The FRONTLINE Interviews
Michael Kruse
Senior Writer, Politico
Michael Kruse is a senior writer at Politico, where he covers the Trump White House. Previously he wrote for the Tampa Bay Times.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk on June 11, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Biden’s Early Political Ambitions
Biden’s story, for the purposes of our film, will, in some way, begin in Wilmington, after law school.We’ll do a backstory section down a little further, when we go back to him as a child.… But for the purposes of just getting started somewhere, let’s start here.
He’s back to burned-out Wilmington.There's been a civil rights struggle.That’s been ongoing in his life.He worked as a lifeguard for a while, saying that he needed to be in a Black neighborhood to gather experiences, or just have a job.What do you think that was about? …
Coming out of law school, a young Joe Biden clearly was ambitious politically.He was going into the field of law, but also understood that he was going to have to have experiences and create relationships that would allow him to run for office and run for office very early, which clearly he wanted to do.I think the reason he talked so much at this point, or talked as much as he does at this point about that experience as a lifeguard is that it is a useful place to start what he would like to be seen as his relationship as a civil rights—maybe not an activist.He’s never called himself an activist.He’s gone through great pains at some times to call himself the opposite of an activist, but somebody who was aware of civil rights realities, the realities of bias, racial bias that were still obviously front of mind at that time, as they are now again, and as always.
But it allows him to start that clock, that racial justice clock at this point, very early on, you know, and allows him to, frankly, set the terms of the conversation in a way that is more advantageous to him, perhaps, than some of the other signposts along the way in his long and somewhat mixed relationship when it comes to civil rights and racial justice.
It’s the time in America where not only was there civil rights unrest, but the Vietnam War was, you know, heating up.You kind of had to make decisions about who you were and what you did.But Joe, the personal side of Joe, as you say, was a political orientation.It was to build a family, and to get a job as a lawyer.He was not off—he was not at Woodstock, nor was he at Selma.He was not one of those [kinds] of people at that time.What were his politics as he starts, as he launches his political career?
I would say he was then, as he is now, fairly ideologically malleable.He is a person who, for better or for worse—and different people have different opinions about this—but from the get-go, was able to and was intent on reading the political currents, the sociopolitical currents of a particular time, particular election cycle, and positioning himself accordingly.In the late ’60s and early ’70s, particularly into the early ’70s, when he started running for, first, Newcastle County Council, and then, of course, U.S. Senate at all of 29 years old, he is operating in an interesting political terrain in Delaware—more liberal sensibilities in the northern portion of the state and much more conservative sensibilities in the more rural, southern portion of the state.
So he, right out of the gate in Delaware, needs to find a way to be OK enough with both pieces of his state.This came, and this showed itself in a variety of different ways there early on.He is environmentally conscious pretty early on, nodding to the more—his more liberal potential constituents’ wants and needs.But he also has a certain way of talking about, quote/unquote, “law and order,” to use a similar charged term, to be OK enough with those folks in the southern portion of the state.
So right away, he understands, and he must consistently toggle back and forth and find some kind of nebulous center space to be palatable to the voters of Delaware, particularly at that time, as the country was grappling with who it was and who it wanted to be in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Biden’s First Senate Run
How formidable was his challenge of Sen. Boggs?How unlikely was his victory?
His victory was highly unlikely.I think there is a temptation to look back at this point at his first race for the Senate and see reasons that he was able to pull off the upset he did.But at the time, it was a monumental upset.Caleb Boggs was the incumbent, not only an incumbent, but somebody thought to be essentially invulnerable to a challenge.He was going to be a senator in Delaware for as long as he wanted to be.
And that’s key—as long as he wanted to be—because at the time, he was starting to, almost by his own admission, become a little bit tired of having to run again.He essentially did not campaign for the longest period of time in that election cycle, seeing Joe Biden as essentially a minimal threat, if not a non-threat.And that wasn’t crazy for him to think that way.Joe Biden was not yet 30 years old.He was a one-term county councilman, known mostly, if he was known at all in Delaware, as a young attorney and family man.So what threat did he pose to a longtime, entrenched senator?
Also, the politics of Delaware at the time.Politics in Delaware, just like the politics in the country, are in a state of flux in 1972.Obviously, the president is Richard Nixon, but we haven't totally gotten into the phase of Watergate.So it’s a tough cycle for Joe Biden to be running in.At the top of that ticket, with a D next to his name, is George McGovern.There is—there are little reason—there are very few reasons to think that Joe Biden at 29 years old could have or would have beaten Cale Boggs.
It took a confluence of unlikely factors to make Joe Biden known as sort of a youthful family man with a sort of rhetorical flourish, to be able to win in that—in that cycle. …
Biden’s Family Tragedy
He’s down in Washington measuring the curtains and picking staff when his sister, Val, gets a phone call.… Tell me the story of Neilia and their daughter’s death, and the two boys’ injuries.
So his first wife, Neilia Biden, he met her on a beach in spring break in college.They fell, within days, madly in love.He drove from his home in Delaware to her home in upstate New York most weekends.A love story.They have three perfect children in rapid succession.Joe Biden is an attorney who gets elected to the County Council [and] two years later gets elected, however improbably, to the United States Senate.It is a string of sort of a fairy book storyline.It is a fairy book storyline to that point, his life.
And he thinks to himself, in the wake of his victory, that this is simply too perfect; something bad is going to happen.And of course something not only bad, but unthinkably terrible, unimaginably awful, is what happened.His wife, with his baby daughter and his two young sons, are off to get a Christmas tree.He is down in Washington, setting things up, working to transition into his role in the Senate.And she pulls out in the family’s Chevrolet station wagon in front of a truck carrying corncobs, coming down a long hill in what was then fairly rural Delaware.
She is killed.Their young daughter is killed, his two sons grievously injured, although, of course, were able to recover, but a blow to a still very young man who was on top of the world that is, I think for most of us, unimaginable.We don’t know how we would respond to that, to something like that, because we don’t really want to know.We don’t want to think about having to bear that, and find a way to carry on, and to go on with the mere act of living.
He, of course, has been very upfront about this ever since, moments along the way, about how he confronted the reality at the time, that suicide was not an irrational act for certain people in certain circumstances.It was a totally, horribly rational decision to make a decision to stop the amount of pain that most of us cannot imagine.And to have that happen in the immediate aftermath of this amazing high of being elected to the Senate at such a young age, and to have your wife and your daughter ripped away from you in that way, I think in many respects, has informed the rest of Joe Biden’s life and political existence as well.
In what way, Michael?
In a few ways.It made him not only known in Delaware in a way that he hadn't been up until that point, but it made him—it made his relationship with the people of Delaware different than I think it would have been.It’s impossible to say that for sure, but I think it’s fair to say that, in the aftermath of that tragedy, his relationship with Delaware and the people of Delaware and vice versa changed in this foundational way.They saw him as one of their own.They took him in, and he—and vice versa.He developed a bond that could only, I think, come from something like that with the people of Delaware.
It also contributed to a certain empathy that he has for people who suffer losses like that or anything approaching like that.I feel like his empathy that came from that event—not only from that event, but was made all the more real by that event—is and has been ever since his number one political talent.And it feels a little strange to put it into sort of starkly political terms, because, of course, first and foremost, it’s a—it’s—it’s a personal loss and a personal trait.
But throughout his political life, spanning half a century, his ability to listen to people who need to be listened to, his ability to hear people who are suffering a loss, whether it’s a lost job or a loss of a loved one, is something that has I think distinguished himself—is something that has distinguished him from other politicians.And so something he gained through such a profound loss I think since then has been his greatest strength as a politician.
Biden’s 1987 Presidential Bid
Let’s jump to ’87.So he’s been in 15 years or so.Who is he in ’87, right before he decides to run for president, and has all the things happen to him that are going to happen to him in that dreadful year?Who is Joe Biden, that senator, at that time, ready to go as a presidential candidate?
Still a young man in 1987.Still possesses the ability.He still possessed, at that time, the ability to run as a fresh face, even though he had been on Capitol Hill and in the United States Senate for a decade and a half.Running for president is something he has thought about for most of his life, since he was a boy, certainly since he was a teen and a college student.The minute he was elected to the Senate, he has thought about the possibility of running for president.He was involved with Jimmy Carter’s campaign in ’76.He thought about it throughout the ’80s.And by the time the 1988 cycle came around, by the time 1987 came around for him, he was ready to go.
He was in the Senate somewhat senior, even though he was still a relatively young man, certainly by the standards of the Senate.He was the chair of the Judiciary Committee, high-profile role, no small amount of power.He was in a good spot to mount a run coming off of two terms of Ronald Reagan.It was a good time, even though he had thought about running before, including in 1984, 1988, that cycle was a good time for a still young Joe Biden to make his first run for the White House.
… Take me to the plagiarism story, the Neil Kinnock story, and maybe in the background hovers the way that Joe Biden’s bad luck, in some ways, continues in the sense that he gets tagged with something that maybe he wouldn’t have been 10 years before.
Yeah.On the topic of luck, before it gets to Neil Kinnock, his longtime friend and adviser Ted Kaufman has said the luckiest person he knows is Joe Biden and also the unluckiest person he knows is Joe Biden.
…He had been incorporating these lines from Neil Kinnock at various stages throughout the campaign to this point.There is one instance in which he did not credit him.
… And then he was hit, of course, by this plagiarism scandal.And whether or not it was plagiarism is, of course, up for debate, and we’ve talked about it a lot in the subsequent decades.But he did not credit Neil Kinnock the way he should have.And the slow dribble of this, including some well-placed oppo from another presidential campaign, created a sort of snowball effect that got him into some real trouble, and as it turned out some fatal trouble for his presidential bid that year.
It coincided, and in some indirect ways, if not direct, led to additional story—an additional story about a lack of proper citation of a paper in law school.So these two stories together—did not credit Neil Kinnock in a rousing line of political oration and also did not appropriately cite a source in a law school paper—contributed to what, until then, had not been a narrative about Joe Biden, which was, you know, at best, somebody who was a little bit lazy and flippant with his work habits and at worst, a cheater and a plagiarist.
And the combination of these two stories, and at that time, amounted to a death knell for a somewhat promising Joe Biden presidential bid.And this was—he didn’t even get to 1988.He didn’t even get to the voting, to the caucusing in Iowa.He was out when he was out.And his—his dreams of being president, at least at that time, were, at the very least, put on hold.Of course in his mind, at that time, was a question: Would he ever be able to have another chance, or would this stain him in some if not permanent way, in a way that would make it harder for him to be a credible presidential candidate, a credible contender at any point in the future?
The Bork Hearings
We watch him in the Bork hearings.… It is the biggest nationally televised hearing since Watergate, from the same room.And there he is, right?Does it help propel him into whatever else happens with him in the Senate?
In some sense, what could have been a real boon to his presidential candidacy instead turned out to be the beginning of his rehabilitation, his reputation as a serious politician, because up until that point in time, people wondered.Some would say they still wonder.But up until that point in time, people wondered how much substance there was to Joe Biden, whether—whether he was a smooth talker and a pretty face and a somewhat adept political operator, or was he a man, a senator of substance, a legitimate presidential candidate?
I think what happened because of the Bork hearings, there was—there was a—there was a shift back toward, or really, in a new way, toward somebody of heft in that role, arguably as important as being president; in that role, an incredibly consequential Supreme Court nomination.Will he or won't he?Will Bork be on the Supreme Court for the coming decades, or will he not?Incredibly ideologically fraught situation, considered even in the moment to be of great, great consequence.He rose to the occasion and came out looking better, in some sense, than he might have if he had performed well in Iowa and New Hampshire, if he had not been essentially forced out of the presidential race.
The Clarence Thomas Hearings
… And not very long after that, he will be tested again, sitting in that chair, in the Thomas-Hill hearings, where Joe’s tendency to want to be friends with everybody, to be the ameliorator, to walk the line down the center of the road…—take me there.Where are we now in the arc of Joe Biden’s challenges, obstacles and successes?
By this point, he was deep into his tenure as Judiciary Committee chair.
… The ways in which he benefited from his performance, if you want to use that word, in the Bork hearings were flipped, flipped on their head in the aftermath of the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings.In an effort to be fair to both sides, he, some would argue and have argued ad nauseam ever since, he was not as fair as he should have been to either side.And if nothing else, Joe Biden was the face of that Judiciary Committee.
Joe Biden was the face and the most powerful person of an all-white, all-male panel, and the imagery that the country saw was an utterly out-of-touch at best, insensitive more likely, panel of inquisitors that did not get—did not understand the realities of sexual harassment, did not understand the perspective of not only Anita Hill, but women, both Black and white, all over America.It made him the face of an out-of-touch body and really wounded, at that time, his prospects of a future run for president.He had some work to do coming out of the Anita Hill situation to put himself back into a politically palatable situation.He had some reputational rehab to do, to give him some runway to, at some point in the future, run again.
Biden as Obama’s Vice President
… Let’s go to 2008.He decides to run again.Finally, finally, 20 years later, he can do it again, one more time.And there’s a gaffe about the young African American candidate who’s one of his opponents.But talk about the gaffe, the Obama-Biden relationship, the subsequent relationship. …
It’s interesting, maybe even ironic, that the public beginning of the relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden, in some sense, started with that quote/unquote “gaffe,” in which he described the up-and-coming, promising bright-light presidential candidate Barack Obama as “clean” and “articulate.”This, I think, gets, in retrospect, at the remarkable duality of Joe Biden.He is now, in 2020, both the person who can say that and did say that, and the person who was pretty staunchly anti-busing in the early to mid-1970s, and the person who, for all intents and purposes, was the chief architect of the ’94 crime bill, which led to a heightened prison population of many, many predominantly African American people.
He can be all those things, and at the same time be the vice president to the first Black president in American history, and not only be the vice president to this president, but create, by all accounts, a relationship that was unusual, an uncommonly close relationship between a president and a vice president.
He gave Barack Obama something that he needed, which is to say, an insider’s wherewithal, a certain institutional knowledge and sensibility.Barack Obama, who’d been in Washington for, you know, all of 15 minutes or so when he was elected president, came to rely on and saw the potential in picking Joe Biden, of course, but came to rely on these things that Joe Biden brought to the ticket, and then to, of course, the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration.
But to think that that kind of relationship could be forged between those two men, one of them being the person who had had, up until that point, a somewhat mixed relationship with civil rights, always was an attractive candidate to enough of the Black vote in Delaware but also had all of these things in his long record that clouded his relationship with the causes of the civil rights.
… Like any vice president, he kind of does what he’s pointed to do.But one of the things that he is pointed to do is deal with race on behalf of a Black president who can’t really deal with race in lots of overt ways, and that means he’s good at bringing to the funerals of murdered people, both the cops in New York City and others, his grief-counseling skills, and hard-won grief-counseling skills over a lifetime. …
It’s really interesting, because it’s something that we’re seeing again, of course, right now.One way for Joe Biden to talk in a really meaningful way about issues of racial justice is to talk about them as a grief counselor, as the potential consoler in chief, and at that time, of course, the VP consoler in chief.It neutralizes the racial component to this equation and allows him to lean into his ability to feel people’s pain and to do it in an authentic way.
I’m thinking specifically of Newtown.And this is not necessarily a—stop me if you don’t want this because it’s not about race.But one of the things he was able to do as the vice president, he was able to talk to those parents who had lost young children in Newtown, and talk to them as a person who’d experienced the same thing, who’d experienced the loss of a child.
And having talked to Mark Barden, the father of one of the children killed in Newtown, that was enormously important for him in his ability to handle his own grief.The fact that Joe Biden could come in and do that for him and to have that initial conversation, and many, many subsequent conversations, was incredibly important for Mark Barden, the same way it was important for many people he interacted with in that way, in that capacity, in his time as the vice president.
Biden’s Empathy
… There’s a lot of things about his past that we haven’t talked about, that others will, the family will surely talk about.But making that all part of a long line of how somebody becomes who they are, it seems like you and I may have just missed that sort of origin moment, if in fact you think it’s there.
I do think it’s there, because he’s spoken about it and he’s written about it at various points along his career, the ability to empathize with somebody who is being bullied or made fun of for whatever the case may be, something he feels still, very powerfully, because of his experience as a stutterer as a child and into his teenage years.He has talked frequently about the shame he felt and the anger he felt when his peers made fun of him for his stutter, and even his teachers, the nuns who taught him in some cases.
And so in subsequent years, he overcame that stutter for the most part, and—but has not—but has not lost that lesson, that feeling.And I think it is a real part of who he is.You combine the experience as a stutterer in his early life with his experiences with loss, with his first wife and his daughter, and also later his son, you have somebody who is unusually experienced with feeling sad, angry, put upon, bullied.And only a person like that can experience that and can—only a person who’s been through all of those experiences, I think, can handle these situations in quite the way he has and continues to.
… Beau dies.The memorial service is amazing. … The most amazing thing to me is that he is the one who takes care of others after the service.He’s the one that’s paying close attention.Talk a little bit about Beau’s death, the memorial service if you want to, and Biden in and through all of that, as one more searing experience that he has in this dimension.
It’s hard to imagine a more wrenching thing.A child of yours who survived that first accident, who survived that first tragedy, who, by his own telling, helped Joe Biden survive and carry on, who was there for him, who gave him a reason to continue living, literally, to have him then die, to have Beau Biden die of cancer, cut down at a far too young age, stopping a very promising career of his own—he was the political heir.
To have that happen is, again, an unthinkable second tentpole.It is a—it is the other bracket.It is the other bracket of a life bracketed by tragedies that most of us, most people have not had to endure.At the memorial service, many, many people have said—have said to me in my own reporting that what struck them the most was that they were not the ones pretty quickly comforting Joe Biden.Joe Biden was comforting them.
The ability to do that, a hard-, hard-earned quality and capability, of course, but the ability to do that was striking to the many, many people who were at that memorial service.For Joe Biden, who had just lost his son, to be able to turn around, in some sense, and comfort those who were grieving as he was grieving was quite something to the people who were there.
Biden’s 2020 Presidential Bid
… 2020 comes along.Joe decides to jump in late.But a lot of people think he’s polling pretty high, and he’s maybe the front-runner when Kamala Harris takes him down in that debate.Ironic in lots of ways.She was a friend of Beau’s, and he thinks of himself, I think, as a civil rights advocate.… Talk a little bit about that moment, and welcome to the NFL rookie moment for Joe Biden.
I think that moment fairly early in the primary spoke to what is one of the most difficult aspects of the Biden presidential candidacy at this point, which is to say the sheer fact that he has been in public office for half a century, there is such a long public record, there is so much to work with for anybody who’s trying to find lines of attack.And because of the nature of Joe Biden’s politics, his ability to pivot, for better or for worse, to read moments and to say certain things at certain times and certain things at others, you can do almost anything you want with Joe Biden’s record.And that is a fair shot that Kamala Harris took in that debate.He was not exclusively but pretty primarily anti-busing in the early to mid-70s in Delaware.It didn’t not make political sense for him to be that way at that time in Delaware.It is a long time ago.But Kamala Harris or anybody else can use any wide variety of things to paint Joe Biden as, at the very least, mixed on his record when it comes to race and civil rights. …
Let me ask you about … his age.Those of us who have been watching him for 50 years see the difference in who Joe Biden is now.How do we assess whether Joe … [is mentally fit] ?And what can he do, as he sits in his basement and occasionally comes out, what can he do to satisfy people, because this is obviously going to be an allegation that the incumbent is going to throw his way.
Well, I’ll start by quoting Biden himself: “Watch me.”He has explicitly asked, over and over again, for voters to take stock of his fitness for office.Again, a not clean, somewhat mixed picture.Depends on what you watch and how long you watch and when you watch and who you are and what you want to see.When you go out and watch Joe Biden, first, in the first portion of the campaign out on the trail, and now, of course, more virtually, you see a person who sometimes is not the most concise in his ability to express what he wants to say, is maybe one way to put it.But that has always been the case.Even when he was known as sort of somebody who just will not stop talking, that was the case.
From a fitness standpoint, he looks like what he is, which is a man in his upper 70s.But he also, I think, is quite fit for a man in his upper 70s.I’ve found myself saying to people, if I am as generally as physically fit as Joe Biden, should I be so lucky to get to be that age, I will be a very happy person.I mean, so how do we want to talk about it?It’s harder to gauge now in ways that might be of benefit for him that he is able to campaign physically less.
Trump in 1970s and ‘80s Manhattan
… What was New York in the late ’70s, early ’80s, when Donald Trump arrives, ready to go, ready to become who he becomes?
… New York in the mid- to late ’70s was down and nearly out, looking back.And Donald Trump, young, privileged, operating with family wealth, saw opportunity.Out of that weakness, he saw an ability to present himself, introduce himself to Manhattan, to New York City, as a savior, as a swashbuckling developer-to-be, as a young upstart who wanted to be at the center of the action in Manhattan and who wanted to be at the center of a recovery in New York.
The obstacles he faces?Let’s start with the government of New York.
So the government of New York, at least at the outset of Donald Trump’s public existence, I actually think was not as much an obstacle as the grease, which was in keeping with how his father had operated and how his father had become fabulously wealthy.To take, in Fred Trump’s case, federal funding to create a personal empire of apartment buildings in the outer boroughs, and to create a private fortune that he then passed on to his children, that reality had started to change by the time Donald Trump showed up.Federal dollars were not available to sort of follow in his father’s footsteps, but he did see government as a partner, something to be fought, but something to be worked with to get what he wanted.
And because of the groundwork that his father had laid over the course of decades, creating relationships with the movers and shakers of machine politics in New York, his son was able to tap into those relationships and iron out certain deals, along with, of course, his own brash nature, his own ability to sort of fudge what he had and what he knew and what he needed, this enabled a young Donald Trump to prey, in some sense, on a scared, weakened New York City governmentally, and otherwise, to extract from the municipality tax breaks, to start building his own empire as he wanted it to be seen.
And that started with the Grand Hyatt Hotel, a project in which he changed an aging, decrepit property in midtown Manhattan, into a sort of shiny, glass-covered Grand Hyatt Hotel.It was, up until Trump Tower, really his one significant accomplishment that he could point to, to bolster this storyline, this narrative that he was already creating for himself.He wanted to be seen as the preeminent up-and-coming developer and to be identified with New York City, and Manhattan in particular.
Roy Cohn’s Influence on Trump
To add to the swashbuckling style and even substance, but certainly the appearance, he comes across Roy Cohn.The relationship with Cohn and Trump was what?
Roy Cohn certainly, in the first decade of Donald Trump’s public life, the clock starting in the mid-70s, was certainly then, and arguably is still now, the single most important influence in his life.Roy Cohn taught him things that only Roy Cohn could have—could have taught him.Where to start?
… The fundamental tenet of Roy Cohn’s existence was to attack and to never back down and to never apologize and to never admit wrongdoing; in spite of anything and everything, to put up a front of that nature.And up until the very end, for Roy Cohn, it worked, and Donald Trump saw that.So atmospherically, he picked up so—so many tools that he used, that he has used ever since, that he has used over and over again as president as well.
But Roy Cohn also, because of his unique positioning within New York City at that time, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, was able to pull certain strings, to get tax breaks for Trump in various projects, including Trump Tower.There is no way to overstate the profound influence, in ways both material and personal and dispositional, the profound influence that one of the more notorious characters in American history had on the man who would become the 45th president.
And their personal relationship, I mean, it’s an amazing thing.Cohn is dying, of course, of HIV, and Trump doesn’t visit him, doesn’t go to him, doesn’t empathize with him.In contrast to the guy we just met for an hour and a half, this is a man who approaches the death of a close associate in a much different way.
Well, in some sense, the way that a still young Donald Trump treated a dying Roy Cohn was evidence that he had learned Cohn’s lessons well.Cohn was, if nothing else, transactional, a student of power.He understood what people could give him and how to get them to give that to him, and when they were no longer useful in that regard—there are exceptions.There are exceptions in the life of Roy Cohn, as there are, in some cases, in the life of Donald Trump.But generally speaking, this is a transactional world.This is a “I'm the winner, you’re the loser, and one of us is one thing, and one thing is the other, and there are no ifs, ands, or buts.And for me to win, you need to lose.”
And when Roy Cohn, at the end of his life, in the last year or two, became significantly less useful to Donald Trump, Donald Trump moved on.He started looking for a new Roy Cohn.And to some extent, he’s been looking for a new Roy Cohn ever since, and he hasn’t found one, because there really is and was only one Roy Cohn.
Ivana Trump
Let’s talk about Ivana and what it is about—it’s a section of our film about Trump and women, but Ivana is … a very good example—well, she’s a fascinating window into Donald Trump and women.Talk about the two of them; tell me about her.Talk about what we can learn from what happens across the arc of that relationship.
He needed, in the early—sorry.He needed, as the mid-70s started to shift to the late ’70s, a partner, a prop of sorts, to continue the storyline that he wanted to present, to continue to create the character he wanted to create.She was an attractive, blond, slightly exotic spouse, and she was a partner for his businesses and for the front he wanted to put up in and around the business community and the media community in New York.
She performed that role very, very well, in some sense too well, because when she also started to attract the kind of attention, when she also became, in her own right, a famous figure in New York, it was not just Donald and his wife. She, too, was now a name, a known name, a bold-faced name in the tabloids; and on the—on the pages of the New York City tabloids, their relationship began to fray.We’ve seen it in Trump’s presidency.When aides or right-hand men become too prominent, too out front in their own right, he reacts in ways that sort of shove those figures back down to maintain the role of primacy that he not only seeks, but needs.When he put—sorry.
It’s easy in retrospect to sort of game out what happened here.But Donald Trump put his wife in charge of some of his casinos in Atlantic City, partly to carry on this tag-team effort, but also to get her out of the way a little bit as he started to stray and be unfaithful in his marriage.In the late ’80s, that started to happen, and it blew up, of course, in February of 1990, when the marriage of Donald Trump and Ivana Trump became tabloid fodder, to say the least.
As you were talking, I remembered they’d gotten married at Norman Vincent Peale’s cathedral in New York City.
Right.
Trump and the Power of Positive Thinking
That caused me to remember the role of Norman Vincent Peale and positive thinking for Donald Trump during the ups and downs of building the Commodore and other things throughout his life.Let’s take a small detour just for a moment and go backwards into the building of the Commodore and the idea of the comeback, survival and strength…
The question really is—I’m sorry to go backwards, but I want to get these themes—comeback, strength, survival—back into Manhattan, the Rotten Apple, as he’s trying to build this building, dealing with the government, getting income, kickbacks, …tax abatements and other things.How much of whatever he learned every Sunday or every so often [when] he visited Norman Vincent Peale’s cathedral did Donald Trump draw the Power of Positive Thinking and bring that to the game?
To the extent that Donald Trump has a religion, it is this, Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking.It’s something he was introduced to by his father, who instilled in his ambitious son that there was only one thing to be, and that was to be a winner, a winner at all costs.Norman Vincent Peale appealed to Fred Trump in this way, and it carried on to Fred Trump’s son Donald.
The Power of Positive Thinking from Norman Vincent Peale carried him into how he incorporated the lessons of Roy Cohn.Roy Cohn, in some ways, is a weaponized version of the Power of Positive Thinking: Never accept defeat, and if you are clearly losing, it is just a passing phase on the way to winning again; to never acknowledge that you are down, that you are defeated; to never stop; to just keep going.And, in some ways, that is good, to have this sort of enduringly positive life force, to just not accept that things—that things could be going wrong and that you might have something to do with it.Of course, that can curdle and manifest in ways that are not great.
Trump and Rudy Giuliani
We’ve talked about Ivana.We’ve talked about her getting—being a partner to him, and then he discovers that he doesn’t really want a partner; he wants a symbol of a partner or something.Along the way through New York in this time, he meets up with a guy who also is on the make, a guy who also has political future in mind in some way, and that’s Rudy Giuliani.Give me the parallel structure of Giuliani and Trump to the extent that you know it through those years in Manhattan.
Yeah.This—gosh.I wish I would have reread that Rudy story that I did about a year ago if I had known we were going to talk about him.Let me try to gather my thoughts in this to see what might be helpful in the current context.
For all the—for all the differences between Rudy—
For all the differences between Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump, there is, I think, one main similarity that we can see kind of coming together in 1980s New York: both very talented at using their different perches to make a name for themselves.They both, in the 1980s, thanks to primarily the New York City tabloids, but once it started in the New York City tabloids, it spread, both very, very skilled at making themselves characters and bold-faced names within this nexus of power, of politics, of celebrity, of media.And of course, New York, Manhattan, the national capital of power, the national capital of financial might, the national capital of celebrity, of entertainment.Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump both saw Manhattan as a unique stage on which to create names for themselves, and by creating names, create power.
Trump and the Central Park Five
Bring in the Central Park Five into Donald Trump’s story in New York City, will you, Michael?
In the story of the Central Park Five, and in the charged context, the race-based context of the Central [Park] Five, Donald Trump saw an opportunity to carve out what we now can see as some early signs of a real pillar of his political ambitions and of his political existence, which is to say, when there is division, when there is a fissure, when there is a racial wound reopened, his instinct in that moment was to go right at it and to not try to close it or solve it or soothe it, but to exploit it.
And if nothing else at that time, it made him a champion of a certain kind of New Yorker and a certain kind of American at that time: fearful if not racist, something more toward the end of that spectrum; white, outer-borough sorts; the kinds of people who now are a foundational part of what is his political base.This is not the context in which we saw him operating this way in 1989, but looking back, it is foundational in what we’ve come to understand as Trumpian politics.
Is this a sign that he’s thinking of a political future?
It’s an interesting moment on the timeline, on the Trump timeline.The first time he talked semi-seriously about running for president was in the 1988 cycle.He went up to New Hampshire at the urging of his longtime and longest-running political adviser, Roger Stone, and gave a speech to a rotary club.It was seen then—and this was not an accident—as a testing of the political waters.He, certainly since then, has said that it was more to sell The Art of the Deal.But make no mistake: It was the first time he started to think about this, partly because Roger Stone wanted him to think about this and wanted to whet his appetite.
Nothing came of it, really, in 1988.He did go to the Republican National Convention in New Orleans that year and saw some things he wanted to replicate down the road, decades later.But by 1989—and we didn’t know it then, but we know it now—his world was starting to fall apart, both personally, with his unfaithfulness as a husband, but also financially.Right around the corner, in 1989, when the Central Park Five happens, right around the corner is Trump’s downfall, really, from which of course he comes back.But right around the corner is his financial and personal downfall.
So I think, looking back, he is seeing an opportunity, not necessarily political in nature, or overtly political, but an opportunity to insert himself in the story of the day, as he is seeing an opportunity to be a certain kind of figure, an outspoken Roy Cohn-like agitant in the cultural-social conversation of that moment, and to keep his name in the pages of the newspapers, on air, on TV.
Trump’s Financial Difficulties
There’s the financial collapse.How profound was it, speaking of comebacks, and how did he do it?
So in 1990, his financial world falls apart.His entire empire, really, is built on mountains of debt.When the economy turns, and when he takes on too much, in too many places, it starts to tumble down.Almost any other person would have been, at least financially speaking, mortally wounded.Just no way to come back from billions of dollars in debt, personally had guaranteed roughly a billion of those billions of dollars.
The key for him to start that comeback—and it was not quick; it took the better part of half a decade, if not a little bit longer than that—but the key to it, and a great lesson he took, is his—
What he learned, trying desperately to not have to declare personal bankruptcy, to only file Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcies, were much more OK in his mind than a personal bankruptcy, which he thought would be a permanent blow to his credibility as a man with [a] Midas touch.What he learned was that he was so in trouble that the banks were equally in trouble.They were in this together.So if he had co-conspirators, if he had people who were just as screwed as he was, he would be in the position to survive.Other people might not survive, but he could.
He also understood, in a new way, the value of the name he had created.Literally his last name, T-R-U-M-P, was a calling card, not only to stay in the public eye, but to present as almost collateral to banks who were just as screwed as he was.They made the assessment, lenders, and so did people in Atlantic City, regulators in Atlantic City, when his casinos were in so much trouble, too, they all concluded that he was worth more to them alive than he was dead.They didn’t want to be stuck with his problems.So they had problems together.
This allowed him to create runway and to get extension after extension, sweetheart deal after sweetheart deal, to the point where he was able to do some things in the mid-90s that did in fact, in some very real financial way, get him back from the brink.He went public with his casinos, getting citizens and investors to, in a very real way, save him.And he enlisted the help of a consortium of investors from Hong Kong to finally get something built on a parcel of property on the Upper West Side that he had had, at various stages over the course of his entire adulthood.These two things allowed him to emerge into the late ’90s as viable, as financially somewhat stable and reputationally somewhat intact.
And what he couldn’t do on his own, The Apprentice did, in terms of reputational rehab, presenting him as a man in charge, an infallible business boss who made decisions and was never ever wrong.
So the lesson Donald Trump, if he was looking back and thinking about things, the lesson he learned from that financial cataclysm was what?
He was too big to fail.The lesson he took from that was the bigger I am, the harder I am to bring down.And if we look at where he is now, he has never had the platform—it goes without saying—that he does now.Up until four years ago, he was not the president of the United States.He had much less to work with.And even what he had to work with, he used to survive a series of crises that almost anybody else wouldn’t have survived.And I should say, he also survived these crises because of family money.There is a—there has always been a safety net from which he can operate.
The rules are not the same for him and never have been.But now, politically, he understands the value of having people on your side, people who are just as screwed as you are.If he is in political peril, so are his political allies and his political enablers.In some ways, politics has brought to a finer point an ongoing lesson of the entirety of Donald Trump’s existence.It is good to have people tied to you.It is good to have people invested in your survival, because it helps you not die.If there is collateral damage along the way, so be it.That’s the way it works.But it is important to be the winner and the survivor.It is important to have that—it is important to have that—that image of never, ever having lost, of being just—yes.
The Crisis Presidency
He becomes the crisis president, OK?He’s got about everything—he approaches it about as differently as everybody.He fights, as Roy Cohn would tell him, find a common enemy.He’s got this thing called the “deep state.”He’s—he’s diminishing institutions left and right.He’s doing all of the things that if you look back, especially having reread your pieces earlier this morning, and it’s so—there it is, right?He’s got strength.He does have—he’s a survival maniac.He’ll take himself right to the—he’s not happy if he’s not in survival and crisis mode, it seems like.You certainly seem to see that now.
Chaos is his comfort zone.It always has been.He traffics in chaos, and he traffics in conflict, knowing from experience that other people will not be able to withstand this, but he can.He will, because he has.Or so he thinks.One lesson he might not have taken from Roy Cohn is that eventually, it catches up to you.It caught up to Roy Cohn.That remains to be seen how the Donald Trump story ends, of course.But the last lesson of Roy Cohn is that eventually, eventually, the chaos you create catches up with you.
The Choice Between Biden and Trump
Let me ask you the question we’re asking everybody at the end of these interviews.
So what’s the choice?
… It’s a choice between two white men in their 70s who have lived extremely different lives and who have emerged from decades of lived experience with entirely different perspectives and entirely different senses for what we are or should be as a country.The contrast between Donald Trump and Joe Biden could not be more stark.In spite of the fact that they both come from a similar era: two white men, born in the 1940s, here in 2020, at this fraught moment in this country’s history.
You have one person in Trump who has lived his life in attack mode, who sees power in the creation and continuation of enemies and fights.And then you have another person in Joe Biden who, if nothing else, in spite of all of his faults and flaws, is a man of empathy, a man who has suffered losses that most of us, thankfully, have not, and who brings those wrenching experiences to his—the way he approaches the world and the way he approaches his politics.
Elections are always about the contrast between the two candidates, but I don’t know that there has been, in quite some time, such a stark contrast between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
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