“I’ve always been fascinated by the American presidency… I started observing leaders and the people they kept around them. I started to see the influence their closest friends had on them. They could speak to the leader in a way no one else could.”

Gary Ginsberg is the Author of “First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents”. He is also a lawyer, American political operative and corporate adviser, serving as a strategist in both the public and private sectors for more than 25 years. He was most recently Senior Vice President and Global Head of Communications at SoftBank Group Corp. before resigning in 2020. Before joining SoftBank, Ginsberg served as Executive Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Time Warner and as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs at News Corp.

Early in his career, Gary Ginsberg noticed that most political leaders had a at least one friend offering unfiltered thoughts. His latest book, First Friends, takes a look at the outsized roles played by the closest friends and confidantes of American presidents. Ginsberg focuses on a handful of American presidents and the impact each “First Friend” had as informal advisors. In this Salt Talk, Ginsberg evaluates the most influential friends of American presidents: Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton, Harry Truman and Joe Biden.

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SPEAKER

Gary Ginsberg

Author

First Friends

FULL BIO

MODERATOR

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Intro and background

4:52 - Presidents’ First Friends

8:27 - Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed

11:44 - FDR and Daisy Suckley

14:27 - JFK and David Ormsby-Gore

18:48 - Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

22:01 - Bill Clinton and Vernon Jordan

27:20 - Franklin Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne

29:58 - Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson

32:14 - Joe Biden and Ted Kaufman

TRANSCRIPT

Rev.com

John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology, and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series with leading investors, creators, and thinkers. And our goal on these talks is the same as our goal at our SALT conferences, which we're excited to resume in September of 2021 here in our home city of New York for the first time. But our goal at those conferences and on these talks is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as provide a platform for what we think are big, important ideas that are shaping the future. And we're very excited today to welcome Gary Ginsberg to SALT Talks. Gary grew up in Buffalo, New York home to two U.S. Presidents.

John Darsie: (00:55)
He's a lawyer by training, but he spent his professional career at the intersection of media, politics, and law. He wrote a great book that we'll talk about in just a second. He previously worked for the Clinton administration, was a senior editor and counsel at the political magazine George, and then spent the next two decades in executive positions in media and technology at News Corp, Time Warner, and then most recently at SoftBank. He's published pieces in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and was an on-air political contributor in the early days of MSNBC. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons. The book that he just published is called First Friends, and it's a fascinating read about the close friends of several U.S. Presidents that ended up shaping American history and having a big impact on the presidents that they served with.

John Darsie: (01:42)
A netbook comes out July 6th, so if you're out at the beach over the holiday weekend, look in your bookstores for that new book, First Friends. But hosting today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci, who's the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, which is a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also an author himself. And I have to add, since we're talking about politics today, Anthony spent, what is it? 11 days, Anthony? Working in politics. But we think that's the end of his political career, but you never know.

Anthony Scaramucci: (02:13)
Gary, he brings it up all the time. It happened four million years ago. Let me just hold on a second because I'm on the phone with my CFO. I just want to make sure that my W2 is not going to John Darsie right now. He sits in my office. He's taking over. Just please make sure it's not going to John Darsie. Thank you. Okay, hold on a second, Gary. So Gary.

Gary Ginsberg: (02:34)
Anthony.

Anthony Scaramucci: (02:35)
Buffalo, New York. My wife went to the University of Buffalo. It's the second largest city in this great state, the empire state. It is a unique place, so I want you to describe Buffalo to people that have never been to Buffalo. And I'm going to have a little tell here. I have, obviously, family members in Buffalo visit often, and my family's originally from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which is a lot like Buffalo, as you know. So go ahead, tell us about Buffalo for those that don't know Buffalo, and how you grew up.

Gary Ginsberg: (03:06)
Well, Buffalo gets a bad rap, Anthony, as you know, for being snowbound, hardscrabble, bad luck city. It was the fifth largest city in the United States at the turn of the last century. And then William McKinley gets assassinated and basically, the fortunes of the city go down from there. But I grew up in a city that is the queen city. It's a city of good neighbors, It's a city of hardworking people. It's a blue collar city where people work hard. They play hard. They love their Buffalo Bills. I have loved the Buffalo Bills since I was old enough to breathe. It's a tough team to follow, tough team to love, but I think our fortunes are looking really up, as the city is.

Anthony Scaramucci: (03:52)
And you got great food. It's a great culture.

Gary Ginsberg: (03:54)
Great food. Great wings. Beef on Weck. City's got everything.

Anthony Scaramucci: (04:00)
And listen, as you said, it was-

Gary Ginsberg: (04:02)
And a socialist mayor. A new, socialist mayor.

Anthony Scaramucci: (04:06)
Well, you probably like that a little bit more than I do. All right. But I just think it's important to bring up your background because Buffalo, when I think of that city, I think of friendship. You're writing a book about First Friends, the new book, which I found fascinating. Obviously, I have an interest in politics and it is illuminating to me that it's a presidency of one man, or soon to be one woman. Eventually, I expect that to happen, but let's just use the masculine term right now because of the last 46 presidents. It's a presidency of one man, but it's really a presidency of many confidants and people that that one person has to rely on. And so tell us why you wrote the book, and give us some of your insights there.

Gary Ginsberg: (04:53)
Yeah, that's a good observation. Well, since I was a little kid, I've always been fascinated by the American presidency. And as I got older and more involved in business and in politics, I started observing leaders and the people they kept around them. I'm sure you did and you get 11 days. And I started to see the influence that their closest friends had on them, how they could speak to the leader in a way that nobody else could, speak the blunt truth.

Anthony Scaramucci: (05:16)
Well, obviously, I was speaking that way to the leader, which got me blown into Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's a separate topic for a different SALT Talk.

Gary Ginsberg: (05:23)
Usually a first friend of what? A couple of weeks, right?

Anthony Scaramucci: (05:27)
Well, no. If you wrote a book about Trump, it would be no friends. Okay, there's no first friends. The guy literally had no friends, but that's a whole separate book.

Gary Ginsberg: (05:35)
Well, I was going there with that, because that was one of the reasons why I wrote the book. When I was younger, I worked on the Gary Hart campaign, 1984. You're probably too young to remember that campaign, but I watched Warren Beatty, the great Hollywood star, and he'd parachute in for the most important events. And he was the only one around Beatty. And I was 21 years old, so I was very attuned to all this stuff. And he'd say, "Stop talking and acting like a politician, Gary. Come on, you're better than this." And Hart would just... he'd listen, in a way he wouldn't listen to anybody else. But at the same time, they'd have these late night marathon talks and he would loosen him up and liven him in a way nobody else could.

Gary Ginsberg: (06:13)
And then I was worked on Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992, and I saw the same effect. I saw the impact that his closest friends had on his campaign. And in particular, the role that Vernon Jordan played. And then, just to fast forward to what you brought up, I was struck by the corollary of what happened with Trump, the lack of any close friend around him, particularly in those last two months of his presidency, when no one dared to speak the hard truth to him to get him off the big lie, and perhaps save him from his second impeachment. And obviously, you could notice... you could see that at the beginning of his presidency. And I talked to somebody very close to the president who will go unnamed, who said, "Frankly, he didn't need it. He didn't need a first friend.

Gary Ginsberg: (06:56)
All he needed was the affirmation of the masses." So in effect, his Twitter feed became his first friend. And I think that had a really pernicious effect on his presidency. So based on all these observations, about three years ago, I decided to, hey, let's see if there's anything on first friends in presidential literature. It turns out, there's nothing. There's books, as you know, about first wives, first sons, first butlers, first chefs, first pets, but no one's ever written a book about first friends. So I looked around, spent about a year doing research, found, I think, I hope, nine good stories of first friendships and wrote the book.

Anthony Scaramucci: (07:32)
The stories are great. They're great because they're touching. They bring about the humanity of the situation, the pressure on the American president, the decision-making. For anybody that's never read the Presidential Brief, once you read it, it's a life-changing thing because there's dilemmas. Richard Newstat once said about the presidency, if it gets to the desk of the president, it means that there were 5,000 other people in the executive branch that really could not make the decision. So now you're going from, wow, this could be a really bad outcome to an even worse outcome. Go ahead, sir. You make that decision. And now you're sitting there. I want to switch right away to Abraham Lincoln, who suffered from crippling depression. And before he went on to end slavery and change the country, who was his best friend? And how did that relationship play out? You write such a beautiful story in the book.

Gary Ginsberg: (08:25)
Oh, thank you. So let's go to 1837. This beanpole of a man walks into a store in Springfield, Illinois. He's a new lawyer looking for a place to live, looking for bedding, actually. He walks into the store, says, "You got any bedding?" He says, "Yeah, I got it. But it's 17 bucks." Lincoln doesn't have 17 bucks, but the store owner, Joshua Speed, knows of Lincoln because he's an aspiring politician himself. And he says, "You know what? I got a bed upstairs. Go check it out. If you like it, we can share it." So Lincoln goes upstairs, checks out the bed, comes back down and says, "Speed, I'm moved in." And for the next four years, they share a bed. I don't believe it was sexual. People have tried to suggest it was. There's no evidence to support that. Then in 1841, he falls under this crippling depression and Speed essentially saves his life, takes away all of his sharp objects, ministers to him, gets him back to health.

Gary Ginsberg: (09:20)
And Lincoln says at one point, "If I die now, no one will remember me." Well, Speed made sure that people would remember him. He gets back on his feet. He goes on to obviously, a career as a lawyer. Speed goes on to be a slave owner, a plantation owner, a big businessman in Kentucky. They come back together again in the 1850s, debating slavery. But their relationship is so strong based on what happened in the early 1840s, that one of the first meetings he has as president-elect is with Speed. And he says, "Speed, I need you in my cabinet, need you in my government." But Speed's making too much money. You know what that's like, Anthony. You're making too much money to join the government. So he says, "I'm going to help you in my role as first friend."

Gary Ginsberg: (10:04)
And what he does is he basically keeps Kentucky in the Union. It's one of the six border states. But he does everything he can to keep the state part of the Union. It does. They become even closer friends once Lincoln is in the White House. He spends Thanksgiving with him in 1861. He's one of the first people to hear about the emancipation proclamation. He's with him right at the end before he dies. And it's really one of the great friendships that affected history because without Joshua Speed, we may never have known the name of Abraham Lincoln.

Anthony Scaramucci: (10:35)
I just think it's an amazing story, but if you wrote a chapter on Trump, it could be first grifters, because you mentioned about not being able to make money or you're losing money in the White House. These guys were making hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves inside the White House with complete disregard of the ethics laws. When they asked me to serve, I went to go sell the company. Thank God, the company, it didn't sell. I'm back at the company. But I just think it's an interesting thing, the evolution of the presidency, and the friends, and potentially some of the bad people around the president as well. FDR, you describe him in the book as extremely lonely and very overworked. And he had a couple of friends. There was a friend that I think passed away. He was a person that worked with him when he was governor.

Gary Ginsberg: (11:23)
Yes. Louie Howe.

Anthony Scaramucci: (11:26)
I think it was Howe. Yep. He passed away.

Gary Ginsberg: (11:30)
Yeah.

Anthony Scaramucci: (11:30)
That was a very touching story there. And then of course, the famous Harry Hopkins and the intrigue around Harry Hopkins. And he had a friendship, but a strain in his relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. So talk about FDR.

Gary Ginsberg: (11:44)
Yeah, well, I think you're absolutely right that he was, I think, consumed with loneliness. Even though he's fighting a world war and a crippling depression, he says to the first friend that I identified in the book, Daisy Suckley, a distant cousin. He says, "I'm either exhibit A or left entirely alone." And what would happen is, he would have 22 meetings in a day, he would then go upstairs, and there was no one around him. His kids were either off to war or ne'er-do-wells, who he just didn't particularly have a close relationship with. His wife, who's one of the great crusaders of the 20th century, brilliant, brilliant woman, has an independent life from him. They are estranged in 1918 when she discovers a trove of letters that reflect a deep relationship with a mistress, who then comes back into his life at the end.

Gary Ginsberg: (12:36)
So he doesn't have a family life, doesn't have a home life. And so he becomes friendly, to the point of, I believe, it's a first friendship with this sixth cousin. And she provides him an emotional balance that he needed during his presidency. He wouldn't have been as natural or as effective a president without Daisy Suckley. John Alter, one of Roosevelt's, I think, most esteemed historians, says that in the book. And I think it's true. She was the antidote to that loneliness. She provided emotional sucker. She provided a constant presence of a really compassionate voice, a listening ear, was with him for every important moment of the last few years of his presidency. And was probably more attuned to his decline in health as anyone, with the exception of his daughter, Anne. And really ministers to him in his last couple of years, and is with him at the end in Warm Springs when he dies.

Anthony Scaramucci: (13:33)
What an amazing story. And the loneliness is so true because they have to make these decisions by themselves. They're also... people that are coming at them, Gary, and they don't even know if it's a friendship, or it's a manipulation, or what's the angle. Barack and Michelle Obama both write in their books that they stopped creating new friends once they got to the presidency, for this reason. They didn't know what the agendas were for different people.

Gary Ginsberg: (14:02)
Exactly. [crosstalk 00:14:05]. And Kennedy said the same thing. He said, "I have enough friends. I don't need any new friends."

Anthony Scaramucci: (14:08)
Yeah. And it's an interesting point, and I'm going to bring up John Kennedy in a second. He met David Ormsby-Gore in pre-war London. Gore goes on to become a foreign policy advisor for him. Tell us about that story and how influential was Ormsby-Gore on John F. Kennedy?

Gary Ginsberg: (14:26)
Well, I said in the book, and I believe it quite vehemently. He was the most important foreign policy advisor to the President of the United States, despite not being an American citizen. What did anomaly that is. As you said, they met in 1938. They debated right off the bat. There were both second sons of powerful fathers and strong, older brothers. Both of their older brothers die. They both are a little bit lost in 1938, but they bond over their love of carousing, of horse racing, of golfing, of debating. They'd love to go to the House of Commons and see Churchill and action. And they start to really question, what is the role of a leader in a democracy? Is it to follow the dictates of the public and do what the public wants? Or do you take that bold stand as Churchill was doing in the late thirties, and saying, no, we have to rearm in the face of German rearmament, and provide a bulwark against their rising militarism.

Gary Ginsberg: (15:29)
And so that debate carries through for the next 25 years, and when Kennedy becomes president, I think Ormsby-Gore basically calls on that 25 years of friendship to convince Kennedy to do what is right. Both in terms of how he approached the Cuban Missile Crisis... he was a central player throughout those last seven days. And then more importantly, in the adoption of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Without David Ormsby-Gore, his counsel, his friendship, his wisdom, and the 25 years of friendship, I don't think you would have had that first significant piece of legislation, which led to the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

Anthony Scaramucci: (16:10)
Well, there's a great story in Evan Thomas' book, The Last Hundred Days of John Kennedy, about Ormsby-Gore working with John Kennedy to get the nuclear test ban. And one of the things they have to do is they have to go influence Eisenhower. And of course, Eisenhower's close first friend was his chief-of-staff that was under potential indictment by the Kennedy Justice Department. Of course, it's a very famous story where Ormsby-Gore says to JFK, "Why don't you give Ike a call and let's do a trade. You guys won't push hard on his former first friend, but you'll need his support for the nuclear test ban for the Republicans in Congress." And so Eisenhower doesn't like this. He's not a politician, but he cedes to the request. And a few days later, he writes an op-ed in support of the nuclear test ban, which helps get a done. So first friends in trouble, sometimes are influencing the course of history as well.

Gary Ginsberg: (17:10)
Yes. It's interesting. Eisenhower, after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's feeling horrible. He calls Eisenhower. Now Eisenhower says, "Didn't you have anybody in the room to argue against this crazy-ass invasion plan?" And Kennedy says, "No," because Kennedy has a three and a half hour meal with Ormsby-Gore at the end of January. And he goes through all the foreign policy crisis he's facing. He doesn't bring up Cuba because at this point, Ormsby-Gore's not even the ambassador. He's just a friend. He's the minister of state. He doesn't feel like he can talk to a foreigner like this. And I think he learns his from that, and that is why he calls Ormsby-Gore on day six of the Cuban Missile Crisis and says, "Come to the White House unseen, and let's debate this thing out, blockade or bombing." And they spend hours, basically. And he listens to Ormsby-Gore, and Ormsby-Gore says, "Blockade. Don't bomb." And then he obviously, I'd say, you probably remember it, yeah. He actually moves the perimeter in from 800 miles to 500 miles and the-

Anthony Scaramucci: (18:14)
I remember.

Gary Ginsberg: (18:15)
... blockade that gave invasions more time, which is just brilliant. And nobody else in the government had thought of it.

Anthony Scaramucci: (18:21)
And thank God Curtis LeMay, General Curtis LeMay, was not John F. Kennedy's first friend because he was calling for a nuclear strike, which would have probably caused 60 million deaths.

Gary Ginsberg: (18:33)
Oh, yeah.

Anthony Scaramucci: (18:34)
So let's switch back a little bit. I want to go to Thomas Jefferson for a second, if you don't mind. In his very interesting and very close relationship with James Madison, two of the founding fathers, both becoming presidents, tell us about their relationship.

Gary Ginsberg: (18:49)
Yeah, that was one of the real wonderful delights of this process, was discovering that friendship. Everybody thinks of Thomas Jefferson as the dominant player of that duo. And very few know that they exchanged 1,250 letters, were intimate friends for literally 50 years, from 1776 to 1826 when Jefferson dies. And I think that it's probably the most consequential friendship in American history. It was more than a friendship. It was a collaboration. It was a power field, because the two of them together could do so much more than they could do individually. And I think for Jefferson to be Jefferson, and Madison to be Madison, they needed that friendship. They were very different in looks, personality, temperament. They were both sons of Virginia. They were joined by that. They were both... came from big, rich families, they were both philosopher statesman. But Jefferson was this big thinker, this idealist.

Gary Ginsberg: (19:52)
Madison was five foot, four and much more pragmatic. And so Jefferson would have these big ideas that he needed Madison to actually execute. And Madison. For his part, I think kept Jefferson in the game on two occasions when we may have lost Thomas Jefferson to history. He was the governor of Virginia in 1781. He was basically run out of the Capitol. He was put on trial, essentially, by the Virginia legislature for abdication of responsibility. And he was acquitted, but he was so distraught by it all that he said, "I'm done. I'm done with politics." This is 1782. And only because of Madison's intercession does Jefferson decide to get back into public life. He ends up going to Paris and that's where he flowers as this diplomat. But the two of them at various moments, keep each other engaged, such that their collaboration at the end of the day, results in so much of what we experience today in our democracy, two parties. They formed the Democrat-Republican Party.

Gary Ginsberg: (20:55)
Madison is really responsible for the Constitution. And a lot of that intellectual framework comes from Jefferson's gifts of books from Paris. They formed the Bill of Rights. That's because Jefferson is pushing Madison hard for a bill of rights immediately after Madison explains what the Constitution is in a letter to him. And then their collaboration results in the Revolution of 1800, which changes Federalist rule to Republican rule, democratic rule, and then the Louisiana Purchase. And ultimately, they collaborate on the University of Virginia in their later years. So it was an amazingly productive friendship, a loving friendship, 1,250 letters between them, and it changes history.

Anthony Scaramucci: (21:38)
It's an amazing story about them, but it also speaks to the fact that you'd need people to lean on, particularly when you're having setbacks, which is something that a lot of these guys, of course, have because the trials and tribulations of politics. So you worked for Bill Clinton.

Gary Ginsberg: (21:57)
I did.

Anthony Scaramucci: (21:58)
What were you doing for Bill Clinton, Gary? Tell everybody.

Gary Ginsberg: (22:01)
Well, I started as his first advance director way back in January of '92. Actually, the first day I got down there, Anthony, was the day that Jennifer Flowers had her famous press conference at the Plaza Hotel. So I thought, I may not even need to unpack my bags here in Little Rock. I can had right back to my law firm in New York. But he survived it. I did that for three months, until April when he was basically the nominee. And then I went up to Washington to work on the VP selection process. I was one of five lawyers who were holed up in an unmarked, law office in downtown Washington vetting candidates. And then I worked on the presidential transition. And then I was in the White House counsel's office in 1993, and the Justice Department at the end of '93 and '94, and then I went back to New York.

Anthony Scaramucci: (22:53)
What would you say about Bill Clinton in his first friends?

Gary Ginsberg: (22:58)
I would say that bill Clinton, of the 46 presidents, probably had the greatest capacity for friendship. When he left law school in 1972, he wrote down his life's goals. And his third goal was to have good friends. And I think he clearly accomplished that. In 1992, when his campaign is floundering a month after I get down there, his best friends go up to New Hampshire to basically attest to his character and save his candidacy. Vernon Jordan, I write about at great length in my final chapter, and I think that was a real, true friendship. A friendship of equals, a friendship of incredible respect, shared interests, shared values, a shared love of politics, and sports, and of women. It has an unfortunate turn toward the end when Vernon Jordan becomes a central witness in the impeachment and investigation of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But I think it shows Clinton's amazing capacity for friendship, which is one of his great traits.

Anthony Scaramucci: (24:08)
Yeah. And listen, I admire him. My friend, Rick Lerner, was my roommate. I don't know if you would remember Rick Lerner-

Gary Ginsberg: (24:14)
Yeah.

Anthony Scaramucci: (24:15)
... but he worked for you guys.

Gary Ginsberg: (24:16)
Sure.

Anthony Scaramucci: (24:17)
My first visit to the White House was back in '93 as a result of Rick. But I went to New Hampshire with Rick to see then candidate, Governor Clinton campaign, and I was amazed about his personality. And I'll tell you how old-fashioned we all are. Somebody called them the disk drive presidential candidate. What did he mean by that? Any place that he went, he found the disk to put into his computer to talk about it. He was talking to union leaders, then he was talking to entrepreneurs, then he was talking to governmental officials. He found the disk, okay? Now, of course, we operate off the Cloud today, Gary, but that's what they said about Bill Clinton in 1992. 1991, actually.

Gary Ginsberg: (24:59)
That's funny. Can I just interject for one second?

Anthony Scaramucci: (25:01)
Please, please.

Gary Ginsberg: (25:02)
David Gergon had a really interesting observation to that point. He said that his friends served as a basis for his narrative. He would make friends, he would learn as much as he could about the friend's life, and it would fit into this mosaic that he was forming of how to run as president, how to discuss people's travails, their struggles, their challenges, their dreams. Everybody had a story, and every story then fit into that mosaic, and into ultimately, his campaign narrative.

Anthony Scaramucci: (25:30)
Yeah. A very, very interesting guy, great capacity for learning. He came to our SALT conference in 2010. I was in the green room with him prior to interviewing him. He was trying to assess me. So he said, "So what party are you a member of?" And I reached into my pocket, Gary, and I pulled out a roll of bills, and I said, "I'm a member of the Green Party, Mr. President. I work on Wall Street." What party you think I'm a member of? Okay. But he never forgot that. Every time I run into him, he always says, "Hey, Green Party." He doesn't know my name. He goes, "Hey, Green Party member."

Gary Ginsberg: (26:04)
Amazing memory.

Anthony Scaramucci: (26:05)
All right. Well, I have to turn it over to my millennial friend, okay? John Darsie is a first friend of mine, despite the fact that I give him guff, and he's obviously trying to... he's the baby boss at SkyBridge. You see him sitting there?

Gary Ginsberg: (26:17)
Yeah. Corner office.

Anthony Scaramucci: (26:19)
Yeah. Yes. And he's mercurial too, Ginsburg. I want to make sure you know that about him, okay? He's going to come across congenial here, but he has a tendency for mercurial behavior. But go ahead, John. I know you have some questions for Gary.

John Darsie: (26:33)
When Anthony's out of the office, I squat in his corner office here. And I think there's squatter's rights in New York, so I don't know if he's going to be welcomed back.

Anthony Scaramucci: (26:40)
Well, that's true. That's true, because we also have a socialist mayor. I'm sure that office is yours now. That's true.

John Darsie: (26:47)
Yeah. But there were so many fascinating stories. Anthony got to a lot of them. But I also thought the Franklin Pierce/Nathaniel Hawthorne story was very interesting. Nathaniel Hawthorne is known largely for his romantic works, including the Scarlet Letter. It's probably the one he's most famous for. But he also wrote a very consequential campaign biography of his great friend, Franklin Pierce, much to the dismay of some of his colleagues in the abolitionist movement. But could you talk about their friendship. How much impact Nathaniel Hawthorne had on Franklin Pierce?

Gary Ginsberg: (27:19)
Sure. Yes. When he writes that campaign biography, people said that extensively, it's his first work of nonfiction, but a lot of people believed that it was just a continuation of his fiction work, because it had so glorified a man who, for many, many people, did not think he deserved it. And Franklin Pierce is probably the saddest president in our history. His presidency was sad, his home life was sad, he lost three sons in quick succession, including his last son two months before he's inaugurated. It's essentially two men against the world. As you say, they were both actually in support of slavery because they believed that slavery was enshrined in the constitution, was a right of states to maintain, and they wanted to preserve the Union over pursuing the abolition of slavery. And they became immensely unpopular in their home towns and in their own communities. And Hawthorne, to his credit, stands by Pierce in a way that very few friends would.

Gary Ginsberg: (28:27)
And that's what I found most touching. He actually dedicates a book, his last book in 1863, to Pierce. His book seller says, "We can't sell any books if you dedicate your book to this misbegotten, horrible, former president." And he says, "I don't care. I'm doing it." Pierce also stays incredibly loyal to Hawthorne. Pierce provides all the jobs for Hawthorne when he can't make a dime from these books that he's writing. He writes two books in 1852, House of Seven Gables and Scarlet Letter, both big successes. We have been subjected to the horrors of having to read The Scarlet Letter for 200 years, almost, but it didn't sell. It got great reviews, but didn't sell.

Gary Ginsberg: (29:08)
Pierce made sure he got jobs and Hawthorne in exchange, stayed very loyal to him. Pierce stayed loyal to him. And they end up taking a trip, at the end of Hawthorne's life, up to the woods of New Hampshire. Hawthorne is sick. Pierce checks in on him twice in the night. The final time he checks in on him, Hawthorne is dead. He opens the handbag that he has next to his bed and what does he find in the bag? A picture of himself. Just shows you how loyal and loving the two of them were, really against the world.

John Darsie: (29:38)
Right. The last one I want to ask you about is Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson. So Israel, it's 1948. Truman's wavering on whether to recognize Israel as a state. His friend, Eddie Jacobson, steps in. How influential was Eddie Jacobson in now what we know as modern history of that region and how it's impacted the world?

Gary Ginsberg: (29:57)
Yeah. This goes to what Anthony was saying earlier. This just shows that it really requires a first friend, somebody who's known a president for decades, and knew him in more humble times when they had a much easier, less formal relationship. And you could say anything you wanted because you shared interests, and values, and really rooted for each other, as the two of them did. So Truman is really annoyed. The Jews in 1848 are hectoring him to recognize the state. He's sick of it. His family's not particularly in love with Jews. They don't let Jews into their home in Independence, Missouri. He's been generally supportive of allowing refugees from the war to go into Israel, but he's just tired of the issue. And he says to Eddie, "Don't come and see me. I don't want to talk about this issue."

Gary Ginsberg: (30:48)
Eddie just says, "To hell with it." Eddie gets on a plane, flies across the country, walks in unannounced, uninvited, into the Oval Office, and he basically says to Harry Truman, "Knock it off. I know you, Harry. I know you're better than this. The fact that you're allowing a few Jews to get under your skin and keep you from doing what you know is right, which is to..." In this case it was to see Haim Weitzman who was waiting in New York to make the final pitch. And everybody knew that Weitzman was the key to convincing Truman because he had great respect for him. He said, "You know you should see him." And he looks over at a little statue of Andrew Jackson and basically says, "Be like Andrew Jackson, your hero. You know what Andrew Jackson would do. You need to do it."

Gary Ginsberg: (31:30)
And Truman's furious. He turns his chair in the Oval Office, he drums his hands on the desk, and then he finally turns around and says, "God damn it, you son of a bitch, you win. I'll see him." And that ultimately leads to this meeting nine days later with Weitzman, and then 11 minutes after the state of Israel is declared in 1948, Harry Truman is the first foreign leader to recognize the state, and it really becomes the foundation for this alliance, this relationship between the two countries for the last 73 years.

John Darsie: (32:00)
All right. Yeah, Eddie Jacobson had a huge impact on history for certain, with that intervention. Last question is about the Biden administration. So as you've examined the Biden administration, does he have a clear-cut first friend who has an outsized impact on his decision making and worldview?

Gary Ginsberg: (32:15)
He does. He does. If you asked 100 people around Biden, who it is, they'll all tell you it's Ted Kaufman. He was a Senator right after Biden becomes vice president. He was his chief of staff for 22 years. The average length of a chief of staff today on the Hill is three years. So for 22 years, he works all day with him in the office, then he takes the train back and forth to Wilmington. So these two form an incredible relationship. They're as close as two people can be. It was Kaufman who told him to drop out of the race in 1987. It's Kaufman who wakes up when Biden wakes up in the hospital in '88, it's Ted Kaufman who's sitting there after his aneurysm. He is the first consoler, the consoler-in-chief when Beau dies, and they speak all the time on the phone, and Ted Kaufman was the first person to sleep in the White House when Biden became president, outside of family. That just shows you how close the two are.

John Darsie: (33:09)
I thought you might say Champ Biden. Rest in peace, the beautiful German shepherd that just passed, but Ted took off. Yeah, from speaking to people in the Biden orbit, they echo what you're saying. But Gary, it's fantastic to have you on. Congratulations on the new book, First Friends. You really covered a topic that, from reading reviews and commentators, it wasn't really something that had been delved into in depth. And so you really broke ground with this book, and I think people will really enjoy reading it. Thanks so much for joining us on SALT Talks.

Gary Ginsberg: (33:37)
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Anthony.

Anthony Scaramucci: (33:40)
It's great to have you on. It's a phenomenal book, it was a great read, and I'm glad to have you. And you paid me a compliment, which I'm hugging you for over the phone, because I'm only a year younger than you, but you made the insinuation that I was a lot younger. Did you catch that, John Darsie? Did you catch that?

John Darsie: (33:59)
It's amazing what Harry and I can do, and I'm not going to go into the other stuff that [crosstalk 00:34:03].

Anthony Scaramucci: (34:02)
And by the way, I don't even have the gel in this morning because I was in such a rush to get to this SALT Talk. I didn't even have gel in. So Ginsberg, you are slowly becoming one of my first friends, okay? If I ever make it back into politics, you'll be stuck with me, okay? I just wanted you to know that.

Gary Ginsberg: (34:18)
I would welcome it.

Anthony Scaramucci: (34:19)
All right. Well, thank you again for joining us.

Gary Ginsberg: (34:22)
Thanks a lot, guys.

John Darsie: (34:24)
Thank you, everybody for tuning into today's SALT Talk with Gary Ginsberg, author of the new book, First Friends, which is out July 6th. Just a reminder, if you missed any part of this talk or any of our previous SALT Talks, you can access them on demand on our website at salt.org/talks, or on our YouTube channel, which is called SALT Tube. We're also on social media. We're most active on Twitter @saltconference. We're also on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook as well. But on behalf of Anthony and the entire SALT team, this is John Darsie, signing off from SALT Talks for today. We hope to see you back here again soon.