‘NOBODY in the White House’ thinks Trump’s focus on vanity projects is good: NYT WH Correspondent

[0:00] Stunning details on the decision to reinstate President Trump's name to the Kennedy Center [0:05] months after a court ordered his name removed. In a story that broke right here on MSNOW, [0:10] Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told my colleague Lawrence O'Donnell, [0:13] Trump suddenly joined the call while the renaming was being discussed. [0:20] He came on. He said he had been listening. He gave the speech for several minutes, [0:27] and then he hung up his vote and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles' vote were texted in on these [0:37] things. He did not vote in person. But Donald Trump did vote for his name [0:45] to go on to the building and for the plaza around it to be called the Donald Trump Plaza. [0:52] Correct. And it was quite a long meeting. It was about two hours. He said he'd been on for [0:56] most or all of it. Joining me here in the studio, we have Maggie Haberman, [1:02] New York Times White House correspondent and co-author of the fabulous regime change inside [1:08] the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. That book, everyone, is holding steady at the top of the [1:13] bestseller list for a seventh straight week. Worth it, though, honestly. It's great to have you back. [1:19] I'm glad you're here, Maggie. Look, voters might think with so much going on right now that you'd [1:24] have the president being focused on, you know, laser focused, in fact, on the economy, on the [1:29] Iran war and the like. How could he have time for a two hour call? Is he distracted? And I'm going to [1:36] say I have read the 70 percent focus line that you've been giving about where his mind actually [1:42] is. So talk about that. Sure. You can subtract, you know, or add five percent, I think, if you and I [1:48] said that as well to Mike Allen from Axios. But I don't even think it's really in dispute. Alex, [1:53] if you look at what he is doing and what he is talking about, I don't think they think of it as [1:57] a distraction, I think, in this White House. And this is what we show in the book. So much of the [2:01] focus is on his efforts to leave his stamp on Washington. And this goes back a long time. [2:07] So one of the things when we were reporting regime change that was so striking to us was that, yes, [2:11] there was this board vote in December to put his name on the Kennedy Center, this board that he had [2:16] created. It was all people close to him. And he had made himself the chair. They had ordered the [2:22] letters to do that because they're these specially designed letters months earlier. So it's not as [2:27] if this was some, you know, sudden new, oh, my goodness, what an honor. They've been talking [2:31] about this for months. People around him had been promoting it. This is what he is interested in. [2:37] He is interested in construction projects broadly. He is interested in reshaping the culture. And he is [2:42] interested in leaving his name in a way that cannot be stripped down and off of buildings and out of [2:48] sight the way it was after 2016 when he became president in Manhattan and then after he left [2:54] Washington in 2021. Yeah. Remember that whole Trump place in Manhattan? Yes, I do. That was all taken [2:59] off. That's exactly what I was thinking about. Yep. Yep. There was that one. Yep. So he appears to be [3:03] consumed by the White House Ballroom Project, fully consumed by that. He's asking the Supreme Court now to [3:08] intervene. The Washington Post reports that at least 900 million dollars are being spent on White House [3:15] construction related projects there with taxpayers covering most of that. How do White House insiders [3:22] feel about Trump's obsession with these projects? And it's at the expense of what matters to voters. [3:31] Are they acknowledging that inside the White House? Yeah. If you strap his aides to a polygraph [3:36] right now, and I don't mean in the leak sense, I just mean if you were giving them truth, [3:40] Siren, many of them would say that this is unwise. Not just what he is focusing on, [3:46] which is what he wants to do. And they all submit to that, which is he's the president. [3:51] This has always been who he is. They do wish that he would be more interested in campaigning. He's just [3:57] not for other candidates. They wish that he would be willing to spend money that he has in his super [4:02] pack. It's like 400 million dollars, as far as we know, and possibly more. They keep promising they're [4:08] about to just release some amount of money. There's not that much TV time left to buy for [4:14] the fall for these candidates to help them out, number one. And they wish that he would talk about [4:18] the economy in a way that didn't sound as if he is being dismissive. Yesterday was a twofer. It was [4:22] not just that he said in Long Island, and I was at this event that he had on Nassau County. It's not [4:28] just that he said that people should be willing to pay a tiny bit more, as he put it, for gas in order [4:33] to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But that also the deployments, this he said as he was on his [4:38] way to the event leaving Washington, the deployments weren't long enough in terms of these ships that [4:43] have been out away from port for months on end. Nobody in the White House, you know, when they're [4:49] being realistic, thinks this is a good idea. Can I just ask you, when you said that you're there [4:54] following him, what's his reaction when he sees you in the crowd? Is there a smile? Is there a scowl? [4:59] So yesterday it was, you know, we were so far away in the media, and I wasn't in the traveling pool. [5:04] I drove there in my car. Got it. Last week, or the week, I can't even remember these weeks all [5:09] going together. I think it was last, I think it was last week, maybe it was the week before. [5:13] I was in the press pool actually on the Qatari jet on the way to Long Island, where was it California, [5:18] and then Nevada. And he really didn't interact with the press at all. He answered one question [5:23] of mine, but he's just not engaging the way he used to with the media more broadly, [5:28] other than these quick phone calls that he controls the terms of. Right, absolutely. All right, [5:32] let's talk about the oil prices because they are higher after this administration has said that [5:38] its naval blockade of Iranian ports could continue indefinitely. And let's take a listen. As you [5:43] referenced what the president was saying yesterday, let's listen to what he said. [5:49] When you have to pay a little bit more, you're at $4. It's okay. I mean, it's, I'm not, [5:54] I'm not, I'll never apologize. I did the right thing. You just have to remember that what we're doing [5:59] is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves, for the world. But does this square [6:05] with what he is saying behind the scenes? Does he believe truly that he has got the right strategy [6:10] on Iran? If not, is he blaming anyone? And all the behind the scenes, we hear what he says out front. [6:17] Yeah, there is no, there's no strategy. There are basically approaches that they are looking to take [6:23] that are their options that are left with as they are basically, you know, bouncing from moment to [6:28] moment in a word that the president thought was going to be very quick. And he has said that [6:32] he has privately gotten upset about how depleted the munitions are. But I know there has been a [6:37] lot of questions about how briefed he was. In mine and Jonathan's reporting for this book, [6:42] but we ran it in the New York Times months ago, Dan Kane and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was, [6:47] was quite clear that further depletion of munitions was a risk here. Now, how specifically briefed was [6:53] the president on the numbers and did Dan Kane stylistically, you know, grab the president [6:58] by the lapels the way Mark Milley might have and said, you know, this is where we are, sir, [7:03] you need to understand that's not Kane style. He lays out if this, then that, and the president [7:08] often hears what he wants to hear. I'm sure that there will be things we learn about various levels [7:15] he may not have been exactly aware of. But it's not a secret in this White House that munitions take [7:21] time to manufacture that they knew they were low last year because of the supplies to Ukraine in [7:27] particular over some time. So this idea that this was catching anyone unawares, I think, is a bit [7:35] unfair. But is he angry behind the scenes? Absolutely. But he has nobody to blame but himself. [7:41] I want to ask you about this new DOJ memo saying that it plans to treat Trump's communications with [7:49] outside advisors as privileged, which could potentially shield him from, let's say, [7:54] congressional investigations. Right. So and even the president himself declares he is the most [7:59] transparent president in history. Take a listen to what he says. President Trump is the most transparent [8:07] president in American history. You talk about being open and transparent. This has to be the most [8:13] transparent administration in history. It's the most transparent administration that we've ever seen. [8:18] We're very open and transparent. This is the most transparent president in history. [8:22] I'm proud to be the most open and transparent president in history. [8:27] Do you see a pattern of secrecy on display in this White House? I mean, is this a form of gaslighting? [8:33] Is this a line that everybody has been fed say this over and over and over again? [8:38] Yes. It's not even a close call. They know that he likes that line. They know that that will be a way [8:43] to evade questions. It is a display of transparency, a spectacle of transparency, which is something [8:50] Jonathan and I address in the book. In fact, they are very good at keeping secrets, not just when they [8:55] want to, but for reasons that are not necessarily in the public's interest. And you can go down the list, [9:03] whether it is the president's money-making as the sitting president and self-enrichment and for [9:08] himself and his family, whether it is something like informing reporters and some of his own staff [9:15] that they were on a plane that was serving as a decoy when he was leaving Turkey. Again, it's not the [9:21] idea that the president should not be safe and it's not the idea that reporters expect that the president's [9:25] safety won't come before reporters' safety. But I don't know of any instance where reporters were not [9:32] let in on this in the past when something like this has happened. And so, no, his health, I mean, [9:37] I can go down the list. Objectively, this is an incredibly non-transparent administration. It is [9:45] how the president likes it. The tone comes from the top. Before I let you go, I want to talk about [9:50] The Atlantic, which says, even Trump cannot believe how well your book has sold. Are you surprised by [9:57] its success at all? What does it say, honestly, Maggie, about the state of this presidency and [10:02] perhaps the state of confusion even among his own supporters, right? What does it say about what's [10:08] actually happening that it takes this book to get it out there? So it's a very long answer for which, [10:15] you know, I would have a conversation with you over coffee about that in terms of media environment and [10:19] all kinds of other factors. But the reality is that this is the first effort, lengthy book-length [10:26] effort that has shown people how their government is running, how decisions are being made inside [10:32] their government. And it is by this handful of people, half a dozen more or less at any given moment. [10:37] That is what Jonathan and I were trying to show. That was the point of this book. And we got a book on [10:42] the first 14 months of a presidency out in month 17, which in publishing is unheard of. But we were both [10:48] bearish on the idea that this was going to go well. I had a long talk with my husband about it [10:52] right before it came out because Trump books in general had not been doing very well and [10:56] nonfiction has been declared dead. There was a Wall Street Journal article about that. And so we're [11:02] really overwhelmed and gratified that people are interested. Yes, obviously we wrote the book, [11:08] so we're happy that it's doing well, but we're really happy that there is an engaged citizenry [11:14] that wants to know more about how its government works. What would we do without you? Oh, you'd all [11:20] be just fine, but thank you. I appreciate it. Not at all. All right, Maggie Haberman, thank you so much. [11:24] Come see me again. Thank you. The prediction markets point to one.