The Dispatch Podcast - Front Row Seat

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent at ABC News, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss his new book Front Row at the Trump Show and how this presidency has changed the way we think about politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, with a special Friday episode of the Dispatch podcast. I'm joined today by Steve Hayes and Jonathan Carl, ABC's Chief White House correspondent and author of the New York Times bestseller, Front Row at the Trump Show. John has unique insights into this presidency. He first interviewed Donald Trump in the mid-1990s. We'll talk to about being a reporter at the Trump White House and how this presidency has changed the way we think about politics. We even talk a little George Orwell. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts.

And make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. And with that, let's dive right in. John, thanks for coming. Thanks for having. me. This is great. Have you been pleased with the reception of the book so far? I was petrified at the idea of having a book come out when every bookstore in America was closed. And I had to cancel all these carefully planned book events and, of course, the book party. But, you know, all that's obviously not significant when you look at all that else is going on in the country. So I can't

really feel sorry for myself. But it has been. And you sold out on Amazon. Sold out on Amazon. We just found out. I'll give you some breaking news. Just found out that we have made the New York Times bestseller list for the third week in a row. And we actually went up from last week. So that's good. But what's been gratifying to me is that people seem to be reading the book and, you know, sending, you know, you get notes over various social media stuff. And I'm used to getting a lot of nasty stuff on places like Twitter, but I've actually gotten some, you know, some, some really good feedback on the book. Well, I want to just start at the end of the book. You, the last chapter takes place in February of 2019. Now, the epilogue takes place in October of 2019, but February

19, that's where you decide to sort of end your day-to-day narrative. How did you decide to end there, how do you decide to stop writing in the middle of the Trump show? Well, It was the biggest challenge in writing the book, even as I was writing my book proposal to try to get a, you know, a publisher was the biggest and most difficult question I faced was, where do you end this thing? Where do you end it? And I struggled with it. I just started writing, not knowing where I was going to end. And then I found myself at one point at the formal launch of his re-election campaign or a rally in Orlando. now he as you know he filed for re-election on january 20th 2017 so uh you know but but i thought

this is this is like a good logical endpoint this is like you know we cover him through and we end with now he's off on you know the second most improbable um you know campaign of his life um and you know that kind of blew by and we were into impeachment and i was like well maybe i'll just end with impeachment maybe we can do it there and then we'll like and it was very hard But I was given a little bit of a gift in that, you know, when I was summoned to the Oval Office, that's the scene I opened with in the epilogue by the president, primarily to chew me out over a, you know, over a story I had done. It was the infamous Hurricane Dorian. Is it going to hit Alabama? Is it not? I mentioned a very short, mentioned in a piece that I ran in world news tonight on Labor Day, okay? I mean Labor Day. I wouldn't have been watching if I wasn't on the show. And I can't guarantee that I watched

anything either before or after my piece, which ran like 10 minutes into the show. And it wasn't a story about Hurricane Dorian. It was, or Alabama, it just made a reference to the fact that he said that it was going to hit Alabama or that it might hit Alabama and that the National Weather Service had said, no, no, no, it's not in the path. So, At any rate, I was dealing with, you know, he brings me in. It's a remarkable 45-minute meeting in the Oval Office. It's like a perfect place to kind of end. Because by the way, he had said that he would do an interview with me for the book and had ultimately never happened.

So here it was. Take him however you can get him, right? Yeah, yeah. And in combination with that, there was. this remarkable event that had happened regarding the White House Charter, the White House Correspondents Association founding chartering. The White House Correspondents Association was founded in 1914. And the reason why it was founded was because Woodrow Wilson was having regular press conferences and all kinds of charlatans were showing up, you know, speculators,

you know, con men of all different kinds, and occasional journalists. And, sometimes those two overlapped. But Wilson, you know, was usually off the record and some of the people weren't abiding by that. So he went to some of the regular reporters at the White House and said, look, if you guys can't control who comes in and out of this thing, I'm going to stop having them. So they formed the WHCA. They wrote up this charter that looks a little bit like the Declaration of Independence. I mean, journalists, even back then, had a sense of self-importance. It's this beautiful document, you know, we, the whatever, the white, and it's signed by 11 correspondents, the founding correspondence of the White House Correspondents Association.

And it was lost for 15 years. When the renovations happened during the Bush years, it, it, the GSA moved us out for, for a while. we came back in. It had been on the wall. It was gone. And there had been this frantic search to find it and it was gone. And suddenly, after I became president of the White House Correspondents Association, it reemerged. It can't be a coincidence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I take full credit. But it was found somewhere in the White House. We don't know exactly where. I got a, I got an email from an assistant to

actually she had Janet Montessie she was an assistant to Sean Spicer and then an assistant to Sarah Sanders and now Sarah Sanders had left and she was going off to a different assignment and she said by the way we have something up here we think might

belong to you and it was thick it was in an old ratty box behind the copier in upper press it hadn't been there for long it'd been there for like she thought like maybe six months or so, somebody had brought it and given it to Sarah Sanders and said they found it and thought she might want to put it on the wall. Of course, Sarah had thought maybe better to keep it in the box and stick it behind the copier and not tell us about it. But anyway, so we got that thing. And those two things just kind of, okay, now I've got kind of my ending.

Because I thought that was a very hopeful sign. We brought it to the National Archivist, you know, the Archivist of the United States at the National Archives. and, you know, I'm walking, and he gave me this, like, after-hours tour of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and all that. And I'm not saying that the charter of the WHCA is, like, those documents, but... Just, it's number three. Yeah, Bill Wrights is in there somewhere, you know. Anyway, so that's... I had kind of a way to find some closure, but I trust me, I'm already working on the sequel.

Oh, yeah? Well, I think so. We'll see. Second, we've noticed in the quarantining, you've been pushed to the second row on some day. So now it's second row at the Trump show. Second row at the Trump show, yeah, yeah. And, you know, unless I like decide to take the last row at some point, just be the last row. I don't know, but maybe that's like the, you know, I mean, how many these can we do?

Can we do a few, you know? Oh, yeah. Does it, let me, let me jump in with that. Just a question about the spacing. I mean, obviously now people who are watching the current daily coronavirus briefings are looking at this press. briefing room that has journalists socially distanced and spacing, does it usually matter? It doesn't seem to matter when you watch these because pretty much everybody gets a question if they have a question. Some people get multiple questions. But on a typical day when the

press room is full, how advantageous is it to be right up in the front? Does it matter? Well, the answer is yes, but of course everything is different in the Trump era. So Including that, during the glorious Spicer era as press secretary, when he was holding briefings, he made it a point of almost never calling on the people in the front rows. And, you know, he would try to find whoever. And it was, you know, I described some of these scenes. I would be in there and not get a question, which is very, I mean, I'd never happened under, under previous press secretaries to be, I mean, you're right in front of them. It's hard to, like, you know, he's in there for like 40 minutes and for him to like ignore you. It takes some skill.

But, you know, he was, you know, he'd call on this guy, Andrew Feinberg, who at the time was working for Sputnik. Do you know what Sputnik is? It's literally an organ of the Russian government. It's not like a Russian-based news organ. It is owned and controlled by the Russian government. The name isn't ironic. It's actually what it is. You know, it's Sputnik, yeah, yeah.

So, but, but, you know, but usually, you know, you, you know, you're right there. And I'm, and it's amazing, you've been in there. You know how small the press room is. And, you know, you are really close to the president and the press secretary, wherever it is. I mean, you're like a little less than six feet. So, you know, you're kind of, you're thinking, should I wear a mask or not in this era? but but it's strange now i mean steve 14 people 14 reporters 49 seats so most of the seats are empty and usually especially if a president is going to be in the briefing room every seat is

obviously filled but the aisles are completely packed the back is completely packed and it's you know there's an energy and a chaos to it and it also makes it easy by the way for the even easier for the president to you know to avoid questions because he can you can call on you, cut you off, and go, and there's 70 other people in the room with their hands up. Yeah. And it's a different environment now. When you had an exchange the other day with the president where he made an accusation about reporters, you know, deliberately misreporting things, and you sort of jumped out of your chair, maybe literally. I mean, certainly figuratively, you were unhappy with them and sort of pushed back and said that's just not true.

obviously what are the things that people spend the most time talking about in this administration with the focus on the Trump versus the press narrative is how often the president says things that just aren't true. I guess my question to you would be, what do you say to people who respond to that by saying, yeah, you know what? He's a politician. All politicians lie. They say things that aren't true all the time. Does he do it more often or more aggressively, or are they right to think that this is pretty much how all politicians operate? I don't think it's how all politicians operate. I mean, spinning and, you know, being disingenuous, dishonest is something that is, you know, politicians of all stripes do from time to time, although I think there's a lot of

good people in politics. So I don't think they're all a bunch of liars. But this is, this is different. He doesn't seem to care if he is called out for an untruth. He doesn't seem to care. He'll say diametrically opposed things in the same, sometimes in the same sentence. I mean, at the briefing that we just had yesterday, when it's a very odd briefing. when he, you know, brought up this guy from DHS to talk about how sunlight and humidity kills the virus and sort of cleaning fluids, you know, like bleach and whatever. And then after the presentation, the president suggested, well, maybe the sunlight we could have like these rays go inside people's bodies somehow. I don't know if he was thinking of like a tanning bed or what he was really thinking. of I'm not really sure.

And then he said, and man, the, you know, the cleaning fluids, that's incredible. It could be, maybe that could be, maybe, maybe even injected in, and kill the virus. So I asked the guy from, the poor guy from DHS, you're not, and the president suggested, asked him if he would test that, these propositions and see what they, if they would work. So I asked the guy, I was like, are you, now we, you're. not going to test, you're not going to be injecting bleach into people, are you, sir? I mean, that's not a, and the president stepped forward. He said, well, no, no, I mean, I never said injecting, but, wait, no, you just did, like, like three minutes ago. So I asked him to describe a scene in the book from a rally right before the 2018 midterm midterms. And I did an interview with

him backstage right before he went on stage. And I had come across, it's a campaign promise I think we've all forgotten about. But at one point, he did say, I promise you, I will always tell the truth in the 2016 campaign. So I said, now, you can't say you've kept that promise, can you? And I thought he would push back and say, I'm the most truthful guy in the world or something like that. I'm tremendously truthful. But instead, he said, uh, I tell the, yeah, I try. I tell the truth when I can. Um, and, um, it was, it was just such a strange admission, he said. And, you know, it was, it was, it was really, and it reminded me, um, I had a college friend. His name, Scott Alexander, a great guy. And he, um, like, he still was still, still a great friend. And,

He told me once, you know, look, I would never lie to unless I had to, you know, unless I really had to. I would never lie to you. Let me ask the flip side of that question, because probably the most controversial part of your book has been discussing your fellow reporters and the media in the Trump show. What do you think has been the most unfair part of the media coverage of the Trump presidency as compared to previous administrations? well i think there's been a relentless negativity from day one which um it's almost the tonnage of it as opposed to any specific element of it it's almost at any point over the last three and a half

years you could tune in um and uh to to to the to the news coverage and think oh my god look at the outrageous, horrific, unbelievably awful thing he just did. And oh, my God, he just did it again. And he just did something even worse. And it's, I mean, the coverage is, you know, is driven by his own actions. And he's given lots and lots of material to drive that coverage. But there's like no, there's, there's no discerning between real scandals and, like, trivial scandals. And I write, and I bring up this, this Hurricane Dorian thing, which, again, I I was the first person to mention that on network news. And then, if you remember, it became a thing.

And the president, it really, for some reason, it ate him, ate at him. And it culminated with him drawing with his Sharpie on the, on the FEMA map to show that the hurricane, the cone of the hurricane, look, look, it really does go to Alabama. And that story dominated news for an entire week. and you would have thought we had just like, you know, invaded Alabama, yeah. Yeah, yeah, invaded Alabama to seek out weapons of mass destruction or something, you know. And, you know, look, he's so, so I do think there's, there is something to that. And he has so goaded and insulted people to do what we do, both in terms of the personal insults and taunts, the general, you know, ridiculous accusations of enemy of the people and all that. And also blatantly declaring real journalism fake news that there's kind of an instinct for all of us to like get in the ring with them and fight them over it.

And like, and sometimes I have, by the way. But the overall impression you get is that to all too often that the so-called mainstream news media looks like the opposition party, which is exactly what he likes to call us. How do you know the difference? I mean, how do you know when to push and when to back off? I mean, we deal with this a lot with our own work at the dispatch. I mean, this morning's, we have our morning dispatch newsletter, sort of we try to cover as much as we can without really obsessing on the things that drive a lot of the kind of silly talk in Washington, the personality stuff, the craziness, the, you know, finger pointing that nobody's going to remember in a week or in a month, certainly not in six months. And this morning at, you know, 5.30 in the morning as we were putting the thing to bed, it occurred to me that we had not included this discussion of disinfectant and sunlight. And we hit send without including it in this, you know, sort of the daily product that we put out.

And on the one hand, I can make an argument. Geez, he said that. It's a window into sort of the way he operates. It's a crazy thing. people should see if the president is saying something totally insane. It's part of the news. On the other hand, you know, this will be something that consumes the 24-hour cable channels for the next couple days. And then it probably does go away because we're not going to inject ourselves with disinfectant. And it's funny that Lysol put out a statement, but this isn't

real stuff. So how do you make that, how do you make that determination or do you just sort of figure it out as you go? Well, what I've tried to do, the rule that I've tried to follow is to focus on what he does more than what he says, which is not really a great rule when you think about it because obviously one of the main powers of the presidency is the bully. Especially in a situation like this, right? I mean, this is arguably when it matters most that the president convey accurate and important information in a timely fashion. And I would say that that's probably his main job right now. And he's not doing it. So it's tough.

So what I tried to focus on during the first month or so, and even now, of these briefings, is I said to myself, I'm going to go in, I want my questions to focus on what the federal government is doing, what they're not doing, what they should be doing, and what they have to say about the developments of this virus and this pandemic. and what people should take to modify their own behaviors based on the information here. So I tried to focus on the now and the future and not get into the, well, you said two days ago this, and now you're saying this, but you didn't get this back then, and why didn't you have more of this? And, you know, and I was like, there's going to be timing off. There'll be like a 9-11-style commission report, you know, and there'll be a campaign that'll deal with this of like, what was done wrong, what should have been done, but that's not important right now. We're in the middle of a crisis, and people don't know what to do and what to make of it, and what matters

is what is happening. So that was my kind of approach, and that's why I, you know, I focused my questions on, on what is happening with the federal response now and the plans going forward and the new information but then he makes it really hard because he like the other day like when he brought a video into the briefing room like a campaign style video that talks about how great

everything he did has been and then at some point you got to say well wait a minute dude this is not you know or or you know every briefing is man we have done the best job in the world on testing I mean we have the testing has just been the best in the whole world

And then you're forced to say, actually, you know, isn't it true X, Y, and Z? But I, so he draws you in. But I'll give you another example of, you know, pre-coronavirus. I remember the morning that he tweeted about Joe and Mika and Mika bleeding from her face. Remember this? Oh, yes. And, um, I, and people, I mean, it was predictable, like, oh my God, how could he say this?

So what I told, you know, as far as my voice, you know, matters within ABC. I said, look, I don't not think we should cover this at all. This is completely trivial and not important. And by the way, by covering it, you're just further spreading this, like, insult that he has made against Mika Bershinsky. So why do that? Why don't you just, like, ignore it? pretend it didn't happen. Let's talk about what's happening actually happening at the White House today. And people bought it and we weren't going to cover it. And then what happens? The story

completely spirals out of my control. The Speaker of the House, who is, by that way at that point was a Republican, his name was Paul Ryan. You know, he's having a press conference and he comes out and denounces the President's tweet. I mean, when the Speaker of the House is denouncing the president of the same party, it kind of becomes, and then like, and everybody else. I mean, it was like every. So we, we had to cover it, even though I didn't want to. Well, let me push you on this a little, because the thesis of your book, in some sense, is the Trump show, right? That this is the president's plan to sort of host the largest reality television show in the history of the world. And he has cast reporters,

you by name often, as one of the kids. characters in that show, against your will, perhaps, but you're now in particular, one of the villains of the show, in a regular character that shows up that he calls cutie pie, wise guy, you're never going to amount to anything, I think, was one of them. You're part of the problem. That's all just from like the last two weeks. You've been cast in this show. So how do you cover a president when you're also one of the main characters for him? I mean, it's, and it is, it is the world's biggest reality show, and it is the way he sees it. And that is not, you know, people say, how could you trivialize this and say it's just a show?

And don't you see the concept? Well, yes, I'm talking about his view of this. He tracks the ratings the way you would have you had a show. He sees the ratings are both literally television ratings. While he was doing rallies, it's the size of. of his rallies. It's all of that. It's the number of reporters that show up at a press conference. He's often amazed. Like, oh, my God, as if, like, you know, when Obama held a press conference, no reporters showed up, you know? And so he does see it that way. He tracks,

just like when you had a show, he looked at what the critics say. He, when he's not speaking to the press, he is watching news coverage. He had, he told me at one point that TiVo was the greatest invention, you know, one of the greatest inventions in history, you know, the early DVR, because now he can watch Fox and be happy. You can watch MSNBC and you can watch CNN and get really mad. He can watch Good Morning America, but he can also check in on the Today Show and on CBS this morning. He watches them all, and it takes a lot of time. None of us here can watch all that television, can we? I mean, and so he does see it that way. And I just think that we just keep focused on the job. And the taunts don't bother me. Sometimes I find them kind of funny, you know,

I mean, when he said third rate reporter and you're never going to make it, I had people who I can't believe he said that to you. Don't, you know, buck up. You're okay. You know, I think you're really good. Like, you know, I thought it was kind of entertaining. And it was what made, what made me irritated was that he wasn't actually answering my question and he was suggesting that the question was was was not legitimate which it was was again about testing um so uh you know you he can have his drama if he wants me to be a player in that drama that's fine i'm just going to focus on on the job of the reporter which is uh to try to seek out the truth ask the questions and report on what's happened well you know i one of the reasons i think think this book was

so valuable is because you've had such long experience with him in a way that most of us haven't. I mean, you open the book, you know, telling a story about an interview that you did with him in the mid-1990s as when you were a reporter at the New York Post. And for those us who are newer to the president and to this kind of behavior, it really is shocking. So you've got two decades of looking at this to sort of contextualize it. And the rest of us still don't. I remember the first confrontation I had with him was in New Hampshire in February of 2015 was the first big cattle call sponsored by the New Hampshire Republican Party. And everybody came and spoke, every single candidate came and spoke, including Trump.

And I was on a panel of journalists talking about sort of journalism. And we were clearly filler, right? had us there just to fill space in between these candidate speeches. And Joe Scarborough was hosting and Drew Klein, who was then the manager or the editorial page editor of the Manchester Union leader, was on the panel. We talked about every other candidate. We never talked about Trump. And then we got a question from the audience. And the audience member said, hey, you guys haven't talked about Donald Trump. What do you think? And Scarborough, through the question to me, And I was pretty dismissive.

I said, you know, I think the guy's a conservative of a convenience and a total clown and blah, blah, blah, didn't think much more like that. Well, he wasn't, I figured he wouldn't like it and it would come back at me, but he wasn't there yet. So I, you know, and nobody knew how much he responds to every kind of insult. And he came later that day and he gave a speech. He didn't mention it in the speech. he, then the next day, I think it was, the paper, the Manchester Union leader, you know, they'd just had 15 presidential candidates show up and give speech in New Hampshire. And their front page story was as much about this panel of journalists because their guy was on it,

you know, as anything else. And they picked out this comment that I had made about Trump. And I show up at Fox News the next day, and Brett Bear, or maybe it was a couple days later, and Brett Bear has, I think it was honestly like a 13-page fax from Trump with his, a note scrawled in Sharpie in the top corner. And the note says something, I have this somewhere in my house, tell Hayes that no clown could have accomplished all of this. you know and and the resume the CV is like written in in totally Trumpy language you know built the most beautiful tremendous buildings very strongly i mean it was and and i that was the first you know that was my first introduction to that and it was it was so odd to think that a potential president presidential candidate even would care at all what some you know not prominent

reporter would say on a panel of, like, who cares? I mean, I don't know. And then that was, you know, he became, later became obsessed and he tried to get me fired from Fox News and he, he didn't really become obsessed with me. You and, you and, you and crowdhammer, man. You were, you were the favorites. Carl Rove, Megan Kelly. He tried to get me fired at the next year, it was the next January, up in New Hampshire. He took an executive aside and tried to get me fired up there. And then he tried to get me fired on Sean Hannity's show. So the question enough about me, a question I have, which you sort of alluded to, but I want to put you on the spot a little bit. How much of this is a plan? I mean, he made this famous comment to Leslie Stahl in which he said, you know,

I attack you so that, in effect, I attack you all all the time so that nobody believes you and nobody knows what's true. How much of it is a plan, a strategy to undermine the media so we can say, whatever he thinks and people will believe him, people who want to believe him, will believe him. And how much of it is just ad hoc day-to-day combat with you and others in the press corps? Well, I don't think that strategic is a word that you should associate with Donald Trump. He is, he's not somebody that goes in with a grand master plan. I don't think about anything, and he's been explicit about it. But in the book, I dug up this interview that he did with Barbara Walters in 1987, which is just a treasure.

And by the way, in the audiobook, I got permission, which wasn't easy because I had to get not only ABC's permission, but Barbara Walter's permission, to use the clip. So you can actually hear this remarkable interview. It was about when he made his first trip to New Hampshire. I mean, his first trip in a political context. I don't know if he had been there before. But in 1987 and spoke at a Rotary Club, I think it was in Concord. And I mean, Leslie, I mean, I'm sorry, Barbara Walters goes with him. 2020 does a whole segment on them.

There's interviews. And it's this total, it's this total like puff piece on Donald Trump, the young brash entrepreneur. And he goes to New Hampshire and he would have loved this. The New York Times even wrote about this and the story, they did a story on it and said that he got larger crowds than Bob Dole and Pat Robertson. He's like people that have actually running and working. But he has this line, which he's used variations of it. He says that, you know, the prize fighters, there's a phrase, it's, you go with the punches. You know, you don't go into the ring saying, I'm going to do two lefts, I'm going to come in the jam, I'm going to go, you, you know, you go, you know, you go, you know, you go with the punches.

Or as, what was the Tyson quote on that? Mike Tyson had a quote about it. Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was pre- Mike Tyson, but that's basically the- Nice pull ceremony, by the way. It's really impressive. We had it up in the office at D. Nice.

Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. Because you guys got punched in the face a few times. A few times. Yeah. Yeah. So he's not strategic. He does go with the punches. But he instinctively knows that undermining the credibility of the press is is an effective thing for him. And, you know, he blurted it out with Leslie Stahl. By the way, there are times that Donald Trump is the most honest politician that any of us ever seen. I mean, a quote like that to Leslie Stahl is an amazingly breathtakingly honest thing to say. I was actually going to quote back to you something that you recommend to read, which here's the famous quote from it, and I think you'll know immediately what I'm referring to, the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there's a gap between one's real and

one's declared aim, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms like a cuttlefish spurting out ink, dot, dot, dot for a little while. But political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness. I guess. That's awesome. George Orwell, politics of the English language. It's your favorite, right? Everybody needs to read that.

And we read it. So compared to... It is the least Orwellian piece of writing you will ever read, by the way. Well, that's sort of the point, right? Yes. His other writing is what, I don't know, illuminates this or something. But you've covered all these presidents. How do you, I feel like Orwell is describing what was occurring in increasing amounts during Clinton, Bush, Obama, et cetera.

And then you get to Trump and you hit this wall. And now Orwell's, that section in particular to me takes on a totally different meaning. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's all out there, and he's unbelievably transparent. I mean, we know more about, I feel like I know what's going inside his head. Maybe that means at this time for me to move on to something else. But even like the most shocking and surprising things, oh, my God, look what he just did. It's like, it kind of makes sense, you know?

And it's, he doesn't, he doesn't speak. the way politicians speak. And that's a great point, Sarah. It's just that how would Orwell, like, how would he amend that essay to explain Trump? I'm going to have to think on that. As a reporter, for decades, there were complaints about the euphemism and the, you know, right, the Gaff in Washington is accidentally saying something true. Yeah, that's the Kinsley and Gaff.

And he and Trump is. a walking kinsling gaff and so how do you cover that how do you change what you've learned to do for decades and and compare it to past presidents when it's a total shift it's everything everything is different about about covering him and and you end up i mean you know the you know fact checking has become like it's become like the central part of the job which is strange it's always you always do fact checks but like i mean in reality all those previous presidents you mentioned worked very hard to not say things that were outright lies even when they wanted to even when even when they wanted to kind of spin right yeah yeah yeah talk around

this thing you don't want to say forever and trump as often is not just says the thing right i mean that's just says it just put it out i mean i think of like remember the uh you know bush's um uh addressed to to to Congress, and was it 16 words about Saddam Hussein, you know, the British, British intelligence says Saddam Hussein tried to get by uranium in Niger. Is that roughly what it was? I mean, I'm sure you have those words like memorized, yes. He's got a tattoo, actually, somewhere if you look for it. And that, you know, that statement, by the way, is actually correct. I mean, British intelligence did find to that, but what was that the scandal was that U.S. intelligence thought it was, you know,

not, not reliable. And, you know, Condoleezza Rice gets dragged before Congress about it. It, like, it consumes Washington for weeks on end. It's like, I mean, can you imagine? I mean, um. Well, take the Obama years. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Yeah. That's something, I mean, I remember some of your greatest hits, if you were. will. Are you and Jay Carney going back and forth on the Obamacare website? If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, he said at one point. Those were those were not lies. Those were false promises. He promised something and they did not deliver on it. It was wrong. It was so, you know, I guess how you want to put it, but it was the

politic fact called that the lie of the year. Eventually. First they validated it and then they later called it the lie of the year. Look, I mean, there's a, there's a real. There's a real. And I know we got to wrap up and let you go here, but there's a reason that Trump has been so effective in separating sort of center-right voters from the media. I mean, there was a, there's been a long skepticism that conservatives have had of the mainstream media, of course. Forever. I think it's well-deserved, frankly.

Obviously, talk radio made it the sort of the center piece of the existence of that medium was to say, in effect, you can't believe these. guys, so come believe us. And, you know, for a long time, I thought that was a, they played that role pretty effectively, even if they were sometimes over the top in the, in the criticism. But there, there are reasons that conservative, I mean, conservatives, you know, who are non-Trump fans like me, are skeptical of the media, have been skeptical of the media for a long time. And I think, you know, present company accepted, you watch the press briefings during the Obama years, and there was a lot more rolling over. Now, the pace, the cadence of the law,

lies probably wasn't as fast. But I mean, the president said things that were manifestly and demonstrably untrue. And you didn't get a three-day press swarm about this. I remember covering, you know, covering what he was doing with the detainees in Guantanamo. And I think that was a minor scandal in and of itself. I mean, basically set up his own separate commission and replaced the military and intelligence professionals who had been making these assessments. and gave priority to human rights lawyers and the people that Obama wanted to hear from. That's the kind of thing

that under George W. Bush would have been a scandal. People would have been really frustrated with that. But when Obama was asked about, you know, what was happening and what he was doing, transferring some of these really, really bad characters that we had in Guantanamo, on whom we had significant intelligence of their, not only their bad intentions, but bad actions.

And he said, yeah, you know, we're going to transfer a handful of, you know, sort of bad guys, not really that bad. It was just totally false. Like what he said was just 100% wrong. Now, maybe he just didn't know the details of these things. But what he was doing was saying something that was provably incorrect. And it just got so little fanfare.

It was a kind of thing, of course, that conservative media then dined out on for several days. I think it was those moments, again, not as frequent as we're experiencing under Trump, but where there was this. this obvious chasm between the way that the sort of center-right world saw Obama and how he was covered and the way that the press treated Obama. He was treated with a sort of an automatic benefit of the doubt that I don't think George W. Bush got and obviously Donald Trump isn't getting. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a little overstated.

In it, the White House press corps really had a, actually had a pretty tense relationship with the Obama White House. Yeah. And Obama sought to avoid us at all costs. I mean, if you look at, I remember this is just one of the astounding facts. It might have changed in the last, I don't know, I don't know if it changed towards the end because I didn't, I didn't keep tracking it. But Peter Baker, who is, you know, probably the, you know, the best guy in the beat right now. And he's, you know, he's written, he's written books about, you know, about Bush and Obama. And he's been, he's really, he's like, he's fantastic. New York Times. Yeah, he's a great reporter. Peter Baker told me towards the end of Obama's second term that he had never had the opportunity to ask President Obama a question in an, in an,

the record setting i don't know if he'd had any interactions behind but but never never for his reporting never been able to he'd never been called on on an obama press conference uh obama had never agreed to do an interview with him i never got an interview with obama um most white house reporters did not get interviews with him he did he did infrequent press conferences and when he did the press conferences because largely because his answers were so long as you remember it would often be like five or six reporters that got called on so um you know i i did have several chances myself to ask him questions these press conferences but you know but i just i blew me away that you know a guy that is like you know maybe the most important reporter on the beat um and not like a

a right wing anti obama he's the new york times guy you know couldn't couldn't get a question with them and and um and i think the reason why so So he tried, and all presidents have done this to a degree in recent, you know, all recent presidents have done this to go out outside, bypass the mainstream media. So he did, you know, between two firms, the pimp with a limp in Philadelphia. He did all these cereal bowl, all these interviews. Yeah, the lady that was with the, was it fruit of the loop? Yes.

Or was it, yeah. Or Apple Jacks. I guess it was one of those. And I remember that there. There was a convergence of kind of like scandals in the second term, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the FBI targeting journalists, putting AP in their leak investigation, something that Sarah was secretly applauding, I think, somewhere in her. And take offense, sir. And what was the third one? But yeah, maybe, I think this was not during the Benghazi, but there was like, so there was this

convergence of these stories. And, and I remember Obama dropped in it. There had been like a little gathering of reporters with Dennis and McDonough in the chief of staff's office at the end of the day. It was like a Friday or something. This happened sometimes. This happened with, you know, Mulvaney did this stuff, but John Kelly did it. it's how you know this happens at the white house so the chief of staff brings the the press on hand to come

back and just you know just talk and Obama dropped by like unscheduled drop by it was definitely a plan this was strategic and he just he just ripped us for he just went on this little tirade about um you guys these these stories are bullshit you know it's bullshit you're focusing on the trivial year, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Now, I'm not saying his criticisms were justified at all, but the point of it is I don't think that Obama really got a free pass from those that were covering him. And maybe that certainly that the general, I agree with you on the general tone night and day between Bush and Obama and Obama and Trump, no question. But it wasn't that the people that we're in there covering him day to day, you know, ignored the stuff. I think that he was pressed

pretty hard. Well, Jonathan, before we let you get back to covering this White House and raising a brand new puppy at home, we have some lightning round questions for you. Oh, my goodness, lightning round. Okay. You ready? Yes. Interview that's on your bucket list. Bob Dylan. Job you would do if you couldn't do this one. Professional baseball player is not in there, right? I thought you'd be the Nats manager. I thought... Yeah, manager of the Washington Nationals.

I'd like to play, too, though. But, yeah, but it managed to be fun. Okay, this was a question that we did earlier on our podcast with all the guys. Musical album that brings you the most joy, start to finish. Probably blood on the tracks. Sounds joyous. Great. Best piece of advice you ever got.

Probably don't take yourself too seriously. Hence why you think you can be a major league baseball player. Yes. And with that, thank you so much for joining us, Jonathan. We love the book, Front Row at The Trump Show. Amazon was sold out, but it is now back to available, also at your local book. And what, I don't know, what questions do you have today for the president, Jonathan? Any parting thoughts? I'm actually not going to be in the briefing today. So I will watch at home. I might try to follow up if I were there, especially because I know you guys didn't cover it. I want to get it in the next dispatch daily.

You know, what do we think? I kind of think Pirel would be the stuff. If I was going to inject something. Purell in our brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you, listeners. And again, subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, wherever you're getting your podcast from and join us at the dispatch.com.