We are in Crazy Town. Another book about Trump is captivating Washington and an op-ed

too. But is Trump down and out? Welcome to the Reliable Sources Podcast. I'm your host

Brian Stelter. And this weekly podcast is our chance to go more in-depth with

media leaders and newsmakers. This week I'm thrilled to be joined by Michael Cruz

a senior writer for Politico and Politico magazine. Cruz does something pretty

simple but something I'm not seeing anybody else do.

When Trump's in the news, when Trump's down on the ropes,

he goes back to Trump's own words.

All of the books Trump wrote or co-wrote or kinder wrote over the decades.

And right now at this moment with the Bob Woodward book hitting and that New York Times op-eds

stinging the administration there's a lot to learn from Trump's own books.

Michael, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Brian.

You wrote recently about this old Trump book called

Surviving at the top and some of the lessons about how

Trump likes a crisis. He likes testing his survival skills.

What did you learn when you reread the book?

So surviving at the top always in the Trump canon has been the most interesting

and in some respects the most self-reflective title and that is because he writes it at a very particular

moment in his long history. 1990 he is collapsing financially, he's billions of dollars in debt.

That collapse is coinciding with his own self-inflicted detonation of his marriage because of his affair with Marla Maples.

And yet he comes out with this book called, preposterously, presumptuously, hopefully surviving at the top at a time when he's not at the top and barely surviving.

...