The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Author: Even His Allies Thought He’d Lost It

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Did Donald Trump REALLY defend Hitler at a World War memorial? On the latest episode of The New Abnormal, a look at the latest post-presidency books. One of the most outrageous claims from the deluge of new Trump books hitting the shelves this month is that the then-president lavished praise on Adolf Hitler at a memorial for World War One. Michael Bender, the author of Frankly, We Did Win This Election says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal that the Hitler incident was just one shocking example of people in Trump’s orbit belatedly coming to realize how dangerous the president was. The next guest, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, says he’s feeling pretty let down by the offerings in the latest string of Trump books. “Most of these people don’t have information firsthand,” he says. “They’re getting it from somebody else. And a lot of it is the same reconstituted bullshit that we’ve heard before, but just by somebody else.” However, he adds: “I think that the books are still important. I think it’s just another example of how this orange crusted bloviated asshole took advantage of this country, especially the Justice Department.” Cohen cautions people to take a look at who is trying to mend their tarnished reputations through the books now that the Trump years are over, saying: “I think it’s very disingenuous when they come out afterward and it’s, you know, through a book.” Finally, Peter Sagal host of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me joins the crew to "call-in" with a hot take. t If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up to a down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kenan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have a super fun show. We'll be joined by the Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender, who's the author of, frankly, we did win this election, the inside story of how Donald Trump lost. And he'll talk to us all about his book. And then, wait, wait, don't tell me host, Peter Sagle, will join us to give a kind of call in and pushback on one of our takes. But first, we have former Donald J. Trump lawyer,

author of Disloyal, and host of the Maya Copa podcast. Michael Cohen. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Michael Cohen. Molly, how you doing? I'm good. I'm glad to have you back here. What do you mean glad to have you back? I sit in my home for 23 hours a day. I don't confidement. It's not like you took me away from doing anything other than watching some other bad show on Netflix, Hulu, or something else. When is this over? Exactly four months and two days. But who's counting? Who's counting? Full disclosure, I invited you to dinner at my house and you were like, I can't go to dinner parties. You're like, I'm on home confinement. Actually, I could and the BOP would be incredibly thankful for you for that invite so that way they could send the marshals, you know, back to come get me, Mr. Cohen turned around and face the wall. Oh, fuck, not again. Here we go again. Yeah, well, four months is

not such a long time. By the way, Molly, that's because it's not you. Right. Believe me when I tell you, four months is a long time. And being already here for one full year, this is actually. This is actually torture. You know, I don't care how big your apartment is. I don't care how big your home is. A home would actually be much better simply because you can go outside on a beautiful day. And if you have a swimming pool, God bless you, you jump into the pool or you go down to a basement where you probably have some weights or things to do. Here, I'm not even allowed to go down to the gym that's in the building that I live in, right? because I live vertical, right? Simply because it's out of bounds.

It's out past my front door. I mean, the BOP, it stands for backwards on purpose. They are so fucked up. And I was praying that when Merrick Garland came in, I was so happy with the choice of Joe Biden to put Merrick Garland in charge of the Justice Department and fix this fucking broken BOP once and for all. I mean, the notion that you,

You can't, if you live vertical, go down to your storage unit without getting authorization. It's just, I don't know, it's frustrating to say the least. Yeah. Let's talk about all these Trump books because there have been a lot of Trump books in the last couple weeks. And it seems like the thing that I'm sort of struck by, and I'm curious to know if you're struck by this too, is that it seems like we're not really learning a lot of new stuff. Well, because most of these people don't have information firsthand. They're getting it from somebody else. And it's basically a lot of it is same reconstituted bullshit that we've heard before, but just by somebody else. Do you think that anything that Millie is turning around and saying is any different than what Comey had said or, you know, John Bolton had said in his book? The answer is no. It's just another example. And I think there's

that the books is still important. I think it's just another example of how this orange-crusted bloviated asshole took advantage of this country, especially the Justice Department. Right. Do you think that the reason why we're not learning new stuff is because we knew everything that was happening? Or do you think we're not learning new stuff because everyone who's a source has so much to protect? You know, I don't know the answer. We would have to go more into specifics. But let's, as an example, use the book. that just came out that reflects General Millie. Now, something that bothered me, as I was reading just the treatment on it, is the fact that all of a sudden this information is coming out, forgetting about the fact of books, non-books, what bothers me the most is he has an obligation

under law in order to report these feelings or these beliefs that he has at least put somebody else on notice. And I think it's very disingenuous when they come out afterwards and it's, you know, through a book without having the backup, which is, hey, I actually filed a document with the inspector general, with the attorney general, or with somebody talking about the danger that I thought that Donald was putting the country, you know, into. But they don't do that. They basically are more concerned about their own jobs. They're more concerned that Trump at the time, obviously he had his Twitter account, tweeting angry shit at them, and then that ultimately causing them a headache. And they didn't want that, but only afterwards. And the same thing holds true for Bill Barr.

Bill Barr, now all of a sudden on January 6th with the insurrection, and yes, folks, it was the fucking coup set up by Donald Trump by. Don Jr. with Rudy Giuliani and Josh Hall and Marjorie Taylor Green and all of these other rejects. All of a sudden now, Bill Barr comes and he wants to stand up with that fat fucking gut of his, with their three fucking chins hanging underneath, you know, underneath his mouth. And sits there and he wants to turn around now and say, well, I said that Donald Trump should not have done this and that I do declare that it was an insurrection. How about this? I declare you're a fucking asshole. How about that one, Bill?

All right, you fucking piece of shit. As the head of our Department of Justice to allow somebody to behave the way that you did and then to think that it's absolutely okay that you get your pass simply because you're going to acknowledge what we all know, what we all saw, and that's an insurrection that you have people storming the Capitol, the people's house, what you're supposed to be protecting as the Attorney General. You don't get a pass from me. That's fucking for sure. And actually, you may not know this, Molly, but one of the things that I've done is, you know,

I filed a claim against the United States government for the illegal remand of me back to prison. And one of the named people is going to be Bill Barr. And nothing is going to make me happier than to be sitting on the opposite side of the table deposing him. Because everybody thinks that he was the smart, you know, guy that he's this honorable guy. I say he's absolutely none of that. Can you explain to me what it means to have Bill Barr in a lawsuit like that? Well, it just gives me the opportunity to depose him. And if, in fact, he continues to lie as he's done so regularly and identically to the way

Donald Trump lies on depositions, then I intend on moving for sanctions, including, you know, whatever is permissible pursuant to law, which could be, you know, criminal conviction because I think Bill Barr, like Donald Trump, is a piece of shit. And they need to be held responsible for their dirty deeds. Not me to be responsible for everybody else's. They need to be responsible. I took responsibility for mine. So now it's time that they take responsibility for theirs. Do you think that Trump will run again? No, no, absolutely not. It's part of the Trump grift. That's all that it is. Other than that, what does he have going for him right now? now. The two investments that he has that are the only two that are actually really solid is

$12.90, every of the Americas and the Bank of America building in San Francisco. And neither of those he owns completely owns 30% interest with Vornado. And they run the property. They do everything. And that's about the two best properties that Donald Trump has. He's going to continue to play this, you know, this role. I'm running in 2024, running in 2024. And he's just going to sit back and watches these dumb people keep floating more and more money to him, you know, as part of the Trump grift, because none of his other assets are producing any income. And look, the guy has, you know, a 757 that he has to fuel up, right? But I thought he wasn't using the 757 because he couldn't really afford to, right? Well, no, look, he could still afford, you know, to do that. I'm just

being tongue in cheek on that. But in fact, he's not supposed to, you know, under normal circumstances, if he wasn't such a prick, they would put in a requisition if he needed to go somewhere, and they would use one of the U.S. government's planes. He's not supposed to be driving himself. He's not supposed to be using any of his aircraft for obvious reasons. But I don't know. I don't think that Joe Biden in this administration would give anything to Trump, you know, to you. So if he's using it, knock, you know, knock himself out. He's grifting off of his base. He's grifting off of his supporters that see him as something much more than what he truly is. It is an interesting thing, because you really have a person who has become kind of a God in this world, despite his lack of

intellect. Do you think that Donald Trump is really anti-choice? Are you talking about pro-choice or pro-life? Yeah. I mean, do you think he's against abortion? Of course not. I mean, look, I say this all the time. Donald Trump lies the way that you breathe. It's just part of who he is. Donald Trump doesn't care if you have an abortion or not. He needed the evangelical vote. And so that's to the base that he was playing. Do you think that he cares. And I want to also be very clear to your listeners because I get this a lot from, and they're probably fucking bots or just people, you know, who are, you know, massive Trump supporters.

And they're just fucking ignorant, to be honest with you, where they start to attack me and say, why don't you tell us about any of the Trump abortions that, you know, you took care of for him, you know, there are none. So therefore, you know, you can't say anything, which means that you're just trying to attack. Okay, first of all, I want to be clear to everybody on both sides, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, Trump supporter, Trump hater. It doesn't matter. I never paid for Donald Trump to have an abortion by any woman that he was ever involved with or not. It never happened. And I never paid for one. So I just want to be very clear about that. But you did pay for like Stormy Daniels? For Stormy Daniels, yes. I paid $130,000 pursuant to a non-disclosure agreement. the famous NDA. And also for Karen McDougall, right? No, I did not.

No, one of the things that you may have seen in one of my tweets, and I fucking had enough of the media, right? And it's really unfair. When I was going through the worst part of this entire ordeal, my lawyer turned and said, you can't speak to any of the press. You can't defend yourself, right? Judges don't like that.

Well, fuck that, right? That's the first mistake that I made was listening to my lawyer on that. If you don't defend yourself, you're deemed to be guilty. So I want to be very clear. David fucking Pecker from AMI, from the National Enquirer, David Pecker paid $150,000 to Karen McDougal. My role in that was nothing more than reviewing the documents to ensure that Donald Trump's,

that Donald Trump was protect. and that this would not then become a story, but everything that was done and negotiated and paid was paid for by AMI National Inquirer by David Pecker and Dylan Howard. That's just a fact. Even Karen McDougal, when I first got out, she reached out to me. She was like, I don't know how you ended up having to plead guilty to it. I don't even know who you are. And meanwhile, David Pecker never got any kind of jail time or anything.

No, not only did he not get any jail time. He was given immunity for testifying against me. The same thing that Alan Weisselberg did. They all, listen, and it's all a lie. That's the sickest thing. I mean, unfortunately, Judge Pauley is dead now, right? He died about 10 days ago because I would have liked to finally have put together all of the documentation. and given it to him. And when I requested, under pursuant to Rule 35 motion for reduction in the sentence

based upon not only my cooperation, which is like in excess of 400 hours, I mean, I met again, you know, and I spoke again to the DA's office. Now it's like more than 12 times. Really, Judge Paulie, turned around in his response to my Rule 35 motion is that I had provided no necessary or relevant information and that I should just shut up and do my time. I'm not so sure I agree with that, but I am doing that. I'm just doing my time sitting here with you. Sorry. By the way, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Just think about his name, right? He's perfect for the job that he got. He is a fucking dick. There is no other way to describe him. He's just a fucking dick. And that's why I guess, you know, he was given the last name of Pecker.

But David Pecker, just to get back to this for a second, he has supposedly stepped back from the National Enquirer supposedly. Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit on that one, too. He's still involved in the company what the principal of the company is, uh, names Anthony Melchiori. You know, obviously they must have worked out some sort of arrangement where maybe by title, he's not the editor-in-chief of, you know, that rag tag, but he's still involved with AMI. There's no doubt in my mind. I've heard it from several different people that he's still involved. And if he is, he isn't, I truly don't care. He's a fucking liar, just like Donald. And they're perfect together. I mean, that's why they've known each other as long in that David has been doing Donald's

bidding for God knows how long. Yeah, it's clear from what I've seen, the reporting I've seen that. That's true. Molly, you know, we sort of jumped over this whole. issue. It's about time that media take responsibility for their errors. Everybody wants me to apologize. Right. You may have seen like even on the view, you know, Megan McCain, the first thing that comes out of her mouth, right? Did you ever apologize to Stormy Daniels? And I'm sitting there and I'm looking at her on the screen as I'm doing that interview. And I wanted just to say, I mean, are you kidding me? Seriously? But she's Megan McCain. I mean, that's kind of the brand. It's a stupid question. And even all of the other folks that were that are on the view,

like Joy Behar and others, they all turned around afterwards. They were like, you know, we're really kind of sorry about, you know, Megan's comments. It's so irrelevant. And by the way, here's the thing. I did. And had she listened even to my podcast, she would have heard me say, I didn't mean to, you know, to do anything that would harm Stormy Daniels. In fact, one of the things Stormy acknowledged, despite Michael Avanotti's claims, I had nothing to do with whoever might or might not have met her in the parking lot there in Vegas or wherever she was. I had nothing to do with it. It actually took place before I was even working for Trump. But then it goes back to the point I was making. My lawyer said, you can't, you can't, you can't go on television. You can't, you can't do it. The judges don't like it. So everybody just ran roughshot over me. One lie after another after another, after another. Frog, you know, that was the biggest lie of them all that got this whole bullshit started. Daily Beast put out the Steele dossier. It's a lie. No, no.

I've never been to fraud. Buzzfeed, BuzzFeed. I apologize. My mistake. You're right. See? You see? Finally, somebody's correcting.

Somebody's correcting the record. Oh, hold on. Here we go. I'm going to do something that media will never do. I apologize. My mistake, I meant BuzzFeed. Mm-hmm. Just backtrack for one second.

And I think this is an important question that we all are wondering. It strikes me, and I think that it's very clear now, that Trump did a lot of really illegal and sketchy stuff while he was in the White House and before he was in the White House and probably he's doing it right now. It seems like he's never going to ever be held accountable for any of it. Tell me that I'm wrong. You're wrong. Okay, good.

Tell me why. Well, you didn't ask me to tell you why. You just told me to tell you that you're wrong. Because look, you know, one of the things that I have been very, very careful is to talk about anything that involves the district attorney, Syvance's investigation. Now it's coupled with Tish James, our attorney general. I've been very careful not to talk about anything. Obviously, I will tell you that I've been there at least. dozen times that they have millions of pages of documentation. You could rest assured that now that you've seen the indictment of Alan Weisselberg, you're going to start to see more indictments coming. There's a lot of reports now that possibly the next one will be Matt Kalamari. Then after that, I've heard that, you know, and these are reports that are out there, it could be Princess Ivanka that they're looking at.

And boy, I'll tell you, she will not fare well. Her whole fashion sense is going to go down the toilet. But at the end of the day, I don't want to discuss as to what I know, but I want you just to understand. And I want your listeners to rest assured. Alan Weisselberg, Matt Kalamari, even Princess Ivanka and Don Jr. And Jared and Rudy and Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green and Josh Hawley and and Ron DeSantis, you name it, the whole group of these fools.

They are not the targets, right? Donald Trump is the prize. And that happens to be the truth. Why? Because he's the president and CEO of the corporation that took advantage, the ones that committed the crimes, not just personally, but in a corporate capacity. So I do again want to tell you and your listeners that, I truly believe that he will finally be held responsible and accountable for his own dirty deeds.

And that will prevent him from running in 2024, amongst other things. This was so enlightening. Thank you so much, Michael Cohen. I hope you'll come back soon. Well, like I said, not that I'm going anywhere. So anytime you want me to start ranting and raving, I'm going to go take my blood pressure pills now. And I want to thank you for having me on your show. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker

or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadobrian. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app

of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.com. Michael Bender is a journalist at the Wall Street Journal and author of Frankly, we did win this election, the inside story of how Donald Trump lost. Welcome to the new abnormal Michael Bender. Thank you for having me. We're very excited to have you. I feel like your book came at first. Like, You won. I feel like I won, too. I got to tell you, I mean, I'm a first-time author, you know, all the things that normally sell books, right, like a TV show or a huge social media

presence or like some singular story that that gripped the world. I had none of that. And, you know, had to let my reporting do the work for me. You are a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. You're not like some guy on the street. Right. But the Journal's brand is like the Wall Street journal, you know, not its reporters. And the stories that the journal are, are written in the Wall Street Journal voice for, you know, very specific reasons. Yes, I mean, I know how to, I've been a reporter for two dozen years and worked at newspapers for that long. So I do know how to do this. But, you know, I mean, just, I'm not a household name or any of that stuff. So I really had to, I really had to hustle to get this in front of people. And it's been, you know, I feel like we're in the game. I mean, I feel like

we're competing with better known and more accomplished authors. So it's been really fun. And very obnoxious. Some of those people are obnoxious, too. But I'm not going to name names because we run a very classy organization over here. First thing I want to ask you about is the Hitler comment. I'm sorry, I know everybody asked you about the Hitler comment. But, you know, as a Jew, my people were stuck on Hitler for any number of reasons.

Talk to me about that. No, and I'm more than happy to talk about it because it's what. of the, it's one of the most striking details in the book. And one that I think is actually kind of thread throughout the book. I mean, in the moment, this is 2018 and it is John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time and Trump, they're overseas. They're going to a World War I Memorial. And Kelly finds himself having to give the president of the United States a very top line history lesson on who the allies were, who the enemies were, you know, what the U.S.'s role was and kind of what the through line was to World War II. And Trump stops.

at one point and says, well, you know, Hitler did some good things, too. And obviously, John Kelly, you know. What do you even say to that? I imagine he's not speaking of the Volkswagen bug or anything. I mean, he's out of his mind, right? I mean, John Kelly, you know, is steeped in military history, but you don't obviously have to be steeped in military history to understand that. The Hitler was bad.

Correct. So, I mean, after they have, they actually, like, have a debate back and forth, Kelly basically ended by saying like, just do not ever say that ever again, right? I mean, like forget who's right and wrong. Like you do not ever say that again. But this has long been a problem for Trump. He's struggled with these sort of to put to rest like accusations of anti-Semitism and his struggles with race relations. I mean, people around him have long worried that he's been giving a, you know, kind

of the wink and the nod to the far right extreme is part of the base. And, you know, that goes through the couple of years. of fast forward 2018, all the way through to 2021, up to January 6th, where I have details in here that General Mark Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top general in the U.S. Army, excuse me, the top general in the U.S. military, was worried that the people Trump was bringing into the administration in the final days, putting in defense positions, putting in positions at the Pentagon and intelligence positions may have had ties to neo-Nazis. Yeah, I'm shocked.

We all know the story of chaos around Trump for four years. years, right? I mean, that, I did not want to write another book about Trump chaos. I mean, I've written 1,100 stories about Trump. I wanted to write something, first of all, that, that I would want to read. But one of the things that kept coming through here was, wasn't the chaos, but, but that people around him thought he was, it'd become dangerous to the country. Yeah. Can we talk about the I made Juneteenth, very famous? I read that excerpt when it came out in Politico. And it's just so, like, inadvertently and all. also disturbingly hilarious.

Yeah, he had called me in for an interview in the middle of June. Did you have to go to Florida or did you go to? No, this one was in June 2020. So he was in the Oval Office. It was in the middle of the pandemic. And he'd actually called me about a story in April, a few months earlier, about a story. And that was equally bizarre. It was a story I had written and he had wanted to litigate the eighth paragraph or

the 10th paragraph of the story. It had literally been published three days earlier. It turned out that Kelly and Conway. I had kind of weaponized my story and an attack on Brad Parskele and Jared Kushner. Anyway, long story short is that he ends up inviting me in. He wants to know why I'm not at the COVID Task Force briefings. And it was kind of funny. This is in the book, too.

You didn't want to get COVID. Correct. That's exactly right. And there's a lot of dynamics in my family that I wanted to protect them from. But he thought it was because I couldn't get in. And he's like the bouncer. He's acting like the bouncer of the club. It was wild and also quite endearing. He's like, if you're having, are you having trouble getting in?

I can get you in. I mean, that's what he's, you know, I was like, oh, you know, I appreciate it. And also, no. Yeah. You know. Thank you very much for the offer. But he says they ends up by saying, you know, why don't you come in for an interview? And I was like, well, that I will do.

His press people follow up with me. And I'm literally like the only request. Please, please, please, please. Like, do not call me and like tell me I have five minutes to come in. You know, I'm working in the same T-shirt for like three days in a row. I haven't shaved in like four months, right? Like, I have, like, and to say nothing of, like, you know, there's, you know, dynamics in my household that I just need to kind of plan for. Like, please, please, please.

That's the only thing. Like, so of course, fast forward five months later. And they call me and say, can you come down right now? And it's just like this, again, I lay out the scene in the book. I'm left alone in the Oval Office by myself for like 30 minutes. Dan Skavino kind of skates through and Mike Pence randomly comes in for a minute and like says hello and asks how the family is. It's very, you know, Mike Pence is a very polite man. and he came in and checked in.

I invited me to come on the road with him. It leaves me in there, too. And I kind of, there was a second there where I thought, like, maybe I should ask Pence to close the door on his way out. Right. But I thought better of that. Did you look at the drawers to see if there was any KFC in there or anything? I figured, like, there was just an invitation to look at what was on the resolute desk.

So obviously I did. Is that like a federal crime to look at what's on the resolute desk or now? I mean, I figure if I'm left alone in there that there was. for game. Yeah, but you won't be surprised. There wasn't much. It was a, it was a small stack of papers and a sharpie. They looked to be all of the exact same page, which was a list of what Trump deemed to

be as accomplishments to that point in the administration, which he handed me one during the, during the interview. So yes, it was a wild interview. I mean, he had not really had, he had not really done many interviews for a while. And it's just like this 90 minute back and forth. And he was really wound up. and I just kind of sat and let him go. And this is just a couple days away from his Juneteenth rally.

Right. And which he tells me that it was a black secret service agent who was the one who informed him what Juneteenth was and that it was disrespectful and that he had been offended. By Juneteenth? That he was going to have a rally on Juneteenth. Oh, yeah. Oh, smart. But underscored the fact that there were no black men and women around Trump. Right.

That nobody had mentioned to him that that was the day. Yeah. And that it fell to a secret. service agent to tell him this. You know, he says, well, like, no one knew what Juneteenth was. And, you know, he's got a couple staffers sitting around him. And he says, you know, turns to them and says, right, like, you didn't know what Juneteenth was.

And his communications director looks and says, well, yeah, I did because we've put out statements each of the last three years on Juneteenth. And Trump was, he kind of sat back. He said, we did. But she's like, yes, sir. We did. You know, we did. And he said, well, no one else knew.

And, you know, in any case, like the outrage over this. rally. Like, I've made Juneteen famous. So that was the, you know, it was a pretty wild interview, but that was definitely the big highlight on that one. I mean, do you think anyone from this White House will be able to, like, work in modern life again? You know, it's a good question. That was one of my favorite things about this White House. I actually was trying to find the people in the White House who were capable enough and diligent enough and sort of disciplined enough to be in any other. other White House. And it was always like, there's a handful of folks who were well before their years, right, like finding the folks who like, okay, you could have worked in a Bush White House or an Obama White House, but like not for like 10 more years, you know, but it was fun to kind of find those people and see them how they were treated and toiling away. I will say like for the most of them,

I don't think there's going to be, wait, is it someone sent me a text the other day that like Robert Gibbs is working for McDonald's. Tim Murtaugh, who's the Trump campaign spokesman, is working for getter. You know, so like... Oh, yeah, that makes sense. You know, so it's like that kind of like, you know, one guy gets the, you know, the Fortune 500 company and the other's working for a Jason Miller's, you know, social media company. Yeah, that seems like that's going to end well, by the way. It is like an interesting case. I mean, some of those people really are kind of unusual. I don't want to ask you about your sources, but I do want to ask you, did you feel like there were a lot of people who were working really hard to try to rewrite history.

It's a good question. And yes, I mean, but that's no different from like five years of covering Trump. And right. And probably anywhere else, too. Yeah. You know, that was one of the, what was one of the striking things when I was reporting the book is that like almost everyone kind of thought that they were the truth tellers to Trump. But they were the ones who like would tell him, you know, how it was and what it was going to be

and like why he was making a mistake or why that was a bad idea. But, you know, this is why you do the reporting. And this is why you have to like talk to the other people in the room. And as it turned out, like, everyone sort of hedged the way they spoke to Trump. It's not easy to ask questions. It's not easy to like, you know, to ask tough questions to powerful people. I think it's hard. You know, whether it's Trump or whether it's Bush or whether it's Obama, the people around them, they didn't have an easy time telling like the president of the United States when he was wrong or that they thought he was doing the wrong thing. This one just needed a few more guardrails. And, you know, ended up being things like, you know, the, you know, the scene in the book that I'm thinking about is, is we got closer to January 6th, and Trump and Pence are going back and forth, back and forth over on what Pence can or can't do. And kind of like the entire legal world had one opinion. And then Trump and Sydney Powell and some of those folks had a different, and Rudy Giuliani had different opinion. And their opinion was insane. But Pence never says that, right? I mean, Pence thought he was clear with Trump and the people, you know, Pence's team thought he'd been clear with Trump.

But what he said were things like, you know, we don't, you know, I don't, you know, I don't, you know, I don't think I have the authority to do this. But anything your legal team has that I can take a look at, I'd be happy to take a look at. Right. And Trump, here's that second part. Right. And even, like, I interviewed Trump a couple times down on Mar-a-Lago, and I asked him about Pence both times. And he told me that Pence never told him, no, he couldn't do that on January 6th. Now, Trump, rewrites history with the best of him. But, you know, that's what Trump had certainly felt like Pence had given him enough where he could, where he could say that. Trump had told, you know, that Pence had never told him no.

Yeah, Jesus. Pence did tell him. I mean, I'm no fan of Pence, but it seems hard to imagine. Will Trump run again? What do you think? I don't know. I know that he likes to be in the headlines, good or bad. It's better to be talked about, you know, than to be boring for Trump. And, but I do think, like, he has, I think he's going to wait to see what happens in 2022. He's made a couple dozen different endorsements from U.S. Senate down to Staten, Island Borough, President. So, and some in like, you know, some of, you know, some of.

in Republican primaries. I mean, he's endorsed a lot of challenges to Republican incumbents, and that's not an easy thing to pull off. So those are all be data points for him. And, you know, I do think like the sort of broader question of 2022 for Republicans is going to be whether or not to redefine the party post-Trump, which will be informative to him. And one of the things I think this book does is, is lay out in some new ways that, you know, however they answer that question, they won't be able to say they didn't have enough information or, you know, this book lays out exactly who Trump was as a president and is as a candidate. Right. And then my other question for you is, since you've spent a lot of time with Trump, you can assess this. Is Trump like a liar or is he

just complete moron? You know, the question, the way I phrased that question to people is like whether you know, completely unbiased question. Well, it's like whether or not he believes the election was stolen, right? I mean, that's like a very specific question that gets at that. Does he really believe this or is this all part of like, you know, tune in tomorrow and see what, you know, to protect his brand as a winner or, you know, to keep people tuned in. And I can say that even the people closest around him don't know the answer to that. Again, in the reporting of this book, worried a lot of people. The idea that there is a possibility that he does believe that the election was in fact stolen, you know, widespread fraud. This is in the book in my interview,

I asked him about Sidney Powell, who had already come out, her statement in her lawsuit. You know, she's being sued for some of the things she was saying about the election companies. I'm forgetting the name of the company now that sued her. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Dominion. Exactly. Her basic defense was that, like, my statements were so ridiculous that no one could have seriously thought that they should have believed me. And I asked Trump about that.

And he just sort of cycled through all of the emotions of that couldn't really have been her, that this must have been some sort of legal boilerplate. You know, it was a very stupid thing to say. and to make sure that I know that Sineepal was never really technically his attorney. So it's hard for him to admit anything. It's so interesting. Well, thank you so much, Michael Bender. Great to have you.

Thanks for having me out, and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Peter Sagle is the host of NPR's Wait, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Peter. I've missed you in my time away. We've missed you. Thank you. Anytime.

So we talked this weekend about the Mark Millie career rehabilitation tour, and you had some hot takes. I had a hot take. I wanted to rise in defense of General Millie after you named him in your in your fuck that guy segment. And I, you know, and it's like I wanted to stand up like, you know, and say, no, no, I rise in defense of General Millie. I should say a couple things. I don't know General Millie. I don't know anything about him other than what everybody else reads. Yes, I'm Atticus Finch, except instead of an unjustly accused guy who just broke up a shiffero. That's all he did. I am here to defend General Millie. And it's part of my general sort of fascination is not too strong a word with how to evaluate

former members of the Trump administration, which I think is harder than most people like to think it is. Let me preface this by saying that when we think about former Trump administration officials, there's obviously a spectrum. On one side, which we will call evil, you have people like Stephen Miller who like should be in the dock at Nuremberg. There's no debate about that. He should never have a good night sleep in his life. And on the farther end, you have pretty much blameless people like, you know, assistant secretaries at the EPA who presumably just tried to keep their heads down and get their work done and wait for better days. You're not going to blame them for what they did, right? So everybody in the administration is somewhere on that spectrum. And we have to figure out

where, and when we talk about them in terms of history or whatever, we have to sort of take everything into account. So to take sort of an edge case, like look at Bill Barr, who is awful. I think he's a theeocrat and an authoritarian and probably the worst attorney general since John Mitchell, I think Jefferson Beauregard Sessions would like a word. Well, I don't think Sessions at least recused him. I mean, Sessions, I mean, let me put it this way. No, but Sessions sucks. Sessions is a terrible person.

Right, horrendous, racist. And the people who came out of his office like Sarah Igers are some of the worst people going. But without getting sidetrack, I mean, one thing we can say about Sessions is Sessions steered the DOJ toward his policy preferences, which were punitive, vaguely racist, or explicitly racist and bad, while Barr actually worked to corrupt the independence of the Justice Department, which is, in my view, worse. But even if you talk about Bill Barr, you have to say, well, when push came to shove, he did not support the president's attempt to overthrow American democracy. And so you have to put that into account. Not saying he's a good guy, you have to think about it.

Let's bring ourselves to Millie. Where does he fit? You said two things about him, as I remember correctly. You said that instead of, and this is, as you say, in response to all the stuff that's coming out primarily from the book by the two Washington Post reporters came out recently, which he obviously was a source. And he says that in the waning days of the Trump administration, he felt that Trump was going to attempt a coup, and he did what he could to prevent it. Yeah, which is good. Which is good. And you said, F that guy, because I'm a public radio guy. I still have trouble saying it in the microphone. It's all right. Are you going to be okay? I'll be fine. I'll be You said F that guy, he should have resigned and spoken out. He should have resigned his post and walked out and said, that president is planning a coup.

Okay, let's consider his position. First of all, he should have resigned. Every single person who resigned from the Trump administration as a matter of principle rather than being forced out because of horrible scandal was replaced by someone worse, right? Every single person. When Mattis resigned in principle, he was replaced by a much worse Department Secretary of Defense. I mean, it's just throughout, they just found some crony, some ignorant person, some. some of apparatchik, and they put him in the post. So you could be relatively assured that if Millie had resigned, he would have been replaced or attempted to be replaced with someone worse. Who knows? Maybe they would have reinstated Michael Flynn as a general officer and made him joint chief. Who knows? Right. So that's, so Millie had the choice. He could stay and try to fight it, or he could resign and bring attention to what was going on. Right. I think it is a reasonable thing for him and perhaps many other people who were in the administration whose stories we have yet to hear to say, I did what I could to prevent the damage that I could prevent and to an extent

I was successful. Some of those people will be telling the truth. Right. Not Ivanka. Right. No. And she's a big source for that book too. Right. Absolutely. She was another big source for the Rucker Lennox, Rucker and Lennig, who are great. She's a big source. She's a big source. She's, As a journalist, I mean, I'm on the opinion side be it, but like, you can't turn down the president's daughter. I mean, that's a very good source. But you know that she has her own, you know. Absolutely. And we need to judge it, you know, because people are going to be coming out and they're going to be saying, I know I did this and I know I'm on record as saying that.

But trust me, I had to do it because I was able to prevent some horrific thing from happening. I mean, getting back to Millie, we also know, and this is also. also from Rucker and Lennox's book, that Trump wanted to put troops in the streets to attack and kill protesters after the death of George Floyd. He wanted to do that, and Millie and others managed to stop him. Milly could have, so Milly can say, I stopped that, and Milly could presumably argue that if he had quit in principle then or later, the next guy wouldn't have stopped it. So that's something we need to take seriously, if not immediately take it on faith. The other aspect of what you said was that he should have gone public. So I'm suggesting,

I guess you mean he would have had the amazing impact of Dr. Rick Bright, right? Do you remember Dr. Rick Bright? We've had him on the podcast once. Right. He was he was the person in charge of the development of vaccines during the COVID crisis of last year. And he, He is the guy who became a whistleblower and said the White House is trying to make me approve these snake oil things for political reasons. And he also said this will be the darkest winter of modern history. I mean, very, he's a really incredible guy. And now he works in the Biden administration. Right.

So he was correct in every and he did the right thing. And he came out and he spoke out. And what happened? Essentially nothing. I mean, it had no effect. He testified in front of Congress. And the same thing happened that always happened with people came forward, which is the Democrat said this is terrible and awful and a scandal correctly. And the Republican said, you're disgruntled.

And Trump said, oh, he's just some disgruntled guy. And the world moved on with very little apparent change. And that's something that not only did you and I see, but everybody inside the Trump administration saw. Let's take an even more important case, somebody we haven't talked about in a long time. I think about him a fair bit, which is the Ukraine whistleblower. Oh, yeah. Whose name we don't know, although the right wing definitely thinks they know who it is, and they tried to publicize it probably so they could get him killed.

And Don Jr., yes. Right. We all remember that. Yeah, another day of that, yes. Think about what that guy, and the only thing we know about him for certain is that he was a male CIA guy. And think about him. So he hears the president of the United States blackmailing an allied leader with foreign aid to get the guy to smear a political opponent, which is

right there probably the top five worst things that any sitting president has ever done, right? And he hears this, and he decides to become a whistleblower, and he goes to the process, and despite attempts to stop it, it comes out. And this guy probably was saying to himself,

when he first became a whistleblower, he said, if I can just get this into the light of day through the legal channels, this will be the end of the Trump administration, because everybody will be appalled that this is act of corruption, and everybody will call for the president's resignation. It will be all over. Thank God. What happened instead? He became a villain, an entire political party, basically tried to expose him so they could get him killed, probably. And I mean, imagine how he felt watching the impeachment hearings, watching clowns like Jim Jordan or Devin Nunes, who was, as far as we know, actually up to his eyeballs in the

scandal, attacking him, attacking those who dared to question the great president. Imagine him watching the impeachment trial where all the senator, every Republican senator, spare one, got up and said, oh, it wasn't a big deal. And the Democrats are the real villains here. And he was just doing foreign policy. Imagine him watching that celebration. Remember this? In February of 20, when Trump invited all the Republicans over to the White House so he could celebrate his acquittal. And he promised vengeance and everybody who had dared try to bring him down and he carried out that vengeance. They basically had Alexander Vindman. Remember the guy? Right Matters. Remember him? Now, imagine how that whistleblower felt watching this. But then,

imagine everybody else in the entire national security establishment watching it, saying, this guy came forward with an absolute open and shut case for impeachment and removal. The worst thing any president has done in living memory that we know about, well, back to back to Watergate, and nothing happened, except this guy became a villain half to the Republican Party. If you're in the national security establishment and you're seeing stuff like this happening, why would you ever do the same thing? Why would you think that coming forward will make any difference? None of it made any difference. So to bring it back finally to Millie, I think he, given everything that we, just as civilians, can see, he arguably did the right thing.

He stayed. He kept quiet, and he tried to prevent it from the inside. And to whatever extent we know, he succeeded. Troops never did go into the streets with live ammunition against protesters, which we know Trump wanted to do. So point for Millie, in my view. Well, I'm glad to hear it. And I'm glad that you were able to rebut my fuck that guy. Yeah. So unfuck that guy if it's possible. I say unfuck that guy. Wow, it is weird to say that into a microphone. I know. Are you okay? I'm okay. I'm all right. I think this will be all right. Despite what you might hear or imagine, NPR does not prevent us from swearing in our off-duty time. Okay, good. We're not like some sort of religious order where we're not allowed to do that. When you learn to do the voice, it doesn't have a buzzer for what, for you guys, have your No, no, it's not like, it's not like, you know, like aversion therapy where they make us sit and give us an electric shock every time we swear.

That's amazing. So there have been about four books that have come out recently, and each one, and there are many more coming. Nobody has said anything. I mean, I guess Trump admired Hitler. We had sort of heard that before. I mean, there's nothing in any of these books that's come as a huge surprise. No, which is interesting. Go on. Well, it is a bit interesting, isn't it to you?

Well, it isn't. It isn't. I mean, one of the weird things about the Trump administration, as many, many, many people pointed out is it all happened in plain sight that every day Trump would say something on Twitter or be reported as saying something by someone who just heard it. Like, remember when the people walked out of the White House and said he just referred to African nations as shithole country? and ask why we have to do. I mean, any one of those things would absolutely destroy any other president who has ever lived. If Biden did any of those things, if a guy came from, came out of the Biden, you know, I don't know, FDA and said, I got political pressure to promote this drug that Biden is trying to, you know, promote for whatever Biden reason. I can't imagine what it might be.

That would be a huge scandal, right? Because we have this baseline expectation of our from Biden that if he were to, you know, contradict, we'd be incredibly upset. But with Trump, there was no secrets with Trump. He said what he did. He remember that so many things, it's so impossible to keep up with. We know that he blackmailed the president of Ukraine because he released the transcript because he didn't think there was anything wrong. So given that strange transparency, that strange, you know, we're just doing it in plain sight. It's not surprising that what we're hearing from these background sources, these deep investigative dives, is just confirmation of what we knew, that Trump was insane, that he was convinced that he

had been robbed, whether or not he really believes it or just decided to believe it for his own purposes, no one will ever know. I don't know if you read, we're speaking on Monday, and Fair just published another excerpt. Over the Rucker book. Yeah. I haven't read it yet. It's interesting because it's their description of their interview. They met with Trump at Mara Lago as he sat there and held court wearing his orange makeup,

which is weird. I'm just going to point out we're so used to the fact that he slathers on orange makeup for all public appearances. It's a bit strange. Oh, by the way, one little, I don't know if I've ever shared this before, but one bit of personal knowledge I have of Trump and I got the secondhand, so it's not personal knowledge, is that he does the makeup himself. He doesn't let any makeup person touch his face.

That's definitely, that sort of squared the circle for me. Yeah, don't ask me how I know it, but I know. Anyway, and you're reading this, and the question comes up again, is he mentally ill? He seems it. He seems mentally ill. I mean, one of the interesting things about Michael Wolfe, who apparently is done with his access. He was on our podcast last week. Yeah, and I don't know if he said this to you.

He's been saying it to other people. I listen to the podcast. I don't remember which Michael Wolf interview I'm thinking of. He just said he's incapable of answering a question. Yes, he told us that. He doesn't understand basic logic. You ask him about apples, and he'll start talking about monkeys. And at a certain point, you're like, is this person crazy?

But he's always been that way. He hasn't changed a bit since he came down the escalator. So, of course, they're just telling us, what we already know. He did it in public. Yeah, it is interesting to me that you have a situation where you have some of the most talented journalists in modern political writing focused on this politician who has had such a kind of dramatic career. And none of these books have any real shocking allegations. I mean, it's also shocking. Any single one of these things in the in a normal world, in back in the right side up, as opposed to the upside down we've been living

in. Any single one of those revelations for a normal president would have ended a presidency, would have marked them for life. Remember, Nixon is seen as a historic criminal for doing an eighth what Trump did in a given year. The one thing I love to point out is we all remember the smoking gun tape, which supposedly, that was the thing, of course, that Nixon fought and fought and fought to keep from being released. Everybody knew there was something in that tape that would end his presidency. He finally handed it over after nine to zero Supreme Court decision, and indeed his presidency ended. Well, what's in that tape? What's in that tape is a suggestion, a suggestion that they interfere with an FBI investigation. That's it. That's what caused his

downfall. Trump did that every day before breakfast. I mean, we have it on record. He did it on Twitter, I want you to investigate that. I want you to stop investigating this. It was one of the first things he did with Comey. Please go easy on him. That's what brought down Nixon. Trump did it a month in and had four more happy years in the White House. So let me put it this way. Is there anything, after all that we know, after we watch Trump do, that you think we could hear from, you know, some inside source that would shock you or more of the point would change anybody's opinion of Donald Trump. This is such a good point. Thank you so much, Peter, for joining us. This was great. That is my pleasure. And what I want to be is I want to be on your podcast the way that like every like sports radio, a show has like a favorite caller.

Done. When they get, when they get bored, like, oh, maybe Chuck will call him. Hey, Chuck, what are you worried about today? Chuck says, well, Bob, I was thinking, you know, that's why I want to be in this show. So anytime you need somebody to come on and rant about something just to change the pace, talk to. make. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power.

Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse Cannon. Molly Jung Fast. I hear there's fuckery. So today is a really special day because I'm even more worried about COVID than I've been in a long time.

because we're seeing more and more of an uptick with the Delta variant, and it's pretty disheartening. So, today's fuck that guy is a special anti-vaxxer fuck that guy. I don't know if you know her. I don't know if you've ever heard of her. Her father is John McCain. Who could this be? So here she is on the View saying,

not everybody on Fox News is, you know, saying don't get the vaccine. I actually haven't heard anyone say that, but maybe I'm just misinformed. Because besides being the daughter of John McCain, she's the wife of serial plagiarist Ben Dominic. Who loves spreading disinformation about that vaccine on his federalist site. Right. But he is now actually no longer the federalist he works for. Wait for it.

Fox News! So here she is defending her husband's employer. Her hopeful next employer. It's bullshit. Fox News does everything. it can every day from Tucker Carlson, its highest rated host, just asking questions, to the platforming of Alex Berenson, to the continual spreading of misinformation in various witch oil treatments.

We should also say, Molly, that Media Matters found that 60% of Fox segments that discuss the vaccine say it provided misinformation. Of course. This is not even a question. And I would say that the peak irony of the entire thing is that. the owner of Fox News, one Rupert Murdoch, got his vaccine as soon as humanly possible through the National Health Organization in the UK. Or as Republicans on Fox News like to call it socialism. So I would like to say you definitely are seeing a lot of bullshit, anti-vax bullshit out of Fox News.

The other part of it, and it's reflected in the polling, right? You see that, you know, one in this weekend we saw that one in five Americans believe that the COVID vaccine contains a microchip. I promise you, the microchip is in your fucking phone, okay? It is not in your vaccine. So anyway, this is a two-part fuck that guy. My second part is Alex Berenson. He is the peak king of misinformation. He used to write at the New York Times.

That's his claim to fame. He wrote a book about how marijuana makes you crazy. he's just completely insane. He's a spy novelist, but his real gig... Despite looking like he's high at all times with his dishelled look. I mean, but his real gig is these vaccine misinformation. And he pivoted recently from the vaccine is dangerous to the vaccine doesn't work. It's often with people like this that you see when they can't make one argument stick,

they just move on to the next. So for that, he was, he got a 12-hour suspension from Twitter. I would love to see him get a permanent suspension from Twitter. This man is a real public health menace. And he cannot be my fuck that guy enough. And to him, I say, fuck that guy. Well, mine's going to continue this theme of Fox News, bad actors. I particularly get mad about this because now that I'm back to work, I go to work.

Literally, I walk by the Fox building. I work next door to it. It's horrifying. I have to eat lunch next to these fucking assholes. But so this morning on America's stupidest show Fox News. friends. One, Steve Ducey, world-class morod, says, 90% of people who are dying are unvaccinated. Good for you, Steve Ducey. But Brian Kilmead, a man who always looks like he's about to have the dumbest thought you're going to hear of the day, he says, that's their choice. And Ducey says,

they don't want to die. The admin and government says mask mandates are to protect the unvaccinated. And Kilmead says, that's not their job. It's not their job to protect anybody, meaning the government. And as it, I'm sure all of our listeners can tell that is one of the dumbest thoughts you can. But I particularly like to highlight these mask slip moments where you really see that these people are just making up bullshit as they go. They have no ideology. They're not really adhering. It is just operational defiant disorder and always trying to be oppositional and make the Biden campaign look bad. The vaccine is politicized and they're on the worst side of it.

Yeah, I think that's fair. 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. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our Star Study.

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