https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=BT80KVzMdg8
Well, speaking of disagreeable people, let’s talk about Donald Trump. Now, you’ve known Trump for a very long time, and you worked with him. Now, did you meet him for Celebrity Apprentice? Is that… And what was that like? And tell me about Mr. Trump, and let me ask you some questions, if you would. So, you have a very lengthy experience with him. So, I met him first on America’s Got Talent. He appeared as a guest star, I think, introducing one of the shows. And I met him briefly backstage, and he was intrigued by me because he knew that Rupert Murdoch, who was somebody he greatly admired, had made me the youngest newspaper editor for 50 years. So, he knew about that part of my background, and that was all he was interested in, really. He was like, oh, so Rupert, you’re one of Rupert’s guys, right? So, that’s how we had a sort of immediate early connection. Then I entered Celebrity Apprentice, which he was obviously the host of. And it was a pretty fascinating experience, looking back, because night after night, I ended up winning the show pretty much by behaving how I thought Trump would want me to behave. So, I read the art of the deal, his book, about four times before I went out there, and displayed it tough and hard to win, which I knew would be all traits he would find impossible to say were not good things. To the degree, actually, that when I won, his last words were, his last words were, peers, you’re arrogant, you’re obnoxious, you’re possibly evil, but you beat the hell out of everybody in my Celebrity Apprentice. When he won the presidency, I sent him the same note. Dear Donald, you’re arrogant, you’re obnoxious, you’re possibly evil, but you beat the hell out of everybody, and you’re the president of the United States. So, we had that little thing going. But on Celebrity Apprentice, what I remember most vividly was that he was a very different character in those boardrooms for three hours a night than I ever saw when he was president. When he was president, he was the ultimate alpha male, I believe, playing a role. I believe we didn’t see the real Donald Trump. We saw the disagreeable side of him most of the time. The bully boy, the braggart, the alpha guy who would never apologize for anything because it’s too weak, he was abusive, he was disrespectful, and so on. In the boardroom for hour after hour, he could be very heartfelt, he could be very moved by people, he could be very funny, he could be very warm. I remember all those things. I think, what happened to that guy? Why don’t you show the world any of that stuff? Because if you did, it would be incredibly disarming. So, I won the show. I then went back into Celebrity Apprentice each year as one of his boardroom advisors for a few years. Then I joined CNN, interviewed him 30, 40 times at CNN. Then he becomes the president of the United States. And suddenly, I’ve got this guy that I’ve become pretty friendly with, who used to ring me every three or four weeks for a chat about life. And now he’s the most powerful man in the world. From a loyalty perspective, which I think is a trait overlooked with Trump, when he became president, I rang him, and I said to him, actually first I would say when I left CNN, he was one of only three or four people in America who bothered to contact me afterwards. And he contacted me every month for a few months. How are you doing? Are you okay? Can I help you? Right now, people might say he had a vested interest in case he popped back with a big job. Well, maybe, but so did lots of people. And he was one of only a handful of people that bothered to actually contact me regularly to check I was okay and could he help. I never forgot that. Similarly, when he won the presidency, I rang him, and we had a chat about a week later. And I said, I just have one favor. Of course, Champ. He used to always call me Champ because I won his show. Of course, Champ. What is it? I said, I just want to have your first international television interview. I know you’re going to do a domestic one in America, but first international. Done. Done. And a few months later, I was at Davos in Switzerland, a 45-minute wide-ranging interview with the president of the United States, which was spectacularly good for my career, and he kept his word. So Trump, if you were loyal to him, was very, very, very loyal back. I’ve fallen out with him recently because I just can’t buy into all this stolen election nonsense, and I’ve told him to his face, and he just wants to hear it. Designed for anyone to sell anywhere, Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big businesses. 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Go to Shopify.com slash jbp right now. That’s Shopify.com slash jbp. Well, I think part of the reason, I’m going to lay out some theories and you tell me if I’m wrong, okay? I think part of what happened to Trump was that that tough part of him played well, especially to working class people, and I think that there was an element of that that was very genuine, especially contrasted with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, what would you call it, patronizing attitude towards working class people. Trump could speak to people directly and he had that bluntness that disarmed them in some sense and made them believe that he was, at least in many ways, dealing an honest hand. Now, he suffered a tremendous amount of assault through vitriol when he was running for president and when he was president, probably because he was running for president, and when he was running for president and when he was president, probably more than any president that I can remember, including Richard Nixon, who I think might have run second for having most abuse dumped on him. Whether or not that’s deserved is independent. I think in Trump’s case, it was over the top in quite a remarkable way. And so I think that that probably elicited more of that bullying behavior that might be perhaps a weakness. I think that Trump was trying to understand him and the bullying, the last interview you did with him, I believe, one of the things I noted about Trump was that he would do something about every 10 minutes that was markedly out of the ordinary conversationally. And so I watch for that because I’m a clinician. And so I always watch people talk to see when they’re going off script, let’s say, because there’s always something underneath that. And one of the things Trump does, and I don’t know how much of this is conscious and how much of it is reactive and how much of it has become habitual, is he’ll say utterly proper, he’ll say, he’ll make statements that are way over the top. So I think he said, for example, when you were interviewing something like, I tell the truth more than anyone ever has in history. Or he’s and then he said about 10 minutes later, something like, I’ve run the best administration in American history, and they’re over the top preposterous statements and they have this self aggrandizing element that’s got a juvenile flavor to it. And I’m not doing a global critique of Trump’s personality because I suspect, as you’ve already indicated, that he’s a multifaceted person. But there’s an element of him that’s he’s got this 10 year old bully part of him that also has a compensatory element. And so to say, you know, I tell the truth more than anyone has in history or something along those lines. I think, well, like, who are you comparing yourself here to exactly? Like, do you tell the truth more than Jesus Christ? You run a better administration than Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. And it’s market because people don’t generally do that in conversation, right? They don’t come out with a preposterous statement about how remarkable they are with some degree of regularity. And now it seems to me to be associated with some other tendencies that he has. Like he has a tendency to nickname people and he has unerring accuracy in doing that. And it can be devastating. And that also reminds me of someone who’s like a very professional 11 year old bully. And a few of them can bring a teacher to their knees if their attacks are targeted. And they can certainly do that with their classmates. And so I wonder with Trump if he’s been so he’s pushed into a corner because of all the vitriol, the bullying and braggadocio tendency has become exaggerated. Maybe he’s more surrounded by sycophants now than might be helpful. Now, I don’t know that for sure, but it looks to me like something that like that is happening. And he’s trying to calibrate himself even during your interview because he comes out with these statements, something like, well, look at how wonderful I am. And I think, well, maybe if he would have got credit for some of the things that he did that were actually pretty positive, like not having America dragged into a war and like also fostering the Abraham Accords, that he wouldn’t be so inclined to be compensatory in that manner. And then that bullying tendency seems to me the inverse of that is this victimization routine, which he’s wandered into. Now, Trump claims the elections were stolen by corruption. And I would say part of the reason people find that credible is because the American left wing establishment and the liberal establishment, for that matter, were unbelievably vitriolic to Trump and stooped pretty much to anything in order to devalue and criticize him, no matter how unfair and how over the top. And that generated a fair bit of sympathy on people’s part. And I think it generated a sense that he was in some global sense treated unfairly. But I can’t see that there’s any legal evidence that’s been compelling that he’s been able to bring forth that the elections were legally conducted in an improper and corrupt manner. And so then what I see happening with Trump is that he’s fallen prey to the very victimization narrative that he purports to stand against. And so he’s gone off brand. It’s like, well, Mr. Trump, you’re the winner. You’re the guy who doesn’t have things stolen from him by by callow fools. You’re the leader of the free country. You can stand up to the dictator of North Korea and to Vladimir Putin himself. You’re a winner. And that’s your brand. And yet the election was stolen from you. And now your story is it was stolen and everything’s corrupt and all the institutions are corrupt, which is exactly what the left wing radicals are saying. And there’s very little positive messaging tied up in that. And it’s hamstringing the Republicans. And so, well, that’s that’s how it looks to me. And so I’m wondering, you know, Trump very well. Am I not giving the devil his due in this situation? Am I off in my analysis in some important way? No, I think you’re spot on. And I think some interesting points you raised there. And I’ve always thought Trump is a unique character and that he has the thickest skin of anybody I’ve ever seen in public life and also the thinnest skin. So he’ll react with ridiculous oversensitivity to every slight and come out punching. But he’s able to withstand the kind of pressure or scandal that would engulf and destroy every other politician I’ve ever encountered. Thank you.