Mark Bowden writes for The Atlantic among other journals. He is the author of Black Hawk Down and a dozen more books. He recently published an extensive analysis of the US’s options in dealing with North Korea. (Spoiler warning: they all suck.)
He recently sat down for an interview with Sam Harris, which you can listen to here.
At the end of this rather dismal run-down of dark possibilities Harris re-directed the discussion to Trump. “Well, this has been a barrel of laughs, Mark. Before I let you go, tell me what you know about Trump.”
Bowden replied, “Well, I spent a long weekend with Donald once at Mar-a-Lago. Back in 1996 I did a profile of him for Playboy magazine. And at the time The Donald was very, very proud of having been the only man ever featured on the cover of Playboy. And a big fan of the whole Playboy concept. He was willing to invite me into his life and I flew to Mar-a-Lago with him and his then wife Marla and their daughter Tiffany. And I had a chance to really talk to him and observe him in action. And I came away feeling like this is one of the most loathsome human beings I've ever met in my life.”
And he goes on to relate how Trump throws temper tantrums, and lies about absolutely everything, and on and on.
Harris and Bowden talk for another ten minutes about Trump and Russia. I found it amusing. Bowden says he doesn't think Putin was foolish enough to collude with Trump; he merely played him, given that Trump is so manipulable.
If you don’t have an hour for the entire interview, you might want to start in at the 55-minute mark for a take on Trump that I’m sure many of us share.
For me it was a useful antidote to the previous podcast with Dilbert author and Trump apologist Scott Adams.