The Bulwark Podcast - Ben Wittes and Eric Cortellessa: Trump's Autocratic Agenda

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Trump went on the record, explaining how in a second term, his staff would only be (election denying) loyalists, he'd run a massive deportation operation, and states could freely monitor women's pregnancies. Meanwhile, evidence of his election interference in 2016 piles up in New York. Ben Wittes and Eric Cortellessa join Tim Miller. show notes: Trump Makes the Cover of Time magazine Trump interview transcript Lawfare's NY Trial Dispatch, Week 2 The Next Level episode mentioned by Ben 

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It's May 1st. How is it May 1st? I'm not prepared for that mentally, but I am here with some comfort food to help me deal with, you know, the passage of time. It's Ben Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. He's on the Lawfare podcast sometimes too. He also writes Dogshirt Daily on Substack. It's a big show. After Ben, make sure to stick around. We have Eric Cordalessa, who wrote the Time cover story about his interview with Donald Trump. That's sure to be interesting. Ben Wittes, where are you coming at us from? Coming at you from the Lawfare Content House in New York City near the courthouse in an undisclosed location. Got it. On TikTok, the kids call that a hype house. So you might want to change that to

Lawfare Hype House. We sort of call it the Nerd Hype House. I'm going to be doing some makeup videos, you know, explaining the Trump trials while showing how to deal with one brown eyebrow and one gray eyebrow. We're going to be doing glare off of receding hairline foreheads issues. It's going to be smoking. I have subscribed now, officially. All right. So the biggest news that we've heard from the trial so far that I've heard on the Lawfare podcast was one of the gentlemen doing security on the perimeter of the trial, a Bulwark fan. Correct. So I just wanted to say, what's up, bro? And just, you know, he just recognized you as a YouTube viewer. How did this come to pass? So the New York City Police Department does

perimeter security for the area. The court police do security of the building and within the building. So I was passing through the perimeter security and flashed my press pass at this cop who saw Lawfare and Benjamin Wittes on the press pass. He said, wow, I'm a big fan of you guys. I love the Lawfare podcast. Listen to it every day. Listen to the bulwark podcast all the time by the way this was demographically exactly you know if you use your prejudices about new york cops you would get this one entirely wrong this is you know an irish cop judging from his name irish american name um and you know so this is not like the group of people that you would expect in the nypd to be the sort of irish cop is not the right stereotype it's right sorry if that for new york cop it's not

the right stereotype for somebody who's listening to the lawfare podcast bulwark anti-trump content right like like you would think this would be the blue that would be the thin blue line you know if you followed your prejudices the thin blue line people who were you know really into law enforcement except the ones who defend the capital that sort of thing expand your mind expand your mind people there are good people in every world that you come upon and uh shout out to i'm going to keep his name confidential, shout out to the officer who's manning the perimeter of the Trump trial, listening to the Bulwark podcast and the Lawfare podcast. We love you guys.

Big shout out. And I was not surprised like you. I don't stereotype like you do, but that's okay, Ben. We're from different generations. Okay, so I want to get to the trial. So Trump has been breaking his gag order consistently. We discussed this a little bit yesterday with Bakari and how I wish that he'd go to jail for it, but there's some logistical issues. Though I do have to shout out Judge Marchand on this one because I think that he has delivered the biggest punishment that you could possibly deliver to Donald Trump.

He's going to make him attend his son's graduation. So tell us about that. Why does Donald Trump have to go to Bar He's going to make him attend his son's graduation. So tell us about that. Why does Donald Trump have to go to Barron's graduation now? So at the beginning of the trial, Todd Blanch identified several days that Trump would not be able to or wanted to not be able to be there. As a general rule, Justice Marchand has insisted that he be there daily, which, by the way, judging from the look on Trump's face, is not something that he wants to do. He looks really grumpy. But Blanche did identify two days that one was important to him, which was May 17th,

which is the date of Barron's graduation. And another one was a graduation of a child of one of the defense lawyers. And Justice Marchand took it under advisement and yesterday ruled on the May 17th matter that they would not hold court on May 17th so that Trump could attend his son's graduation. Well, I mean, I'm sure he's going to really struggle to stay awake during that if I know Donald Trump. And by the way, he immediately then turned around and held him in contempt on nine separate matters related to violating the cat court. So it's like, congratulations. And this is what I'm saying. I think that it's possible that it's related. Okay, I think that it's a related punishment. These were literally seconds apart. It was like we have three items of preliminary business before we bring in the jury, one related to the audio system. The second, yeah, you can go to your son's graduation. The third is

you're in contempt on nine counts. Okay. So then we get to the actual testimony. Jury comes in. The big testimony yesterday was from Keith Davidson, who is the lawyer for Stormy and others. Talk to us about what we learned from from the testimony right so before actually we had keith davidson we had this guy uh gary farrow who looks like a bouncer but is in fact a banking executive okay and he was the guy on the other end of all these interactions with michael cohen as he set up the payments and as he scrambled to get this done after the Access Hollywood tape. I actually think he's an important witness in that he's not Michael Cohen. He's describing Michael Cohen's activity in that period, so you don't have to rely on Michael Cohen's testimony.

And he is, notwithstanding, speaking of prejudices, looking like a bouncer, extremely articulate, and Trump didn't even try to lay a glove on him and cross. He was just a banking executive. So they actually got a lot of stuff on the record through Gary Farrow. And then subsequent to Gary Farrow's testimony, there's a couple of other pure document witnesses, one from C-SPAN. What do you mean pure? Like, why would a C-SPAN person be a document witness? So because the prosecutors had subpoenaed a bunch of C-SPAN videos of Trump talking about the women who had come out alleged sexual assault against him and a variety of other things. And so you need somebody to authenticate that these are ordinary business records produced in response to a subpoena. And so when that happens, the company sends

what's called a custodian of records to be the witness. So there are two companies that did this, one a court reporting firm that did the E. Jean Carroll court deposition transcript, and the other was C-SPAN, which had these four video clips that the prosecutors wanted to use. So they get those in the record, and then they bring in Keith Davidson, who, as you know, was both the lawyer for Karen McDougal and for Stormy Daniels. He, therefore, is the principal interlocutor for the people at AMI, which is to say the National Enquirer, and later for Michael Cohen as he is, first, they're negotiating the Karen McDougal deal. But secondly, Michael Cohen is now scrambling after Access Hollywood to arrange to shut Stormy Daniels up. And so, again, this is

very important testimony because, you know, Michael Cohen is, among other things, a convicted perjurer, and you don't want to rely on his testimony more than you have to. And so, to the extent that you can get a picture- And a podcast host. Very also, just at a personal level, he's a, as every witness had testified, a very excitable creature. He yells a lot. He's not an attractive witness. And that's before you get him cross-examined. And so you're trying to, as a prosecutor here, tell the story as much as possible with redundancy on the points on which you're going to rely on Michael Cohen. And so Keith Davidson is a lawyer, mostly of a perfectly pedestrian variety, but he

does have this sub practice, you might call it in women who want money from Donald Trump to keep their stories shut up okay so that's interesting so this guy is not like a like a lawyer for for playmates or something right like he has a normal lawyer job and somehow he just got this like side hustle going because thanks to a connection or what and so it seems to be that he knew these two women from a ways back. And so, once one of them comes to you, the other does too. And so, this is not a particular specialty of his. And I actually expected him to be much more sleazy than he turned out to be. He turned out to be sort of like an ordinary, you know, imagine your ordinary Los

Angeles kind of personal injury, kind of pick up law, you know, that clients have needs and you work for their needs. And he seemed, first of all, entirely credible. And second- Morris Bart for the New Orleans, for the New Orleans crowd. That's an inside joke. But very normal. It was not like the AMI people who, like David Pecker's an extraordinary character. I believe this guy was going to be extraordinary character. And actually, in that sense, his testimony was boring. It's like you're expecting an uncommon sleazeball, and you get a normal lawyer with two relatively abnormal clients. Got it. But he testified to some very, very significant things.

So first of all, that, you know, on the Karen McDougal matter, which other witnesses have said as well, she was not principally interested in money. She was principally interested in reviving her career and that she really didn't want to tell her story. What she wanted was the ancillary stuff that you get by having these media contracts, like writing a lot for fitness magazines and having profiles of herself. And so the deal was essentially collusive with AMI. They want to catch and

kill the story. She doesn't want to tell the story. So they come up with this deal in which, yeah, they throw $150,000 her way. But really, from her point of view, a huge percentage of the value of the contract is these 60, 70 articles she gets to write, the relationship she gets to have with these magazines. And so you really see kind of the collusive aspect where Trump's interests and AMI's interests and her interests kind of rush into each other. More importantly, on the Stormy Daniels matter, he testifies very clearly that Michael Cohen, he believed that Michael Cohen was trying to stiff him and stormy daniels and that she negotiated the deal either unable to consummate it with money because let's watch our language a little

bit we're talking stiffing and consummating it's a little bit okay this is a family podcast okay all right let's let's put it a little bit uh more gracefully. He thought Cohen was trying to fuck him. And specifically that Cohen negotiated this deal, then doesn't pay. And he became convinced that Cohen was trying to push it to after the election and then not pay. This is very important to the prosecution because they're trying to show that these deals were about election interference and election influence, not about, say, the John Edwards defense, right? Melania is going to find out. Melania's name wasn't spoken yesterday, by the way. What was spoken a lot was he wasn't paying me and I was convinced he was trying to get

past the election and then not do it. And so that changes as a result of the Access Hollywood tape. And then he is able to testify about the measures that Michael Cohen went through in order to complete the deal. Right. That's the key timing question, right? The Access Hollywood thing. I mean, to me, it's like, if this was about Trump being a celebrity and wanting to keep things from Melania, you know, he could have done this deal with Karen McDougal at a different time. The fact that it came right after this, doesn't that make it pretty clear that this is about the campaign? So this is why Keith Davidson testimony is really important in connection with the earlier testimony by the banker. So Davidson testifies that he's

being strung along, and then all of a sudden the deal happens. He thinks he's going to get strung along until after the election, then Access Hollywood happens and it all comes into place. And the banker testifies as to the extraordinary speed at which Cohen needed to and wanted the bank to operate in order to make that payment, you know, on October 26th and 7th of 2016, which is again, right after the Access Hollywood tape. And right before the election. The thing that I just don't understand at the biggest level is like, what is the Trump defense at this point? Before the trial, it did seem like it was going to be the Melania defense. The core of the defense is three points. One is, while we didn't do this as an election interference measure, and in fact, this was normal course of business for AMI, hold that point because it's a really interesting one.

There's nothing wrong with a scheme to interfere with an election by legal means and catch and kill deals are perfectly normal and people do them all the time. And election interference, that's called democracy. That's point one. Point two, Michael Cohen is a lying sack of shit. Stormy Daniels is a lying stack of shit. They're both trying to monetize and professionalize their hatred of Donald Trump by turning this perfectly normal electioneering activity into something nefarious. Don't believe a word they say. Point number three, and this is the key point which we have not yet gotten to in the trial because the prosecution hasn't put on any evidence of the document falsification yet. Michael Cohen was in fact paid over the course of 2017

for actual legal services as Trump's personal lawyer. And so the records in question were not falsified. This was not a payback for the Stormy Daniels payment. It was actually exactly what it was recorded to be a payment for legal services. That last point, by the way, if they can cast significant doubt on the government's theory of the case on that point, that's a winning argument all by itself. But isn't that premised on the fact that Michael Cohen did this himself, though, that he paid the money himself, and that it wasn't Trump? He did pay the money himself and then was reimbursed. The crime here is that in reimbursing him, they classified these in their internal records, their internal documents, as payments

for legal services, substance to a retainer. The allegation is that that was false. It was actually not a retainer. There were no legal services. It was a reimbursement for the payoff to the porn star. So, if you're the defense and you can show, actually, there were legal services, and these really, Michael Cohen is lying about this. These were real legal services and he was paid for legal services. That's the end of the case. The defense wins. Now, I thought that Todd Blanche did, he's a professional, he's a good trial lawyer. I thought he did an excellent job making that argument in opening statements to the jury. And Bauer, in my summary of his opening statement,

is, you know, if you want to, people want to read it, it's in some detail on lawfare. I thought it was an excellent opening statement. It's exactly as compelling as he is able to substantiate it in either cross-examination of the government's witnesses or presentation of evidence of its own. You're allowed to say almost anything in opening statement that you're going to prove. Can he prove it? I have my doubts, but that's the three-pronged nature of the defense. So then how does this all tie back to the Pecker testimony? Okay, so first of all, I can't remember.

You guys have so many podcasts now, it's hard for me to remember which one it was on, but I think it was on the next level. You and Sarah and I think which JVL was there, had the best conversation that anybody has had that is one of the core elements of this trial. So the prosecution's job is to show the jury that this relationship was unbelievably weird and democratically destructive. And the defense's argument is actually this is just the normal course of business for AMI and they both have some material to work with here and again I want to refer people to the dispatch that Anna and I wrote about Pecker's testimony which goes through this material at some length but on the first point you know the defense quite effectively brings out that david

pecker is an unbelievable sleazeball with respect to all kinds of people right rom emmanuel uh tiger woods he does catch and kill arnold schwarzenegger the tiger wood stuff was amazing though because it was he collected negative stories on tiger woods in order to leverage them to force tiger woods to appear on the cover of you know men's fitness or men's health or whatever right you know it was basically an extortion scheme that stuff i'll feel it should be illegal too by the way i think there's a good argument that extortion should be illegal um and it is they were able to set up also that he had been doing this stuff for trump for 17 years prior to the 2016 election and so their argument is this is actually business as usual for ami it's not a collusive scheme with respect to the 2016 election it's just, you know, go back to Plato, the Republic, book one, right? What is justice?

Justice is fucking your enemies and helping your friends, right? And that's David Pecker's motives. So, the prosecution's job is to make this seem extraordinary. And the redirect examination of Pecker by the prosecution was just this rat-a-tat-tat of, have you ever done this before? No. Have you ever done this before? Have you ever let a campaign edit your stories before? No. Have you ever let a campaign choose your cover art before? No. Have you ever paid $150,000 to Playmate for content you didn't want no and it's this really rapid fire hey we're not disputing that you're you're a sleazeball in your general course of business but this was different and they were really effective at that this is a category difference a sleazy category difference exactly got it yeah well that's interesting that's true

both in packers world and in the campaigns and that's really the side of it we were talking about more on the next level right which is like this is not like john edwards like this is a very different animal and the way that they were working together the other thing about pecker is that you know what comes out he's a terrible person but he's a great witness and one of the reasons he's a great witness is that he's just so frank about it all, and he's completely unashamed, and he's still so evidently fond of Trump. I mean, he is asked at the end whether he has any animus toward Trump, and he says, he's like moved by the question. He said, oh, no, I think of him as my mentor. You know, he was so good to me.

I have so much fondness for him. He talked about how when AMI was subject to the anthrax attacks, Donald Trump was the first person who called him and asked him whether he needed help. He's an unbelievable sleazeball, but he's so frank about it and so unembarrassed by what his business is that he's able to talk about it in a fashion that's completely credible. Okay, we're out of time, but we have one final item. Donald Trump keeps falling asleep in court. I am pro-nap. I don't know if people know this about me, my Mimi. She used to take these eight minute naps where it's like you're barely even asleep, sometimes even two minutes, sometimes 30 seconds. And I do these

after lunch to kind of get my second wind for content creation for all of you. So I'm pro nap, you are pro nap, I understand you're also a napper. Donald Trump, though. He's napping in court, falling asleep in court. That's a little different than like on an airplane in your bed. As listeners of this podcast know, my anti-Trump credentials are complete and intact and unimpeachable. Unimpeachable. I want to say on this point, I'm going to defend him and I'm going to defend him in a full throated fashion without caveat. Look, long court proceedings are really, really boring. And even when they're momentous, there's only so much time that you can spend listening to

somebody talk about eight-year-old internal banking documents about opening accounts for LLCs that no longer exist before you lose the will to live. Have you fallen asleep in court? Absolutely. Today, though, during the Trump course, during the Trump trial? I have nodded off several times during the same proceedings that Trump has nodded off in, and not once has anybody criticized me for it. And by the way, any journalist who tells you that they haven't nodded off in court during these proceedings is freaking lying. Everybody's nodded off. By the way, the temperature controls and the rumor are stuff you're sitting there at

3.30 in the afternoon after lunch trying to keep up with, you know, the prosecutors get to stand up when defense counsel's arguing they get to stand up. I don't get to stand up when defense counsels arguing, they get to stand up. I don't get to stand up. If I stand up, you know, the court security people are going to be like, it looks like going to be like a proctological exam. You have to sit there quietly and just take notes and falling asleep every now and then I'm 54 years old. I'm going to nod off every now and then Donald Trump, like he is. I'm going to nod off every now and then. Donald Trump, like he is guilty of many things. His sins are legion and extraordinary. Folks, I'm looking at you, Maggie Haberman. Don't focus on the minor shit. I love you, Maggie Haberman, but it doesn't

matter if Donald Trump nods off in court. I have a criminal defense attorney friend who is a listener of this podcast, and he has testified to me in private that it is unusual for the defendant to nod off in court. So I just, I want to reflect that counter view that generally when you are the one on trial, you stay awake.

Now that's what he had to offer. I hear your points, and we'll let the listeners decide. I'm just saying, you know know even if it's unusual it's not bad no one's hurt nobody's um you know it doesn't compromise the integrity of the proceedings i guess it's true when donald trump is sleeping he's not bleeding and that's good that's we would rather be asleep than be attacking people this is a guy who bleats about witnesses gives press statements about witnesses this is harmless leave him alone let him take a nap

okay i will not leave him alone but i thank that you for that testimony ben with us we are going to be back on the other side with more trump it's a trump episode deal with the people uh with eric corda lessa national political reporter at time see you on the other side you We are back with the man of the hour, Eric Cordalessa, political writer for Time. He has the cover story, If He Wins, from multiple interviews with Donald Trump. It's a thing everybody's talking about. Eric, thanks for coming on the Borg podcast. Thanks for having me.

First questions first. I mean, obviously, you're an intrepid reporter. People should want to interview with you. Everyone should. But like, let's just be honest. He did this because he wants to be on the cover. Why did Donald Trump do this interview with you? Was it because of the cover or something else? I can't get inside of his head. I mean, all I can say is, look, there's no question this is a man whose cultural touchstones date back to the 1980s, and he sees being on the cover of Time as the pinnacle of world fame and recognition. I also think I did my job cultivating sources close to President Trump and making the argument that he should be willing to talk to me about what his agenda was for a second term and that we would present as fairly and comprehensively as we could precisely what he wants to do in his own words in a very straightforward

way. And I think we accomplished that. Yeah. Well, the article is good, but I also read the full transcript, all 83 minutes of it. And man, why he gave you that time, I'm not sure, but he revealed a lot I want to get through. But before we get to just the seriousness, if you wouldn't mind, could you just paint a picture for me? Because I am a little bit jealous. I know this seems crazy, but I want to be in a disguise and go into Mar-a-Lago just so I can just experience what is happening there with the Cougars poolside and the weird bag of celebrities and all this. So would you mind just taking us inside mar-a-lago for this interview a little bit well i mean you know it's it's about how you might imagine it it's this huge opulent property uh right on the ocean and palm beach

everything is extremely uh ornate and you know like the courtyard scene as i write about in the piece when we had dinner after the interviewing of president trump invited me to stay and have dinner at mar-a-lago and it was a maga mecca that night speaker the house mike johnson was there billionaire steve winn was there and you know donald trump right when he walks in after getting his rounds of applause, gets an iPad delivered right to him at his table where he is with an index finger scrolling through a set list and being the disc jockey for the evening playing songs by James Brown, Sinead O'Connor, and from Phantom of the Opera. And of course, the most striking moment from that evening as I write in the piece is at one point, a roar blast from the speakers, and everyone stands up as they play the Star Spangled Banner,

except in this instance, it's a rendition as sung by a choir of defendants who have been imprisoned for attacking the Capitol on January 6th. It's a safe space, I guess, for the people who were fallen in the Me Too scandal. You might remember that Steve Wynn had many allegations of sexual misconduct from people working at his casino. I want to get into the substance here because it's pretty serious stuff. You know, you guys framed the article about if he wins. So what were the things that struck you about his plans?

You know, because there are some elements of it. We'll get into the details where he's kind of vague in various ways and, you know, he sort of leaves things open to interpretation. There are other ways that he seems to have a very clear plan. So maybe talk through what your impressions were. Yeah, I mean, my impression, you know, first of all, personally, was that he was perhaps more assertive and confident than I've ever seen him before. And he is embarking on a very strategic and coordinated plan to return to the White House and consolidate power around him as the president to remove many of the guardrails

that persisted throughout the first term, right? He's going to have his people in key positions throughout the executive branch, right? He served one term. He knows who's loyal to him and who is not. He has engineered a far more compliant caucus in the GOP and both the House and Senate. As you can see, he's clearing away Senate primary fields for House and Senate candidates so that he can have his people to approve his agenda and his nominees if he wins for a second term. And what struck me was how much Trump plans to seize power in a second term. And, you know, what struck me was just how much Trump plans to seize power in a second term. And he's going to do that through all sorts of different avenues, right, through his immigration program, where he intends to restore many of the policies he had in

the first term and embark on a massive deportation operation. We can talk about that more in a bit. He plans to have greater levels of intervention with Justice Department prosecutions than past presidents. He says he would fire, or be willing to fire at least, a U.S. attorney who didn't follow his orders to prosecute someone. He talks about restoring the power of impoundment, which was outlawed in 1974. It was a favorite maneuver of Richard Nixon's to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. He talks about Schedule F, which is the ability to fire civil servants at will. And this is going to be a major tool for his take on what he calls the deep state. He told me he's unlikely to hire people. You think that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and a big cornerstone of his agenda is, of course,

his economic plans, which is to restore the tax cuts from the 2017, many of which will expire early on in 2025, and to impose tariffs on all imports and massive tariffs on Chinese imports. So there's a lot to chew on. Nothing says fighting inflation like a 10% tariff across the board. Okay, so I want to go through the policies of this. But to me, when I read your article, the thing that stuck out, which you just kind of mentioned in that list was the staffing. Wouldn't feel good about hiring people who don't believe election lies. Because if you and I'd encourage people if you will put in the show notes, if you read the full 83 minutes,

there's some scary stuff in there on the policies. But a lot of times he's just, he's full of it. It's bluster. It's, oh, we'll look into it. It's all this kind of stuff. It's hedging. But the one area where he's not hedging is the staffing question. You know, he does not want to be implemented if there is a litmus test that you have to go along with his 2020 lie to get in there. Talk about how that struck you and what

you kind of see as a change on the staffing front. Yeah, I mean, you know, Donald Trump says, look, when I came into office in January 2017, I didn't know people in Washington. I had to rely on people. And so he had a lot of people who were close to him, like Reince Priebus and others who helped him fill cabinet roles. And these were kind of traditionalist old line public install wards. He brought in some people from Wall Street, right? And his plan this time is none of that. Everyone I'm going to bring in is going to be a MAGA true believer because I want the people in government to carry out my agenda and my vision. I mean, in their eyes, right, they will have a mandate by being elected.

And they want to install not only the cabinet, and White House officials who are Trump loyalists, they want the bureaucracy, right, to serve Trump's vision. And that's a really big thing that they're taking on this time. I don't think they're as worried about picking certain people. I mean, who they'd be able to get through their cabinet nominees, depending on the makeup of Senate, that's a big wild card in this discussion. But the real thing that they are targeting to go after the deep state is unelected career government bureaucrats. And that's where Schedule F comes in. Let's talk about the immigration aside. I thought that you were really

like a dog with a bone on him on this stuff, which is good because he tries to evade. But he basically in the end comes to this and says that he'd be happy to break the existing laws in order to enforce the deportation regime that he wants, whether that includes military, whether that includes incentivizing local police forces. You know, the implications of that seem pretty scary. The camps, he was less, he was, you know, maybe kind of dodging around whether he actually wants camps. But Stephen Miller, the types of people that he would appoint, which goes back to our staffing question, they do. So, I mean, just talk through, you know, kind of the extent that he seems to be willing to go to actually follow through on an extreme nativist immigration agenda.

Well, this is like one of Donald Trump's signature campaign issues. And it's been a Trumpian obsession since, you know, the dawn of his political emergence. And I think if there's at least one thing you would expect him to go full throttle on, it's going to be immigration. And this is an area where he's really going to try and seize his executive authority, right? Some of the things he plans to do, it's just a restoration of what he did the last Mexico, Title 42. They'll come up with different justifications for the emergency measures to do that. When it comes to deportation operation, he said he plans to use the National Guard. He said he would try to induce local police departments by saying,

like tying funding to whether or not they would participate in helping them to find and remove undocumented migrants. And when I pressed, you know, sir, would you be willing to use the military? His answer was, well, I would use the National Guard, but if I felt I needed to, I'd be willing to bring in the military. At which point I pointed out, sir, the Posse Comitatus law prohibits the use of the military on civilians. And he basically said he doesn't see undocumented migrants as civilians. That's not how the law sees it, but that's how Trump sees it. And so, you know, I think he's preparing to really follow through on this from starting on day one. I have to pick on you on one thing.

I was going to save it for the last question, but you just did it. Do we have to call him, sir? Do we have to? Do you feel like that's necessary? I mean, I don't know. He loves being called, sir. I don't know. He loves being called sir. I don't know. I felt it was fine. Are you calling every politician sir? You think it's okay? You know, he was former president. I spoke to him in a way that I think offered him a level of

respect. And all I can say is, look, Donald Trump spoke to me at length and told me things he hasn't told other reporters. That's true. Made me think about it. I'm interviewing a governor today, which will be on the podcast later this week, and I'm like, what am I going to call him? Governor? Sir? Am I going to do sir? Go ahead and call him sir. I encourage it. I don't think that Mr. Trump, I don't think that Donald is going to be letting me into Mar-a-Lago, but if he were to, I don't know that I would go sir, but I respect it. I know what you're trying to do. Okay, I want to talk about the abortion thing. This is like the same trap he's been in literally since Chris Matthews nine years ago. And you asked him, I thought, very kind of astutely about this question of,

would he be concerned, I don't know if you're exact phrasing in front of it, or would he have worries or issues with states monitoring women's pregnancies? Because if you're going to put in a 12-week abortion ban or six weeks, which was enforcement in Florida, well, how are you going to exactly prove that the abortion happened after six weeks? Are you going to monitor the pregnancies? And he basically said he feels comfortable with that. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump, ever since the overturning of Roe versus Wade with the essential sign-off on his three Supreme Court appointments has had to thread a very delicate needle on this because he knows that while the base really wants him to be against abortion, it doesn't play with the rest of America, right? So he has basically said that

this is going to be a state's rights issue. And now whatever the states determine as their policy, he's going to let fly. And so when I asked him specifically, well, sir, would that mean you're comfortable with states monitoring women's pregnancies to know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban? He said to me, they might do that. And when I said, sir, would you be comfortable with states prosecuting women who've gotten abortions after the ban? He said, it's irrelevant whether I'm comfortable or not because states are going to make that determination. I should specify he didn't say he wanted the states to do that, but that he would let them do that because he believes as he or at, he demurred and said, I don't have to veto because it's never going to come to my desk. One of the funniest parts of the is a two part interview. So you're with him at Mar-a-Lago. after pill. And there's some questions about whether certain states, they're going to try to criminalize access to Mifepristone

or other related pharmaceuticals. And he kind of gives you, oh, well, we're going to announce something about that in two weeks. Then you call him back two weeks later and that's your first question. And maybe you can share whether you'd come up with a policy on that yet by the time you talked to him a second time. Yeah, yeah. Each time it was coming in two weeks. Just like the healthcare plan. This is one of those things where it's harder to judge looking at the transcript. Did he seem to know what you were talking about even? Or was he ducking it?

Or was he just lost? How do you assess it? I will say, I think Donald Trump knew most of everything I asked him about. Maybe not everything, I'm not sure, but I think, look, he's a really smart guy. And I think a lot of people throughout the mainstream press and the political class continue to underestimate Donald Trump. And he is much smarter than a lot of people give him credit for. We can analyze what type of intelligence we're talking about here, but the guy's smart. And I got a sense with each question, he knew what I was talking about. And in a lot of cases, he was really careful and cagey with his language when providing answers. One other thing I wanted you to talk about, because you went at him about it a few times.

He didn't seem to really be supportive of BB. You know, a lot of the, you know, kind of mild crowd, you know, the more nationally security-minded establishment, right, has been critical of Biden for, you know, the ways that he's distanced himself from Bibi and various Israel policies, despite the fact that he's been directionally supportive. And so, I think it's interesting. That's going to be an important crowd, like this Haley voters, an important swing vote in this election. And so, I did think it was interesting that Trump was doing a little bit of a two step on that himself. How'd you assess his answers when it came to Israel? Yeah, I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that there's a profound bitterness between the two men that, you know, Donald Trump

resents Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a number of reasons. You know, he cited to me his anger that Netanyahu and Israel backed out what was planned to be a joint operation to take out Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in 2020, and it ended up being a unilateral mission by the United States. But we also know that he took great offense when Netanyahu congratulated President Biden after winning the 2020 election. I think there's bad blood between the two. And some of the comments that Trump said to me were some of his harshest against Netanyahu to date. He said, I had a bad experience with Bibi. When I asked if he thought he could work better with Benny Gantz, he said he wasn't prepared to say that, but there were a lot of other people in Israel who could do a good job. So that was quite a stinging rebuke of the Israeli premier. He also said that if Israel and Iran were to get into a

war, he would join Israel in the fight and be willing to strike Iran militarily. A lot of interesting stuff, man. A lot to chew on. We'll be talking about you tonight because we are live in Philly doing a Next Level podcast. That'll be up for people tomorrow on Thursday. If you want to hear kind of a deeper analysis and look at the implications of your reporting, we'll be discussing that tonight. We'll be discussing it the rest of the week. It seems like everybody's discussing it. So congratulations on the interview.

Stay in touch. We'll hope to have you back on the Borg podcast sometime soon. Love to be back. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks. That's Eric Cordalesa from Time Magazine, national political reporter. Thanks to him. Thanks to Benjamin Wittes. We'll be back here on Thursday. We got a fun interview for you. So make sure to

check us out tomorrow. See y'all then. Peace. So what'd you bring me down here for? You got me down on the floor So what'd you bring me down here for? If I was a man, I'd make my move If I was a blade, I'd save you smooth If I was a judge I'd break the law And if I was from Paris If I was from Paris I would say ooh la la la la la la la Ooh la la la la la la la The The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.