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Yeah. Hello there. I'm Kristin Welger. My first broadcast of Meet the Press just aired featuring my exclusive interview with former President Trump.
You can listen to that episode right here on this feed or watch it at meetthepress.com on Peacock or anywhere you find NBC News video. Mr. Trump and I spoke for over an hour and a half. I asked him whether he'd pardon himself if he were to win another German office.
I had him detail his views on the war in Ukraine and I pressed him on his ongoing legal challenges. I'm here now with Peter Baker, Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, who's going to help make sense of what we learned. Peter has covered every president since George W. Bush and is most recently the co-author of The Divider, the inside story of Trump's four years in office.
He also joined me for my very first Sunday round table as moderator. Peter, welcome to the first post game of this new era. I'm so honored that you're joining me. Thank you.
I'm excited to be with you. And I'm so happy that you were taking over because you were doing a fantastic job. You are a naturalist. Peter, thank you so much.
That means a lot. And it means a lot to have you here. So we have just heard this wide-ranging interview with former president Trump. And of course, on our broadcast, it really focused on how he sees his second term, how he views retribution, which he has vowed, how he's viewing his legal battles, and also where he stands on abortion.
I couldn't really get an answer out of him, whether he would support a federal ban on abortion. But what were your key takeaways from the interview? Yeah, I think it was a fascinating interview in a lot of different ways. I think there are so many different specific things too on which you've just sort of highlighted right there.
I think my overall take though is just how defiant he is. This is a man who's not giving in a quarter, not giving in anything to any of his critics or even frankly to the truth. I mean, what struck me in your interview is time and time again, every sentence practically is filled with some sort of distortion, faulted, lie, different way of looking at the world. He is creating his own reality and he is sticking to it.
And he tells you again and again that the election in 2020 was rigged, even though we all know that that's not true. There's zero evidence of that. Zero evidence to back that up. He is not giving in on any of that, even though he's now been charged criminally for trying to perpetrate a fraud on the country.
He is not giving in. I think that that's fascinating to watch how he tries to shape reality to suit his needs, his interest. And he has a welcome audience in the part of his base. It wants to hear him tell it like he tells it, rather than the way evidence and experts would tell it.
Yeah, it's so interesting. I think his defiance was the one thing that stood out to me as well here. And it was evidence really from the moment that the interview started. Quite frankly, let's delve into some of the revelations from this conversation that I had with the former president, particularly on his legal defense.
His defense team has been out. They've been signaling that he's going to essentially, it seems they haven't said this definitively, but that they are going to argue that he was acting on advice of counsel. And what's interesting is that he told me, he was acting on his own instincts, that this was his decision when he decided to move forward with these allegations that the election had been stolen despite being told that it wasn't, despite losing more than 60 court cases, to what extent is that revelation, potentially, undercutting his argument that it was his lawyer's fault? Yeah, I think you're exactly right to pinpoint that, because I think it's exactly why lawyers don't want their clients giving interviews at a time when they're facing a diamond, because they're going to say things that will undercut their ability to make arguments in court.
Now, of course, if the lawyers try to make that argument in court, they're going to have your transcript, have your interview to play a prosecutor's will for the court saying no see here, the former president says it was his own instinct, he's following his own judgment on these things. And I think that that is a classic example of how he gets himself into a bind politically at the same time. I think why, this way he's seen him cycle through, lawyer after lawyer after lawyer after lawyer, and then stick with them very long because they all find me, I think, to be an unmanageable client. Yeah, no, it really is so striking.
And it was interesting to hear him talk about the legal advice and he kind of says, yeah, I talked to a few people. And this notion that he was getting input from a lot of different people based on his conversation with me and what he told me about how he was viewing all of this. Another striking moment occurred to me, Peter, when we were talking about the Mar-a-Lago documents, of course, he's accused of obstruction in that case, other charges as well. But one of the new charges relates to him being accused of telling a staffer to delete surveillance video.
It shows people moving boxes of sensitive documents around. He says it's not true. He says he would testify under oath, directly contradicting what's in the indictment effectively. Peter, what did you make of that?
Well, for one thing, I would be very stunned if he ever actually testified under oath about this. Right, that's right. It's very important to make. He said that to me, it's another thing to do it, yeah.
And he did that, of course, report. He said he would testify in the Mueller case, he never did. He said he gave written answers as lawyers prepared. I can't imagine a lawyer is going to let him testify and his own defense in that case.
And if they did, they, well, was to say that would be a smart lawyer. At least I will perceive that not to be smart lawyering because for all of these, we just talked about. But you're right. I mean, I think that he's contradicting the facts there.
We don't know for sure everything that Jack Smith, the special counsel has. It's really testimony, but our understanding, our perception of what he has are some pretty straightforward first hand accounts from people who were involved, including what seemed to be Tex and other messaging that is contemporaneous documents from that period. So I think that it looks from what we've seen so far anyway, pretty strong evidence that there was in fact an order to do it. Now Trump also makes the point that the tapes weren't actually deleted.
That doesn't mean you're not guilty of a crime. You can order a crime that doesn't actually take place. It doesn't absolve you of the fact you tried to do it. So that's kind of meaningless, I think, in a sense they don't take that argument, but I don't know if that gets them off the clock.
Yeah, it's actually, let's highlight that point because it is an important point. He's charged with directing his staff to get rid of the surveillance footage, not necessarily of getting rid of it. Right, exactly. And he says, well, it's my tapes.
I can do it. Well, just because your tape doesn't mean you can destroy evidence. Evidence is almost always something owned by the suspect by the defendant. He's never, you know, like the defendant is destroying somebody else's property.
The destroying thing is that they have that would be incriminating that's the typical obstruction charged in terms of destroying evidence. So the fact that he owned these tapes is irrelevant again to the legal cases, as I understand, not being aware. And I think he's throwing a false check, right, with you, he's trying to sort of throw up these things and kind of distract us from the basic point, which is that he was directing according to Jack Smith. His employees to destroy evidence that he knew could be damaging to him in court.
Right. And, you know, so fascinating, Peter. I tried to get him to talk about January 6th from the perspective of what happens after he left the ellipse. We've heard him talk a lot about the ellipse.
I wanted him to really give us some new information about what happened once he got back to the White House. We know that he watched it in the dining room and reports are that he watched it on TV. He shut down in that section. He said, I'm not going to answer your questions.
I asked him who he called. He wouldn't answer those questions either. What did you make of that part of the interview, Peter? That was interesting, right?
The only real question he was, I mean, he ducked a lot of your questions, but that was the only area where he just flatly said, I'm not going to talk about it, right? Explicitly and overtly saying I won't talk about it. And maybe that's the one case where he is listening to his lawyers. Maybe the lawyers have told him, look, don't give out new information on this.
You're already in danger. And so anything you say could be used against you. And so maybe in that instance, it's the one time he is following their advice because you're right. So far, we know from witnesses who testified at the United States Committee and otherwise, given their accounts publicly, he did nothing to stop the attack on the Capitol other than issue belatedly some tweets and a statement that people thought were pretty weak, weak host.
And I think that we've seen the Mark Millie with the Chairman of the Joint Chief Staff, he had the military essentially said, no, I didn't hear from the President that day. He never called me. I heard from the Vice President. He said, but never from the President.
He heard that from others as well. Yeah, and it was notable when I asked him if he'd showed, he thought he'd showed leadership on that day, having pointed out that it took him more than three hours to tell people to go home and continue to double down on these false allegations that the election was stolen. He said, yes, he does believe that he showed leadership. He also revealed for the first time, Peter, and this is something, of course, there's been reporting about, but that there were discussions about whether he would pardon himself in his final days in office.
Not a surprise, but it does speak to the legal peril that they perceived to be swirling around him at the time. Absolutely right, to hear him in his own voice talk about that was fascinating. And he says, I didn't need to pardon myself because it would look bad. Not because he necessarily didn't need a pardon.
And there was an argument obviously, we should acknowledge this. They're not a constitutionally. We don't know for sure that the constitution would allow a President to pardon him. That's still a debatable point, right?
There are arguments that he could have, and that he still might, if he gets into office again, but that would be challenged. We'll see how that would resolve itself. But you're right, it suggests those final days just how, you know, what this competitive White House would have been like in those final days, realizing the criminal exposure that they faced and the possibility that their actions would be held against them. And should he pardon himself or not?
He decides to, for public relations, political reasons, he says here, basically. Not to do it because it would look wrong. But you can imagine what he was going through his head, the fact that he was even considering it, is really telling. Yeah, it was really fascinating.
I want to get your thoughts on what we heard and what we didn't hear from the former President on abortion. I really tried to pin him down, Peter, whether he would support a federal ban, how many weeks he said he's going to negotiate a deal, would not commit to a federal ban. That's something that could backfire for some primary voters. Yeah, I think in some ways, in terms of policy, that was the most interesting part of the interview, right?
Because there's so many different areas, he's usually pretty decisive in saying what he thinks and what he wants to do, even if he may be distorting the facts. In this case, he was ducking and bobbing and weaving as best he could. He took credit for getting rid of Roe v. Because he had one or three conservative justices who were critical to overturning the decision.
But then he says that the other side, speaking about it all wrong, that Mike Pence, in effect, is too radical. There's a lot of Republicans who don't like sessions or too radical. He suggested to Sanders, governor to Sanders the Florida and signing a six-week ban was going too far. So it's fascinating to hear him basically play out and he wouldn't commit, as you say, to whether he believed a federal ban should be in place or not.
His idea that he'd want to somehow bring people together and everybody will agree, of course, is, you know, relied by history, let's just say, at least. There's not ever going to be a complete consensus in this country about abortion. You may be able to get a majority vote, but sometimes I compromise, but you'll never have both sides genuinely happy with him as he says he could make them. Yeah, and I think that's so interesting, right?
This is an issue that is so personal for so many people all across this country, and to hear him talk about it within the context of a negotiation, I think for a lot of people it's not how they think about it, but we know that he has, this is someone who shifted his position on abortion. I mean, there was a time when he supported choice, and obviously that has shifted. It was also notable, Peter, in terms of what's happening right now on Capitol Hill, Republicans have issued this impeachment inquiry against President Biden, not hiding the fact that he's very supportive of that. So no surprise there, but I asked him, like, okay, so should some Republicans abandon their threat to shut down the government over some of their other priorities that they're demanding?
He said, no, he's quite bullish on this point. No, shut down the government if you don't get what you want. I mean, that could potentially backfire against Republicans. Oh, absolutely.
There hasn't been a government shut down yet that we have political plus at the polls. There have been some that didn't actually matter, but the ones that had an impact of the polls have been negative for Republicans in the past. And that's why you see Mr. McConnell and a lot of the Senate Republicans saying, whoa, wait a second, let's not do that again.
That's not the best way to go forward here. But McCarthy is, of course, working with a very slim majority, and he is a stomach stab hostage to the far right of his caucus, which is listening to President Trump or President Trump. And he's not giving direction at the very least giving encouragement to this kind of, you know, hard line approach. Yeah.
Let's talk a little bit about foreign policy before we wrap up. I tried to pin him down on, he continues to say, he can end the war in 24 hours. I tried to get him to paint me a clearer picture of how exactly he would do that. He wouldn't do that.
I pressed him though, Peter, on this idea of, wouldn't it be a win if you were to wind the war down quickly? Wouldn't that mean Russia would get to keep the territory that it illegally occupied? He seems to suggest he could do it without having that happen if he were to be reelected and put in his position. And that seems quite unrealistic given the current status.
Yeah, I mean, let's be real here. There isn't a war that's been ended in 24 hours ever, right? Nobody has ever blown into a war and said in 24 hours we ended it just to happen. And by the way, he had four, this is what's been going on since 2014, right?
Right, right. It was, you know, it was escalated obviously in 2022, but it was going up in the entire four years that President Trump was in office. I don't remember him stopping the war or settling in on a negotiation or even trying to, during that four years. So the idea that he can cut some, you know, snap his fingers and suddenly everybody will agree, obviously it's fanciful.
And you're right that anything, there's a reason why neither side wants to negotiate right now because neither side could accept whatever deal it. They couldn't accept even the status quo, which is that Russia has taken over essentially, you know, is getting a part of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Ukraine wouldn't accept that. Politically there's no way there's a lens to be could accept that.
And even Putin right now, well that's probably the best he could get, would be acknowledging what a failure his invasion really was. So there's absolutely no chance that anybody thinks other than Donald Trump that this could be settled in 24 hours. And I'm not sure anybody thinks it could be settled in days, weeks or months. I mean, we made years before this war is finally settled.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that tragically. Former President Trump got what seemed like all but an endorsement from President Putin this past week. And I asked him about that. And he said, well, I like it.
It's not a surprise given his past relationship with Putin, but it is a reminder of his ongoing, what is the right word here, admiration, or the ties that he built when he was in office with people who typically have not been friends of American presidents. Yeah, if you're right, that's not surprising and yet it still should be stunning, right? That the leader of a country that is just invaded for no reason, it's neighbor, it caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. And we are effectively, we're definitely odds with not war with ourselves as suppliers, allies of Ukraine.
You welcome the support of that. That leader is, is, you know, breathtaking in a way in American politics. And the idea that that wouldn't be damaging in American politics is also testament to how much politics has changed here because that would have been a kiss of death under any normal circumstance. And we're in such a different time than when he was in office because of everything we're talking about, because Putin has, as you say, escalated what was already effectively a war in Ukraine.
The fact that he has, as I put it to the former president, been bombing maternity wars. There are mass graves throughout Ukraine. This is a different Putin than when Trump was in office. Well, he didn't condemn any of that with you, did he?
He said, oh, it's tragic and I'm terrible. A lot of people are dying. But he didn't say Putin was responsible. He didn't say that the aggressor is responsible for doing this.
He just sort of left in a vague, kind of well-stairable people are dying. And in fact, if anything, he was actually kind of kind of playing Biden rather than Putin, right? And so it goes to show you that he is still had this unexplained relationship or admiration or whatever we want to use of Putin. We still don't really understand what that's all about.
Yeah. Final takeaways here, Peter, obviously big picture. We are coming off of a week in which President Biden's son was indicted. So now you have the GOP front runner who's been indicted.
The son of the sitting president has been indicted, which is also unprecedented. Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. They're threatening a shutdown. I mean, what a week.
What do we call that in Washington? We call it Sunday. I mean, it's amazing. We keep having these things happen that you would never have thought would have happened unthinkable in the past.
Yet here we are. Of course, just to be clear, the foreign indictments against President Trump are so far different than the indictment against Hunter Biden who was never in public office. And it's either in terms of corruption of the government, obviously that's not what we're talking about where Trump did, at least he's been accused of doing a burning democracy and danger in national security and so forth. And yeah, it's all muddy together, right?
And it's all kind of, and that's what, of course, Trump wants. He wants everybody to say, see everybody's doing the same thing. They're really the crime family, not me, even though I've been indicted for it. But the one that you said, by the way, in the interview, I'm glad you raised the word retribution.
I think that's an important thing for us to remember. He has told us what this campaign is about. This campaign by his own word is about retribution. It's not about making the country better, achieving this policy goal or that policy goal.
It is about retribution. He wants to take out the deep state as he calls it. He wants to go after his political enemies. He said that he wouldn't use the Justice Department but that's exactly what he tried to do in his first term.
I mean, everybody's going to think, of course, he would try to do it again. So I think retribution is, in fact, the definition of this campaign right now. And it's appealing to a lot of voters, obviously, who like him. Maybe they want to engage in that as well.
But the danger, I think, for him, is at some point, do they look at that and say, well, I have other priorities other than taking revenge against Donald Trump's enemies. Yeah, and that is going to be one of the key questions. For voters, GOP primary voters, as I kept reminding him when I was asking him all of these questions, they want answers because they're going to the polls in a matter of months. Peter Baker, thank you so much for joining me.
It really is an honor to have you on this first podcast and on my first meet the press. So great to be with you, the start of a great new era. Thanks, Peter.