Jonathan Swan’s Dive into Trump’s Reality

Folks, you know, I am nothing if not a generator of ideas that may never work. Obviously, we've talked a little bit on the show about the crumple, which is the portable dog bed that you throw on the ground that makes a different topographical shape each time you do it. Or maybe I'll make an app. Maybe I'm always thinking of different apps. Or maybe I'll make an app that helps people create and run their great business ideas. Oh, wait. I don't need to do that because it's already existing, Shopify. Somebody probably sat around having a Shopify idea about an app that would help people bring their ideas to fruition like the crumple. And then they made that and the damn things brilliant. It makes the whole process easy. Everything you need, it's easy to design your shop. It's easy to get paid. They handle the checkout process. You might think to yourself like, "Oh, how are they going to complete their purchase?" The Shopify handles it. Get some to come back as repeat customers. Set up and check out or all handled. You get to live your life, grow your business, which they help you to too. I mean, perfectly honestly, I'm not that happy with them that they stole my idea. Even though obviously they had it first and did the work you needed to do to make it come to fruition. So get Shopify for God's sakes, with Shopify nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/TWS. Look, I don't know when I'm going to leave this job. I don't know when I'm going to stand this job. I don't know how these things are going to do, but when I do, you should replace me with indeed. You should call indeed when you're replacing me because, listen, this podcast requires skills. You need a face. You need a pie hole so that you can open your pie hole and just spout that not everybody can do that. And so if you need to hire, you got to say to yourself, "This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs." For each candidate that meet your specific criteria, like if you want them to have skills or pie hole certifications, maybe even you want to know what the location is, only indeed can get that stuff done efficiently. Trust me. You know, you got to kiss a lot of frogs unless you use one of these services there like indeed. So spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less trust, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show, we got a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job. The premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast, indeed.com/podcast, terms and conditions apply. Everybody, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is John Stewart. We are back from our summer hiatus refreshed and ready to tackle. It is Wednesday, September 9th. Normally, we would tape this on a Tuesday, we would release it on a Wednesday. We had to shift over because of obviously Labor Day and some other concerns and events that I have to be a part of. And I know tonight, and we obviously can't cover it on the podcast today, but everybody is going to be tuned into the Republican Trumpopuluza National Committee midterm convention. Fifty three glorious speakers on night one, 53, Oh, what a delightful items and speakers on, on, on, on, I imagine a healthcare affordability with the top of list, the immigration affordability. Oh, the Republicans are so on top of it. And I can't wait and, and I really hope Ken Paxson, you know, it is Texas that Ken Paxson gets an awful lot of time. He deserves it. Couldn't be a better guy and couldn't be a better representative for the state of Texas. And so I am going to be eyes glued on the Republican midterm convention, today, Trumpopuluza. And in no way, well, I actually be just watching football. Why would I be watching the Seahawks and Patriots play in a repeat of the Super Bowl when I could see Ken Paxson, the homunculus himself stand on stage as a paragon of morality and good government, motherfuckers speaking of morality and good government. Our guest today is just one of the best in the business at holding said government officials to account. His name is Jonathan Swan. One of Australia's finest exports and just a fantastic reporter and I'm delighted to get an opportunity to talk to him. So let's just get to it. So we are delighted today. We are joined by Jonathan Swan, White House reporter, the New York Times and co-author of regime change with Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, welcome. Thanks for having me, John. And I know we so appreciate you being here. You've been on this wild book tour with regime change. Your family is expanding. You have a new baby at home as well. So we appreciate whatever time you want to stay awake for during my best, yeah, yeah. So let's just catch up. I spoke to you when you first came out with regime change. Since the book came out, what has the response been, not amongst, you know, readers and journalists, but of insiders, well, is there anything when you put a book out like that? Is there a sudden rush afterwards of people going, you think that's bad? Let me tell you what, how do the insiders respond to it? Well, there's the president's response and he's written several angry, true social posts about it. Right. You know, everything's fake, maggot Hagerman. He calls me her flunky and her lightweight assistant, you know, that's fair. You got off easy, maggot, maggot, Haberman and you're flunky. Yeah, exactly. What's been interesting actually, and quite a few people have commented on this, is there hasn't actually been any specific denials of any of the scenes in the situation room or the Oval Office. And pretty early on, I think he got a, there's sort of been very little talk publicly from anyone in the administration about the book. And early on, the vice president was actually on making Kelly's podcast, and he said he thought that we might have tapes in the situation room. And I think that statement, kind of, to me anyway, revealed that there were quite a few of them at the senior level who were probably reticent to make specific denials. We haven't commented one way or the other on that stuff, but we haven't killed today. Today is the day, Jonathan Swan announces whether or not the tapes are real. So it's been notable for the lack of denials. I'm sort of constrained somewhat in, you know, there have been people who have reached out privately about different things, and particularly with Iran, we've done some reporting since the book came out where we have heard from people saying the situation is worse than you understand. And in particular, we've done some reporting on how this war has depleted America's weapons supplies to a really alarming extent. And that reporting has become the subject of leak investigations and other things. So it's been a very difficult time. I mean, some of my colleagues had the FBI show up at their houses for another story. So I would just say generally it's a pretty, in terms of the national security reporting right now. It's a pretty delicate time and we're just trying to make sure that everything we write is completely bulletproof and buttoned down. How do you do that? What's the process? So if people reach out to you and say, this Iran war, you're not getting the whole story and not to frame it in, you know, these are the Pentagon papers, but what is the process? So just stick with that larger claim, you know, we have a depleted supply of missiles or armaments or the supply chain is broken because the attacks that Iran did on our bases in the Middle East were more damaging than they had, you know, first, how do you go about the process of making those claims bulletproof? What's the difference between accountability and actual sort of specific evidence? Well, it's difficult for lots of reasons, but one is because during this war, information has been kept extremely tight. Central command has been really, really secretive about all kinds of things, and they will say, you know, it tips off our enemies if they know how many air defense interceptors we have. The problem with that argument, and we have reported quite a bit on the lack of air defense interceptors, and in some cases, gotten quite specific with numbers. The problem with that is China and Russia have pretty sophisticated ways of surveilling America's weapons supplies, both with human spies and also with electronic surveillance. So it's not like they're in the dark about this. And from our point of view, yes, there are probably things that, you know, shouldn't be published because they might endanger lives. But we lean pretty heavily on the side of the public has a right to know about the state of the American weapons stockpiles in a war that Congress had no role in approving that the president went to war without even, you know, any kind of, I mean, under the constitution, the Congress is supposed to declare war. There was no such thing happened here. I'm sorry. You said the Constitution like that. It's a quaint notion, right? We don't declare war anymore. We just have military actions or martial exclusion. Right. An excursion. An excursion. An excursion, not a war. So, this is actually one area where it's hard and it's also in some ways easier because there are actual numbers that you can put to it. You can say, you know, there are X number of Patriot interceptors in the European command stocks. There are a number of javelins, Tomahorks, you know, jassams, whatever. Is that accounting generally known like did it? No, it's not. Well, sorry. Now, at this point, it is largely, frankly, largely because of our reporting and several other news organizations reporting. But the specifics of just how many interceptors we have, total and in certain commands, that's still not publicly completely known and, you know, that stuff that we're still working on. What is the cat and mouse game like for reporters at the Pentagon? So, Hegseth was very clear, you know, they've removed so many of the people who were placed at the Pentagon. Does that make it more difficult? Is this, you know, you talked about Russian, China have, you know, human intelligence but also electronic surveillance and all kinds of other things. Are you relying on human intelligence? Is it purely based on whether or not someone will be open to giving you that information? Without sort of exposing the Kebler-L of secrets of how the cookies are made, I am curious how you are able to get specifics of those things. And obviously, you don't want to give away operational details that could in any way place people at harm. Right. But you want the American public to be aware of whether or not there's a recklessness or what the, what the effects of this has been. Right. It's not about how the cookies are made. What I'm very sensitive to is protecting sources because the people who are giving us this information are taking huge risks. And what would the, what is the risk that, in your mind, is what they're doing illegal? I really don't want to comment on the legal side of things because we're getting, but let's just say, generically, you can go to prison for leaking classified information, okay? And this information is classified. This is not the kind of thing that is known on a kind of military audit. Again, I don't want to say, no, no, no, I'm just, it's difficult, the position, I mean, the position I mean is, is, I just don't want to give any legal ammunition to the people who are already trying to sue us and come after us and potentially have an espionage case. Let's just say, generically, hypothetically speaking, not anything I've reported on, but hypothetically, information about how many weapons America has of certain types is some of the most sensitive and guarded information that we have, particularly how many air defense interceptors we have left that that is very highly sensitive information, very highly sensitive. Is the information about how we went to war a different category for you than it is the specifics of operational specifics? Definitely. And although I will say we've done both. I mean, even though I'm not going to get into whether, like I'm going to describe some, both categories are areas that we've reported in great detail. The going to war is, you know, conversations in the situation room. What was the president briefed on? What were those conversations? And we, I think, did some of the most detailed reporting on that march to war and how those decisions were made and what was presented to the president. Right. Is this the kind of information, this class of information that Donald Trump might safely keep in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom? Is that, or maybe a box by a car? You know, Jonathan, have people then talk to you about not just this information, but their surmiso of what this Middle East scenario is going to look like in the future. You know, obviously they came out a week into it and said, we won. We have utterly obliterated not just their nuclear program, but their ability to, they don't have a Navy, they don't have an Army, they don't have an Air Force, they don't have anything we've won it, we control the straight. Clearly the information you're getting is the antithesis of that. Does that have any accountability in Washington? And I guess this gets at sort of what I wanted to talk to you about, which is the frustration between great reporting and its consequence. Is it difficult, you know, and maybe I have a kind of hazy nostalgia and this might have been born of a kind of Watergate fable, but I always think of it as, you know, the Pentagon papers drop and suddenly the Vietnam War is no longer viable and the American public, their conscience is shocked and the Watergate reporting done by Woodward and Bernstein shocks the nation into accountability. The biggest difference between now and then is the congressional branch has just pieced out. When you have a Congress that is inert, you don't actually have, the only accountability mechanism is the courts and they give the president, how's that going? Exactly. And they give the president a huge amount of difference in conduct, particularly foreign policy and national security. And then the press and so the one thing I will say is it's pretty clear that the American public is very unhappy with this war and I think that that is to a large extent based on what they're reading and seeing and hearing. And a lot of reporters have done very, very good work, not just New York Times but other places to get out that information, you know, when President Trump says the Iranian military is completely demolished, decimated, we published a story saying they regained access to 30 out of 33 of their missile sites, their cruise missile sites alongside the along the straight of our moves. So you're not just saying you're wrong, you're like, you're actually saying here is real information, you know, because to me it's all about, my job is about providing information. You can only, you can only act on information. You can't act on a vibe or a feeling. And so every day I wake up and I try to get more information out there in the public sphere. So we've done a lot of reporting, an enormous amount of reporting about this war and try to inform the public. But the accountability mechanism doesn't really exist. It may, you know, I'm sure with Democrats take the house, there'll be investigations and what have you. I think people are under appreciating just how difficult oversight will be potentially in this administration. And what happens when, if the administration essentially refuses to cooperate with Congressional oversight, congressional subpoenas, there isn't a Congress jail. There's no place that, you know, Congress doesn't have, right, it's not like a stadium where, in the bottom of it, there's a dungeon where people that throw rocks could put in right exactly. So the, the, the enforcement mechanism is Congress says, you know, this is really bad and we're going to refer it to the Justice Department, the Justice Department that is run by Donald Trump's personal lawyer, former personal lawyer. Okay. So that's, that's what we're dealing with in terms of accountability. I hate the news. I hate what it's doing to me emotionally. I, I hate that you don't really know where the information is coming from sometimes you don't know how it's being manipulated and it, it adds to the creeping fog of sadness that grows. But I have to keep up. I have to understand what's going on in the world. And that's why ground news. news. They've got a website. It's an app. It lets you compare news coverage across the board to understand how you're being zoomed. Do you know what I'm saying? You can see how different news outlets will frame the same story. They've got a blind spot feed so you can challenge yourself about your news consumption. You'll see who owns what news outlet to understand why they're framing the stories the way they are. This is the one, this is the one you should get a hold of in light in yourself. Please, to get the same unlimited access to the Vantage subscription, go to groundnews.com/steward and subscribe to get 40% off discount only available for a limited time. That's groundnews.com/steward or scan the QR code on screen. I hate to frame it in this way, but it's sort of the difference between information and evidence. The information is just sort of a broad base. This is what's going on. Some of it is evidence of malfeasance or of secretive nature or misleading and so much of the information that you put out there could also qualify as evidence. How do you look at the two of those as you're going through? Is there a goal in your mind of, okay, they're saying this and this and this have been depleted and otherwise and you're saying, but the information we have and when you discover the discrepancy, is that information now evidence? Well, evidence in a sort of colloquial sense, yes, but I don't think there's any prospect of a legal proceeding. I mean, one thing that has been really notable about this term is just how influential the Supreme Court's 2024 immunity ruling was. You felt that you feel the difference of that. Oh, I think you just got nauseous. Oh my gosh, beyond. So in turn one, covering Trump, it was, I kind of overstate this. I'm not saying he changed that much. You know, in terms of his deep character and he like that, but it's unrecognizable. I mean, they were certainly in the White House Council's office. Quite cautious. I mean, people in the White House administration were prohibited from talking to the DOJ. There was, there was like a real attempt to enforce some kind of a, a, a firewall. That's why Trump kept having to do these sort of talk to this person. Can you please whisper in Jeff Sessions's ear? You know, that's all being obliterated. You felt there was real caution there. Who was, can you recall who were the White House Council people then? I know Sessions was the Erdogan, Don McGahn, Pat Cipollone. And they're gone. Oh, beyond gone, but it's not really just about the story about the White House. Because it's really just about Trump. I mean, he feels, he feels that no one can touch him. Right. And understandably so. I mean, we had reporting in our book that he's been saying privately, that he's going to pardon anyone who came within 200 feet of the Oval Office. He literally said that. And he says it in this sort of joking way, but you kind of know it's not a joke. Because certainly the way he was at the end of the first administration, I mean, I spoke to a senior official who was working in the first administration and they're actually kind of a clean sort of, by the book type person. And they were sitting with Trump and Trump's like, do you want to pardon? And they were like, what? What? What were they want to pardon for? But that was at the end of the first term. And now you've seen how the pardon system has evolved. So how would I even qualify? I'll give you another example that just shows how different it is and how much freer he feels to act. So so term one, Trump used to say almost kind of yearningly. He say, you know, we talk about drugs. He'd say, you know, there's no drug problem in China because she just kills them. She just kills them kills the drug deals. And he goes, there's no problem in the Philippines because you know, he just kills them. That's right. Well, this term, what happened? Donald Trump said, I am going to determine myself that people in fishing boats who are trafficking cocaine. Maybe we actually don't necessarily know that all of them were, but you know, let's just take their word for it. Let's take the word for it. That these people are all trafficking cocaine on fishing boats. Usually that's a law enforcement problem. You know, the coast guard into dicks them arrested, you know, there's a, there's a proceeding. There's due process. Trump said, we'll just kill them. We're just going to call them enemy combatants, describe this as essentially a war and kill them. And there's no appeal process when your body is scattered at the bottom of an ocean after being, you know, blown up. There's no appeal process. You can't put your limbs back together and go and say, hey, actually, you know, this one. So that's what's happening. And they didn't really even bother to justify it legally. I mean, they have lawyers in one of the biggest things that Stephen Miller and others did between term one and term two was change the types of lawyers that they start staffed administration. More aggressive lawyers, lawyers who are willing to push the envelope, lawyers who are willing to get to yes and not put up a no. So their internal legal opinion basically greenlit this whole operation of blowing up boats. In term one, you had people like Mark Esper, the defense secretary and other saying, absolutely not. This would have never have flown in term one. It's interesting that they still feel the need to even make a kind of theatrical move towards justification legally, but they didn't really, John, it was like, they didn't even publicize it. They think it's not like they put out said, here's our legal fear. Here's the framework around it. Here's what it was like, you know, they, they, it was, you know, basically take our word for it. This is legal. They didn't sort of go to great lengths to make a legal justification to the public. Do you think this is the learned effect of, and I don't want to blame everything on January 6th, but January 6th strike, and and January 6th was the culmination of a strategy. I think like to point to that day as boy, that was just a day that got out of hand in chaotic. But I thought it really was the culmination of a very intentional strategy that began right after the election. He loses. His first idea is, well, I'll just call up the states that I lost and say, can you flip those votes, please? Because, you know, I actually won. And when that didn't work, he sort of started the process of at, at, you know, then I'll go after the people that certify the election. So I'll, I'll call the Republicans in Michigan or Wisconsin and I'll say, don't certify it. And when that didn't work, he went to the next stage. But at each stage, there were meetings. And he was meeting with a team going, what else can we do? And I always assume that what ultimately came to him was, they said, you're, this is your final chance. If they certify this in the Congress, it's over. So if Mike Pence doesn't somehow, you know, do the right thing and stand up and not certify it, that's your last chance. Your only other chance is to disrupt the proceeding. And maybe then that thing gets kicked into the House of Representatives. And maybe then they could, they could just decide because we have the advantage there that you're the president. Is that where he learned? Because there were so many lawyers that said, you know, including Bill Barr, that's nonsense. You lost. You can't do this. He lawyer shocked. He ended up with people like Sydney, whatever name was an Eastman and all those people that would do that bidding. And is that when he realized, oh, I don't need to change the law. I just need to change the people who will help me justify what I want to do. Yeah. The only part of that that I don't have any supporting reporting for is I don't think that they expected the riot at the Capitol. I really, I really don't expect that part of it. But everything up until that point, yeah, I really don't think that I think that surprised them. Came as a real surprise. But everything up until that point was was an effort to use every lever to overturn the election. Right. And what happened was it's not like he had a bunch of lawyers working for him that were squishes as they would say, or these were loyalists. These were hardcore Trump people, but they said, no, this is, we don't have it. We don't have it. We just need a lawyer shop in the way that somebody wants pills with doctor shop. That's exactly right. And so that's how you get a legal team that comprised, you know, city power Rudy Giuliani and the others. And so I think that that is that is something that he was Trump would already do that in other areas. So when he wouldn't get the answer, he wanted from his military, generals or whatever he was, you know, going out and talking to others that he might see on Fox or other places. I just think what happened was this term round, he came back with a very clear determination that I'm not even going to have that first step. I'm just not going to have people around me who are doing that type of pushback. And so you just clear out that first step and start with the second step. And that's basically where we're at. And it's so interesting because term one was considered such an aberration from traditional American presidencies that the idea that term two is almost unrecognizable even to term one, which at the time we thought, my God, this is utterly pushing the bounds of executive power and of the way that the executive functions as opposed to congressional oversight. We thought that was an aberration. I mean, term one looks like the Eisenhower administration compared to what we're dealing with now. That's, that's just makes me sad. But then, but and and term one though was all leaks. What would you say? That's like, like term one, people just came to you. How do you? So now, what is it all deep throat in a garage like, how does it work now for you? How that they have removed so many of the avenues of oversight. How does anything and and maybe do they get to the point where that information, they don't believe it hurts them anyway. Do they not even care? No, I think they care. They still care. He certainly does. Term one, the leaks were largely a product of fighting of people, factional warfare, people trying to destroy each other. Jared Kushner is trying to destroy, Steve Bannon trying to destroy Jack, Jared Kushner etc, etc. And, you know, things break out, you have faction, you have camps and they're all at war. That's how a lot of the the leaking came about. The reason you've seen so much less inside the room reporting for this administration is because it's just much harder, just much, much harder and they don't have those factions anymore. They're not people. They're subtle. It's much more subtle. It's not really factions. It's not that there's sometimes I'll see commentary that suggests that there's sort of these very bright lights. It's not really the way it works. It's a team that yes, there are little nuances here and there, but they're basically all people who believe in Trump, who want to work for him, who want to implement what he has to do. You know, I'm not pushing back and trying to stop him. I mean, in the first term, you would routinely we would talk to, for those of us covering him, talked to very senior officials who thought that Donald Trump was dangerous and saw their job as protecting the country and the world from Donald Trump. That's really what they would say explicitly. They felt they felt they were there as kind of a firewall, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. There's no one at a meaningful senior level who believes that in this administration, zero. But at what point Jonathan does reality begin to erode that fantasy or that for some, you know, JD Vance, who I think is a pure creation of ambition. I don't believe there's anything, you know, he has his ideas or whatever, but I think he is all strategy. Well, they say like all hat, no cattle, but he's all strategy, no principle. So he sits in the Oval Office or stands as Donald Trump sits and says, these other presidents got us involved in these wars because they're stupid. But Donald Trump is smart, so and he was talking about Iran, you know, we're in this war with Iran, but it won't turn badly because Donald Trump is smart. Well now that it's turned badly, did they deny that it's turned, they can't, they can't truly believe that it's going well. So at what point does reality erode their belief in his powers of even basic competence? Well, Vance is probably a bad example because he was actually the single person at that senior level at the inner circle who actually argued against the war in the meetings with Trump and it cost him to irritate it, it really Trump did not want to hear it. And we've spoken to people who talked to Trump at the time he was complaining about Vance. So Vance actually made a case against the war before the war. But publicly what he made the case or was it won't go badly because this guy is so smart. Right. And that's just, I mean, you know, you know, but my point is, yes, if they're loyalists who believe in Donald Trump, where is the evidence for their belief other than he's great at becoming president and shitty at being president? Well, it's hard to know what a lot of them actually think, right? Because, you know, I don't want to sort of go beyond what I have in terms of reporting. It's sometimes really hard to untangle, you know, personal ambition, pragmatism, cynicism, what you need to do to survive, the stories you tell yourself, all that stuff, it's very hard to untangle. And I'm sure it's much more nuanced than, you know, I mean, there's a spectrum, right? Like not everyone is Natalie Harp, you know, so, so there's probably, you know, I think they're all just writing love letters. No, they're not. And you know, we had reporting in the book, for example, like just to give you an example, when Trump starts a trade war with the whole world, you know, Scott Bessent understands his bond markets, he could see what was happening in the bond markets. And him and Howard Lutnik, even Howard Lutnik, who has, yeah, who's, you know, said all kinds of flattering things about Donald Trump, both of them privately realized this could really go wrong. This could really go off the edge and they made a case to pull back on the tariffs and Trump did. He put up a pause on tariffs for just about every country, I think, except for China. So there are moments of that and so if it was just total blind, Natalie Harp level adoration, you wouldn't have an episode like that. You wouldn't even see it, but they're, so they're, they're still reacting at some level to the reality-based community, yeah, absolutely. And they're making changes. But form might that take when it comes to the Iran war, or is that such a cluster fuck at this point, there's almost, they don't have the same ability to do what they were doing with the tariffs. They certainly don't. I mean, one of the, and by the way, the crying that you hear in the background happens in all of my interviews. It's not just- Oh, can you actually hear it? Oh, I can hear it. Yeah. I'm so, Jonathan, I'm so attuned. Like I immediately want to go like, oh, are you, like once you have kids, oh, that's bad. Just give me one set. One set. Let's go to commercial. Oh, you know, I like to sleep because I'm old, but you know, when you're old, where you sleep matters more than most things. You'd be surprised. When I was younger, I could fall asleep on tile, in a backyard, on a bench. When you get older, you got to have yourself a little bit of the comfort. And that's where the avocado green mattress comes in, man, avocado green map. And before you ask, again, they're not made from avocados. Let's not be crazy people. It's the name. So if you could please not keep asking them that, I think they're not actual avocados. Avocado mattress is designed for comfort, support, helping your body stay aligned. You know the last time my body was aligned, it's been, I think it might have been the last time the Mets won the World Series. That's how long it's been, it's been aligned. But these mattresses, avocado green mattress, responsibly sourced organic materials that are built to last. So get an avocado green mattress. Avocado products are made not manufactured and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. You can experience them in person at an avocado showroom or a premier retailer near you or shop online at avocado green mattress dot com slash TWS to check out their mattress and furniture sale, avocado green mattress dot com slash TWS, avocado green mattress dot com slash TWS period. Now is that that's that's a baby cry that's not a six year old that's not a four year old. It's a three week old, three week old. Can I tell you something man, I like my wife, so I would come home from work. And I remember I'd be like, you know, I had such a tough day. And I'd be like, my wife would just look at me like, I'm going to throw you off the roof. I'm going to punch you in the face. And I can remember one day I was like, you go out, I'll take care, and I'll be fine. He cried like that nonstop the whole time she was gone. She comes back, I'm in the bathroom door closed with a hair dryer. because I think that she had told me, like, weirdly, like, if you turn on the hair dryer, he'll stop crying. I'm sweating. I'm crying. I'm holding a hair dryer, like, it's a weapon. And she just, I said to her, like, you go relax. She literally opens the door and is like, I was gone for an hour. Oh, shit. I very much have had not exactly the hair dryer, but, uh, you know, it's like you get a new appreciation for them, right? Uh, for your wife. It's, uh, dear God. It's, it's something. It is something. Sorry. The question was about Iran and truth. So, so I think one of, I think one of the biggest, um, uh, problems that American presence tend to have and Trump has has to the extreme is the misconception that you can control events anywhere that you have the power to control events everywhere. And Trump seemed to believe at an almost cellular level that, and wait, I don't know if it was the power of positive thinking or whatever. But before, I think that, I mean, he isn't Norman Vincent Peele guy. Like, yes, that is, he was raised in the church of Norman, but like, that is his totally tut, you know, load star. He believed before the war, despite everything he'd been briefed, that the Iranian regime would collapse really quickly. And when that is your operating assumption, when that is infused through everything, considerations like the Strait of Hormuz stockpiles, they all are not considerations because if the premise is this regime's going to collapse like that, these problems don't end up happening. So when that didn't happen, uh, you saw this, I mean, Trump, uh, you know, we have reporting that early on first few weeks of the war, Trump almost couldn't fathom that the Iranians were still fighting, that they still had fight left in them. And he was asking, you know, General Cain, the chairman of the Georgia himself, I don't know, you know, just, yeah, yeah, yeah, they still got fight left in them. They was doing this. He did not believe that they were going to be as resilient as they ended up being. And so we saw him pivot to diplomacy, um, by April. Uh, and obviously it does not gone well at all. They had the memorandum of understanding that they unveiled in June, which was hailed as the end of the war. Um, the 60 day deadline expired, uh, in August, when our last night was heavy strikes, uh, you know, on the Jordanian, the US based in Jordan and, you know, back and further apart than they were the two sides, um, with the MOU. So, you know, Trump has been wildly, uh, flailing from kinetic action to, uh, diplomacy, coercion, and does not have anything that you could describe as a strategy, um, here. So that's, that's where we're at right now. You, I, and again, and I so appreciate you do something that I think very few other journalists do, which is you refuse to speculate beyond the measure of your knowledge, which I think is admirable. And it's the antithesis of cable news television, which is just 24 hours of like, what do you think it means? And people just go out over their skis. In your experience, though, with Trump, when reality punctures that power of positive thinking, have you ever seen them, you know, you've been involved in two really interesting interviews with him. Uh, the first one I think was 2018, where you were talking about birthright citizenship. And he mentioned, you know, we're the only country in the world that has birthright citizenship. And you didn't say that's not true. And people really went after you on that. It was terrible bad interview. Yeah. Well, and, and you came out and said, by, you know, my bad 2020 was the opposite. You sat down with him about COVID and he was making statements and you steadfast and, and he brought up something and, and I think it was about, what was it? The death rate? Yeah. And, and you were saying, well, that's not how it's calculated. It's, it's per capita. And we're doing, you know, we're not doing great. We're doing badly. And every, and people hailed that. Do you notice a difference when you are in front of him and you provide him with irrefutable evidence of reality? How does he absorb that? Does he absorb it? Do you, did you find that that made inroads into his future, you know, framing of issues? How does he absorb reality? I can't believe we're asking this question about the president of the United States. How does he deal with reality? Because his world is so distorted. So I think there are, there are realities that are just too intrusive to ignore. So things like the bond markets, the price of gas, when American service members die. And even then, he'll still try to spin it publicly. But it's pretty clear from his actions since April that reality has intruded because he's changed course. He's this is not, you know, he hasn't continued to escalate this war. He's trying whatever he can do to get out of this war. It's just not working. Iran has a vote in that. Iran is extending the pain. It feels like they have leverage. But it wouldn't be true to say that Donald Trump was oblivious to reality because why then would you authorize your team to go and negotiate a settlement? You don't do that if you genuinely think you're winning. You don't say, oh, Vance, Kushner, Whitcoff, go and get me a deal to get out of this war. If you think you're crushing it and they're totally decimated, you've won, like, you don't do that. So by his own actions, it's clear, even if he is not willing to admit it publicly, that he acknowledges some degree of reality in this war. And so that the, you know, because he does seem to have his, what he falls back on, because I'll say, like in terms of gas prices, he'll just come out and say, right, they're actually not very high. I actually thought they were going to be much worse. He'll send Besson out to say, oh, no, this is nothing. It'll be gone. They'll be down to $2. When it comes to, you know, the casualties of war, Howard Lutnik will literally say, hey, we did this without anybody dying. Trump will say, oh my God, look how much better we're doing than Vietnam. Like, he'll bring up, they'll still spin it. But you're saying he is viscerally aware that this has been a disaster. But that gets me back to the other thing. The people around him, do they not see now that his competence was a façade, that he's a reckless and, and capricious individual, not this strategic five level chess Jedi. I don't know. Is this the short answer? No one has sat down with me and said, you know, I thought he was a Jedi master. And now I think he's, you know, completely incompetent. Right. I think he's kind of a book. I also think that probably for a lot of them, it wasn't that they thought he was a 5D chess master. It was that it was something slightly different, which is he's an instinct player and his instincts are often right. I see. Now, has that changed? May well have, but I don't have reporting to support it. How have you changed in dealing with him? You know, those experiences that you had in 2018 and then 2020, what did it tell you about? Look, reporters can't have specific evidence at the level to refute on everything. It's just not possible. But are there things that you learned about dealing with him or dealing with his administration in a way that helps? I always said, Trump has always stopped usually when it's not the Supreme Court by the legal system because the legal system has evidentiary standards. Anybody can go on CNN and just say whatever the fuck they want. But there are evidentiary standards and it's why they do so badly in court most of the time. So it was two things. One was just learning, frankly, learning and studying how to do an interview. The first time I interviewed him is the first interview I've ever done on television on camera was with the president of the United States. That 2018 interview. Your first interview was with the president on camera. Yes. Yes. What do you think it would be good to do? Yeah, it's crazy. You'd be nice if I had done like a mayor or a governor or something. No, Axio starts. No, it was insane. Start out with a mayor. You've got to start out with a comptroller and then move your way. Yeah, comptroller, a school council person, a school board person. Oh, Jonathan, that's amazing. No, it was totally fucked. And I faced, but it was the worst. I face planted. And on the biggest stage, you could imagine. I'd go a little easier on yourself that. You didn't face plant. You did what most reporters have always done with him, which is you didn't realize he was going to be a fire hose of nonsense. Well, I guess shame on me first. for that. No, no, sincerely. I mean, you know, so I, I'd been on television, I'd been on panels and whatever you had never done. So actually, as we launched this HBO show, and that was my first time I'd ever interviewed someone on camera, Donald Trump. So that was a disaster. So I do that interview and it's a really bad interview and I get completely shredded. And everyone, you know, because every element of it gets analyzed because it's understandably it's the president of the United States, it's about whatever, it's a huge opportunity. And the ecosystem is you aggregate moments and you press them out over every sort of internet outlet or social media outlet. That's how things work. Right. And so after that interview, I made a study of interviewing. I like, I kind of created my own sort of self-curriculum in a sense. I went back and kind of said, well, who's done this really well over the years? And you probably remember Ariana Fulacci. She was incredible. She's my hero. I mean, before she went kind of crazy in the last decade of her life. So I don't associate myself. We all do. We all do. So her last 15 years, where she just like went off the bend, but between about 1960 and 1980, she was this fearless, brilliant, well-prepared interviewer. And I have a book of her interviews, a collection. What did you, what did you think was instructive about her? Because she was fearless. Fearless. I mean, Henry Kissinger said it was the most disastrous interview he ever did. Yes. She got him to admit that Vietnam was a useless war during the war, during the war, okay? And what she did, I mean, there's this moment in the interview with Kissinger, there's stuff that she did that you and I couldn't do, but she said, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but it was something, you know, Henry, Henry women find you so attractive. Why do you think it is people find you so attractive? And he said, Oh, do you have a theory? He said, you know, I have a theory, but I'm not going to tell you. Oh, come on, come on. And you're sort of reading the interview, go, don't do it, Henry. Don't do it. Don't do it. And he says, all right, I'll tell you, you know, in the American mythology, we love the cowboy who rides into town on the horse on his own. He doesn't even have a weapon. Basically, that's me. And he just, he just humiliated himself. And she had unhorsed him so much, so to speak, that he then starts saying, you know, really stupid things. So what I'd learned from reading her interviews and studying her and the other one I studied a lot, there's two others, Mike Wallace of 60 minutes interviews and also Andrew Neil in the UK, who's just at his best. So detailed. He's so good. Yes. When he's on, like, like, he'll read the, the bill, the legislation, he'll know the budget, he'll know every detail. But what I, what I love about them, yeah, they don't do it when people know that sometimes the tendency is to just demonstrate your specific knowledge over and over again. And I've fallen into that trap sometimes where you try to do that. Right. Those guys prepared. But then they allowed, they were very present. I'm doing percent. So present. And it would, it never felt like they were performing their knowledge. I thought 100%. So the thing I, again, I spent so much time on this sort of insane and watching tape of people. So knowing what are their program prices? What are their program dances? What are their moves? And so because I think in an interview, you know, I think about it in terms of lines of questioning and you only really get to the interesting stuff on the third or fourth follow-up question. It's never the first, the first answer is always glib. It's always rehearsed. The second one's a little more interesting. The third one and the fourth one is when you really unhorses them and get to something close to interesting or the truth. And what I found over time as I got better at it was the preparation liberates you. It's exactly what you just said. If you are so well prepared, Mike Wallace used to call it the chemistry of confidentiality. It was this moment at its best where you're sitting down with an interview subject. This is not true of Trump, but most interview subjects. And they realize you've done your homework and it's a show of respect really. You've really done your work. You know the subject and you're not going to put up with the old bullshit. Right. And there's a moment where they say, you know what, the lights are all here. Fuck it. We're just going to have a conversation. I'm not going to think. And so that's the kind of holy grail. But what I find in even like the most adversarial accountability interviews is the preparations liberates you to put the notes aside and just listen and just listen to what they're saying. And if they say something really interesting, follow that path. Don't go back to the script. Follow that path to wherever it goes. And have the confidence to do that. And that's what that Trump interview was because we've spent like 25 minutes on covert. I was only a lot of 30 minute interview. I knew I could extend him out because his staff wouldn't have the balls to cut the interview. But I was kind of getting a bit, you know, anxious because I had other stuff I wanted to ask him about. And I could have said when he pulled out these papers that he had and I could have said, no sir, moving on to the next question. But I was like, no, I'm going to take a look at these papers. What's on them? Right. And that was them. That was the most revealing and interesting moment in the whole interview because he was trying to say basically they were winning at death. And based on the most kind of preposterous conception of of covert death statistics. So, yeah. I mean, but were you surprised because I remember that interview astonishing people. And it astonished people because, I mean, you might look at it as, well, that was in that moment and it was the natural thing, the curiosity of a journalist to be in the moment. People are not accustomed to journalists who are not just going down their list of the 10 subjects allowing the answer and then just going to the next thing. And I'm surprised that what you did wasn't then modeled given how, you know, the incentive structure for journalists is you're also trying to make a name for yourself. Why do you think that didn't then become the norm? I don't know. Is it too hard to do? Are they trying to just produce for 20? Is it too hard to pin them down like that? Firstly, he doesn't, he has the perception of ubiquity because he's sort of ever, but he actually doesn't do that many serious sit down interviews. He really doesn't. It's mostly friendly interviews. Or easily manipulated in a, you know, it's so easy to conduct a room. Like the White House press press. I mean, that's the easiest thing in the world. Yeah, those pairs get, I mean, like, you know, you shout a question, you know, shout at you. You don't have even have a microphone microphone. I mean, it's, no, it's impossible. And you know, it's not impossible. You can, you know, ask a tough question and what have you, but you can't, you can't do a serious interrogate, you know, so easy to move past and yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's it. That, I mean, it is so stacked in his any politicians favor in that kind of a setting. And that's why when they refer to that as transparency or accessibility, you just think, well, that's a lie. That's just his ability to dominate a theater of his choice. That's a home game. And he makes the rules. And he puts that, that's not transparency and it's not accountability. It's a performance that he gets to put on to satisfy himself. Yeah, I mean, yes, obviously, I'll still, you know, again, I haven't been, I haven't been in one of these for a very long time, more than a year actually, I think since the last time I had a chance to do one of them, but I'll take it over nothing. But, but for sure, it's, it's not, you know, meaningful transparency. Hey, everybody, you know, obviously it's a podcast. So like, you got to do ads. That's just kind of the way the world works. But every now and again, a company comes along and you're like, oh shit, I use those. Hey, hey, you actually go like, oh, yeah, those are great. And that's where I know, bombas. Bombas, great. I use those. And not just like not in the sense of like, oh, socks. Yeah, I mean, everybody uses those. I'm not a delicate flower. I'm not, I'm not one of those bold, doxider, no sock dudes that we all read about in the 80s, bonfire, the vanities and such. None of that. No, I wear the socks for comfort, but the socks I wear are bombas. They're phenomenal socks. Now, they got t-shirts and underwear to what? Start with the foundation and build all the way up in comfort and generosity, by the way. Here's the other thing. Okay. So forget about this. I don't even care. If bombas just was the quality that it was and felt this good on your feet, as they say in, as my people would say, "Dienu, it would be enough." But they're good people too. Yeah. Yeah. Every single item you purchase in a central clothing item is donated to someone in need. Head over to bombas.com/weekly and use code weekly. For 20% off your first purchase, that's bombas.com/weekly, code weekly, to check out. Do it now, you fox. Did you ever see, you know, you brought up Mike Wallace? I'm curious. If you ever saw it because there was an interview that Mike Wallace did with Roy Cone and Roy Cone being the lawyer that kind of taught Donald Trump kind of the the basic steps of ambition and power and corruption. You don't hire Roy Cone to be your lawyer because you want him to make sure you're doing everything by the book. It is a manipulative, dangerous guy. It was Joe McCarthy's lawyer, you know, on the House of American Activities Committee. Bad person. Mike Wallace does an interview with Roy Cone and it gets back to sort of what we talked about about the power, positive thinking and reality distortion. Roy Cone at the time is dying of AIDS. And I urge you to go look this up because it is a master class not just in what you're talking about as a journalist, but in a subject that is I think quintessential to understanding the way Trump operates. So he says to Roy Cone, you know, there are reports, you know, that you are a homosexual. Well, that's no, that's absolutely. Oh, I have seen this. Oh, you say okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know what I'm talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're dying of AIDS, a homosexual, not a homosexual, not dying of AIDS have, you know, you're welcome to talk to my doctors. Like Wallace says, can I because I talked to your doctors and they said I couldn't talk to them unless you said it was okay. Are you saying it's okay? You know, they go through this whole dance. What's so interesting about it is they both know he's gay. They both know he's dying of AIDS. Mike Wallace is pressing the point incredibly respectfully. Roy Cone is such a fabulous, fabulous. He's such a great liar and watching him. And that gets to the question I was talking about earlier is does he believe this or is he just so accustomed to the show? And what happens a few months, he dies of AIDS. And I think ultimately came out and said, yeah, I'm gay. But I thought, you know, is that what it's like when you're faced with someone who just won't give up the game of reality in front of you? I think it's so hard to know sometimes what he actually believes. I'll give you one example where he clearly believed the lie. Terry Moran used to be a B.C. He was a doing Trump. And he asked him about a brago Garcia. And the tattoo. And Trump brings up this M.S. 13 tattoo, which he posted. Yes. Yes. It was Photoshopped. Yes. But Trump afterwards, after the interview, was asking people, we need to, you know, this is real. Basically, get me the photos, you know, so he sincerely believed that this tattoo and was insisting that it was real. But other times, he will say something like we have all the weapons we need for a run. Right. Right. He knows he's been very well briefed on the weapons constraints. And if he actually believed everything he's saying about the war, he would not be acting in like he wouldn't have authorized his team to try to get out of the war. Right. They would have pressed ahead for regime change. Lord knows what else they would have done kinetically. You know, he pulled back from major operations that they had planned that, you know, huge additional bombing campaigns and things to disable. So clearly, he knows that they have leverage because if he believed everything he said, he wouldn't have pulled back. He would have gone ahead, pressed the advantage and taken over the country. It's so interesting though that you're saying this because it is, it seems like there's two information streams. There's sort of, you know, he's getting updates on the war and things like that and he's realizing like, so have they given up? Because he can't fake that boats aren't going through the straight-of-war moves or are going through it. Like you just can't fake that sort of thing. But things like the MS-13 tattoo on his, on his fist, my guess is, and again, don't know for sure, and you can correct me or say, well, that's just speculation, is people feed him a lot of information that they think he wants to see. That's the Natalie Harp, the human printer. Sir, your poll numbers are great. Here's, I found this story that says 97% of Republicans, and they give that to him. And so part of the reality distortion field is created in his mind, but part of it is reinforced. Definitely. By a lot of people around him who he goes, is that guy MS-13? Let's say he is curious about it. Absolutely, sir. Let me show you this and they do that up to show him like that's really, and so he thinks that picture is real. And that is actually what he's going on like when you got him on the numbers. My guess is they feed him that shit. He doesn't look at it that carefully and say to him, see how well we're doing. Yeah. And it's almost like they're feeding him a distorted world as well. It's both, or he'll solicit it. You know, he goes out, you know, get put me together a graph that shows we're doing. Why? I mean, one dynamic is Bill Paulty, who was the head of the house, the house is a real estate guy, yeah. Yeah, real estate guy, but had no, no experience in intelligence and was briefly the acting director of national intelligence. But he goes to Trump's golf clubs and he brings these phone boards and it's like they often end up being Trump will truth a lot of the stuff you see on his truth social on the weekends. That's right. In particular, it is, it's sort of Bill Paulty's, uh, often his, his handy work. And so you have people like him and Natalie Harp, who are feeding him what he wants to see. Uh, it's very much both ways. He solicits, he gets it. Um, and then he has obviously, you know, his intelligence briefings and what have you, which are, you know, yes, they're tailored to what he's interested in, but it's not, you know, wacky stuff from Gateway Punder. It's, you know, right, right. And they all, and they make little presents sort of like in the way my daughter got us to get her a hamster, like they make little presentations with a couple of slides that are easily, you know, well digested. And that's how they get their way with him. He loves a little, everything is shark tank to this president, I think, to some extent. Very, very visual. You often see these kind of dramatic, um, you know, images of, he loves looking at the, um, the, you know, the, the, the big naval vessels and things like that. Loves to have his name on it. Where do you think? Is there a future, you know, for the, the fact that you talked about, I studied all these interviews, I learned how to do them better. I walked in there. That's an incredibly competent and thoughtful way to go about in a world that is moving away. I feel like you're artisanal. You're like, you're, you're like one of those shops where like you go in and a guy is still making chairs by hand and he's got a little leave. And he's like, look, and they're like, yeah, but I just went to China and got 800 of them for two dollars. Yeah. The type, we are now in a world of media consolidation. We are now in a world where it's incentivized to quick hitting vitriolic hostile bits. Good journalism has to exist in that world. Can it compete? How does it, what are, what are the incentives that you would like to see change or, or stay the same? How does this artisanal methodology survive in a new world of Twitter and, you know, Instagram and influencers and media consolidation? Or does it, how do you break through? So on the interviewing on camera, which is a very specific theory, you know, it is an art and it takes a long time to work on it and I still feel like I was only 5% of what I, you know, what I wanted to do with that. You know, we had the HBO show for three years. We won the ME for that interview and then HBO canceled the show almost two weeks, I think, after the, um, after the Emmy. Sure. Why, why wouldn't they cancel an Emmy-winning journalism show? So, so I don't know. Obviously, I don't know that there is. I do know that we were doing very controversial interviews. You know, um, uh, we interviewed Imran Khan in Pakistan and, and I pressed him on, uh, China's treatment of the Uighurs and that caused a huge amount. I don't know what, what happened internally. I'm not saying I have any insight into it. Like, I can tell you, um, certainly we would, we were doing shows that were getting a lot of public debate and they were highly political and what have you. And I, I gather that a lot of these streaming things just don't want to be in the news business. I mean, it happened to you, obviously, with, um, Apple, right? That's right. Yeah. So, so, and by the way, explicitly so, I mean, I was in the rooms where they said, and you know what was so interesting? What really seems to have affected these companies. It's not necessarily even FCC. Ron Tassantis suing Disney. When, do you remember when Disney came out and they took a stand on, don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Him suing them and, and actually going after their sovereignty in Orlando, that was brought up to me specifically. When it came to they did not want politicians interviewed on the show for fear that those types of repercussions might occur. And then there were obviously other very touchy political things that, you know, they came in and we got a lot of pushback on what you realize is their interest diverges from your interest. Your interest is to get the most interesting interviews that are the most incisive that are the most revealing, that get to litigate the boundaries of our reality and the people, the powerful people that control that reality. Their interest is selling phones, mergers and acquisitions. You can only hurt them. You can't help them. I think one reason, so I think that's all true. And this is, I'm almost reticent to say this, because it just sounds like I'm promoting promotional, but I'm not. It's sincerely what I think. The New York Times is kind of a unicorn in that the government Trump would like nothing more than to shut down the New York Times. But he actually doesn't have, we don't need, we don't depend on the government for licenses, we don't depend on the government for money. We're run by a family. Right. It's all spoken. This is their only thing. They're not in all these other industries. The New York Times is everything for them. And they're willing to invest and support it. And I'm all for independent media. I think it's wonderful. I'm all for it flourishing. But for the sort of national security type of stories in particular, man, we need that infrastructure, the legal infrastructure, the digital information security, and also having knowing that the ultimate power at the New York Times will support us, you know, with Trump suing the paper and all these sort of things. They're going to their houses and they're giving them subpoenas. Right. And, you know, I'll just say, you've never seen A.G. Salt Spurger give a donation to Donald Trump, go and suck up to him, it doesn't happen, doesn't take private off the records with him. Nothing. Nothing. So to me, that's the ideal model, but I'm not naive enough to think that everyone can just replicate that. The New York Times has managed to build in this very difficult economic environment. I mean, New York Times was no sure thing 15 years ago. This thing was floundering economically. And they built a digital subscription model and it's worked. And thank God it has. But it's really hard to do. And there's not many people who've managed to do it, certainly not at scale. Investigative journalism is very expensive. It's not a profit center in and of itself. It's something that gets subsidized by other things. So it's never going to be this pure commercial thing. So then you have other models like the nonprofit model, which you know, philanthropic model, which again, I'm all for all of these things existing. But it's really hard. And the other issue I had probably towards the end with the interviewing. And I'm sure you've had this issue as well is once you start doing a few interviews that are tough accountability interviews, people stop, stop wanting to agree to be interviewed by you. So actually getting getting the interviews becomes an issue. And so I actually didn't see huge future for myself in on camera interviewing because it requires a guest booking and access that was becoming a parent to me was diminishing pretty rapidly. And what you have to give up to gain that access. Can I ask you about another the flip side of that? You said, you know, when you start doing these accountability interviews, it becomes harder to book people. The other thing I found was once the audience gets a taste of something like that, their expectation is for blood. Their expectation now is all interviews must draw blood. I must taste blood. They must draw blood from the right people. And there is a disappointment if it's not because the way that social media has kind of a grand eyes, the Jonathan Swan evicerates Trump. Yes, right. Jonathan Swan lays low the head up. And it's almost as though the audience becomes thirsty for something that you weren't trying to provide in the first place. And did you feel any of that? Man, that's so true. That's so true. I don't know that I've observed it more than fit. I guess I felt internal pressure to do the best accountability interview I could, but I didn't feel I've always hated, I've never, never gone into an interview with like, I'm going to take their head off like it's just not my approach. Like the style of interview, it's not the way I operate at all. I think it can go, it can take an interviewer to not great places. So like, I'm sure you've seen a lot of Paxman over the years, Jeremy Paxman in the UK. So I think Paxman's done some brilliant, like some of his interviews are brilliant, right? But I know where you're going with it. But you know what I'm saying? So it became a stick where he would like, there was the famous one where he asked the same question 10 times of that hapless guy. And then there was the woman who I think was the Treasury minister or something where he just, oh, it was so brutal. He's like, aren't you embarrassed to be, you know, he was so mean and whatever. And so he did a couple of great ones. And then over time, it became a cartoon. And I actually didn't think that it actually revealed much or shed any light. It, you know, the cliche of heat, not lights. It was all heat and very little light. And not every interview is this sort of boxing match. It's just not. I mean, interviews, you have to have range as an interviewer. You have to be able to elicit and probe. And, you know, whether you agree with his politics or not, William F. Buckley, you know, go watch his own, his own firing line interviews are brilliant. Yeah. They're brilliant. There's a lot of conversation. Dick Cavitt was similar to that. I don't know if you ever watch a lot of Dick Cavitt. No, they're so probing. Yeah. And he gets things out of people that are astonishingly insightful, but I think that you said it. It's preparation plus presence. If you have, listen, if those organic moments arise. And by the way, I've done both. You know, I've been in situations where, you know, Rumsfeld famously where I was like, I'm going to get this motherfucker. And they were terrible. And, and it showed the narrowness of the questions, my lack of being present, like it all showed. And it was, it was poorly executed on my part. And, and I try to learn lessons from the bad ones. But I'm also cognizant, like, and tend to shy away from that idea of drawing that, you know, you've got to, you've got to punish them. And you're like, that's, it's not punishment. If, if within the body of the interview, these things happen, they happen. But you don't know the alchemy of it. But, but even like take your fedeman interview, like you would, you weren't out for, like, it's very respectful. It was very respectful. And you're giving him every opportunity to explain himself, like every opportunity to explain himself. And, you know, there, there was a show on Australian television. I used to love called enough rope. And, and, and I just, I just, it was by, um, it's by this guy Andrew Denton. Such a good idea. Yeah. And Andrew Denton's a comedian. Very smart guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really. And that's what the show was. It was, he gave them enough rope. He was probing. He wasn't disrespectful. He was very respectful, actually. Um, he done his homework. And it was one of my favorite interview shows. It was so good. And I think that's a great concept, you know, the enough rope concept, For a lot of interviews, it doesn't always work. Sometimes you need to to like fossing up yourself. - And that's okay too. And I love the fact that you do. I feel like you're the same way, which is like, the person you're always mad at after an interview is yourself. 'Cause you're always like, I showed it to you. I showed it to you, you know, all those things. - Well, I really appreciate the time. By the way, I wanna correct something. I said earlier, we talked about Roy Cohn that he had come out at the end of his life. Apparently, he did not. - I see. - Jillian texted me in the middle and said, actually never admitted, even through his dying day, which, wow, I did not realize. I thought he did it the very end. Jonathan Swann, thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks for being so thoughtful about the whole process of sort of interviewing in the public square and in the eye and not going out over your skis over things that you don't know. It's just a rare quality these days. So I really appreciate you. And it's so nice to talk to you and get some sleep 'cause I know you gotta be. - Thanks John, really appreciate it. - Thanks man. - Thanks man. (upbeat music) - You know, before I was surrounded by dogs and goats and pigs and sheep and the like in the rustic life that I now enjoy, a couple of cats. And I was, I thought a responsible cat owner, he'd feed him the, what was it, the bag that was like, it was like cereal, like wheat-a-picks, but I've heard cats like supposed to provide everything. You know, but we know better now and no one knows better than smalls. Smalls cat food, I'm telling you man, if my cats had ever gotten ahold of smalls or if they had known there was another cat like across the hall getting smalls, they'd have left me toot sweet. They would have been out of there. I was, you know, feeding them like fast food. But smalls man, fresh cat food, preservative free, 100% human grade ingredients. You find in your fridge. Back then I wasn't eating human grade ingredients. Let alone my cats. And by the way, like not hard to get the delivered right to your door, 88% of cat parents. And you know, if you know people that have cats, you can't get 88% of them to grant anything. 88% of them say, after feeding smalls, notice the cat has better digestion. Softer and shinier and has more energy to play. Stop serving your little carnivore bowl of processed shortcuts for a limited time because you are a weekly show listener. Get 60% of your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com/tWS. One last time that 60% of your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com/tWS. (upbeat music) How alert was he for having a three week old baby? Seriously, it's pretty impressive, yeah. I loved it in the middle. I was like, you know, there's a baby crying on the thing. But that's the difference between I think, not to be overly gendered, a man and a woman. Tell us more. Man's playing this job. That baby could have cried for 30 minutes. And Jonathan and I would have just kept talking, oh yeah, you know, it's interesting on the thing. Like, if my wife had been in the room, she's like, somebody get the baby! Like, it's a different visceral. It's all that, it's like what I was saying to him, like that day I came home and was like, oh God, work was so hard today. And she was like sitting there with the two babies and just like, hey, how about I punch you in the face? - Do you wanna make work a little harder? - But he really is. I love how the way that he described preparation, I thought was all the people whose craft I admire, I feel like prepare in that kind of a way. - He studied tape. I mean, I have so much respect for that. Like, you see so many interviews that, and he was actually like, what he didn't mention was like the 2020 interview, he held him to account and they covered a broad variety of topics in about 20 minutes. Like, it's not just that he held him to account on one issue and he had to give up so much in order to do it, he still was able to get the conversation moving. And you can do both, you can walk into gum here. - Right. And it is true that, you know, you can't, I think our expectation that reporters must all be in the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions and understand, you know, at a granular level, the specifics of every issue. But I also think there's room for, you know, and we do to give people at home some insight. There is a chat and Jillian and Brittany are on it and also, you know, Rebecca is keeping an eye and when shit's wrong, when I say something wrong or somebody says something, there is a person who is thinking about the veracity of things. And I don't know why that's not more utilized. It's not like it's a college course where you're like, you're not allowed to use your phone. - It's a whole lot. - It's a whole lot. - Right. - Yeah. - Life is open book. - I mean, Trump certainly treats it open book. You know, he's got somebody handing him things in the Jonathan Swan interview. He said, well, let me show you what I've seen, you know? He didn't say just going off the top of my head. - That's right. I don't understand why we make interviews that kind of a, it's sort of like in the way, you know, presidential debates are like, you can't bring your notes and you're like, sure. No, you've got to make, 'cause when you're the president, you're not allowed to use notes. You're not allowed to use your phone as president. Like, what the fuck are we doing? - Yeah, but I also think you guys, when you were talking about how like the expectations of your interviews now and how people are out for blood and stuff, I do think that ties into the like gamification of like you knowing more fact wise and like crushing on your interview-y. - Yeah, you know what, that's so true. And I do feel that like, 'cause there have been a couple of interviews. Like, I remember it began with, there was a Jim Kramer interview during the financial crisis. And ever, like, I remember being on the street the next day and walking in the streets in New York and people were like, "You fucking took Kramer to the house!" - Yeah. - Like, and you really felt like, like. - Like a boxing match, yeah. - Like, you imagine like what OG and an OB felt, like, after the tip, you know, not to that extent, but like, you're like, oh, that wasn't like, the idea isn't necessarily to put people ahead like. It's the alchemy of it. In the moment, you're so stunned by someone's lack of accountability or whatever, but that can't be everything. - No. - And that can't be your goal. It skews things too much. - Yeah. - Yeah. - But I also think like, interviews have become so friendly on the opposite side of that that people don't expect any pushback. You know, maybe Kramer came on your show, really not expecting anything because. - Oh, no question. - People, you know, he's never, never been asked anything. Like, it's, we have to, people should be a little scared when they sit down and they have to do it anyways. I mean, when he mentioned, you know, how he really didn't see a future for himself and television journalism because of the bookings, like Mike Wallace still got interviewed. Like, what has changed here? And they, you know, it used to be tougher. I think it's gotten so much easier. - I do think it is like, I think the politicians have figured out what environments they can thrive in and what environments they will, they will crumple in. - And how to derail it, you know, they really figured out how to get around it, the little cheat codes they can do. Say, I mean, actually that was one of the things I was most, you know, it's so basic, but in regime change, just like how intentional the administration has become about distracting the media and how they literally have a list of what can we say, right? We want this new story to go away. What do we have in the wings? Okay, well, let's do this then, you know. - And it's so strange that there's not a lot of self-reflection on the media as part of, oh, you know, it's like that dog and up. You know, we're every now and again, they're like squirrel. - Yeah. - Should we stop doing that? - And let's say in the book, yeah. But when it comes to journalists, politicians, even business leaders, they don't have to say yes to interviews anymore. - No, they don't. Or they only have to say yes to the ones they know will go a certain way. - Of course, I mean, we've certainly seen that, but like I've been surprised, like people will think like, oh, we'll be so friendly to Democrats on the show. We've had Democrats say no to us, because they think it's gonna be a tough interview, which is bewildering to me, but, you know. - And if you can't handle questions, what are we doing? - What are we doing, yeah. - Speaking of which, handling questions. What a segue. - We've got some dozers for you this week. - Oh, do we really? - All right. - We're gonna hold you to account. - They have been piling us. - We've been away, so they've been piling up on there. - All right. - 100. - Fucking, come at me. Come at me, bro. Remember when we were gonna, I think we were gonna do a second. This is on the old show. Where it's like, we were gonna do a segment called, come at me, bro. And it's like all the people that would talk shit about the interviews and all that. We would just have them on and we would go. It's like that Jubilee, they would just fire at me from all different directions. What do they want to know? - John, I'm really mad at you. - No, come on. I've been on vacation. - All right. - Remember. - I listened to you, Michelle Obama's podcast. And do you really think the Daily Show, is giving country political diabetes. Like, come on brother. - I don't, I think the point is I don't know. Like you, you don't know what, here's the thing. We think we're making healthy food. But we don't, you don't know the overall, you can never know. All you can control is what you're making. You can't necessarily control how it's being digested, what the downstream effects may ultimately be, and all those things. Do I think that? No. I think that at our best, we can identify the space between what you see on camera and television and what's actually happening in the rooms where that is planned. The best sort of insight in satire. But at its worst, it can create a gamified atmosphere of disdain that is not, is, it's sort of like, you know, you, everything can't make you outraged. You have to always try, and the difficulty when you're iterating a show that often is to make sure you've adjusted your governor that you've synchronized everybody's watches so that you're not, I used to say it was the, snuggles the bear problem, where you ever seen comedians that will go on stage and be like, if I see that snuggles the bear commercial one more time. And you're just like, really? Where do you go from there? The snuggles the bear thing's really good. You don't wanna be a ungrounded outrage machine. And so you're always trying to calibrate that because if that's what you become, then it's just more than down to you. So we're the thing that we try to do. And I think it was what I appreciated with Jonathan was saying he tried to do is post-mort the reality of what you're doing and how you're doing and how you're executing it. And where you think that wasn't justified or that, you know, you always wanna make sure that fairness and veracity and good faith is being, and context is a part of, that doesn't mean that the tools of satire hyperbole and juxtaposition and, you know, adjectives that are not kind can be used because there are things that are contemptible that need to be attacked. But you wanna make sure that the targets justify the deployment and the amplification of the tools you're using. And you hope that the downstream effect of that isn't a caricaturing, even though caricature and stereotyping are such a tool of satire. I don't know if that made any sense. - No, it did, it absolutely did, it really did. - But that's the point is we're definitely not trying to give you diabetes, but we also don't think we're curing anything if that makes sense. Sorry, what do we got next? What do we got next? - Okay, John, you've been recognized for your advocacy on behalf of 9/11 First Responders. Why do you think Donald Trump hasn't been acknowledged for all he says he did? - I mean. - Sorry. - He's the president. I think that's, is that not acknowledgement enough of all that he's done to the country. Yeah, he's such an interesting figure in that, in that he really does feel the need, I think, to inject himself as kind of a crucial part of that day. - Yeah. - Even from that, you know, the famous one is him going like, I guess my building's the tallest now. Such it, it's such a, like, you know, Tracy loves the narcissist. She loves studying, you know, what's that relationship? Orna's show, I can't remember the name it, but like. - Couples therapy, right? - Couples therapy, where, you know, there'll be such a clear narcissist, or narcissists on narcissist crime in the, in the couples. And she's so attuned to that. It's so obviously a destructive caricature trait. It's so obviously corrosive to the people around you. And so to see that rewarded with the position of the most powerful person in the, like, it's hard to imagine the country in a voluntary relationship with such a damaging narcissist. - Yeah. - That's, I feel like, how did, why are we going out with him? - Yeah, and we broke up with him and we took him back. - Why did we take him back? - Our girlfriends did not help us. - He lit the house on fire. - This is why you need good girlfriends. They stop you from doing these things. - But does like, how, doesn't anybody go like, girl, don't you remember? He stormed your house. - Yeah. - And he did all the, and he almost. - We loved the attention. Like, it's, it's such a shit. That's what I'll tell you. But the sick shit is, it almost is like a country who's like, I know he did that, but he was good, he was good to me. He bought me, he bought me. - He keeps calling me. - Right. - You remember my 401K during that relationship? - Right. - That, it's almost like, but I remember, I, you know, we used to eat at Les Sark. And that was here. - Yeah, the good times. - Even that was a fantasy. - My favorite comment he made this week about the 9/11 stuff is when he said, I'm not the smallest guy. The big, strong guy said to come and lift him up. And I'm not the smallest guy. I'm big. - They lifted him up under the arms. - And he does love talking about big, strong guys. - Yeah. It's interesting how that story just arose like a couple of years ago and just, wasn't one of the, you know, stories, but. - I mean, you could say that it was really big of him to hold on to that story for so long. A lot of people saw it in the spotlight for, you know, but not, not Trump. He said, I'll wait, I'll wait two decades. It's just, it's so interesting to see something so fundamentally awful happen to so many people and so much bigger than anything any of us can ever conjure. And it's almost like his first thought is, how is this about me? - Me. I want to be part of the story. - Right. - They're not talking about me. - And I am now, aren't I? I guess I'm the tallest building now, aren't I? That's my takeaway. What's your takeaway from 9/11? I guess the size of my building. Isn't that what everybody's takeaway is? Fuckin' psychotic. - Yeah. - Anyway, we're back. I think our next episode is also gonna be on a Thursday because of, I guess maybe it's the timing of next week. I don't really-- - Emmys. - Oh, for God's sakes. Okay, so that's it. Oh yeah. - What'd you vote for? - Oh, everybody, apparently everybody. But I'm hoping Jimmy, I'd be stunned if Jimmy doesn't. Although now I think, they've changed the rules. I'm not really sure, but God, why can't they just fucking do it in New York? - Just like, at least alternate. - Right. Something along those lines. Well, how can they stay in touch with us, Brittany? - Twitter, we are WeeklyShop had Instagram threads TikTok Blue Sky. We are WeeklyShop podcast. And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The WeeklyShop, which on Stewart. - Beautiful. - Nice to see you guys again. It's so nice. I hope everybody had a good break and enjoyed themselves and got a little rest in relaxation. Our producer, Brittany Memeveg, producer, Jillian Spear, video editor, and engineer, Rob Vittolo, audio editor, and engineer, Nicole Boyce. Our associate producer, Rebecca Rotenberg, and our executive producer is Chris McShane and Katie Gray-Pod. Good to see everybody, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye-bye. (upbeat music) The WeeklyShop with John Stewart is a comedy-central podcast that's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. (upbeat music) - Olen Shannon Maldonado. (upbeat music)