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Darlene Superville
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Darlene Superville
The Associated Press
Darlene Superville is a White House correspondent for the Associated Press. She has covered politics for the AP for more than a decade.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 4, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Trump’s First Six Months in the White House
We've talked to you a lot about Donald Trump in the past, so I won't go back through all of Donald Trump's presidency, but I just want to hit a couple of things and some things that we haven't talked about.First is his reaction to the Russia allegations and the dossier as it comes out, because it seems like he takes it very personally, that he sees it as a question about who he is.As you're covering him, how do you see his response to the dossier, to Russia, to the questions about him?Is it personal for him?
Absolutely.And I think one of the takeaways from his reaction to the dossier was, you can almost use that moment as the beginning of the kind of tortured relationship that he had with the intelligence community because he really pushed back hard on the leaks about the dossier, the information that was in the dossier, and his relationship with the intelligence community wasn't the same after that.And the FBI director at the time, James Comey, was one of the individuals who had gone up to New York when Trump was still president-elect to brief him on the Russia report and the dossier, and within months of taking office, he fired James Comey.
So we talked about the first six months of Biden's presidency, but those first six months of Donald Trump's presidency with people coming and going and Bannon is out, what is the feeling inside the White House, and how would you describe the atmosphere and just what it was like when he walks in?We talked about Biden arriving when Trump walks in.What was that like?
Those first six months were very turbulent, might be a good word to use to describe it.I talked about him firing the FBI director within months of being in office.I think his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was gone within a month or six weeks or something like that; he was gone very early in the administration over some contacts that he had been having with Russia.
President Trump tweeted early and often.He announced policy over Twitter.He fired people over Twitter.It was just a very turbulent, topsy-turvy, kind of disjointed few months.
Trump’s Response to COVID
… He's survived impeachment by the beginning of 2020, [and] they feel like they are on their way to reelection, that they've sort of figured things out and the country was with them.What was it like?How did they feel in those moments before COVID in the White House?Did they feel sort of secure in the wake of, once they defeated the first impeachment and going into the election?
Yeah, definitely.Not being impeached and removed from office, any president would be happy to not have that happen to them.So he certainly felt victorious.I think he'd had a news conference where he held up the front page of <i>The Washington Post</i> that had a big headline.I don't remember what the headline said, but it was a positive headline, and he was brandishing that headline around.So he had the wind at his back and just felt really good, felt like he was going to obviously win a second term.
And then COVID happens.And how quickly does it change?Do you notice something or see—was there a moment inside the White House where you realized—
Things had changed?
—that COVID is a real thing and that this is going to change the presidency?
Oh, definitely.He started off being sort of confident that he had it all under control.I remember that one of the first times he was questioned about COVID was when he was in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, and he kind of dismissed it and basically had said that, "We have it all under control; it's just one person coming in from China, period."But of course, with viruses, that's just not the case, and things kind of went downhill pretty quickly, I would say, in terms of just the number of cases that were starting to develop and show up in the U.S.
And the response was a little bit uneven.There wasn't enough PPE, protective equipment, for nurses and doctors—the gloves, face masks, those kinds of critical supplies that people needed to protect themselves.
There was a coronavirus task force that I remember he put together.First it was the HHS secretary; then he removed the HHS secretary and had Mike Pence, his vice president, in charge of that task force.They started holding daily briefings, and then at one point, I think, or we all thought that President Trump didn't like the idea of Mike Pence getting all the attention and being on camera every day with the briefings, so then President Trump came out and started doing the briefings himself.
And it was at one of those briefings where he talked about bleach and sunlight and disinfectant, which President Biden is now starting to try to remind people that this is what the former guy said.
He gets credit for pushing for the vaccines.Operation Warp Speed developed those vaccines.I think by the end of 2020, they were pretty much ready to be rolled out.But then he did not do a good salesmanship job with the public in terms of trying to encourage everybody to go out and get the vaccines in the first place.So his handling of the pandemic was a little uneven.
Were you in those press conferences?
I was in some of them.
Can you tell me about that, because we see also those images of the people, the experts that are watching the president come out there at the press conferences.Can you tell me about it when he would come out and the reaction of his advisers and just what those were like?
In those days, the briefing room is usually packed.Because of COVID, the White House Correspondents' Association, which is the organization for all the White House reporters, limited us to 14 reporters.So we were all sitting socially distant.President Trump would come out for the news conference.Sometimes they went on for two hours, where he was taking questions on all sorts of topics.
Sometimes Deborah Birx, who was the COVID czar—I don't remember what her exact title was, but she was the person he brought in to help work on the COVID pandemic.She would be at some of these briefings, and she was at the one where he talked about, could we do something with bleach?And I think she just shrunk in her chair.
They were kind of wild and freewheeling, as most of President Trump's news conferences were, because he was just that kind of person.He loved media attention, which was why he was coming out and doing the briefings instead of his health secretary or even Dr. Birx, the actual scientist, the person knowledgeable with all this stuff.
It's not like the administration did nothing.They had Project Warp Speed.But people have told us that from President Trump's perspective, it was almost a messaging problem.And he's famously said, if we don't test, we won't find the virus.Did you get that perspective?Did you see that from him, that he saw this as a messaging problem?
Yes.He hated the social distancing.He didn't like all the masking.He just thought that it wasn't the image that he wanted presented, right?And if you remember, after he had his own case of COVID and was hospitalized at Walter Reed for a period of days, when he returned to the White House wearing a mask, the first thing he did was sort of violently rip it off of his face.And at that time, people were still being encouraged to wear masks.He just—he didn't like that look.And so it was a whole messaging thing with him, definitely.
Trump’s Response to Black Lives Matter
As the George Floyd moment happens and the Black Lives Matter moment happens, what is it like inside the White House?Somebody who works there said there was a feeling of being under siege.Is that how they felt?What was it like during those days at the White House?
That was another intense period at the White House just because everything that was going on around the country, all the rioting in cities.And the administration, I think, did feel a little bit under siege because—I remember moments in time where news reports would talk about the riots and describe them as mostly peaceful or whatnot, and administration people, the press secretary would point out, "Well, they were burning that building," or, "They set that fire over there."And how could you call it peaceful when they're destroying property?
And there was always this feeling in the Trump White House that conservatives and Republicans were treated more harshly than liberals or Democrats, right, and if conservatives had taken to the streets and done all the rioting and set fires to whatnot, that the treatment of them would be a lot harsher than it would for Black people and people of color and that kind of thing.
So there was that kind of siege mentality going on, or that feeling that was permeating through the White House.
Were you there when they clear the square and the president walks across?
I was there that day.
Can you tell me about that day and what that was like?
That was another odd day.There were a lot of odd days.So again, he did something in the Rose Garden.I don't remember exactly what he was announcing, but we were all in the Rose Garden, and he was making this announcement or saying whatever.And then he said at the very end, "We're going to go somewhere."And the White House hadn't told us that he was going anywhere after he gave those remarks.And so we were all wondering what was happening.
The next thing we knew, the press pool was hustled across the street, through the gate, across Pennsylvania Avenue, into Lafayette Park.And we were positioned on H Street, right outside of St. John's Church.And then President Trump, the Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, Ivanka Trump and a bunch of other White House officials, there was this procession through the park where they walked through the park and stood outside of the church and President Trump held up the Bible.
And before that happened, the park was cleared of all the protesters that had been there.Park Police, other law enforcement, threw these—I forget what they call them, gas something or other, flash bangs or something?
There's a lot of controversy about exactly what it was, but they cleared it by force.
To clear it by force so that he could have this moment standing outside of this church kind of looking tough in this moment, where the entire country was up in arms over the death of George Floyd.1
Did you see them clear the square?
I did not, because I was in the White House.We had other reporters who were out in the field covering what was happening out there.
Trump Contracts COVID
… It's such a dramatic moment right before an election that he comes down with COVID.
He comes down with COVID and then is hospitalized for three or four days; I'm trying to remember how long he was there.And then there was the incident where [a] couple days in he had the Secret Service agents suit up and they drove him through all the Trump supporters who were outside the hospital.And that was another moment of, did he really do that?
Election Night 2020 and the Following Weeks
Election night at the White House as the results are coming in, are you there that night?
Election night 2020?
Yes.
No, I am in the office, working from the office.
Just help me understand the president's response to the election and the sort of craziness of that moment.
Well, I do remember that he came down at some point late that night, because there were still a number of states that were too close to call. And he came down with the first lady and basically said that he'd won when there were like six or seven states that still hadn't been called.And that was when he started—well, he had started months earlier kind of laying the groundwork to be able to claim that it was fraudulent or illegitimate or a stolen election, and we saw him do that that night when he came down from the residence after they were watching returns, and he basically had had enough and said, "I'm going to go down and claim that I won."
What are those weeks like from your perspective?Because we've read about what was going on from the Jan. 6 Committee.But what were those weeks like after the election, this election that he doesn't admit that he's lost but he's still president of the United States?
Surreal, because one thing that happens after you have a president-elect is the sitting president usually invites the president-elect and his wife to the White House for a little meeting.The president, the sitting president and the president-elect will meet in the Oval Office.They'll talk; they'll do a photo op.And the first lady will invite the wife up to the residence, and they'll talk.The first lady will give her a tour, they'll talk about whatever over tea.
None of that happened.Trump was just not ever going to give Joe Biden any of the—he wasn't going to participate in any of the customary traditions that are involved with the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America.
He also had held up the transition.There were several weeks where the Biden apparatus was kind of frozen; they couldn't do anything because Donald Trump wouldn't do what he needed to do to release office space, and I think there's some funding, so that the Biden transition team can get up and running and start to do the work of building the new administration.
So it was another kind of strange, surreal moment where we're seeing things happen that had never, never happened before.
What would he say?Was it all over Twitter?What was Trump saying in that period about the election?
A lot of the same stuff about he won.He, Trump, won; Biden didn't win—that kind of language, just sort of digging in on the idea that the election was somehow stolen.And here you had a situation where, during the campaign, they were trying to portray Joe Biden as like Sleepy Joe, right?Somebody who was incompetent, borderline senile.But then when it comes to the election, they want you to believe that somehow this sleepy, borderline senile person somehow engineered a takeover of a presidential election.That's what they were trying to get people to believe.
And the administration officials you're talking to, are they, is there disbelief?Is there—they're all on board?
Trump administration officials or—?
Yeah, the Trump administration.Or are they not talking to you?
Some of them are not talking to you.Some of them are all in because this is your president; this is the guy that you work for; you have to support him.And so some of them were all in on it as well.
You had your Mark Meadows-types and your Kayleigh McEnany figures—she was the press secretary at the time.They were all also just pushing the narrative that something was wrong; there was fraud; there were problems with the election.And granted, there are problems in most elections, minor problems, but nothing enough to actually swing an entire presidential election.
January 6
Can you help me understand what happens on Jan. 6 from the perspective of the White House and from President Trump?
So he had this rally down on the Ellipse.I think there was a title to it, but I can't remember what it was right now.But all of his supporters were coming.A lot of his supporters were coming to town, and Jan. 6 was the day that is set aside for Congress to go through all of the electoral votes and certify all those votes and basically, the outcome is that Joe Biden is certified as the winner of the election.
So this rally was scheduled for that day.A lot of Trump supporters came to town for it.And a day or two before, he had sent a tweet that promised that it would be “wild.”2He's down on the Ellipse giving his speech, and then at some point, he promises his supporters that he's going to walk with them up to the Capitol, because I think the plan was for them to go to the Capitol after he spoke.And he said that he would go with them.
And I remember hearing him say that and thinking, that is so not true.The Secret Service is never going to let a president of the United States walk two miles to the United States Capitol.And next thing you know, a lot of these folks are going up to the Capitol.They are busting through barricades.They are fighting with Capitol police officers, breaking into the Capitol and literally trying to get into the House Chamber where the work of certifying the electoral votes is happening.
What are you doing during that time?
I was actually in Wilmington, Delaware, with the president-elect because I needed a week to try to get to know some of his people and be in his bubble.And I was in a hotel room.That day, he was supposed to make an announcement about some new members of his team; I think they were economic types or something like that.
And in the hotel room, I had CNN on.But, you know, you're in the room, you're working; you're getting ready; you're futzing around the room.And then at some point I turned over and looked at the television and was just like—because there were images of people literally climbing the walls of the Capitol trying to get up there.And it was something I'd never seen before, never thought I would see in the United States of America.
And so Biden kept to his schedule.We all piled into the motorcade at some point, and he went to this theater in Wilmington that he was using as the place where he made all these announcements.But he went behind closed doors and was gone for a really long time because they were ripping up his prepared remarks and writing a new speech for him to deliver.
Basically, he ended up calling on Donald Trump to call off his supporters, tell them to go home, that kind of thing.And after that, he went back to his home in Delaware, and the rest of the day unfolded.
Nancy Pelosi and other top members of Congress, Vice President Mike Pence was there at the time, they were all whisked to secure locations, and more police were called in to try to stop what was happening.
Such a strange moment where you have two presidents.You have a president-elect and a president, and it's the president-elect who goes out and—
—calls for the end to this, and the sitting president kind of takes his time getting around to doing it.
Trump Remains the Leader of the Republican Party
The more you think about that day.Something else that overlaps about their two presidencies is Donald Trump leaves Washington, as we talked about, and in some ways people say he sets up a parallel presidency in the sense of staying in charge of the Republican Party and rebuilding control of the party.What's the challenge that Joe Biden faces with these two guys continuing in some ways to be leaders of their party and rivals throughout the Biden presidency?
That's a great question.One of the challenges for President Biden was just—usually when a president leaves office, there is a period of time where they kind of go underground, right, out of respect for the new president, to let him kind of run the country, make decisions without any kind of Monday morning quarterbacking from the former president.In this instance, Trump never really played by any of the traditions or followed any of the traditions of Washington, so why should he start at this moment?
He set up his operation in Florida, continued to have everyone call him Mr. President and was still—he'd set up Truth Social, his new social media platform, where he could issue pronouncements on whatever was coming out of the new White House.And so he was another voice out there that President Biden had to contend with, another critic just commenting on everything.
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