The Daily Beast Podcast - What the Hell Is John Bolton?

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Molly Jong-Fast, like the rest of us, is rather confused. On the latest episode of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson and Molly try to puzzle through the mystery of Donald Trump’s mustachioed menace. Plus! The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright tells the juicy backstory behind his big scoop that Mary Trump has written a tell-all book about her fucked-up family. The Beast’s Nicole Phillip talks about how the United States tried to disappear the Tulsa Race Massacre. (“American history, the sins of America? When it comes to race, when it comes to slavery, when it comes to native Americans, it's sanitized. It's whitewashed. It's covered up,” she says.) And be sure to listen to the end, or you’ll miss a very MAGA guest appearance by the Dragon of Budapest himself. No, really. Rick & Molly’s Cameo greeting from Dr. Sebastian Gorka https://www.cameo.com/v/pWetTAiUS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. I want you to explain to me. I'm history's greatest monster, by the way, just so you know. Your history's greatest monster, that's right. But, just awful, but I want to talk about history's real greatest monster.

Are we doing another Eric Trump show? Eric Trump is not history's greatest monster. Eric Trump is known as the simple son. Slow Eric. Right. No, today we're going to talk, or at least you're going to explain to us as a Republican operative and a person who knows the dark arts. What the hell is John Bolton? What is John Bolton? So if we're doing like a Richard Attenborough nature documentary, beheld the John Belton in his native environment. He takes copious notes in these meetings as a master bureaucratic infight a bulletin seeks to always retain a record of what happened. Behold, he's now stalking in the Trump National Security Council, listening, always alert, ready to pounce. That's about as much Richard Attenborough as I can pull off for one bit, But here's the thing. John is a product of the Reagan era defense and national security buildup.

How long have you known him? I think I met him the first time in like 89 or 90. So we're not like close friends. You're not close friends. No, we're not like close friends or anything. But this is the process that I've been in for a long time, a lot of administrations. You know, John floats in and out in various capacities because he is one of the wise men, and I use that phrase advisedly, of the sort of national security bureaucracy.

and he drifted between roles in the administrations of various Republicans and green rooms at Fox News and in the sort of national security think tank world for a long time. And he is a famous combatant. He is a famous sort of policy hack type guy. And I don't mean that as an aspersion completely, but he is also one of these people who's very difficult to deal with on some level. And I think he famously doesn't suffer fools very gladly. And obviously going to work for Donald Trump would immediately challenge that problem. I have an important question for you, though, besides all of that serious stuff, what does that mustache look like in real life?

It's glorious. It has its own attendance, of course. Right. I mean, I feel like photos don't really do it justice. To keep it brushed and oiled, and each strand has a serial number on it because they want to make sure that they're all curated appropriately. It feels like a real showstopper. And do you remember a couple years ago there was a story that Trump didn't want to

hire Bolton because of the mustache? Because of the war stash, as you called it? Yeah, the worst stash. John Bolton's war mustache. No, look, Trump is, he's notoriously weird about people with facial hair. It's amazing. We are living in the dumbest simulation. It is the dumbest simulation ever. I think that there's a certain degree to which John Bolton's reputation as a careful note taker and observer and bureaucratic anthropologists of the Republican National Security State is all playing out in this book. I mean, yes and no, though, right? Because he does suck. He could have testified. Oh, of course. Listen, I said this repeatedly. I tweeted it. I I said it. I communicated it through an intermediary to him. If you don't testify, you lose the power.

And this book, look, he may make money on this book, but he's going to spend what he makes litigating with these a-holes. They're going to go after him. I said it in a tweet, I think in January, I was like, you either step up and testify or they will fuck you. Right. Trump will try to stop the publication of the book and Bill Barr will try to put you in jail. And, well, what's happening now? Trump's trying to stop the public. of the book, and Bill Barr's trying to put him in jail. Bill Barr hasn't really tried to put him in jail yet, though, because that would be really fun to watch. Today, they're floating that the DOJ is looking at criminal charges against John Bolton.

I would enjoy watching that. I can tell you, they will move with Bill Bar-ish dispatch, and although he looks slow, he's a swift bureaucratic actor, and... He looks like Huckleberry Hound, right? He does look like a little bit like Huckleberry Hound. I love Huckleberry Hound, so that's kind of sad for me. Continue. Although, I'm not going to say that Bill Bauer.

involved in a Northern Virginia Huckleberry Hound cosplay group. I've heard it exists. I've never been. I mean, I can't confirm it. It could happen. I like to think of him as sort of an e-ore-looking character. Whatever he is, it's not great. Well, I'm here to shred the Constitution.

We get Rick Wilson today with accents. With all the accents, I'm ripping on the accents today. That's right. Continue. So this entire risk that Bolton took by deferring his testimony, by not testifying, and thinking it was going to hype the book, he thought there was not going to be a downside risk to it. But of course, these assholes are going to try to put him in court and cost him every penny he makes on the book.

Let's say it blows out and he sells $10 million for the book. They're going to run up his legal bills as high as they can, as fast as they can. That is part of pure white hot Donald Trump fuckery. It's also something he should have expected at this point. Nobody gets a pass in Trump world. Nobody gets it's a oh, he was okay. He served well and farewell good soldier. I know we disagreed, but moving on.

And he's also on the wrong side of history too. Of course. Well, that's another matter for another day. We could talk about an ill-advised wars for days. I will say this. John Bolton's observations in the book have sent the president and the White House. And, of course, the White House, they cleared the book.

The National Security Council people sent it for vetting. They cleared it that it did not have any kind of classified material in it. And by the way, Bolton is old enough and smarter enough to know. He's not going to put classified into this book. He didn't have to. Right. He didn't have to. This assertion on the part of the Justice Department

that Bolton's sitting in on meetings with foreign heads of state and the president are classified is, of course, ludicrous. It is, of course, absurd. You are speaking with a foreign head of state. This isn't the dressing room of the apprentice where he makes these people sign in DAs before he goes in for the kiss. I was going to say something else, but I'll avoid it today. But this shit that's in the book that's come out so far in the excerpts, Trump begging

Xi Jinping, like a dog, as I like to say, like a dog. He begged Ping like a dog to help him when the election. This gets me upset because this is not how dogs work. I like dogs. No dog works like this. My dogs are so smart they basically could like jump on each other's backs to get on a counter to steal food. Stop bragging. I have good dogs.

So I do think that the Bolton thing will be interesting to see even though he should have testified and it was really shitty that he didn't. But even despite that, we would still have him on the pod if he wanted to come on. then we would make fun of him mercilessly for his facial hair. If John Bolton wants to come on the pot, I would welcome his national security insights and his visit to Jesus in terms of telling the truth about Donald Trump. Hey, Molly. Yeah, Rick Wilson. Can I say a magical phrase in Trump world? Okay.

But Gorsuch. We touched on the LGBT decision the other day, which the vast majority of Americans believed just on a pure individual liberty basis was correctly decided. But it led to an enormous ocean of butt hurt on the part of Trump folks. And then while we're recording this today, we ended up finding out that the Supreme Court of the United States of America, that conservative majority that are absolutely going to be there for Donald Trump at all times, they sided with the MS-13 caravan members of DACA. Well, they're also mad at Gorsuch for not taking away gay rights like he was supposed to. You know, their anger on many things is going to continue to be very hot. And I've written about this a lot. One of the things that I've noticed over the years is there are two big sort of conceits of modern era conservatism.

The first is our ideas are so great, we just want a balanced fair media. They really don't. They want their own version of the liberal media enterprise that exists in their heads. And so they have that. But the other part of it was, oh, we just want justices who will interpret the Constitution. They don't. They really don't. What they really want are people who will use the court to do social engineering for them and who will use the court to accomplish the things that they can never get accomplished, either political. out in the country or legislatively in Congress. No matter how big your majority is, and let's just hypothesize tomorrow, the Republicans, by some weird miracle, recaptured the House and the Senate. You know what they're not going to pass? They're not going to pass a bill banning gay marriage. It's not going to happen. There are people around Trump, the evangelical movement, who want that still to this minute.

Oh, yeah. Even when the Republicans have had the majority, did you see a lot of bills saying, this is the structural repealer of Roe versus Wade that really went anywhere? No, because they know it's not feasible or possible. They're hoping to use the core. as their meta-legislature, because they can't pass any of this any other way. I think that's why they're very unhappy right now.

The problem, I think, and we've talked about this a lot, is that there's no central organizing principle for conservatism anymore except owning the libs. Right. Owning the libs is the sole mover of modern republicanism. It's not conservatism, because owning the libs itself. I missed that when I read Burke. That owning the libs was a central goal of conservative philosophy.

I will say that, The owning the lives, hating the media culture is the only thing they have left. It's the one thing that they know plays to their base. It gens up the Fox audience. It gens up the folks who essentially exist now in a oppositional defiant disorder, political space that used to be called the Republican Party. So Trump has decided he's going to start the rallies again, despite the fact that not only is it not under control, it's actually spiking in Oklahoma where he decided to have the rally. It is. And I think it's important to remember that this entire.

entire rally is exclusively about Donald Trump's delicate little ego. This is because this guy is so pent up in the White House and so frustrated that he's not getting this screaming crowd and the audience cheering him that he is going to go out. And these people follow Trump around like it's a fish concert for the rascal scooter demo. The rascal scooter thing is really getting you a lot of juice these days. It really is. It really is. The new abnormal brought to you by not rascal Yeah, I think we're not getting ads from that. But these guys have filled up this enormous email list. A million people want to come to the rally.

That Ferrari of Bradge isn't going to pay for itself. These guys have a sense of urgency to get Trump out there because if he stays in the White House, he's going to murder somebody. If he stays in the White House, he's going to lose his mind. And they're all running around the White House right now, scared to death he's going to notice them. Right, he's forced. This is not a good time to be a White House staffer. You've got to think of this thing as a monster truck rally.

You've got to think of it as that kind of entertainment. It's world wrestling. It's it's monster trucks. This Saturday in Tulsa's on BOK Arena, the one, the only monster Trump jam. Come first come, sir, to be killed by the virus that's already slaughtered all 120,000 Americans. Masks are for losers. You'll be up close and personal with 19,000 Trumpomaniacs. So Trump has another problem, which is he is planning a big rally in Jacksonville, which is also. So he's planning the convention in Jacksonville, the acceptance of the nomination for the Republican Party. And there are three funny things about the Jacksonville story. First off, Florida is like COVID spike central.

Yesterday, we're up to 3,290 some cases. The numbers here are not pretty. Ronda Sanders made a bad call. But he made that bad call because like so many of these governors, Governor Abbott and Texas and others, they're all convinced they're going to run for president in 2024 and you've got to keep Trump happy. So Jacksonville is going to be a viral hellhole. The super spreader mania at the end of the. things. It's almost as if you designed

a program to push virally infected COVID patients out into the country. You couldn't think this up in a fucking laboratory. So today we had Lachlan Cartwright here. He's a senior reporter at The Daily Beast and a friend of all of ours. And Lachlan, so you have

this amazing Mary Trump scoop. You were in fact the first person to talk about this book. Tell me the history. You know, like all cracking yarns started with a tip, Molly. That tip was actually last May of 2019, where someone approached me and said, need to look into what's played out at the New York Times and in their investigative unit, in their Trump tax team.

And the tip was fairly vague, as some tips are. It was basically the source was telling me that three-member reporting team, a member of that team had tried to go off and write a book with a source, a key source that was described to me. The whole matter had gone pear-shaped. Their colleagues had found out about it, and it had led to the team imploding. This was the Pulitzer Prize winning team. They had just won the Pulitzer for their Trump Taxes Investigation,

which was a phenomenal piece of journalism, which they really got at the heart of Trump's wealth and where his money came from. So this is the Times team. Yes, so this is the Times reporting team, which was David Baxter, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Suzanne Craig, an incredibly accomplished journalist, and Ross Buton are also a gunjourner.

This was the team that spent about 18 months in a closed-off, locked-off room in the New York Times building, a secure room going through hundreds and thousands of documents, financial documents and other Fred Trump's tax returns to produce this stunning piece of reporting on Donald Trump and his finances and taxes. So you got a tip that this group had split up? Yeah, they had split up and it was something to do with a book and something to do with the source and that was basically the tip. You just start trying to unpack it. Like any reporting mission, you start sourcing up, speaking to other people around the New York Times, people inside the building. And it soon became.

came clear that the person that was trying to do this book was David Balsow, the four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and he had aggressively pursued this source, this key source of the New York Times for the Trump taxes, to the extent that he was sending them text messages, assessor text messages, saying things like, this is your ghost calling, please call me. Another text message he sent after he got back from a vacation to Jamaica was rest of tan, ready to get going. And this key source, they didn't want a ghost, a writer at that point. They said, certainly didn't want David Barto to ghostwrite their book. And obviously, there's implications, ethical implications. The New York Times has very strict rules that you can't go off and

ghost write a source's book while that person is a key source to ongoing hoarding. And the story involved, I found out that Andrew Wiley, who was known as the Jackal in the publishing business, he is a very well-known figure in the literary world. He's represented some very high-profile writers. Andrew Wiley became involved and with David Bastert tried to convince this key source that they were going to do the book. And they had even started to reach out to publishers and realized that they could get in advance, a seven-figure advance. So as I'm reporting this out, there's a couple of things going on. I'm trying to kind of report out what has happened within the New York Times to kind of implode this tax team. But the back of my mind, I'm thinking,

who is this source? Who is this person that played such a pivotal role in their reporting? And why is this book so valuable that you've got these characters like Andrew Wiley, who represented Norman Mailer and a number of other very high-profile people? And he earned that It named the Jackal, by the way, because he was infamous for swooping in and poaching other people's clients very aggressively. I reported this out over a course of a number of weeks, and that ended up us publishing a story actually around this time last year about how the Trump taxes team had imploded, how David Basso had tried to chase this source. There was even a stunning episode incident where this person basically went dark on them, the source that he was chasing. So he drove to their address, and he basically staked them out, banged on the person's door front. door, backdoor over the course of three hours, the source was so scared that they hear in their

own home, they even consider calling the police. So really aggressive tactics, and he really did push the boundaries of the Times ethical rules and the opinion that other Times editors that we spoke to took, sorry, former editors, was that he actually broke the ethical rules. Now, the paper, when we went to them for comment, they said, well, because the book didn't happen, he didn't break the rules. But we published that story last June. David Basto subsequently left the paper in about a month after that story was published to go to the University of Berkeley to head up their investigative reporting teaching course. Then, for me, the story then became, well, who is this person, the source? And can I get to the point where I am able to publish a story?

Now, I don't want to add anyone's sources. That's definitely not something I want to do. But in the back of my mind, I was thinking, well, this is a very valuable property. This person clearly wants to do the book. At some point, this book's going to come out. So I spent the last year really just kind of tracking this story with different sources, checking in with them, and just kind of getting the Daily Beast to a point where we may be in a position to publish a story about this source doing the book and then what would be in the book. So as this whole thing developed, there was this sense that this was somebody with the sort of Rosetta Stone inside of the Trump world. It wasn't one of the accountants or wasn't one of the former employees of some kind, but rather something that was much more intimately connected to the fact. family. Right. You thought, where did they get all of Fred Trump's senior's tax returns from? Was it someone from the IRS? Was it a government leak? And through the course of my reporting, it became... By the way, the

administration thought it was. Right. Exactly. And through the course of my reporting, it became clear it was someone much more intimate to Donald Trump. It was a family member. And so it's become clear that it was a female family member. And so I thought, maybe it's one of the sisters, maybe it's the judge. But that didn't add up. And then around Christmas, I kind of just, I said, down, I looked through all of the Trump family, created a sort of family tree. And I just started sort of poking around at these different family members. And I stumbled across this New York Daily News article from 2000, which talked about this messy, very messy family, bitter family court fight, where Fred Trump's niece and nephew, and this is where it slightly gets confusing because

the nephew is also called Fred. He's Fred the third. So these are Fred Trump Jr.'s kids. Fred Trap Jr. obviously sadly passed away due to complications of alcoholism at a very young age. And I see this New York Daily News report and I'm reading it. And basically what had happened is the niece and the nephew had decided to take Donald to court, Marianne to court and Robert to court, to challenge Fred Trap Sr's will and the estate. And it was a very bit, a very messy case. It also involves some retaliation where it was alleged that Donald and Robert and Marianne cut off medical benefits to Fred the third's son, William, who was. born with cerebral palsy and needed medical care. So it was this very messy family fight. And after that 2000 article, they basically both disappear off the radar, both Fred Jr. and Mary a Trump. And I'm sitting there thinking, well, through this court case in 2000, they would have probably had to produce a lot of financial documents, including Fred Trump's tax returns. And so I'm thinking at that point,

this is the source, this is the person. But again, I'm not in the business of adding anyone's sources. I sat on this. I didn't mention it to a soul. I didn't even mention it to my editor. It's made it as trusted in me that I was going to continue to pursue this and keep tabs on it very quietly. But I didn't tell us all, but I continued to work with different people and work with different people around different sources. And it became clear through the reporting that they had reached a new agent, someone of Louis Morris Endeavor, and that they had a book deal with Simon & Schuster. That book was going to be published on August the 11th. And last week, I heard the pitter-patter of a competitor. There's always a frightening thing as a journalist who's invested a year in a story, but I knew a competitor.

was onto it. And so I knew we had to move. And, you know, I spoke with Noah and Noah, the editor and Chief of the Daily Beast and my editor, Katie Baker about putting together a game plan. And then I just hustled from sort of last Thursday through the Sunday, just working with different people to try and figure out, well, what's in this book? Can I get the title? Can I get details? So we could get a story out before a year's worth of work went out the window and a competitor broke the story that I'd been trying to break for a year. Wow. How did you know what was Mary Trump? You look, I didn't know 100% for sure. But I was 99.9% certain based off of my reporting, based off of what different sources had mentioned over time. I mean, you look at someone who has motive, you look at someone who has access to these documents.

I didn't have it exactly 100%. And nor did I need to, really, because I was never going to out the source, but I was confident that it was Mary Trump. So as of late last week, when I worked out that we had someone on our tails trying to break this story, I then spoke to different sources around Mary Trump and different people in the publishing industry. who confirmed to me it was indeed Mary Trump, and the title of the book was too much and never enough, and that in the book, Mary Trump would out herself as the source for the New York Times as the primary source.

And so then that gave me great confidence that we were good to go, that we had this story, Copper Bottom. And then through more reporting, I was able to find out there were going to be other revelations in the book that, for instance, Mary Ann, Trump, the judge, had confided in a Mary a number of things about her brother, about Donald, that she was critical of her brother. And that was going to be in the book. There was going to be a detail in the book about how Fred Trump Sr.

And Donald Trump had treated Fred Jr. during his battle with alcoholism. And just the general tone of this memoir, of this tallol, bearing in mind how much access Mary had had to the family growing up. And also since then, speaking to her keeping in touch with other family members. What about the aunt? Does the aunt participate in the book? So, no, as far as I'm aware, no family members even knew this book was coming out until. story broke. I think they all got a very rude surprise on Sunday night, and including the president, and we know that from reporting our Washington team, that he was briefed. We went for comment on Sunday evening, and he was briefed almost immediately about this and was in a rage. And we've subsequently reported myself and our DC correspondent, Aswin, that he has been talking to his aides about the possibility of taking some kind of legal action against Simon Schuster,

against Marianne. And we know he's done that in the past. We've reported. that he's engaged, retained services of Charles Harder, the Gorker-killing lawyer to fire off letters to Michael Cohen after I reported that Michael was preparing to publish a book before the election. We know he was none too happy. And in terms of the other family members, I've reached out subsequently to Mary Ann, to Robert, to Fred III. And I have not heard back from any family members. I mean, this story is just beyond amazing. Did she write the book alone, or did she have a co-writer? So this plays back to David Basto. David Basto was aggressively pursuing this book deal, knowing that it were result in a major payday. I think I calculated that he'd walk away with 700K for ghost writing the book. So yes, my understanding is that she did work with another ghost writer. But not him. Most definitely not David Basto. Was David Basto trying to scoop her story? David Basto defended his actions.

He said he did nothing wrong. He said that he was just trying to help this source out. He was so helpful, in fact, guys, that he introduced her to his own agent, Andrew Wiley, at a series of meetings just weeks after this first story ran without telling his colleagues, Russ Brutner or Suzanne Crave. what he was doing and also not really plugging in his editors. When his editors did find out, they told him no on certain terms not to proceed with this project, that it could compromise the Pulitzer Prize winning reporting. It could compromise further reporting. It also could compromise his reputation, the reputation of the paper. But he continued to pursue, relentlessly pursue the source, including a series of all those text messages I was talking about before,

which you're in that original story on the Daily Beach. You've got to remember a year ago, Mary Trump was sitting a very quiet, you know, still concerned, I guess, about her uncle coming after her, suspecting that she leaked the tax returns. So David Basto put it all on the line to try and get this deal because it was obviously going to be incredibly lucrative. Wow. I think my big question is she obviously has a truckload here of dirty family laundry. I'm curious how Trump is going to try to keep this book from coming to publication. Have you heard anything about like what Trump himself or his organization or his lawyers is trying to do to prevent this from coming out? Yes. So as we reported earlier this week, Mary Trump is actually under an ending.

under a non-disclosure agreement. Wait, why? So that dates back to this 2001 court case where they challenged Fred Trump seniors of state and will. There was a settlement at the end of that, and as part of that settlement, Mary Trump signed an NDA.

And my understanding is that NDA prevents her not just from talking about that 2000-2001 litigation, but she's also not allowed to publish anything regarding the litigation or publish anything regarding her relationship with Donald, Trump, Marianne, and Robert. So there is an argument that could be made by Donald Trump's attorneys to Simon & Schuster and to Mary Trump, that she's in violation of that NDA.

Interesting. The Trump addiction to NDAs has been something that was a piece of insurance he took out, and I think he learned it from Cohen. Yeah. It's just sort of mind-boggling here is this is an NDA, not to a member of staff, not to member in the administration, this is to his niece, his own family member he's put under NDA. So we know he's agitating about this.

I mean, he's obviously got the John Bolton a book firmly on his. mind if you look at his Twitter account, as I say. I would hazard a guess that the next legal letter that's fired out is to Simon & Schuster. And Simon & Schuster are the publisher of the John Bolton book. They're also the publisher of the Varnia Trump book that came out this week. I would hazard a guess that a legal letter may be fired out. A cease-in-sist may be fired out to Mary Trump and Simon Schuster citing that NDA, citing that contract from 2001. I'm sure the first thing they did was go through the archives and line it and dust it off and read through it and try and work out how they can try and stop this or prevent this book being

published. But just like we've seen with the John Bolton book, these challenges sometimes, most times don't hold water. These NDAs, even though they're scary and he uses them to intimidate people, aren't they very hard to actually legally hold up? As someone who's under an NDA himself for my tenure as the executive editor of editor of the National Enquirer and Rader Online, I had no idea of that. That's a whole other podcast. And we have to run that past the Daily Beast legal desk before we dive into that. But as someone who has signed an NDA, these are contracts. People can come on. after you for them. I certainly, this has been reported. I can talk about this. American media certainly came after me. They threatened me with a $5 million lawsuit over the Jeff Bezos reporting. The Daily

Meese reported that. So look, these are contracts at the end of the day. They can be argued that people are in violation of them. And it's just scary enough sometimes getting a $5 million legal threat considering guys what the Daily Beast pay me. And it's very fortunate in that situation, the Daily Beast fired off a letter back and no litigation went ahead. Wow. That's amazing. Oh, what do you think Trump holiday dinners are like? My God. This makes secession seem like the fucking Walton's. So let me ask you this.

She's kind of an unknown figure in the sort of pop culture around Trump. You've got the fail sons and you've got Ivaca and Jared. And people sort of know them as part of the Trump overall brand. What is she like? Have you got to read on like her personality? Like, what kind of person is she? I'm curious because we just don't know anything about her. I know.

And that was one of the tough things really reporting this story out was after I'd worked out her identity. I really couldn't start poking around her or friends or whoever because she was still a source for the New York Times. And I didn't feel comfortable getting into a position where I potentially could have put someone's identity at risk. And I didn't feel comfortable poking around on someone else's source. It was a very weird situation for me. I would say up like trying to sort of strategize and Google. There is a Twitter account that bears her name. I believe from sources, it is her Twitter account. To give you a bit of insight of the tone of the book on the evening of the election. She tweeted, obviously after the results have come through, she tweeted, this is one of the

worst nights of my life. What is wrong with this country? I fear the American experiment has failed. So a bit of a vibe about where this book might be going. And she has a PhD in clinical psychology. The publisher has certainly played that up in the blurb that they've released on Amazon. They've played it up on the cover of the book. This book is already number two on Amazon, only number two to the Bolton book in terms of pre-sales when Simon Schuster sort of had to, I guess, crash it on Amazon because they weren't aware we were going to break it on Sunday night. So I think they spent most of Monday trying to get this up on Amazon. The book, I think, was number 19 by the next morning. Now it's number two. So there's an incredible list in this. And look, we've seen all these other Trump

books from Cliff Sims, from the Bolton, from everyone else who's been in the administration, Amorosum? Who hasn't written a book, the janitor? But in this case, this is the first family member to break ranks. This is the first family member to put their head above the parapet, to put their name to something and to write a critical insight into Donald Trump and into the family. I think it's going to be explosive. It was described to me by someone who has had disability into it, who has read it as, quote, harrowing and salacious. Wow. Yeah, she had a tweet, if that's her, obviously we can't verify that yet. There was a tweet about, he said something about Bolton wrecked everything he touched, and she said something very, that a lot of people notice was,

let's talk about what you touched or something of that effect. If it is her, this may have some, as you had some salacious legs. The only interview that I was able to find was from 2000 when she spoke to the New York Daily News following that very bitter family court fight over Fred Trump's will, which again just shows you the tenor of the man in terms of Donald Trump, because after they filed that legal action, Donald Trump and his brother and sister then cut off financial and medical support for young William, Fred Trump. Didn't one of them have cancer? It wasn't cancer, but he was gravely ill in hospital. He was born a cerebral palsy and needed

a conflict of care. So they cut financials off. And it was described to me by sources, clearly payback for them filing this lawsuit. And so in that 2000 piece with the New York Daily News, Mary Trump is quoting, say, Trump's niece, my aunt and uncle should be ashamed of themselves. And then she goes on to say, I'm sure

they are not. This has been fuming for 20 years. This has been sizzling for 20 years since that legal action. And obviously, there was a settlement, there was an NDA, but I'm sure that bad blood is still very much presence of this day. Also in that interview, she said, given this family, it would be utterly naive to say it has nothing to do with money. But for both me and my brother, it is more to do with that out father, Fred Jr. be recognized because they were saying that Fred Trump's senior's will

had been changed close to the time of his death. They were accusing Donald Trump of doing this, which then resulted in, obviously, Trump and his brother and sister getting more of the pie. And it was described to me as a bank robbery that then Mary and her brother really lost that financially as a result. As I like to say, they seem nice. So full disclosure, I formally published a book through Simon & Schuster. It was a number one New York Times bestseller. Thank you very much. That will never get old. I'm curious how much of a media plan they seem to have put in place for her. I can't imagine this is not going to just detonate across the television networks. Yeah, so I don't have any visibility into that. I don't think Simon Schuster were extremely happy with

me on Sunday night when they started getting news alerts that this book had already been announced. I know that they had planned to put a press release out around. the second week of July. My understanding was they wanted the Melania book firstly to get all the press, then they wanted the Bolton book to get all the press, and then they were going to roll out. They were going to announce this book, Mary Trump's book. So I don't think they're extremely excited with me, or they certainly weren't extremely ecstatic with me on Sunday night, Monday morning. I know that from sources. But I think since then they've probably have gotten over it, considering their number two on the Amazon pre-sale list. But I'm not exactly sure, but I'm sure that

they have a set-piece TV interview set up, and I'm sure that there's going to be other print interviews. And if they're listening, they've got my emails. So I'm more than happy to do the first sit down with Mary Trump. Oh, us first. I did not. If you appreciate knowing the good, the bad, and the bad shit, become a beast inside member. Your support gives voice to podcast just like this one.

Visit new abnormal.thedailybeast.com to sign up today. And today we have Nicole Phillip, who has written a really great piece on the Tulsa Massacre. So, Nicole, Tulsa is obviously going to turn into the story that dominates the news over this week, and probably in the next week, if everything goes into the Trumpian abyss that we all kind of imagine that it will. What are you seeing right now as the sort of feel on the ground there in terms of what you think the outcomes are going to be from this? We can never predict what he's going to do once he gets up on the podium. But what's your sense of the Tulsa festivities to come?

Well, I don't know what you all saw, but he recently claimed that he made Juneteen famous. Yes. Because obviously, no one knew about Juneteen famous. until he decided he wanted to put a rally on that day. There's already conversation brewing around that topic of just the fact that the president thought that Juneteenth was not a thing until he made it a thing. It reminds me of what, remember Frederick Douglas?

He's a very good man or something like that. People are talking about him more and more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It reminds me of Dr. Eval describing his father in Austin Powers because he was a relentlessly self-improving belangerie owner who claimed he had been to the question mark. Exactly. So I anticipate, since there's already conversation brewing about that particular topic, and then as we move into the weekend, I hopefully more people are going to try to educate themselves

about exactly what went down in Tulsa, considering that rally is still being held there. Don't know if that's going to be overshadowed by the fact that they don't even want him in Tulsa right now because of the coronavirus. But I do anticipate that people will hopefully begin to educate themselves more and more about this part of history that's been shrouded in secrecy for so long. Do you have a relationship with Tulsa, like this story that you wanted to write it? Yeah. And actually, in terms of my feelings about Tulsa, especially in connection with Juneteeth, when he first was having his rally on this day, when I heard that, I also remembered that it

wasn't even too long ago that I had first heard about Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre and all of that. So there were a lot of people who were trying to, I understand, say, well, Trump knew exactly what he was doing. And for those people, I'm like, you can't one minute say that the man knows nothing about anything about foreign policy and all of a sudden expect that he's going to know like this one thing, this thing that's been shouted in secrecy for so long, and even know what Juneteenth is or when, even though he quote-unquote made it famous, you can't go from one extreme to the next. So I didn't necessarily think that he knew per se what happened in Tulsa or about Juneteenth, but I thought that it highlighted a larger issue that is no one really, like not a lot of people or not enough people are talking about what happened in Tulsa. I know about it. That's also indicative of a larger problem also within the United States and just how black history and slavery and all of that is taught within the country.

The idea that Donald Trump didn't know about Tulsa is, I think, completely believable. The idea that he didn't understand what Juneteenth meant, completely believable. But now, do you almost feel like part of this is trolling? Like, they're just being defiant about it. Even though they know the history now, they've been made aware of it, that this is just like, I call it all the time, the oppositional defiant disorder of the Trump party. Again, back to that, I made it famous comment.

Just to me kind of feel as though there's some sort of, I don't want to call it poking fun, but yeah, I guess trolling. would be the appropriate word here, at least in this particular case, because, you know, with this president, we can go back to the Tiki Torch-Carian people, and he said there's good folks on both sides because there's a good side to racism, apparently. You mean the vanilla latte ISIS?

So we've already heard this sort of sympathetic kind of like wink, wink, nod-nod sort of attitude that this president has had toward racial insensitivity. We can go as far as to say racists. So I would not be surprised if there is, some trolling involved, you know, going on right now from his administration or from him directly. Have you talked to African American leaders in Tulsa about how they feel about this? I have not spoken directly to African American leaders about this particular subject,

but you can see on Twitter different people from that are from the area, different thought leaders, not just within Tulsa, but within the United States in general. Again, back to that whole he knew what he was doing sort of thing. So there is a lot of that. And there's also a lot of the understanding that. a lot of people just are not aware, and people do want to be made more aware. There was a 60-minute special actually on Tulsa recently that I saw. There was someone on who was saying that they grew up in Oklahoma, if I'm remembering correctly. Forgive me if I'm not, but they grew up in

Oklahoma and hadn't known about this for a very long time in their life. So did you have a personal feeling about this that you wanted to write about it? So to backtrack just a little bit, I also spent some time on the 1619 project. And part of what I worked on with that project was about education. So I did have a personal connection to this idea that American history, the sins of America, when it comes to race, when it comes to slavery, when it comes to Native Americans, it's sanitized, it's whitewashed, it's covered up. When I worked with this project, I heard from people from 91 to 21 years old saying things like when I was taught in school, it was that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, it was states' rights,

and then other aspects of Black history, African American history within America, being twisted to fit this narrative that, yeah, like something bad happened, but we've done better. So when I heard about this, and I do realize that a lot of people are not familiar with this subject, it was like, I felt compelled to then write about it and tell people, and even the president, if he took the time to read it, about what actually happened. It's not about the time. It's about his inability to read. Right. Because it's such an egregious event. It was heinous. It was horrific.

The number of people dead is beyond what was, of course, written at that time. beyond what we even know right now. So it's important for us to ask people that are trying to move forward with the race conversation to see legitimately how bad things were. Whatever makes you sad, uncomfortable, whatever, to understand how bad things were and what was going on back then to understand why we are where we are today. So, Nicole, it was a very stirring article and a very moving article because we don't always look back in history. We don't always look back at these things. We try to sort of allude over them. The narrative of war to, is history will play itself out in front of you if you're not careful. It will repeat itself

in front of you if you're not careful. Do you see any sort of parallels to the way that very divided communities in Tulsa ended up in this situation? And some of the things in our communities that are so divided today, the better question. So taking a step back to the 1619 project, that is Nicole Hannah-Jones Brainschild. For whatever reason, people are always congratulating me, be confusing your black Nichols. We're two different people. Nicole Hannah-Jones project. It was her brainchild back from, I believe, February 2019 is when she started speaking about it to the New York Times magazine. But she had always had this idea for a while.

She had been thinking about this. And then I kind of came onto the project around June 2019. And my goal was to work on what's called user-generated content. So reaching out to our readers and get some real regular voices of the community to come in and kind of speak to us. So one of the ideas I had, because just a side note on this, as well is my family's not America. I'm a first generation black American. So there are certain aspects of African-American history

that I didn't learn until I was an adult because I didn't have family that knew to teach me. And I was relying on the American education system to teach me. And one of my earliest memories of being taught about black history, in particular slavery, was when I was in the fifth grade and they tied us all together, made us lay underneath our desk, and pretend to be enslaved. Jesus.

Yes. Yikes. And even as a child, I knew there was something weird about this. I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of this. Something's weird, right? So as I'm working on the 1619 project, it occurred to me, I cannot be the only person. Because I know it's at least me and then the 20 other kids in my class that experienced that one moment, right? It occurred to me, okay, there must be an issue of education in America at large.

So I just sent out this what's called a call out to see what kind of responses we got. And we got, if I remember correctly, hundreds of responses from people who were sharing stories about how, poorly they were taught in school. This particular topic was slavery, but I can only imagine how far reaching. You know, if you get that wrong, I'm pretty sure you're not talking about the Tulsa Race Massacre. So we were seeing things like enslaved people, and I do prefer to use the word enslaved, which is something I learned also during the 1619 project, because to call someone, a slave is dehumanizing people are not born slaves. They are human and then enslaved. So with that said, the people are talking about enslaved, people being referred to as workers, for instance, and

not forced laborers to inslave people. And then again, back to the Civil War being about states' rights and whatnot. When our editor reached out to me and told me, you know, this is what's happening. Are you interested in potentially writing on it? The first thing I thought about is, wow, we are so poorly educated because I am pretty certain Trump didn't know about when or what Juneteenth is. Hopefully he knew the what, but that might be a little presumptive. So when I was reached out too about this, immediately I started thinking back to the 1619 project and how I'd worked on this piece. And there's another piece by a reporter named Nikita Stewart that goes much deeper into the actual issue of educations and slavery within the United States that I encourage everyone to read.

But then I immediately went back to that and I just knew, okay, there's an education issue here because I also, myself, don't remember hearing about the Tulsa Race Massacre until I was an adult. And it was something that I had to find out on my own. This concept of Black Wall Street, it's also important for Black People today to understand what Black Wall Street was, how flourishing this community was. because as a result of burning this community, as a result of not teaching it, as a result of hiding the information about this, people aren't then made aware of the great successes that black people can't attain,

if only given the opportunity. This was about intimidation, right? And crushing spirits, right? It was a larger message to the black community. Yeah, that's exactly what I gather from it as well, because there's even a line in the piece that I wrote about how they were upset, jealous, of what they deemed to be this inferior race.

doing so well. So there is definitely that aspect of it, like, quote-unquote, knocking people down a few pegs and decimating all that they worked so hard to do because at this time, especially in 1921, it's like that was not the goal of Jim Crow. The goal of Jim Crow was never to make sure that black people could do well in light. In spite of Jim Crow, this community was diving. That's what I always wonder with the Confederate statues, because that was around that same time, those Confederate statues went up, was that idea, these were all like ways to try to disempower African-Americans. Yeah, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, they were kind of set up as a reminder of the Big Brother, this watchful eye, like, remember we had this power, had this power, we're always

going to be here sort of to bring you down and in a sense. That's how I view the construction of those monuments. And so many of them were well post-war. The fact that so many of them were erected in the South in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, when at that point, the folks who had fought in the Civil War at that point and remembered it were all in their late, late years, if they were still alive at all. And so many of them were kind of an extended middle finger. They were. And as a matter of fact, it's interesting, you mentioned the people that were from that era, because I also, something else that kind of motivated me to write this was remembering that the accounts that we have from slavery, the written accounts that we have, because you know, many

enslaved people could not read and write. Many of them came during what was that New Deal writing project. Oral history project. Yes, that came about during that time. And many of those people that were formerly enslaved were children. So they were like in their 80s, 90s, by the time they were able to tell their story. So it's just always been so important to me to make sure that these moments of history do not get lost and do not get glossed over, whitewashed in any sense, so that we can't just forget history. We have to continue to not just remember it as a thing that happened once before, but as a

thing to not repeat again. That's another reason why it was so important to me to make sure this was written. So Rick, Molly, this is your producer, Jesse Cannon. Hey, Jesse. Rick, I know it's been like a rough week and, you know, you've been under attack from all the worst people in the world. So I thought we might need like an outside voice to like give you guys a little bit of a pep talk about this and like, you know, a real experienced producer in the realm of the discourse. So I went on cameo and for $45, I got one of the greatest voices in radio to give you guys some advice.

I mean, I also want you to pay attention. His affectation is just so good. So allow me to bring you some advice from Dr. Sebastian quarka. Hey, Rick and Molly. I've got sent a message from your friend Jesse, who says you have a new podcast and wanted me to give you some advice. Look, whether it's a brand new podcast or a national radio show or any kind of program where you are the character of the program, one thing matters above all else. Authenticity and you can't fake it. Be yourselves. Be genuine. You're listening. we'll know, and it'll be a success. God bless you both. Maga. I'm Sebastian Gorka. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes,

we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science, who will 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. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter. I'm Molly Jongfast, and he's the Rick Wilson. 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-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support

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