l EP: What’s your take on Trump and | lived through Kennedy and Nixon. movie roles. But he did say he was willing Russia? PK: My earliest remembrance of a Presi- | to take a senility test! Of course, the sug- PK: | read one article where an uniden- | dent was Franklin D Roosevelt. gestion that he’d take a senility test is a tified Russian official used the phrase | EP: Do you remember him on the radio? | suggestion that you already are senile. “useful idiot”. That’s really what it is. PK: Yes. He was famous for having his | EP: Right. That’s very funny. It’s like J. Edgar Hoover; he stayed | Fireside Chats. Which, through these | PK: Jumping back to Trump. Along the around for decades [via] blackmail. I | decades, has evolved into tweets. same lines of the buying the 20,000 think it’s the same thing. You don’t have | EP: Here’s a very pointed question: When | copies of his book, the first day of his to say it, you know. Hoover would just g0 | Kennedy got shot— what’s your memory | presidential campaign, he came down to JFK and say, “We found some photo | of that? the Trump Tower elevator. There were of you in bed with Marilyn Monroe. But | PK: Several memories. One was my first | people with placards, saying “TRUMP don’t you worry, we'll keep it in our safe.” | wife was out shopping, heard it on some- | 2016” — but they were all hired actors. EP: You've lived through some Red seares; | body’s radio, and immediately bought a | Fifty of ‘em. can you imagine any other time where | TV set. That’s one thing I remember, just | EP: You know, the success of that red hat this Russia stuff would be forgiven? being glued to the television...AndI was | really disturbs me. It’s so idiotic — but it PK: [ think foreign countries may have | getting calls, maybe not that day, but from | really seemed to work. influenced previous elections. $$. PK: | agree. No other presiden- I don’t know, but it was mostly | tial candidate had a cap like before the technology of the | that. And a s