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Robert Costa

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The FRONTLINE Interviews

Robert Costa

CBS News

Robert Costa is the chief election and campaign correspondent for CBS News. He previously reported on politics for The Washington Post and is the co-author, with Bob Woodward, of Peril.

The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 5, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

The Choice 2024

Trump’s Comeback

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Trump’s Attraction to Politics

What is it, do you think, that attracted Donald Trump, the real estate developer, the brand expert, to politics from such an early point in his life?

Donald Trump has always been attracted to public life, living life inside the headlines.His father, Fred, was a public figure, but so much more private.And when Donald starts to make his way in New York in the 1970s, it's so apparent to his friends, his confidants, that he wants to be someone on the scene.And being on the scene at that time in New York, it meant getting to know political leaders—the mayor, members of the City Council, the people who really had influence and power in the Big Apple.And he got to know everybody in New York.

And one person Trump became very close to early on was Roy Cohn, the longtime fixer, the former aide to Joe McCarthy.Trump gets to know Roy Cohn early on in his career, and that really draws him into this tidal wave of politics in New York and nationally.He's not just becoming close to a party; he's becoming close to a person.

Trump's politics were forged by Roy Cohn in the 1970s and 1980s.This was not someone who rose up the ranks as a Democrat or as a Republican; he was someone who wanted to be an operative, a schemer, someone who had the inside take on whatever was happening.Never driven by ideology, Trump is driven by being in the room, wanting to exert power.

There's a particular kind of politics that he's interested in from the very beginning and that flows throughout his presidency.And you mentioned Roy Cohn.When he goes up to New Hampshire, it's another Roy Cohn protégé, Roger Stone, who's there with him.What's the role of Roger Stone in shaping Trump, even in those early years, if that's the way the relationship goes?

Donald Trump sees Ronald Reagan on the rise in 1980, 1984, and he becomes close to someone who was associated with the Reagan campaign, Roger Stone.He also knew Stone was close to Roy Cohn, and after Roy Cohn's death, he's looking for a replacement Roy Cohn.Who's going to be that person in his life that he can lean on politically and legally, someone who can make stuff happen for Trump?

Trump always has the belief that real decisions are being made outside of the headlines, outside of what you see on television, and he wants someone like Roy Cohn, or then Roger Stone, to help him get in the room, be part of the decision-making process.For Trump, everything's a deal, a transaction, and he needs to have someone like Cohn, and then later Roger Stone, at his side.

Trump going to New Hampshire in 1987 was a seminal moment in his political life.He goes from being a real estate developer to a real estate developer flirting with national politics.And by going to New Hampshire, it wasn't a serious effort, but it definitely had serious implications.It was a nod toward his active role in national politics, not just being a donor, not just someone who showed up at the White House for dinners.He morphed from being that guy who was young, on the make in real estate, shaking hands with Richard Nixon, shaking hands with Ronald Reagan, to being someone who was maybe thinking about making a run for the White House.

Trump told his allies at the time in 1987 that he always had a belief that the outsider could really make something happen in American politics, that you didn't just have to go through the greasy machine of political maneuvers in New York or in the country nationally with the GOP or with the Democratic Party.Trump always has had the belief that if you had the money and you had the stature, you could make something happen.Power to Trump was never about party politics.It was about being able to generate news.

And you see him in New Hampshire in that first trip testing just how far he can go politically without making any sort of commitment.He wanted to see, how did people respond to him?Did they really like having Donald Trump there in New Hampshire talking about politics?And Trump said at the time, look, George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole, these were likely going to be the candidates, but why not give Trump a shot?

The Art of the Deal elevated Trump from being a real estate figure to being a pop culture figure.That image of Trump on the cover of the book, a best-seller nationwide, it made Trump a figure in the culture, someone who almost moved out of being on Page Six and in the tabloids in New York to being someone who was a businessman, who was quoted, and not just part of the New York scene, but part of the business scene, the Wall Street scene.

And so as Trump gains this stature, as he gains capital in the business community, he also is looking to gain it in the political community.New Hampshire has always had kind of an independent streak in national politics, and it's not surprising they were willing to give Trump a listen back in 1987.Maybe this outsider, this businessman who has a best-selling book, maybe he's someone who could start to make it in a place where retail politics mattered.

But Trump wasn't going to New Hampshire to shake hands and go to the Red Arrow Diner.He was trying to see if his pop culture celebrity could translate into politics.1987 is the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential journey.

Trade as a Political Throughline for Trump

There's all sorts of issues that he goes from one place to another on and doesn't seem to particularly care about—abortion and things like that.But there are some things that do resonate throughout and he gets involved in the Central Park Five case and crime and really divisive racial issues in New York.What is it that draws him to that kind of politics?Is it something about him, or he recognizes a political opening in issues like that?

To understand Donald Trump's political views, you need to understand Fred Trump.Trump's politics were forged at the kitchen table with his father, seeing the world not just as good and bad or red versus blue; it was about winners versus losers.Winners and losers, that's always been the paradigm for Donald Trump as he's thought about politics, as he's thought about business.And when he looks at an issue like trade, you can go all the way back to the 1970s and hear what Trump said on trade then.It echoes almost to a T what Trump is saying about trade now.

Trump has had a through line in his political life, and that has been his position on trade.He believes other countries are taking advantage of the United States, that there's somehow a raw deal being offered to the United States, to the American people.And that has been a piston in his political career and his business career—viewing others as somehow taking advantage, taking a cut, and he wants to be the person who addresses it bluntly.He did it in his business career, and in his political career he's always been someone who resonated with working people because they share, a lot of times, the same suspicion he has, which is that somehow the United States is being taken, that nobody's getting a good deal, especially when it comes to trade with the United States.

And he looks at China, Japan, Europe, Latin America, and he says to himself in the '70s, '80s and '90s, the United States is having its whole manufacturing base eradicated, and that's all because the people in this country, in the business community, want to send their jobs overseas.There's a trade imbalance, and he believes that that has to be addressed.

What makes Trump so interesting politically is that he doesn't have any deeply held beliefs, but he does have a deeply held belief on trade.There's this sole issue his whole life that he's thinking about the transactional nature of business, politics and life.

Trump’s Political Advisers

… What is his connection to Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani's politics?Does it go back to New York?Does it predate him as Trump's lawyer?

The characters of New York always have identified with Trump.He's not looking for people who really share his political views, who in some way are even friends with him.Trump doesn't necessarily have close friends in the political world.He's looking for people who speak the same language as him, someone who understands New York, what it means to be in the New York Post, what it means to work with the mayor and try to get a building put up downtown.Trump is always someone who looks to people with that New York sensibility, that Manhattan sensibility.He comes from the outer boroughs, but he's trying to have a Manhattan way of life.

And so he's like a magnet, being drawn to people like Roger Stone, like Rudy Giuliani, Roy Cohn.These are New York people to their core, as is Trump.And he's part of this whole group in the '70s, Studio 54.New York's kind of on its way back after having some tough times in the mid- and early 1970s.Trump's being part of this revival, and he wants people who connect with him.

He's a fast talker, he's a deal maker, and one day you can be cold with him, the next day you can be hot with him.It's all about what you're saying to him now, what you have to offer to him today.Throughout his whole life, people have said about Donald Trump, the most important person to Donald Trump is the person who spoke with him last, because he's always trying to say, "What's in front of me right now?How am I going to react?"And people who know him always say he's looking at people; he's evaluating people.Is this person going to help me or hurt me?Friend or foe?Can I make a deal with this person or not?

Trump and Birtherism

As he gets more serious about politics, he chooses a strange issue during the Obama years, … which is the birtherism, which is the questions about Obama.What attracts him to that controversial issue, that conspiracy theory that's dismissed by many people even in the Republican Party at the time.What draws him to something like that?

This is a great question, because the origin of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign is not really 1987.It's not The Art of the Deal.It's 2011-2012.To understand why Donald Trump was able to become the presidential nominee for the Republicans in 2016 and again in 2020 and again in 2024, it's because birtherism gave him this foundation with the base that has connected him in such a visceral way that they've never really wavered from him, from that moment.It's taken him a long time from 2011 to build the political base he needed to become the Republican nominee.

But I covered Trump when he was doing the birther movement, and this was a racist campaign against an incumbent president of the United States who was Black, and he was questioning President Obama's love of country and Obama's credentials.And he was doing it with total lies across the board and engaging and stoking conspiracy theory.

What was so revealing about the birther moment is how Republicans responded.Instead of saying, "You're banished from the party," what happened?Mitt Romney accepts Trump's endorsement in Las Vegas.What happens just a few years later?Trump's allowed to become part of the Republican debates.He's allowed to become part of the Republican Party at a high level.Trump never had to pay a cost for engaging in racist conspiracy theories about President Obama.

And I've covered Trump for long enough to know he will always test the bounds of how far he can go.And he saw with birtherism that no one was going to try to stop him.Sure, some Republicans, many Democrats wagged their finger, some expressed outrage, but he was always allowed to stay in the tent.

When Trump sees he can offer this kind of racially charged, racist language about Obama, questioning whether he's even an American, he knows that this Republican Party is soft.It's perhaps primed to be taken over by him or someone else, because there's no real norm anymore that's guiding the Republican Party.Trump is often credited with shattering the norms of the GOP, but what he recognized with birtherism is that the norms didn't really exist.He was able to walk right in and espouse birtherism and get away with it.

... Is there something about Trump, where he comes from, that attracts him to the conspiracy theories, to something like birtherism, to later other similar conspiracy theories?

Trump has never seen his role in public life as something that needed to be guided by any sort of rule of engagement, that he needed to be careful about his language.He's always been cavalier.You go back to his earliest public comments in New York; he was always willing to criticize people, espouse conspiracy theories, talk about things he wasn't certain about, hasn't proven, hasn't confirmed, but he's willing to put it out there.

Trump has this tendency—and I'm not a psychologist—but always to be able to float things out there without confirmation, without really knowing if what he's talking about is real or verifiable.But he'll talk about it.Throughout Trump's life, and you can find clip after clip of this, he goes, "Well, a lot of people are saying,” “I'm hearing from a lot of people,” “A lot of people are saying," as some kind of excuse for pushing forward something he hasn't confirmed.

But he loves this.He relishes the opportunity, whether it's at a rally or with birtherism, to put some conspiracies out there and just see what happens.It's almost like a gleefulness he gets from putting out a rhetorical or a questionable statement that’s really a bomb that could explode into the public debate, and he just wants to see what happens when he puts it out there.

The Access Hollywood Tape

In the Access Hollywood moment, … do you think that there was a question of what Trump was going to do based on who he was, based on his life story, of how he was going to respond to a crisis like that?

I was the first person to interview him after Access Hollywood.So Access Hollywood breaks on a Friday afternoon.I'm sitting next to David Fahrenthold at The Washington Post, and this story is explosive, a nuclear story, Donald Trump on tape making comments about women that are lewd, vulgar.Many Republicans instantly said, “This is the possible end of the Trump campaign.”Trump goes into bunker mode.He records this video that almost looks like a hostage video up at Trump Tower.And Republicans are calling for him to drop out of the race, to think about dropping out of the race.

Trump spends Friday night looking at his options, talking to his advisers, says he's not getting out of the race.On Saturday morning, less than 24 hours later, I called Donald Trump on his cell phone, and he picks up, and he says, "What do you want?"And I said, "On the record, are you staying in this race?"And he said, "I will never, ever withdraw.I will never withdraw."And I go, "A lot of Republicans, sir, are telling you you should get out."He said, "You don't understand me, Costa.You don't understand me at all.The press doesn't understand me.I am staying in.This is nothing. This is nothing.I've seen a thousand things in my life; this is nothing."

And he kept telling me repeatedly that he has been through so much in New York, in business, to see his businesses collapse and then he comes back, and then he's derided publicly from the business side, the political side.He kept telling me he's a survivor; he's carrying on.

And a small group sticks with him—Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway.People say, "We're going to hang with this guy."But there was a pervasive belief inside some of the Trump campaign that this all could be sinking very soon.But Trump was adamant in our conversation that he was going to stay in the race and that he could galvanize his supporters regardless of how the media covered him and regardless of how traditional Republicans were unhappy with him.

He never really saw himself as a Republican at that moment.He saw himself in our conversation as someone who would connect with working Americans on a grievance level and use that connection to push him into the White House.Everything else was sort of noise.He heard all the criticism about Access Hollywood, but he had this belief, going back to his time with The Apprentice, going back to his long years in New York, that most Americans, in his view, didn't care.They didn't have a moralistic streak or view of this in the way some Republicans did and some in the media did.He believed that this country, the people who could elect him president of the United States, saw things much more like he did, which is a shrug, that this is just Trump being Trump.

Trump’s Transition to the White House

After he wins the presidency, there's talk about Russia.There's a briefing at Trump Tower from the national intelligence, the leaders of the national intelligence community.There's talk about the dossier, which eventually leaks.What do you think is the impact of that on Donald Trump, who's just won the presidency?Does it change the trajectory, the way he enters the presidency?

I remember speaking to Trump during the transition in late '16, and there was all of this scrutiny on his dealings with Russia, and you could almost see Trump start to close up; that as he was about to enter the presidency, he began to view the FBI, the Justice Department, the media as aligned against him.It had echoes of Richard Nixon, as I covered it as a reporter.I never covered Nixon, but reading about Nixon, he had this deeply held belief that the system, as he saw it, was aligned against him.

And I began to see that almost instantly from Trump after he won the White House.He tries to think about his presidency.He brings in Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and other Republicans to set out his agenda.But when it comes to how he views the government, from almost day one—and this was stoked by Steve Bannon—you had Trump believing there was a sort of conspiracy against him.And you start to hear the phrase "deep state" during the transition, the "deep state," early on in the Trump presidency.

A key moment early in the Trump presidency was when Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, and Steve Bannon are at CPAC, and Bannon says, "It's time to deconstruct the administrative state."That was a statement fueled by Trump's own belief that the federal government was somehow not working with him or for him.

At Trump's inauguration, what is it that he's promising?… What does he say his presidency is going to be?

Bannon once told me that Trump considered giving his inaugural address and then turning around to deliver the speech to the elected officials sitting behind him, not to the crowd in front of him; that that was part of the discussions ahead of the inaugural.Trump wanted to take on Washington, and he painted this bleak picture of the country, “American Carnage,” and he saw a country with rusted factories, crime in the streets, and he alone could be the person to come in and change the trajectory of the country.

This was an inaugural unlike anything we've ever seen before—not just an outsider, but an outsider with a dark worldview who comes in wanting to take on Washington, but not in any way really work with them.He wants the system to bend to his will, a movement politician with grievances everywhere.

Trump and Charlottesville

When you look back at that first year, do you think that Charlottesville was a turning point for his presidency, for how he acted as president, for the type of president he was going to be?

Charlottesville captured Trump and race early in his presidency and really set the tone for what was going to come.This is a president, going back to the Central Park Five, going back to all of his efforts on birtherism, has always had statements on race that alarmed people, that really raised questions about whether he was racist.And the birtherism explicitly was a racist conspiracy theory against President Obama.

And you see with Charlottesville this unwillingness of Trump to understand how other people perceive him on race and systemic racism in this country, especially the rise of white supremacy.Only looking at Charlottesville through the prism of the monuments and of the protests about the monuments, in the view of many Trump allies I've spoken with, hurt Trump's ability to have a presidency that spoke to the country in a broad way on these issues.It kept him boxed in, they've told me, on race.

And even those in the White House at the time were worried that this was the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency, even though it was just months into his term in the White House, that he was failing to get the country behind him on one of these core issues: racism in the country, the rise of white supremacy.

And that moment is when Joe Biden always said he was going to begin his own comeback, his own time to come back to the White House.So you see in Charlottesville the end of the idea for many in Trump's orbit that he could somehow become a transformational figure who united the country.And you see, as Biden's watching on the outside, someone who says, "This is the time to come in; this is a threat to the country, a threat to democracy."

Trump Doesn’t Change

You've studied his presidency as carefully as anyone, and one of the theories that we've heard is that by the time he gets to the end and the acquittal after the first impeachment, that he's unleashed in some way.Was Trump constrained before that?Was he—unleashed a different president in that last year in 2020?

In 2020, was he a different president?

Yeah.The theory is, once he was acquitted, he had nothing to fear, and the things that would follow with COVID, with Black Lives Matter, with how he handled that last year, did you see a change in him?

No, I never saw any change. No, I never saw any change with Trump.I've covered him going back to 2010.Trump, in my view as a reporter, never changed once in the presidency.The only thing I ever saw with Trump during his presidency change was his ability to understand power.So he comes into the presidency not really sure how to use the apparatus in front of him, the federal government.By the end of his presidency, Trump grew comfortable with power.He grew to love power.He wanted to stay in the White House.He wanted another term.He thought he could push Congress around, push the courts around, push DOJ around.

He matured as someone who could use power, exert power, but he never changed.The Trump I met in 2010-2011 at CPAC and at conservative events, covering them as a reporter, is the same exact Trump I encountered at the end of his presidency.This is still someone who believes his own gut, his own intuition should guide everything.He's not guided by ideological ideas, by certain party principles, by a worldview.There are winners and losers.He wants to be a winner, and he is going to trust his gut on everything he does, from personnel to policy.

I've never seen any presidency where someone has almost changed less.He aged, but he didn't change as a person.And anyone who really knows Trump and covers Trump says that he just became someone who liked being president, but other than that, he was the same Trump who watches television constantly, who was always trying to react to the news, who was reading the newspapers every day, wondering how he can jump into the news rather than manage it.He is someone who lives in the fire, loves to be part of the action.And that was always who he was, and it was who he was at the end of his presidency, too.

Trump Likes Being President

You're saying he didn't change the person, but he did get more skilled.We see a lot of changes in his staff and who is working under him and the types of advisers he has.Is that what that change is, is he's learning how to be president in a different way?

The staffers almost really never matter with Trump.The Trump story is never about who's around him.That's a mirage that somehow people are going to change him.He's unchangeable.

And what you see in Trump in 2016, when you look at that image of Trump on stage, what do you see?You see someone who almost looks bewildered he's actually won.It's like that moment in the Robert Redford film The Candidate—he won; well, now what?What happens?So Trump wins the presidency, and he never really expected it.Thought he could win.His wife thought he could win.But he wins it, and then suddenly he has to be president of the United States.

There was a joke among some Trump allies at the time in 2016 that the best thing that could happen to Trump would be to win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College so he could say he won but not have to be president.Instead, the opposite happens—he loses the popular vote, wins the Electoral College, has to be president, but can't claim he won the most votes.

And Trump becomes president, but by the end he's someone who wants to stay in the office so badly that he pushes people to march down the street to the Capitol to protest the certification.He tries to pressure Republican after Republican to overturn the election.Why? Why?Because he didn't want to go back to Mar-a-Lago or New Jersey to play golf.

He became someone who was the same person, but as a public figure, he became comfortable with power.He finally wore the presidency like a suit that he really enjoyed.It was not something that he just kind of lurched into in 2016.It became, the presidency, who Trump was and all of the trappings of it, but especially the ability to change the trajectory of the country on policy, to really be at the center of all national and global conversation.That excited him.It electrified him more than anything that had ever happened to him in television or in the business world.Power was something he wanted to wield and hold on to.

Trump’s Comfort with Violence

... And we'll get to Jan. 6 and to the violence there.Was that always part of Trump, a comfort in using force, in those images that we remember from the Trump presidency?

Everything about Trump is about showcasing power and force—the way he walks, the way he speaks, his presence in meetings.This is someone who wants to project strength, even though his critics see him as extremely weak, someone who is feckless, unfocused, unwilling to ever listen to feedback, doesn't really see the big picture of so many of these policy issues.But in terms of presentation, never forget, he was a longtime television producer who understood how the image mattered.And the image was always about blunt force, about being this movement politician or movement celebrity who could somehow speak for the everyday American who felt aggrieved against the American political and legal establishment.

And so for him, the presentation was everything, and that presentation often included violent rhetoric.It included remarks at rallies where he would encourage some of the fighting going on, the back-and-forth among his supporters, the way they would tussle with those who interrupted his speeches.Trump loved the scene.Even if it had a violent edge to it, he didn't mind.This is someone who walks around with not only Secret Service now, but for years before that, I would always see him with these looming bodyguards around him.He was someone who kind of walked around like he was a force from the streets of New York, and he projected that in almost every setting.

Violence has been something he's never shied away from in terms of how he speaks, how he thinks about things.Listen how throughout his career, Trump uses the word "killer": “That person's a killer”; “That person's tough”; “That person, they're a real killer.”“Tough” is the highest compliment Trump can almost give.That word carries so much weight in his world.If you're tough, if you're willing to fight, if you're willing to throw your fists up—maybe not literally, but in an argument, in a public dispute—that really matters to Trump, that kind of bravado, oftentimes veering into violent imagery and language.

January 6

That period the Jan. 6 committee calls the 187 minutes, when Trump is at the White House, when he's being asked by Kevin McCarthy, by his top aides, by his own family, to say something, to intervene, to do something, you make it sound like almost like it's preordained based on who Trump is how he's going to react.But his aides, everybody around him seems to think that this is going to be the moment he's going to at least say that this should stop.Help me understand what's going on for Donald Trump as the Capitol is being breached.

The story of the aides is never relevant with Trump because it's a constant refrain of, "We're trying to do this with him; we're trying to do that."People talk about Trump, who have worked for him, like he's a child.He's the opposite of a child.He's an adult.He's an adult who has real perception of what he's doing and what's going on.To speak of Trump like a child confuses who he is and what he's up to.

Every time I've interacted with him, covered him, he is an adult who's constantly evaluating whether people are helping him or not.And he sees life through television.If it's not on TV, it doesn't carry much value to him.To have real stature in his inner circle as a surrogate or as a staffer, what's the best way to become highly esteemed by Trump?Get on TV; be good on TV.If he sees you on TV, he says, "Well, this person's good enough to be on TV."Communication, celebrity, stature—being on TV matters to Trump.

Watching Jan. 6 on TV was the most Trump thing that you could ever conceive, because it wasn't about what the details that were happening, whether Mike Pence was safe or not; he wanted to see how it was playing on TV.It was an episode of the Trump show, a violent one, a bloody one.But it was an episode of the Trump presidency, and he was going to watch it from his dining room adjacent to the Oval Office.He was going to watch it all, his eyes transfixed to that big TV that he put up himself.And he watched it minute after minute even as aides came in and pleaded with him.He wasn't going to be distracted.He wanted to see what his people were doing.

He was captivated on the night of Jan. 5; he was so captivated by his supporters, he kept the door of the Oval Office open so he could hear the cheers outside on Freedom Square as they gathered ahead of Jan. 6.They were playing music, singing songs.Trump loved it.Trump loved the idea of people who were so loyal to him they'd gather at the Capitol, break into the Capitol and see what happens.It's a very Trump way of looking at the world.He didn't march up Pennsylvania Avenue, but he didn't mind that his people did.He told them to do it.

I think the challenge with looking at Trump is so often people go, "Well, how could this happen?How could he let this happen?"If you know Trump and have covered Trump, you know that this is very Trump, that he was always going to see what happens.Whether it's floating birtherism out there or floating the blocking of a certification of an election, he loves to just roll the ball down and see what happens.Even if it has drastic constitutional legal consequences, so be it, for Trump, because his entire life, he's tested the bounds of what's appropriate, of what's legal.

And now, with Jan. 6, he saw an opportunity to say, "Maybe I can stay in power."But people said, "You have to concede, sir.You have to move on.That certification is going to happen."Trump doesn't accept norms.He doesn't accept rules.He doesn't accept traditions.This is a president who is a person who disregards almost everything when it comes to how things are "supposed" to be.And that's where his power comes from—to disregard the guideposts that shape everyone else in American politics.He's willing to not only ignore them, but destroy them.

Trump’s Post-Presidency

How hard is it for him, the period after Jan. 6 as he goes down to Mar-a-Lago, the guy who never wants to lose, and maybe he has or hasn't admitted in his own mind that he lost the election, but he's no longer president?Is that a difficult period for him, or does he adjust to that immediately?

From day one in 2021, it was about two things: playing golf and getting ready for 2024.There was never really a question of whether he would run again.He doesn't concede, and he never even admits he's lost defeat to any of his friends in 2021-2022.

Trump spends the first year out of the White House out of the picture but really looking towards 2024 and believing he can come back.And there was no effort to ever say to President Biden or anyone else that he was willing to be an ex-president who could be somewhat agreeable on different fronts.There was no retreat from public life.

This is actually a really important point.Trump's decision to stay in public life and to dominate the Republican Party in 2021 is so historically unique.Can you imagine in 1981 Jimmy Carter still trying to run the Democratic Party?Inconceivable.Could you imagine in 2001 Bill Clinton—let's not even say Bill Clinton; let's use who lost.Let's say George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush in 1993, after he loses in '92, somehow looking towards '96 and a comeback.No one would have ever imagined that.

Trump loses and says, "I'm going to stay in total control as much as possible."The tell for Trump that he was still in control, even though he was out of power, was when Republicans in the Senate did not vote to convict him in the impeachment trial.When he saw Republicans buckle and not try to really toss him out of the GOP, he saw an opening.He saw an opening to stay in power, even if it was informal, and to become the person who was still the center of gravity in the party, because the party still had this undercurrent of fear about Trump.They looked ahead to their own primaries in 2022, and they said to themselves, "We don't really want to be on the wrong side, not only of Trump, but of Trump voters."

Trump's power in 2021 comes not from his own actions.It's about the continued grievance of his own supporters about his defeat.They can't let it go, he can't let it go, and therefore the Republican Party essentially can't let him go.

Trump’s Legal Troubles

The other thing he has grievance about now are the indictments, the 91 indictments, the four cases against him.What do the cases against him reveal about him?What does his response about it reveal about him?

Well, this is a long discussion, but quickly: The hush money payments trial tells you a lot about Trump in New York.This is someone who wanted to use not only Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, but his final fixer, Michael Cohen, to get things done, to make things go away; that Trump was going to be someone who didn't operate within the rules, who wasn't always advertising how he was spending money.And so the hush money payments trial is really a return to the Trump figure we know from the '80s, '90s and early 2000s, someone with Michael Cohen at his side trying to get things done, dealing with infidelity potentially, dealing with business issues.

He was always someone who was cutting side deals, and one of these side deals in 2016 was giving hush money payments to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.So to have Stormy Daniels and hush money back at the forefront of 2024 is surprising but also not surprising.Trump is who he has always been—someone who has these fixers, who is not trying to just operate within the confines of a White House or a political party, but to do things on his own.

The fact that Trump is sitting in a court for six weeks in 2024 to deal with hush money payments in 2016, it tells you that Trump can never really escape who he is or his past.

Classified documents.Dealing with classified documents tells you about how Trump believes he has the right to his own papers, that he has the right to whatever he wants to take home.When I used to go visit Trump at Trump Tower on the 26th floor of his office building, you would always see these piles of newspapers and magazines.He was a pack rat at Trump Tower.And so anyone who knows him is not surprised that he tried to bring all of these papers back to Mar-a-Lago and put them in storage lockers.This is who Trump is.

Why does he bring the papers back?Because it's part of his personality, and he really believes these aren't the papers of the American people.They don't belong to the National Archives; they belong to him.Everything is about him, what belongs to him, his ownership, perceived ownership at least, of everything, whether it's a trinket that somebody gives him in the Oval Office or whether it's classified documents.

Trump used to bring the classified documents back to his residence, sometimes against the advice of his advisers, like John Bolton and other national security advisers, because he believed that was his right to do so.

So the classified documents records reveal Trump's character, that he is going to do whatever he wants to do, keep everything he wants, because he believes it's his right.He's not thinking about the law.He's not thinking about what aides are telling him what to do.His gut is, he wants to bring it upstairs to his bedroom to read, put it in a closet down at Mar-a-Lago, that's what he's going to do.You can't convince him otherwise.

And then you have the trials.I think one of the most—the biggest trial so far this year has been the civil fraud trial.The civil fraud trial tells you so much about Trump and his business career—always about talking about his worth, billions and billions of dollars.Trump once told me back in 2015 that his brand was worth $3, $4, $5, $6 billion alone.And I said, "Well, how did you come up with that figure?"And he said, "I just know it.That's what I know."

And so these valuations have always been part of his political persona and his business persona, and now he's being called on it.Judge Engoron is saying, "You're going to have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the state of New York because you've defrauded the state of New York."Trump denies that he's done anything wrong, but the case itself, the civil fraud case, tells you so much about how Trump was able to rise in America because of how he valued himself, his properties and his businesses—saying he was a billionaire, saying that his properties had these exorbitant huge values.

And all of this is a reckoning.All of these trials—federal, state, city—are all a reckoning for Trump in 2024.Who is he?What's he all about?Each of these trials is like a mirror to a different part of Trump's personality, showing us who he is, how people perceive him, his weaknesses, sometimes his strengths, and how he's able to barrel through it all, subpoena after subpoena after subpoena.

How high are the stakes in this election for Donald Trump personally, given the legal jeopardy that he's in?How important is it to him to win this?

The stakes are extremely high, not only for the country, but for Trump himself personally.If Trump wins the presidency and the trials on Jan. 6 and classified documents haven't started yet, or are still ongoing, there's a good chance, as president, through the Justice Department, he can get those trials to go away, never happen.

So if Trump wins, there's the possibility he will never be held to account by the Justice Department for how he handled classified records or how he handled Jan. 6.So there's a real impetus for Trump to win beyond winning the White House and the presidency.He could get trials thrown off the table, trials that could put him in prison for a long time, even if he appealed it, even if it went all the way to the Supreme Court.He's facing a lot on the horizon, legally and personally.Now, when it comes to some of the state and city trials, he can only do so much as president to push them away.But it would be easier, likely, as president, to somehow push all that to the side.

So there's a real personal reason, personal motivation for Trump to want to be president again.Yes, he wants to enact his agenda, be president again and all that entails, but in terms of his legal future, he's in a much better position as president to say that he shouldn't face this kind of prosecution as the commander in chief of the United States than he would face as a private citizen.

Would a Second Trump Term Be Different?

You said he hasn't really changed, but he's learned.Do you think that his second term would be different?

Based on my conversations with Trump advisers, covering his campaign closely, a second Trump term has the potential to be a transformational moment for the United States and what the United States means and what it's all about.You could have a president who totally disavows traditional American foreign policy, the post-World War II order, and says we are going to now be a country that follows to its core an "America First," almost isolationist approach, and that Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, all these regions and allies that have counted on the United States to have a major presence could see that shrink quickly because Trump is going to say to himself, based on my conversations with his aides, that he now has a mandate to move the country away from how Bush, Obama, Clinton, Biden see the world, and he is going to make American foreign policy in his image.

And it'd be such a change, almost a shocking change, to the world to see Trump come in and put people in place to enact his vision in a way they never did from 2017 to 2021.You would see the culmination of Trumpism inside the Republican Party transform the administration as well.

You're looking at a president who tried to block the certification of an election in 2020.Failed—barely.Never conceded.If he wins again, what's to say he's going to follow democratic and legal norms, or even the law, to any extent?There's no guarantee from Trump in any interview he's giving that he somehow processed his conduct on Jan. 6, learned from it, prepared to assure the country that he's not going to act like that again.He was willing to build a pressure campaign at the highest level to block the certification of an election.If Trump was willing to do that, what else is he willing to do?

And you see in his 2024 campaign a lot of talk about border security, crime, the economy.And on one level, Trump is running as a Republican, a run-of-the-mill Republican who's against President Biden's policies and is offering a more conservative agenda to the American people.And for many Republicans, that's enough.They look at Trump's campaign and they say, “Well, he might be a little out there, he might not be the best avatar for our views, but he's what we have as a nominee, and he's better than President Joe Biden.”

But the character of Trump remains unchanged, and it remains someone who's more determined, based on my reporting, to exert power and use power.So you're looking at a potential Trump presidency where the federal government is bending to the executive in a way we have not seen for a long time, because if I learned anything covering the first Trump term, perhaps the only Trump term, is that Trump doesn't love Congress, doesn't love the courts, doesn't love the Justice Department and other agencies.He wants to be the one shaping policy, driving policy, not being told by advisers or officials what to do.He wants to be the one.

And now, at 77, 78 years old, he's looking at the final chapter of his political life being one where he can be, once again, at the center with all of this institutional knowledge now of where power really exists within the presidency.He didn't have that in 2017; he has it now.

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