‘Go along with it or you get CRUSHED’: Trump’s control over the GOP explained in 'Regime Change'

[0:00] What I found in your book is, because we all ask the question, how does he have this much [0:05] power over Republicans? You go into great detail about him learning the lessons between the first [0:11] and second term, and he just showered members of Congress with all this attention. Tim Burchett [0:18] telling reporters, he knows my name. I'm just so flattered he knows my name. Constantly calling [0:23] him, constantly bringing him over to a point where you write, and this jumped off the page [0:28] on 211. You write, Trump wielded near total command over his party in Congress, command [0:36] greater than any president before him. Well, we tried to find any president where you could [0:44] compare it for their own party in Congress. I defy you to tell me one, where you can convince [0:51] these guys who, many of whom absolutely knew or felt that Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, [0:59] Bobby Kennedy were all, and this is in the views of quite a number of Republican senators, grossly [1:04] unfit in office, and yet they just did it anyway. There were people who really didn't want to [1:10] vote for his legislation, you know, cut Medicaid in their, in their districts and states. Huge [1:15] problems. They do it anyway. They do it anyway. You bring up the point of Joni, Joni Ernst wanted [1:19] to vote against Hegseth. Oh, she was, she saw her political life. She got crushed. Absolutely. [1:24] They went after her and crushed her. There's two options, really. There's two options. You go along [1:29] with it. Fall online. Or you get crushed. Right. And they, they are open about that. I mean, [1:33] Chris Lasaveta, one of his operatives said, basically, I can't remember, you might remember [1:38] the exact quote. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was on the record. It was essentially that, you know, [1:42] the, the iron fist rule that they, uh, that they take with the Republican party. And if you don't [1:47] fall in line, you get your effing head bashed in. But it's this, it's this, they see it as a virtuous [1:52] cycle. Because what actually happens is fear raises money that generates more fear. So corporate [1:59] America's terrified of him. So they go out and they say, Hey guys, we need some money. [2:04] Right. So all these companies give money. They build up their political war chest. Thomas [2:08] Massey in Congress says, Oh, you know, I'm not going to support this. They say, okay, [2:12] the hammer's coming down. What's happened to Thomas Massey? He's out of Congress. [2:16] All right. So it's four minutes past the top of the hour. We're talking with Maggie Haberman [2:20] and Jonathan Swan about their brand new book out today, regime change. We're going to have them [2:25] on for quite some time to get into the details of which many of them are just absolutely [2:32] that there's, there's no words to describe the dramatic impact it's having on this country [2:37] that you are both able to pin down. I want to pull back a little bit before we dive in deep, [2:44] because you cover in great detail, many dimensions of, I'll call it encroachment from this presidency [2:52] down through the country into media, into changing the look of Washington, whether it's monuments in [3:00] Washington or the White House itself, the judiciary, the concept of due process, [3:06] the self-dealing going on, these detention centers across the country, improper deportations, [3:13] Ukraine wars, alliances around the world. These are in no order of importance. But what ultimately, [3:19] and I'd like to hear from both of you, is your conclusion about Donald Trump's state of mind [3:25] and the ability of his team to do enduring damage. Maggie. [3:32] I don't fancy myself a psychiatrist. I don't know about his state of mind in terms of, [3:37] you know, sort of long term. What do you conclude after working on this book? [3:40] The same thing that we've been saying, really, which is that this is somebody who is uninhibited, [3:44] who is operating on pure gut, who sees himself as this world figure. So one thing that I do want [3:52] to talk about on a specific, if I can, just to make that point, when we had this interview with him [3:56] on March 16th, which was at the end of our reporting process, and we had asked for an interview [4:03] several times because he is the subject of the book, but the reporting was done. [4:08] And we wanted to fact check with him. We did not want to just sit and have sort of an open mic night. [4:14] And when we went in, first he greeted us with pictures of maple trees, which was what he was [4:20] looking at. And the amount of time that he is spending on decor and sort of re- [4:25] Renovations. [4:26] And remaking the White House, Washington, in his image, and sort of trying to make sure that people [4:33] can't take his name out of commission the way it happened before. So that is one thing he's very [4:39] focused on. And then we asked him a question about power and how he sees his own power, because we knew [4:45] that he had been talking about this with confidants, and we wanted to see what he would say. And he had, [4:50] you know, we were a few weeks into the war at this point. And he tells Natalie Harp, who is his [4:56] ever-present aide, who sits on the side of the wall in the Oval Office in almost every meeting, [5:00] and go get the printouts. And then he says, do you know who Gary Player is? And we weren't really [5:07] sure where this was going, because Gary Player is a golfer, and a very well-known one, yes. [5:13] And so she comes back with these sheets of paper, and she hands each of us a two-pager. [5:18] And he tells this story about how Gary Player introduced him to a historian, and a historian [5:24] had this theory of the case about Trump. And this paper begins that Donald Trump is the most [5:29] powerful person who has ever walked the earth, more than Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, [5:37] the Caesars. Yeah, he calls them the top ten. These are the top ten. Top historian. [5:41] Yes, and the people he's naming are the top ten of sort of the well-known influencers of history, [5:49] so to speak. And that Trump is more powerful than any of them, because he has the might of [5:52] the U.S. military, because there's social media, because he's got reach. And Trump is [5:58] just sort of reveling in this. You know, he's reading the names, and I wasn't reading them [6:03] along with him. I don't think Jonathan was either. And hearing him say it out loud was [6:07] actually sort of jarring of Hitler, Mao, Stalin. It turned out that this was not a historian. [6:15] This was Jonathan went down a rabbit hole and tracked him down. We were asking what the name [6:19] was, David King. He was Gary Player's business associate and caddy. [6:25] Almost a historian. Right. But there was no moral assessment here of who Trump was happy [6:33] to be in the company of. It was about power and how it was being exercised. So that is [6:38] my takeaway from all of this about his state of mind.