Preet Bharara: Before we start the show, I have a small favor to ask. If you love Stay Tuned, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show, and it’s not terrible for my ego. Here are just some of the nice things people have been saying about Stay Tuned. Nancy Morales writes, “I look forward to listening every week,” while Cunning Spy—good name—writes, “So informative, but not preachy.” If you feel the same way about this show, add your voice with a—I don’t know, a five-star review, on Apple Podcasts. Thanks very much. Now, on with the show.
From Cafe and WNYC Studios, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.
Katy Tur: If I’m covering a campaign, I’m not gonna vote. I think it is a privilege to be a reporter covering a presidential campaign and to convey information to the American electorate. And that, to me, is fulfilling my duty as an American citizen, much more so than casting one ballot.
Preet Bharara: That’s Katy Tur. She’s a correspondent for NBC News and hosts MSNBC Live every day. She’s got a new book out called “Unbelievable.” It’s about covering the Trump campaign in 2016. I wanted to have Katy on because not only is she, you know, incredibly smart, great journalist, great writer—we’ve had journalists on the show before—but Katy comes from the world of TV journalism, which I think is a little bit different. And we had a great conversation about our insights about what it means to be on television, how to interview someone effectively, and the perils of access journalism.
Before we get to your questions, obviously the biggest news relating to the Mueller investigation this week has to do with the reports that Special Counsel Mueller and his team are looking to interview the president himself in the coming weeks. So, I have a few reactions to that. One is, I don’t know how much to believe the timetable. The likelihood is that that information comes from the White House or lawyers for Donald Trump who have made it point for a long time now to suggest that the investigation is coming to a close. They said last year that it would be over by the end of the calendar year. That wasn’t true. So, they have some interest in suggesting that the timetable is a short one. I have no doubt, though, that the Mueller team wants to interview the president. Now, what that tells you in the ordinary course, although this is not an ordinary investigation and it’s not an ordinary circumstance, it’s not an ordinary prosecutor—ordinarily, when you’re at the point when you’re gonna be interviewing those high profile subject or target in your investigation, that usually means that you’re near the end of it. And though it’s possible that there are other avenues that they might be looking at with respect to the president, the fact that they are—if it’s true—setting up an interview, knowing that they may only get one bite at the apple, because you’re probably not gonna have two opportunities—it means they’re nearing the end of at least some phase of their investigation. So, as President Trump himself says, we’ll see what happens.
Ray Jones: Hello, Preet. My name is Ray Jones. I’m calling from Jacksonville, Florida. I see today that our attorney general has met with Special Prosecutor Mueller and his team, and I was wondering if Attorney General Sessions is free to discuss his interview with our president, or would that kind of be sort of obstruction of justice? Thank you, and I really enjoy the show.
Preet Bharara: Thanks, Ray. That’s a great question. I don’t think there’s an absolute legal prohibition on Jeff Sessions having a conversation with the president, but I don’t think it’s wise. And there’s been some reporting, if it’s believed, that says that the president was—has been annoyed that Jeff Sessions has not told him about the details of his interview with Special Counselor Mueller. And witnesses who are smart and know what they’re doing usually keep to themselves about those interviews.
But the fact of the Sessions interview, I think, is interesting for a number of reasons, and I’ll mention two. One reason is it shows, I think, some advancement in the investigation overall, because Sessions is an important, high-ranking, high-profile witness. And the fact that they’ve already completed their interview with him, I think, means that with respect to the kinds of things that Sessions has information about, whether it’s related to collusion or it’s related to obstruction involving the firing of Jim Comey, that the investigation’s pretty far along. Because usually, you want to do those kinds of interviews towards the end. And the second thing I’ll say is, it goes to show, again, the absurdity of Donald Trump’s position that Jeff Sessions should never have recused himself. I mean, what you would have had here is a person, if he was unrecused, overseeing a particular investigation and simultaneously being—now not hypothetically anymore, but in fact, a witness in the very same investigation. And even if you’re not a lawyer, common sense tells you that you cannot both supervise an investigation and also be a witness in that investigation. So, I think those things are significant, and we’ll see where it goes from here.
Next question comes from Twitter, from Josh Turner, who asks, “Preet Bharara, does lying to Mr. Mueller carry the same penalty as lying to the FBI, given his designation as special counsel?” The answer is yes.
Amy: Hi, Preet. My name is Amy, and I’m calling from Ann Arbor, Michigan. And I would like to know more about the grand jury process. Can you tell us why we have them and how they work? It seems a little bit of a mystery to me. Thanks so much. Love your show.
Preet Bharara: Well, thanks, Amy, for your question. It’s pretty broad. That’s a seminar. I guess let me just answer it quickly this way. You know, the grand jury system is embedded in the tradition of law in this country. It works differently in the federal system than it does in the various state systems. You know, we have a process by which it’s not just the prosecutor who determines whether someone should be charged or not. And every indictment that is brought that ultimately leads to a trial of a particular person before an independent judge with a constitutional right to a defense counsel has to begin somewhere. And the place where it begins formally, usually, in a process that leads to court, is in a grand jury. And the grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary American men and women who sit in a room and deliberate over the evidence that is presented to them by just the prosecutor in the federal system. And this has drawn complaints from some folks in the federal system. There’s no defense lawyer there. This is the opportunity for the prosecutors to make a showing on a lower standard than you do at a trial, but make a showing that there is probable cause to believe that a particular person has engaged in some criminal conduct, and probable cause to believe that the person named in the indictment did those things.
The usual way that a grand jury hears evidence in a case is through witnesses. And the assistant U.S. attorney in a federal case will bring in a witness. It could be an FBI agent, a DEA agent. It could be an eyewitness to a crime. Questions are asked, just like you see on television in a real trial. And documents are sometimes introduced through those witnesses. The prosecutor will give instructions about the law, and if and when he or she thinks that an indictment is proper, they’ll draft one up. It’ll be called a proposed indictment, and based on the strength of the evidence that has been brought before the grand jury and instructions given on what the law is, they’ll present the indictment to the 23 men and women. And they then deliberate alone, with no lawyers in the room, and decide whether or not to approve it. The other thing that’s very important about the grand jury is its proceeding are secret.
It’s actually a violation of law for a prosecutor to reveal what happens in the grand jury or for grand jurors to reveal what happens in the grand jury. Witnesses are allowed to give their testimony and can talk about what happened. But the need for the grand jury proceeding to remain secret is obvious. You don’t want to have to prejudice the investigation. You don’t want to prejudice the rights of people who may never be charged ever. You might be reading about various things that are happening with respect to the Special Counsel Mueller investigation that is obviously using a grand jury. This thing that we always talk about called a subpoena. Subpoenas are physically served upon a bank, or upon a business or someone else, by an agent of law enforcement. But they’re done in the name of the grand jury. That’s why they’re called grand jury subpoenas. So, the grand jury is both a mechanism for investigating a case and getting information and causing people to come in and give information, but then is also, I said—they’re also the mechanism by which a formal indictment can be lodged against a person.
Chris: Hi, Preet. This is Chris, listening from Indiana. It occurred to me recently that you could still be working as a U.S. attorney, but undercover as a podcast host building your credibility as a great interviewer with no particular law enforcement affiliation, until one day, you get the target of your current investigation on the show and get them to admit to their crime on the record. I wonder if you could comment on that. I realize you’ll need to deny it vehemently and that you’ve put a lot of work into your cover story, but I think it would be a great twist, maybe at the end of season five. I really enjoy the show. Thanks.
Preet Bharara: Thanks, Chris. Thanks for blowing my cover. We were gonna have President [?Erdo] on here next week. There goes that plan.
My guest this week is journalist Katy Tur. In her new book, she takes a very intimate look at what it’s like to cover a campaign—in this case, the Trump campaign, and the actual work that goes into making TV. Now, despite what he says, the president does watch a lot of TV, so I think it’s important to talk with journalists who get the medium and how it’s unique. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.
Preet Bharara: Katy Tur, thank you for being on the show.
Katy Tur: Thank you for having me.
Preet Bharara: You wrote a book called “Unbelievable.”
Katy Tur: And you’ve taken copious notes in that book.
Preet Bharara: Well, I always do.
Katy Tur: Good.
Preet Bharara: It’s a great read. But before you wrote this book, you did other things. And before you were a campaign reporter, among other things, you began in television doing something quite different. You chased storms.
Katy Tur: I did.
Preet Bharara: What the hell does that mean?
Katy Tur: I was among a group of people working for the Weather Channel who chased tornadoes. And we—
Preet Bharara: Like on foot?
Katy Tur: Yeah. On foot.
Preet Bharara: You have skates?
Katy Tur: Well, listen, tornadoes aren’t very fast, so we could outrun them.
Preet Bharara: They’re not?
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: They spin fast.
Katy Tur: They spin fast, but they don’t move—no, I’m lying. We were—
Preet Bharara: Are you making this up?
Katy Tur: I feel like we need to be clear.
Preet Bharara: Okay.
Katy Tur: Tornadoes are very fast, and they’re very dangerous.
Preet Bharara: Oh, they are fast. Okay.
Katy Tur: And you should get out of their way.
Preet Bharara: But you ran towards them.
Katy Tur: We ran towards them. We drove towards them. So, we did this project. It was called Vortex 2. Vortex 1 was what they based the movie Twister off of. So, this was the second iteration of it.
Preet Bharara: And then did they base Twister 2 on Vortex 2?
Katy Tur: Twister 2. There was no Twister—was there a Twister 2?
Preet Bharara: I have no idea.
Katy Tur: I don’t think there was. Bill Pullman was not there.
Preet Bharara: There was the one about the board game.
Katy Tur: Well, yeah, no. It wasn’t the board game. It was the movie. Anyway, I chased tornadoes, and it was fascinating, and—
Preet Bharara: Were you scared?
Katy Tur: No. Actually, at one point. Well, we saw this tornado form right in front of us in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And I mean, it was a beautiful sight. There was nothing there, so there was no one really at risk of getting hurt. This was in the wide open. And—
Preet Bharara: Other than you. You could have gotten hurt.
Katy Tur: Well, other than us.
Preet Bharara: Yeah.
Katy Tur: But we’re—you know, we’re not a big deal. So, the sky—and I’m from Los Angeles. I mean, rain is a weather event for me. And the sky starts opening up and turning above me. The sky literally turns. It spins above your head. It is a wild sight to behold. And out from the sky comes this funnel down to the ground. And this tornado forms. It’s amazing how calm everything else. There’s no noise. There’s no wind. It’s just calm. We’re about a quarter mile away from this tornado. As it gets closer, things get a little more hectic. Anyway, and so, I’m standing there stunned watching it. And I’m with this girl who is a scientist at—I forget which university, but she’s a meteorologist, and we’re with this x-band radar, and this radar is supposed to basically scan the interior of the tornado. It’s got to get as close as it possibly can. There’s a number of storm chasers, like just the cowboys that do this on their own behind us, and they start running in the opposite direction because the storm’s getting pretty close. And she’s like, “We gotta do one more spin. We gotta do one more spin.” And I’m looking at her saying, “These crazy people, the storm chasers, who are always doing things they shouldn’t be doing”—
Preet Bharara: They’re fleeing.
Katy Tur: Are feeling.
Preet Bharara: Right.
Katy Tur: And we’re still here. Anyway, we made it out alive, and it was a beautiful sight, incredible sight.
Preet Bharara: Does a tornado form from the sky or from the ground?
Katy Tur: Scientists don’t know, and that’s what’s so amazing.
Preet Bharara: The only reason I asked the question is because we talked about it before this, otherwise I wasn’t smart enough to know to ask that question.
Katy Tur: But that is—but isn’t that fascinating? We study weather. It happens all around us. We have this incredible technology, and there are still weather events that we don’t understand. And tornadoes are one of those things. They don’t know—and I should caveat this, if scientists have figured this out in the last two years, it’s because I haven’t been paying attention and Donald Trump has filled my mind—but they don’t know whether a tornado forms from the sky or forms from the ground.
Preet Bharara: Wow. So, you went from chasing one kind of storm to dropping into another kind of storm.
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: Which was the campaign. How did it come about that you covered the Trump campaign?
Katy Tur: I was living in London. I was a foreign correspondent. Dream job for me, for most reporters, because you get to live overseas, you get to travel the world, and somebody else is paying for it.
Preet Bharara: Right.
Katy Tur: Great gig. Exciting gig. And I am settling in really well. I’m there nine months. I have a flat in London. I drink wine at lunch. I’ve got a French boyfriend. My life is really good. And I’m really happy. And I come back—
Preet Bharara: It’s better than the tornado.
Katy Tur: Yeah, no, it was. It was a lot before than the tornado coverage. And I go back to New York to fulfill a Make a Wish that was asked of me by a boy named Aaron who wanted to shadow me for the day. So, I came back, and I took him out for the day. And it happened to be the day that the Supreme Court decided that gay marriage was legal. And it was a celebratory day. I took him to the Stonewall Inn, where everybody was celebrating in the streets down in lower Manhattan, and it was incredible. He got to watch live reports, got to gather interviews. It was a really wonderful, positive, bright moment.
And I go back to the office, and the bosses are trying to figure out what they’re gonna do with Donald Trump, who had just announced he was running for president, but businesses were dropping him. It wasn’t really a political story at that point. It was more of a novelty story, more of a New York story, general assignment, day of air story. Donald Trump, this New York real estate guy, has decided he’s going to run for president, and now he’s saying such wild things that he’s running his business in the process. We gotta get someone to do a story on this for today. And who can we have do it? Well, no political reporter’s gonna do this because they have actual political stories to cover. Katy Tur, she’s just standing around. And so, that’s how I got assigned Trump. And one story turned into two, into three, and then suddenly, I was assigned his campaign full-time, which I was assured would just be six weeks tops. Spend the summer in New York.
Preet Bharara: There was one news outlet, I think, that decided it was gonna cover the campaign only as entertainment.
Katy Tur: Yeah, that was the Huffington Post.
Preet Bharara: The Huffington Post.
Katy Tur: Yeah. Yeah, no, it turned out much long—it totally upended not only the politics of this country and the Republican Party, it totally upended my tiny little life with it.
Preet Bharara: So, you then became a person who followed the campaign around. Did there come a point when you thought, because there were all these naysayers, that Trump could win?
Katy Tur: Yeah, and it was early. I mean, there was that moment when I was first assigned it by a guy at NBC News, the head of coverage. He said, “And if Donald Trump wins, you’ll go to the White House.” And it was one of those moments that made me stand still for a moment. We laughed, but then I thought, oh my god, I could be going to the White House. And I quickly brushed it off, and I thought, that’s totally insane. It’s Donald Trump. Okay, move on with my day. But not long after that, when he was denigrating John McCain, which is usually just such a cultural taboo. You don’t go after a veteran in America if you’re a politician. You cannot get away with that. And you especially—
Preet Bharara: Who was held captive.
Katy Tur: And you especially don’t go after a prisoner of war. This is an American hero. And he did. And he was not apologetic about it. And his poll numbers went up. And a few weeks later, in Mobile, Alabama, 20,000 people showed up to cheer him on. Were they offended by the John McCain remarks? Absolutely not. They liked Donald Trump’s “I don’t care” attitude, his willingness to say whatever he wanted and not back down. And that, to me—I thought to myself—you know, I was having calls with the Republican National Committee, and they were assuring me that he could never survive this, that there’s no way Donald Trump was going to make it out of this. You’d better book your ticket back to London. Your time is over. If you want another candidate, you’d better start asking your bosses to get on the Marco Rubio campaign, or the Ted Cruz campaign, or the Scott Walker campaign, because Donald Trump wouldn’t survive. And I thought, you know, gosh, they are wrong.
Preet Bharara: Do you think you felt that way not just because you saw he went up in the polls after making a statement like that about John McCain, but you felt the energy in the room?
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: And that matters.
Katy Tur: It’s really hard to describe what it was like to be there day in and day out. These rooms were like revivals, you know, meets a WWE wrestling match or a rock concert. I mean, they were full of energy and full of enthusiasm. Donald Trump inspired people. He inspired them to say what they were thinking. All of the hateful and horrible things that they would never say in public, they got to scream out at the top of their lungs in these rallies. And nobody would look sideways at them. And they could scream it at the press if they wanted. They could—
Preet Bharara: At you.
Katy Tur: Scream invective at the press and tell us that we were B-words or C-words or liars or whatever. They could punch a protestor in the face, and their legal fees would be paid by the candidate up on the stage, or at least he would tell them that. Or they could scream, “Assassinate that bitch!” about Hillary Clinton. Assassinate her. And nobody would look sideways. Nobody would say, “Hey, that’s a little too far.” They could do whatever they wanted.
Preet Bharara: And how did you feel when you were hearing those things and observing that level of sort of unleashed emotion as a journalist and just as a person?
Katy Tur: How did I feel about it?
Preet Bharara: Yeah, how did you feel?
Katy Tur: I mean, my feelings—you try to keep your feelings out of it.
Preet Bharara: I know, but on a podcast, you’re supposed to talk about them.
Katy Tur: Well, no, no, no. I’m answering. You try to keep your feelings out of it in the moment because it’s not about your feelings. And if you let your feelings get in the way of your reporting, you are gonna start to color it with your own opinions. That being said, it was hard to deny the anger and the hate and the vitriol. And it was, at times, very shocking. Very shocking. And then it was shocking because it stopped being shocking.
Preet Bharara: You speak a bit in the book about a lot of these experiences, and what it was like to be on the campaign trail, and interact with the candidate, and interact with his campaign staff, and the people who were attending his rallies. And you talk about some of the indignities that went along with that. What were some of the most odd experiences you had on the campaign trail?
Katy Tur: Oh, god. I had an old man spit on me at one point. This was outside of Trump Tower. We basically—when he wasn’t on the road, we lived outside of Trump Tower in a van. So, there was one day I’m doing live shots all day, and at this point, we have everybody covering Trump, and me in particular have a security guard assigned to us, a body guard assigned to us, former Secret Service agents who are armed, because I had been getting death threats, and there was so much anger towards the press, there was real concern that somebody might get hurt. Anyway, so my bodyguard, security guard guy was standing a little bit away from the truck because they don’t want to crowd you. And this old man comes and knocks on the window. And the guy, I mean, he looks exactly like my grandfather. It was like my grandfather came back to life. He’s wearing the same outfit, the same pageboy cap. He is just—I think I’m seeing the ghost of my grandfather knock on the door, so I open it. And the man starts talking to me, and I can’t quite make out what he’s saying because it’s so loud, so I turn my head to frame my ear towards his face, and he took it as a slight. He took it as me not wanting to listen to him. And then he started berating me, and he said something like, “You female reporters are so obtuse.” And I remember thinking, what? And I look at him, and then he spits.
Preet Bharara: It was an intentional spit?
Katy Tur: Yes. It was so—it was so weird and surreal. He’s just angry at me. You female reporters are so obtuse. Puh.
Preet Bharara: What did you do?
Katy Tur: I wiped my face and I closed the door. I said, “Excuse me, sir, get away,” and I closed the door. And I was worried that I was gonna hurt him because he wasn’t moving. And I said, “I’m gonna hurt you with this door if you don’t move.” And then he got out of the way, and my security guard came back over, and he’s like, “Is everything fine?” I’m like, “It is. It’s just this weird”—I mean, it became almost laughable at that point. The ghost of my grandfather spit at me today.
Preet Bharara: Yeah, that sounds—that sounds very odd. Were there any sweet moments?
Katy Tur: Yeah. I mean, there were, certainly. There was a nice moment. And this is—it’s important to point out that not all of Donald Trump’s supporters were angry people who had hate in their hearts and who were xenophobic, or racist, or prejudiced, or whatever other label you want to attach to them. I think that’s—it’s important to not paint with a broad brush because if you do, you won’t understand where folks are coming from. Anyway, there was one lady. We were in a bathroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it’s a couple days before Christmas, December 2015, and it’s the last Trump rally of the year. I’m about to go back to London to see my apartment for the first time in a long time. I’m just waiting for the day to end. And I’m in this bathroom trying to curl my hair for Nightly News, because that’s just what you have to do when you’re a female and you’re on the network news. And I’m like contorting myself because this is not a friendly bathroom. This is like a concrete bathroom with a steel mirror, and the plug is behind a trashcan, so I’m like holding the curling iron, trying to crane my neck to see the mirror. And this lady walks in, and she says, “You know, I’m a hairdresser in town. I can help you.” And I look at her. And I pause. I’m thinking to myself, this is a hot curling iron. Donald Trump, a few days earlier, had just called me a liar, and I should be fired, I’m third rate, and people are hating me at that moment. Does she think I’m crazy? Am I gonna hand her this hot curling iron? No way.
Preet Bharara: Here’s the murder weapon. Right.
Katy Tur: But she laughed. I think she understood that I kind of—I was hesitant. She’s like, “No, no, no, I promise, I’m really good at this. I’ll help you. I can do the back of your head.” And so, I handed it to her, and she was really lovely. And we talked about Christmas coming up, and the holidays, and she was really excited to be there. She liked Donald Trump. But she was just a really friendly woman who was willing to help out a vile, scum reporter.
Preet Bharara: You said a minute ago that if you are a female in journalism and you’re gonna be on TV, there are things you have to do. How is it different being a woman in television journalism?
Katy Tur: Well, I think it just starts with what time do you get up and versus what time do I get up. If you have to—
Preet Bharara: I sleep till noon these days.
Katy Tur: If you have to get out of a hotel room at, say—at 6:00 AM, what time are you getting up to get out of that hotel room?
Preet Bharara: Me?
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: 5:58.
Katy Tur: Yeah. I’m getting up at 5:15. And that’s—
Preet Bharara: I was kidding. I take a little bit longer.
Katy Tur: No, but—no, I’m getting up to take a shower. Your hair has to be done, look neat and tidy. And it takes longer when you have longer hair. You have to put on a face full of makeup. Eyeliner and shadows and mascara and blush and whatnot. And you have to wear a different outfit everyday.
Preet Bharara: When you say “have to,” because that’s the expectation?
Katy Tur: That’s the expectation. Listen, maybe if I went on TV today without any makeup on—I mean, I don’t know. It would be a thing. It would be a—if I went on TV today without any makeup on, without combing my hair, it would be a thing. You could wear the same suit every day, and very few people would notice.
Preet Bharara: And I do.
Katy Tur: And there was an Australian broadcaster who did just that, this morning show host in the most popular morning show in Australia, this man wore the same suit every single day, tie and shirt and everything, for a year. Nobody noticed. And his female counterpart, when she would wear the same dress within a week or two weeks, she would get hate mail for it.
Preet Bharara: What about the way you’re treated? Do you think there are some people you interview who underestimate you?
Katy Tur: Absolutely. I think the president underestimated me when he first sat down with me.
Preet Bharara: Well, he believed that a lot of people underestimated him.
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: But how do you feel about being underestimated? I think it’s sort of—there are two ways to think about it. Is it a good thing, or is it sometimes only a bad thing? I mean, how do you feel about being underestimated?
Katy Tur: It can be a good thing because you can sit down, and if someone’s underestimating you, you can—
Preet Bharara: You have the upper hand, right?
Katy Tur: You have the upper hand. You could blow them away. I mean, you’re more prepared than they are. You know that as a prosecutor.
Preet Bharara: I’ve been underestimated many times. And I kind of like it. It’s better.
Katy Tur: It’s nice. It’s nice. There are circumstances where it’s great to be underestimated. There are others where you just want to say, come on. Cut the BS.
Preet Bharara: Because it’s offensive?
Katy Tur: It can be offensive, yeah. If someone’s just underestimating you because you have breasts and a vagina and blond hair, that’s offensive, if that’s the only reason they’re underestimating you. You can work it to your advantage, but if it’s every day, then it starts to get tiring.
Preet Bharara: Well, so you’ve written a book. You’re on TV, and you do a great job. Is there less underestimation now of you than there was, or is it just—
Katy Tur: I think there’s less. There still is here and there, but there’s less. The book helped. Yes, I can write a sentence. Shock.
Preet Bharara: You can also interview people very well. I was—and I’ve told you this. I’ve watched you a few times on your show on MSNBC, and you do have this way of asking questions of somebody when that person is not making any sense, of exposing the idiocy of what that person is saying, but not necessarily impolitely. Do you have a strategy for how you ask people questions?
Katy Tur: Oh gosh. I—kill them with kindness, I guess? I try not to let anybody offend me personally, or I try not to be offended personally by anybody who is on my show, even if they’re trying to talk down to me. So, I go at it with a feeling of this is not about me. This is about the issue. It’s about how you’re trying to explain it. So, I’m gonna try not to ever let my frustration rise above or be seen. I’m gonna try. So, when they are talking in circles, I point it out gently with a smile, and I continue to point it out until they finally stop and answer the question, or it becomes so absurd that they’re not answering the question that it’s abundantly clear to the viewer that they can’t answer the question, or they don’t want to.
Preet Bharara: Did you do it that way because you’re just being yourself, or you think that’s the most effective way to do it?
Katy Tur: I think for me, that’s the most effective way to do it.
Preet Bharara: Right.
Katy Tur: I think if it was somebody else, if it’s Jake Tapper, he could probably be a little more forceful.
Preet Bharara: He can—he ends the interview.
Katy Tur: Yeah. Well, yeah.
Preet Bharara: Sometimes. Have you ever done that?
Katy Tur: No. I’ve thought about it.
Preet Bharara: With who?
Katy Tur: I won’t say.
Preet Bharara: Come on.
Katy Tur: I won’t say.
Preet Bharara: Okay. You’re underestimating me. Is TV different from—I mean, obviously, it is—when you have someone on the show and they’re spouting things that you believe are not true, or they’re misleading in some way?
Katy Tur: Well, I think it’s important—here’s the difference.
Preet Bharara: Yeah.
Katy Tur: I mean, if you’re interviewing somebody for a print piece, you go back and you write the print piece, and you don’t just print a bald-faced lie or an inaccuracy. Your next sentence will be pointing out the truth of the matter. So, that’s—I mean, he’s using it to get to another place.
Preet Bharara: Right.
Katy Tur: Mine is live and on television, and it’s right there.
Preet Bharara: You don’t have a chance.
Katy Tur: There’s no chance for me to go back and to edit, and to say—and to fact check it in reverse. It has to be on the level in the moment. So, if a lawmaker is coming on and telling me A when it’s really C, I’ve got to say, no, that is actually C, or this is an apple when it’s really an orange—no, that’s actually an orange, or this is—that’s an orange.
Preet Bharara: That’s a banana and an apple. That’s the CNN thing.
Katy Tur: Yeah, it’s the CNN—you know, can I tell you something?
Preet Bharara: You’re on—you’re on NBC.
Katy Tur: I really like that ad. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to say it, but I really—
Preet Bharara: I will tell Jeff Zucker.
Katy Tur: I thought that ad was brilliant.
Preet Bharara: Jeff Zucker will be very happy to hear that.
Katy Tur: Kudos to CNN.
Preet Bharara: Speaking of CNN, I’m a senior legal analyst at CNN, so I go on –
Katy Tur: Unfortunately.
Preet Bharara: From time to time.
Katy Tur: Should we divulge that I begged you to come to NBC?
Preet Bharara: Sure. Keep that in. Make sure you keep that in. And I go on from time to time, and I enjoy it, and I think there’s value in it. But I do want to be respectful to everyone on television, including you, my guest. I sometimes find it hard for anything of depth to happen in the course of six minutes on television. How do you feel about that? You have your show, and how many guests do you typically have on in an hour?
Katy Tur: Well, it depends on the day. It could be anywhere from ten to five.
Preet Bharara: That’s a lot of people.
Katy Tur: That’s a lot of people. I try to –
Preet Bharara: From whom you can ask a couple of questions.
Katy Tur: I try to make it less people, because I agree with you, there’s very little you can get when you’re asking six people questions in a six-minute span of time.
Preet Bharara: When you have a panel of six people, yeah.
Katy Tur: I don’t like those large panels.
Preet Bharara: I refuse to do those.
Katy Tur: Good for you. I don’t like those. When you see one anchor and like, ten people around that anchor, I think it’s just—it’s absurd.
Preet Bharara: Do you think that viewers want to see many faces, and they get bored if you have someone on for 30 minutes?
Katy Tur: I mean, people seem to think that—I think that’s ridiculous. I don’t think so. I mean, I—
Preet Bharara: You should talk to those people at NBC.
Katy Tur: Viewers, tweet me and tell me if you want to see more faces, because I think seeing more faces—some people think seeing more faces makes it look very big and like we’re covering all angles of something, that we’ve got every reporter on who’s dug into this, and we’re gonna give you every aspect of this story. To me, it just seems like a lot of noise, and it can be confusing. It’s limitations of the format. I’m gonna plug my show for a moment.
Preet Bharara: Please.
Katy Tur: When you get out of the—
Preet Bharara: Tell everyone what time it’s on.
Katy Tur: It’s on 2:00 PM every day on MSNBC, and then on Mondays, I do Meet the Press Daily at 5:00, because Chuck Todd, god bless him, needs one day off a week. But 2:00 PM is great and really exciting because there’s all sorts of breaking news that happens at 2:00 PM. So, yeah, we’re not having a long conversation with one person because that lends itself better to the end of the day when the news has broken. In the 2:00 PM hour, you’re finding out everything as it happens, so you need more voices. And we also have the press briefing, so we’ll dip into that and listen to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and then come out of it and correct Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Preet Bharara: That has to happen every day, right?
Katy Tur: Every day.
Preet Bharara: So, you listed all these crazy things that happened to you in broadcast journalism. You gotta get up earlier. You gotta make sure you have different outfits. Sometimes men will spit at you. Why pick this form of journalism?
Katy Tur: TV?
Preet Bharara: Yeah.
Katy Tur: My parents were TV journalists, and they always had a camera in my face. Initially, I didn’t want to be a TV journalist. I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer. That was my dream. But I didn’t end up pursuing it. And then when I got into the TV business, I wanted to be a field producer. I didn’t want to be on the television. But I quickly realized that there were very few field producers out there any longer, especially—there’s none in—almost—basically, there’s none in local news. And then if you want credit for the work you do, you’d better put your face on it. And I wanted credit for the work I was doing. And also, I really enjoy doing it in real time. I enjoy live TV. I really like it.
Preet Bharara: It makes some people throw up.
Katy Tur: Some people don’t like it. I really like it. I like the immediacy of it. I like the front row seat you get to history. And I love the pictures. I love the video. I like to write, obviously. I wrote a book. I don’t find writing a book or writing as enjoyable as I find writing to pictures or describing pictures, what’s in front of my face in the moment. So, that’s why I chose this.
Preet Bharara: Can we talk about competition for a second?
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: It’s a competitive business you’re in.
Katy Tur: Mm-hmm.
Preet Bharara: Does that affect how people report things? You know, there’s the tension between getting it right and getting it first. How do you deal with that dynamic?
Katy Tur: It is tough, because you want to be the first person to break a story. But you have to—
Preet Bharara: Yeah. But if you get it wrong today, by the way—
Katy Tur: If you get it wrong, you’re—
Preet Bharara: It’s even worse than ever before.
Katy Tur: Ever before. And so, I think it’s really important to be out there first, but it’s more important to be right. So, if it’s gonna take you a little bit longer to nail something down, I think there’s every expectation that you take the time it needs. It used to be very—I mean, it still is very, we want to be first, first, first.
Preet Bharara: Right.
Katy Tur: But there has been a correction, certainly with our editors, where—and the bosses, the people who were pressuring us to get it on first, to say, hey, hold on. We want to be first, but we want more than anything to be right. So, if you are concerned even a little bit about a story, sit on it. If you need to sit on it longer, sit on it longer. Make that extra call. Get that third, fourth, fifth, sixth source.
Preet Bharara: Particularly if it’s about the White House.
Katy Tur: If it’s about anything nowadays. Absolutely anything. This charge of fake news is so dangerous that if you give anybody that ammunition to use it, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Preet Bharara: But so, the technical rule is not the number, the numerosity of confirmations. It’s—you have to think about the quality of them.
Katy Tur: You have to think about the quality of the source. You’ve got to think about where the source is coming from. Is that source getting their information from the same place? Is it somebody telling two people? I mean, it just depends. It depends on the circumstance. It depends on who you’re talking to. It depends on what the information is. You want to get it from a variety of people coming at different angles, coming from different angles. You know, we do that all the time, though. There was—I was the first on NBC to report who Donald Trump’s vice president pick would be, and I wasn’t the first person to have it, period. But I—it was before they announced it, and I spent the entire day berating a couple of my sources to tell me who it was. And finally, one of them did, and I could confirm. And I was terrified. And this was just—this was something that was probably going to be true, but I was terrified that what if it was not true? It would be all on me.
Preet Bharara: Have there been times where you tell an editor or producer that you have a bit of news, and you’re not 100 percent yet, but they think it’s good enough and they want you to go?
Katy Tur: No.
Preet Bharara: No.
Katy Tur: No.
Preet Bharara: It’s left to you.
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: Because it’s your face.
Katy Tur: Yeah. There have been times where I’ve said I’m 100 percent, and they’ve said no, get another source.
Preet Bharara: And have they been right?
Katy Tur: Yeah. It’s never bad to get another source.
Preet Bharara: Unless three other networks are gonna beat you, right?
Katy Tur: No. It’s never bad to get another source.
Preet Bharara: Good. Well, that’s good to hear.
Katy Tur: It’s never bad to get another source. Listen. I mean, the news is unfolding rapidly. We’re all working towards the same goal, which is uncovering the truth and facts. I’m happy if somebody else breaks a big story and it’s not me. If it’s an interesting story, if it’s getting closer to the truth, good for them.
Preet Bharara: You’ve talked a bit about and critiqued the concept of access journalism.
Katy Tur: Mm-hmm.
Preet Bharara: What do you mean by access journalism?
Katy Tur: Access journalism is, I will say anything you want to hear in order for you to tell me a piece of news, or I will be milquetoast. I won’t ever be critical of you or your campaign or your administration in order to be the person that has their phone calls always answered, and in order to be the person who gets the small bit of tidbit, nonessential news that everyone’s gonna get down the line anyways. Like, they’re going to announce this person for Treasury secretary. Who cares? We’re all gonna find that out at some point. I don’t think it’s worth it. And I think ultimately, it’s a disservice.
Preet Bharara: How many people do you think practice that form of access journalism?
Katy Tur: Some people do.
Preet Bharara: A lot?
Katy Tur: I think now, less.
Preet Bharara: Why is that?
Katy Tur: I think it’s proven to be a useless form of journalism. I think there’s levels of this. I mean, you have to take everything in moderation. It’s not just, I’m gonna be your enemy because you’re not gonna like anything I say.
Preet Bharara: That’s not gonna work.
Katy Tur: That’s not—that doesn’t work, and that’s not what we do. But just being a vessel for their information, for their spin, then you are a PR person. I think very few people are doing that today in comparison to the past. I think a lot of people have decided that the job of a journalist is to get to the truth and to expose spin, and to be as evenhanded, as fair as they can.
Preet Bharara: There’s this concept that people refer to as regulatory capture, right? So, the regulators who are supposed to be overseeing an industry, kind of as an analogue to the press, end up over time becoming sort of a little bit more intimate with the industry they’re supposed to be regulating and enforcing regulations with respect to than they should be. And, you know, because people are human beings, and you get to know people, and you get to understand them. And then there are other more nefarious reasons why that happens. Is that a danger that’s just natural?
Katy Tur: Yeah.
Preet Bharara: So, when reporters cover a campaign or are embedded with someone over time, isn’t it sort of natural—that candidate then has more opportunities to be kind, to be charming. You get to see that person in greater context. Do you fight against that? Do people fight against that?
Katy Tur: I think that’s a reality of all beat reporting, that you get close to your subject. And if your subject succeeds, then you succeed, because you get to continue covering that subject.
Preet Bharara: Right. So, do you start rooting? Do you some reporters are rooting for their person to win so they can go to the White House?
Katy Tur: I think reporters really struggle with it, because you don’t want to root for the person. You don’t want to continue on. And there was a moment I had when Donald Trump lost Iowa where I thought, well gosh, what the heck do I do next?
Preet Bharara: Right. Who’s gonna insult me now?
Katy Tur: Yeah. Well, yeah. And what am I gonna do the day after? Am I still gonna be a political reporter? Am I going back to London? It’s a confusing experience, certainly. You have to fight against that. You have to fight against the urge to want to see the person you’re covering succeed. I don’t think it’s—I mean, I think we’re human, so everybody fights against that to a degree. But I think reporters are just preternaturally good at distancing themselves and their personal opinions from something. I think we’re just good at doing that. We’ve been trained to do it. We are able to take a step back and just—that is our job. Our job is to be honest and unbiased about something, regardless of whether that’s gonna benefit us or not benefit us. And that’s part of why voting can be so problematic. It’s part of the reason why, if I’m covering a campaign, I’m not gonna vote, because I don’t want to be swayed one way or the other. I don’t want to overcorrect because I voted for somebody, and I don’t want to under correct because I didn’t vote for somebody.
Preet Bharara: But how much does it matter that you engage in the actual act of voting if, hypothetically, you otherwise strongly favor one over the other because you’re not just a journalist, you’re also a citizen in the country. I mean, does it matter that much whether you vote or not if you have a strong preference for who should win?
Katy Tur: I think you try to resist having a preference.
Preet Bharara: Did you have a preference?
Katy Tur: I didn’t have a preference.
Preet Bharara: Okay.
Katy Tur: I didn’t have a preference. I mean, I—it’s not my job to have a preference. This is—I find it—
Preet Bharara: Well, one could say, you know—so, do you surrender citizenship?
Katy Tur: No. Not at all. I think it is a privilege to have this job. It is a great privilege to be a reporter covering a presidential campaign and to convey information to the American electorate. That is a sacred honor and privilege, and I take that really seriously. I think that’s an amazing opportunity. And that, to me, is fulfilling my duty as an American citizen, much more so than casting one ballot. Everybody should vote, yes. I’m never gonna say that it doesn’t matter if one person votes or not. But I take this privilege that I have to be so, so sacred and so serious that I think it is just as equal as casting my own ballot.
Preet Bharara: Katy Tur, thanks a lot for being on the show. Congratulations on your book and on your own show.
Katy Tur: Preet, thank you very much for reading it. Thanks for having me. Come back to MSNBC some day.
Preet Bharara: Talk to you soon.
So, this is the point in the show where I talk about something from the news that affected me. There’s been so much stuff that’s happened in the last week, it’s hard to pick one. It may already seem like ancient history, but you’ll remember that over the weekend, we were on the brink of a government shutdown, and then the government did shut down. That happened to be short-lived, thankfully. But it just reminded me of something that happened when I was United States Attorney. So, I had that job, as you know, for seven-and-a-half years, and I was fond of saying that I never had a bad day. Every day was a privilege to have that job. And even when things didn’t always go our way, it was still a great day. There was one exception to that. The one bad day I had was U.S. Attorney was when we were on the brink of a government shutdown in 2013. And I led an office of 450 dedicated public servants, and I had to go stand in front of a large group of people in my office who were dedicated to serving the public, keeping the public safe, representing the federal government in court, who could have made more money doing other things. And I had to tell them that these other government people in Washington who didn’t have their act together and didn’t have the same competence, intelligence, devotion to doing the right thing that they did—because of their ineptitude in Washington, we were going to be in a potential shutdown situation.
Now, imagine talking to dozens of people in your own office who are just as dedicated as everyone else. Because people don’t know how to get their act together in Washington, I’ve got to denote them as nonessential. And not only that, that I had to say to them, even if you want to come into work on a volunteer basis to continue your cases and do the work that’s important to the people of New York, you’re not allowed to. You have to stay home because you’re being formally furloughed. And not only that, there was no guarantee if and when the shutdown were to end, are you ever gonna be paid the government salary that you lost, because these other folks, who are not losing any salary at all, caused this to happen. I think it’s just important for people to remember that when you have a shutdown like this, it’s not just some people in the military who may be affected, but in government offices all over the country, including the U.S. Attorney’s office, there are lawyers, and paralegals, and secretaries, and assistants, and IT people, and computer people, who basically are furloughed and lose their job for a period of time with no guarantee they’re gonna be paid back.
That’s a terrible thing. We ended up getting through that shutdown, and they ended up getting paid for their time. But here we are on the brink again, and I think will be again in a few weeks, and it could happen on a repeated basis. And so, my thoughts go out to the very fine people who work in the government for not a lot of money, who are much maligned, I think, without reason, and hope that they get treated a little bit better than folks were in 2013.
Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Katy Tur, and thank you for listening. If you like the show, rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. It really does help new listeners discover the show. Send me your questions about news and politics. Tweet them to me @preetbharara, or even better, give me a call at (669) 247-7338. That’s (669) 24PREET.
Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and WNYC Studios. It’s produced by the team at Pineapple Street Media, Chris Berube, Henry Molofsky, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Joel [?Lovell], and Max Lindsky, with help this week from Courtney Harrell. Our music is by Andrew [?Dost]. And special thanks to Julia Doyle, Jeff Eisenman, and Jake [?Maccabbee.] I’m Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.
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