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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Trump’s Indictment, and a Brief History of Election Dirty Tricks
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Trump’s Indictment, and a Brief History of Election Dirty Tricks
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- [00:00]
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- [01:16]
Evan Osnos
So this is another day in which you save the front page of the newspaper. It seems like there's a lot of those. Every time this happens, you think, okay, I'm gonna save the impeachment front page. Now you say, I'm gonna save the one that says Trump indicted.
- [01:31]
Jane Mayer
And then they start piling up. And you can't believe that events have even superseded the last unbelievable event. I mean, it's creating an incredible stack in this period.
- [01:43]
Susan Glasser
You know, Donald Trump always wanted to be one for the history books. Well, first twice impeached president, first twice acquitted president. First. First president to refuse in American history to concede an election he lawfully lost. And now first president indicted. Amazing.
- [02:01]
Jane Mayer
And the details, no matter what, are going to titillate schoolchildren from here on out. I mean, how are you gonna. You're gonna have to use the word in every history book. Something to do with hush money and porn star. I mean, for me, anyway, one of the things that is most interesting and jarring is to see a man who has. He revels in being in power and in control in A situation where he's lost control, he's powerless. He is now part of the legal system, criminal justice system, and he's gotta be treated like everybody else. It's just an amazing transformation.
- [02:43]
Evan Osnos
I think you see him passing through this membrane between the world in which you can say anything you want because you're not under oath, and the world in which the things you say have real accountability. And there's an irony to the fact that he's now finding himself in the same situation that some of his most dutiful lieutenants have been in and have suffered for it. Weisselberg, Flynn, Bannon, one after another, people who thought that they could kind of transport the same sort of liberty from the truth that they lived with in regular life into the criminal justice world. And it turns out, actually you get in trouble when you lie, and that's gonna be a new experience.
- [03:24]
Susan Glasser
Of course, Michael Cohen, his longtime professional liar on Donald Trump's behalf and fixer Cohen, actually went to jail for the actual crimes underpinning this. So that's what I find particularly fascinating about this case. We're still waiting to see the specifics in the indictment that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has. Secur. But it's not theoretical that there was a crime here in the sense that Michael Cohen actually literally went to jail for this, among other crimes that he went to jail for. And so it's a fascinating question about whether or not Trump will be held accountable for the same facts that Michael Cohen was. But it's not a theoretical issue about whether some wrongdoing occurred in the sense that there was a guy who literally had to serve time for it.
- [04:14]
Jane Mayer
I think the difference, though, of course, was that that was. It's an easier case in federal law. And this is a state prosecutor, so, I mean, a city prosecutor, da. So it's a little more complicated, but it does seem, I think, as sort of a matter of poetic justice and just about actual fairness, important that the person who directed the crime not get off when the person who was taking orders to do it actually serve time in prison. I think everybody can feel that. That. That fairness gap.
- [04:45]
Evan Osnos
Yeah.
- [04:46]
Jane Mayer
Regardless of the details of the law.
- [04:48]
Evan Osnos
I also. I mean, there's. Yeah, there's a kind of classic principal agent thing there going on that if. If Michael Cohen's going to do the time, then so does the person who did the crime. I mean, I am aware of the arguments that down the road, you may begin to see conservative local prosecutors deciding to try to bring cases against Democratic presidents. But I have to tell you I think that banana republics are getting a bad rap right now because actually, if you want to know really what makes a banana republic, it's not going and prosecuting a former president. It's allowing certain people to live above the law. That is actually the defining feature of what makes a dysfunctional country. And I think you see all these Republicans saying, oh, gosh, we're now going down the path of these deteriorated nations. Well, no, actually, we're going down the path of a bunch of advanced democracies that have done this before, like Israel, France, Italy, South Korea has gone after five former presidents. And the reason you do it is because you're trying to prevent it from happening again.
- [05:46]
Jane Mayer
Well, and of course, we've gone after in this country numerous politicians. I mean, the only difference is that it's a president. But we've had, you know, it's Biro Agnew, vice president. We've had any number of major political figures have been charged and many convicted of crimes in this country. It's fundamental to the rule of law that everybody's bound by it, regardless of their power.
- [06:11]
Susan Glasser
Well, and yet previous presidents were so concerned, even in the midst of scandal, to avoid breaking this barrier, this psychological barrier that Trump has now broken of becoming the first president to be charged. I mean, in some ways, that's what drove Watergate was the, you know, the deal that President Ford made to pardon Richard Nixon. And in order to avoid this kind of prosecution, Bill Clinton, we talked about the Starr report. It's very likely that he would have faced charges, in fact, for lying under oath and perjuring himself. And he made a deal, in fact, explicitly with prosecutors to avoid doing that. That involved him surrendering his law license for a certain period of time after he left the presidency. And again, that's because he didn't want this kind of stain on his historical record.
- [07:02]
Jane Mayer
And it's very interesting. There's revisionist thinking now about Ford's pardoning of Nixon. And a number of historians, it was very much, it was unpopular the public, but then celebrated with sort of the wise hands and heads of Washington. And, you know, everybody from Ted Kennedy on said that they thought that it saved the republic from being torn asunder over the whole thing. Now, not so much. I mean, basically, if you listen to Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, John Meacham, another presidential historian, they feel that by having let Nixon on off the hook, basically, that it's sent a message of impunity for presidents and maybe kind of set the stage for where we are now.
- [07:49]
Evan Osnos
I totally agree with that. I actually think that we have to think of this less in sort of classic Washington political terms about what you do or do not do to former presidents and put it in the terms that are actually appropriate, which is white collar crime. I remember talking to the federal judge in New York, Jed Rackoff, about this, and he said, look, there is a century of good studies on this fellow that the only way you actually can bend the curve of deterring white collar crime is by actively and publicly seeking accountability for high profile wrongdoers. If you don't do it, it acculturates that kind of behavior, and that's where we are now.
- [08:28]
Jane Mayer
But, you know, I think the thing is there's been a fear that presidents are basically too big to jail and that it will rip the country apart. And I think, you know, it's an open question how this is going to be received. And you have to be somewhat conserv. When you see something like DeSantis, governor of Florida, saying he's not going to cooperate with extradition measures. It turns out, of course, it would violate the Constitution if he didn't and it's not going to be necessary anyway. But he's signaling a lack, a defiance of the law here. And I think, you know, we have to worry after seeing January 6th, how this will hit the part of the country that will do anything to help Trump.
- [09:18]
Susan Glasser
Well, I think, Jane, that's a really important point. If you look at the stampede, and it really is a stampede on the part of Republican politicians there, you know, rushing, rushing to the defense of Donald Trump. These are even people who have been publicly tentatively criticizing him, saying he shouldn't be the president again, that it's time to move on. Even those people are rushing to criticize an indictment they have not yet seen and to, you know, profess their ongoing loyalty for Donald Trump. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who of course owes his very narrow victory in the speakership to a faction of extreme pro Trump House members. He said that American public will not stand for this and, and how outrageous it is. And to me, that really echoed some of the inflammatory language in the run up to January 6th. Donald Trump himself is not only fundraising off of his indictment, but using incredibly maximalist terms about how this is a violation of American principles. It's the last battle calling his troops forth. And so, of course, it's not just. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. And even in a vacuum, of course, there are real legal issues around whether this is the strongest kind of case to bring, because it's not unprecedented even that there should be a politician accused of inappropriately paying hush money. I've been thinking a lot about John Edwards over the last 24 hours. A kind of a forgotten name, a footnote to history, maybe the former, the North Carolina Democrat himself, by the way, an accomplished trial lawyer. He was literally accused by federal prosecutors of illegally paying hush money to silence news of an affair right before an election. He actually was acquitted. And that is a precedent that I'm sure Trump's lawyers have looked very closely at in this case.
- [11:19]
Evan Osnos
I'm curious how you guys think about the problem that other Republican candidates are facing now, where, on the one hand, they have to somehow condemn this case against Donald Trump and then also run against this guy in the primary. That strikes me as a completely bizarre contortion.
- [11:36]
Susan Glasser
Well, by the way, Evan, this is exactly why Donald Trump is and remains the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Exactly for the reason you said, because he once again makes them small by making himself big. Now, he does it in a way that almost no one else would want to. He's a master of the, you know, as long as you spell my name right, it's good publicity school. And that now even applies to his handling of this unprecedented criminal indictment. But the other people remain the minor stars in his orbit.
- [12:11]
Jane Mayer
This does obviously play into the idea that he likes to project of himself as the victim of a witch hunt and all that sort of thing. But at the same time, I've got to say, you know, in terms of whether this makes him look big in the eyes of everyone else, I don't think anybody looks big when they walk into a courtroom.
- [12:31]
Evan Osnos
Agreed.
- [12:31]
Jane Mayer
And have to stand in front of a judge who's on a higher level and say, yes, sir. And you think I'm thinking about Trump and how much he loves to tell these stories where he always pretends that someone has called him sir. He actually has to call somebody else sir in this occasion. And I think, you know, it levels him.
- [12:55]
Evan Osnos
I think that's a huge insight, actually. I mean, I think the reality is that so much of his Persona rests on this projection and this creation of an imagery around him and the status he enjoys. And he has now entered a completely different phase of his life. And I think, if we're being honest, none of us know how this plays out.
- [13:17]
Susan Glasser
Well, that's right. There's a lot of cocky talk coming from the Trump camp right now. But I actually agree with you, Jane, that in the long term, it's hard to see this benefiting any politician. And I think it's important to point out, too, that this is the beginning of what is likely to be a long new chapter for Donald Trump. He may be crossing some threshold right now, but if in fact, he is indicted in these other very serious criminal cases that are being looked into against him at the state of Georgia and by Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who's looking at two different very serious criminal cases, then this indictment by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg may well end up being almost an asterisk, a footnote, certainly an important moment when something that had never happened before in American history happened. But we just, we don't know where these other legal cases are going. And if there are three or four indictments against Donald Trump, this one is likely not to be the most serious one, just in terms of legal and criminal jeopardy.
- [14:22]
Evan Osnos
Well, we talked on last week's show about some of those cases in detail, and listeners can go back and, and listen for that. I will say, I think, to your point, Susan, that in some ways this is also now a challenge for all of us who think and write about politics to not become the minor stars in Donald Trump's orbit, that it's actually on us to remember there are other things facing this country, there are other issues. And that's not to minimize the importance of this moment, but it's also to say let's not allow ourselves to get pulled back into his vortex. There is a tremendous number of things we can, we can and will be talking about.
- [14:59]
Jane Mayer
Well, we have actually a slightly different topic today, but it's quite related. So let's get into it. Welcome to the political scene. I'm Jane Mayer and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Well, we still haven't seen the actual indictment of the former president, but on closer examination, this case wasn't just about hush money. It was an attempted pre election cover up to hide information from voters that could have affected the outcome of the election. And in that respect, it was neither an isolated incident in Trump's political career nor or in the country's history. I'm pretty sure all three of us would agree that presidential elections are often blood sports. But there's one type of campaign dirty trick that casts an especially dark shadow. The secret hijacking of US national security policy to help a candidate win. In recent years, there have been several stunning revelations along these lines. From Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to Trump's so called perfect phone call with Zelenskyy. Now we have a shocking new report in the New York Times which, if it proves accurate, shows that Republican operatives in 1980 tried to sabotage Jimmy Carter's campaign by secretly prolonging the Iran hostage crisis. Evan, to start, can you briefly set out the scene 43 years ago?
- [16:43]
Evan Osnos
Yeah. You know, this is one of those chapters of American history that burns indelibly for some people. And for others, it's worth reminding about how significant this was. In November of 19, you had 52Americans at the US embassy in Tehran and they were taken hostage. This is in the midst, of course, of the Iranian revolution. Jimmy Carter was in the White House and it became the defining and really paralyzing fact of his presidency. This is an ABC News special, the Iran Crisis. America Held Hostage. The special report that we planned to bring you tonight was about domestic politics, but we think the crisis in Iran is more urgent right now than the campaign here at home.
- [17:27]
Jane Mayer
The United States will not yield to blackmail.
- [17:32]
Evan Osnos
After 30 days of unsuccessfully trying to get the American hostages out of Tehran.
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Jane Mayer
My hope and my prayer is that they will be released very soon, but I cannot predict that.
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Susan Glasser
Do you still consider it a crisis, Mr. President?
- [17:44]
Evan Osnos
His efforts, ultimately unsuccessfully, to get the hostages out became this kind of grand metaphor for his performance at one point. People will remember that they tried a rescue mission in April of 1980, and it ended in disaster. A helicopter crashed, crashed into a plane in the Iranian desert, killing eight service members. Our rescue team knew and I knew.
- [18:10]
Jane Mayer
That the operation was certain to be.
- [18:12]
Evan Osnos
Difficult and it was certain to be dangerous. Reagan ended up defeating Carter in 1980 in a really a landslide victory. And after his defeat, Carter's administration struck a deal that released billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets in return for the American hostages. And they were released on Inauguration Day just minutes after Reagan took office. Day one of Ronald Reagan's presidency and day one of freedom for 52Americans. Though thousands of miles apart, these two historic events moved almost on parallel tracks today. The new president had not been in office an hour when the former hostages became free men and women again. And it has really gone down in history as an example of the way in which this kind of foreign affairs can actually have a fundamental effect on a presidential election.
- [19:13]
Jane Mayer
So, well, Susan, thanks to reporting by Peter Baker, your husband at the New York Times, we've now learned what some of Reagan's allies were doing behind the scenes to manipulate the election. What was uncovered?
- [19:26]
Susan Glasser
Well, obviously I'm biased, Jane, you know, but I think Peter's story is an amazing example first of all, about what we don't know.
- [19:34]
Jane Mayer
Can I just say right here, butting in, I share your bias here. I thought it was a phenomenal, mind blowing story.
- [19:43]
Evan Osnos
And last I checked, we're not married to him. So I think we have some objectivity.
- [19:46]
Susan Glasser
Well, I appreciate the validation. I appreciate the validation.
- [19:49]
Jane Mayer
So what did he find? What is this, let's say, first of.
- [19:53]
Susan Glasser
All, reminder that secrets hold for a long time, but ultimately we do find things out. And that's why people are still writing books about Richard Nixon and Watergate today, or Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and Iran contrast, or in a way, Donald Trump. I'm pretty sure that decades from now, we'll still be finding out more crazy stuff that happened over the last few years in American politics. But this chapter, I think, is a particularly important one. And what happened was Peter interviewed Ben Barnes, a former Democratic politician in Texas, again, former lieutenant governor, who happened to be very, very close to John Connally, who was his mentor. John Connally was an extremely important figure in Texas politics, in national politics. He was a Democratic governor of Texas. Then he became a Republican. He himself ran for the Republican nomination in 1980. Then he was endorsing Ronald Reagan in the general election in 1980, there was thought that John Connally was campaigning for a senior job, maybe Secretary of State in the Reagan administration. It's in that context that Ben Barnes kept a secret for many, many years. And now with Jimmy Carter literally on his deathbed in hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia, Barnes seems to have wanted to come forward and to, I think, right what he perceived was the wrong that he himself had done of not speaking out more forcefully and clearly sooner in time to talk about this remarkable trip that he and John Connally took around the Middle east in 1980 in the context of the general election, in which Barnes says, in this interview in the New York Times, he says that John Connally would, at each stop, his job was to go to these leaders in the Middle east and essentially to try to get the word to the Iranians, don't release the hostages. Wait until Ronald Reagan is elected. After the election, you'll get a better deal. It's circumstantial. He doesn't have notes or tape recordings of these meetings. He says he remembers it vividly. There are circumstantial details that match up. In other words, the historical records suggest that he did take the trip to the Middle east, that he was on it with John Connally, that a month afterwards that he and Connally met in an airport lounge with Bill Casey, who would go on to become Reagan's CIA director, as a key figure in previous reports about the October Surprise. And so it's a fascinating chapter because it reveals, first of all, that secrets can remain hidden for a long time. But second of all, that this was a kind of an election interference that was extraordinary. Right. It was essentially saying, I will subordinate American foreign policy and the lives of these hostages to the political needs of this Republican candidate. Not surprisingly, the reaction has been outraged by many Republican accolades of Ronald Reagan, who want to make sure that their guy is not tarred with what would be a really dastardly act.
- [23:08]
Jane Mayer
There certainly has been sort of a gathering of the troops. I've seen on, you know, the New York all over the kind of the right wing press and you know, people who've worked with Reagan say, impossible, he could never have done such a thing. He cared so much about the hospitality, hostages and all of that kind of thing. But I actually think, I mean, what struck me, cause of course these stories have been bouncing around for years. What struck me is this was a firsthand on the record eyewitness report of somebody who was in the room as they made these trips and had these conversations, which was stunning. It really moves the story much further into the column of credibility. I think. You know, it really raises a question, I think, Evan, you know, what do you think the effect of this manipulation might have been this October surprise, if in fact it really happened, do you think it would have affected the outcome of that election?
- [24:12]
Evan Osnos
Well, I can tell you that one person who absolutely believes it was essential was Jimmy Carter. I mean, he has spent the last four decades, in effect, thinking and studying and gathering other pieces of information about this. And it's worth pointing out that as you guys have indicated, this story builds on what has been a growing mountain of evidence that does support the portrait of events. I mean, one of the key factors being came out only in 2013, to Susan's point, it sometimes takes decades that there was a visit by Bill Casey to Madrid for reasons that still remain unknown. And if in fact that was a meeting related to this, that would be also further evidence that there was this effort. But I think it's worth pointing out that as much as Jimmy Carter and others believe that this had a dispositive effect on the race, he was actually at that point running a difficult race at the time. It looked closer than it ended up being. The economy was in very bad shape. Gas prices were high, inflation was high. So we don't really know what the ultimate effect was, except that the truth was that the hostage crisis had pushed his approval ratings way down into the 20s, lower, in fact, than Nixon's after Watergate. So it's impossible to tell the story of American politics of the last 40 years without acknowledging how central this event was.
- [25:44]
Jane Mayer
I mean, I was just coming, you know, I was, I guess, in college. And, you know, the image that Jimmy Carter had was of he was weak, he was a loser, and Reagan was running on the idea of being strong, a strong man, strength and hawkishness. So I can imagine, I mean, maybe this is the reason I think this is so important is I can imagine how the whole narrative would have flipped if Carter had succeeded in some really derring do rescue of the hostages and they all came home before the election. It would have been conceivably a. A different outcome, certainly a very different story, a different image for Carter than what he was saddled with. I have to say, looking back also at the sort of slow drip, drip, drip of information on this story, I think that 2013 news break is really interesting because it was a story by Bob Perry, who's no longer alive, a very interesting investigative reporter. And what he did was find something in the presidential papers of George H. Bush that suggested that, in fact, what people had said, which was that Casey had met in Madrid with Iranians who were trying to manipulate the hostage situation, that that actually did happen. It looks like it did. From the presidential papers of George H.W. bush. And worse, in a way, was that there was kind of a cover up of this because there was a congressional investigation into it by Lee Hamilton, and that that piece of evidence was not turned over to Congress. It was stuck in those presidential papers until Bob Perry found it in 2013, many years later. And by then, of course, you know, people had moved on. There are plenty of other things to think about. This is a counterfactual history. It seemed ancient and, you know, it was, you know, but just like this Ben Barnes kind of confession, 43 years later, it really makes you want to look back and try to put the pieces together.
- [27:54]
Evan Osnos
It also changes our understanding, if I'm right, Jane, of the Iran Contra scandal, I mean, this changes in some sense how we understand the timeline, the origins and the nature of it. Susan, is that a piece of what we're learning in this too?
- [28:08]
Susan Glasser
Well, I mean, you know, Jane literally wrote the book on Iran Contra, and I want to know what she thinks about it. People have always been interested in the story of the possible October Surprise because it seemed to echo the Later, Reagan willingness to trade arms to the Iranians for hostages. There is the possibility that there was a deal already to trade arms to the Iranians, even, you know, years earlier. The Iran Contra affair did not happen until many years later in 1986. And so it would be really striking and notable and passable, therefore plausible. Ben Barnes, this new story is one man story. And what's very interesting about it is that it's not. It wasn't previously known to those who spent years writing and thinking and trying to dig up evidence, who focused on Bill Casey, understandably someone who was very close to Ronald Reagan and the inner circle and later became famous as the architect in some ways of the Iran Contra scandal. So there is a through line with William Cancie. What's fascinating is that this is a whole different story. This is a whole new account that seems to buttress the general sense that the Reagan entourage, writ large, was trying to meddle in the hostage scandal in a way that would be politically beneficial to Reagan. But Jane, I don't know. How do you look at it? Given that William Casey obviously was willing to entertain notions of trading arms for hostages with the Iranians, since he actually did that in later years, is it possible that this was just the beginning of the plot?
- [29:52]
Jane Mayer
Well, thanks for asking. I have to say that for years I've been a skeptic about the October Surprise. I basically am skeptical about almost every kind of conspiracy theory because I cover government and I see mostly dysfunction and I don't see people as able to coordinate secret plots and without the public finding out. But I am reassessing that at this point because of this story. And looking back, having written a whole book about the Erin Contra Fair, I really think it seems probable that this was the predicate. And the fact that Casey was involved in both is really important. Bill Casey, who was the campaign chairman in 1980 for Reagan, goes on to become the CIA director. He was somebody who came out of the OSS. He loved sort of daring do skullduggery and secrecy. And it's just, it's too much of a coincidence. There's a real pattern here.
- [30:56]
Evan Osnos
Wow.
- [30:56]
Jane Mayer
He was involved in both cases in as Susan just laid out, setting up secret channels through Israel to sell arms illicitly to the Iranians who were our avowed enemies in both instances. It appears very soon after the 1980 election that some of those arms deals went through. And then again, we discovered in 1986 that this was a whole secret working channel and the US was selling arms to the Iranians and taking the profits and using them to fund a secret illegal war in Nicaragua. It was just a mind blowing discovery then. But look at this. I mean, it's impossible not to see it as laying the groundwork.
- [31:44]
Evan Osnos
It feels like we.
- [31:45]
Jane Mayer
I feel I missed it in the book, but you know, it takes, but this is, this is.
- [31:51]
Susan Glasser
History takes time.
- [31:52]
Jane Mayer
History takes time to getting the story. I mean, you know, the one thing.
- [31:57]
Evan Osnos
The truth takes time and it wills out. I mean, I do think that the one of the political scene rules has to be that sometimes incompetence doesn't stand a chance against actual conspiracy and that there were, there really are conspiracies.
- [32:19]
Jane Mayer
The political scene will be back in just a moment.
- [32:23]
Susan Glasser
I'm Katie Drummond, I'm Wired's Global editorial director.
- [32:26]
Evan Osnos
I'm Michael Kalore, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
- [32:30]
Susan Glasser
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. At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech, right?
- [32:49]
Evan Osnos
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.
- [32:59]
Susan Glasser
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [33:11]
Jane Mayer
You know, I mean, and this is, I have to say, not. I mean, it's a stunning example. It's not the only shocking revelation of this order that's come out in recent years in terms of our history. I mean, there was before that, of course, in 1968. We're learning more and more about what's been known as the Anna Chenault or Anna Chenault affair, depending on how you pronounce it, which took place in 1968. Evan, can you explain or fill us in on that?
- [33:40]
Evan Osnos
I do love the, the process of going back and excavating these pieces of history because they are amazing and it's very easy not to know about them if you weren't paying attention. Look, Anna Chenault was this kind of famous Republican activist and Washington hostess. She was the widow of a World War II general, Claire Chennault, who had been the commander of the Flying Tigers in China, kind of a celebrated figure. And in 1968, she was given this task by the Nixon administration to in effect, negotiate with our own allies, the South Vietnamese, to get them to put off a peace settlement in the war in Vietnam in order to advantage the Nixon campaign over Hubert Humphrey. And what's fascinating is that for years Nixon denied this up and down, said absolutely never did this thing. There was no Chenault affair. And what we now know, thanks to the work of historians and of the Freedom of Information act and disclosure over the years, is that in fact, there is very clear evidence of it. At one point there was an intercepted phone call that the FBI recorded between Anna Chenault and the Vietnamese embassy in which she said, quote, hold on to the South Vietnamese ambassador three days before the election. She said, we are gonna win and in effect, this is gonna be to your advantage to wait. And I will just mention one other piece of data because I think it's important, which is that in 2016, the biographer Jack Farrell, writing about Richard Nixon, drew on these materials, notes from H.R. haldeman, who had been working for Nixon at the time, Nixon's instructions, in which he said, quote, keep Anna Chenault working on South Vietnam and also quote, any other way to monkey wrench it. Anything that rn, meaning Richard Nixon can do.
- [35:30]
Jane Mayer
Monkey wrench. What a word for something where. I know. We've also learned that Lyndon Johnson had caught some wind of this and he was saying when 400 to 500 people were being killed a day still in.
- [35:46]
Evan Osnos
Vietnam, and they're killing four or five hundred every day waiting on Nixon.
- [35:51]
Jane Mayer
And it's despicable. And if it were made public, I.
- [35:54]
Evan Osnos
Think it would rock the nation.
- [35:56]
Jane Mayer
And they're monkey wrenching back in Washington. Awful.
- [35:59]
Evan Osnos
Yeah, yeah, Richard Nixon was crazy, I think. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:02]
Susan Glasser
Richard Nixon was famous for dirty tricks at the end of his presidency, but the truth is that his presidency started, started with a dirty trick, and this was the original dirty trick. And by the way, I'm glad you mentioned that Jack Farrell book, because that Nixon book is really is a terrific example. First of all, it's incredibly well written, great read. But it's also a good example of why people come back and back at these subjects. You know, politics has its secrets and people work very hard to keep them. And I, you know, again, to me that's why it's stunning but not surprising that we're learning new information about the Reagan October surprise. It's why we're gotta fully expect that we'll learn much more in the future about what Donald Trump actually did in the four years of his presidency and what he did in particular to try to hold onto it. We do not know so many important things about this present moment in our politics, but I think the Chenault affair is an incredible story, actually, that people are not really familiar with because of the cynicism of it. And again, it's something important to understand that these are not one off scandals, but the idea that there would be multiple American presidential candidates who would essentially decide that it was more in their interest to become president than to follow along with the national security policy of the country. It's really important to document these things. And I'm amazed, frankly, at the amount of information we now finally have confirming what would have been literally unthinkable to American voters in 1968 had they known about it.
- [37:45]
Jane Mayer
You know, something you said made me remember a wonderful point that Mark Shields, the late political commentator, used to make, which was campaigns, candidates, campaign signs tell you a lot about what kind of president they're going to be. And you learn a lot. If they're playing dirty, cynical games in their campaigns to get elected, they're putting their own interests ahead of national security, innocent people's lives. In these cases, you've learned something about their character and it's going to be prologue to what kind of presidency they're going to have. And I think we've obviously seen that with Trump, which gets us back to, you know, why it is that something like the Stormy Daniels case gives you the first glimpse of what kind of character you're dealing with. It's not actually the first glimpse. We'd had many glimpses with Donald Trump by then, but it gives you a pretty good take of somebody's character and what he was willing to do. And it then goes on and repeats. And that's what these other cases are, aren't they? I mean, basically we've got, you know, Susan, you know, what happened in that call with the perfect call with Zelenskyy, wasn't that just, it seemed complicated to much of public, but it's quite related, wasn't it?
- [39:06]
Susan Glasser
What's remarkable about Trump, though, is that often the scandal is right in front of you and it comes out in real time and he still manages to keep on going on. And you know, Stormy Daniels was about a cover up. It was about trying to keep something from the American public before they voted. And 2016 was a really, really close election. And so it certainly possible to speculate about what might have been had this information come out, especially in the wake of the, remember the October 7, 2016 revelation of the Access Hollywood tape. If you had followed that up with the information about this very unseemly dealings with the former porn star, it could have made a difference in an extremely close race now in 2019. Fast forward. Trump is president and he and Rudy Giuliani essentially are cooking up this, this blackmail of Ukraine's president under threat from Russia. And as we know now, horrifically, this is no theoretical threat from Russia, but the actual threat of Russia coming in and carving up his country. This brand new figure is elected, this outsider, Zelensky. And what's his first dealing with the United States. That's his one hope for getting him weapons like javelins, Stalin missiles, for example. What's his one first dealing with Donald Trump? That perfect phone call.
- [40:32]
Evan Osnos
My call was perfect.
- [40:33]
Susan Glasser
The president yesterday of Ukraine said there was no pressure put on him whatsoever. None whatsoever.
- [40:40]
Evan Osnos
And he said it loud and clear for the press.
- [40:42]
Susan Glasser
What these guys are doing, Democrats are doing to this country is a disgrace.
- [40:47]
Jane Mayer
And it shouldn't be allowed.
- [40:49]
Susan Glasser
I think just encapsulating the Trump presidency. Trump did such a masterful job of trolling us that people forget what was actually in it. Right. He says it was perfect. There was nothing wrong with it. This was the phone call of a mobster. This was a very extraordinary thing to capture on tape and then to release publicly, which Trump chose to do because basically you have poor Zelensky there squirming while Trump is saying, do us a favor, do us a favor, though. I need you to talk to my attorney general, I need you to talk to Rudy Giuliani. I need you to get me this information and to work on these, quote, investigations. Whereas, like Zelensky keeps trying to bring the conversation back. Well, Mr. President, could you, you know, what about the weapons that we need? Thank you so much. And it's extortion, pure and simple. And the fact that it was done with regards to meddling an election. I keep going back to that remarkable speech by Adam Schiff at the end of Trump's impeachment trial. He's being acquitted in a very party line vote by Republicans in the Senate. And Schiff gives a speech and he says this was a case about an election interference and if you don't stop him, he will do it again. And that's what's going to happen. It was a very prescient, I think, warning about what Trump would do in the 2020 election.
- [42:16]
Evan Osnos
I think this is also a lesson in what are the full political effects of a scandal. Because I think there was a time after the impeachment process when people were saying, well, this shows actually the limits of impeachment, because after all, this guy is extorting a foreign Leader on tape. And yet here he is carrying on running for president again, except for the fact that, that we know that over time there was a degree to which the parade of Trump's indignities, of his injuries to the office, of the ways in which he was doing violence to American political culture, it turned people off. And, you know, these are not people who are gonna come out and announce it necessarily in advance. But when you look at the results of the 2020 election, you didn't have an overwhelmingly popular Democratic president, but you had a Republican president in Donald Trump, who had committed these crimes, and then the process had excavated them, made them as public and as apparent as possible. And that has a value whether or not the impeachment itself removes him from office.
- [43:19]
Jane Mayer
Well, you know, if you look at this, we're talking about all of these cases. Nixon, 68, Reagan, 1980, Trump in 2016, Trump again in 2019, 2020, and then the January 6th. These are all Republicans. Are the Democrats not equally dastardly? Where are they in this history?
- [43:43]
Susan Glasser
Well, look, Jane, that's an important point. I mentioned John Edwards, the original recent example of a hush money case. He was a Democrat. He was a progressive Democrat whose campaign for president didn't go very far. Bill Clinton, we talked about here who was the, the first modern example after Richard Nixon of an impeachment case and a scandal. And it very likely would have resulted in his indictment and possible conviction for lying under oath, which is not something that you get to do even if you're President of the United States, had he not made a deal. So there are many examples of wrongdoing by Democrats. I have to say, having spent much of my career in Washington, one of the first things you learn as a journalist is that scandal knows no party. And, you know, the will to power and the incentives and the corruption that power and money and politics offer to people. There's just a long lineage of Democratic members of Congress ending up in jail and Republican members of Congress. So I do think it's important to point out that it knows no partisanship, although these three examples that we're talking about today are truly extraordinary in terms of pushing the bounds of what we think of as legitimate executive and presidential conduct. And there has been a view often expressed by Republican presidents in recent decades, that the chief executive is almost unaccountable in many ways. And that was a view that Richard Nixon himself propounded after he left office, the idea that there is almost nothing for which a sitting President of the United States could be held accountable for. Certainly, we all know Donald Trump has an almost Louis XIV view of the state as being himself. So he himself has a view of almost unbridled executive power. But I do worry that in this hyper partisan moment, because it's Republicans that we're talking about and because it's Donald Trump specifically, that the tribalism around this, it's caused people to make statements attacking the indictment of the former president without even knowing what's in the indictment in a way that I don't think we would have seen even a few decades ago with Nixon or with Bill Clinton.
- [46:13]
Jane Mayer
You know, it's interesting that when Richard Nixon was facing impeachment and then had to resign, one of his henchmen at the time was Roger Ailes, who went on to run Fox News partly because he wanted there to be a news outlet that would be so partisan it would protect a president like Nixon if it ever happened again. And here we are where Fox News is out there. It sort of hesitated for a while about whether to rally around Trump yet again, but it is all in right now on this indictment, taking Trump's side and denouncing the prosecution. And it's living up to Roger Ailes dream of a news organization that will try to protect the president who is alleged to have broken the law.
- [47:13]
Evan Osnos
I have to say, though, you know, we're gonna be talking about this in the weeks and months ahead, and I think just as a sort of point of personal orientation, of trying to stay focused on the things that matter, is sort of resisting the atmospheric pressure to say that the risks of indicting Donald Trump are simply too great to be able to take it on its merits. And I think one of the things we're seeing right now, now, is that that is, in the end, the dividing line between a country that has a functioning and just system of government and a country that doesn't. And if the decision had been made to say, well, we just can't take the risk, then you really do lose the ball game.
- [47:54]
Jane Mayer
Totally agree.
- [47:56]
Susan Glasser
I would say, in the immortal words of Donald Trump, we'll see. Will Donald Trump face accountability for January 6th? Will he face accountability for becoming the first president in American history to seek to overturn the results of a lawful election? You know, that's, in my view, kind of the whole ball game here. You know, I think we've had many politicians who face the kind of charges that Trump is now facing in New York. That's a step along the way. But I'm still waiting to see whether, in fact, it will just be, you know, the thousands of foot soldiers in Donald Trump's army who go to jail for supporting him, or whether Donald Trump or those who help to organize and orchestrate and to call forth, you know, this attack on American democracy, whether they're going to face charges or not. And I think, unfortunately, our conversation about the one case will always be tied up with those bigger questions surrounding Donald Trump. And as we're having this conversation today, let's take a breath and note he remains the front runner for 2024, which is just a remarkable, remarkable commentary on our politics.
- [49:05]
Jane Mayer
Well, let's just hope that it doesn't take 43 years for the truth to come out. This has been the political scene. I'm Jane Mayer. We had production assistance today from Alex d' Elia and Dan Richards. Stephen Valentino and is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week.
- [49:37]
Evan Osnos
America is changing and so is the world.
- [49:41]
Susan Glasser
But what's happening in America isn't just.
- [49:44]
Evan Osnos
The cause of global upheaval.
- [49:46]
Susan Glasser
It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [49:49]
Evan Osnos
I'm a Smah Khalid in Washington, D.C. bBC.
- [49:52]
Jane Mayer
I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is THE Global story.
- [49:56]
Evan Osnos
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [50:01]
Susan Glasser
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [50:09]
Jane Mayer
From.
- [50:10]
Susan Glasser
PRX.