USA ... Election 2016
David Cay Johnston talks about Donald Trump

Getting to Grips with the Trump Phenomenon ... The media has failed ask basic questions about the economic thinking — and business record — of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, says Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump.

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Peter Burgess

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The media has failed ask basic questions about the economic thinking — and business record — of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, says Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump.

INTERVIEW FEATURING David Cay Johnston Contributing Editor, Newsweek Also with Robert Johnson Institute President Senior Fellow and Director, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute The economic vision that’s being offered on the campaign trail has been crafted with Trump’s peerless salesmanship. Johnston’s book relies on extensive reporting of interviews, public statements, court records and financial statements to build an argument that Trump’s vision is based on what he believes voter want to hear, but has little relationship to his own — or America’s — reality. Share your perspective

Getting to Grips with the Trump Phenomenon

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New Economic Thinking

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English 0:00i'm here today with David Cay Johnston and we're talking about his book the 0:05making of Donald Trump how did you get inspired to do this book 0:10well I've known Trump since 1988 and when he announced this time that he was 0:16running because he's been talking about it since 1985 I recognized he was 0:21serious 0:23what troubled me was that my peers on the national journalism level we're not 0:27asking the right questions 0:30I mean Trump is is terrific television it's like not just when your 0:34rubber neck to look at a car wreck it's like a car wreck with fireworks and 0:39dancing girls and performing seals and people just can't turn away from it so 0:44journalists weren't asking the questions they need to ask but well who is he does 0:51his self-image that he's selling you comport with reality and what are his 0:56actual philosophies and and positions so i wrote about two dozen pieces about 1:03this and no publisher wanted to do a book 2015 because nobody believed he 1:10would get the nomination although I said right from the get-go I thought he might 1:13and by the time he got it 1:15nobody could do it except someone like this publisher Melville House which 1:20specializes in doing books at high speed and so we got the book out August second 1:25with regard to Trump what do you want to impart to people about him 1:30you talked about what I would call a map between what he says what he might say 1:38we want and what he is 1:41well Donald is a master salesman anybody who's done any kind of sales should 1:46admire his unbelievable ability at sales but he's also PT Barnum you know hey buy 1:53a ticket to see the incredible Fiji mermaid and the two-headed man and so 1:59it's important to understand that he is selling you what he thinks he can sell 2:03you what he wants you to buy and in the Presidential race what he's selling you 2:07as his belief that he's superior to the rest of course he should be President of 2:11the United States as one of his 2:13sons has said they believe that they're genetically superior to the rest of us 2:18and so would be beyond question that he should be President but the problem is 2:25well who is he and what he actually got well there's no evidence that he's a 2:30billionaire none he's somebody who was always borrowing money from his father 2:35borrowing money from banks he's posted i borrowed money knowing i wouldn't have 2:38to pay it back 2:39not paying his bills you don't actually a billionaire to own up a 2:44thirty-year-old jet and a smaller jet a couple helicopters you have a lot of 2:47income but you don't have to be a billionaire and I wanted people to understand that 2:53Donald Trump throughout his adult life has gone out of his way to do business 3:00with criminals 3:02they've been his father's business partner was an associate of the Gambino 3:08and Genovese crime families according to the New York State 3:10organized crime task force and a lot of other law enforcement reports Donald 3:15when he arrived in Manhattan as a young man made a beeline to the notorious Roy 3:20Cohn and through him got connected up with all sorts of mafia figures who Cohn 3:26represented but he went beyond that he did business with a Russian mobsters 3:34just as recently as a couple of years ago he has done business with con 3:40artists and swindlers and perhaps most importantly of all the person who 3:45supplied his casinos with helicopters wasn't somebody at one of the many 3:50breezily well-run well-capitalized helicopter companies it was a mob 3:55associate convicted felon and it turned out that this guy had a second business 4:02he was a major cocaine trafficker shipments of cocaine marijuana up to 4:091,500 pounds of time that he personally handled and when he was indicted Donald 4:17should have run away from him New Jersey Casino Control Act says that the owner 4:22of a casino is required to prove by clear and convincing evidence 4:26that he or she doesn't associate with criminals instead Trump drew this guy 4:32closer and while the case was from Miami to Cincinnati that's where the drugs 4:38went he asked the case be moved when he agreed to plead guilty to either Miami 4:44or New York City where he lived and somehow mysteriously because neither the 4:48defense or the prosecutor can explain this 4:50the case was transferred to New Jersey where it came before a newly appointed 4:55relatively newly appointed judge Mary Ann Trump Barry Donald's sister now she 5:02removed herself from the case but she also had to go tell the chief judge that 5:06she was flying around in helicopters of a major drug trafficker think of that 5:10we have a sitting federal judge flying around in helicopters as was her 5:16husband of a major drug trafficker Trump then wrote a letter pleading for mercy 5:21for this guy 5:22he then lied about it and denied he did it until he was confronted with it again 5:27and he called the man a credit to the community stand-up guy who is a diligent 5:33citizen 5:35well the mules who drove the drugs got 20 years up to 20 years this guy served 5:4018 months and he said he was eligible for parole because he had a job with 5:45Donald Trump and he said he had no money to pay back his fines and debts to the 5:50government but he moved into his girlfriend's newly-acquired 5:54multimillion-dollar Trump Tower apartment now 5:58boy that's something journalists should be asking about on national TV voters 6:03should be asking about and I have been invited to talk about this on national 6:07networks in Australia Japan Canada Britain France and Germany because the 6:11book is selling all around the world including a German language edition but 6:16I have not been on ABC NBC CBS or Fox and PBS edited out every reference 6:22Donald's connections with these criminals every reference you haven't read about 6:27it hardly in the New York Times where I used to work a little bit a little bit 6:30in Washington Post and I've helped both those papers with their stories by 6:33giving documents that I have but the public doesn't know who Donald Trump 6:38really is what 6:39they know is the image he's been selling them it almost sounds like an episode of The 6:44Sopranos yeah well there are some elements of that in there for sure 6:47yes and you look at this man you have is if you're like a social scientist you 6:56have to start with there is an attraction here 6:59yes it is not uniform across the population and 7:03obviously he does things that drive some people away and attract others but he 7:08did get the nomination he went through the biggest what you might call money to 7:13party in the country and blew right through all of the structures that were 7:19designed to inhibit someone from like this from winning 7:22well at the other one level rob this reflects the weakness of political 7:26parties in America and they're becoming almost irrelevant but on another level 7:29Trump understand something that is you know I've spent the last 20 plus years 7:34of my life writing about which is inequality how government is creating it 7:38through policies the tax system that favors people top and in Trump grasps 7:45that ninety percent of americans are not doing well and he knows how to sell them 7:50what they want to hear and he's telling people elect me and I will get you out 7:55of your economic misery I know who I were having trouble and he doesn't talk 7:59about these complex things that are in the real world of government rules 8:04you've never heard of 8:05he talks about easy to understand things it's the Mexicans it's the Chinese it's 8:10the Muslims that's the other into a lot of people that's a simple 8:14easy-to-understand explanation that he can sell and so that's a good important 8:23and good and important part of his base is selling this the simplistic answer 8:28here's the trouble that Donald Trump has no plan or policy to do anything for 8:34ordinary people in fact he started off the beginning of his campaign saying 8:39wages are too high he said it in november and one of the presidential 8:42race wages are too high he was asked about the next day said wages are too 8:46high the next day after that however he appeared on fox news and he said I 8:51wasn't saying wages 8:52I was saying minimum wage was too high because he asked on the Wednesday 8:57morning event about what about the minimum wage people living on there's no 9:02question that Donald Trump has said repeatedly wages in America are too high 9:05so people who think Donald Trump and white house will relieve me of this 9:09economic terror I've been living in where we don't have unemployment 9:14insurance now for lots and lots of people who lose their jobs they're just 9:17we've restricted their eligibility at the state level we people don't have 9:21savings wages haven't grown the the median wage in this country half make 9:26more half make less has been stocked from 1998 through 2014 at about the same 9:32level 28 thousand dollars when you adjust for inflation he has no plan to 9:36deal with any of that 9:38yes but i want to take the other side ok slightly i agree with you that 9:44he has no prescription but the attraction comes from a diagnosis and 9:50it's in one phrase and everything else is a variation on that the system is 9:54rigged 9:54yes and and he's right about that i mean that's the subtitle of one of my 9:58previous best sellers the system is rigged and he's right and you know what 10:02Donald Trump's one of the people who rigged it yes he well a thief to catch a thief as 10:06though is the old saying here is a guy who is trying to inspire us to believe 10:13because he's played on the inside he can now be the ref and stop the inside 10:19players from pulling more wool over our eyes except maybe he won't get he's pulling 10:25wool over our eyes himself well and I think it's very clear he's pulling wool 10:29over eyes for a couple reasons Trump has a very very short attention span and I 10:34know that from having talked to him at lunch with him interviewed many times 10:38incredibly short attention span 10:41he literally doesn't know anything 10:44I he was asked in won the presidential debates by Hugh Hewitt the very smart 10:49conservative talk show host 10:51what's your priority for the nuclear triad he gave an answer with gibberish 10:54he would followed up he gave another answer was gibberish and Marco Rubio was 10:59asked the question and Rubio explained its the ability to deliver nuclear weapons from 11:04submarine missiles land missiles or jet bombers 11:06well I point out in the making and Donald Trump that you had asked him this 11:10question four months earlier on the radio Trump had four months to learn about 11:14it when I met Hewitt recently by chance I brought this up and Hewitt said 11:18yes isn't that amazing in four months he didn't do anything about because he 11:21doesn't know anything 11:22think about how he describes the job of the President does he talk in terms of 11:26what the Constitution says are the duties powers limits he talks like a 11:30dictator he's going to tell Ford and Nabisco where they can build factories he's 11:35going to order you to do this he's going to do that that's not within the purview 11:39of the President and then finally on top of all of that 11:42no legislation and he can't do anything without legislation that he says he's 11:48going to do will move through Congress unless one person allows it and that's 11:52the speaker of the house so who did Donald Trump pick repeated fights with 11:57Paul Ryan the speaker who did he appoint to run his campaign Steve Bannon who is the 12:05chairman of Breitbart a website that regularly attacks Paul Ryan and that has 12:10said and in fact has an article that says Paul Ryan is a secret double agent 12:14for Hillary Clinton now that tells you he doesn't understand how government 12:18works he has no idea how it works 12:21therefore I conclude he can't actually accomplish any of the things he said I 12:26think that you're right in one sense that he may have demonized the 12:32government by picking Paul Ryan 12:35yes but the demonization of the government may be part of what gets him 12:39elected oh yes and then he'll have trouble implementing because of the way 12:43he scarred and antagonize the speaker the house who is that vital know i think 12:47Trump has been brilliant in making the government to be the bad guy here and we 12:52have had this enormous disconnect between Washington and the rest of the 12:56country for going on and building for about 35 years one of my grown children 13:01whose Republican likes to say you have to recognize that in America the 13:05Republican Party and Republicans are two separate unrelated things and at the 13:10base of all that is the campaign finance system and you know Trump says 13:14repeatedly I give money and they do what I tell them I want to do because they 13:18want more 13:18money that's the underlying real problem he's exploiting as someone who created 13:23it benefited from it but I don't see any evidence he's got the capacity and the 13:28skill level and the diligence to fix to repair it systemically yes most people 13:35are interested in the issues about their own lives know Gandhi said the politics 13:39of india our bread salt and water and the politics in America are people want 13:44to roof over there had a car that starts in the morning and ability to 13:48feed and clothe their kids most of them don't want to do and are willing to do 13:52what it takes to have some huge amount of money that they don't need in the 13:56first place they want a pension that's going to be there when they actually 14:00retire and another interesting aspect of this Rob one of things Trump teaches in 14:07his books and his lectures is never trust any workers especially the high 14:10level workers around you they're always out to get you must never trust them 14:14because any chance they get their gonna go get you or I think he's projecting 14:17about himself in this regard 14:19whereas business and capitalism are based on trust you and I make an 14:26agreement i'm going to buy your house in 30 days and i expect 30 days that you're 14:30going to be there you're going to perform and you expect me to show up 14:33with house in good shape as represented and whatever and and the 14:38Democrats need to I think recognize that they are supposed to be the party of 14:44people not a business and they need to represent the interests of people who 14:49are never going to have significant amounts of capital but we want to 14:52encourage them to save and have so they're not living paycheck to paycheck 14:55but higher wages and by the way remember Donald Trump wages are too high in 15:00America one of his principal themes wages are too high 15:03remember the old Frank Zappa line is that a real poncho or is that a Sears 15:08poncho 15:08well are you a real Democrat yeah in terms of ways that touch my life and 15:13people have lost faith in the democratic party again i want to ask you a question 15:18that has kind of haunting me and there probably is a good answer 15:22you talk about the turning point being Ronald Reagan's promises at the time I 15:27remember seeing clips of Death Valley days and this is an actor and 15:31the sky is perhaps a more regal PT Barnum but that's what they think that's 15:40what Democrats alleged he was at the time in 1980 not suited to be a 15:44president of the United States 15:45well Ronald Reagan remember though had eight years as governor of California he had a 15:50record we can establish we know that he said he would never have a state income 15:54tax withholding each week or each paycheck and then as soon as we got in 15:58office he wanted to expand the Highway Patrol so he agreed to do that Reagan 16:04was a very smart guy who played this doddering character in public the 16:10defining characteristic of him was that he had a couple of things he cared about 16:14less regulation lower taxes deal with the Soviets and crumbling Empire by 16:20speeding up its falling apart and care about the rest of it so it's one of the 16:24reasons that we had was a hundred and thirty some indictments of Reagan 16:29administration officials that was the record about Reagan was was a smart guy he was 16:34lazy 16:34that was his principal shortcomings he was he was lazy his own staff has 16:39written about him but people knew who he was because of GE theater in Death 16:43Valley days and all the speeches he given and the fact that he said Medicare 16:47would lead to by now the enslavement of Americans has proven to be absurd that 16:53didn't affect people what they heard was vote for me and you'll be better off and 16:58the solutions that he proposed unfortunately they may be better off 17:01business owners because they now have an incentive to withdraw capital from the 17:06business and spend on their lifestyle we went from successful business owners 17:10only maybe a single-engine plane or a 2 engine prop plane today we have business 17:16owners who have his-and-her 747s and you know more mansions then they can count 17:24so that is not worked out well for the average person and what I'm concerned 17:28about with Trump is that will see more of the same his tax plan is heavily 17:32weighted to very wealthy people his child care proposal isn't much value if 17:39you're an ordinary working American but if you're somebody who's got say three 17:42nannies to watch your kids and you flying around first class 17:45your various houses totally deductible expenses under the under the Donald 17:49Trump plan and people don't seem to be recognizing this is not in their 17:53interests 17:54it's in the interest of people like Donald Trump so you talk about the money 17:59politics system 18:01your son says that broke the Republican Party away from the- it was my daughter 18:05oh your daughter I'm sorry you've got Ronald Reagan 18:10slightly more credible but Trump having that magnetic energy as well right 18:16you've got despair or now like you had in 1980 yes what do we have to fix so 18:23that Democrats and Republicans can represent people and people feel 18:29more connected well the core of all this is the campaign finance system you know 18:33when i wrote about this 40-plus years ago the campaign finance system i 18:39thought these reforms were put forth by liberal reformers were going to be 18:42terrific 18:43they haven't turned out to be that way at all in two states Maine and Arizona we 18:50tried publicly financed elections the voluntary system you have to help to 18:55find it worked much better than anybody thought and the fear that publicly 18:59financed elections would lead to incumbents being reelected no incumbents 19:03got thrown out and one of the great things about publicly financed elections 19:06is you gotta budget we're going to learn how will you manage that budget in a way 19:11where is now or you have unlimited dark money and we know from the emails in 19:16Wisconsin that even though dark money is supposed to be separate independent 19:21committees governor scott walker in the dark money crowd where hand-in-glove so 19:27until we break that system and come up with a new one financed elections that's 19:33the problem i once had a new york state senator let we both landed at laguardia 19:38airport so we took a cab together in manhattan and he told me that in the 10 19:43years he was in the state Senate he said every morning when I was shaving it 19:46would think about what do I have to do for my 10 biggest donors so they'll 19:50continue to support me and not support somebody else and he said in many cases 19:54I knew that they not only would never get it but what they wanted was actually 19:58bad for them 19:59it would hurt them they just couldn't see it but I had to show them i was 20:02doing something or they would run somebody against me they said you know I 20:06can't remember a single time I ever thought about the average citizen in my 20:10district or what should I be doing for them people respond to incentives and I 20:15could sit here and tell you man if I was in the u.s. senator the Congress i would 20:18do this or that 20:19no I wouldn't i would have a staff telling me David today you're gonna meet 20:23with the furthest first survive then try to do good and 20:28yeah you know we gotta fix that we've got to have a system where members of 20:32Congress are directly responsible to people and we have to get rid of gerrymandered 20:36districts we corral in some states all the Republicans or all the Democrats 20:41in a handful of districts need to stop that we have 96% retention rate 20:46in the house representatives with an eleven percent approval rating that's 20:50right little uptick answer is actually that's changed slightly used to be 20:53ninety-eight percent approval rate for people who are running it is slipped 20:56down a bit but not much and you know I've interviewed many many members of 21:01Congress well over a hundred congresspeople and Senators about this 21:05they hate the fundraising they find it demeaning and I'm not surprised that 21:10they find it demeaning but their risk averse that is they're not willing to 21:15say ok let's blow this up and try something new 21:18well it's incumbent insurance. well we need to blow it up for them. it is incumbent insurance at some level 21:22sometimes you have policy to sell with your Challenger may not David thanks for 21:27joining us thank you Published on Oct 4, 2016 The media has failed ask basic questions about the economic thinking — and business record — of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, says Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump. The economic vision that’s being offered on the campaign trail has bee crafted with Trump’s peerless salesmanship. Johnston’s book relies on extensive reporting of interviews, public statements, court records and financial statements to build an argument that Trump’s vision is based on what he believes voter want to hear, but has little relationship to his own — or America’s — reality. Category Education License Standard YouTube License SHOW LESS COMMENTS • 9 Peter Burgess Add a public comment...