What Makes Trump Trump?

In this episode of 'Over Here, Over There', hosts Dan Harris and Claudia Koestler engage in a deep conversation with David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and expert on Donald Trump. Johnston shares his insights on Trump's rise to power, his manipulative tactics, health issues, and the implications of his presidency on American democracy and global relations. The discussion also touches on Trump's tax practices, the potential impact of the Epstein files, and the risks posed by Trumpism in future elections. Johnston emphasizes the need for courage in journalism and politics to confront the challenges posed by Trump and his administration. This episode was recorded before the onset of US/Israeli hostilities with Iran, but all the content is more relevant than ever. 

Please don't forget to like, subscribe, share, and add your comments about this episode below. Why do you think Trump does what he does? How is his administration affecting your life, and what are you going to do about it? David Cay Johnston challenges all of us to uphold our democratic values during these challenging times, and at a minimum, make sure you register and cast your vote in November's midterm elections.

Here are links to David Cay Johnston's resources: 

Wikipedia bio; DC Report; Rochester Institute of Technology Profile

Here are a few of David Cay Johnston's outstanding investigative works in Amazon Books:

‘The Making of Donald Trump’; ‘The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family'

'It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America'

See also David's bio and other resources: Wikipedia bio; DC Report; Rochester Institute of Technology Profile

Transcript

David Cay Johnston (00:03.874)

Donald is the third-generation head of a four-generation white-collar crime family. We have many white-collar crime families in America. And Donald grew up in a household where his father, the second-generation head of this crime family, had a very simple philosophy. You are to win. And win meant get the money. As long as you didn't get arrested, then it was okay.

Dan Harris (00:48.686)

Welcome to Over Here Over There, a global conversation across borders. I'm Dan Harris, and I'm joined by my co-host, based in Munich, Claudia Koestler. You can send us your feedback on the podcast via our website at overhereoverthere.org or on social media. We're delighted to have a stellar guest on today's program, someone we greatly admire for his rigorous intelligence and investigative journalism, which has won him a Pulitzer Prize while at the New York Times.

He's none other than Professor David Cay Johnston, one of the leading experts on Donald Trump and Trumpism, dating from the 1980s, following Trump's business and political career right up to today. He's the author of books on politics, economics, law, criminal justice, and international affairs with such titles as The Making of Donald Trump, The Big Cheat, one of my favourite titles, and It's Worse Than You Think, among others, which line Claudia's and my bookshelves in Germany and the UK. He also has worked at leading newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News, where he was a staff writer as a teenager from 1968 to 1973. The Detroit Free Press, 1973 to 76. LA Times, 1976 to 88. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1988 to 95. And as mentioned, the New York Times from 1995 to 2008.

David is also the founder of the DC Report and a frequent commentator on TV, radio, and podcasts worldwide. He currently teaches law, politics, and journalism at the Rochester Institute of Technology and formerly taught law at Syracuse University. We also greatly admire David's courage and conviction to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when it comes to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. But what makes David extra special is that he can back up everything he says and does to the consternation of Donald Trump and the MAGAosphere. So, it's a pleasure to welcome you, David, to Over Here, Over There. Claudia, over to you.

Claudia Koestler (02:57.294)

Absolutely, a hearty welcome to you, David. It's absolutely great that you join us here at Over Here, Over There. You have watched Trump's evolution over the decades from a real estate figure to a political phenomenon. On a personal level, when did you first realize that Donald Trump could threaten the norms of American democracy? What was a key moment or a story that made you see this is existential, not just political?

David Cay Johnston (03:25.806)

Well, I met Donald at the beginning of June 1988, just for a meet and greet and say hello, and nothing of substance. But about two weeks later, I sat down and had a long interview with him, the first of a number. And in that first interview, I learned that he was a con artist, that he tells you what he thinks you want to hear. He lies without any difficulty whatsoever. He utilized as easily as you and I breed. And that he had this boundless self-view. I mean, if he were not the president of the United States, I would tell you as delusions of grandeur. Well, within two or three weeks after that, I was the first person to write about the possibility he might become president someday. That was in the Philadelphia Inquirer. And as things went along, I began to see how practiced he was at manipulating a government, escaping law enforcement, and escaping accountability. And I knew that he harboured ambitions to be president. Let's go back to at least ‘87, the year before I met him. Nobody took him seriously on that level. But on the day that...Well, then, Trump announced in 2000 that he was running, and it was kind of a joke. He was going to make money off it. But in 2011, you'll recall there was a White House Correspondents' Dinner. And it turned out it was on the very night that Barack Obama was making the decision about whether we were going to go after Osama bin Laden. And Trump had been invited to this dinner, which is essentially a roast of the president. Then the president gets his turn to roast the journalists.

Trump said something, Trump did something that I really was alarmed by. Barack Obama, reading lines from his speech makers said, you know, I'm so glad I don't have to make the kind of weighty decisions that Donald Trump does. And the cameras switched to Trump who was sitting there stone-faced. And he said, " You know, like, will I have to fire Meatloaf? And the whole audience…

Claudia Koestler (05:44.878)

which

David Cay Johnston (05:45.33)

laughter except for Trump, who's clearly angry and frustrated because Donald has no capacity to laugh at himself. Shortly after this, he started claiming Barack Obama wasn't an American and lying that he'd sent detectives to Hawaii and stuff like that. But he announced he was running. And that alarmed me a great deal because, being a con artist and knowing how many Americans lack critical thinking skills, I was concerned. Now, only two nationally known journalists, Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC and me, said he's not running for president. He's running for a new contract for his TV show. And sure enough, eventually he announced, well, I am the only person who should be president. Another alarming statement. But my TV show needs to be more. So, I'm going to withdraw. When he announced in 2015, he came down the escalator with Melania, that's when alarm bells went off for me because I realized the politics reporters who had egg on their face, because they had treated his 2012 campaign as serious when it was a diversion. We're not going to treat him seriously. And I immediately tried to sell a book. agent, got on the, she got on the phone. She's a wonderful agent. Everybody said it's a vanity project. He's going to be gone soon. and I went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I pointed out to a few people the episode of The West Wing where the mythical president, Jed Bartlett, says, well, you know, we weren't supposed to win, but we knocked off someone here and then another primary, someone else. And we won that primary unexpectedly, and look, we're in the White House. And I realized Trump could do this. And I knew that we were being troubled in terms of the news media because the very next day after Trump's announcement, when he, you talked about

to lines of applause, know, murderers and rapists and racist nonsense in Midtown Manhattan, in Trump Tower. I mean, this is the heart of liberal America, and people were cheering him. And I thought, well, he busts in people from somewhere. The next day, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that the people who clapped and cheered more than 40 times on cue were paid actors. They got 50 bucks cash each. And I said to my wife, well, this will be the lead story in every big newspaper tomorrow.

David Cay Johnston (08:10.99)

No, it wasn't in any of them. It was reported. I reported on it. And I was just dumbfounded. I went, " Oh boy, this is not going to be good.” The politics reporters think he's a politician. They don't understand he's a criminal. He's a con artist. And I dropped everything I was doing at that time, and I devoted the next seven years of my life to Donald 24 seven until literally I couldn't sit down at the computer keypad, just became so toxic. I couldn't do it.

Claudia Koestler (08:45.63)

You just called him a con artist. You just said he's a criminal. You've seen him operate close up, you know, and study better than anyone. Tell me, what do you think is Donald Trump's key skill or USP? What is it? Because some people actually that have worked with him or experienced some, some meeting or whatever with him actually claim he's a, he's a moron. He's an idiot, but with a big ego. What do you think is his superpower? Why is he so successful? At least he made it up to the presidential seat.

David Cay Johnston (09:26.218)

Yeah. Claudia, I've covered a lot of con artists in my life. None of them is in Donald's league. And what a con artist does is they figure out what you want to hear. In fact, what I thought about when I first met Trump was that I had just come here to the Philadelphia choir from the Los Angeles Times. And there were these ads on TV back then. Is your husband going to leave you? Is your boyfriend having an affair? Call us, the California psychics. We know we're the real psychics. And of course it's all nonsense. But I listened to Donald the first time we had a substantive conversation. I went, my God, this is exactly what the California Psychic Ads are about. He thinks I want to hear something. So, I ask him a question, and he gives an answer he thinks will make me be pleased. And that's his great secret. So, I wrote a series of bestselling books early in this century, still in print. Perfectly Legal about taxes, The Free Lunch about all the hidden subsidies to big companies and certain individuals, and The Fine Print about monopoly and getting rid of competitive market capitalism and replacing it with monopolistic capitalism. And in those books, I explained why the bottom 90 % of Americans are so unhappy, and they are legitimately unhappy. Their incomes are below what they were in the 1970s, particularly 1973, when you adjust for inflation. And then you add on the fact that they don't have any real tax cuts. They really got tax increases. And then you add to that that in 1973, if you had healthcare, it was on top of your wages. Now, a big portion of your insurance comes out of your wages, and you have all these copays. And if you had a retirement plan back then, it was on top of your wages. Now it comes out of your wages. So basically, in 2016, 90 % of Americans got paid through October compared to 1973, and they had to go two months with no income. And Donald understood that the vast majority of Americans are not doing well.

David Cay Johnston (11:38.766)

And so he tells them, I alone can save you. You know, the problem is you need to make more money, and the swamp in Washington. They're the ones who are responsible for why your economy is so bad. And he talks to people on a visceral level that they understand. Whereas Hillary Clinton is probably the most qualified person ever to run for president of the United States. She'd been a first lady, secretary of state, a US senator. She gets up in front of a crowd and says, " You know, we need to have high-tech manufacturing. We don't want to be making cheap little tchotchkes that we get from China and Vietnam. We need high-tech manufacturing. Those are the jobs that will pay. And I have a 47-point plan. And let me draw your attention to page 15 at footnote seven. And audiences go. Or as Donald would say, I alone can save you. I love you. We love you. Every single rally. We love you. We love the poorly educated.

And most people, they don't understand these policy issues. I mean, I wrote my economics book so that if you had a high school education, you could understand it. They were best sellers. That means that fewer than a million people read them. In a country of 340 million people, bupkis. Most people don't understand what happened to them. They're not interested in finding out what happened to them. And here comes somebody who says, I'll fix it for you.

Dan Harris (13:02.966)

And David, what about Donald Trump's health between the cankles, the ankles and the swelling, the hands, the dementia that has been described by a lot of TV psychologists and commentators? What do you think of Donald Trump's health and how it's affecting his presidency?

David Cay Johnston (13:23.202)

He has a theory that he calls the battery theory. That the reason he doesn't, he never exercises, is, well, life is like a battery and when it runs out of juice, you know, you're done. He's never exercised, at least as an adult. And he's not in good health at all. And he hasn't been for some time. During his trial and during some other events, he often nods off. And if you pay attention, you'll notice he tends to nod off about an hour, 90 minutes after he's eaten.

That would indicate that he may have diabetes. I mean, there's no public record supporting that, but it's common enough. His swollen ankles are indicative of one of several medical problems, none of which are good. More significantly, there's a lot of videotape of him walking. Now, I'm partly disabled from an injury I got when I was only 22 years old. And if you were to walk behind me in an airport, you might notice I don't, I walk fairly straight, but not quite right. I am a little… I limp a little on one side. Donald can't walk in any close to a straight line. When he was meeting Putin in Alaska, it was a zigzag down the carpet. There's footage of him from just the last few days where he's really way off base in terms of his walking. And that would suggest both physical and neurological problems.

Now he explains away his sentences that go awry, what we used to call word salad, by calling it the weave. You know, I get to this point, and I go off to all this other stuff, and then I come back to it. Well, sometimes he does, but there are a number of videos where he clearly doesn't understand the question, and journalists revise, repeat, and fix the question.

Donald claims to be the world's greatest expert on 22 subjects. On one of those subjects, I have a global reputation. I've been brought into lecture on every continent but Antarctica about tax policy and taxes. Donald doesn't just claim to be the leading expert on taxes, as he does on the 21 other subjects. He says no one in the history of the world knows more about taxes than I do.

David Cay Johnston (15:36.172)

Well, under oath a few years ago, Donald was asked, so Mr. Trump, what do you know about accounting? I don't know anything about accounting. Don't you know anything about accounting? No, I leave that to the bean counters. Lawyers questioning him spent a dozen or more questions, several dozen questions actually, tying him down to make sure there was no escape route from his claim, his assertion that he knows nothing of accounting. Why does that matter? In order to do what I did at the New York Times, I changed the way journalists report on taxes. I had to learn the essence of accounting. I learned it well enough that for eight years I had an appointment to teach in the Graduate Accounting School at Syracuse University. I wasn't teaching accounting, I was teaching regulation, but I learned it that well. I've got several plaques at home from accounting schools and others for my coverage of accounting.

The reason that's important is that you cannot understand tax if you do not understand accounting. They are completely intertwined. They are yin and yang, and Donald doesn't know anything about taxes except how to cheat and crudely. By the way, you know he was tried twice. I wonder if you two know this, Donald Trump was tried twice for income tax fraud

Dan Harris (16:57.804)

I think he was talking, yes, I think I know one of them, yes, yes, but I'm not sure about twice.

David Cay Johnston (17:02.26)

It was a civil case. These were civil cases. They were over the same tax return. He was tried by the city of New York and the state of New York. And he fabricated a nonexistent business. He had no receipts, no records, no revenue. But he took $600,000 in tax losses, more than $600,000. And the judge in one of the cases excoriated him and said, " You know, you can't do this.” He's lucky he wasn't referred for prosecution because his lawyer and tax accountant, Jack Mitnick, was required to testify. And Mitnick testified about the tax return, which didn't have what's called a wet signature. That's when you sign with a pen. It had a photocopy signature of the tax preparer and of Trump himself. And Jack testified, " That's my signature. But neither I nor my firm prepared that tax return.” That's a declaration that it's a fraud, that it's a forgery. And I'm shocked that Trump was not immediately referred for criminal prosecution. But instead, the judge gave him the maximum penalty he felt he could, and Donald had to pay some money.

Donald, that's Donald's kind of tax cheating. And when the Democrats put out six years of Trump's returns, because they came out on December 30th or 31st of 2020, there was no news coverage of it. All the better reporters were away, and the juniors who were in charge. It showed that Trump had continued years later to create non-existent businesses and to file returns for actual businesses that couldn't possibly be true. Revenue and costs zeroed out to the penny. And that's never happened, never happens. That's ridiculous. He's filed fraudulent tax returns his whole life, but they're crude. And yet he never got caught. And the reason the IRS didn't get him is, A, we do very little auditing of wealthy people. There's been a collapse of auditing.

David Cay Johnston (19:15.138)

Republicans have been demanding, and they've been cutting the ranks of auditors left and right. Secondly, because he's in real estate, even if you audited Trump and found he had cheated, he would still owe negative or almost no income tax because of his real estate paper losses. So, to the IRS, that would be data that would not show they had wisely used their auditing resources because we mismeasure the success of audits. Donald understands that and how to exploit it, and he does.

Dan Harris (19:47.724)

And David, what is Trump's tax status now? There's been so much controversy. You have been instrumental in opening up that issue with Trump and forcing him to release his earlier tax years. But what are his tax records like now? What do we know?

David Cay Johnston (20:09.742)

Under American law, civil tax fraud has no statute of limitations. Criminal tax fraud does, but civil does not. One of the things we don't know is that Donald had a huge refund pending. The reason he wouldn't release his tax returns, except for the one that I got the first two pages of back in 2017, and which I believe came from Donald or came at his direction, was a refund.

that he was due. And we don't know if he got the refund. You know, I don't know why now that he has control of the Treasury Department, he hasn't told him to release the money, give it to me. But we don't know. Because under something called Section 6103, 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, taxes are secret. Only you and the government know.

I'm sure the Donald continues to be a tax cheat. The Democrats, when they control the House Ways and Means Committee, put it out, made it eminently clear that Donald is a serial, blatant tax cheat.

Claudia Koestler (21:14.639)

expert and text loopholes and probably also.

David Cay Johnston (21:18.668)

Cheating. No, no, no. We're not. I mean, Donald takes full advantage of the lawful things, many of which shouldn't be in the tax code. For example, you give away a stock that's grown in value. If you sold it, the maximum tax you can pay is just under 24 percent. But if you give it away and you have earned income from your job, you get a deduction worth 37 percent if you're rich.

Why should you get a 37 % deduction for a tax you're avoiding at 23? Donald takes advantage of those sorts of things. No, it's creating non-existent businesses, putting in accounting records that can't possibly be true. That's cheating. And if you do it once, it's the policy of the government not to prosecute you. No matter how serious it is, they will pursue you civilly. Because it could be a mistake. But if you do it as Donald did for at least seven years, then we can prove it because we have those seven years of tax records. Excuse me, that's criminal conduct. That's what you belong behind bars for.

Claudia Koestler (22:27.022)

But is he too big to fail? Is that one of the reasons that...

David Cay Johnston (22:32.31)

No, it's the rules under which the IRS selects audit targets and how they judge themselves internally, the lack of audit resources. Remember, Donald has over 500 companies. Now there are people with many more. I talked to an IRS auditor once who did an audit of a guy in New York who had over 6,000 companies, all completely owned by him, and still managed to establish that there was tax cheating and to get a significant recovery for the government. But we don't have the resources and talent. In fact, the IRS has said in testimony to Congress and written documents that it does not have the expertise to dig through many of the tax avoidance vehicles, many of which I'm confident are, in fact, tax cheating vehicles that are out there and are being marketed. You know, it was back when I was exposing tax shams, sham tax shelters. There are legal tax shelters. These were shams. That Professor Schmalbeck, who's a well-known lawyer and business law professor and dean of one of the business schools in the South, called me the de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States. And I got a bunch of people prosecuted who the IRS knew about, but they weren't prosecuting them and basically shamed the IRS commissioner into approving, referring them for criminal prosecution. And 14 of the 15 people he referred were convicted.

And some of them got such long sentences, they're now dead, they died behind bars. There's rampant tax cheating in this country, and we're not treating it seriously. If you're a wage earner, if you're a retail investor, you basically can't cheat. But if you own your business, as Donald Trump does, lock, stock, and barrel, you can cheat with impunity. And unless you're audited, the government accepts your tax return as filed.

Dan Harris (24:27.054)

David, can I ask whether we think Trump's a moron, an idiot, or has some special superpower? Why does he cheat? Why? What causes him? Is it because he's not capable that, you know, he doesn't have the ability to do things the right way that he has to cheat? Why does Donald Trump always seem to cheat and lie?

David Cay Johnston (24:47.732)

It's who he is. This is the very nature of who he is. Donald is the third-generation head of a four-generation white-collar crime family. We have many white-collar crime families in America. I teach one of the subjects you didn't mention in the introduction, criminal justice, here at RIT. white collar crime costs Americans, depending on which study you're looking at, between 10 and 20 times as much as blue collar or street crime. But our law enforcement resources are heavily focused on street crime, burglary, robbery, rape, arson, murder, grand theft auto, those kinds of crimes, instead of on white collar crimes. And Donald grew up in a household where his father, the second-generation head of this crime family, had a very simple philosophy. You are to win, and win meant get the money. And as long as you didn't get arrested, then it was okay.

As long as you're not prosecuted. And Donald was taught by the notorious Roy Cohn, Senator Joe McCarthy's attack dog. If law enforcement ever comes after you, you attack law enforcement. They're corrupt. They're dishonest. They're the ones who are doing the evil. You're as pure as the driven snow, and you never concede anything. You don't concede a comma. Look how Trump behaves as president. He is absolutely perfect. He's acknowledged publicly to a single error in his public life. One, and it was within the last year, he said the only mistake he ever made in his life was he shouldn't have left the White House in 2021. Which, by the way, I predicted in 2015 that if he got to the White House, he would never leave peacefully. So, to Donald, this is what you do. You know, it's like, thinking that, you know, why does Hugh Hefner pursue young women and create a whole business just so he can have hordes of them in his bed because it's who he is, and that's who Donald is. He's a con artist, he's a thief, he's a tax cheat, and he of course, to make all of this work, he has to claim he's the world's greatest lover, he's the greatest expert of all time on these 22 subjects, he knows more about ISIS than the generals do. And he knows more about nuclear weapons than anybody else because his uncle was a professor of physics. Give me a break. But you know what? Tens of millions of Americans either believe that or at least don't disbelieve it.

Dan Harris (27:27.63)

That's the important thing; they may not disbelieve it. That lets them off.

Claudia Koestler (27:34.328)

Take it for granted, or at least accept it or whatever. But how do you actually deal with a person like that if you are a politician, a high-ranking politician from another country? Do you flatter him? Do you oppose him? What would you suggest doing? What's the best way forward? Not to sell out completely, but to come across and bring across your agenda as well, and have a mutual and good relationship.

David Cay Johnston (28:07.02)

The answer I'll give you to that is the first time I have a law student who tries to bluff his way through an answer because he didn't do the research, I stop them, and I say, listen, there's an answer to this. If you weren't prepared, it depends. And so it depends on the circumstances. So notice when it became clear that there was an opportunity after the Alaska meeting to shift Trump on the Ukraine war where he was totally with the Kremlin. European leaders dropped everything, went straight to Washington, met with Trump in the White House, and buttered him up left and right. They weren't at all critical of him. They buttered him up because they want to move him into supporting Ukraine. And by the way, know, the Europeans have put up more money to defend Ukraine than Americans, contrary to Trump's inflated and nonsensical claims.

And we're not giving money to Ukraine. We give them a tiny bit of money. What we give them are weapons we build, including electronic weapons, and give them to them, which means the Ukraine War is an American jobs program and a European jobs program. So, there are other occasions when you got to stand up to him. You got to stand right up to him and make him look foolish if you can't. Donald has no capacity whatsoever to laugh at himself. That's the point of the gridiron dinner that Obama, when he said, you have to fire meatloaf. What a weighty decision. And he's literally in his mind deciding, are we going to kill Osama bin Laden tonight? The circumstances depend a lot. And Trump is so ignorant and gullible that, you know, he gave this photo op to Putin in Alaska. Putin arrives on his plane. There's a red carpet laid out by American soldiers in their uniforms on their hands and knees that goes right to the stairway. Trump walked across the tarmac for about 50 feet, you know, back and forth in a zigzag way until he got to the red carpet. And then he puts Putin in the beast, the presidential limousine, and gets this photo op that Putin exploits like you can't believe. Then, Putin doesn't do what Trump wants.

David Cay Johnston (30:29.93)

There's a meeting in Shanghai of something called the SOC. And at that meeting are President Xi, Kim Jong-un from North Korea, Vladimir Putin, and Prime Minister Modi from India. And they humiliate Trump. They deliberately do photo ops that have Xi with Putin riding in a limousine in the exact same positions that were in the presidential limousine. He does it with Modi. Modi does it with Putin.

Donald can't cope with that kind of humiliation. He doesn't know what to do because inside, he's an empty vessel. There's nothing there. He is this emptiness who tries to fill the void of his interior life with grandiose claims of wealth, of being this great lover, of all-knowing power. And it's a vessel you can't fill, no matter what he does. So, how you deal with him, it depends on the circumstances. But everybody should be very worried because he's not; he doesn't know what he's doing. He is disrupting all sorts of established norms for no good reason and causing permanent damage. know, American farmers under Joe Biden in 24 sold something like $13 billion of the soybeans to China. This year, China has bought no soybeans, and they've made it clear they're never buying American soybeans again, at least as long as Trump is around. What are the soybean farmers? He's got legislation now or will be introduced shortly to, you know, give the farmers money.

Classic corporate socialism that I exposed in my economics books. But what are we going to do next year? Are we just going to keep paying farmers to grow crops that nobody buys and let them rot in the field? Are we going to just pay them to stay home, which is not what they want to do? They want to farm. know, there's no forward strategic thinking about this. Vladimir Putin is not a great strategic thinker, very good tactical thinker. But Donald isn't a tactical, short-term, or strategic.

Dan Harris (32:48.492)

You're listening to Over Here Over There with your hosts, Claudia Koestler and me, Dan Harris. We want to thank some of our partners and friends who helped make this podcast possible. Tim and Catherine Mountain at Evenlode Films and Productions, and Chris Davis at Chris D Projects Web Design. Check out our website at overhereoverthere.org and our social media channels. Please don't forget to like, subscribe, smash that notification bell, and share this episode. We'd really appreciate it. Now back to our show.

Dan Harris (33:24.408)

David, we were going to call this episode exporting chaos because in the first term, the U.S. experienced chaos pretty much domestically from the Trump administration. But in the second, his second term, he seems to be exporting that chaos to the rest of the world through tariffs and all his different actions against international institutions. But what do you think is going to be the impact on Western democracies? It will undermine them, these actions, this exporting of chaos?

David Cay Johnston (33:59.214)

Yes, all over the world we're seeing this happen. Remember, he said he would solve the Ukraine war in one day. He wouldn't even have to be sworn in for a new term. He said he'd settle the Gaza in one day. You know, nothing's happened. And even what you're seeing about Gaza right now, I think, is going to all turn out to be what the software people call vapourware. It will evaporate very quickly.

But look what's happening to the US. China has for years tried to create a trading zone in Asia. I've written about their plan to do so. It was a plan competing with the Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership, of which I was a vociferous critic in certain elements. We should have a trade agreement, but we shouldn't have a trade agreement that insulates monopolists and allows high prices, and that allows foreign businesses to sue in the US over speculative losses, and a lot of troublesome provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. China, after being rebuffed by everybody in Asia, is now working very hard to put together a whole new trading zone. And where the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Mexico are our biggest trading partners, by the way.

China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, and India to get together, or even a number of them to get together and create a new trading zone. They just run around the US. You know, hey, what do we need the US for anymore? We've got all these things. We can make things. They need us. And he's doing something as dumb as when the British people voted for Brexit. They listened to Nigel Farage and the other racists, who contended that they'd be better off. And as we can all see, it's clear in the data now that the United Kingdom is getting poorer slowly over time because it made a mistake. And then they, you know, it was a wedge opening where they might've been able to go crawling on their knees back to Brussels and say, please, please, we made a mistake. And nope, that didn't happen.

David Cay Johnston (36:07.254)

Well, Trump is doing just permanent damage, and no one is doing more to make the 21st century, the century of Chinese supremacy, to create a Chinese hegemony than Donald Trump. He doesn't know or understand that because Donald creates his own reality. And this goes to your original question, Claudia, about this. Donald, just this is the way it is. You can see lots of videotapes where he'll say something. He'll say, then say the opposite, and then he'll deny he said the opposite. Timothy Snyder, the professor on authoritarianism who left the United States for his, he felt his own security and safety, and is now at the University of Toronto, has a similar, but slightly different take. He says, Trump lives in a fictional world in his head, which means that just like a novelist who says, " This scene isn't working”, or this thread in the plot isn't working. You just rewrite it. And that's what Donald does. He just rewrites the scenario. And if you don't accept his rewrite, you don't accept his new created reality, well, fake news.

Claudia Koestler (37:17.742)

Absolutely. David, but with the midterms and the 2028 election looming, there is still time for more significant damage to American democratic institutions. But looking ahead, what do you see as the greatest risk between now and 2028, both domestically and also in terms of US influence abroad, if Trump or Trumpism remains ascendant?

David Cay Johnston (37:44.642)

Donald, like all fascistic leaders, Donald is meeting a playbook, the seven big fascists of the 20th century in Europe, Spain, Portugal, the originals in Italy, Germany, et cetera. They all did the same thing Trump was doing. You bring in family members right at the top because you trust them. That's how crime families work. Then you bring in. Toadies that are incompetent. You want them to be incompetent. And you don't want the government to work. Mussolini did not make the trains run on time. That's just a myth. Not true. The Germans lost World War II in part because instead of building 10 models of battlefield transports with interchangeable engines and transmissions, they built 1,400 different ones with well over a million parts that weren't interchangeable. Stupid things like that, because they were incompetent. And you're seeing utter incompetence in the US federal government. That's starting to cause economic damage now. And even when we get back to the government being working again, I don't know that we can trust the data because Trump fired the highly competent technician who ran the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, got a problem with zone making in that there are going to be growing numbers of people, so we will pull back from him. How many? Well, maybe not enough. The second thing is we're fortunate that elections under Article 1 of the Constitution are controlled by the States unless Congress sets new rules. Don't be surprised if there's an effort by the Republicans to take over elections from the states and the counties. That would be devastating. I've counselled all the way along that the single most important thing to do is get people registered to vote, follow up to make sure that they're not thrown off the rolls, and then, and this is the crucial element, get them to cast ballots. So when Governor Snyder of Wisconsin, who was very anti-union, anti-public worker, was facing a recall election, the Koch brothers and others poured in money to save him because they hate unions and they want to pay workers less.

David Cay Johnston (40:07.65)

The Koch Brothers literally once sent out a manifesto to their workers telling them why they should be glad the Koch Brothers are here, in which it said that you should have lower wages. The Democrats responded by trying to outspend the Republicans on television ads. For 10 % of what they spend on television ads, they could have organized people to drive people to polls on election day so that somebody shows up at your house, Claudia, and says, hey, we're here to drive you to the polls to make sure you vote today. And they could have paid people a couple hundred bucks each to do that tank of gas. No, they bought TV ads. I mean, the Democrats have been frankly pathetic in many ways. Now, Trump only won by a very thin margin, right? One of the narrowest margins in American political history. He does not have a mandate. He didn't even get 50 % of the vote. But the Democrats, if they don't get control of the House, which shouldn't be difficult to do, then Trump will just further expand his powers. If they can get control of the Senate, as well as the House, they can block everything he's doing, they can order investigations, and they can find out what's happening in various places. There's one other very troubling element, and that is John Glover Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, has been using what's called the shadow docket to help Trump. So various judges, federal trial judges, and appeals courts have said, no, Trump, you can't do this or that. They get the Supreme Court, and the court says, well, the litigation may continue, but we're going to allow the president to do what he's done in the meantime. So, you're fired as head of this federal agency. You aren't going to have your income anymore because of X, Y, or Z, ignoring the principle of irreparable harm. If you lose your job, there's irreparable harm, and instead going with the government. And in doing so, they're empowering Trump and encouraging him to be more and more aggressive in what he's doing, such as his illegal deployment of troops onto the streets of the U.S. And we need to be deeply concerned about what's happening in the courts. And it's very unfortunate that Joe Biden was unwilling to expand the Supreme Court. I've long argued that instead of nine people, there's no, the constitution says Congress will make the Supreme Court whatever size it wants. It's been different sizes over the years. It should have been expanded to 13, 15, or 17 members. And they should have been limited under a constitutional amendment to one term of 18 years. Another important principle here, the law will always be behind society.

Dan Harris (42:49.87)

Totally agree. Totally agree.

David Cay Johnston (42:57.646)

It has to be because law grows from human experience. Leonardo da Vinci figured out how to build both an airplane and a helicopter in his mind, but he had no materials to build them, nor to fuel them. So, no one said, oh, well, we need to start writing aviation law. We didn't get aviation law until we had actual aviation. This is critical to the law. We don't have laws on how to deal with a dictator in the White House. Well, we have some, but not enough.

And so, the courts are not going to be the ultimate solution to these problems. It's the voters. Hey, Americans have the right under our constitution to vote, to throw the constitution away. They want to, or to make it irrelevant, and to have a dictator. If we're stupid enough to do that, you know, we're stupid, but we shouldn't have that happen because people didn't turn out to vote. And that's why you're seeing these very aggressive efforts to take away the franchise, to not allow service members serving overseas to vote. How offensive is that to the notion of military or other US government service? require married women who got married and adopted their husband's last name to have to go through a heavy process to be able to vote, which by the way, I think will hurt the Democrats a lot more because it's, you know, evangelical Christians are not among the women who say, I'm marrying you, but I'm keeping my name.

Dan Harris (44:32.056)

Exactly. Speaking of irreparable harm, which you mentioned there, how can we not mention the Epstein files here? And would that be enough? I've heard you say on previous podcasts that that might be the one issue that stops his train.

David Cay Johnston (44:51.206)

Yeah, I believe irrefutable proof like photographs and videotapes of Donald Trump having sex with 12, 13, 14-year-old girls should end his presidency. I will tell you that a number of people I know, including journalists whom I deeply respect and some politicians I respect in both parties, say, no, no, the MAGA people will accept that. As one person said to me, they'll just say Donald repented of those sins, and they'll forgive him. I don't think that's true. I don't think that Americans are that callous. You know, he can get away with Stormy Daniels and Marla Maples being his mistress when he was. I was the first person to discover Marla Maples.

Claudia Koestler (45:38.062)

And he got away with grab them by the pussy, you know, those recordings.

David Cay Johnston (45:42.092)

Yeah, well, actually, his support among women voters rose after that tape came out. It went up, which says a lot about how people incorporate when they're the discriminated-against group. It's very disturbing. But I believe that irrefutable proof will destroy his presidency. And of course, that means we then get JD Vance.

Here's where journalists and litigators, I don't think, are doing their job. The reason I keep calling for the financial records is that if Jeffrey Epstein was a Wall Street genius, and that's why people like Les Wexner gave him all this money, then there are trading records. When the Madoff Ponzi scheme broke, what did we find out? There are no trading records. I mean, there's minimal trading, but nothing that would justify what he was doing. That tells you it's an extortion racket. Secondly, when the FBI raided during Donald Trump's presidency, Epstein's properties, there was an inventory of what they found. It doesn't have irrefutable evidence, but if you are raided by law enforcement, you either get back your originals or you get back copies of the evidence that was seized. Either they return it to you outright, or you get a copy, or in some cases, you get back the originals. Well, that means the estate of Jeffrey Epstein should have all of the Epstein files.

If they don't have them, it means that they have legal standing to go to court and say, we need these files. Because remember, there are lawsuits being brought by the women who were girls when they were raped. So, Congress needs to be pushing this. They need to be pushing the issue raised by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, that there are suspicious activity reports, banking reports, on this looks like money laundering for more than a billion dollars of transactions, especially with Russian banks or banks known to do Russian money laundering by Jeffrey Epstein. And now we have Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, who lived next door to the former Les Wexner, later Jeffrey Epstein mansion in Manhattan, which is supposedly the most expensive house in Manhattan, and he told about seeing this massage table and Jeffrey Epstein saying to him as his neighbour, hey, yeah, you know, you want to get the right kind of massage here, wink, wink. And Lutnick said to Fox News, " This guy was running an extortion racket. He's the greatest extortionist ever.”

Claudia Koestler (48:15.788)

Wow!

David Cay Johnston (48:16.878)

Of course, that's what he was. And Lutnick should be sitting under oath in front of Congress explaining what he said. He'll evade left and right. But the Democrats should really be pushing this. And so should Republicans. The Republicans have lost their spines. They are Quislings, Quisling with Norwegian collaborationist prime minister when the Nazis controlled Norway in World War II, who was tried and executed right after the war. They need to stand up because the world is going to go on, and this is not good for the Republican brand. But as Mitt Romney pointed out, and remember he was the presidential candidate of his party a little more than a decade ago, millions of people in my party, the Republican party, don't believe in democracy.

And that's really the core issue here. And the Epstein case, I believe, is crucial to sustaining our democracy. People will look the other way for a lot of things, but seeing a photograph of Donald Trump being filleted by a 13-year-old girl who's naked or who is, as we have testimony by a young woman.

who basically said she was resisting being raped by Donald Trump when she was a virgin. And Trump saying words to the effect of, know, what's the matter with you? You want some pimple-faced, incompetent 14-year-old boy to take your virginity? Although those weren't the words he used. Videotape of that would I believe, be very profound. And one of the big questions, of course, would be faced by the networks is are you going to air that?

Dan Harris (49:58.102)

Yes, yes.

David Cay Johnston (49:59.638)

Are you going to blur it and air it, or are you going to be cowed by threats that Trump will take away your broadcast license? But I just, I may be wrong, Dan. I don't believe that Trump can survive that. And if he can, boy, the American people are a lot less moral and decent than I want to believe.

Dan Harris (50:20.972)

I just want to follow that up, but technically, how do you think that irreparable harm will come to him via the, say for instance, the 25th Amendment, impeachment, or resignation? How do you think it'll go?

David Cay Johnston (50:35.924)

I can't imagine Donald resigning, but I can imagine JD Vance and his backers like Peter Thiel, who's focused on the Antichrist for whatever reason, invoking the 27th Amendment, 25th Amendment, to remove Trump requires half the cabinet to go along.

Dan Harris (50:51.502)

25th Amendment

Claudia Koestler (50:52.322)

Yeah.

David Cay Johnston (51:00.277)

Impeachment for sure and the issue in impeachment isn't impeaching him at the Democrats control of the house it's the issue of 67 votes now there are two things about that I talked this to my law class just yesterday impeachment trials in the Senate are two-thirds of the members present means a bunch of Republicans could decide not to walk up to Capitol Hill that day and then the number voted voting to convict wouldn't have to be 67 to be knocked all the way down to and Republicans to avoid taking a vote while still letting Donald Trump be pushed out. But yeah, if you cannot convict upon impeachment a serial child rapist,

And Trump, to be clear, says, I never did any of this, it's a hoax. Well, then, release the files. If that's the case, they're going to show that you are being wronged here. And I'll be the first person to get out there and say, boy, was I wrong about that. I completely screwed that up. It's a black mark on my career that will never go away. I'm not worried about that.

Dan Harris (52:07.15)

I've got to ask you this, David, because it's Nancy Pelosi's question as well. I mean, does everything pretty much in US foreign policy lead back to Putin? What does Putin have on him?

David Cay Johnston (52:21.186)

Putin no doubt has kompromat on Trump. Exactly what it is, we don't know. You go to Moscow and stay in the government-approved hotel, they got cameras. I used to go lecture in China, teaching investigative reporting because the communist regime there wants investigative reporting at the county and city level. They don't want it. Maybe at the provincial level, they don't want at the top, but they want to know what's going on down below. You know, I understood perfectly when we stayed in the Foreign Experts Hotel in Beijing that they undoubtedly could listen in if they wanted, and probably video if they wanted. And so you comport yourself appropriately. Donald wouldn't ever think that. It's just not the way he thinks. And he's, he's subject to his carnal temptations. But more importantly than any compromise, Donald admires Putin, Kim Jong-un, and MBS in Saudi Arabia, because they're all powerful. And he, you know, he, he, look at what he's doing right now. He is murdering people. And it's not me saying that it is retired judge advocate generals in the military, military lawyers, who say that trying to bring drugs into the US on a boat is not a capital offense. That is when you believe, suspect that, you interdict the boat, you grab the evidence if there is any, and you prosecute these people. You don't kill them all. And Trump has now, at least three times that we know of, killed everybody on a boat. And one of these drug boats had 11, supposed drug boats, had 11 people on it.

Why would you have 11 people on a drug boat? I'm sorry. That's you want the most minimal crew you can for lots of reasons. He's going to continue to do the things that tell him this is Donald, will continue to things that tell him I'm all-powerful. I can do anything. And what did he say in his first term? I have an article two referring to the constitution that says I can do anything I want. That's what I'm going to teach my law class on Thursday, Articles 2 and Article 3.

David Cay Johnston (54:27.914)

It doesn't say that. It doesn't say anything within a million miles of that. Donald doesn't read it, doesn't know what it is. He just thinks, I'm president, I can do anything I want. And that's going to influence him more, his admiration of the fact that dictator Un had his uncle murdered. He had a half-sibling murdered with impunity. And to Donald, that's like, yeah, I'm special.

Claudia Koestler (54:56.556)

Well, David, you have spent a lot of your career chronicling and analyzing Donald Trump. Be honest. Do you have any regrets?

David Cay Johnston (55:08.458)

About my coverage of him?

Claudia Koestler (55:10.242)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, you know, all the time that you spent on this person.

David Cay Johnston (55:14.83)

That's a little different quote. People usually ask me, why do you hate Donald Trump? I don't. If you're in my business, which up until a few years ago was investigative reporting, I spent 50 years at it, 58 years at it. If you hate people, your career will be over real quick. You have to be focused on these are facts people should know, and somebody's getting away with something, and the fact that getting away with it, you can hate, but you don't hate people. So, no. There are a couple of things I wish I had put more time into early on and written more about them. But, you know, that's like, I went back recently and reread the first investigation I did when I was 17 years old in Stelman High School. I hope nobody goes to breed. was 17 years old. I do.

I regret that I came to the point in 2023 where I just couldn't continue to be the publisher at DC Report. We turned DC Report over to my friend Adam Leipzig, who is a very well-known Hollywood movie industry executive. I wrote about him in one of my books, the movies he made.

Hollywood loses money all the time. Hollywood makes thousands of movies every year that are never distributed. They're put in the can. And his movies made $7 for every dollar they cost to make. And only one was a loser and it was one he was ordered to make. And we turned it over to Adam. And because I would sit down at the keyboard, I just was paralyzed. And I feel like...

That's a personal failing. I mean, it's not. I understand why people who are under stress eventually reach a breaking point. And I did hang in there for seven years, but I just had to stop. But I, if there's anything I regret, and I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, it's like, you should have been able to overcome this. You should have just continued what you're doing. I don't think this is like you were being tortured in a tiger cage in Vietnam or held in some German Nazi prisoner of war camp. It was just the constant psychological pressure to do this, you know, combined with all the other things. I have a very large family. I have eight kids. My grandchildren were all grown.

Dan Harris (57:39.822)

Well, you don't have to slow down at all. You don't seem to be slowing down whatsoever. I mean, it seems like...

Claudia Koestler (57:47.854)

You don't fear his revenge. You mention in your books that he is all about revenge. So, you don't think he will come after you.

David Cay Johnston (57:55.334)

When Donald got to the White House the first time, I sat down with the members of my family I was able to assemble, because they live all over the country and one's gone to Canada. And I said, look, this may, probably, everything will be fine, but this may go badly. Donald may try to find some excuse to sweep me off the street. And it could be I opened the front door of the house one day, and some Trump or nut blast me with a shotgun.

And I want you to know that I'm going to do what I'm going to do. It's just like when I was exposing the LAPD, and I was being tailed by them and followed, and a senior officer took me aside and warned me that he thought I was in danger, not from the LAPD, but from people who need to curry favour with the LAPD. Because we had a series of kill-the-witness robberies in LA, where you hand over everything to somebody and then they kill you, and there's no way to connect you to the crime.

When that happened, I went home told my wife that I wasn't worried but I said I could be dead wrong and I sat down and wrote a 31 page memo and placed it in five different locations so that if I was dead wrong Stuff was going to come out that was going to be make make a big deal about it You know, I life is not without risks But nothing helps someone like Donald Trump more than cowardice

More than a million people died for the United States of America. More than a million people. A larger number of people, like my father, became disabled. My dad was a 100 % disabled veteran of World War II. Never once complained about his life being ruined because of the war. And if you're a politician and you won't stand up for your oath of office,  because you're afraid you'll be primaried, that your own party will, Donald will run someone against you in the primary and get you out. You don't deserve to hold public office. You're a Quisling, you are a coward, you are beneath contempt in my view. And I think there needs to be a lot more calling out of these people and saying it doesn't have anything to do with ideology. Trump is doing things that are obviously illegal. He is taking emoluments. $400 million airplane for starters, even though he's doing it through his presidential library, it's going to be his to use. Assuming he's alive and whatnot, you know, he is doing business deals for his family, all of which would get anybody else, prosecuted. Yeah. Right. And your duty is to the constitution. Hopefully, our military officers.

They are going to stand up for their oath of office. If you're an airman, a Marine, or a grunt, you take an oath to follow the orders of the president and to defend the Constitution. But if you were an officer of any kind, not just military officers, civilian officers, or the government, you would only take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And so, one hopes that military officers are going to refuse orders. It's going to be the end of your career.

You are ending your career, and you may get court-martialled for it, and you might end up in the stockade. Not likely, but a possibility. If you're willing to die on the battlefield for us, then you ought to be willing to blow up your career. We need people to be courageous. I don't expect everybody to be courageous. I've been to many big events where things have happened, and you see how many people pull away or cower or just watch. Most people do not run toward fire or gunfire.

But when you see people who do back them up, and when you see people who are supposed to push them to go, we need to make that part of the ethos. I mean, are we the land of the home of the free and the brave, or are we a land of Quislings and cowards? That's really the existential question facing Americans right now.

And our major news organizations, including my longtime former employer, The New York Times, which is the greatest news organization the world's ever seen, flaws and all, it's far from perfect. Like everything else, it's far from perfect. They screw up all the time, but they get it right more than anybody else and get it better and more independently. They need to stop this polite discussion about what Donald Trump is doing and start on the opinion pages, saying,

This is criminal what's going on here. This is unconstitutional. And stop with the polite establishment language that goes over the heads of most people, and follow the dictate of John S. Knight, who owned Knight Ridder newspapers, or what became Knight Ridder. When he was faced with tough stories where there'd be lawsuits or trouble over publishing them, he always published. And what his newsrooms were, and I worked for Knight Ridder Papers for 15 years of my newspaper career, publish and be damned.

Dan Harris (01:03:02.412)

That's just great. So, thank you very much, David, for taking the time to join us today. You're welcome back here anytime. Your insights into how Trump's second term will affect democracy, foreign policy, and American society. And the paths forward are crucial. We hope our listeners will heed your advice and take the recommended actions that you suggest. If you'd like to dig deeper into David K. Johnston's work, we'll have all his resources, all his books, website, and everything listed in the show notes and on our website for you to view. So please check them out. Some great reads there, and educate yourselves. And if you haven't read them, why haven't you read them yet? So, I think you'll find them very educational and intriguing. Thank you.

David Cay Johnston (01:03:48.59)

Thank you, Dan and Claudia.

Claudia Koestler (01:03:50.734)

Thank you so much. What an insight and great discussion. Thank you very much. And I hope we can continue to be in touch.

Dan Harris (01:03:59.694)

Again, David, thank you for joining us at Over Here, Over There. And to our listeners, please like, subscribe, share, and check out our podcast. You can also visit overhereroverthere.org or find us on YouTube and all other major podcast platforms. And of course, our social media channels. If you want to be a patron, we have a button for that, too, on our website, and we'd very much appreciate your support. Polite, insightful, humorous, and constructive comments are also welcome in any language, so please be in touch. Check out our website for our next Unmissable Podcast. Until then, thanks for being over here, over there.