Going Inside Trump's Head with Geraldo Rivera

0:00Good day again from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center here in New York City. I am Carlo Versano and this is the 1600. This country was stone cold dead. So today I'm speaking with a titan of the broadcasting industry and I don't say that lightly. This is one of the people who really inspired me to get into the news business way back when. But more importantly for the purposes of our conversation, he's also somebody who is deeply experienced covering wars and all sorts of conflicts around the globe. and also somebody who happens to have a longstanding relationship with President Trump, which we're going to ask him about today.

0:33Geraldo Rivera joins me now. Geraldo, thank you so much for your time. My pleasure, Carlo. Thank you. So I appreciate you coming on. You've written several what I find to be must-read columns since this war began almost a month ago on your website, which are also syndicated in various outlets. One of them was titled, What Are We Fighting For? And you wrote that on March 4th, which was exactly three weeks ago today. Are you any closer to figuring out an answer to that question? Hell no. I wish there was more clarity from Washington. And I, you know, it's not just that reporters need clarity. I think that the principles involved in this real life trauma need clarity.

1:19And I'm not sure that they have it. What are we fighting for is still the question. three weeks later. Is it regime change? Is it to get the nukes out? Is it to end the ballistic missile program? What exactly is this all about from the United States point of view? And I worry that there's shifting goals, shifting visions. It seems ad hoc in some ways, uh, seat of the pants. Uh, uh, I, I worry that, uh, you know, it, I, I was traumatized in 2003 and the months that followed, uh, in Iraq, uh, and chasing non-existent weapons of mass destruction. And then all of a sudden I blinked and it was 10 years later and I had been there for 11 assignments.

2:13and all we did was take the power from the Ba 'athists and give it to the Shiites, it seems to me. It just seems to me I don't know what it was all about in retrospect, Carlo. Well, it makes me feel a little better because I've been talking here and to anybody who will listen, I'm having flashbacks to Iraq. I was a kid back then. I obviously wasn't covering the war the way that you were in country. So it makes me a little bit better to hear that someone like you also is having those flashbacks. But, Geraldo, you know President Trump personally. You've known him for a long time. I know you were a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice before he jumped in the first race.

2:54Do you see that? Please. Second place finisher. That's very important. I apologize. And I think you actually raised more money than anybody else. Right. Number one fundraiser. OK, well, thank you for clarifying that. But so just given what you know about the president, did you see this war coming? Do you think that he's sort of playing some sort of, you know, 5D chess and there's some theory of victory that he's not letting on to, but he's got it under control? It seemed to me that he is often accused of doing whatever it is that the last person he spoke to suggested. And it just seems to me that in this case, the last person he spoke to was Benjamin Netanyahu.

3:35when the Israeli prime minister came to the United States with the old secret plan, and the plan was Iran. I had no idea why he did this. Maduro snatching in Venezuela was brilliant. It followed the brilliant B-2 bomber strikes on Iran six months before. Then he did Venezuela. Well, I thought for sure that Cuba would be next. Cuba was lying there waiting to be taken, you know, with no lights, no oil, no future, no nothing. Instead, he jumped 6 ,000 miles to Iran with what looks like it's going to be a land war. It's very perplexing to me. Let me put it that way. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know now that we have a solid definition of victory.

4:38I, again, I think he's listening to a lot of people, you know, Mohammed bin Salman and in Saudi Arabia, Bibi, of course, various hawks in his own government. And, you know, the left and Israel seems very suppressed to me I don't hear their voice, the anti-war voice If there is one now, I think that Israelis are so pissed off by the Iranian attacks Or counterattacks on Israel that they're not willing to Not in the mood for seeking peace either So where the hell this thing ends is I worry, I don't know why it started What was this war about, that column three weeks ago And now my column would be you know, how does it end?

5:24So I'm curious and feel free, you know, these are personal questions. So if you don't want to answer them, by all means. But I'm curious what your relationship is with the president. Do you still speak to him? And if so, have you made your thoughts on this clear to him? I know he listens to people like you. Obviously, we share many friends in common. I know Pete Hexas very well. We were colleagues at Fox. We'd see each other in the green room, I had a beautiful dinner with Pete and his wife and Sean Hannity's house not long before I left Fox. I love the president. I do. He's been so nice to me and my family.

6:12He's a wonderful, spontaneous, generous person. I don't speak to him anymore because I made myself very clear that January 6th was the end all and that he should have been impeached or at least prevented from running for office again, for fomenting, inciting that coup. it still doesn't change how I feel about him personally. It's been so nice to my family, so nice to me. It's just that I think that there's an erratic aspect, at least there was when we were close. Sure. Well, that's called having principles, by the way. Laying down a principle on January 6th. I commend you for that. I appreciate your characterization of it.

7:10Thanks. You mentioned Hegseth. I'm curious as somebody who knows him and worked with him, because I look at this guy and he strikes me as in way over his head. And, you know, I heard somebody refer to him as, you know, Donald Rumsfeld on crystal meth when he's doing this. He's sent Rumsfeld too. I can tell you some Rumsfeld stories. Well, I will table that for the next time we talk. But are people are people misunderstanding Hegseth? Are they are they underestimating him? I mean, I know that he was, you know, he I don't know if it was a Marine. He was in the armed forces. He went to Princeton.

7:44He's not a dummy. Yeah. He was a major in the army, a combat veteran, as they said, a colleague at Fox. And, you know, over the course of my war correspondence career, you know, the 11 assignments in Iraq and the 11 assignments in Afghanistan. and all the other places in the region in and out. I feel that my generals, my friends who are generals and who are general officers, some very, very high in the Pentagon, they detest peace. They didn't trust them at all. They thought it was going to be a catastrophe as an inexperienced mid-level veteran in terms of rank. In terms of his performance, let me tell you what I like about Pete.

8:42I think that Pete was right about the Defense Department getting bureaucratized. There's plenty of bureaucracy in the Pentagon, don't get me wrong. It's just that they became politically correct in the Defense Department. I think that with Pete, I appreciate that he has made or remade the military in the image of the fit, young, gung -ho, high-spirited, spunky military of yore rather than just becoming another Washington department. So I appreciate that. Maybe it took this low, relatively low ranking, you know, macho veteran to get the Pentagon off its fat ass. That's an interest. I didn't really ever think of it that way.

9:39And I think that's that's a useful counterpoint to a lot of people who think that this guy's just sort of a crazy meathead who's out there, you know, doing his own thing. And it is, by all accounts, they do, the Army does appear to be having, you know, something of a recruitment spike. So maybe that is, you know, does kind of have to. And soldiers and Marines and airmen and Coast Guardsmen and, you know, the Marines, they should be able to do push-ups and run and, you know, wade through mud and take, you know, marksman lessons. So you also you wrote you started another recent recent piece of yours.

10:22I love this this lead. President Trump is leading us through a crazy, violent year. And you go on to make the point, quote, we needed the war in Iran like we needed a hole in the head. And you basically are arguing that, you know, after the Maduro operation, which was hugely successful, regardless of, you know, what you think about whether it was, you know, worthy or not, it was certainly tactically brilliant. And your point is there was a window to keep the pressure on Cuba and that regime. Do you think that he lost that window by pivoting to Iran or do you think that the Cuba operation, whatever that's going to be, is still on the table?

10:56I think it's still on the table. I think that he has postponed what was going to be a logical next step for the United States military and and activist politicians. I think that Cuba right now is more vulnerable than it has ever been. And I think that there's a real chance or has been so far delayed, hopefully not squandered, to remake the relationship, restart the relationship. My question on Cuba, and again, this is just not a topic that I feel, you know, has read in on as many other topics. The question that I always have is how much of the current misery that is experienced day to day by the Cuban people is because of, you know, that regime being both corrupt and incompetent?

11:48And how much of it is because of our embargo, which is going on however many decades now? Well, the embargo has never meant as much as it does now that Venezuela is in the United States sway again. With Cuba cut off from its principal supply of oil, any semi-industrialized nation would dry up. And that's what's happening. Cuba is dying. You know, I don't care how divid your ideology, you don't have gas in your tank, but you're going nowhere. And right now Cuba is going nowhere. And because it is going nowhere and because of this profound connection between the expats in Florida and elsewhere and the activists in Cuba, I think the regime is, you know, on life support.

12:46and it's not even on life support because there's no one providing life support. Right. It was on life support. Now it's seemingly just collapsing. Now it is dying. Yeah. So Cuba, to me, at least regime change. I mean, I'm sort of an anti-interventionist. I'm kind of like, you know, that's sort of like the old school lib in me. But regime change in Cuba at least makes sense in terms of you can understand why an American president doesn't want a communist regime 90 miles from Miami, right, regardless of whether you agree or not that it's in our interest or our job to change that regime. Do you think that a Cuba operation in the realm of how we did Venezuela, where we kind of we get the remaining Castros out, we somehow put somebody in there who can deal with us.

13:30Do you think that that would be more justified, more winnable and more strategically coherent than what we're doing in Iran, at least? I think there's a couple of Castros in Cuba that we could deal with still. You do? I do. I do. And I think that he's still, I think, I think the brother is still alive. Raul, isn't he still alive? There's a third generation, fourth generation, fifth generation since 59 that are available. I think they could do a kind of a Maduro without the snatch, just to a kind of low-torque coup, who had not so many bombs and bullets as more, you know, a different group moving in that can do and will deal with the United States while maintaining their socialist bent.

14:28I think that that's possible. It was more possible a couple of months ago after Maduro. To a certain extent, by waging this war in the Middle East, we're dissipating some of the goodwill or clout that we acquired with the Maduro snatch. But that's what I envision. I envision just a few people at the top being shuffled out and new people coming in who are more pro-capitalist or pro-business, pro-tourist, you know, open the island up, you know, so you'd have to go to Canada to go to Cuba. When Obama attempted to, sorry to interrupt, I was going to say, when Obama attempted a version of the opening, what did you, what was your reaction to that whenever that was six, seven years ago in our...

15:22It seemed very clumsy to me. And I remember his moral high ground was undercut by the fact that Haitians were not getting most favored nations kind of attention the way they should have. Along with Cuba, they're only a few miles apart. Or Obama did not seem to have anywhere near the kind of standing among the right that he would have needed to make a deal with Cuba. Right. Right. The diaspora in Miami was never going to go along with that. And I think the real question is, will they go if if Trump can can identify a Castro who can you know, he can be sort of the Delce Rodriguez do the Cubans in Miami and that diaspora say, no, the name cannot be Castro.

16:13Or do they say, look, we'll take, you know. Well, I think you can't underestimate the influence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I think that's what I wanted to ask you. He is the sort of his life's work. Right. But he's also the first American politician who really does have crossover appeal, that he does have a constituency on the island and in the diaspora. And I cannot emphasize enough how his speaking Spanish is helpful in that regard. Do you think that Rubio privately thinks the pivot to Iran was a mistake? Like, I don't know. I don't know. Sure, yeah. Who knows? I thought I'd give it a try.

16:58Harold, the question that I really wanted to ask you is more about, like, Trump and how he thinks. And again, you're not— Well, let me tell you one thing. Fidel Castro, one of my great moments in life was meeting Fidel and chatting him up 3 a.m. one morning. and the person he most resembles in the American government is Donald Trump. And I think those two guys would have gotten along great. I think that they would have really been chums and I think that would have helped accelerate the process that we've been discussing. Interesting. I would love to move those chess pieces around and get to be the, you know, the fly on the wall of that meeting.

17:50Yeah, it's true that they do have some sort of similarities, right? Even size-wise. Yeah, he was a big boy. So look, back to Trump. I'm, you know, I'm not a Trump fan by any means, but one thing that I've always liked about him is that he's not an ideologue the way that, you know, the Bush people were, meaning that he obviously doesn't have a problem kind of like improvising as conditions warrant. Jamie, you talked about how he's spontaneous. I think that's one of the good things about him. But he's always been reined in by two things. And tell me if I'm wrong here, but it's been either the polls or the markets.

18:28Now, it strikes me as what's happening now is he doesn't have those guardrails anymore. He's a lame duck and he obviously doesn't give a shit about the Republican Party writ large. So he doesn't really care, I don't think, how much, you know, how badly they're going to do in the midterms. And it seems like he's not as reined in by the markets anymore, at least as he he used to be. Does that strike you as accurate? I I I don't know. I don't know what his filters are. Yeah. Historically, he's been the last person I spoke to. But I but I he does seem to be throwing a bit wider net now in terms of the people around him.

19:11I worry. The thing I worry about Trump right now is that. He may not understand like Bitcoin and all these other bulls**t technological stuff, but as he should and his sons do. I worry that they're businessmen and he's our leader. And I worry that the business, the rock and roll business guys will undercut him in a moral way or mislead him in a moral way. I wish I was there to warn him against that kind of stuff. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that that's you could definitely argue that's what's happening with Wyckoff and Kushner, who are the envoys. And obviously they did a good job in getting the Gaza peace deal done.

20:05But it's not exactly clear to me that they're working in the American interest or even in Trump's interest. I mean, yeah, and I agree with that, except that, remember, Abraham Accords. Yep. Good point. And then now Gaza and then Gaza. That's too huge. That's a good point about Abraham. Yeah. So I wouldn't undersell them. I met him, obviously, Kushner, a few times. You know, he's kind of stiff in terms of socially. But, you know, proof's in the pudding. I'm open-minded. Anyone who has the best interests of the country in mind, I'm all for them. But again, at the same time that Kushner's negotiating with Witkoff, Iran, and all these life and death issues, they're talking about buildings here and there and projects here and there.

21:03And I've never seen the interface of business and politics, people doing—I remember when Trump bought that hotel in D.C. during his— Oh, yeah. The post office, yep. And, you know, that was so tiny compared to some of the stuff that's going on now. It's almost like a period of naivete. No, no. I think that in terms of the lame duck, he's got—he can do a lot in three years, a lot for good and a lot for bad. So three years of war. I wouldn't be so lame ducking him yet. I think that's a fair point. Geraldo, before I let you go, I do want to ask you a little bit about just immigration. You know, you're probably one of the most famous, most influential Latino Americans in the country, have been for decades.

21:57You've been sharply critical of ICE. You've noted the backlash to ICE enforcement among the Latino community. And, of course, this is happening. You know, we've talked about here how the GOP has given up now all of its 2024 gains with Latino voters as well as black voters and even. And real make sure. Yeah. Yeah. My question to you is, did it have to be this way? Because in some ways, Latinos have always struck me as kind of the perfect Republican constituency, right? By faith. Or Ronald Reagan, rather. Ronald Reagan said that Latinos are Republicans, they may not know it yet. Yeah, exactly. Right.

22:35Exactly. I knew that came from somewhere. And Ruben Gallego, the senator from Arizona, has this great quote where he's like, all Latino men want is a big truck. Right. And, you know, Trump did sort of a pretty good job in kind of intuiting that. And also, you've also said that you don't think Trump is anti-Latino, racist against Hispanics. I don't actually either, for whatever that's worth. But my question to you, I suppose, is since the Republicans appear to have given up the ghost on chasing this, you know, rather large voting bloc, is there anyone on the Democratic side you think who could appeal to the Latino community in America for 2028?

23:13That's a very tough question. I mean, I have my own favorites. I like Josh Shapiro. I like Pritzker. I like Bashir. I like Gavin Newsom. I like all those guys. I think that they can win. And they seem more pragmatic than that Cory Booker-type Democrats, Elizabeth Warren-type Democrats. Right. But I think that it is extremely important. Trump sealed the border. Biden should have sealed the border. And, you know, the American people's revulsion at Democrats last time around shows that people recognized how totally dysfunctional the American border became, where millions of people—if you don't have a border, you don't have a country.

24:16But having achieved that monumental success, it was the perfect opportunity, and still is. If I was still speaking with him, this is when you want to be compassionate this is when you want to be pragmatic this is when you don't want to send 3 000 ice agents into fucking minneapolis to uh you know to pursue some lady going shopping or some dishwasher right some activist kid uh um you know it just uh And to crush or attempt to crush immigrants as you round them up and you go to schools and wait for them getting their kid out of school or going to the hospital or going to church, I mean, it's sickening.

25:09And it's, you know, it is impossible to think of this operation, certainly in the Bovino days, as being remotely possible if they weren't targeting a racial subgroup. You know, they wouldn't be doing this if these were a bunch of people from Sweden. It is. They overplayed their hand. There's no question. Right. They had a flag. than that. They were, they were disgustingly, uh, un-American in the way they pursued, uh, these people as if the, you know, Juan and Maria, the babysitter and the lawnmower as this, as if they were, you know, uh, not that those are our enemies. Right. It's, uh, you know, it's pathetic and, and they deserve the Republican party and I'm still a Republican.

26:00The Republican party deserves a real spanking for what they did in Minneapolis and LA at Chicago it was really beyond the pale. On the other hand, you look at a place like Memphis where they really did have an understanding that they were there to supplement law enforcement. That's why there's plenty of good work they could do and can still do. But I think the Republicans forfeited the Latino vote in 2026, and they will pay dearly. It's funny you mentioned Memphis because we just had the mayor of Memphis on the show a couple weeks ago to talk about the exact point that you made, which is that there are ways to work with the feds.

26:41There are ways for the feds to work with local officials to solve actual problems, right, to get rid of gangbangers, to, you know, to do sort of like broken windows policing. But they didn't do that. They didn't do that in Minneapolis and they didn't do it in Chicago. Geraldo, before I let you go, last question. Do you think Rubio's got the juice in 2028? Because I don't think it's going to be Vance. You know, I didn't mention Rubio in my candidates, just because I'm not sure, still, you know, it would be such a big breakthrough. But the thing about Rubio and what he is proving as the lead emissary for the United States of America is that he does have the juice, that he has the intellectual wherewithal, that he has the, you know, he's deeply experienced now.

27:27And he does have this unique

27:33asset, extraordinary, unprecedented language ability to rope in all of Latin America in a way that makes the United States much more approachable and benevolent-seeming in the eyes of fat-speaking people. I think that Rubio may indeed have what it takes. Well, from your lips, Geraldo, I really appreciate you coming on. Honestly, I wish you still had the ear of the president, because I feel like this country would be in a better place if somebody with your compassion and your experience and your principles was able to talk some sense into this president on certain things. But Geraldo Rivera, everybody, Geraldo.com, you can read his stuff there you can see him on news nation gerald thank you so much living legend i appreciate it thank you