Speaker 1: Hi, Brian, Hi Katie. Guess what, it's our last podcast
Speaker 1: of the year, and I'm kind of sad about that, Brian,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. But we're recording this a little
Speaker 1: bit ahead of the new year because you're going on
Speaker 1: a special trip. Actually, yes, I'm going to see my
Speaker 1: daughter who's studying abroad, So I'm going to Barry's studying Jackie. Jackie.
Speaker 1: She is in Paris, so I'm heading there actually momentarily.
Speaker 1: But I just want to say to you, Brian, I've
Speaker 1: really really enjoyed doing our podcast this year. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being a part of this and for
Speaker 1: sharing your wit and most importantly your wisdom about politics.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, well, thank you. Wait what just happened?
Speaker 1: I was just weirdly sincere for a moment. Thank you
Speaker 1: for allowing me to to blah brush aside greatness every
Speaker 1: other week for about an hour or so. Thank you
Speaker 1: and away. Well, of course, Donald Trump was the big story.
Speaker 1: We spent a lot of time talking about Donald Trump
Speaker 1: this year, so we wanted to spend the last podcast
Speaker 1: of the year talking about something new and different, right, Brian, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is that, Katie? Donald Trump? And we're going to
Speaker 1: do that with a journalist who really held his feet
Speaker 1: to the fire during the campaign season. David Farrenhald is
Speaker 1: a reporter with the Washington Post. Many people are saying
Speaker 1: he might actually want a pulic surprise. I don't want
Speaker 1: to jinxis. But remember that Access Hollywood tape, Remember all
Speaker 1: the reporting on the Trump Foundation. Yes, I'm not mentioning
Speaker 1: you know the word because I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't like that word, Brian, the p word that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump used. The Yeah, I tried to avoid that.
Speaker 1: Let's just say, yeah, he likes to grab him by
Speaker 1: the kiddies. How about that? That sounds gross too, But anyway,
Speaker 1: David Barrel broke these stories and reported fearlessly throughout the
Speaker 1: course of the campaign. But David became kind of Woodward
Speaker 1: and Bernstein all rolled into one at a time when
Speaker 1: a lot of people were just commenting on the poles
Speaker 1: and the horse race. He was really focused on trying
Speaker 1: to figure out who Donald Trump is, as revealed by
Speaker 1: his charitable contributions, his past comments, and really broke news
Speaker 1: about stuff that matter. That's right. He wasn't talking about
Speaker 1: the comment of the day, the news of the day.
Speaker 1: He actually did some serious digging and digging using a
Speaker 1: cool mix of twenty one century social media technology and
Speaker 1: little fashion gum shoe reporting and yellow legal pad reporting.
Speaker 1: David Farenthal from The Washington Post, thank you for joining
Speaker 1: our podcast. We're very excited to talk to you. We're
Speaker 1: going to be completely geeking out today. David. It's going
Speaker 1: to be all Trump, all the time. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: be here. First of all, I want to say congratulations
Speaker 1: on your extraordinary reporting this campaign season. I know you've
Speaker 1: been heralded for all your scoops, for many of your
Speaker 1: pieces that really got to the heart of issues in
Speaker 1: a in a era when people were covering really the
Speaker 1: superficialities of the horse race. So congratulations. There there Pulitzer
Speaker 1: rumors flying around. David. Um, you must be feeling pretty
Speaker 1: good about yourself right now. You know, I was looking
Speaker 1: at your bio by the way, and it occurred to
Speaker 1: me it took you about sixteen years to become an
Speaker 1: overnight sensation, So I think that's probably good to remember. Exactly. Yes,
Speaker 1: this time last year was writing about Jim Gilmore. So
Speaker 1: it's really been a pretty fast rise. Well, how are
Speaker 1: you feeling? Well? Good? I mean, the job that I
Speaker 1: thought was going to sort of be over on November eight,
Speaker 1: now continues on in a much more comprehensive way. So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to kind of get figure out what my
Speaker 1: niche is gonna be covering Trump the president, So it'll
Speaker 1: be some Trump charity stuff as well, but it's obviously
Speaker 1: got to expand because it's you know, He's there's a
Speaker 1: lot more to say, you know, before we talk about
Speaker 1: moving forward, because that's a big area I think we
Speaker 1: want to broach. How would you characterize covering this campaign?
Speaker 1: What was sort of your your true north as you
Speaker 1: set out to cover the Trump candidacy. Well, I felt
Speaker 1: like the way to cover Trump is not to write
Speaker 1: about his words, or not about his words only not
Speaker 1: about what he says, but about what he does. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the Trump is a unique candidate. And then he
Speaker 1: spends all his time sort of throwing out these things
Speaker 1: that I don't know if they're on, if it's purposeful
Speaker 1: or not, but they serve as a good distraction. Every
Speaker 1: day there's some new thing to chase, and the campaign,
Speaker 1: it was sort of a new outrage every day. He
Speaker 1: said and said things that would have killed off anybody
Speaker 1: else's campaign. But the way he did it. He would
Speaker 1: say them, and the next day, when we were sort
Speaker 1: of getting spun up to cover the first outrageus thing,
Speaker 1: he'd do another outrageous thing. We have just jumped onto that.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to cover his actions, the results of
Speaker 1: his actions, and in particular in this case, this really
Speaker 1: sort of important moral dimension. This is a guy bragged
Speaker 1: his whole life about how much he gave the charity,
Speaker 1: how generous he was. Let's go and see if it
Speaker 1: did he really keep those promises, and how much sort
Speaker 1: of moral compunction did he feel to help. He really
Speaker 1: put sort of a bull's eye on Trump's carrot. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think in a way that any great journalists would
Speaker 1: can use just reveal or review what you discovered in
Speaker 1: the course of your reporting. The main takeaway from me
Speaker 1: was that Trump understood that because he was rich, people
Speaker 1: expected him to be generous. That that's what rich people
Speaker 1: do have always been. That's a sort of part of
Speaker 1: the lifestyle of a rich person is giving to charity,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to have that appearance as much as
Speaker 1: he could. He wanted to have the the sort of
Speaker 1: the facade that he was a very generous person, but
Speaker 1: he did as much as he could to avoid actually
Speaker 1: doing the charitable work that that that illusion or that
Speaker 1: facade required. So often he would use other people's money
Speaker 1: as his own charities. He's find a way to convert
Speaker 1: other people's money into what seemed like his own charitable gifts.
Speaker 1: He would often promise gifts that he never gave. Even
Speaker 1: his own charity, that Donald J. Trump Foundation, he would
Speaker 1: use that in ways that basically where he was the
Speaker 1: biggest beneficiary, it looked like he was helping charity, but
Speaker 1: actually often he was helping himself. So that's that's what
Speaker 1: I learned. He knew that people expected him to be generous,
Speaker 1: and he need to meet those expectations on the surface,
Speaker 1: but didn't. I often want to comply with the sort
Speaker 1: of true moral dimension of charity, which is giving actually
Speaker 1: something of yourself to help others. So what actually spurred
Speaker 1: you to start looking into Trump's philanthropy or lack thereof,
Speaker 1: and and how hard was it to track down the
Speaker 1: contributions he did or didn't make. Well, it started actually
Speaker 1: kind of by Shant, So I spent all covering basically
Speaker 1: loser candidates George Pataki, Jim Gilmour, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry,
Speaker 1: they were all gone by the time we got to
Speaker 1: the Iowa caucuses where they were, they were all clearly
Speaker 1: hitted out the door. So I had nothing to do
Speaker 1: on Iowa caucus Day. And the report the editors said, Okay,
Speaker 1: go to Iowa, follow Trump around. We're gonna see this possibility,
Speaker 1: which didn't actually come to pass. This three time married guy,
Speaker 1: sort of play famous playboy is gonna win, we thought,
Speaker 1: the famously conservative and religious state of Iowa. So go
Speaker 1: see what he does on caucus day. So I went
Speaker 1: to this rally Trump did on caucus in Waterloo, Iowa.
Speaker 1: And during the rally, he got up. It was up
Speaker 1: on stage, and he stopped the rally and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: now come to the stage. Uh, this local veterans group,
Speaker 1: the this Waterloo Veterans Aid group. And in the middle
Speaker 1: of the rally, he gives them a giant check like
Speaker 1: one that they give to people who win win golf
Speaker 1: Tournament's a really big oversized check that says Donald J.
Speaker 1: Trump Foundation on the top, make America great Again on
Speaker 1: the bottom for a hundred thousand dollars. It turned out
Speaker 1: this was money that he had raised a few days ago.
Speaker 1: Do you remember he skipped a Republican debate because he
Speaker 1: was having a fight with Fox News and he had
Speaker 1: this big televised fundraiser race. He raised six million dollars
Speaker 1: for veterans, which included a million bucks out of his
Speaker 1: own pocket. So this is he's stopping his political rally
Speaker 1: to give away a check from his charity. Um, And
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, I know you can't do that. I
Speaker 1: don't know much about charity law, but I know that's
Speaker 1: against the law. You can't use you the money and
Speaker 1: your charity to boost a political campaign, even if it's
Speaker 1: your own. Uh. So I came back from having covered
Speaker 1: Iowa and New Hampshire and I wanted to look into
Speaker 1: that to see where they'd broken the law. And there
Speaker 1: was another thing. He had said he'd raised six million dollars,
Speaker 1: but he only actually given out about a million dollars
Speaker 1: of these oversized checks and then he stopped. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to know, Okay, where's the rest of the money.
Speaker 1: And I thought at the time that question where's the
Speaker 1: rest of the money would take a couple of days
Speaker 1: to answer, because what political campaign would basically stiff veterans
Speaker 1: in the you know, in the middle of a Republican primary.
Speaker 1: Who would ever do that? The veterans contributions he made
Speaker 1: to catch people up were as part of an event
Speaker 1: to get out of a presidential debate that he didn't
Speaker 1: want to be part of. He said, you know what,
Speaker 1: instead of debating these you know losers, I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: a fundraiser for veterans to which I'm going to contribute
Speaker 1: a million bucks of my own money. Basically, you're right.
Speaker 1: So he got a huge political goodwill out of that
Speaker 1: televised fundraiser and out of the idea that, look, isn't
Speaker 1: he amazing? He can raise six million bucks for veterans
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat. He's so rich he
Speaker 1: can give a million bucks of his own at the
Speaker 1: drop of the hat. It's important to test and see
Speaker 1: whether he really followed through in those promises, because he
Speaker 1: got a lot of good will out of making so funny.
Speaker 1: This seems like such a no you know, a no brainer,
Speaker 1: doesn't it, David? I mean, you did something that most
Speaker 1: journalists should be doing. You've actually followed up right. You
Speaker 1: continued to cover the story and connect the dots. But
Speaker 1: the dots were harder to connect than I thought. Because
Speaker 1: I got back and said, okay, Trump, you know Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: Where did the rest of the money go? And I
Speaker 1: looked and looked at called the veterans organizations he named
Speaker 1: his beneficiaries. I talked to them. After a month, I
Speaker 1: could find about three million worth of the six million.
Speaker 1: I didn't know where the other three million had gone.
Speaker 1: And I kept looking, kept looking. This was kind of
Speaker 1: in the background while I was writing some other stories.
Speaker 1: Finally we get to May, so it's not been almost
Speaker 1: four months since the original fundraiser. Something really odd happened.
Speaker 1: Coral Lewandowski, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time,
Speaker 1: called me and he said, Okay, I can tell you
Speaker 1: what happened to that one million dollars the Trump said
Speaker 1: he'd get give out of his own pocket to veterans groups.
Speaker 1: He gave it away. But I can't tell you who
Speaker 1: got it, or in what amounts, or when or anything.
Speaker 1: It's a secret. But just know that million dollars has
Speaker 1: been given. At that point where you at that point
Speaker 1: where you also looking into Trump's other charitable giving. Had
Speaker 1: you broadened out yet or were you just focused on
Speaker 1: this one event. I was mostly focused. We've done some
Speaker 1: other stuff, but I was mostly focused on the veterans thing.
Speaker 1: Was there was such a concrete promise he had made
Speaker 1: in the in the context of the presidential campaign on TV.
Speaker 1: So I really wanted to focus on that um. And
Speaker 1: so after Lendowski says that to me, I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to see if he's right,
Speaker 1: you know, if you will tell me any details. I
Speaker 1: want to try to find some of this money on
Speaker 1: my own. So I used Twitter, knowing that Trump was
Speaker 1: on it, knowing that a lot of media were on it.
Speaker 1: I started sending out queries on Twitter to different veterans. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought, if in the old days before Twitter, you
Speaker 1: would just have to send out, you know, call or
Speaker 1: email a million you know, different veterans groups, and there's
Speaker 1: thousands of them, and you never would be able to
Speaker 1: reach them all. So, you know, the idea you could
Speaker 1: prove a negative. It's no way you could prove the
Speaker 1: negative dot Trump gave no money. But I thought, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll prove the opposite. I'll find a little bit of
Speaker 1: the money and we'll say, okay, well I found the
Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. This must have been a real thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I sent us spend a day tweeting and nothing,
Speaker 1: no response from anybody. I couldn't find any of the money,
Speaker 1: and I thought at the end, yeah, I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I've just wasted a day. I felt like the oldest
Speaker 1: man in the world. I was like, right, the Twitter
Speaker 1: didn't work. Uh, what a waste of time? Uh So
Speaker 1: what howen was Trump? Uh? He saw he was paying attention.
Speaker 1: And that night, the night that I had been making
Speaker 1: this search and not finding any of his million dollars,
Speaker 1: that's when he gave the million dollars away. So when
Speaker 1: Lewandowski told me he'd given it away, that was totally false.
Speaker 1: It was still in Trump's pocket. So how did you
Speaker 1: do the crowdsourcing? So you tried to Twitter and that
Speaker 1: didn't work so much, although it actually did because Donald
Speaker 1: Trump saw it. But tell us about crowdsourcing the report? Well,
Speaker 1: that was my first experience with it, and I was
Speaker 1: surprised at how well it worked. And then a bunch
Speaker 1: of media, a bunch of you know, campaign reporters, other
Speaker 1: reporters picked it up and started tweeting about it, spreading
Speaker 1: the reach and Veterans Group started started tweeting about it,
Speaker 1: and the idea had been okay, maybe I don't. I
Speaker 1: won't be able to query every veterans group in the world.
Speaker 1: But you know, somebody else watching this will say, well, hey,
Speaker 1: you didn't ask me directly, but you know he did
Speaker 1: give us this money, so and I could find it
Speaker 1: kind of by word of mouth that way. That was
Speaker 1: the idea, and it turned out and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: my backup plan is maybe Trump will just tell us
Speaker 1: what he did. And it turned out to be that's
Speaker 1: what happened. Because he hadn't given it. There was nothing
Speaker 1: else to find. There was nothing to find at that point.
Speaker 1: It was all in Trump's pocket. So you kind of
Speaker 1: shamed you kind of shamed him into it in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. So I asked him that night. He so
Speaker 1: Trump called me. This is the last time he and
Speaker 1: I spoke. He called me in late May to say, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: I just gave the million dollars out. He gave it
Speaker 1: all in one fell swoop to this particular charity run
Speaker 1: by a friend of his, and I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: could you would you have given this money out if
Speaker 1: I hadn't been asking about it? And he said, oh,
Speaker 1: you're really a nasty guy. You're a very nasty guy.
Speaker 1: That was his answer. Did he say sad with an
Speaker 1: exclamation mark? I don't. I don't find that he says
Speaker 1: that in conversation, but he does say nasty a lot.
Speaker 1: It was a weird interview because he would say, you're
Speaker 1: so nasty guy, and Hillary Clinton was a nasty woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not definitely not the only nasty person. We should
Speaker 1: que Janet Jackson right now for some reason. But anyway,
Speaker 1: and then you started looking more broadly at what the
Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump Foundation has been doing or not doing,
Speaker 1: and in a nutshell, the answer would be, well, the
Speaker 1: Trump Foundation, he was giving money out of it, not
Speaker 1: in very large amounts, to charities, often charities that did
Speaker 1: business with him. You have to remember a lot of
Speaker 1: Trump's business at marl Lago and Trump Tower is running
Speaker 1: out ballrooms to charities who can pay like two it
Speaker 1: and seventy five thousand dollars a night to rent out
Speaker 1: Mara Lago. So they're his clients. So he was giving
Speaker 1: donations to these clients. But the money we figured out
Speaker 1: was not his, the money the Trump Foundation. He hadn't
Speaker 1: given the Trump Foundation a dollar since two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and had all been other people's money that he took
Speaker 1: in and then gave out. I mean, the one extreme
Speaker 1: example we found just amazed me. So okay. So there's
Speaker 1: this charity in in Florida, the Palm Beach Police Foundation,
Speaker 1: which is uh, they ran out Mara Lago for seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars a night. Trump wants to give them
Speaker 1: a donation, but he doesn't use his money. He doesn't
Speaker 1: even use the money. And the Trump Foundation. He calls
Speaker 1: the foundation of a friend of his who has died
Speaker 1: and asked the friends surviving relatives, hey, listen, I'm raising
Speaker 1: money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation. Can you kick
Speaker 1: in someone? I say sure, but he says, don't give
Speaker 1: it straight to the Palmic Police Foundation. Give it to
Speaker 1: me and I'll pass it on to them. So they
Speaker 1: give him two hundred thousand dollars the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
Speaker 1: He just takes their money and gives it on, adding
Speaker 1: nothing of his own, gives it to the Palm Beach
Speaker 1: Police Foundation, and then Trump is recognized as a philanthropist.
Speaker 1: He gets a giant crystal palm tree as a reward
Speaker 1: for his grate philanthropy. When was all somebody else's money
Speaker 1: that's the sort of most director like Florence Johnson gave
Speaker 1: the money, but he gets the credit credit. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the strangest stories was the story of his portrait
Speaker 1: four ft tall or six foot tall portrait that was
Speaker 1: paid for by the foundation. Can you tell us the
Speaker 1: story of that portrait? Sure? So I've been calling all
Speaker 1: these charities the Trump Foundation had given money to just
Speaker 1: to find out a had Trump given them any money
Speaker 1: extra out of his own pocket? And also to find out, Okay,
Speaker 1: what was the money when the Trump Foundation gave this donation.
Speaker 1: Was it an exchange for anything or was it just
Speaker 1: a straight up gift? Uh? And so this particular group,
Speaker 1: this was I'd called three and five charities is choarity
Speaker 1: number three five? And they said, yes, that the Trump
Speaker 1: Foundation gave us twenty thou dollars. But it wasn't just
Speaker 1: a straight gift. It was a purchase. A Trump had
Speaker 1: gone to this event at Mara Lago, where the entertainment
Speaker 1: was a guy who was a speed painter. He paints
Speaker 1: portraits in like five minutes and then then auctions them off.
Speaker 1: So he painted a picture of Trump he auctioned off.
Speaker 1: Trump's wife Melania, was the only person willing to bid
Speaker 1: very much for it. She won it for twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: and then he paid with the Trump Foundation's money, and
Speaker 1: that is really puts him on thin ice with the
Speaker 1: I R S because that is not kosher. Well, basically,
Speaker 1: the I R S says that if you're a charity
Speaker 1: and you buy something, that has to be something that
Speaker 1: you're using for a charitable purpose. Right, Trump can't use
Speaker 1: his charity to buy something for himself or his business.
Speaker 1: So the question what the heck charitable purpose would there
Speaker 1: be in his six ft tall portrait of Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: And we never got the answer. Wh wouldn't she just
Speaker 1: pay for it from from their private We never got
Speaker 1: the answer. I thought in a number of cases that
Speaker 1: Trump's understanding of his charity was whenever he needed to
Speaker 1: give money to another charity, he would use the Trump Foundation,
Speaker 1: basically not understand ending that that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: That even though in this case the money went to
Speaker 1: a charity auction, and then we said we then we
Speaker 1: found this later another portrait, a ten dollar portrait also
Speaker 1: of Trump himself, that was also bought pay using charity money,
Speaker 1: and that we actually were able to trace to his
Speaker 1: golf resort outside Miami where it's hanging on the wall
Speaker 1: of the sports bar. So that's clearly a legal so wait, wait,
Speaker 1: so what so so there were two portraits, there were
Speaker 1: two portraits one and so whatever happened to the twenty
Speaker 1: dollar one? Is that in Trump Tower. All we know
Speaker 1: is that afterward the artist at Milania Trump's direction, boxed
Speaker 1: it up and shipped it to Trump's golf course in
Speaker 1: Westchester County, New York, with the understanding they would hang
Speaker 1: in the employee boardroom. I haven't been in the employee
Speaker 1: boardroom there. They won't let us in, they won't talk
Speaker 1: to us about it. So maybe it's there, and maybe
Speaker 1: it's somewhere else, but it was clearly Children's hospital. But
Speaker 1: the other one you tracked down though, and that was
Speaker 1: we're again. Trump has a golf resort called Durrell outside Miami,
Speaker 1: and so thanks to my Twitter followers, we found it
Speaker 1: hanging on the wall of the sports bar there. So
Speaker 1: that's you know, the charity paid for it, and it
Speaker 1: was used to decorate the wall of Trump's for profit business,
Speaker 1: which is like textbook self dealing text books. And you
Speaker 1: became kind of famous over the course of this reporting
Speaker 1: of sort of mixing Twitter with this old fashioned yellow
Speaker 1: legal pad that you used to keep track of how
Speaker 1: much money Trump was giving or not giving to charity. Um,
Speaker 1: how did the yellow legal pad become such a thing?
Speaker 1: You know, we had all these promises Trump had made
Speaker 1: to give money to charity out of his own pocket
Speaker 1: over the years, and I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: if he'd done any of that, And so the Trump
Speaker 1: people wouldn't help me, and I try to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I'll try to again, trying to prove, not prove
Speaker 1: a negative, but proved Trump. Right, let me try. Let
Speaker 1: me go calling the charities that I think seemed closest
Speaker 1: to Trump, the ones most likely to have gotten his money.
Speaker 1: I'll call him and see whether they ever gotten a
Speaker 1: donation from him. And I knew it was going to
Speaker 1: be futile a lot of the time, that I was
Speaker 1: going to be calling and getting nothing, no answer. So
Speaker 1: I needed a way to make futility look interesting. And
Speaker 1: that's when I came up with that legal pad. Right,
Speaker 1: could take a picture and at one glance sort of
Speaker 1: show you how hard I was trying to find this
Speaker 1: money and how I was failing. We're gonna move on
Speaker 1: in a moment. But before we do, I have to
Speaker 1: ask you why you're reporting, as excellent as it was,
Speaker 1: didn't seem to resonate with with a many voters on
Speaker 1: election day when it came to Donald Trump and his
Speaker 1: use of charity dollars. I think people did care. I
Speaker 1: have sort of a couple of theories about this. One
Speaker 1: is that I don't think it was used very effectively
Speaker 1: by the Democrats. I think you're you're sort of dependent
Speaker 1: on you know, in some cases, you know, I can
Speaker 1: only bring these things to light, somebody else has to
Speaker 1: use them for political purposes and for them to quote
Speaker 1: unquote matter and the election. So they used it a
Speaker 1: couple of times, but not very much. That maybe one reason.
Speaker 1: The other one is that there was just a lot
Speaker 1: else going on in this election, and there are so
Speaker 1: many other factors, you know, an FBI director chastising the
Speaker 1: Democratic candidate writing a letter a week before the election,
Speaker 1: you know, just to say that Trump one. I don't
Speaker 1: think that means that it didn't matter. It just means
Speaker 1: that a lot of other things matter too. Well. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about your other
Speaker 1: big scoop of this campaign cycle and has to do
Speaker 1: with Kitty. We'll be back with David farenthought right after this.
Speaker 1: During our last episode, we asked you what is the
Speaker 1: best thing that happened to you in two thousand and
Speaker 1: sixteen other than our podcast, of course, And here's what
Speaker 1: you had to say. Hi, this is Lisa Craig from Cleveland, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and the best thing about was the Cleveland Cavaliers winning
Speaker 1: the World Championship and breaking our ruts here in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: And we're also really proud of how we hosted the
Speaker 1: r NC this year. Oh and the Indians made it
Speaker 1: to the World Series. So I think Cleveland was the
Speaker 1: best thing for me about So you asked for the
Speaker 1: best thing that happened into thousands of sixteen. For me,
Speaker 1: the best thing that happened was coming to this beautiful
Speaker 1: country and being able to expand my life and my
Speaker 1: career and my education to how to high a level
Speaker 1: after being twenty five years in the dictator Ship, which
Speaker 1: is a minial east In country. Thanks Katie, Bye. So, Brian,
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Speaker 1: special offer Gianna for Katie kurrg listeners. Right, we do.
Speaker 1: You can stream hundreds of their courses free for one
Speaker 1: month when you sign up, get your free trial of
Speaker 1: the Great Courses Plus by going to the Great Courses
Speaker 1: Plus dot com slash Katie. That's the Great Courses Plus
Speaker 1: dot com slash Katie. On our next episode, we will
Speaker 1: be talking with Donald Trump. Well, actually we'll be talking
Speaker 1: with Alec Baldwin, who plays Donald Trump. Does a fantastic
Speaker 1: Tony Bennett. By the way, he does a lot of
Speaker 1: fantastic impressions. Maybe he'll do something for us. He is
Speaker 1: he is on Fuego, Yes, he is, as Donald Trump
Speaker 1: would say, Uh, what questions do you have for Alec Baldwin?
Speaker 1: Please leave us a message At nine to nine to four, four, six,
Speaker 1: three seven, and we're back with David Farenthal from the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Let's talk about your other big scoop and
Speaker 1: this was the notorious Access Hollywood Billy Bush tape. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much you're going to be able
Speaker 1: to talk to me about this or how much you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to reveal your sources, But come on, David,
Speaker 1: give it up. How did you get that tape? I
Speaker 1: can always say we had a source. It was not
Speaker 1: something we were looking for. We had you know that
Speaker 1: we knew existed beforehand, but you know, on our laps,
Speaker 1: And maybe it was because I'm better known than I
Speaker 1: was before because of the Trump Foundation stories. You know,
Speaker 1: not look at a gift horse in the mouth and
Speaker 1: we had Can you just describe sort of how it
Speaker 1: came to you? In terms of did you get a
Speaker 1: phone call? Uh, when you listen to it, I mean,
Speaker 1: just give me some color commentary here, please, Well, uh,
Speaker 1: we got it. I can't say much more about how
Speaker 1: it came to us, but when we got it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm watching this videotape. In the beginning, it's just a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a video of a bus, right, It's
Speaker 1: a bus driving around this extremely boring back lot. At
Speaker 1: the beginning, like this is so lame. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: can hear some mumbling, but you can't really hear what
Speaker 1: the mumbling is about in the beginning. But then maybe
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen seconds in, you hear Trump's voice and
Speaker 1: you hear him telling this story about Billy Bush, about
Speaker 1: trying to seduce this woman in Palm Beach, And you know,
Speaker 1: immediately you knew the language. You know, you could tell
Speaker 1: was Trump's voice, obviously, but you knew the language was different.
Speaker 1: This was him talking about himself in a way that
Speaker 1: even Donald Trump had not talked about himself in public.
Speaker 1: It packs a lot in the two minutes, uh, And
Speaker 1: I mean to the point that you know he's there's
Speaker 1: that line in there that I always stuck with you
Speaker 1: with me where he talks about groping women, and then
Speaker 1: he says, when you're a star, they let you do it.
Speaker 1: And then and there's like a wonderment in that in
Speaker 1: his voice, there like a genuine wonder where he's like wow,
Speaker 1: like I'm not I'm not bussing here, like I'm just
Speaker 1: telling you, this is amazing that this happens to me.
Speaker 1: I can't believe the world works this way. So we
Speaker 1: knew it was a big deal. And we knew it
Speaker 1: was you know, this was not him talking about women,
Speaker 1: rating women's bodies or whatever. This was him saying like,
Speaker 1: here's how I behave, Here's what I do to women.
Speaker 1: Here's what I will do. Here's something I might do
Speaker 1: to this woman we're about to meet right now, this
Speaker 1: soap opera actress. And so the the sort of guy
Speaker 1: got a lot of gears started in motion. Here, the
Speaker 1: video team, the lawyers, you know, trying to figure out
Speaker 1: getting everybody ready, like okay, listen, something really big is
Speaker 1: going to happen, and we have don't have that much
Speaker 1: time to do it. In did NBC sit on that tape?
Speaker 1: I read later that they did that they had got
Speaker 1: they had found it. Uh, the Monday of that week,
Speaker 1: I guess in response to an AP story that was
Speaker 1: about The Apprentice. Uh, I don't know. That was my
Speaker 1: main worry all day long was that we were gonna
Speaker 1: get beat by by NBC. UM. So we had a
Speaker 1: call NBC obviously to say, hey, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: are you gonna sue us? Because this is you think
Speaker 1: this is your property? And we we've you know, we've
Speaker 1: gotten it somehow. And b do you think it's a hoax?
Speaker 1: Do you think this is? Um? You know that this
Speaker 1: was because when all the offending words are said, you
Speaker 1: can see the bus, but you can't see Trump or Bush,
Speaker 1: can't see their mouth moving. So are you gonna NBC
Speaker 1: gonna say it's a hoax? And we had a called
Speaker 1: Trump for the same reason to say, to see if
Speaker 1: he would say it was a hoax. So that was
Speaker 1: so wait, yeah, yeah, So what did NBC say? What
Speaker 1: did Trump's and miss basically did not get back to
Speaker 1: us on the record. They didn't send the signal that hey,
Speaker 1: We're gonna sue you, but they didn't comment either. Trump's
Speaker 1: people At first we sent them a transcript of the
Speaker 1: video of you know the parts that are the first
Speaker 1: two minutes and they said, well, it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: Mr Trump. Can we see the whole video? And uh,
Speaker 1: we were like, you know, there was some arguing back
Speaker 1: and forth among the editors, and they decided yes, they
Speaker 1: can see the video. So we sent them the full
Speaker 1: video and it was, you know, probably it was about
Speaker 1: three thirty. We told him, look, we're gonna publish it four. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you haven't till four o'clock to comment or not.
Speaker 1: We're gonna publish with you know, either way, and they
Speaker 1: got back to us at four. It was almost like
Speaker 1: a sort of digital stop the press this moment. I
Speaker 1: had to yell at somebody to get her to stop,
Speaker 1: you know, before she get the button to publish it.
Speaker 1: And their statement that came in then was yes, Trump
Speaker 1: did it. You know, this is him. He apologizes, locker
Speaker 1: room talk that sort of thing. Wow. Wait, I just
Speaker 1: have a question because I'm this is so fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: Do you think NBC so they didn't get back to
Speaker 1: you because you know, they took a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: for sitting on the tape, holding onto it, maybe with
Speaker 1: the suggestion and that they were protecting Billy Bush. You know,
Speaker 1: this was their show Access. Hollywood is an NBC show,
Speaker 1: so just like The Apprentice was an NBC show. But
Speaker 1: he didn't say that they didn't get back to him.
Speaker 1: He said that they didn't respond on the record. I know.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm following up, baby, go ahead, go ahead,
Speaker 1: and let the master work go ahead, David So Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, really, I did not get that much
Speaker 1: out of them that day. I should note that our
Speaker 1: story published it like four oh two that afternoon, and
Speaker 1: MSNBC and Katie Tour had a story about this up
Speaker 1: at like four oh six, So we beat them, but
Speaker 1: not by very much at all. I wonder, but I wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very interesting whether I guess the the
Speaker 1: official story is they were kind of running it through
Speaker 1: their lawyers too, But it seems like they had a
Speaker 1: lot of time and those were you know, a number
Speaker 1: of days spent running it by the lawyers. It didn't
Speaker 1: take you that long to do that, did it. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they wanted the cover of not being the
Speaker 1: ones to break the story and to let you all
Speaker 1: have that honor. Who knows if if they did, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's the origin of all this. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'd be grateful for it, you know, however it happened,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for the h that it was me. Uh, no,
Speaker 1: matter what, this changed the tenor of the campaign dramatically
Speaker 1: for I would say maybe two weeks. Yeah, two weeks,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, Billie Bush lost his job at
Speaker 1: NBC as a result of it. A number of senior Republicans,
Speaker 1: including members the United States Senate, abandoned Trump. This is
Speaker 1: when McCain finally abandoned Trump, and we now know that
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, a lot of top Republicans were panicked,
Speaker 1: convinced they were going to lose in the landslide. Some
Speaker 1: even said that Trump he should drop out at this moment.
Speaker 1: Do you know much from your reporting about what was
Speaker 1: going on in Trump Tower as this was unfolding, Uh no,
Speaker 1: not really. I mean I've read, you know, our version
Speaker 1: of it, and it seemed like I read this interesting.
Speaker 1: Glenn Thrush from Politico wrote something a few weeks ago
Speaker 1: about sort of how Trump responded to it, and they
Speaker 1: called that sort of one of the most consequential decisions
Speaker 1: of the election. That Trump basically was unrepentant. You know,
Speaker 1: he said, I'm sorry, but then you know, quick move
Speaker 1: quickly to say, you know, this is the liberal media
Speaker 1: to get me. This is a you know, conspiracy to
Speaker 1: stop you the people from getting what you want, apparently
Speaker 1: borrowing a playbook from a lot of things that Bill
Speaker 1: clin did when he was under investigation for his affair.
Speaker 1: So you know, Trump responded aggressively. I thought that the
Speaker 1: that the true consequence of it for those couple of
Speaker 1: weeks was going to be that it had set Trump
Speaker 1: against the Republican establishment in a very open way. Remember,
Speaker 1: he was attacking Paul Ryan and encouraging his people to
Speaker 1: vote against Paul Ryan. It was this kind of like
Speaker 1: Republican circular firing squad that had set off that lasted
Speaker 1: a long time, lasted basically till the COMI letter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and it was interesting in in those days following it,
Speaker 1: Kelly and Conway wouldn't really come out to defend him
Speaker 1: on this topic. The only person who really did was
Speaker 1: Rudy Giuliani, right right, b Rudy Giuliani, who has been
Speaker 1: rewarded for that so far, rewarded for that loyalty with
Speaker 1: precisely nothing. Glenn brush Piece you referred to in Politico.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend people who are political junkies to read it.
Speaker 1: It goes into some depth on this topic, and and
Speaker 1: it reports that Trump was actually pissed at Giuliani for
Speaker 1: going out and defending it, for saying that he made
Speaker 1: a mistake and he's apologized because they just wanted to
Speaker 1: go on the attack. They wanted to throw out the
Speaker 1: normal playbook and just divert the topic to the liberal
Speaker 1: media trying to screw Donald Trump. What impact do you
Speaker 1: think that huge, huge story had on the electorate when
Speaker 1: all was said and done. Well, I think it did
Speaker 1: have an impact on the electorate when it happened. I
Speaker 1: think people it did changed people's minds about Trump. You
Speaker 1: saw that in the polling averages. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: also it caused you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other Republicans who I think, we're willing to support Donald
Speaker 1: Trump when they thought he could win, but you know,
Speaker 1: disagree with him in a variety of things, and at
Speaker 1: that point when they thought he was going to lose,
Speaker 1: we're willing to back off. And think of Jason Chaffits,
Speaker 1: the powerful House Oversight Committee chairman, saying I'm out. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't look at my teenage daughter in the eye
Speaker 1: when I hear this sort of stuff, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's made people, I think, even more cynical about politicians,
Speaker 1: if that's even possible, because there were so many people
Speaker 1: at that moment who said, on principle, absolutely no, they
Speaker 1: couldn't support Trump, they couldn't vote for him, who then
Speaker 1: reversed themselves again before election day and said they were
Speaker 1: for Trump, including chaff its Um And and now we're
Speaker 1: having to back him because he's president elect. So what
Speaker 1: have we learned from this? I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: politicians are going to behave differently in response to scandals
Speaker 1: as a result of this? I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: this sort of picked up a lesson that George W.
Speaker 1: Bush and before him, Bill Clinton had employed, which is
Speaker 1: that if you don't seem ashamed by whatever you did,
Speaker 1: people will start to think that it wasn't shameful after
Speaker 1: all that. I think a lot of people look to
Speaker 1: politicians to communicate the depth of their own mistakes. And
Speaker 1: if you were able to convince people that you don't
Speaker 1: think it's a big deal that you're moving on or
Speaker 1: it's really somebody else's fault, you can move past it.
Speaker 1: Not everybody can do that. I was going to say, though,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to take issue with that, David,
Speaker 1: because I think this was a singularly Trumpian response, and
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure anybody would have the bluster and
Speaker 1: the hubris to kind of deflect a story like this
Speaker 1: the way he did, don't. I mean, can you see
Speaker 1: that as well? I think you're right. I think he
Speaker 1: was an extreme case. I mean, he already at by
Speaker 1: that point, had been the guy who said I could
Speaker 1: shoot someone in Fifth Avenue and people wouldn't care. You know.
Speaker 1: My colleague get Yahoo mapped By often said during the
Speaker 1: course of this campaign, Trump cannot be shamed. He does.
Speaker 1: He's genetically he's genetically incapable of feeling ashamed about anything.
Speaker 1: But I think that's right. I think that's what we learned.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting thing to me you mentioned other politicians.
Speaker 1: I was really struck by those people. Sort of they
Speaker 1: were reacting to what they thought voters would think, to
Speaker 1: what they thought voters would care about. And I think
Speaker 1: when voters, you know, I think after a while, when
Speaker 1: they realized that voters were not turning on Trump in
Speaker 1: the way they thought, they sort of slowly came back
Speaker 1: because they wanted to be on the winning side. So, David,
Speaker 1: I met you a few weeks ago at this conference
Speaker 1: at Harvard that brought together all the time campaign operatives
Speaker 1: on both sides, and Katie's to Harvard people, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the secret handshake after this, but you
Speaker 1: can't watch it my safety school. By the way, David,
Speaker 1: she says, not at all defensively. I was really struck
Speaker 1: by saying. Robbie Mook, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, said to me,
Speaker 1: which is the negative frame on Trump was always take
Speaker 1: something he said and kind of make fun of it,
Speaker 1: attack it. But the media always showed the thing that
Speaker 1: Trump said, and the negative frame on Hillary was something
Speaker 1: totally outside of her campaign messaging the Clinton Foundation or
Speaker 1: the emails or ben Ghazi, and so she didn't get
Speaker 1: the opportunity to like say what she wanted to say.
Speaker 1: And so for a lot of voters it kind of
Speaker 1: boiled down to Trump the badass versus Hillary the crook.
Speaker 1: And given that choice, particularly in the wake of the
Speaker 1: FBI director's letter, Uh, they went with the badass um
Speaker 1: and thinking at least they get some cha Angeine Washington, Well,
Speaker 1: we talked about the you know, the shame thing. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a really interesting They were two very
Speaker 1: opposite cases of of how do you deal with a
Speaker 1: shameful act? Right think of way Clinton reacted to the
Speaker 1: email thing, which was for a long time giving shifting
Speaker 1: explanations about how much she was allowed to do it
Speaker 1: was totally fine, or maybe it was mostly fine, then
Speaker 1: apologizing for it than apologizing more for it and dragging
Speaker 1: it out and letting it be the main thing that
Speaker 1: she talked about because she couldn't find the right thing
Speaker 1: to say about it. Uh. And I think that's sort
Speaker 1: of that she was an extreme case in the other way,
Speaker 1: and that she showed so much sort of shame and
Speaker 1: unhappiness about that that it allowed it to dominate the campaign.
Speaker 1: So I think I think Robbie Mook was right. I
Speaker 1: think that's I think he's right about uh, sort of
Speaker 1: the two different frames. But Clinton someone did some of
Speaker 1: that to herself, and I should say that she didn't
Speaker 1: have some sort of other positive message about herself or
Speaker 1: not anything that broke through. So she was relying on
Speaker 1: Trump to sort of make her case for her to
Speaker 1: be a sort of campaign against him rather than four
Speaker 1: Can you imagine Hillary Clinton responding the email scandal by saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I did it, deal with it. Well, it's interesting. One
Speaker 1: of her biggest supporters made exactly that point that she
Speaker 1: shouldn't have apologized, that she should have said, you know
Speaker 1: what Cohen Palell suggested it. It was allowed under the rules.
Speaker 1: I did it, and you know, there was nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with it, and there was nothing you know, and it
Speaker 1: didn't it didn't jeopardize national that that email was ever hacked, right.
Speaker 1: I do think that. I mean, I'm playing armchair armchair
Speaker 1: politician here, but I feel like if whatever she was
Speaker 1: going to do, she should have started doing it in
Speaker 1: May of two fifteen and stuck with it. And the
Speaker 1: same with the Golden Sack speeches that you know released
Speaker 1: that or don't. But you know, at this at the
Speaker 1: Harvard thing, uh they have somebody asked one of Clinton's aids,
Speaker 1: why didn't you just put out the transcripts of the
Speaker 1: Goldmen Sack speeches before? And her response was, well, what
Speaker 1: people would have picked through it. They would have asked
Speaker 1: all these questions. It would have been a lot of hassle.
Speaker 1: It was not a political calculation. It was them bearing
Speaker 1: the weight of these years of Clinton scandals and not
Speaker 1: wanting to get into it, and they created this something
Speaker 1: that lasted, this mystery that lasted the It was just
Speaker 1: drip drip, drip drip. And because she never gave a
Speaker 1: satisfactory answer, every journalist had to ask her every time
Speaker 1: she did an interview. And she could have said, hey,
Speaker 1: refer to my comments from May. I've answered that question.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about things in American people really care about.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I'm going to run for office.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. Anyways, were talking about fake news significant ye
Speaker 1: to to final sort of categories that I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about. And I know Brian's super interested
Speaker 1: in this as well. You know, why wasn't fake news
Speaker 1: discovered before election day? I mean, we saw all these
Speaker 1: bogus stories circulating around Facebook. I had friends send me
Speaker 1: things and say did you see this? And I'd be like,
Speaker 1: it's insane. You know, Whoma and Hillary Clinton are lesbians,
Speaker 1: or Whoma's associated with the Muslim Brotherhood or I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many crazy, crazy things out there. What happened?
Speaker 1: What I mean? I think journalism I include myself in
Speaker 1: this category. I think journalists really let the American people
Speaker 1: down by not pointing this out earlier, and we know
Speaker 1: the impact it had because there was one study that
Speaker 1: showed that in the three months before the election, these
Speaker 1: fake news stories were actually more widely shared than real
Speaker 1: news stories. So what happened? Well, I do think that it's,
Speaker 1: you know, part of our bubble is that we live
Speaker 1: in a world where we read other legitimate news outlets,
Speaker 1: you know, that's who we follow on Twitter's, we follow
Speaker 1: on Facebook as journalists, and so I think in some
Speaker 1: ways it was hard to see how much you know,
Speaker 1: other people had self selected their their media feeds to
Speaker 1: just tell them all fake news. I think we didn't
Speaker 1: get it because we didn't see it. That's one thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Another thing is I think that it's you know, for
Speaker 1: us to agree that we knew about it. You could
Speaker 1: write about it, and there was some writing about it,
Speaker 1: but you know, we are struggling to figure out, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how do we show people our credibility, you know, how
Speaker 1: do we stand out how do we beat those people
Speaker 1: in the marketplace if Facebook or Twitter is going to
Speaker 1: treat them equally to us. And I think we're still
Speaker 1: sort of trying to figure that out. And for me,
Speaker 1: my own little piece of it adant, trying to be
Speaker 1: very transp Aaron about what I was doing. You know,
Speaker 1: here's how I'm gathering this information, Here's who I've asked,
Speaker 1: Here's what I've asked, you know, and be open to
Speaker 1: people's suggestions. So to degree that people saw me doing
Speaker 1: that on Twitter, I was trying to show them, Look,
Speaker 1: this is how you report a real news story. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so you can have more trust than what
Speaker 1: I'm produced. So what's going to be What can be
Speaker 1: done about fake news without sort of censoring you know,
Speaker 1: news that may not be desirable or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you get your how do
Speaker 1: you wrap your arms around this? Well, part of it
Speaker 1: is a question for people like Twitter and Facebook. You know,
Speaker 1: they have to decide do they want to you know,
Speaker 1: is there a market reason forget about censorship or you know,
Speaker 1: public good reason. Is there a market reason why they
Speaker 1: might want to be able to give their customers a
Speaker 1: way to distinguish between you real and fake things? You know,
Speaker 1: what do they think there's a there's a you know,
Speaker 1: a problem with their business model. You know, half of
Speaker 1: the news they're showing is fake. Uh. The other thing
Speaker 1: for us, because how do we think about ways for
Speaker 1: the you know, the mainstream media, the true media. How
Speaker 1: do we show people how hard we worked to produce
Speaker 1: what we do. How do we show people the standards
Speaker 1: we adhere to. I think we need to be a
Speaker 1: lot more explicit about this. We think we live in
Speaker 1: our world and think that, oh, everybody knows, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to have two sources everything. Everybody knows things
Speaker 1: are better on the record. Everybody knows the rules that
Speaker 1: we follow, but not everybody. You're saying that journalists have
Speaker 1: to have to sell the public on what good journalism
Speaker 1: is and explain it to the public. I guess maybe
Speaker 1: maybe so, huh yeah. I mean, if we're gonna grow
Speaker 1: our audience. There's a lot of people who read us now,
Speaker 1: but if we're going to reach those people who are
Speaker 1: out there passing around fake news, like we need to
Speaker 1: show them Okay, this is this is how we do it.
Speaker 1: You know, we need to be sure we're not wrong.
Speaker 1: Bec we can lose a lot of what having sort
Speaker 1: of like a good housekeeping seal of approval for legitimate
Speaker 1: news organizations. Craig Newmark, from the who started Craigslist, said,
Speaker 1: is giving a million dollars to the pointer Institute, and
Speaker 1: one of the things they're talking about is having some
Speaker 1: kind of indication to viewers or readers that this is
Speaker 1: from a legitimate news, particularly on social media. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I support that. I think there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of difficulties inherent in that, and you know,
Speaker 1: you worry about seeding the power to somebody to distinguish
Speaker 1: my real or faith. Uh, you know, more want to
Speaker 1: do that on your own with the way you you know,
Speaker 1: with your own work. But I think it's important people
Speaker 1: are paying attention to that. I mean, I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about ways to make our you know, our stories
Speaker 1: more trustworthy or more you know, more clear how we
Speaker 1: know things. There's ways you could do stuff online to
Speaker 1: show people, make it easier for people to see the
Speaker 1: primary sources you relied on, to show people how you
Speaker 1: know the things you know when when that's possible, I
Speaker 1: think it would be really educational for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And covering President Donald Trump is going to be an
Speaker 1: enormous challenge already. His team is floating stuff like eliminating
Speaker 1: the daily briefings for the press. What do you think
Speaker 1: are going to be the two or three biggest challenges
Speaker 1: for reporters trying to hold this White House accountable. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the biggest challenge we've identified so far is
Speaker 1: Trump himself. That he often uses Twitter as a way
Speaker 1: to reach a mass audience and with information that's wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, he'll he'll, he'll tell you'll tweet out something
Speaker 1: that where the facts are wrong or the context is wrong.
Speaker 1: And you know, the way that we had dealt with
Speaker 1: things like that in the past was if the you know,
Speaker 1: on the Sunday talk shows or a presidential speech or
Speaker 1: something like that, if the president says something, the first
Speaker 1: version of the story is written usually by somebody who's
Speaker 1: not a subject matter expert in that thing, and the
Speaker 1: story is the President said X, right, and then a
Speaker 1: few hours later, somebody who's a sub a matter of
Speaker 1: expert rights the second version that says the President says X,
Speaker 1: Here's what it means, here's how you know, here's what's
Speaker 1: going to happen next. All that context. But the way
Speaker 1: that you have to do with Trump. Trump comes out
Speaker 1: and says, you know, the Air Force one contract carts
Speaker 1: four billion dollars. That's wrong. You know, millions of people
Speaker 1: voted illegally, that's wrong. But you know, nobody knows about
Speaker 1: climate change. That's wrong. So you can't have the first
Speaker 1: version of the story responsible. You can to the first
Speaker 1: version of the stories that be Trump says X and
Speaker 1: then five hours later come back and say, hey, what
Speaker 1: he said was totally wrong. I mean, the truth is
Speaker 1: a you know, lie gets around the world before the
Speaker 1: truth gets its pants on. So we wanna have something
Speaker 1: where we can the first time we write about Trump's statement,
Speaker 1: the first story we write about his tweet or whatever
Speaker 1: is from the expert, and the expert says, hey, Trump
Speaker 1: said this, but it's wrong, and I want you to
Speaker 1: know that right away. Well, so it sounds like a
Speaker 1: lot of the coverage is going to be intensely critical.
Speaker 1: And do you worry about alienating the wide swath of
Speaker 1: American readers, viewers, etcetera, who say, hey, give this guy
Speaker 1: a chance. I mean, it's it's kind of a delicate balance,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It is. I think the main question for
Speaker 1: us is to avoid uh seeming sort of emotional or
Speaker 1: invested in in a particular outcome, and meaning in Trump
Speaker 1: not doing well. There's a big political ecosystem out there,
Speaker 1: and our job is to tell you what happened, and
Speaker 1: to tell you, you know, what's what's new about what
Speaker 1: Trump is doing, but not to tell you, you know,
Speaker 1: is it going to lead to the autocracy or is
Speaker 1: it going to lead to America being great again? You know,
Speaker 1: we have to just tell you what happened. Let other
Speaker 1: people run with the with the meaning of it. I
Speaker 1: think that's gonna be Uh. We have to sort of
Speaker 1: restrain ourselves from commenting too much rather than just sort
Speaker 1: of telling you what happened. David Farenthald, it's so fun
Speaker 1: to talk to you. I could stay here all day,
Speaker 1: and I have so much respect for your reporting. You
Speaker 1: do our podcast. After you want to pull us or
Speaker 1: did I just jinx it? Don't jinx it, but I
Speaker 1: would love to come on again. Thank you. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. You'll have a good home, Okay, Thank you, David.
Speaker 1: A big fat thank you to Gianna Palmer for producing
Speaker 1: the show and Jared O'Connell for engineering and mixing it.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mark Phillips for our fantastic theme music. And
Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening throughout this year. We really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. And remember you can email us at comments
Speaker 1: at curric podcast dot com or you can find me
Speaker 1: on social media. Brian is on social media too, he
Speaker 1: has oh tens of follower Yeah, I'm at Katie Curic
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram and Katie dot curric on Snapchat.
Speaker 1: What's your handle? Good buddy? You don't even know, do you? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do? Isn't it? Is it at BM Goldsmith? No,
Speaker 1: that's sad at goldsmith b on Twitter? Good because I
Speaker 1: don't like BM Goldsmith. Okay. Best of all, you can
Speaker 1: rate and review us on iTunes. Don't forget to subscribe
Speaker 1: as well. Thank you again for listening. We've had so
Speaker 1: much fun doing this. I hope you've had fun listening
Speaker 1: to our antics and we'll see you in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen.