Disorder & dysfunction: inside Trump's White House - with Maggie Haberman

**Maggie Haberman** (0:02)
This is a Global Production. He has always, always, always wanted to be a star. But money is how he measures the worth of somebody. It's, he equates wealth with intellect, and he is going to leave office richer than he has ever been.

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:16)
People in allied countries and elsewhere, they're like, what? How come they let him? You know, what? How is this happening?

**Maggie Haberman** (0:26)
What we are seeing now was always a possibility, only because he will always push as far as people will let him. Trump's shamelessness is his superpower.

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:34)
Very, very sadly, just the first year and a half of Trump 2 has caused popularity of the United States polls to plummet, the trust in the United States to plummet, the admiration for the United States to plummet.

**Maggie Haberman** (0:47)
His attacks on female reporters have gotten much nastier, much more aggressive, and much less just about being a keyboard warrior. He has done it about me. He's been calling me a hag. He has called me the least attractive, whatever. I mean, who cares?

**Christiane Amanpour** (1:05)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Ex Files. Now, this week, we have something nice and different. Jamie's off for a couple of weeks vacation, and we've got some special guests. Our very first is an amazing journalist and author, Maggie Haberman, whose name you all know because of the amazing Trump reporting she's been doing for decades, and her latest book, Regime Change, along with Jonathan Swann of the New York Times.
It has exposed so many aspects of the Trump administration that none of us knew before this book was published. So it's really worth having her on again. Maggie Haberman, welcome to the program.

**Maggie Haberman** (1:42)
Thank you for having me, Christiane.

**Christiane Amanpour** (1:44)
So look, you have spoken a lot about it. Your book speaks for itself. Many, many people have read it because it's a massive best seller.
I'm obviously interested in all the incredible news that you put out there, but I'm also fascinated by what makes Trump tick, what you know about him, the sort of behind the scenes episodes and examples that you both give in this incredible book. But first, I want to start with something that's happening today. It's kind of a hard news.
As we record, President Trump decided to post for I don't know what reason, on Sunday night, that he wanted to end the joint exercises between America and South Korea, which are annual, been going on for 70-odd years, designed specifically not just to train and practice and send signals, but to reassure American allies. Now President Trump has said on Truth Social that he wants to potentially eliminate them. It's too late this year, so he's asked Secretary of War, Pete Hicks, to diminish them. But he's also talked about North Korea's Kim Jong Un as being respectful at least to the times that Trump has been in office. Can you make head or tails of it? He talked about how expensive it was. I mean, I was really shocked having covered a lot of North Korea, including his negotiations with Kim. What did you make of it?

**Maggie Haberman** (3:07)
Considering the fact that he was at his golf course in Bedminster yesterday and was playing throughout the day and had a, as best as I can tell from people I've spoken to and what I've seen on social media, it pretty bubbled in weekend where he wasn't doing a lot in terms of strategy looking forward. This looked to me like a frustrated statement in terms of his view of Kim Jong-un. I don't think it's especially complicated. He used to say privately, I do better with the strong ones. That's what he would say in term one.
He has long admired authoritarians and you can go down the list. It began with Putin, we've seen it with Orban over and over again. Kim Jong-un, it appeared as if they were trying to, they meeting the Trump first term administration, that he was trying something that even his own aides who were skeptical would say, well, nothing else has worked, fine, let's try this. But there's really no evidence that some kind of direct approach with the North Koreans is having some kind of an effect other than that Trump likes Kim Jong-un and admires the behavior. What was it that he said to, I think he said something to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends, at one point in term one, something about how all of his people sit up straight when he walks in, I want my people to be like that. It tends to be just that simple.