The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender

Episode Date: July 24, 2021

Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender Michael C. Bender, senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, presents a deeply reported account of the 2020 presidential campaign that details how Donald J. Trump became the first incumbent in three decades to lose reelection—and the only one whose defeat culminated in a violent insurrection. Beginning with President Trump’s first impeachment and ending with his second, FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION chronicles the inside-the-room deliberations between Trump and his campaign team as they opened 2020 with a sleek political operation built to harness a surge of momentum from a bullish economy, a unified Republican Party, and a string of domestic and foreign policy successes—only to watch everything unravel when fortunes suddenly turned. With first-rate sourcing cultivated from five years of covering Trump in the White House and both of his campaigns, Bender brings readers inside the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and into the front row of the movement’s signature mega-rallies for the story of an epic election-year convergence of COVID, economic collapse, and civil rights upheaval—and an unorthodox president’s attempt to battle it all. Fresh interviews with Trump, key campaign advisers, and senior administration officials are paired with an exclusive collection of internal campaign memos, emails, and text messages for scores of never-before-reported details about the campaign. FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION is the inside story of how Trump lost, and the definitive account of his final year in office that draws a straight line from the president’s repeated insistence that he would never lose to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol that imperiled one of his most loyal lieutenants—his own vice president.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here for thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.

Hey, coming to you here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. We've got an amazing guest you've been probably seeing all over the news waves, blowing up all these incredible stories about his amazing book. Frankly, we did win this election, The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael C. Bender. We're going to have him on the show. But be sure to subscribe at YouTube.com, Forge Has Chris Voss. You can see all the wonderful videos we have over there of interviews of all the most brilliant authors that are always on the show.

You can go to Goodreads.com, Forge Has Chris Voss. See what we're reading we have over there of interviews of all the most brilliant authors that are always on the show you go to goodreads.com forward slash chris voss see we're reading and reviewing over there see all the groups you have on facebook twitter instagram linkedin tiktok all the place where all those kids are doing all that stuff on this social media things and refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives we're going to be talking to him today about his amazing book and insights and some of the interviews that he did for the book. But let me tell you about him first real quickly. Michael C. Bender, he covers the White House for the Wall Street Journal. Before joining the journal in 2016, he was a senior writer for Bloomberg Politics in Washington. Mr. Bender spent the first 15 years of his career at newspapers in Ohio, Colorado, and Florida.

He's a Cleveland native and graduate of The Ohio State University. He lives in Washington with his wife and two daughters. And what do you know? We have him on the show today. Welcome to the show, Michael. How are you? Thanks for having me. Awesome.

And congratulations on the book. It just came out, I think, what was it, July 13th. This baby just launched 2021. It's been all over the airwaves. Give us your plugs where people can find you on the interweb, find out more about you and order up this fine book. It is. I appreciate that. I think this is the one book here. There's a whole pantheon of Trump books, right? Going back decades and decades. I think this is the only one to date and will be this year that comes at Trump three different ways.

I know a whole slew of inside the room details from the White House. I have under the hood exclusive memos, text messages, more fly on the wall scenes from inside the $2 billion campaign. And then the third thing that I think that makes this particularly unique and that I'm most proud of is I effectively embedded with some of Trump's most hardcore supporters for two years to describe why they come back time and time again to these Trump rallies, 30, 40, and not kidding, 50, 60 rallies these folks go to. What it is about themselves and about Trump that keeps them coming back. That is amazing. Now you interviewed the president and a lot of other people. Tell us how many people that was and some of the interviews you did with Trump.

Yep. The book is a result of more than 150 interviews with Trump. Not all Trump. My God, help me. Trump, his senior aides in the White House, campaign officials, Republican Party officials, former aides and advisors, friends, family members, extended family members, all who would have a way into, would have firsthand knowledge of some of these moments through 2020. And again, and these conversations and scenes are recreated with, through these interviews, as well as private text messages, emails that folks shared with me in the reporting process here. And a lot of people throw stuff at books like this because they're like, this is the thing. But you interviewed Donald Trump several times, at least twice, I think.

Yeah, exactly. I've been a journalist for two dozen years, Chris. I've covered nightcops, school boards, county commissions, state legislatures in Ohio and Colorado and Florida. And I brought the rigorous editing process and reporting process to this book. There's nothing in here that is based on a single source, right? The conversations I recreate, yes, I write about them and people to feel like they're in the room and it's like the movie type atmosphere, but I'm not, I don't rely on any single person's word for any of these details. These are scenes that multiple people were in the room for and verified for me. Yeah. So give us some, there's like a whole dearth of salacious stuff that's been put out.

This is the tip of the iceberg of what's in the book. Give us some of your favorites that you like. Thanks. I appreciate that. We've been rolling out scoops of from this book since, your favorite scoop is your favorite kid, right? I have a favorite kid, but I'm not going to tell you which one. No, I'm just kidding. Our first one was back on June 1st, right? The book came out July 13th. Our first scoop from the book came out on June 1, which was that Sean Hannity had written a campaign ad for Trump in the final days of the race and not just had written it, but that it aired exclusively on his shelf during the last two weeks, which again, to me was a lens into this campaign and Trump himself, that he has so many voices around him. He's listening to so many people and taking

advice from so many people that the people he's actually paying to write ads are trumped by, so to speak, by a media personality. And not only that, but they're spending millions of dollars on this ad in the final weeks on Hannity's show, which is watched basically exclusively by Trump voters. Like how much money was wasted there? But then there's a lot more, the ones the book has become more well-known for now are Trump telling Hitler, or excuse me, Trump telling John Kelly that Hitler did some good things,

Trump wanting to shoot Americans, telling his military and defense team and other senior White House officials, law enforcement officials, that he wants a protest, that George Floyd protesters shot in the leg, shot in the foot, their skulls cracked, not a one-off, but repeatedly. And one of my favorite scenes in the book is during this time, again, this is June of 2020, which I think is where the wheels start to come off for Trump ultimately. But he's trying to get, he wants uniformed, active duty military on the streets of American cities. And it falls to Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Staff Chairman, Bill Barr, the Attorney General, Mark has for the Defense Secretary to tell him no. But in the heated back and forth, Mark Milley in the Oval Office very calmly owns the room when he points to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln over the president's shoulder and points to it and says, that man, Mr. President, had an insurrection. What we have is a protest, which was indicative to me of him needing to, all of the kind of

historical, the context that Trump doesn't really bring to some of these decisions. And Milley was trying to not just tell him no, but no, here's why. No, here's the reasons why, here's the context why this would be the wrong thing. Yeah, it was quite shocking. And the way you portray it in the book, he brings up Abraham Lincoln and they were trying this thing in Portland, I think it was, where they were surrounding the courthouse. And I was like, if this expands across the country, this is almost like third world sort of authoritarian rule here. It's crazy. behind the scenes in order to pacify Trump for the moment, who repeatedly throughout the summer wants to bring in the 81st Airborne into D.C., into the nation's capital, into Seattle, into Portland. And again, it falls to these cabinet members to say, the National Guard

is specifically trained for these kinds of things. They're a quasi-law enforcement agency that is specifically trained for domestic situations and peaceful protests. The folks you want to bring in from Fort Bragg are 20 to 25 year old kids who are trained to kill. They're trained to kill and take land. Right. And that's a dangerous situation by injecting them into otherwise mostly peaceful protests.

And you talk about Lafayette Square in your book, too, as an extension of that. And where it almost seems like we hit rock bottom from your insight. And I want to ask you about Lafayette Square after this. But in your insight, if these guys had been there, General Milley, Barr and some other people that were letting him do certain things, but not all of them, if he would have had a fully compliant cabinet, would we be still having a democracy at this point? It's a good question of kind of what would have happened. And I've gained this out with other people as well around Trump. And there's no clear answer on it. There's no kind of one mind of it.

One of the reactions I get from, again, from people who have worked with Trump and around him to that is that there's not a lot of follow through with Trump. Right. worked with Trump and around him to that is that there's not a lot of follow through with Trump, right? So if he wanted to have had a coup, right, or if he had wanted to bring in the military, he might not have been able to actually pull it off. I guess it's a better question of if he had someone who is actually an enforcer who knew the ins and outs of the military, like a Mark Milley did, or the Justice Department, like Barr, what might have happened then? And yeah, it's a pretty chilling question. And I know one that people around Trump were pondering when I was reporting this book and considering about how that was what was news to me and what was shocking to me in the reporting here of how dangerous the people in the room with Trump thought he'd become by the end of 2020 and his desperation to hold on to power.

So was it that loss or the feeling of the potential loss that was driving him to that point where it was like, we need to do whatever we can? I imagine COVID from your reporting was an aspect of that too. Yeah, I think so. It's the loss, which is he's put so much into his brand as a winner. He'd been telling us for years, since 2015, 2016, that the only way he would ever lose an election was by fraud. And then he gets into office and tells us that he's, that there's no other politicians should be trusted, that the courts are not correct, that he'll always be acquitted, that he'll never fade away.

Like it's this repeated attempt to impose his own reality. The protests on COVID and on the election result that at some point, again, to bring it back to your last question, there are people very close to Trump who don't know whether or not Trump really actually thinks he won the election or whether this is just all a bit. Wow. I've had friends that are narcissists and pathological liars and they tell the stories over and over. Trump does to a point they do believe them. And sometimes I would sit down with my friends and I'd be like, do you, are we still in reality here? Are you, are you still off the farm or where are you really? And it's really hard to tell. So one of the stories from your book is Trump comes down with COVID before the rest of us ever found out about it. If you share a little bit about that. Yeah, this was one of the stories from your book is Trump comes down with COVID before the rest of us ever found out about it.

If you share a little bit about that. Yeah, this was one of the hardest scenes and moments to report for this book is the day he test positive the administration is that Trump and other people in the White House had mostly been affected, got infected by what Fauci called a super spreader event, which was Amy Coney Barrett nomination for Supreme Court justice. I think Debbie Birx thinks that there may have been like multiple ways in by that point, but that was the next day. Within a couple of days is the Cleveland debate where he has effectively a meltdown on stage and which is actually the single moment I think he. She's that sick and has the symptoms that by then we're all familiar with. He quarantines her on the plane and she tests positive the next morning. Then this is where we still really don't know what happened. There's no one closer to Trump than Hope Hicks. She's one of a couple of people who are constantly at his side. If there's any one person who's going to turn up positive, whose positive test would immediately set off alarm bells or should have set off alarm bells

around Trump, it's hope. And yet what we know from the public version of this is that Trump doesn't test positive until later that night. And the new reporting I have in this book was that he tested positive that morning and didn't believe it. Wow. And partly he reason he didn't believe it was he had some false positives during the year. So false positive test during the year, which is also something we did not know about. And then takes another test, it turns negative. And then he gets on Air Force One and goes to Bedminster for a fundraiser. This is so it goes to the this question of Trump is not just I mean, he would become violent and his tendencies on the Floyd protests. But he's when it comes to covid, he's he's reckless with his own health. He's reckless with the health of the people around him and ultimately the public health on this issue. I should just button up here that that story about him testing positive earlier in the morning is also there are other senior officials at the White House who didn't

think that was correct, that various senior people who should have been alerted in that in that sort of scenario who were not. And so there is some debate internally about what actually happened that day. But at the which I outlined in the book, is almost more important than what happened to Trump. The fact that senior people around Trump, the chief of staff, the director of operations, Trump himself, the vice president, the campaign manager, don't know exactly when his first positive test was, if he tested that day, and all have different versions of what happened. It tells a lot about this administration and explains why they struggled to address the pandemic,

why they struggled to address the protests. Two things that are not Trump's fault. Trump didn't start the pandemic. Trump didn't kill George Floyd. Those protests were not about Trump initially. And then ultimately, you know, why he loses is, I think this is one of the more telling anecdotes in the book. That's one question I have for you.

If COVID did not happen and George Floyd may have not happened or may have happened, if those two events hadn't happened, would we be looking at a second term for that, man? Do you think, in your opinion? If COVID. And Michael, the Floyd killing hadn't happened. Again, it's a good question. One that I've posted to people around Trump. And I'll never forget asking one person in particular who had served in a senior role, very senior role, who didn't even hesitate when I asked that question. He looked at me and said, if it wasn't COVID, he would have fucked up something else.

Right? Like, I mean, chilling i i don't know it's a there's i think that theory has some credence on the other hand for how awful things got with the pandemic and how tense things were with with floyd for so many areas of the country for so long. He still came within, you know, a stone's throw of winning this thing. He was just as close as Hillary. So it's a fair question. And I think you're right,

because that was something I had set up for you, was with how they approach COVID, the cavalierness, and you show in your book, because if I would have gotten a couple positive tests, I would have would have been like okay we got to start taking this more seriously because we're playing with dynamite here i'm gonna lose this election as soon as if i get this before the thing i was worried that biden would get it and can you imagine if someone gets elected president the one scenario would be trump doesn't win he loses loses, and Biden gets it, Biden dies, and then Trump tries to seize power.

The whole scenarios that were going through my head as a CEO and an entrepreneur was like, oh my God, the maze of this is crazy. Oh, and rightly, everything that could go wrong in 2020 seemed to go wrong. It sounds crazy to say some of this stuff out loud, but that's where everyone's head was at that time. You'd wake up every day and you'd just be, oh, satellites are falling from the sky and aliens are here. Yeah, that's, it's probably Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I saw when he was installing his lackeys into the Pentagon, that really had me scared. And like you mentioned earlier, we're talking about five or two minutes ago that I think someone called them the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

And it's really it really is one of those things I guess historians will always have to turn over is if they would have been a smarter group of people, what this would have been. And then, of course, they've laid they've laid a roadmap for somebody who's probably a lot smarter to come down the pipe. Yeah, just the events of January 6th, how easily they got into the Capitol. It wasn't so simple, but a lot of people were hurt and died in that fight. But it didn't take too much to get right into Nancy Pelosi's office. Detail in the book here, another beat. When Pence was taken into a secret hideaway in one of the rooms,

it was within a couple of seconds of that mob catching a glimpse of him. And who knows what would have happened then? I have some people in the book that were there that day telling me what they think would have happened that day. It would have happened if they saw Pence and they think he would have died. They think he would have been killed, which is just chilling to think about how close we came there. And to your point, how close we came with... There's a lot we still don't know, I think, about January 6th. And I do think that this book adds to our understanding of what happened that day and

the day before, and we'll run up to it. But given what we know to this point, just like how little planning there really was on some of this stuff. Had there been, to your point, someone actively planning to seize control of the government, it could easily have been a lot worse. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In fact, we just recently found we had the ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok on the show when his book came out last year. And there's a comment on it that says, this is a bunch of hooey or something.

Just wait till January 6th. Is that right? We just found it. It's chilling to see on our YouTube channel. And a bunch of people wrote after when they're january 6th is that right we just found it it's chilling to see on our youtube channel and a bunch of people wrote after when they're like are you in prison now who is this guy we've been trying to figure out his guy in fact peter saw it yeah that wasn't even in the run-up there in those few weeks that people around trump and i was i had taken leave to write this book after the election was called you know pretty shortly after

the election was called and was trying to do start do some reporting that for the book and was having trouble getting people and i had several people say we got to get trump's right trump's still disputing this and we got to get to just once december 15th happens that was the date that a lot of people around trump had in their minds which was when which was when the electoral college vote happened and and and the states had certified some of that through the other electoral college they thought that was going to be the moment where temperatures dropped and tensions eased and that sort of thing january 6th wasn't even really on the radar for a lot of the people in the white house and i it was for me man i i was like everyone was talking about facebook it was

crazy so you know you reported in there that trump was willing to do whatever necessary they were the game that couldn't shoot straight and i don't know if you want to expand Trump was willing to do whatever necessary. They were the game that couldn't shoot straight. And I don't know if you want to expand on him willing to do whatever was necessary or anything we haven't touched on that. Yeah, that was the quote I have in here that Pompeo told people was that the crazies had taken over. Wow. And one of the things that we haven't talked about that's in the book is that he had tried to replace Bill Barr right after the election. Yeah. that's in the book is that he had tried to replace Bill Barr right after the election. So I think one of the new things in this book as it relates to January 6th is that right after the election was called on November 7th, there was this sense around him that,

again, he's got to find his way, his own way out. He's got to blow off a little bit of steam and we'll get to December 15th and he'll find his own way to concede because he wasn't screaming at people in the White House. He wasn't losing his mind. He wasn't foaming at the mouth as Meadows would sometimes describe him. So that gave people the impression that he was going to find his own off-ramp here, right? And this is what Mike Pence is telling people, what Ronald McDaniel, the chairwoman of the party is telling people. Even Milley leaves a meeting and goes back and tells Pentagon officials like Trump had going through the agenda items here and we got into one and Trump says, oh,

let's leave that to the next guy. An indication that this is all a bit and that we'll get to yes. But by creating, by thinking they need to just give Trump space, for one, it ignores five years of what Trump had been telling us he was going to do. And giving him space just creates an opening for Rudy Giuliani, for Sidney Powell, to get their foot into the Oval Office, tell Trump exactly what he wants to hear. And suddenly he is sending parallel legal teams to Georgia to fight down there and this sort of thing. But even during this period where they thought he was going to get to find a way to conceive. I report here for the first time is that he offers the attorney general job in early, mid by early,

mid November to his director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe wanted the job. Ratcliffe was the runner up when he nominated Barr the first time, but Ratcliffe sees that what this job entails, right? Like he wants to actually run the justice department. He wants to get his hands into the agency. And he sees that what Trump wants him to do is back up his claims

of election fraud, right? Effectively, he wants him to go over to the Justice Department and spend the next two months refuting all of the intelligence that he'd been giving him as Director of National Intelligence that said Venezuela and Russia are not colluding to put ghosts in the machines of Dominion voting machines, right? Like the things he'd been telling him were not true. He could tell that he wanted that he would have to take the opposite stand as attorney general. And just imagine that you have a dream job that you wanted your whole life and you're given it. But when you're finally offered it, you have a dream job that you wanted your whole life and you're giving it you then when you're finally offered it you have to say no was bar aware that was being shopped around on him

no oh wow no i think there was um i mean by then the relationship had frayed pretty badly and i have a scene in here and in this on december one where where trump is just unleashing on bar and criticizing him and the agency and then catches his breath and says, in this sort of wry underhandedness, as you might have noticed, I've not been talking to you lately. As in like his withholding his attention from Barr as some kind of punishment when I would bet that Barr was appreciative that he didn't hear so much, He hadn't been hearing so much from Trump. But yeah, so Barhead had, the people around Barhead, some inklings that maybe Trump was working, they were going to pull something on him. But no, he didn't know that. No one knew, really. Only a handful of people knew at the time that Ratcliffe had been formally offered the job within days of the election being called. It would have been interesting. I never thought a pillow guy would be potentially the guy

who would overthrow democracy. Not sure our founders saw that one coming. Madison was like, we should put it in there. Something about a guy who owns a pillow company just to make sure. You're talking about Mike Lindell, who's a Trump loyalist through and through. One of the shocking things to me in reporting this book was how early Lindell had been involved in the campaign. Lindell was going to campaign meetings early on, and he's in the meeting in the spring when they decide to go to Tulsa on Juneteenth. Part of that meeting was about the TV advertising. And there's a moment in the book where Brad Parscale, who's campaign manager, tells Lindell ahead of the meeting saying, hey, you got to tell Trump that I'm doing a good job with the advertising because he's going to put a lot of weight in what you say. And sure enough, in the meeting, Trump turns to Lindell and

says, what do you think of these guys? His campaign manager, his campaign team, he's hired and put in these very important positions. He's turning to someone with no political experience at all to validate it. And then you also talk about Pence and Trump. There's a scene there where Pence gets up in Trump's face, which is interesting about his campaign manager. Yeah, yeah. The kind of image we all have of Pence of being this very supplicant loyalist, picking up the water bottles at the same time as Trump. That was all extraordinary. Yeah, that's all accurate. And I have some scenes in the book here that underscore this, like the moment when Gary Cohn, Trump's initial economic advisor, was furious about Trump's reaction to Charlottesville, the racial violence in Charlottesville, and tells him as much in a meeting with multiple people how disturbed he'd been that Trump hadn't been adamant about distancing himself from white supremacists and being very clear about what a bad element that they were. Gary is unloading himself and emoting all across

the White House here. No one in the room says anything. It's just silence after that. And they move on. Except a few minutes later, Pence walks into Gary Cohn's office in another corner of the White House and says, yeah, Gary, I'm really proud of you for what you said back there. It's like Gary in the moment. It's like, where the hell was? Yeah. But to get back to the scene you bring up, this happened, I think it was 2018. had hired Corey Lewandowski, who had been Trump's original campaign manager and remained and remains an ubiquitous presence near Trump, had hired him onto his own pack. And Trump lost his mind.

Trump viewed this as bad PR for him. hired Corey per se or that, but that it looked like in the middle of the Russia investigation that Trump loyalists were jumping ship and looking for some sort of safer ground. And this is where, this is what, what Trump is upset about. And they're in the back of the presidential limo on the way to an event. He crumples up the article that he brought into the, into the car, throws it at Pence, gives him the silent treatment for a while until it just like lets it out of the side of his mouth saying it's so disloyal so disloyal and pence is anything but that right and pence has just had enough picks up the article throws it back at trump and says this is not only did you know we were hiring cory we talked to you about hiring cory and we were jared kushner asked us to hire Corey.

What was happening was, was Jerry was about to announce Brad Parscale as the campaign manager. And he wanted some, he wanted Corey to have something. He knew Corey was going to be upset and wanted Corey to have a sort of consolation prize, asked Pence to hire him. Pence goes to Trump as like a good lieutenant would, they talk about this over lunch. And then a couple of months later, Trump has no memory of this, doesn't recall it to the point where Pence is a couple inches away from Trump pointing at his

chest, you know, you need to get your facts straight here. And the reason I tell the story in the book is that by January 6th and the run up to January 6th, there's people around Pence telling him, you need to have another get your facts straight moment with Trump here. He needs to hear from you directly and clearly that you do not, you will not try to overturn the results of a fair and free election. And there's some debate around Pence, as we talked about before, about whether or not he actually was that clear, you know, about his constitutional duties as he was about hiring Corey Lewandowski. One thing that was interesting was you, I saw you at one of the video interviews you did, you talked about how Trump to everyone around him didn't really seem like a white

supremacist, didn't even seem to understand any sort of value of history, whether it was black, white or anything, which I thought was interesting because I always take Trump as a white supremacist. You take Stephen Miller and stuff, but what's your opinion on that in depth? Yeah, you're right. That's where I use the, I bring up the Hitler story as an example of Trump not really, when it comes to the George Floyd issue, Trump not really understanding, him not understanding Black history in America necessarily a sign of his racism, because he doesn't really understand white history either, or cared that much about to know it. I think that my reporting was, for the first time, I've always had an idea about this, but people around Trump worried for four years that he'd

long given a wink and a nod to uh white supremacists that this extremist corner of the party because he saw some sort of benefit to him politically and i don't know if that's better or worse than being a white supremacist but but i do know that's a concern again all the way through the end of the the presidency when mark milley's investigating some of these hires and their ties to neo-naazism. It's not just, it's not just like idle speculation. And these are the questions that Trump's own cabinet members were asking themselves. Doesn't it seem disturbing that's going on that they're like, we don't know how much of a wild card this dude is. And we spend our time with them every day. Yeah. I was shocked. I was, yeah, I was, listen, I was like, I, um,

I, I, part of the reason I include some of the front row Joe's in here and some of the other scenes is, I mean, I've written 1100 stories about Trump for the wall street journal in five years. I didn't really want to read another guy. No, I wanted to write something that I would want to read that and that my friends and family who don't follow, who know the themes of the story, but don't follow the every turn of the screw would want to read. And I, so I spent a lot of time trying to inject some different things that my, my experiences here, some of my conversations with Trump, what it was like for me covering him. But boy, when I got around to actually reporting this book after the election had been called, I was shocked to find out some of these things, some of these that were happening behind closed doors. There was more to know and there was more to learn. And yeah, I had some interviews where I heard some of these things for the first time that I'll never forget.

Yeah. I'd love to be able to have said what your interviews have seen, seen some of the shocking stuff. You talk about the book and we'll round up here in a bit. You talk about the book about how he wasn't ready to go to Mar-a-Lago and it was just craziness when they got down there. Tell us a little bit of that. And is there anything you want to tell us about? Is there anything you would like to tell us about that maybe really stuck out at you in your interviews with Trump at Mar-a-Lago? Yeah, I think what we should start with here is that Trump was as unprepared for the post-presidency as he was for the presidency itself. And some of the things I have in the book here for the first time are that he gets off of Air Force One and turns to an aide and says, now what do I do? Now what am I going to do? He brings his staff to Mar-a-Lago and shows them the room that they're going to work out of. And there's mattresses on

the floor. They have to go to Office Depot and buy their desks and their desk chairs and put this thing together. And he really was really like, I interviewed him in March and then again in May and was in this sort of transition period, which I say in the book is described as transitioning from the leader of the free world to the king of Palm Beach, which is how he found his routine. And I kind of got his own mojo back. If he had asked me in the first few months of the year, after I talked to him the first time, I don't think he was going to run. And again, this is even now 2024, so far away, but he had had this moment of a rare moment of self-reflection where he sees how happy Melania is to be back in Mar-a-Lago

full time. He's asking friends or come to see him. You don't think I wanted those people to riot. You don't think that's what I wanted them to do. Very concerned about how he was going to be blamed for this by people by people he knew and then one of the things that turns here is that he's you know unsurprisingly it's golf right he starts golfing a lot 36 holes a day and starts to get more of a routine and some of the he reshuffles the people around him in his political operation one big change was jared kushner a exits it probably i don't think there was any my reporting is that there was no single moment, like they wasn't like fired or excommunicated or anything.

I think it was some mutual agreement that they'd spend a little too much time together. And, but still, Jared's down in Miami Beach and Trump's in Palm Beach. I mean, they're not that far away, but that Don Jr had taken over as like the main family advisor, who frankly is probably much closer to,

he's the, there's a Trump delegate, a trump convention delegate in the family it's don jr he's got this sort of the gut instinct of where the base is and um shares a lot of that in common with trump supporters and then like reshuffles a little bit of the people around him and he is so distrustful of of what's at this point that he doesn't he's he's not signing paychecks he he's not he doesn't believe that when they tell him how much money he has in the pack from you know left over from the election and those fundraising after after the election he like wants to see the receipts yeah yeah he's just very paranoid and

very distrustful of everything that's for one thing is that the campaign team they don't get blamed for the loss they get blamed from trump Trump for losing the victory, right? He thinks they won and it's almost worse, right? That's extraordinary, man. My head just went spinning around when you said that. Yeah. So this is where Trump is when I see him at Mar-a-Lago. And what ultimately happens here is that is the members around him, i have some it's it was just fascinating in 2016 as it was in 2020 and 2021 the dues paying members of mar-a-lago of the golf clubs of all of his resorts um they these are the real vips right these are the real this is the real base they i remember them telling me in 2016 how much like you should see the greens right like this guy

knows how the details will be a great president. Like the fairway, how much better it looks from last year to this year. Like this is the kind of, you know, and he's the reason that it got done. Well, what's happening now in the spring of 2021 is after my first interview,

Trump invites me to stay for dinner. And he, it's out on the terrace with all the other club members. His table's set off in the middle with velvet ropes. And Trump comes in after everyone's been seated. And as he comes in, everyone stands up and applauds him and cheers him and encourages him to keep fighting and shouts out, holds up their cameras, takes pictures. And the same thing when he leaves. When he gets up, now they've all had a drink or two.

And now it's really hooting and hollering, and he gets sent off every night with this standing ovation. Honey, can we get that for me for dinner? Yeah, right. Yeah, definitely. That would be a great way to get welcomed home every day. Yeah, totally. Do they play the music that they use in the White House? That would be a nice touch.

I remember President Obama saying, one thing I miss is that when you walk in a room, they play the music and everyone's ready for you. But that's extraordinary. And he's so gracious, too. He really is. He's in his element here. He's the ultimate concierge. He's a hotelier.

People are leaving and leaning over to him and saying goodbye. And Trump says, okay, did you have the chicken or the fish? Was it good? Was your service good? How was that chocolate cake? Remember that, Jeff? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Japanese chocolate cake. Has he thrown anything back at you on the book? I imagine he has to give it the denial or whatever he usually does on everything, it seems. What sort of stuff has he thrown at you about the book? He very publicly and specifically attacked me a few weeks ago. Yeah. Third-rate reporter was how he referred to me by name. Did he invite you to Mar-a-Lago multiple times. Yeah. Third rate reporter was how he referred to me by name. And he invited tomorrow. I'll go, you know, multiple times.

Yeah. The thing was, is he's always at the center of our relation. My relationship with Trump is, is my hair. I have longer wavy hair and Trump for whatever reason is always literally every single time I've seen him or talked to him, he makes a comment in a positive way. And one that like my colleagues in the press corps used to torment me. But I've always taken as a high compliment from someone like Trump who has spent so much time and energy on his own hair. So I was just glad that he didn't disparage my hairdo or like I would have known he was really upset with me. And you know what, Chris, I think what he was upset about was that he knows, he's been aware of this book for a long time. And he knows how many people I've talked to for this book. He knows that people who don't normally talk to journalists were talking to me for this

book. And I think that's why he singled me out. And that's what had him spooked and why he attacked. Do you think he's going to make a run in 2024? Or is he just... I don't think he's quite decided yet. I know that... Is he confident the people around him want him to hold off any decision until at least until 2022 after 2022 midterms one is that they don't see any upside in making a decision before then and and 2022 is going to be is an important going to be an important data point for him in a lot of ways right he's made two dozen endorsements already from like u.s senate all the way down to staten island borough president and some in primary races he's backing incumbents against challengers who voted to impeach him and it's no easy thing to unseat an incumbent even for someone who holds as much sway in the party

as trump so it'll be interesting to see what happens with all that. And more existentially here, Republicans have a choice this time around. They're faced with a very specific decision on whether or not and how to define themselves. And I don't know, that will help inform Trump's decision on what he does. And I don't know that anyone knows which way they're going to go exactly yet. But what I do know is that this book provides new information and the full gamut of who Trump is as a president, as a political candidate, as a person, that Republicans have no excuse but to go into that decision with their eyes wide open yeah yeah 2022 is going to be uh a pivotal year for democracy us and everything else and probably for like you say donald trump we had the radio show guy uh tom hartman on our show shortly after january 6th and i hit the floor when he said to me he says you know what they call january 6th don't you and i go what he goes practice warm up and i was like, holy Judas. And the beautiful thing about your

book is you have so many great moments. This is going to make an amazing movie. If they do not put this into a movie, and I will watch it, and I'll be watching for that Trump-Pence scene where he gets up in his face. I would love to see that. Do you have any movie stars you picked out to do some of these roles in your book?

Oh, no. I should probably figure out who gets to play me like i would yeah yeah george clooney those guys would be good and they would have to audition obviously sure of course you'd have to sign off on that probably too or you could go with that uh one gal who's really hot with all the marvel movies she just does that movie was a blade or something recently that uh i don't keep up with the the movies obviously, but she plays everything. Yeah, I guess. Charlize Theron could maybe play. She plays everybody.

That'd be good, yeah. Or maybe I could just play myself. That's good. I'm going to make the transition here to Hollywood. So anything you want to tease out of the book before we go out? Not really. I think we hit a lot of the high parts here. I just think, again, I put a lot of time and effort into this book to give people something new, to tell the story of 2020 here in a way that people would want to keep turning the page

and learn new things about Trump and Washington and the process here. And I really do think this is the one book that's going to have inside the room details from the White House and the campaign and really introduce you at a very human level to some of Trump's most loyal supporters. There you go. There you go. Give us your plugs, Michael, so people can find you on the interwebs and get to know more about you. Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Michael. I'm on Instagram at Michael.

You can find the book on Amazon. We're trying to get it restocked right now. The e-book is available everywhere and on a daily basis at The Wall Street Journal. I've heard of The Wall Street Journal. That's a great paper. So there you go. We've had a lot of great people from the journal on there as well. Thank you for coming on the show, Michael.

We certainly appreciate you spending time with us today. So thanks for taking the time to do that. Yeah, thanks for your interest. It was fun. Thanks for having me. Thank you very much, sir. Very insightful book. Pick it up.

Like I said, I'm going to be excited to see it turn into a movie because i want to see all the scenes play out and all that good stuff so uh check it out you can get it wherever fine books are sold but only go to the stores with the fine books are sold the book is called frankly we did win this election the inside story of how trump lost michael c bender is where you can find it. To my audience, go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, hit the bell notification button. See us all on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all those billions of groups we have out there.

Also go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, follow us over there. Thanks, Michael, for being on the show with us. Thanks to my audience for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time.