The Dispatch Podcast - Trump's Retribution | Interview: Maggie Haberman

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

The New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman tells Jamie that a second Trump will be defined by unfettered score settling. -Trump's social media strategy -Bannon friction -Trump/Carlson 24? -Trump's totalitarian rhetoric -The trials are happening -Mass deportation and other policy agenda Show Notes: -New York Times Sienna Poll Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. A recent poll by the New York Times in Sienna found that Donald Trump was up in five of six swing states, leading many people to start thinking that there could actually be a second Donald Trump administration. And this always seemed obvious to me, but it's becoming, I think, more of a reality, or at least a potential reality for, I guess, the general media world. So with that in mind, I have today as a guest, Maggie Haberman, who of course is the New York Times Pulitzer-winning senior political correspondent and author of Confidence Man, The Making of Donald Trump,

and the Breaking of America. And I think universally considered the best source reporter in Trump world to get an insight on exactly what a second Trump administration would look like, what priorities it would focus on, and what figures might be staffing. So without further ado, I give you Maggie Haber. I want to start with kind of just getting insight from you. You've reported on Donald Trump, obviously, since he entered political life.

What is the difference reporting on Donald Trump when he's in the White House versus in the wilderness, if you will, out of office? That's a really good question. It depends on the moment that we've been in prior to his indictments. It was actually, I think, a little easier to see in. I mean, you know, we're getting more keyhole views, obviously, than we did when he was president when he was on Twitter. You know, he does tens upon tens upon tens of truth social posts every day to the point where they're hard to keep up with,

but not very many people aren't truth social. so they're not seeing that he's just sort of screaming into the wilderness. That's sure to use your term. So it's a little different. I mean, in the White House, there were obviously lots of people around. I think that added to his sense of paranoia. The only place that I know of where he's entirely comfortable is Mar-a-Lago. And yet, he feels under siege.

And because he is so angry about the criminal cases against him and the New York Attorney General case really, to do his company, which is a civil case, but it could have serious impacts on whether he can continue to do business in New York, whether he can continue to own Trump Tower and so forth. It's hard to see around that level of anger, in part because so many people around him either are afraid of him or want to maintain this veneer that everything is fine and he's in a great mood all the time. But it's, it is different. The White House was strangely easier. I want to get into, if you've sensed he's changed all, but I kind of want to follow up on the

truth social posts. There used to be, you know, you'd read all these stories and how he actually tweets. Is it him tweeting? Is it through AIDS? How does he do these truth social posts? Is this a strategy or is this just him venting? And who was writing them? Is he dictating them? Is he learning how to, you know, does he type on the phone to the post of truth social himself? How does that actually work? So for one of the earlier indictments, It is kind of remarkable that there were four in fairly rapid succession between the months of March and August earlier this year. For one of the first two, and I don't remember which one it was, it might have been the June one, which was federal. He typed out the truth social post himself announcing that he had been told he was indicted.

This became yet another information stream that he tried to control, right? I mean, he loves sort of choreographing and narrating everything about his own life. He likes to be the only subject matter expert on Donald Trump. And so he used Truth Social to do it. And that one I know is one that he had written out himself. Some of these late night ones are ones that he does himself. Some of them are ones I'm told that Dan Skavino is longtime digital aide who was in the White House with him, who was a golf caddy years ago at Trump's Westchester Golf Club.

He types up a bunch of them and he, I think, presets them. so they go off at, you know, some preset time. So it's some combination. And that is, Jamie, how it worked in the White House, right? Trump was sometimes tweeting at one of the morning. Sometimes other people were drafting tweets and presenting them to him, and then they would all agree on them. It's not that different.

The volume is different. There's just so many of them. And I don't, that I have not been able to figure out what accounts were. And is it, can you tell us it's strategy or venting? I mean, is this something that he needs almost like therapy to get, his anger out? Or is this a strategy to rally his base? I think sometimes it's a strategy, although again, I don't think too many people are reading truth social, even among his hard-de-score base. And sometimes it's bent it. You know, I mean, he writes about all manner

of things. He is a little freer on this site of his own than he was on Twitter. But when he was on Twitter, he was president. He, you know, only was reinstated to Twitter recently. And I think that he was a little more restrained because of the office than he certainly is now. I think you discussed it a little bit, but the Trump in the White House versus the Trump in, as we're calling it, I guess, the wilderness, has he changed? In what ways has he changed? Personality-wise, health-wise, demeanor-wise, is there changes in any of those areas that are very noticeable? It's a good question. Look, health-wise, I don't really know how to answer that. He's obviously a much older man. The job takes a toll on every

president. And he's an older man who was already not a young man when he was president. But it doesn't, he doesn't appear noticeably different physically from what I've seen, but I will note that we are seeing him publicly less. He is doing fewer rallies, which his team generally attributes to trying to cost save, because those rallies are very expensive to put on. But I would also know that it's energy saving, right? I mean, you're less likely to wear out a 70 seven-year-old man with several rallies a week, then you are doing them a few times a month or even once a month. He doesn't need to do a ton of them right now. He's so far ahead in the polls that I don't think they see a huge advantage to it. I have noticed that lately, and my colleagues

Michael Gold and Michael Bender wrote about this, he is making a bunch of verbal miscues that have been pretty striking. He's not exactly ever been the clearest of articulators, but or of speakers or of orators, but he, you know, he keeps appearing to believe Obama is still president. He confused Orban and Erdogan. Um,

I don't know if it's fatigue. I don't know if it's distraction. I don't know what it is, but, um, but that's been a little, a little notable. Does he want to leave that Mara Lago lifestyle for the White House?

What is his motivation for running again? Is it a legal strategy to try to avoid going to jail or, or, these cases, is it to, you know, revenge for what, to be seen as a winner again of an election? What is his motivation, or does he generally like the job as president? I never had a sense, Jamie, that he liked the job. I had a sense that he liked the trappings of the job. He liked the title of president. He liked the White House. The scene in the book that I wrote, Confidence Man, where he was saying at a dinner with Democratic members of Congress,

that, you know, Congress members only get, don't get to keep their title for life, but that he does. He'll get called president forever. He's clearly keenly aware of this. He liked Air Force One. He liked Marine one. You know, and I think he certainly likes the power it represents.

I think it's some amalgam of everything you just listed. He certainly is mindful that this can afford him insulation legally, whether it's in the form of a self-pardon, which would be challenged in the first. courts because the law is not settled on that, or whether it's him telling the DOJ to drop the charges, even if he's been, in theory, convicted and sentenced by them by the time of election day. But he was talking about running for president again not long after the November 2020 election was called. And so I think it's a bunch of different factors. And part of it with him

is that he is one of the most regenerative public figures in our country, who I can think of, who have just been on the stage forever. This is a guy. who went through bankruptcies that other people would have deemed as wiping them out, and he refused to succumb to bad publicity about it and started driving his own narrative home, even though it wasn't true. He would constantly describe himself in bigger terms than he was financially, both in the 80s and the 90s, but in the 90s he had already gone through these bankruptcies. It's not in him to not find some way to stay part of the conversation,

and I think that he is well aware that running gives him some level of prominence and armor that he wouldn't have otherwise. Just curious, because you mentioned that he mentioned how he will be called president for life. And it made me think, has he made any effort to establish where a presidential library will be? Is he going to build a presidential library like past presidents? Is there any active fundraising for something like that? Well, I haven't heard of anything along those lines, and I know that people who have tried raising it with him have generally gotten dismissed, and that was a long time ago. I don't think that's something that they're thinking of right now. I'm sure if he loses the election next year, it's something that they will turn to again, but he will undoubtedly see it as some kind of cross-brand marketing opportunity. At Trump Tower, the bar that's in the lobby that has been there for a while has been renamed Club 45, and it's sold with all these pictures, these jumbos from his presidency. the biggest one being him and Kim Jong-owned. So I'm sure there will be something along those lines, but not any time soon.

Let's turn to what a second Trump administration might look like. You write in a piece about a second Trump term, along with Jonathan Swan and Charlie Savage. In a second term, Mr. Trump plans to install a team that will not restrain him. He was unable to craft the team he thought he was crafting while in the White House, picking people that he thought would do one thing and turned out, you know, he ended up having fire them or they would leave and trash him. Is he capable of picking a team that won't restrain him? So it's, it's a great question, and it's actually along the lines of some conversations I've been having with people close to him in the last

couple of days. He is capable of picking a team that won't restrain him, and that is actually much more what he wants. And I think that he feels like he learned lessons from staffing last time. I don't think that he realized he was picking a team that was going to restrain him. think he thought that he was picking a team that would please the media or that would please elites or who had, you know, what he considered impeccable credentials because he's a credentialist. But I think he very much does not want a team that will constrain him. I do think that he is extremely fickle and I think that he is hard to predict about what he is going to want in a stapper. And so he, you know, and he loves nothing more than there's a line from

the show's succession about how Logan Roy loves nothing more than one seat, two people for the job. That is Trump. And so I don't, the biggest question for this term is staffing. There's no, there's no doubt about that. Are there names that come up when you talk to people in Trump world or talk to Trump that you see as definite figures in the second Trump administration? I think that you will see Cash Patel, who was at DOD and who Trump named as one of his NARA archives representatives last year, although he recently added one of his criminal lawyers to be one of his NARA representatives, which makes sense, given some of these cases, and the discovery material related to them. I think that you will see people like

Rick Rennel, Robert O'Brien, who was the last national security advisor as somebody who you could see again. But more broadly, I think that there are significant questions about who we would see as Attorney General, who we would see as Secretary of Defense, who we would see at the CIA, who we would see as the DNI. These are the agencies that he cares most about, and I think that that will be the biggest question. And I think that you will see all manner of names floated for that in those 12 months, if he wins. Well, you mentioned some names. I actually have a list of names I was going to ask you about, and all of those names that you mentioned were on it. Robert O'Brien, thought had been oddly silent during questions about classified documents where, you know,

everybody was either saying, you know, Cash Patel was out claiming, you know, Trump declassified them and, you know, others were saying that's impossible. You didn't hear from Robert O'Brien. Is that a strategy? On that front, you didn't. You heard him on other things, but yes, not on that. I mean, is that a strategy kind of to get under the radar so he doesn't, a lie, like maybe Cash Patel may have by saying that Trump be classified in, but also not upset Trump by

negating what Trump wants people to say in order to protect him in the case. I think that Robert O'Brien has been pretty careful at walking certain lines where he can maintain influence but not dive into controversies that have a potential huge downside. And I would guess that that's one of them, although I don't know what the motive is. People like Steve Bannon. I mean, are they aiming to get back in the White House or, you know, what is his motivation? I don't think that, I don't think that Trump would like Steve Bannon back in the White House as much as I think that Trump likes some of what Steve Bannon is saying. That first year was contentious in terms of the relationship between Trump and Bannon and the credit taking.

And Donald Trump likes nothing more than, sorry, likes nothing less than people who he sees. trying to glom onto him and gain something from him that way. I don't think that Bannon back is a huge likelihood. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect

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as vice president, is that a real thing that you're hearing as a possibility? Or is that, you know, floated by maybe people around Tucker? No, it's a, it's a real thing that I am hearing as a possibility. You know, the likelihood of it I don't know. I think there will be a pretty professionalized, um, vetting process, honestly. I know that that might sound unbelievable, um, based on what we've seen from Trump historically, but Trump's current political team is, is the, the best at least. as a non-incumbent that he's had. And there's just a different level of control.

I mean, these are people who have been involved in efforts that give them a base of knowledge. This is not 2016 again. But I don't think the type of thing is not real. I think that what the ultimate VP choice for a Trump nominee could look like could be very different than what we think. I think the risk with Tucker Carlson and Trump is that Tucker Carlson is a very big star in his own right. And I'm not sure how Trump would contend with that. You mentioned, obviously, the most, maybe the most important role for someone who wants to seek revenge in the next presidency is probably attorney general.

But that has to be confirmed by the Senate. And Trump had sent people he thought were going to be loyal to him for that post before, Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, only to find out they were unwilling to do the things that he wanted them to do part because sometimes they were illegal. Is there a name that you've heard that he once as Attorney General? And B, is there a name that you've heard that theoretically could get approved by the Senate for Attorney General? Jamie, that's the, that's the $64 million question in terms of who could get approved. And so I think those are two separate questions. One is who could get approved and one is who he could install his acting while he's waiting for Senate approval. I don't

know who that person would be right now. You know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the name that people keep mentioning to me is a lawyer named Mike Davis, who has been quite vocal on Twitter, who we quoted in one of our Project 2025 stories by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, and me, whether that is something Trump would want or not, I don't know. You know, I think, again, I think there are a few staff roles for which Trump has bigger regrets. I will say on the Bill Barr front, Barr was equally skeptical about the Russian investigation as Trump. And so, you know, he did a lot of things that Barr was very heavily criticized for, including dropping charges against Mike Flynn, that it were very much aligned with

Trump's interest. He just didn't say that there was widespread fraud after November 2020. But I have not heard of a name. I have not heard of who they might put forward. Now, I think we'll start hearing in a couple of months. But as of right now, I think it's something that they know they must do and they don't know what to do. Another important role would obviously be the Secretary of Treasury, which the IRS is within. And if you wanted to audit people, I guess you might want to have a secretary that would be willing to do that. I don't know if he would be willing to do that. But Steve Mnuchin, is he someone who might return to that role? I think that's not impossible. Mnuchin, you know, I think that he would face a lot of questions in a Senate hearing, et cetera,

but in part because of the work that he's gone on to do in investments after the White House. But Mnuchin is somebody who still has a decent relationship with Trump. I think there are a number of people who could come back, and I also think that a number of people who say they never would might rethink it when it comes back to the idea of being back in power. How about someone like Vivek Ramoswamy, who obviously is running against Donald Trump, but doing so in the politest and nicest way possible? That was really very delicately put, yes.

I mean, is he someone that could find a role in the Trump administration? Has he been discussed as a potential vice presidential candidate by anyone around Trump? I have not heard his name mentioned as a potential VP by anybody. And I think it's certainly possible he's young and he has fashioned himself in the America First Model, which I think is part of what they're going to look for in a VP, is somebody who can push the movement forward, given Trump's age. But I had not heard his name. It doesn't mean I won't, but right now I haven't. You mentioned a few moments ago, not necessarily for the administration, Mike Flynn, but I guess my question is, is it possible he could be picked to come to the White House? So I don't think he could be confirmed in the Senate, but could he possibly be?

He could absolutely come in in some kind of a presidential appointee role. I think Trump has said repeatedly in public that he wants to bring him back in. And I think you raise an important point, too, which is that somebody like Cash Patel, I think is going to have a very hard time getting through a Senate confirmation, especially in a closely divided Senate, certainly if the Republicans don't take the Senate in a Trump presidency. But and even then, I think it would be hard. but Trump could bring all kinds of people in as presidential appointees within the White House

and I think those two are among them. One other name that I have on my list here is Mark Meadows, which it's unclear whether Trump's upset with them for supposedly turning or he hasn't turned. Is he still within Trump world? I mean, is he a potential person to come back or is he seen as someone who is cooperating with authorities?

I think a lot, I think that the answer to that question is going to depend on what comes out of trial next year in the January 6th case in D.C., which I expect is going to be the only one that really goes to trial. Trump's rhetoric on the trail is increasingly totalitarian. He's pledged to root out his enemies that live like vermin, talking about immigrants, poisoning. They're poisoning the blood of our country. I mean, he has used kind of some imagery like that before.

he always talks about genes and horse races like having a good, you know, you get a good breeding horses, you get a good horse that was a, you know, great runner before. Where does he get this type of rhetoric? You know, how did, you know, the way he speaks, I've always been interested about Roy Cohn and the language he gets from him, but how does he get kind of this type of poisoning the blood? It's not a thing that seems like a common phrase that you didn't read somewhere before. No, look, I mean, a lot has been said about the fact that that language is language that echoes phrasing by Hitler, you know, and there's other language that he's been using about vermin to describe his adversaries and he has to, quote, quote, root out in the country that also echoes fascists through history. look he's not a great reader as you know he's not a he's not somebody who spends a lot of time on historical texts

but he is somebody who reads a lot of social media and one of the things that he used to do to your question about how truth social posts are phrased and how Twitter was done is that he would look at the replies to his posts and I assume he still does that here too because sometimes you'll see him retweeting or retruthing whatever we call it a lot of things, it's often just stuff that he sees in response to himself, or he'll look at trending topics in both cases. And so my assumption is always either that somebody around him said it, or that he read it somewhere, and he's skimming it off of someone else's language. But, you know, he's, no matter how many times he's told what this rhetoric historically means, he doesn't

change it. And so whether he is intentionally echoing some of histories, worst villains or not, it almost starts to become beside the point. I'm sure you remember, because you've read everything about Trump, the Vanity Fairpiece from 1990, where it was about his first divorce and, I guess, Ivana talked about the book of Hitler's speeches or mine comp that was next to his bedside. And I think, I forget which one she claimed and he said it was the other and it was given to by Jewish. It was in Mind Kampf.

It was the speeches and it was given to him by a Hollywood executive. knew who thought he would find it, quote, unquote, interesting. Right. And he claimed it was a Jewish producer, and then they went to the producer, and he said, I'm not Jewish. There's no. Correct. I think it was Marie Brenner who went to the producer, the journalist who was there before many of us with Trump and with Roy Cohn.

Yeah, I mean, he did have these speeches. He does have a history of referencing Hitler. He told John Kelly, as my colleague Mike Bender first reported in his book, that, you know, Hitler did some good things. he would say that he wanted his generals to be like the German generals, which shows a real lack of understanding how history went with Hitler and his generals. But he just sees it in terms of he thinks he's talking about toughness and responsiveness. And so the language has been echoing fascists for a long time, but it has gotten, I think, a lot more explicit recently.

What are in the pieces you've written about what a second Trump term will look like, a lot of A lot of it is, you know, what immigration policy will look like. And obviously, you know, his rhetoric is very strong. I guess maybe that's a plight way of saying it on that. Very harsh, but yeah. Yeah, his rhetoric was similar, at least in some ways, in 2016. And obviously, a lot of immigration hawks, Anne Coulter comes to mind, who wrote a fawning book of him, you know, were upset that he didn't do what he said he was

going to do. So I guess my question to you is, you know, despite whatever he's saying right now, Are there priorities that you know that he personally has that he's going to try to push when he's in the White House? You know, what are the three things that Donald Trump personally cares about? Well, look, we did this big story the other day, I think it was last weekend. And Trump has been very open on the campaign trail that he wants to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. he uses Eisenhower's Racistly named Operation Wetback as a model

And that is, I think, one of the biggest priorities I think that canceling visas Is going to be another massive priority I think basically trying to restrict Both legal and illegal immigration Is going to be a massive priority Which was, as you note, Not unlike what you were saying in 2016

I mean, when you Google Trump and immigration and some of the same praises, a lot of what shows up is from that first campaign of his. And then he was seen as by his hardest line backers as not quite following through. You know, the wall certainly did not get built to any length that he claims it has and so forth and so on. But I think that he is, and what we tried to convey in the story is, you know, he's so very close to Stephen Miller, who was the architect of his immigration policy. And Miller learned a lot during the presidency. They figured out what could work and what couldn't.

how to get lawyers in who would be more willing to acquiesce to interpretations of the law that would let them take more aggressive actions. Those are how I would loosely describe as his priorities. Trump would repeatedly say when he was president, you know, just don't let them come in. Don't let them come in, which is just not a realistic way to approach the border. But if you asked me what I think his dream scenario is, I think that's it. For foreign policy, in a second Trump term, I go back and forth, will he be tough on China? I mean, he seems to like Xi, though. You know, he likes the idea of she coming to Mar-a-Lago and maybe having another dinner.

I mean, what is, what is Trump's foreign policy going to look like? I mean, it is yet another $64 million question because he really hasn't been talking about it. I mean, at this point in the campaign in 2015, he actually had articulated, granted, they were sort of id-like impulses, but things about he had articulated things about his views on foreign policy. He was starting to talk about NATO and Article 5. He's talking about foreign policy very little this campaign, other than these kind of sweeping and non-realistic statements about Ukraine and getting a deal in 24 hours.

I was having a conversation this past week with a former senior administration official who was making the point to your question that Trump's policy on China was articulated, really by his hawkish senior officials, Esper, Pompeo, Bolton. Trump's desire was really all based on his thoughts on trade. So what he will do beyond that is a huge open question, and I don't think we're going to have a sense of it until if he wins, he's in office.

The case that Trump's reelection would be perilous as an easy one to make, especially after what we saw in January 6th. My question, is there an optimistic case that you can imagine for a second Trump presidency that maybe, you know, this is a guy who wants to be seen as a winner, so he wants to see the American economy succeed. So he appoints people that are not crazy to some of these positions. I mean, I think that for things like the economy, I think that you will see people

who, or could see people who are not, quote, unquote, of that, you know, crazy model that you're articulating. And he had that last time. I mean, Gary Cohen was hardly a lightweight. I don't think you're going to see Gary Cohen in a Trump administration again. And I'm not sure that you'll see another, you know, senior Goldman Sachs official that was pretty controversial with Trump's base. But Trump has always been a little more of a shape shifter when it comes to things his base wants because he's a, for all the debates about his wealth, he's wealthier than 99% of the country. And he is still a wealthy guy from New York who has certain interests of his own that are different from some of his supporters. So you could see that on the economy. I just think that when

it comes to things like DOJ and the degree to which he is so pretty, pretty strong. singularly focused on retribution right now. I think those are the appointments that are going to be more of a question. But will he lean into the idea, as you're suggesting, that, you know, in a general election, I am going to make this optimistic case about the economy. Yes, I think that is what he's going to do. And I keep thinking back to something that a Democratic pollster said to me in September of 2016, which is that they were seeing that Clinton was struggling on the issue of the economy and she was speaking in very granular detail about plans she had. And Trump just kept saying jobs, jobs, jobs at every rally. And it wasn't detailed. But people heard that and it sank

in. So let me ask you just end on this. He's facing a lot of trials, you know, the Jack Smith federal case, the Georgia case. Is there any chance that those trials, specifically, from what you're hearing, happen before the election, where they actually have either acquittals or convictions before the election, or are all of these likely to have a verdict after he's either elected or lost the election? There is only one trial that I think is going to go forward next year, and I think it's almost a certainty, Jamie. It's the federal case related to subverting the election or alleging that he illegally tried to subvert the election. I think that Tanya Chuck and the judge in D.C. has made very clear that she is not missing around, that she has been very, very vocal about her views about January 6th,

and its meaning and its impact on the country and on democracy. And I think that she is going to want to move forward with that case. And then because of that, I think that Judge Eileen Cannon, the federal judge who Trump appointed, who is overseeing the documents case, which is a much cleaner cut legal case for the government in Florida, I think that one's going to get delayed to the election. Because he can't, when you're a criminal defendant,

you have to be in court. so it's not like he can someone asked me recently well can't he just go back and forth between the two trials that it's it cannot work that way they will they will have to schedule around each other you're already seeing fawny will as the georgia of the fulton county district attorneys say she's talking about late 2024 at this point so i think you can assume that it's later than that and then there's been sort of nary a word about the manhattan uh state local criminal case um about paying hush money to a corn star and i i don't know whether or that one will ever push ahead. But it would, Bragg, the DA, Alvin Bragg, has made very clear he's going to take a look at all the rest of the scheduling. So there's only one case that I think definitely goes forward. And I do think it definitely goes forward. Maggie Haberman, thank you for joining the dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me.