David E. Sanger

But in the end, he very happily agreed to it.

And we were told that the moment would be 5 p.m.

on Wednesday night.

And we actually thought that was a good piece of timing because we figured we would probably be his audience.

Last appointment of the day.

Right.

And anybody who has dealt with Donald Trump and I've dealt with them for a few years knows that if you're the last appointment of the day, you're likely to be sticking around for a while.

We didn't leave the White House till after 9 p.m.

We did.

Interrupted some by a few side moments, including the president wanting to show us some of his architectural plans and visit what he's done up in the residence and so forth.

But a good, oh, just shy of two hours of it.

was an actual deep probing conversation about this past year, foreign and domestic issues.

And our goal, Michael, was to try to do something deeper and hopefully more revealing than what the president does every day when he stands up briefly in front of reporters on Air Force One or does a gaggle, as they call it, around the Resolute Desk.

And readers and listeners are going to have to determine... If you succeeded.

Yeah.

Sit down, please.

So we settled in, sat down, arrayed around the Resolute desk.

It was me and Tyler Pager, Zolan Cano-Youngs, and Katie Rogers.

Marco, why don't you join us for a couple of minutes?

Sure.