Trump boasts of plan to 'pardon everyone': report

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Now in their bombshell new book, Regime Change, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal a ton of new details about the chaos and corruption endemic in Trump's White House. And one of those reporters joins me here now. Joining me now is Jonathan Swan. He's a reporter for the New York Times and co-author of the new book, Regime Change. First of all, congratulations. As I noted at the top, I couldn't even buy a hard copy of the book because it's hard to find currently. I'm sure they're solving that, but congratulations on your success. I wanted to start with what I just mentioned. I mean, we are two days away from America's 250th anniversary. In many ways, it's brought out what I would consider some of Trump's worst impulses. I just outlined some of that. And today we learned that a former Olympian, a canoeist, David Hearn, was indicted for allegedly vandalizing the peeling mess in the reflecting pool, which he, of course, denies. I just played Jeanine Pirro's explanation as well. In an isolated situation, it's kind of a shocking, bizarre story on its own. It's a part of a pattern. What is that about? [00:01:03] Jonathan Swan: Well, it's sort of this conversation about does Trump, you know, is he directing his Justice Department? Of course, he is publicly. But he also almost doesn't need to as well. He has all these people in there who know exactly what he wants. And so what we really have over the last 18 months is a series of events where Trump will express anger about something, whether it's the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. And he has people within his administration who serve him up what he wants. Jeanine Pirro obviously did that today. We have a scene in our book where Bill Pulte, who's now the director of national intelligence, but was really, you know, the heir to a home building fortune, has no experience in national security, was put in charge of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. And he understands what Trump wants. And when Trump was really agitated about the Federal Reserve, for example, he shows up to the Oval Office with these giant phone boards, OK, for a meeting. And he has a picture of Lisa Cook's face, the first black woman to ever get a job as a Federal Reserve governor. It's blown up as this giant, unflattering picture of her face. And it just has above it a headline, the fraudster. And that was the genesis of this whole effort to indict her, to, you know, get her, to fire her. You know, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. It's just happening across every. So, you know, yes, stunning in an isolated event, but actually just, you know, par for the course. [00:02:41] Speaker 1: And people taking direction from what they think he wants, whether or not he told them. The Great American State Fair is not really a Great American State Fair. I think it's fair to say from watching quite a bit of coverage of it, I know you've been very busy on your book tour. Have you heard from any of your sources in the White House what's going on in there as Trump's perhaps fuming about it? [00:03:02] Jonathan Swan: He's been very unhappy about the reflecting pool, as you've discerned. And I'm not so sure about the crowd sizes. But, you know, it's not hard to imagine. [00:03:14] Speaker 1: He does care about crowd sizes. But you have been busy. Let me ask you about pardons, because this is something that you and Maggie have both reported on. You've talked about it as a part of the legacy of his presidency to date. And there has also been this reporting out this week about the consideration of mass pardons for 250 people leading up to the 250th anniversary, which would be in the next two days. Is that something you're kind of bracing yourself for? Or what do you make of that prediction out there and reporting on it? [00:03:47] Jonathan Swan: Well, we have reporting in the book that Trump has been telling people privately on multiple occasions that he's going to pardon. Forget this thing. This is, you know, 250 pardons. I actually think we're going to see the biggest mass pardoning we've ever seen, potentially, at the end of this administration. He's told people that he's going to pardon. This is a direct quote from Donald Trump to people. Pardon anyone who came within 250 feet of the Oval Office. Sometimes he says 200 feet, sometimes he says 25 feet, but there's some diameter, some radius around the Oval Office, sort of the pardon zone. And I think one of the stories of this administration and why they're willing to act so aggressively, so boldly, take such risks, is because there's no fear of any consequence. For Trump himself, he has the immunity conferred upon him by the Supreme Court for any president now. And he's going to pardon everyone. He's told people that. I'm not predicting or speculating. That's reporting. He's told people that. So, you know, what do they have to fear, really? [00:04:51] Speaker 1: You do talk about it in your book. The thing that seems, well, there's been a lot of speculation about, but you've covered him for so long. Is it about incentivizing for people to do things on his behalf? Is it about exerting his power because he's immune? Is it about protecting his family and people around him, a combination? What's it ultimately about? [00:05:13] Jonathan Swan: Are you talking about the pardon power? Yeah. It's interesting. So one of his advisors said to me that Trump told them, you know, people show gratitude for all sorts of things, but no one's ever as grateful to you as when you pardon them. Over the course of covering him in two terms, the pardon power, once he sort of discovered it in the first term, worked how he sort of imagined the whole presidency to work, which was in a flash, unilateral, no process, I, Donald Trump, decide, you know, with a stroke of a pen and it all happens. It obviously creates leverage. There's a whole industry around pardons now, as you know, people are... The price of them you talk about. Well, and it's very hard to cover because it's hard to know where the money's going sometimes, who's getting paid for what. You could spend years just covering the pardon industry on the outside around the Trump administration, but Trump himself, you know, it's a tool of absolute power, and he uses it, you know, very, very aggressively. [00:06:22] Speaker 1: One of the other things that very much comes across in your book and from anyone who's watched interviews you both have done is, of course, the difference between the first term and the second term. And the difference, as I think you describe, how the end of the first term you start to see where he wants to go and ends up going in the second term in terms of loyalists around him. I want to play... Trump sat down with CNBC's Joe Kernan today. I don't know if you've seen this yet, but I just want to play a clip of it, which I thought was interesting, and just get your thoughts on it. [00:06:52] Speaker 3: In the disclosure this week, the amount of money that you and the family made in crypto, it was an outsized number. I was just asking, did you, were you know about the crypto venture? So that was just something... By the way, I could know about it. I didn't. I mean, there's nothing illegal. There's nothing wrong with it. I could know. [00:07:12] Speaker 1: So one of the things that struck me is that he and even his son seemed to be more... They even... They wanted to have the appearance of no corruption in the first term, at least for most of it. Or they seemed to say things publicly that were more, you know, we don't do anything that's corrupt or, you know, has a conflict of interest. And now they seem to be a little bit more out there and upfront about it, or a lot more, I should say. Do you think his perception of corruption, of profiting off of the presidency, has it changed in terms of what he thinks should be allowed, or his behavior has just changed? [00:07:49] Jonathan Swan: Oh, so he... My colleagues at the Times interviewed Trump earlier this year, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect of, I got no credit in the first term for abiding by the, you know, the norms. He actually didn't abide by it. [00:08:05] Speaker 1: He didn't abide by it. He just sort of said it publicly. [00:08:08] Jonathan Swan: Well, the one thing he did was he prohibited his sons from pursuing new foreign business deals. But, of course, people found ways to put money into the Trump's pockets by, you know, patronizing their clubs and what have you. This time around, it's just open for business. And he makes no apologies about it. And like I said before, what's the accountability mechanism? When you are, as he will say, immune, and when you have, you know, as he's expressed, an intent to pardon everyone, and when there's a very real possibility, I'm not saying I know that this will happen, but I think based on everything they've done, it's a reasonable question, that they will not necessarily comply with subpoenas if Democrats take the House. That's the environment where we're operating in. And foreign countries now know that it's not, they don't have to be indirect. They can put money directly into the pockets of the Trump family, and they're doing so.