HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019954.jpg

of its chief, Jeff Zucker. Zucker, who as the head of NBC had commissioned The Apprentice, had been “made by Trump,” Trump said of himself in the third person. And Trump had “personally” gotten Zucker his job at CNN. “Yes, yes, I did,” said Trump. He then repeated a story that he was obsessively telling almost everyone he spoke to. He’d gone to a dinner, he didn’t remember when, where he had sat next to “a gentleman named Kent’—undoubtedly Phil Kent, a former CEO of Turner Broadcasting, the Time Warner division that oversaw CNN—“and he had a list of four names.” Three of them Trump had never heard of, but he knew Jeff Zucker because of The Apprentice. “Zucker was number four on the list, so I talked him up to number one. I probably shouldn’t have because Zucker is not that smart but I like to show I can do that sort of thing.” But Zucker, “a very bad guy who has done terrible with the ratings,” had turned around after Trump had gotten him the job and had said, well, it’s “unbelievably disgusting.” This was the Russian “dossier” and the “golden shower” story—the practice CNN had accused him of being party to in the Moscow hotel suite with assorted prostitutes. Having dispensed with Zucker, the president of the United States went on to speculate on what was involved with a golden shower. And how this was all just part of a media campaign that would never succeed in driving him from the White House. Because they were sore losers and hated him for winning, they spread total lies, 100 percent made-up things, totally untrue, for instance, the cover that week of 7ime magazine—which, Trump reminded his listeners, he had been on more than anyone in history—that showed Steve Bannon, a good guy, saying he was the real president. “How much influence do you think Steve Bannon has over me?” Trump demanded and repeated the question, and then repeated the answer: “Zero! Zero!” And that went for his son-in-law, too, who had a lot to learn. The media was not only hurting him, he said—he was not looking for any agreement or really even any response—but hurting his negotiating capabilities, which hurt the nation. And that went for Saturday Night Live, too, which might think it was very funny but was actually hurting everybody in the country. And while he understood that SNZ was there to be mean to him, they were being very, very mean. It was “fake comedy.” He had reviewed the treatment of all other presidents in the media and there was nothing like this ever, even of Nixon who was treated very unfairly. “Kellyanne, who is very fair, has this all documented. You can look at it.” The point is, he said, that that very day, he had saved $700 million a year in jobs that were going to Mexico but the media was talking about him in his bathrobe, which “I don’t have because I’ve never worn a bathrobe. And would never wear one, because I’m not that kind of guy.” And what the media was doing was undermining this very dignified house, and “dignity is so important.” But Murdoch, “who had never called me, never once,” was now calling all the time. So that should tell people something. The call went on for twenty-six minutes. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019954