← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Brothers Trump
00:22:08
John Cassidy talks with Dorothy Wickenden about how the Russia scandal is closing in on the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his son-in-law Jared Kushner
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- [00:00]
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This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Friday, July 14th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. This week, Donald Trump Jr released email correspondence from June 2016, just after Trump secured the Republican nomination that shows him eagerly agreeing to meet with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt from the Russian government on Hillary Clinton. Jared Kushner, who oversaw the campaign's digital operations, attended the meeting, as did Paul Manafort, the former campaign director. It was a year ago this month that Trump claimed he had nothing to do with Putin and encouraged the Russians to look into the subject of Hillary Clinton's private emails.
- [02:06]
C
I will tell you this, Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.
- [02:22]
B
John Cassidy joins me to discuss how the Russia investigation is closing in on Trump's innermost circle, his son Donald Jr. And his son in law, Jared Kushner. Hi John.
- [02:33]
C
Hi Dorothy.
- [02:34]
B
This was supposed to be your week off, but you couldn't stay away.
- [02:37]
C
Yeah, yeah. I had one day off and then this story broke, so I had to rush back. You know, covering Trump's a bit like being in the armed forces. You never know when are the next air raid's going to sound. And this was a big, a big air raid this week.
- [02:50]
B
It was, and we'll get to that. I actually, I wish you were here in the studio with me. You probably haven't had a chance to see our cover this week yet. Which is another by the inimitable Barry Blitz that really sums up the week. It's Trump walking down the ramp of Air Force One, kicking Jared in the seat of his pants and hauling out Donald Jr. By his ear. And it's called Grounded.
- [03:14]
C
That sounds pretty good.
- [03:15]
B
It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Okay, so let's go back. There was Donald Trump Sr. Last July encouraging Russia to help him attack his opponent. It was also last July that the FBI began its investigation into Russia's interference in the election. Take us back for a minute to what initially prompted the FBI investigation and what was happening at the time.
- [03:39]
C
Well, as far as we know, the initial FBI investigation was prompted by a series of intercepts by the American intelligence agencies in which they appear to have picked up some Russian officials or people connected with the Russian government boasting or talking about how they were cultivating links to people close to the Trump campaign. You know, this is all classified information. We don't know it for sure, but that's what reports have said happened and the FBI started an investigation. Now, meanwhile, while all this was happening, of course we get this, we now find out that we had this meeting on June 7th at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer closely linked to the Kremlin, Donald Jr. And Jared Kushner. And that's the sensational news of the week and the most sensational news which has come out so far in the entire Russian investigation.
- [04:30]
B
The intermediary in this exchange promised that this is obviously very high level and sensitive information, but is part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump. And Donald Jr replies, I love it. So that is collusion, is it not?
- [04:47]
C
Well, it's certainly willingness to talk about collusion and see what the Russians have got. We should make a couple of points here. Number one, the information is coming from this intermediary, Rob Goldstone, a sort of colorful British character, my countryman, who music publicist who is arranging the meeting. So I guess if you're a Trump die hard, you would say, well, we've only got Goldstone's word for it that this woman was an official, you know, Russian lawyer. Although it does seem, looking at her past, that she had very close links to the Kremlin and was campaigning on behalf of a campaign to get rid of some sanctions, which Putin himself was very opposed to. So I don't think there's any doubt that she is basically tied to the Kremlin one way or another, or we now know that Trump's son was very enthusiastic about meeting her. And not only that, he decided to bring along to the meeting the Trump's campaign manager at the time, Paul Manafort, and Trump's most trusted adviser, his son in law, Jared Kushner. We also know now that Trump Jr. Says that nothing came of this meeting. But the question of intent to collude has now been settled, at least for Trump Jr. When he was certainly intending to collude with the Russians.
- [05:57]
B
If possible, it's worth revisiting just for a moment how the administration has been trying to obfuscate its dealings with Russia in this year long period. First they denied that there was interference in the election, then they denied collusion. Now, thanks to Donald Jr. It's clear that they're there was in effect collusion. And they suggest now that that doesn't mean anything. The Guardian this week published a timeline chronicling the number of times that Trump and his associates have denied contacts with Russia. And it includes Trump saying it over a dozen times. Vice President Pence, Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sean Spicer, and Trump Jr. And Trump Jr. Asked if he had ever discussed government policies related to Russia, said 100% no.
- [06:44]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing setback for the, for not just Trump himself, but for all the people around him. Because as you said, they've been very dismissive of this story all along. Their basic attitude has been, look, this is all smoke. Will you show us some fire? Where are the actual meetings? Where's the actual contact between anybody having to do with the Trump campaign? This is all just set up, put together by Clinton officials and former administration officials who were sour about losing. That's been the Trump line from the beginning. But now we actually have documented evidence of this meeting. They've admitted the meeting took place, they've admitted the campaign manager was there, they've admitted that the son in law was there. And now, you know, the fallback position seems to be okay. We attempted to collude, but it didn't come to anything. So it didn't mean anything.
- [07:29]
B
The press all of us focus a lot on how erratic Trump is. He's still peddling his victimization narrative. He now calls it a witch hunt. He refuses to say that the government was involved, despite the unanimous consensus of intelligence community. He still openly admires Putin, as we saw in their meeting last week, where he asked the most pro forma question about whether Putin had meddled. But it's pretty clear that Trump is conducting politics in Washington exactly as he promised, which was he would conduct his business in Washington the way he conducted his business in New York. Could you talk a little bit about that?
- [08:07]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's a great story in many respects, one of which is it sort of shows how the sort of two sides of the Trump world continue to intersect. I mean, Trump came out of a sort of, he was obviously a real estate developer, but he's more famous as sort of tabloid character, a New York character, a real reality television star, mixing with celebrities, going to nightclubs. You know, that's his milieu. Yes, and it seems like that, you know, you would think, well, maybe that's pretty distant from the world of sort of spying and collusion with Russians, etc. But no, here's this tabloid character, Rob Goldstone, the British publicist, and it turns out that he's the guy who up what appears to be the key meeting with the Russians now, you know, most presidential candidates or the families of most presidential candidates, the music publicist called up and said, hey, look, I can set you up with a meeting with foreign country where they're going to give you some dirt on your opponent, would at the very least look twice at it and come, you know, consult the campaign lawyers and decide whether this was the way to go ahead. And even if they did decide to go to head, would probably, you know, say, well, don't talk to us directly, talk to this guy in the super PAC or talk to this guy we're not nominally connected with. And it would all be done in subterfuge and maybe a meeting in a garage somewhere or something. Whereas here they say, come right into Trump Tower, we'll meet and we'll have the campaign manager there, we'll have the president's son in law there. And then Colston himself, when he arrives at the meeting, checks in on social media. So there's no doubt as to where he is. I mean, it's an astonishing story all around, really.
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B
And why does that work well for the Kremlin?
- [09:42]
C
Well, that's a good question. I mean, you know, if you, as I say, if you want to make the argument for Trump, you would say, look, there's still no proof here that there was any collusion. On the key issue of hacking emails, the biggest charge against Trump has been they somehow colluded with the Russians to hack into the DNC to hack into various Democratic counts and then release the information through WikiLeaks in as damaging manner as possible. John Podesta's emails, of course, during the summer, that link is still not yet, has still not yet been made. And Trump's supporters insist that there is no such link. So that's the sort of read the Trump side have got to stand on. Yet at this stage, I think, you know, this is the campaign manager. It's not somebody who is somehow connected to the campaign and it's the President's trusted adviser who's now got an office in the West Wing, who are meeting with these Russians. Apparently we learned today that the meeting was conducted in Russia. Now it seems pretty hard to me to forget a meeting that was conducted in Russia, as Jared Kushner suggests he did by not filling in the relevant form. This was obviously a meeting of the Trump people were expecting to get some dirt on Clinton and they were disappointed when it didn't arrive.
- [10:57]
B
Donald Trump Sr. This week defending Jr. S agreement to meet with a Russian lawyer, told Reuters, I think many people would have held that meeting. So our President still does not see any problem with holding that meeting.
- [11:10]
C
Yeah, well, I mean the two issues with Trump, one, did he know about the meeting? He says he didn't, but I mean he was just upstairs at the time we know he was in Trump Tower. Seems sort of beggar belief that the President's son would take a meeting with Russians and not inform his father in law. There's also some circumstantial evidence in form of the timeline. Immediately after the meeting, Trump tweeted out, where did the 33,000 emails go in reference to Hillary? And a week before the meeting or a few days before the meeting, two days actually before the meeting he gave when he'd won a key primary, he gave a sort of victory speech saying that the following week he was going to give another major speech detailing some of the wrongdoings about the Clintons. Steady talk about lots of things involving the Clintons. That seems to suggest that perhaps he had come into some new information or that he expected to receive some new information. And this meeting was taking place a couple of days later after the meeting took place. And it turned out this woman didn't have the goods, or so we're Told Trump never gave the speech. Instead, he started talking about encouraging the Russians the month after to hack Hillary's emails and find them for him. That's a pretty damning timeline there. But again, it's circumstantial evidence.
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America is changing and so is the world.
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C
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
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I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
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Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global story.
- [12:44]
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Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
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Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [12:56]
B
One of your pieces this week, you wrote right after the leak of the Donald Jr. Emails, speculating that it might be part of a White House strategy to make him the fall guy.
- [13:06]
C
Well, it's, you know, one of the great mysteries about this story. There are two great mysteries. One, where did the emails come from? Who gave them to the Times? And two, you know, what's the, what is the Whitehead's strategy for dealing with this? Now, there are various suspicions as to where they came from. The Times itself. It's reported that Jared Kushner's own lawyers discovered these emails a few weeks ago to while they were, he has admitted that he didn't fill in his disclosure forms properly when he was seeking national security clearance and didn't disclose this meeting. Presumably, Kushner must have given them to his lawyers. One theory is that Kushner then this is basically all an attempt to protect Kushner and put the blame onto Donald Jr. Who isn't a member of the administration and so can be the White House can distance itself from him, even though, of course, he's the President's son. So it's not very easy. Now, if that's the case. Question is, is Donald Jr. In on this? Is he sort of volunteering for, you know, taking the, taking the fall for his father? That was my suggestion. And there was for that in the fact that after the news came out, the White House didn't immediately run to Donald Jr's defense. Instead, they just referred all press calls to his counsel. Trump himself did defend his son a day later. But it would certainly be, this is a disaster for the White House, so they have to deal with it somehow. And it's a much better narrative for the White House if this is seen as an initiative of Donald Jr. Acting by himself than if it's seen as initiative of the campaign involving Kushner, Manafort, and possibly Trump himself. So, you know, in one way, it makes sense for the White House to set up Don Jr. As the fall guy here.
- [14:50]
B
And then after you wrote that piece, there was another damning revelation about Jared Kushner. Makes his vulnerability seem all the worse. That had to do with whether the campaign coordinated with Russia on hacking in very specific ways, of course.
- [15:05]
C
Dorothy, this is a very murky area. We're just relying on press reports so nobody can be sure exactly what's happening. But the allegation is that there was some sort of collusion, or there may have been some sort of collusion between Trump's digital campaign, which involved the firm Cambridge Analytica, and Jared Kushner, who was reportedly overseeing it, and the Russians in targeting Bodas with fake news, anti Hillary stories, et cetera, lots of which were promoting online by bots. Many people think these bots were set up by the Russians, et cetera. Now, how that worked, as I say, we don't know. Maybe the information went from the Russians to the Trump campaign. More likely, the Trump campaign may have supplied, which obviously had sort of precinct level data on Trump supporters across the country. It's possible that they supplied information to the Russians about who to target with the bots. That's the allegation. Anyway, as I say, we don't. This is all just a conjecture stage. But what we learned this week is that the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators on the Hill are looking into this seriously. And there were also reports that the Justice Department is looking into it. I mean, we would expect Robert Mueller, the special counsel, to look into this stuff as part of his overall investigation into Russian collusion, because this, if it took place, was obviously a very serious form of collusion.
- [16:26]
B
What is the scene like at the White House right now? We're getting all kinds of reports that Trump's longtime lawyer might quit or get fired. Reince Priebus is perhaps in trouble, perhaps not, et cetera.
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C
Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question. And if you just read all the reports that are coming out by the White House correspondents who spend all day every, every day trying to find out what's going on there, you would think at this stage the White House would be circling the wagons and would have settled on a sort of coherent story at which. Which they would stick to day by day, but that just doesn't seem to have happened. Instead, it seems to be factions, internecine fighting, and really sort of every man for himself. Jared Kushner, for example, appears to have his own press operation, and he's certainly got his own legal operation. And there was a story in the Times this week saying that Trump's own lawyer, his outside lawyer, is annoyed by Kushner and thinks he's freelancing and more interested in defending himself than in defending the president. That's a pretty devastating story to have. And there's even the suggestion, as you said, that the lawyer, Mark Kasowitz, might even resign and force Trump to get another lawyer. Then there are the divisions between the Trump family, who are the people closest to him, and the sort of Republican establishment people there, including Reince Priebus and possibly even the Vice president. Then there was another story this week saying that the president's own family, including his wife, Melania Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump, and his son in law, Jared Kushner, are pushing to get Reince Priebish removed as the Chief of staff because they're furious about all the leaks coming out from various parts of the White House about, you know, all the inner workings of the White House. And that's understandable. There are a lot of leaks. I mean, this White House seems to leak like no other in the past. But anyway, the general picture is one of chaos, which is what we've seen.
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B
And Pence, meanwhile, is doing everything he can to distance himself from all of this.
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C
Ever since Trump fired Comey, Pence, quite sensibly, seems to have been quietly trying to distance himself from all this. He keeps a very low profile. He makes very few public statements. And according to various reports, he's quietly meeting with. He's the primary link now to Republicans on Capitol Hill. So he's cultivating that side of it. And he's also been meeting privately with a lot of Republican donors, which gives rise to speculation that, you know, he's preparing his own position if he was ever called to take over as president, if Trump was forced out or resigned.
- [18:59]
B
Looking forward to next week. Paul Manafort is set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to call him as well. You wrote this week in one of your many pieces that there's no indication, no big indication that Congressional Republicans are breaking ranks in any meaningful way. And yet presumably these hearings could be quite damning in ways that we can't yet expect.
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C
Yeah, I mean, the Manafort hearing is going to be interesting. The big question is whether he's going to take the Fifth Amendment. He'd agreed to testify in a private session, which there wouldn't be cameras or Anything but Grassley and the Judiciary Committee have called him to an open session. If he testifies there, he's obviously going to get lots of leading questions about his links to Ukraine, about what happened at its meeting, etc. And I would actually expect him to take the fifth on his lawyer's advice at this stage. But that will be, you know, that would be a great embarrassment, obviously, not just for him, but for the administration as a whole. The President's former campaign director taking the Fifth Amendment in order to avoid incriminating himself in front of the whole cameras. Now, would that be enough to, you know, persuade Republicans to start deserting Trump en masse? No, I don't think it would. I mean, there's a couple of things going on here. Number one, obviously, Trump is enabling the Republicans to push through or try to push through out of their policy agenda. We see that, you know, they're trying to push through the health care bill at the moment. They want to move on to taxation. They're desperate to take advantage of the fact that the, they control both houses of Congress and the White House, and they want to push through this conservative, ultra conservative agenda they've had for decades now. So that's one issue. The other issue is that a lot of Republicans are still terrified of, you know, Trump's base and being challenged in their own districts. Even with all these stories coming on, Trump's approval ratings still haven't got much below 40%, which is pretty much where they were all the way through the campaign. So that suggests his. Now, you can qualify that in various ways, saying the sort of intensity of support for him has declined, and maybe it's declined in some geographic areas as well. But the headline figure for the Trump approval range hasn't gone down as much as you might expect, given the terrible news he's had over the last few months. The Russia story doesn't seem to be persuading his supporters to desert him. They seem to be willing to buy the story. That's still all fake news. So if you're just a typical Republican congressman or senator, you know, you're worried that if you turn on Trump before everybody else does, you'll have the Trump hordes descend upon you and you'll get deselected or, you know, there'll be a primary challenge to you. So I think that's disciplining people as well.
- [21:35]
B
The contradictions here are manifold. When members of Congress go back to their districts, they're harangued about the health care bill and various other things.
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C
It depends what level, you look at it, if you look at it at the country at large, obviously Trump's extremely unpopular. The Republican agenda is extremely unpopular. The health care bill is extremely popular. The proposal to cut taxes on the rich and on major corporations, which would be the next thing if health care passes, even more unpopular. But inside the Republican Party and at the grassroots of the party, those things are still, you know, do still attract a lot of support. And the party's donors and the party's, you know, apparatus supports all those things. If you go against Trump on this stuff, they'll come after you. So at this stage, if you're just a sort of self regarding run of the mill congressman or senator or whatever, you know, the sort of in your own self interest, you basically keep your head down. And I don't see that this Russian story may eventually change that. But I don't think this week's revelations have done that. You know, this story's only broke a few days ago. Inside the media world, there's people inside Washington where obviously, you know, following it, following it second, we were following minute by minute. Now we're following second by second. But the country at large, a lot of people on vacation, people just don't follow this stuff as closely as we do. But at the same time, it's such huge news. It's on front of all the newspapers, it's on all the television broadcasts. I would expect it to have some impact and it's going to be fascinating to see in the next week or so exactly how much impact it does have on the polls and specifically on Republicans and Trump's core supporters.
- [23:11]
B
Thanks so much, John.
- [23:13]
C
Thank you, Dorothy.
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B
John Cassidy is a staff writer and a regular political columnist for newyorker.com this has been the political scene from the New Yorker. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. And find more political analysis and commentary on newyorker.com feel free to rate and review this podcast on itunes. This podcast is produced by Jill Duboff for newyorker.com with help from Hannah Willem. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
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I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director. I'm Michael Kolori, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
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And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [24:10]
A
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So Each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech, right? So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
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From prx.