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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Nondisclosure and Trump

Robert Costa [RC] and Bob Woodward [BW] of the Washington Post interviewed Trump. Corey Lewandowski [CL], press secretary Hope Hicks [HH] and son Donald Trump Jr. [DTJ] were also present.  Trump's insistence on nondisclosure agreements probably means that Trump people won't be attending the post-election conference at  Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics.  In her 2010 California gubernatorial race, Meg Whitman reportedly had staffers sign such documents, and they stayed away from a post-election conference at Berkeley.

If Trump were to win, these agreements would also cut off oral histories, memoirs, and other valuable sources of information for scholars.
RC: And one thing I always wondered, are you going to make employees of the federal government sign nondisclosure agreements?
DT: I think they should. You know, when somebody — and I see it all the time. . . . And I don’t know, there could be some kind of a law that you can’t do this. But when people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that. I mean, I’ll be honest. And people would say, oh, that’s terrible, you’re taking away his right to free speech. Well, he’s going in. . . . I would say . . . I do have nondisclosure deals. That’s why you don’t read that. . . .
BW: With everyone? Corey has one, Hope has one.
DT: Corey has one, Hope has one. Did you sign one?
HH: Of course.
CL: Stephen [Miller, Trump's policy adviser] has one.
DT: Stephen has one.
CL: [Donald Trump, Jr.] has one.
DTJ.: I don’t have one. I’m in the middle of the book. [Laughter]
CL: Don has two. [Laughter]
DT: I know, I forgot, he’s the one I’m most worried about.
DTJ: I’m not getting next week’s paycheck until I sign one.
DT: I have a very, very, very prominent businessman who’s right now got a person — he’s involved in litigation, terrible litigation with somebody that worked for him in a very close level. And I said why are you . . . .
BW: Do you think these are airtight agreements?
DT: Yeah, totally. I think they’re very airtight. They’re very . . . .
BW: And that no one could write a book or . . . .
DT: I think they’re extremely airtight. And anybody that violated it — let’s put it this way: it’s so airtight that I’ve never had . . . you know, I’ve never had a problem with this sort of thing.