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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host David Axelrod.

In a week marked by stunning revelations about President Trump's personal finances and an epically rancorous presidential debate,

I could think of no better person to chat with than journalist and author Tim O'Brien of Bloomberg Opinion, who literally wrote the book on Trump.

We sat down in the wake of the stormy debate to talk about the President, the campaign, and O'Brien's own rich journey. Here's that conversation.

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Tim O'Brien, it's good to see what a propitious time to be sitting down with you the day after what could only be described as a historic presidential debate, not in a good way, but historic nonetheless.

First of all, welcome. Good to be here David. Thank you.

You wrote the book in 2005, Trump Nation, the art of being the Donald, we'll be talking about that at length later, but you spent a lot of time with Donald Trump. You probably know him as well as any journalist.

Were you surprised about his performance last night?

Well, I don't mean this in a like a Nyanyah kind of I told you so way, but I don't think any of us should have been surprised by what we saw last night. I think we should be worried and concerned and attentive.

But the Donald Trump who was on that stage last night is I think the Donald Trump, you know, who's who sprung from his his father's forehead like a thina fully armed, you know, in the first years of his life.

He's just he's a 74 year old man who's been doing this publicly for 50 years. It's not a strategy because he's not a strategic thinker. He's not sophisticated or empathetic enough to be a strategic thinker.

This is just who he is. He's he's a troubled damaged person who's a force for chaos. And right now, I think he's he's very aware that he's well underwater compared to Joe Biden in the polls. I think he feels cornered.

And and I think that debate was an effort to try to deal legitimize Joe Biden narrowly deal legitimize the election and voting more broadly.

And then yet it's another chapter in his effort to deal legitimize institutions and and basic trust people haven't anyone or anything other than him.

So no, I wasn't surprised by it. I authentically was not surprised by it. The irony is that, you know, he he in many ways, deal legitimize himself with that performance. My feeling I sense and I don't I know him just a very little. I don't know him the way you know him.

But I did get the sense of a person who knew he was losing. And in addition to understanding that he he needed to to deal legitimize his opponent, I also got a sense that he was lashing out because he's angry that he's losing and he thinks it's grossly unfair and that he's been treated unfairly.

And you could see that bursting out sort of episodically going back to you know Biden and and Obama spying on his campaign and you know that there was he wove several of his his favorite conspiracy theories in there and you just got the sense that this was a guy who is angry that he is losing and I think maybe fearful of losing.

Let me let me ask you about that. I spoke to one of his someone who's close to him and asked about all of this stuff around the election and you know there's a lot of concern obviously about him suggesting he wouldn't accept the results of the election kind of sending smoke signals to to his supporters that they might have to take to the streets and so on.

This guy said you know I think it's less complicated than that I think he's trying to create a coping mechanism for what's to come.

Like he cannot lose so he needs to create a pretext for losing and you know it's not he's not he's not got a grand strategic plan about how he's going to stay in power.

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