-How are you, Michael?
-Great. Thanks for having me.
-Thank you so much for being here.
So I was fascinated
by the contents of this book, but also,
just what goes into covering stories like these?
The Comey firing, the Mueller investigation.
You met sources at airports late at night.
You had to chase them down in D.C.
It must've been quite an undertaking.
-I mean, covering a Trump story was like another --
like nothing we had ever covered before,
primarily because of the speed.
It was just so fast
and the news cycles turned over so quickly.
And we went to great lengths, as you were saying.
I lay out in the book
about getting up at 3:00 in the morning
and driving to airports to pick people up
that were flying in, who I wanted to talk to,
thinking that was the only time
I would get a chance to actually speak with them.
And to stay competitive and in this story,
we pushed ourselves in ways that I think
we never thought we'd be tested in.
-You have a brilliant piece of wording
in describing what it's like to interview Donald Trump,
which is you say it's like "unzipping fog,"
[ Laughing ] which will stay with me a long time.
You did manage to sit down and interview him
at Mar-a-Lago, but it wasn't really scheduled.
How did it come about?
-So, what I was able to do was I was able to have one
of the president's friends take me to lunch at his club
and the friend basically said, "When the president comes
off the course, we'll go over and talk to him
and maybe you can interview him."
So, we did this. I was there.
I looked like I was wearing golf clothes.
And we went over and the president greeted me
and I crouched down next to him like a catcher
because I wanted his undivided attention
and I knew, if I was just standing there
at the table with other people,
then I wouldn't get a chance to talk to him
and I needed to sort of convince him
that he would sit with me for an interview.
So I crouched like a catcher
and I sat there as long as I could
and he was going on and on
about state and local taxes and stuff.
And I said, "Mr. President" --
My legs were killing me
and I said, "Mr. President, this is all really interesting.
Why don't we sit down and do an interview?"
And he said, "Okay, let me just finish lunch,"
which I describe as him eating a head of lettuce
that looked like it had been dowsed
in Thousand Island dressing. -[ Laughing ]
-So I go back to my seat and, within a matter of moments,
I hear, "Michael, Michael, get over here!"
And I had a chance to sit and interview
the president for a half an hour.
-It's really amazing, the energy he has for talking
when he's had his lettuce.
[ Laughter ]
You draw attention to -- you know, I think people
who follow the story have heard the name Don McGahn,
but maybe don't know him as well
as they, say, know a Comey or Mueller.
You describe him as one of the most fascinating
people of this story.
Can you talk about how you came to that conclusion,
insofar as the role Don McGahn has played
in the Trump administration?
-So, McGahn, to me,
is consequential for so many reasons.
First of all, he was in charge of the umbilical cord,
the tie between Trump and his base, which is the judges,
the thing that allowed conservatives
to stay with the president when he behaved in ways
that they found to be unsavory.
Because of that and because of the impact McGahn had,
we will be living in Don McGahn's America
for decades and decades to come,
because of how he remade the federal judiciary.
He was also a chief container of Trump,
someone who was stopping the president
from hurting himself and the country
and the office of the presidency.
And, on top of that, he was a witness against the president
in an existential threat to the presidency,
being the Mueller investigation.
So McGahn, as a lawyer,
was being used as a witness against his client.
Now, the question you probably may have is like,
"Why would McGahn stay, if this was all going on?"
He stayed because he had a never and again opportunity
to remake the courts and was willing to endure all of this
and the risks of it, in order to get the courts remade.
-There is this idea that you talk about
and, obviously, others have talked about, you know,
especially when we talk about why did people stay,
which is the idea of adults in the room.
Do you feel like this theory, in the end,
turned out to be a bad one,
that they were not particularly good adults in the room,
or was it just a reminder that some adults
cannot control their children?
-I think that there were more adults earlier
in the administration and they had more success.
That does not mean that they had complete success
or should be absolved for anything that happened
in the first few years of the administration.
But the John Kellys of the world, the Don McGahns,
were more of a barrier around the president.
The president effectively got rid of people like that
and has less barriers in his way now.
And I think that has left the president
even more emboldened than ever before
and he has a very unusual use of power
and interest in using power
and there are those fewer guardrails now around him.
-Well, Michael, I'm so impressed that you wrote this book
[ Laughing ] while you continue to be a working reporter.
I do not know how you juggle them both,
but I am happy on each count
and thank you so much for being with us tonight.
-Thanks so much for having me.