Jonathan Swan: We Only Know 5%

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show. It's been way too long. White House reporter for the New York Times, co-author of Regime Change. You might have heard of it. Inside the Imperial Presidency, it was number one for, what, like 19 weeks? I've got my trusty copy right here. Nine weeks. That's Jonathan Swan. You know, maybe 19. Nine weeks. You might be back up this week. I don't know. We got Sarah Longwell. You're competing again. We'll learn tomorrow. But who knows? You might, you might maugre in the New York Times rankings. We'll see. Andrew, you have a child now. It's a big couple months for you. I have three, actually. But yeah, I have a new one. Yeah. The third is when things go really downhill, I hear. That's what it feels like so far. Okay. Well, you're looking fresh. So that's good. Praise from Caesar. I was expecting, you know, I don't know, wrinkles. You know, bags. Nothing. Well, I've seen your commentary about various men's skincare routines. So I did a glow up. I'm doing a service to straight men. Yeah. Okay. I'm trying to offer a service to straight men. You can moisturize too. That's all. And I feel like sometimes I do that via positive feedback and occasionally negative feedback. I've only seen the negative, so I'll take your word for it. All right. I want to start here. There's a story about J.D. Vance, another one of my favorites this week, the vice president. And now there are anonymous sources saying that he had some skepticism about the Iran war. I know you're not going to talk about the sourcing, right? So I shouldn't ask you whether J.D. is calling the New York Times. Well, I sort of find the reaction to that kind of amusing slash farcical because we reported in April, Maggie and I, we did a big takeout for the New York Times. Oh, we talked about it. That was an extract from our book, which was a big piece on probably the most deeply reported. piece immodestly on the lead up to the Iran war, which opened with that scene of Netanyahu coming down to the Situation Room and pitching Trump on the war. And in that piece, we report in detail about how Vance was really the only one in the inner circle to argue against the war in those meetings in front of the other aides. Now, as far as I'm aware, every significant outlet who's done any reporting on the war and what happened in the lead up to it and behind the scenes has confirmed that reporting. And the reason for that is it's true. And we've heard it from people who hate J.D., don't mind him, like him, support him. It just happened. It's just a fact. And the other part of that, I would say, like, you know, we're obviously limited in what we can say about sourcing. But the other part of that that I find like odd is do people actually think that he's incentivized right now to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump? When his single goal between now and January of twenty twenty eight is to have Donald Trump's endorsement, which Donald Trump has quite theatrically declined to give so far. Yeah. Like when he when he opposed the war early on, it did not endear him to Donald Trump. Trump was complaining about him. As we've reported, he was pissed off about it. This was not like some wonderful experience that played out really well. It actually empowered some of his opponents, both on the outside and on the inside. So. So, yeah, I mean, this is it's true. This is kind of an interesting question about how to deal with that, because, yeah, let's explore it, because I don't I don't like talking about people behind their back on Friday's podcast. You're a busy guy. You're not listening to every Borg daily podcast, most of them, not all of them. But we've met to tease you a little bit about this line from that article where it said Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from from the outset. And like this is like the challenging part of that, which is, OK, that could be true. Like, I don't have any reason to doubt your reporting. You've had the best reporting on this. But then simultaneously to that. Like publicly, he's talked about how Trump is not going to allow us to get into a multi-year war. Trump's a smart president, not a dumb president. In July, he said Trump's been successful. He said we created economic, diplomatic and military leverage. Let's use that leverage to go accomplish an even bigger win for the American people. It's not over yet. So far, so good. And he said so far, so good in July. And so it's kind of hard to, you know, how do you grapple with that? Like on the one hand, saying that he's opposed the war. On the other hand, publicly. He's like, so far, so good. Yeah. The way we grapple with it is in the same story. Who did you say was saying this about the outset? Whatever. I presume they read the story because in the subhead of the story and in the body of the story, we say that he's been saying one thing privately and a different thing publicly. The advance has been out there endorsing the war, supporting it, defending it. Whereas privately, as we've reported, as The Atlantic's reported, as The Wall Street Journal's reported, as The Washington Post has reported, presumably, I don't know if you guys have reported on it. But if you have. I assume you've found the same thing. The sourcing for the bulwark inside the White House is pretty shaky these days. It is what it is. I mean, like, that's the fact. But like, I don't know how much more prominent you can have than, you know, the subhead of the story and in the body of the story. Yeah, I guess it's kind of like, the question is, that's like a tough thing for people to navigate, right? Why? At some level. Why is that tough for people to navigate? Yeah, because you can just read it, right? It's in the subhead of the story. Well, because it's like, is that true, though? Like, I guess. I mean, is it true in the sense that, is this gamesmanship from him? Right? You know, it's hard to, you know, divine. You're trying to say, well, we should trust what's, like, that there's the behind the scenes, that privately he's criticized it. But like, publicly, all people see is him supporting it, you know? Yeah, which we say in the story. But like, again, what I'm saying is, these meetings happened. I mean, we reported on them. They were in front of multiple people. And anyone who's done any reporting on it has verified the same. So, I don't know. You could not like that it happened. I mean, how do you think he's navigating it, though? It wasn't like we're reporting on, like, secret one-on-one conversations between J.D. Vance and Trump. These were meetings with the core inner circle team in the White House Situation Room in the Oval Office. Just as we've reported on a whole bunch of stuff. And then he accused you guys of having tapes from the meeting. All I'm saying is, like, people could say, well, how do you know that the Netanyahu meeting happened? Well, we know. It happened because we reported it. We did our work. We verified it. And we reported it. You could trust the reporting or not. But you don't have to trust our reporting. You have to then question the Atlantic's reporting, the Wall Street Journal's reporting. Nobody's not trusting the reporting. The question is like, no, no, no, it doesn't. I'm sorry. If it sounds like that, I don't want it to sound like that. I believe what J.D. is saying is privately is what you're reporting. The question is that, like, you have this situation that is very unique to this administration, I think. Right. Which is very often, like, they will call you guys and say something on background. Or I'm not saying that J.D. called you, but whatever. There's reporting. They're talking to people. They're trying to spin things on background. And then publicly, they say the opposite. And they call you fake news. And then they call you a liar. And so it's, like, tough to know, like, who is getting played. You know what I mean? Well, I'll just say, in this situation, two things happened. And we described both of them in the story. One is in meetings with the Trump's core team. And Trump, in front of other aides, which include people who are big fans of Vance and people who are less so, Vance made an argument against the war. It pissed off Trump. Trump complained about it to people. This happened on multiple occasions. That's a thing that happened. That's a true thing that happened. Also, at the same time, he has been publicly saying that he supports the president, supports the war, defending the war on television. That's also something that's happened. And we wrote that, like, in the story, that he's saying one thing. I don't know. I mean. Yeah. And is that working, do you think, for him? Like? In what sense? No, I mean, it hasn't persuaded. With Trump, yeah. No, as we say in the story, it cost him. This is not something that's helpful to him. Like, the existence of this story. This is why I find it so absurd. It's like, J.D. Vance has one job between now and January of 2028, in terms of his political future. It is to get Donald Trump's blessing and endorsement. The notion that he would be thrilled or excited about stories that drive a wedge between him and Donald Trump is, like, interesting to me that people think that. But, you know, I'm limited. Well, I mean, I think this is why it's so interesting to, like, think about, like, the way, the political machinations of him and the way he's trying to manipulate things. Because he's trying to do both, actually. Right? I mean, like, I understand what you're saying, that the number one thing, his number one priority is for Trump to give him the blessing. But his, like, number two priority is to be the most America first person. But, Tim, do you. But he's trying to do both. Well, anyway. And is that not true? You don't think he's trying to do both of those things? I think right now. I think. Right now. Let's talk about this, Sean. He gave a speech just last week. Right? At the midterm convention. Where the only time that he brought up the Iran war was he created the straw man where the ghost of Charlie Kirk, had he been alive, would have opposed the Iran war, but still voted for Republicans. And so, like, that was publicly. That wasn't private. That's not him kind of navigating things behind the scenes. Like, in his speech at the so-called convention, he basically tried to alibi, like, it's okay to be against the war. But. And also for Republicans. Don't you think it's possible that he just is against, like, was against this war and that what everyone has reported is accurate that he was dead against this war and he's been trying to walk this awkward, excruciating tightrope in public and that it may not be the most exciting thing for him to have stories that are elevating a division between him and Donald Trump at the same time that he's trying to. I think, you know. I think that's possible. But I also think it's possible that he wants to do both again. Like, okay, if that was if it was not exciting for him, I don't understand why. that would be his strategy for the mid midterm convention like his like trump has ears like he was able to watch the midterm convention speech and when he talked about how charlie kirk would have opposed the war i think that's a slightly different thing that's that's that to me you talk to people internally that they are trying to use him whether it'll be effective or not i'm skeptical as an emissary to that disaffected alienated younger part of the coalition that has right felt betrayed this is a different thing then which is kind of like maybe it's okay maybe trump's yeah maybe it's okay with trump that's what i'm saying that's different i'm trying to figure out i don't think but tim but tim let's be clear like i don't think the piece that we did most recently in the new york times serves that purpose it's already on the public record in our reporting in the atlantics reporting in the washington journal's reporting in the washington post the jd fans opposed the war what does jonathan i'm not trying to say you're serving jd's purpose i'm not saying you're a pr person i'm not no i i mean i think that it's interesting the jd it seems to me that he wants to try to have both but but you're saying he doesn't that's and that's interesting and also in itself i i don't think i don't think it's obvious that he doesn't want those stories out i i think that he's trying to keep in trump's good graces while also positioning himself as like kind of winking and nodding at people and saying i'm more with you guys on this i think he's trying to do both what do i know yeah maybe i didn't i i thought i didn't realize that you were gonna like you know feel that strongly that the article was uh contra uh jd vance jd vance's political political interest i just saw all this i just it's like it's a it's an it's a weird experience as a reporter when you write a story and you know how the stories you write come about and then you see all these people like comment on it and then you also know that in the same story that people like well how could you say that this when he's saying this publicly it's like yeah bro it's in the it's in the subhead and the main body of the story and then you're like well how could you say that this like is this like a literacy problem yeah and they're like i don't know we reported it in april to me this is just javanka all over again though so you can maybe separate yourself out for that because you weren't doing that you know you're in a different role then but like we we lived this right like is that not true like jared was trying to stay in the father-in-law's good graces and also he was like leaking about how he was a little bit concerned about things before like is this not just the same thing that does that i i don't think it's the same thing but um at all um uh in fact couldn't really be further from it but um in what way was it further do you think because what i just told you is is true which is that privately jd's worried you think jd's worried you don't i mean because privately i think jared and didn't like some of the stuff from the first term but you know they're trying to do what i'm saying is the vance stories the reason everyone's reported that he's against the war is because there were meetings where he argued against it aggressively to trump that happened i understand if people don't like that or whatever but it's just a fact um and the javanka stuff was more as far as i'm aware it wasn't actually me i mean i covered it it wasn't there was this big meeting in the sit room in the over office where jared navanka said you know dad don't do this and and then all these other aides were like in the room it was always avanka went off privately with her father and said like i don't recall a big scene and that's what i'm saying it's like these things and there were some of these things either well that was true i mean jared was in a war against yeah i mean things can be true like i guess i guess i'm sorry i want to move on we've belabored the point but what i'm trying to say is that things can be true and also political strategery and machinations right like you can choose to oppose trump and try to keep it as quiet as possible and like say things to him behind the scenes or you can try to do it and then also kind of signal to tucker your friend tucker that like you're still on side and like i know i think he's i think he's trying to signal to both of you that you're still on side and like i think he's trying to signal to both people that he's still inside that's but maybe that's wrong i don't maybe that i'm okay i'm open to being wrong i can't be in jd's head he's not calling me the challenge i mean is we just don't talk about sourcing so i can't say to you tim that's wrong actually the way we got this story is xyz uh but you know i'm well i'm telling you i'm telling you you might be wrong that's what i'm telling you i might be i might be wrong i might be wrong yeah he's mad at you hold up hold hold open the possibility in your mind jay i've got jonathan what you think about the origin of this story might be in fact no john i i look i'm wrong all the time so i'm i am holding open the possibility yeah i also i also watched j i guess i just i keep coming back to i watched jd's speech last week so i put your story aside like i don't need to like no like the sources could be the generals that called you i don't care like who the sources are my point is that jd is trying to have it both ways because he wants to stay in trump's good graces and he wants to be the nationalist and i think that tension is probably the big tension of the next two years don't you think that's right i think that's right but i do think that he's not trying to in those speeches drive a wedge between him and trump he's trying to keep open he's trying to drive a wedge between trump and the dead charlie put out an olive put out an olive branch to those people who feel betrayed by them i'm skeptical it will work but i think that's what he uh is trying to do you know those pieces in your closet you find yourself wearing on repeat this shirt for example this purple white pipe shirt i've been loving it lately the sweater that goes with everything the perfect pair of pants the tea that you somehow always reach for first those are the pieces that making getting dressed easy and that's what quince does best quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like a hundred percent mongolian cashmere organic cotton merino wool these styles are timeless versatile and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for every day i love the quince sweaters like this i'm not wearing them yet because still summer here in new orleans indigenous people summer down here for you guys though some of you up in the northeast pacific northwest might be time to turn to your quince sweater look sharp you'll 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quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash the bulwark get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in canada and the uk too that's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash the bulwark on the other around more stuff um you have some other sourcing issue you know people are very interested in your sources including the president um you reported about the uh weapons depletion you guys were the first on this nbc is now out this week and others uh with the inspector general's report like basically confirming your reporting you guys were the first on this nbc is now out this week and others uh with the inspector general's report like basically confirming your reporting uh you also reported there's polygraph testing uh after 50 members of the u.s military's joint staff had to take a lie detector about whether they're telling people yourself in particular that you know we're running low on weapons take us a little bit behind that like what's the level of alarm well um we started reporting on this in the spring um and to be fair to the trump administration it's not a problem that uh suddenly came out of nowhere that there were problems with the u.s military's joint staff but it has gotten dramatically worse and it's gotten worse in two key areas one is long-range missiles and the other is air defenses and we started to learn pretty early on in the war that uh they were raiding the supplies of ucom european command stocks and also indopaycom the pacific command stocks and they were raiding the supplies of ucom european command stocks and also so basically weapons that would be potentially used to deter russia and china were being pulled into centcom to fight the iran war and they were running very very low on all kinds of long-range weapons including attackams precision strike missiles tomahawks um the patriot supply is low and of course our defense industrial base is not up to speed so you keep hearing these projections from the defense companies saying we're going to produce you know these huge numbers it's not actually the case so you're seeing some instances where they're using you know a month supply of patriots in terms of the production in a day or two of heavy fighting um it's it's really bad it's of great great concern within the military and the national security community and the president is and pretty much every member of his administration publicly is pretending that this is not an issue um but it's a very serious issue and it could have really serious strategic and and uh tactical implications and what's the degree do you think of that the relationship between that and driscoll resignation another i guess this ties us back to vance a little bit uh since he was vance's friend some some a little yeah yeah um i i think it's a small part of it i think the larger part of it was that uh pete hegseth and and driscoll were in a cold war maybe not even a cold war maybe just a shooting war um maybe just like you know golf or one um and and pete hegseth came out victorious maybe for now and it's interesting that pete's what like it's funny when i was reading the book like trump does this thing and this is another thing that's hard for us to kind of interpret from the outside right where he likes to pick on people inside right like he picks on cash he picks on pete from time to time and yet like pete's still there like that's interesting that pete won that one that internal war right because he's kind of losing the public war like what do you make of why why that is well when you say losing the public war yes he's getting a lot of critical coverage in um the mainstream press but uh i don't know that that would be considered you know in trump's sort of way of thinking about hegseth i think he he definitely was lowest on hegseth in our reporting after signal gate and he did this appearance on the white house lawn which looked very erratic at the time and trump was very low on him um but since then we haven't had any report we've seen lots of rumors kind of being floated you know hegseth's next to go and what have you i've never verified any of that um and he survived through you know months and months and months um cash patel kind of the same um last summer was a real low point for him i thought as the new year was approaching that he potentially was going to be one of the people that trump replaced and he ended up being one of the people i thought was going to be one of the people i thought was going to be the obvious which is that these are two men who ostentatiously flatter trump uh publicly privately do what he wants i mean trump has in pete hegseth the defense secretary that he really wanted in term one if he if he had a version of his term one um defense secretaries there would have been objections raised when he said you know what i'm deciding in my mind that these people who are riding on the road are going to be the ones who are going to be the ones who are going to be the on fishing boats with cocaine are actually enemy combatants and instead of it being a law enforcement issue instead of sending the coast guard to interdict them we're just going to kill them um and there's no appeals process uh you were just going to kill them um hegseth enthusiastically supported that people like esper would not have so right the other thing that hegseth has in his corner is he's got a really strong ally in stephen miller they are very very close and miller has seen hegseth as a as a key ally in using the defense department to help with immigration enforcement and and some of these operations so again another issue where another area where people like mattis and esper uh threw up roadblocks and wouldn't have gone along with it that's interesting i mean so in that sense like is it too simple to say that like driscoll was trying to like raise concerns about the way that the war was being prosecuted and like hegseth is just you know telling trump what he wants to hear is that too simple do you think about why hegseth i don't know the extent to which driscoll ever raised any concerns to trump based on our reporting he certainly was concerned about the munition stockpiles and and and various other things so that could have been part of it and i'm sure some of that filtered back to trump but i also think part of it was when there was a period of time where there were lots of media stories coming out that you know driscoll is going to be the next sec def and all of this and i suspect that that may have had a um an effect as well on the way that hegseth viewed him again it ties the jd thing and like man they still have two and a half years left and who knows and i think that you've reported others that trump would love for this war to be magically over but like iran has a vote in that and you go through a period next year where you have jd has expressed some concerns of the inside driscoll is now out things are going badly that's a challenging thing that they're gonna have to navigate ahead hugely hugely and the public is heavily against this war they can see a linkage between the war and their own lives and the cost of goods gas in particular and there doesn't seem to be any way of spinning that trump has tried pretty much every method of spinning that in the public just isn't buying it the polygraph thing is kind of crazy and it's sort of reminds me of meet the fuckers a little bit where you have you know deniro giving ben stiller the polygraph it's like it feels like you're losing control of the situation when you've resorted to that i don't know and i was talking to someone i was talking to someone i'm not aware of a single example of alika being caught and prosecuted based on a polygraph it's possible that it's happened but i'm not aware of it and they're famously uh you can game them certainly people we've spoken to who have been polygraphed and and have expecting to be polygraphed view it as a tool of intimidation yeah at the beginning of the term and there is like a lot of reporting because except has been using this from the start the polygraph technique and this seems like the most expansive version on the specific story but like that caused blowback and it like hags had lost like one of his good friends who like quit early and he does seem you know while he might be not doing so well in the war in iran um he seems to have clamped down on that a little bit internally i don't know what do you make is that sorry feel right to explain what you mean clamped down on like the pushback i i don't know you know like there was a moment at the beginning of the administration where it felt like people like this is clownish like this is not serious the way he's handling this there's some there are some resignations but like i mean it seems like no he's kind of won that battle no yeah exactly i mean again this most recent polygraph mass polygraphing that we reported on around 50 members of the joint staff and others by the way other senior people in the pentagon we're not aware of any precedent in modern history for this scale in modern u.s history of this scale of polygraphing there's i i'm not aware of anything and we've spoken to you know people who serve in the military and serve in this area um and they're not aware of any precedent for it it's wild well you've been hearing us talk about moisturizing on this podcast and uh what do you know our sponsor is our friends at one skin that was just serendipity serendipity the jonathan swan brought up his moisturizing routine uh let me tell you our friends at one skin are now moving into some other areas where their breakthrough longevity science can help you and that is with their os1 hair scalp serum whether it's stress hormonal shifts or just getting older hair changes can happen to everyone well my hair's still looking good but hair changes do happen to almost everyone and that's exactly why one skin built os1 hair it's a daily serum powered by the 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what they're doing it works born from over 10 years of experience in skin regeneration and bioinformatics one skin's os1 peptide is engineered to support your hair to look visibly fuller and thicker at any age for limited time try one skin with 15 off using code bulwark at one skin.co slash bulwark that's 15 off one skin.co with code bulwark after you purchase they'll ask you where you heard about them please support our show and tell them we sent you i don't know the ai stuff which is like really hot in the news right now and you guys covered this in the book i think maybe on the first round of the book tour we weren't in ai doomsday mode so probably weren't asked about it as much but you you have this kind of remarkable scene and it's in vegas i'm going from memory i think it's in vegas where um greg brockman from open ai goes and briefs trump about chat gbt just regale the listeners with that if they haven't made it to that part of the book yet you know there's actually been i think relatively little reporting on this area in terms of trump's own interaction with ai compared to the importance of the topic i mean when we look back on the trump administration this may end up being one of the most consequential things that he did his his policy of basically go for it essentially uh unleash the growth of these ai companies and i'm gonna put myself firmly on the side of the ai accelerationists the interesting thing about that story which we get into in the book um is that trump is i would say the most extreme version of a tech late adopter. He only began text messaging in 2022. I mean, that's like 20 some years after most of us began text messaging. And he really knew nothing about AI and really hadn't ever interacted with it to any meaningful extent until the 2024 campaign. And what we describe in regime change is this scene in Vegas where the open AI executives meet with Trump in this hotel and he's with his team and they give him this demo. um of chat gbt and he's like he's really tired it's you know it's the end of the day he's like been campaigning he's kind of exhausted and they put it up on the screen and his eyes kind of like whatever he's like oh you know it's just sort of magic yeah yeah and um they they start uh putting in prompts um and from memory one of them was like they they they got um the chat gpt remember this is 2024 chat gpt was not that great in 2024 they get chat gpt to turn an executive order on ai into poetry into a poem yeah and trump sits there he goes man this is beautiful it's like he's reading the book because the poet these words they're so beautiful yeah yeah yeah he was just thunderstruck it was like he was reading wordsworth or something um and he turns to one of his a's he's like you know this is gonna take your job and he went from being uninterested tired whatever to immediately asking you know it was like zero to a hundred he immediately started asking these executives what do we need to do what are the obstacles to you guys growing how much energy do you need what regulations can we get rid of he went from sort of extremely skeptical asking them questions about well what happens if there's a deep fake of me declaring nuclear war you know he was all worried about it was all on the risk side and skeptic or whatever to full-on you know how do we get rid of nuclear war you know he was all worried about it was all on the risk side how can we put this thing on turbo charge and that is the posture that he has continued into this administration i think what's really interesting about it is trump won both times as a populist and he is squarely on the side of the the wealthiest most powerful tech elites and against the coalition that you see with bernie sanders and others saying no data center is you know against public opinion you had a line on this in the book that really struck me he started to be interested in operation warp speed for data centers which is such a funny like thing to think about that that's where his head was in 2024 versus where we are now right just this week like he called jensen wong while he was on stage at the all-in podcast right and jensen's like i'm here with the besties mr president so i mean he is just both feet in both feet in and one thing we also write in the book which we'd heard from several people around trump is that you know if you think back to the first term his whole promise was i'm gonna bring back sort of norman rockwell america and these old heavy industries i'm going to bring back the coal mining jobs i'm going to you're going to see an industrial revolution in america obviously that didn't happen and you know he obviously pretended it happened but it didn't happen and he knows on some level this is not going to happen so what we had been hearing from people around him is that when he started to hear these investment figures from people like zuckerberg and these others you know i'm going to invest a trillion dollars for hundreds of billions of dollars in his mind this became the way to create a new golden age in america and you know each time he would look at the valuation of nvidia it seemed to have gained a neutral million right and trump himself is a shareholder by the way in nvidia so um he became seduced by these figures jensen huang who had never really had much of a washington presence realized trump is a personalist leader you need to engage directly he started to call him he started to drop in at mar-a-lago zuckerberg is on the phone with him so they all play the game and you're seeing that uh the effects of that now i have to now but do you have a do you have any sense that jd disagrees with him on any of this i mean jd seems pretty aligned with this world too it's interesting just from that populist framework that you talked about because you are seeing this as we're taping right now bannon is having a press conference with bernie sanders against this uh is there any sense that there's dissension inside the administration on this i think it's gonna be a really challenging area for vance in 2028 because in some of his public statements he has indicated that he's not entirely comfortable with uh the flourishing of of ai you know he described it in one of his interviews elements of ai certain uses of it as satanic which is very much bannon-esque tucker-esque uh language at the same time he's towed the line with trump in terms of we need to stay ahead of china you know he hasn't broken with trump in any meaningful way on this issue and his biggest donors are probably going to be people like elon musk david sacks silicon valley yeah right so i don't expect that it's going to be feasible for him to um to run as a pure populist on this issue you glossed over it do you have any reporting on trump's personal ai use i see doing the the meat the slot memes it kind of sometimes it seems like he might be i don't know in the book you talk about how they they uh he was with doug bergum and they you know they asked it to do an image of his wife on a horse or whatever and you see some of these i don't know his jesus obviously he's taking a lot of them from just random people on true social but okay we'll try to do some reporting on that if you're inspired by his true socials feed i would say you have to give a lot of credit to bill pulte really because yeah he so on the weekends these days trump is essentially unstaffed i mean he really the main most of his staff are not with him at the golf clubs well natalie um natalie's there often but bill pulte is usually there and he brings these foam boards um and often what you see trump truly does is he brings these foam boards out on the weekends originated as a bill pulte foam board just so people know you at least i'm sure your listeners are familiar with bill pulte but of course you know yeah okay fine you guys are hardcore but well no i mean i just talk about bill pulte's all because that's good well no but pulte would bring in these boards that would have you know um the fraudster in all caps and it would have this like photo of lisa cook's face blown up and and you know diagrams of how frauds are supposedly committed that's the kind of stuff that he's serving up for trump and and often it turns into i mean bill pulte comes to prominence like during covet over meme stocks and like doing that you know like game stock and all that so right he knows how to create manipulate the internet he's good at the meme economy right tbd on the rest things aren't great in the interest rate department i want to talk about the library there's another thing that um i feel like just people miss and kind of you know everybody realizes that there's kind of a lot of a lot of money sloshing around in trump world but like just how kind of direct is it overstated to say quid pro quo do you think and and some of these donations i mean it's it's one half step short of it if not i don't know how would you describe it if you are a company in america major company in america you understand that when a request comes in from the trump team for money and they come in very directly you you either have to play ball or you either have to play the game or risk donald trump using the government to punish you or or not to reward you and he's made very clear that he's willing to do that we've seen it i mean when you do things like uh demand the the resignation the firing of the head of intel and then he comes in and flatters you and tells you his life story and then you say at the end well very nice i don't think you're a chinese spy anymore but i'm gonna need a cut of your company uh and then he gives you the cut yeah ten percent that was one of the things that i was thinking about when you were talking about in the book you said that they said that trump now says privately to people he should have asked for more of intel a hundred percent yeah i think dick cheney used to have a phrase you know the educational use of power or the instructive use of power something like that this is trump's version of that and and we have reporting in the book that um his fundraiser meredith would sit with him with a list of companies or individuals and trump would literally write next to them the dollar figure that he wants and it just comes out of his head you know whatever he feels you know 20 million whatever he's feeling five million this is what i think this person and the asks come in it's created this cycle whereby the companies are afraid they give money to trump entities the trump entities amass huge war chests and then they use that money to intimidate and defeat republicans who step out of line people like thomas massey bill cassidy and others and so it's this cycle really it's it's fear to raise fear to spend fear creates fear fear begets fear it's a cycle with the with the library i think this is another area just because there's been so much of this um money sloshing around trump family entities trump political entities you can lose sight of different elements of it but the library we had two parts in the book that we thought were very interesting one was the trumps have been soliciting from the gulf arabs for the library including the saudis and the other is that at a moment when trump was complaining about howard lutnick um and his sons making money lutnick gave 25 million dollars to the trump library this is the commerce secretary and trump in meetings in front of lutnick and others would say you know the only reason i'm putting up with howard's bullshit is because he gave me 25 million dollars you know he'd also say how great is howard you know i asked him for the secretary doing something like that maybe it's been done before but um or maybe after but in Yeah, it seems kind of unusual. In the middle of the administration. And the most telling thing to me about that anecdote is, is like Trump acknowledges basically that the Lutnick family is grifting off the administration, right? I mean, kind of. He's like, hey, why don't you throw some money at my library and, you know, I'll look the other way at these problems that you're causing me. I mean, it's very mafia-esque. Trump doesn't like to hear about other people making money, obviously. And during the interregnum period, I was talking to a source and they were with Trump and Trump was complaining about Brooke Rollins, who is now his agriculture secretary. And he's like, you know, she's got this group, it's called America First Policy. He goes, you know, they do policy stuff, like very dismissive. He goes, and people think, you know, I talk to those, they think they're giving to me, but they're not giving to me. They're giving to this group. And he goes, you know, I think she owes me like, she should give me like half. And he thought she had like 50 million sitting in this account, which of course wasn't true. So he had this idea that she was basically, you know, taking money that rightfully belonged to him. And that's the mindset, I think, across all of these areas. Can I ask you a question from the Trump derangement syndrome crowd on all this? Sure. People hear these stories and it does make you wonder, can you afford to give this up when you think about like the succession plan? I mean, like the degree and the scale of the grift is hard to even wrap your head around. And it's hard, you know, usually people don't give that away, I guess would be one way to put it. Just elaborate? Well, I mean, the kids are making a lot of money. Right. Trump's personally making money. Like the idea that he would, like this kind of, again, goes back to the JD. The idea that he would pass on to a successor that would not be, you know, in on the game, if you will, is a little hard to imagine. Or I don't know, or maybe not. Maybe he sees that this is a sprint for, you know, him to cement his legacy. As you guys talked about in your interview as the next Attila the Hun and his kids make as much money as they can in the next two years and then it's over. But I don't know. That doesn't really seem like him. I mean, if a Trump ally like JD Vance is the next president, would the Trump kids, you know, how much would their money-making diminish? I don't know. They've made so much money. They've made so much money during this term that they're obviously set for life. I mean, not enough money if they can fund their own second wedding, I guess. I think the sense I have from people around Trump is that he feels that 2024 was his big victory and since then he's essentially untouchable. Yes, he doesn't want to lose the house. He doesn't want to get impeached again. But ultimately, it's not the greatest fear for him. We have a report in the book that he said he's going to pardon anyone who came within 250 feet of the Oval Office. His family's wealthier than it's ever been by orders of magnitude. He's building monuments to himself. He has sweeping immunity conferred by the Supreme Court. I mean, what does he have to worry about? The light's turning off. Same thing everybody has to worry about who's in the public sphere. I mean, he's been- Yeah, I think that's the big thing. I think the lack of attention is actually- I think that when that drug goes away, I think that's probably going to be the biggest loss. I'm sorry to keep tying everything back to JD, but I think that's another worry that you have over the next year. It's like somebody asked him yesterday. He gets asked this about who the next, you know, whether he's going to endorse a successor. He gets annoyed. Like he gets visibly annoyed at the question. That's my point. That was my whole point to you at the start is that Vance is not in a secure- It's not like he's like cruising in cruise control right now. He needs Trump's blessing. And Trump is very ostentatiously holding that back. And we have a lot of reporting in our book. I mean, we have a scene in our book where Rupert Murdoch comes to power. He comes to dinner at the White House in the blue room and Vance and Rubio are at the table. And Trump essentially does a beauty pageant with Murdoch. Who do you, do you like JD? Do you like Marco? Who do you like more? So, you know, Vance has one job. He has to get Trump's blessing. I mean, this is kind of interesting though, because Marco just, you don't hear Marco talking about the war that much. And he's the national security advisor. Very true. So, so very interesting point. So Marco Rubio, even though he's, Secretary of State and national security advisor has actually not been that engaged on two of the biggest foreign policy issues, Iran and Russia, Ukraine. And on Iran, you've had Witkoff and Vance and Kushner lead the negotiations, not Rubio. And then on Russia, Ukraine, you've had Witkoff and Kushner. And again, Rubio, stepping back, he is much more focused on Western hemisphere, Cuba in particular as the next one, obviously Venezuela. So, that's an absolutely accurate observation. Again, I don't know that it's so much political. I don't have any sense that Rubio's preparing for a 2028 campaign. In fact, I don't think he is, but he has certainly been willing and happy apparently to let others step into that void. - Yeah. And you're reporting, I talked to this about what to Maggie, when she was on about in Rubio, I think people have a misunderstanding of what Rubio is doing and what he cares about in the administration. And you guys had that he was the point person, for the Sakat negotiation with Bukele. I mean, he was like the foreign Gulag deal. Like Rubio was the person that made that deal. He's the reason that Ozturk, the Tufts student is jailed. He is on board with the bombing of the boats that you mentioned in the Caribbean. I've been covering this week, there's Iranian family that's been in six months in the Delhi detention center. They did nothing. He took their green card away because they had a family member that's, you know, was part of the hostage takers in the seventies. So like Rubio, it's funny. Like there's this perception that he kind of is not on board with some elements of the MAGA part of the agenda, but it's like, he is fully bought in and the point man on a lot of the immigration stuff. And if nothing else neutral are on board with the rest of the foreign policy agenda, be that Greenland or on Russia. - Besides Pete Hanks have, there may be no cabinet secretary who is closer to Stephen Miller than Marco Rubio. - No, which is incredibly interesting given that Stephen Miller was his arch enemy, as you know very well, Tim, during the gang of eight immigration era, when Stephen Miller worked for Jeff Sessions and was trying to kill that bill and Rubio was at the center of it. We reported in our book that in an email to a Breitbart reporter, and I think it was 2015, Stephen Miller referred to Rubio as pathological. So that relationship is now extremely close. They work very closely together. And Miller has told people that Rubio has been a great ally. - Yeah. People like it when you bend the knee to them, like Marco did to Stephen Miller. So I understand, I mean, right? I mean, like it's not like they met in the middle on their big fight from the gang of eight. Marco basically looked at the Stephen Miller wing and said, I'm on board. - No, Stephen's vision prevailed and has become the prevailing vision of the Republican party. - I'm not gonna let you go without asking about Natalie, just a little bit. The mash notes, the love notes. Maggie did have, Maggie did duck the question that I had about whether Trump is impotent or not. No, I just- - Oh my God, dude. - Do you have any reporting on that? - Wait, what? Well, say that again. - Whether Trump is impotent. For the longest time, I've been trying to match- - What are you, Howard Stern? What is this like? - Well, I think it's noteworthy that Trump spent his whole career sexually assaulting people for like 30 years. He has like dozens of women have accused him of sexual assault and now none, but now he has Natalie. I'm not speculating on his- - Well, I wasn't asking you to speculate. I was wondering if you had any reporting. - I certainly don't have any reporting on- - So then what do you think's happening? What do you think's happening with Natalie? Just, I kind of think it's weird. This is my point. It's weirder than that other more prurient thing, I think. It's more like- - I think it's the story of a young woman who is completely devoted and obsessed with- - Have you done any reporting? - Have you done any reporting on whether her story is real? Like the backstory? - You mean about her health and stuff? I haven't got any reporting to contradict her version of it. - When you had those mash notes, you had to, that had to tickle you during the reporting. Was that the part of the reporting that made you do your Aussie laugh the most when you got it? - It's always good when you have something on paper, it makes it harder to deny that something happened. And so yes, it was very good to have these documents. Because if people tried to claim that they weren't true, we had them. We have them. - This could be Howard Stern. Why'd you say that negatively? Howard Stern is a huge success. Was a huge success at a great program. - No, he is. He just does a particular thing. And I didn't realize that was your thing. - We kind of, I try to touch all, like a good podcast for me, Jonathan, is laughter, crying, anger. You know, you try to touch all the whole kind of emotional color wheel. And we've been doing that, I think. - We certainly have. - Yeah, we certainly have. He's really mean to Maggie. - Do you think I've been overly emotional at times in this podcast? - I don't, no. - You don't, okay. - No, do you feel like you have? - I don't know. I just, I felt like- - You got a little high? - Maybe, I probably got a little on my high horse. - No, that's okay. We're pals. This happened with Maggie too. We'll just, let's just break the fourth wall. Let's just break the fourth wall for a second. I love you and Maggie. And we talk a lot. And like all of the comments in the Maggie section, I, you know, sometimes you don't know your audience as well as you think. I thought the comments were gonna be mean to her, - Right. you do see this sometimes, not our audience, audience is great audience was mad at me they're like why were you so mean to maggie why were you so mean to me you're a little rude to her and i was like pal me and maggie should talk like that's fine that's how we show love you know so anyway we're good right you're not you weren't oh dude we're totally good i just worried i got a little uh defensive that's okay you're doing real fucking reporting out there the government is still my best man the president is calling your co-author ugly and a maggot people are trying to go after they're targeting your reporting they're targeting alleged people they think are sources i guess by suing them that's a that's a high stress environment it's also challenging like i mean i didn't do i didn't go on tv for a really long time because when you're doing this type of reporting you have to be so careful about the way you talk about anything to do with sourcing because everything we do almost every story that involves anything to do with munitions or national security results in a leak hunt some of my colleagues have the fbi show up at their front door um subpoenas are going out they're suing you know all this stuff and so you're sort of powerless you sit there watching a public conversation about your story you know exactly how the story came about but you can't actually so it's like it's sort of damned if you do damned if you don't and you just have to like take the hit it's like you know that's and it's a little different than last i mean than the first term right how is it different unrecognizable completely different just from a sourcing completely completely completely because they were leaking to you and shit talking each other this was my this is kind of why it's tough and it is beyond they do and this one i was trying to get to at the start i'm saying this is the nicest way like how they do business is just different and it's like how do you adapt to it how you do and you and maggie have adapted as as well as anybody but like you know when i i would spin you guys when i was in that world for jeb like i would sometimes tell you things that weren't fully true but i would never like give you something i would never like give you a story about marco or whatever and have you report it and then go on twitter and be like jonathan swan is an ugly prick and this is fake news right like that is like it's it's it's a different animal like the way they do business is is different and now it's kind of one of the first term way and now this time i feel like they you know just bully right i was saying i can't remember who i said this to the first term like kind of looks like the eisenhower administration at this point yeah it's just you can't even draw any type of comparison uh so this that takes me on final question for you which is like i felt in the first time we kind of knew everything i mean there were like some secrets but like there was so much fighting right that things just like leaked out and like eventually and sometimes you had to kind of navigate it and you had to kind of navigate it and you had to kind of navigate it and you had to navigate like what was true and was not because sometimes they lied and leaks like they lied about each other right like for the most part like shit got out what is your sense for that this time like i don't know like the one story that comes to mind is you mentioned like the gulf states and like the amount of business that eric is doing and jared is doing and there's a great dexter filkin story in the new yorker this week but i was reading and i'm like there's more than this i just i'm reading this story and i'm just like how much more do you think there is i think we know very little i i think we know five percent i think i think wow it's going to take a lot of reporting and digging over probably years not months um to get to the bottom i mean i i think we just know so little like in what in what area i think i think in almost every area but in particular national security and anything to do with money making and self-dealing i think in those two areas and also probably in the way what's going on actually going on at the doj and investigations that we're probably not aware of and other things like that you know like i don't think when we started this administration you wouldn't have thought that the book would be like the big excerpt would be about deliberations about the iran war right i mean that was unexpected i mean so like what projecting out like do you have sense for like what the next big one would be well i also didn't think that the other big excerpt would be um his top team including his attorney general sitting in the white house situation room talking about the jeffrey epstein firehawks and how to spin them i have no idea what the next um big story is i still think the iran war is is right now a huge story i i personally want to do a lot more reporting on ai because i feel like there's a confluence of financial interests and and a government that is not really prepared to wrap its arms around this technology and very real concerns about national security public safety jobs it's such an enormous issue and i just think i've been quite deficient in my um reporting on it so that's an area i really want to dig into i think everybody's feeling that way right now and especially with trump i mean just like that that i was saying that in the nice way i feel deficient in it as well who 100 like the idea that trump would end up being the biggest cheerleader for it even in this moment is totally to me there's money there too that ties to the money store right because it's like operation warp speed and this at the operation warp speed for ai like those are the two times that he has been the most out of step with the base i guess and epstein yeah covid vaccine yeah that's true that's true and iran and iran although to be fair on iran i think it's more complicated i think there's a part of the base that's against it but yeah and i think that had it been like venezuela or had it been like solomony or had it been like last year would have been fine and he just got in over his head all right jonathan anything jonah tack make fun of me do you have any any critiques any uh anything about my look that you don't like right now most tries you look great you look great um come down to visit me sometime can we hang out sure three children do you have a lot of free time for that you do a lot of times i'm always going away yeah it's great it's one one big vacation is my life i loved your wife thanks for comparing me to howard stern hi praise and uh i'll talk to you again soon all right give your wife a squeeze for me all right we'll see everybody else back here tomorrow see ya peace see ya bye you can put your clothes back on she's leaving you no time to apologize for the things you do go rent a ferrari and sing the blues believe that clapton was the second coming it falls apart it all got work to do it gets dark it all got work to do she's leaving she's leaving she's leaving the bulwark daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer katie cooper associate producer ansley skipper and with video editing by dante de chico and audio engineering and editing by jason brown