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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Before we dive into our show for today, let me just reinforce for one minute what you've been hearing from Michael Hill and Jessica Gould this morning. Jess is going to be back on to talk about some of her actual reporting later this hour as our education reporter. She's got some really interesting stuff today. Today, we begin our annual winter membership drive. You know, rarely has there been a more important one to support the continued existence of a free independent press, period, or at least this corner of it for our area and for the world.

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For this Monday, after the Friday Trump and Vance versus Zelensky showdown, we return to the overarching question of our times. Is this what democracy looks like? Beyond the good and bad of specific policy changes, are they establishing an authoritarian state? Our series, Is This What Democracy Looks Like, is asking the question explicitly to not lose the forest for the trees. Right? In this segment, we'll ask that question with the reaction to Trump and Vance versus Zelensky. On the way, they are punishing the Associated Press for not saying, "Gulf of America."

Here is one very stark and very frank framing of Trump and Vance versus Zelensky that came on Friday afternoon, just practically right after the exchange from Congressman Mike Quigley. If you don't know him, he's a Democrat from Illinois who was co-chair of the House Ukraine Caucus. Yes, there's a House Ukraine Caucus. It's a rare bipartisan caucus with two Republican co-chairs and two Democratic co-chairs. Here is Quigley on CNN on Friday afternoon.

Congressman Mike Quigley: No one imagined that the president of the United States would betray all the things that we fought for, all the reasons we fought the Second World War, that we formed the new world order, liberal democratic World War after that great conflict. We're on the side of the bad guys now.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Mike Quigley. It's in that context that we ask again today, is this what democracy looks like as it pertains to democracy, not just here, but around the world? Did you hear those words at the end of the clip? Quigley actually said, "We're on the side of the bad guys now." Beyond the questions of Ukraine policy per se or whether Friday's confrontation was spontaneous or an ambush, that's a debate the media is having. It's once again a question of democracy versus creeping authoritarianism as well. Same with the Associated Press issue, which we'll also discuss.

With us now, Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today and author of the recent biographies of Barbara Walters, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Bush. One of her latest articles, Trump's Unprecedented Shouting Match with Zelensky Could Rattle the World. Susan, always good of you to take time from your busy real job to come on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Susan Page: Brian, it's always good to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: You've covered Washington for decades. Have you ever heard it come to this in the context of world affairs? A leading congressman saying we're on the side of the bad guys now, meaning the authoritarians who George W. Bush as president called the axis of evil?

Susan Page: The answer to that is no. I started covering the White House in 1981 with President Reagan. I've gone to a million of those Oval Office photo ops with the president sitting in one chair in front of the fireplace and a foreign leader sitting in another and never have we seen this kind of scene before. Now, maybe it's happened before behind closed doors, but in front of the cameras, never.

I do think that, not only was the argument unprecedented, but the realignment it signals is unprecedented because it aligns the United States increasingly with Russia and decreasingly with the European allies that we've fought two world wars with. Yes, I thought it was quite an important event. You never know, history unfolds in its own ways, but I think we could look back and see this event on Friday as a real pivot point for the United States.

Brian Lehrer: You went right to the paragraph from your article that I wanted to cite from anyway. I'll back you up by reading this. You wrote, "In time, the shouting match in the Oval Office may turn out to be a pivot point in a realignment that moves Washington closer to Moscow and further from European allies." How do you see what Trump really wants by aligning with Putin as much as he does, turning reality on its head, we should say, saying Ukraine started the war, and calling Zelensky a dictator, which he doesn't call Putin. What does Trump actually want from calling democracy dictatorship and not calling dictatorship dictatorship?

Susan Page: I think some of it is personal. He has from the beginning, from 2015, from the 2016 campaign, he's expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin, often to the bewilderment of other conservative Republicans who see Putin as a thug and a despot. Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for him as a strongman. You remember that Helsinki news conference where he said he believed Putin's assurances over election interference over his own intelligence agencies? That's not new. What's also not new is Trump's irritation with President Zelensky.

They met over the phone when Trump was urging him to investigate his rival Joe Biden on grounds of corruption. Zelensky not only refused to do it, but it led to Trump's first impeachment. He has a history with both of these guys, but there's a policy here too. It's a different United States policy than we've seen before. It's the United States less as a prominent member of NATO, a strong supporter of NATO, and more like a neutral observer in the world that might sometimes act as a go-between. That's really the role that Trump is now setting up for himself when it comes to Ukraine and Russia.

Brian Lehrer: Not just neutral, but as Quigley was alleging, on the side of the bad guys. This comes after Vance lectured Germany at the Munich Security Conference, we remember, the other week for having weak democracy because it restricts the kind of hate speech associated with its undemocratic Nazi past and limiting parties of the far-right that seem to recall that past, like the AfD, even though the AfD aligns with some authoritarian governments abroad today as well, meaning abroad from Germany.

We're telling Europe that it's against democracy for limiting parties that are against democracy. One's head could explode from the contradiction, but what position does this realignment that you cite leave a global alliance for democracy itself in the US, imperfect though it's been, has long been a leader in that respect?

Susan Page: I just mentioned, along with Vance's speech in Munich, which I agree was very important, there was the United States vote in the United Nations, where we refused to support a resolution that cited Russian aggression against Ukraine. We sided with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

Brian Lehrer: There's that George Bush axis of evil, right?

Susan Page: Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Precisely those countries. I don't think China was on that list, but the other ones were. Now we're voting with them at the United Nations against the democracies.

Susan Page: Against Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom. That was also, I think, a crucial moment. We've now seen a couple of them. Clearly, it's deliberate. This is not some accidental slip of the tongue in the Oval Office. It changes the world order. This changes the way the world is aligned. That's what we're seeing, I think, right in front of our faces.

Brian Lehrer: I also want to play one very short bite. Don't worry, folks, I'm not going to subject you to the whole thing again. I watched it like five times over the weekend, not just because it was unbelievable in general, but because there were a number of specific things in there that I wanted to be really clear on. I'm going to replay one of them right now. It relates to this question of where democracy and governing styles interact.

We know they were lecturing Zelensky that he should be thanking the United States more, but there was also this that seemed consistent with other things going on domestically as well, just purely showing who's in charge for who's in charge's sake.

President Zelensky: From the very beginning of the war-

President Trump: You're not in a good position.

President Zelensky: -I was [crosstalk]

President Trump: You don't have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.

President Zelensky: I'm not playing cards.

President Trump: Right now, you're playing cards.

President Zelensky: I'm very serious, Mr. President. I'm very serious.

President Trump: You're playing cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

President Zelensky: [unintelligible 00:09:58].

President Trump: You're gambling with World War III.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, on the one hand, Trump is right that without the United States supporting them in some way, Ukraine is nowhere, versus the much bigger and richer Russian army, but was he also showing Zelensky who's boss? Like, "You do what I say. Give us those minimal rights from your country." Congressman Quigley called it ransom in a CNN interview, like a demand from a thug, "Get ready to give up some of your country to Russia because I'm the one in charge here."

Susan Page: Well, Zelensky was not following the script that the prime minister of Great Britain and the president of France had followed earlier in the week. We saw them do something to be deferential to Trump, flatter Trump, praise Trump, portray him as a great peacemaker, and only in the most discreet ways, correcting him on a few factual errors. That is the recipe, they think, to get Trump on board to do the policy that you want them to do. Zelensky didn't do that. He irritated the White House by not showing up in a suit.

They say he didn't do enough to say thank you to the United States, although, of course, he said thank you over and over again. You heard him there challenging Trump and interrupting him. That may seem totally natural and right, but that is a recipe to trigger Trump and to make him assert his own authority over you.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I noticed in your article that you quoted Trump's post on Truth Social from after the Zelensky incident. Trump wrote, "He disrespected the United States in its cherished Oval Office." It wasn't our Constitution that he called cherished or our interest in peace or democracy. It was our cherished Oval Office, which means him. This segues into the AP story. The cherished Oval Office is exerting more control over what news organizations have access to the president and when. The AP issue is just one example. Explain to our listeners what happened because the AP is still writing Gulf of Mexico rather than Gulf of America.

Susan Page: Yes. To be clear, the AP is saying the Gulf of Mexico, which the United States now calls the Gulf of America. They're acknowledging the language that Trump has put for that body of water but mentioning first the traditional name of it. It's not as though they're in a state of total defiance against renaming the Gulf of America or the Gulf of Mexico. In response, Trump has blocked AP reporters and photographers from the press pool. They're not able to go into the Oval Office for things like the exchange on Friday. He's kept them off Air Force One.

This is more serious for the AP than it would be for almost any other news organization because the AP is their-- It's the news association. It represents everybody. It's traditionally the number one member of the pool. If there can be only one wire service in a pool situation because of size, it's traditionally been the AP. This is a really fundamental blow to the Associated Press's ability to both cover the White House and also to photograph it. The AP photographers are no longer in the press pool. That is a serious restraint on the AP's ability to do its traditional job in covering the White House.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know if the AP was an outlier for not changing the name? I see, for example, that Google Maps did change the name. At least I read that online.

Susan Page: Well, I think we were all trying to figure out what to do about it. At USA Today, we're now calling it the Gulf of America, which has traditionally been called the Gulf of Mexico. We're doing that because our audience is American. We have not a big foreign footprint. That's what Americans now call it. We do the flip side of what the AP is doing. The AP's rationale is that their audience is global and most of the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico, so they do Gulf of Mexico first and then Gulf of America. It's, I think, something that we're all trying to sort out now.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, what's the convention on this, if you know? Who officially names places, especially if they're not owned by any one country, like most of the Gulf or most of any ocean?

Susan Page: Well, my understanding is the president can declare that the United States government sees this by this name, and then for US Government purposes, that's its name. You got a lot of lawyers in your audience, and I'm not one of them, so maybe one of them would know more.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The AP has now sued the Trump administration with their lawyers. One line from the lawsuit that your colleagues reported in USA Today, "The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government." How do you see this dispute in terms of, is this what democracy looks like anymore? Is this a shot across the bow by Trump toward more state control of what has been a free press under the First Amendment?

Susan Page: Just to note one thing, the AP has not been denied credentials to the White House. Reporters and photographers can still go to the White House and cover open events. They're being denied access to the Oval Office and to Air Force One. A court may see that as a different issue than, say, pulling the credentials of the AP, which hasn't happened, but yes, I think the White House has moved to assert more control over the coverage that they get.

You see the effect by some of the questions that get tossed to President Trump in these photo ops. Some of them have much softball quality from news outlets that are friendly to him that now have new and greater access than they used to.

Brian Lehrer: Right. There should be a diversity of news organizations, including ones that are explicitly friendly to him that have access, don't you agree?

Susan Page: Yes, there should be all kinds of news organizations credentialed by the White House. The political point of view of a news organization should not determine its credentials. I absolutely agree with that. We also know that the president's tradition don't get to choose the press that covers them. The idea that you limit those who have the closest access, the ability to ask the most questions or to see things close up, that's a different issue from having a diversity in the press corps that's [unintelligible 00:16:51].

Brian Lehrer: Exactly. Well, that goes to this thing called pool reporters. Just take 30 seconds and explain to our listeners what a pool reporter is and who gets to be in the pool.

Susan Page: The pool is a small group of journalists who represent the larger group of journalists in situations where everybody can't go somewhere, which is on Air Force One, which is in the Oval Office. Pool reporters do pool reports that say, "Here's exactly what happened. Here's what I saw." You're there as everybody's eyes and ears. You can't get information and not share it with the whole group. That's the theory of the pool.

The pool rotation usually includes always someone from the AP and Reuters. Usually, they're members of every pool and then a rotating group of newspaper and other traditionally print reporters in a rotation that has usually been organized by the White House Correspondents' Association but now is being controlled by the White House.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that's the thing, and we'll end on this. You are a past president of the White House Correspondents' Association. I understand that they used to pick, and you just said that, they used to pick who's in the rotation for pool reporters. What were the criteria that the White House Correspondents' Association used, and what criteria is Trump now using or the Trump White House?

Susan Page: Before the changes with the White House, the White House Correspondents' Association required that you be credentialed for the White House and that you'd be willing to show up to do your pool. That was a group of about 30 print reporters. That's the rotation we had. It did not have an ideological ground. We didn't have really efforts by some of these new conservative news outlets to participate in the pool. We, I think, by tradition would have allowed them to do so as long as they did pool reports of quality, pool reports that did what the pool reports were supposed to do.

Brian Lehrer: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today and author of the recent biographies of Barbara Walters, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Bush. The Barbara Walters one is her latest. Susan, thank you, as always.

Susan Page: Hey, thank you, Brian.

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