-Our next guest is a "New York Times" best-selling author,
Politico's White House bureau chief and the host of
"Way Too Early," which airs weekdays at 5:00 a.m. on MSNBC.
Please welcome to the show Jonathan Lemire, everybody.
♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
I'm so happy to have you here.
I know at this point, it's already been
a very long day for you. -Yeah, it's past my bedtime.
-It's past your bedtime. What time --
First of all, I really like that the title of your show
"Way Too Early" is obvious -- it's honest I should say
about exactly when it's on TV.
-Yeah, it is truth in advertising.
It is 5:00 a.m. Eastern.
It is a great thing to be able to start the day,
presenting the news of the day, what people need to know
as they're getting ready for their day,
but, Seth, it is -- it is way too early.
-Yeah, so what time do you actually have to
set an alarm in the morning?
-So, my schedule in the morning is the alarm goes off
at 3:10 a.m. [ Audience groans ]
And at 3:11 a.m., I question all of my life's decisions.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
-That's followed by a few sort of incoherent snoozes
and some coffee, and try not to spill it on myself
as I get dressed in the dark.
I will say, though, coming into the studio here at Rock Center,
or if I'm in D.C., no traffic at that hour.
-Really? -Yeah, yeah.
-So that's sort of a -- -You sail right in.
-New York City life hack. -Yeah.
-It is very nice because I think the most helpful time
for a lot of people to get their news would be
first thing of the day, right?
These are the things they need to be aware of today.
Have you had people come up to you with an appreciation?
Obviously, there's a certain kind of person who's watching
the news at 5:00 in the morning.
They must appreciate that there's someone like you
who's, you know, putting their effort into it.
-Insomniacs. That's the word you're looking for.
We do get some night owls from the West Coast who haven't gone
to bed yet but we do; there are people who are up early
because their days start early, and that could be
a corporate CEO or someone, you know, driving a city bus.
And we try to deliver that news to everyone.
It is a start to the day.
And we know mornings are about routines,
you're trying to get out the door, and my show,
and then I'm around on "Morning Joe" afterwards for a few hours.
It is -- It's a responsibility that we take seriously.
-And what time do you go to bed?
-So the goal is around 9:00 p.m.,
which is still not nearly enough sleep,
and I know that, but we -- you know, two kids at home,
two boys, 11 and 8, so that's pushing it,
because their bedtime is supposed to be 8:30,
quarter to 9:00.
Sometimes, they get a kick out of tucking Dad into bed
and then they get to play another hour of "Mario Kart."
-You also --
You've obviously been a traveling reporter as well.
You covered the 2016 presidential campaign.
You received a lot of attention for a question
you asked Donald Trump in Helsinki,
when he was on stage, very famously,
with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Can you tell us a little bit about the question
and what it was like in the moment
as you were asking those two gentlemen?
-Sure, so this is the summer of 2018.
This was then-president Trump's much anticipated first
and only summit with Vladimir Putin.
There, of course, had been questions for years
about what connections he may have to Russia.
This was the height of the Mueller probe,
the investigation into his ties there, potential ties to Moscow,
and I was at the Associated Press at the time.
And it was, you know, it's a limited press conference.
Only a couple reporters got questions.
And I was called on.
And I asked -- -Did you know?
Is that something where you know or do you have a sense?
-No, no. -Okay.
-You don't. I mean, it's --
I certainly had been petitioning to say
that I'd like to get a question.
This is a big moment, important things need to be asked
but you don't know until that -- until that moment.
Often, Donald Trump would try --
choose not to answer my questions.
He would go out of his way to ignore.
-Usually, he's such a straight shooter. That's weird.
-Yeah, it was surprising.
-He was probably jet-lagged.
-Yeah, maybe that's what it was.
But he did this time and the way it works
in these presidential news conferences,
you get one question to each leader.
So to President Trump, I simply asked him,
I said, you know, the U.S.
Intelligence officials, all of them,
say that Moscow, Russia interfered
with the 2016 election. Vladimir Putin,
the man standing next to you just denied it.
Who do you believe?
And he pretty clearly signaled that he believed Russia,
that he did not believe the assessment
of his own intelligence agencies.
And then my question to Vladimir Putin was,
did the Russians have any compromising material
on Donald Trump or his family?
You may recall there was some salacious rumors back then
as to stuff they may or may not have had, some kompromat,
and I will note as Putin answered the question,
and by the way, when he talks to you,
he doesn't break eye contact.
It's pretty terrifying and I made sure not to have --
I made sure not to have any tea or step near a window
or a set of stairs the rest of the day.
He gave a long answer about how it would be very challenging
to collect compromising material on every prominent
American who comes to Russia.
He never actually denied it.
And I will say a postscript, obviously,
that moment, the Helsinki news conference,
was seen as one very damaging for Donald Trump.
Even some of his allies in the Republican Party
turned on him and said they couldn't believe --
I think John McCain used the word "traitorous."
That we got back on Air Force One -- I was part
of the presidential pool, so I was traveling with him
back to Washington, and he got on the plane
and had thought he had done well.
And as soon as he turned on Fox News,
he was disabused of that notion
and grew so angry that aides later told me
that he was so anxious to get home,
you know how planes sometimes, the pilot will tell you,
"Well, we can make up some time in the air."
Air Force One really has the ability to do that.
[ Laughter ] And we shaved about two hours
off our flight time from Finland.
The plane was like shaking on the way back,
and we're all hanging on
as he was looking to put this behind him.
-Now, I want to ask.
Something obviously you've been reporting on last week
and into this week is the classified documents situation.
Obviously, we were all well aware
of what had happened with the documents
that former president Trump was keeping at Mar-A-Lago.
And now, we're having obviously a far smaller amount
of documents, but real classified documents
that were in President Biden's possession.
What -- How do you see this story unfolding?
Do you see this as a sort of universal idea
that keeping classified material is bad
or do you see it developing into sort of a partisan story
where we're losing our focus?
-Yeah, we're certainly covering this every day,
both on MSNBC and Politico.
And it is much more of a political story
than it is a legal one for President Biden.
There's certainly, at least from what we know of now,
and it's still developing, we're still learning about it.
It seems that there's about a dozen or so documents
seemingly inadvertently
packed away where they shouldn't have been.
And to be clear, the classified material should not be
in the garage of a home
in Wilmington, Delaware, that's never okay.
But there's no sense of intent that it was done deliberately,
and President Biden, unlike his predecessor,
has not been accused of trying to willfully obstruct efforts
to get that material back.
So we have now descended into very much a partisan story
though national security implications to be clear,
classified materials,
that matters, that's serious stuff,
but this is much more about politics
and we're seeing from a lot of Republicans,
I mean, hypocrisy, there's no other way to say it.
They didn't care much at all about the hundreds
upon hundreds of documents found at Mar-A-Lago.
They seem to care quite a bit about this dozen
or so found in Delaware and D.C.
-Another hypocrisy you've pointed out
is they are sort of raising a ruckus
about the fact that there were no visitor logs
for who came to President Biden's home
in Wilmington, Delaware.
But this is obviously, if you were a supporter
of President Trump,
this would be the sort of height of hypocrisy
because visitor logs weren't really his thing.
-They were not.
I mean, first of all, for any president,
it's a personal residence. Visitor logs are not kept,
whether it's President Biden's home,
Wilmington, Delaware,
President Obama's home in Chicago,
President Bush's home in Texas or any of President
Trump's homes, Mar-A-Lago,
Bedminster, Trump Tower, et cetera.
But more than that, President Trump did away
with the tradition of releasing visitor
logs at the White House itself.
So it is very much one
where Republicans don't really have a credible leg to stand on.
-He's not watching right now,
but if President Trump was watching --
[ Laughter ]
I think he would like what you just said because he'd be like,
"Did you hear I had a lot of houses?"
[ Laughter ]
"Do you hear how he mentioned only one Obama?"
[ Laughter and applause ] -That's true.
-"He had to mention like a bunch of mine.
He missed a few.
[ Laughter ]
There's a story, obviously it's being covered.
I think that people maybe haven't quite wrapped
their heads around how insane this George Santos story is.
This is a freshman Republican Congressman
from New York who was elected,
and then his personal biography just seems every day
is falling apart even more.
Maybe hadn't told a single truth about himself.
Have you ever seen anything quite like this?
-Do you have a favorite George Santos lie?
-I -- I mean, Jew -- saying you're Jewish
and then backing off and clarifying
that you meant you were the "ish."
Personally, I found that one very --
-That's classic.
Another 10 out of 10 no-notes lie
is that he claimed to be a volleyball star
at Baruch College that won a championship.
That part's true. Baruch College won a championship.
He had nothing to do with it. He wasn't on the team.
He didn't go to the school.
But more than that that he played so hard,
he had to have double knee replacement.
He had to have both knees replaced, a man in his 30s.
He seems pretty spry as he's trying to evade
reporters in Capitol Hill hallways.
But to your point, it is remarkable.
Certainly we live --
We've never had a politician lie A to Z about his biography.
George Santos has done that, if that is his real name.
[ Laughter ] And what we -- But in some ways,
it almost seems like the natural evolution of the Trump era.
A figure who so much of his career was built on lies.
And then of course from his campaign to his administration,
he would so distrust with institutions
by telling lie after lie after lie,
and of course, most of all about the 2020 election,
which is what I covered in my book.
In some ways, Santos is like, "Well, he got inspiration."
-[ Laughs ] Absolutely.
How do you see it ending?
Do you think he's going to stick it out?
-Well, the biggest surprise to me in terms of the day-to-day
is the fact there have been some of his fellow
Republicans who have called for him to resign,
including those in New York, as well as Nassau County --
that's where he represents, Long Island --
that Republican Party have said, "You should go."
He is saying he won't.
But an element -- at a time of such great
partisanship, the fact that any Republicans
are willing to say he should go is noteworthy.
That said, Republican leadership
in the House, they're not doing so.
They're even giving him a committee assignment.
Kevin McCarthy can't afford a single vote.
And the other lesson that Santos seemed to learn from Trump --
you never apologize,
you never say you're sorry, you don't quit.
He thinks he can ride it out.
-Yeah, he learned all of that from his volleyball coach.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-One last thing to ask you about, which is sports,
we are Boston sports fans. You're a Boston Red Sox fan.
You are raising children in New York City.
This is a great fear of mine.
Ours are a little younger. They haven't committed.
But do you ever worry they're going to come home one day
with some Yankee paraphernalia or tell you this is the team
that they have chosen to throw their life behind?
-I mean, they know the stakes. They'd be disowned.
-Yeah, okay. -So no, there's no chance.
They are being raised as Red Sox fans,
I've lived in New York a long time.
It has done nothing to diminish my fandom
for the Red Sox. In fact, living among
Yankee fans every day just makes me dislike them so much more.
-Yeah, I agree. [ Laughter ]
And it was all worth it to live here in 2004.
-Was it ever, oh, was it ever.
-That was the time of my life.
-And my kids know, as wonderful as it was when they were born,
that's second place to 2004.
-Everything's been downhill since then.
You guys, that's Jonathan Lemire.
[ Cheers and applause ]
"Way Too Early" airs weekdays at 5:00 a.m. on MSNBC.