CHUCK TODD (HOST): Mr. Draper, you spent a lot of time with Mr. Trump over the last few weeks, have an epic piece in the New York Times Magazine. It'll take days to finish reading of course, but let me pull out this excerpt here.
ROBERT DRAPER: Unreadably long.
TODD: No, it's very readable. No, no, no, no, no, you will want to do this. “I asked Trump if he had ever been to Iraq. 'Never,' he said, sounding horrified by the thought.” And then you asked him, "'What's the most dangerous place in the world you've been to?' He contemplated this for a second. 'Brooklyn,' he said, laughing. 'No,' he went on," quote, “There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland or Ferguson, the crime numbers are worse. Seriously.” Was he serious?
DRAPER: Yes, he was serious. Yes, and I think that the transition that people would like to see this man make is not so much staying off of Twitter, not so much having a veneer of presidential affect. But I think instead what they'd like to do is imagine this sort of boastful CEO of a company that bears his own name becoming or assuming the moral mantle of responsibility of being a public servant, which obligates you to -- among other things -- learn about the world and learn about your own issues with more granularity than he has currently demonstrated.
TODD: Joy, first two cities he says is Ferguson and Oakland. That --
JOY REID: Yeah. That's not even a dog whistle, it's a bullhorn. Right? And the thing that's interesting is that Donald Trump up to now has really not gone after African-Americans as directly as he has obviously Mexican migrants and Muslims and others. But I think it's implied there, and it's one of the reasons that he can't get out of single digits or improve where Republicans currently stand with people of color. Trust me that the kind of people who will be protesting in Cleveland, the folks that will be outside of that arena, they hear that dog whistle as a bullhorn, and they will respond.
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REID: I can tell you that they're not going to respond to a candidate that has an ethno-nationalistic message.
