Dan Snow's History Hit - A Very Stable Genius

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig are both Pulitzer Prize winning journalists at the Washington Post.They've written a new book with yet more revelations from inside the Trump White House so Dan seized the opportunity to ask just how insane the whole thing is.That's it really.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I've got an interesting podcast for you today. I think in years to come, when people look back on this period of human history, they will look at a globally hegemonic power, the United States of America. A power that's put the robot on Mars, a country with the largest and most productive economy in the history of mankind. A country capable of wielding military force in order of magnitude greater than any previous imperial power the world's ever known. An arsenal of nuclear warheads directly controlled by one individual that can end life on earth as we know it. And people in a few years time will look back and they will wonder how it came to be that People in a few years' time will look back and they will wonder how it came to be that supreme executive power in this country was given to Donald J. Trump.

Whatever your views on Donald Trump, you'll admit that he is unorthodox. He's breaking every rule and norm that has bound previous presidents. And if nothing else, his method of communication using social media is extraordinary, unprecedented. So on the podcast today, I've got two Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. I've got Phil Rucker and Carol Leenig, both Pulitzer Prize winners, both at the Washington Post. They've written a new book. There are more revelations about what's been going on inside the Trump White House. This is recent history, everybody, but it's so fascinating. I want to ask them about their revelations, but I also want to ask them,

you know, for all of you history geeks out there, how can we trust what they're writing? There's a great tradition in US journalism of using unnamed sources. This provides historians with a problem because we like citations, we like to know where things come from. So we had a bit of chat about that as well. So please enjoy this podcast. Don't forget, you can go to historyhit.tv, the digital history channel. It's like Netflix for history. You pay a small subscription and you get Netflix for history, for true history fans. We're building it. It's getting better all the time. It's really, really exciting. So please join us. If you use the code POD6, exclusive to listeners of this podcast, POD6, P-O-D-6, P-O-D-6, you get six weeks for free. Check it out. If you don't like it, don't subscribe, but we'd love you to come and check

it out. So have a listen to the podcast, then please head over to historyhit.tv and sign up it's so really exciting what we've got going on there thank you for all your support i feel we have the history on our shoulders all this tradition of ours our school history our songs this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Guys, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm sure you're incredibly busy, both with the book, but also your day job. How are things in D.C. at the moment? Dan, they're pretty hectic.

You know, the president's impeachment trial is getting going in the Senate and and that is consuming his attention as he's, you know, trying to scramble to survive here. But we're in the throes of a real political moment and a historic moment in Washington. And volume two of your book is going to be perhaps even more explosive than volume one, guys. There's a lot of interesting history being made today and in the next few weeks, but we are mostly focused on the book we just finished. Could you both just talk to me a little bit about what it has been like being senior experienced reporters in Washington during the Trump presidency. We hear a lot about norms, about things being different. How different are they, do you think, in your experience from previous presidential administrations?

Well, Dan, I covered the Obama White House, and that was so similar to what I understand most White Houses have been like. And the reporting sort of followed a pattern to some degree. But the Trump story has been entirely new. As you know, it's almost dizzying day by day and hour by hour. There's a new crisis, a new investigation, a new holy crap moment that we're chronicling here at The Washington Post. And what Carol and I tried to do with this book is really hit the pause button and look back at what has been an extraordinary three years in Washington with really monumental change to our government, to our country, to the institutions that a lot of Americans hold dear,

and to assess the consequences. We did a ton of extensive, rigorous reporting with people who've worked very closely with the president, with President Trump, to document what has happened in this country and in Washington during these three years. Yeah, Carol, can I ask you, because in the U.S. there's this extraordinary tradition of this wonderful political journalism. And we recognize it. And I'm such a fan of books like The Game Changer, detailing the Obama that rise to power. But it's a particular style.

You're not able to say who your sources are. But we have to just, we the public just believe that you guys are legit. Like, why should we, you're putting stuff that is incendiary in these pages. What can you tell the audience other than saying, well, Rex Tillerson told me? How can you reassure us that it is true? So Dan, the only thing I can tell you is that Phil and I have been reporters for decades. We have reputations at stake. We have a rigor and a protocol and a standard. And I would like to say something about the sourcing. You know, in our daily reporting, Phil and I reveal a lot in the Washington Post's pages. Much of what you know about inside the Trump White House comes from us and our colleagues

and some of our competitors. But in the book, we had sources who were very reluctant to talk at the time that these events were unfolding. One reason was they saw the president belittling, berating, and basically harassing people who questioned his intelligence or his decision making. And then we had people who honestly, as patriots, felt strongly that you don't criticize a sitting president. They came forward, broke their silence, talked with us for the first time about some of these events, because they thought it was important to tell for history, and we're indebted to them. The stories, the ones that are making news, rightly so, that you guys are breaking new stories. For example, President Trump didn't seem

to know what had happened at Pearl Harbor, for example. Do you think that's, are those the things people are picking up about this book? Or is it, as you say, the kind of general impression given stepping back a bit and just looking at the whole presidency? You know, Dan, I think there are a couple takeaways from this book. Certainly, there are a lot of new, scoopy stories, some of which have come out in the press, some of which are still in the book and have not been discovered yet. But that add new context and color and information about this administration, about this president, moments and episodes and dialogue and so forth.

But the other takeaway is thematic and contextual. And one of the things we did with this book, and it's really a collection of scenes from the very first day after the election when Trump's assembling his government all the way up to the eve of impeachment, we looked for patterns and we tried to detect what is different. What does all of the chaos that we've been chronicling for three years add up to and what are the consequences in America? You mentioned Trump assembling his government. What's very striking about your book is it appears that his daughter was foremost in assembling the government. I mean, that's the, just on page one, there's a mind-blowing description of how Flynn was given a

top job without any vetting, without any of the procedures and the practice that would have been gone through as standard in a previous administration. You know, Dan, Phil and I are so glad you noticed that because one of the things we wanted to share with readers from our reporting with many, many people who were there basically at the ground floor of the Trump presidency and setting up, you know, what would be the transition and what would become the West Wing. Those people were sort of shocked at the lack of care in deciding who should have some of the most important jobs and make some of the life and death decisions that would protect our country. And, you know, General Flynn's selection is emblematic of that. He had a fairly mixed record as a general. President Obama had basically fired him because of concerns about his temperament. There had been numerous investigations of his interactions with foreign officials,

and yet he gets one of the most important jobs in the White House. And that sort of set the stage for what would happen. There were a lot of novices. There was not very much vetting. And these are the people giving the president the advice, again, to keep our country safe. It's been interesting over the last few years. There's a sense from people who are paying close attention that the Trump White House has kind of been pretty chaotic and he was unprepared for the role at at best reading your book uh compiled from insiders

it actually looks like the rest of the world we were behind the curve like it's crazier than we even thought well well dan you mentioned the president being unprepared for the job and i think everybody who's worked for him would agree on that point but there was an effort early on in the administration to help school him to tutor him to, to get him up to speed, to make him sort of understand the world. And one of the most explosive scenes in our book is a meeting that took place in the tank, which is a sacred sanctum conference room inside the Pentagon, where the president's war cabinet tried to school him on our military deployments all around the world. And he just could not tolerate that session.

He didn't like the schoolhouse vibe. And he lashed out at them. He called them a bunch of dopes and babies. He said, I would never go to war with you people. And it was an emotionally scarring moment for those who work in our military, for those who worked in this administration. And, you know, it really became an inflection point for this presidency because after that point, Trump rejected a lot of advice and really started making decisions on his own,

and it became a presidency of one. I mean, this is not your fault, but you can understand there's a huge frustration from the rest of the world, and I'm sure from U.S. citizens in particular, that all these people are like standing up and telling you guys off, you know, quietly in hidden places about the reality of the Trump administration.

But why don't, if they want to do something about it, why don't they stand up and do it in public? Like, why don't these people who worked with Trump initially to try and temper some of his excesses and who failed and were fired and humiliated? Why don't they come out and speak in public? It's a great question, Dan, and we can't go to the heart of the motivations of some of the people that could speak up about what they've

witnessed. We can tell you a few things about our sources. Again, one of them that I'm thinking of said very plainly, I'm never going to criticize a sitting president. That's not what I do. That's not how I'm trained. But think about the larger picture here of what we have learned and what you have seen even across the pond, which is this is a president with an extremely abusive management style. His power of the megaphone of tweeting at people, he has deployed to berate, belittle, and chase a lot of people around who question him. And some of the sources we spoke to said they're fearful of that kind of retaliation

from basically the most powerful person in the country. Wow. I remember Rod Rosenstein was reporting about Rod Rosenstein. He was saying he didn't want to be subjected to the tweets. That was the thing he was trying to avoid. That's right. It's terrifying. It's important that we don't just think of people that we disagree with, that they're not just idiots, right? So what you identify, you identify Trumpism in this book, you identify a kind of coherent thread. Can you talk to the audience a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, you know, Dan, there are a couple of ways you can think about Trumpism. The first would be the sort of ideological strain and the power of this populist movement that he created in 2016.

He cast himself as the champion for working class people, and he made it all in his own self-image. We open the book, actually, on the floor of the Republican National Convention when Trump, the celebrity mogul, the real estate guy, becomes the most unlikely presidential nominee for a major party, but he declares I alone can fix it. He was so focused on his own self-image, on his own personal brand, and he built an entire political movement around that. And that has propelled him through all of these crises, through the Mueller investigation, and made him a really potent threat to become re-elected this fall in November, perhaps. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows,

where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week this is you know i'm not expecting answering you guys these are the biggest questions of our time. But what is it that has changed? Is it technology? Is it people?

Is it partisanship? Is it economy? What is it that has changed that means that this person is able to get away with gaffes and actual, you know, just extraordinary outbursts that a previous generation would not have been able to do? What is different about Trump and the area in which we live? Dan, I think it's important, though we have a lot of people in our book who are very critical of President Trump, I think it's important to give him credit for the master of the megaphone that he is. He has been able to convince a lot of supporters, appropriately so,

I think, that he's a fighter for them. He's the guy who's first going to say, you know, I'm standing up for you. I'm looking out for you. You've been forgotten by the elites on the two coasts, by the super educated who look down at you through their nose. He's been able to tell those people, I'm your champion, and they believe him. And I understand why. A lot of people in this country feel left behind, and they do feel looked down upon. And Donald Trump is magnifying their concerns, and at the same time, dividing the country ever more with the way he fights for them. And Dan, if I could just add one example of what's changed in our politics and certainly in the media and the way the public have reacted to it. I've covered politics at the Washington Post

for about a decade, and I was our reporter on the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012. And I traveled with him to London right on the eve of the London Olympics. And you and your listeners might recall that he did an interview, a television interview, where he questioned whether London was prepared for the security threat at the Olympics, which in today's environment would seem like a total nothing burger, but was a major global headline gaffe. I think the tabloids in London called him Mitt the Twit. global headline gaffe. I think the tabloids in London called him Mitt the Twit. Then Mayor Boris Johnson had that massive rally in Hyde Park saying, are you ready for the Olympics? And Londoners roared. And so, you know, the way that politicians in the past got so dinged for these

gaffes and it really became destructive for their campaigns. Trump is like Teflon. He says stuff every hour of every day of every month that offends people, that horrifies people. And yet he doesn't lose his supporters. And that's really, frankly, to his credit, his mastery at branding and ability to kind of get himself back up, have no shame and fight back. Is it also about the news environment, the ability to live in these echo chambers that we, you know, our Trump fans, Trump voters, are they insulated from the work that you guys do? Like, is it frustrating in your newsroom? If you're breaking stories that 25 years ago would have been on the Manil News Hour, would have been watched by 25 million people and would have just been the end of the game. Whereas now, do you feel that you're able to reach those people?

Dan, we don't have an agenda as reporters. And as I like to say often, our executive editor, Marty Barron, says we're not at war with this White House. We're at work. We share our work and people will make of it what they will. We share our work and people will make of it what they will. Journalists have always been the people who provide information upon which, you know, the citizens can make decisions. I don't find it frustrating. I find our reporting to be professionally really satisfying, invigorating. And honestly, Phil and I felt so strongly that this was becoming dizzying. All of the hour by hour crises,

scandals, investigations, events, we wanted to make sense of it for ourself, make sense of it for readers. What's really going on behind the scenes and what does it mean? We hope this book will reach people in blue and red states and that they will take away a bigger picture of what this president is after and what motivates him. So what do you think does motivate him?

You know, the truth is we don't know what's in his head, of course. And I don't think anybody other than Donald Trump can say what truly motivates him. But we can tell you what all of these, you know, dozens of people who work very closely with him told us. And they say he's motivated by self-image, by his survival instincts, by his narcissism. Some have phrased it that way. His narcissism, some have phrased it that way. And we describe in the book that Trump's North Star is the perpetuation of his own power, that there's this sort of vainglorious pursuit to stay in command, to stay in control. It's one of the reasons why he ground down all of his guardrails and pushed away some of his more seasoned advisors. It's one of the reasons, frankly, why he was able to muscle through the Mueller investigation and fight back at every turn to defend himself and to try to survive politically. He is so driven by keeping hold of

his own power and by his own brand and how he presents himself, how his image appears to the public. And Dan, if I could add one thing to that, we describe, because of the amazing sources who agreed to talk with us, we describe a presidency in which it's a den of dysfunction. And the president's decision making, the thing that frightened and disturbed them the most was that he was often thinking, how does this work for me, rather than how is this best for the country? And over and over again, they would show us moments when how he would survive the political drama of the moment was paramount in his mind, not necessarily what's good for the country writ large or even the country in this very moment of crisis. I've got to ask, and this is again, this is outside the book and I can understand if you

can't answer this as a journalist, but you say perpetuation of his own power. This is a man who, as you point out in the book, has actually you know we forget he has refused to accept the vote count in the 2016 election right he has never said he has never accepted that he was actually defeating the popular vote right he said there were legal votes do you in the reporting you've done uh and we're getting close to the election of 2020 now do you have a do you have concerns uh that he will that something there will be a major constitutional crisis? He will refuse to leave office in the event of him losing election. He will refuse to accept the results of an election. Well, Dan, certainly there are some in Washington who have that concern. That's not something Carol and I think about, and it's not something we as journalists would be concerned about. I can

tell you back during the 2016 campaign, Trump and his rhetoric on the campaign trail in those closing days seemed to be laying the groundwork for contesting the election results were he to lose to Hillary Clinton. He, of course, ended up winning. But there was a very real fear within the Democratic Party in 2016 that if he fell short in the electoral college total, that he would refuse to concede and that there could be a crisis. And, you know, I expect that there will be some of that conversation again as we get closer to November of 2020. But, you know, that's really not something Carol and I have any expertise to be able to predict or feel any advocacy or concern over. Totally, totally, I totally understand. Well, guys, thank you so much indeed for talking to me.

The book is called? A Very Stable Genius, Donald J. Trump's Testing of America. Well, thank you very much indeed. He's testing, he's not just testing america he's testing the rest of the world let me tell you over here from the other side of the pond as well um thank you very much guys it is an outstanding book and very good luck with it thank you school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated.

One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well. I have faith in you. I hope you enjoyed the podcast, everyone. Just a massive favour to ask if you could go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts,

give it a rating, five stars, obviously, and then leave a glowing review. That'd be great. My mum is getting overwhelmed by the amount of different email accounts she's set up to leave