“If you behave the way that the president did at a company or at a school, you would be ostracized, pushed off to the side.”
Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times, covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues and the other for coverage of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia.
What do you do when the most chaotic and out-of-control person at a company is the singular leader? This was the problem White House workers faced with Donald Trump as president. It was not possible to go higher up the chain of command in an attempt to moderate extreme behavior. “John Kelly could try and sort of box him in; the people around the president could tell him that he certainly couldn't do things. But at the end of the day, he was the president.”
It remains an open question as to whether the government institutions can be repaired following a Trump presidency. Perhaps his most lasting legacy will be his role in remaking the courts with young, conservative judges.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Michael Schmidt
Correspondent
The New York Times
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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 at the intersection of finance, technology and public policy. SALT Talks or digital interview series that we started during the pandemic. And like many things that started during the pandemic will have a life, well after the pandemic, we've had a lot of fun with these. We started in about late may and we've had a lot of great speakers another one coming up today.
John Darsie: (00:33)
But what they are, are interviews with the world's foremost investors, creators and thinkers. And what we're really trying to do during the SALT Talk Series is replicate the experience that we provided our Global SALT Conference Series, that we have annually in Las Vegas. And we've also had several international conferences as well, for those of you who have attended. And that's to really provide our audience a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as to provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future.
John Darsie: (01:02)
And we're very excited today to welcome Michael Schmidt to SALT Talks. Michael is the Washington correspondent for the New York Times who covers national security and federal investigations. And his remit has grown a little bit in the last four years in terms of what he covers, given the volume of investigations that we've seen in this administration. And he was part of two teams that won the Pulitzer prize in 2018. One for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues and the other for his coverage of president Donald Trump and his campaign's ties to Russia.
John Darsie: (01:34)
For the past year Michael's coverage has focused on the Mueller investigation into Mr. Trump's campaign and whether the president obstructed justice as part of, everything that went into that investigation. From 2012 to 2016, Michael covered the FBI, the Department of Homeland security and the Pentagon. He spent 2011 in Iraq chronicling the last year of the American occupation. From 2007 to 2010, he covered doping and off the field issues for the sports section of the Times.
John Darsie: (02:04)
And he started his career at the Times in 2005 as a clerk on the foreign desk. And has obviously earned a lot of trust internally there. Has taken on a lot of the big projects over the years at the Times. He's broken several high profile stories over the years. The first was to reveal that secretary Hillary Clinton exclusively relied on her personal email account. And when she was Secretary of State. In sports, he broke the stories that Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez had tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. And he wrote about the treatment of young baseball players in the Dominican Republic, who were exploited by American investors and agents.
John Darsie: (02:41)
In 2017, he co-authored the stories that outlined how the former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly paid off a series of women who made sexual harassment allegations against him. For that coverage, he won the Livingston Award for national reporting, which recognizes the best work of journalists under the age of 35.
John Darsie: (02:59)
Michael also has a recent book out, which we're going to talk a lot about today called Donald Trump versus the United States. And conducting today's interview is going to be Anthony Scaramucci, who is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, which is a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also the chairman of SALT. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (03:19)
Michael thank you and John thank you. And Michael, I got to hold up your book. See that. So not only am I self promotional Michael, but I'm also promoting of others, see that? If you want to others as you would like to do to yourself, look at this, right? So this book is amazing. I told Phil Rucker I'm sorry, this goes to the top of the stack on the Trump books and there's been a proliferation of them. But I thought you had a fascinating understanding of the personalities as well as the facts of what was going on. And so I would like to get right into it, if you don't mind. I'd like you to tell us about the work that you did on this book. In terms of the research, the interviews, obviously, certainly don't want you to give up your sources, but I want you to give us a little bit of a story of how you got a book like this, which to me reads like an internal transcript of the West Wing.
Michael Schmidt: (04:16)
So I think the biggest challenge that I had was telling a book that would be distinctive. We all had a sense that this was a chaotic time, really crazy shit went on unprecedented shit. The president was acting very irregularly unprecedented, but how do you tell a story that will stick? So what I tried to do was to concentrate on the human story of this. What is it like to be one of these people around the president trying to contain a president? What's that human experience like. We can sit here and we can go through the paces of all of the stuff that's gone on. You want to start with the Muslim ban and go through the tank meeting and all that stuff.
Michael Schmidt: (05:01)
But what does it really feel like when you're at the top of the government and there's no one else to call. There's no one else to help you. And it's just you standing up to a president. We know what it's like for a president to use power and for the people around them to help them do that. But I don't think we've seen as much in history, people trying to stop a president. What does that like? What does that chaos look like? What does it feel like to be one of those people? So that is what I tried to concentrate on and tried to tell that story.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (05:37)
Well, and obviously you did a great job of that. When I finished the book last night, my reaction was man, president Trump's next job could be replacing King George the third in the musical Hamilton. I mean, you said crazy shit, but he's batshit crazy. And so tell us about that. Tell us about people like John Kelly, Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, others that recognize, okay there's something seriously wrong here. So what are we going to do here to try to corral it, if it's even possible?
Michael Schmidt: (06:15)
The problem is that if you behave the way that the president did at a company or at a school or at wherever, you would be ostracized, pushed off to the side...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (06:26)
And John Darsie does behave like that at SkyBridge, but we're fairly tolerant, but most people would be fired immediately. But go ahead, Michael. I'm so sorry...
John Darsie: (06:34)
We all know who the crazy one is at SkyBridge is Michael [crosstalk 00:06:37].
Anthoy Scaramucci: (06:39)
Put yourself back on mute Darsie.
Michael Schmidt: (06:44)
So the thing is that, the fact that, this may sound a little simplistic, but the fact that the president was the president is what caused this problem. Because you couldn't just ostracize him. I mean, you could try, John Kelly could try and sort of box him in, the people around the president could tell him that he certainly couldn't do things. But at the end of the day, he was the president. And there was only so much that you could do to try and stop someone like that. So, we know what it's like to work at a company where someone may be, acting abnormally and needs to be sort of contained. But what happens when the person at the top is doing that? And what happens when the apparatus that is supposed to be there to serve as a check on the presidency when that's not functioning, what happens?
Michael Schmidt: (07:38)
What happens when that power is sort of loosely running around? And you have someone who is not more to norms. They're more to... It's unclear what they're more towards. So when you take those factors and you throw them together, what is that like? Because I don't think we've seen that a lot. So I said to myself, I said, in terms of how the power has unfolded here and how this is all structured, this is really unique. And I need to do more here than just capture sort of the paces of the story. They wanted to do tax cuts and they wanted to do it. We need to go bigger than that. We need to go inside the bodies of these people around the president to see what this experience was like.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (08:29)
If you... I mean, you make the case in the book, is I'm just curious in reaction. I mean, he's damaging the institutions of our democracy because he doesn't want to follow the norms or the procedures. And John Kennedy once said about the presidency, it's a great, great interview. Huntley and Brinkley interviewed him a year after he got the job. And he was like, well, I was in the house, I thought the action was in the Senate. And when I got the Senate, I thought the action was down the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. And when I got to this office here, he was being interviewed in the oval office. He's like the action isn't anywhere. It's so diffused that we have to figure out a way to work together. But this book is really about Mr. Trump trying to or president Trump trying to assert himself in a way that is outside of that construct, outside of that power to diffusion. And so my question is, has he permanently damaged our institutions, our democratic process, our alliances? Is this something that's repairable in your view Michael?
Michael Schmidt: (09:30)
So I've thought an enormous amount about that. Because for a while I was convinced that, whenever this came to an end, the system would snap back into what it was. I'm less convinced of that today, but the real answer of what the Trump era meant and what impact it will have, will really be determined by what comes afterwards. Because if what comes after the president resembles more of this presidency, then it is truly a pivot point in American history. The presidency being used in a different type of way. But if it sort of goes back to what...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (10:13)
Define that way, if you don't mind. It's being used in a different type of way. So what way is it being used?
Michael Schmidt: (10:21)
I would say that the most sober way of describing it would just be that, in the post Watergate era, we started to live by a set of norms about how politics should be divorced from law enforcement and how the Office of the Presidency should be used sort of as the tip of the spear for the entire country. And I think that we've seen the Office of the Presidency and the levers of power used in a much more selfish way for the politician in this case, the president than we've seen before. And I think that we have seen politics become part of law enforcement in a way that we haven't seen before.
Michael Schmidt: (11:15)
Let me just point something out. The president said today that if his rivals are not prosecuted before the election it will be a great let down. It will be a essentially a great failure. Okay? I don't see that as a lead headline anywhere. Okay? The president's saying that about a criminal investigation is so pre-Trump era off the charts. Unusual that we've become... and this is the cliché. We become numb to this whatever. The president's saying that about a criminal investigation is just still so extraordinary. And we haven't moved on from it, but... [crosstalk 00:11:59].
Anthoy Scaramucci: (11:59)
Vice president last night is saying, well, we may not accept the electoral outcome of the peaceful transfer of power. I mean, it says same sort of thing. It's like, why are good men and women in the country accepting that Michael? Why isn't there more outrage?
Michael Schmidt: (12:19)
Let me tie that back to the book. The thing that Trump has done is his consistency in terms of feeding his base. And in terms of his loyalty to his base has created a tether between him and the base that has allowed, I think for behavior that the base would not normally tolerate to go on. And at the heart of that, I think is the judges. I think the fact that Trump has been so consistent on the judges and has remade the federal courts in the way that he has, not just with Conservative judges, but Conservative judges of a certain mold, of a very conservative mold of a certain age. And I think that the fact that the president has been so true to that, has created that tether, that umbilical courts. That has allowed for things like Mike Pence to say last night, not to fully commit to accepting the results of the election, to be at least accepted. By pick your number 30, 40 whatever percent of the country.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (13:22)
So you've got guys like, Senator Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Senator Ted Cruz. There's so many people, that were trying to crush Trump in 2016. There were literally withering attacks day in and day out. Those people are now in the boat with Mr. Trump. And those people are the biggest sycophants of Mr. Trump. And I'm just wondering, what do you say about that? How has he been so successful in bending people who are that influential in that powerful to his will? What are they doing exactly? What's the order in their personality of their priorities that are allowing that to happen?
Michael Schmidt: (14:06)
I would actually ask you this question. And My thesis, and I want to see what you think about this. My thesis is that, they still don't understand the base of the party. So if you're Lindsay Graham, you're probably really surprised that Trump got as far as he did in the Republican Party primary. And then you're even more surprised that he became president and even more surprised that he endured and survived despite the way that he behaved.
Michael Schmidt: (14:34)
So what I think is that if you're a Lindsey Graham, you're not totally sure what the base really wants and is willing to go along with. And the only thing that you can recognize is that they've been willing to go along with this. So you have to dance, you have to grab the Baton and the parade and just start marching. Because I don't think that they fully thought the base would do this. And the only thing they know is that the base has gone with him. So they have to go with him. What do you think?
Anthoy Scaramucci: (15:07)
Well, I mean, there's many things I a bore in light, but racism is probably at the pinnacle in terms of what I a bore. Because just complete unfairness and talking about peace and social justice. And so this whole Southern strategy that Stuart Stevens writes about in his book, we had him on SALT Talk, and the acceptance of this sort of systemic institutionalized racism in 2020, I find reprehensible. And I would make a statement that if we don't figure that out in the Republican Party, Republican Party is going to end up on the ash heap of history. If Mr. Trump wins and they continue down this path, it's going to be aging, white people that buy catheters and SeaPak machines and my pillows from Fox News during the commercial breaks. That's going to be their party and it'll be a minority party for a generation.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (15:54)
And so if they're clinging to that, they're making a very big mistake. My odyssey with Mr. Trump was I was an establishment, Republican fundraiser working for Jeb Bush. He recruited me, I allowed my ego to impair my judgment. I was excited by the opportunity of working on that campaign. And so I chose to ignore, you could call it moral expediency or whatever you want to call it. The comments about the Mexicans, the comments about the immigrants, the comments about the Muslims. And I think I lost a piece of myself doing that, which I've apologized for. And I could no longer take the moving of the goalpost. When he told the four Congresswoman to go back to the countries that they came from, I told mayor Giuliani, hey man, they said that to our Italian grandparents, why are you a tolerating these races native as tropes?
Anthoy Scaramucci: (16:46)
And the answer is everybody wants to be in the bubble Michael. They want to be in the state dinner. They want to be in the presidential motorcade. They want to be on air force one. And there's a seduction to power that allows these people to conform to his behavior. So I don't like it at all. And I think what you're saying is interesting, but I would say something differently to you. We need leadership in the country that is more like a thermostat on the wall, as opposed to a thermometer. Mr. Trump is a thermometer. There's anger out there. Let's tap into the anger and all of these accolades gravitate to that. But we actually need a thermostat. We need somebody to say, okay, hey, we're going to punch in these coordinates. We're going to lower the temperature in the room.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (17:33)
I'm going to show you how we're going to do this. And we're going to calm down this middle-class and lower middle-class anxiety and anger by actually providing them something of substance, which could make their lives better. And so we're not doing that on a result of which they're catching waves that are coming towards the beach, and they're trying to surf those waves. And I just think they're making a huge mistake and it's going to really hurt that party. It'll also hurt the country, because you're going to have a lopsided country here soon. You don't want one party rule. One party rule has destroyed the city of New York. It's impaired the state of California. You need two vigorous parties. But this is about you, not me. You asked me the question, I shouldn't have been that long winded.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (18:20)
Let me go back to the book because I think this is an interesting thing about this book. Mr. Trump feels like he is one of the characters in Looney Tunes. The envelope is coming for him. It's about to hit him in the head. He escapes the envelope. He's tied to the rail track and here comes the train for some reason he's released from the rails and he gets out. How was he able to do that? How is he the Harry Houdini of political corruption and malfeasance?
Michael Schmidt: (18:50)
I think that the thing about Trump is that Trump can't take a punch, but he can take a beating better than anyone else. So like he can't take the day-to-day criticisms and it drives him crazy. But what he does is that he trudges on despite incredible embarrassment and sustaining things that if you or I or anyone was running for public office and did, we would have given up on and gone home. Let's say, for example, politician X was running for office and he on the trail said, what Trump did about John McCain about being caught. My guess is that, it's more times than not. That politician would have come out and said, I cannot believe I said that. I'm incredibly sorry, I'm retreating from public life. I'm going to go home. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life repenting, for what I said.
Michael Schmidt: (19:45)
But Trump was emboldened by that. And he just continued on. And I think his ability to continue on undeterred is one of his greatest assets. The day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress, in which he laid out, I mean, not very effectively, but he testified about what was in his report about obstruction and collusion. The next day, Trump picks up the phone and combines the greatest hits of obstruction and collusion into one event. And he asked the Ukrainian president to interfere in the election to help his candidacy by using his law enforcement powers. And I just don't think most people that would have endured a two year long investigation like Mueller's in which it looked at the use of law enforcement and obstruction and collusion in terms of ties, if using a foreign power and an election, would then go out the day after that person testified and combine the greatest hits into one thing.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (20:49)
When you interviewed your sources and lets your sources be anonymous, unless the ones that have been on the record in the book, do they have regrets? Do they feel guilty? Is there any sign of remorse or is it just I'm coming to you Michael, can, off the record, just to ventilate a little bit? What was your feeling about the people that you were interviewing?
Michael Schmidt: (21:14)
Let's put that question aside. Let's take on McGahn. Let's just take on McGahn for a second. Because McGahn comes to the Trump...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (21:21)
Okay. So for those... That's Don McGahn, the former White House general counsel, who was the lead lawyer on the campaign. Go ahead. Sorry Michael I just wanted to...
Michael Schmidt: (21:30)
So this is Trump top lawyer. McGahn came to the trough of the Trump presidency and he did three things that were remarkable. Trump gave him the power to remake the courts and he remade the courts. At the same time, Trump badgered him was nasty to him. And McGahn had to become a container of Trump. Trump's someone trying to stop Trump. And at the same time McGahn was a chief witness as a lawyer against his client in an existential threat to the presidency. In the end McGahn did all these things, but he walked away with two new justices on the Supreme Court that are made in the mold of a Scalia or a Thomas the type of person that he believes in. He believes in the courts more than anything else.
Michael Schmidt: (22:23)
And he walked away with no criminal exposure, a big legal bill and some pretty frightening experiences but largely intact. Does he regret that? I don't think so. Because he walked away with this invaluable thing of remaking the courts and being the person to do that. Did he have to put up with behavior that most people wouldn't have in order to do that? Yes. Does he regret that? My guess is no, because he got the courts at it. But it's a lot to...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (23:03)
So you're saying that the ends justify the means. Is basically what you're saying. [crosstalk 00:23:10] that's where the revocation comes in, right?
Michael Schmidt: (23:13)
That would be one of the rationalizations of the people around the president. It's like well, in the end the courts were more important than anything else. And I think that it's not as simple question as I regret coming to the Trump presidency. And I saw a lot of things that were bad and I should have done more. These people got things out of it. They got notoriety that got profiles that they wouldn't have had before. Some people say Don McGahn wouldn't have been the White House council under a more traditional president. I don't think five years ago someone said to you, you were going to be the White House communications director for...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (24:03)
I was yelling at Jeb Bush last week on assault dog. You should have won the goddamn nomination. I would have been anywhere near the White House. When Trump called me, after I got fired, I said relax, you made me as famous as Melania and Ivanka. I didn't have to sleep with you or be your daughter. So we're just fine. Let's move on. But McGahn calls Trump Kang or King Kong in this book, at least according to Michael Schmidt, why did he refer to him as that? Tell us why.
Michael Schmidt: (24:30)
Because Trump was needlessly destroying things and was sort of uncontainable and McGahn had a pretty good sense of humor and had to deal with this force of the president. And basically looked at Trump as this larger than life scientific character that would go out and no matter what you did would trudge on and destroy things for unnecessary things. I think that the thing that if these people and you may believe this yourself too, it's like it never had to be this hard for Trump. If Trump and I write about this in the book, McGahn thought if Trump just behaved like Reagan became caught up with the trappings of the presidency and allowed his people to ruthlessly execute his agenda, then he could have been really successful.
Michael Schmidt: (25:31)
And the thing about the Trump story that sort of undermines not my interest in it, but that sometimes undermines the stories that once or twice a month, Trump kicks the ball into his own goal and he blames the other team. It's not like two sides here where they're really plotting or whatever. It's Trump is just so ad hoc that it almost makes it less interesting. You almost wouldn't, in terms of the story, it's he just undermines himself at every point. And it makes you wonder, is the presidency maybe easier than we thought it?
Anthoy Scaramucci: (26:14)
And I get the point, I want to turn it over to John. And one second, but I have one last question I'm spending a lot of time, in the pandemic reading about interwar Germany. Which is a fascinating period in European history, which leads to the rise of populism and nationalism and ultimately fascism. Steve Bannon always said this, and you address it a little bit. I'm just curious if you'll share it with us here. When Trump calls the media fake news, it's an attack taught to him by Steve Ben and it's quite reminiscent to interwar Germany. Tell us in your opinion, why he's doing that? Why is that attack so successful? And what can the media do to sort of restore the trust that I believe it needs to have with the American people, with the preponderance of the American people?
Michael Schmidt: (27:06)
I think that the one of Trump's greatest strengths is not one that is dried to the legal powers of the presidency, but it's derived at what I would call the megaphone of the presidency. And it's the ability to say things that people will pay attention to and the willingness to say things. So it's not just the fact that he's the president and he goes out and he gives a speech. It's the fact that he's willing to say, 10, 20, 30 different things a day than most presidents wouldn't say. Because by doing that and just repeatedly hitting that note on the issue, like fake news, it has a lasting impact. And I think for the media to say that it doesn't, is wrong. Because you can't live in a world where the person with the loudest megaphone says, things like that and it doesn't have some damage.
Michael Schmidt: (27:58)
So, I think it's been incredibly effective, even if it's something that is incredibly simplistic, it's something we assume in the media that we're going to get attacked on some sophisticated thing on you got the facts wrong or whatever. We didn't just think that someone was going to come by and scream out. You idiots you're a bunch of fake news. So it sort of tests us in a way that, we're used to fighting things with facts. It's like, well here are the facts. And it's sort of hard to respond to a bull horn, with an answer like that.
Michael Schmidt: (28:33)
So, I think it's been super effective and I don't know what the remedy is. I don't know what it is. And I think that it is, this is sort of a cop-out when you don't know what to say, but I think that really, we will only be able to measure the damage of it after we have some time after whenever Trump is done in office to really look back and see if it really matters what comes afterwards. And if whatever comes afterwards is similar to Trump and this keeps up then we could be in some full real trouble.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (29:10)
Well said, I'm going to turn it over to John Darsie. Who's got questions from the audience, but then I hold the book up again. One more time, Donald Trump versus the United States. And I'm sorry Phil Rucker but this is the best book right now that I have read on...
John Darsie: (29:25)
Call Carol the author. Come on don't leave Carol out of this.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (29:27)
Who's that?
John Darsie: (29:28)
She's his co-author on the book.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (29:29)
All right. Yeah. Okay. I don't know her as well. You know what I mean? We got Peter Baker coming up with Susan. You know we're going to favor Susan in that interview. John, I'm just giving you the heads up on that. Okay. But go ahead. We got questions from the outside audience. Go ahead.
John Darsie: (29:42)
So your last comments were a great segue to this next question about what comes next. And I'm going to ask you to put your sort of prognostication hat on a little bit, but also refer to some comments that have been made in recent days by some Republican senators. And it seems like almost the quiet part is now being set out loud. Trump, he's basically tweeting out, we're not going to allow minorities to come into the suburbs, Housewives of America vote for me and I'll prevent low-income housing from coming to the suburbs. He's, he's shown a willingness to do some things to say some things out loud that maybe the Republican Party believed in but never had the courage to fight for so openly. And you now have Senator Mike Lee, who's tweeting out the fact that democracy isn't the objective.
John Darsie: (30:25)
He's saying that yes, while we have some democratic elements of the Constitutional Republic of the United States that ultimately our job as elected officials is to fight for prosperity, for peace and for Liberty. And so they're basically setting the stage for justification of a lot of the voter suppression and other heavy handed tactics that they're probably going to use over the next month or so. So do you think that portends for what's going to come in the next five to 10 years, let's say Biden wins and the polls are right. Do you think it's just going to be four years of very underhanded fighting from Republicans who think they're the guardians of American society and culture?
Michael Schmidt: (31:06)
I was really surprised by the Mike Lee tweet and really wanted to know more about what was behind it. Because I'd never seen anything like that. And I was surprised it didn't even get more attention, but I'd never seen a politician, sort of, for I guess Mike Liza, a Republican Senator to say something like that. So I don't know what to make of that. I think that, whatever comes after Trump, the tone of it will really matter. If the next attorney general let's say, Biden wins and the next attorney general, is a Democrat who has been out there for the past four years publicly really going after Trump. And it's then decides to turn the focus of the justice department back on the Trump administration.
Michael Schmidt: (32:02)
I think you're going to get a sense that, in this country it's whoever wins, the election is just going to go after the other side. And we're going to get caught up in sort of a continuous loop in that. Down that path is a pretty potentially dangerous thing. If the public, and what I'm saying is that if the public perceives it to be whoever wins goes after the other side. Because I think that in any administration that takes over for another, there's always some look back at the previous administration. But I don't think that we've ever thought that the result of an election was to go back and sort of prosecute the previous administration. But certainly Trump has made his desires to do that to the previous administration, a central part of it saying it as recently as today. So, I don't know. I think that sometimes when one side sees another side do something, they adjust to keep up with them and whatever they... If there's a tit for tat here, you're down a new and different path.
John Darsie: (33:22)
And just to add on a little bit to the Mike Lee tweet, Anthony responded to the tweet basically saying, Senator, is this the steroids talking or do you really believe that democracy is basically not the goal here? I know it's not the end goal but... And he got a lot of vicious replies from all of the Conservative think tanks. And it almost made me think that this was a bat signal that's gone out in the Republican Party to say, you know what guys, we have to embrace this messaging that Trump has embraced about voter suppression and all the things that we're going to have to do to maintain power with the party in its current form. And so that's somewhat troubling. And I think portends interesting times ahead over the next few weeks. But I want to pivot to the New York Times story about secretary Clinton's personal email use, which you broke that story.
John Darsie: (34:08)
And I find it curious that for some reason on Twitter and in social media, it's become fun to dunk on the New York Times for doing things that might potentially work against the interests of progressive Americans that are deemed as the subscribers to the New York Times, I guess. And so there's been a lot of, I don't know, accusations is not the right word, but sort of criticisms of the Times for giving oxygen to stories that might potentially benefit Trump or focusing on what might be perceived as small stories in the scope of the grand corruption that exists sometimes in the Trump administration. So how, when you're reporting a story, you stumble upon a story that might be negative on vice president Biden or secretary Clinton. How do you weigh the consequences of your reporting when you're writing a story?
Michael Schmidt: (34:54)
I think that it's a good question. I think that for what we do, it's pretty simple. We're going to follow the facts wherever they lead us. And we're here to cover the world around us as thoroughly and as authoritatively as possible. And to find out what has gone on behind the scenes, in terms of any political party of any person, to understand the larger forces in the country and to put them into context and tell that story. We're not here... We operate without fear or favor as we say, in our credo. And sometimes that means that you write stories that the president tweets nasty things about you. Sometimes that means that you write stories that the left gets very upset about. It's part of working in journalism and working at the Times, is that you're going to write things and people are not going to like them.
Michael Schmidt: (35:57)
And it's part of the job. And if you got into the job to satisfy people that's not what we're there to do, we're out there to sort of ruthlessly go after the truth and to try and tell that. And I think that at least before and I think still is, is that is an agreed upon bedrock of the country of one of the core values of the country. And I understand that a lot of people don't like a lot of things that I've written for a lot of different reasons. But if I'm getting up in the morning and heading out the door, I just don't head out the door anymore. Because I'm getting up in the morning and going to work. I think that if I'm trying to figure out how not to make people upset, then that's a bad way of starting a day. And it's my job to go out and just try and find the story. And we're not going to make friends in that process but we didn't get in into it make friends.
John Darsie: (36:58)
So this is sort of a personal follow-up question to Anthony's question about, president Trump's attacks on the media as the enemy of the people, from a personal standpoint, what has it been like to live through this era where journalists are sometimes targeted, whether it's with digital hate mail or at rallies, getting targeted. What's it been like to report in this highly charged environment on a personal level?
Michael Schmidt: (37:24)
I mean, the thing that struck me the most is the vitriol that has been directed at my colleague Maggie Haberman, which has been far more intense than anything than I have or any of us has confronted. And I think it's been very unfair and I've always said, Maggie can deal with the level of stuff that she has and the rest of us could deal because the rest of us face far less stuff. I don't know what the answer to it is. I think you just have to put your head down and get back to work and that sounds like a cliché and it sounds easier than it is. But that is sort of... It's the only choice that we have.
John Darsie: (38:07)
So we have a devil's advocate question from one of our participants and it says, if president Trump didn't pretend like he was going to be a continuation of the norms that existed in American government before him. He ran on the fact that, conventional government wasn't working for the people and he was there to disrupt it. So why would we expect him to fit into that mold of a traditional politician and conform to the norms that the American people have seen that have failed them? Do you think, the fact that he still has maybe 40% support is a reflection of just continued dissatisfaction with the way our political system is operating and serving people that have been left out from the economic growth we've seen over the last 30 years in the country?
Michael Schmidt: (38:48)
Yeah, totally. And I think that he's been very faithful to that base. I mean, if anything it may end up be his political undoing, is his unwillingness to tack to the center. But he has played to that base, what that bases wanted to here and what that base has wanted for him to do are fairly consistently. And I think that, that's why he has held on to them as strongly as he has. And I think one of the interesting things, the calculations that he may see is he is not moved to the center. And he is not tacked to the center in ways that probably would have been fairly easy for him. Because he seems so fearful of that base and that he wants to continue to feed that base. My guess is that the base would stay with him, even if he moves a little bit to the center.
Michael Schmidt: (39:35)
But he's been unwilling to do that. And I just think the real question, I think in this election will be, is how big is that base? How big is that base? And can that base still get him over the line? I mean, the polls seem to show that it's not, but I don't know. I think that's the thing. It's like, he's bet on the base. And not move to the center on anything.
John Darsie: (40:00)
So I know you're not a pollster or a political forecaster, and I want to end it with your prediction about what happens, come November. Do you think the polls are going to hold true? And if Biden does win, how do you expect based on your reporting in the book and about how Trump deals with these types of situations, how do you expect to him to handle a transfer of power?
Michael Schmidt: (40:23)
I don't know. I don't know. And I think that for us to get back for... I'm having a Mike Pence moment here, I got a fly on my head. I think for us to...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (40:41)
You moved a lot more quickly than Mike Pence. I just want to point that out.
Michael Schmidt: (40:47)
I think, for us to assume...
Anthoy Scaramucci: (40:50)
Then again you probably don't have the smell a shit from all the bullshit emanating from your head. So, the fly probably moved fast.
Michael Schmidt: (40:59)
I think that for us to expect... I think without being alarmist and trying to predict the future, which is our to do, I think that the president has shown an unwillingness to go along with norms. So anytime that you're heading into a situation that's based on norms, which I think we've learned in the Trump story, the country's a lot more based on norms and his own laws that if you're heading into a situation that's heavily reliant on norms and let's just say elections and transfers of power are heavily reliant on norms. You have to be open-minded to the fact that he's not going to follow norms. I'm just saying based on his behavior as president, he's not wanting to follow norms and he's been willing to do anything against those norms and a situation relying on norms. You guys are the math guys, the finance guys, but when you have factors like that, I think your chances of something are higher.
John Darsie: (42:03)
Well Michael, thank you so much for joining us. It's been fascinating following your reporting over the last four years, and even prior to that. But you're now a household name because of how much Trump has put the media in the spotlight. So, thanks so much for all the work you've done. Anthony, you have a final word?
Anthoy Scaramucci: (42:19)
Yeah. Michael, the only reason why we did this with these, we don't want to be the subject of one of your books. Okay? So John and I were buttering you up with this SALT Talk. Okay? In all series is I gotta tell you, this was a fascinating read. I'd recommend it to anybody, even if they don't have an interest in politics, you quote Shakespeare a few times in here. This is a Shakespearean story unfolding in American real time. I really enjoyed it, Michael. And thank you so much for joining us on SALT Talks.
Michael Schmidt: (42:50)
Thanks so much for having me. It's been great.
Anthoy Scaramucci: (42:51)
All right. Be well.
Michael Schmidt: (42:52)
Thanks.