Connie Chung

Oh, no. Mari is very secure in who he is. It's the biggest thing that I admire about my husband. He knows he is this very, very intelligent person, and he has... He's had a storied career as a journalist for many, many years. Then he hit upon the current type of talk show. When he was doing a talk show in Washington, D.C., he was interviewing authors and politicians.

What Donald Trump does, of course, is make a lot of money and make sure everybody knows it. A yacht, a mansion, a bigger mansion, an airline, two casinos, a bigger casino.

I mean, every author from Gore Vidal to Tom Wolfe to Maya Angelou. And it was a classic old talk show. And he did cooking segments with Julia Child. And he did, during Watergate, he was in the thick of it. You know, he covered Kennedy's funeral, JFK's funeral, covered Martin Luther King's assassination. So he's an old-fashioned journalist. Then he hits upon the talk show circuit.

And one of his producers comes up with the idea of the paternity of Every Child in America. Suddenly, he has six and a half million Facebook followers and a million Instagram followers, and he's become a walking meme. And it's just a big kick for him.

He can wax poetic about what he actually accomplishes by determining the paternity of children and fathers resume paying for their children instead of denying their existence. So it's a funny... He doesn't care what critics say. And I always care. So we have completely different views.

No. He talked me off the ledge many times. When I came home and I said to him, do you know what so-and-so said to me today? And he would Say, don't think about it. Don't take him seriously. Take your work seriously. Don't take yourself seriously. Don't take the critics seriously. Let's have dinner. And I would seriously calm down.

By now, his possessions are more familiar to us than what we have hanging in our own closets. His buildings? Well, you know which ones they are.

Maybe if you can try and answer this question without giving me the normal spiel.

Well, the problem was that the men could not be pushed into that direction. At CBS News, Dan Rather, who is my co-anchor, wouldn't touch it. At 60 Minutes, it was all men at the time, and they wouldn't touch it. They wanted nothing to do with O.J. Simpson. And frankly, I didn't either.

I'll set the stage, otherwise I'm going to get myself in such trouble, Tanya. I was doing this program called Saturday Night with Connie Chung, and I was the only correspondent because... We had another format prior to that, and it really was excoriated. It tanked. So I had to then go out on stories every week to fill an hour program.

But the management would come to me and say, Barbara Walters is getting X, Diane Sawyer is getting Y, and Katie Cork is getting Z. You have to do this for the team. I said, I don't want to. I don't see the value in it. It's tabloid. I don't know. You know, Tanya, I have a lot of regrets, but that was one of the biggest ones of being the good girl.

Or being told what to do, resisting, but never being able to put my foot down and say, I am not doing it. Go find somebody else.

I don't know. I really don't know. I think they just knew I would acquiesce. I wish I had pushed them and put my foot down to take a stand.

You've known for about a month now that you test positive for HIV. How are you handling it? I mean, I get the feeling, see, you put the game face on for me.

And that you really have some feelings that are down deep in here. that you don't really want to share with me?

Really?

You're so right, Tanya. The reason why I wanted to get it was because HIV, AIDS was at the... It was a front-burner story. And when Magic sacrificed himself and his reputation, his career, everything came out, he was such a gem. I used to... Kind of no magic, because I did the news in Los Angeles.

And when he came on live with the sports reporter at the time, he would always say with his big, beautiful smile, say hi to Connie. You know, his smile is infectious. And he actually asked me to go have... some soul food with him and his very tall friends. And we went to Boris's Snack and Chat, and it was the most incredible gravy-covered fried chicken I had ever had in my life.

I was traveling all over the country and the world and everything. I was pretty darn exhausted. Then the executive producer comes to me and says, We have an interview with Donald Trump. At the time, he had not planned to run for president by any means. He was a mogul. He was actually a very – he was a tabloid king because he was always in the New York tabloids.

And I wolfed it down. At that time, I was young, and I could eat anything I wanted, and it didn't show up in bad places. Now there's a festival going on below my waist. They said, where the heck did that come from? But I thought to myself, I could get that interview because I know him and I'm kind of his friend.

And then when I called some other people in L.A., they all said, ah, magic's my friend. I'll be able to get that interview. And I thought, uh-oh.

I flew to L.A., went straight to his agent's office, and I squatted. I actually became a squatter. I sat outside his office. His face... And assistant said, you know, he's not going to do, the agent is not going to talk to you. And Magic is not going to do the interview. And I said, but I'm his friend. And she said, yeah, everybody's his friend.

So I sat down and I said, I'm not leaving until he leaves to go home. So I squatted. And he had only one door to get out. He finally agreed to pass you. Yeah. And somehow he talked to Magic and Magic said, okay. I was just so happy because it was a big, a big interview. And Magic was too kind.

And that was his – that period of his claim to fame. So I went, I want to – here we – whining. Oh, boy, did I whine.

On the surface, it was very superficially normal-ish. I mean, we seemed as if we were both professional and doing our jobs. But it was pretty clear to me that he didn't want me there. I don't blame him totally because he had... owned Walter Cronkite's chair for many years and had to move over a few inches to make room for me.

I became the first co-anchor at CBS and he really, I think they must have held a gun to his head because I can't imagine that he would have done it voluntarily. So there I was and I do believe that had I been another man, had I been an animal, had I been a plant. He would not have wanted me to share. He would not have wanted anyone to share that seat with him. It was not his cup of tea.

Yes. Jane Pauley had to endure that when she was co-anchoring with men.

Yeah, could not say good morning and could not say goodbye.

That's right. And she fought it. And she acknowledged that she lost. And I didn't know that at the time. I thought, how could she acquiesce to this kind of ridiculous rule? And so I tried, and I lost too. So I was... hoping that I could set a new term for my substitution period when I was substituting for her during her pregnancies.

Yes, it's the automatic respect that men get just by virtue of the fact that they're men. I think we are perpetually trying to prove ourselves. And I think we've made great progress. I think women and minorities have made great progress. But Asians suffer this incredible Asian hate these days, which has reverted back to a peculiar—I mean, not peculiar, but horrible results—

Women have not reached the level of parity. I think we can't sort of quietly sit and see if it's going to happen. We need to continue to move forward.

I really appreciate the investigative reporting in television news and alt print everywhere. Anytime I see an investigative report, I'm impressed. What I don't like, of course, is if I see opinion. And there is a lot of that. I would really like the news to swing back to objective, honest, credible, straight news. And I know a lot of people, you know, people I just run into, want facts.

Well, guilty as charged. I did, and he went on the Joan Rivers show, and at the time she had a talk show. And he said that I was—he used all those words that he is—want to use with some female journalists.

That's all they want. Do you miss it? Only when I see—when I'm watching an interview on television, I want to throw my shoe at it. If somebody isn't asking the question, the next question that I would ask, it doesn't do a follow-up. Or I— It's very strange. I miss that, the interviews and being able to dig deeper. But I also miss the joy of going after a story that's worthy.

And I know it sounds really old-fashioned, but it's the—if I can change a government wrong or— change in attitude regarding social ills or whatever, something like that. I think it's so gratifying. And I know a lot of my friends still feel that way as well. And they get to do it sometimes. But sometimes the... The ball is rolling, rolling over them.

And they're just lucky to be still in the business. And I'm happy for them because I'm looking in from the outside.

Tanya, I think you did the best interview that I've done on this, that I've ever done. Seriously. You're a hottie, not only as I've seen in pictures, but you're a really, really good interviewer, too.

Thank you, Tonya. You were great. I mean, seriously.

Yeah. And I can't remember the exact words, but that I was basically stupid and didn't ask good questions and all of that. I would see him – my husband is a crazy golfer. You know my husband, Mari Povich, who's been determining the paternity of every child in America? You are the father. You are not the father. Well, in addition to that, my husband is a very good golfer as well.

I would see Donald Trump at celebrity golf tournaments in which my husband was playing. And he ghosted me, essentially. It was as if I were invisible. I wasn't there. Maury would say, you know Connie. And I was just...

No. No, it wasn't dangerous. It was just fraught with sexism. And, I mean, I think they all saw me as this unusual little toy.

Well, they were surprised when I came up with a story that they didn't have. It was a little competition, you know, and I love the competition. So I just... developed this sense of humor. And what I did was I tried to get them before they got me. And I had this propensity to be much too bawdy. And it was antithetical to what I looked like. You know, I looked like a lotus blossom.

And they were appalled that I had the audacity to use a bad word. But at the same time, they found it very comical.

You got it. And when I realized that, and I did, because I... I would call the assignment editor in Washington, the overnight assignment editor, and I'd say, what broke overnight? Or what's on the front page of the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times, whatever. Whatever he had access to or whatever was released early enough. And I realized that they were getting stories.

And it suddenly dawned on me that They were saucing up the campaign manager and everyone who worked for the candidate and letting them spill the beans. So I said, end of staying in my room. I'm going down to the bar. And I did. I could drink when I was in college. I learned how to take a few down and still stay sane. I wasn't driving anywhere. which is walking back to my room.

And therein lies a great way to learn how to be a reporter. You had to get in there. You had to play that game. Exactly. The only place I couldn't enter where the men were, obviously, was the men's room. And they got stories there. I couldn't infiltrate the men's room.

You know, Barbara Walters taught me that. I knew that she picked up the phone herself. She wrote a letter. She faxed. She called. She nudged. She would say, let's have lunch. And I would call it being barbered. And Barbara barbered me. When I was fired from the CBS Evening News, she called me and started trying to get the first interview with me when I emerged from my bunker.

It was just remarkable. Barbara and I had a lot in common. She was clearly the pioneer and paved our way. She was the breadwinner in her family because her father's nightclubs tanked and she had to take care of her mother and her father, support her mother and her father and her disabled sister. I was the breadwinner in my family as well. my mother and father.

I supported them until the day they died. From about 25 on, I was their parent. We both co-anchored with someone who despised us, a man. We were both fired after two years. We both adopted a child. We both married nice Jewish boys, although I think Barbara married maybe two or three. But, you know, I really did—I admired Barbara because she paved our way.

I'm still wondering how come we are the perfect match, you know, because we are so different. But the public personas belie what is really behind our door. And the reason why I say that is because He, although he does this, has been determining the paternity of every child in America and utters these words, you are the father and you are not the father.

So he's a very down-to-earth, realistic guy. What belies his public persona is that he is very much a voracious reader. He's a political buff. He's a history buff. He could run circles around these pseudo-intellectuals who do interviews with – important people. And I always say that to him. Why don't you do a serious talk show? And he says, and I said, you're so smart.

People don't know how smart you are. And he says, as long as you know that, I'm fine. And I thought, oh my goodness, what a guy.

Yes. The difference is I am not serious. And you now know that, Tonya, because you've read my book. And he has to curb my enthusiasm. Because I'm liable to do something off the wall. It is not he who would do something off the wall. It is I. And he has to talk me out of it. Because I say, why? You would do it. And he'd say, no, you have a reputation to uphold.

No, I think they're right over here.

That's great.

Yes, you're right. How much is it? David, I can't have you pay for this.

I can't believe you found the clip and you used it.

Yes. He refused to call him Maury. He would always call him Morty, Murray, Marvy. I mean, whatever. And I said, he said, do you want to go out for pizza sometime? And I said, sure. Can I bring Maury? And he'd say no.