The Daily Beast Podcast - Jared Kushner Is Likely Why Trump Made Governors’ Lives Hell During Early COVID

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

In this bonus episode of TNA, journalists Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, authors of I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year, talk about Jared Kushner’s role during the early stages of COVID, why Trump’s whistleblowers stayed so long by his side and rumors from inside the Pentagon about Trump using the military to stay in power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another special bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an awesome episode with co-authors Carol Lenig and Philip Rucker, who wrote the hit book, I Alone Can Fix It. And we're going to talk to him about what you may have not read in the book and get a little bit more perspective on their writing today. Welcome to the New Abnormal, Carol and Philip. It's super exciting to have you.

Neither of you have been here before. This book has been out. It's on the bestseller list. It's been there for, you know, a while. filled with interesting revelations. What do you feel like people haven't asked you about this book? Sometimes I feel like they haven't asked us enough about just sort of the normalization of crazy. You know, people got pretty numb to the fact that in 2020, inside the White House,

a lot of nutty things happened, and they just accepted that that was part of the fabric of the place. You know, that the Secretary of Defense was afraid to tell the president that the vaccine development was going really well because he thought he would force everybody to take it before it had been it was ready you know bill bar was getting yelled at all the time when he went to the white house because he wouldn't agree to unleash you know the u.s military on protesters in portland and seattle who were rallying against the death and the killing of george floyd it just seemed like every every little piece of the cabinet was dealing dealing with a president that that made them shudder, whose impulses made them really weak need.

Phil, do you have a thing that you feel people haven't really asked you about with the book? No, I agree about what Carol said. I would also point out that we have a lot of new reporting, and I alone can fix it, about the shenanigans going on inside the Department of Justice and what Bill Barr was up to in that final year. And the ways in which he got crosswise with President Trump, and that's important. He was a big character throughout, you know, the latter half of the presidency and especially in the final year. And our reporting has been a little bit overshadowed by the other reporting in our book about other topics. But there's a lot there for people to dig in on.

This is your second Trump book. And I'm curious to know, did you, were you worried that you, that the first Trump book, like, were you worried people weren't going to participate from Trump world? You know, I guess when we began the reporting, we might have been a little bit worried about that, Molly, but it was all those fears were quickly dashed. Everybody that we went to, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, we just dialed on the phone and everybody just started to spill their guts, but it was a lot simpler process. And I think Phil and I both sort of would look at each other once in a while after like the fifth hour with a person. And we realized that it was a little bit therapeutic and cathartic for people, even people who really adored President Trump and went into that White House wanting to serve him. It was therapeutic for them to sort of spit out what they had endured a little bit in silence. Right. This is a problem that we all have when we write about sources.

Did you worry that you were getting worked over by people? You know, Carol and I were on guard from day one when we started this report. for officials who served Trump and would want to sort of launder their reputations through us and use our book and our history book to kind of recast the way they served and the way they're remembered through history and get some of that Trump stink off of them. And so we were pretty careful not to let ourselves become their shower for lack of a better term. And when they would recount stories of their heroics, we would ask for documentation and we would try to corroborate those accounts with other people who witnessed them or experienced them and could verify whether

that account is true or not. And we feel like we did pretty rigorous and scrupulous fact-checking in order to make sure that we didn't get worked over by anybody. Are you surprised, like some of the revelations in the book, you know, they're both shocking and not shocking, right? They're believable, Batchaka. Are you surprised at Trump's continued grip on the Republican Party, or did you see this coming? You know, despite, you know, our big takeaway from this reporting, which is that even the most ardent supporters of President Trump's were unhinged and unsettled and unnerved by how much much he put himself above America's public health, you know, above the democracy. It is really striking that so many individuals support him still. But, you know, the bottom line is he is a genius at mastering that megaphone of his and convincing a very large part of the American public that he's their defender,

that they're down and out. And whether he delivers for them or not, he's convinced them that he's fighting for them. Do you feel that Trump tried a coup to keep power? Or do you feel that that's sort of the wrong word for it? Well, it depends on your definition of a coup. I think certainly he tried to remain in power despite the will of the people in a free and fair election. That was clear in our reporting. And it was also clear in real time based on his public utterances.

Now, you know, we report that there were fears inside the Pentagon that he was going to try to use the military to aid him in that effort. but we're not aware of any actual actions that he took to deploy the military towards a coup. So, you know, certainly he wanted to stay in power and overrun the will of the people. That's not what we do in a democracy, but it's what he wanted to do in his authoritarian style rule. But, you know, whether you call that a coup or not, you know, we're not the people applying labels. Right, right. No, that makes sense. I mean, you both have his venerable careers at the Washington Post. post document it. So you've covered Washington for a long time. So, I mean, I guess the shock

wore off by the second Trump book or now? You know, you would, you'd like to think the shock wore off, but there were so many times, Molly, where Phil and I were in a room again with somebody who was a major player in the administration, a principal. And even they were just sort of like sickened by what they were describing to us, and we had our jaws on the floor, mostly because 2020, as terrifying as it was, right, a lethal pandemic, marching across the nation, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, and, oh, so many across the globe. Even as scary as that all was, behind the scenes, what the president wanted to do was so much more terrifying. Yeah. You think he'll run again?

I do. You know, he has a bit of time before having to make that decision, of course, and he's not going to want to make the decision until he ultimately has to. And he obviously has an interest in making people think he's going to run again because it helps him raise money for his political organizations. But, you know, sitting down with him at Marilago, it was clear that he wants in the game. He's not going to be satisfied just being the kingmaker. He wants to be king. And, you know, he certainly sounded like somebody leaning towards running. for president again in 2024. And we should keep in mind that if he does run for president in 2024, he will almost certainly be the Republican nominee and will therefore have a very decent chance of actually winning and returning to the White House. She's almost the scariest part of this whole thing. It depends on who you are, right, Molly? I mean, I mean, if you're Michael Flynn or if you're some of the core supporters of the presidents in red states, you feel like America is in jeopardy, that the presidents convinced them, sold them really some snake oil, that Biden's ruining the country, that Antifa's coming to your suburbs, you know, that you think, if you're in that

headspace, you think that him returning to power is one of the best things that could happen. Do you think any of these people who've worked for him for so long have had now revelations that will prevent them from going back into the Trump White House? I mean, you have these people who have told you these things, even fans of Donald Trump's who have, you know, have recounted things in horror, do you think they still go back for, you know, for the, when he tries to run again? Great question. You know, a lot of the people who served in his cabinet, I suspect, are unlikely to return in a second act, especially because some of them have had pretty difficult and public breaks with the president, Bill Barr among them. But, you know, others may stay

in that orbit. And what we've seen over the years in Trump world is that people can be in and then they're out and then they're back in. And time has a way of kind of healing those wounds. I mean, some are not recoverable, I would say. But a lot of the people who spoke to us and were really disappointed in Trump, you know, may want to end up back in there anyways because they want the power. So insane. Did you talk to any of the real fringe characters like the Michael Flynn's? We tried actually to interview a lot of individuals that were, how would I describe it? Sort of the pushers of that of that addictive candy that the president really started to crave at the end of the presidency. The conspiracies that, you know, all these valises of fake ballots for Biden had been rolled into ballot, ballot places under cover of night, you know, for which Bill Barr found.

absolutely zero evidence despite having the entire Department of Justice at his command. And he told the president that we tried to interview some of those people and many of them, you know, gave us a big cold shoulder or didn't respond to any of our requests. It sounds like the people you interviewed for this book are largely sort of the people who kind of know better. Did you feel they knew better? You know, we interviewed a range of people, including a lot who didn't know better. But the people you're referring to, they did know better, and they made calculations along the way about staying in those jobs. And for a mix of reasons, depending on the circumstance.

But, you know, some of them knew better and knew what was going on was wrong and dangerous and stayed in a job because they wanted that power. They wanted to be a cabinet secretary. They wanted to have a security detail. They wanted to be a senior White House official. And they were driven by personal ambition. Others were in those jobs because they felt like if they resigned or quit, somebody even worse and more dangerous would take their place. And so they thought by remaining in Donald Trump's employ, they were in their own weird way, you know, helping save the country. And there was just a real range. And some, by the way, were total true believers who, you know, were all up in and make America great again and believed in the agenda and believed in him as a leader.

What do you think the biggest mistake Trump did with COVID is? Because it struck me that there were many, but I'm just curious what you guys, you know, as sort of experts. You know, to me it's hard to pick one, Molly, I'm with you. But in the beginning, when this virus was more knowable and more controllable, there were two ways in which the president fumbled the ball. Because he wanted to sell that happy talk. He wanted to keep his number one priority riding high, the economy. He was really scared when Nancy Messonnier of the CDC alerted the public to the truth, which is that we're all going to have our lives changed.

First, he had insisted as the CDC wanted to get a team into China and figure out what this virus was, which he didn't push aggressively enough. Many of the doctors confided. All the medical experts agreed and confided. to their friends and colleagues, that could have changed the arc of this disease. And it could have dramatically reduced the fatalities because then they would have known what they were dealing with instead of, you know, hoping that it would be like SARS. It wasn't like SARS. It was so much worse. So going to China was the number one thing. And the second thing was it would have been so easy

for him to follow the advice of the medical professionals from the get-go. And by setting that model, wearing a mask, telling people this is serious, again, so many lives could have been saved. Robert Redfield basically said

to many, many, many of his colleagues and friends, it was his number one professional regret of his career that he couldn't convince Donald Trump to wear a mask. I'm curious. So we hear this Trump quote this week that I'll handle the rest when it came to the big lie and getting the Justice Department to perpetuate that the election was stolen from him. Were you guys ever shocked by how much of a role Trump had in things or other people?

Do you feel like that often the press was downplaying or underestimating some people's role inside the White House? I don't think Trump's hands-on role with a number of these episodes surprised us because we knew he was. a micromanager. We knew he controlled and made decisions based on impulse in the government, and that many of the people working under him, including running agencies in the federal government, were at his beck and call, had very regular interaction with him and were taking orders and direction from him at all times. So that wasn't as surprising. What was a little more surprising, I think, was the role that other people around him played and the degree to which he had in his Chief of Staff for the final year, Mark Meadows, a willing and ready enabler who just kind of was an

accelerant for all of these Trump impulses. I feel like we need to talk about Jared now. Yeah. You can always talk about Jared. Jared was the point man. He made himself the point man on so many things. You know, he decided that he was the best person to round up all the protective, personal equipment when the U.S. was running out of masks, right? He decided he was the best person to redesign a way to accelerate the development of the vaccine with Operation Warp Speed. You know, he was also the marionette on the campaign. He was in all the campaign meetings and finger on the pulse of what the polls were, what the president, his father-in-law should say, trying to give advice all the time

on where they'd spend money on ads and what the president should do. Yeah, that reporting that with the sort of letting the blue states die, did you find that? Jared really pushed it to the governors. You know, Jared was just constantly looking for ways to get the president out of the PR problems when it came to COVID. So at any opportunity trying to find ways to have the governors take the blame or let the governors take the hits or just, whatever it took to shift the public accountability and responsibility away from the White House because he was thinking first and foremost about the re-election and wanting to do what he could to make sure Trump got re-elected in November.

Yeah, I'm shocked that someone with no experience with any of this could do so badly. This was so great. Thank you guys so much for coming on. It was a lot of fun, Molly. Thanks for the good questions. Thank you for having us. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science.

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