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- [00:00]
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- [01:16]
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, March 2nd. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Yesterday, the Justice Department confirmed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions twice had contact with the Russian ambassador during the course of the campaign, despite an apparent claim to the contrary while giving sworn testimony during his Senate confirmation hearings. Here's part of an exchange with Senator Al Franken of Minnesota.
- [01:46]
Thomas Mallon
If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do? Senator Franken I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians and I'm unable to comment on it.
- [02:14]
Dorothy Wickenden
Thomas Mallon joins me to discuss Donald Trump and the lessons of Watergate. Hi Tom. Welcome back to the Political Scene.
- [02:21]
Thomas Mallon
Thank you. Glad to be here.
- [02:23]
Dorothy Wickenden
So just yesterday you and I were talking about what to make of this unusually placid week in the Trump administration. It was just after his generally well received address to Congress. We're only in the second month of this administration, but two weeks ago, the national Security adviser, Mike Flynn, was fired for lying to Vice President Pence about speaking to the Russians before the inauguration. It's a good moment to have you on because you write historical fiction about former American presidents, among other things, including your bestselling novel about Watergate. You're also a lifelong Republican, or you were until November 8th. Pundits have been making the Nixon analogy since the start of this administration, and thus I have to begin by asking you about it.
- [03:10]
Thomas Mallon
Well, you started to hear a lot of that two weeks ago when Flynn resigned. And then, so Trump and Nixon were being equated. Then a couple of nights ago, Trump was being equated with Reagan because he seemed to be, you know, the master of the chamber when he was giving the joint session speech. And now we're back to Nixon again. I think that the most crucial bit of fact that needs to be known is just what these contacts were with the Russiani almost said Soviet, which dates me with the Russian ambassador. I mean, if you do think back to Soviet days and somebody like Anatoly Debrinan, who was in the Capitol for years and years and years and was a very social creature and met everyone, there were many innocent contacts with him. But it does seem we're talking about something deeper here. And that kind of COVID up has already begun. And if there is a cover up, then you are right in Nixon territory.
- [04:04]
Dorothy Wickenden
So take us back, at least for our younger listeners, about where we were in the Nixon administration when the Watergate story really broke out in the open.
- [04:13]
Thomas Mallon
Well, Watergate was an extremely protracted scandal. More than two years elapsed between the burglary at the DNC headquarters and the President's resignation. The burglary was known about from the start, and then the COVID up began. Watergate doesn't really explode until March of 1973. And that's when James McCord lets judge Sirica know that higher ups were involved. And you still, from that point on, you still have about a year and a half to go. So, and all of this, of course, is happening after Nixon has been president for four or five years. But the atmosphere of desperation, the atmosphere of extreme hostility to the press, all of this does make for reminiscence. As we look at what's happening now, the clear question that's going to arise is exactly what was Trump's own involvement? That was what it always came down to with Nixon. The famous question, what did the President know and when did he know it?
- [05:20]
Dorothy Wickenden
And it's not the crime, it's the COVID up.
- [05:23]
Thomas Mallon
Absolutely. That's what really did Nixon in. If Nixon had made a clean breast of things early on, he might well have survived. Nixon, you know, lived on to be this sort of elder statesman and was very much a counselor to Ronald Reagan. And in 1986, when Reagan was looking as if he might drown in Iran Contra, Nixon told him both privately and publicly, just apologize for the damn thing and get it behind you fast. And Reagan only took that advice belatedly and probably in the nick of time.
- [05:54]
Dorothy Wickenden
I want to ask you too about young John Dean, Nixon's former White House counsel who testified before the Watergate Committee in 1973. He's interviewed this week on the New Yorker Radio Hour and tells Amy Davidson that it's a very, very remarkable parallel between that administration and this one. During his testimony before the Watergate committee in 73, he called the scandal an inevitable outgrowth of a climate of excessive concern over the political impact of demonstrators, excess concern over leaks, an insatiable appetite for political intelligence, all coupled with the do it yourself White House staff, regardless of the law.
- [06:35]
Thomas Mallon
Well, he is in a very good position to talk about it because he was heavily involved in the COVID up. He was one of its orchestrators. And then he was the man who more than anyone else, blew the whistle on things during the Irvin Committee hearings that summer. It took so long for Watergate to unravel, for everything to come to light. The scandal had been going on for a year before anybody knew that the Oval Office was, as they used to say, that the President had bugged himself. And so I don't think that this is going to be quick. I think a number of things will drive the story. One is the extreme detestation of President Trump by many in the press and by the Democratic opposition. The other thing that will drive the story is glee. Glee had an enormous role in Watergate. You always know that a politician is clicking his heels and delighted with happiness when he or she goes out to the microphones and says, I was so disappointed in so and so to learn that always means I was so thrilled. And of course, every Democrat in Washington woke up delighted this morning, not appalled.
- [07:48]
Dorothy Wickenden
The other thing I wanted to ask you is at what point Nixon lost the support of Republicans on the Hill, because that too will be play a determining factor in all of this.
- [07:57]
Thomas Mallon
Very late. He lost a lot of it in the fall of 73 with the Saturday Night Massacre, getting rid of the attorney General and so forth. But I don't think that he was without support. I don't think that the bottom had fallen out until very late in the game, really, a matter of days before his resignation, when the party elders like Barry Goldwater came to him and said, you just don't have the support. And that was the point that hewhen.
- [08:24]
Dorothy Wickenden
He got out, you've told me that your father was a die hard Nixon supporter and also that he stood by Vice President Agnew right until the revelation that Agnew was still taking envelopes of cash in the White House. I've read your novel about Watergate, and one of the things I liked about it is that your portrait of Nixon is relatively sympathetic. And in a piece you wrote for the magazine before the election, you made it clear just how you feel about Donald Trump. And, and after the election, you told me you changed your party affiliation. Tell us a little bit about that and your worries about today's Republican Party.
- [09:02]
Thomas Mallon
I became an independent and I devoutly hope to be able to re register in the Republican Party at some point. That will not happen as long as we have the current incumbent. You know, my father was a very honest man. He was a young New Dealer who became a Goldwater Republican. He traveled the exact same route that Ronald Reagan traveled in life. And he was quite conservative, but also in most respects, a sort of mainstream Republican. What he loathed about Agnew was the cheapness of it all. Literally taking envelopes with money. He's been gone a long time, my father. I think he would have been kind of aghast at the vulgarity of Trump. One thing, though, that I do think is very different about these scandals, and that is the main character in each of them. Nixon was extraordinarily complicated. He was not just three dimensional, he was 10 dimensional. He was agonized, tormented, gifted, very talented, serious in most respects, in all ways that Trump is not. You know, there were always the stories about Nixon walking around the White House halls during the depths of the scandal and talking to the portraits and so forth. I doubt that Trump has ever even looked at the portraits that are in the White House. He might have looked at the frames and tried to decide, you know, which ones were better gilded than the others. But I don't think he has any interest in history. I don't think he knows any history. And I think, you know, I brought along The Haldeman Diaries, H.R. haldeman being Nixon's chief of staff who had to resign in April of 73 when the scandal was nearly a year old. He talks about the White House Correspondents Dinner, which Nixon gamely went to that night, even though the limousine pulled out of the White House late so that they would miss watching Woodward and Bernstein get an award from the press. Nixon made a few jokes saying, it's a privilege to be here. I suppose you should say it's an executive privilege. And he then told a story that David Lawrence, the correspondent, had once told him that the only tougher job than that of a president's waging war is that of a president's waging peace. He said it was something Lawrence had told him. Afterwards, he confesses to Haldeman that he made it up and he thought it would be useful. But then Haldeman in his diary says the following. Then he sort of reviewed our situation, made the point that when you think about it, the hopes for peace in the world really depend on the office of the President, and we can't be compromised in carrying out that office by lack of confidence in the President arising out of Watergate. And that really overrides the consideration of any individual or any other problems. I think even in this, even when he is strategizing and cheating and finagling with his chief adviser, Haldeman, you see a certain amount of gravitas, and I don't see any of that in the present administration. I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global editorial director. I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer, Tech and Culture.
- [12:08]
Dorothy Wickenden
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [12:17]
Thomas Mallon
And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics. Right. So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin, Doge, or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are.
- [12:35]
Dorothy Wickenden
Affecting Washington and how they affect you.
- [12:38]
Thomas Mallon
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [12:46]
Dorothy Wickenden
Tell us about Steve Bannon and his role in the White House. Is it substantively different than other close White House advisers? You think ofyou think of Ehrlichman, actually, and of George W. Bush's Vice president, Dick Cheney.
- [13:01]
Thomas Mallon
Bannon roughly corresponds to John Ehrlichman, but I think his influence is vastly greater than Ehrlichman's was. I think it's vastly greater than Cheney's was. Cheney's influence really begins to dissipate in the second Bush term. Bannon, I think, is the supplier to a great extent of Trump's vision. Bannon really is the person who gives Trump, insofar as he has any at all, gives Trump a certain ideology. He's not shy about saying that he's running things. The Washington Post the other day resurrected a quote from the Hollywood Reporter from the transition period when he talks about, you know, I am the guy pushing this infrastructure business, which is not at.
- [13:47]
Dorothy Wickenden
All a traditional Republican issue.
- [13:50]
Thomas Mallon
Not at all. And yet the Republican Party has so fallen in line with Trump that when Trump started talking about rebuilding the infrastructure with federal money and when he started talking about the importance of non free trade, of protectionism, he's the only person I have ever heard quote Lincoln on the subject of protective tariffs. But Bannon will tell you that these are the things he's in charge of, and he is. This is not Republicanism. I find Bannon a very scary fellow. And as I told somebody the other day, he seems intent on building the Audubon. And I don't know what follows that, but he certainly adds to the whole sense that this is a White House that is out of time, out of history, and for the most part, beyond the pale. One of the things that was interesting about the speech the other night was for the most part, Trump seemed within the pale for really, for the first time. But I think that given the developments of the last day or so, the Sessions story, we're going to go back to where we were two weeks ago.
- [14:59]
Dorothy Wickenden
Well, and just to pause for a moment on the speech this week. You know, it was such a radical change from the tone and substance of what he had done during his inaugural address. For instance.
- [15:10]
Thomas Mallon
Carnage.
- [15:11]
Dorothy Wickenden
Carnage, yeah, carnage. Most notably. And then on Tuesday this week, he said, you know, I'm here to deliver a message of unity and strength. And again, as you mentioned mentioned earlier, was much more Ronald Reagan, like, in its spirit of optimism. What did you make of that change?
- [15:28]
Thomas Mallon
One of the things I was struck by most was the delivery of the speech. Somebody is really teaching him how to give a speech with a teleprompter. He doesn't want to look through both sides of it. He only wants to look through the Republican glass. I think that, you know, he knows he has to present a budget to the Congress. He knows that that's going to be contentious. He knows that he's going to have to peel off some Democratic votes here and there for one thing or another. So I think it was mostly a tactical thing. I don't think it's in his nature for that to last. I think he did learn some of the Reagan tricks, like, you know, putting American heroes of having them in the balcony and giving the audience in the chamber, as well as the television audience, something to unite around.
- [16:14]
Dorothy Wickenden
The Lenny Skutnik moment.
- [16:15]
Thomas Mallon
Yes, the Skutniks who begin in 1982, Lenny Skutnik being the fellow who dove to the Potomac river to rescue somebody from a plane crash. And he was a very ordinary sort of man who had done an extraordinary thing. And from that Moment on in 1982, Reagan brought these people into the gallery. Reagan also knew how to be his own Skutnik. Even before that. Reagan's famous speech to a joint session of Congress early in 81, the closest equivalent to the Trump speech, he came and he gave it several weeks after he'd been shot. And he was the object of people's admiration for the grace with which he conducted his own recuperation. I think Trump has learned some things from Reagan, but he does not have Reagan's temperament. Reagan was not a hater, and Trump is a hater. He runs on hate. The more personal the hatred is, the more intense it is with him. So I don't think the Reagan parallels will hold up. And I think we're in for, you know, astonishment, continual astonishment, even though he remains to me one of the most uninteresting, the most uninteresting person ever to occupy the White House. His own personality is flat as a pancake.
- [17:33]
Dorothy Wickenden
Not George W. Bush, though. This week he broke his silence about Trump. He's on a tour promoting his new book of paintings of veterans. It's called Portraits of Courage. I just want to play a little clip of him this week on the Today show with Matt Lauer.
- [17:48]
Thomas Mallon
Even at the times where you were dealing with the worst criticism, where it must have been very difficult to hear and read some of the things that were being said by the press in this country. Did you ever consider the media to be the enemy of the American people? I consider the media, media to be indispensable to democracy, that we need an independent media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive, and it can be corrosive. And it's important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.
- [18:24]
Dorothy Wickenden
And then talking to People magazine, he said, I don't like the racism and I don't like the name calling, and I don't like the people feeling alienated. Nobody likes that. And then Yesterday he indicated at the Reagan Library that he hadn't really been speaking about Trump. He had only meant to point out that there should be a free and independent press, but it ought to be accurate.
- [18:45]
Thomas Mallon
Everybody knows he was talking about Trump and he knows it. I find the follow up comment to be sort of like Eisenhower never mentioning McCarthy by name, telling his aides, I won't get down in the gutter with that guy. But really knowing exactly what he was doing behind the scenes to drive McCarthy to his own demise. I think that the difference between the two men could not be starker. I mean, George Bush excited ferocious opposition in the United States while he was president. But President Bush is a decent man. I think he's a man of extraordinary feelings, particularly where the veterans are concerned. I think some of these paintings are really exceptional. And if you read his preface to the book of them that has just been published, you see that painting changed his view of the entire world. He discovered shadows. That's what he talks about. I've been thinking hard about George W. Bush for the last year. I'm about a third of the way through writing a novel that's set in his administration. And I think he was a complicated man. What he didn't know how to do was operate in shadows. And I think his concern for veterans, whatever one thinks of his war policies, his concern for veterans was tremendous and emotional. I don't mean to be a cheerleader for him and no novelist, knowing you.
- [20:09]
Dorothy Wickenden
You will not be a cheerleader for him in the novel.
- [20:11]
Thomas Mallon
But I do think that, that he belongs with the other presidents, which is all of them who had complicated personalities. There's something I continue to find. It's not a word that's often used with Trump, but there's something obscene about him. And I cannot be anything but implacable. I view us as having the need to survive him. And for all that he talks about being the head of a movement and for all that there were actual political reasons that he became President of the United States, I continue to see him as more of a psychological phenomenon than.
- [20:49]
Dorothy Wickenden
A political one, and a dangerous one at that. Thank you so much, Tom.
- [20:54]
Thomas Mallon
Thank you.
- [20:54]
Dorothy Wickenden
Thomas Mallon, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the author of more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Watergate and most recently, Finale. This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. You can subscribe to the this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on new yorker.com Feel free to rate and review the political scene on itunes. This podcast is produced by Alex Barron for newyorker.com with help from Daniel Wenger. I'm Dorothy Wickenden. America is changing and so is the world.
- [21:41]
Thomas Mallon
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [21:49]
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I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [21:52]
Thomas Mallon
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [21:55]
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Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.
- [21:57]
Thomas Mallon
From this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts from. PRX.