The Art of the Shutdown Deal

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

When he announced his candidacy in June of 2015, Donald Trump said this: If you can't make a good deal with a politician,

then there's something wrong with you.

You're certainly not very good.

Well, there appears to be something wrong with President Donald Trump.

In December, he refused to sign a compromise budget bill, and instead, he shut down the federal government.

Weeks later, we are in the middle of the longest shutdown in U.S.

history with no apparent deal in sight.

The president, through all of this, has not exactly looked like a master deal maker.

And his behavior has only made a solution seem further away.

When Trump claimed he'd apply his business tactics to government, was that empty political rhetoric?

Or are we actually getting exactly what he promised?

This is Radio Atlantic.

This week's guest is Maggie Haberman, New York Times White House correspondent, Trump whisperer, national treasure.

Maggie, my friend, it is great to see you.

It's great to see you.

And we're in person.

This is not in years has this happened.

It has not happened.

Finally, the universe has allowed us to be in the same place.

Very exciting.

So, as we speak, it is Thursday morning.

It looks like federal workers are going to miss another paycheck tomorrow.

Two Senate bills to end it are up for a vote later today, but both both of those are likely to fail.

Unlike past shutdowns, this is not a legislative deadlock that we were looking at.

It is the president himself who closed the government.

So I wanted to try and spend some time understanding his mindset.

And the best way to do that is to A, talk to you

and to understand how he operated before he was president.

So if you have not read it, everyone should read it.

A recent piece that you wrote with Russ Buetner, you guys quote a number of people from Trump's time as a real estate developer.

They say they see, quote, multiple parallels between Mr.

Trump the businessman and Mr.

Trump the steward of the country's longest government shutdown.

Maggie, you have been reporting on Donald J.

Trump since you worked for the New York Post in the early 2000s and probably more than any other political journalist in the U.S.

understand and to some degree have access to the mind of DJT.

Are you surprised that the shutdown negotiations, if we can even call them negotiations, that this has unfolded in the manner that it has?

Yes and no.

I am surprised that the shutdown is still going because I thought that he would take the national emergency off-ramp, which he did want to do, and was told by everyone around him that he couldn't.

It was legally problematic, so he backed off.

But I thought he would take that much earlier and try to extricate himself from a situation that was was clearly going to be bad before it got much worse.

I think now, because he has basically two speeds, and one is dig in and the other is don't dig in and then declare victory on whatever it was, he is taking the former.

He is being told by his most conservative backers.

I know there's been a lot of focus on, you know, Ann Coulter criticized him.

That's really not.

a lot of what's happening.

It's some of it, right?

I mean, he's aware of sort of the right-wing media ecosystem.

But from his conservative backers in Congress, the House Freedom Caucus, they are telling him, stay strong.

This is important for your re-election.

And that is in his head in a big way.

Because remember, while he is intuitive about what people who watch TV or pay attention to certain culture will respond to, he's actually not intuitive politically at all.

And he is not, or I shouldn't say at all, he's not intuitive.

politically on in many in many ways.

And he's certainly not intuitive about congressional negotiations, which are just a very, very different animal.

So I think he has gotten himself into some kind of a puzzle box and he can't really seem to figure out how to get himself out.

And like doors in that puzzle box, you know, where you can go from one little section of the box to another, are closing on him.

And I think he is finding himself trapped.

This sounds like a scary puzzle box.

Sorry.

Is it bad movie?

Puzzle box.

Okay.

No.

Okay.

I like that.

Okay.

But I would I guess reading your piece, right, the the the idea that, okay, he doesn't have honed instincts for politics is one thing,

but surely he had honed instincts in his business career, because those are the sort of bona fides that got him elected, or at least that were central to his platform of getting elected.

Let me just ask you a big picture question about Trump's style as a businessman in New York City back in the day.

What were the hallmarks of that style?

Look, that style is actually quite similar to what you're seeing now, and I think that's really important to remember.

I think anybody who wants to understand the way that he functioned in business, read a book by Jack O'Donnell, who was a casino executive he worked with in Atlantic City, who explains it pretty well.

But basically, the style is

sow chaos, be inconsistent,

you know, move the goalposts constantly, say that you won, even if you haven't,

and really just be relentless in terms of beating on your opponents.

Because he is, we know he is ruthless, we know that he is willing to do things that other politicians wouldn't do, but he has this willingness to keep going and just try to grind the opposition down in a way that is pretty rare for a president, particularly in this town.

It's sort of important to remember

he's led a pretty consequence-free life.

So even when his businesses went bankrupt, It almost was a way for him to get out from under them because they were not doing well anyway.

The banks took a hit.

The creditors took a hit, but he didn't personally.

I mean, he did take a hit, but it was not quite as bad as what other people took.

And then he went into entertainment and he had a sort of a hit with the first time he was on a show with The Apprentice.

And then The Apprentice, I think that people still don't really fully appreciate this.

The Apprentice is such a factor in why he got elected, because it just branded him to an audience of viewers, not as this sort of sea list developer from New York City and somebody who was constantly striving to be part of the elite, which is how people in New York knew him, but it branded him as this titan of industry, you know, sitting in the leather back chair and firing people, which as we know, he doesn't really like to do himself, right?

But, but this set him up as this kind of master of the universe.

And so I would find when I would go to Iowa or I would go to New Hampshire, people would bring up the apprentice and I would ask them why they were voting for him.

They'd be like, I watched him for years.

You know, he ran his business.

I watched how he did that.

And, you know, he was firing Gary Busey or he was doing something that was not really running his business.

But, you know, Roger Stone once said to me, and it was dead on, that the line between news and entertainment that we rely on is just so blurred for people who are not in our industry, and I don't think that we fully appreciate it.

And then Trump runs for office one time and he wins.

So his style is to assume that he will always win and to just keep going.

And Nancy Pelosi doesn't need anything from him.

And look, I mean, we're setting this up as if it's a dyad, right?

There's also Mitch McConnell, who's

arguably the person that can open the government.

Well, or a minimum whose caucus is also getting restless, right?

And like would like a lot of his, a lot of his senators need this to have.

Corey Gardner would like the government to reopen in Colorado because senator from Colorado, because he's facing a reelection, and this is not helpful.

But in terms of just the two people who are at odds, it's Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump, she doesn't need anything from him.

And when you don't need anything from him, that is the most powerful position you can ever be in because Donald Trump never is more interested in you than when your back is to him.

And she has figured, and she, look, yes, yes, I think she has figured that out, but she also recognizes that her caucus, her voters do not want her to give in, period, full stop.

So she has no reason to.

Let's get back to Trump's career, right?

It's interesting that you say the apprentice is the thing that truly defined him among his base.

And that's actually the most important part of his resume, because he

actually pretends that it's his career, right?

That's the thing, that's the proof is in that pudding.

And yet, you know, we look back at sort of signal moments of his career and it does not reveal him to be some kind of master negotiator.

Yeah, that's right.

I just want to start with the book, The Art of the Deal, right?

Which is his most well-known tome, right?

In the story, you quote Trump's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, who's since become a pretty vocal critic of this president.

But he says, I think Trump was always a terrible negotiator.

And if you look back, Politico reports that perhaps as evidence,

Schwartz got from Trump an almost unheard of half of the $500,000 book advance and also, and this is important, half of the royalties from the sale of the book.

And according to Schwartz, it did not take even a lot of haggling.

Maggie, what is up with that?

I mean, we have this picture of a belligerent negotiator, a selfish or at least self-oriented person.

Does this kind of thing happen?

I ask you this on the day that Trump has acquiesced to Nancy Pelosi's

sort of demand that he not deliver his State of the Union before the government is reopened.

It looks like he kind of just laid down the arms.

Is this part of his negotiating style?

She definitely won this round, there's no question.

But I guess I would frame it a little bit of a different way in terms of his negotiating style.

He tests limits and markets constantly.

So with his trade war, he was seeing what literally the financial markets could absorb.

When he has seen that it is potentially a net negative, he's been trying to accelerate accelerate a deal with China.

You know, with

what he was willing to do in terms of norms shattering, he has gone right up to the line of

what can be considered acceptable in terms of

senators tolerating him and him not facing impeachment, right?

It's funny, for all of his sort of lack of impulse control, he does have this weird sort of mental barrier and where the line is.

But when he is in situations that he is unfamiliar with, such as negotiating a book deal when you're 40 and you're doing your autobiography,

he tends, and it's an industry that you're just not familiar with, he tends to make concessions that you just wouldn't expect him to make.

So that would be one of them.

Another would be when he first came to Washington and he basically handed Reince Priebus control of much of the White House because he was sold that Reinz would be the bridge to Congress and to the Senate.

Most people could have told him this was not going to work the way he had imagined it, but because he was new to Washington and new to the way this functioned, he let it happen.

And then he learned later.

So, what I would say is his style is

when he is in command of sort of the facts and the environment that he's in, his style is to just ram you, keep going, zero sum, you know,

heads, I wind, tails, you lose.

But when he doesn't really know

the pond in which he's swimming,

he can let himself get a little

bit.

He can acquiesce.

Yeah.

A little possumish, I might even say.

Or something.

Something.

I don't know if I really say possumish.

You don't.

But you did hear.

So that counts.

I give you that.

There was, it sounds like, at least if you read the reporting, a point in Trump's early career before he turned 30 when he wasn't bad at negotiating.

We have reporting from Politico that talks about a project Trump engaged in 35, 45 years ago, which was the conversion of New York's decrepit Commodore Hotel to make it the shimmering Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station.

That project took years, and Trump was barely 30 years old, and he had to convince the agents of the bankrupt Penn Central Railroad, lenders, brokers, and city and state officials to buy into his plan.

And he did it.

with salesmanship, with verve, with cunning, and with good timing.

The end result when the hotel opened in 1980 was the most generous tax abatement in New York City history, and it was a launching pad for Trump's career, right?

So at one point there was some skill at building coalitions, convincing people, doing that.

He did not waste a lot of

time

before he positioned himself.

By 1984, he's offering himself up to represent the United States in negotiations about nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union in the middle of the Cold War, right?

So his ego does not suffer.

Nobody ever accused him of

of knowing what might look a little bombastic

in public and being more cautious about that.

I mean,

his ego is both incredibly big and he is also incredibly insecure, which is a dynamic that you actually see in a lot of politicians.

And people with big egos.

And people with big egos.

But what I would say is in 1980, he was still...

He was still working pretty closely with his father.

And I think that that's a really important ingredient here.

His father had a ton of connections.

He had connections that led into Ed Koch's city hall.

That is where those tax abatements come into play.

And you have to really think about that.

Although he eventually goes on to make Ed Koch a fierce adversary and gets into a public war with him.

In part because of this fight over what happened with the Woman Rank redesign, where it was done.

And Ed Koch, I think, according to...

former Koch aides I've spoken with really kind of resented how quickly Trump was able to do it.

And that was a good notch in his belt for Trump.

But then, you know, Trump made all kinds of other demands and statements, and

they ended up very much at war.

I think that early on, that was still sort of a conventional project of using connections to government and working the levers of power to get what you want.

And then I think the further away that Donald Trump got from his father, the more he was trying to do things on his own, the more you have seen the Donald Trump that we know today.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So let's talk a little bit about some of the projects you guys detail in the story that give us more kind of concrete insight into Trump's behavior then and perhaps how that informs Trump's behavior now.

There's the Trump Taj Mahal project in Atlantic City.

Maggie, that sounds like it was an utter disaster.

What happened?

In a nutshell, he overleveraged himself.

He got himself into an enormous amount of debt and

collapsed underneath it.

And that is, you could argue, a version of what we are seeing right now, where there's this robbing from Peter to pay Paul cents in terms of the government, right?

Where

I'm going to shut this down here because I'm going to get this other thing that I need from there in terms of the conservatives, without recognizing that there's just an objective reality that he can't sort of paint over.

It's the same thing with creditors, except that, again, he always managed to work it where he was really personally fairly unscathed, but the projects ended up in dire straits.

His father helped bail him out, but Trump, at the end of all of this,

blames everybody else and fires all of his top executives and then stops paying contractors who had built the casino, which sort of seems like

an emerging play out of the Trump strategy book, which is when a deal goes south, blame everybody else.

Well, number one, it is nothing is ever his fault.

It's really funny.

I had a colleague who wrote a story quoting Stephen Moore, the,

I don't even know if he's an economist, I don't know how to describe him, but

he said that the president had acknowledged that

he should not have picked Jerome Powell for the Fed chair.

And it was described as he said, you know, this is the worst pick I made.

And I said to my colleague, that's not him accepting responsibility for it.

He's going to say it was a bad pick that he made, and he's going to blame whoever recommended him, which in this case is Steve Mnuchin.

So,

no, Trump does not.

take on responsibility for

things being bad.

The only time I have ever heard him even creep close to it during this presidency presidency was when the first health care effort failed and he said to somebody, I should have done tax reform first.

But that is what he had wanted to do, was tax reform first.

And he'd been talked out of it by Republicans who said, especially Paul Ryan, we ran on this, we have to do this.

And so again, it's still not really him.

It's not claiming himself.

It's not contrition.

It's not contrition.

It's just descriptive, right?

So he definitely is doing that now.

It is everybody else's fault for the shutdown, except he walked into this trap, as he keeps doing because he needs to say these things as he did with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Defining moment in the shutdown.

Defining moment in the shutdown, it's going to show up, I suspect, in ads about all of this.

I mean, I don't know what we'll be talking about in 17 months,

but it's hard to imagine that the longest shutdown in history will not be a piece of that, right?

Especially if it goes on for another week or two, which I know that most people in the West Wing are freaked out about.

He had this statement, I will gladly shut it.

I will proudly own it.

I will proudly, something to that effect.

The Trump shut down.

The Trump shut down.

And

that's video.

And so for somebody who likes to say that nothing exists if it's not on tape or if it's not recorded, you know, there it is.

That's him saying it.

Probably, other than his meeting with Russians in the Oval Office, one of the most known and discussed Oval Office meetings of his presidency thus far.

That is definitely.

So there's the way he treats those who are his adversaries or people who he wants to shift blame to.

But there's this anecdote you guys have about Trump and Deutsche Bank.

And that's in the piece where

you say, to win financing from Deutsche Bank to build a Trump hotel in Chicago, Mr.

Trump personally guaranteed $40 million of the debt.

When he could not make his payments during the 2008 financial crisis, Deutsche Bank executives were open to granting him more time to repay the loan.

Thanks, Deutsche Bank.

But before a compromise could be reached, Trump flipped the script.

He filed a lawsuit and argued the bank had helped cause the worldwide financial meltdown that essentially rendered Mr.

Trump unable to make his debt payments.

At the time, Deutsche Bank called the lawsuit, quote, classic Trump.

The bank eventually settled with Trump, saving him from having to pay the $40 million.

Mr.

Trump expressed his gratitude to the lawyer who fought on his behalf by what?

Not fully paying his bill.

He left me with some costs, said the lawyer, Stephen Schlesinger.

With friends like these, Maggie, who needs enemies?

I wonder if that behavior reminds you of 2017 when Trump basically cuts a short-term spending deal with Pelosi and Schumer, aka crying Chuck Schumer and Nancy, Nancy Pelosi.

I mean, do Republicans, should Republicans be looking at this example or generally his behavior of no alliances really that you should depend on at any time as a cautionary tale?

Well, I think that if they wanted to look at it as a cautionary tale,

that ship has sailed.

I think that they could have looked at it as a cautionary tale a while ago.

They've known the cautionary tale exists, and yet they have continued to walk out on tree branches for this president only to have him saw it off

a little time later.

For instance, in this current shutdown, remember, this happened after Mitch McConnell passed a continuing resolution through the Senate because he was told that the president was going to sign it.

And then it was...

you know, blown up in the House

or by the President's allies who got him to abruptly pull out of it.

So he he has done this over and over again, and you would constantly hear in 2018 concern, especially from Republicans in the House in marginal districts, that the president was going to try to push them to take positions that were very problematic for them, and then he might not be there later.

And so one of the things that I think the term is holding the bag.

Holding the bag.

One of the things that people who have done congressional negotiations have said to me over and over again is that The key piece here is consistency.

And it's a little less significant in business, but consistency in negotiations is always really important because you know who's sitting on the other side of the table.

You know that you can trust what they're saying.

You know that the fulcrum is not going to shift

suddenly.

And that's just not the case with him.

So it's all over the place.

People on the hill don't even know who they're supposed to be negotiating with.

There's Pence, there's Mick Mulvaney, there's Jared Kushner, there's the president himself throwing himself in sometimes.

This is not how you do it.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: There is a similarly antagonistic story from the late 80s when Trump tries to develop Manhattan's west side rail yards and he gets into a public brawl with then-Mayor Ed Koch, who he had been asking for a $700 million tax break.

This is from reporting in Bloomberg.

At one point, Trump said the mayor had, quote, no talent and only moderate intelligence.

This is a phrase, I mean, you could really use that same phrase for any number of Trump's adversaries in the present day.

And Trump said that the mayor should be impeached.

Ed Koch would do everybody a huge favor if he would get out of office, and they started all over again.

The bluster and the throwing people who you need things from under the bus behavior

is, it's amazing to actually see it play out in the 80s, and here we are in 2018, and I feel like the exact same thing is happening all over again.

It's reasonable to argue that we are living in a Tom Wolfe novel writ large for the Capitol.

I actually interviewed Tom Wolfe at one point when the New York primary was going on

just because I wanted to see if he saw the similarity in all of the characters playing out that I did.

But

he,

look, that I would argue actually is what you have seen with Trump trying to grind down adversaries.

Everything is going to be, I'm going to one-up you.

You cannot look stronger than me.

So for instance, that's what he did with Pelosi, where she sent him that note warning him about the state of the union.

And to be clear, I know a number of Democrats, I don't mean on the Hill, but just Democratic voters or strategists, who were uneasy with what she did because they thought that it looked petty and that the state of the union is something that people understand, you know, just as a concept.

It's a big speech.

They're used to it existing and they don't necessarily tie it to the shutdown.

So and the security concern seemed specious, right?

I mean, it was obviously about something else.

That said, he just couldn't help himself.

So he cancels her codal, which was ultimately to go to a war zone in Afghanistan.

It was a government trip.

canceled it for Republicans as well.

You know, then word leaked out from the White House that she was going to travel commercial, which is all kinds of dangerous to have that kind of private information leaking out about a powerful figure in government.

And then she had to cancel that.

So he has been looking for some leverage over her, some kind of personal leverage, because that's where he goes.

So what does he do with Koch?

He goes straight for the kill shot, right?

Which is you shouldn't even be there.

And it just ratches it up.

completely.

Some of this, I would say, is New York.

Some of this is not just Trump, right?

I mean, like, a lot of what I see in Trump reminds me of Rudy Giuliani.

Who is his public brawler?

Public brawler.

They're really close friends.

There was, when the president did that cancellation of Pelosi's trip, it actually reminded me of Giuliani going up to Yasser Arafat

at, I think it was at...

was it at the UN or the Lincoln Center for some concert during during, I think it was some event at the UN, during Rudy's mayoralty, I think it was 94, 95, and he went up to him and invited him to leave the hall.

And it was a huge international incident.

And doesn't that sound familiar?

I mean, it's so

there is a there is a stylistic thing that is New York, and I think it's very unfamiliar to people who aren't from New York, which is understandable.

But for us crazies who live in New York, some of this feels familiar.

Yeah, de Blasio doesn't really have the same set of boxing gloves, but there is a long and storied tradition of brawling.

De Blasio, Trump takes it, I think, to another

level.

And de Blasio tends to do passive-aggressive complaining about the press as opposed to

outright warfare, although he's still not exactly Mr.

Transparency.

So he should not, there are certain behaviors by de Blasio that are that are textbook Trump,

just not the public bludgeoning the same way.

All right, we're going to hold right here and take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about how Trump's history of failed business deals helps explain explain the shutdown.

Stay with us.

Hey there, I'm Claudina Bade, and I lead the audio team here at The Atlantic.

I think a lot about what makes great audio journalism.

It commands your attention, but isn't noisy.

It brings you closer to the subject.

but leaves room for you to make up your own mind.

And when you hear someone tell their story in their own voice, you understand it in a deeper way.

When you subscribe to The Atlantic, you'll be supporting this kind of journalism.

You'll also enjoy new benefits just for Atlantic subscribers on Apple podcasts.

Think ad-free episodes of our shows and subscriber-only audio articles.

To join us, go to theatlantic.com slash listener.

That's theatlantic.com/slash listener.

If you're already a subscriber, thanks.

You can head to the Atlantic's channel page on Apple Podcasts and start listening right now.

And we're back talking with Maggie Haverman of the New York Times.

Maggie, a couple, let's just kind of contextualize what's happening right now.

First off, you guys make this point, and I think we probably need to drill this home, that Trump has embraced his business practice of giving the most latitude and trust to family members, no matter what their prior experience.

By way of examples, you cite the fact that he put his first wife, Ivana, a model, in charge of an Atlantic City casino and the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, which he purchased for an exorbitant sum.

And he put his younger brother, Robert, who had some background in corporate finance, in senior positions at his casinos.

Who is advising Trump at this moment as he's in the thicket of controversy with this shutdown?

Is Kushner playing a big role in that?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, he's relying.

It's really funny.

Increasingly, as you look at the White House,

it's just kind of like burned down to the roots, right?

Except for the Trump family and then a handful of other aides.

There are not a lot of people there.

There's not a lot of people who he's listening to.

I don't think that the President gives Shahira Night, the current

legislative affairs director, the same hearing that he used to give Mark Short.

Jared Kushner feels emboldened after criminal justice reform and I think has learned all the wrong lessons from it

because I think he sees this as somehow about

his deal-making ability as opposed to the criminal justice reform was something that actually the groundwork had been laid for in bipartisan fashion for two years before Trump was elected.

And I agree that Jared Kushner pushed it through, but it was not because of you know, his unique style or relationships.

Negotiating.

And he doesn't write, and he doesn't really know Democrats, and he doesn't really know what Democrats want.

So this has been very problematic.

And

the president's also listening to Mick Mulvaney, but Mick Mulvaney's style is to acquiesce to the president and tell him what he's doing is right.

Not a ton of other people.

And then he's listening to congressional leaders.

He's talking to Hannity, as he always does.

I'm not really clear on what Bill Schein does in terms of

you and the rest of the world.

I mean, he's there.

I don't think so.

He's calling Fox News and getting bookings.

Right.

So I I don't,

that's about it.

I do need to ask sort of a reflective question, which is Trump presents this image of himself as a dealmaker.

And literally in the course of the last three decades, the evidence pretty definitively points in a different direction.

If we look at his deal making since he's become president, the failed repeal and replace health care negotiations, where Trump inserts himself in March of 2017, only to see the House

talks collapse.

There's the pulling out of the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and of course the Iran nuclear deal where the evidence points to him being better at breaking deals than making deals.

There's the NAFTA renegotiation, which is truly a victory one from strength that has a potential downside in terms of risking longer-term relationships, and by the way, has yet to be ratified.

There's the series, the endless series of ups and downs with North Korea, which has yielded a sort of vague commitment on denuclearization.

And then, of course, there's a trade fight with China, which has like created market, I won't say panic, but rattling.

Instability, certainly.

Instability.

Why, Maggie, do you think he truly believes he is a good deal maker?

I think he does, because I think that he tends to believe what he reads about himself.

And so I think he ⁇ remember that Tony Schwartz had this line to us that he ⁇ and Trump, to be fair,

he despises Tony Schwartz and when he learned that I was quoting him, called me to argue why we shouldn't listen to him or Jack O'Donnell or Barbara Ress.

And his argument was they all tried to work with me in various ways again.

They all only knew me decades ago.

That one, he does have a point, that these are not people with contemporary experiences with him, but they also have eyes, and they're allowed to comment on what they see.

Schwartz told me that

the title was a mnemonic that he came up with because it was supposed to be an autobiography, and his point was no one's going to want to read an autobiography.

You're 40.

What if we read about your deals?

And that Trump fell in love with this title.

Trump's version of it is that Schwartz was his quote-unquote secretary who took his notes.

And anyway, so, but I think that Trump.

It's probably a masculating position.

Look, I think, exactly.

Much respect all the secretaries.

I think that Trump really

likes the gold-gilded version of himself and that that has been basically spun since 1987, right?

Even a little bit before the book, frankly, but the book is what put him on the map nationally.

I do think he believes this about himself.

And I think that this is where that whole debate over, is he lying?

Is it just not true?

You know, let's label it.

I think people would be amazed at how much he convinces himself is true.

And so

that said, the facts do not show an abundance of great dealmaking, right?

And I mean, look,

He didn't want to be in the Paris Accord, so we knew he was going to get out of that.

TPP was already limping along before he got there, to be fair.

But I would say the ones where he has said he would do something,

getting the U.S.

out of Syria, that has proven very difficult, even after he announced it.

Now, that doesn't qualify as a deal, but

it is a decision and a negotiation that has to take place on a couple of fronts.

Kim Jong-un, he keeps claiming progress that is outsized as to what it actually is.

And what it was was incremental, and it wasn't nothing.

But because he tends to describe it as something that it isn't, then people call him out.

And then he says, you're being unfair to me.

And no, you're just calling it what it is.

I mean, I think that negotiating sort of actual

objective facts with him is very difficult.

And so pointing out that actually he doesn't really have a series of great deals is just the fact, but to him, it feels like you're being unfair to him.

You talk about Jack O'Donnell, Maggie, and Politico has a great quote from him.

Trump will say anything to keep people thinking that they're going to wind up doing a deal that's good for them.

He gets people to believe, or he tries to get people to believe that they're going to get a really good deal, even though he is obviously only concerned about getting a good deal for himself.

That brings me to the title of your piece in the Times, which is, In Business and Governing, Trump Seeks Victory in Chaos.

How does this end, Maggie?

I mean, does, I mean, I know you can't really predict this, but it's unclear what Trump even, I mean, yes, he wants the funding for his wall, but the broad consensus is they could, the Democrats could give him anything.

They could say, here's $5.7 billion in funding for gigantic lampshades, and you can call that a wall or whatever you want to,

and that that'll be enough to end this thing.

Do we, have we reached the point at which the bar is that low and it's just about giving him away to say, I won?

We're pretty close, right?

I mean, I think that, and I think that that was actually why you saw this very acquiescent, calm statement from him in response to Pelosi last night that he tweeted about how he'll wait to do the State of the Union speech until after

the shutdown is over.

I think that that was a recognition of

we got to get to the end of this phase now and then we can move on to something else because it is clearly becoming diminishing returns.

My reporting is that the national emergency option is still on the table and still something they're looking at.

I think there's a couple of jiu-jitsu moves with continuing resolutions that the Senate could pass that they're looking at.

I think it'll be something like that in the next week.

From your mouth to Trump's ears.

But we'll see.

But we'll see.

Truer words were never spoken.

Maggie Haberman, my friend, it is great to see you.

Thank you for your wisdom.

The country thanks you for your reporting.

And thank you for the time.

Thanks for having me.

That will do it for this week of Radio Atlantic.

Thanks, as always, to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode and to our podcast fellow, Patricia Jacob, and of course, to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

Our theme music is the battle hymn of the Republic, as interpreted by John Batiste.

You can find show notes and past episodes at theatlantic.com/slash radio.

If you like the show, rate and review us in Apple Podcasts and subscribe in your preferred podcast app.

And most importantly, thank you for listening.

Packages by Expedia.

You were made to occasionally take the hard route to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

We were made to easily bundle your trip.

Expedia.

Made to travel.

Flight inclusive packages are at all protected.