'You are all that matters to me': Aide’s notes to Trump revealed — Haberman & Swan

[0:00] why the two of you titled this book Regime Change. [0:06] Yeah, I mean, we sort of a couple of months into the presidency realized that we weren't just [0:14] covering a transition from a Democratic president to a Republican president. And in fact, [0:19] it was nothing like what we covered in the first term in the way he was using executive power. [0:25] The premise for the title Regime Change was that we're used to talking about regime change [0:31] in foreign countries and covering regime change in foreign countries. It's a much more uncomfortable [0:37] and challenging task to think about a regime change in our own country. And when you look at [0:45] what he's done as president, the way he's used executive power, it's like nothing we've seen [0:49] in our lifetimes. You can go across the gamut. When George W. Bush went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, [0:55] you know, as flawed as the decision making was, there was a process of getting approval by Congress, [1:02] the branch of government under the Constitution that has the power to declare war. Trump didn't [1:07] even talk to Congress. He just went to war. When he went and snatched a foreign sovereign head of state [1:13] out of his bedroom in his pajamas in the middle of the night and forced regime change in Venezuela, [1:19] he didn't talk to anyone in Congress. When he started a trade war with the whole world [1:24] based on authorities, which, you know, once the courts caught up to it, you know, were invalid, [1:29] again, there's no consultation. So it's unilateral expressions of power like we haven't seen in our [1:35] lifetimes. And what we wanted to do in the book was to really emphasize what's in front of our own [1:41] eyes and try to dig deeper and show people how it's working in there, how this country is being run [1:47] by the very small group of people that are in charge of this country. [1:51] Yeah, and you do that very effectively. New details about one of his closest aides, [1:56] Natalie Harp. Maggie and Jonathan report on how she became the president's gateway to information, [2:02] supplying him with positive news stories and pro-Trump social media posts. [2:06] They also write how she would often read the materials out loud to the president [2:10] and later give him physical copies from a portable printer that she kept on her. [2:15] According to the new book, Harp, quote, wrote Trump adoring letters that she left in his personal spaces, [2:20] including one that read, you are all that matters to me. Trump's chief of staff, [2:25] Susie Wiles, told others that she remembered thinking, where am I? And that Trump had taken [2:30] to telling his staff that Natalie was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids, [2:36] adding, all of you will go off and make money and she'll never leave me. I mean, Maggie, [2:41] obviously those of us who cover the president know Natalie Harp. Obviously, [2:44] she's typically by his side all the time. For people at home, though, and as you're looking at [2:50] the realm of figures that are surrounding him in this second term, what does this say to you? [2:58] So a couple of things, Caitlin. Natalie Harp became omnipresent in the campaign, and we write about [3:04] that. She was not one of the original people in 2021 in this very small group of people who was [3:09] there. But, you know, at some point in 2022, she became somebody who was constantly with him on [3:15] the golf courses when he was in Florida. Again, they would refer to her as the human printer because [3:21] she had this portable printer where she would hand him pieces of positive information. What it says is [3:27] that he wants to keep people around who either, you know, make him happy or feed him information [3:33] that he prefers to hear. I mean, one of the scenes that we have in the book is him demanding the [3:40] quote-unquote real numbers during a tariff discussion when he is being told by his own [3:47] staff what the actual numbers are. And he wants Natalie to go get him some different set of numbers [3:53] that just didn't comport with reality. And he is more interested in information that he wants to [4:02] hear. And in seeking out something that validates what he believes, you know, that he has always [4:07] been interested in that. It was just harder for him to get this time. It is much easier. And [4:11] Natalie Harp is one of the people who took over posting duties to the President's Truth Social [4:18] Post in this term. And that makes her fairly significant. Yeah. I mean, Maggie, that part really [4:24] stood out to me because basically, you know, he was talking to the Howard Lutnick, the Commerce [4:29] Secretary, Scott Bessa, the Treasury Secretary. I mean, this passage of the book talks about [4:33] what he's hearing from all of these staffers. And he's telling Natalie, go find the good numbers that [4:38] she had pulled up for him. I mean, it kind of takes you into how he equates his staff in terms of [4:44] experience and whether they're in the cabinet or a staffer who follows him around. No, that's right. [4:51] I mean, one of the things we used to hear in term one a lot, Caitlin, and in this way, you know, [4:56] this is a sort of more of a pure Trump aspect. And we describe Steve Bannon referring to Donald Trump [5:03] that way and how much pure Trump was coming through. You know, he often would assign multiple people [5:09] the same job, but not quite like this. He really is just bringing in, you know, sort of direct people [5:18] who will do what he wants. You're seeing that with Bill Pulte, who is now the Director of National [5:23] Intelligence, despite having no intelligence experience, no intelligence community experience. [5:28] We have a lot of detail about Bill Pulte's efforts to try to push Trump toward evidence that he [5:35] believed could help lead to prosecutions of Trump's perceived enemies in the book. The fact that he is [5:41] now the Director of National Intelligence, I think, speaks to exactly what we're talking about with [5:45] Natalie Harp in a different context. Yeah. And Jonathan, you know, as Trump was speaking in the Oval [5:51] Office today with the NATO Secretary General, I thought about a part of your book that I had read [5:56] in terms of the president's aging and what White House staffers have noticed, not even what other [6:01] people have noticed. I mean, obviously, he turned 80. And the two of you write in the book that the [6:06] president was having trouble hearing. He was asking people to repeat questions they had just asked, [6:11] that joint press conferences with world leaders were more often held in the Oval Office than in the [6:15] spacious East Room, in part because the acoustics were better and they didn't have to stand for an hour. [6:20] You also write that some of Trump's aides began to say privately that for the first time he was [6:25] beginning to seem old to them. Those who spent time with him could see the signs, the moments of [6:29] fatigue, the cupped hand behind the ear. But Trump's personal dominance in any room often papered over [6:35] what his body could no longer fully conceal. I mean, what did you, what was the sense you picked [6:41] up on from these staffers? Well, it's a very difficult area of reporting, as you know, Caitlin, [6:51] because all of us cover the president. It's something that they keep very well concealed. [6:56] I'm not even sure that his most senior aides have a clear picture of his health, about all the aspects [7:02] of his medical reports. They often talk about how they're the most transparent White House, [7:08] the most transparent president. It's manifestly not the case. They put out very incomplete medical [7:15] information. Recently, they said he saw 22 specialists. We have no indication of who those [7:22] specialists are or what their specialties are. They haven't released all the imaging results. [7:27] You can go down the list. Look, he's 80 years old. We can see for ourselves that he sometimes has [7:34] troubles staying awake in the afternoons. We can see the swelling around the ankles, the chronic [7:39] venous insufficiency. And there's a lot of unknowns. So we didn't manage to crack. That was one area that [7:46] as a reporting task feels very incomplete to us. And we're still very much continuing the reporting on [7:53] that. But there's nothing beyond what is publicly available. But I think we actually know very little, [7:59] frankly. Yeah. I mean, Maggie, the two of you, as you reported out on this book, [8:03] and everyone really should read it because it goes into so many different facets of [8:07] this second Trump term and so much that has happened from the Kennedy Center to the president's [8:14] health to the dynamics. You actually sat down with the president inside the Oval in the final stages [8:19] of your reporting for this book to go over the material that you had learned. And the president [8:24] kind of went off at one point. He told you they illegally indicted me. They impeached me. [8:29] They did everything. They shot me, I guess you could say. But I won the election in a landslide. [8:33] Nobody else could have done it. And there's only one thing you can say about me that anybody [8:37] believes, and you know what it is. He said, essentially, I won every effing time.