INTERVIEW 2: Rocket Man
Oval Office, The White House
December 5, 2019
TRUMP:
I said, did you ever hear of the song “Rocket Man”? He said, no, no. Did you ever hear of Elton John? No, no. I said, I did you a great favor. I called you Rocket Man. He goes, you called me Little Rocket Man.
COMMENTARY: On Thursday, December 5, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House would move forward with articles of impeachment against President Trump.
PELOSI:
If we allow a president to be above the law, we do so surely at the peril of our republic.
Trump was being impeached for his head of state call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. The President had asked Zelensky to investigate his political rival, then former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter in exchange for security aid from the United States.
A few hours after Pelosi’s press conference, I entered the Oval Office to interview President Trump.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Senior Political Counselor Kellyanne Conway, and two of Trump’s aides—Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley and Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney—were also present.
It’s important to try to answer the question why Trump would agree to do these interviews with me. One reason was that Lindsey Graham told Trump he was confident I would not put words in Trump’s mouth but would report accurately what President Trump said.
BW:
I’m doing book number two.
TRUMP:
Good.
BW:
But we’re going to talk.
TRUMP:
I like it much better. So we should’ve talked on the first one. You know that Bob was going to do a book about me 25 years ago.
GRAHAM:
He told me that he went by with his cohort, Bernstein—
TRUMP:
Long time.
GRAHAM:
—and ya’ll were going to do a book. They found you interesting 25 years ago.
TRUMP:
We sat at a table and we talked. I remember it well.
BW:
And Carl said, this guy is really interesting. Now, let me be honest, I said, but not in politics. [laughter]
TRUMP:
Yeah. That’s right. Who knew? Right?
CONWAY:
Carl Bernstein.
TRUMP:
One for one.
BW:
Did you know?
TRUMP:
Well, I always thought about it, but I never did it. And I did it, and it worked out nicely. I think—did you see the polls that just came out? We’re way up, with this crazy impeachment stuff. And it is crazy, by the way. It’s crazy. Over a phone call. And you know, did you see the famous sentence with the “us”? Okay? The word was “us,” not me. You know, they were saying me, I want you to do “me” a favor. I didn’t say that. I said, I want you to do us a favor. And I talk about the country. This is what they’re impeaching on?
GRAHAM:
My first impression was it wasn’t him on the phone call, because there was no cussing. [laughter] And it made perfect sense.
TRUMP:
No, he called up. He said, I didn’t know you were this nice. [laughter] You know what this is, though, Bob? These are all judges that I’m signing. Look.
BW:
This is on the record for the book.
TRUMP:
That’s fine.
BW:
For next year.
TRUMP:
Fine.
BW:
Quite frankly, sir, the later it comes out, the better. Other words, September, October.
TRUMP:
Ok. I trust you. I have a lot of respect for this guy.
GRAHAM:
I wouldn’t be here with him if I didn’t think he—
TRUMP:
And we blew it, because I would’ve met him—but somebody didn’t—I actually called and apologized to him, but it was too late. Somebody—nobody told me about it. And maybe Kellyanne, maybe—I don’t know how this whole thing happened, but I would’ve met with him. Now I don’t meet with others. My general policy is if somebody’s going to do it, you meet, but it’s almost getting—it’s hard to meet when you’re president, for two reasons. Number one, you’re president. You can’t meet with everybody. And number two, you don’t have enough time. I just met with all of the major ambassadors from the major countries over at the UN. And it was fascinating. You know, really fascinating. From China. From Russia. From all the major countries. And it was great. But I wish I met with you for the last book. But we’ll make it up, we’ll make it up.
COMMENTARY: When he said this, I was absolutely stunned—as stunned as I had ever been in trying to understand the actions of a president.
My first book on the Trump administration, Fear, published in 2018, covered the first year of his presidency and by all accounts it was a devastating portrait.
I had concluded in Fear that Trump was an emotionally overwrought, mercurial, and unpredictable leader. Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president’s most dangerous impulses. To do this they stole documents off his desk so he wouldn’t see them, and he could not sign them, and could not issue orders. I called it a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world—the United States.
Maggie Haberman of The New York Times wrote that my book Fear “depicts the Trump White House as a byzantine, treacherous, often out-of-control operation,” and that the book “unsettled the administration and the president in part because it was clear that the author has spoken with many current and former officials.”
I ended Fear with a quote from Trump’s lawyer John Dowd because in the man and his presidency, Dowd said he had seen the tragic flaw. What Dowd had concluded but could not bring himself to say to the president’s face was: “You’re a fucking liar.”
Now as we met in the Oval Office, Trump was trying to make a sale. He was trying to urgently sell himself to me.
The president sat in a burgundy chair behind the Resolute Desk. He had all his props set out on the desk in front of him.
There was a stack of judicial appointment orders in the center of the desk. Then on one side there was a binder of letters Trump had exchanged with North Korean president Kim Jong Un. And on the other side were large photos of Trump standing next to Kim shaking his hand and smiling.
I had interviewed presidents Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama in the Oval Office. All sat in the standard presidential seat by the fireplace and did not have props.
Trump then pivoted to the issue of appointing judges. He had 105 federal judicial vacancies when he took office.
TRUMP:
This is driving them nuts. You know?
GRAHAM:
More coming.
CONWAY:
A hundred and eighty.
TRUMP:
I’ll have 182 shortly. We’ve signed 167. And that doesn’t include two Supreme Court judges.
GRAHAM:
[background talk…] by the way, from South Carolina.
BW:
So I really am here—
TRUMP:
Because Obama left me—
BW:
—to listen to your case. And I want to do policy. Because having done nine presidents, you’re the ninth—
TRUMP:
Okay.
BW:
—going back to Nixon—the policy is what matters. It’s the spine and definition—
TRUMP:
I agree. I agree.
BW:
—for the public, for history.
TRUMP:
Sure. Policy can change, also, though, Bob, you know? I like flexibility. Some people say I change. I do. I like flexibility, not somebody that has a policy and will go through a brick wall for that policy when you can change it very easily and not have to go through the wall.
BW:
You’re talking about momentum, sometimes just carries you into—
TRUMP:
Momentum. Momentum. That’s a very important word, momentum. Having the right momentum. Lindsey called me up many years ago, because I always did sort of okay with certain networks. And he said, could you give me a reference of a certain thing. Remember? Long time ago. I mean, you might not even remember that.
GRAHAM:
I just remember you—
TRUMP:
But then we ended up in the heat of battle. And it was now between Cruz and Trump. And he said, I have to take either the snake or the poison, and I’ll take the poison. I was the snake. [laughter] And he said—And then the poison lost. [laughter] And then he endorsed me. I don’t know if I—
GRAHAM:
No, you said I won’t… Calling me Dr. Kevorkian.
TRUMP:
I viewed that as being, you know, pretty far down the pack.
GRAHAM:
You called me, the Dr. Kevorkian of endorsers. Everybody I endorsed died. [laughs]
TRUMP:
Yeah. Anyways, so it worked out. And now he’s a great guy. He’s been a great friend. So—
BW:
So, foreign policy.
TRUMP:
Yeah.
BW:
Wanted to start with North Korea.
TRUMP:
Okay.
BW:
Because I think that’s so important.
TRUMP:
Okay.
BW:
And I would ask you—my wife, Elsa, always talks about the girls’ version—
TRUMP:
Right.
BW:
—which is the long version. We know what that is.
TRUMP:
Right.
BW:
Where are you with Kim Jong Un?
TRUMP:
So let me—
BW:
What happened? And what does it mean to you?
TRUMP:
Sure. Let me just tell you what—where we are.
COMMENTARY: Trump had already met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times. His first meeting was on impulse, catching his secretary of state, his secretary of defense, and national security adviser completely off balance. Because Kim Jong Un at that point had a growing nuclear arsenal, the national security team was deeply worried that Trump’s impulsive and combative diplomacy could trigger a nuclear confrontation.
And 54 years earlier, as a 22-year-old ensign in the United States Navy, I was part of a two-man team that had custodial control over the nuclear authentication codes that would be used by a president to launch nuclear weapons. I was stationed on the USS Wright that was designated as the National Emergency Command Post Afloat that a president could use in crisis or possible nuclear confrontation. I witnessed firsthand the dangers and vulnerabilities in the system for controlling launch and authentication orders for the use of nuclear weapons. I have followed this issue closely as a reporter for decades. Based on what Trump had told me so far about his relationship with Kim, I believed North Korea and the potential for a nuclear crisis could be the big story for my forthcoming book.
TRUMP:
One of the only times I ever met with Obama—that was because it was mandatory. We were sitting in those two seats at the very end. And he said, as you probably know, he said the single biggest problem you have is North Korea. And if he stayed a little bit longer, assuming he were able to, or if Hillary got in—let’s assume her position would be the same—you would’ve absolutely been in a war with North Korea. Possibly nuclear. Would’ve happened very shortly after.
BW:
Did he say that?
TRUMP:
He said it’s the single biggest problem. Yeah, I mean, he didn’t have to say that. I think his basic stance, you’ll end up going to war with North Korea shortly. So I said, did you ever try calling him, talking to him? He said no, but the answer was 11 times, yes. And they couldn’t get to him. They couldn’t speak to him.
COMMENTARY: As you’ll hear later, this was not true. In fact, Obama made no attempts to speak with Kim Jong Un himself.
Here Trump gives a monologue on what a diplomatic genius he thought he was to try to forge a partnership. Though Obama had not predicted war as Trump claimed, he had predicted that North Korea would be Trump’s biggest problem.
At the time, Obama’s worry was shared by all the national security leaders in the Trump administration. Two days before this interview, tensions were high. North Korea had ominously warned Washington of a “Christmas gift” if President Trump did not change his tone.
TRUMP:
What happened is, if you go back and look, the rhetoric and all was unbelievably beyond what anyone’s ever seen before. And because of that, we ended up getting along.
BW:
Right.
TRUMP:
And we met. We had a great relation—great thing. And we signed a deal. It said, denuclearization will take place. And then we met again. That was in Singapore. We met again, as you know, the second meeting. And the second meeting didn’t go as well. We got along great. We’ve always gotten along great. I said, did you ever hear of the song “Rocket Man”? He said, no, no. Did you ever hear of Elton John? No, no. I said, I did you a great favor. I called you Rocket Man. He goes, you called me Little Rocket Man. You know, he looks at me—[laughter]
BW:
He knew?
TRUMP:
Oh, he knew that. He didn’t like Little Rocket Man. Rocket Man was okay, but he didn’t like—
BW:
But just to go back with Obama. I mean, having done some reporting on that, President Trump—
TRUMP:
Yeah.
BW:
—what didn’t come out is how badly it was going for Obama. And not just for Obama, but for George W. Bush. The experts I talked to say for two administrations, both George W. Bush, Obama, we had feckless policy and a real inept way of dealing with this. And so I know you use the English language—it was a shitshow.
TRUMP:
It was not good. They didn’t have a clue. This is a different kind of a guy. And I hit him very hard. I said, we’ll blow them to smithereens. I did things I would normally—People said, he’s going to get us into a war. Remember they were screaming?
BW:
Yes, my nuclear button is bigger than yours.
TRUMP:
That’s right. I said—yeah, he talked about the button. Right. He said about the button on my desk. I said, my button’s bigger than yours, and my button works. Yours doesn’t. You know, stuff like that. And it was—I mean, I had friends of yours saying, he’s going to get us into—this is terrible. So the rhetoric was unbelievable. I made the first speech at the United Nations, where I talked about fire and fury, he’ll burn in hell, bah, bah, bah. And then he’d send something back. And they write things—
BW:
And is this all designed to drive Kim to the negotiating table?
TRUMP:
No. No. It was designed for whatever reason, it was designed. Who knows? Instinctively. Let’s talk instinct, okay? Because it’s really about—
BW:
Yes, sir.
TRUMP:
—you don’t know what’s going to happen. But it was very rough rhetoric. The roughest.
COMMENTARY: There was no strategy or plan. It was all determined by Trump’s feelings and instincts. This is precisely what worried all of his national security advisers.
TRUMP:
You couldn’t be any—
BW:
So what’s he like? What’s Kim—
TRUMP:
Well, let me just tell you.
BW:
Yes, sir.
TRUMP:
So what happened is the first sign was the Olympics. And then I get a call from South Korea. They would like to see me with the highest delegation. They come in to see me. And they say, Kim Jong Un would love to meet you. Because of me, the Olympics became a great success. Nobody was going to be there. They didn’t want to have a nuclear weapon hit the middle of the stadium during an ice-skating event. [laughter]
GRAHAM:
That does drive the ticket sales down.
CONWAY:
[The shot put].
TRUMP:
So what happened is I get the word he wants to meet with me. And I’ll tell you the funny thing. They go out and announce it to the fake news, which is standing outside. Right? And nobody could believe it. Even stupid CNN, where I got Jeff Zucker his job. I got that bum his job. But what happened is they go out, they announce it, and for a few hours, it was this is the most incredible thing. Then they wake up in the morning and they say, oh, anybody could’ve—Nobody could’ve done it. Obama called 11 times. They showed me the records in Korea. I’m very close to this man. Very close. The ambassador of Russia was just here, along with the ambassador of China and probably 17, 18 ambassadors from the United Nations. It was some—it was Security Council people. But the top people. And they told me—and it’s true—I’m the only one he wants to deal with in the world. He doesn’t want to deal with anybody but the United States under Trump. And if Trump doesn’t win, he’s actually—well, you saw what he said about Biden. He is too stupid. He’s a stupid—these guys put out the toughest rhetoric. They make you look like a little baby, okay? You know that? You know what I mean.
GRAHAM:
I’m trying to up my game.
TRUMP:
They put out rhetoric that’s brutal. You know what I’m talking about.
BW:
Yes, I do.
TRUMP:
They said about Pence is this and that—I’m not going to say it. But Pence is this—Pompeo is this—Like, but the president is a great man. It’s the craziest thing.
BW:
Now why is that though? Do you have an answer?
TRUMP:
And China and the Russian ambassador just—no, I just have a relationship with him. You saw when I went—
BW:
You haven’t met him yet, in the—
TRUMP:
Yeah. In fact, I’ll get you something that nobody’s seen. I’ll get you something that’s sort of cool. [speaking into a phone?] Bring me some pictures with Kim Jong Un and myself, crossing the line.
BW:
Yeah. Yeah.
TRUMP:
[speaking on the phone] You have those pictures, right? Yeah. You can bring the smaller ones, I don’t care. Just bring me some of them. Those nice color ones that I just saw, right.
BW:
But the CIA says about Kim Jong Un—you know they do all this analysis and reporting—that he’s cunning, crafty, but ultimately stupid.
TRUMP:
I disagree.
BW:
But you know—I’m sure they tell you that—
TRUMP:
I hope you write that, and I hope you write my answer. I disagree. He’s cunning. He’s crafty. And he’s very smart. And he’s very tough. You know—
BW:
Why does the CIA say that?
TRUMP:
Because they don’t know. Okay? Because they don’t know. They have no idea. I’m the only one that knows. I’m the only one he deals with. He won’t deal with anybody else. Okay. So here’s—he never wrote a letter, right? You know they have historians that study.
BW:
Yes.
TRUMP:
Here’s a series of letters that he wrote. Your Excellency—he calls me Your Excellency. I am thankful your personal letter—
BW:
Can I get copies of these?
TRUMP:
No, I can’t give you copies, but I’ll let you read them, if you want to look at them real fast. Then you could see them.
BW:
Okay. I’ll look at them after we talk, if I may. I’ll read them into my—
TRUMP:
But these are like 10 or 12 letters that he sent me. He’s never sent a letter in his life.
COMMENTARY: This is not true. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un had written letters to other presidents and world leaders.
TRUMP:
And you know how they’re sent? Through courier. They’re dropped off at the border to an American colonel and the colonel flies back to the United States. He won’t send—you know, the whole thing. But I have these, the originals of those. That’s the interpretation of—
BW:
Do you get a sense he’s wooing you?
TRUMP:
No, I get—
BW:
Or building a relationship of trust?
TRUMP:
—a sense—I get a sense he likes me. I think he likes me. Okay. So you know he’s got a great piece of land. He’s in between Russia, China, and South Korea. In the real estate business we’d say, great location. You understand?
BW:
[laughing] I do.
TRUMP:
And I—he would love to be able to do something with it. I have him convinced. Remember when I did that thing and I showed condos all over his—
GRAHAM:
Oh yeah.
TRUMP:
Right? You know what? Had a huge impact on him.
BW:
It is chilling to report on North Korea. I’ve looked in depth at this. The secretary of defense sleeps in his gym clothes because he has an—do you know this?—an alarm and a light in his bathroom in case he is called to an emergency conference.
TRUMP:
We’re talking about his secretary of defense?
BW:
No, we’re talking about the American secretary of defense.
TRUMP:
Which one are we talking about?
BW:
Mattis and the current—I mean, it’s—anyway—
TRUMP:
Mattis was the world’s most overrated general.
BW:
I know, you’ve said that.
TRUMP:
Oh, just terrible.
BW:
You know, when he started testing those missiles, ICBMs, they were scared to death. They would watch them arc up over the Home Islands—
TRUMP:
Sure.
BW:
—north Japan—
TRUMP:
Right. Yes.
BW:
—calculating the aim point.
TRUMP:
[DJT shuffling though photos] This is me and him. That’s the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool. You know? Pretty cool. Right?
BW:
Yeah.
TRUMP:
You see them, Linds? They just came out.
BW:
Do I get to keep these?
TRUMP:
No, but I’ll give you a couple—you can have some of these.
BW:
Good.
GRAHAM:
Did you ever think you’d live to see this? The North Korean guy inviting the [unintelligible]—
TRUMP:
No, nobody’s ever been—see that? See that? That’s the line between North and South Korea. And Bob? See this?
GRAHAM:
[unintelligible] Look at that.
TRUMP:
Look, Bob. That’s the line. That’s North Korea and South Korea. That’s the line. That line is like a big deal. Nobody has ever stepped across that line. Ever.
GRAHAM:
To live to tell about it.
TRUMP:
Except me. Because what I did is I did it. I said, would you like me to come in? He said, yes, I would like you to come in. Nobody’s ever done that. I mean, they’re cool pictures when you—you know, when you talk about iconic pictures, how about that?
COMMENTARY: Trump was the first American president to cross the North Korea/South Korea border, but by no means was he the first person to do so.
BW:
But it’s still a dangerous relationship. Would you agree?
TRUMP:
Yeah, but it’s less dangerous than it was.
BW:
Okay. Fair point.
TRUMP:
Because he likes me. I like him. We get along. That doesn’t mean I’m naïve. That doesn’t mean that I think, oh, it’s going to be wonderful. He’s a very tough cookie. And he is smart, very smart.
BW:
You’re convinced he’s smart.
TRUMP:
Beyond smart. Look, he took over when he was 25 years old, a volatile place where the people are very smart. Same as South Korea. They’re the same. Okay? Same people. Very smart. He was violent and vicious and smart. Now, I don’t care if you’re like portrayed as a godlike figure, doesn’t matter. If you’re stupid, they throw you out. It’s over pretty quickly. He took over as a very young man when his father died. You had the grandfather—
BW:
I know the whole—
TRUMP:
He had great respect for the [whispers] grandfather. Tells me everything. I know everything about him.
BW:
So what does he want—what does Kim want out of this relationship?
TRUMP:
But when you do that—I’m saying—he killed his uncle and he put the body right in the steps where the senators walked out. And the head was [whispers] cut, sitting on the chest. Think that’s tough? You know, they think politics in this country’s tough.
BW:
You know how he—
TRUMP:
Nancy Pelosi, who’s a dope.
CONWAY:
Praying for you.
TRUMP:
Nancy Pelosi says, oh, let’s impeach him. You think that’s tough? This is tough. Look, I’ll show you. Go ahead. [laughter]
BW:
He’s tough. I just want to ask you this, President Trump—
TRUMP:
Look, did you ever see him smile?
BW:
—as I’m sure you know—
TRUMP:
Did you ever see him smile before?
COMMENTARY: Trump is showing me pictures of himself and Kim smiling and shaking hands.
BW:
But the NORTHCOM commander—
TRUMP:
Right.
BW:
—in Colorado Springs is presidentially designated to shoot down a missile that might hit the United States homeland.
TRUMP:
That’s correct.
BW:
—from North Korea.
TRUMP:
Yeah. We’re all set. Because you have to be set. I mean, I’m not a person that said, oh—but I will tell you, anybody else would’ve been in a war. They would’ve been in a war. They wouldn’t have had a choice. Here’s my daughter. I took my daughter to—
BW:
So you’re comfortable with that delegation of authority to NORTHCOM?
TRUMP:
Sure. Well, you have to be prepared.
BW:
Because you can’t live 24/7 waiting for—
TRUMP:
No, no, no. I don’t wait for anything. I don’t wait for anything. Nothing bothers me. I don’t wait for anything. If it did I would’ve been not here a year ago. They’ve been trying to impeach me now for three years. No, more. They’ve been trying to impeach me from the day I came down the escalator, okay, you want to know the truth. They’ve been trying to get me from that time. Look, nice picture. But—no, the relationship is good.
BW:
Okay.
TRUMP:
Yeah, you can give Bob some of these. Bob—let’s see those, too.
BW:
So, hard question, President Trump.
TRUMP:
Yeah.
BW:
I understand we really came close to war.
TRUMP:
Them?
BW:
With North Korea.
TRUMP:
Very.
BW:
Pardon?
TRUMP:
Much closer than anyone would know.
BW:
Yeah. I realize—
TRUMP:
Much closer.
BW:
—one more ICBM test, and—
TRUMP:
Much closer. You know. He knows it better than anybody.
BW:
Did you tell him?
TRUMP:
I don’t want to tell you that. But he knows. I have a great relationship, let me just put it that way. But we’ll see what happens. But now—so we had a great meeting.
BW:
And why did we not have that war?
TRUMP:
Because it’s now three years—until just recently—and there has been no nuclear testing, by the way, for that whole time.
BW:
Yes, I know.
TRUMP:
You know people say—
BW:
And no ICBMs.
TRUMP:
Here’s the thing that—somebody said, what did you learn most being president? I said, I knew the press was fairly dishonest, but I had no idea how much. And they really are. You know, I can’t tell you what the end is going to be yet, how it’s going to end. For three years, we’ve had no nuclear tests. He’s tested short-range missiles. Which, by the way, every country has short-range missiles. There’s no country that doesn’t have. Okay? It’s no big deal. That doesn’t mean that after January he’s not going to be doing some things. We’ll see what it is. But I have a great relationship. You know what you can do? When we’re finished I’ll let you sit down and look at a couple of those.
BW:
I will. I will.
TRUMP:
But you’ll see the level of the relationship in the letter. And again, he never wrote a letter to anybody.
BW:
The best North Korean expert I know, a man named Bob Carlin, who’s served forever, refers to the situation as the tapestry of doom. Very pessimistic.
TRUMP:
You mean—
BW:
That this is going to spin out of control.
TRUMP:
It’s possible.
BW:
This relationship.
TRUMP:
Sure. But it would have spun out of control with other presidents immediately.
BW:
Okay. I accept that. But—
TRUMP:
Possible.
BW:
—you’re in the driver’s seat now.
TRUMP:
Uhhhhh.
BW:
No?
TRUMP:
Well, I’ll tell you why. Because when I took over—Lindsey can tell you this better than anybody—when I took over this country, I had Mattis come to me. And I said, you better be ready for North Korea, because it looks like we’re going to have to do something. Very good possibility. And he said, sir, we have no ammunition. Did you know that?
GRAHAM:
Oh no, I did. A hundred percent.
TRUMP:
Obama was—we had no ammunition. We have places in Guam that are big warehouses. They had nothing. They had nothing.
GRAHAM:
[They’re running out of?] a lot of that stuff in the Mideast.
TRUMP:
So we’re much better, because now we have more ammunition than we’ve ever had. [laughs] Two and a half trillion dollars I spent. We had no ammunition, Bob. That was the statement by Mattis. I think he might admit that, actually. But I said, no president should ever—two things. No president should ever have this bullshit happen to him, and no president should ever take over and has no ammunition. I will say that.
COMMENTARY: This is not true. They had enough ammunition. Secretary of Defense Mattis was so worried about the possibility of nuclear war that he went privately to the National Cathedral in Washington DC to pray and prepare himself for the possibility of having to use nuclear weapons against North Korea in order to defend the United States.
Mattis described how difficult it was to have a discussion with the president. An intelligence briefer could barely get through a couple of sentences before Trump went off on what Mattis irreverently called “those Seattle freeway off-ramps to nowhere.” You could not take the president to 30,000 feet, Mattis said. You could try, but then something that had been said on Fox News or something more salient to Trump would grab the president’s attention and he’d shoot off on to another subject. The facts would be dismissed.
Mattis didn’t see any way around the president’s lack of attention span. “You just had to deal with it,” he said. “You’re sitting there, and it’s not deference at that point. It’s grasping for a way to get it back on subject. And it was just very hard. There wasn’t a lot of time for it.”
BW:
Have you given Kim too much power?
TRUMP:
No.
BW:
Because if he’s defiant, if he shoots one of those—
TRUMP:
Doesn’t matter.
BW:
—ICBMs, what are you going to do, sir?
TRUMP:
That doesn’t—let me tell you, whether I gave it to him or not, if he shoots, he shoots. And if he shoots, he shoots.
COMMENTARY: This cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons, “if he shoots, he shoots,” terrified his national security team, particularly Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Nuclear deterrence is designed to make the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable, an absolute last resort. But Trump’s advisers knew that one miscalculation in the seesawing relationship between the young North Korean despot and Trump could launch the U.S. and the world down an escalation pathway to nuclear war that would be very difficult—if not impossible—to get off.
TRUMP:
And then he’s got big problems, let me put it that way. Big, big problems. Bigger than anybody’s ever had before. You know, I’m getting credit. Most people thought I’d be in a war within the first seven days of my presidency.
BW:
Yeah.
TRUMP:
And they’re actually finding out that I’d rather not be. I have built a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.
COMMENTARY: The U.S. military possessed some powerful weapons systems, and was continually developing new ones, but I could never establish conclusively what Trump was talking about here.
This exemplifies the casual, dangerous way that Trump treats the most classified programs and information, as we’ve seen now in 2022 in Mar-a-Lago, where he had 184 classified documents, including 25 marked “Top Secret.”
TRUMP:
Bush was using our military all over the place. He didn’t know what was happening. I don’t care what you say on that, Lindsey, that’s one thing I disagree with you on. The Middle East. Should’ve never been there.
BW:
You know by giving Kim all of this—you’ve given him a lot of power.
TRUMP:
I don’t think I have. We haven’t taken the sanctions off. Right? The sanctions are stronger now than they ever were.
BW:
And that’s what he wants. He wants them off.
TRUMP:
All he wants.
BW:
What did you say?
TRUMP:
That’s a big thing. I said, can’t do it, sorry. But listen—
BW:
Why?
TRUMP:
—we haven’t taken the sanctions…
BW:
Why not?
TRUMP:
Can’t do it.
BW:
Because you’ve got this new relationship—
TRUMP:
No, but I can’t do it. I said, give me a deal. We’ll do it fast. I would like you to treat that with respect. Because I don’t need a book coming out where I’m—because I have a lot of respect for him and get along with him. This isn’t games.
BW:
Yes. A lot of artillery.
TRUMP:
Artillery. Did you ever see the scene on the beach where he must’ve had 3,000 like Howitzer-type guns sitting on the beach firing into the ocean? Now, unless that was computer generated—and they say it was impossible, that was the biggest display—
BW:
And you’ve got that—
TRUMP:
Do you agree with that, Lindsey? I have never seen anything like that.
GRAHAM:
There are 14,000 artillery pieces pointed at Seoul right now. He doesn’t have…
BW:
Thirty miles away—
TRUMP:
So you have 32 million people. We think New York is big. We have nine million people. Thirty-two million people living in Seoul—
BW:
I was there a couple of months ago. It’s a beautiful,—
TRUMP:
Yeah.
BW:
—magnificent city.
TRUMP:
Wouldn’t be beautiful after about an hour. And they have them in the mountains. You know, they can be knocked out, but it’ll take two weeks on average to knock them out. Okay, two weeks. But in the meantime, Seoul is gone. That’s without nuclear.
BW:
Okay. Do you have a channel with Kim—
TRUMP:
Yeah. [sighs]
BW:
—if there’s some confusion that your military people come in and say—
TRUMP:
The only one he’ll talk to—
BW:
—there’s a missile coming from North Korea. Can you call him—
TRUMP:
No. Not calls. Because they only have one phone. They only have one phone.
BW:
Yeah. It’s the intel phone.
TRUMP:
In the House of Communism. I don’t deal—I deal with him a different way. I deal with him really through letters. And those letters are fascinating. When you read those letters, you’ll see the relationship. Now look, I don’t want to be naïve and tell, oh, I have a great—stupid people, right? I have a great relationship with him. What does that mean? Maybe nothing. Maybe it means a lot. But it’s worth—so when these guys come in, Trump has given up so much. He’s given—what did I do? You know what I did? One thing. I met. Big fucking deal. It takes me two days. I met. I gave up nothing. I didn’t give up sanctions. I didn’t give him anything. Okay? Didn’t give him anything. He was—
BW:
So you don’t sleep in your gym clothes?
TRUMP:
No, I don’t even—
BW:
Like the secretary of defense.
TRUMP:
No, I don’t.
BW:
And worry about—
TRUMP:
He—the secretary of defense. I don’t think he did either, okay, you want to know the truth? I think it’s another good story. It’s a yarn.
COMMENTARY: I had learned from the Pentagon and Mattis’s staff that Mattis regularly slept in his gym clothes. So he was ready in an emergency or crisis to come to a secure call, a National Event Conference as it was called, to deal with a nuclear threat. For example, if North Korea launched an ICBM, Trump had delegated the authority to the secretary of defense to shoot down a missile that threatened the United States.
TRUMP:
For three years they haven’t tested nuclear weapons. Almost since I’m here. In other words, once I started the talks. They haven’t tested. That doesn’t mean they won’t, and they might.
BW:
And they have 40 of them at least, I understand.
TRUMP:
And they’re the real deal. He’s got the real deal stuff. They don’t have a transportation system yet. But you know they have to travel 8,500 miles. And I don’t believe they can do that yet, but we’ll see what happens. But I think we’re doing fine with him. Okay? I think we’re doing well. We might be doing great. He wants to meet. You know, he’s trying to send a signal. He wants to meet with me. Now I left the last meeting, I said, you’re not ready to make a deal. I told him. I said, you know, you’re my friend, but you’re not ready to make a deal. See he’s—
BW:
What’d he say?
TRUMP:
He couldn’t believe it. They say he killed all of the people that were there. And I will say, I’ve been dealing with those people. I haven’t seen them recently. So you know—[laughter]. We haven’t been dealing with them. We’ve been dealing with a different group.
GRAHAM:
Now, you do know you can’t do that.
TRUMP:
But you look, look at that picture. He’s having a good time. You know? Nobody’s ever seen him smile. Look. Look at him smiling. He’s happy. He feels happy. But he’s very smart. Remember this—when you take over—and I really mean this too, you take over a country and you’re 25 years old and you survive? You’ve got, you know, millions of people that are all smart as hell and energetic? You know the energy’s incredible.
BW:
They show you the reports about those camps in North Korea.
TRUMP:
Oh—
BW:
President Bush once told me about Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, he said, I loathe Kim Jong Il because of what he’s doing to his people. And for—
TRUMP:
And you know what? That attitude got him nothing. In the meantime, they built a huge nuclear force during those last two administrations. They haven’t done it during me. Now you know you hear reports that they’ll start again. But for three years, I gave nothing.
BW:
Has he given you—
TRUMP:
You know, they’d say, President Trump agreed to meet. What the fuck? It’s a meeting. I agreed to meet? What? You mean instead of sitting home reading your book, I met?
BW:
Did you think it’s kind of Nixon to China?
TRUMP:
No, I don’t want to—You know, I don’t want to even talk about Nixon to China.
BW:
Okay.
TRUMP:
I think Nixon to China—I think China’s been a horrible thing for this country. Horrible.
BW:
We’ll get to that.
TRUMP:
Because we’ve allowed them to build a monster that now I’m doing a very good job—I’m taking in billions and billions of dollars. What these presidents have allowed China to do to our country. The way they sucked money out of our country. Five hundred billion dollars a year, for many years. Was crazy. Go ahead.
BW:
Intellectual property theft on a level that’s staggering.
TRUMP:
Intellectual property theft. At least $300 billion a year. That’s estimated by people that do that. That’s hard to estimate, but that’s what they say. I’m sure you’ve heard those numbers.
BW:
But after North Korea, a lot of people in this world say managing the relationship with China is the most important thing you’ve got to do.
TRUMP:
Yeah. It’s very important. It’s important in two ways. I have a very good relationship with President Xi, but it’s somewhat strained right now [laughter], as you can imagine. Because we’re taking in tens of billions of dollars. We never took in ten cents. We’re taking in a tremendous amount of money. Get these for Bob, give me those, Bob.
BW:
You’re still a tariff man with China?
TRUMP:
Oh, I’m the king of tariffs, yeah. Because it’s the only thing that has any impact. Yep. It’s the one thing they don’t want. Here.
COMMENTARY: Independent analysis showed that Trump’s trade war with China cost the U.S. economy $316 billion by the year 2020. It cost Americans 300,000 jobs. The federal reserve found U.S. companies lost $1.7 trillion in the price of their stock as a result of the U.S. tariffs imposed by Trump.
TRUMP:
Give him that one. Give him those two. Nice. Nice. You get three nice pictures. Here, if it’s a good book, if it’s a bad book I wasted $10 on photographs. But it should be a good book. Because you know why it’s a good book? Because I’m here less than three years, and nobody has done what I’ve done in the first three years of a presidency. Whether you like it or not, nobody’s come close. I’ve rebuilt our military. We have the strongest economy we’ve ever had. Nobody’s done what I’ve done. And I’ve done it with these crazy Democrats, these lunatics, trying to concoct all sorts of bullshit between Mueller and Russia and all of the stuff. And I’ve done it with a cloud, where I have a cloud always, you know—from the day I came down the escalator, I’ve had that. Nobody’s done what I’ve done. I even brought—I brought you some stuff that you can look at and do whatever you want with, but you can have it. Okay?
TRUMP:
Get those pictures. Maybe if you get them fast, I’ll give them to him right now.
BW:
One of your closest confidants said something interesting, said, I am absolutely sure President Trump does not want a war. Is that true?
TRUMP:
No, I don’t want a war. No. Because I’m intelligent. Okay? War is no good. War is no good.
BW:
Is there some—
TRUMP:
That doesn’t mean—that doesn’t mean—
BW:
internal mechanism in you—
TRUMP:
No. No.
BW:
—that restrains you?
TRUMP:
Well everyone thought I’d be in war the first day of my presidency, right?
BW:
Yes. A lot—that was the conventional—
TRUMP:
They thought we would be in World War I within 24 hours.
CONWAY:
[and a recession?].
TRUMP:
And now they’re really shocked. As an example, on Iran, they shot down a drone, unmanned. So I said, okay. Not very valuable. I was all set to—you know, I could’ve done whatever I wanted. And they shot off a second one, they hit Saudi Arabia. You know Saudi Arabia, by the way, Saudi Arabia is paying us billions of dollars. They never paid us any money. I said to the king, King, you got to pay us for protection. But nobody has ever asked. I said, but I’m asking, King. If it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t be there for two weeks.
BW:
That is true. Did he pay?
TRUMP:
I said, King, have you ever flown commercial? You know, he’s got a brand-new 747. Beautiful, most beautiful plane you’ve ever seen. I said, no, you’ve got to pay. But he said, but nobody has ever asked. That was his only problem. Because they have nothing but cash.
BW:
And did he pay?
TRUMP:
Already paid. Paid us a billion dollars the other day.
GRAHAM:
They’re paying a lot in Syria. They’ve done more in Syria in the last year than—
TRUMP:
I said, you’ve got to pass $15 billion.
BW:
Now, can I shift to—
TRUMP:
And he’s already paid a lot of money, so—
BW:
—politics for a moment?
TRUMP:
In other words, wait a minute—we have countries paying—I went to South Korea. Nobody knows this. Nobody would write it anyway. It costs us $10 billion a year to protect South Korea, which is stupid. They’ve been paying us $500 million.
BW:
But as you know, the military people always tell you that’s the best bargain we make. It’s—
TRUMP:
The military people are wrong.
BW:
—a great investment.
TRUMP:
I wouldn’t say they were stupid because I would never say that about our military people. But if they said that, they—whoever said that was stupid. It’s a horrible bargain. We’re protecting South Korea from North Korea, and they’re making a fortune with televisions and ships and everything else. Right? They make so much money.
BW:
You say in meetings, you kind of say publicly, we’re suckers when we do that.
TRUMP:
Suckers. We’re suckers. Even Abe—you know, he’s a good friend of mine. I say, Shinzo, you gotta pay. They’re all starting. What happened with South Korea, I said, you gotta pay. And they were at the end of their term, the budget term. I said, give us $2 billion to start. No, no, no, we… they’re very tough to negotiate with. Among the toughest. They don’t appreciate what we’re doing for them. We’re keeping them from war with North Korea. And I said, you’ve got to pay. And they said the same thing as the king. They said, but nobody has ever asked us. I said, that doesn’t matter. I can’t help it if people were stupid. And that’s the story.
[BW’s cell phone rings.]
TRUMP:
That’s probably Bernstein.
[CONWAY]:
I didn’t know he had it?
BW:
It’s not—
GRAHAM:
Don’t know how that got in here. [laughter]
TRUMP:
Do you want a Coke, Bob? Anything? You want something to drink.
BW:
No. Can I ask a political question?
TRUMP:
Sure. [sighs]
BW:
And that is, looking at this through the lens of a reporter who wants to look at the whole story, you’ve changed the Republican Party. You realize that?
TRUMP:
Ninety-five percent approval rating. Nobody’s ever been at—you know Ronald Reagan was 87. He was—
BW:
Okay. Is this a movement?
TRUMP:
No. Ah—that I can’t tell you. I can tell you—
BW:
What do you think?
TRUMP:
It’s the party of strength and common sense, both. You know?
BW:
And who’s the heir?
TRUMP:
I don’t say—
BW:
Who’s the heir?
TRUMP:
And I’ll tell you what—the heir will have to be determined. That’s to be determined. But, but I—okay, as an example. The Republican Party has always been known for disloyalty to each other. Okay, they always broke up. They always broke up. You had many Mitt Romneys. Let’s see if he’s disloyal. Let’s see. Right now, he couldn’t be elected dog catcher in Utah. He couldn’t run—if he ran, he’d be fifth in a primary, just like happened to little Bob Corker. And just like happened to Flake. They wanted to be senators for the rest of their lives. They were in clover. And Flake attacked me before I ever heard of him. I said, who’s this guy named Flake? He’s really a nasty son of a bitch. Right? I never even heard of him, but he attacked me. Then I attacked him. He was that way. Bob Corker, I got along with him. But then all of a sudden he hit me a couple of times. And I went after him. He went from 57 to four in Tennessee, and he was fifth in the primary. He wouldn’t have even had a primary. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
COMMENTARY: This is probably not true, and I could find no evidence to support what Trump had said.
TRUMP:
So it’s the party of really strength and common sense. And what happened is the other day they took a vote. A vote on this situation. The House. Never happened before—197 to nothing. To zero. That’s impossible.
COMMENTARY: Exactly 195 Republicans and two Democrats voted against impeaching Trump.
TRUMP:
I will say this, and this isn’t a threat, because it’s not a threat. But if they went against me, they’d all lose their election. Even if they lost five percent of my voters, because nobody has a base like that.
BW:
Okay, now, why do people love you?
TRUMP:
I don’t know.
BW:
Why do they like—
TRUMP:
Because I’m real. Because I love them.
BW:
Here’s my anecdotal—talked to people, and why are you for Trump? And they’ll say—one answer you get more than anything: he’s not politically correct. They don’t like political correctness.
TRUMP:
I don’t think of it that way. I don’t think—
BW:
You think that’s—
TRUMP:
They say I have the strongest base in the history of politics. Remember the statement? I could—
BW:
Who said that?
TRUMP:
Everybody. They say it now. I don’t think there’s ever been a base like this. And because I love them, they love me. I mean, it’s just a great base.
BW:
Why among Democrats—I talk to lots of Democrats—they are on fire about you.
TRUMP:
Yeah. But they—really?
BW:
There is anger.
TRUMP:
How come I had so many votes for me in the last election? And I’ll have it again.
BW:
But you listen to them, and if you heard some of the—I mean, Lindsey says it’s grievance. But people are just beside themselves. Why?
TRUMP:
Why did I have so many vote for me? So you—
BW:
But why are they—let’s talk about—
TRUMP:
Well, wait—but—
BW:
—those that are angry—
TRUMP:
No, I can’t, because I’m more popular now than I was then. A lot of them don’t want to say. I don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment—
CONWAY:
Compliment.
TRUMP:
Do you know why the exit polls were wrong, Bob? Remember I was going to lose the election big, it was over, about five o’clock it was over. You know, the exit polls like at five o’clock.
BW:
I know. I remember.
TRUMP:
You know why? Because there was a group of people—the largest they’ve ever sampled—that said, F-you. They call them the F-you people. You know what that stands for, right?
BW:
Yes.
TRUMP:
It means, it’s none of your business. So they’d walk out. Who are you voting for? Fuck you. Boom. Who are you voting for? It’s none of your business. It’s none of your business. Okay. Thirty-four percent of those people said—they never had that. Usually it’s like five percent. Every one of those votes came to us. They didn’t count those votes. That’s why the exit polls—
BW:
President Trump, fair point. But there is anger out there.
TRUMP:
There is, but there’s also—
BW:
And the question is, you’re sitting here in the Oval Office. Why? Why all that anger? It’s so—look, I’ve done this almost for 50 years. I’ve never heard—people come to my house and they’re in responsible positions, and I almost have to give them a valium to calm them down.
CONWAY:
[?]
TRUMP:
Okay, I think it’s for a number of reasons. I understand what you’re—
BW:
Okay.
TRUMP:
But before I—before I—before I—
BW:
You understand the importance—
TRUMP:
—agree to even answer that question, okay?
BW:
Okay.
TRUMP:
I have to say this: there’s also many Democrats that silently will vote for me. And it happened last time. The Obama Democrats that came out—I was going to say Barack Hussein, but I figured I wouldn’t say that today, because I want to keep this very nice. The Obama Democrats who came out and they voted for me, and it was a tremendous percentage. And the Bernie Sanders Democrats, they voted for me. Now the Sanders did it because of trade. They like—you know. Okay.
BW:
The question is, why are so many people on fire about you? Why are they so angry, sir?
TRUMP:
Because I’ve accomplished more than any other president, and it’s driving them crazy. And because they don’t think they can beat me fairly and squarely in the election. I really believe that.
BW:
David Cameron, when he was prime minister of Great Britain—
TRUMP:
Okay.
BW:
—met Obama as president. I asked him at a breakfast, said, what do you think of Obama? And he said, oh, I like him, I love him, he’s so smart. Pause. But no one’s afraid of him. Is that fair?
TRUMP:
I don’t think he’s smart.
BW:
Because I think people are afraid of you.
TRUMP:
I don’t know. I don’t think Obama’s smart. See? I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker. Oh, he’s so—you know, hey look. I went to the best schools. I did great. I had an uncle who was a professor at MIT for 40 years, one of the most respected in the history of the school. For 40 years. My father’s brother. And my father was smarter than he was. It’s good stock. You know they talk about the elite. Really, the elite. Ah. They have nice houses. No. I have much better than them. I have better everything than them, including education, including—so here’s the thing—
BW:
So at this moment where they are about to—
TRUMP:
I mean, Obama, Obama, good speaker. So… Nobody ever says this, but how come every time I speak—for instance, if I say let’s go to Florida tomorrow and I’ll speak, and I only have one requirement. Right? That requirement is get me the largest stadium available. And they get me NBA arenas that hold 20,000 people. And I have them filled up, and I have 25,000 people standing outside trying to get in. In one day. So we had elections recently. First of all, I didn’t run in ’18. And there’s a big difference between—but they had elections—
BW:
This is an important moment in history, where they’re going to impeach you, the House is going to impeach you—
TRUMP:
Yeah.
BW:
—and we’re sitting in the Oval Office here. And you are content, happy, proud.
TRUMP:
Sure.
BW:
Any angst?
TRUMP:
No.
BW:
Any sense of, Jesus, what’s going on?
TRUMP:
He knows. He knows. It’s okay, don’t worry about it.
AIDE:
We’ve got about five minutes, gentlemen, before the—
TRUMP:
Okay, well—I love this guy.
CONWAY:
He’ll come back. Soon.
TRUMP:
Even though he writes shit about me. That’s okay.
BW:
What?
TRUMP:
Go ahead. Go ahead.
GRAHAM:
They thought they were going to win. I thought they were going to win.
TRUMP:
I didn’t. Because I saw the crowds.
CONWAY:
—the only person on TV saying that, though, so—
TRUMP:
No, no. I saw the crowds.
GRAHAM:
Everything they wanted to do has been undone. You have done a great job of taking the eight years of Obama and rolling it back.
CONWAY:
[?]
TRUMP:
I have disassembled 82 percent of what he did. Okay?
BW:
That’s a new number.
TRUMP:
Including his health care, because I got rid of the individual mandate. Obamacare, the whole thing was the individual mandate.
COMMENTARY: The individual mandate was a requirement that individuals purchase insurance or face a tax penalty. While the individual mandate was repealed by congress in 2017, millions of Americans are still on Obamacare.
TRUMP:
Here’s the thing that gets me. Number one, I’ve dismantled almost everything he’s done. And that’s a killer. Okay? When you ask why. But the other thing are the judges. Because I have two Supreme Court judges. I’ll have 182 judges.
GRAHAM:
But here’s the point. I told you, and I told him, if Mueller had found something, you’ve lost me. This is all bullshit. From day one, this has been bullshit. This is Schiff and Nadler, it’s the first impeachment in the history of the country driven by partisan people—
TRUMP:
All of them.
GRAHAM:
—not by outside counsel.
BW:
But you never know where that—once that train starts, you don’t know—
GRAHAM:
Oh, I know.
BW:
—where it’s going.
TRUMP:
Okay, Lindsey knows this.
GRAHAM:
I know where it’s going.
TRUMP:
They spent on Mueller $44 million. They had 18 Trump haters, all Democrats. Mueller was used, but he wasn’t a Trump guy anyway. But he was used, okay? They issued 2,500 subpoenas. Interviewed—listen to this—500 people. And they found nothing. I guarantee I could find something on you. I guarantee it with that. You understand? With one-half the firepower. And I had to go through that for two years. And don’t forget, you know, we have a very calm White House. But people would say, oh, the White House. If you go to office and in your first day you have a guy named General Flynn, who people respect—35 years in the armed services, right?
BW:
Mm-hmm.
TRUMP:
And I understand—he walks in. He’s almost crying. He’s under investigation. From almost the first day in office, they were trying to do an overthrow of this administration. And look what we did. And let me go one step further. When you say there’s dissension out there, sure.
BW:
No, anger.
TRUMP:
But you had—
BW:
People are on fire. You know that. You—
TRUMP:
You had the same anger against Barack Hussein Obama. Except it was politically incorrect for people to express their anger. But you had the same anger for Obama as you do now, except it was the opposite. Come on in, Mike.
COMMENTARY: Vice President Pence came in.
TRUMP:
You know Mike Pence.
PENCE:
Mr. President. Welcome home.
TRUMP:
Hey, Mike.
BW:
Sir, Bob Woodward.
PENCE:
Of course. Good to see you. Good to see you.
BW:
Good to see you. Good. We’re talking—somebody told me in November, when you interviewed Mattis to become secretary of defense, that Ivanka was there and she asked him, when are you going to rewrite the ISIS strategy and how long is it going to take you? Is that right?
TRUMP:
That’s right. Ivanka was very much into it. She hated the terrorists. Hated terrorism. Ivanka is—
BW:
How did she learn—
TRUMP:
Ivanka’s been a tremendous—Ivanka’s done a great job here. Gets no credit for it. You know she’s very smart. Top, top student. Top talent.
BW:
But how interesting, I thought, that she would say, how long is it going to take you—
TRUMP:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Just a second on Mattis. You know Mattis when I hired him, his real nickname was Chaos.
BW:
Yeah.
TRUMP:
And I said, is your name Mad Dog? Your nickname?
BW:
He didn’t like it.
TRUMP:
He said, no, sir. What is it? Chaos. I said, I don’t like that name. He said, well, that’s my name. I said, I thought it was Mad Dog. No, that’s so-and-so. And he told—that’s some other guy. I said, all right. Do you mind if I change your name to Mad Dog? He goes, you can sort of do whatever you want. This was at the beginning, before I hired him. I said, Mad Dog Mattis. That works out great. But he wasn’t. He was just a PR guy.
BW:
I was surprised you weren’t able to work with him better.
TRUMP:
I’ll tell you what turned out—
BW:
What happened?
TRUMP:
He was a Democrat who was an Obama guy, and he got fired by Obama.
BW:
Yes, he did.
TRUMP:
And for good reason. Because—just didn’t work out. You understand. But he got fired. And pretty viciously by Obama. And I viewed that as a good thing, but ultimately he was an Obama-type guy. He was—you know, that was his mentality. No, it was just a mistake. It’s okay. Not a bad guy, but he was highly overrated. I took out ISIS 100 percent. When I came in, when we came in, we had—
BW:
They say 99 percent.
TRUMP:
Well, I don’t care what they said. They can say whatever. But it was a mess. It was all over. I defeated ISIS. Then remember, I said, all right. I’ve got 98 percent. I’m getting out. And everyone went, no, do 100 percent. And that’s when I went to Iraq, and I met with some generals and it was all an interesting thing. But we took it over, and we did a great job. We cleaned it out. That’s another—I don’t even put that down, but that’s another—I said, Mike, nobody has ever done more in less than three years than what we’ve done in this administration. And it’s not even close. Nobody. No other administration. Even close. First three and a half years. And I’ve been under a cloud. I told him, from the day I came down on the escalator with our beautiful first lady of the future, but our beautiful first lady—who by the way, people love. Did you see how many retweets she had?
BW:
Why did you have this pull and tug with Mattis on allies and the military alliances, like NATO?
TRUMP:
Because Mattis has no concept of money, and I do. Because everybody took advantage of the United States. Look, when we defend Saudi Arabia—it’s a wealthy country. Nothing but cash. I said, why are we doing this without at least working out a deal with them?
BW:
And how much money did you get, or are we getting?
TRUMP:
They’ve given over—they’ve given a billion dollars, just recently. We asked them two, three months ago. Said, gotta pay, gotta pay. They got hit.
BW:
Does it go into the U.S. Treasury?
TRUMP:
It goes into the—just standard treasury, yeah. And they’ll pay 15 billion. You know who else is going to pay? Japan. South Korea.
BW:
So what’s the Trump-Pence strategy to win over in the next 11 months the persuadable voter?
TRUMP:
Well, number one, I think we’re winning anyway. Okay? Did you see the poll that just came out? I’m at 52 percent. And they say you can add 10 points to every poll. Do you agree with that?
BW:
I don’t—I have no—I think polls are BS, President Trump.
TRUMP:
I don’t know. You know what? I’ll tell you what the Trump-Pence strategy is. You know what the Trump-Pence strategy is? To do a good job. That’s all it is. It’s very simple. It’s not a stra—I don’t have a strategy. I do a good job.
BW:
Can I come back—
TRUMP:
Yes.
AIDE:
Yes.
BW:
—and we take Iran—
TRUMP:
You can come back as many times—because—let me tell you why you can come back, unlike others that I just can’t see. [laughter] Because I respect you. This man was in my office—I hate to say—it’s probably more than 25 years ago, but 25 years ago, with Bernstein. They were in my office because they found me an interesting character and they wanted to do—I was very successful, I did a great job.
BW:
I thought you were interesting, but not in politics.
CONWAY:
Not in politics. [laughs]
BW:
I live in—
TRUMP:
And when I announce, when I give my financial statement you’ll see how well I did, too. Because I want to give it out, but I want to wait until before the election.
BW:
Why don’t you give me your taxes?
TRUMP:
[Tsk]
BW:
No, seriously.
TRUMP:
I would, except for one problem. Bob—
BW:
I asked Sherry Dillon to do this during the campaign.
TRUMP:
I know. I know.
BW:
And we would spend a week—
TRUMP:
Bob, I would. I would except for one problem I have: I’m under audit. And I’ve been under—no, seriously, it’s a problem. If I’m under audit—and everybody in the world—I don’t want to do that.
COMMENTARY: Presidential candidates and presidents have routinely released their taxes. Audits are no reason for Trump to not release his. Every president from Jimmy Carter through Barack Obama released tax returns that were under audit.
TRUMP:
Now you have to understand, I have a big company. Much bigger—you saw the filings.
BW:
Yes.
TRUMP:
It said—what did we make? What did we make according to—
BW:
I would love to have your taxes.
TRUMP:
—what did they make last year according to the filing?
BW:
I would love to have your taxes. I would spend a week—
TRUMP:
Do you know what I made last year?
BW:
Pardon?
TRUMP:
Do you know what I made last year, according to the filings?
BW:
No.
TRUMP:
You know we had to file.
BW:
Yes, I know.
TRUMP:
Which is much more detailed than the tax return, by the way.
CONWAY:
That’s correct.
BW:
That’s true.
CONWAY:
One hundred and four pages, and then 400 last year.
TRUMP:
Four hundred and eighty-eight million or something like that. I made 488—and that’s because I’m not there. Meaning [laughs] I would’ve done much better. Four eighty-eight. I built a great company. And all that stuff you read about is such bullshit.
COMMENTARY: Trump earned $427 million from The Apprentice and its associated licensing deals over 16 years—based on parts of his tax returns obtained by The New York Times. This was his biggest income stream by far. But like all other Trump financial and tax questions, the bottom line is just not clear. I brought up Trump’s impeachment trial.
BW:
You know, they always talk about the split screen. What’s going on in Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi and all of this. And I—it’s as if you had won the biggest lottery ever.
TRUMP:
I did. Every day I won it. Look—
BW:
What’s the best part about being president?
TRUMP:
—Nancy Pelosi—I don’t know if you’ve seen my—Nancy Pelosi has driven my poll numbers through the roof. And she comes out with, I pray for our president. She never prayed for me in her life. And she uses prayer—
BW:
Do you pray for her?
TRUMP:
No, not at all. Nor would I, okay, because I don’t like her. So I would not pray for her, no. I wouldn’t. And she doesn’t pray for me either. And I told people a year ago when she said, no, no, no, impeachment is a big move. No, no, no. I said, she’s going to do it.
CONWAY:
You did say that.
AIDE:
Yeah. Yeah.
TRUMP:
Now, what I didn’t think she’d do was on a phone call—
CONWAY:
Nothing.
TRUMP:
Over nothing. You read that call, it’s like—it’s two calls. It’s two calls, by the way. Nothing.
BW:
In a sentence, what’s the job of the president? What is your job as you see it?
TRUMP:
I have many jobs. But among those jobs—
BW:
But I think it’s figuring out what the next stage of good is for a majority of people in the country—
TRUMP:
That’s good.
BW:
—and then saying, this is where we’re going, and this is the plan to get there.
TRUMP:
Correct. But sometimes that road changes. You know a lot of people are inflexible. Sometimes a road has to change, you know? You have a wall in front and you have to go around it instead of trying to go through it—it’s much easier. But really the job of a president is to keep our country safe, to keep it prosperous. Okay? Prosperous is a big thing. But sometimes you have so much prosperity that people want to use that in a bad way, and you have to be careful with it. And a little bit that’s what’s happening now. That’s why they come up with the wealth tax and you know the different things that are going on right now. By the way, could I ask you a question?
BW:
Yes, sir.
TRUMP:
So you’re a total pro. Who do you think is going to get the nomination?
BW:
I have an awful track record on this.
TRUMP:
Yeah? Most people—
BW:
And I did say that I thought you might win and people laughed at me, so—but—
CONWAY:
Did you say it again?
TRUMP:
That’s—
CONWAY:
Would you say it a second time? After they laughed?
BW:
[laughs] We’ll see. We’ll see.
TRUMP:
Well, we’re in much better shape. You know why, though, Bob? Because—
BW:
Who do you think is going to be your opponent? And remember, this is for next year, for the book.
TRUMP:
I’m being honest with you, I’m being honest with you. I think it’s a terrible group of candidates. It’s an embarrassment. I’m embarrassed by the Democrat candidates. I may have to run against one, and who knows? It’s an election. And I’m looking pretty good right now. But to me it’s a terrible group of candidates. And to be honest with you, as an American, I’m embarrassed by those candidates.
BW:
But if you tune into their debates, it’s as if it is—
TRUMP:
It’s hard to watch.
BW:
I know. But it’s like the Senate subcommittee on health insurance having a markup.
TRUMP:
Yeah.
BW:
It is—[laughter] Now, what do presidents do? My final, bottom line on this, presidents are talent scouts.
TRUMP:
Well, to a certain extent.
BW:
That’s your biggest job. Pick—
TRUMP:
To a certain extent. And we have a great Cabinet.
BW:
Would you agree with that?
TRUMP:
Yes, very much so.
BW:
What’s your best pick?
TRUMP:
I’ve had a lot of good picks. Some of them are quiet. You don’t even know who they are. And if I tell you, I’m going to insult a lot of other people. But I have three or four people that I think have done an outstanding job. The problem, if I say it, then I got 200 people that will be upset.
BW:
But isn’t that true? You can’t do all this stuff—you’ve got to find other people to do—kind of simple management 101.
TRUMP:
You do. Yeah. You do. But we have a—I think we have a great Cabinet.
CONWAY:
We do.
TRUMP:
We’ve done very well.
CONWAY:
Mr. President, you put out your list of judges, and it helped you. Hillary wouldn’t answer the question.
TRUMP:
That was a big thing. You know, Bob, putting out the list of judges, the 25 judges, was a very important thing as it turned out. So come back. Digest that.
BW:
Did you use the autopen on this? Judges?
TRUMP:
No, I used this.
MAN:
No, he doesn’t.
TRUMP:
So I use this—Here, Bob.
COMMENTARY: With a flourish he handed me the pen he used to sign the judicial appointments as if he was giving me some trophy.
I left feeling that I’d experienced Trump to the tenth power. What a wild ride. I was still not sure what the story or the book might be. But the grave risks about North Korea were still at the top of my list. I also realized I had to make sure I focused my questions better because Mattis was right: Trump could take you off on a freeway to nowhere in an instant, making it almost impossible to get him back onto the topic I wanted to discuss. Trump was one of the toughest interview subjects I’d ever faced.