{"id":40088,"date":"2025-04-29T07:58:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T07:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/how-donald-trump-tried-to-court-the-atlantic-and-why-the-liberal-magazine-landed-an-interview\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T07:58:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T07:58:56","slug":"how-donald-trump-tried-to-court-the-atlantic-and-why-the-liberal-magazine-landed-an-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/how-donald-trump-tried-to-court-the-atlantic-and-why-the-liberal-magazine-landed-an-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"How Donald Trump tried to court the Atlantic \u2013 and why the liberal magazine landed an interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hell hath frozen over: At the White House<\/a> the other day, Donald Trump “was launching a charm offensive, directed mainly at Goldberg,” as in Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic\u2019s editor-in-chief. “There was none of the name-calling or hostility he regularly levels at our magazine.”<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to Atlantic reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, who wrote the magazine\u2019s cover story<\/a>, which was posted yesterday.<\/p>\n

For all the insights gleaned from the interview, nothing is more fascinating than how it came about.<\/p>\n

They called the president on his cell phone. (Wha? Who do I have to court to get that? The reporters ain\u2019t saying.)<\/p>\n

Trump says he did the initial phone interview to see if the liberal magazine could be fair.<\/p>\n

PRESIDENT TRUMP TELLS THE ATLANTIC HE RUNS THE COUNTRY ‘AND THE WORLD’<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

So I\u2019m here to pronounce that the entire, seemingly endless piece is fair. The president hasn\u2019t taken a shot at it on Truth Social, at least so far.<\/p>\n

He has, however, ripped new polls from the “Failing New York Times<\/a>” and “ABC\/Washington Post” as “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS,” saying they should be “investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the Fox News Pollster while you\u2019re at it.” His lowest approval rating, in the Post-ABC survey, was 39 percent.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we may now look back on Trump\u2019s 2024 victory as inevitable, but after Jan. 6 it was anything but. On the cell call, “The president seemed exhilarated by everything he had managed to do in the first two months of his second term.”<\/p>\n

And then came the transaction: “As ever, Trump was on the hunt for a deal. If he liked the story we wrote, he said, he might even speak with us again.”<\/p>\n

Goldberg describes the session: “What I found in this particular meeting was a Trump who was low-key, attentive, and eager to convince us that he is good at his job and good for the country. It isn\u2019t easy to escape the tractor beam of his charisma, but somehow we managed, and we asked him what needed to be asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But squaring Trump the Charmer with the Orcish Trump we more frequently see is difficult\u2026Trump posted on the social-media platform he owns that Ashley is a \u2018Radical Left Lunatic\u2019 (she is not) and that Michael \u2018has never written a fair story about me, only negative, and virtually always LIES\u2019 (also false). It is our task at the Atlantic not to be bullied by these sorts of attacks.”<\/p>\n

STATE OF WAR: HOW TRUMP IS FIGHTING A 9-FRONT BATTLE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The most interesting Trump sound bite is his comparison of the two terms:<\/p>\n

“The first time, I had two things to do\u2014run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys. And the second time, I run the country and the world.”<\/p>\n

Parker and Scherer did many other interviews, such as with Steve Bannon. “Our reality is that we won,” and he cited the conspiracy theory that the FBI had incited the crowd on Jan. 6<\/a>. The reporters said that was simply untrue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Now, here\u2019s the interesting thing,” Bannon said. “Who\u2019s won that argument? I think we have\u2026<\/p>\n

“This time it\u2019s \u2018Hey, f**k you, Greenland\u2019s ours\u2026When you\u2019ve come back from such long odds, you clearly feel, \u2018I can do anything.\u2019\u200a”<\/p>\n

What about the four criminal investigations, including the conviction on the weakest one \u2013 Alvin Bragg\u2019s hush money case? Trump says his numbers kept going up.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWING DONALD TRUMP: A LAST-MINUTE BLITZ AND NEW CLOSING MESSAGE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

“Shockingly, yes,” Trump said. “Normally, it would knock you out. You wouldn\u2019t even live for the next day. You know, you\u2019d announce your resignation, and you\u2019d go back and \u2018fight for your name,\u2019 like everybody says\u2014you know, \u2018fight for your name, go back to your family.\u2019\u200a\u2026Yeah, it made me stronger, made me a lot stronger.”<\/p>\n

He also said in the phone interview: “I got indicted five different times by five different scumbags, and they\u2019re all looking for jobs now, so it\u2019s one of those things. Who would have thought, right? It\u2019s been pretty amazing.”<\/p>\n

After the 2016 election, Trump told oil executives<\/a> at Mar-a-Lago:<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m not president, you\u2019re f***ed. Look at your profit-and-loss statements. You realize what would have happened to you if she was president? What\u2019s wrong with you?”) She was Kamala Harris, of course.<\/p>\n

One turning point: When he went to East Palestine, Ohio after the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals, while Joe Biden didn\u2019t do squat.<\/p>\n

On the Kennedy Center: “I didn\u2019t really get to go the first time, because I was always getting impeached or some bulls**t, and I could never enjoy a show.” So he fired the Democrats and made himself chairman.<\/p>\n

All right, enough quotes. Wait, one more that captures the tone of the piece:<\/p>\n

“I got 38 percent of the male Black vote. Nobody knew that was possible. That\u2019s a lot. I got 56 percent of Hispanics. How about that one? Every county along the Texas border<\/a> is Hispanic. I won every one of them.” Though every single number he cited was wrong, the general thrust of his observation was correct.”<\/p>\n

The reporters chronicled how things have gone south for the president, especially on tariffs and the economy, and how he pressured Hill Republicans into backing his nominees with primary threats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE’S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF ON THE DAY’S HOTTEST STORIES<\/u><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

After the March phone interview, the reporters tried Trump\u2019s cellphone again. Just got voice mail. But at 1:38 am, he tried them back. No message.<\/p>\n

Trump believes he can win over even his worst enemies. In 2015 or 2016, I watched him make a beeline in the New York green room for Karl Rove, who was very rough on him. At worst, he thinks, he can neutralize the person. Or soften him or her up for the next time. He enjoys the challenge.<\/p>\n

The mainstream media almost uniformly can\u2019t stand Donald Trump<\/a>. He does invite some of his own negative headlines, while providing unprecedented access, but much of the press is back in Resistance mode.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, the Atlantic\u2019s original pitch is undeniable, that he\u2019s “The Most Consequential President of the 21st Century.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hell hath frozen over: At the White House the other day, Donald Trump “was launching a charm offensive, directed mainly at Goldberg,” as in Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic\u2019s editor-in-chief. “There was none of the name-calling or hostility he regularly levels at our magazine.” That\u2019s according to Atlantic reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, who wrote … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}