Trump's fist topping the arch? New details from Trump's 2nd term

[0:00] in october he's showing a visitor a model of the ginormous arch he wants to build and he's asking [0:07] he asks uh should it be for what should be on top of it he said should it be he mused a large replica [0:14] of his fight fight fight fist so he was seriously thinking of having a giant replica of his fist [0:20] he asked someone whether they thought it was a good idea he also was asking whether it should [0:23] be bigger than the lincoln memorial we have a scene in the book where he calls the french [0:27] president emmanuel macron to ask him about the arc de triomphe tell me about your arch emmanuel uh [0:33] do people jump off it etc the point is he wants to put his physical imprint not just on america but [0:39] on the world so how much is he thinking about legacy i mean is that enormous you have a pie [0:43] chart of his brain it's a huge slice a paragraph from this which to me was kind of just an amazing [0:50] paragraph it's a page 167 you write by midway through the year a picture was emerging of how [0:56] the oval office operated in trump's second term it was of a president spending his days at the [1:01] resolute desk in a series of rolling bull sessions accompanied by a core group of intimates these were [1:06] supplemented by a rotating cast of extras and on any given day they could be republican lawmakers [1:12] titans of industry former pro wrestlers country musicians gulf royals crypto bros or friends of felons [1:18] seeking pardons they would enter and exit the frame with some invited to stay for meetings they had no [1:23] business attending the conversations ran fast often string far from the point or from anything [1:28] visitors imagined when they arrived at the white house the president's sentences often began on one [1:33] topic and ended far away it's like the opening scene of an opera i mean it's like it would be an [1:39] incredible stage play just that visual one of the uh moments that that we describe and and we spoke to [1:46] somebody who laid out this scene for us is you know trump having uh a highly classified briefing in the [1:53] oval office and then in comes the guy with the stone samples uh for the rose garden sure this was last year [1:59] uh and he's always talking about like there's specific stones yeah and these razo right and and so these [2:06] are these are these are moments that all sort of collide into each other there is just this [2:11] sort of sweeping meeting that takes place all day long and it means that people are pulled into [2:17] something as we say that uh probably they they shouldn't be listening to uh i mean the the the [2:23] stone guy the paper guy had had essentially walk-in privileges to the oval uh and that that's just [2:28] the way this white house works but there's an interesting um contrast that's all true of course [2:34] and and there's sort of this no no delineation no structure but what's also true is it's actually a [2:43] very secretive white house much more so than the the first administration but much more so in some [2:50] ways than even the biden and obama administration i'll give you an example this memorandum of understanding [2:56] that has just been published uh to end the war in iran the number of people who had seen that document [3:03] in the white house in the u.s government microscopic tiny number of people before it was published [3:09] people you know you have people in the intelligence community that we talk to who are essentially trying [3:16] to monitor this white house almost like it's a foreign government they have no idea what's going on [3:22] and there are conversations that are happening within such a small group that's running the government [3:27] when you have people like steve whitkoff and jared kushner you know doing business they don't they're [3:32] really unstaffed um they don't rely on staff much they they basically are these sort of free agents [3:40] i mean it's really unheard of from other administrations normally if you're a negotiator [3:45] you would have a team of right experts in the field traveling with you going over documents behind the [3:51] scenes but that's how you get these i mean we have a scene in the book where steve so whitkoff goes to [3:57] meet putin alone which is stunning right he's sitting in the room with vladimir putin steve [4:02] whitkoff is has no experience in diplomacy not there right he's a real estate friend of trump's [4:07] and he's suddenly the russia um envoy spends three hours with putin alone and then we have this scene [4:14] in the book where he he's sitting with putin in moscow and putin is drawing this doodle of you know a [4:21] three plus two which is the territorial arrangement giving uh territory to russia freezing certain [4:27] territory and whitkoff says can you sign that for me and putin signs his signature and whitkoff takes [4:33] it home and gets it framed but again it's this there is a contempt for expertise there is a contempt [4:41] for um it's deeper than contempt for the deep state it's basically anyone who's been doing this [4:47] for a long time you're probably you know not up to it well it's fact it gets to the next paragraph [4:54] which what i want to just read to people you say to the extent he still cared this is the difference [4:57] of this term versus the last to the extent he still cared about polling at all he was seeing far [5:02] fewer polls and during his first term his advisors knew he was not receptive to being briefed on harsh [5:07] realities in his second term unlike his first he was willing to take breathtaking risks risks that could [5:12] throw not only his presidency but the republican party and the entire world into chaos and carnage [5:17] more than ever before as president he was operating on pure gut instinct which makes what happened [5:24] with iran it makes sense yes i mean and we really describe that in great detail in the book uh just [5:30] about the lead up to the iran talk about what you've learned because it's not as if you know there [5:35] were all the uh we played endless montages of him saying oh nobody brief me on that i you know nobody's [5:39] nobody suggested that well he was he was brief it's not true i mean he he a couple of things are the [5:45] case number one he was always more hawkish than about iran than members of his own team now we we [5:53] do not see a world where he would have gone to war against iran in term one but he has always been [5:59] different about iran that's why there was the sulaimani strike in 2020 which you know many people [6:04] around him did not agree with not think was a good idea thought it was too big a risk now he was much [6:10] more aligned with benjamin netanyahu than members of his own team wanted to see and yet the evidence [6:15] was there throughout 2024 and then afterwards he was informed of the options there was really no one [6:23] on his team who thought this was a great idea the the person who really was very vocal about it [6:28] with the president was jd vance and and it cost jd vance with the president but the president was [6:34] informed of various scenarios of what could happen and downsides uh by dan kane the chairman of the [6:41] joint chief of staff one of which was munitions depletion uh one of which was the possibility that [6:46] the strait of hormuz would have been closed the president and and the president's own uh secretary [6:52] of state and cia director examined these scenarios about regime change that benjamin netanyahu had [6:59] portrayed in this remarkable meeting in the situation room uh to president trump on february [7:03] 11th and one of them said it was farcical uh the other said i think we can say this on air's [7:09] bullshit was of marco rubio's quote uh the president knew all of this and he still wanted to go ahead [7:15] and try this so you ask yourself the question how do we get into the situation where we have [7:21] dangerously low supplies of critical long-range munitions this is a national crisis national emergency [7:27] actually in terms of our supplies of um interceptors missile interceptors long-range weapons well if [7:33] you're donald trump and you have a gut instinct this war is going to be over like that those questions [7:38] become right who cares you asked the president if there had ever been an american president as powerful [7:43] as him uh you're kind of setting a nice layup right there he he brought out a list of historical figures [7:49] uh this is from the book alexander the great the caesars william the conqueror they didn't have [7:54] airplanes right you could you couldn't travel around this is the president talking genghis khan [7:58] attila the hun tamerlane napoleon he said with relish hitler mao stalin these leaders maintained [8:04] power through fear he said who would ever do a thing like that right trump lingered on the document [8:08] central argument that each leader however fearsome in his day had no global reach their power was [8:13] local but his was not it's remarkable so we asked the question uh because number one the the war against [8:21] duran had started just a few weeks earlier and number two you know he had been boasting publicly [8:25] about how no other president would do the things that he had done and he had said to tucker carlson [8:30] you know i at some point i'm the most powerful president uh you know that ever lived i'm paraphrasing [8:35] so we we put the question to him about how he sees it i think both of us found it one of the most [8:40] astonishing moments we've ever had with trump because he hands us this document um and he says it was [8:46] written by a historian and the opening line says you know donald trump is the most powerful man who's [8:52] ever existed on the planet and it goes on to compare him uh to all those people you named some [8:58] of the great monsters of history you know the most ruthless dictators and conquerors of history [9:07] and there was no moral dimension to it the only point was power and and the point was he has power [9:15] but it was something he wanted us to understand a slightly more subtle point which was in the in [9:20] the document which was it's not just that i control the u.s military and the most powerful economy in [9:26] the world the most powerful technology world it's that i'm willing to use the power and that was the [9:30] assessment and it was very interesting because he was relishing that company and one thing that we've [9:37] been toying with in our reporting and sort of trying to understand as we go through this book is [9:42] just to try to understand why is this term so different from the last term and there are many [9:48] reasons for that but one of them is trump himself is far less reactive to domestic politics like his [9:56] aides are trying to get him interested in the midterm he's not looking at polls in the way he is not the [10:01] way he used to it's not just it's not totally binary he really doesn't care that much it's small [10:06] stuff he again it was so he essentially told this i mean it was handed to us by the way the the [10:13] the historian he's talking about is the uh the golf cat former golf caddy yeah for for gary player [10:19] right i just a couple of the details i just want to get in he shows you go in to talk to him on the [10:24] 13th day of the iran war what's on his desk what is he was pouring over yeah so i think it was i think [10:30] about the 17th day but yeah but so so when we walk in he's got these these he he's holding these [10:35] pictures uh of maple trees and he starts talking about how he's he's installing maple trees uh around [10:41] around the the i'm good at buying trees i'm going to buy in trees then he wants us to look at his [10:46] ballroom designs which he shows lots of people and he starts talking about the columns and you know [10:51] one side is an honor of athens another another is uh rome uh this is what he's focused on