PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT Premiere: Le Batard’s Lost Trump Tapes, Revealed

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Thanks for watching our show, Donald.

Thank you, Donald.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Keep the show going.

It's terrific.

Right after this ad.

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All right, so I've been waiting months, Cortez, to finally get to this story that I have painstakingly brought our audience today, but I just need to explain what happened as we've been sitting here because we are sitting here.

It's me and Ryan Cortez.

What's up, you cowards?

Yeah, very good.

Intro.

Me and Ryan Cortez, our producer, sitting inside this new studio that we built over the summer at the Metal Arc offices in New York City.

And I just got this voicemail.

Okay.

I got this voicemail from one of the many older people in my life who have absolutely no idea what my job is now.

Now this Tony Kornheis are leaving this message.

Pablo's podcast is launching today.

And I wanted to help because I love Pablo.

I, of course, have forgotten what the title of Pablo's podcast is.

I think it's Pablo Torre just found out, or Pablo Torrey knows this,

or maybe it's Pablo Torrey has gout.

I'd have made it Pablo Torrey graduated from Harvard, so eat it.

So, yeah, a little late.

The thing is to rename the show.

No, Tony Cornezo used to be a writer, and you could see it in that message where he says you might have had gout.

Should we rename the show?

It's honestly good merch.

So there's so much going on, actually, that I feel like we should probably explain what it is that we're actually doing on this show, Pablo Torre finds out, because people, I think Cortez, people rightfully, I must admit, might be confused.

People want to know when is the show coming out?

Where the hell has it been?

You have a Substack channel that you've put some content on, not a ton.

High quality, some content.

The show is coming out three times a week.

That's what we can tell people.

Yes.

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

Correct.

You're going to want to subscribe to youtube.com slash Pablo Torre finds out because the people running the video department, I used to work with Patrick Kim at Desus and Merrill.

He is incredible.

You're going to want to watch this.

Subscribe to youtube.com.

Patrick Kim behind the glass fist pumping because he paid you to say that, but also it's accurate.

So format wise, once a week, Cortez, once a week, we're going to do an originally conceived docu-style, fully reported podcast, like a nourishment.

Journalism.

We're going to do goddamn journalism.

We're going to do seriously executed sports investigations that are inspired by the magazines that Tony Kornreiser and I used to write for, but investigations that while they are seriously done, don't take themselves seriously.

This is the whole like, we want to f around, but we also want to find out.

And this is like the 500 spreadsheets you've created that have all these story ideas, some of which we've forgotten about over the months.

I know.

There's so many of them.

There's so many, like, I mean, admittedly, a lot of them are just like semi-stoned ideas.

They could become fully stoned ideas, which is sort of the idea.

With that attitude, with that production attitude.

Okay, so there's that spreadsheet full of like reported ideas, But also once a week, I'm going to do the thing that I think people may have heard already in our feed.

I'm going to host a talk show.

It's basically a talk show called Share and Tell.

Two of my friends and I all find out which stories we're obsessed with in that given week.

Dan and Mina have done those with me already.

Dan, you're referring to Dan Fatface, right?

Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Trapezoid.

Dan Lebatart.

More on him in a second.

Our third episode, our third weekly episode is essentially like in fantasy football parlance.

It's our flex spot.

It's a flex spot.

It's a flex episode.

That's right.

Okay.

Wide receiver, running back, tight end, if you're in that weird league, it could be anything.

And that, actually, that is what today's very special premiere episode is,

which we can finally get to.

And I feel obligated.

I mean, there was just no other way that I could have started this show, despite all the dangers associated with this specific episode.

Because the very first time, Cortez, the first time I ever co-hosted the Dan Lebatard show with Stugats in person, this was my introduction into the family that became Metalark Media.

It was way back in 2015.

Wow.

And we had a call-in guest.

Okay.

And this is a call-in guest that I've been thinking about literally, literally ever since.

All right, Trump, thank you as always for joining us.

I want to get to some truths here with you, if I may.

Pablo Torrey in with us all show today.

Is it true that Donald Trump has never in his life used an ATM?

Well, I haven't used too many of them, but I do love the concept.

And, you know, we're going to have to be a little bit careful.

A lot of money is being taken out of different forms of computerization.

I think someday we're going to have to go back to the old days, you know, the old way.

But no, I'm not big on them, but I have used them, yes.

So

Dan, what he informed me was that Donald Trump had been a recurring guest, but I had never heard or felt any of this.

Okay.

I had never heard any of these interviews, did not know that they ever

happened.

Um, and I really wanted to find out what they were actually like.

The problem was that everybody associated with the Dan Lebitard show with Stugats had memory-hold those tapes.

I was gonna say, I don't think they exist anywhere.

No, that's old footage, right?

Well, by 2016, they had wiped them off the internet, they were gone forever.

And in fact, what I realized recently was that they were

banished they were banished to a physical hard drive in miami accessible only to select metal lark media employees

dan lebetard never to be heard from again right

until now oh no

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What's happening, Carl?

Carl, is it all falling apart?

It's all happening.

Look at this.

Yes.

Look at this.

Where am I sitting?

You're sitting, not in your chair, because I'm going to sit in your chair.

Okay.

Because we're turning the tables.

Yes, we are turning the tables.

We're turning the tables.

You're being turned.

All right.

Five, four, three, two, one.

This is what I was hired to do,

was to make you sit across from me with little to no information about what's actually about to happen to you.

I've asked you three or four times to tell me what we're doing.

You have consistently, steadfastly refused to tell me what we're doing.

Correct.

It's better this way.

But in the interest, truly, Dan, as you wear your ridiculous sunglasses in front of me, which is appropriate for someone who has to confront the blinding lights of his past,

are you somebody who remembers anything about the tapes I'm about to play for you?

You have just told me we're doing the Trump tapes, and I'm like, what is it?

What are we doing?

And now I'm led to assume just from the sheer delight streaking across your face that what you're about to do is play for me the time that we irresponsibly had Donald Trump on and frolicked with him.

Lest anyone say that we are an echo chamber.

We've had Bill O'Reilly on, Geraldo River, just because I wanted to ask questions about his mustache.

And at the time,

a reality game show host who surely would not win the presidency and threaten to topple democracy because I'm an idiot.

There is one major problem with what you just said, a falsehood.

Because you said time.

And this is about the times.

We've talked to him twice.

Oh, more than twice.

How many times did we talk to Donald Trump?

People have recommended to me that we not do this episode as my first episode.

Dominique Foxworth, our friend, said, quote, do not

do this.

And he's never heard these tapes.

He said he would never own up to them if he were a person who had been involved in these tapes.

He was kind of worried that we were going to cancel ourselves.

As your first act and jumping into the arms of Metal Arc Media with your wife and family.

Yes, and three-year-old Violet.

All of that going down in flames because I wanted to do the Trump tapes.

Because you want to start on the third rail.

How many times have we interviewed Donald Trump?

You've interviewed him several times over the course of three years.

And 2013, 2014, 2015.

We're going to go through them.

You were at one of them, correct?

I was at the last one of them.

Who else was involved in the others?

I have legitimately no recollection of why it is we had him on.

My question for you actually is going to be, why did you have him on?

And you're telling me that you don't even recall.

When was the first one?

I'm going to be first.

It's going to be like somebody being indicted talking in front of a federal government.

I don't recall the incident you speak of, but I legitimately, let's start with.

You cannot go, I'm not here to talk about the past.

You can't go Mark McGuire on us, even if you are wearing glasses conspicuously.

Did we all do all of them at ESPN?

Yes.

All three of them were done at ESPN.

Okay, all I remember is the last one, the last one that you were involved in.

And the only reason I think I remember it is because you wouldn't shut up about it.

This was how that first interview back on November 19th, 2013.

Oh,

yeah.

This is how it began.

Really cool to have Donald Trump, Trump, who is going to join us right now on the Subway Fresh Take Hotline here on ESPN Radio.

Stugatz very badly wants to be Donald Trump.

Even with all of Donald Trump's many enemies, Stugatz just wants to be this guy.

We've got a lot of things to ask him about.

All right.

I'm now legitimately wincing.

But now you've got me fearing.

Now you've got me, because I didn't have any idea of what Donald Trump was, and he was just celebrity TV ego host who was a famous person for reasons that were hard to discern.

We were having him on because he was famous.

I just want to start this again.

Hold on, really cool.

Yeah, I know.

I heard him already, but that's really cool.

I didn't say that.

Really, not cool.

Really cool.

I didn't say that.

You didn't.

In fact, Mike Ryan, Dan, I was, I've been doing reporting around your company, our company now.

Investigative investigative reporting.

Pablo Torre finds out.

It's on the screen behind me.

Mike Ryan told me that Stugatz was actually the one who booked Donald Trump.

Oh, what's the back story there?

So, quick interlude here because I did try to book Stugatz to ask how he booked Donald John Trump repeatedly over three years as a guest.

But what I got

was this: Hi, you've reached John.

I can't get to the phone right now.

Leave a voicemail, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks.

Which would have been fine, except for this.

The mailbox is full and cannot accept any messages at this time.

Goodbye.

And so I kept calling without any explanation because, as with Dan, I just wanted Stu's most genuine, unplanned reaction, which I did eventually receive.

Yeah.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello, Pablo.

So listen, okay.

We are doing an episode for my show

that is

all about

interviews you guys did with Donald Trump.

Sure.

You remember those?

Of course I do.

What do you mean?

I booked them.

Did you ever get Trump's number?

Would you ever text him?

That is a great question.

So hold on.

There is a Donald Trump phone number in

my phone.

I remember us liking him so much that we were wondering if we should turn it into a weekly.

I do remember that conversation

because uh because he was such a great guest like he he speaks in perfect sports radio you know

so I just remember Daniel and I like we were like wow that would be fun and different just to have that guy on every

every week just shredding people

um by the way I should say that I have been recording this phone call with you so can we use any of this stuff on the show?

I don't give a

you could also somehow point out that I was blowing cigarette smoke out of my mouth as I told you I don't give a

but as for why the eventual 45th president himself wanted to call into the Dan Levittard show and possibly texts to Gotz in the first place, that explanation was loud and clear.

Because I heard it on the actual tapes themselves.

By the way, you guys have a great show.

That's why I'm doing it.

But I think you have a great show.

I watch it a lot.

You know what?

I remember he did that move each of the times he was on with us, I feel like.

And I believe that we thought afterward, he's lying, right?

He's just pretending like he watches our show.

I mean, I feel like when he says...

By the way, you guys have a great show.

That's why I'm doing it.

But I think you have a great show.

I watch it a lot.

I watch it a lot in 2013 when you were doing a radio show that was maybe just becoming a video show.

Oh, it probably wasn't even.

I feel like there might be a real hypothesis

in the video there.

Yes, he was saying he watched a show.

Really?

That was our first indication that Donald Trump was a total fraud.

But then again, there was, you know, you guys sort of playing into it.

Thanks for watching our show, Donald.

Thank you, Donald.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Keep the show going.

It's terrific.

And you did.

You kept the show going, and it is, in fact, terrific.

We really should have.

We should run that now as something even though we're not doing it as radio uh all the big names talk here donald trump yes keep your show going it's terrific wait there's more

you have a great show too and i really like it thank you

That's my favorite part, maybe.

How much worse does this get?

Because I am legitimately fearing what it is that you're about to play next.

Like where you have to understand that I am looking at this through the prism of I did not know back then the evil anarchy that i was dealing with i am talking to a game show host and so you've got me legitimately cringing right now

i can't stop smiling it's bad right well look it's just this part again thank you

thank you sir yeah like he's a military leader like he's going to be our commander in chief thank you

well i want to point out that in these three years of talking to him, he did, as you might expect, just have a lot of weird random brags.

I happen not to be a spanker.

If Ivanka did something wrong, I was never a spanker.

But there are spankers, but you know, there's a tremendous group of people.

And I don't mean beaters, I mean spankers.

There's a vast difference.

What did we ask him?

There's a vast difference.

That came out of a conversation about Adrian Peterson.

We just decided to ask Trump about.

Well, the thing about what Trump would do.

We asked Trump about the moralities of hitting a child.

And he pointed out that

I happen not to be a spanker.

This is an important clarification.

But the point of these tapes, when you go through them and you really relive those experiences.

Well, it's the cringy chumminess, is it not?

Like that's the undercurrent of schmarm, of us like all of us slapping each other on the back at the golf club.

I mean, speaking of the highest stakes that Donald Trump has ever played for on the golf course.

Well, actually, the highest stakes are, you know, I've made some of my best deals on the golf course, and I've gotten to know people.

And I bought Trump Tower on, you know, Fifth Avenue.

I built it, but I bought the site because of golf because the people that I played golf with really liked me a lot.

And I made the deal because of them.

I mean, because of golf.

And I've made many great deals, and these are billion-dollar deals because of golf.

Trump, do you know what you just did to me?

I asked you.

You turned it around.

You did?

Okay, at least you did it aware.

At least I did it.

No, no, no.

I turned your question around.

I answered it like a politician.

But you didn't answer.

I was talking about the most I ever played for.

I gave you an extra little spin.

Maybe that spin was more interesting, but

no, Trump, answer that question.

The biggest thing.

No, I flipped it around.

I liked my answer better.

I think it's fun.

Trump, the audience doesn't like that answer.

They want person.

Yeah,

maybe they like it.

That's as hard as he's ever been drilled right there.

I really drilled him.

It really is.

He didn't answer the question.

No, he actually just continued to talk about his friends.

Who is your best famous friend?

Like, among your famous friends, I'm giving you the opportunity you've waited for all your life here, Trump, to just name-drop all of your friends.

And so I'm wondering who is your best of your famous friends?

You know what?

People don't know about me.

I have a lot of friends.

Bob Kraft is a friend.

Coach Belichick is a friend.

Tom Brady is a friend.

And by the way, Tom Brady is a great guy.

Woody Johnson of the Jets is a terrific guy.

He's a friend of mine.

And Fred Wilpon and the Steinbrand affair.

I know them all.

I just got back from the United States Golf Association where Jack Nicholas, who's a good friend of mine, was being honored.

Jerry Rice and Lawrence Taylor played golf.

And I'm telling you, Lawrence put on a chipping display.

I play with Michael Jordan.

He's a great guy.

I played with Bill Clinton a lot.

A terrific guy.

A terrific guy.

I will tell you that right now I am deeply embarrassed.

But I am deeply embarrassed beyond realms beyond why you think I'm embarrassed I'm embarrassed by the sheer laziness of that question tell me about your celebrity tell me about who you hobnob with tell me about what it's like to be you I'm just embarrassed by how little work went into that question I'm disappointed that you didn't follow up on Bill Clinton being a terrific guy with anything about Jeffrey Epstein's island personally.

Well, retrospect.

Well, yes, with the clarity of hindsight, yes.

It is 2020.

But there was, but the other part about these tapes is that there is this wildly, truly eerie foreshadowing running through it.

Because we talked about how you talked about Adrian Peterson, and that random conversation about Adrian Peterson, former Vikings star running back, it wound up here.

Here's the thing about Adrian Peterson.

Famously, he has a death grip of a handshake.

Famously, you refuse to shake hands, correct?

Well, I did shake his hand, and I really don't refuse to shake hands.

But of course, everyone knows that I'm right because you catch colds, you catch flus, you catch all sorts of things by shaking hands.

But if you're living in this society, and I happen to like Japanese custom better, where you just sort of look at each other and you nod.

Donald Trump had a better, more coherent, and less racist towards Asian people pandemic policy on your show in 2014 than he did as president of the United States in 2020.

That is correct.

How much more of this do I have to sit through?

Well, we got to get to the yachts.

What was the most reckless period of the Donald Trump life like?

Give me the most reckless six-month or year-long period.

I went out and I bought Adnan Khashoggi's yacht for a lot of money.

And I had this yacht, this tremendous yacht.

It had 27 people on board working.

It cost at the time $25 million.

Now, that was today the equivalent to probably $100 and something million dollars.

And I had this magnificent yacht, but there was a problem.

So I want to pause that here because you might think, Dan, that the problem with buying Adnan Khashoggi's yacht would be that Adnan Khashoggi turned out to be a renowned Saudi Arabian arms dealer who sold weapons to autocrats, who also, by the way, famously had a bodyguard, it turns out,

that he literally nicknamed, quote, Mr.

Kill.

That was Adnan Khashoggi's bodyguard.

But instead, instead, the actual problem Donald Trump with owning this blood yacht was this.

But there was a problem.

I didn't want to use it because I wanted to play golf.

So I had a yacht sitting there waiting for me.

I had this massive crew, and I'd play 18 holes, and I've won a lot of club championships.

So I'd be playing like at a club championship, and I didn't want to go and go to the yacht after the round of golf.

So it sat there.

I was probably the only yacht owner that almost never used his yacht.

So you were

way ahead in terms of getting Donald Trump on the public record, compromised by Saudi Arabian arms dealers.

Again,

all I am hearing there,

and I appreciate you saluting us for hard-hitting journalism there because we were ahead of the curve.

All I'm hearing there is, again, the lazy stupidity in tell me how much money you have.

Talk to me about how much money you have.

Those,

I don't know if this is exactly the interview that people wanted at this time from Donald Trump because he was just famous for being famous.

Sure.

Oh, yeah, he was a celebrity.

He was

a reality show personality.

And so, to your point, about the questions you were asking him, the very next question off of this revelation about how he bought this yacht.

Not a hard-hitting Saudi question.

Well, it was this: Donald, give us the best party you've ever attended.

I mean, okay, so just to be clear, what you're doing right now is you've acted as a first order of business in the creation of this show that you've been talking about for months.

Months.

It's to embarrass the founder of this company

by

resurrecting a bunch of things that not only I had forgotten about, but blissfully and thankfully the audience had forgotten about until you remind them.

Well, this is why I'm reminding them, and this is why it's not total embarrassment.

It's because when when Stu asks, when he asks this question, Donald, give us the best party you've ever attended.

Obviously, this is absent any sort of journalistic instinct, and you fail to follow up on any of these sort of autocratic, adjacent details.

But what Trump says in response to this question, Dan,

is kind of incredible.

Well, you know, it's a very interesting question because it might have been last week.

I went to the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and after the pageant in Crocus Hall, which is a fantastic location right outside, right inside of Moscow, and everybody was there, all of the, you know, most of the oligarchs were there.

It was tremendous wealth, unbelievably beautiful women, including the people from the pageant who were beyond belief.

It could have topped them all.

It was wild.

I mean, yeah.

We need to just do the math for the listeners here, okay?

Because I had to triple check what was just said there.

And that week,

the wildest party week of Donald Trump's life is exactly when the P-tape allegedly happened.

Wow.

The alleged P-tape.

This was November 2013.

This was the same month Trump was allegedly taped watching prostitutes.

Yes, Piana Bed in Moscow, host city of the Miss the Miss Universe pageant.

The entire shroud of how is an American president this in bed with Russia, many people suspect, although nothing has ever been credibly linked to it, that it was a party in which Russian oligarchs have photographs of Donald Trump being peed on by prostitutes.

Excuse me.

Or him, yes, watching them pee on a bed that Barack Obama had rented in that Ritz-Carlton, allegedly.

All these theories apply.

None of which I asked him about.

I didn't raise a single journalistic antenna to party with Russian oligarchs being something that was probably a bit of malfeasance in it.

But the point is,

he went on the record authentically talking about that same week in Moscow with Russian oligarchs.

The wildest week that he still could not stop thinking about in November 2013.

We interviewed him the week after this.

That's right.

We got his first public comments after positive.

Literally.

Literally, because Stugatz asked this.

That's right.

Donald, give us the best party you've ever attended.

Stugatz accidentally gathered circumstantial evidence for the most infamous rumored tape in American political history.

Government evidence.

And nobody knew it until now because everybody forgot about it.

Because you decided to start your career shaming one of the founders of this company.

This is, by the way, how you rewarded Stugatz's investigative journalism in these interviews, by the way.

Can you fire my co-host on your way out the door, Stugatz?

I know everyone requests this of you everywhere you go.

Just fire Stugats.

Tell him he's fired.

Well, Stugatz, you are absolutely fired.

You don't have it.

There's no question about it.

As a team, you're phenomenal, but individually, you're fired.

So you are just actually physically trying to become like smaller and you're trying to shrink inside of yourself.

It's hackery of the highest order.

Like, I'm just...

Hey, real estate, television, monkey.

Do your television real estate monkey phrase.

It was kind of like watching someone ask Jaleel White to do a little Urka.

It was that way.

It's just so lazy.

It's just, I'm mostly what I'm embarrassed by.

This is hard to say, it's hard to think,

is just what a hack job that interview was.

Just embarrassing as content.

Even more embarrassment

after the break.

I do want to be fair to you because there was a real moment of legitimate journalistic integrity.

This is true because by this point, again, Trump was a reality TV star.

People didn't really take him seriously.

He had awful takes that were sort of only vaguely addressed, but you asked him directly about this topic.

That birth certificate fiasco with the president, that was just a nightmare, right?

We'd do that differently if we had to go back and do that over?

No, I don't think so.

I mean, I think it was, you know, there's a large group of people out there that would like to see what's going on.

And look, right now, I will say this.

This country has bigger problems.

When we have a healthcare thing that's in total shambles, and you can't get a website after spending a billion dollars, I mean, we have some very big problems.

But no, I don't consider that at all.

There's so many people.

I walk down the street and people are screaming, keep it going, keep it going.

They love it.

Now, maybe they like it for entertainment, and maybe they like it because they believe it.

But that is a, you know, it was a very, very serious subject.

And there are a lot of people out there that agree.

So, you know, I don't, again, no regrets whatsoever.

I just think that I'm on to other things.

So the whole demanding Barack Obama provide his birth certificate to prove that he's an American thing.

No follow-up from me after that.

The hardest,

the most that I leaned into it was we do that one over again differently.

That was my controversial stance on it.

Yeah, the thing you did next was actually did the stupid ass you're fired thing that came after this.

So yeah, followed it with the natural follow-up.

But this part of his defense, I felt, was really actually interesting because you remember, in all of that monologue, he kind of just gave away the game a little bit.

Now, maybe they like it for entertainment, and maybe they like it because they believe it.

And that sort of instinct, Dan, again, on the record with you,

is why he was already instinctively good at politics before people actually took him seriously about politics, right?

I mean, this was the whole thing.

He was shameless about what his actual thinking was.

He was kind of a sports radio caller who was staggeringly transparent about where his instincts had led him.

I don't think there's anything

in my life, never mind the history of American politics as I viewed it, that has left me feeling more foolish than underestimating what total shamelessness could do to American systems that I thought were stronger than that.

I got to think that as we talk about this, I'm assuming there's going to be fear involved for him on the idea that indictments from every corner of the universe might put him in jail for a long time.

But for

his last move to be not if I topple the entire system to prevent the checks and balances from working.

I would have never guessed that I would be so stupid as to think that that entity, that from that entity, could come the challenging of like the principles we hold dearest allegedly as a country.

No, and it's especially ironic that you say that because you did ask him about this.

Donald, do me a favor.

Break news right here on this show on ESPN radio.

Don't wait till June.

Are you running for office?

Are you running for president?

So I'm looking at it very seriously, fellas.

And by the way, you guys have a great show.

That's why I'm doing it.

But I think you have a great show.

I watch it a lot.

But I am thinking about it very, very seriously.

And the country is in trouble.

We're being laughed at by everybody.

China's taking our jobs.

They're taking our manufacturing.

They're loaning us the money.

They're taking our money.

And then they loan it back to us.

We owe China now $1.3 trillion.

Can you believe it?

Trillion.

$1.3 trillion.

Mexico is not our friend.

Mexico is doing a number on us, not only at the border, but they're doing a number economically.

They're taking our jobs like crazy.

Ford just announced a $2.5 billion plant in Mexico.

I am looking at it very seriously, and I'll be announcing in June.

And I think a lot of people are going to be very, very surprised.

One thing I will tell you, if I decide to do it, and if I win, I will make this country great again.

That part.

Dan, I was sitting next to you when he said that.

And it occurs to me only now that that was the first time I would hear a phrase that has been said millions of times since that we will hear unto eternity, I will make this country great again, was in some sense debuted, soft-launched as we were interviewing this man at ESPN Radio.

With a Stugat's question that has one of my favorite things in it, replay the question so that people can hear one of my favorite things, which is Stugat's feeling like he's tripping while running in the middle of a thought.

Donald, do me a favor.

Break news right here on this show on ESPN radio.

Don't wait till June.

Are you running for office?

Are you running for president?

The sound of him being punched, it sounds like.

The sound of him being tased in the middle, one of my favorite things.

So three weeks after Stugatz gets tased, answering, asking this question that Donald Trump answers, he runs for president.

Three weeks after this, that's the timeline.

That was his final appearance on the show.

And I'm assuming, based on how you have physically, viscerally reacted, that that was also the last time that you personally ever talked to Donald Trump.

It is.

And I also just have washing over me, like

when you say visceral,

that's one thing that's washing over me.

But

I haven't felt a long time the way that I feel right now, where I'm listening to something back that we have done, and I'm genuinely afraid of what it is that happens next and how it is that it's going to embarrass me because uh

yeah because in retrospect it becomes very clear how foolish we were but let's talk through this because the reason i wanted to do this is because you obviously became one of the foremost critics of trump in sports media in media generally you risked your employment

There's a racial division in this country that's being instigated by the president, and we here at ESPN haven't had the stomach for that fight.

But what happened last night at this rally is deeply offensive.

Send her back.

About a Somali refugee who serves in Congress.

This is deeply offensive to me as somebody whose parents made all the sacrifices to get to this country.

Send her back.

How are you any more American than her?

You're more privileged.

You're whiter.

You're richer.

But people don't know whether your money's real or not.

You've had every privilege afforded to you by America.

Every privilege.

And now what you do with that power is you go after brown people and black people and minorities.

And around here, we won't talk about it.

The idea that you did those interviews and then you did all of that criticism and you feel the way you do now.

How are these things informing each other inside of your heart?

Well, one of the things that I'm looking back at

as you talk about some of this stuff is

just being truly shocked

that I had no idea from that perspective of my view of America that that conversation would be seen as something dangerous instead of playful because I'm arming somebody casually with the ability to say, no, I don't regret that I was claiming that Obama had a fake birth certificate.

I think that you will find somewhere if you go through the sound, my guess is you can find my voice on something saying that I was hoping that Donald Trump would run for president, not because I thought that he would win in any conceivable, fathomable idea, but because I wanted the circus of anarchy that would come with him debating legitimate politicians who wouldn't.

I wanted the entertainment, the spectacle of it.

But that's actually what you talked to him about as well when it came to him doing something closer to sports.

I would love for you to be an owner though because you'd be so meddlesome.

Oh my God, you'd be

totally meddlesome.

And every time you said something bad about me that I made a bad move, I'd call you an owner.

I know.

I mean, you would be a disaster to me.

I would be a total disaster.

I'd even be a disaster for you, although you guys would like it.

Yeah, you'd be so much worse.

You'd be so much worse than Jerry Jones.

It would be.

Facts.

But

the point that you wanted the chaos and the anarchy because there was entertainment in that,

And the reason why you believed that that was a worthwhile goal despite the risks was because you had a belief in the fortitude, the resiliency of America's institutions.

The irony here seems to be that you were actually, ironically, too patriotic.

You thought that America would never do this because you believed in America so much.

And instead,

the bullshit that we do in sports, in reality television, entertainment, that that would never actually get all the way into the Oval Office when, in fact, exactly that is what happened.

The naivete in it is a bit stupefying.

I guess it's sort of

it would be the

articulation of privilege to assume that the America that I thought existed

was

what I experienced as others were not experiencing that America because I wasn't thinking about things like gerrymandering.

I wasn't studying what it meant to put in federal judges in positions where they could distort law.

Like in some ways, I was a, when it came to politics, a bit of an infant

soaked in embryonic fluid about what it is that

could happen to America because I didn't think America was that flimsy that it could be toppled by an oaf.

I didn't think an oaf shouting fake news.

Not only did I believe in America that way, I believed in media that way.

The idea that journalism would matter more.

You can't just shout down journalism by being a real estate liar and criminal who just shouts fake news, but you can.

Right.

No, the fact checkers actually don't have to matter if you don't let them was what he sort of realized.

And to your point, the question I asked myself and I asked myself as a person who was with you in that interview that we're both cringing at.

I was right next to you.

I noticed you didn't play any sound from you in that interview.

This is my show.

You did ask questions, right?

You didn't sit anything out, right?

You did participate.

All right, fine.

Donald, I'm curious,

is there a story of somebody from sports asking you for advice?

And do you recall a notable piece of advice you gave to somebody in the world of athletics?

Well, I get it all the time.

I mean, you talk about Deflategate.

I talk about those folks.

And, you know, frankly, I think Tom Brady should sue the NFL for $250 million and settle for nothing and, you know, get out of this thing.

But, you know,

that's a good soundbite, though.

That's a good thing.

Did they put it on the scroll?

Did they put it on ESPN?

Did they put the scroll that Trump, Tom Brady should sue the NFL for $250 million?

That sounds like a legitimate reality.

We made some news.

We made real news.

And now the question that I have to ask myself with you here is a question I ask myself a lot in these

times.

Hashtag these times.

Are we the bad people in the documentary?

Are we the people who missed the thing that obviously ended up in the next scene being horribly, horribly explosive to everything we now say we care about?

I think that if you're showing this graphically, what it should look like as a montage is sort of Confederate statues toppling, you know, Nazis in the street in Tallahassee, and sort of the jovial cackle of Stugatz in the background, just laughing, throwing his head back and saying, What was the best party you attended, Donald?

Donald, give us the best party you've ever attended.

Yes, here are the complicit enablers, the fools who

helped an army of hatred overtake democracy.

Is it just guilt?

Is that the feeling?

In your chest cavity?

Is it just guilt?

I mean, you make this company, Metal Arc Media, founded on a principle of I'm going to do things differently, very differently.

I'm going to do things I could not do before.

I join up under that same aegis.

How does what we just revisited intersect with your ambition here?

Both of the feelings that I have in both starting the company and listening to that are similar in that I'm thinking to myself as it happens, God damn, I did not know I could be this big of a fool showing my ass in front of this many people.

But if your starting point on all of that is being able to make fun of yourself because you were a fool and you tried to do a vaguely principled thing at ESPN by leaving to create your own thing in 2024, when I was telling people in the creation of this company, I feel like these microphones are going to matter.

The independence of these microphones is going to matter.

I didn't see a writer's strike coming or corporatization of the content economy coming, but I did say to Skipper and anybody who believed in the idea of the creation of this company that we need to have the freedom of the microphones in 2024 so we can learn from our mistakes and so that we can do it better.

And the ideas that I had about America, handed down from my parents and grandparents near the Freedom Tower, because America was the place that wasn't communism, that wasn't Cuba, that wasn't a dictatorship.

I wanted to make sure that we had microphones in Miami, not because I knew Florida would go this bad, not because I knew that the press in general would come under siege, but because we'd built something in 20 years and I wanted to protect it.

This is where I do want to like sort of sit up straight a little bit.

and not be totally cowed by our past selves as much as we are embarrassed to be our past selves.

And it's because what you did, what we did, was truly recognize Donald Trump's superpower.

It was not merely a willingness to disregard the truth and certainly a shamelessness about destroying America's institutions.

It was that he is

entertaining.

He was funny.

You have told me before you like to collect weirdos, strange people.

Trump qualified because he is not just funny intentionally, more than that,

he's funny without trying.

And that part, like him being a sports talk radio caller, literally with you, and also as a matter of just wiring mentally, he's an A-plus gas bag man.

And he spawned imitators.

But the reason why he succeeded was because you actually want.

to watch and listen to him.

Despite all of it, he's just actually good at that.

but the celebrity guest is supposed to always remain a guest he's not supposed to beat all the republican nominees and then become a guest who lives in the white house and can then uh you know take all of the systems to uh just pour them into his own bank accounts with with yes with with adeally with a system breaking that none of us that none of us had any idea that the key to surviving a single water gate is just to have a thousand of them yes bed of nails theory don't get punctured by one scandal have a thousand of them so that none of them can puncture the skin.

It's unbelievable.

But the idea of now, are we hypocrites, right?

Because I'm anticipating all of the stuff coming back at us because I have decided to do this with my first show.

I do not believe that we are hypocrites because hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty,

that would be to say,

no,

he was never actually

that interesting.

And in fact, I would never listen to him today because the reality is when he gets on a debate stage, Dan, I'm going to be watching and listening and probably laughing at some of those clips.

I admit this.

Like, it's not like I have found religion where I am now cleansed and all of my instincts towards why is this man interesting and entertaining and funny have been erased.

The battle that I am going to have to sort of reckon with as I go through another election cycle as just a guy in this country is,

am I not supposed to laugh anymore?

If you put him on a debate stage with DeSantis, I'm at least watching in part just to see how scared DeSantis gets and how

frozen in the lights he gets.

No, I mean, look, the reality of what this is, and I now I'm just like on the therapy couch with you.

We're both sort of like sitting in a, lying in a king-sized therapy couch together, is.

I feel like we have to be honest about what he's good at and that to deny it, to sort of indulge the moral scolding that we did not do when he was on the radio with you is to

amplify his power.

Because the whole point of him, the reason why he is appealing is because he sort of has changed that formula on they used to say about presidential candidates, you want it to be somebody who you drink a beer with.

With Donald Trump, it's different.

It's a little different.

You want him,

Donald Trump, you want to watch him while drinking a beer.

He is entertaining you.

And that part of it, if we're not honest about his skill, if these candidates who are, if the Democratic candidate is not honest in a debate about, look, that guy is about to be 10 times more entertaining than me, it does feel like part of the game, if you choose to play it with him, is to concede that I am not going to out charisma this man whose charisma is fueled by the most base instincts that are only found at the most compelling, perversely compelling levels of sports talk radio.

He is that, right?

He is the sports talk radio caller.

He is New York sports talk radio.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

It's a guy who knows it all, even though he doesn't know very much at all as somebody that Mike and the Mad Tog are throwing their entertainment vehicle to.

Here, Donald on a mobile, please do our job for us with this call.

Be entertaining by whatever it is you have to say.

Donald from Queens, Dan, was not just any sports radio caller.

He was your sports radio caller.

You're delighting a little bit too much.

And it's, yeah, that laughter, you've been muffling it the entire time.

It's been in your sternum the entire time we've been doing this.

I legitimately thought when you gave me the vague notion of we'll be doing the Trump tapes, I'm like, do I have to listen to like some wiretaps or something around the documents that they found in his toilet?

How are you not going to give me some information on what the Trump tapes are, only to find out that there are three interviews with Trump, one of which I remember?

Yeah, it was just going to be me the entire time just pressing this button.

Thank you, Don.

You, uh,

thank you, Don.

Yeah, you're an asshole.

Thank you, sir.

All right, so you may have noticed that this show is not actually over yet, unless Dan has already canceled it, in which case I do understand.

But I wanted to explain what we're going to be doing at the very end of our episodes.

Because here at Pablo, Torre finds out.

We do,

in fact,

around.

Shout out to Daniel Baldwin and everyone who listened to our trailer.

But after each episode, I do want to honor our literal title by going a little bit doogiehauser and just taking a second to reflect on what exactly I found out in a given day.

And today,

there was a lot.

Something we didn't even get into, I realize, is that when we fed the audio files of these Trump interviews into our high-tech transcript generator, the AI literally could not tell the difference between Trump and Stugats.

That is not a joke.

Their cadences, their voices are so similar that their quotes all got labeled as each other by artificial intelligence.

But what I really found out is a lot simpler.

Because I believe that America deserves to know the truth.

The truth about how, yes, lots of media figures from Seth Myers to Jon Stewart have all been blamed for inspiring Trump to seek higher office.

But that narrative has been missing a crucial piece.

Today, what I found out is that Dan Levittard and his long-forgotten radio interviews with Donald Trump are clearly responsible for the ongoing collapse of American democracy.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out,

a Metalark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.