republicans. One expert, Michael Gonzalez, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
- [02:56]
Michael Gonzalez
In the early 70s, there were only three networks. We had Cronkite, Reasoner and the Other Guy. And PBS added by a third the number of networks that we had. That's not the case today. And as far as education, which has been diminished, and by the way, I believe that Sesame street was sold to HBO 10 years ago.
- [03:15]
Mike Pesca
Sesame street was not sold to HBO. Sesame street partnered with HBO to raise some money. That partnership with the private sector was exactly what the Republicans were advocating this afternoon. But that deal ended and this hearing ended. Unlike the wheels on the drag queen bus, it was going nowhere. A few dumb stories that NPR aired were thrown in the face of the new CEO. She admitted that the network mishandled the Hunter Biden laptop story or. Or as the Republican expert said, it.
- [03:44]
Michael Gonzalez
Also refused to cover the Hunter Biden lab story.
- [03:47]
Mike Pesca
Actually, I want to thank NPR for not covering that particular story. And I want to thank our representatives for their service and our drag queens for their musicality. This hearing will change nothing. The heads of public broadcasting were about a thousand times better than the presidents of universities. Then again, Elise Stefanik is several orders of magnitude sharper than Marjorie Taylor Greene. The best arguments that the Republicans had were was this is 2025. Taxpayers no longer need to fund the kind of coverage you can get. In fact, there is less ideologically inflected news available for free online or from podcasts. Hey, wait a minute. We're a podcast. All right. Therefore, I could do this. I hereby bring you Drag Queen. Sing along.
- [04:34]
Child (possibly a character or a voice)
Shoes on the dragon go stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp we hear it Stomp, stomp, stomp the shoes on the dragon go stomp, stomp stomp all through the town the jewels on the dragon go bling, bling, bling.
- [04:43]
Mike Pesca
All right, that is enough. I do not want Marjorie Taylor Greene to become unglued on the show today. It's a full show interview. And I was thinking about our current interview, the interview that's going to air with Alex Eisenstadt, who wrote Revenge. As I was thinking about what's been going on with the Signal chat group. And in this new book, Revenge, the Inside Story of Trump's return to Power. There are so many details fleshing out and expounding upon what you know that the Trump campaign and Trump himself specifically, is so chaotic so rule breaking has so much disdain for the normal way of doing things. I think it very much informs what we're seeing becoming a possible scandal. But even if not, the details of Trump losing an election. Oh yes, he lost winning a primary and then winning the most recent presidential election. The details are riveting. Alex Eisenstadt, author of Revenge Up Next the other day I hosted a poker game. No one really wanted to get sloshed, but you know, to loosen things up, if you're a tight player, maybe it helps to have a little fun, a little buzz. But then you got the ordeal, the hangover the next day, the added weight gain. We had a solution. It's Sol's out of Office THC Beverage. A lot of the fun buzziness without the downsides that come from booze. This podcast is sponsored by Sol's out of Office Beverages. They're microdosed with hemp derived THC and CBD to give any situation a vacation vibe. Like I said, the well, it wasn't the raspberry lemonade, it was the cucumber flavor. Many of the poker players that I was playing with found oh so delicious. No hangovers, no alcohol, sleeplessness or anxiety. Nope, it's not what Sol's got. Whether you're looking for a sleep aid, enhanced focus or pain relief, Sol has all your wellness needs covered. If you want to feel your best, head to getsoul.com and use code the gist for 30% off your order. That's 30% off your order. Using Code the Gist one last time getsoul.com and code the gist for 30% off. Elevating my style used to mean well. Spending way too much money and way too much time figuring out what website. Then when you go you say, does the sweater look good? But Quince ends all that I know and can rely on high end versatile pieces at prices I can afford. Quince is a delight to clad myself in the mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50 the leather jackets, great pants for every occasion, formal, casual, pleats, non they got it all. Quint Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. The key is they partner with top factories, they cut the cost of the middleman, they pass the savings on to us. I mean that sounds kind of cliche, but that's what they do and it works and you look good in them. They only work with the factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. I have a Mongolian sweater. That's the one. I have worn it on a few of the videos that we put out so you could see it. You'll never know how good it feels from the inside, but I'm here to tell you it's plenty good. Indulge your affordable luxury. Go to quince.com/the gist for free shipping on your order and a 365 day return. That's Q U I N C E dot com the gist to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/the gist Alex Eisenstadt, who is POLITICO's national political reporter, not redundant, is out with a book. An insider account of. Well, here's the subtitle. The inside story of Trump's return to Power. The name of the book is Revenge, and it has a lot of delicious details. Great quotes I hadn't heard anywhere else. Like, after Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, they got the bloody clothes and he said, put those in a museum. Or here's another one. After revelations came out that Kristi Noem shot her dog, Cricket. It's not that revelations came out. She told everyone, Donald Trump said to his son Don Jr. That's not good at all. Even you wouldn't kill a dog and you kill everything. Alex Eisenstadt, welcome to the Gist.
- [09:29]
Alex Eisenstadt
Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me.
- [09:30]
Mike Pesca
How'd you get them? Don't give up your sources. But give me in general, how'd you know he said that to Don Jr.
- [09:37]
Alex Eisenstadt
You know, I, I had a lot of people who helped participate in this book in Trump world, people involved in the campaign, people outside the campaign, people who talked to Trump. And there were a lot of people who wanted to participate in this. Some people didn't want to participate, but what I found was, was that most of the people I approached, they wanted to help. They, you know, they were doing so under the understanding that none of this reporting would be used until after the election. Not in my daily reporting for my, that I worked for. And, you know, there are a lot of people who understood this was going to be history in the making, right? This campaign, we never knew how historic it would be or how dramatic it would be in the end, but as I was reporting it, I found a lot of people wanted to participate in it and they helped. And so in this case, I had a source who was very familiar with that conversation and was willing to relay it, right?
- [10:32]
Mike Pesca
So to me, as I read this, as a discerning consumer, the reason that gets out quotes like it, and it's not going to change anything, but it fills in some details is it feels like to someone and we don't know who it was or what that person's motivation was, that it's helpful. Maybe it's helpful to showing Donald Trump being normal, thinking that killing a dog is abnormal. Maybe it's helpful to give you something benign, that the person who gave it to you now will feel that you. He has helped you and maybe you can help him in the future. But there are motivations at play with every new bit of information you learn. That's not. Not how media works or reporting works, but that is generally true, right?
- [11:15]
Alex Eisenstadt
100%. And it's a great point because I've been reporting now for almost two decades, and sources have a variety of reasons for giving you things. I mean, sometimes it's because you have a good relationship with them and they trust you. But. But a lot of the time they do have motivations. They want to hurt someone, they want to help someone. And you never always know, you don't always know what their motivations are. You can't always discern them, but sometimes you can.
- [11:42]
Mike Pesca
And the reason that you keep getting quotes and access is that they is that you're good at it and you keep. You show yourself as a person in that business. But there's also a quality of once someone gives you something, you don't portray that in the most disfavorable light, let's say. Here's another quote. Steve Wynn pitches him Tom Cotton as a possible vice presidential candidate. And Trump says, after hanging up with Win, wow, Steve, Steve wins. Steve Wynn has retinitis pigmentosis. So it's an incurable eye disease. And he says, wow, Steve is even more blind than I thought if he thinks Tom Cotton has charisma. So that's maybe given there by someone who thinks that it makes Trump maybe not look bad, maybe look edgy, but definitely someone who wants to denigrate Tom Cotton as a possible vice presidential pick. Right.
- [12:38]
Alex Eisenstadt
Don't want to go too much into the sourcing in this one, but I think that, you know, we decided that it was an entertaining quote and worth putting in the book because it would entertain readers.
- [12:52]
Mike Pesca
But whoever said it doesn't, doesn't think it makes Trump look too bad. Correct.
- [12:56]
Alex Eisenstadt
That's 100% accurate. Yes.
- [12:58]
Mike Pesca
Insulting. Insulting. A man going blind. Yes, but that's okay. That's his brand, I guess you would say.
- [13:05]
Alex Eisenstadt
Correct.
- [13:06]
Mike Pesca
So here is the general impression. I want to ask you about specifics after this. Here is the top line impression I got, which is Donald Trump is an extremely undisciplined person, but also incisively instinctive. Fair.
- [13:24]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yes.
- [13:24]
Mike Pesca
Give me some examples that flesh that.
- [13:26]
Alex Eisenstadt
Well, one of the things that, that I conclude in the book is that, you know, Trump has sharply divided American society. Either you love him or you hate him. There may be a little bit of. There may be a few people who are in between on that, but there aren't many. And. But one thing that we can conclude from this, the outcome of this election is that he is, without a doubt, one of the most, maybe the most talented political athletes of our time, and maybe not someone who is calculating things six steps ahead, but who just. Who has great instincts for. For politics and has a. Has an intuitive feeling for the electorate and where people are. And I think in this particular case, if you look at what he was able to accomplish, which was to make this astonishing return after January 6, when he was completely written off, when no one wanted anything to do with him, when even the friends that he had for decades weren't taking his calls any longer, when he was treated like a pariah, to make that comeback and to survive four indictments, two assassination attempts, a changeover in the top of the Democratic ticket really underscores what he understands about the American electorate. And I think what in this case he was able to do was to position himself as a vessel for frustrations of people, not just people in his base, the longtime maga ites who've always loved him, but for a broader swath of the American public who was frustrated at elites in places like New York and Washington and Hollywood and who saw him as a vessel for their frustrations and who identified with him as sort of a victim of the same forces that they seal as aligned against them. And it's remarkable because he took these indictments and he took January 6th, and he turned around the narrative and cast himself as a victim.
- [15:21]
Mike Pesca
Yes. So you just said that he survived assassination attempts, literally. True. One case.
- [15:31]
Alex Eisenstadt
True.
- [15:31]
Mike Pesca
More or less true. He survived these indictments. And the point you just made is interesting. And what I wanted to ask about. Did he survive or did they actually help him? Because there was always a push and pull, and at the time they realized they could make some hay, they could make some money off of them. But in retrospect, would you say the indictments, the lawfare, helped him more than hurt him, or would you say it's probably more the case that it was a net negative, but they did a remarkable job in cauterizing the.
- [16:05]
Alex Eisenstadt
So with regard to the Stormy. The Stormy Daniels indictment, let's Just, let's just focus on that one here for a second, which is if you look at what happened in the Republican primary, it. And his opponents realized this, but once he was indicted, it completely, it kind of ended the Republican primary. Right. It stopped whatever chance of momentum that folks like Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley would ever have because the entire party rallied around him. He raised a ton of money. He was seen as a victim by the Republican base. And it got to the point, and I talk about this, where these other candidates were forced to take his side. And it's really hard to run against someone when you're coming out, when you're being forced to come out with public statements like Ron DeSantis did, in which you're taking Trump's side. And it became nearly impossible. And this is what, if you talk to people who are close to Ron DeSantis will say it. Once Trump was indicted in the Stormy Daniels case, the primary was completely over at that point.
- [17:07]
Mike Pesca
Right, right. Because DeSantis would try to, you know, do a little bit of a threading of the needle. Well, it's wrong that. Ba, ba, ba. But the greater wrong is the state, the power of the state being brought against Trump. And at that point, it's way too subtle a message, and this is not going to work at a primary. And the other thing it did, as you point out and as we saw, it really did rally Republicans. So even people who were, you know, not seen as, even Republicans who are not seen as the most diehard Trump supporters would show up in New York, often wearing matching clothes, perform the rituals of fealty to Trump. And this was, you know, I use the word rally, but this was a sort of social experiment in which it gelled and created cohesion in the party and took anyone who might be 10 to 30% anti Trump and just turn them 100% pro Trump.
- [18:05]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah, I totally agree with that, with that assessment, 100%. And, and, and if you think about it, it's, it's, it's remarkable because, you know, as I said, so much of the party was ready to move on from Trump. If you go back to the end of 2022, Trump had announced his has launched his campaign in 2022. End of 2022. A few weeks earlier, he had been blamed by a lot of people in the Republican party for the GOP's lesser sort of disappointing outcome in the 2022 midterm election. He endorsed a lot of candidates. A lot of those candidates ended up losing. You know, he then has this Dinner with Kanye west and Nick Fuentes, these two about anti Semites in Nick Fuentes case, a Holocaust denier. Trump gets a lot of heat for that. He then comes out with a tweet a few, a few weeks later in which he talks about potentially ending the Constitution. He then launches this, he then launches this, this NFT baseball card thing. So Trump is at getting a lot of, a lot of heat within Trump's own inner circle. He was. People were wondering how serious he was about actually running for president. This was a conversation that was going on campaign. And so, and so when you look at it, when you look at it from that perspective, a few months later, he gets indicted in the Stormy Daniels case in spring of 2023. And from that point on, it becomes impossible to beat him in the Republican primary. And the. It was the indictment, maybe a few other things that really turned the tide in his favor.
- [19:45]
Mike Pesca
Mm. Earlier and also on page four of the book, you didn't call him a political actor or figure. You called him a political athlete. One of the most, you said to me, talented in the book, it's one of the most resilient political athletes in American history. Why that word?
- [20:05]
Alex Eisenstadt
Because Trump sees politics as Trump at his core as an instinctive person, and he sees the world through the lens of politics, meaning this. Trump sees himself, styles himself as a big city political boss. He has this affection for this Brooklyn political boss from decades ago by the name of Mead Esposito. And Mead Esposito was a guy who became known for trading favors and expecting them in return. He was purely transactional. And Trump sees, wants sort of styles himself after Mead Esposito. He sees himself as a transactional figure. And so when you see him acting on the world stage with regard to Ukraine or Russia or tariffs, everything with him is transactional. He relies fundamentally on instinct. And in that sense, I think he's more of an athlete than say, someone who, you know then, like a James Baker type, for example, someone who is trying to think five or six steps ahead in terms of foreign policy. Trump thinks of gaining leverage over people and transacting with people.
- [21:24]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, me, Desposito, of course, wound up in a cavalcade of corruption indictments and scandals. But yeah, that's who he does, he does admire. So give me an example of how his top advisers, who are Susie Wiles and Chris Lisavita, how do they think of Trump's. He's instinctive. He's going to do what he wants to do. They advise him not to. For instance, Go in with the NFT trading cards that make him look like a superhero. And Trump's like, what are you talking about? They're going to sell well. So how do they view his forays into either tweets or truths or even endeavors that will, they think, hurt his political chances? Do they look at it like, we got to pick our battles, or do they look at it more like, you know, he does often have instincts that we don't even see, so we're going to defer to his wisdom on these things. Or there's the third one. Pick their battles thinking that maybe he's right. And the third one is know that he's wrong. And our real job is to minimize the damage that we know is going to come. How do they look at it?
- [22:40]
Alex Eisenstadt
I think it's a combination of the first two that you mentioned. And so I will look at a couple examples here. There was at one point early on in the campaign when Trump puts out a Truth Social, essentially implying that Ron DeSantis is a pedophile that he groomed at one point when he was a teacher earlier on in his life, that he groomed underage children. Of course, this was just an Internet rumor that Trump had picked up on the Internet and he put out on Truth Social. There was no basis of fact in it. And so Trump puts out this tweet. And when some members of the Trump inner circle saw it, they were completely surprised they found out about it when we did. But as Chris Lacivita liked to say, he was a former soldier. Once the bullet has left the chamber, there's no calling it back. And so, in other words, La Civita and Susie Wiles said to themselves, there's not always Trump is his own boss, he's his own campaign manager, he's his own person. He's going to do what he wants to do, and we just have to work with it when it comes out. And he's the boss at the end of the day. The other, the other thing that, that I would say is, is that they sometimes they saw his instincts as better than theirs in many cases. So a couple of examples here would be, one, Trump decided to launch his campaign. Trump decided to launch his campaign shortly after the midterms. And I was talking about this, the 2022 midterms. Trump was at an ebb at this point, right? A lot of Republicans blamed him for the party's poor outcome in the 22 midterms, wanted him not to run. And so a lot of Trump's people in Trump's inner circle said, why don't you just wait? This is a very early moment to announce for president. Wait a few more months, get your ducks in a row, let some of the bad headlines pass. And Trump said, no, I want to camp. I want to start right now. And the reason for Trump's thinking is he wanted to get out there in front of Ron DeSantis and start attacking and defining DeSantis. And so Trump's inner circle went with it. They would conclude later on that he was 100% right in that.
- [24:55]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Well, there was a little bit of pushback, right. And, and it was Don Trump Jr. Who who made the final convincing call not to announce his campaign during the Ohio Senate race. Right. A couple of days until that midterm election took place. So there was some amount of convincing that could be done, but they needed Don Jr. To do it.
- [25:16]
Alex Eisenstadt
Correct. So this was a, this was an anecdote. Trump was, this was the day before the 2022 midterm elections. And Trump was thinking about announcing his campaign, doing a surprise announcement that night, the final rally of the midterm elections that he would be hosting, which, interestingly enough, was in Ohio for J.D. vance, who was running for Senate at the time. And there was a lot of pushback within the higher echelons of the party who were freaked out that if Trump announced that night, it would become the story and it would overshadow everything that was going to happen and that it would define how people would be voting the next day, that that would be how they were thinking, and that a lot of voters wouldn't nest weren't necessarily that hot on Trump at that time. And so there was pushback, and you had pushback from people like Ronna McDaniel, who was the chair of the party at that time, and Donald Trump Jr. Who said, who convinced him, look, just wait a little bit. Don't do it tonight. Wait a few weeks at least.
- [26:14]
Mike Pesca
Does he listen to don Trump Jr. A lot?
- [26:17]
Alex Eisenstadt
In he does value his opinion. And he listened to him at a few really important junctures in this, in this book. One of them, and chief among them was when he decided to pick J.D. vance for VP Donald Trump Jr. Put all his political capital on the line to push Trump to pick J.D. vance. TRUMP @ the time was also thinking about Doug Burgum, who was a figure who was more aligned with the Republican establishment, and Rupert Murdoch, who also was a figure in this book. And Donald Trump Jr. Really led the charge in getting Vance picked and also led the charge in sinking Doug Burgum and working behind the scenes to do that.
- [26:53]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
That.
- [26:53]
Mike Pesca
And we'll be back in a minute with more of Alex Eisenstadt and a garbage truck. We're back with Alex Eisenstadt, author of Revenge the Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power. And I do notice we've been talking about a lot of people in the Trump orbit, but I have to say that Jared and Ivanka are barely in the book. I mean, Trump comes back after getting shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, and he hugs Ivanka when he gets to Bedminster. But they're not advisers. And that also does seem to reflect their lack of input into the campaign and into the presidency thus far.
- [27:38]
Alex Eisenstadt
So two things on this front, which is one, Jared at this point is more interested in making money hand over fist in real estate than he is in government. He feels like he did the government thing. He's over it now, and so he's moving on to other things. And indeed, he is making money hand over fist. He's making a lot of money in real estate right now. The second thing is, is Trump came to realize that Jared wasn't always a plus for him in his first administration. He felt like a lot of the chaos that happened was a result of Jared's actions in the first administration. And he also believes that Jared didn't always give him great advice. He, you know, Trump and I at one point talks. Trump at one point says he blames Jared for pushing grim criminal justice reform on him and pushing him to do, pushing a criminal justice reform bill, that Trump now is not exactly happy that he did, but he blames Jared for pushing him to do it.
- [28:38]
Mike Pesca
Was all the advice that he blames Jared for. Jared was within the context we're talking about, the moderating voice.
- [28:44]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah. I think the general view of the first administration was that Jared was more of a moderating voice than, say, someone like Steve Bannon, and that he aligned himself much more with sort of a globalist wing of the administration at that point, which was like, filled with Goldman Sachs executive, former Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell and Gary Cohn. And that those figures pushed against what a lot of the populace want like Steve Bannon, which was increased tariffs, more of a protectionist attitude, more of an America first.
- [29:18]
Mike Pesca
So are we maybe seeing now Trump sticking? There's been a little step back, but Trump being more behind tariffs than the markets even expected him to be because he came to believe that the voices of moderation, who, who warned him off that in the first term were wrong.
- [29:38]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah, that's, I think that's right. And I think that the other dynamic here is that Trump feels like after he won, he feels like he won decisively. He feels like he's got a lot of political capital right now. And so he feels emboldened. He feels emboldened to push around Canada. He feels emboldened to, to push ahead forward with tariffs. He feels emboldened to do a lot of different things right now. And what's helping him in this case is he's got Susie Wiles running his, his White House. And one of the things I talk about this in the book is that Susie Wiles created the most functional, operational and organized campaign that Trump ever had. It was far more operational and functional than what he had in 20 ran in 2016, far more operational and functional than what he had in 2020, and far more operational and functional than what he had when he was in the White House. So in the first White House, the first time around, there were these opposing divisions, right? Factions that were going at it, people that were pushing their agendas, that were pushing back on the other side. This time around, Susie Wiles has consolidated power and she has brought aboard the team of loyalists that she had that worked for her in Florida, that worked for her on the campaign, and they are all working for her. And so power is centralized around her. That doesn't mean there hasn't been chaos. There has been fair share of chaos in this White House. We've already seen it, but it's far less chaotic than what we saw in Trump. 1.
- [31:02]
Mike Pesca
What's that? An ambulance, a fire truck? Is there something.
- [31:04]
Alex Eisenstadt
I'm sorry, there's a garbage truck outside my garbage truck.
- [31:08]
Mike Pesca
Okay. Scoring beautifully, scoring our chat. I don't know anything about Susie Wiles. I mean, I know what I read. I know she's Pat Summerall's daughter. I've read about her in the book. I've tried to read profiles. I don't think I've ever seen her speak. What's her North Star?
- [31:28]
Alex Eisenstadt
She sees herself as someone who is not out to make a name for herself. She doesn't speak publicly really, ever. You'll remember that during Trump's victory speech, he invited Susie to say a few words. She wouldn't do it. She would not. She shook her head vigorously. She does not like being out. She does not see that as her role to be out in front. She sees her role as being a behind the scenes operator. And so, and so she sees herself as the kind of person who wants to facilitate as functional an operation as she possibly Can. And so that means oftentimes keeping at bay some of the most, you know, chaotic voices that are, that are out there, that fill Trump's head with bad ideas. And there's an anecdote in the book where she pushes aside Dick Morris, who had been, who'd been calling Trump's cell phone a lot. Everyone has Trump's phone number. She pushes aside Dick Morris, says, don't call him, basically makes it clear, don't call him.
- [32:29]
Mike Pesca
And he was offering, in typical Dick Morris style, he was offering what great piece of advice.
- [32:35]
Alex Eisenstadt
He was telling Trump to participate, that Trump should participate in the Republican primary debates, which Trump very wisely, in the.
- [32:43]
Mike Pesca
End, just, yeah, whatever Dick Morris says, maybe you want to do the opposite. Okay. That's her process. And I get that. That's why she's good at her job. But who is she? What does she believe? What's her ideology? What's her theory of not just how to win an election, but governance in America?
- [33:03]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah, she is.
- [33:05]
Mike Pesca
So is that a side loader? Is that a front loader, garbage truck?
- [33:08]
Alex Eisenstadt
I don't know. And I'm sorry about this, by the way. My God, this is not planned on my part. The she, you know, she has described herself as a card carrying member of the Republican Party establishment. She worked for the likes of Ronald Reagan. She went on and worked for John Huntsman's presidential campaign back in 2012. She is at her core, kind of an establishment figure.
- [33:37]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I know, which is weird that she's now Trump's main person, but go ahead.
- [33:42]
Alex Eisenstadt
But, but her, for her interest, first and foremost isn't ideology. It is pushing forward and helping the person that she works for. That's what she cares about.
- [33:55]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, and she worked for DeSantis and he shifted her and it was quite delicious for her to get back at him. And everyone in Trump's circle knew that. I want to go back to moderating voices. Does Trump look at the fact that the economy during his first term in office was good up until Covid, and that was the main reason he won reelection. And see that Gary Cohen helped with that and certainly Steve Mnuchin, who is treasury for the whole time, helped with that. And Jared Kushner, if not on economic issues, Abraham Accords were successful under him. He. Doesn't he give them any credit for having established the track record that helped him get reelected?
- [34:41]
Alex Eisenstadt
I don't think so. I think he gives himself credit for getting reelected and he feels like he's following through on the agenda that he ran on during the campaign. He feels like he won because he was talking about tariffs and that he was appealing to people who were frustrated by jobs going overseas, that voters endorsed more of a protectionist America first. And so he feels emboldened to put tariffs in place right now. I also think that he is under the impression that whatever pain there are there is in the economy, whatever pain there is in the markets right now is going to be short term and that it's going to be, it'll turn around at some point.
- [35:23]
Mike Pesca
Is there anyone who could convince him otherwise? Because this is the big question I have.
- [35:28]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah.
- [35:28]
Mike Pesca
Does political gravity still apply? And normally different politicians have different taste for, you know, taking some short term hits, what they seem as short term hits, to spend down their credibility to get their agenda passed. That's quite normal. Donald Trump has definitely overindex for what the stock market says. Now the stock market is punishing his ideas. It would seem that 9 out of 10, maybe 99 out of 100 politicians at this point would say every indication is that this is a bad idea. So I'm wondering if gravity still applies and if Trump is in the 99 where he'll bluff for a little bit and pull back because the wisdom of it really seems bad, or is he in that 1% which says, I campaigned on it. That's all that matters. It doesn't matter what feedback I get.
- [36:16]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah, no, it's a great question. And to be honest with you, I'm going to give you, I don't know the answer to this question.
- [36:22]
Mike Pesca
We'll see.
- [36:22]
Alex Eisenstadt
Right. One, one thing that I do think is going to be interesting, and I talk about this in the book, is that Trump, for the first time ingratiated himself with the billionaire donor class. He did not do the wooing and courting of donors in 2016 or 2020 and during his first White House. And he's now gotten a lot closer to major billionaire figures who have his ear. I mean, it would have been unthinkable for him to be doing, you know, for him to be talking with people like Jeff Bezos, for example, and yet he's doing that now. It would have been unthinkable for him to be surrounded by other billionaire figures and, and like, like Mark Zuckerberg. And there were a bunch of, if you look at Trump's campaign account, he's received, he received money from a whole host of billionaires and he's still receiving, his political operation, is still receiving vast sums of money from major donors. And so the question that I have is now that he's established these relationships with major donors and they have access to him. Do they sort of sway him somehow? Do they have his ear and can they talk him off the ledge as it relates to tariffs? Because a lot of these wealthy figures, they can't really like what's going on right now.
- [37:43]
Mike Pesca
Right. And so there's always the tension between the Steve Bannon type anti globalists and the people who are by definition, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the world's richest billionaires for whom there is no home country. There is just this international floating existence above it all. How do you think Trump will react and is reacting to this latest leak that was plopped in the lap of Jeffrey Goldberg?
- [38:16]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yeah, so, so here, here's what I would say, which is that I think that Trump and this, this is something that I talk about in the book, is that he liked that Susie Wiles did not have a, a taste for or an appetite for chaos. And he was, he actually was sick of it in the first term. He saw how the toll it took on his reelection campaign.
- [38:39]
Mike Pesca
Okay, so by that you mean the people under him, his staff being involved in chaos. If there's chaos, he'll be the one to be chaotic.
- [38:47]
Alex Eisenstadt
Yes, yes. And he, at one point in the book, and I'm going to answer your question here, this is an answer your question here, he, Corey Lewandowski, during the summer of 2024, when it looks like Trump's struggling a little bit, this was when Kamala Harris first got into the race, there were a few kind of bumpy weeks there. And Corey Lewandowski, who is Trump's former campaign manager, sort of an agent of chaos, as I think most people in Trump world would agree, tries to capitalize on that and elbow his way in and push Wiles and La Civita out and try to take control of the campaign. Wiles and La Civita go to Trump and say, look, it's either Cory or us. You can't have both of us. And Trump says it's Chris and Susie and tells Corey essentially, go take a hike. So the reason that that is relevant to this particular situation, I believe, is because Trump, I think it's possible, might have less appetite for the kind of turnover and firings that happened during his first term. When you had people leaving the administration, literally every couple of weeks, you'd see someone out, mass turnover, people getting fired, people leaving on their own accord. And so the question now is, does he push out someone like Mike Waltz, who was responsible for putting this signal, chat together, or does he say, well, the guy made a mistake, he learned from it. Let's move on? And so perhaps Trump's going to have less desire to push Mike Waltz aside. Yeah, but it also depends on what kind of coverage it gets going forward. If this. This situation keeps on getting a lot of really negative media attention and it's dominating cable TV and it starts to dominate Fox News, maybe Trump says, look, this is a bad look for me. It's bouncing back and looks bad on me. Waltz has to go. That hasn't happened yet as of the time we're recording this, but who knows?
- [40:50]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And add to that that Walls was under suspicion by the Bannon wing of the party. And Walls was a real moderate who Democrats really enjoyed working with when he was in the House. So Walls and Trump World might have a few things, a few strikes against him. Do you think that he looks at JD Vance's participation in that as disloyal, or what's his general sense of what's the general impression of how JD really has been as a vice presidential candidate and a vice president? And how would he look at. How do you think he'd look at the fact that JD Objected to the strikes against the Houthis and was, to me, consistent with J.D. vance's worldview. So I was a little impressed by that, you know, within the context of everything else. But would that be, do you think, punished by Trump?
- [41:44]
Alex Eisenstadt
I think, if I had to guess, I think that it rankles Trump a little bit. I think it embarrasses him a little bit. But I think he sees J.D. vance as a loyal figure, someone who hasn't undercut Trump really at all, someone who's been a real attack dog. If you look at what happened during the campaign, and I talk about this in the book, which is that right after J.D. was picked, and your listeners, I'm sure, will remember this, JD Went through a pretty rocky period. Right. You remember how there were a number of statements that were unearthed in that came off as maybe a little sexist in some cases. And. And J.D. vance privately told his team that he was concerned that he might bring down the ticket, and Trump was. There was a lot of speculation in the media that Trump might actually dump J.D. vance. And Trump, at one point, I have this goes up to Vance and says, look, don't worry about this. Keep on fighting. And J.D. vance ended up righting the ship, established himself as a policy attack dog, had, I think, what everyone agreed was a pretty solid debate performance against Tim Walls. And so there is a degree of loyalty that the two men have for one another. If this continues to happen, where JD Vance continues to under, there are examples of him undercutting Trump either privately or publicly. I think that that could be an issue. But one instance, hard to see how that that becomes a thing as of as of right now.
- [43:27]
Mike Pesca
Alex Eisenstadt is POLITICO's national political reporter. And the name of the book is Revenge the Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power. Alex, great talking to you.
- [43:36]
Alex Eisenstadt
Thank you for having me, Mike. Really appreciate it.
- [43:44]
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show. Cory Warra produces the gist. Michele Pesca, cbso, thanks for listening.