YouSaid · the spoken record

Carol Leonnig

lines on the record: 105
first: 2020-02-10
most recent: 2020-02-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's a huge change, but he's not going to go away, right? He's not going to be the president that goes up in Marine One, off to his ranch, and we never hear from him for another year until his memoir comes up. He might be acting as a shadow president at a Trump Tower or Marlago where he's now the official resident of Florida. So I don't know, but he's going to be in our lives until he's no longer in our lives.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I don't know how this will turn. He certainly is beatable. He's a historically unpopular president. And yet talking to Democrats top people in the party the last few days, there is real anxiety and concern that he is in a very strong political position right now coming out of impeachment and his approval rating is up and he's going to be difficult for the Democrats to beat, but they can do it and have enthusiasm because there are so many people in this country, especially young, especially Brown, especially women who are repulsed by this president and want this.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he's an incumbent, so he already has a huge advantage with that electricity he's got. That's the genius. That's the special sauce. It's going to be hard to beat.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This election predicting what would have been uncle. You know, it's not a very good day or week or month or year for Democrats. And why Iowa didn't help. But when you look at Donald Trump, look at the way he electrifies his base. Look at the way he can get them riled up, excited, chanting whatever words he's chanting, whether they're factual or not. And you don't really feel the same kind of thing on the Democratic side. Too well being.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree with what Carol just said. And we're fortunate to have a big platform on Twitter to share our reporting and our news and our information. And that brings its own pressures too. I'm very careful about what I tweet about expressing opinions in the heat of the moment when Trump does something. And I always lean towards sharing fact and sharing analysis that gives followers something that they wouldn't get otherwise without Sort of letting it all out there or without saying something personal because we're speaking on behalf of the Washington Post. People follow us because we're Washington Post reporters, not because like I'm a super handsome, cool guy. Right, right.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's no reason for us to clap back. One side thinks there's the evidence that that person, that reporter is a liberal. Or there's the evidence that that reporter's in the tank for, you know, the Trumps. We just have to be so careful, so priestly. And it's hard to do. It's hard to do.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we try to do it all. We've decided at the post, and The Times has made the same decision too that we can't ignore when the president says something outlandish or attacks somebody or does something of news value. He's the president of the United States, what he says on Twitter is a statement from our country, from the leader of our country and should be covered. But we also can't let that get in the way of real digging and reporting. And so there's an assessment of priorities every day in a newsroom and a lot of the reporters covering the president are assigned to basically ignore the shiny balls in order to focus on a deeper reporting and the enterprise. Do you ever get pulled?”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And on top of that, we have a breaking news team of three reporters who mostly write about the president's things early in the morning or late at night when he's tweeting things. And then the whole investigative team, which is another.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The past six things. It's a huge problem and challenge in our reporting. And it's been this way, by the way, from the very beginning of this campaign. And what we've had to do at the post is actually double the team of people covering the president because we feel like we can't ignore.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good distraction What do you think, though? Because the Shiny Ball thing is really a problem, and he's great at it, it's every day, it's a new thing that you have to like, and you've forgotten the past six things.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think just showing people is what we need to do. Actually, in terms of winning or losing, we don't think about reporting that way. But I will say one thing I worry about is how often we are chasing the shiny ball that he tosses up in the air each day. Good, distraction, distraction. Right. And we should be digging deeper than just his tweets. Of course, it's our duty to cover what he's saying. He's the president of the United States, but there's a lot more going on.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was. I think we can say lie when we know that it's intentional. So, for example, we didn't know in real time that he was actively lying. He knew in the Trump Tower Don Jr. moment. Now we know he intentionally lied. He was warned that information was inaccurate and he spun it. But we just need to be careful about that. I think we should stay on our lines.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really carefully. That was a big debate at the Washington Post. It was. I got in a big argument with someone there, a high ranking person, when he was lying. I'm like, it's a lie. Well, we're going to say he fabricates. And I was like, it's a lie. Like, why not just use the word? And he said it's a loaded word. I'm like, it's not a loaded word.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“like pundits. Right, right, right. But for example, you know, either call yourself an opinion person or call yourself a reporter. There shouldn't be a lot of middle ground. We don't need to sexify our reporting to get people to see it and to know what's going on to make their own conclusions. You know, one thing we're asked a lot about is like, why do you call the president a liar? We were asked about this the other night, and I feel as just Phil.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't like the blurriness of it at all. I'm like, I understand why you want to say I'm calling this what I want to call it, but I feel really strongly that the old school way should be the new school way about reporting. We tell you the facts, you make the decisions the same as with the book. You know, we do some analysis and we have some through lines and themes that we see, but they're based on factual reporting.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Diagnose him. clearly. Tell me how it's changed to being a reporter because, like, you're all on Twitter. I've always said what I thought. That one's, you know, that one's corrupt. This one's like people like cover and tech, like the Yahoo is terrible. The Uber guy is like sociopath, whatever. Once you do reporting, you can sort of make I'm so part of a change in reporting where we actually tell people we actually think. How does that change as political reporters? Because there is this sort of Washington political reporter who has been the typical one, like you all, who just were just here to cover the news, ma'am. And then there's this whole new class of political reporters who are just gloves off. And it's really, and then there's all these pundits running around. Where was that going, the political class? Because it used to be much more viewpoint.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Watched over three years these institutions start to erode. Another five years, I don't know what it's going to look like, but our role in all of it is to just chronicle it and question it and bring it to light as best we can and as quickly as we can.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We can't diagnose him. I mean, we're not experts on mental health and psychological fitness, but we can watch how he's stressing these institutions and how he's testing them. And when he first came into office, there was a feeling that, okay, the legislative branch will hold him accountable. And okay, the Democrats won the House in 2018. So suddenly that guardrail is in place. Well, that's gone, clearly. There was a sense that the Justice Department would be independent from the White House would investigate these things properly. That seems to be gone under this Attorney General Bill Barr, who's very much following Trump's orders and trying to protect him politically. And there aren't a lot of institutions that are standing. The judiciary is one, clearly, and the courts have blocked a number of things that are considered illegal that the president and his administration have tried to do. The free press is bringing a lot of this to light and serving a critical function at the moment, but we've”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Crazy. He's dead now. I'm good. I don't know what else to say, but he was a terrible, he had very similar narcissistic personality disorder doing crazy things to people, ultimately a sexual harasser, all kinds of stuff. And it was really interesting to watch because I was not a Republican. I just happened to be there. I was 22 years old. And so I didn't have a, you know, I didn't want to become successful in Republican politics later and the people that there did because he had quite a lot of purview. And what was interesting is how much they put up with at the time. I was fascinated by it. And I would talk back to them and say, no, no, this is not going to happen, even at 22. And what was really interesting is that there was no one to stop them and they were always like this. And they just became more so as they became more successful, I guess, at it. And so I think this is exactly what he's like and not any different. It may be slightly crazier, possibly some mental degeneration going on or exhaustion of office, I don't know.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Versus, why are we doing it this way? And the independence of our three branches of government. They shouldn't all be in lockstep supporting a potentially solipsistic president.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you think that's what he wanted to say in bold. And so I just think more bold, dramatic challenges to what we view as the norms, the pillars of our democracy. He's going to question. And sometimes it's okay to question some of these things. Yes, absolutely. Like the war in Afghanistan. I understand why he questions that.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard to imagine it, but I do think that our foreshadowing, based on the trajectory that we learned in the book and traced, is just going to be more emboldened. The State of the Union. He read this speech that was carefully crafted, reality TV show, lots of little surprises, a little goody for everybody to show that he's an inclusive president. But when he got off script today, the state of the union he really wanted to give was I'm coming for you, every single one of you, that all you Democrats who tried to hem me in, to impeach me, the one Republican who voted to convict, I'm going to get you.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grammar is a bitch, you know, spelling's a bitch. So when you have that, what happens now to the president? Where do you see it going? If you were going to be writing this now. Where are we going to go from here? It's like, or is it just this endless reality show that never ends? It's hard to imagine.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He is the alter ego on the tweets, but I think the ones in the morning are oftentimes just from Trump himself on the phone. And that's actually where a lot of the spelling errors come through. You know, the guy who calls himself a very stable genius has a lot of issues between there and there and there and were and counsel and counsel.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the amazing thing is we as reporters are finding out about it at the same time as the White House staff. It's just an incredible sense of chaos and dysfunction when these moments happen. I mean, we, of course, have Twitter alerts for Trump, and lately he's been manic with the retweets about impeachment and Pelosi and all that. But, you know, we just react to cover it and we try to figure out what the hell is that? What is going on here? What motivated it? Why did he do it? Usually it's easy to figure out because you just play back the tape of fox and friends and see what somebody said earlier that morning. But a lot of times it's more complex. And, you know, the tweets are never fully transparent. So you see what he's saying. And it's clearly in his voice oftentimes with a lot of typos and grammatical errors, by the way, but there's more to the story and there's more reporting that we have to do to find out what it means.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a piece of the law that needs reauthorization from Congress, and the White House was behind that reauthorization. The president and his whole team. But when the president saw Judge Napolitano talking about it and saying, I don't know why the president would support a law that may have been used to wiretap him and survey his campaign, the president is on fire and he tweets his concern about this law. Maybe we shouldn't do this. The two things have nothing to do with each other. And that starts several hours of chaos again at the White House where John Kelly, Chief of Staff, has to bring in the Intel chiefs and has to have Wayne, forgive me, Tom Bossert issue a corrective tweet because they actually want this law and it has nothing to do with the warrants that are used to surveil people in America.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a lot of hours in the morning hate watching TV and love watching other shows. And calling friends and saying, Oh my God, Lou, that's really interesting. Or Sean, you know, Hannity, interesting, blah, blah, blah. Well, one day he's literally governing by tweet because Judge Napolitano, a fixture on Fox and Friends, is talking about the reauthorization of a foreign surveillance act, a piece of that act that is important to catch terrorists plotting abroad.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's talk about the ways it hasn't worked out so well. I mean, for example. You said Romney has it reviewed by multiple people. Well, Trump doesn't, obviously, and people want to take people who work for him want to take that phone away from him. One morning in January 2018, he's sitting in the residence in the executive time.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think one of the reasons why Trump can do it so well is he has no shame. He's the only person in politics who has no shame and is not afraid of what people are going to think of what he says or does. He'll just do it again the next day. And so he's able to tweet his thoughts in that moment without the calculations that other political figures do. I covered the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012. And for Mitt Romney to issue a tweet on that campaign, it had to be reviewed by like two dozen communication staffers at the head.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“John Kelly, I think one thing that's what we keep hearing from people, whether they're Republican or Democrat that we've interviewed, experts in presidencies, historians, this is lowering the bar of what a president should and could do. When you have this kind of nasty language, what are we teaching children? What are we teaching other politicians or budding politicians about the way in which we have a civil discourse? Most presidents haven't gone into this sort of ad hominem way of speaking to their rivals in this way. Another thing that's really”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On Twitter. Or, for example, when he announces that John Kelly is his new chief of staff, while John Kelly is in the air and hasn't been notified or rather hasn't told the president affirmatively, okay, I'll take the job. That's another thing we learned in the book. He uses Twitter as a weapon, as a marketing tool, and as a hiring almost like command performance hiring. I remember this one scene we were reported out that had to do with Chris Christie. You know, he was warned by his wife, you better get in there and talk to him. He might announce on Twitter that he hired you without you agreeing, which is indeed what happened ultimately to...”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nonsogram's real bad, but some of them are good, but some of the Republicans are quite good at it. And Trump is great at it, even though he's awful. He's great at it. Talk about this phenomenon in politics now, because now all the news is seen through governing is done through there. There was a couple of times he issued executive orders on Twitter.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trump's got his hands full with a guy like that, you know, having watched his career. But when you think about the pushing back of it, When you have these names happening all the time, when he uses Twitter in this way, how do you think it's changed political discourse? Because everybody's on Twitter now. You have Margaret Ruby, who's a shitty Twitter person, by the way. He's terrible at it. And he is, I'm sorry. He just says he's so bad. It's so painful.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, of course it's preferable, but he's going to do it. And what's the difference? No one's going to remember the last one he did. Like at this point, it's kind of losing its steam in terms of what I find interesting as someone like Jeff Bezos, and he did get heard on this defense department thing, and we'll see how that turns out because Jeff is suing and Jeff is not a shrinking violet in dealing with people. And I can tell you.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The truth is, though, we don't want to be attacked by the president. We don't want to be a part of this story. I mean, we don't get our feelings hurt. We've got thick skin. We're grown-ups. We're doing our jobs. We pick up the next day and keep going, but we'd rather not be in the middle of the fray with”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When he called us Stone Cold Losers, I thought, well, we've really arrived. And maybe we moved up from nasty, lightweight, and low life.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He would attack her for her looks. He would say she's too short at what is she 5'2", 5'4", too short to be an effective homeland security secretary. She just didn't have the look that he wanted for somebody securing the border.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And We all know what an abusive manager Donald Trump can be, but we learned in his reporting for the book. That he's even more abusive than we imagined, and it comes out with Kirsten Nielsen. Right. He would call her late at night after watching the Lou Dobbs episode on Fox Business Channel to tell her Lou's got this great idea for immigration. I want it done. Of course, Lou's ideas are not always legal and usually don't work anyhow. So she would sort of entertain that request from the president. He would call again at five in the morning to wake her up on purpose and ask why it hadn't gotten done. And she'd have to tell him, you know, sir, the staff at the department are sleeping. We can't get that done. By the way, it's not legal.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To Kirsten, as if to say, Quit it, stop talking. This is not a winner. She's trying to explain the law to the president, and nobody's giving her cover.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's another scene like this in the book, too, though. I'm thinking about it as Phil's talking is because he's making me remember it. Kirsten Nielsen is getting reamed out by the president in a cabinet meeting, screamed at by him, dressed down. Again, Pence does almost nothing. Jared Kushner, as she's getting yelled at because he wants to, he's talking about shutting down the border, literally closing it. And she's like, Mr. President, you know, under our laws, that's not legal. People are allowed to cross the border, ask for asylum, and then we will decide whether or not they properly can stay. And he's like, well, what do you think, Jeff? And he's mad. And Jeff Session says, yeah, I think you're right, Mr. President. I think we should shut down the border. That's right. And I'm thinking as we're learning the details of this conversation, this is the highest officer of law enforcement in our country, the Attorney General, and he's saying, sure, we can do this illegal thing. Jared Kushner in this scene takes his fingers across his neck.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fear, you know, It's still the fear, you know, certainly that the uniform members, as Carol was saying, felt like duty-bound to follow the chain of command, but there were all sorts of civilians in the room, including, for example, Mattis, who in that role was a civilian defense secretary, even though he's a former Marine General, who wouldn't confront the president. They feel like he's been elected by the American people. He's rightfully holding this office, even though we all know he lost to Hillary Clinton a popular vote by three million votes, but he won the Electoral College. He's in that office for a reason, and they feel like they need to honor him as long as it's within the bounds of the law.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The impression that many had was that as flag officers, nobody could speak back to their commander-in-chief. And Tillerson didn't have that kind of responsibility. He wasn't in that chain of command.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somebody said, you know, I learned everything I needed to learn about the vice president that day. He has a son in the military and he was willing to listen to this. And finally, after calling them dopes and babies, the president says, the worst curse word he can say, I wouldn't go to war with you people. And Rex Tillerson can't take it anymore according to the people in the room. He's looking at Mattis, waiting for Mattis to bark back. Mattis won't do it. Tillerson stands up and says, that's wrong, Mr. President. You're wrong. People don't put on a uniform to make a buck. We're not trying to make money by charging the Koreans for, you know, our base there. This is about safety for America.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Like they're always fighting him without these things and they're thinking to themselves, we just need a shared basic understanding, shared language so he understands why we all can sleep safe and near and dear at night. These things keep America safe. And unfortunately, the schoolhouse rock goes terribly awry because as the president is hearing these descriptions. I loved it too. The president is just bellowing at them, and as others have reported, he's telling them that they're Afghanistan's a loser war, they're losers. But what we didn't know is he started to call them dopes and babies. A woman started to cry in the room. People start shuffling their papers. They want to will themselves out of this room. Jim Mattis has his head bowed. He's speechless. No one's talking.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in July 2017, which is very early and seems like ancient history now, but we learned a lot new about it, President Trump is brought to the tank, a sort of sacred space in the Pentagon where decisions of war are made and the Joint Chiefs, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State General Mattis, Secretary of Defense, and Gary Cohn, National Economic Advisor, want to have kind of like a tutelage, if you will, without making him feel patronized. They want to explain to the president like why we have bases where we have them, why troops are forward.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's really, of course, he can switch the light on or off on whether or not you're going to get your next term. I think that Phil's exactly right. And also, I mean, again. The venom he can unleash on Twitter against any member who comes at him. Think of all the cute little nicknames he's gotten for people, shifty shift and he comments on people's weight. I mean, it's pretty vicious whenever you are somebody who's on the other side. I will say there have been a couple profiles encouraged if people view it this way, of people who've stood up to the president, sometimes in private and sometimes in public, in private, you know, he's not a perfect hera. There are no perfect heroes in this book, but Rex Tillerson stood up and said you're wrong, Mr. President, when he came at...”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two step, right? Exactly. But what do you think the enabling comes from? This is unprecedented. There was enabling under Ronald Reagan. You've seen it everywhere. Look, but they broke from Nixon eventually. They broke, people have not, this level of enabling have never seen it's almost cult-like. Can't be that much fear.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's a really simple answer for that, which is Trump's approval rating among Republican voters. All the other Republican elected officials live in fear of the 80 to 90 percent of Republican voters who strongly approve of this president's performance in office and they're afraid that Trump is going to turn his venom on them and turn these supporters on them and then they're going to become a former former Senator Bob Corker, former Senator Jeff Lake. Those guys are not in office anymore and probably could not win elections in their home states because they got crosswise with this president. And that's why so many of these senators voted to acquit President Trump, even though they know that the evidence was not even in dispute, even though some of them said publicly what the president did was wrong.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what's happening behind the scenes with others? Because one, I think the parts that is interesting is you did get a lot of people to talk to. You have 200 people talking to you. These are the enablers who do not talk publicly one or just let it go and move along. And I think one of Donald Tom's strengths is understanding that people break apart really quickly if you break them apart. Like if they group together, it would be a different situation. But look what happened with Me Too. Finally, when everyone talked together, they were able to talk together. But nobody does that here. They group together in sort of fear and loathing. And you guys have written about, I think Josh Dawsey wrote a piece about this. Why is that happening? Is it just, I just want to be, you know, Senator Lindsay Graham, or what is it?”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It kind of makes the hair go up on the back of your neck to think that somebody could Republican, Democrat, independent. They know who Romney is. You can't say that faith, that he isn't genuine in that claim.”
2020-02-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT