“That makes no sense,” said Mr. Woodward, who argued that there should be a “zone of protection” around a candidate’s children.

On today’s episode, Mr. Friedman rejects that argument, saying that Mr. Trump had forfeited any such “zone of protection” when his children became top advisers to his campaign and highly public spokesmen for it.

“Oh my God. I mean, who are the main speakers at Trump’s convention?” Mr. Friedman asked. “They are his kids. Who has he cited as his top advisers? His kids.”

An edited excerpt from our interview:

BARBARO: What were you trying to do there? FRIEDMAN: I was simply thinking about it as a dad myself. How I would feel if I had engaged in the kind of mocking of a gold star family, suggesting in some vague way that Second Amendment advocates might want to take the law into their own hands. I know what my family would have felt toward me, and I was wondering what his kids really feel toward him.

I asked whether Mr. Friedman was trying to encourage Mr. Trump’s children to intervene and rein in their father.



“If you want to change his behavior, it seems to me legitimate to call on them,” he said.

In the same episode, we asked a former top employee of Mr. Trump’s, Barbara Res, once the head of construction at his company, whether the inflammatory language he is now using resembled his choice of words and his shading of the truth as a boss in the workplace.