The Bulwark Podcast - Sam Stein and Susanne Craig: Look Beyond the Polls

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

We're swimming in polling data, but we should also consider that Kamala has more money and a superior ground game. On the other hand though, she doesn't have a spouse promoting nude modeling experience. Plus, the sweeping narrative behind the 'Lucky Loser' who squandered his father's fortune.  Susanne Craig and Sam Stein join Tim Miller. show notes Susanne's new book about Trump, "Lucky Loser"

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We've got a double dip today. Up in part two will be Suzanne Craig, author of Lucky Loser, about I bet you can guess who, an investigative journalist in New York Times, the great Suzanne Craig. But first, my buddy Sam Stein, managing editor of The Bulwark. And he's managing it quite well. I don't know if you've been to thebulwark.com lately, but we've got a lot of good stuff. Make sure you're signed up.

Thebulwark.com slash free trial if you want to be a Bulwark Plus member. How are you doing, Sam? Oh, good. That's the first compliment you've paid me since I've come to The Bulwark. So this feels like a good start to the podcast. Thanks. Well, I've got to do it live. You know, I can't pump you up too much in person. You know, I'm going to make you work for it. It's been wonderful having you. I want to start

with, we have poll mania this morning. We woke up to poll mania. Oh my God, too much. Yeah. Amy Walter was on on Tuesday and Amy was, who I just bumped, I'm in DC right now. I just bumped into Amy Walter on the sidewalk. That's what happens the bull. It happens in D.C. We're everywhere. And we were just talking and, you know, her point on Tuesday, which I think is right, is that it's basically a 50-50 ratio. You can call it a 60-40 ratio if you want. But like, what's, if you're a data nerd, what's really the difference? And, you know, I press her on that a little bit. I'm a little bit more bullish than she is, I think, which is unusual for me.

But then these polls come out this morning and all my emotions start to get wrapped up in them. So let me, I'm going to run through them very fast. We have Marist has Harris plus five in michigan plus one in wisconsin and pennsylvania tied if you don't like that the new york times has pennsylvania plus four and the national tide and if you don't like that snm is it snm no f and m snm something else pennsylvania franklin and marshall yeah there you go thank. Thank you. Pennsylvania has Harris plus three. Okay.

Not SNF. Yeah, that's a different one. That's nice. Emerson, we don't like Emerson right now. Emerson has Trump plus two in Georgia and Wisconsin, plus one in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina tied. Harris plus one in Michigan. And the Washington Post has Pennsylvania tied.

And Signal has North Carolina tied. And the Maryland Senate race, Angela also broke 50, St. Larry Hogan 33. I just added that one in for Sarah Longwell. Sam, what's your main takeaway? How do you sum all that up? Don't get too emotionally tied to polls. I want to be emotionally tied, though. It's not healthy for you. I feel like you should not check the internet early in the morning.

It's like these things, what are we talking about here? A percentage point here, a percentage point there. How do you know which one's correct? I just feel like ultimately it's such a close race. I keep coming back to a couple things that are not in the polls, which is if you want to be closing

well down the stretch, you want to have a lot of money and you want to have a lot of organization. And which campaign has that? It's Harris's campaign. I mean, it's not momentum, debates, stuff like that. I saw an interesting thought on Twitter this morning. It's like, well, everyone's looking to see if this slight improvement that she's had since the debate is tied to her debate performance. Maybe.

But it could be the fact that she's just drowning him in ads and people are getting a ton of exposure to Harris that they've never gotten before. And that will continue from now on through November. So, you know, it's really impossible to know. What we do know is that she has more money. She has more on the ground operations. There probably will not be another debate. And so those are the main factors here. And I think in those, in that case, she's in a nice position. I don't think it's like a lock or anything, but she's in a nice position. I agree with that. For those reasons is why I was a little bit more bullish than Amy was. And also, I just think the pool of undecideds is more Harris-friendly. It's not completely Harris, it's not like 100%. But the types of people that are either undecided between the two or

undecided between showing up or not, I think Harris is a bigger pool to fish in there for the most part. Well, that's what Sarah was saying. Sarah Longwell has basically been on this train for a while, which is that this pool of undecided voters just needs to know what Harris is about, and they don't know her that well. And they know Trump. I mean, look at those polls from this morning. Again, we talked about this every time. Trump's at like 46, 46, 47, 48, 46. That dude is just capped. Really, Harris just can grow. That's where the money comes in.

If you can spend a lot of money advertising and so on and so forth, you can reach those undecided voters. I did a YouTube video on the abortion ad they did yesterday, which I just thought was so powerful. A lot of people missed that. I can see it on the YouTube feed. Just one more, just summing up the polls. Nate Cohn basically breaks it down with,

if you're just going to average out the good polls, she's about plus three in Wisconsin and Michigan and plus two in Pennsylvania and nationally. And that's the ballgame. What's your take on the Nates? We have a lot of Nates out there. There's a lot of people that are triggered by Nate Silver. I don't really understand why.

He's kind of a contrarian prick on Twitter, so I get why that rubs some people the wrong way. Who isn't? There's like a Nate conspiracy theory out there that's like Peter Thiel and the Russians are paying him. And he's betting on this stuff. I don't actually know what the conspiracy is.

I guess that it helps Trump for him to say that Trump has a better chance to win. I'm not sure that actually helps Trump because Nate is saying basically the same thing that the Harris campaign is saying. So I don't get that conspiracy. Nate Cohen, on the other hand, I think does a very good job and I have professional respect for him, but I remain triggered by the needle. I'm still, the needle still haunts my dreams. He's caused a lot of harm, that guy. Not deliberately, but he, you know, he inflicts emotional damage on a whole swath of the Upper

West Side of New York City. Yeah, my child came down the other night, had a nightmare, and came into my room, and I said, what was the problem? And she was like, no, no, no. She was like, it was a caterpillar. And I'm like, caterpillars aren't scary. She's like, it was a scary caterpillar. That's kind of howillars aren't scary. She's like, it was a scary caterpillar. That's kind of how I feel about the needle. I wake up about once a month and I'm like, it's the needle. The needle. And move towards Trump.

Basically summed up slightly for Harris, too close for comfort. Here's the one thing that jumped out at me at all these polls underneath. And it is a group that you and I know a little something about. College educated whites. What'd you say, Jews? Yeah, Jews. I know a lot about Jews from i know a little something about college educated whites what'd you say jews yeah jews i know a lot about jews from my time in george washington college educated whites gotcha college educated whites hello fellow college educated whites trump is down at 36 with them that's men and women yeah wow yeah i know the movement post-debate in the New York Times poll, at least, was significantly due to the Harris gains among college-educated whites. There was a group of our people that I think were maybe nervous about her, watched the debate, and were like, okay,

she's got this, and moved into her camp. So that is somewhat encouraging. There's another fact about college-educated whites I want to share. In Verona, New Jersey, which I know nothing about because I've never been there, but I know the demographics because I can Google. 80% white, 150K median income, 63% with college degrees. In 2020, Biden won this district 59 to 40. In a special election Tuesday night, the Democrat won 68 to 31, a nine point move, 18 point move really, in the Democrats' direction. So in the one hand, some people responded to that and they're like, great news for Democrats.

Me being rain cloud, I look at that and I'm like, am I in a bubble again? Is it just the college educated whites that are for Harris and I'm missing what's happening elsewhere in the world. Anyway, how do you respond to that data? It can be both, right? I feel like it could be both.

I too saw the tweet about the special election with that data and I was like, that's interesting. I've never really paid attention to that district. Hello, New Jersey 10 residents, we see you. Yeah, we love you. We definitely care. On the one hand, I like these special election results

because they are real-life examples of what elections can be and maybe foreshadow some larger elections. I know you're not supposed to read too much into them, but if you get enough data points, that's helpful. Through the past year or two, we've had a successive number of special elections that have really broken in the Democratic Party's favor. So that's interesting. Two is the college-educated stuff, that seems very true.

The real fault line has been education levels in this country. The partisan fault line has been education levels in this country ever since Trump burst onto the scene. That can work in two ways, though. I think the news yesterday that kind of shocked me and you, according to our Slack conversations, was the international teamsters deciding to not endorse. But it wasn't just that. It was the poll. I know there's some question about the methodology of the poll, but whatever. The poll showed that... Of their members. Of their members showed that they had gone from something like plus eight for Biden to minus 17

for Harris. And that, to me, is like plus eight for Biden to minus 17 for Harris. And that to me is like, whoa, white working class, predominantly white, not exclusively white, working class men who are not sold on her. And is that sort of the canary in the coal mine here? Is that the thing that Harris is really going to end up losing those marginal gains that Biden made? And we know that Trump's really invested in turning out those people. That's the game for him. So yeah, reason to be optimistic, reason to be pessimistic. There's just tons of data points. Yeah, that's just the thing that worries me. It's just that it's a bad trade. It's a good trade for Democrats in special elections and midterms, right? This trade of, just to stereotype, your median Teamster versus your median suburban Verona, New Jersey, 150,000 media income, college educated white.

The Verona, New Jersey person votes more often in these weird elections, right? But there's a bigger pool of the non-college. So it's not a great trade for the general election. And that's the thing that worries me a little bit. Okay, Trump rallied last night. I didn't get to watch it. I was on my plane to D.C. You watched it, though.

And I would like to hear. I want you to tell me everything. Isn't your job to just tune into every single rally? Isn't that why we pay you? I watch an insane amount of Donald Trump. I've watched too much ever since I started here. Real America's Voice. You have no

idea how many hours I've logged on Real America's Voice, but not last night. We had no internet on the flight. You'd be that guy who's watching with the screen. I had to read a book last night. I was reading Joan Did not last night we had no internet on the flight i'll give you be that guy who's watching with the screen i had to read a book last night i was reading joan diddy oh my god it was very refreshing actually i was like there's no internet on this flight amazing also what a contrast didion versus trump both great with words uh so the rally last night was like um i was talking to kaput about this on the youtube channel it's like funny to see him in his element a little

bit like he can go to these rallies where he clearly, I mean, they're his people. Obviously they love him, but he just feels a little bit uncomfortable in those settings. But Nassau County, New York is his people. He's a Queens guy. It's just outside of Queens. Yeah, Nassau County Republicans are his people. It's not

the Rome, Georgia Republicans. The Rome, Georgia Republicans, he's faking it a little bit. Yeah, he's not hawking the Georgia Republicans. The Rome, Georgia Republicans, he's faking it a little bit. Yeah, he's not the hawk in the Bible, as you can tell. His heart's not into it. But talking about the New York subways, yeah, he's into it. I remember when he did this rally in 2016, he was talking about all the guys in the crowd who probably slept in their car overnight to go play Bethpage Black, which is the famous golf course out there in Long Island.

And you knew when he was telling that anecdote, this guy gets those guys and vice versa. So the white working class New Yorker type, and he there in Long Island. You knew when he was telling that anecdote this guy gets those guys and vice versa. So the white working class New Yorker type, he was in his element. He was just bringing it. He made up this conversation with Melania where apparently she tells him, oh baby, you were on top of it last night and you were great. He's like, I'm talking about my speeches. And I was like, oh man,

too much. You were on top of it? Yeah, we can pull the audio. Sam, it's too early for this. I'm not pulling the audio. When does this podcast come out? The other thing he mentioned was he's going out to Springfield in Aurora. He's going to do this in two weeks.

So he says he's going to go to Springfield, Ohio to mend fences. It's going to be like a beer summit, kind of like Obama did with Gates. He's going to sit down with the Haitians and the Republican mayor of the town and Miss Sassy, the cat, they're all going to have a meeting together or is he going to go there? If Sassy showed up with Trump on the stage,

I'm pretty sure he's going to go to the, to demagogue. And then the last but not least was Rudy opened for him. And I was just like, Rudy is on another planet at this point. He's just screaming into the microphone. I have the Rudy sound. Let's listen to that. No more attacks! No more attacks!

No more! Stop it! If there's anybody behind it, I'll find them. I did it to the mafia. I can do it to them. If you're behind it, I'm looking at you and I'm going to get you. Hmm. It was very intense.

It was loud. Well, who is he going to get there? That's the assassin. Rudy is going to go to Rudy's doing kind of a born identity thing. Now a disbarred Rudy Giuliani with absolutely no liquid to do anything. Well, he's got some liquid going down the gullet. Different type of liquid. No finances is going to go and track down the assassins in their network, apparently. Hey, y'all. There was a period where at the end of a work day

I'd get home, we'd split a bottle of wine, or maybe I'd have a bourbon. you know the result of that is a little bit of sluggishness and especially as you get into your 40s the result is sluggishness and that's why maybe after a stressful day after a stressful day of streaming Donald Trump rallies the best answer is soul's new out of office thc gummies perfectly microdosed to get you blissed not blitzed this podcast is sponsored by soul soul's new out of office gummies are perfectly microdosed with hemp derived thc and cbd to give any day that chilling on the beach vibe until recently i didn't know you could buy thc products online like this and i bet

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I can't decide if I want to do funny first or angry. What do you want to do, funny or angry? What do you want to get first? You want to get angry first? Let's listen to J.D. Vance. This guy is running the most disgusting campaign I think that I've ever witnessed, and that is not hyperbole. Let's just listen to this.

Now, the media loves to say that the Haitian migrants, hundreds of thousands of them, by the way, 20,000 in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of them all across our country, they are here legally. And what they mean is that Kamala Harris used two separate programs, mass parole and temporary protective status. She used two programs to wave a wand and to say, we're not going to deport those people here well if kamala harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally i'm still going to call them an illegal alien fuck you jd vance like i'm still going to call these people an illegal alien just because because i don't agree with tps like what like his kids are mixed race i

just don't understand how he lives with himself. I just like, what would JD Vance do if somebody went up to him and was like, you know what, JD, I hear you that Usha came here legally, but I'm still going to call her an illegal alien because to me, whatever the system was, it wasn't right. And I'm freelancing and I think that she's an illegal alien. So that's what I'm going to call her. This one really sucks to watch, honestly.

It sucks because you know that the people who are on the receiving end of this are probably some of the most disadvantaged people on the globe. I mean, they come from a country, one of the most impoverished countries in the world that was hit with a devastating earthquake. They came to this country legally. They didn't sneak in. They came legally. They came looking for work. All they want is an opportunity. And for this person to use the stage he's been granted and the power that he has been bequeathed to stigmatize, to demagogue, to make their lives harder, not easier, really shows you something about both the priorities.

But also I would just add, and I know this is not a terribly unique insight, it's offensive to the Republican electorate that he plays down to this type of politics for them. He's made the calculation that they too want to stigmatize and demagogue and go after this Haitian community. And he believes it's a political winner. And it's just an offensive calculation to the electorate itself. So yes, it makes me angry, honestly. And it's un-American. It's like the fundamentally American story.

Right. Like, does the disadvantaged people come here? They followed the rules, the rules as they were when Joe Biden was president. You can say you disagree with the rules, you're going to change the rules. I would also disagree with that. You can say, hey, when we're in there, we're not going to let anybody that's suffering from violence into this country. We're not going to do TPS anymore.

Okay. Also, he's created a straw man, too, where if you're for treating this community with dignity and offering help to them, that therefore you are against the people of Springfield. They are the people of Springfield now, too. They are, who were there before the Haitian community arrived.

And I just think that's a real idiotic dichotomy. You can be for both of these people. You don't have to be for one or the other, but he has turned them against each other. And these are his constituents. I mean, keep that in mind. These are his constituents that he's turned against each other, all for political opportunism.

Also, just as a matter of fact, Kamala Harris was the vice president. She didn't waive any wands. Just as a factual matter, it's also wrong. He fucking sucks. I don't know that I've had a personal disdain for a candidate the degree of J.D. Vance ever, actually. So it's hard for me to get past. It's weird. Yeah, I've been trying to think of a figure who's had this kind of trajectory in recent times. And it's hard to think of someone. This isn't Palin. Palin came on the scene and we were like, who is this person? I challenge people to go listen to Sarah Palin interviews and compare them to J.D. Vance interviews.

She's downright humane. She's not prepared, but her rhetoric is like she's trying to appeal to John McCain. Anyway, I already did this twice this week. I just, he drives me so crazy. Let's laugh a little bit more. Trump on Gutfeld last night. Let's listen to Donald Trump on Gutfeld, exclamation point, the comedy show on Fox News, which I also suffer through for you. And they didn't correct her once,

and they corrected me everything I said practically, I think nine times or 11 times. And the audience was absolutely, they went crazy. And the real, I thought it was, I walked off, I said, that was a great debate. I loved it. You know, you got a lot of people watching. I guess we had 75 million people watching, something like that.

And you have to do well. You can't do badly. The audience went crazy. Yes. What audience went crazy? Isn't it scary? Is he in a cheering section in his brain? There was no audience.

Women were fainting. Men were crying. What is happening there? Do you think that he, is this just a narcissistic sociopath? What is happening? I've come to some, not complete conviction, but I've concluded that he's got these tics in that he, no matter the story,

he'll be like, people are going crazy, or he'll throw out 20%, and then he'll always every sentence one, and make America great again. He's got these routines, and there's these rhetorical tics that he relies on. And he even kind of

admitted it the other day, where he was talking about how everyone accuses him of rambling, but he puts the dots together. And he even kind of admitted it the other day where he was talking about how everyone accuses him of rambling, but he puts the dots together and he said, if people are leaving my rally, I'll just say, and make America great again and they'll come right back in. So he sort of knows it. I don't know. I think we could use a

professional therapist, though. There's something deeply... Narcissistic? Yeah. There's some deep issues you've got to work through if one of your tics is, and people were cheering for me. You don't do that in the morning? I look in the mirror in the morning, I'm like, and people were cheering for me. And people were cheering for me and Sam.

Guys, I'm going to say this when I'm on this panel this afternoon. And me and Sam taped this podcast this morning, and it was so great. And the audience was cheering for us. The audience was going crazy. You could hear it. You could hear them chanting our name. All right. I saved one last thing for you. Just a little palate cleanser. I didn't tell you it was coming. Oh, good. Is it RFK? It's not RFK. We do have a little special thing you and I with RFK. Next time, next time we'll do a whole segment on RFK, but this is something that's a little bit better than that. Let's listen. Why do I stand proudly

behind my nude modeling work? The more pressing question is, why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human forum in a fashion photo shoot? Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty

of the human body? Throughout history, master artists have revered the human shape, evoking profound emotions and admiration. We should honor our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art

as a powerful means of self-expression. Do we need to listen to it again? You're laughing pretty loud. I don't want to. Do you want to hear it again? I don't want to. Let's just play five more seconds.

Jason, put it back on for five more seconds. I want to hear five more seconds of it. Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work? The more pressing question is... This came out today. This came out today. Or yesterday, I guess. Yesterday.

50 days from the election. And the first lady to be wannabe put out a video about her nude modeling work. And by the way, she looks great. She looks great. I agree with that. It's the messaging and kind of the timing I find interesting. I have no issue. I think she should do nude modeling work now.

Whatever makes her happy, I support that. I'm pro. I am body positive over here. This is a Borg podcast. This is body positive. We do not kink shame. It's a safe space. Politically speaking, it's an interesting question.

Did they ran that by Susie Wiles on La Savita? It's like, hey, we're leaking out a little bit from the book here. We're going to do the nude modeling section. Well, like Melania, I too celebrate my naked form. Does Mrs. Stein celebrate your naked form still, or has that passed? This is a kid's podcast. Okay, sorry. Let's not go in there.

Come on. The thing about the audio, you can't see it, but there's a video component to it. This is the thing that kind of struck me was i was watching it i was like she's going through all these like famous artistic depictions of the naked body and there's like the michelangelo david there i'm like did she just compare her like nude shoots to the david i guess we are celebrating the human form and all of its variations but i just don't think maxim magazine and the David are on the same plane. None of the video pictures were full-bodied people.

It was not actually celebrating all of the human form. It was comparing herself to the most pristine human forms in world history. All these sculptures with rock-hard abs. That's not real. Let's be honest, Melania. Maybe this was part of the youth mail outreach. That's the only logical explanation. I will say 46 days from the election and

you're wondering, Doug Emhoff's out there talking about anti-Semitism and going to Texas and trying to flip Florida and she's like, the nude body needs to be celebrated. Which one has got more appeal? I think she's going to actually win this one, though. I think this will get some votes.

From a subset of the electorate. It's something. Something's happening there. Sam Stein, I'm glad we could listen to that together. I hope everyone that was listening to the carpool line enjoyed thinking about Sam's form. And we'll be seeing him back here soon, up next, my friend Suzanne Craig.

All right, we are back with Suzanne Craig, investigative reporter at the New York Times. She's co-author of the brand new book, Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Hey, Suzanne, how are you doing? Good. How are you? You've been working on this thing for a while. I was paging through it yesterday, and man, this is not one of those Donald Trump books. It's like Orange Man Bad, which he is, 200 pages, and we're out. This is deep, deep research about his finances. And so I just kind of want to hear from you the origin story,

why you felt like this was sort of worth the effort to really dig through his financials over the course of decades. Right. I should have started by saying I'm a bit tired because I've been at this for coming on nine, ten years now. This all started, the thing I love about reporting, and maybe I hate it some days, we talk about that, but you wake up in the morning, you don't really know what you're going to do. Something happens and you're sort of dispatched to it. And what happened to me in 2015 and what got both myself and Russ Butner, my colleague who wrote the book with me is Donald Trump was running for president.

Nobody at that point suspected he would stay in the race. But he was in early 2016, was having some success in early 2016 in the primaries. I remember. I got the call from the boss saying, hey, he could be out in a couple months, but we'd like you to come back. I was running the City Hall Bureau for the Times. I had just started. And can you do one big story, kind of looking at what he owns in New York, what he doesn't own, you know, his names on buildings, and people didn't know if he owned that. And sort of what sort of player is he in New York? So I said, sure. And I did that story. And then Donald Trump kept winning. And I never went back

to City Hall. and I'm still writing about the guy so that's like nine years of crazy town and the same thing happened to us the reason it's important you know back then I just put people back then he started by saying I'm in a release my tax returns and that was important because he's got a complicated business empire. He was running for president and people want to know what influences are on the guy. You know, who's pulling the strings behind the curtain and what do his finances look like? So he had said he was going to release his tax returns. Well, big surprise, he lied about that.

He didn't release his tax returns. And in 2016, there was, in particular, there was just a massive search on for a lot of things about Donald Trump because he came from nowhere in politics to running for president. So, so much was not known about him. But my corner of the world, and it was a big one, was his finances. And everybody was looking for his tax returns. We were tearing through courthouses and anywhere you can imagine, regulatory filings. And then I had an incredible thing happen to me in September of 2016, which was I went to my mailbox one afternoon, Friday afternoon,

and I love mail. And so I was excited. I hate mail. This story is inspiring me because I hate going into my mailbox. There's always bills, you know, tickets, camera tickets. Magazines you don't want to read. But I always check it. I don't know.

It's just a thing. And there was a Manila envelope addressed to me when I opened it. And inside was what looked like, we weren't sure, three pages of Donald Trump's 1995 tax returns and I was like well this is great if it's true you know we looked at the tax return and he had what was shocking about it was a billion dollars in accumulated losses for 1995 like this successful billionaire guy who was running on that in 1995 his losses had looked like they did you know if it was true it clocked a billion dollars and it was true we confirmed the

tax return took us working around the clock for 10 days but we got that to press and that was kind of the first big what was the first big story about anybody had got about his taxes and that sort of set us on a journey for the next however many years where we did a lot more on Fred Trump and what he inherited from his father, how he enhanced it with tax fraud. This was cool. It went a great story. And we were lucky enough to have won a Pulitzer with that. And then we got 20 plus years of his corporate and personal tax returns in 2020. All of that gave us this incredible, I think, skeleton for a story.

But Russ and I, we wanted to tell the sweeping narrative that we saw in those numbers, a story about family and power struggles and about Donald's business career, about how he was born into this fortune, got another fortune from Mark Burnett for hosting The Apprentice, and how that was structured. And then how the loser in him, he put all of that money, he invested it in himself, and that he invested it in businesses that he didn't run very well. And we could see through his taxes, most of them lost money. So I was a liberal arts major. My dad wanted me to go to business school and I didn't listen to him. So, okay. How do you lose 900 million in a year and also have a plane? Can you explain to me how he was structuring this? How did it even work? Yeah, no, those were

accumulated losses. His casinos were losing huge amounts of money, but he was also borrowing money. And the banks were willing to loan him money, and they kept doing it. And part of the magic of the casinos, it was structured within a public corporation. But he would buy the accoutrements of wealth. It's a really good observation. And he looked wealthy, and the banks kept betting on him.

He bought planes and yachts. This is how he got on like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Like they just loved, they loved it because he had all these toys that they could film. And then it all came crashing down at one point. And then he sold The Apprentice on this, you know, that he'd come back from, from this wreckage. But yeah, so talk about that period, because that's what I don't quite understand, right? Like I get the apprentice money. But after the failures, after the bankruptcies, he has his story, right? Which is whatever rebuilding, comeback, famous man, what does the numbers show? Like, how did he live his lifestyle in the bankruptcy period? He was sort of almost too big to fail. So there was sort of a

structured plan for him coming out of that. And then he actually, you know, it's interesting that period before The Apprentice, he kept up the appearances, and there was a lot of big talk. But he wasn't, you know, he was pretty stagnant at that point, he was building a couple projects included, he started the tower in Chicago that he built. That was his last construction project. That wasn't doing well. And he, in 2003, 2004 era, he structured or engineered the sale of his father's empire. His father died in 1999. Fred wanted to keep that in the family, but Donald convinced his siblings to sell.

And he got, you know, almost $200 million from that. I think around $177 million from that. He always is lucky. It's an apt title. He found a wellspring of money. But he was trying to get, what was interesting about that period that Russ and I found, is he was trying to get licensing deals during that period and other things to bring in cash because he still had, you know, the Trump name,

it was all over the buildings. There was a value he saw in that. And he was really having trouble. He was not cutting deals at all with the, on the licensing side. And then the apprentice came around and it turned everything around. Mark Burnett shakes my fist. How Mark structured that it still is one of the craziest

things that we found once we got into the reporting on this because you think tv host right like how much could a tv host make he was being paid and there's 50 000 an episode like this is good money but it's not life-changing magic money but what what happened which was incredible and we were able to get not only his taxes through the reporting in the book i got a lot of the financials of the actual television show okay and what mark did which was incredible was it was incredible let me premise that for donald trump and for mark burnett they both made a huge amount of money out of nbc was so keen to lock not donald trump down but mark burnett down on the apprentice because he was red hot at that point coming off of um survivor the reality tv show that was just a monster hit and nbc really wanted to get into the reality TV space. So Jeff Zucker was involved, he goes on to

be the head of CNN and, you know, another big figure in Donald Trump's life. He at that point, signed an agreement with Mark Burnett on The Apprentice where NBC would retain the money from the commercials, which is really good money. But Mark Burnett would get the product placement money. And what that means is, you know, on Survivor, if there was a competition between the two teams and they were fighting over a bag of Doritos, Doritos would pay or whoever owns Doritos, the potato chip maker. And Mark Burnett would keep that money.

So at that point, that meant something. But NBC was willing to let it go because they didn't see it as sort of this big moneymaker. And then The Apprentice comes on the first year. Pretty much there wasn't a lot of product placement. They had like a NetJets type, Marquee Jets came on and they got some advertising, but they just agreed to fly the contestants from the show somewhere. It wasn't like they were paying a lot to be on the show. But after the first year, Madison Avenue loved the show.

And all of a sudden, all these corporations are clamoring to get on the show because it's essentially a 40, 45-minute ad for their product. Like if a toothpaste company comes on and the two teams are battling to create an ad campaign for the toothpaste company, that's 45 minutes of... That's an ad for the toothpaste. That's an advertisement for the toothpaste company. And we saw the second, third, fourth season, companies were paying up to $4 million, $4 or $5 million to be on the show. And Mark Burnett agreed to give half of the product placement money to Donald Trump. So he got a check every time for half of whatever that company was paying. Mark Burnett was sitting over there creating TV magic, including rehabilitating Donald Trump's image. And like Donald Trump was the host. So he didn't have anything to do with that. He would show up for the boardroom scene, if you've seen the show, meet the contestants,

and walk away with half of all the product placement money. And then he got licensing deals off of it, right, with all these companies, like he was separately doing a ton of licensing deals. While you mentioned Survivor, I should mention, you know, some breaking Survivor news that might be of interest to some of our audience fellow podcast host john love it lost in the very first episode of survivor on last night's show tough break to john love it happy trails to you but glad you're back in the podcast thanks for that that was great we love them i just had to tease them you mentioned survivor and so i was like oh i feel like we need to tease john a little bit it was a good try it was a good try one episode's pretty good so the mark bernadette I just had to tease him. You mentioned Survivor. And so I was like, oh, I feel like we need to tease John a little bit. It was a good try.

It was a good try. One episode's pretty good. So the Mark Bernadette is kind of the second inheritance that Donald Trump gets, kind of a second daddy figure. The first one was a point of contention at the debate. And so I want to play what Kamala Harris and Donald Trump said at the debate about his inheritance and then have you, since you've actually seen the data, be our podcast fact checker.

Let's listen. As it relates to my values, let me tell you, I grew up a middle-class kid raised by a hardworking mother who worked and saved and was able to buy our first home when I was a teenager. The values I bring to the importance of home ownership, knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times. It's a value that I bring to my work to say we are going to work with the private sector and home builders to increase 3 million homes, increase by 3 million homes by the end of my first term. First of all, I wasn't given $400 million. I wish I was.

My father was a Brooklyn builder, Brooklyn Queens, and a great father, and I learned a lot from him. But I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction, and I built it into many, many billions of dollars, many, many billions. All right, Suzanne. So what is the truth of this? This is something that he's been saying. He just gets a little bit of help, and he's been saying this for years now. And then she drops the $400 million figure, which I guess is what matches what your reporting showed. So talk to us about how you came to that figure. Right. And we did a lot of work to get to that figure. It was in that 2018 story that I mentioned. We were able to get to that figure because as part of the reporting for that story, Mary Trump, who is Donald Trump's niece, provided us with more than 100,000 pages of documents that, I mean, just opened up a door that we never thought we would, a room we would

ever get into, into Fred Trump's wealth. And she had all this information. It's interesting, when we started on that story, and we wanted to understand more about Fred Trump when we started on that story that ran in 2018. It ultimately showed he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars and it was enhanced through tax fraud. But it started with a simple question was, we knew who Fred Trump was, but we really didn't. And Donald Trump had been saying he was some kind of Mickey Mouse outer borough builder for a long time. He said it was a small builder and he inherited a million dollars. And we just started looking first into the property records in New York City just to understand what he owned. It's great. There's a system, it's a public system,

and you can put in someone's name and see what they owned. And we started just basically to build a map of everything. And in doing that, Mary Trump's name and her brother's name, a lot of other names came up, and we just started building a big source list. But Mary Trump and Fred Trump, her brother, had owned some of the properties that we were bumping up against. And we realized, and it had been written about, she was in litigation with Donald Trump at one point, and it was over her grandfather's estate. We knew

importantly that that litigation had gone to Discovery. And Discovery is like kind of the magic reporter word. So we knew there was something there. We thought there would be some records. We didn't really know how much. We'd done some digging around. And I just decided one day, it was important enough, we didn't want to call. I wanted to go to her door I mean she was pretty apprehensive at first about talking to me but you know we kind of kept an open line and eventually she sat down with me and she said I have really not any idea what's in the litigation but the boxes should still be over at the lawyer's office that I hired why don't I call him and I'll go and get everything for you and the the short of it is she did. She went and rented a van and it was great. And she loaded it up and came back to her house. And I met her there with my colleagues who were working on the

story. And we transported all of the information to kind of this is crazy, the secret locked room at the New York times and starting digging through it all all it took us a year or more to get through it but we saw through that do you have good snacks in that room or like a good was the temperature control we did we had some scotch and uh we didn't we we didn't even let the cleaners in so we had to clean it but that was fine we were you know we sort of had some rules it's kind of a reality show of its own sort of you know it's like a big brother situation you guys the reporters in a room with Donald Trump's attacks. And so the short of it then, you get to the $400 million, it's just this combo of the buildings.

So it's not all cash, right? It's like the buildings and then some of what Mary and Fred, we had Fred Jr. on the pod, and sort of what they got schemed out of. And that is really where the number comes from. Right, and we can see how much it was worth because he sold it a few years later and then some of this becomes public records so you sort of can see how much he got right you know through it all but we were able to trace it through the documents through other public records and put it all together and his

claim that he got a small loan you know i think he's come to believe it and and he just keeps repeating it and it was even bigger because it was a kind of true at the beginning is one of those things where it was like at the very beginning it was kind of true and then his dad not really yeah well he got some loans from his dad some of them he didn't pay back but that million dollar loan we actually looked into it and it never existed like he got loans some of them you know like i said weren't paid back but no i, he got a ton of money and he's still... So George Costanza situation, like if you believe it, it becomes true type of thing with Trump. Right. And that's Donald Trump's magic, right? A lie repeated over and over, he hopes becomes fact. And he's still, you know, Starrett City is the public housing project that Fred Trump owned a piece of that recently paid out money for Donald Trump.

He continues to get money from the smart investments his father made. project that Fred Trump owned a piece of that recently paid out money for Donald Trump. He continues to get money from the smart investments his father made. Like, you know, it's still going on. There's no, there's no small time builder here. There's no, oh, I just got a small loan and it was all me. Donald Trump, he got so much money from his father, but he also got contacts from his father. His father co-signed loans for him. What drives me crazy about it is, why don't just acknowledge that your dad was a great builder? I don't know. Just let it go, man. It has to be him. It's all got to be him. Megalomania. You also got into a little bit of the stormy and some of the finances around that. What have you found out about the stormy

situation? We did. Actually, it was fun. it wasn't actually anything financial but we you know we we called a ton of people and i called this was came from an unexpected source i i was talking to a fellow over in the uk he was uh his name's neil hobday he's a great guy and he had been involved in the project management of some of the golf courses that donald trump has built. So most of his interaction with Donald Trump was overseas, but occasionally he'd come to HQ in New York to visit the Trump Tower and see Allen Weisselberg and Donald Trump. And he came one day, flew over in February of 2007, which we came to learn through Stormy Daniels' book and through the trial that just happened that Stormy Daniels book and through the trial that just happened that Stormy Daniels had it was at Trump Tower at that time so he comes in for a meeting and he he's

walking in to see Donald Trump and there's this blonde haired kind of very well endowed woman in the office talking to Donald Trump he doesn't know who it is but he comes into the office says hello to the woman and she says goodbye and sort of leaves. And Donald Trump's all excited. And he's holding a pack of playing cards. And on the playing cards, on the front of them are all pictures of this woman. She's naked in various sexual positions. And he's all excited, showing Neil these playing cards. And then he's like, oh, yeah, look at this. And this woman, she was here because she was pitching me on a pornographic evangelical television program. And Neil's just like, what the hell is going on here?

And then they started on with their conversation. But Neil was telling me about this. And he goes, I realized later the woman was Stormy Daniels. And then we got a hold of Stormy Daniels. And she's like, I totally remember that. And I remember the playing cards. i gave them to donald like it was just this crazy story that goes to like how batshit donald trump's life was during this period you know during that period in particular but kind of all the time you know you laugh and in 2007 that seems like a ridiculous

pitch a pornographic evangelical television show it feels like a you know contradiction in terms but now in 2024 they were ahead of the game maybe i bet that would have crushed i don't know it seems like you know i mean evangelism is more of like a like a lifestyle brand now you know right so you can add a little pornography on top of it if you're gonna have trump as the as your david yeah it sounds less crazy today, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. What else?

Anything else? You're so deep. You spent a year there. You're going through all this stuff. Do you have any other favorite kind of anecdotes, favorite little factoids about the Trump business that jumped out at you? You know, there's one that I just, I really like it. It's an apprentice anecdote.

And it's, again, it just sort of goes to Donald Trump and the ego that he developed during this period. And just to premise that just, this is another story before I tell the main story, but even during the filming of The Apprentice, you know how you have, you put an X where people are supposed to stand when you're on a TV set. He would insist that there was a T. We actually have photos of this. Somebody on the show

showed us because they they kept it because it was so crazy so one of the stories that that we heard we heard so many stories from i phoned all the marketing officers from every company that appeared on the show to talk to them about their interactions with donald trump because some of them were insulted on air by him and i was like, these guys have got to just have great stories and a lot, nobody called them. So it was great. And one of the ones was, so QVC is the shopping network and they did an episode on The Apprentice. And then after this, because Donald Trump's always cutting side deals, he got a deal where he could come out to QVC to sell whatever his latest book was at the time. And so he has to go out to QVC to sell whatever his latest book was at the time. And so he has to go out to QVC to their campus in Pennsylvania. And normally when people, when

celebrities come in, because a lot of celebrities go out there to hawk stuff, they fly into Brandywine Airport. Well, Donald Trump didn't want to do that. So the chief marketing officer and the people from Mark Burnett show, they agreed to create some makeshift helicopter landing pad in the big field that's at QVC. And so they go out there that day and they're waiting for Donald Trump to come and they see the helicopter and it's descending down and it's about to land not far from where it's supposed to land. All of a sudden it redirects and it lands in the middle of the employee parking lot and stones go flying everywhere. They hit cars. There was insurance claims filed because of this. And he lands, he gets out.

And Dan Gill, one of the people who was working for Mark Burnett, looks at Donald Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, and says, Keithith what just happened they were furious there's a lot of words i don't want to repeat that were said i'm sure then donald trump covered everybody paid for all the you know kind of insurance yeah right right everything all the damage yeah exactly yeah yeah he was very concerned and he and and the comment came back donald trump didn't want to get his shoes muddy oh my god so he just landed in the employee parking lot

what trash person um there's so much there there's so much in the book you kind of just i mean it's it's a narrative you can do the beginning of the end you can also just page through it and just like read great these crazy anecdotes like this from the various phases of his life of losing and debauchery and bankruptcy so So the book is Lucky Loser. Hopefully, hopefully two months from now, we have the loser and not the luck. And hopefully the luck is ours. But we'll see how it goes.

Suzanne Craig, thanks. Thanks so much for coming on the Borg podcast. We'll see you around 30 Rock soon, I'm sure. And we'll do it again soon. Appreciate all the work you put in on this. Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow for the Friday weekend edition of the Borg podcast. see y'all then peace like the legend of the phoenix all ends with beginnings

what keeps the planet standing uh the force from the beginning We've come too far To give up who we are So let's raise the bar And our cause to the stars She's up all night to the sun I'm up all night to get some She's up all night to the sun. I'm up all night to get sun. She's up all night for good fun. I'm up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to the sun. We're up all night to get sun. We're up all night for good fun. We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky. We're up all night to get lucky we're up all night to get lucky we're up all night to get lucky the board podcast is produced by katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by jason brown