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Marc Fisher
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Marc Fisher
Co-author, Trump Revealed
Marc Fisher is an associate editor at The Washington Post and the co-author of Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 4, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Trump is Remarkably Consistent
I want to go back to [Donald] Trump's childhood in Queens, and what shaped him.But let me ask you, because you've been reporting on him for so long.And you first wrote about his life story, a biography of him.Is there anything that, in the years since, as you've watched him as president, and the years after the president, that surprised you, or that comes out of his biography, that you maybe didn't pay enough attention to, that you look back on now, that's especially relevant?
No.I think one of the defining characteristics of Trump is his consistency.And he has a remarkable ability to stay in the moment, to pay no mind to those around him who are trying to push him into a different pathway.Psychiatrists will tell you that narcissists tend to be remarkably consistent.That they rarely decline in precipitous fashion.And that they have this deep belief in themselves that shapes their behavior through the years.And although some of his language is constantly—he's constantly having to spike his language, spike his rhetoric.And that's the boy who cried wolf kind of phenomenon, where essentially, the more outrageous you are, the more outrageous you need to be.
But that's been true throughout his life.And he's recognized that.His marketing genius is that he understands just how important it is to go farther, to go beyond norms, beyond what people generally expect of people of his stature.So I'm kind of unsurprised.
Trump’s Childhood
So let's talk about his growing up.And what does he take from Queens, from growing up in the outer borough, that was going to shape the politician he was going to become, was going to shape the man he was going to become?How did the times and the place shape Donald Trump?
Donald Trump is very much a man of his time, place, family.He is someone who grew up in the family business, grew up going around with his father to collect rents in the Trump buildings in Brooklyn and Queens.He was someone who was the son of a prominent person, but a person who knew his place in those outer boroughs, and had no interest in going to the bigger stage of Manhattan or the world or the nation.
And so in Donald's case, he very much wanted to go beyond what his father had done.He wanted to prove himself to his father.And his father was a very tough guy to please.His father was emotionally distant.Fred Trump wanted his son to be part of the business, but he wanted his oldest son, who was named for him, to take over the family business.And that turned out to be not a possibility, as the older son was both not interested, and not entirely functional, and had a dream to become an airline pilot, rather than a real estate entrepreneur.
So it fell to Donald to take on the role of next generation leader of the Trump Organization.And Donald was shaped very much by his father's extreme rigor, when it came to devoting himself to business.But also that emotional distance, that this was not a family where the kids were told that they were loved.This is not a family where there was a lot of warmth, except perhaps from his mother, at least by Donald's telling, his mother was warmer.
But from Fred Trump, there was this consistent directive that you had to be a winner, that you had to achieve beyond all description, that you had a family obligation to go out there and do big things.And if you fell short of that, you were a loser.And there's nothing worse than being a loser.Add to that, Queens—it was not Manhattan.It was the outer boroughs.It was the sticks.It was almost the 'burbs.And so, for Donald, there was this sense that he wasn't where the action was.And he wanted to be where the action was.He spent much of his youth traveling around with his father, as his father made the rounds of the political clubs, the Democratic Clubs in Brooklyn, working his political connections, making sure that he had the ability to get the projects done that he wanted to.And Donald absorbed that basic political instinct of going out and making and working connections.
But Donald was always frustrated that his father didn't want to play on the biggest stages of all.And for Donald, the idea that Queens was not the main stage, and he wanted to be on that main stage.This drove him all through his youth.At the first available moment, he crossed the bridge into Manhattan, to make his way on a much larger stage.
Trump as a Product of Queens and His Father’s Example
The politics of growing up in Queens, you write he's attracted to Don Rickles and Archie Bunker as characters.Just does some of that come from Queens and from where he grew up, the politics he's going to develop later?
Donald grew up in a pretty rough environment.It was economically quite easy.He lived in a fairly affluent part of Queens.He hung out among mostly other affluent kids, going to a private school in the neighborhood.
The identity of being from Queens, and of having Manhattan gleaming across the river, as this sort of luring, magnetic possibility, that gave Donald a sense that he was not on the main stage, and that he needed to be on the main stage.In addition, he grew up in a place where there was a lot of sort of easy insulting of people around him, othering of people, whether they be people of lower economic status, different races, part of the family business was managing, manipulating, really, who got to rent apartments in one or another of Trump's developments.
And the federal government would come after both Donald and his father, for steering Black and Hispanic renters away from certain buildings, and toward other buildings that they owned.And this was a way of maintaining a certain segregation.Well that showed or taught Trump about who counted, who really was worthy, who got the better apartments.And it fed this notion that he had, that there was kind of a hierarchy of ethnic groups in New York City.And certainly, at that time, there was friction between white ethnics and Hispanics and Blacks in various directions in New York City.That was very much a part of the politics when Donald was growing up.And he absorbed all of that, because his father was deeply involved in the local political apparatus, mostly in the different wings of the Democratic Party.
And so I think for Donald, there was this sense that being from Queens, you're kind of an outsider to begin with.And he wanted very much to get all the way inside.That's why he wanted to move to Manhattan.That's why he wanted to move into a different level of real estate entrepreneurs.And that's why he positioned himself as superior to, and therefore making fun of, other ethnic groups.
He loved the humor of Don Rickles.He loved the character of Archie Bunker, who could say straight out the kinds of insults about Blacks and other ethnic groups, that most people wouldn't say in public.There was this sort of bullyish kind of mentality that he absorbed.It was part of his friend group.It was part of the atmosphere at school.It was part of what was in the air, and on the radio, in the New York City that he grew up in, in the 1950s and '60s.
The last thing on this.I mean it's also interesting that racial controversy is there from the beginning, right.You write about his dad being arrested at a klan rally, for whatever reason he's there.1There's a Woody Guthrie song about “Old Man Trump keeping Black folks out of Trump housing.”I mean that racial controversy is there from his dad at the beginning.
1
The Washington Post: In 1927, Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens
Absolutely.This is part of the basic calculus of New York City, the political and social relationships that dominated in New York were very much ones of ethnic and racial rivalry, even hatred.And so there was, at the time, as Donald was growing up, there were a lot of political figures, and social and cultural figures, who made their money, made their careers, making fun of others, sort of creating and cementing a kind of hierarchy of ethnic groups.And Donald was very much into that.
And he adopted some of the New York slang, called Blacks schvartzes, making fun of the Jews for wearing yarmulkes, there were all kinds of little slurs that were just kind of in the water, part of his life growing up, that he adopted, that he made kind of central to his own humor, and which we hear today, we hear echoes of that in the kind of rhetoric he uses about different ethnic groups.
If you flash forward to today, we know the Trump Organization has been found liable for civil fraud, for their accounting practices.2Does that go back to those days, to his dad, to how he learned about the business growing up?
2
Donald grew up in a successful family business that made its way, in good part, by working the edges of the system, by breaking the rules.Fred Trump had this idea that the rules didn't really apply to the Trump Organization.And so when they were deciding whom to rent apartments to, they didn't pay attention to the anti-discrimination laws.They did what they wanted to.They had their salesmen code applications from tenants; they were coded by race, they were coded by ethnic group.And so they were then steered, those applicants were then steered to the buildings where we put those people.
And so, there was this mentality, from the beginning, that Donald absorbed, that this was a way of categorizing people, and that people belonged with their own groups.And so he had a somewhat derisive attitude toward those groups that were on the outs, and he had a sense that it was up to a family like his, to make these decisions.From the very beginning, Donald learned, in his business, and applied to the rest of his life, a sense that the rules didn't apply to the Trumps.And that you could always get around the rules, simply by defying them, or by working the people who were supposed to enforce those rules.
So he would go with his father to the political clubs, and find the folks who needed to perhaps get some campaign contributions, who needed some political support.And those might be the folks who could then be implored to back away from any enforcement, when it came to the Trump Organization.So the lesson to Donald was that the system is infinitely workable.It's infinitely pliable.And that all you need to do is find the right people, and go out there, and do your thing, and defy the rules.
Who Is Roy Cohn?
The person in his life who really embodies that is Roy Cohn.
Right.
I mean, is he attracted to Cohn because of his dad?What is it that draws him to Roy Cohn?And what is it that Cohn is offering him, in a big sense?Obviously in a small sense, but in a big sense, what is it that Roy Cohn is offering to Trump?
When Donald Trump first met Roy Cohn, at the 21 Club in Manhattan, Trump was in the process of trying to win political support and municipal support for his first big project at the Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Station in Midtown Manhattan.And he wanted help with that.He also was dealing with a federal investigation into discriminatory practices by the Trump Organization.The feds were going after both Donald and his father.
And Roy Cohn was the ultimate power broker in New York City.He was someone who knew every—had every possible connection, politically, financially, in a real estate world.And Cohn had a sensibility that was immediately attractive to Trump.And that was, Roy Cohn preached the idea of always doing an end run around the rules.Roy Cohn preached a way that you could escape responsibility and consequences if you only found the right people and won them over to your side.
Cohn was an obvious operator.For Cohn, the first instinct was always, how can we get around that?How can we break that rule?How can we maximize our profit and our performance without regard to whatever the guardrails of law might be?And this was enticing, attractive to Donald Trump.He really hit it off with Cohn.And Cohn offered him strategies for dealing with this federal investigation And those strategies involved things that kind of echoed what Trump had heard from his father: always be on the offensive; attack, attack, attack; go for the kill.These kinds of aggressive and forward sorts of strategies that were immediately appealing to Trump, because they echoed what his father had done, and they went a step or two beyond.
I mean, as you say, Cohn is known for that fight back.And he's also known for the, you know, the sayings, “Don't tell me what the law is.Tell me who the judge is.”I mean, do you see a direct connection between Roy Cohn and Trump, who we know now, you know: indicted 91 times, impeached twice, liable for sexual assault, for civil fraud. I mean, do you see a connection between Cohn and those events that would happen to Trump later?3
One of the great frustrations of Trump's presidency, for him, was his inability to find what he has always called “My Roy Cohn, my next Roy Cohn.”He was never able to find the person who—the fixer who could make all of his problems go away, in the way that Roy Cohn did.Cohn was a master of New York politics.The city, although the biggest one in the country, nonetheless was small enough, its power structure was small enough that someone like Cohn could master it.
And so for Trump, Cohn was someone who could always or almost always deliver.He was someone who could always find the pressure point, the person to go to, who could make things right.Transfer that to Washington and a sprawling bureaucracy, and this enormous government that didn't seem pliable, Trump was always frustrated that he could want things to happen, he could order things to happen, and they didn't happen.And so he was constantly looking for the advisor, the aide, who could make those things work for him in the way that Roy Cohn had.
What Trump learned from Cohn was that you could just go ahead and do your thing, and damn the consequences.So Donald Trump was sued or sued people, literally hundreds of times, over the course of his career.This was simply a cost of doing business.He never took it so seriously as to believe that it could end his business, or result in him going to prison.Because lawsuits were things that you could manipulate.And you could extend, and delay.And you could use all sorts of tactics to get out of it.
And sure, you'd have to pay some fines here and there.But for the most part, he was able to work the legal system to his own benefit.Now, he's in a situation where it's not entirely clear that he can do that.He's trying the same tactics that he learned from Cohn, delay, delay, delay.And in many of the cases against him, that's working.But he doesn't have the same confidence about it that he did when he had Cohn around, because he hasn't found the right person, he believes, to make sure that he suffers no harmful consequences.He tried to use his long-time advisor Michael Cohen in that role, and ended up believing that Cohen had betrayed him.For a short time, Steve Bannon was someone who seemed like he could play some of that role.And then Bannon got, in Trump's view, too big for his britches.
And so, there's been this constant turnover in that inner circle, which has always been extremely tight, which rarely admits anyone who is not a blood relative.And so for Trump, it's been almost a life-long quest to repeat, to find the successor to Roy Cohn.
Trump Rails Against the Elites
As you know, a lot of Trump's political rhetoric is about the elites.It's part of his appeal politically.How much of that ties into the Trump of the 1970s, of the 1980s?You can tell me if he wants elite acceptance, or what he's looking for.How does he relate to New York elites? And how does that shape him?
Donald Trump, much as he has adopted Florida as his home, is a New Yorker through and through.He is someone who grew up with a street sensibility.He was always more comfortable hanging out with his drivers and security guys than he was with the other executives in Trump Tower.He liked to go out on Fifth Avenue and hang out at lunchtime with the blue collar workers, watching women go by on the street, and making comments about their looks.So this was his lunchtime entertainment, far more than sitting down in a fine restaurant with his executives from the Trump Organization. …
So from the beginning, Trump had this nagging sense of being an outsider.It was the way he saw his father shy away from working in the Manhattan real estate business, sticking to his own place in the outer boroughs.That built in Trump this sense of exclusion.We're not on the main stage.We're not where we ought to be, playing at the highest possible level.And Trump wanted to be there.He felt that there was a kind of wall that the elites had built, however you define the elites, the top real estate developers in the city, the political powers, the richest people in the city.He always felt excluded from those circles.Even when he moved to Manhattan, and began his work as a developer, he felt that the Fifth Avenue developers were looking down on him, excluding him.And so he was always trying to break into that inner circle, or at least to make such a public splash, that he was better off than he would be if he were in that circle.
So there's always been this battle, this tension in Trump's life, and in his business, between wanting to be in that central elite inner circle, and spurning that group, and saying, “I don't want anything to do with them.”You know, he publicly has this attitude, almost a Groucho Marx, “I don't want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member” kind of approach.And yet, there's still this nagging feeling that he expressed as a high school kid, at the military academy that his father sent him to, that he expressed as a young entrepreneur, that he expressed as a wannabe politician, through decades of edging around the possibility of politics.
In each of those identities of Donald Trump, there is a yearning to be accepted, and at the same time, a kind of pride, whether it's false pride or not, about being the outsider, about being the one who can break the rules, who doesn't have to abide by the niceties of the establishment, who can just go his own way, do his own thing, and come out on top.
Trump Cultivates his Public Image
That period, when he goes into New York, and it seems like the boom time, as far as business.He's going into Atlantic City, and the Trump Shuttle, and the football team.When you look back at that period, before the collapse, what does it reveal about Trump, about the leader, about who he is?
Trump had an instinctive ability to win attention, and to recognize that attention, whether it be media attention, popularity, connection with the little guy, that all of that had a value that went far beyond the street value of a particular building or project.There was an intangible value to getting his name out there, and being seen as a huge success.
He picked up a lot of this from his father.His father was very big on selling the family name.From his very earliest experiments with advertising on banners that were flown over the beaches of New York City, on summer weekends, that kind of advertising stuck with Trump, and he used that idea of selling the family name as a brand.But he took it to a new level by going beyond appealing to the rank and file blue collar workers of the city, and taking that to the mass media.
And so he began, from an early age, cultivating the press, cultivating the tabloid newspapers of Manhattan, cultivating the TV stations.And what he was selling them was Trump the personality.
And so whether it was pretending—whether it was posing as a PR man for Trump, calling up reporters and producers, and telling them, “Trump's going to be a Studio 54 tonight with one of the hot models of the moment and you need to be there to photograph this, and put it on TV, and in the gossip pages of the newspaper”—or whether it was staging media events, in big splashy events, with lots of gold and glitter and showmanship, this was an approach to real estate development that was totally at odds with the way business was done in Manhattan.And the other developers very quickly frowned upon, looked down on Trump, cementing this idea of, “You're the outsider.You're not part of the inner circle.You're not one of us.”And Trump fed on this.
And, from his earliest ventures, he realized that he had to combine the political tactics that he learned from his father, the legal tactics that he picked up from Roy Cohn, and his own instincts, perhaps fed by his mother's love of pomp and ceremony, he had to combine all of that into a new formula, a Donald Trump formula, that would use public notice, and even infamy, to create a brand that people would aspire to.
And so the idea was, put Trump out there as this impossibly rich playboy, who could go out with any woman in the country, who had the ability to buy up anything, whether airplanes, or skyscrapers, or country clubs, and live in almost a French Renaissance grandeur.And this was someone who every man could look up to, and say, “See, you could go out there and just work the system, and get what you want, and be this giant figure.”And he realized that it didn't matter if the authorities came after him.It didn't matter if the other rich folks rejected him.It didn't matter if the politicians dismissed him.What mattered was persuading the larger public that Trump was the height of luxury.And that therefore, you wanted to be associated with that name, whether it meant buying his products, renting his apartments, or simply reading about him, every scrap that you could find in the tabloids.
Who is Roger Stone?
We talked about Roy Cohn, and the law.And as Trump starts flirting with politics in the 1980s, Roger Stone is there, which is interesting, looking back now, because Roger Stone is there on January 6th.And Roger Stone is there in New Hampshire, with him.I mean, who is Roger Stone?And what's his influence on Donald Trump, on his approach to politics, on who he is?
If you look at Donald Trump's life as a life-long search for a successor to the traditions of Fred Trump and Roy Cohn, as people who can be both an enforcer for Trump, and a guide to working end runs around the system, the next plausible successor is Roger Stone.Roger Stone, a political operator, going back to the first Nixon president term in 1968, Roger Stone was someone who was both a dirty trickster, and a strategic genius at doing things that were beyond the rules.Breaking the rules to, whether they were campaign finance rules, whether they were traditions of how Americans ran for office, Roger Stone was someone who came up with canny ways to get around the way things are normally done, in order to present an almost kind of populist appeal to the public for his candidates.
And Roger Stone saw in Trump someone who had tremendous political possibility, because Trump had this sort of natural connection as a marketing guy, as a showman, as someone who could appeal to a blue collar worker, even though he was this purportedly super rich guy living on Fifth Avenue.
So for Stone, Trump was a great vehicle for combining the sort of moral emptiness of a Richard Nixon, with the sort of celebrity culture that Trump represented.And for Trump, Stone was someone who knew his way around the rules, who was always looking for an angle, who was always looking for a way to present a political figure, who was a populist and a popular, like a pop culture sort of celebrity.And so it was a political marriage that would last decades, and would propel Trump to levels far beyond what even he expected when he first came across Stone back in the '70s and '80s.
Trump Is Drawn to Politics
In the 1980s, as he goes to New Hampshire in '87, he gets involved in the Central Park Five, I think, in '89.He's got Roger Stone.You say he's listening to Bob Grant and talk radio.I mean, what is the politics that Trump is developing in that environment?What's the appeal that he's, you know, that he's selling?And where does it come from?
Donald Trump's politics were not definable by traditional political standards, even going back to his youth.He grew up going with his father to the Democratic Clubs in Brooklyn, to work the system, to try to make the connections that would allow Trump building projects to go forward without interference from the city regulators.That meant crossing party lines constantly.And that meant for Trump, that you had to be all things to all people.But the abiding faith that Trump had throughout this period was that he understood the street.He understood the guys, the workers, the construction workers at his family company's building sites, the security guys who worked in the office buildings that the family ran.He got their sensibility.And this is in a New York City of the 1960s, with a lot of ethnic strife, with battles over control of the schools, with battles over the public unions.
And in all of this, Trump is listening to talk radio.He's listening to Bob Grant screaming about how the Black and Hispanics were invading New York City, and talking about the loss of political power from the traditional ethnic groups that controlled the city, the Italians, the Irish, the Jews.There was this ethnic battle going on.And it was being touted on talk radio precursor of the right wing media that was to come in later decades.
And so for Trump, he sees that he needs to work the Democrats to get things done in New York.He sees that there are inherently conservative ideas that are driving white ethnics in the city.And he wants to try to find a way to marry those.So he gives money to both parties.He enrolls as a Democrat, then switches to Republican, back to Democrat, seven times he changes his party registration.
As he's thinking more and more about politics, and going into politics himself, party has nothing to do with it.He realizes that he wants to make this kind of blue collar connection, an Archie Bunker kind of connection with people.And he doesn't really care about party politics.He believes that personal brand transcends organizations and parties and those kinds of political traditions.And so, decades ahead of his time, he understands that personal branding is going to be his path to power.And that becoming part of a party, and becoming part of a philosophy or ideology, is almost irrelevant.
I guess this raises the big question.I think he's first asked about whether he'd run for President in 1980.But he keeps coming back.I mean, why?Why real estate developer, branding—But what draws him?What makes him want to be in the political arena?It would seem like, at that point, he only has things to lose, right, as a branding person?What is it that draws him to politics?
I think for Trump, the political arena is the ultimate in power.As a real estate developer, he can make things appear on the skyline.He can change people's lives, give them housing.But this is small scale.And his fame, and his power, were limited primarily to New York.It was only after he was on national TV, it was only after The Apprentice, that he saw that he could take that fame nationwide.And if he could take that fame nationwide, what bigger stage was there to play on, than the presidency?
The idea of political power had been there from the start, from hanging out with his father, from going around to the political clubs, from working the system to win the breaks that would allow them to build buildings cheaper and faster.So he understood that politicians controlled a lot of important authority.
But for Donald Trump, the real lure was power, the idea that he's in charge, that he can make things happen on a grand scale.And so he had spent the first decades of his career building this personal grand scale, the gold plating of everything in his apartment, the covers of Vanity Fair, the constant back-and-forth soap opera of his love life in the New York Post or the New York Daily News.But these were small victories on the way to this larger goal of actually running everything.
There was this notion that he had, from early on, that Trump was more than a real estate brand, it was an empire.It was golf clubs.It was water.It was steaks.It was wines.It was all the different products that he sold at various points in his career.It was hotels and casinos.But all of that seemed, in the long run to him, as small stuff.The ultimate stage to play on was the presidency.And he never had—He was asked to run perhaps for New York governor, never had any interest in any interim steps.It was all or nothing.The big one or forget about it.
And so from the very beginning, he was putting out some smoke signals that, yeah, sure, he might be interested in the presidency.At various points, he would coyly deny it.But at various points, he would test it out.He would go with his pal, Roger Stone, to test the waters in New Hampshire.He would join the Reform Party, a third party, as a possibility of taking that personal brand, and turning it into a presidential run without dealing with the Republicans or the Democrats.He was trying out various ways, various aspects of politics, over the course of many years, really playing a long game.But it wasn't a true realistic possibility until the fame of The Apprentice.
… But then, there's the moment of collapse, of bankruptcy, of things falling apart.What is it that leads him to that moment?And whatever flaws lead to that, are those things that you see with him later, that you can see with him as president or a candidate now?
Donald Trump's great instinctive and learned skills are centered around marketing.They're centered around presentation and performance.How he presents himself on TV, how he presents himself as a celebrity character, working, going on the Howard Stern Show dozens of times over the years, going on David Letterman Show, having his own show on NBC.All of this was what he truly knew and understood and loved.
In order to present himself as a grand success, he had to have all these businesses as well.The businesses never really did that well.He was a failure again and again and again.Whether it was with his casino hotels in New Jersey, whether it was with the Plaza Hotel in New York, one project after another would end in failure.Six bankruptcies.Stiffing contractors left and right.Vendors suing him again and again.It is a litany of failure.
And yet, his marketing genius allowed him to present himself as a tremendous success.He spent endless hours on the phone with the young reporters at Forbes Magazine, who put together the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in america.The numbers, the publicly available numbers said Trump didn't belong on the list.But Trump worked these young reporters again and again and again, making up numbers, making up successes, and persuading them that his properties were worth more than they really were.That his reputation had an enormous financial value that should be credited to his overall wealth.
And so he was successful at marketing himself as an extremely rich person.He was rich.But he was never that rich.And he had a long streak of failures that carried him through decades.He would counter those with small successes that were primarily PR successes.So when New York City had an ice rink in Central Park that was falling apart, losing money, the city tried, again and again, to fix it.They kept failing.It became an embarrassment, a joke.Donald Trump stepped in and said, “I'll fix it for free.”He became a folk hero in the city, and he got the job done.It wasn't a big job, didn't involve a lot of complex work.But he got the job done, and was able to claim it a success way beyond the scope of what he'd actually done.
And that was his genius.He parlayed the small success of fixing an ice rink into the enormous success of being a municipal savior.Someone who could get the job done, get things fixed, in a way that the politicians never could.
I mean is this translated to Donald Trump the politician?
Yep.
It's not about what you have, it's about how you sell it?
Right.
What does he take from that?
Trump knew, from the start, that if you could get people to believe that you were a success, you were a success.If you could get people to believe that you had fixed things, you had fixed them, even if you had done nothing.So he was able to make promises, from the very start of his jump into the presidential arena, “I'm going to build a wall.I'm going to fix immigration.”Never did any of these things.And yet, many of his followers came to believe that he'd made real progress, because he had said he was going to, because he made a show of starting things off, going to the border, standing in front of various pieces of a potential wall.All of these kinds of PR shows translated into the minds of many of his followers, as real accomplishments.He understood this as, because [he] had spent 40 years doing it, to make his business a successful brand.
So his suits business, his steaks business, his water business, all of these ultimately were failures.And yet, people came to think of Trump as a paragon of luxury goods of all kinds.And this was something that he had worked on for decades.When it came to implementing that in the political arena, it was second nature by that time.
The Apprentice
What is it about Trump that he would have that success at The Apprentice, that he'd be willing to seemingly risk it?Was he not satisfied with being a reality TV star?What is it?
Donald Trump probably loved being a reality TV star more than anything, other role that he's played in all of his varied career.He has—This was the ultimate success for him.He was on national television.He was a star.He was someone who was—he was—Everyone from Hollywood to New York to Washington, everyone wanted him.They wanted him at the White House Correspondents Dinner.They wanted him on the Letterman Show.Being the host of The Apprentice gave Trump an entree to a world of celebrity well beyond anything he had achieved before.And it gave him an ability to hone his image, so he could put his business failures behind him, and say, “Look. I'm the ultimate business success.I am the ultimate arbiter of what works in business.I'm the ultimate arbiter of who deserves success in America.And I'm funny, I'm entertaining.You never know what I'm going to say next.I'm willing to say things that no one else will say.”
All of that came together to create a character that was attractive, not just to affluent people who might be able to afford a Trump apartment someday, but far more important, and far larger numbers, to every man and woman out there, who just had the ambition, the aspiration, to be successful, to maybe run a small business, to maybe get away from a paycheck, and move towards some entrepreneurship of their own.
Donald Trump, for them, became a model, not because they thought they could become Trump, but because Trump was someone who was—had the almost Wizard of Oz-like ability to bestow the success on ordinary people, the regular people who came before him in The Apprentice.And so the idea of Trump as someone who could spread success to others, who understood the little guy, that is the essence of the character he played on The Apprentice, and as always in his life, he adopted these characters that he had created, and made them himself.
And so he began to think of himself in that same way, as he made the transition into the political arena.That kind of national celebrity, national appeal, could only, in his mind, have led to the presidency, because it was so big.And the idea, for Trump, was always be ratcheting things up.Always move toward a bigger stage.And there was nothing bigger than the White House.It was simply the next place to go.
Birtherism and the Draw to Conspiracy Theories
So why, in that position though, pick—as his coming out on the national stage—what's described as a racist conspiracy theory about the first Black president of the United States.Why?Because it seems risky.But what is it about his past?What is it about Donald Trump that would make him attach on that as the thing that he was going to use to really break through?
The birther movement, and the birther notion, for Trump, was a combination of two very important strains of thought and direction in his life.One is the idea that the powers that be are lined up against you.That the establishment is never going to let you get where you want to go.That there are these structural blockades in American society that will prevent you from the success that you truly want and deserve.
And so the birther notion, the classic conspiracy theory, was one of these cases where Trump could say, “Hey look.This is the power, the presidency, the first Black president is scamming you.He's part of this bigger political scam that is designed to keep the little people down and allow these elites to succeed.”And Obama, with his Ivy League background, his appeal to the Hollywood elites, Obama could fairly easily be painted as someone who had this sort of elite backers.And Trump sensed that, and sensed that he could juxtapose himself against that, as the more blue collar kind of guy, against this more elite-seeming president.
The second stream of thought that is consistent through Trump's life is one of racial derision, one of going back to his childhood, making fun of Blacks, enjoying the comedy of insult comedians, and in New York City, taking the side of the folks who wanted the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the five young Black men who were accused and convicted, as we eventually learned wrongly, of a vicious attack in Central Park. …
And he had this instinctive belief that there was an enormous part of the public that had great resentments, that the system was rigged for Blacks, that the system was rigged for poor people, or people on welfare, or immigrants.All of these groups who they could look down upon, and yet also resent for the benefits that they were purportedly getting from the government.
And so Trump took that populist notion, that you know, people beneath us are getting these special benefits.And combined it with that other notion that the elites are lined up against us, and preventing us from getting where we want to go.He married those in the birther notion, which obviously he knew that it wasn't true.But that didn't matter to him.That never matters to him.If he thinks he can enhance the brand, build resentment, build this sort of emotional dependence on Trump, as the truth-teller, as the one who's going to get out there and say the things that no one else can say, both the Central Park Five and the birther issue, gave Trump that ability, allowed him to present himself as the one, the only one who's going to tell you the truth.
And I think it's useful to think about the conspiracy theories, as their own thing.I mean, and is he—and maybe Roger Stone is going on Alex Jones, who is there for the rigged election.I mean, are they innovators in American politics, and understanding the power of conspiracy theories, and tapping into that?
No.They're picking up — in Roger Stone's case, quite consciously, and in Donald Trump's case, blundering into it, and just sort of instinctively getting it — but they're both picking up on a long, really centuries-long history in American politics, of a periodic movements toward adopting conspiracy theories.And this goes back to the founding of the nation.And we see it with the Know Nothings in the 19th century.We see it with the all sorts of racial politics in the 20th century.There's a periodic resort in American politics to the idea that there are great powers, whether they be political, financial, both, that are controlling our lives, that are preventing people from achieving their dreams and their hopes.And that they are to blame for economic and other ills in society.
And so Trump instinctively gets this, because he grew up believing this about New York City, about the powers that controlled the city's politics, that made life more difficult for his family business, that brought about the ethnic rivalries and tensions in the city.And so, this is part of what Trump has always believed.It's part of what he's always seen as a road to success.Ride those resentments all the way through, from his childhood all the way to the presidency.It was a way of connecting with people emotionally, and of presenting himself as a kind of savior.
That gets to the point where we can ask how to pull some of these things through, which is, as he comes down the escalator in 2015, as he becomes a politician, should anybody have been surprised by the appeal that he was making to voters, by the success that he had, if you had seen his life starting up with growing up in the outer boroughs, and moving to Manhattan, and watching his rise?
The more you look at Donald Trump's life, the more you learn about the way he's run his campaigns, his businesses, his family affairs, the more you see a remarkable consistency, and a remarkable predictability.It's a paradox.On the one hand, his whole public identity is based on the idea that he has to keep coming up with new outrages, new ways of bucking the system, new ways of attacking the elites and the powers that be.
At the same time, he's remarkably predictable in both the fact that he's doing that, and the ways in which he does that.The targets he picks to go after, consistent all the way through.The methods that he chooses, working the media, taking on new technologies, and working those as well.Selling his own brand and his own products at every stage, to enhance his personal role and brand.Does that all the way through.
So there's this amazing consistency to his tactics and to his goals, all the way through his career and life, even as he's constantly coming up with new ways to make those sales, and to draw people closer to him, and to make them believe that he is this savior.
Trump Doesn’t Change and Base Remains Loyal
I mean many of the political experts wrote off Trump after Access Hollywood.And yet he goes on to succeed, having followed that strategy.Does that change Trump?Does his invincibility in that moment shape who he will be as a president or his approach to things?
No.Trump doesn't change.One of the core truths about Donald Trump is the Donald Trump of today is the Donald Trump of the 1990s, is the Donald Trump of the 1970s.His own relatives talk about him, as a child, having exactly the same approach that he does as president, that he does as an adult.The consistency is remarkable.So when Access Hollywood happens, when a lot of the political pundits say, “This is the end of the road.This is, he's gone too far,” all Trump has to do is what he's always done.All Trump has to do is what he said years before, when he said that he could go out and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and his followers would not only not mind, they would be deepened in their support for him.
And so, there is, from the Fifth Avenue comment, to the Access Hollywood moment, to the 91 felonies, there's the same reaction, the same certainty that Trump has, that he can and will prevail, because the system coming at him is simply further proof, deeper proof of everything he's said about the conspiracies.It's proof that the powers that be can't countenance a powerful Donald Trump.That they're afraid of him.That they don't want him fighting for the little guy.
And so, every time people try to hold him to account, every time people try to impose consequences on him, that deepens the support that he gets from his base.Because they see him under attack, it reminds them of their sense of being under attack by the system.And so they see in him a hero, someone who will stand up for them by standing up for himself.The narcissism ends up being a benefit for him.It ends up enhancing his populist appeal, because it says to the public, “This guy is taking the arrows for you.And when he stands up for himself, he's fighting for you.”
Trump as President
I mean you've described him as great at branding, great at building his image, great at that side of things.Not so great at the business side of things.And how do you see that play out as he becomes president of the United States, and the campaign is over?How does he adjust to that role?
Donald Trump tried to run the presidency as he had run his business for all those decades.It's what he knew.It's what he knew how to do.And so he never read the documents.He never bothered to learn the details of how the government actually functions.He was constantly being surprised when he was stymied in one initiative or another.He was constantly surprised that he couldn't get things done by fiat, simply by saying, “We will now do this.”
He continued to say those things, because it maintained his base of support for him.He continued to say, “We're building the wall.”Or, “The wall is almost done.”And whether it had any connection to the truth or not was immaterial to him.But he was frustrated, constantly, in the presidency, by his inability to get things done simply because he said so, stop the Muslims from immigrating, close the border.Didn't happen, because that's not how government works.
And so, he was missing the central power and capacity of the presidency, which is the power of persuasion.Donald Trump never, during the initial campaign, or as president, sought to build the coalitions.He never reached out to the center.He never reached out to the folks from the other party.He always catered to his base, because he saw that as the way to get elected, and then reelected.But he never did what presidents do to get things done, which is to build coalitions across party lines, across ideological lines, across class lines.For Trump, that was simply not a tool that he had, and not something that he believed was necessary.
So you see a pattern in which he continues to win the rhetorical war among his followers, and yet the on-the-ground accomplishments are not always there.He did bring in people who got some stuff done, the Middle East deal, the rapprochement with North Korea.But what actually came of these things?Well, that's debatable.But what's consistent through all of his successes and failures as president, is that he tried to get things done the way he always had, by personal fiat.“I'm going to go meet with the North Korean dictator.I'm going to send my son-in-law to work out the deal in the Middle East.”It was always the Trump tradition: end runs around the system.And sometimes that works, especially rhetorically.But most of the time, given the nature of government, given the sprawling structures of government, it didn't work.And it led to enormous frustration on his part.
Trump’s Response to Charlottesville
I mean, that first year, it seems like there's a lot of frustration over Obamacare.Then the Charlottesville moment happens.And that's the moment we remember from the first part of his presidency.I mean, is it a turning point in his presidency?How do you see his response to Charlottesville?
I see Charlottesville as very much of a piece with his venture on the Central Park Five, or his lunge into the birtherism nonsense about Obama.It's a way of using race to cement his relationship with his base, to present the idea that Trump is fearless, that Trump is someone who's going to say the things that cannot be said about race, about all the other touchy issues in society.And he pushes into these things, knowing there will be fierce blowback from the other side.And not only saying that's okay, but saying, “Bring it.Because that fierce blowback will redound to my benefit as leader of the MAGA movement.”
Now, it obviously damages any ability he might have to bring people together as president.And so, it diminishes his presidential power, even as it enhances his control over his base, and over the Republican party, which increasingly has to become Trump-like in its rhetoric and its agenda, because that's where their voters are at that moment.And that's where he's leading them, always cementing this notion that Trump, the truth-teller, is going to be the one you can trust.Whereas, these run-of-the-mill politicians are never trustworthy.
The Final Year of Trump’s Presidency
… That he's acquitted in the first impeachment.And, as he goes into 2020, there's a sense of being unshackled, of not worrying about impeachment, a feeling he has.Do you think that's true?Do you think that there's something different about the last year of his Presidency?
I think, as it became clear to him that he might lose in the second election, there was a desperation that crept into his rhetoric and actions.But the behavior, overall, was quite consistent and predictable, in that Trump was being Trump.And he was reacting to adversity by doubling down, by fighting back, by attacking, attacking, attacking.So these, the rules of Trump are unchanging.And the rhetoric in the moment changes.The willingness to adopt conspiracy notions has to always be enhanced.
Once you are buying into the idea of winning support by backing conspiracy notions, you can't roll that back without disappointing people.You have to keep ratcheting it up.And so the rhetoric gets wilder.And the adoption of lies gets more intense.But the ultimate strategy behind it is unchanged.
And with COVID, which is an example of a real crisis, maybe the first crisis, this guy, who you said was not detailed, not reading the briefing reports about the branding, I mean what is it?How do you see it play out?And what is it like in a moment of crisis, the consequences of the man you're describing?
For Trump, COVID, or any crisis that must be dealt with, that you can't put aside or blame on someone else, is a challenge to the way he operates.And so, perhaps thrown off guard at first, he immediately turned to what he knew best, which is the rules of Trump, the way he's always done business.So he puts himself at the center, daily briefings, daily images of him meeting with his advisors, one announcement after another with Trump as the doctor-in-chief of the country.But then, that doesn't have much of an effect.And the disease, which he promised would simply go away in a matter of days, turns out to be worse and worse.The pandemic spreads.And so Trump pulls back, says, “I don't see a win here.”And so he puts his advisors out front.And he withdraws and says, “This will just go away.”
And so, for Trump, COVID was yet another business failure, in that he failed to get a handle on things.And yet, he put himself out there as the hero, especially when he got COVID himself.And he defies his doctors, and continues working for the American people.And he holds a big event with lots of people without masks on.And he, you know, he's clearly physically suffering, and yet he's going to be the one who's strong and out there for you.
So he resorts to what he's always known will work, which is get Trump the brand out there.Find a way to personalize this.Find a way to make this yet another example of Trump fighting for the little guy.
And was his response with Black Lives Matter, and to George Floyd … I mean is he seeing it as a threat to him personally?Is he drawing on what he picked up in the '70s and '80s? ...
Trump at bottom believes that he is not racist.And yet there's a lifelong history of taking advantage of public events to make Blacks look bad, or to turn public opinion against Blacks, or to take advantage of what he believes is a bedrock racism that many Americans have.And so, as much as he rails against the idea that there is structural or systemic racism in America, a lot of his political decisions are based on the idea that there is.And that he can tap into it.
And so, he does tap into it, in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, just as he did with Charlottesville, just as he did with the Central Park Five.In every instance, he is taking advantage of a moment that some people see as an outrageous expression of American racism, but that he believes his base sees as an example of putting too much attention, too much concern on the plight of Black Americans. And instead, here is Trump presenting himself as someone who is going to be the truth-teller, who is going to say that the Black Lives Matter Movement is undermining the ability of the police to do their job.He's someone who's going to go out there and defend the police, defend law and order, stand up to people who are burning the cities, and so on.
So it's a very consistent message.It's a very consistent series of decisions about how to appeal to that base that looks at these kinds of events and says—and has a sense of racial resentment about it.And he strongly feels that, believes that, and is willing to use that in a more overt way than most traditional politicians would ever dream of doing.
He's been living it his whole life.
He's been living it his whole life.He believes it.As a kid in New York he believed that these were the problems, and that they required straight talk.And he has seen, throughout his life, that people rally to him when he is straightforward about those beliefs.And in his limited goal of cementing and appealing to his base, it works.Where it doesn't work is on appealing to the rest of the country, the majority of the country, that has serious misgivings about Trump's approach to these issues.And yet he believes that if he can hold his base together, and satisfy them, their enthusiasm, and their devotion will outweigh the outrage that others might feel.
Trump’s Response to Losing the 2020 Election
After he loses the election, even his closest family members, advisors think he's going to give up.He's going to concede to reality.He's not going to keep fighting.He's not going to push things over the edge at some point.He's going to back off.And yet, as we know, it leads to Jan. 6, to the lies and the run-up to Jan. 6, to feeding it, to his actions on that day.What was it about his life, when you look back on it, that leads to the response that he has to losing the election, and to threatening American democracy?
Donald Trump is simply being consistent.He's simply being what he's always been.He's always believed that what the rest of the world sees as a loss can be marketed as a win.He's always believed that when bad things happen, you fight back, you attack, attack, attack.He is being remarkably consistent.
What's amazing is that people expected otherwise.Even the people around him expected otherwise.They thought he would just calmly go away.There's nothing in his background that should make us believe that he would do that.He has always said that the version of truth that he believes is what he will present, and is therefore what's true.And he has a remarkable ability to stay in the moment.When you talk to him about his past, he seems almost bewildered.“Why are you asking me about these things?”When you talk to him about the consequences, ramifications of things he's done in the future, he seems unable to process that.
He's in the moment.In the moment, he is told he has lost an election.He doesn't believe it, because he doesn't want it to be true.And therefore, he will take to heart and act upon any shred of evidence, no matter how absurd, that says, “No, you have won.And you can make this a victory.”And so he pushes and pushes in that direction.He has remarkable staying power.We've all seen that.It shouldn't be a surprise to us that he would stick with it like this.He learned that at the earliest possible age.And he's never acted otherwise.
Americans have an almost naive innocent belief that our rogues can be turned into upstanding citizens.And Donald Trump has always fed that belief.In the 2016 campaign, he kept talking, he told me on several occasions that if he was elected, he would immediately pivot to become more presidential.Well obviously, he wasn't going to become more presidential.He was going to be who he's always been.But he made that promise.
And similarly, after he was elected, he told interviewer after interviewer, that if he lost the election, he would simply go away.That he would accept the results of the election.But of course he wasn't going to do that if he lost.There's nothing in his past that would indicate that he would.It's just like, in the '60s and '70s, there was this idea of a new Nixon, the idea that Nixon would suddenly reform all of his dirty trickster instincts, and become a statesman.Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.And same with Trump.His philosophy is his philosophy.His personality is his personality.It was foolish to ever believe that it could be otherwise.
… What is it about Trump that, on that day, of Jan. 6, he can sit there, he can say, “Mike Pence deserves it.”He can, you know, resist his aides telling him that he should intervene.
At no point during his presidency did Trump fully trust in his closest advisors at the White House.One of his great abiding frustrations about being president was that he didn't have people of the ilk of Roy Cohn and Roger Stone in there, in the Oval Office, with him.It was only in those last days, when people like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell came along, telling him what he wanted to hear, that he could adopt all of these absurd positions that were counter-factual, about how the election had been run, and ride that into some possible victory.
So of course Trump was going to attack those around him.He never trusted fully in them in the first place.Of course, he was going to cast them aside, and throw Pence to the wind.Because Pence was never someone who was, in Trump's mind, fully for Trump.The Trump Organization, going back through all the decades, was remarkably small.He went up to those offices and expected to see lots of offices, and cubicles, and all of that.No, it's tiny.It's a handful of people.And because it was run as a family business, and those were the people he could truly trust, he had literally a handful, maybe not even, of executives who had been with him for 30-40 years.He knew he could trust them.They knew how he operated.They knew what kind of rages he would go into.Everything was above-board and operated in the way he wanted.
He goes to the White House, and that's gone.He doesn't have that anymore.And so, when things blow up, and he loses the election, and Jan. 6 happens, he's—he doesn't trust these people.He's not going to go—He's not going to damage his own prospects for them.He's not going to stick with them.He wants their loyalty.And when he doesn't get it, when they say, “Hey, Mr. President, face reality here,” he doesn't want to hear that.He doesn't want that from the people around him.And so, he wants new people around him.
And then in the face of violence, he's comfortable with that.
I mean, so the idea that he would rally a crowd toward an insurrection, obviously it's extreme.And rules of Trump require that the bar always be raised.And so each action has to be more outrageous than what came before it.So that's logical.And even the resort to violence didn't come out of the blue.He very much seemed unbothered by the violence at Charlottesville.He put on a big show of force when he walked across Lafayette Park to stand in front of the church, with National Guardsmen all around him.He very much has always liked the idea of being surrounded by the military.He sought to turn the inaugural parade into a military parade.And so these kinds of shows of force are very much a part of how he defines power, and how he wants to display power.So it's not that big a step beyond to unleash the forces of Jan. 6.
Who's the Donald Trump who doesn't want to lose, doesn't want to leave office, but is forced out, who goes to Mar-a-Lago, who then faces a decision about what he's going to do with his life, who he is going to be?Who is that Donald Trump?
Trump once told me, in one of our early interviews, that he really hasn't changed in any elemental way since he was seven years old.And for a man who doesn't put a lot of energy into developing self insight, this was quite remarkable.And so seven-year-old Donald Trump could be a bully.There are numerous examples of that, in school, among his friends.But he was also someone who did what his parents told him to, and especially was devoted to his mother.
And there is ultimately, as there is with many bullies, someone who wants to be liked, and wants to get along, and is therefore willing to follow authority, in fact wants authority.And so, from an early age, whether it was in military school, where he very much adopted one of his teachers and coaches as a role model, a very authoritarian role model, to his relationship with his father, to his relationship with Roy Cohn, Trump has always had the ability, or the need, to have around him people of great authority, who tell him what to do, and he does it.
And so, as much as his public persona is, “I'm the guy in charge, I'm the winner, follow me,” there's also the little boy in there who wants to be told how to make things better.And so in adulthood, he is constantly searching for that.“Where's my Roy Cohn?Where's the one who's going to fix all this?”And he has this series of fixers in his life, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon.And they don't live up to his ideal.But he's searching for that.And he wants to do what he's told if it will get him accepted.
Trump’s 2024 Run
…He's going to run again.I mean, some people say this is vengeance this time.I mean, what is this time?What is this race for Donald Trump?
There is a piece of vengeance in the 2024 candidacy.There is a piece of correcting a wrong.He believes that, even if he didn't win in 2020, he should have.And so he wants to correct that.There's a sense, above all, of not retribution so much as finally being vindicated.And that vindication is what he seeks.I don't think anyone around him would say that he wants to do the job of president for four more years.The actual nitty-gritty of reading policy papers, and signing off on decisions, and so on, he doesn't put in a whole lot of time and energy toward that.But the idea of being president, of being in charge, that is something he relished about the job.And he wants that back.
It's unfathomable that he would simply say, “Okay, I'm leaving as a loser.”That, there's nothing in his life that would allow him to do that.And so, he needs one more victory to vindicate himself, and to be the winner that his father insisted that he be, to be the king that his father insisted that he be.He must live up to that, or he is unfulfilled.
And so, you know, he said, in this campaign, virtually nothing about policy.He's made almost no remarks about how to solve the Middle East war.He's said virtually nothing about how his immigration policy would change in a second term.Because it's not the job he wants, it's the stature, the position, the title, the being there, of the presidency.And above all, the vindication.This is, for Donald Trump, a chance to go out as the winner he must be, and a chance to avoid the loser tag one last big time in his life.
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