WEBVTT - Chris Whipple is Still Covering the White House 0:00:02.840 --> 0:00:05.760 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:11.360 Thing from iHeart Radio. In today's world of endless scrolling 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:15.000 and twenty four hour news cycles, it's rare for any 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:19.119 one piece of journalism to become culturally relevant. But that 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.159 is precisely what happened to a piece written by my 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:27.360 guests today. Chris Whipple's groundbreaking profile of White House Chief 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:31.080 of Staff Susie Wiles became one of Vanity Fair's most 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:35.559 read stories of twenty twenty five. The piece was debated 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:39.360 constantly on TV news, and photos of Wiles and her 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:43.159 staff from the article were shared across the Internet for weeks. 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.159 Along with his work for Vanity Fair, Chris Whipple is 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:52.520 an Emmy Award winning journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker described 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:57.840 as quote an indispensable observer of American power quote. Whipple 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.680 has written for publications such as Police and The Daily Beast. 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:06.320 He is also authored for nonfiction books on American politics 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:10.559 and government. Working in so many different mediums, I wanted 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:12.880 to know what Whipple considers himself to be. 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.119 A little bit of all of the above. I guess 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.320 I have. Clearly, I've got some kind of identity crisis 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:23.319 going on, I stumbled into this latest phase of my 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:28.800 career writing books about political history. And it happened with 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:30.800 a phone call out of the blue from a couple 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:35.440 of French brothers named Jules and judion Naude, who had 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:39.320 done the iconic documentary nine to eleven. They almost died 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.679 that day. They said, Chris, we have this crazy idea. 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:44.800 We want to do a documentary about White House chiefs 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:48.080 of staff. And I thought about that for about thirty 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:49.720 seconds and I said, I'm in. 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.720 So they produced the documentary, which you did for Discovery. 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:54.880 We did it together, the three of us. I did 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.120 the interviewing, we all did the producing and editing together. 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:00.840 They directed, you wrote it. Yeah. 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:03.640 So before we get into any details about the Wiles 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.720 piece for Vanity Fair, I think it's safe to say, 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.359 and you wrote a book about these folks. That was she. 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:13.160 Perhaps I didn't really see Wiles on the scene very 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:15.200 much in the first administration. Was she there with him 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:16.000 in the first administration? 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:16.639 She would not. 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:17.919 Who was the chief of staff then? 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.920 So he went through four chiefs of staff, beginning with 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.480 the Wrights previous, followed by John Kelly, General John Kelly, 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:29.480 followed by Mick Mulvaney, followed by the ultimate sycophant, Mark Meadows. 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.480 I wrote a piece about Meadows, calling him the worst 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:34.840 chief of staff in history, and there was stiff competition 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:36.320 for that, and. 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:37.440 He qualified as worst. 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.440 Why because he was the ultimate? He was the guy 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:45.920 Donald Trump was desperately wanted, namely, somebody who would just 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:50.239 refuse to push back in any way and say yes, 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.840 boss and salute every time Trump came up with coca 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:57.400 made the idea, he just rubber stamped everything. Yeah, exactly. 0:02:57.480 --> 0:02:58.639 He was the ultimate sycophant. 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:03.080 But is in this second term she started the second term? Correct, 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:04.880 she'd been with them throughout this past year or so. 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:07.640 That's right, that's right. And Wiles I don't really read 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.040 very much about her. I didn't really have much of 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:11.680 a sense of her until this piece came out in 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:12.240 Vanity Pain. 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:16.320 Yeah, listen. I think Susie Wiles, in my view, was 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:20.440 maybe the most fascinating person in American politics, and partly 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:27.799 because she engineered this unbelievable, against all odds twenty twenty 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.480 four presidential campaign for Donald Trump. Donald Trump would not 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.560 be president without her, in my view, So for openers, 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:41.240 she had that going for her. Beyond that, she has 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.920 this fascinating story. You know, the daughter of Pat Summerle, 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.960 the famous sportscaster who was an alcoholic, and she came 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.240 up through the traditional GOP as a kind of Reagan Republican, 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:57.960 became disillusioned with that. Then she found Donald Trump and 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.040 along the way she got Ron DeSantis elected. That's another 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.400 wild story. Desanta's turned on her and threw her under 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.360 the bus and tried to destroy her career. 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:09.480 She's a Floridian. 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.400 She's a Floridian. She's been through the wars, and she 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:18.839 was rewarded after having won this against a lad's campaign 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:21.880 in twenty twenty four, for Trump, she was rewarded with 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.159 the job of White House chief the first woman ever 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:26.400 to serve as White House Chief of staff. 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:28.920 What do you think was her contribution to the campaign? 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:30.120 How did she help them get elected? 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.160 Well? In many ways? I mean she first of all, 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.120 she has a kind of magic with Trump that none 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.920 of her predecessors had, either campaign managers or White House 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:43.200 chiefs of staff for that matter. He trusts her in a 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:47.080 way that he never trusted anyone else. She's, without a doubt, 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.159 the second most powerful person in the Trump White House 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:53.600 and she earned it the hard way. There's a great 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.480 story that I tell in the Vanity Fair piece about 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:01.520 the time that Trump in twenty sixteen into his golf 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:05.000 club and in front of a bunch of cronies, proceeded 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:10.000 to just take her apart over abuse her verbally over 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:13.559 a pole that he didn't like that showed him losing 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:17.119 in Florida. While she sat there, she said she didn't 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:19.479 know whether to flee or a bit. What she really 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:23.480 wanted to do was cry. But instead she steeled herself 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.919 and she said, mister Trump, if you want somebody to 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.920 set her hair on fire, I'm not your girl. But 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.800 if you want somebody to win Florida, I am. And 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.800 she turned on her heel and walked out. And she 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.279 says that every day thereafter Trump was on the phone 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:40.279 calling her for help. 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.480 Now I don't know as much about this, obviously as 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.480 you do, but sometimes I wonder where someone who has 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.960 this privileged position, someone who's worked their magic with Trump 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.960 and it's working. She has his ear all the time 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.000 and is an important figure in that administration. Then she 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.040 does an interview with you, and I think to myself, 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:00.000 do you catch some of these people on a day 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:01.800 they're just fed up and they really decided they want 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:02.160 to talk. 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:04.880 Well, in this case, it would have to be eleven 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:09.760 days over eleven while to talk. She really wanted to talk. 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.680 You know, I've read all the stories, the speculation that 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:18.240 this was a Machiavellian maneuver on her part to take 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.599 jd Vance down a notch and elevate Rubio and position 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:26.160 herself and distance herself from some of the problems, the 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:28.760 pardons and all the rest of it. And I think 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:32.760 it's a lot simpler than that. I think that number one. 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.039 I ran into Walter Isaacson the week that the story dropped, 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:39.880 and Walter came up and gave me a big hug, 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:42.680 and he said, you know what, Chris, people just like 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:47.400 to talk. People want to tell their story, especially if 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:49.480 they think they're going to get a fair hearing. So 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:51.920 that was part of it. I think I came with 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.440 a reputation for being nonpartisan. You know, I'd praised some 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.520 Republican White House chiefs. She knew i'd written. She'd read 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.280 my book about the White House chiefs of staff, the gatekeepers, 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.839 so that helped. But the other thing that I think 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:10.440 is really key here is that every white House Chief. 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.360 Every White House staffer lives in a bubble. They work 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.360 in a bubble called the West Wing. And it's exponentially 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.640 more so in the Trump White House, where you're sitting 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.600 around talking to acolytes, all of them reading from the 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.000 same playbook. And I think at a certain point you 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:35.440 forget that all this crazy stuff you're talking about sounds 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:39.080 insane on planet Earth. And I think at a certain 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:43.120 point she thinks she's talking to Stephen Miller. And when 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.240 the whole thing landed a couple of weeks ago, it 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:47.040 was a problem. 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.600 Now, what was your journalistic DNA when you were a kid? 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:51.400 What's your dad? 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.000 Now? My dad was a journalist, So that's how it started. 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:55.400 So I caught the bug. 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:56.160 Who do you write for? 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.200 He was an editor of the Weekly Life magazine back 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:02.240 in the glory days in the sixties, And so I 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.680 caught the bug around the dinner table. His friends were 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:09.000 writers like Walter Lord. Rachel Carson came over for dinner 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:13.440 at Washington in Knowing in Connecticut. Oh well, he commuted 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.080 to New York where he worked, so you know, Alfred Eisenstadt, 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.200 the photographer, would come over, you know. So I caught 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.280 that bug early on. This is pretty exciting stuff, just 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:24.440 covering the world. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:29.720 So your home and journalism affects you like you're meeting 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:31.440 the New York Times when you're ten years old. How 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:33.319 does it start for you? Your curiosity? 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:36.960 It started again around the dinner table. This just seemed 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:40.840 like a pretty exciting way to have a career covering stories, 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.880 you know, all over the world. And again, those were 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:48.080 the glory days of life and Look and Saturday Evening Post. 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.120 And seven newspapers in New York the day. 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.480 Yeah, exactly, So that was pretty exciting. And I so 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.240 right out of college, I got a job working for 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.640 Foreign Policy magazine. Dick Holbrook was my boss. I want 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.280 to get to And then I went to the monthly 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.720 Life magazine, which made a run around nineteen seventy eight 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.240 to the late eighties. And so for eight years I 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:11.080 traveled all over the world. I mean I went to 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.079 South Africa and lived with Winnie Mendela for a while. 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:15.080 I want to ask you about that. 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.280 I went from there to waiting my notes here. I 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:21.320 went to the Philippines and you know, met Ferdinand and 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:22.000 Melda Marco. 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:24.319 Back in the day when journalists like that were traveling 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:26.040 a great deal they don't do this right anymore. 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.520 We'd go for weeks sometimes you have kids. Sometimes months 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:31.319 of time you have children. I didn't at that point, 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.000 but I do well. I mean that's you probably didn't 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.000 have any time. Yeah, yeah, probably wise if you. 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:37.760 Not to have children when you're flying all over the world. 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.800 Right now, talk about Mendela for example, I remember when 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.160 you were with her, was this before, after, during they 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.520 will wear our necklaces stuff and. 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.120 Great during during Right at that moment, I mean, she 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.760 was lionized, she was idolized. She was the so called 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.760 mother of the nation. Mama'll wait too. You'd hear the 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.240 people chant when she walked through the streets of Cueto. 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:04.880 At one point, David Turnley, the photographer for Life, and 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.520 I were surrounded by an angry group of kids, and 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.240 we thought we might be next to be necklaced, as 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:15.760 they called it necklacing. The necklacing was the practice of 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.800 if they thought you were a police informer, and we 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.480 were a couple of white guys in the middle of Cueto, 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:26.200 they would pour gasoline over a tire, put it around 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:27.360 your neck and set it on fire. 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:29.320 I remember she said in that speech, they will wear 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:31.960 on necklaces. He's condemning somebody at that speech. 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:35.080 So we you know, at one point we were surrounded 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.280 by these kids and they were suspicious, and suddenly we 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:42.280 saw the crowd part and we saw Winny Mendela coming 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:45.280 through and she said, these are my friends, and she 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:47.720 led us back to her house just in time. 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:48.720 What did you talk to her about? 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.520 Well, mostly about the struggle as they put it. Nelson 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:54.559 Mandela was still in prison at that point. He was 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:59.440 actually in Pollsmoor Prison at that point. He'd been moved 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.080 from Robin Islanery spent most of those years to a 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.439 place called Pollsmore. We actually went into the waiting room 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.920 with Winnie posing as a couple of her lawyers, hoping 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.480 to get a glimpse of Nelson, and nobody had seen 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:15.960 him since you early sixties, since the Ravonia trial, and 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.800 we were hoping that Winnie would take a miniature camera 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:20.400 in and get a picture for her. Wouldn't do it 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:23.200 for life? Well, she said she couldn't. She said she 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:31.359 tried anyway. Winnie was a absolutely fascinating, charismatic and really complicated, 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:33.240 ultimately tragic character. 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:34.640 I think tragic. 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.480 Why tragic because I think that she as she would 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:43.760 be the first to admit she was much more radical 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:48.520 than her husband Nelson. She was much less prepared to forgive. 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:53.280 And I think she also thought, and you could argue, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:58.680 maybe rightly, that having spent all those years struggling to 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:00.880 advance the. 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.599 The revolution in his absence. 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.520 In his absence, that she was owed something. I think 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.600 in her mind. Again, I mean, there were certainly, you know, 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.600 allegations of corruption and all of that was sort of 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.640 after the time I spent with her, but we could 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:20.120 see there was a kind of megalomania. I think that 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:21.200 she was prey to. 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:23.800 Well. I think that that's also very you know, the 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.679 potential for that is high because of the stakes and 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.120 the whole flavor of the whole thing. You know, your 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.679 husband's in prison for the rest of his life, presumably 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.839 he's a political prisoner. You're there and that I mean, 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.120 my ex wife made a film there. We went to 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:42.600 South Africa after they had bombed Planet Hollywood in Cape 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.160 Town and the US embassy in Nairobi. So the film 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:47.720 was supposed to be in Kenya and it was moved 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.120 to South Africa and she went there and it was 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.920 like roadblock, highway robberies. My ex wife had to have 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.520 a driver, a lead car armed, the driver with her armed, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.960 a bodyguard armed. They were pulling people over and raping 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:03.839 and robbing people right before we got there. So South 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.319 Africa was not Disneyland, you know, No, it was not. 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:09.600 But imagine being there during the state of emergency, you know, 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.400 before Mandela was released from prison. It was just, I mean, 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:15.160 absolutely extraordinary experience. 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:17.959 You go from Life and you're there for a while. 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:19.920 You didn't pop in and out of these places quickly. 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:22.600 You were there at Life for eight years, for eight years, 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:25.559 and when you leave Life you go to ABC. 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:27.800 Actually CBS first. 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:29.800 So you did. You were at sixty minutes that was 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:31.960 before ABC. Yeah, and you had sixty Minutes for how 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:32.480 many years? 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.400 What happened was I met Diane Sawyer who was in 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:40.600 her second year at sixty minutes and in need of 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:45.720 a associate producer, and I went to work for sixty minutes. 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.400 And you were there from eighty six to ninety one, 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:50.920 that's right, ninety when you go to ABC. Now, what 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:52.720 was your experience like at sixty minutes. And we're going 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.199 to get into just a little bit about whither CBS News. 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:57.040 Was it was? 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:57.120 It was? 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.200 It was just phenomenal. I mean it was. It was 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.559 really an exciting period of my life. And the very 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.120 first thing I did was I said to Diane Sawyer, 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:07.600 you know what, give me a plane ticket to Honolulu 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:09.960 and let me see if I can get Amelda Marcos 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.000 Amel de Marcos and her husband, Ferdinand, the dictator of 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:16.200 the Philippines had fled, had just fled the Philippines. They 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.680 were in Honolulu, they were holed up in a bunker there. 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:22.520 The entire World Press Corps was trying to get to him, 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:26.360 and I liked my chances of getting him, so I 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.480 jumped on a plane, flew out there, called Diane from 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:34.400 the compound, said how soon can you get here, because 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.080 I've got emel de Marcos ready to go, and she 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.280 couldn't make it. And so the next thing I knew 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.040 on my first day, at sixty minutes, two camera crews 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.440 were flying in and I was interviewing Emelda Marcos and 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.800 Ferdinand for sixty minutes, which I did. We sent the 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.720 transcripts back, sent the tapes back to New York. They 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.720 were transcribed. Don Ewett, the legendary executive producer, read the 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:01.840 transcripts before I flew back and I walked in the 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:04.240 door and you It is standing there with Mike Wallace, 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.480 the famous star of sixty Minutes, and he looks at me. 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:11.640 He goes way to go kid, And I'm feeling pretty 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:13.960 heady at this point, and I go, well, you know, 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.600 don there's a moment. You may not be able to 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:18.960 see it in the transcript, but there's a moment where 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:23.520 Emmelda doesn't quite lose it, but she gets all misty eyed, 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.000 and you It looks at Wallace and looks at me 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.160 and says, kid, if you were any good, she would 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.240 a cry. That was my introduction to network. 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.480 Tell her. Now, let me ask you this. In the 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:38.040 sixty Minutes period, you interview John Connolly. I'm assuming that's 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:39.360 the governor of Texas. 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:43.080 That's right. So Connolly was really fascinating, kind of larger 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:47.160 than life character. He had been Treasury secretary under Richard Nixon. 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:51.840 He was at one point considered a real possibility as president. 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.280 He ran, he tried to become resident, he won one delegate, 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.600 spent a fortune. But we went and saw him right 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:02.160 after he had this real fall from grace. I mean, 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.840 he declared bankruptcy. He lost everything he had. This was 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.840 in the mid eighties eighty seven, I guess around the 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.440 recession of that time, but the real estate market collapsed 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.040 and took all of Connolly's into possessions with him. And 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.920 he's sitting in a ranch house with all the furniture 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:24.040 removed and talking about that fall from grace, but also 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:29.120 talking about being in the limousine. JFK and he and 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.920 Nelly told us that story, you know, moment by moment 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.960 that was just absolutely rivetting. Connolly barely survived it, and 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.240 obviously JFK did not. 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:41.080 What did he say about that that you can be 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.680 called anything, because I mean, I'm a conspiracy nut. I'm 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:45.320 not going to lie. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.360 Yeah, he was not a believer in a conspiracy. He 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.520 believed that that bullet really was magical. You know that 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.320 that bullet zigzagged and came out of his wrist or 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.160 wherever it was I forgotten now. But the other fascinating 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:02.000 thing was climbing into his pickup truck. I'll never forget it. Man. 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.520 John Connelly's driving and Diane Sawyer is in the passenger seat, 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:08.960 and I'm in the back with a with a cameraman, 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:13.440 and we drive to his old homestead where Connelly and 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:15.000 Diane Sawyer started talking. 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.000 About Richard Nixon, who Diane had worked for. 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.359 Who Diane had worked for. Those two maybe knew Nixon 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:22.040 better than anyone well you could think of, So it 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.960 was it was amazing. And of course he pointed out 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.240 the homestead where he said, I used to walk barefoot 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.399 behind a mule over here, and he said, and one 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.200 day I saw a fancy car go by, and I said, 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.919 someday I'm going to be driving that car. So it 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:40.840 was some pretty amazing experiences. 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:45.200 Diane Sawyer, who of course enjoyed a great career, then 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.560 she left for ABC as well. Correct, did you connect 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.600 with her again at ABC? Did so? She was happy 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:51.400 to see you when you should. 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:53.800 I don't know about that, okay. I was happy to 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:54.800 be welcomed there. 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.120 She was great on that show. People forget how wonderful 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:00.719 she wasn't she was a really good tell journal Well. 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:03.840 She and Sam Donaldson launched a show called Primetime Live. 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:09.520 Primetime Live as Sam was said rune Arledge at that 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.719 point was held bent on trying to compete with sixty Minutes, 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.960 and lured her over and brought Sam Donaldson out of 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.200 the White House and put them together as a team, 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.359 and for a while we had the resources to do 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:26.880 a lot of pretty serious investigative hidden camera stuff, which 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:30.439 we did for a number of years. It didn't last forever, 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:34.280 but you know, at one point, I literally set up 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:39.320 a phony medical clinic in Las downtown Los Angeles and 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:42.320 hung up a shingle and rigged the place with hidden cameras, 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:47.840 and we advertised ourselves as a general practitioner doctor's office, 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:52.600 and we watched and rolled tape as crooked doctors and 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:56.280 brokers beat a path to our door offering us illegal 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:00.359 kickbacks for our patient referrals. 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:00.920 That's so forth. 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:05.119 Yeah, And after four or five months of running this 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.760 phony clinic, you know, we invited them all back and 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:13.600 Diane confronted them, and anyway, we won an Emmy for that, 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.760 but it was those are the days when Network's really had. 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.920 We're throwing money at pretty serious investigative journalists. 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:30.000 Exactly, exactly journalist and author Chris Whipple. If you enjoy 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.600 conversations about the inner workings of important magazines, check out 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.960 my episode with former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown. 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.320 Well. I think I'm a compulsive reporter. Actually, I mean 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:45.000 I have what I think of as observation greed right. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:47.560 Most of the time, I'm propelled to go out, not 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.480 because I actually want to go out, but I think 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:52.720 I got to see that. You know, I need to 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.959 see that. Curious, I'm really curious, and I have a 0:19:57.040 --> 0:19:59.280 great desire to report on the action. 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:04.560 To hear more of my conversation with Tina Brown, go 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:08.920 to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Chris 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.720 Whipple details one piece of advice former White House Chief 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:26.640 of Staff Right's Prebus gave to Susie Wiles. I'm Alec Baldwin, 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.640 and this is Here's the Thing. In nineteen seventy eight, 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:35.040 Chris Whipple began his reporting career at Life magazine, where 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:39.879 he covered countless historic events and interviewed many significant figures 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:44.680 such as Winnie Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Ted Kennedy. Whipple 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:48.240 secured an interview with Ted Kennedy during the nineteen eighty 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:52.320 presidential election, but his interview did not quite go as planned. 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:57.879 Absolutely amazing story. A sorry that didn't appear in Life 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:01.480 because for reasons you'll wander in a second. But what 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.000 happened was I was at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.920 the day Roger Mud did that infamous. 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:09.879 Interview why do you want to be President? 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.000 Ted kenn Why do you want to be president? And 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.840 it was produced by Howard Stringer and Andy Lack, two 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.119 guys you never heard of, and they were chasing me 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.159 around the law and trying to because they thought this 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.600 was their exclusive And so all of a sudden, this 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.679 kid from Life magazine is there with a photographer, and 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.560 we stood our ground. Anyway, we watched this thing happen 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.520 and Roger Mud asks the famous question and Kennedy is 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:38.360 utterly inarticulate, cannot complete this, can barely complete the sentence, 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.399 couldn't answer the question, why do you want to be present? Afterwards, 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.399 Mud takes off his microphone and walks down to the 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.639