Evangelical Fear Elected Trump

The history of evangelicalism in America is shot through with fear—but it also contains an alternative.

White conservative evangelicals in America are anxious people. I know because I am one.

Our sense of fear, perhaps more than any other factor, explains why evangelicals voted in such large numbers for Donald Trump in 2016 and continue to support his presidency.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson once wrote, “Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” The great poet of the Jersey shore, Bruce Springsteen, sings, “Fear’s a dangerous thing, it can turn your heart black, you can trust. It’ll take your God-filled soul and fill it with devils and dust.”

Robinson and Springsteen echo verses in nearly every book of the Bible, the sacred text that serves as the source of spiritual authority in evangelical life.

  1. Moses told the Israelites to “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today.” The Hebrew
  2. God told Job: “At the destruction and famine you shall laugh, and shall not fear the beasts of the earth.”
  3. The Psalmist wrote: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me.”

The Gospel of John teaches Christians that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” St. Luke writes: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Despite all these scriptural passages, it is still possible to write an entire history of American evangelicalism as the story of a people failing miserably at overcoming fear with hope, trust, and faith in their God. But it is also possible to find evangelicals, drawing deeply from Christian theological resources, who sought to forge an alternative history.
A history of evangelical fear might begin with the 17th-century Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts, who feared that there were witches in their midst threatening their “city upon a hill” and their status as God’s new Israel. They responded to this fear by hanging 19 people.

But other evangelical options were available. As Puritans began to lose control over Massachusetts Bay, they might have turned to their sovereign God for guidance and trusted in his protection to lead them through a new phase in the history of the colony. Or they could have heeded the warnings put forth by those—such as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, or the growing number of Baptists in the colony—who saw potential problems with such a close relationship between church and state.

Our history of evangelical fear might also include a chapter on the early 19th-century Protestants who feared the arrival of massive numbers of Catholic immigrants to American shores. They translated their panic into political organizations such as the nativist Know-Nothing Party and religious tracts cautioning fellow believers of the threat that such “popery” posed to their Christian nation.

But other evangelical options were available. Biblical faith requires evangelicals to welcome strangers in their midst as a sign of Christian hospitality. While some of the most prominent evangelicals of the era, such as Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher, were spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric, other evangelicals could not reconcile such hatred with Christian love. These evangelicals, as the historian Richard Cawardine has written, “could be found in all evangelical denominations” in the 1840 and 1850s.

A history of evangelical fear might also note that Catholics made up just one front in the battle for a Protestant America. “Infidels” made up the other front. At the turn of the 19th century, evangelicals went to war against unbelievers, deists, skeptics, freethinkers, and other assorted heretics who threatened the Godly character of the republic.

Elias Boudinot, a former president of the Continental Congress, agonized that unless he and his team of evangelical Federalists curbed the influence of the followers of Thomas Paine, the United States would end up like the Church of Laodicea in the Book of Revelation: “Because you are lukewarm [in your faith] … I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

Jedidiah Morse, a Massachusetts minister and the author of geography textbooks, worried that the Bavarian Illuminati, a German anti-Christian secret society, had infiltrated America to “abjure Christianity, justify suicide, advocate sensual pleasures agreeable to Epicurean philosophy, decry marriage, and advocate a promiscuous intercourse among the sexes.”

When “godless” Thomas Jefferson was elected president of the United States in 1800, frightened New England evangelicals thought the Virginian’s henchmen would soon be arriving in their towns and homes on a mission to take away their Bibles.
But other evangelical options were also available. While Federalists like Boudinot and Morse railed against Jefferson and his followers, frontier evangelicals—mostly Baptists and Methodists—flocked to Jefferson in droves. They understood that Jefferson’s defense of religious freedom would allow evangelical faith to flourish in America. They were right. When religion in America was separated from state sponsorship, it resulted in a massive religious revival which historians have described as the Second Great Awakening.

In the antebellum South, evangelicals, according to some historians, made up close to 80 percent of the region’s population. Southern evangelicals were caught up in a slave system that kept them in constant fear for their lives and the lives of their families. Slave rebellions against their white masters were relatively scarce, but when insurrections did take place they brought paranoia and panic. One South Carolina widow claimed to lie in bed each night fearing that at any moment one of her slaves would break into her house and hack her to death with an axe.

The aggressive moral rhetoric and publishing campaigns of Northern opponents of slavery threatened the white Southern evangelical way of life and prompted fears of a race war. In response, some of the South’s best evangelical minds went to work constructing a complex biblical and theological defense of slavery.

But other evangelical options were available. Modern-day attempts by Southern evangelicals—especially those in the Southern Baptist Convention—to come to terms with its slaveholding and racist past imply that the Northern abolitionists, the thousands of evangelicals who came to South during Reconstruction, and those who fought for racial equality during Jim Crow, were on the religious high ground. They represented a much more consistent evangelical ethic on this moral problem.

The very short history of evangelical fear would certainly need to spend some time in the decades following the Civil War as evangelicals waged intellectual and religious battles against Darwinism and the higher criticism of the Bible. Some of the worst aspects of American evangelicalism converged in the Fundamentalist movement of the early 20th century. It was stridently anti-Catholic, and on occasion worked closely with the Ku Klux Klan to guard the white Protestant character of the country.

Fundamentalists, committed to the otherworldly teachings of the Holiness or “Higher Life” movement, chose to separate from the world rather than engage it. They promoted a theology of the “end times” that led them to spend considerable energy trying to identify the appearance of the Antichrist on the global stage.

In defending the “fundamentals of the faith,” these anti-modernists relied on authoritarian clergymen. These fear-mongers gained followers, built large congregations, and established national reputations by sounding the alarm of the modernist threat whenever they saw it rearing its ugly head. They took on the role of ecclesiastical strongmen, protecting their congregations from outsiders who threatened to destroy their faith and the Christian identity of the nation.

But once more, other evangelical options were available. Those concerned about doctrinal drift could have learned something from the biblical virtues of love and humility. The sense of certainty that defined the fundamentalist movement in America might have been replaced with a sense of mystery and the embrace of a God who could not always be confined to man-made doctrinal formulations and end-times speculations. Perhaps such an approach might have tempered the militancy of the movement and provided fundamentalism with a more respected public platform in the decades following the 1925 Scopes Trial.

Since World War II, evangelical anxiety has intensified. In 1947, in the landmark case Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court announced a “wall of separation between church and state [that] must be kept high and impregnable.” The court drew on this decision when it banned prayer and mandatory Bible reading in public schools in 1962 and 1963 respectively.

The demographic makeup of the country was also changing. The Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 opened American shores to millions of Africans, Asians, and Middle Easterners. Many of these new immigrants brought their non-Christian religious beliefs and practices with them, creating unprecedented religious diversity.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Supreme Court efforts at desegregating Christian academies and colleges led to fierce resistance from Southern evangelicals who viewed the federal government as taking away their local autonomy and the religious freedom to control their own admissions policies. (These arguments were not unlike to those put forth by the Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861.) By the late 1960s, the feminist movement was posing a threat to the long-held conservative evangelical commitment to patriarchal households, and in 1973 the Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade. For those who saw all these things contributing to the decline of a Christian culture in the United States, there was much to fear.

Any effort to make sense of the 81 percent of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump cannot ignore evangelicals’ fear of the Barack Obama administration. Obama was an exotic figure to many white conservative evangelicals. He grew up in Hawaii and spent time as a child in a predominantly Muslim country. He was the son of a white woman and an African man. He had a strange name; that his middle name was “Hussein” did not help.

Obama had a Christian conversion story, but it was not the kind of conversion story from which many white conservative evangelicals would find inspiration. His embrace of Christianity took place in a liberal African American congregation in Chicago under the guidance of a pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who was not shy about calling America to task for its past sins of slavery and racism.
Obama’s social policies alienated conservative evangelicals. Though “pro-life” could be used to describe his views on

  • immigration,
  • health care,
  • the death penalty,
  • the fight against poverty, and
  • civil rights for racial and ethnic minorities,

Obama was “pro-choice” on abortion and, for most evangelicals, that was all that really mattered.

And then there was gay marriage. When Obama ran for president in 2008, he supported same-sex unions, but defended marriage as a union between a man and woman. During his first two years in office, he supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that prohibited married same-sex couples from collecting federal benefits.

But in February 2011, he changed his position on the Act and instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending it in court. In a May 2012 interview with ABC News, Obama announced that he had gone through an “evolution” on the issue. He was now willing to affirm that “same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

In 2013, the Supreme Court, in United States v. Windsor, declared the Defense of Marriage of Act unconstitutional and the Obama administration began extending federal rights and benefits to same-sex married couples. By 2015, when the Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the United States government would recognize same-sex marriages, the practice was legal in 36 states and Washington, D.C. On the evening after the Obergefell decision, Obama showed his appreciation by illuminating the White House in rainbow colors.

The LGBT community saw the Obergefell decision as the culmination of a long struggle for civil rights. Conservative evangelicals cringed. For them it all happened too fast. In the hours after the decision they turned to their blogs, websites, and media outlets and wrote apocalyptic opinion pieces on how to cope in a post-Christian society.

This history of evangelical fear would come to an end, at least for the moment, with a chapter on Hillary Clinton. After a recent lecture on Trump and his evangelical supporters, a woman approached me at the lectern and identified herself as an evangelical who voted for Trump. “I am part of the 81 percent,” she said, “but what choice did I have?” I have heard something similar many times from evangelicals who voted for Trump.

Evangelicals are not supposed to hate. But many hate Hillary Clinton. The history of that antipathy is long, reaching back at least to Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992. But it was solidified among white evangelical baby boomers when revelations of her husband’s marital infidelities surfaced in 1998. Conservatives who challenged Bill Clinton’s character were outraged when Hillary attacked her husband’s accusers and went on The Today Show and claimed that the impeachment charges against her husband were part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Hillary Clinton did not help herself among evangelicals in the 2016 election campaign. She lied about using a private email server in her role as secretary of state. She placed Trump supporters in a “basket of deplorables.” She made no effort to court evangelical votes, a strategy that the progressive evangelical writer and Clinton supporter Ronald Sider called “dumbfounding and incredibly stupid.”
On the policy front, Clinton was, for most white evangelicals, an extension of the Obama presidency—a candidate who would steamroll their long-cherished conservative values.

Faced with a choice between Clinton and a race-baiting, xenophobic, lying adulterer who promised to support conservative Supreme Court justices, white conservative evangelicals chose the latter. In 2016, American evangelicals were looking for a strongman to protect them from the progressive forces wreaking havoc on their Christian nation. Donald Trump was the strongman.

Most evangelicals did not believe more traditional candidates of the Christian right such as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Ben Carson could protect them as well as the bombastic big-talking New York real-estate tycoon. As Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas and early Trump supporter put it, “I couldn’t care less about a leader’s temperament or his tone of his vocabulary. Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals. They don’t want Casper Milquetoast as the leader of the free world.”

Ironically, some evangelicals have found a savior. They sought after Trump, he answered them, and he delivered them from all their fears.

But other evangelical options are available. Evangelicals are people of hope, not fear. The practice of Christian hope points us to a life beyond this world, but it also requires us to act in such a way that models God’s coming kingdom. The Kingdom of God is characterized by the love of enemies, the welcoming of strangers, the belief in the human dignity of all people, a humble and self-sacrificial posture toward public life, and a trust in the sovereign God of the universe. Fear is a natural human response to social change, but evangelicals betray their deepest spiritual convictions when they choose to dwell in it.

The Trump era presents a host of new challenges for evangelicals who believe in the Gospel—the “good news” of Jesus Christ. The first step in addressing these challenges must come through a reckoning with our past. Evangelicals have taken many wrong turns over the decades even though better, more Christian, options could be found by simply opening up the Bible and reading it. We must stop our nostalgic gaze into a Christian golden age in America that probably never existed to begin with and turn toward the future with renewed hope. It is time, as the great theologian of hope Jurgen Moltmann taught us, to “waken the dead and piece together what has been broken.”

Bob Woodward’s “FEAR: Trump in The White House”

13:03
the great worries so I tried to keep it
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neutral and repertory ‘el but fear comes
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from his own mouth
13:14
when Bob Costas young great reporter at
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the post and I interviewed Trump two and
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a half years ago when he was on the
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verge of getting the Republican
13:24
nomination and we asked him we were
13:29
asking some broad interesting questions
and addressing the issue of power
because the presidency really is about
power isn’t it and quoted some Obama
comment about real power is not having
to use violence and Trump you know
finally it said it was almost a
Shakespearean moment where he said real
power is I don’t like to use the word
fear and the way it was Hamlet his aside
to the audience of this is what I really
think and it’s about this is how you
exercise power you scare the hell out of
people and you see a lot of that in the
book you see a lot of that in Trump’s
performance and life before he became
14:24
president but there’s a clear message
14:26
here that the man in the White House is
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dangerous and that no one can protect us
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from it yes and that and that’s the
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words of the people and the actions of
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the people who were there and it’s it’s
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vivid in scene after scene and he it’s
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it’s most interesting because presidents
14:50
I think all of them live in the
14:53
unfinished business of their predecessor
14:56
like Obama told Trump you’re what’s
14:59
going to keep you up at night is North
15:02
Korea and at the same time presidents
15:06
inherit a framework this the way
15:10
business was done and you can change it
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but you can’t abrogate it you can’t
15:15
destroy it and he’s tried to and there’s
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this meeting over at the Pentagon in
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July which is a stunner because
15:25
Gary Cohen national security the
15:29
economic advisor and mattis the
15:33
Secretary of Defense they formed an
15:37
alliance and they say we’ve got to get
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Trump over here we’ve got to it’s kind
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of like an off-site at the Greenbrier
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but we’re gonna do it at the Pentagon
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because there are no televisions there’s
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no distraction and he can’t call out to
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his secretary Madeleine and they they
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try to educate him and they say there’s
15:57
as mattis says it’s a it’s a great line
16:00
the great gift from the greatest
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generation is this world this rule-based
16:09
international order and Tillotson then
16:12
Secretary of State says this keeps the
16:15
peace and Trump just doesn’t want us to
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sign up to any of the old things and
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just insults everyone gets angry
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discards won’t listen and at the end
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maddis the Secretary of Defense it’s
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just deflated it’s just like you know we
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tried
16:36
and this is when Tillerson says as
16:41
accurately reported by NBC that he’s a
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should I say it effing moron and you
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didn’t say yeah but he said it very
16:55
plainly and that’s so that what do you
17:00
manage power I mean that was one of the
17:04
scenes Bob were just my jaw was on the
17:06
floor because there you have the most
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senior and distinguished military
17:09
leaders in the country and Trump you
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know we know from elsewhere in the book
17:14
he he sort of prefers people in uniform
17:17
I mean he likes military leaders and
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gives them more respect than he gives
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anybody else and in that meeting he
17:22
treats them the way bad people treat
17:25
Busboys and restaurants I mean he is he
17:28
is just he just is so contemptuous of
17:32
them and and dismissive of them and I
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mean deflating would be would be
17:36
you know a nice word but his behavior of
17:39
them is despicable if he doesn’t give
17:41
them respect is there anyone who can get
17:43
respect from Donald Trump
17:44
well it’s but again this is why fear
17:48
fits and it is also I kind of think from
17:55
studying all these presidents that the
17:59
most important characteristic a
18:02
president can have is the ability to
18:05
listen and grow and understand and
18:09
accommodate reality while directing the
18:14
policy their way and he just doesn’t
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want to learn doesn’t want to listen so
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many of these people who work for Trump
18:23
justify working for him by telling
18:27
themselves and presumably telling other
18:28
people and telling you it’ll be worse if
18:30
I weren’t there we are protecting the
18:34
public from his worst actions and his
18:37
worst instincts what do you think of
18:40
that justification but it’s actually
18:43
more in the case the the prologue where
18:45
Gary Cohen takes this letter that would
18:49
get us out of the trade agreement with
18:52
South Korea you know it’s a trade
18:54
agreement but it’s not there’s a
18:57
military agreement there’s very secret
19:00
intelligence partnerships that give this
19:04
country a degree of security that people
19:07
don’t understand and this is all linked
19:10
together and so if you pull out of the
19:12
trade agreement you can start the dotted
19:15
line to nuclear war yeah exactly and if
19:20
there’s a job the president has is to
19:23
not play around with that I remember
19:25
talking to interviewing President Obama
19:28
wants about this and he said everything
19:30
is about keeping a nuclear weapon from
19:35
going off in an American city that is
19:38
and he said all our intelligence
19:41
operations are geared toward making sure
19:45
that doesn’t happen
19:47
and Trump is cavalier about this but but
19:51
Gary Cohen instead of saying well I’m
19:56
just kind he says
19:58
gotta protect the country this is you
20:01
you begin the unraveling and God knows
20:07
what’s gonna happen and the same thing
20:08
happens with the trade agreement NAFTA
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there’s a letter
20:13
you know summarily we’re getting out of
20:15
it and Cohen takes it Rob Porter the
20:21
staff secretary is doing all of this and
20:25
has told people and I quoted it saying a
20:28
third of his time is preventing bad
20:32
things from happening but you know with
20:35
my question again to you with what do
20:37
you Altima Talitha that justification
20:39
this is an issue I’ve been struggling
20:40
with since the beginning of the
20:42
administration at one level I think were
20:44
worse off with Gary Cohn gone and HR
20:47
McMaster gone and you know I’d rather
20:49
have relative relatively competent
20:52
people around him at the same time I
20:55
kind of feel like they’re kidding
20:56
themselves well you it’s not you don’t
21:00
get to take a college course in
21:02
philosophy when you were confronted with
21:05
that moment oh my god this is on the
21:08
desk and he could get it formally
21:11
drafted in Simon and so you have to act
21:14
and I think these are acts of conscience
21:21
and courage it but it’s not something
21:26
that you say let’s run the government
21:28
this way let’s have the president
21:30
there’s the Trump track and then there’s
21:32
the same track where we’re going to have
21:36
people coming around taking papers not
21:41
implementing the policy and literally
21:44
and the chief of staff general Kelly has
21:47
to send out a memo to everyone in the
21:50
White House that says no more
21:52
spur-of-the-moment decisions
21:54
no more seat-of-the-pants decisions
21:57
nothing is final until there’s a
22:01
normal process of review by cabinet
22:04
officers and a decision memo to sign
22:08
assigned by the President and of course
22:10
this could never thanks off yeah yeah
22:13
and so you it’s a little of it’s the
22:17
Wild West yeah
22:19
and given the stakes internationally and
22:26
to the global economy and the American
22:29
economy it’s not I I would argue if
22:33
you’re a trump supporter and you read
22:35
this neutrally and you realize that it’s
22:39
meticulously reported you would you
22:42
would have to have pause yeah this
22:45
question about protecting the country
22:47
from Trump’s worst instincts is also the
22:52
theme of the the anonymous New York
22:55
Times op-ed first I got to ask you
22:57
before someone else in the audience did
22:59
I won’t ask you who wrote it I’ll give
23:01
you my oh I have it written down right
23:03
oh yeah yeah no I’m just gonna give you
23:06
my theory it’s actually not my favorites
23:07
this hearing that will solitaire wrote
23:09
in Slate but I found very persuasive he
23:11
thinks it’s John Huntsman the ambassador
23:13
to Russia whose views are a match who
23:16
doesn’t have much loyalty to Trump and
23:18
whose denial was was a very non-denial
23:22
denial what do you think it wouldn’t
23:25
think it might have we might be right I
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don’t know but it’s important who that
23:29
is and if it’s the ambassador to Russia
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it’s not as if it’s somebody key in the
23:37
White House is we well no ambassadors
23:39
are isolated also and if that person had
23:43
come to me and said gee I’d like you to
23:45
append this is an op ed statement from
23:50
me anonymously in your book I would say
23:53
wait a minute details the the building
23:56
blocks of journalism are details
23:59
what exactly happened who was there what
24:02
was said what was driving this and the
24:05
absence of that leaves me kind of well
24:11
well use this you don’t doubt that
24:13
there’s a real
24:13
Hiroto I don’t because I don’t think the
24:17
New York Times would take that chance
24:19
but who’s that real person see in doing
24:24
a book like this the method is to go to
24:27
people and say okay I want the full
24:31
story I want your notes and what
24:33
documents I’ve gotten a your a
24:35
confidential source I’m not going to
24:37
name you I’m gonna use everything you
24:39
say I’m gonna cross-check it within an
24:45
inch of its life
24:46
and then you can go and see what happens
24:50
in the Situation Room or the Oval Office
24:52
at a specific time with specific issues
24:55
and a kind of generalized statement I
25:03
I’m not wild about that now you know
25:08
maybe it’s millennia or maybe it’s maybe
25:13
it’s somebody who really knows Trump
25:16
I’m not seriously suggesting that I’m
25:18
just saying some it may be somebody in
25:21
the White House who’s there who’s a
25:23
witness the most important element in
25:29
describing what really goes on is having
25:33
witnesses witnesses who are there or
25:36
have Diaries who will that you as a
25:41
journalist or book author can build a
25:44
relationship of trust with I mean
25:46
whoever wrote it it seems like a bit of
25:48
a miscalculation miscalculation in the
25:51
way that some of the people who spoke to
25:53
you may be feeling they miscalculated in
25:56
that you say I want to tell everybody
25:58
that we’re working to protect you from
26:00
our dangerously paranoid president but
26:04
you do it in a way that Spurs his
26:06
paranoia and his dangerousness and makes
26:08
him more dangerous yeah well that’s you
26:11
know it’s it’s part of it it is what it
26:17
is but it would it doesn’t meet the
26:20
threshold of the kind of journalism that
26:24
I think is really important what you
26:26
specific let’s talk about your your
26:29
method a little bit and and how it’s
26:31
evolved but just to start out I was
26:33
making a little note as I was reading of
26:35
you know probable sources and for your
26:38
book
26:38
Steve Bana and Rob Porter Lindsey Graham
26:40
John Dowd Gary Cohn Tom Bossard a little
26:44
less former homeland security people so
26:47
these these are not very well these
26:49
people are not very well hidden their
26:50
thoughts are described the question is
26:53
and I’m not asking you to confirm that
26:54
they’re sources but when when oh I’m so
26:57
glad yes
26:58
yeah cuz I because I know you give them
27:00
up pretty easily maybe I come back in 50
27:02
years but um but it’s it’s it’s not hard
27:07
to read this and have it have a strong
27:09
opinion about who the sources probably
27:11
are people are gonna talk to you and not
27:13
do a better job of hiding why not just
27:17
talk on the record why not be quoted why
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not put actual quotation marks around
27:20
their remarks well there are actual
27:23
quotation remarks around lots of people
27:27
including President Trump that they are
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you know these as you’ve seen people
27:34
deny some of these things and it’s vague
27:37
or it’s it doesn’t have much weight
27:40
these are our kind of job security
27:43
denials that where people don’t they
27:48
want to protect themselves but they want
27:51
to talk and this goes back to the
27:54
Watergate coverage of the eighteen books
27:57
that I’ve done involve using people who
28:02
are confidential sources who are
28:05
participants in witnesses yeah I mean
28:09
I’ve never seen more ritualistic denials
28:11
than in this case I mean it almost just
28:14
seems like you know Trump said you have
28:16
to deny it they go through the motion
28:17
with a you know very they don’t deny
28:19
anything specifically they say the books
28:22
inaccurate or doesn’t portray what I
28:24
would I think and you know what are what
28:27
are they what do they expect you to
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think when you see that that you know
28:31
they have to do that
28:32
you know I’m sympathetic because again
28:36
this is not
28:38
these are big decisions people make to
28:41
say I’m gonna trust you with my story
28:44
and I’m gonna tell you what I witnessed
28:48
and I have interviews with you ask about
28:52
method I tape with their knowledge so in
28:58
50 years somebody’s gonna get these
29:00
boxes of hundreds of hours of interviews
29:04
and some graduate student is gonna look
29:07
through it and is gonna say oh my god
29:09
that’s you know that’s a document oh
29:13
this is a witness this is the person
29:17
talking and if it’s a method that we
29:22
used in the Nixon case that I’ve used in
29:25
the Supreme Court book or the Pentagon
29:27
books or the war books or Obama books
29:31
and I know I remember when doing
29:35
interview with Obama for the first book
29:39
Bush Obama swarms about his decisions in
29:44
Afghanistan and near the end he said you
29:50
have better sources than I do now that
29:53
that’s not true because but I’ve been
29:56
able to focus on this and he actually
29:59
said have you ever thought of becoming
30:01
the CIA director it was not a job offer
30:06
well your files probably rival Hoover’s
30:09
at this point
30:10
pardon your fought your files rival
30:12
Hoover’s at this point no no they’re not
30:14
like Coover’s it’s they’re not about
30:17
somebody’s personal life they’re about
30:19
the business of government this is a
30:22
very serious undertaking but you can get
30:27
really close to what goes on and that
30:32
has to do with trusting people people
30:36
trust in you so I I understand the
30:40
dynamic here there’s a kind of
30:43
Washington denial machine out there
30:47
and during water game we called it the
30:50
non-denial denial and it sounds like a
30:54
denial but it really is not technically
30:56
technically untrue talk a little bit
31:00
about how your method has evolved since
31:04
since Watergate you get you get your
31:06
sources to come to your house right I
31:08
wish I could get a source to come to my
31:10
house well you know what other than that
31:12
you can and they’ll do it why do you do
31:14
that well not just the real important is
31:19
to get to their house and I frankly
31:25
realized in doing some reporting on this
31:28
that I was getting quite lazy yeah I
31:31
have people come over for dinner it’s
31:33
nice you can’t you you advanced the ball
31:37
a little bit but there was a moment in
31:42
this when I called somebody from the
31:45
White House at home at 11 o’clock and
31:48
said you know you said we’d talk yeah
31:51
yeah yeah we will you know the brush-off
31:53
happens all that time poster yes yes
31:56
we’ll do it
31:57
oh I said well how about now and he said
32:00
now are you crazy it’s 11 o’clock at
32:04
night and I said well I’m four minutes
32:07
from your house and he said how do you
32:11
know where I live and I said that’s easy
32:15
that’s the easy part
32:17
okay come on over and then you there’s a
32:21
natural comfort people have in their own
32:25
home you asked you have any documents no
32:28
no I don’t take any documents from the
32:32
White House and then in the third
32:34
interview any documents well yeah let me
32:37
go upstairs and check and come down with
32:40
you know boxes have documents it’s when
32:45
we did the book on the Supreme Court in
32:48
1970 all the clerks oh never have
32:51
documents and of course everyone you
32:54
don’t clerk at the Supreme Court or work
32:56
in the White House and not just take a
32:58
little memorabilia
33:00
and that kind of memorabilia or a diary
33:06
people have Diaries and so forth and so
33:09
getting into the home is really
33:13
important and it gives you potential
33:18
access to the kind of authoritative
33:24
paperwork that will it’s very comforting
33:28
to have somebody tell you something and
33:30
then see a memo that says exactly the
33:34
same thing one more question about this
33:36
but I want to open it up for questions
33:38
and their microphones on either side
33:40
where she said we’re taking questions
33:42
live not on not on note cards today so
33:46
if you line up we’ll call in a second
33:48
but just as a to follow up that that
33:50
point Bob well people get ready to ask
33:54
in all the President’s Men which I’ve
33:57
reread recently there’s there’s some
34:00
different nothing you sometimes
34:01
surprised people by knocking on their
34:03
doors at night and a lot of the
34:06
reporting comes through discomfort what
34:09
you’re describing sounds more like a
34:11
process of getting people very
34:13
comfortable so that if there is
34:15
discomfort still a part of your process
34:16
there was not more but it starts his
34:19
discomfort and then it transitions to
34:21
comfort and that’s exactly what happened
34:24
in all the Presidents mint I remember
34:27
one of the bush books going there was a
34:29
general who would not talk and kept
34:33
nagging him emails intermediaries
34:37
nothing found out where he lived in the
34:39
Washington area went to his house
34:42
without an appointment knocked on the
34:44
door and he opened the door and looked
34:46
at me and said are you still doing this
34:49
[Laughter]
34:51
and he meant it and but then you learned
34:57
the CIA people always said you have to
35:01
let the silence suck out the truth so I
35:03
just poker-faced and they looked at me
35:05
got too disappointed look I I think in
35:09
himself could come on in and talked for
35:12
a couple of hours and helped immensely
35:16
lesson there we’re not showing up I
35:19
think our method is driven us to the
35:23
Internet more and kind of what’s your
35:27
comment on this and I know people will
35:29
sit in the White House you ask a
35:31
question and they have six deputy press
35:34
secretary as well gee that sentence is
35:36
too revealing let’s let’s launder it and
35:39
so you wind up getting BS I can’t not
35:43
ask you how do you compare the Trump of
35:46
fear to the Nixon of the final days
35:49
there are scenes in there right after
35:52
Muller is appointed where Trump is just
35:56
beside himself and you see him in the
35:59
White House and he doesn’t sit down he’s
36:02
just on his feet all almost all the day
36:06
going from the Oval Office to the dining
36:09
room where he has his television he’s
36:11
watching these tivoing things you know
36:15
ha how did this happen how did it now
36:17
there’s a special council investigating
36:19
me they’re gonna look at my finances and
36:21
and one of the people likens it to
36:26
Nixon’s final days that it’s in the
36:28
paranoid zone it’s it’s it’s pretty
36:34
scary and Trump says you know I’m the
36:38
President of the United States I can
36:39
fire anybody I want I I have this
36:42
authority well actually he does I think
36:47
the the real one of the questions
36:52
pulsing through this is what does it
36:54
mean and I think one of the things that
36:57
means is that this is a and when I when
37:03
Trump called less
37:05
I said this to him we’re at a pivot
37:07
point in history and he said right and
37:11
we’ve we really are at a pivot point in
37:14
history and that we better really think
37:21
about where all this is going what
37:25
who’s in charge who has authority how
37:28
his presidential power being exercised
37:31
what is the is there an oversight of
37:35
this process and it’s a time to because
37:40
there’s this contest for what’s true and
37:43
he’s launched it almost daily a war on
37:48
truth and that’s that’s not great for
37:51
democracy in in 1974 through otter Gate
37:54
we had a crisis and the system worked
37:57
yes – what’s your level of confidence in
38:01
the system this time and I’m sorry I’m
38:03
going to get to the right a few hey you
38:05
have to have confidence in it but the
38:08
system only works when people rise above
38:13
party and in the case of setting up the
38:17
Senate Watergate committee in early 1973
38:20
senator Ervin who was the chairman the
38:23
only all that they had were the stories
38:26
that Carl and I had written and some
38:30
investigation Teddy Kennedy’s
38:32
subcommittee had done and I remember
38:35
going to see senator Ervin he called me
38:38
up and said we’d like your sources and I
38:40
said that you know I can’t do that and
38:42
he said well we’re gonna go ahead and
38:45
the resolution passed 77 to zero
38:50
dozens of republicans voting for that to
38:55
investigate their president I think in
38:57
the Senate today if you had a resolution
39:01
to say let’s keep the colors in the
39:05
American flag you would not get a 77 to
39:10
0 vote there would be some objection
39:13
someplace all right let me ask you to
39:16
make your questions brief and to the
39:17
point and avoid
39:18
any editorializing and let’s start on
39:20
this side mr. Woodward for I’m a huge
39:26
admirer I’m a student of journalism I’m
39:30
from Brazil and this year we’re gonna
39:31
have presidential elections as you know
39:34
next month and a true problem that I’m
39:37
observing there’s people are starting to
39:41
become very true believers in well their
39:45
politics and their ideology or even
39:47
their ideas and I think from your
39:50
experience both of you what
39:53
how can journalism improve in the sense
39:56
of like showing the facts like even if
39:58
people are really true believers well
40:01
get it right and that takes time and you
40:05
know true believers there are lots of
40:09
them on lots of sides of politics my
40:13
just temperamental attitude is you know
40:17
be suspicious of true believers but but
40:22
your way of dealing with an environment
40:23
in which people increasingly choose
40:25
which truth to believe is to carry on
40:29
and and pursue the truth and not address
40:33
not try to solve that problem because
40:34
you can’t that’s a better answer I want
40:41
to thank you and bless you and hope it’s
40:43
the tipping point that’s for your new
40:46
partner today one of the spawn I think
40:50
it was Eric said that you was Beavis or
40:53
Butthead one of those people said that
40:55
you did this for the shekels which some
40:57
of us feel is anti-semitic since I don’t
40:59
think you’re Jewish
41:00
except for hanging out with Carl
41:02
Bernstein could you please comment on
41:04
that in you know actually I am NOT
41:09
Jewish but I the idea that anyone would
41:13
talk like that I just you know I
41:16
we shouldn’t have comments like that
41:20
from anyone and he’s it’s it’s
41:25
unfortunate but I think you can’t kind
41:29
of overreact to it I think you kind of
41:32
have to
41:32
say okay what does it mean what did you
41:36
know what did Eric trump do who is he
41:39
and there still lots of questions about
41:42
that and the investigation so I’m not
41:46
I’m not worried and I think this kind of
41:49
taking the emotion expressed by somebody
41:53
else and having an emotional reaction to
41:56
it gets you off track mister it’s a
42:00
privilege thank you and do you
42:02
anticipate any of the people you’ve
42:04
discussed coming forward before the 2020
42:07
election it seems that if they’re that
42:08
concerned about the fate of the country
42:09
they would want to speak out before he
42:11
gets another four years well people have
42:13
spoken that in this book and it’s I it’s
42:21
important to not get tangled up in G is
42:25
somebody gonna write an editorial
42:28
without specifics in the New York Times
42:32
I think that’s not the real issue I
42:36
think is what’s authoritative what’s
42:39
going on and then there you you said at
42:42
one point something happened in the book
42:44
in your jaws and on the floor I think
42:47
there are about 10 or 15 in the in the
42:52
book a great since many people think
42:58
that Trump is a threat to our national
43:00
security
43:02
do you believe that you know GOP
43:05
politicians and flu intial ones like
43:07
Ryan and Ryan and McDonough McConnell
43:11
are traitors to our country no look they
43:15
you know we have the political system
43:18
and see that’s the yeah that should be
43:24
taken away from them okay
43:26
well that’s your view I think the remedy
43:30
is to not use Trump’s language about
43:34
other people I just I think that I’ve
43:38
you know you can be critical of people
43:41
and this let’s Jack up the rhetoric and
43:45
this fear I think okay we know what the
43:53
Russians um let’s come back over here
43:55
thank you sorry
43:56
obviously trump is still president the
43:57
molar investigation is still going on I
43:59
was wearing when did you know that you
44:01
were done with this book when you can
44:02
settle on you know also to any
44:07
roadblocks you had in this Friday when
44:09
your you had a lead and you thought you
44:11
were there but you couldn’t get the
44:13
sources to completely fulfill the story
44:15
yeah do you work in publishing it’s it’s
44:23
a great question and the answer is on
44:27
something like this you’re in a way
44:29
never done but you have to cut it off
44:33
and say you’ve got enough information I
44:36
have the wonderful benefit of a support
44:41
system at the Washington Post where I
44:43
still work at Simon and Schuster the
44:46
publishers and you know they are all
44:49
these people say I you know they say
44:52
individually and collectively we have
44:55
your back and dig into these things and
44:59
there also is just a quality when you’ve
45:02
got about 350 pages that’s a book and
45:08
yeah that simple yeah and there will
45:12
there be another Trump book I mean you
45:13
start the next one as soon as you finish
45:16
Wow yeah
45:19
you have the you have created precedent
45:21
for this don’t know if you know you
45:23
don’t know where you know who knows the
45:26
end of this story or boy I sure don’t
45:31
and so you know but we need to keep
45:36
working even when the book is done based
45:46
on your book and all the research and
45:48
experience that you have what do you
45:52
think is possible that could happen as a
45:54
result of the investigation
45:57
and do you think it’s possible that
45:58
nothing can happen in other words like
46:01
nothing will happen in the Muller
46:03
investigation yeah sometimes nothing
46:06
happens in the the book John Dowd who is
46:12
Trump’s lawyer for eight months who
46:15
eventually resigns because he’s trying
46:17
to convince Trump
46:19
you can’t testify because you won’t tell
46:23
the truth you are incapable lifts I mean
46:27
isn’t that I mean that that that’s a
46:29
sieve donnie seem like he went there
46:31
with Trump yeah yeah they had a practice
46:33
session in the White House which is one
46:35
of the most fascinating things I’ve ever
46:39
written and you hear it John Dowd the
46:44
lawyers plane Muller and asking Trump
46:47
questions and Trump flies or makes
46:49
things up or goes ballistic and finally
46:53
says see you can’t testify and Trump you
46:57
mean I’m not a good witness no you are a
47:01
terrible witness you I you know there’s
47:06
a legal obligation for a lawyer to not
47:11
as he said I can’t sit next to you and
47:13
let you lie or to fall into a perjury
47:18
trap and it’s it’s it’s quite moving and
47:23
the the final line of the book is Dowd
47:28
concluding but not one in two in Seoul
47:33
but concluding Europe liar yeah
47:39
and it’s a it’s a one of those moments
47:45
where you go wow that’s you know that’s
47:50
the lawyer that’s the guy on his side
47:54
yeah that’s the guy he’s paying yeah
47:57
yeah a hundred thousand dollars a month
48:01
which is you know pretty good for Trump
48:06
and at least he paid it for a month I
48:09
understand the rare bill he paid yes
48:14
did any of your sources in all their
48:18
months alone with Trump in the White
48:20
House describe any private moments with
48:24
him when he might have just for a moment
48:26
confessed to his deepest fears I mean
48:28
the obvious fear is that the Muller
48:29
investigation will lead to his
48:31
impeachment but fears of being betrayed
48:34
as a Russian mole or Russia has fears of
48:40
happened I think I might nobody ever
48:45
described any private moment in which in
48:46
which Trump confessed to his own fears
48:48
about where this might end up even
48:49
losing the respect of his kids or
48:51
something well no but their moments were
48:53
he displays intense anxiety about the
48:57
investigation there you know it’s gonna
48:59
go on forever if they’re gonna look at
49:02
everything they’re gonna look at my
49:04
finances and so forth and he also
49:07
acknowledges to people in the book at
49:10
times and those people are named that
49:13
maybe Jared Kushner his son-in-law
49:17
should not be there working in the White
49:20
House that there’s too much of a
49:21
conflict potentially and so but the
49:26
moment of seeing the the Muller
49:29
investigation is and it’s the lawyer
49:32
John Dowd who concludes that Muller
49:36
played him Dowd and trump for suckers to
49:40
get them to turn over all the evidence
49:43
in the documents and
49:45
witnesses and there is a telling moment
49:48
where a doubt realizes my god we’d been
49:52
had and he goes to trump and he said you
49:54
were right we can’t trust Muller yeah I
49:57
mean you you know Muller buy it by all
50:00
accounts is not his office is not
50:02
leaking so that that account has to come
50:05
primarily from one side and it’s
50:07
self-serving in the sense that dad’s
50:09
position is we’ve been an open book
50:11
we’ve given you everything but we don’t
50:13
do we know that’s from Muller side do we
50:15
know that Muller feels they’ve been that
50:16
cooperative yeah I mean there’s been a
50:19
lot of reporting on it and I checked
50:23
this independently and they did give him
50:28
they did they did give him all this
50:30
material and so you know that’s that’s
50:34
authentic what’s an interesting about
50:37
Muller in the book is he only says a
50:42
number of things to doubt because most
50:44
of the time he’s just marbled he’s just
50:47
you know poker-faced
50:48
and but he does when Dowd’s pressing him
50:53
what are you looking for on the
50:54
obstruction investigation and Muller
50:59
says we want to find out if he had
51:01
corrupt
51:03
intent now that’s the the necessary part
51:08
of an obstruction charge and it’s
51:11
actually the right thing and I think
51:14
when doubt heard this he was it was
51:18
bracing moment made it real that they
51:21
were considering the possibility of
51:22
bringing a charge like that or that
51:25
that’s that was the investigative trail
51:27
they were on but somebody you know is it
51:30
possible this goes nowhere I remember –
51:33
well the big investigations after
51:37
Watergate the iran-contra and the Reagan
51:40
administration the one Lewinsky
51:42
whitewater investigation and under
51:45
Clinton and there were mid somebody and
51:48
my newspaper actually wrote a story the
51:51
same Reagan was going to be indicted and
51:54
I went back and looked at all of
51:59
the investigations after Watergate he
52:02
talked to Lawrence Walsh who was the
52:04
independent counsel in that case and he
52:06
made it very clear to me he was he
52:09
didn’t even think Reagan was dirty and
52:11
had done anything illegal so you can
52:17
these things can get all puffed up and
52:19
you think it’s somebody’s gonna discover
52:22
the crime of the century and they don’t
52:25
you need a storytelling witness or tapes
52:30
yes if I recall correctly when Nixon was
52:36
unraveling didn’t al haig give
52:39
instructions to most everyone that no
52:43
matter what Nixon said ray nuclear
52:45
weapons and all they it couldn’t go
52:47
through I’m sure that today but you have
52:49
people like general mattis the Pentagon
52:52
as you said it’s country first Kelley
52:55
that they wouldn’t allow Trump to give
52:57
an order of any type that would they’re
53:00
real Patriots that would threaten the
53:01
United States well that’s a good
53:04
question I don’t have the definitive
53:07
answer on that but in Watergate it
53:10
wasn’t Al Haig the White House chief of
53:12
staff it was the Secretary of Defense
53:14
Schlesinger who put out the word saying
53:18
if the president calls and said launch
53:21
call me first do you believe that having
53:27
talked with these people like Mathis and
53:29
Kelley and so on that Trump could ever
53:32
get to that point but if he if he wanted
53:34
to distract something or that he could
53:36
you know they they would stop him at
53:38
some point
53:39
I don’t know the answer to that and you
53:42
know that’s what that’s a a big large
53:46
question it would depend on
53:47
circumstances and you know what’s what’s
53:51
going on the reality is though the
53:54
president has an incredible there’s a
53:57
concentration of power in that office
54:00
and he can employ the force as he wants
54:03
to I remember talking to academics
54:05
during the George W Bush years and say
54:09
you know the president can start a war
54:12
like
54:12
he has happened said oh no the
54:15
Constitution is very clear that Congress
54:18
has to declare war like I said that’s
54:21
not the way it works and on but I said
54:23
look george w bush can invade Mexico
54:27
tomorrow if he wants and somebody stood
54:29
up in agony and said don’t give him any
54:32
ideas they have presidents have
54:37
incredible power yes first of all I want
54:42
to thank you very much I just hope that
54:44
this book will help and Trump’s term in
54:49
office quicker than it should and on
54:52
that point and other people have spoken
54:55
about this what if you had to give odds
54:58
on Trump lasting two more years what
55:06
would you say the odds are of him being
55:10
taken out I have that written down two
55:13
[Laughter]
55:18
diseases of journalism I’d be interested
55:21
if you agree where we want to report on
55:23
the future which of course we don’t know
55:26
and if the future is real hard it’s a
55:30
fair question but to be honest with you
55:35
I have no idea I agree that’s
55:47
the best answer you know I think I hope
55:49
I learned the lesson in 2016 that what I
55:53
thought was going to happen with a with
55:56
a high degree of likelihood did not
55:58
happen and I think that showed the value
56:00
of my predictions and the value of a lot
56:02
of other people’s predictions and so now
56:05
when people ask me for a prediction i
56:07
disappoint disappointingly try to offer
56:09
some kind of analysis but avoid that you
56:12
know a good line is that one I used
56:14
easier to describe the creation of the
56:17
universe yeah
56:18
because it is yeah yeah I think let’s
56:21
take two more questions and then we
56:23
should let Bob sign some books but
56:27
redundant after the last one but I was
56:29
going to ask you when you live through
56:31
the whole Watergate crisis with Cole
56:34
Bernstein and you must have felt at some
56:37
moment had your aha moment where you
56:39
thought well this is where the president
56:41
is going down how has your gut instincts
56:45
serve you now I know it leads on to the
56:52
can I give the same answer this side of
56:56
the room that I gave over there
57:01
obviously time works against us and the
57:04
longer this goes on the longer a lot of
57:06
these abnormalities tend to become the
57:09
norm and we find ourselves deeper and
57:12
deeper so basically is how what’s your
57:16
gut been telling you the difference
57:18
between but you see I try not to operate
57:22
on my gut and in Watergate Carl realized
57:26
at a moment he said my god this Nixon’s
57:30
gonna be impeached and we’d written a
57:32
story about his closest aide John
57:35
Mitchell campaign manager Attorney
57:37
General controlling a secret fund for
57:41
Watergate and other espionage and
57:44
sabotage activities and Carl turned
57:48
around said this guy is going to be
57:50
impeached and I said I I agree but we
57:54
can never use that word in the newsroom
57:57
because people will think we’re on some
58:00
sort of crusade and for one year we
58:03
never used that word and so I would
58:08
apply the same caution now about what we
58:12
think this is gonna lead to that or that
58:14
the answer is we don’t know but the job
58:19
of journalism is to I don’t know the
58:23
Trump actually does read whether he
58:26
would read a copy of this book I heard
58:28
for a while they couldn’t get a copy at
58:30
the White House this
58:31
Simon & Schuster’s security was so great
58:36
but I think if he I’m sure he would be
58:40
very upset upset because it’s a
58:42
penetration of his business it says this
58:46
is what he does this is what he thinks
58:49
this is the nature of the conflict and
58:51
so forth and I step back as a journalist
58:56
say that’s all we can try to do and then
58:59
the political system will take over and
59:03
do what it’s going to do and even though
59:07
there’s a lot of anger at the political
59:09
system system and a lot of a sense of
59:12
disappointment if not betrayal it it
59:16
kind of works and that’s that’s what we
59:19
have and so I’m not not writing odds
59:24
about anything or I you know examining
59:29
my gut Hey
59:35
and I love it when they opened the door
59:39
and say are you still doing this because
59:43
the answer’s yes
59:54
let’s make the Salaf question and I’m
59:56
sorry we couldn’t get all of them but
59:58
please go ahead
59:59
good evening on the daily yesterday you
60:01
alluded to some of the events that that
60:05
came out of your reporting on Watergate
60:08
so avoiding the the prior questions what
60:14
do you think are some takeaways from
60:17
this book that we can bring out to our
60:20
representatives and congressmen and
60:23
women to alleviate the fear well I mean
60:28
that’s obviously up to you but this is a
60:30
as I say in the early and the prologue
60:34
that there was a nervous breakdown of
60:37
executive power and having a government
60:41
with a nervous breakdown I mean do you
60:44
agree this describes a nervous breakdown
60:47
on a good number of levels and it’s
60:51
something very different from the kind
60:53
of chaos and confusion disorganization
60:56
that has come up in many other White
60:59
House yes I agree it’s a it’s a it’s a
61:02
breakdown of every kind of code of
61:05
normal behavior in a presidential
61:08
administration and so you know that’s
61:11
what it is and it’s you know I mean last
61:17
I don’t can I tell one story this goes
61:20
back to Watergate but it was a great
61:22
lesson in January 7 d 3 Carl and I’d
61:26
written all these stories people didn’t
61:28
believe them in Katherine Graham the
61:30
publisher owner of the Washington Post
61:32
invited me to lunch and I knew where
61:36
she’d supported the publication of the
61:39
stories and go in to her lunch room and
61:43
and she starts quizzing me about
61:46
Watergate and blew my mind with what the
61:49
boss knew she at one point said oh she’d
61:52
read something about Watergate in the
61:54
Chicago Tribune and I thought what the
61:56
hell
61:56
meaning the Chicago Tribune for no one
61:59
in Chicago does Katherine was you know
62:04
sucking in all the information
62:07
a management style I later described as
62:11
mind on hand so if she didn’t tell us
62:14
how to report or what to do and so we
62:16
get to an important moment and she said
62:20
well when is all that forth going to
62:22
come out and I said well there’s a
62:24
cover-up going on the investigations
62:27
week they’re paying the burglars for
62:29
their silence
62:30
Carl and I go knock on doors at night
62:32
and Nixon had just won a massive
62:36
re-election and so my answer is never
62:41
and I know I’ll never forget the look on
62:45
her face when I said never and she said
62:49
pained wounded look she said never don’t
62:55
tell me
62:57
never I left the lunch a highly
63:01
motivated but the statement was not a
63:07
threat it was a statement of purpose and
63:10
what she said was look we we we signed
63:16
up for this journalism is high risk we
63:20
believe our sources and and then she
63:24
said why do you think we do this and I
63:26
didn’t have an answer and she gave an
63:30
answer to her own questions and it’s a
63:33
brilliant answer she said because that’s
63:35
the business were in we have to we
63:39
believe what we’ve got here we have to
63:42
triple quadruple our effort to get to
63:45
the bottom of this and gave a kind of
63:47
let’s go ahead I left the lunch
63:51
highly-motivated I was 29 years old at
63:55
that time and and I thought my god the
63:59
boss really understands the necessity of
64:04
risk injury it doesn’t mean you aren’t
64:08
sure it means that you’re taking on the
64:12
highest authority in the country by
64:15
yourself essentially so someday we’re
64:17
going to put a plaque in the lobby of
64:20
the Washington
64:20
post even though Bezos owns the
64:24
Washington Post now and the Grahams are
64:27
not there I think he would approve of
64:30
this but we’re gonna drill it in so no
64:32
one can take it out gonna be a plaque
64:35
that will just begin quote and it will
64:39
say never
64:41
don’t tell me never end quote
64:46
Katharine Graham
64:59
well that is a great note to end on and
65:01
and one I can heartedly support I’m Bob
65:03
it’s it’s an honor to talk to you about
65:05
the new book and I want to thank
65:08
everybody for the great question for
65:09
being here thank you about thank you
65:13
folks in the next room

America’s Great Divide: Ben Rhodes Interview | FRONTLINE

Ben Rhodes served as deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama. He is currently a writer and political commentator and co-host of the podcast “Pod Save the World.”

Rhodes’ candid, full interview was conducted with FRONTLINE during the making of the two-part January 2020 documentary series “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump.”

Watch Part One here: https://youtu.be/SnMBYMOTwEs
And Part Two here: https://youtu.be/l5vyDPN19ww

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