What Did the Assassination Attempt do to Trump's Psyche? (w/ Olivia Nuzzi) | The Bulwark Podcast

Intro the thing I really wanted to know was how do you explain okay you think that God intervened to save you right this all appeals to he doesn't really think that he doesn't think that I don't I don't know but I think it really appeals to his narcissism the idea that God there's a God and that God is my fan I love my fans right like I want I want to meet all my fans right all right now now you're speaking my language that sounds like Donald Trump [Music] [Applause] Nuzzi’s rapport with Trump hello and welcome to the B podcast I'm your host Tim Miller uh today I've got with me my old friend Olivia NTI Washington correspondent for New York Magazine her latest piece is I examined Donald Trump's ear and his soul ew uh well somebody's got to do it Hey Olivia how's how are you I'm great I think I mean you seem uh you were with Donald Trump again can you explain to me why they let you back in to the premises it's interesting I um this is like the third in third installment um in my features about 20124 where I've interviewed him the first one was before he had announced that he was running but he had made up his mind he told me and then the next one was about him being sort of cocooned in marago um with no real campaign to speak of but he was already technically running and he really hated that piece the NORAD Desmond piece that was the NORAD Desmond piece yeah he really hated that piece he called me like dumb as rocks and unattractive and all these things um but I was confident that he would talk to me again after that I just knew it would take a little while and and it did take a little while he's sort of like the eternal optimist in some way he said something to the effect of like yeah you've written some some mean stories but let's try it again what the hell and I was like huh okay I hope my mother's not listening because her and Donald Trump are opposite in every way but they have one trait that's together that maybe I also have a little bit of I got from her which is I just always feel like I can win you over yeah I have that same thing like if I could just do the one if I said the one right thing or I relate to it because I just I refuse to have an enemy you know like I view it as a challenge if if someone doesn't like me and I think I think that's maybe the one thing that I have in common with him and um one other just just factual matter before we get into the the meat of the story he let did you literally did you touch his ear did you physically An update on trump’s ear touch I did not touch his ear seem to invite you to though he I don't know I didn't want to you know it's very it was at sort of the beginning of the interview too that this happened and so uh you know he was showing me from a distance he was sort of like moving his ear back and forth and showing it to me um and we were seated you know maybe two or three feet apart um and I I wear glasses I'm completely blind without glasses and so I I really needed to come closer to see what he was referring to um and I did not touch it uh but I got close enough that I can tell you that he doesn't smell like anything which is very interesting the smell the smell story was false that is or maybe it's you maybe that's something about your all Factory um actually have one more thing before we get into the substance of the story there's the there's the conspiracies and I had this like this just about like whe what happened with the ear and like there is a Nick you can see in the pictures and I had this thing have I was a de I was in a decadence I think I was in French cour I'm wearing my foot flops and I have this like tiny cut on one of my toes I didn't notice in my flip-flops and I came home that night and I was taking off my clothes you know I'm in the bathroom and you know I wasn't really paying attention the next morning I woke up and I had blood all over the sheets all over the bathroom floor and it was the tiniest little Nick so I do think that we can we can get rid of any of the conspiracy mongering he was nicked there was I mean I I don't have any doubt that something happened to his ear I you know it it seemed if you watch I watched the video you know a million times while writing this piece um and he seemed so disturbed by what happened I mean in a way that he can't fully um can't fully acknowledge um I think there's no doubt that something happened and all of the kind of bleue and on theories that it you know it was prop blood or whatever people are saying um I don't I don't give any Credence to any of that um okay well I want to come back to because you kind of you delve deeper into the psyche of Donald Trump than I like to be usually and maybe some Trump’s strategy on Kamala listeners like to be so they might not want to go there so before we get back to that I do hey it is it is it's our it's our reality we didn't choose it um before we get to that I want to in the context of the debate and like what to expect from him I I think it was interesting in the piece you discussed kind of how he has struggled to make this pivot from Biden to kamla and how she couldn't come up with a nickname and and they had the brief phase they tried kab blah anyway so Ju Just talk about kind of that and how you see whether he's been able to get his lizard brain around his new foe it's interesting I mean first of all he's just very frustrated that he has to do this he he thought that he sort of had it made with Biden as his opponent um things were going super well in his view um and then he had the rug pulled out from under him and I think he SE some irony in you know he performed so well comparatively at the debate and uh you know the gift that he got in return for that was um you know maybe losing this election whereas before he did not think that he was going to um so he's very frustrated by that and feels like it's unfair but like add that to the list of you know every every other thing that he believes is unfair um but it's interesting I noticed this in 2020 and I'm sure you did too that he just could not figure out how to talk about Joe Biden he didn't really seem to want to talk about Joe Biden he was talking about Hillary Clinton or even Barack Obama much more than he was talking about Joe Biden he just wasn't a great villain for him to run against um he didn't animate the base if you go to rallies or you went to any rallies in 2020 um you could tell that people just didn't really care that much about Joe Biden and so he would sort of see I think he's very attuned to whether or not the crowd is engaged on something and uh he would just pivot to talking about Locker up or talking about Barack Hussein Obama or whatever um and then he finally landed on you know some language to talk about Joe Biden and finally got comfortable with it after losing to him in 2020 and now he's got to talk about somebody else who he really doesn't seem to know very much about KLA Harris at all that was sort of one of the big takeaways for me from our conversations just basic biographical stuff um he's not really in a defensive posture right now or at least he wasn't in conversations with me um and so when he was referencing kamla Harris as being this sort of marxist and he was using her father being a Marxist professor in his in his words um I just just conversationally was like I don't think that's uh I don't think she even really knew her dad growing up like I think she was raised by her mom I'm pretty sure she doesn't maintain contact with her dad and he sort of was like huh yeah maybe that's right I don't know and I just thought like it's one thing if he's just being um shitty and just like misrepresenting her her biography to make a some sort of political attack um that I sort of expect right or I definitely expect um but for him to genuinely just be sort of spitballing about her and and not be sure about uh whether or not what he's saying is true sort of surprised me um and he seemed sort of surprised by it like yeah H maybe maybe that is wrong I don't know um I so it's this was one section I was going to ask you about because there's always some subtext the Is Trump disengaged? the Olivia deadpan I'm I'm kind of waiting through and that same section you talking about how one of his advisers was surprised that he wasn't as attuned to like these Biden interviews back when Biden was trying to save his save his campaign um after the the debate um and and I just want so is the subtext there like did you feel like he's losing a step disengaged you know some signs say he wasn't as sharp or like what what were you trying to get out the thing that you're referring to I talked to an adviser you I called someone after that exchange with him and and this followed my meeting with him at marago and him uh trying out a new name for me uh kambla and I genuinely had not heard it I I you know I I confess I don't read every truth social post um and I didn't know about this nickname and I really just was trying I was trying to understand what the hell he was saying and it didn't make any sense to me and I was like what is the joke what like what what is Kamala and I think he realized how genuine my confusion was and he just looked crestfallen about it um and I to my knowledge they haven't really been using the name Kam since then so I do sort of take credit for that um but I talked to an adviser after that other exchange about kamla's um father and I just was sort of like does he not is he not being briefed like are people not doing sort of the work of of getting the principle up to speed that you have to do on a campaign um and this adviser was like absolutely not he's not being briefed um and to to that effect he didn't even know that George Stephanopoulos was interviewing Joe Biden after the debate and he asked me where he could too it and I thought that was such an interesting story I can't he's in such a little bunker down there in maralago and it's sort of like the campaign is in two different modes it's either he's in the rally mode and and he's traveling to these swing States or what have you um or he's being you know dragged into some court appearance or other um or he's in this living room this like gilded space where people are sort of coming and kissing the ring and being very respectful and deferential to him um it's not the kind of like hectic chaotic um people elbowing for proximity environment of campaigns past and I think that there's probably a lot that just from a purely political perspective is like good about that in that it's not uh creating insane headlines every day and uh he's the only reason why they're off message um but I think I don't know I guess people just people seem a little afraid of him on this current campaign that's sort of what I got and maybe it's preventing them from really doing doing their jobs how does how does the Gilded living room smell it different times of year I've noticed it smells different I was expecting it to be pretty bad in hurricane season um it it wasn't so bad I've been in there before where it really smells like like mildew and and like you can just smell all of the old people who have been in that space over the decades but um this time it would just sort of sound smelled like you know an old house um another thing that you get into which is I think relevant to the tonight is um just that he's kind of A chiller Donald Trump? annoy like you you mentioned he's annoyed by the situation and he's AG grieved by the situation but he also is like annoyed by her a little bit the attention she's getting annoyed by the weird thing so I just I mean that isn't great for like we saw at the National Association of black journalists when he's annoyed that usually doesn't reflect well in his performance so I I don't like is your do you think that that's persisting or is he getting over it I think the you know the advisers I talked to said like his task has to be to not get irritated by her basically and I know he's received some other advice about sort of just um not allowing her to get away with just piffy sound bites or you know Shing him rhetorically to sort of force her to to talk in some more depth um but he is I I don't think he really has much ability to um to not get annoyed by someone I will say like you know I'm sure that the left the people have read this piece oh my God wait a minute I have two things in common with Donald Trump this is a horrible podcast I continue I I did find that I could tell um sometimes I would formulate a question and I could see him make a decision um I could sort of read it on his face that he it was something that he very easily could have gotten very irritated about and responded very defensively um and take an issue with the framing of the question or the way that I said it or whatever anything that he would typically do in the past um it used to be the case that it was like dealing with this wild animal and you're trying to waltz with him and not um get him so angry that he just thrashes you around but you're also trying not to let him you know walk all over you um this was a much more relaxed Trump and you could kind of have a semi-human conversation with him and I saw him decide not to take the bait and to take me sort of at face value in wanting answers to my questions so I maybe it's the case that this sort of slow um uh Chiller post shooting Donald Trump is not going to act like he acted in uh debates with Hillary Clinton but I don't know then you saw you know on last Friday um he stood I was there he stood in the lobby of Trump Tower for what felt like four hours talking about every allegation not even every I mean it was probably a fraction of the allegations of some sort of sexual misconduct or Orum sexual assault against him um that he was extremely irritated and he was mad at his lawyers and it just seemed like you know Donald Trump as we've always known him so I don't know I I think if he I think he maybe he learned something from the Biden debate which is if you keep the focus on your opponent maybe they reveal themselves in a way that's advantageous to you but I don't know does he learn I don't know yeah can he do it with a black woman next to him that makes it a little tougher I think um the uh I did see there was a there was and who the hell know like you just can't even believe anything these people Trump’s debate prep say but there was a report from Gates and gabard and his whatever his little debate prep team Jason Miller that they were like he is going to focus on Prosecuting I don't think they us they Prosecuting but like the record like the Biden Harris record and she's gonna have to defend the Biden Harris record and I'm just like that just doesn't sound like Donald Trump right that he's gonna like make her press her for details on the policy record like that just doesn't sound right to me are are you saying he's not a details guy well I do I think he is a details guy on like I bet he could tell you more about the Hunter and laptop from Hell than anyone in America except for like five people like like ran like tabloid like details about tabloid gossip maybe but like policy Detail no I think with all that stuff he just sort of gets the gist and he moves on but like I have to tell you I asked him at one point I was trying to get him into um a conversation about the Hannibal Lector thing and so my way to do that without just jumping right into it was to first ask him about the movie business and to ask him to tell me about what it was like to know Robert Evans he talked about Robert Evans in more detail than he has ever talked to me about anything like he I was like oh he is a policy expert if that policy is like old Hollywood film making um so I I don't know I have a hard time imagining him standing up there kind of reciting a list of um talking points against KLA Harris where he knows stuff about her record um I I think that's not a Donald Trump that anyone has ever experienced before yeah I think it's getting tougher because he also just absorbs some of that stuff via cable like he had this like in the 2016 like debates like with the end of them he had just like this lizard brain ability to kind of just sort of regurgitate stuff that that is was in his brain because Laura Ingram had said it you know and just like repeat and and he knew the bad stuff about about Hillary and all fun he just hasn't had the time to like let that seep in with with Caba it takes him a while like it really takes him a while he really didn't know how to I always thought it was so funny in 2020 and probably part of why he lost that he was at once he was saying that Joe Biden was a criminal mastermind and also that Joe Biden was basically dead and it was like well what is it you know is he creepy Joe or sleepy Joe and he couldn't figure it out and I think that made it difficult for his base and and for everyone he was talking to to really have a clear idea of what the alternative was that he was presenting so I don't think he knows enough about KLA Harris uh to create a caricature of KLA Harris that would be appealing to you know whatever tiny fraction of uh swing voters he's trying to uh persuade um all right I want to get to the other part of the story the um uh you you have Has Trump changed since the shooting? a line in there about how Trump and his opponents agree on one thing that he has not changed after the assassination but you make a kind of I will just say because we're Pals kind of a dubious implication that you think maybe we might both be wrong that both Trump and his enemies might be wrong about Trump so come on make the case I mean it's not that I think that he is I think that he is resistant to the reality that if you go through something traumatic as a human being I think that he has never really thought of himself as part of the human race like I think that he has he thinks of that as being beneath him and so therefore you cannot have a human experience or human reaction to an experience if you are not a part of the human race if you are better than that um and so he's very resistant you and I asked him if he had nightmares or I didn't ask I asked that's what I was asking but I asked him if he had dreamt about the shooting for instance and he knew immediately that what I was asking was are you [ __ ] up by this right and he was absolutely not absolutely not that might happen to some people some weaker people he's suggesting but but not to me Donald Trump so it's not that I think that he's changed but he does seem different in conversation he looks different he looks a little Shell Shocked frankly um he's there's no getting around the fact that like he I've been interviewing this man for for 10 years almost 10 years exactly um he just asked me where I'm from like he he is like conver making conversation and curious about other people in a way that is frankly alarming it's like oh God like what happened to this guy um does that mean that his values you know phrase I hate but that his values are different or that um that what motivates him is different absolutely not when I come around to the end of the piece I you at the end of the interview I was sort of just teeing up what was frankly just a like an easy slam D softball question to mix Sports metaphors I don't know anything about sports obviously um and I I had seen recently his home in Queens that he grew up it and I was really struck by the fact that like I don't know what I was expecting but it just looked like a house and queen like my mother grew up in Middle Village Queens it just looked like a regular Queen's house it looked shockingly small um and I mentioned to him that I'd seen the house and I I said you know what what do you think when you consider your journey from there to where you are and I I figured he would give me some [ __ ] like about oh well my mother or my father or I've accomplished more than anyone on Earth and instead he just launched into he was like I'm honored by it I'm honored by it um and I'm waiting for the you know the thing about how amazing he is and he just launched into this like rant that went on for for minutes about um how everyone on Earth talks about him all the time and no one has been talked no one has been talked about as much as Donald Trump has talked about he was talking in the third person like he always does he sounded just like Donald Trump as I've encountered him you know before the trauma of the shooting so by the end of the piece I suppose it's subtle um I come around to no he hasn't really changed but I think that he is traumatized by what happened and I think that he has no desire and no ability to process it okay we've got to talk about Donald Trump and God just because I have to do Trump saved by God it since you wrote about it um here you go uh an adviser described his religious curiosity he has questions about resurrection and eternal life good and evil right and wrong and the afterlife and what happens how does God decide who lives and doesn't during experiences like that this who the [ __ ] I mean this [ __ ] ad give me a break and another longtime adviser described his curiosity he has questions about the resurrection and eternal life good and evil no right no no no this none of this happened Donald Trump did not ask any of these people about the resurrection there was another element in there where you talked about how one of these [ __ ] talked about how he literally turned the other cheek yeah come on it's funny it's like a lot of people are projecting onto him with they what they wish he would become in the wake of this right and it is true he is suddenly like asking like do you believe when I asked some question about God it was like do you think so and it's part of the general curiosity about like oh maybe I am part of this human race that people talk about and I I'm interested in the other people who are a part of it all of a sudden um he seems I mean I asked him the thing I really wanted to know was how do you explain okay you think that God intervened to save you right this all appeals he doesn't really think that he doesn't really think that I don't I don't know but I think it really appeals to his narcissism the idea that God there's a God and that God is my fan I love my fans right like I want I want to meet all my fans right all right now now you're speaking my language that sounds like Donald Trump there was a line in the piece to that effect that I guess got cut I Haven I haven't looked at the piece um but uh you know to to him if he can understand God through the prism of fandom and God is his fan and God thinks that he is so important that God stopped everything that God was doing to turn his cheek to look at the stupid [ __ ] chart right then I think he's all in on the God thing but I asked him you know how do you explain a God that would intervene to save you but not to save the gentleman who was killed or not to save the two people who who were shot and badly injured and he really he said yeah I thought about it and then he launched into this um when he gets uncomfortable he Yammer right like he's just like a grade A yapper um and the yapper yaps to fill the voids that they don't have to look into it right and so it can't stare back and he was just yapping about how much money he he had been able to raise and then divert to these families and you know praising a friend of his that he alleges gave him million doll check and talking to me about how much money a million dollars is it doesn't matter how rich you are just yammering and yammering yammering and then finally he took a breath and I was like okay but I'm trying to have you thought about it or not why would God intervene to save you and not Corey um and then he sort of looked off and he really did seem to be thinking which is more than I could say for the Donald Trump you know the previous nine years that I've spoken to and he said um I don't like to think about it he went on a whole thing about how um he's been really busy to explain why he hasn't been thinking about it even though he knows and he said I I guess I should think about it and this was another interesting thing about this conversation he was sort of he didn't apologize for anything but he was weirdly willing to accept that he had made mistakes a different times you know I asked him like why would you have enlisted John Bolton why are you relying on advice from lindsy Graham and and all these neocons if it's so at odds with what you claim is your your worldview and your foreign policy and he gave me this whole like song and dance about how he never really went to Washington before he'd been there a couple times for his hotel but he didn't really know anybody and so he didn't know like who was an idiot and who's not an idiot but uh and he made some mistakes as a result of that but but now he's pretty sure that he knows who the idiots are and who he shouldn't trust but I thought it was interesting that you know he used the word mistake in relation to himself which is not something that I've ever known him to do I mean the bar is low really really low the bar can't get any lower I thought it was just interesting the one last thing on the God thing was when in a different part you're were talking to him about it and he like starts to do the like he starts to play pretend about how he thinks the god really intervened and then and then you're like then he like downgrades himself to talking about how other people are talking about how yeah can't do it and even at another point when he's talking about God he's talking about God and then he immediately is like you see that photo oh did you see that really good photo and then he's like were there any other really good photos that day why was that photo iconic do you have any theories like he wanted me and Isabelle browman who was painting his portrait during during this interview uh to assess aesthetically um these photographs and why some of them broke through and some of them did not and it was like that conversation started with me asking him about God and it ended with him being like yeah these are really amazing but it all reminded me of um there's this wonderful story I think it was actually two stories but this profile of Lee Outwater by um Marjorie Williams um who used to write for Vanity Fair and she's she's dead now but she's like one of the all-time great feature writers and and someone I admire so much and at the end of his life leat water claimed to who to have found god um you know he found God and uh I I might be bungling this but in my memory um the story is that she goes and visits him or she relays that you know someone that she was speaking to for this story goes and visits him on his deathbed and there's like a stack of Bibles and they're all still covered in plastic right I there's always a bit of that with Donald Trump was it is the portrait did you get a peek at it is like an update of the golf portrait of him in the white vest the portrait we we ran the portrait alongside um the story in the magazine I'm on the app I missed it in the app it must not have appeared in the app version um and it's uh it's really something I kind of WR I wrote the piece um with the portrait like looming over me in in Isabelle's apartment um and I think it affected the kind of surrealistic aspect of the piece perhaps that is dark um well you always make me uh make me like just reconsider is not the right word think again about Don like just kind of like look at a scance at Donald Trump from a slightly different Vantage Point than i' than I always have looking at him which is a deep challenge considering how much time I spend thinking about this [ __ ] so uh uh that is uh to your great credit um La last thing any any predictions we're in Advice for debate watchers prediction business the people listening to this have five hours till the debate so they're they're nervous they're their stomachs are nuts is there anything that you you want to leave them with for tonight I'm not really good at predictions me neither um any Su any advice to them for their anxieties any any cocktails candidates no to the listeners the listeners the listeners right now you're their you're their therapy right now they're like they're like this debate is coming I'm breathing into a paper bag yeah you're in real trouble if anyone's relying on me for therapy um I feel like yes it might matter I know I keep having this debate with people I know right where it's like does it really does anything that happened in these debates leaving aside the last debate where it really matters does anything that happens now really matter and I kind of think it does I think like for the like when we're talking about that tiny fraction of Voters who will decide the election I think a lot of those people are people who are going to vote pretty emotionally no and and are going to make a decision based on one or two things that they see where they say oh I can't vote for that person or oh I guess I could vote for that person so I think it really does matter as surface level as it all feels um but no do I have any advice don't do a drinking game I think that's bad idea people always tell me they do that for debates and I I can't understand why you'd want to horrible take a downer don't do a drinking game I always think back to election night 2016 I saw the tweet that was after Trump won Florida that was like things are getting so real I've stopped drinking that's how that's how I feel about the about the debate I it's too real I can it's too real for alcohol um Olivia nzy thank you as always we'll be talking to you soon I hope to see you out on the trail thank you so much [Music]