Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. In today's world of endless scrolling
Speaker 1: and twenty four hour news cycles, it's rare for any
Speaker 1: one piece of journalism to become culturally relevant. But that
Speaker 1: is precisely what happened to a piece written by my
Speaker 1: guests today. Chris Whipple's groundbreaking profile of White House Chief
Speaker 1: of Staff Susie Wiles became one of Vanity Fair's most
Speaker 1: read stories of twenty twenty five. The piece was debated
Speaker 1: constantly on TV news, and photos of Wiles and her
Speaker 1: staff from the article were shared across the Internet for weeks.
Speaker 1: Along with his work for Vanity Fair, Chris Whipple is
Speaker 1: an Emmy Award winning journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker described
Speaker 1: as quote an indispensable observer of American power quote. Whipple
Speaker 1: has written for publications such as Police and The Daily Beast.
Speaker 1: He is also authored for nonfiction books on American politics
Speaker 1: and government. Working in so many different mediums, I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what Whipple considers himself to be.
Speaker 2: A little bit of all of the above. I guess
Speaker 2: I have. Clearly, I've got some kind of identity crisis
Speaker 2: going on, I stumbled into this latest phase of my
Speaker 2: career writing books about political history. And it happened with
Speaker 2: a phone call out of the blue from a couple
Speaker 2: of French brothers named Jules and judion Naude, who had
Speaker 2: done the iconic documentary nine to eleven. They almost died
Speaker 2: that day. They said, Chris, we have this crazy idea.
Speaker 2: We want to do a documentary about White House chiefs
Speaker 2: of staff. And I thought about that for about thirty
Speaker 2: seconds and I said, I'm in.
Speaker 1: So they produced the documentary, which you did for Discovery.
Speaker 2: We did it together, the three of us. I did
Speaker 2: the interviewing, we all did the producing and editing together.
Speaker 2: They directed, you wrote it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So before we get into any details about the Wiles
Speaker 1: piece for Vanity Fair, I think it's safe to say,
Speaker 1: and you wrote a book about these folks. That was she.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I didn't really see Wiles on the scene very
Speaker 1: much in the first administration. Was she there with him
Speaker 1: in the first administration?
Speaker 2: She would not.
Speaker 1: Who was the chief of staff then?
Speaker 2: So he went through four chiefs of staff, beginning with
Speaker 2: the Wrights previous, followed by John Kelly, General John Kelly,
Speaker 2: followed by Mick Mulvaney, followed by the ultimate sycophant, Mark Meadows.
Speaker 2: I wrote a piece about Meadows, calling him the worst
Speaker 2: chief of staff in history, and there was stiff competition
Speaker 2: for that, and.
Speaker 1: He qualified as worst.
Speaker 2: Why because he was the ultimate? He was the guy
Speaker 2: Donald Trump was desperately wanted, namely, somebody who would just
Speaker 2: refuse to push back in any way and say yes,
Speaker 2: boss and salute every time Trump came up with coca
Speaker 2: made the idea, he just rubber stamped everything. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: He was the ultimate sycophant.
Speaker 1: But is in this second term she started the second term? Correct,
Speaker 1: she'd been with them throughout this past year or so.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. And Wiles I don't really read
Speaker 1: very much about her. I didn't really have much of
Speaker 1: a sense of her until this piece came out in
Speaker 1: Vanity Pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen. I think Susie Wiles, in my view, was
Speaker 2: maybe the most fascinating person in American politics, and partly
Speaker 2: because she engineered this unbelievable, against all odds twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four presidential campaign for Donald Trump. Donald Trump would not
Speaker 2: be president without her, in my view, So for openers,
Speaker 2: she had that going for her. Beyond that, she has
Speaker 2: this fascinating story. You know, the daughter of Pat Summerle,
Speaker 2: the famous sportscaster who was an alcoholic, and she came
Speaker 2: up through the traditional GOP as a kind of Reagan Republican,
Speaker 2: became disillusioned with that. Then she found Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: along the way she got Ron DeSantis elected. That's another
Speaker 2: wild story. Desanta's turned on her and threw her under
Speaker 2: the bus and tried to destroy her career.
Speaker 1: She's a Floridian.
Speaker 2: She's a Floridian. She's been through the wars, and she
Speaker 2: was rewarded after having won this against a lad's campaign
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, for Trump, she was rewarded with
Speaker 2: the job of White House chief the first woman ever
Speaker 2: to serve as White House Chief of staff.
Speaker 1: What do you think was her contribution to the campaign?
Speaker 1: How did she help them get elected?
Speaker 2: Well? In many ways? I mean she first of all,
Speaker 2: she has a kind of magic with Trump that none
Speaker 2: of her predecessors had, either campaign managers or White House
Speaker 2: chiefs of staff for that matter. He trusts her in a
Speaker 2: way that he never trusted anyone else. She's, without a doubt,
Speaker 2: the second most powerful person in the Trump White House
Speaker 2: and she earned it the hard way. There's a great
Speaker 2: story that I tell in the Vanity Fair piece about
Speaker 2: the time that Trump in twenty sixteen into his golf
Speaker 2: club and in front of a bunch of cronies, proceeded
Speaker 2: to just take her apart over abuse her verbally over
Speaker 2: a pole that he didn't like that showed him losing
Speaker 2: in Florida. While she sat there, she said she didn't
Speaker 2: know whether to flee or a bit. What she really
Speaker 2: wanted to do was cry. But instead she steeled herself
Speaker 2: and she said, mister Trump, if you want somebody to
Speaker 2: set her hair on fire, I'm not your girl. But
Speaker 2: if you want somebody to win Florida, I am. And
Speaker 2: she turned on her heel and walked out. And she
Speaker 2: says that every day thereafter Trump was on the phone
Speaker 2: calling her for help.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know as much about this, obviously as
Speaker 1: you do, but sometimes I wonder where someone who has
Speaker 1: this privileged position, someone who's worked their magic with Trump
Speaker 1: and it's working. She has his ear all the time
Speaker 1: and is an important figure in that administration. Then she
Speaker 1: does an interview with you, and I think to myself,
Speaker 1: do you catch some of these people on a day
Speaker 1: they're just fed up and they really decided they want
Speaker 1: to talk.
Speaker 2: Well, in this case, it would have to be eleven
Speaker 2: days over eleven while to talk. She really wanted to talk.
Speaker 2: You know, I've read all the stories, the speculation that
Speaker 2: this was a Machiavellian maneuver on her part to take
Speaker 2: jd Vance down a notch and elevate Rubio and position
Speaker 2: herself and distance herself from some of the problems, the
Speaker 2: pardons and all the rest of it. And I think
Speaker 2: it's a lot simpler than that. I think that number one.
Speaker 2: I ran into Walter Isaacson the week that the story dropped,
Speaker 2: and Walter came up and gave me a big hug,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know what, Chris, people just like
Speaker 2: to talk. People want to tell their story, especially if
Speaker 2: they think they're going to get a fair hearing. So
Speaker 2: that was part of it. I think I came with
Speaker 2: a reputation for being nonpartisan. You know, I'd praised some
Speaker 2: Republican White House chiefs. She knew i'd written. She'd read
Speaker 2: my book about the White House chiefs of staff, the gatekeepers,
Speaker 2: so that helped. But the other thing that I think
Speaker 2: is really key here is that every white House Chief.
Speaker 2: Every White House staffer lives in a bubble. They work
Speaker 2: in a bubble called the West Wing. And it's exponentially
Speaker 2: more so in the Trump White House, where you're sitting
Speaker 2: around talking to acolytes, all of them reading from the
Speaker 2: same playbook. And I think at a certain point you
Speaker 2: forget that all this crazy stuff you're talking about sounds
Speaker 2: insane on planet Earth. And I think at a certain
Speaker 2: point she thinks she's talking to Stephen Miller. And when
Speaker 2: the whole thing landed a couple of weeks ago, it
Speaker 2: was a problem.
Speaker 1: Now, what was your journalistic DNA when you were a kid?
Speaker 1: What's your dad?
Speaker 2: Now? My dad was a journalist, So that's how it started.
Speaker 2: So I caught the bug.
Speaker 1: Who do you write for?
Speaker 2: He was an editor of the Weekly Life magazine back
Speaker 2: in the glory days in the sixties, And so I
Speaker 2: caught the bug around the dinner table. His friends were
Speaker 2: writers like Walter Lord. Rachel Carson came over for dinner
Speaker 2: at Washington in Knowing in Connecticut. Oh well, he commuted
Speaker 2: to New York where he worked, so you know, Alfred Eisenstadt,
Speaker 2: the photographer, would come over, you know. So I caught
Speaker 2: that bug early on. This is pretty exciting stuff, just
Speaker 2: covering the world.
Speaker 1: So your home and journalism affects you like you're meeting
Speaker 1: the New York Times when you're ten years old. How
Speaker 1: does it start for you? Your curiosity?
Speaker 2: It started again around the dinner table. This just seemed
Speaker 2: like a pretty exciting way to have a career covering stories,
Speaker 2: you know, all over the world. And again, those were
Speaker 2: the glory days of life and Look and Saturday Evening Post.
Speaker 1: And seven newspapers in New York the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So that was pretty exciting. And I so
Speaker 2: right out of college, I got a job working for
Speaker 2: Foreign Policy magazine. Dick Holbrook was my boss. I want
Speaker 2: to get to And then I went to the monthly
Speaker 2: Life magazine, which made a run around nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 2: to the late eighties. And so for eight years I
Speaker 2: traveled all over the world. I mean I went to
Speaker 2: South Africa and lived with Winnie Mendela for a while.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about that.
Speaker 2: I went from there to waiting my notes here. I
Speaker 2: went to the Philippines and you know, met Ferdinand and
Speaker 2: Melda Marco.
Speaker 1: Back in the day when journalists like that were traveling
Speaker 1: a great deal they don't do this right anymore.
Speaker 2: We'd go for weeks sometimes you have kids. Sometimes months
Speaker 2: of time you have children. I didn't at that point,
Speaker 2: but I do well. I mean that's you probably didn't
Speaker 2: have any time. Yeah, yeah, probably wise if you.
Speaker 1: Not to have children when you're flying all over the world.
Speaker 1: Right now, talk about Mendela for example, I remember when
Speaker 1: you were with her, was this before, after, during they
Speaker 1: will wear our necklaces stuff and.
Speaker 2: Great during during Right at that moment, I mean, she
Speaker 2: was lionized, she was idolized. She was the so called
Speaker 2: mother of the nation. Mama'll wait too. You'd hear the
Speaker 2: people chant when she walked through the streets of Cueto.
Speaker 2: At one point, David Turnley, the photographer for Life, and
Speaker 2: I were surrounded by an angry group of kids, and
Speaker 2: we thought we might be next to be necklaced, as
Speaker 2: they called it necklacing. The necklacing was the practice of
Speaker 2: if they thought you were a police informer, and we
Speaker 2: were a couple of white guys in the middle of Cueto,
Speaker 2: they would pour gasoline over a tire, put it around
Speaker 2: your neck and set it on fire.
Speaker 1: I remember she said in that speech, they will wear
Speaker 1: on necklaces. He's condemning somebody at that speech.
Speaker 2: So we you know, at one point we were surrounded
Speaker 2: by these kids and they were suspicious, and suddenly we
Speaker 2: saw the crowd part and we saw Winny Mendela coming
Speaker 2: through and she said, these are my friends, and she
Speaker 2: led us back to her house just in time.
Speaker 1: What did you talk to her about?
Speaker 2: Well, mostly about the struggle as they put it. Nelson
Speaker 2: Mandela was still in prison at that point. He was
Speaker 2: actually in Pollsmoor Prison at that point. He'd been moved
Speaker 2: from Robin Islanery spent most of those years to a
Speaker 2: place called Pollsmore. We actually went into the waiting room
Speaker 2: with Winnie posing as a couple of her lawyers, hoping
Speaker 2: to get a glimpse of Nelson, and nobody had seen
Speaker 2: him since you early sixties, since the Ravonia trial, and
Speaker 2: we were hoping that Winnie would take a miniature camera
Speaker 2: in and get a picture for her. Wouldn't do it
Speaker 2: for life? Well, she said she couldn't. She said she
Speaker 2: tried anyway. Winnie was a absolutely fascinating, charismatic and really complicated,
Speaker 2: ultimately tragic character.
Speaker 1: I think tragic.
Speaker 2: Why tragic because I think that she as she would
Speaker 2: be the first to admit she was much more radical
Speaker 2: than her husband Nelson. She was much less prepared to forgive.
Speaker 2: And I think she also thought, and you could argue,
Speaker 2: maybe rightly, that having spent all those years struggling to
Speaker 2: advance the.
Speaker 1: The revolution in his absence.
Speaker 2: In his absence, that she was owed something. I think
Speaker 2: in her mind. Again, I mean, there were certainly, you know,
Speaker 2: allegations of corruption and all of that was sort of
Speaker 2: after the time I spent with her, but we could
Speaker 2: see there was a kind of megalomania. I think that
Speaker 2: she was prey to.
Speaker 1: Well. I think that that's also very you know, the
Speaker 1: potential for that is high because of the stakes and
Speaker 1: the whole flavor of the whole thing. You know, your
Speaker 1: husband's in prison for the rest of his life, presumably
Speaker 1: he's a political prisoner. You're there and that I mean,
Speaker 1: my ex wife made a film there. We went to
Speaker 1: South Africa after they had bombed Planet Hollywood in Cape
Speaker 1: Town and the US embassy in Nairobi. So the film
Speaker 1: was supposed to be in Kenya and it was moved
Speaker 1: to South Africa and she went there and it was
Speaker 1: like roadblock, highway robberies. My ex wife had to have
Speaker 1: a driver, a lead car armed, the driver with her armed,
Speaker 1: a bodyguard armed. They were pulling people over and raping
Speaker 1: and robbing people right before we got there. So South
Speaker 1: Africa was not Disneyland, you know, No, it was not.
Speaker 2: But imagine being there during the state of emergency, you know,
Speaker 2: before Mandela was released from prison. It was just, I mean,
Speaker 2: absolutely extraordinary experience.
Speaker 1: You go from Life and you're there for a while.
Speaker 1: You didn't pop in and out of these places quickly.
Speaker 1: You were there at Life for eight years, for eight years,
Speaker 1: and when you leave Life you go to ABC.
Speaker 2: Actually CBS first.
Speaker 1: So you did. You were at sixty minutes that was
Speaker 1: before ABC. Yeah, and you had sixty Minutes for how
Speaker 1: many years?
Speaker 2: What happened was I met Diane Sawyer who was in
Speaker 2: her second year at sixty minutes and in need of
Speaker 2: a associate producer, and I went to work for sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: And you were there from eighty six to ninety one,
Speaker 1: that's right, ninety when you go to ABC. Now, what
Speaker 1: was your experience like at sixty minutes. And we're going
Speaker 1: to get into just a little bit about whither CBS News.
Speaker 2: Was it was?
Speaker 1: It was?
Speaker 2: It was just phenomenal. I mean it was. It was
Speaker 2: really an exciting period of my life. And the very
Speaker 2: first thing I did was I said to Diane Sawyer,
Speaker 2: you know what, give me a plane ticket to Honolulu
Speaker 2: and let me see if I can get Amelda Marcos
Speaker 2: Amel de Marcos and her husband, Ferdinand, the dictator of
Speaker 2: the Philippines had fled, had just fled the Philippines. They
Speaker 2: were in Honolulu, they were holed up in a bunker there.
Speaker 2: The entire World Press Corps was trying to get to him,
Speaker 2: and I liked my chances of getting him, so I
Speaker 2: jumped on a plane, flew out there, called Diane from
Speaker 2: the compound, said how soon can you get here, because
Speaker 2: I've got emel de Marcos ready to go, and she
Speaker 2: couldn't make it. And so the next thing I knew
Speaker 2: on my first day, at sixty minutes, two camera crews
Speaker 2: were flying in and I was interviewing Emelda Marcos and
Speaker 2: Ferdinand for sixty minutes, which I did. We sent the
Speaker 2: transcripts back, sent the tapes back to New York. They
Speaker 2: were transcribed. Don Ewett, the legendary executive producer, read the
Speaker 2: transcripts before I flew back and I walked in the
Speaker 2: door and you It is standing there with Mike Wallace,
Speaker 2: the famous star of sixty Minutes, and he looks at me.
Speaker 2: He goes way to go kid, And I'm feeling pretty
Speaker 2: heady at this point, and I go, well, you know,
Speaker 2: don there's a moment. You may not be able to
Speaker 2: see it in the transcript, but there's a moment where
Speaker 2: Emmelda doesn't quite lose it, but she gets all misty eyed,
Speaker 2: and you It looks at Wallace and looks at me
Speaker 2: and says, kid, if you were any good, she would
Speaker 2: a cry. That was my introduction to network.
Speaker 1: Tell her. Now, let me ask you this. In the
Speaker 1: sixty Minutes period, you interview John Connolly. I'm assuming that's
Speaker 1: the governor of Texas.
Speaker 2: That's right. So Connolly was really fascinating, kind of larger
Speaker 2: than life character. He had been Treasury secretary under Richard Nixon.
Speaker 2: He was at one point considered a real possibility as president.
Speaker 2: He ran, he tried to become resident, he won one delegate,
Speaker 2: spent a fortune. But we went and saw him right
Speaker 2: after he had this real fall from grace. I mean,
Speaker 2: he declared bankruptcy. He lost everything he had. This was
Speaker 2: in the mid eighties eighty seven, I guess around the
Speaker 2: recession of that time, but the real estate market collapsed
Speaker 2: and took all of Connolly's into possessions with him. And
Speaker 2: he's sitting in a ranch house with all the furniture
Speaker 2: removed and talking about that fall from grace, but also
Speaker 2: talking about being in the limousine. JFK and he and
Speaker 2: Nelly told us that story, you know, moment by moment
Speaker 2: that was just absolutely rivetting. Connolly barely survived it, and
Speaker 2: obviously JFK did not.
Speaker 1: What did he say about that that you can be
Speaker 1: called anything, because I mean, I'm a conspiracy nut. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to lie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was not a believer in a conspiracy. He
Speaker 2: believed that that bullet really was magical. You know that
Speaker 2: that bullet zigzagged and came out of his wrist or
Speaker 2: wherever it was I forgotten now. But the other fascinating
Speaker 2: thing was climbing into his pickup truck. I'll never forget it. Man.
Speaker 2: John Connelly's driving and Diane Sawyer is in the passenger seat,
Speaker 2: and I'm in the back with a with a cameraman,
Speaker 2: and we drive to his old homestead where Connelly and
Speaker 2: Diane Sawyer started talking.
Speaker 1: About Richard Nixon, who Diane had worked for.
Speaker 2: Who Diane had worked for. Those two maybe knew Nixon
Speaker 2: better than anyone well you could think of, So it
Speaker 2: was it was amazing. And of course he pointed out
Speaker 2: the homestead where he said, I used to walk barefoot
Speaker 2: behind a mule over here, and he said, and one
Speaker 2: day I saw a fancy car go by, and I said,
Speaker 2: someday I'm going to be driving that car. So it
Speaker 2: was some pretty amazing experiences.
Speaker 1: Diane Sawyer, who of course enjoyed a great career, then
Speaker 1: she left for ABC as well. Correct, did you connect
Speaker 1: with her again at ABC? Did so? She was happy
Speaker 1: to see you when you should.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, okay. I was happy to
Speaker 2: be welcomed there.
Speaker 1: She was great on that show. People forget how wonderful
Speaker 1: she wasn't she was a really good tell journal Well.
Speaker 2: She and Sam Donaldson launched a show called Primetime Live.
Speaker 2: Primetime Live as Sam was said rune Arledge at that
Speaker 2: point was held bent on trying to compete with sixty Minutes,
Speaker 2: and lured her over and brought Sam Donaldson out of
Speaker 2: the White House and put them together as a team,
Speaker 2: and for a while we had the resources to do
Speaker 2: a lot of pretty serious investigative hidden camera stuff, which
Speaker 2: we did for a number of years. It didn't last forever,
Speaker 2: but you know, at one point, I literally set up
Speaker 2: a phony medical clinic in Las downtown Los Angeles and
Speaker 2: hung up a shingle and rigged the place with hidden cameras,
Speaker 2: and we advertised ourselves as a general practitioner doctor's office,
Speaker 2: and we watched and rolled tape as crooked doctors and
Speaker 2: brokers beat a path to our door offering us illegal
Speaker 2: kickbacks for our patient referrals.
Speaker 1: That's so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And after four or five months of running this
Speaker 2: phony clinic, you know, we invited them all back and
Speaker 2: Diane confronted them, and anyway, we won an Emmy for that,
Speaker 2: but it was those are the days when Network's really had.
Speaker 2: We're throwing money at pretty serious investigative journalists.
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly journalist and author Chris Whipple. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: conversations about the inner workings of important magazines, check out
Speaker 1: my episode with former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown.
Speaker 3: Well. I think I'm a compulsive reporter. Actually, I mean
Speaker 3: I have what I think of as observation greed right.
Speaker 3: Most of the time, I'm propelled to go out, not
Speaker 3: because I actually want to go out, but I think
Speaker 3: I got to see that. You know, I need to
Speaker 3: see that. Curious, I'm really curious, and I have a
Speaker 3: great desire to report on the action.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Tina Brown, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Chris
Speaker 1: Whipple details one piece of advice former White House Chief
Speaker 1: of Staff Right's Prebus gave to Susie Wiles. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and this is Here's the Thing. In nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: Chris Whipple began his reporting career at Life magazine, where
Speaker 1: he covered countless historic events and interviewed many significant figures
Speaker 1: such as Winnie Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Ted Kennedy. Whipple
Speaker 1: secured an interview with Ted Kennedy during the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: presidential election, but his interview did not quite go as planned.
Speaker 2: Absolutely amazing story. A sorry that didn't appear in Life
Speaker 2: because for reasons you'll wander in a second. But what
Speaker 2: happened was I was at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport
Speaker 2: the day Roger Mud did that infamous.
Speaker 1: Interview why do you want to be President?
Speaker 2: Ted kenn Why do you want to be president? And
Speaker 2: it was produced by Howard Stringer and Andy Lack, two
Speaker 2: guys you never heard of, and they were chasing me
Speaker 2: around the law and trying to because they thought this
Speaker 2: was their exclusive And so all of a sudden, this
Speaker 2: kid from Life magazine is there with a photographer, and
Speaker 2: we stood our ground. Anyway, we watched this thing happen
Speaker 2: and Roger Mud asks the famous question and Kennedy is
Speaker 2: utterly inarticulate, cannot complete this, can barely complete the sentence,
Speaker 2: couldn't answer the question, why do you want to be present? Afterwards,
Speaker 2: Mud takes off his microphone and walks down to the
Speaker 2: sea wall, and I walked down behind him and I
Speaker 2: congratulated him. I said, Roger, I am Chris Whipple. That
Speaker 2: was amazing. He goes, really you think I got anything?
Speaker 2: He had no idea what he had. It was pretty
Speaker 2: clear to everybody else who was watching it. I mean,
Speaker 2: we didn't know it would end his campaign, which essentially
Speaker 2: it did. But Mud didn't realize what he had. That
Speaker 2: was the modesty of the man. I thereupon had my
Speaker 2: ten minutes or fifteen minutes with Kennedy riding in the
Speaker 2: limousine from the compound down to the dock where Patrick
Speaker 2: his son was waiting on the sailboat to go for
Speaker 2: a sale, and Kennedy had he was catatonic. He had
Speaker 2: this like thousand yards stare, and I would ask him
Speaker 2: questions and get no response. And to this day, I
Speaker 2: don't know what was going on. Whatever happened, Boy, he
Speaker 2: didn't have it that day, and I think it ended
Speaker 2: his campaign.
Speaker 1: So tell me about CBS and what you think has
Speaker 1: happened there. Does do you think that this is going
Speaker 1: to wind up happening everywhere?
Speaker 2: Wow, it's painful to watch. I mean for those of
Speaker 2: us who were there during the glory days. I'm not
Speaker 2: always the hair on fire guy when it comes to
Speaker 2: what's going on at CBS right now, because I can remember.
Speaker 2: Let's take for example, what happened recently with Barry Weiss
Speaker 2: spiking or at least delaying that story about that terrible
Speaker 2: prison in Nel Salvador Seacott. I'm old enough to remember,
Speaker 2: even though it was after I left sixty minutes when
Speaker 2: Don yu At, the executive producer, spiked the story about
Speaker 2: Big Tobacco, and it was later turned into.
Speaker 1: A movie, as you know, the.
Speaker 2: The Insider with al Pacino, and that story eventually ran,
Speaker 2: and it ran to devastating effect, I mean, really changed everything.
Speaker 2: Lowel Bergman was the producer, but I knew Lowell when
Speaker 2: he was there, So I don't think it's the end
Speaker 2: of the story. And I think I think that Seacut
Speaker 2: story will run. I mean a lot of people have
Speaker 2: seen it, because there was a bootleg version of it
Speaker 2: that the CANADIENC has put out. A lot of people
Speaker 2: saw it. But boy, they're going through a rough period.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if the other networks as well, that
Speaker 1: the news which was an edict from the FCC. If
Speaker 1: I recall, these are public airwaves and you have to
Speaker 1: have some news program. I mean they ordered that and
Speaker 1: eventually tried to turn it, you know, away from a
Speaker 1: lost leader with you will or whatever comparison you want
Speaker 1: to make. And they you know, the news is big business.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if it's not big business anymore and
Speaker 1: they all want to get rid of it in some
Speaker 1: way or just cut the costs of nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you may be right, and nobody under
Speaker 2: seventy five is watching the Network news broadcast. I spoke
Speaker 2: to a twelfth grade class, really bright kids in Greenwich, Connecticut,
Speaker 2: affluent kids, and they're getting their news from TikTok and
Speaker 2: dinner with their parents. It's not a pretty picture.
Speaker 1: I'm at a party once at John Eastman's house, McCartney's
Speaker 1: brother in law, Linda Eastman's brother. And I'm there and
Speaker 1: John Eastman and his wife would have these fabulous parties
Speaker 1: in the summertime at their house, and all these people
Speaker 1: there that you admired, And I'm sitting down with the Holberg,
Speaker 1: who was the loveliest guy on earth and the most
Speaker 1: charming man on her And hollbrook sits there and says,
Speaker 1: to me, read the forty pages in Halberston, and that'll
Speaker 1: tell you everything about me. You know, don't even bother
Speaker 1: anything else. That's Maclamara, and I want you to read
Speaker 1: it and then call me and we'll have dinner. He
Speaker 1: was very kind to me, he said, let's have dinner
Speaker 1: or lunch. And then he died two weeks later or
Speaker 1: something like that, right on the heels of that. Wow,
Speaker 1: what was your relationship with him?
Speaker 2: Like Holbrick was an unbelievable character. I mean, I was
Speaker 2: a kid at a college, you know, with hair down
Speaker 2: to my shoulders, and completely out of my depth as
Speaker 2: his assistant at foreign policy. But I must have done
Speaker 2: something right because he just became a mentor and a
Speaker 2: great friend and the reason I wound up at sixty minutes.
Speaker 2: One day I was back from an assignment for Life,
Speaker 2: was walking through the lobby of the Jefferson Hotel in
Speaker 2: Washington and Hobrook comes out of the dining room and
Speaker 2: we bump into each other and he goes, congratulations, Listen,
Speaker 2: I just read your piece on Marcos. You got the
Speaker 2: quote of the Year from Marcos. Of course he'd read
Speaker 2: Life magazine, he read everything. And he goes, listen, you
Speaker 2: gotta have lunch with me and Diane. Well, Diane was
Speaker 2: his then girlfriend, Diane Sawyer, and that was how I
Speaker 2: met Diane and wound up eventually at sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's your relationship with Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: The peace goes because you had an ongoing relationship with
Speaker 1: them and written for them before I have when you
Speaker 1: first started writing, who was in charge? Graydon?
Speaker 2: So, Graydon Carter was in charge when I began writing
Speaker 2: for Vanity Fair. I did a number of pieces, including
Speaker 2: the first interview with Ryan's prebus after he was shown
Speaker 2: the doors on the tarmac. He was literally on a
Speaker 2: rain soaked tarmac under Air Force one when Trump tweeted
Speaker 2: that his services were no longer needed. That was the
Speaker 2: way Trump rolled during the first term with White House chiefs.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I got to know Ryance interviewed him. The
Speaker 2: very first thing he said to me, I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: I met him at a bar in Georgetown and he
Speaker 2: came over to me and he said, take everything you've
Speaker 2: heard and multiplied by fifty and we were off to
Speaker 2: the races. And I did a piece of vanity fair
Speaker 2: after that. The irony here is that fast forward now
Speaker 2: eight years there was a gathering for Susie Wiles before
Speaker 2: she became White House Chief of Staff. Jeff Science, the
Speaker 2: outgoing White House chief for Joe Biden, invited a bunch
Speaker 2: of chiefs to come and give Wiles some advice. They
Speaker 2: went around the table and they got to Ryan's previous
Speaker 2: and Breevous looked at Wiles and said, one thing, don't
Speaker 2: talk to Whipple.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: She evidently didn't take it to heart. So every once
Speaker 2: in a while on a reporter's career lightning strikes, and
Speaker 2: this was one of those cases. White House chiefs of
Speaker 2: staff never talked to reporters on the record.
Speaker 1: Very rarely, not for that length of time either.
Speaker 2: You know, I wrote a book on the Biden White
Speaker 2: House in the first two years of Biden White House
Speaker 2: got to know rhyme claim pretty well, interviewed him multiple times,
Speaker 2: always on so called deep background with quotation approval required
Speaker 2: before you publish. None of that was Susie Wiles.
Speaker 1: So they came to you. You pitched them. What did
Speaker 1: the Wiles thing come up?
Speaker 3: Oo?
Speaker 1: Who originated that idea?
Speaker 2: So I did. What happened was I was writing, and
Speaker 2: I still am writing a book on a history of
Speaker 2: presidential campaign managers from nineteen sixty eight to the president.
Speaker 2: It's a rogues gallery of great characters, from John Mitchell
Speaker 2: to Lee Atwater, to James Carville to Susie Wiles, who
Speaker 2: ran Trump's campaign. So I called up Wiles. She was
Speaker 2: driving ten days before she became White House chief. She's
Speaker 2: driving from mar A Lago to her place in Ponavidra,
Speaker 2: about four hours north in Florida. And we started talking
Speaker 2: and I can't believe it. She is open and unguarded
Speaker 2: and on the record and smart and funny and charming.
Speaker 2: And I got off the phone and I said to
Speaker 2: my wife, you're not going to believe this, and she didn't,
Speaker 2: but it was true. She was on the record during
Speaker 2: that first conversation except when we mutually agreed to go
Speaker 2: off very briefly, and for the next eleven months we
Speaker 2: just kept talking. Now, I should say that what happened
Speaker 2: was initially she knew I was writing a book about
Speaker 2: presidential campaign managers. That's why she was talking to me.
Speaker 2: I quickly realized that what she really wanted to talk
Speaker 2: about was Trump two point oh. And she she told
Speaker 2: me I just got off the phone with Hakim Jeffreys,
Speaker 2: and I told him, you're going to see a whole
Speaker 2: new Trump. Trust me anyway. So a couple of interviews
Speaker 2: into this process, I said to her, well, listen, Susie
Speaker 2: Vandy Fair wants to do a big piece on Trump
Speaker 2: two point oh. And she said great. Congratually, she was
Speaker 2: all in.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing to me looking back at your books,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned the Biden book. This is not a
Speaker 1: serious question, obviously, but I guess I can't help, But
Speaker 1: should we have an age limit for the president of
Speaker 1: the United States. I mean, we got two guys that
Speaker 1: are round in the corner at eighty and both of
Speaker 1: them have serious issues, maybe neurologically, who knows or whatever,
Speaker 1: And I wonder should we go that you can't be
Speaker 1: present to you pass a certain physical.
Speaker 2: Maybe they should be Yeah, maybe there should be. Look,
Speaker 2: I think that it was Joe Biden's eleventh hour abdication
Speaker 2: from the race, which left Kamala Harris with two shorter runways.
Speaker 1: That's what I said. I used that phase to a runway.
Speaker 2: To mount a serious race against Trump. Was a scandal
Speaker 2: and a tragedy. A tragedy for Biden obviously, but also
Speaker 2: for the Democratic Party and arguably the country. There's no
Speaker 2: question about it. Now. I don't agree with Jake Tapper
Speaker 2: that Biden was Woodrow Wilson non compass, meant to over
Speaker 2: in the corner while everybody else was governing by auto pen.
Speaker 2: I think that was nonsense. I think Biden was actually
Speaker 2: making decisions behind closed doors. What he couldn't do was campaign.
Speaker 2: He couldn't do anything, as we all saw in that
Speaker 2: infamous debate.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we're married now to this kind of
Speaker 1: hawkish or semi hawkish presidential figure, whether he didn't have
Speaker 1: to talk tough. You never hear anybody talk about peace anymore.
Speaker 1: Never nobody talks about peace in the Middle East or
Speaker 1: in Ukraine. It's all war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, you really wonder was I was joking with
Speaker 2: somebody earlier today that you know, rama Manuel, if he
Speaker 2: wants to make a run, doesn't even have to clean
Speaker 2: up his language after Trump.
Speaker 1: Can you believe this?
Speaker 2: I believe the bomb, you know, every other sentence, But no,
Speaker 2: I mean, seriously, you really do have to wonder whether
Speaker 2: we've turned some kind of corner where politics will be
Speaker 2: coarse and nasty, brutish and short.
Speaker 1: You've pro filed in terms of the chiefs of staff
Speaker 1: and so forth, but beyond that, you've been around these
Speaker 1: people forever. The one thing that I was the most
Speaker 1: surprised by in the first term and especially now in
Speaker 1: the second term, I didn't know there were that many
Speaker 1: people who were like minded with Trump. I didn't know
Speaker 1: there were that many people to staff a White House
Speaker 1: and there and their other offices to come to And
Speaker 1: I'm appalled by how many I don't want to say evil,
Speaker 1: but hardline, vicious, non empathetic people are in Washington. Hundreds
Speaker 1: of them showed up there to work. Did that surprise
Speaker 1: you or did you know they were always there waiting
Speaker 1: for their moments?
Speaker 2: It surprised me too. You know, the difference between Trump
Speaker 2: one point oh and two point oh, there are a
Speaker 2: number of differences, and one of them is Susie Wiles.
Speaker 2: She runs a tighter ship. But a major difference is
Speaker 2: that everybody's reading from exactly the same playbook. We had certain,
Speaker 2: you know, minor exceptions. I mean Susie in the Vanity
Speaker 2: Fair piece, Susie Wiles told me there was real disagreement,
Speaker 2: a real battle over tariffs. But you know, other than that,
Speaker 2: they're essentially all reading from the same playbook. And you
Speaker 2: don't have obviously, as everybody's pointed out, you don't have
Speaker 2: a Gym Madison, you don't have a Rex Tillerson, you
Speaker 2: don't have people who were trying to.
Speaker 1: Quit opinions of their own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of speculation about why Susie talked to me,
Speaker 2: why Susie Wells would do this, And again, I think
Speaker 2: it's I think it's pretty simple. At the end of
Speaker 2: the day, which is that they're in this bubble and
Speaker 2: they forget that. A lot of the crazy stuff that
Speaker 2: they're saying to each other all day long sounds insane
Speaker 2: un planet Earth, but they're not on planet Earth. They're
Speaker 2: in this bubble exponentially more so in the Trump White
Speaker 2: House than in any other White House. And I think
Speaker 2: that when the Vanity Fair piece landed, they were surprised.
Speaker 1: Journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker Chris Whipple. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. When we come back, Chris Whipple
Speaker 1: talks about why Bill Clinton might have been a one
Speaker 1: term president or it not for his chief of staff
Speaker 1: Leon Panetta. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, Chris Whipple wrote and produced the documentary
Speaker 1: series titled The President's Gatekeepers for Discovery Channel. The series
Speaker 1: spanned nine presidential administrations and featured interviews with all nine
Speaker 1: chiefs of staff. After the series, Whipple continued his research
Speaker 1: his book The Gatekeepers, How the White House Chiefs of
Speaker 1: Staff to Define Every Presidency was a New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 1: The book was the first of its kind giving a
Speaker 1: behind the scenes look into White House chiefs of staff.
Speaker 1: Most recently, Whipple profiled the current White House Chief of Staff,
Speaker 1: Susie Wiles, for Vanity Fair in twenty twenty five. Out
Speaker 1: of all the chiefs of staff Whipple had interviewed and
Speaker 1: researched over the years, I was curious which he admired
Speaker 1: the most.
Speaker 2: James A. Baker the third, from Ronald Reagan, Leon Panetta
Speaker 2: for Bill Clinton. I think you can make a really
Speaker 2: strong case that there would have been no Reagan Revolution
Speaker 2: without Jim Baker. And I'll give you an example. Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 2: when he came into office, was hell bent on tackling
Speaker 2: social security cutting. Jim Baker Sadam Dann and explained, Look,
Speaker 2: social security is the third rail of American politics. You
Speaker 2: touch it, you get electrocuted. You need let's put that off.
Speaker 2: And the result was that Reagan pivoted to tax cuts
Speaker 2: and was re elected in one of the largest landslides
Speaker 2: in the history.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, Baker did it with help from Nancy Reagan, but
Speaker 2: he was smart enough to round up the allies he
Speaker 2: knew he needed to do that. Bill Clinton might have
Speaker 2: been a one term president if not for Leon Panetta.
Speaker 2: Eighteen months into Clinton's presidency, he was dead in the water,
Speaker 2: paralyzed with all kinds of many rich scandals, Gingrich Travelgate, Whitewater,
Speaker 2: you know, crazy little scannals that we've almost forgotten by now.
Speaker 2: But he was in deep trouble and the White House
Speaker 2: was really ineffective, and Leon Panetta came in and just
Speaker 2: turned it around. He imposed real discipline on a guy
Speaker 2: who was pretty hard to discipline, but Panetta did it.
Speaker 2: Panetta was kind of guy who could walk into the
Speaker 2: Oval office, close the door and tell Bill Clinton what
Speaker 2: he didn't want here. There's nobody who can do that
Speaker 2: with Donald Trump. Even though Susie Wiles. Here's the thing
Speaker 2: about Susie Wiles, we'll never know what might have been
Speaker 2: in a sense, because Susie Wiles has a kind of
Speaker 2: magic with Trump. He trusts her, he pays attention to
Speaker 2: her when she speaks. And yet it's clear, and I
Speaker 2: document this over the course of eleven months of talking
Speaker 2: to her, it's just clear that she has chosen not
Speaker 2: to tell him hard truths. You know, she said I've
Speaker 2: had white House chiefs tell me, some of my predecessors
Speaker 2: say they have these seminal moments when they have to
Speaker 2: confront the president about a constitutional issue. I don't have that. Well,
Speaker 2: an empowered white House chief, an effective White House chief
Speaker 2: has to have that. You have to be able to
Speaker 2: tell the president what he doesn't want to hear.
Speaker 1: I wonder sometimes you know who goes into that job,
Speaker 1: and when you get the president's here, there's a lot,
Speaker 1: there's a volume of people who could take that job,
Speaker 1: and it want that job. But is that part of
Speaker 1: it where they realize they can depend on you to
Speaker 1: tell them the truth? Who was Obama chief of staff that.
Speaker 2: You absolutely so? Obama had four? Ram Emmanuel was his first,
Speaker 2: Dennis McDonough was his last, Bill Daly was his second,
Speaker 2: and Jack Lou was his third. And not easy. I
Speaker 2: mean it's it's they have his ear believably difficult jump.
Speaker 2: I think Rom got true to him, Bill Daily not
Speaker 2: so much. They just didn't click. And I think Lou
Speaker 2: more so. And Dennis McDonald was the most successful.
Speaker 1: Really for yeah, because Obama seems so inscrutable. He doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like you have to really drill down to get
Speaker 1: down to the real Obama. He's only going to share anything.
Speaker 1: He only shared on an as needed basis with people.
Speaker 1: That's where whereas Clinton always seemed to be more evuncular
Speaker 1: than that. Now the spy masters have the CIA director
Speaker 1: shape history and the future. What do you think about
Speaker 1: the intelligence apparatus we have in place now?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a really good question because, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: the thing that, very much like a White House Chief
Speaker 2: of staff, a CIA director has to be able to
Speaker 2: tell the president heart truths, and it's not at all
Speaker 2: clear to me that John Ratcliffe is the guy to
Speaker 2: do that. I mean, Ratcliffe is famously partisan. And the
Speaker 2: danger of that is that, you know, the CIA director
Speaker 2: is the guy we count on to prevent another nine
Speaker 2: to eleven or worldwide pandemic, all kinds of terrible things,
Speaker 2: and if you can't count on that guy to tell
Speaker 2: you hard truths, you're in trouble. Having said that, look,
Speaker 2: I mean, clearly, we've had a couple of operations that
Speaker 2: have been very successful in the short term. I mean,
Speaker 2: the bunker busting operation in Iran, the snatching of Maduro,
Speaker 2: whatever you may think of that idea was pretty effectively executed.
Speaker 2: So the CIA is doing something right, but we're just
Speaker 2: gonna have to see all how all of this plays out,
Speaker 2: because these are a long way from over.
Speaker 1: I've always maintained when I was more involved in politics
Speaker 1: and candidateseas per se, I always used to say that
Speaker 1: the former director of the CIA or the Energy Department
Speaker 1: were automatically disqualified from being president, but they woke up
Speaker 1: every morning. He had to lie to the American people
Speaker 1: for a living. When I said that to Bill Ridge,
Speaker 1: and Negolands looked me like, you can leave now, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But he was about to run
Speaker 1: for something out of coming out of New Mexico. Ye,
Speaker 1: what are you working on now?
Speaker 2: Actually, I've gone back to the book that I was
Speaker 2: working on when I first started talking to Susie Wilds
Speaker 2: for Vanity Fair, for the piece that became a Vanity
Speaker 2: Fair piece, And that is the history of Presidential campaign Managers,
Speaker 2: the working titles the Kingmakers, and it's a really fascinating
Speaker 2: cast of characters. Right sixty eight an unbelievable campaign. You know,
Speaker 2: two assassinations, at least two more than that. MLK, Bobby Kennan,
Speaker 2: the Hubert Humphrey almost caught Nixon in a photo finish
Speaker 2: because interestingly, he really broke with LBJ on the conduct
Speaker 2: of the Vietnam War. I always thought Kamala Harris should
Speaker 2: have taken a page from Hubert Humphrey and distanced herself
Speaker 2: from Biden, But that's another story. In twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Four, Mitchell was his campaign manage.
Speaker 2: John Mitchell campaign manager. In sixty eight, hr Haldeman was
Speaker 2: sort of his deputy.
Speaker 1: There's such a flurry of facts in All the President's Men.
Speaker 1: I participated in a staged reading of the screenplay of
Speaker 1: All the Presidents Men, and Carl and Bob came.
Speaker 2: My favorite story about tell me if this is true.
Speaker 2: My favorite story is that the screenplay was a mess
Speaker 2: to the late William Goldman, who was a terrific screenwrin.
Speaker 2: But the screenplay was a mess. Carl Bernstein took it
Speaker 2: home one night and Nora efren rewrote it overnight.
Speaker 1: Well that may be, so, can't roll that out. He
Speaker 1: was married to her for that period of time. It's
Speaker 1: amazing the facts that come flying. But I forgot that
Speaker 1: Mitchell was his campaign manager. That's sixty eight campaign.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and then became his attorney general and ended up
Speaker 2: in prison along.
Speaker 1: With a bunch of others Christ before those were the
Speaker 1: days when they ended up in prison.
Speaker 2: So anyway, sixty eight is the beginning, and when I'm done,
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring it all the way up to
Speaker 2: the present. But it's been amazing. Gary Hart. I was
Speaker 2: talking to Gary Hart, who lives on a road called
Speaker 2: Troublesome Gulch in Colorado.
Speaker 1: I saw that big article in the Times about him
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 2: Gary Hart famously his campaign fell apart after a scandal
Speaker 2: with a girl named donnad Rice. Of course, but boy
Speaker 2: does Heart have some story.
Speaker 1: Monkey Business was the name of the.
Speaker 2: Name of the boat. But boy does Gary Hart still
Speaker 2: have some stories to tell.
Speaker 1: I want to say, thank you. What an amazing career
Speaker 1: you've had. What a great career you've had to do
Speaker 1: journalism and do television news and then do these books.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. I hope you're happy that's your career,
Speaker 1: even an amazing career.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: My thanks to journalist and author Chris Whipple. This episode
Speaker 1: was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're
Speaker 1: produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Isaac Kaplan Woolner. Our social media manager
Speaker 1: is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is
Speaker 1: brought to you by iHeart Radio