Interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest works. All after words programs are also available as podcasts. Host is great to talk with you today about this wonderful book that youve written, and i want to start with the beginning and at the end of the book because you have two different encounters and the first is when you are and the last is when you are youre a hotshot reporter. But describe those two different encounters, because i think that is kind of the arc of the book that goes between the two. Guest i guest is an incredible weekend. The first i was in my 20s working for the New York Post. I was actually assigned to city hall. There was an absolutely unbelievable story that had gripped new york city at that particular moment. It wasnt when i was particularly interested in but i was working for the post and it was all my editors cared about. It was news that have just broken that Michael Jackson, the king of pop have just married lisa marie presley, Elvis Pressleys daughter. They married in secret and hadnt been seen in public yet anand be worth a debate coach staying at trump tower. So all the paparazzi, all the curiosity seekers. This is new york city and the New York Post. Michael jackson is not an absolute peak of popularity at this moment. And you know, so the crowd around the trump tower became so intense they put police cornered around the block and people had to get across the street because there were just too many people trying to get in and get a glimpse of the newlyweds. So, is Michael Jackson and Elvis Pressley postlight daughter. I am at city hall and nobody cares whats going on at this particular moment, not the New York Post, so how can i get a piece of the story so i called up this number for the Trump Organization. I didnt know donald trump or have any connection whatsoever. I had only been at the post for seven or eight months. I was connected to his gatekeeper at the time and longterm price secretary that had a desk outside of trump tower on the 26th floor. I said i have a story to pitch to mr. Trump. Why would the most famous newlyweds in the world want to have their honeymoon at trump tower . She passed on and i got a call back almost immediately from trump himself and he said come on over to. Lower manhattan, south street. They send me with a photographer and we hustle our way to midto midtown. There is a photo in the book. You look like the kid you were at that point and i remember at the time with me show you around and why they are here and we have a picture of the front page article about the hideaway for michael and lisa marie and we have five pages of. We went around and met his body guard. He showed the secret tunnels they called in and out of the tunnel. They showed me their secret getaway car, which probably wasnt a great thing. And they were telling me where everyone lived in trump tower. We actually ran inside a drawing of trump towers with a rose pointed to the apartments owned by people that were trying to be discreet. But it was something else. At one point in the middle of the tour, she said do you want a picture. It became obvious he meant do i want to take a picture with him. As a journalist you dont normally say do we stop and get a shot together. So the picture was snapped and you see it in the book. I had this picture i put it in a frame when i was in new york 25 years ago and then when i moved to dc a few years later i threw it in a box of old photos and it was after he became president i wonder if i still had that picture. He looks exactly the same. Wearing the same type of suit a little longer than anybody else would wear it, the hair is essentially the same. Shes got this expression that ive seen in the pictures hes taken now from behind the resolute desk in the office. But i was thinking as i was writing this book when i was almost done i got called into the oval office to meet with the president and that is the end. I was president of the White House Correspondents Association and he had complaints about a story that i had done and also about a story that had run in the Washington Post over labor day weekend, by the way. There were some things he wanted to raise with us so we were brought into the oval office and i described the scene at the time when there have bee and thy odd moments like i was White House Press secretary i was brought in by the press secretary and the chief of staff and i brought with me two of my colleagues from the Association Board the oval office was empty and we were asked to sit at the three chairs that were out in front of the desk. Then we were told waite. Mulvaney and Stephanie Grisham left us in the oval office. I dont know how many times you worked there in the oval office alone and ive never been in the oval office alone. The doors were closed it was just the three of us. I cant tell you exactly how long it was. At this meeting lasted maybe upwards of an hour and i at one point sat there thinking here i am sitting across the resolute desk from the president of the unitepresident of theunited stad trump and 25 years ago almost to the day, 25 years earlier i had been with him in trump tower running around trying to find Michael Jacksons bodyguard doing this kind of gossip to her of celebrity apartments in his building. And who could have imagined if i end up where i was and he ended up where he was. Here i was like a junior tabloid reporter in new york city and he was this flamboyant to get his name in the tabloids and 25 years almost to the day from the former developer. The whole story kind of the incredible story how we went from that moment to that final moment is really what the show is about. Guest host isnt there a seductive quality that he had that kind of rings through all of this which is the one time he is declaring you to be an enemy of the people i want you to talk about that. But at the same time he is looking for approval and engagement and wanting to be involved in have some kind of relationship with the people that he is dealing with in the media. You see that play out and write about that in the book a lot. But what is that like because there is this simultaneous quality of wanting to declare fake news and the enemy of the people and at the same time looking for your personal approval and wanting to engage to be kind of pals. Guest ive had the privilege of being a reporter that has covered the white house for four different president s. I was there when you were there i was a junior cnn reporter and was sent to fill in, but i remember being there with you during the chaos of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Guest dont remind me. And george w. Bush and barack obama and now this. Every one of those president s complained about press coverage and every one of the president s fault the press focused on it was way too negative and didnt see the accomplishments of the administration. That is Standard Operating Procedure but trumps attacks go far beyond any of that. Literally it isnt just you have enemy of the people which is a phrase i actually spent a little bit of time in the book about the origins of the phrase that has been used by stalin and hitler during the french revolution to justify the beheadings of people in the guillotine. Talk a little bit more about that. That is one of the interesting part of the book and you do that at some length in a couple of the chapters and go through with a noxious phrase that is if you look back at the history of it. Talk about that a little bit. I spent some time looking through the origins of the phrase and it was used quite prominently during the french revolution. That is the most significant place. People got beheaded as a result and basically the justification was the people that were targeted by the law under which they become guilty and beheaded the actual law uses that phrase any of the people and i go through it i documented the use during the reign of terror when blood was flowing in the streets of paris and then the next place i saw it is with germany it gave hitler the power i go back and i find this article that was an Associated Press article on the front page of the New York Times and newspapers around the world right there in the lead paragraph you see the National Socialist party enemy of the people. So you have the nazis using the phrase and then a bit later you see it used by joseph stalin. I am not saying donald trump knew that that was the, you know, what the history was behind the phrase but it was certainly pointed out by a lot of people that it had been a dark and deadly history. Its essentially a traitor to. I would argue it is exact opposite about the user phrase that makes america great. But this is a president that consumes more news than any of the others. He knows the reporters and reads the stories and watches the news coverage. He once said tivo was the greatest invention of mankind because he had all the shows on his dvr and he watches and pcs how hes being portrayed. I recall at one point fill with the Washington Post who is a good reporter at the press conference the president made reference to a story that he had written before the New York Primary in 2016 about the Staten Island ferry and about a. He saw the story and read it. Its not only a household name by the way. That story that you wrote was a wonderful story. Its mind blowing he knows that reporters. Most people in that room he knows them by name what theyve done. Its to complain about something written or to offer something up. Bartok obama particularly on the right people say that the media was infatuated with obama. First of all, the Obama White House complained bitterly. Host every president going back to George Washington complained about press coverage so there is nothing new about that. Guest about obama would come into the Briefing Room and to do a press conference and i swear he didnt know. He had no idea who was in the room. I remember he gets a list of questions of who to call on from his press secretary which some president s do and some dont but that was the practice and i remember looking down the list and he reads the name of the reporter and then he looks up like of course they are sitting right there in front. They would think that he would no reporter, but no idea. George w. Bush didnt know the personalities of the camera operators. Some of them ha have been with m on the campaign. But donald trump, she consumes the news and is fascinated and has talked about how many times he dominates the front page of the New York Times, a paper he likes to attack the piece so proud of the fact when he is on the front page of the times really even if it is negative it is there and being covered so it is a fascinating dichotomy. It is the relationship in some ways let me ask you a question that mention being involved in the White House Correspondents Association and leadership position. Why havent they more aggressively challenged this or that he has declared on you to be the enemy of the people, why havent you fought back more aggressively . Guest i think that there has been fighting back on that. When he first used the phrase i was anchoring the show with George Stephanopoulos that sunday and i did a thing at the end of the program i pointed out the history of the phrase and push back aggressively but i have to say that doing that is not easy because it is and the role that anyone should be making in the news, they want to report the news and i think that is part of the dilemma. Guest we are not the resistance of the Opposition Party. That is the phrase that i talked about with the media the Opposition Party and then trump grabbed onto that. My role representing the White House Press corps when stuff gets dangerous and his overthetop, it needs to be called out. There was an incident where there was an offense for a Trump Organization at one of the president s properties in florida and they hav had an exhibit whee they played a video clip it was a doctor scene from a movie that showed somebody in a church firing, killing newspeople and democrats. And it was horrific. Youve got to call this stuff out. Its actually dangerous. We saw with the guy that sent the pipe bombs. Ive said this to the president directly and i recount that the end of the book there are people that will take these words literally and too hard and hurt people. Its dangerous and its particularly irresponsible coming from the person with the biggest bully pulpit of all. One thing you have to recognize and this is another theme of the book donald trump does seek out advice and listen to people, but ultimately he goes in his own direction. Sometimes he takes the advice and sometimes he doesnt, but he truly is his own chief of staff. John kelly tried to change that for a while had some moderate success but he is his own chief of staff and his own National Security advisor. We oppose this on certain hot button issues that hes his own medications director and press secretary. Guest talk a little bit about that and about the press briefing. That is a subject that i care about. He has now turned t the press Briefing Room into his platform for delivering a daily message so hes not out doing rallies and things like that. Why do we need to have a Daily Press Briefing and what is the role of the press secretary and what do you need as you are covering the white house . Guest we went into all that time without having any briefings by the press secretary. We have occasionally like Mike Mulvaney did a briefing. I think that we just went, we passed a one Year Anniversary of the no press briefing by press secretary, which i find astonishing. Guest it is. And you make the point, which i think is a valid one, and an important one which is i want to gegive to it, but my argument about the need for a press secretary having regular press briefings, we are in an extraordinary moment right now where the president is doing his own briefings every day and it is a whole different extraordinary time in a crisis, but i think its important to see the person that is speaking on behalf of the executive branch in the United States of s government, speaking on behalf of the president coming out and taking questions every day from all comers. I think its important for us to fall in terms of the newsgathering even though admittedly the information isnt that visceral, some is more useful than others. But i think its important symbolically. It sends a message to the country and to the world that the most powerful person in our government is accountable. Anyway we dont have a question period like the british minister in parliament. But the society speaking on behalf of the executive branch who has to sit there and take questions which some of them are quite uncomfortable from a group of reporters. But you make another point which is the process of preparing for that briefing that helps clarify policy making and i think thats an interesting point, to back. Host the preparation requires you to go around the government and talk to the officials in the white house ticket clear information because you know you are going to get the questions. The process of getting the right answer sometimes leads to better policies sometimes i would go to president clinton and to say here is the answer im supposed to give today and he would say that is who we and they would say yeah but thats your policy so you pick up the phone and call someone and is a weed got to get this right. What are we doing on this issue is with improved the functioning of the government. The reality of doing that briefing is much more than just taking care of the press and feeding the press but it needs every day. It also has a reverberating effect through all of government because people have to come up with better answers and if you come up with better answers that usually means you will get a better policy. So, i am a very strong advocate of doing that, but the other question, sometimes it turns into Performance Art or the theater of the absurd. And its whats on tv and sitting in the front row and asking questions knowing that its going to be on live tv. Does that make it less useful, is that an impediment to get the right information in the public . What should we do about that . It i isnt easy to ask the Television Personality that question, so what do you think . Guest you and i have disagreed on this point and talked about suggesting debriefings might be more useful if they were not televised. I think that sure, there is an element and ive probably been accused of it more than once and i certainly look to some of my colleagues like are you really, we are trying to do a serious thing here playing to the cameras. That definitely happens and it is annoying but it does, but again i think that there is symbolic value in the world seeing this play out and seeing this is the way the system works. Nobody is above the law and nobody is above scrutiny. I also keep in mind there are 49 seats in the Briefing Room. They say why can they stand of the idols anymore and are not the obvious Public Health reasons, but theres a lot of people who watch those briefings including reporters who cant see their into people watching cspan. Cspan might also agree with me on this. Its not to say that there isnt a really Important Role for the background briefings and briefings that a