The Dispatch Podcast - Retribution | Interview: Jonathan Karl and Declan Garvey

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Steve Hayes interviews Jonathan Karl and our very own executive editor, Declan Garvey, about Karl's new book Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, which delves into Donald Trump’s 2024 political campaign. The three discuss insights from Steve Bannon’s prison experience, the decisions behind ending President Joe Biden’s campaign, and the authenticity crisis in modern politics. The Agenda:—The process of writing Retribution and key interviews—Bannon prison experiment—The role of Trump and pardons in the prison system—Karl’s confrontation with Trump on hate speech—Pizza and subs with Vice President Harris—Trump’s Influence and changes in America—The Democrats' struggles with authenticity Show Notes:—Read an excerpt of Retribution here—Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including access to all of our articles, members-only newsletters, and bonus podcast episodes—click here. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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detail the consequential 2024 presidential election and the beginning of Donald Trump's second term. I am also joined by the Dispatch's executive editor, Declan Garvey, who is, oddly enough, not joining me in my capacity as the interviewer, but alongside John. as an interviewee to be subjected to my very aggressive, some might say, withering questioning. Why is that? I'll let them tell us. I hope you enjoy the conversation. John, Declan, welcome.

John, can you please explain how you came to be associated with one Declan Garvey? Yeah, this is a sordid tale, but it is true. Declan, Declan actually worked with me at my last book, Tired of Wendley. And when I decided I was going to submit myself to this once again and to write another book about our current political world, I reached out to Declan and I said, you, how about an encore? So Declan was very much a part of this book. He was there at the conception when I decided to write. Literally, as soon as I made the decision, which was when Biden dropped out, that's when I knew I had to do a story about, at least about the campaign and who knows what else was going to happen, I reached out to Declan and he was there.

He was, he helped me in researching the book. He was there for many of the key interviews. And as you know, as you very well know, the guy, despite being a Cubs fan and a Bears fan, he's actually a pretty good editor. So he was key in every step of the way on this book. Well, Declan, the first and most obvious question to ask you. you as somebody who worked alongside you throughout this process here at the dispatch. When did you find time to help John with this book? Because we didn't really notice any significant lag in your responsibilities here. Did you just not sleep? Were you taking drugs to allow you to enhance your performance? How did you do that? My wife noticed a lag in activities. So no, much

much appreciation goes out to her to basically give up weekends and evenings for about what was it, eight months, nine months, John, from start to finish. It only seemed like four years, but yeah, yeah. I remember we had one of the intro phone calls right after the Bears' Commanders' Hail Mary game that I was at.

And then we've wrapped up right around the All-Star break when the cuts, I measure things in in the sports calendar. That's got to be brutal if you're a Bears and a Cubs fan. I want to tell you one, before we get into any substance here on the book itself, I want to tell you one kind of anecdote about how this book really started to come together. So, you know, the decision was made that I was going to write another book. Declan signs on after that crushing loss to the commanders.

And we begin the process of, you know, what's this book going to be like, I mean, it basically overtook my job. I don't know how it didn't. I don't know how Declan was able to still do all that he did, but it was a very time-consuming process because we were tracking multiple storylines here. Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the Shakespearean drama surrounding him, and of course all things Trump. So right after the election, I sat down with Steve Bannon over at what we call the Breitbart embassy, his townhouse right behind the Supreme Court, he had agreed to kind of do an on the record extensive interview about his time in prison. And it was right after the election. And I brought Declan along with me and we went and went into his very cluttered living room,

just the three of us, Bannon at one point going out to take to show us pictures that were taken, you know, while he was in prison of his various inmate buddies. And so we did this rather extraordinary interview. It was well over two hours. And then we're like, you know, we got to, let's sit down right now and figure out really what the structure of the book is going to be. Let's try to like craft an outline. So we walked away. We went towards Pennsylvania Avenue on Capitol Hill over by, you know, where the tune in is, hawk and dove. And it was the afternoon, like, where can we sit down and, like, and we saw this restaurant that neither one of us had ever seen it just opened that week. It was called Butterworths, Butterfields,

what was it, something like that? Anyway, it's a nice little kind of bistro, French bistro kind of feel. The place was empty because it was like about lunch. It wasn't dinner. And we sat down and we sketched out the outline. Little did we know that that was going to be the new center of the MAGA, you know, universe on Capitol Hill, owned by a buddy of Steve Bannon's and a place for the convening of all things on the very MAGA extreme right of Trump's Republican Party. But that's where we sat down and really, for the first time, sketched out what the book would look like. And you didn't know when you went there that it was...

No idea. No idea at all. This MAGA Central. No idea. And just to put some time around that meeting. I was thinking back to it earlier today. Some of the topics that came up, we were like, will Matt Gates be confirmed as AG? Will John Thune allow recess appointments?

Is John Thun going to stand up to Trump nominees and really make them shoot several down? Bannon was actually concerned about that at that point. And it just a lot has happened and a lot has changed in eight or nine months here. And Bannon, and even, even Bannon was alarmed by some of the recent cabinet picks that it just happened. Christy Noem, Pete Hegseth. And he was like, oh my God. It was especially exercised about Christy Noem, just completely unqualified, he said. This is like, this is Corey Lewandowski, you know, trying, he was basically saying trying to get his girlfriend into the cabinet.

And he was completely outraged by it. It was pretty, pretty amazing. And Bannon at that point had been. out of jail for what, like a week? Just a couple weeks, yeah. He was bragging about how much weight he'd lost. Yeah. I'm a beast.

I'm a beast. Yeah, the jailhouse, the transcripts or the excerpts from that interview where he's describing his time in jail were interesting and compelling for about 20 different reasons. But I was struck in particular by the scenes that he seemed to really be sort of loving this idea of Bannon as a hardened convict. And, you know, with the toughest of the tough and, you know, his people, he learned a lot about the nature of jailhouse life and the codes and all of this stuff. I mean, it was a pretty colorful interview. Yeah. And, you know, he's not the first person in Trump's orbit to go to prison. Obviously, Navarro was in prison, you know, for much of the same time.

Peter Navarro and of course Michael Cohen had had done some time in prison and he wanted to know I wasn't in a I wasn't in a camp like that Puck Cohen and you know Navarro was in a camp and he won't moan about it the whole time I was in a tough you know he was in a tougher prison the the prison the federal prison in Danbury is not a camp it's an old style you know bars and cell blocks and you know it isn't one they're in dormitories, which is what some of these low security prisons are. It's a tough prison. It's by far not the toughest prison. But Bannon wanted us to know that he was with really tough, bad guys who, you know, hardened criminals. And he told us this story about a guy named Vito. And he kept on talking about Vito and he said he was a mob hitman. He told me wild stories about Vito. And I got to say, for much of it, I was like, I don't believe it. So you're telling me you were with a mob hitman and his name was Vito. What was his last name? Corleone? I mean, what was the and I kept on saying, let me talk, you know, let me know more about him. What's his last name? And he's

like, I got to check and make sure it's okay. And et cetera, et cetera. It turns out it's entirely true. We figured out who Vito is. He was actually released from prison earlier this year. I saw a video of him coming out of the Danbury prison, the razor wire and the like and giving, you know, greeting his girlfriend, some of his old buddies. He had been in prison for nearly 30 years. The guy was in prison convicted of five, five murders, confessed to five murders and a whole range of other violent crimes. And by the way, Steve, if you're, if you're pleading guilty to five murders, how many people have you actually killed? How did he get out? How did he get out having committed five murders? Well, he had served, like I said, about 26 years of a 38-year sentence. The reason why he was

in Danbury. It started in Marion, the Supermax. He had been in a bunch of really tough, tough prisons. He had gotten down through good behavior to Danbury. And he had been, he had actually tried to get parole in, in 23, about two years ago. And he was denied. And he got out with the help. According to Bannon, he got out with Bannon's help. Bannon helped him navigate the First Step Act, which is you remember, was the brain child of Jared Kushner, signed into law by Trump in 2018. Criminal justice reform legislation. Criminal justice sentencing reform. Pushed by the Trump, opposed by a lot of Republicans.

Something ban and hated at the time. And as a matter of it, we went back and looked at the vote just to get a reminder of how this came law. It was like every Democrat in the House and Senate voted for it. But there were a lot of no votes, and they were all Republicans, you know, didn't like the idea going soft on criminals. Now Bannon loves the First Step Act. And he helped, according to him, we don't know the details, but we know he got out early. And the First Step Act was the way he got out early. Let me ask a question of both of you about that interview. The thing that really struck me as I read that section of the book about Bannon's time in prison, about the people he met, about their experience as the way that he described them, what I found so interesting as you sort of ticked through what they had done, kind of why they were there, how he had come to know them, the sort of environment in the prison, the attack that he says.

he witnessed. What struck me is in all of this discussion of his time there, all of his discussion of the things that led people to be incarcerated there, all of his discussion about sort of the empathy, the obvious empathy he had developed for these hardened criminals. There was no judgment rendered ever at all about the things that they had done. It was a very. It was a very sort of surface level description from Bannon about these people as sort of human beings without any reckoning, at least in the pages of the book, with what they had done to be there. And the reasons that they were there, he talked about them almost as victims. I wonder if that was reflective of the broader conversation that you had with him.

And if it was, if that struck either of you at the time as you're having this conversation, that it was almost judgment-free as it relates to these guys who did some really bad stuff. Yeah, I mean, he, I mean, Vito is the poster child for this. I mean, you know, he, this guy killed five people. He was also convicted of attempted homicide. So he tried to kill others, admitted to. a whole range of other violent crimes and there was not even a hint. He was just so impressed with how Vito

kept his dignity and his sense of worth in a place that was designed to break it. And that's why he was so impressed. He described, he showed us the video. We saw this video of Vito getting released, but to hear Bannon talk about it

and to narrate it, he's like, the guy looks so precise. His hair is perfect. He's got to, the white track suit, the branded tennis shoes, you know, he's in good shape, his posture, and he's just like in charge after having been beaten down and pummeled for 26 years. And also, you know, Bannon, another thing Bannon described was when he was released, the day he was released after four months. He was released one week before the election.

And when Bannon turned himself in to start his sentence, there was a whole circus outside the court. You know, he had Eric Prince drove, you know, it was in the car driving him in. He had, you know, all the cameras. He put out a press release saying he was going to have a press conference outside the press. I mean, it was like a whole big thing. So the prison did not want that to happen again. So they released him at three in the morning when there would be nobody outside. And what Bannon said is that when he got, when they came in.

you know, knocked on the cell and said, it's time to go. And he has to go in and fill out all his paperwork and get his belongings that several of his buddies, his inmate buddies, all convicted of very serious crimes, came to bid him farewell in the middle of the night. And he was almost like emotional about it. Yeah, he was quite evidently touched about that. Yeah. I mean, these bonds.

But, you know, so he became. he became you know it would seem to have a real sense of empathy for what these people face he was just in for four months and he said it was brutal it was really really rough uh these guys had spent most of their lives behind bars most of them and you know but but then i asked him well what about because because while we're well i'm writing this this is after the interview that initial interview and i kept on talking to ban and i kept on you know uh uh uh uh uh having further conversations. But we had the whole episode with the Venezuelan accused gang members being taken in the dead of night, you know, to, to Seacott Prison in El Salvador, you know, a place that makes, uh, the federal prison in Danbury look like a four seasons in, uh, in, in the Bahamas.

Um, and I said, well, what do you, how do you feel about those guys? You know, I mean, they, they know, they don't even trial, no, no due process. no hope of getting out, no ability to appeal. I mean, how do you feel about those guys? No, no concern whatsoever, no compassion. And that's another component to this, too, is that you'll see as you're reading that chapter and throughout that ban, and there's no real way for us to verify this, but although John, you tried to go visit him,

but everybody in prison was the biggest Trump fan that you'd ever heard or ever met that everybody was incredibly maga. Some people were even more maga than Bannon was and were explaining things to him and he left with this newfound appreciation of the working class and criminals, basically career criminals being a new constituency for the Republican Party to reach out to. And that's kind of a, in a kind of the tribal politics that we've seen increasing over the past decade, but let alone over the past year. These people are on team Trump, team Republican, and therefore they are worth empathy. Kilmara Brigo Garcia is not, and therefore he is not.

Because he's not on team trope. Well, this is something that struck me, and I wanted to ask you about it. He's describing these people as very maga. They come to him, they have these conversations with him. They describe themselves as loyal Trumpists. You know, as you mentioned earlier, John, he's almost touched by the fact that these other prisoners somehow know that he's going to be released in the middle of the night and they sort of salute him on the way out. And he takes this as, you know, a sign of, I guess, friendship,

of some kind of emotional tie. And it occurred to me at the time. It did not occur to him that they might be cheering him or sucking up to him because they know that he's close to President Trump and President Trump might win an election in a week. And if President Trump wins an election, it might be good to have somebody close to President Trump who might be able to play a role in helping to get them out of prison. I mean, it seems as if through the way that you've depicted in the book, that almost just didn't even occur to him. Is that your impression? Yeah, I mean, he, and by the way, Vito is not the only one that he helped navigate First Step Act and to get out. there's another fellow inmate that Bannon has been that also is now is now out that Bannon was

very instrumental in helping work and it's not that he's going to Trump and say commute the sentence that that hasn't that hasn't happened but Bannon knows the system in a way that you know whatever public defender these guys are going to get that when help them try to you know get get you know get parole is is not going to know but I got to say one one thing I as we're talking about this, the prison, there is, we are in prisons at key points during this book. We're obviously with Bannon at the federal prison in Danbury with a little cameo appearance of Navarro, you know, at his prison in Florida. We're also at one point when I'm talking about Biden in a Russian gulag where Alexei Navalny, before he died, wrote letters to a friend of his. saying, what is going on with Biden and the Democrats?

Don't they realize that he could slip and fall or he could have an incident and, you know, everything is lost and Trump wins. And by the way, they didn't really appear to realize that. Navalny, you know, stuck in a solitary confinement, you know, in some gulag is aware of this very real reality. And then in one of the kind of most vivid scenes, that was described to me. Enrique Tereo, who is the guy that received the longest sentence of any of the January 6th prisoners. This is the guy, you know, the head of the proud boys.

And he's in a prison. 20 plus years. Yeah, 20 plus years. And I spoke to him after he was pardoned and got out. And he was in this prison in Louisiana. and you know when you're in i've learned i've learned a little bit about how these places operate now you you get you can go to the commissary and buy a what is basically a transistor radio and it's how if you go into the television room that they're allowed to go in at certain times during the day

you can tune it and listen to the sound on the on the television but you can also just listen you know from yourself you can listen to the radio it's the only kind of like window to the outside world that these guys can get so enrique atario had one one of these transistor radios. And he, on election night, he's listening to the results coming in. And then his battery dies. And so he does, what can he do? So he, he yells out. And he understands, just to jump in, he understands that the potential election of Donald Trump could have profound implications for his time, the length of time he is likely to spend in prison. He's very confident in your telling that he was going to get out if Trump was. He was either going to spend,

most of the rest of his life in prison, or he was going to walk out a free man, because he was absolutely certain that Trump was going to pardon. He had zero doubt that he was going to be pardoned. So, you know, he's there. So he bangs on the door of his cell and he gets the attention of a guard. Another one, by the way, Tereo describes as totally MAGA. I mean, it's a very interesting language as the ban. Yes. Yes. And there's a guard station down the, down the hallway of the cell block. and the guards have a little television where they're watching CNN, by the way, CNN. And he yells, you know, can you turn it up? Can you turn it up so I can hear? So the guy does crank it up. And it's very hard for him to hear, but Terry what describes being on the floor of his cell, listening beneath the crack of the door, you know, trying to hear the results.

And when he hears CNN project that Trump has won Pennsylvania, he knows it's over. so he jumps up and he starts banging on the door in celebration and according to tario the rest of his cell block they start hearing it too and they all start banging so you have this like scene of like this this prison and in this case a tougher prison than than the one bannon was in with some real hardened criminals these guys are celebrating donald trump's victory on on election night just a crazy crazy scene and in fact of course tario did get a full pardon. Yeah, along with everybody else. Yeah, along with that. Who was involved in January? Yeah. If you're still overpaying for wireless,

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You talk to everybody all the time. That's very obvious throughout the book. Two of the people that you spent a fair amount of time talking to, very close to, you know, the people who are depicted in this book. One of them is Steve Bannon, as we've been discussing. And another is Hunter Biden. And as I was reading through your exchanges with them, your interviews with them, going back to them. verifying what they've said, trying to validate it, you know, externally, I kept coming back to the question of how you reconcile the fact that these are, I would say, among the best-known liars in the country. These are not sort of morally upstanding people. They have both of them told many, many lies in public, been caught. Do you, what do you, how do you handle that? What do you do? How do you know what to include? Do you do as you write it, do you go out of your way to try to make clear like, hey, this is just what he said, hard to verify. And then other times

when you can verify it, you verify it. How do you approach interviews like that? And then how do you approach reporting what you've been told? It's, by the way, just to further kind of paint the scene. I was talking to both of them. And also, I would say, you know, another guy that I, that I had regular conversations with other than the course of the campaign would probably fit into that category as well. Bobby Kennedy was another one that did I spoke to quite a bit. And I was talking to them each during, I mean, Bannon obviously there were four months where I couldn't talk to him because he was in prison. But, you know, all the way leading up to him getting out and then I spoke to him the day he got out. I think I was one of his first calls after

Trump called him on the day he was released. He got a call from Trump. He got released at 3 in the morning. You got a call from Trump at about 6 a.m. So, you know, I knew that both of these guys had unique insight into what was going on, particularly Hunter Biden, because, look, Joe Biden, especially after the debate, but before the debate, too, had become very much separated from almost everybody. I mean, there was the inner circle of a handful, four or five Biden advisors. And so if you're talking to the chief of

staff, you're talking to the press secretary, if you're talking to the senior advisor or the communication, you're not getting jack about what's going on with Joe Biden. But Biden was speaking every single day to his son, Hunter. And Hunter doesn't talk to reporters, very rarely. I, and I tell the reasons and how I got to be in regular contact with him in the book. But I was. And, you know, you have to be skeptical of everything that is said to you. A lot of what Hunter was describing to me was very raw and came across to me as incredible.

incredibly honest, and not spin, not the kind of crap that you were hearing from Democrats. He was in anguish after the debate. Obviously, he's, you know, the ultimate loyalist to his father that goes without saying. But, you know, he unloaded to me about, especially about, like, other Democrats. I mean, the stuff you read in the book, on the record, talking about Barack Obama, Um, especially. Yeah. So, and, you know, Bannon, you just have to, you have to listen and verify and explain

where it's from and know, look, you're not, especially in the Trump world, you're, you're, you're not going to be, you know, getting, your sources are not going to be pristine, uh, upstanding, um, truth tellers, uh, who, you know, I mean, you're going to deal with some, with some interesting characters. And that was definitely true in Biden. world as well. No, I remember a specific instance, uh, it would be in the, the chapter about Butler, where two people in the room at the same time described a scene in a directly contradictory way. And we basically had to go back to them and say, like, help us figure this

out. One of you is, is either misremembering or not telling the truth. And, and luckily we, you know, we caught that. Um, yeah, let's let's talk about what exactly that was. Because this is getting this stuff that's actually so we won't say like who and everything but but you know there are only a hand people of there are only a handful of people that were with trump uh in butler because people like chris la savita and a couple others were had moved ahead to Milwaukee because the the convention was just to start so he had a smaller group with him he always had a small group but this was even smaller and one of the people that was in the group described a really vivid scene that I then wrote in the book, you know, in an early draft of Trump getting put on

a stretcher when he arrived at the hospital after the shooting in Butler and then being wheeled into the hospital. And as he's coming into the hospital, you know, greeting his handful of advisors that were with him and saying some pretty funny comments, somebody else that was there told me, look, he wasn't on a stretcher. That's not true. They didn't, they didn't, they He walked into the hospital. And so I went back. We finally, like, I checked with Secret Service, did some stuff. We found, you know, one kind of cell phone video that seemed to show him walking in.

So we knew he didn't go into the hospital on a stretcher. So was this person, like, lying to me about that detail? And why would they lie on that? And I think it's actually a case where just memory is a fucked up thing sometimes. because Trump was on a stretcher inside the hospital as he was brought in for his CAT scan and whatever. So I think that this person just conflated something. You know, there's an essay you've probably read, Steve, but it's called John Dean's memory or the memory of John Dean. And it's a famous essay that compares what Dean, you know, told the Watergate Committee and what he is, you know, and what we learned later when the

Nixon tapes came out. And, you know, and a lot, I mean, he was right on the big stuff. He did say there's a cancer on the presidency and all that. But he was totally wrong on a lot of the details. Was he lying? I don't think so. Because it was irrelevant details. But so no matter who, even if you're talking to really honorable, upstanding truth tellers that would never tell a lie, you know, you have to, you know, you have to verify. And it's an advantage for you all that you are doing the reporting and the writing almost in real time. I mean, this was, you were, you were talking to people with it, sometimes within minutes of these events taking place and getting them down and putting them in the book. What was the, just in terms of process a little bit more, and I'll ask

you, John and Declan, you can weigh in too. The, why didn't we hear about this on, on ABC News? I mean, you're employed full-time ABC News. You're a good reporter. You do all stuff. Declan, why didn't you give us any of this stuff for the dispatch? We would have loved to have broken some. I mean, there's a lot of news in the book. Not disclosure agreements. We could have used it. Yeah, so this is a great question because you get this, you know,

particularly this is like something that you hear from the left about these horrible reporters. You're just saving it for the book and you're protecting, you know, the people you're covering and you're putting it in the book because you're trying to make. money, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the process. So, first of all, I was reporting a hell of a lot every day on ABC. And I know, you know, the dispatch was all over, you know, a lot of the day-to-day events of the campaign. What's different when you're doing a book is you are doing, you're going back to events after they have happened.

And if you, it's not like I saved stuff for the book. It's that I wouldn't have known any of this shit if I wasn't writing a book. I mean, that's why I found out. Because I went back to these events. What was really happening? This is what we thought was true at the time. This is what we reported. But what else was going on?

You go back and talk to people. And some people you talk to are completely unwilling to talk while the campaign is underway. They're trying to win a campaign. By the way, you can't even necessarily trust what they're going to say, even more so when they're trying to spin, you know, for a campaign. But you go back and you say, look, I want to talk to you. This is for the book. None of this is going to be reported until after we know who the winner is. For instance, I mean, I sat down with Nancy Pelosi. You know, I did this with Bannon. I did it with Pelosi all across the spectrum here. But I had a, you know, I interviewed Pelosi, very interesting, you know, like 90-minute interview in her capital office in October.

And, you know, I wanted to talk to her before we knew who had won the election because I don't want it to be colored by the fact, you know, oh, Kamala's won and then she's got this wonderful story or she's lost and she's going to be cast. I want to know what she really thinks, not how she's trying to rewrite a history after the result. And she would not have agreed to that interview, or if she had, it would have been a useless interview, because it would have been like everybody's great on the Democratic side, everybody's. But, you know, and, but the ground rules were I'm not going to publish anything until next year after a new president is sworn in, whoever he or she may be. So it's a, you know, it's a fundamental. And by the way, like, the book in terms of like, do you write books to cash in and get all the money? I think that as like an hourly thing, this is probably the lowest I've ever been paid. I mean, this is, this is, this is a very time-consuming intense process.

Television is a lot easier. Going on television is a lot easier, trust me. Yes. Declan, as you were, as you were listening to the interviews and rereading and rereading the the transcripts, was it obvious to you that people were talking? talking to you all as if they were sort of, as if they were conscious of the history here. Like, it wasn't like it was going to be in an online reported piece that might be gone and forgotten the next day. This is going in a book.

This is likely to shape the way that historians will think about this period because of some of the interviews that you all did. Was that obvious as you're going through the process? Totally. And not just because of, you know, listening to those interviews, but I know firsthand that we had reporters at the dispatch who were reaching out to some of these same people in real time who they said yes to John and they said no to the dispatch reporter. And maybe that's because John is great and we need to continue to build up our reputation around town. But I think largely it is that wanting to say your piece for history. And one of the biggest tips that I picked up from from John over two of these now is using that to your advantage as a reporter where you can go and say, hey, Nancy Pelosi's talking to me for history. Your side is going to be completely left out of the history if you do not also speak to us.

And that's how you get your foot in the door with one person and you can all of a sudden unlock access and sourcing to dozens of people because they do really. care about how this stuff is portrayed and that's um but one of the things that i think is unique about this book relative to a lot of the other campaign books that have come out this year is there there's some political operatives and there's some um you know campaign consultants and those types of people but uh john and and we were really speaking to the people themselves the people who are making these decisions uh you'll see and we can talk about john was speaking to Trump, just calling him on his cell phone throughout the campaign, talking to very, very high-level decision makers that I do think would not be doing that if there weren't some states involved.

Yeah, if you really want to know what the campaign operatives were, if you really want to know the day-to-day activities of Jenno Malley-Dillan or Chris LaSavita, you know, the decisions they were making on ad buys and ground game strategy. This is not the book to read. There have been a number of books on the campaign that really were like those two people, Chris LaSavita and General Mali Dillon, the respective kind of campaign manager. Well, Suzy Wiles as well, they were kind of co-campaign managers. You really get into the down and dirty of like what they were doing, what they were eating at the key moments when they were discussing. I mean, I kind of don't really care.

I don't know that those people are going to matter much in the course of history. the food at Kamala's at the vice president's residence. I did, yes, yes, yes, yes. You did have pizza, sandwiches, subs, yes, yeah. It's the matcha or the three ensemble cadets, Sephora, of the fact that I've been to deniches

all the time. Mm, it's the ensemble. The form of standard and mini, regrouped, hello, Ben. And the embellage, too beau, who is practically pre to donate. And I know that I'd love them offer, but I guard the Summer Fridays and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez.

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best leisure airline champions Air Transat Let me use this as a jumping off point because I want to talk specifically, John, about your relationship with Trump. And I want to start with something that happened after this book has been put to bed. You guys have signed off. There's nothing you can do. It can't be added. You're at the White

House. Pam Bondi has just made news. I think she was on Sean Hannity's program. And she says something like, you know, everybody watched what you're going to say because we're coming after hate speech. I mean, it wasn't quite that, but it was very close to that. And it was this moment where I think it was a whole shit moment for anyone paying even passing attention, but there were several of Trump's allies who said, wait a second. And you were at the White House, outside of the White House, talking to Trump, and you pointed that out to him. You said, look, some of your allies think this hate speech is free speech. And you asked him the question. And then here's what Trump said in response. You probably go after people like you, because he's free people.

so unfairly. It's hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after your ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they'll have to go after you. Look, we want everything to be fair. It hasn't been fair. And the radical left has done tremendous damage to the country, but we're fixing it. We have right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. And remember, one year, ago, our country was dead. And now Washington D.C. is fixed. And I fixed it. The mayor was fine. The mayor was just fine. Okay. Do you have a lot of hate in your heart? In fact, John, is that it's that true? I sure hope not. But can we just like pause for a second to what what he says there

in the before, not the hate in the heart part, but maybe she'll go after people like you. because you have been so unfair to me. I mean, so it was, it was, a lot of people were outraged at the idea that the Justice Department would be policing hate speech, but he's talking about policing speech that is unfair to an elected official, the president of the United States. I mean, the whole notion on the First Amendment is to protect the ability to criticize the government, for God's sake. I mean, it's just, it's a wild, like, he went like so much.

further than Pam Bondi had gone. Not just hate speech, but, you know, if that report is unfair, let's lock them up. So, no, I mean, like, I've got nothing but joy and love in my heart. You know that. You know that. So I want to use that. I mean, it was a moment. Like, it was a crazy thing for him to have said.

It was part of what was at the time, I think probably still is, but maybe just not quite as public. a campaign to intimidate to go after journalists, to go after media outlets, there were threats that the FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, was going to deank licenses. I mean, this is a big part of what we've seen over the first 10 months of the Trump administration. But I'm interested here in going a little deeper on your relationship with Trump. You have covered Trump for probably as long as anybody on this beat doing this stuff right now. You started covering him back at the New York post. You documented that in one of your earlier books. And if you were to just listen to what Trump said after you asked that question there, any sane person would hear him rant and think

he despises you. He can't stand you. And yet, throughout the book, you have these very pleasant conversations with him. He's calling you out of the blue to share stuff, sometimes just to check. in on you. And there's one sort of exchange or one moment where you go, go on sort of at length. I think you lay this out to give people a sense of the relationship. And it comes after you have an interview with Tom Cotton on this week. And you describe it as a somewhat contentious, but not overly. I mean, nobody was shouting at anybody. It was sort of a straightforward Sunday morning interview, tough, but fair. And Trump sort of loses it on this. And he goes, on truth social, and he says, I watched ABC fake news this morning, both lightweight reporter

John Carl's ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton, who was fantastic, and their so-called panel of Trump haters on and on and on. And yet, again, if you just take him at face value, you think, boy, he really can't stand Jonathan Carl. He doesn't even know how to spell your name. He either doesn't know you or he doesn't like you or maybe some combination of both. And yet you share in the book, and hopefully we'll share here, the story of what happened after that, where he reaches out to you, at least the way that I read, he's almost apologetic about having gone after you in public. What happened there? And what is your relationship like with it? Yeah, that was something, because it wasn't just the true social. The day after the true social,

he had a campaign event in Virginia, where he went off in front of the cameras, again, attacking me by name because of the Tom Cotton interview. And in both of those instances, he was threatening or suggesting that he would drop out of ABC's debate with, you know, the Kamala Harris Biden debate, Trump debate, which was hosted by ABC and was a major thing for our network. So you can imagine the pressure on me. Now suddenly he's acting like he might pull out and it would be my fault. I mean, can you imagine what I might have been hearing internally about that? I mean, that's like, I mean, my God, it was a huge threat and it was vicious and it was rough. I texted him after he went off, I mean, the first time.

And by way, it just seems like a funny thing, texting a presidential candidate, you know, but anyway, this. You just have to stop and think about that, right. Yeah. And I said, you know. He responds quicker than he should. You know, thank you. Thank you for watching the show. You know, I hope you also saw my.

interview with Bernie Sanders. Because I had a, what was actually, I think, a tougher interview with Bernie Sanders than the one I had had with Tom Cotton in the same show. Anyway, he didn't respond to that text. A couple of days go by. And I'm sitting at ABC headquarters, planning the next week's show with the staff of the show. And my phone rings and it's Trump. And that's also another one of the weird things. Your phone rings. You know, you would think that he would have it like blocked, his number blocked or something. But it shows right up. It's just Donald Trump. I mean, it's like, I mean, you get a call from the deputy press secretary at the D-Triple-C, and they like are blocking their numbers. I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like the weirdest thing. Anyway,

so he just calls me and I'm like, hey, how you doing, Mr. President? And by the way, this is like, we weren't like in a calling relationship yet. I mean, this was not something, you know, I've known him for a long time, but this is a relatively recent development. element, the, you know, the, all the calls. And it's clearly he doesn't really seem to have much to say. I mean, he's almost like checking in with me. And he, and he references the Cotton interview, but it almost like as an aside. He just says, you know, I saw you, you, you roughed up our pal Tom Cotton. Nah, that's okay. He did, he did great. He did great. No big deal. So, uh, so what's going on? And what do you, what do you? And he asked me what? And he asked me what.

And he asked me what my role was going to be in the debate. He knew that I wasn't moderating the debate, but I was anchoring the post-debate show. That was the plan. So I told him that. Then he started asking me, how do you think Kamala is doing? And then, of course, I've got him on the phone. So now I'm asking him questions. The conversation went on for, you know, for several minutes.

It couldn't have been more pleasant. He ends it, you know, and I say, by the way, you know, let's get to. I'd love to interview you after the debate. He's like, yeah, yeah. give me a call and we'll have you come down and we'll do some camera work. He says, we'll have you come down and we'll do some camera work. But it's, but this is, this is typical with, with Trump. And what I describe Trump's behind the scenes relationship with Joe Biden, which is actually even more dramatic and more stark. Because he had several conversations

that I had, you know, again, I talked to people that overheard the conversations. So I I had very good insight. He talked to Biden right after he was shot in Butler. He talked to Biden, you know, after the election. And, of course, when he came to see him and had that big two-hour visit in the Oval Office, they were before the cameras for about like 43 seconds or something. But they spent two hours. I got a blow by blow of what happened to there.

They were together in that limousine ride up to, up to up to the Capitol for the swearing in and the inauguration. Anyway, I got a really good kind of blow-by-blow

of these conversations. They couldn't have been friendlier. And then he goes and he says the most horrible things about Biden. Calls him a corpse.

Calls him a lot worse than that even. So, and by the way, when he talked about hate in my heart, I also was in the Oval Office later that week. Later that day,

I'm sorry, it was the same day. It was the same day. in the Oval Office with him, and I continue to ask him about this kind of free speech issue, which was big because of what Brandon Carr was doing and all of that. And he unloads on me again. He says, you know, you act like you're a wonderful person. Well, you're not a wonderful person.

You're the worst. And every, you know it and everybody else knows it. And it's like withering. It's on live television. He's the president of the United States. And it's like, oh, my God. And I'm not the kind of guy that's going to like. like, sit there and say, no, I am a wonderful person.

You know, I'm not going to, like, fight with him. I'm there to, like, ask the questions. So, uh, the, the, the event ends, he, he, uh, you know, everybody gets ushered out. He motions to me to come up to the resolute desk as we're going out. I'm like, and he's like, he's like, we're okay. We're okay. And, and, and I said to him, I said, I said, you were, you were pretty rough there. And, and he says, ah, no, you were rough.

You were rough. It's like it's a game. It's like we're playing a role. So that's the question. What's he doing there? What's happening? I mean, I think that the metaphor for what is happening are the changes at the White House. You know, whether it be the goldification of the Oval Office, the planned construction of the massive ballroom, the deconstruction of the massive ballroom, the de-construction of,

the East Wing that we saw, you know, kind of shocking images. That doesn't really necessarily matter. It's just a building. And of course, there's a store. I mean, it does matter, but it's not like the most important thing at all that's happening in the world. But it's a metaphor for Trump's second term. And that is that I think that he is in the process of changing the country in a way that he never came close to doing in his first term. I mean, the first term was chaos. It was constant coverage. The world was focused on, you know, his every move. He became the most famous person on the planet. There was, you know, constant movement. But when he left, he left. And it was ephemeral. Biden moved in. It was almost like Trump hadn't been there.

this time's not that way these are these are this is this is a different this is a different thing and he is changing he's changing american ways that are going to last long after he is he has left the white house but one of the things i want to go back to you one of the things that is is a constant that we've seen from the moment trump stepped on stage that that you covered in trump's life before he was in politics is his willingness to say things or to act in such a way that's totally counter to the truth. I mean, what he's doing when he's taking you on, was he beating you up, he's going after you for the cameras. And then he steps back and he's friendly and he's nice. And I've heard this. Of course, we all know, you know, this is common. He does this with Maggie

Haberman. He does this with other people who come and sit in in the Oval Office and he'll attack them and he'll shout at them by name and then he's, then he's friendly. I was, it's just sort of another level of mendacity that, I mean, we've been doing this for long enough. Like, nobody's surprised if a politician exaggerates or if a politician fudges or if a this is, this is a different level. And I was reminded as I was reading the book, you all included this thing I'd totally forgotten about it until you reminded me by writing about it. When Kamala Harris comes, joins the presidential race, and

she's getting some pretty good crowds. There's some pretty good energy. I think, you know, your view is, this was kind of relief that Biden was finally gone. She was there. Democrats had something to be excited about for the first time ever. She seemed to have some momentum. And Trump says, in public, she doesn't have those crowds. They're all AI. That's totally preposterous. It's one of the dumbest things that has ever passed the lips of any public official in the United States ever. But he doesn't just say it once. He says it again.

And he comes back to it. And he's evidently trying to convince people that this totally bull-h-explanation for what we're seeing is reality. He does this when he has those interactions with you, where he says, you have hate in your heart. You're horrible. I should come after you. and then he says, it's all good. What is this strategic on his part? Is this just the way that he

operates? Does he, is he indifferent to the truth? Does it occur to him? Does he get, is there a moment where he says, I don't think this is true. I might not say it. I don't think that thought has ever popped into his head. I think it's just an instrument to further his aims. And you say things that sound good, put you in a good light. Rick Riley, you know, the sports writer who wrote that book Commander and Cheat about Trump and golf has a, as a good, I think a very revealing anecdote on this in that book where Riley, writing for Sports Illustrated, is assigned to cover some golf tournament at a Trump property, and Trump is showing him around. And Riley is a sports writer. He's a columnist. Um, and, uh, Trump keeps introducing him as the publisher of Sports

Illustrated. And he, he correct some, you know, after he's, by the way, I'm not the publisher. And then he keeps doing it. And then so Riley finally pulls up, say, why do you, why do you keep saying I'm the publisher? I told you I'm not the publisher. I'm a writer. And Trump looks at him and says, it sounds better. Whatever. Who cares if it's true. It sounds better. Um, you know, uh, Rick Klein, my colleague, political director, way back in 2015, like even before Trump was going to run. You know, we were, you know, Rick had an occasion to see him a couple times. And Trump would always, like, to other people point out to Rick as the youngest guy ever run a television network. And, you know, Rick is really bright and he might, you know, and some of us might think he's running things.

But, you know, he looks. And he looks young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a little older than he looks, but he looks young. But he, you know, which is, by the way, one of the things that. makes him, that makes him so compelling when you are with him is he wants the people around him. I mean, unless he's like withering into trying to destroy you and belittle you, which he will do, he is building you up. There's almost like no in between. And it makes you feel good. You know,

here he is. Look, I mean, you know, I've recounted in, I think every book has an anecdote related to this of how Trump speaks to me when he, when he's in a good mood about me. He's talking about how I did the greatest interview ever with him. You know, in the old post office where he built the trampled... I mean, like, on and on and on. It was the greatest thing. And, boy, it was everybody attacked you for it. But, man, you got the best ratings.

I mean, we ran five minutes of it at the end of the... I don't know. I don't know what the ratings were. But anyway, the truth is... I mean, he'll just... If he was pointed out that it's wrong, then either he'll keep saying it or he'll say, okay, whatever. So it was this.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's just, it just struck me. I mean, again, we've been in the Trump era now for a decade. I've been covering politics for 30 years. I'm not surprised when politicians are dishonest. But it just seems like another level. And I think one of the things that the book does so well is it without sort of leaning too far into it or smack and readers in the face about it. it's sort of a classic show don't tell again and again. Declan, I wonder if you're not nearly as old and cynical or experienced as John and I are, are. Did that strike you as you're working your way through the book? Did that strike?

I mean, there's so many examples. And I will say not only sort of in Trump world. I mean, one of the things we haven't spent nearly enough time on. I have seven hours still more of questions to go. I fear we're not going to get to them all. We haven't spent much time on the Democrats. I do want to ask a few questions there because you have some new and really interesting fresh reporting on what happened on the Democratic side of this.

But it is the case that you have many examples of the Democrats being incredibly disingenuous and phony and sort of staging kind of silly photo ops and. mini videos. Declan, did it strike you? Was that something you came out of the book with or am I just at this moment where I just look around and think everybody's phony. So this book sort of spoke to me that way. The, at the risk of upsetting you guys, I was 19 years old, 20 years old when, when Trump

launched his campaign for president. And so my, my adult, in time. entire adult life has been defined by this era. And so I don't really know, you know, I paid attention to the Romney campaigns and watched the debates with my parents. But I was not following this day and day. What do you mean? Paid attention to the Romney campaigns. But yeah, I mean, people in my life will ask me, okay, there's a lot, I know there's a lot of politicians.

you don't like, who are the good ones? And I, you know, the list is shorter and shorter and shorter. And I think I'm of two minds with kind of seeing this process and John's reporting. Some of them are decent and good people behind the scenes. And then they get sucked into this machine that we have created collectively as a society. and they are either for electoral reasons, for attention reasons, for fundraising reasons, just forced to do, be the worst versions of themselves. And it's increasingly hard to suss out who is the worst version of themselves all the time

and who is putting on an act. And I think the proportion is shifting more and more toward we're just electing worse and worse people because of these incentive structures. it sure it sure feels like it let me john let me go back to you on sort of the democrats the um sort of the irony to me i mean i think this was true before i read your book but certainly the the book makes this more and more obvious you have in trump you know this sort of towering figure of mendacity and yet i think you could make a good argument that one of the main reasons that Kamala Harris lost him, maybe the main reason was that she was so manifestly inauthentic.

Whether you're talking about her, you know, and you all chronicled this in some detail, presenting herself to voters in 2024 in a way that is almost the opposite of the way she presented herself to voters in 2019, both I would say in temperament and substance and policy. But also, you know, you have in detail these two videos that she shoots. And I remember them at the time. I remember they created this sort of cringe moment. One was when Barack Obama, after waiting, I think you all reported it was five days before he finally endorsed her after Biden got out. And there was all sorts of that was five days filled with activity where he wasn't excited about it.

He would have rather had him any primary. She was pushing to get the endorsement. And they were pissed at each other. And then they have this video moment where it's all captured. The phone call where he endorses is all captured. And he says a bunch of things that he doesn't really believe. And she says a bunch of things that she doesn't really believe. And then the scene repeats itself later when she picks Tim Walz.

And it's not that they're sort of not being honest with. one another, but it's just so sort of transparently phony and silly and almost kitschy. Is that, am I right that that's really one of the reasons that she ended up not resonating was because she came across as so inauthentic and first and foremost, of course, would be the fact that she continued to get Joe Biden's back and to sort of vouch for him and stand by him while we all knew, I think, at the time. and certainly know now with reporting in your book and others that that's not really how she felt. The video of the Obama's Michelle and Brock calling to endorse her is particularly cringe-worthy to use your word.

Because it was late, everybody else, every other Democrat under the sun of any significance had already endorsed. Most of them endorsed that day after. after Biden dropped out. Nancy Pelosi waited until this following day and took a fair amount of heat because she waited a day, a single day. But all the Democratic leadership by the time, you know, had endorsed that that second day. They were all there except for Obama. By the way, Bill and Hillary Clinton endorsed, you know, within hours or almost immediately.

And so, you know, there was a lot of resent. in anger on the part of the Kamala Harris world. So the call comes in, which obviously I think they might have known was coming in because they had cameras videotaping or answering. And really good lighting. I don't know. I maybe jump into a conclusion, but she's like, oh, Barack and Michelle. I mean, she's acting like she's so surprised.

Oh, my God, you're endorsing me? Right. Wow. Oh, my God. That's how it felt. Holy wow. I mean, this is just like, so yeah, yeah. I mean, there were a lot of factors that led to the downfall of Harris. I think that one reason that we can rule out was the 107 days. So the argument that Kamala Harris has made is that the problem was she only had 107 days to run her campaign. I mean, how are you going to do that? You got to build your campaign. You got to pick a running, mate. You got to introduce yourself. You have to. In reality, it wasn't that she didn't have enough time. It's that she had too much time. If you look, her biggest moments were within days and weeks of becoming the de facto nominee. She had tremendous events immediately after, you know, she had affected before the convention, when she had effectively, had effectively, secured the nominee. Everybody else had made it clear they weren't going to run against her.

She had her first events. These were the ones that Trump was complaining and saying it was AI that was making up the crowds. She was really good. And then the convention, I don't know how you felt, Steve, I forget if we had spoken about this at the time. My feeling being at that convention in Chicago was that I had never seen a better Democratic convention. I thought it was, I thought it was electric. I thought the production of it was was, was very strong, the messages from the stage, the taking back the mantle of patriotism or trying to from the Republicans, having Republican speakers each and every night, adding to the crowd, and then also kind of

pushing aside the kind of stuff that would alienate, you know, independence. There wasn't, you know, there wasn't a lot of far left progressed. I remember Bernie Sanders. speaking and he was he was book he was flagged by um flanked by billionaires on either side uh i think i think pritzker was right after him and uh who was the guy the uh the bank of america guy that was uh that spoke right before him but it was two billionaires yeah and bernie sanders in the middle we uh we have a line in there somewhere that uh if you erase abortion and LGBTQ from the speeches. It would have been George Bush 2004 campaign. Yeah. So, so, you know, and then she had a very

strong debate against, against Trump. So she, and if you look at the polling, really, she didn't actually have much of a convention bounce, despite the strength of that convention. And the reason is because her bounce had already happened. And if you look, and you could tell it, and by the way, Trump's behavior in, in August, he's clearly were. that, you know, he's complaining that they, you know, that they did something illegal by switching the nominees. He really wants to be running against Joe Biden. She's, you know, it's all margin of error stuff. I mean, this was always going to be a close race. But the edge and the polling clearly seemed to be Harris at the end of August after our debate. And then it's like a steady

And by the end of October, by the time Bannon's walking out of prison, the, you know, the Harris campaign is doing what seemed to be desperate things because they get a sense they're losing. You know, they're trying to get a debate on Fox. They're trying to, they're like begging Fox to host another debate. Then she goes on with Brett Baer. She's finally in the first time in her life doing an interview on Fox. And by the way, I thought of this one, we saw Mom Donnie go on Fox and have a very strong interview. That was the other thing.

What the hell? I mean, what does it say when you're running for president and you're basically afraid to do an interview that might be tough? You're going to stare down Putin and Xi and Kim Jong-un, but you, you know, you have a hard time, you know, sitting down for an interview with, you know, with a journalist that isn't overly friendly? Yeah, she went weeks without doing an interview at the outset. Yeah. with anyone, right? I mean, much less a tough one. And then she finally agrees to do one on CNN with Dana Bash, and it's like they time it out no more than 20 minutes and they're going to have, you know, walls there.

Anyway. One of my favorite anecdotes from the Harris campaign that's in the book is the idea she was getting hammered by the Trump campaign about the transgender stuff and what she had said about it in 2019, all the comments. for they, them ads. And operatives, former presidents, people were going to her saying, this is an issue, you've got to deal with it. Bill Clinton's telling her. Come on. And her campaign comes up with a plan. She's going to say that she's not in favor of transgender women competing in female sports if she is asked about it.

And because she didn't do any hostile interviews, she was never asked about it. She never released the proposal. And therefore, she never did it. It's like the ineptness, that's just, that gets to your phoniness point, Steve, of, you know, these people. I don't know. It's enough to, it's enough to make you awfully cynical. All right. Final question for each of you, Declan, you've helped John with his last book.

You played a big role in helping him put this book out. Having been through this process now, twice helping someone else, do you want to write a book? So I think I've probably gained 10 pounds with each of these two. If I do one completely by myself, probably double that, triple that. No, it's been incredible. I've learned so much. I think I will take, John, this original book was going to be twice as long. It was supposed to be through basically about now.

And thank goodness we cut it off when we did because it's already 400 pages. But no, it's been a. blast. How many hours of, how many hours of interviews did you actually listen to? Because I recorded almost every conversation I had. And you all the files are in my are in my otter somewhere. I could go back and count them. I mean, the funny thing, it didn't feel like work. Lots of other parts of it felt like work. But listening to the interviews was that their guard was down. It's like a running podcast. Exactly. I mean, Declan, you're famous in the dispatch offices for listening to your podcasts.

Like 5X or something, like ridiculous. Did you listen to these interviews at a high rate of speed as well? Or did you listen to them? Some of them. Yes. Some of them. Yeah. I mean, there were a couple like three-hour lunches in there that had to get through.

With the extra noise in the background of the food getting brought in and stuff. Yeah. You really need to bring a producer next time. to get better acoustics on some of this stuff. That's good ambient sound. If you're going to do NPR, you could put the audio in there. Okay, John, last question goes to you. You've written, this is your fourth having to do with Donald Trump or with Donald Trump as a main character, the main character. Is there another Trump book in you? And if so, are you reporting it right now? So I have, when I signed this contract, I agreed to do two books. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I'm obligated to do another book. I can tell you this, Steve, I am not ready, nowhere near ready. I can't even begin to think about it. What I do is I do keep, depending on the day, a pretty detailed journal where I try to also, you know, include some of the key events that happened that day and, you know, stuff that might have happened with me or I might have heard. So that ends up becoming a good, good raw material for a book, but I am nowhere near ready. So don't tell my publisher this. hopefully Dutton's not listening right now. Because I think maybe like when he's done, it would be good to go back and, like, go through and do the, you know, what was all that?

But my God, this one almost killed me. So it's half as long as Declan said we were thinking in terms of what we were covering. But this book is, we just did, this is the longest. This is a pretty, yeah, it's 400 plus pages, right? Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And I'm only doing it, Declan's going to help me out.

So, uh, so there you go. Declan, did you sign a two book contract, too? I mean, that would have been. I'll use a quote from Hunter when we, uh, John was asking him kind of the decision making process about deciding to run for, uh, another term with Biden. And shockingly, there was no meeting where they even debated whether to do it or not. It was the machinery just went. It just went.

Maybe that will be that I get tricked into doing another book again. That sounds like a commitment. John, I would take that. Write it down. I'm taking it. I'm taking it. Declan's in. Well, thank you.

You were recording this, right? Yeah, yeah. We're recording this. I will give you the audio. Thank you both for spending this much time talking about. It's a terrific, terrific book. I've enjoyed all of them. I've learned a lot from the others.

This is no exception. Detailed deep reporting. It's an easy read. Sometimes people will describe a book as breezy or easy and mean it as sort of a backhanded compliment. But this is an easy and enjoyable read. And I mean that as a straightforward compliment. Great work. Fun to read it.

And thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks a lot, Steve. And let me just say, because I, not that I'm trying to repay a compliment, but I am a massive fan of dispatch. I think it's, uh, it may be the most important, uh, publication out there, certainly in the world of, of, of political news analysis and the like, and you guys are getting better and better each day. So, uh, thank you for letting me steal your executive editor for in his, uh, in his late nights and weekends, uh, to, well, we can, we can thank this young buck who's still in his crime of the Romney campaign. This is why we're doing this

podcast. Victoria, we don't have a heart out yet. Do we? Good. Well, thank you. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Good luck.

All right. Take care. See it. You know,