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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone.

I'm Steve Adubato.

For the next half hour, you're gonna hear two authors who are expert, and experts in government and politics, and understand the Trump presidency.

They are, in fact, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, who are co-authors of the book, "The Divider.

Trump in the White House, 2017 to 2021."

Peter and Susan, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thanks so much.

- By way of background, Peter is the chief White House correspondent at "The New York Times," and also political analyst at MSNBC.

Susan is a staff writer at "The New Yorker," and author of its weekly "Letters from Biden's Washington," and also a CNN global affairs analyst.

And they also are in the same home because they live together and are married.

Full disclose.

I'm disclosing things all the time.

I wanna disclose that.

So in reading the book, there are so many aspects of this I wanna focus on, but here's the primary one out of the box.

I'm a student of leadership.

We do a sister program called "Lessons in Leadership."

Dare I ask you, Susan, could you finish this sentence, "Donald Trump as a leader was, is," please.

(Susan laughs) - You know, is, is, I guess first of all.

We gotta go with present tense, because unlike other presidents, he has not relinquished the stage even when defeated.

But you know, he is a divider.

That's the bottom line.

That's why we called the book "The Divider."

Trump is a genius at not only marketing himself, but I think, more importantly, he senses the fissures and divisions around him, whether it's in the country or in his own family, and that to me is really the hallmark of his time in public life.

- We should also make it clear, we're taping on the 15th November.

It is a Tuesday.

I believe there's an announcement being made today, if it hasn't been made already.

We've been taping most of the day, and it is what it is.

Peter, Trump as a leader is?

- Well, I think divider's a good word.

I think he's also, you know, he is a disruptor.

He is a unique force.

We've never seen anything like him in the presidency.

He not only came into the office without a single day of experience in public office, or the military, he came in with a radically different view of how the White House should be run.

A view, basically, that it should be like his personal business, the Trump Organization, where he calls all the shots.

There's no board of directors, no shareholders, and in this case, in the case of a president, he was resistant to the traditions and institutions that serve as a check on power, whether it be Congress, the courts, agencies, or even, you know, some people would say the Constitution.

So I think that he's a disruptor as well as a divider.

- Susan, when we like institutions that matter, we have a series that we've been doing called "Democracy at a Crossroads."

The graphic'll be up, and here's why.

We see ourselves in public media as a very important part of helping inform people, we have no horse in any race, helping inform people about issues that matter, and how government works or does not work.

Enemy of the people, that we are the enemy of the people.

When the president said that, Jim Acosta's book, I believe, is of the same name.

When a politician, in this case, President Trump, calls us in the media, that we're enemies of the people, what is the real significance of that from a broader perspective in terms of, trust me, there's an end to this question, "a functioning democracy"?

- Yeah.

Well, I think you're right to ask that question.

Peter and I lived for four years in Russia, and traveled all across the former Soviet Union as correspondents, and so for us, I think that term, as soon as Donald Trump said it, it had a particular horror.

The reason is that enemies of the people was a term invented by Stalin, as Khrushchev once noted, to condemn millions of people to the gulags in the Soviet Union.

(Russian pronunciation) "Vrag Naroda" It's a particularly dehumanizing term, and you know, in our book, we recount the story of actually how once Lesley Stahl confronted Trump, "Why are you attacking the media?

Why are you ripping us down?"

Especially given that Trump was such a creature himself of the media, obsessed with it, eager to participate in its coverage, and, you know, he said one of those classic, unintentionally revealing, Trump things.

He told Lesley Stahl, "Well, so that when you write bad things about me, no one will believe you."

- I saw that.

I saw that interview.

Peter, stay on this.

Trump and Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, I've been watching a CNN series on the Murdochs, and it makes "Succession" look funny, which it's not, it's compelling, but it's more real.

That being said, Trump is also, Donald Trump is also in some ways a creature of Fox News, in the eyes of many, but now they are covering him in a different way, and he talks about them in a different way.

Trump and Fox News/right-wing media.

Talk about that, Peter.

- Yeah, it's a good point, because in fact, it's really a story about how Trump came to power, right?

Fox News used to be kind of the arbiter for conservative politics.

If you were a Republican who wanted to win, you went to Fox News and tried to get on their good side.

Trump made it the other way around.

He kinda tamed Fox News and made them his adjunct of power, so that he would dictate to some extent the themes that they would carry, the stories that they would talk about.

He would talk regularly with Sean Hannity after his show.

He rated in his own mind the various anchors and hosts on Fox.

"This one gets a 5 outta 10, this one gets the 12 outta 10."

And it got to the point where Fox, which under Roger Ailes had been sort of this independent conservative outfit within the conservative ecosphere, was more or less became, you know, a part of Trump's orbit.

Now, they seem to be breaking away.

Right now, especially in the wake of the midterm elections, which Trump, you know, helped bring the Republicans down, at least that's the view of most Republicans, you hear Fox, and "The New York Post," and other parts of the Murdoch empire, "Wall Street Journal," being much more vocal than they had been in the past, and saying, "It's Trump's fault, it's time for him to leave the stage.

Let's move on to the next evolution of Republicans."

So they have now sort of broken away from Trump, at least for the moment.

- Susan, I'm gonna go back in a moment, Trump and autocrats, people like Putin and others, and his seeming, a sense he respects them, or he admires them.

I'm not sure what it is.

But I wanna talk about COVID, because a big part of the book, a significant portion of the book, and we had governor Chris Christie, we're a New-Jersey-based operation, we've had the governor on many times, he talked about his experience with COVID, prepping Donald Trump for that debate, when in fact Donald Trump, and many of the people who were prepping got sick.

The president had COVID after that.

There's a question here, and it's this, the book goes into detail about the president and his leadership, or lack thereof, in the face of COVID, consistently in the beginning saying, "It's gonna go away," whatever.

What do we need to understand about Trump and COVID, and why is that important moving forward for all leaders of this state, region, and nation, as it relates to public health?

- Yeah, no, I think it was in that sort of public health catastrophe, a once-in-a-century-level magnitude catastrophe that you really saw so very clearly, I think, the limits of Trump's approach to the White House.

You saw, you know, his ignorance about the government, and the vast machinery of the government, his desire to interfere even in what should be non-politicized independent agencies, you know, public health being first and foremost among that, but certainly not alone in that.

You saw Trump's viewing of the pandemic almost purely through the lens of self-interest, and in particular, the fact that it was his election year.

You saw his embrace of conspiracy theories, which again, hardly limited to public health, but certainly extraordinary when you saw the ways in which he, you know, thought of it all as a, you know, vast conspiracy against him, that it even existed, nevermind promoting, you know, sort of quack cures.

And so what I would say to you is that, you know, Trump and COVID is a story about the extreme hyper-personalization of power that Donald Trump brought to the presidency, and that really is characteristic not of a functioning democracy, as we imagined in the United States, but you know, of a kind of country like China, where Xi Jingping can personally dictate, you know, that millions and millions of Chinese remain locked in their homes even now, three years into the pandemic.

- Real quick.

As a student of leadership, I often say that what's important for a leader is to remember it's about them, meaning whoever they are, those who are affected, thousands, and then ultimately a million Americans, et cetera.

Extraordinary loss, pain, suffering of others.

The issue of empathy and Trump is talked about in the book as well, versus, "It's about me."

Everyone can decide for themselves, but the book is called "The Divider."

Peter and Susan have co-written that book.

Peter, let's, in an effort to, I don't like to say fair and balanced, because some other people have said that, and it is what it is.

In an effort to be as fair as possible, from 2017 to 2021, President Trump did what well?

- Well, look, you know, if you are a conservative and you believe in his policies, he did a number of things very well, right?

He enacted large tax cuts, he increased military spending, he put three conservative justices on the Supreme Court, if you're pro, if you're against abortion rights, then that worked out really well for you because those three justices helped lead to the Dobb decision this last year.

Obviously those are, for people who approve of those policies.

You know, the Abraham Accords, you would say certainly happened on his watch, where Israel has new diplomatic relations with some of its Arab states.

That was probably likely it was heading that way anyway, but certainly it happened on his watch and his administration- - How about the economy?

I'm sorry for interrupting, Peter.

The economy, the stock market, you know, for many, "Hey, I did well under Trump."

You were saying.

- Yeah.

Exactly.

Look, it was not the greatest economy of all time.

He's a master salesman, right?

He sold a good economy, and made it sound like it was a better economy than it was, but it was a good economy.

He took the economy that Obama left him, and he kept it going, and he instilled confidence.

I think that salesman skill of his did instill confidence, which is why the markets went up so much, because they believed that things were really going well.

Consumer confidence and investor confidence went way up.

Obviously, when the pandemic hits, it all comes crashing back down again.

It probably would've under anybody's leadership, but he obviously will talk about the economy as being one of his strengths.

- Yeah.

Let's do this when we come back from this very short break.

I wanna talk about January 6, and the significance of it, and the role of President Trump in it.

And the book is "The Divider."

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

We'll be right back after this.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

We're back again talking with Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, the authors of this book called "The Divider."

Susan, the book leads up to, the way the book is written, it leads up to January 6, the events after the election of 2020, the questioning, the stop the steal, the, "They took this from me.

The only way I could lose is if they stole it."

But don't people have their own free will to decide what they believe is the truth or not, leading up to January 6?

Meaning, those people did what they did, a violent insurrection in the eyes of many, or to what degree is it on Donald Trump, from your point of view?

- Yeah, I just don't accept the idea that there is a subjective version of the truth here.

It's not in the eyes of many that there was a violent insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6.

That's a fact.

We literally just did an interview with a State Senator in New Jersey by the name of Edward Durr.

Edward Durr is a Republican representing the southern part of the state, beat the Senate President Steve Sweeney.

Why is it relevant?

Because I asked him was it a violent insurrection?

He said, "No, it was a protest with isolated violence."

That's not a subjective reality for everyone, Susan, but go ahead.

- Right.

Well, that's the problem.

Just because he says it doesn't make it so, and the bottom line is, you know, we're in the truth business.

We're in the journalism business, and it doesn't matter if a Republican elected official goes on your television show and lies to the public, but that's not true, and it's our job to call it out.

It has nothing to do with partisanship.

And it's also true that Donald Trump called forth that mob, and urged them to come there, and that had Donald Trump not spread lies about the 2020 election, they wouldn't have been there.

They would not have been there.

And so those are all factual assertions.

Now, the reason that Peter and I, one of the reasons that we wrote the book, I think, is because, in some ways our understandable focus on this extraordinary event in American history, and it was an extraordinary event.

There's not been a single president, Democrat or Republican, in the entire history of the United States who sought to overturn election results as Donald Trump did.

But that focus on January 6, I think can sort of lose the trajectory that led up to it, because it's our view, and I think what the book lays out, is that January 6 was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

It was not a protest gone awry, but in fact, it was the inexorable culmination of Trump's four years of attacks on American institutions, and the pillars of American democracy.

- Peter, to Susan's point, and again, I only bring up Senator Durr here in New Jersey because he said this as well, when I asked him about denying the results of an election, he said, "I don't wanna go backwards, let's go forward."

Which was his way of obviously not wanting to respond to that question.

But I argued, and it's not an opinion, but to move forward, we need to understand.

That being said, we're doing this a week or so after the midterm elections.

Denying the results of an election, a huge issue.

It started with President Trump.

Well, it didn't start.

Others can say who they think it started with, but the point is, and the question is this, Peter, what is the threat to democracy?

Democracy at a crossroads, or worse?

Who knows?

What is the risk, in your view, and you talk about, both of you talk about this in the book, of denying the results of an election before the election, and then when I'm winning, I think it's okay, and then when I'm not, it's stolen?

Why is that relevant to the functioning of a democracy, trusting election results, win or lose?

- Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.

Look, democracy is an act of faith, right?

It's an act of faith that we believe in our system, that we believe that when we cast our vote, there's gonna be honest counting of them, and what Donald Trump is trying to do is tell people that it doesn't work.

The system, as functional as it is, in fact, it's probably the cleanest, best-run election in 2020 we ever had, according to experts who know about these things, was somehow crooked.

There's no evidence of it, none whatsoever that suggests that.

And yet he's convinced two thirds of his Republican supporters that it's true.

That's corrosive to democracy if you have such a large segment of the public that doesn't even believe in the honesty of the system, that really believes the system is crooked, even though, again, there's no evidence of it.

If there was, that would be one thing, but there's not.

And time and time again, every authority, Republican and Democrat, who's looked at this has said, this system, this election, was free and fair.

It was clean, it was the result it was.

You may not like the result, but that doesn't mean it wasn't honest.

And you're right to mention that he said this before the election.

He has always said, anytime he has lost, it was because somebody else cheated, or committed fraud, even up to the Emmys, when he was up for an Emmy for "The Apprentice," he said he lost the Emmy because the system was rigged against him somehow.

He will not accept defeat, no matter what the facts are.

- Let me say this, the book was written before the midterm elections, obviously, and many will argue, and I will as well, that it's a positive thing that the vast majority of those who lost races acknowledged that they lost.

As a former state representative in New Jersey who won one race, won one election and lost the next, I knew I lost because the other person got more votes than I did.

I may not have liked the result, but that's why I'm here.

But also, I remember that that was a reality, point being, what is it that you wanna say, Susan, to everyone about the future of our elections, and trusting the results?

That does not mean that we don't need to tighten up election security, that who knows whether people should show their ID or not.

That's debatable.

But is there a systematic, persistent problem with the results of elections?

Or should we largely trust the results of elections, Susan?

- Yeah, I mean, look, that's where Donald Trump is such an outlier, and has taken his Republican Party down, you know, really a path that can- - His?

I'm sorry, Susan, for interrupting.

His?

It's his party?

- Well, that's what I'm gonna say, is that it is his party, and he's taken them down the path of extra constitutionalism.

You asked, why does it matter for democracy?

The answer is is because that's the basic deal in a democracy, which you described.

You know, if you win, you accept the results.

If you lose, you accept the results.

If we have one of our two parties that does not accept the results of an election because they lost, then we don't have a constitutional system that works anymore, and that's why you've seen people who are so concerned, who follow democracies, because also this is the way to democratic unraveling, not just in our society, but in other societies that have experienced democratic, small D, rollbacks.

And so, I just, I think that, you know, you could say on November 3, 2020, that this wasn't gonna happen.

That it wouldn't be Donald Trump's Republican Party anymore.

You could say that on January 5, 2021.

But after January 6, 2021, when you had the Republican Party that could have made a decisive break with Donald Trump, and chose not to.

As Peter said, two-thirds of Republican voters today, today, two years later, believe that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president of the United States.

Why do they believe that?

Because Donald Trump told them so, and because Trump has made that essentially the ideology of the Republican Party today, and so again, you know, you can't just sort of paper that over and say, you know, as your State Senator that we keep bringing up did, "Well, let's just move on.

Let's not talk about it."

Well, wait a minute, you know, like, this is a breach in our system that it's going to be very hard just to paper it over and forget it ever happened.

- Again.

The book is called "The Divider."

Peter Baker, Susan Glasser.

Peter, I said I wanted to mention Trump.

Can I get to something, I know it's complex topic, but Trump and Putin, can we just do that?

Because there are other authoritarian leaders across the world, and we're a New-Jersey-centric program, but this is relevant to everyone in New Jersey as well as our region, and the nation.

Why do you believe it is so difficult for Donald Trump to be critical of Vladimir Putin, regardless of what the actions of Putin are, and how they clearly go against who we are, and we say we are as a nation?

- Right.

I think there are two things.

First of all, he believes that any criticism of Putin, particularly of the 2016 election interference, undermines his own legitimacy as president, right?

He believes anytime anybody says, "Hey, Russia shouldn't mess around in our elections," that we're saying Donald Trump was not legitimately elected, which is actually two different things, right?

Russia should not- - He won that election.

He won that election.

- He won the election.

He won the election, and most people who were saying Russia interfered in it are not saying that Donald Trump didn't win the election.

They're just simply saying that Russia shouldn't be allowed to play in our elections.

But he took those two things to be the same.

So if you criticized Russia, you were criticizing his election.

And the second thing is what you said earlier, which is his affection for autocrats in general.

He has had a particular affection for Putin long before the election, going back years, when Putin was named Man of the Year, Trump sent him literally a fanboy message saying, you know, "You're the best.

You're great."

Time after time, long before he became president, he admired Putin's strength, and he does seem to look after strong men, literally as that, strong men.

His father taught him the best word to use to compliment somebody is a killer.

"You're a killer."

And well, who's more of a killer than Vladimir Putin?

And somehow Donald Trump got in his mind that Vladimir Putin was somebody to be admired, and he did, even though everybody else told him not to.

- Yeah.

A couple minutes left.

Susan, let me try this.

Again, as I said, we're a New-Jersey-centric public affairs series.

Chris Christie, if you look in the table of contents, or excuse me, the index, there's tons of Christie stuff and Trump.

We've had Chris Christie many times, check out our website.

Last time the governor was with us, he told us his views about Donald Trump, leadership, lack thereof, et cetera.

The relationship between Trump and Chris Christie, who advised him, who helped prep him for debates, who lost to him, and then was the first on board in 2016 to support him.

That being said, do you believe there will be more prominent Republicans, and not just in our region, but across the nation, who will, quote, "break" from the former president, particularly as it relates to this run for the presidency?

- You know, it really is remarkable.

Chris Christie's such an example, in many ways, of how the Republican Party fell into line with Donald Trump, even though they knew he was wildly unsuited for the presidency.

It was his own opponents in 2016, people like Chris Christie, people like Lindsey Graham, who called him a kook, who said he was wildly unsuited to the presidency- - Like Marco Rubio.

- Absolutely, who were insulted and belittled by Trump- - Like Ted Cruz.

(Steve laughs) - And fell in line behind Trump nonetheless.

And, you know, I think it's that kind of slavishness to have access to power, to even be dazzled by it in some ways, as I think Chris Christie was at times, certainly Lindsey Graham was.

So Christie is a character in our book for that reason, constantly flirting with, and wanting to be close to the center of the action, and yet never quite being able to get the big job.

Trump does at one point ask him to be a Chief of Staff, but he realizes that, you know, that's gonna be a disaster.

And, you know, the falling out had almost a feeling of inevitability between Christie and Trump, both because it was so clearly a transactional and opportunistic relationship between the two, including, you referenced Christie getting COVID.

You know, Christie blamed Trump for almost killing him, basically- - Hey, remember, I'm sorry for interrupting again.

I interrupted Susan three times.

I apologize.

Remember Trump said to him, and Christie wrote this in his own book, "Chris, you're not gonna tell people that you got COVID from me."

I'm sorry.

Thinking, "It's about me."

Go ahead, Susan.

Go ahead.

- That's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

So two guys with monstrously huge egos were bound to clash in some ways, and certainly Chris Christie has a healthy self-regard as well.

And so, you know, the other thing is, though, that Donald Trump has fallen out with nearly everybody.

There's the great line in the book from Reince Priebus, Trump's first Chief of Staff, who is humiliated, by the way, by Donald Trump, like, you know, tweeted out of a job, left standing on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base in the rain, you know, while Trump zooms off, nonetheless refuses to forswear him publicly, but Priebus used to tell people, you know, "There's only two kinds of advisors that Donald Trump likes, those who used to work for him, and those who will work for him."

Trump falls out with everybody, and that's why you had the sort of clown car of chaos and dysfunction in the White House, in everything, basically, that Donald Trump ever ran in his life.

- To you, Susan, to you, Peter, I wanna thank you for not just joining us on public broadcasting, but for this book, "The Divider."

There are several books, many books, about Donald Trump.

This is one of the most compelling, comprehensive, and important.

Thank you both for joining us.

We wish you all the best.

- Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato, thank you for joining us.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

The Fidelco Group.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

The North Ward Center.

Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Summit Health Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Rutgers University Newark.

And by Johnson & Johnson.

Promotional support provided by BestofNJ.com.

And by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

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