501 - Donald Trump’s Endgame

28:26Tim Dillon:left of life and he knows that his place in history is, will kind of be solidified if he just fires a nuclear weapon. He's like, I got to figure out a way to do it. I got to figure out a way to do it. So I think when the Iran stuff comes up, it's kind of interesting. He's like, well, maybe I'll just drop the big one. Like maybe I'll just fire a ballistic missile at him. so our interview now is with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman who wrote the book Regime Change about the Trump administration's first year it's a good interview they do go into some interesting tidbits from the first year of the Trump presidency Vance, Epstein Iran Kirk, etc etc.

29:17So enjoy it.

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31:07Tim Dillon:Armour colostrum is so important. I tell everybody all the time about it. You know, I'll be standing in line somewhere and I'll go, have you talked about Armour colostrum? Have you heard about it? And people go, what exactly do you mean? And I go, well, number one, it's incredibly important for your health, okay? It's really, it's nature's original health hack. Colostrum is packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients to fortify gut health, strengthen your immune health, promote healthy metabolism and fuel fitness performance, revitalize your health from the inside out, function like a human again with Armra.

31:44Tim Dillon:Strengthened immune health is so important. So much is linked to your gut health right now. We've worked at a special offer for my audience. Receive 30 % off your first subscription order. Go to Armra.com slash Tim and enter T-I-M to get 30 % off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash G-I-M. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. One of my favorite things about Rocket Money is that it can track subscriptions. It has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use.

32:18Tim Dillon:I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns. You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The app consolidates checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join rocketmoney.com slash GIM. That's rocketmoney.com slash GIM. Rocketmoney.com slash GIM.

32:52Tim Dillon:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon Show. Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman have the biggest political book of the year as evidenced by the fact that it is sold out everywhere. I was curtly told by a employee of Barnes and Noble that it is sold out and I would have to wait and that they were waiting for the book to be reprinted because the demand was so high. So congratulations to both of you on that. Thank you for coming on the show. So, Maggie, I want to ask you the first question. You know, famously during Trump's first term, you had a ton of access to Trump. And I know you had kind of a rocky relationship.

33:35Tim Dillon:There were times he loved you. There were times he was disappointed in you. What would you say the main defining characteristics, now that you've observed Trump up close, what are the main differences between Trump won in his first term and now the first year of his second term? Is he more emboldened? Is he more confident? What exactly do you think the main defining differences are? It's a good question. Although I think that him loving me was a word I wouldn't go with, but definitely he, you know, he spoke to me and, and, and so forth. This presidency, Tim is, this term is really unrecognizable so far for the first 14 months or so to the last one.

34:24Like he is flying on gut instinct in a way that we've really never seen. And he's always been a gut instinct player, but not like this, you know, in 2017, he came to Washington. He was under investigation. He didn't really know most of his government. A bunch of them felt like he was dangerous and that their job was to stop him. And now he's surrounded by people who many of whom were with him for the four years he was out of power. They watched him make it through indictments and court cases and assassination attempts. And they really believe in him and they want him to succeed. And so all of that has made him much more emboldened.

35:04And he's so much less attuned to domestic policy and, excuse me, domestic politics than he was before. In term one, you could sort of see what was going to slow him down at various points. You know, he would watch negative coverage of like, you know, the border and how policy was being handled and he would change it. It's really not the case the same way this time. It's not black and white, like sometimes, sometimes something changes. But he is operating on what he wants to get done. And he's playing for like a bigger stage, Jim. It's like he wants to be remembered in history in a way that he can't be erased.

35:41Tim Dillon:Just to follow up on that, do you think there's a guiding political philosophy behind him? It is often said that Trump is a populist or a nationalist and that Make America Great Again, you know, Steve Bannon describes it as a populist nationalist movement. Is there anything behind that? Is there a political ideology behind that for Trump? I know for many of his fans there is, and for many of the commentariat, for lack of a better word, there is certainly. But for Donald Trump, in the sense that you've observed him over a long period of time, do you think he has political principles? I think that he has certain core id-like impulses on a few things that he's talked about for a long time and trade would be the main one other countries ripping us off ripping the u.s off on national defense would be a big one um being against the nato alliance would be a big one but generally speaking i i personally and jonathan may have a different answer on this i think there is a difference between the MAGA movement and where Trump is.

36:53Trump is able to change, and I think that's kind of what's hurting him right now. He is able to say two different things about the same issue and has been for a very long period of time. But he was very emphatic in 2016. You know, no more foreign wars, no more foreign overseas Middle East wars. Said the same thing in 2024. And he, you know, our reporting, and we write about this in the book, but there is this belief that Netanyahu just kind of like puppeteered him into the war. And it's certainly true Netanyahu made a case, but Trump really wanted to do this and he believed it would be quick and he's much more hawkish on Iran than a lot of his own advisors.

37:34So there has always been a bit of a divide between the movement and Trump, but his supporters were willing to give him a lot of benefit of the doubt that I think he has lost some now. But Jonathan, I'm curious if you think I'm wrong.

37:45Tim Dillon:Yeah, Jonathan, Ethan, what would you say the main tension points are between Trump the man and Trump the movement? Because now we've seen that the fissures in the movement have grown over Epstein, over Iran, slightly a little bit over some domestic issues as well. You know, Palantir, AI. Where do you think the main tension points are? what does the MAGA movement not understand about Trump? Well, I think you just put your finger on a bunch of them. The first time I really saw the movement cleave away from Trump was actually, I want to say it was 2021. Whenever he did that tour with Bill O 'Reilly, it was like in his off years when he was out of office and he was doing this like stage tour with Bill O 'Reilly.

38:41He used to be a Fox anchor. And Trump starts boasting about the COVID vaccine. And the crowd's just like, boo, you suck. And like you could tell Trump was really like startled because you've got to remember, he doesn't really get exposed to negativity. Firstly, he subscribes to sort of the power of positive thinking. You know, he grew up with Norman Vincent Peale was his pastor, right, Maggie? Yeah, eventually his family ended up worshiping there. But he wrote this book, The Power of Positive Thinking, and Trump really manifests that. He doesn't allow negativity. And when he's on the patio at Mar-a-Lago, he's surrounded by flatterers, right?

39:24They're coming up to his table. He's playing the iPad. He's like playing Pavarotti and James Brown and piping it through. And they're coming up to the table going, great job, Mr. President. You're crushing Iran. Keep your boot on the neck, et cetera, et cetera. And then he goes back to the White House and he's surrounded by flatterers. I mean, what Maggie said is really important because what's happened in this term is, look, every president exists in a bubble. We've seen that. I mean, Biden certainly did. Every president does. But Trump's bubble has tightened. and there's really not many people inside that bubble who are telling him, sir, actually, people really don't like this war in Iran or this problem with affordability is a real issue.

40:11It's not to say no one is doing that. J.D. Vance was a really singular lone voice, actually, in the lead-up to the war with Iran saying this is a terrible idea, this is a disaster, laying out the problems with munitions and all the things that we've come to see, the Strait of Hormuz potentially closing. But even though others on the team had a lot of skepticism about going into Iran, they really didn't voice that in the room with Trump. It was very mild. And look, I think I'm sort of, this is a bit of like cheap psychoanalysis, so treat it as cheap psychoanalysis. But I do think there's an intimidation factor, you know, when you're in the room with Trump, there's a sort of, I don't know if you've been around Trump, I've never met him.

40:56I've never been in the same room with him. It's a really interesting thing, Tim. Like he sort of, he creates, Tucker talked about this actually publicly. It's almost like, I don't want to get like, you know, supernatural about it, but I think Tucker used the word spell. There's something to that. He sort of, he creates, no, he creates an, he creates an atmosphere around him. And like, you know, if you work for him for long enough, you've got to kind of make a decision. You know, if he's saying, you know, the economy's never been better, you know, he talks in like absolute declarative sentences, hyperbole, often completely divorced from reality.

41:36It's not like you're going to sit there and like fact check him. You know, at some point, if you're an age, you sort of just got to let it wash over you if you want to, if you want to stay in his company. And over time, I think that has an effect where they sort of begin to see the world as Trump sees it and they end up occupying a bubble um as well so right um so Jonathan I want to I want to take you in this

42:00Tim Dillon:this goes to both of you Maggie brought up a great point it's a point I've brought up a lot one of the most attractive planks of the Trump platform to a lot of people my age that live through Iraq or Afghanistan was that we should not mire ourselves in unwinnable foreign wars, bankrupt the country, saddle future generations with debt, inflame anti-American sentiment all over the world, destabilize these countries, which send floods of refugees through Europe or here, and that in turn destabilizes the political situation in those countries. And we saw that happen in Iraq, Afghanistan, in Syria, in Libya.

42:51Tim Dillon:All of these were, you know, wars of choice for the United States, and Trump came on the scene saying we've wasted a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of people tragically died in those wars. How do we go from that? take us in whether it's the Oval Office or the Situation Room. Maggie said that it wasn't simply Netanyahu puppeteering him, that he thought this was a good idea. But, you know, in the article that I read in the New York Times that you guys both write, he has the head of the Joint Chiefs telling him this is not going to be easy. You have Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, going to affect regime change is going to be incredibly difficult.

43:36Tim Dillon:We don't know that we can do it. I forget who it was, but someone in the room goes, the Israelis are overselling. Like this regime's not just going to collapse. So he's getting all of that information. What is motivating him to do this? Why would he mortgage his political future on this war? It's a country of 90 million people. They have a very large military. They have defense guarantees with, you know, with places like Russia and China. He's getting all of this information. What is pushing him in that direction? How do we go from 2016, Middle Eastern wars bankrupted our country to 20, you know, 2024, we're invading Iran?

44:28So I'll sort of work backwards a little bit. Maggie and I, as part of the reporting for the book, we obviously asked for an interview with the president. And we ended up getting one at sort of quite late in our reporting process. And we go in and see him on March 16th. So it's the 17th day of the war with Iran. And there was a very, I thought it was a very revealing moment in that interview. we were asking him about presidential power because he had told Tucker Carlson a year earlier that no president has ever been as powerful as me. He made that claim to Tucker Carlson, which obviously a claim that sort of soaked in hubris.

45:09And so we asked him about that and he gets one of his aides, Natalie Harp, to go and fetch this document for us. And she goes off and gets this printout and gives each of us a two-page printout. And he sits there, he wants us to read this document and he starts reading it and the document he says is written by a historian and the first opening of the document says donald trump is the most powerful man who's ever existed on the planet by far and then it goes on to compare him to what he describes to us are the top 10 and it's mal stalin hitler alexander the great the caesars genghis khan attila the hun tamerlane essentially some of the most notorious dictators and conquerors.

45:56Let's be fair to Trump. It's a good list.

45:58Tim Dillon:It's a good list. It's solid. It's a solid list. It's a solid list. So he shows us this list, and there's no moral dimension to it. The metric is about power. And the analysis at the top is the reason Trump is the most powerful American president is because he is in charge of the U.S. military. He's in charge of the U.S. economy. There has never been a military as powerful as the US military, obviously, in human history, but that Trump is willing to use that power. And it really occurred to us in that moment, but it occurred to us throughout our reporting. You know, you asked Maggie about how the second term differs from the first term.

46:36I think he, and he made this very clear by Hannah St. Dobby, I think he wants to be a sort of Napoleonic type of figure. I think he wants to be a capital G great man of history. And I think that he believes that the way to do that is to do, quote unquote, big things on the global stage. And I think the story of going to war with Iran was a story of for sure Netanyahu pushing extremely hard. You know, we have an extraordinary scene in the Situation Room in the book, etching war to Trump and showing this video montage and regime change in Iran. The CIA said it was nonsense. But I think an even bigger part of Trump's own instincts, he thought this was going to be a farce.

47:26He said his experience of going in, authorizing Delta Force to go into Caracas and snatching a foreign sovereign head of state out of his bedroom in the middle of the night in his pajamas and doing regime change in that country and installing a pliant puppet, I think made him feel that he could control events around the world when he really can't. You know, you said it, it's a country of more than 90 million people. This is not Caracas. And the revolutionary regime in Iran is 47 years in the making. It goes much deeper than the Hugo Chavez remnants in Venezuela. So I think he just had an overestimation, a false belief in the power of the American military to shape events overseas.

48:13Completely ahistorical. There's no example in human history of regime change achieved through an air campaign. It's never been done. You always need boots on the ground. So, you know, anyone who has any passing familiarity of military history could have told you that. But he just had a feeling. And we've talked to people who are in the room with him, and he just felt that this was going to work out and that this was going to go well. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, we have a thing in the book where Tucker Carlson, before the war, says to Trump, you know, he's questioning him about it.

48:43And Trump goes, it's going to be fine. And Tucker goes, are you sure? I'm paraphrasing. And Trump says, yeah. And he says, well, how do you know? And Trump says, because it always is. Right, right. I mean, that's the mindset.

48:55Tim Dillon:Maggie, following up on what Jonathan said, The Israelis have the greatest intelligence service in the world, arguably one of them. They do tons of psychological profiles of people. Do they look at Trump and they know he wants to be a great man of history? Are they using his own ambitions and his own personality against him to get him into this war? Can you go into a little bit of his relationship with Netanyahu and how exactly, when did Israel start lobbying for him to do this privately? Was this when Miriam Adelson gave him money? Was this when he was elected? Did it start in term one? When did the clamoring to go to war with Iran begin?

49:41So we write in depth on this, Tam, and I'm glad you asked about that because it's actually one of the areas of reporting that was really interesting to us and that went in a direction that was somewhat different than we had initially anticipated. But I mean, look, he did the strike against Soleimani in early 2020 over the objection of some of his advisors. He was very proud of that. He's been talking about it for a long time. He had this falling out with Netanyahu in early 2021 because Netanyahu congratulated Biden on winning the election. And this became a sore point. And we write about how in the book, Netanyahu wanted to repair the breach with Trump.

50:21He goes to see him right after Butler when Trump has this wound on his ear. And he's showing Netanyahu the ear. And Netanyahu shows up to this meeting at Mar-a-Lago, which is really long, a couple hours. And he's got a list. I'm shortening this anecdote, but he's got a list of like all of the leaders who had or one category of leaders who had congratulated Biden and showed that actually Netanyahu was pretty late by comparison. and it wasn't really that quick. Okay, so Trump kind of laughs and whatever. Trump makes clear to Netanyahu in this meeting, according to our reporting, that at some point in a sort of pull aside, he's going to be a much harder line president on Iran in a second term than he was in a first.

51:08He knew that Netanyahu wanted him to do certain things that he didn't do last time. He will do them this time. And the context for that is, number one, Iran had been lobbying physical threats against Trump since the Soleimani strike against half a dozen or so members of his senior team from term one. Iranians, according to the U.S. government, hacked into the Trump campaign's emails. And so all of this is like part of the backdrop for why Trump is more pissed off and more receptive. It was clear to Netanyahu's top advisor, Ron Dermer, that there was like an 80 percent chance that Trump would join them in a war and in a meeting that he had with Trump after the 2024 election.

51:52So you move forward and Trump is incredibly and this is actually an underexplored piece here. But Trump was like fascinated by the pager attacks that the Israeli military did against Hezbollah. and Netanyahu brings him a gold-plated pager and it's a gift to Trump. And, you know, Trump is very good at telling different people different things depending on the audience. So to some who are anti-Netanyahu, he was sort of critical of the gift. But with others, he was clearly fascinated by it and kept talking about the violence and the violence of the attack. And then you get to June of last year when they go into this 12-day war, which is led first by Israel.

52:31And they were going ahead regardless. It's a massive success. Trump is watching on, it's obviously a much smaller campaign, but Trump is watching Fox News that morning and it's just being heralded as this like military success. And he wants to be part of that. And so he had great faith in the Israeli military because of what he was being told. And he was just much more open to this for the variety of factors that Jonathan mentioned and that I'm talking about, which is he personally felt under siege by Iran. And he believed this was going to go quickly. But like, Tim, one thing that was so striking in our reporting, we talked about this in the book, he was so much more hawkish on Iran than most of his own team.

53:13And I remember as we were reporting this out, so many of his own team believing like late last year, right before New Year's, like Netanyahu is going to come and he's going to come and ask us to do more. And the president's just not having it. And that is so

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54:03Tim Dillon:Function like a human again with Armra. Strengthened immune health is so important. So much is linked to your gut health right now. We've worked at a special offer from my audience. Receive 30 % off your first subscription order. Go to Armra.com slash Tim and enter T-I-M to get 30 % off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash T-I-M. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending, helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. One of my favorite things about Rocket Money is that it can track subscriptions.

54:34Tim Dillon:It has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use. I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns. You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The app consolidates checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster.

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56:11Tim Dillon:Get Wet and Forget at Home Depot, Lowe's, and Walmart. Right. So, Jonathan, let me let me ask you, you know, Tucker Carlson, who's incredibly close with Trump for a long time, campaigned with him, was probably one of his biggest advocates in the media, if not his biggest advocate in the media, has publicly broken with Trump over the Iran war, over Epstein. I mean, Tucker has recently come out and said he would no longer support the Republican Party over this. Tucker has floated the idea on his show that we don't fully understand. And even to me, it is a bit confusing. We don't know much about Thomas Matthew Crooks.

56:58We don't know much about the Butler assassination.

57:02Tim Dillon:There are people that believe that there are elements to it that may have been staged, may have been faked. You know, it's just very interesting that after that assassination attempt, Trump and Netanyahu have this meeting and Trump goes, I'm going to be more hawkish on Iran. And Tucker has floated the idea without directly, but I think he's kind of implied it, that Trump is afraid for his life. And that for whatever reason, after that assassination attempt, he became more amenable to certain ideas. And I think Tucker strongly implied that either Israel was behind the attempt or Israel maybe knew about it or whatever the situation may be.

57:50Tim Dillon:I mean, you're aware of that. Obviously, both of you are aware of that. It's Tucker Carlson is a massive figure in the party. What is your response to something like that? Whether it's that direct accusation or like, what about Trump changed after that assassination attempt? Did anything change? Was he more concerned with his own mortality? Why did the president of Israel fly to him directly after the assassination? Explain to me the dynamics of that aftermath. Right. I don't see, firstly, I haven't seen any evidence to support what Tucker is saying on that. And I personally don't agree with it.

58:28I do think that the assassination attempt made Trump more fearful for his life. There's no question about that. I don't think there was any, I don't see any evidence that there was any Israeli connection to any of that. But we write in the book that Trump, he's not really traveling as much domestically anymore. And there's a lot of sort of fear about that. And when you talk about the closed off ecosystem, I just don't think you can underline that enough as a factor in all of this. when you're hearing primarily from people like Mark Levin and Hannity, and there's an echo chamber around you that is very hawkish against Iran, and they're telling you, you can be a figure of destiny.

59:10You're going to be a great president. You're at the Mar-a-Lago patio. I think that's been a much bigger factor. And in term one, Trump was traveling out around the country a fair bit. He had Twitter. He was scrolling Twitter. He was being exposed to different ideas. And I just, again, you never know what you'd ever know, but I haven't seen any reporting that links those events and that makes me think that there's something there with respect to Israel.

59:38Tim Dillon:Maggie, do you think Trump's demeanor changed? He seemed very, a little bit more reserved in the Republican National Convention. He's sitting there. He has a bandage on his ear. He does seem, you know, slightly more reflective. I've heard from people that know him pretty well that he never really thinks about mortality do you think that assassination attempt and I'll also ask you Maggie about when Charlie Kirk lost his life how did these events affect Trump in your estimation and change him as a person as a leader So, I think you were saying people say that he doesn't reflect on his own mortality.

1:00:17That's actually not our experience at all. And in fact, it's a little different. Starting with one event, Tim, that predates Butler, which was actually a few events. One was when his first wife, Ivana, died, which was during the four years that he was out of office. He was really, really shaken by that for whatever reason. Obviously, that was a complicated marriage, divorce, what have you. But that was the first time that somebody really, really close to him in a long time had died. So that was one. His sister died, Marianne, during the campaign also. And that had sort of a different effect on him.

1:01:00But he is thinking about mortality that absolutely, according to our reporting, I can't get into his mind, whatever, but just in the things he is saying to people and had been saying, it absolutely did play out for him and was something that he was thinking about. He also knows that, like, I mean, one of the reasons that it wasn't totally clear that he was going to run again was because he was talking to people about in 2021 about how old he was. And he only had like six or eight years left potentially, you know, to enjoy a great, I mean, that's, I'm possibly forgetting the exact number, but he was clear that it's not like he's 50, right?

1:01:35And so he had a limited amount of time to enjoy life and that if he ran again, this might be the rest of it. And obviously, you know, he ran. But yeah, I do think that he thinks about his own mortality. I do think that that convention was a strange, muted version of him, at least for a while. And then he started giving his speech. And I think that the crowd seemed bored. And so he was doing, he started talking more like himself. But I think that death and physicality is something that he does think about. And as Jonathan said, according to our reporting, his concerns about safety are indeed why he is not traveling as much.

1:02:15Now, he also doesn't believe he has to. That goes to the whole not comparing hearing about domestic politics that much. But if he doesn't have to, he's not going to do it. Jonathan, tell me about – I think it's hard to over – Yeah. Sorry. I was just going to say to your question – sorry.

1:02:30Tim Dillon:No, go on, go on. No, I was just going to say, to your question about Charlie Cook, I think it had a really profound effect on the image circle. And we have a report in the book. I mean, the way Trump learned about the shooting of Charlie Cook, his son Barron called him. He was in the Oval Office and he gets a call from his son Barron. And Barron was like very upset. You know, he was a big fan of Charlie Cook's. Charlie Cook was almost a family member to everyone in the West Wing. And like, I knew Charlie really well. I mean, I talked to Charlie the day before he died. He was, his loss, you know, there was all this stuff written at the time.

1:03:12And I think it was written with good intentions, but I think it was kind of bullshit, which was, you know, his impact will be greater in death than it is in life and blah, blah, it's sort of a glib way of saying it's really not true. So the thing about Charlie Cook was he was sort of a unique – his abilities were kind of unique in the Republican Party as a political organizer, as someone who had Trump's ear but was willing to kind of push him on certain issues. He was very against the Iran war. There's been all this stuff written after he died about, oh, no, Charlie was very pro-Netanyahu. That's just not true.

1:03:54It's absolutely not true, especially in the last year of his life. He became much more skeptical of Israel, much more. I mean, he was aggressively arguing against going to war with Iran. So he was an important voice. He was a hugely important political organizer. He had a big media presence as well. And he was this sort of connective tissue to a younger part. You talked to him about like your age and your listeners and whatever. But like Charlie Kirk was arguably more in tune with that group of people than anyone in Trump's close orbit. And so I think that loss had a really profound effect on Trump's circle.

1:04:32And it just removed a person who I think was an important voice in Trump's ear as a counterbalance to some of the more hawkish voices that he hears from.

1:04:42Tim Dillon:How does this administration come into the White House crusading for more transparency, talking about declassifying documents related to Jeffrey Epstein? Cash Patel, the FBI director, builds a career doing this, right? Dan Bongino is a podcaster, does the same thing. Trump was always a little bit more lukewarm on that idea. Take us into that scandal that erupts over the administration's refusal to declassify those documents in the beginning and then to also kind of gaslight their own supporters by saying nothing happened. Epstein didn't do anything. there was no organized trafficking of women, underage women.

1:05:36Tim Dillon:Take us into that because that was, from my estimation, the beginning of the end of the MAGA movement as a cultural force because people really started to see, you know, it's the famous line, meet the old boss. I mean, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Take us into that if you can. Yeah, I can take that one. So what you just said, I was nodding as you were talking because I was thinking about how at least even if it maybe it isn't the end of MAGA as a as a cultural movement, but enforce the way it had been. But certainly in our reporting, that was really the turning point when Trump just starts to lose political altitude with his own supporters because he, you know, they were seeing him say something very different than what he had said before, just like the Iran war.

1:06:32But on this one, you know, Trump's got key figures in his government, top officials who you just named, who had been talking about releasing the files, that there was a client list, that it It needed to be put out a client list of predators. This was a cabal that people had gone unprosecuted for years. And clearly, by the way, just as an aside, this was a multi-administration failure in terms of dealing with Jeffrey Epstein after he got a sweetheart deal in 2008 and with Ghislaine Maxwell. But Trump himself was never actually that vocal about it. If you look at what he was saying, it was sort of half-hearted.

1:07:13Yeah, I'd be okay with it. So in early February - Even more than that, Maggie, I interviewed Trump on - Oh, I forgot about that. We used to have an HBO show when I was at Axios, and I interviewed him in 2020. And Trump was saying about Ghislaine Maxwell - I wish her well. I wish her well. And I interviewed her. I said, she's being charged with child sex trafficking. Why would you wish her well? And he was like, oh, I'd wish anyone well. It was clearly something he felt very uncomfortable about. And when he was asked about releasing the Epstein files during the campaign, he was like, yeah, I'd have no problem with that.

1:07:49But you could tell he just he wasn't that into it. But I think that Patel, I mean, Patel was so bombastic about it. I mean, during the campaign, he was like, put on your big boy pants, FBI, you know, release the pet. Tell us who the pedophiles are. And it was this amazing situation where, like, you know, you release the demons and the demons come back to get you. It's like, oh, suddenly you're in charge of the FBI. And, you know, presumably if someone's going to put their big boy pants on, that's you. So he found himself in this extremely awkward position where all the demands that he'd made were now demands that, you know, he ought to fulfill.

1:08:27But, you know, to be slightly fair to to Kash Patel, the problem, one of the biggest problems was the president himself. Do you want the whole thing to disappear and didn't want to go down that path? So even if Patel was interested in doing that, it wasn't really a road that he could walk down.

1:08:46Tim Dillon:Maggie, why did he want it to disappear? Why would the president want it to disappear? Without being able to know exactly. I mean to be clear, Tim, like in the reporting that we did, we didn't learn anything that would change anyone's understanding of what happened in terms of Epstein's crimes, Maxwell's crime, anything about Trump. We were really focused on the administration's reactions. But what is known is that Trump had been close friends with Jeffrey Epstein for years and years and years and years. And he tells this story about, you know, how they had a falling out and the exact reasons why have changed.

1:09:24They clearly did at some point. He has been trying to distance himself from Epstein for quite some time. There are many, many pictures of him and Epstein together. Some of those were in the files that were ultimately released. whether it was that reason, whether it was just that he didn't want to deal with it, whether it was just that he underestimated his own base, his interest in this. And he wouldn't be alone in that. There were top officials in the White House, political officials who did too. They thought this was a passing cloud. Susie Wiles being chief among them, right?

1:09:57Tim Dillon:Susie Wiles completely was taken by storm by this. James Blair, Susie Wiles, a couple of other people. And what we write in the book is that, you know, they had polling from Tony Fabrizio to support that idea that this was a very limited group of people who were interested in this. And Dan Bongino in our reporting really was the one trying to do something of a lapel grab and say, you do not understand. This is not an online story. And Vance. And Vance. And then you get into a situation. Yes, Vance was actually the most vocal inside the White House, bar none. And don't forget, Tim, like, you know, so much blame was put on Pam Bondi for giving that interview where she was like, it's sitting on my desk, which seemed to confirm there was a client list when she got asked about it.

1:10:43And then she shows up at the White House with these binders, which were to give influencers. And her staff, you know, got them from the FBI, according to what people close to her said. They anticipated there would be new information in them. There was almost nothing new in them. But most importantly, they had not been looked at for whether Trump's name would be in them. And so they get to the White House and a White House aide takes the binder and opens it up and there's Trump's name right there. And it's stuff that had been out already. It was like travel logs and stuff like that. But that was the beginning of how this all came to end up in a series of situation room meetings that we write about where, yes, some people did have concerns about the victims.

1:11:24But those specific meetings were almost exclusively about how to handle a PR crisis around a president who didn't want any of this out.

1:11:31Tim Dillon:This question is for both of you. Have you seen any evidence to the or whether it's circumstantial or not? Do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein was affiliated with either our intelligence service or a foreign intelligence service? And is that one of the reasons that we have not seen the rest of the documents or that it has, as Maggie said, it's a multi-administration failure? is it because at some level Jeffrey Epstein and his operation were being protected? I haven't seen any evidence of that. But his network was, I mean, extraordinary. And you've seen that in the documents. He's a very unusual network.

1:12:15But we've not seen anything that, you know, we would need ironclad evidence to be able to say that, you know, he had some affiliation with an intelligence network. We just haven't seen evidence. I haven't seen evidence that makes, that would make me feel confident saying that at all.

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1:15:16Tim Dillon:Talk about the dynamic between Vance and Trump. Vance is famously, I mean, you know, chosen as the vice president because Tucker Carlson tells Trump, if you pick Marco Rubio, forces within the government who disagree with your policies will just kill you because they know Marco Rubio is going to be able to carry out their plans. you have to pick J.D. Vance J.D. Vance is more of an isolationist you know he's you know more of a nationalist they would not kill you to get Vance this is you know like a well publicized thing I know that I reported it I literally reported that conversation Tucker said that too whether you reported it or I reported it who knows really I get it I get it But no, so Vance comes in.

1:16:10Tim Dillon:Don Jr. loves J.D. Vance. Tucker Carlson loves J.D. Vance. You know, so... Musk loves him. Musk loves J.D. Vance. What is the dynamic between J.D. Vance and the President of the United States? Is he respected? How does this play out? J.D. Vance comes on as this nationalist guy. Then what happens? so i think it's a very interesting relationship um because um jd vance actually believes in these policies to a much deeper extent than than trump does um whether it be um anti-intervention you know not going into the wars that you were talking about whether it be um he's more hardcore on immigration for sure much more aligned with like a stephen miller on immigration and we get into that in the book.

1:17:03Trump thinks he's very smart. One of the main reasons he picked him, besides all the advocates that he had, Charlie Cook was, by the way, another advocate, big advocate for J.D. Vance, was that he was good on TV. Trump thinks he's smart. He often talks about how impressive it is that he got into Yale without having a rich daddy. That's what Trump says. Thinks he's handsome. Trump is very much a cast people for certain roles. But the fact that Vance has been really the only one at the senior level who has vocally opposed going to war with Iran and been skeptical of the big military adventures that Trump has taken, that has cost him a bit with Trump.

1:17:46It's irritated Trump at different times. And others who had skeptical views about this effort to go to war with Iran didn't really stick their necks out in the same way that Vance did. Rubio was skeptical, not as skeptical as Vance, but didn't really make any type of case against going to war with Iran that we could observe in our reporting. So I think it cost him a little bit. The other element of that relationship is Trump just enjoys messing with them. And we have a scene in our book where he has Rupert Murdoch over for dinner at the White House. And it's a pretty astonishing moment. You know, it's like a few months after Murdoch in the Wall Street Journal published the story about Trump writing a birthday card to Epstein, you know, in the shape of a nude woman, whatever.

1:18:38Trump says he's going to sue him. But anyway, they have this sort of peace dinner in the Blue Room at the White House. And they're at the table. Murdoch's there and Vance and Rubio are both there at the table. And Trump says, you know, I like them both. They're both great. Rupert, what do you think of JD? And Murdoch says, you know, JD has the potential to be great. And Vance is like, you know, it's awkward, but Vance is like, oh, gee, thanks, Rupert, you know, knowing full well that Murdoch had done whatever he could to stop Vance from being vice president. And then Trump says to Murdoch, and what do you think of Rubio?

1:19:17And without missing a beat, Murdoch says, Marco's brilliant. So I think one of the issues that Vance is going to have potentially is a lot of the donor class, a lot of the people that Trump hears from at Mar-a-Lago, a lot of the more hawkish voices that he hears from on Iran are very anti-Vance. and I still think, based on our reporting, we don't like speculating. I still think Vance is the most likely person to be the candidate. There's no sign that Rubio is building any kind of operation to challenge him. Rubio has told Vance and said publicly that he'll support his bid. So I still think he's going to end up being the nominee, but I think the one thing we could probably say with some level of confidence is that Trump is not going to make it easy for him.

1:20:04Tim Dillon:Right. Final question. I know that you both have to go and I appreciate the time. what revelation um do you think and maybe there is one there might be many that is that explains right now the future of our what our relationship with Israel is going to be in the democratic party and in the republican party one of the biggest tension points is has been the war in Gaza the war in Iran now the war in southern Lebanon it has put a strain on the US-Israeli relationship like no time I have ever remembered I'm 41 and at no time in my life have I seen anything like this Trump had said you know people are starting to hate Israel this was a quote he said his supporters were starting to hate Israel you see specifically among young people but now that has grown with everybody how does our relationship with Israel change because of this?

1:21:03Tim Dillon:Is there, are they cognizant of that in the administration that this has been a very, you know, shifting thing for a lot of people that they are looking at this relationship as saying it's an unhealthy relationship. And is that being addressed on any level? Trump seems to be aware of that. Matt, what is his relationship with Netanyahu like right now? I'll talk briefly and then Jonathan should should take it. And in brief, the things I was just thinking about when you were saying that is that most of Trump's advisers. And again, this goes back to the point that he's much more hawkish on Iran, for instance, than most of his team.

1:21:48They they are looking at what has happened. They are looking at the fact that this MOU has become the paddle they're trying to get out of the creek with. But it's kind of slow going. You know, the oil prices are coming down, but they know that they are running out of time, especially before the midterms. Most people in Trump's world are way more concerned about the future of the MAGA coalition than he is. Trump said something interesting that I was thinking about, Tim, before when you were talking to us when we were in the Oval Office, which was we were asking him about Netanyahu as a wartime partner.

1:22:24And how has that been, given the ups and downs in their relationship? We report in the book that Trump had called Netanyahu a con man at one point, which is like one of the biggest insults in Trump's lexicon. And he was speaking very favorably of Netanyahu. And then he said, and I'm paraphrasing a bit, but it was, he's not afraid of war. And that actually speaks to Trump's psychology as much as anything, but also spoke to what he found appealing about Netanyahu, which was a willingness to do this. Their relationship right now is not great, but it's not great because Trump is finding himself in a quagmire that it's harder for him to admit that he went into pretty willingly.

1:22:59But Jonathan may have a smarter thought on that than I do. I think the asterisk and the nuance is, yeah, like Trump is, we have a report in the book where, you know, he had a phone call, Bibi, Netanyahu last September, where he's like, Like the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call, it was Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff, they're sick of you, you know, berating. He has these eruptions at Netanyahu, but he really hasn't, except for rare exceptions, he really hasn't used his leverage to actually change Netanyahu's behavior. He hasn't cut off the supply of weapons to Israel or done any of the things that, you know, the biggest skeptics of Israel on the Democratic side, some on the Republican side are pushing for.

1:23:37I think the future of the relationship is very uncertain. the US-Israeli relationship. Because what comes after Trump, it's hard to imagine it's a more pro-Israel direction. When you have public opinion doing what it is, when you have younger Republican voters much more anti-Israel, I still think the congressional Republican Party is very pro-Israel. But the younger, newer members coming through, you can see where the trend line is heading. And if J.D. Vance is the Republican nominee in 2028, the Democrat is certain to be very skeptical of Israel. So then you may have a matchup of two Israel skeptics.

1:24:19And I think the Israelis understand that. You can see what they're doing. like Netanyahu said, he wants to bring down the amount of US aid. You're seeing some evidence that they're trying to increase their relationship with India and understanding that they might need to start finding other friends in the world. Because I don't think with public opinion being where it is that this relationship at the moment anyway, has a very rosy picture ahead.

1:24:48Tim Dillon:Interesting. Well, the book is Regime Change. Can anyone get it anywhere? I mean, this thing's sold out everywhere. How do they get it? They're still in bookstores, and they're restocking fast. There's e-book. There's audio. They're doing a big reprint. They're doing a huge reprint, and so it is going to be back soon. There's some copies. You can find them sometimes. Everybody is reading the book, and just as you guys leave, you know, the podcasters a lot is made of podcasters and and the impact they had in the election or the audiences they have you guys are traditional mainstream media journalists who you know obviously work at the new york times um do you fear being replaced by people like me tim you do what you do much better than we ever could mate but uh i think you know i don't think you would want to replace us, mate.

1:25:41Our jobs are pretty unglamorous and I don't think you'd want to be doing what we're doing. So look, on a serious note though, like I often think about this, this is sort of, you know, legacy media is almost this like dirty word. And I understand that that's fine. But for us, the kind of reporting that we do actually require, you need a big institution behind you because often, you know, we have published a lot of information recently. You You talk about the supply of American weapons, which we've spent down in Iran. We have no munitions left, you're telling us. It's very limited. Very limited.

1:26:18It's really disastrous. Well, that's not good. The long-range missiles and stuff. But the point being, sources have taken really, on a serious note, they've taken really big risks to give us that information, publish it. And we, like the infrastructure of the New York Times and having lawyers to defend us, you know, if the president tries to sue us, leak investigations, the technology security apparatus, not to mention the platform. Like Maggie and I actually couldn't do the type of reporting we do as free agents on Substack. That's not to denigrate people on Substack. In fact, I subscribe to a bunch of them, but the type of reporting we do, we actually need a big institution around us.

1:26:55So we're grateful for it, honestly.

1:26:57Tim Dillon:Well, very good. We're hot and cold here on the New York Times. We like them sometimes. We don't like them other times. That's just the way it is. We can live with that, mate. You can live with that. You guys are great. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, Tim. The book is Regime Change, but the reality is me, Joe Rogan, and Barry Weiss are the only journalists left in America. Sorry. Thank you both, and we appreciate it. God bless. Good luck with the book. Thanks, Tim. Appreciate it, man. Bye. Armor Colostrum is so important. I tell everybody all the time about it. You know, I'll be standing in line somewhere and I'll go, have you talked about armor colostrum?

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