announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: maureen dowd is here, she is a pulitzer prize winning columnist for the "new york times." she joined the paper in 1983 as a metro reporter. her career covering politics spans nine presidential campaigns. she describes this election as the most epic battle of the sexes. she describes it in a new book, the book is called the year of voting dangerously, the derangement of american politics. jim, co-founder, writes dowd surely captures the theater of politics better than anyone else. i am pleased to have her back at this table.

welcome. maureen: thank you, charlie. charlie: so this is the easiest way to make a buck i know. put your columns together and there it is. it's not that easy, is it? maureen: some of them are my columns and new material, in a tom sawyer move, i forced my brothers and sisters to write original essays. but also, i have a really long essay on my 30 years with the bush fall and i have all of my letters from papi bush, not all of them, i used snippets of them and how he was able to maintain what he calls a love hate relationship all through the six or seven years i was writing critical columns about his son. charlie: what do you call it, love, hate, or something else? maureen: i never feel love or hate for politicians, i try and save those emotions for my exboyfriends or boyfriends. charlie: or future boyfriends for goodness sake. maureen: that's not how i think of politicians. you know, he represents the lost

world of bipartisanship and civility -- charlie: decency. maureen: the letters are really fun. charlie: he loves to write letters, too, he is famous for writing notes and letters. maureen: he didn't write a memoir and so he reveals himself, he has a book of letters and then he reveals him self. that's a form he feels really comfortable with. charlie: describes what politics mean to you. maureen: what they mean to me. charlie: what they mean to you. is this the great game of our time, for example? is it the most interesting spectacle that anybody could observe and write about, is it what? maureen: i watched your shows on shakespeare recently and in fact i watched them all twice because they were so wonderful. and i majored in shakespeare in college and it's the closest thing to me that you can get to being a royal court reporter.

you know, it's the drama. how people respond to power, you know, how either they become better people or it corrupts them or the pressure they're under in a campaign is the closest thing you can get to that. and now i'm a "game of thrones" aficionado for the same reason, all of those alliances and feuds and trying to get power, it's fascinating. charlie: but not murder. maureen: not yet. we got 55 days to go. charlie: trump keeps talking about it. in a sense, i could shoot someone on fifth avenue and they wouldn't convict me, and on her, he said she could shoot somebody and she wouldn't be convicted. maureen: the most incendiary political rhetoric we have ever heard, the craziest. i used to call political

strategists to help me analyze the campaigns and now i call shrinks. charlie: the psychologists and shrinks. maureen: right. charlie: do they give you helpful advice to understand why donald trump is the way he is and why hillary clinton is the way she is? maureen: yes, because with hillary, it's sort of a nixonan paranoia. with trump, he lacks empathy, so he doesn't understand why he can heckle people and insult them and they get mad at him and then when they do something to him, he doesn't understand. for instance, he didn't understand why the bushes wouldn't come to his convention. he was really hurt, but he doesn't understand he eviscerated them, both of them, w., because he said, w, right. charlie: he can't understand why they wouldn't want to come to

his convention. maureen: he is mystified. charlie: you have known him for two decades, had the phone relationship with him. maureen: i have seen him a lot. charlie: has the person you have known over the years the same person that you see campaigning today? maureen: in one sense, the same and in one sense opposite because when we went on the 199 foray, the plane, the fake french impressionist paintings, so i said to him, why do you think voters would vote for you and he said because i get good ratings on larry king or more precisely because i get the best ratings on larry king. so even then it was ratings. and then he said, you know, because a lot of men hit on melania. so he was saying he had that ego arithmetic that he uses, the numbers are sentinels of his success. that has not changed. he still, even on tv this week, he was giving the number, the

high number of his testosterone count as an example. charlie: testosterone count? maureen: he was telling dr. oz that he had a really high number. charlie: you think that will be in the medical report? maureen: it is, yeah. so everything with him is the numbers. but on the other hand, he has completely changed. he was this sort of white rapper, greed is good kind of new york liberal, so you have these two new york democrats running against each other, but now he is either pretending to be or has morphed into all right, anti-abortion -- charlie: you think that's genuine? maureen: anti-gun control. no, i don't think any of it is genuine. i think he is a salesman trying to make the sale at any given moment so he will say what he needs to do to make that sale like any good real estate salesman. charlie: you said once, i was worried if i wrote something that made him mad, he would send

out one of his midnight tweets about me, she started as a three, now she is a one and then you said i would be upset. for a while, i didn't want to write something about him. maureen: i was kidding. i was kidding about that. i'm expecting that tweet any minute though maybe as i walk out the door. charlie: you don't really care? maureen: god no. charlie: do you think he can win? maureen: anything can happen you know. charlie: of course, it can. maureen: i think that this week because hillary made some mistakes last week, she called his voters, including my family, the basket of deplorables. charlie: one half of his were deplorables. maureen: the problem is she is doing what she says is so awful what he does, which is take a whole group of people and

generalized like he does with mexicans and muslims. charlie: a big mistake that mitt romney made, too. maureen: exactly, so that wasn't good. the health scare, i agree with david axelrod that it's more about self than health because the health scare was a microcosm of the problem she always has had for the last 25 years which is something relatively mundane happens that could be cleared up easily in a few days or a few minutes and instead of just being transparent and clearing it up, she hunkers down, has the war room, is really defensive and secretive and she is like this idealistic public servant who wants to make the world a better place, but then sometimes she also makes decisions from a dark place of fear and insecurity that trips up the idealistic servant.

charlie: on that, how is she different if her husband? maureen: i don't think he in all of these cases for the last quarter century, he is not the one who wants to hunker down and demonize opponents and fight the press. he goes along with that if she insists, but george stephanopoulos said if he could get a genie out of a bottle and change one thing, it would be to give "washington post" the white water papers and it would be over in a week. but instead, it led to seven independent counsels and the taxpayers paid $80 million that led to impeachment. she does have a pattern to say she had pneumonia, we all understand that. charlie: some people on her staff in brooklyn had pneumonia. or some variation of pneumonia. maureen: i have been on a book tour for two days, i'm exhausted. everyone knows you get sick and tired, so no one would have held that against her. but, i guess the outright was to trying to make it a gender issue that women aren't as strong as men and she responded to that.

charlie: look at trump on the birther issue, for example. everybody says he no longer believes that. but he doesn't say that. he can go out front -- maureen: giuliani -- charlie: conway has said it, too. maureen: i asked him about it? charlie: what does he say? maureen: he says no comment. charlie: he said the first thing he first started experiment with that group of people within the right wing of the republican party, but it's the same thing. it's the same thing. maureen: you're right, but in his head, he thinks he is doing what he needs to do now and then later he'll be really flexible. he said to me, the "new york times" will be very happy with me when i'm president because i will be the kind of president they like. so i think in his own head, he thinks he is doing what he needs to do now and then i said to him, i don't recognize you on the public stage.

you are this bigoted person who is spreading hate. and that's not the person i knew in new york for three decades. i wasn't a friend of his, but i would interview him on occasion. he said i can be that person again. i can be very presidential, but i think he just feels that he is riding this train and he doesn't realize that train is taking him to very dark places that he can't return from. charlie: i think you said the following: no one is more surprised than he is that this thing, this adulation from tens of thousands of people in an arena would be for him. maureen: exactly. charlie: and it's intoxicating. maureen: yes, exactly. charlie: he doesn't want to do anything that will break that bond. maureen: right, that's exactly right. charlie: people who come here and talk about this all the time and talk about, which election will be decided whether it's a

referendum on him or her. and the caveat is if it's a referendum on her, that in fact he is not the perfect vessel, but because it's a referendum on her, they'll take him believing that he can't be any worse than what has happened before which is a gross revisionism of history. but that is his idea. if it's a referendum on her, they'll accept him and they don't think he is perfect. they know that he changes his mind. they know he is a raging ego maniac, they know all of that. but he is in 2016 the change agent. maureen: that's why voters are fearful and anxious and depressed because they have to vote against someone, not for someone. they have got these candidates who have historically high unpopularity ratings. and they seem to be getting

higher by the minute. charlie: if he loses, having convinced himself or at least convinced himself to the point of being able to merchandise himself that he is the world's greatest winner and on a day in november, he could become the world's biggest loser, will he simply rationalize that and say it wasn't me, it was fixed. maureen: that's why he started doing the thing about the system is rigged. i do think it would be sort of devastating if he has to shrink back to new york as a loser. his whole brand is about winning. i don't know how you continue the brand unless you change the name to ivanka. charlie: or the business with roger. are you fascinated by what roger is doing with him? maureen: yes, it's so weird and

all of these kind of motley crue that i have covered my whole career sort of combining in this strange toxic brew. charlie: your brother and your sister, as of now, are voting for him. when you say why, what do they say? maureen: well, you know, if you read -- charlie: these are conservative irish catholics. maureen: right, it's funny because all of the other columnists are going on some margaret mead anthropoe logical road trip, they're driving to kentucky looking for that strange exotic screen tour called a trump voter. one of the columnists wrote an open letter and he said, i would like to find a trump voter and reason with them so if i could just find one to come forward and all i have to do is go home, you know. i don't even actually have to get in my car. charlie: what do they say? >> i think their essays are

really interesting because they're agonizing the way a lot of traditional conservatives are agonizing. and paul ryan is not allowed to talk about this right now. but if you read their essays, you can see the kind of agonizing mental process that paul ryan is going through where they want to be republicans, they do not want to vote for hillary clinton. they want the supreme court, but they can't abide some of the things trump is doing. charlie: since you know him so well, you can answer the question. is he fit to be president? maureen: you know, having covered all these presidencies, the qualifications issue is interesting when i think about it because if you take dick chaney and donald rumsfeld, you would have thought they were the two most qualified people on earth. charlie: certainly the most experienced along with bush 41 and along with hillary now. maureen: they led us into the worst foreign policy mistake in american history.

so it's hard to tell and -- in advance, there is a great quote from harry truman where he says you can't tell in advance how someone will take the responsibility of being president. also you don't know what historical event is going to hit. if 9/11 hadn't hit, w probably would have been a very popular president. charlie: vietnam hadn't hit before he was president, lyndon johnson would have been one of our great presidents, on civil rights, great concern for those social measures that changed people's lives. maureen: right, exactly. ♪

♪ charlie: hillary, tell us what her gift is. what makes people, she walked into this nomination, everybody thought it was hers and bernie sanders showed up and he found a constituency that was not hers, young millennials to the left of where she was, but she has impressed people like david petraeus and people like bob gates and people like barack obama. maureen: when you think about what hillary has been through, i mean, i feel really sorry for her when i think about this trajectory because she thought it was hers in 2008 and then it's like "game of thrones," the

young handsome african-american prince comes along and usurps the queen. --rlie: someone with him equally great claim on history, the first. maureen: yes, she and obviously bill were dumbfounded by that, so acted out and was really upset and so then -- charlie: jesse jackson. maureen: she loyally waits her turn and works for barack obama and then, you know, this time comes and she is again almost usurped but this time by this cranky 74-year-old socialist, i mean, what are the odds? who got the best of all of the young women who were supposed to be excited by her. so then she kind of finally sends him off and then she gets like, you know, this kind of

short fingered bulgarian who is like a toon. its almost like who killed jessica rabbit. short fingered bulgarian who i'e and drawing close -- charlie: closing the race and behaving. maureen: from her point of view it must be like what the heck is happening here. charlie: bill wants to be set loose. i did an interview with him. maureen: right, it was a great interview. charlie: thank you. he is anxious to get out there because he thinks, he said to me, i can go find, give me two weeks, i can go find out what it is with the working men and women in america, what it is with the people on the assembly lines who tend to want to support trump, what it's about and can reason with them and explain my wife to them. i believe he believes that. he had to do that for barack obama at the convention in 2012. maureen: amazingly, right, because barack obama, as it turned out doesn't like politics.

charlie: richard nixon and jimmy carter. maureen: right, he likes to be above the fray, but politics is the fray. but bill is not as much as a pure boon to her as he was in 2008 because -- charlie: less popular. maureen: african-americans are reluctant to vote for her partly because of bill's record on criminal justice. charlie: incarceration which he has apologized for. maureen: and nafta which is no longer -- charlie: all part of the center when she has moved away from the center. maureen: right. charlie: what would be more fun just from the perspective, you have defined yourself. tell me, and do it again for me, what is it that interests you in terms of your column? how do you think maureen dowd sees the world in a way that other columnists don't? what is it that attracts her powers of observation? maureen: yeah, i am really not so interested in the horse race. charlie: policy?

maureen: i'm interested in policy as it pertains to the person. for instance, you know, i have this essay in this book where i re-reported the whole relationship of papi bush and w, the father-son relationship. their breeding and competition ended up in the worst foreign policy mistake in history. the family dynamic -- charlie: you believe the iraq war was about the son trying to do something his father didn't do and trying to at the same time revenge his father because saddam hussein tried to kill his father. maureen: yes, and i went back and re-reported the whole thing and i hope like with john meacham, i have done a definitive essay on this. so voters go along and they think they're voting for someone and they don't realize and the clintons have been the same, you know, that they're also dealing with this family dynamic that

helped determine the results of these huge policy decisions that affect a lot of lives. charlie: so therefore, you also have been, you really are interested in the interplay of all those shakespearean qualities, greed -- maureen: like hillary, you know, health care, she did not listen to bill's advice and he didn't insist on helping her with it, the my way or highway the advice, it was very secretive. bill could have helped her, but that was when the arkansas trooper paula came out and one of her top health care aides said to me, she had a 100 pound fishing wire around his balls -- are we allowed to say balls? charlie: yes, we are. maureen: it's nighttime. charlie: feels like it in the studio. maureen: it feels like a casino, if you never know if it's

anyways night or day, you never know it. charlie: and no clocks on the wall. understanding what i just talked to you about it is that interests you, the shakespearean issues and how they affect policy -- maureen: that's what i meant to tell you about shakespeare, the appeal of trump, there is this longing for the strong outsider, washington has been so dysfunctional and ted cruz tried to burn down the capitol and the will republicans had all of these promises about obama care and immigration that they didn't keep. there is a longing for an outsider and there was a general, but that strong person we saw with perot, i think there is a longing for that. but then they turned out to be kind of nuts. charlie: what would be more interesting, donald trump in the white house with all that might happen or hillary clinton and bill clinton in the white house? maureen: well, this is

interesting because in hollywood, the only storyline they care about is bill clinton as first lad or as first vlade addy, which he says he wants to be called in the same way that hollywood was mesmerized by sarah palin, a young woman could play the dick chaney role. so now there was an old movie with fred mcmurray and polly bergen where he played the first lad. but hollywood is just completely enthralled by that storyline. and so hillary has said, oh, she would continue to pick out the china and chelsea could do the hosting and bill could be in charge of the economy. i think it would be a real public service if he had to pick out the china and do that because then it would underscore how that role is. you have women like hillary and

michelle in the role who have the exact same educational and qualifications doing it. i think if we saw bill clinton do it, we might modernize the role. charlie: i said to hill, i want you to give me more than anybody else. always the same, i'll do whatever he she wants me to do, that tells me nothing. what about the envoy to the middle east? you came closer than anybody else had and you could see that that idea in his eyes when i talked about it, he got, it appealed to him, noble prize opportunity, too, he doesn't have a noble prize. maureen: i think he would be great at that. also, i watched him, i covered him, i went to ireland with him when he was trying to help with the irish peace process and he knew every street in northern ireland. he knew everything and i think he would be -- charlie: irresistible. maureen: he would be wonderful. charlie: he would be very good at it. i think that obama should have

appointed him, but i think there may have been some rule about it because, i guess he can't, if in fact she is elected, he can't be a member of the government, can he, you can't appoint your husband or can you? maureen: he appointed her on health care and that was 16% -- charlie: that was a cabinet job or was it? maureen: no, it was just -- charlie: a commission or something. maureen: it was kind of like do it. charlie: i don't know this, some constitutional scholar, maybe 10 of them will tell me as to whether he could be secretary of state. i don't think he can be secretary of state. maureen: well, robert kennedy got to be attorney general. charlie: he did, the brother. hmmm. because it will be hard for him, if you're secretary of state and bill clinton running around the world representing his wife, that makes secretary of state a bit less appealing. maureen: that's true. but you know, he does have a range of talents, not as a citizen, but as a journalist, if

trump is president, i'll be there every day from noon till midnight on twitter. charlie: looking for what. it would just happen. maureen: it would just be insane. charlie: do you worry? maureen: you have to understand, charlie, i have gone through entire years of my career where i covered bob dole who was very grumpy for a year and not happy -- charlie: but funny. maureen: he really wasn't funny as a presidential candidate. he really wanted to be back on the treadmill watching c-span. and i covered michael dukakis for a year. i said what do you do for fun? he said black mulch. what do you do with black mulch? i put it on my tomato plants. that was the level of fun. that wasn't much fun. charlie: actually david wrote a column on something like that. he basically said we don't know

what she likes, even with obama you know he loves golf and books all the time. bill, you know what he liked. maureen: and fred hyatt wrote that trump's big sin is being a bore, b-o-o-r and b-o-r-e. charlie: both of those. maureen: he is like the guy you sit down next to at a dinner and he talks about him. charlie: you have written a lot about obama. is it fair to say, in your mind it is not whether i like them or do not. it is how i see them at moment. maureen: exactly. i am so proud of you for knowing that. so true. charlie: how do you see obama at this moment in his presidency as he looks at three or four months

to go. maureen: his numbers are going up because people compare him to the vulgar. they are getting another take for the mishigoss. they do not want to go back to 1600 where donors are in the lincoln bedroom and on air force one. his numbers are going up. he has no shadow. charlie: at the same time, as you know, there is the great contradiction that the numbers in terms of right direction, wrong direction for the country are way down. his numbers are up and people think you're going in the wrong direction. maureen: yeah. himink, i went to cuba with and when you are with him just as a reporter, when you are with him, he is so classy and his family is so incredible and to

me, inspirational the way they raised those girls. charlie: it is. maureen: and you are happy, but on the other hand, if you see in the book obviously i start out in praise but i think he wanted to be a transformational president and i think he was not because, as james carville said it is like peyton manning not liking football. it is like bill gates not liking computers. the president somehow -- charlie: i do not think he like some of the aspects. maureen: he does not like being a salesman. that is why he let bill clinton, who likes being a salesman explained his health care. charlie: i have asked about this and he said that is not true, i do like politics. he does not like what people

think is essential to be in politics. he does not like the stroking, the inane conversation. maureen: that is what helps you pass your gun-control bill. charlie: she has said she would do it. maureen: also i just think he does not like the cheap emotion. and there is a lot of, in a funny way, it comes to easily to him. he has admitted and david axelrod said with those moments where you have to comfort a jittery public after the christmas bombing. charlie: you said if i get it wrong, tell me. he is transformational simply because of who he is. and you said that is no small thing. maureen: gosh, no. he was like luke skywalker with the force. i think he wanted to bring together red and blue and black

and white and now those two things are worse than never. that is surely not his fault. had rolled uph he his sleeves and used some elbow grease. even if they are fighting and obstructing, try. charlie: on the one hand, this is about america and our leadership in the world and where we stand and what kind of country we are. that is what happens when you choose a president. on the other hand, as a journalist, it is also about, is this the most fun campaign you have covered? is this because we have the two least popular people ever to run for the office given the we have had a lot of unpopular people to run for the office. with so many wars and so many insecurities, and so many over

the top personality traits. maureen: it started out as kind of wicked fun. charlie: i like that. maureen: because trump was exposing a lot of hypocrisy. he turned over the golden apple cart of political consultants. he did not use all the money from citizens united or whatever. he was using his own money and he -- it was sort of refreshing. he was pulling the mask off things. he told the truth about the iraq war, that it was not, even that was wishful thinking that he was against it from the very beginning. he was against it by 2006 when i interviewed him. and you know, he was -- charlie: why doesn't he just say that? maureen: because he is a real estate guy. saying what he needed to say to make the sale. he is trying to make the sale. charlie: salesman do not

acknowledge mistakes. maureen: to finish the point it turned out not to be so much fun because it is not fun to see hate and bigotry and muslim children getting taunted or muslim women getting it up. that part turned out not to be fun. charlie: for him. maureen: for us. that is not american values. charlie: do you think he understands american values is the question. maureen: i do not think he understands what he is doing. all he is doing is try to make the deal in the moment and in his head he thinks, i asked him about this and he said you know i am not racist that you are what you say at the microphone. he is responsible for that. charlie: does he acknowledge that question mark he is saying ignore what i say. just accept me as the person you really know in the privacy of the conversation you and i have. maureen: i asked what about this violence at rallies, are you

responsible for that and there was this cause and he goes, i think that adds a little excitement. charlie: do you think that you are not temperamentally suited to the job of columnist? it is the perfect job for you. first of all it is opinion. you do not have to be fair and balanced in everything you do. it is about your opinion, it is about your observation, it is about your capacity to entertain. all of that. maureen: i think david brooks and paul krugman are perfectly suited to be polemicists. charlie: that is different. are you a policy junkie? maureen: i am not really. charlie: what are you?

maureen: i am responsible for who watch dashes who watches the court and who gets the ultimate power over lives. charlie: the year of voting dangerously. the derangement of american politics. maureen dowd. we will be right back. ken burns is here. stay with us. ♪

♪

>> february 23, 1946. i hope and assume this reaches you on your return from what must have been a very exacting but very successful -- exacting but very successful expedition. i must say i would like to begin having a home again. the kids do not show their feelings too much. i see nothing but men's things in my wardrobe. i smell no perfumes. i have been quite desperate at times. i want to go on from what there is left of life with you. charlie: "define the nazis" is a new documentary. the unitarian minister and his wife traveled to europe as part of a missionary effort to help refugees. in 2006, they were honored as

righteous among the nations. a list of non-jews who risk their life to save jews. joining us is ken burns and the sharps' grandson. he has researched their story for decades. he also has released the official companion for the film. them atased to have this table. >> it is amazing, really, and he -- it gives me goosebumps just to tell the story. my grandfather gets a call february 1939 from his friend and says would you be willing to come talk to us? we want you to go to the first intervention against evil, against nazi germany, and my

grandparents decide, after lots of conversation, to do it. and leave my mom who was 2 and my uncle who was six and they go to prague in february 1939 and witness the invasion of prague in march 15, 1939, and are there in the underground working to rescue lives and take care of people who are being persecuted from the nazis. charlie: and then she joins him later. >> they go together. they are invited as a husband and wife team to represent what happens -- to represent -- what happens is the unitarian church, pe sister church in prod -- rague says do not send us money, send us americans. we need americans because americans are the only thing that nazi germany is afraid of. so we need american to come here

and help us deal with them millions of refugees coming into prague from austria and germany. charlie: you helped them figure out a way to tell their story. ken: this is artemis' film. i have known him for decades and normally i am saying no to all of these things, we have our full plate but i looked at it and there was a diamond in the rough that needed to be restructured, reedited, repaced. i felt that i could get tom hanks to read the voice and he agreed and he is fantastic. and marina goldman. it is first person voices. a couple of historians and then the witnesses who were children now in their late 80's who were saved by the sharps and they remind you not only of the heroic nature of the story in the sacrifice of the sharps but its residents to today with the refugee crisis we have but also

of human potentiality because they were saved, they got to live lives. those lives are rich in full and they are professors emeritus of mathematics or french or russian. but it reminds you of the people who were not saved. the opaque 6 million who we can never penetrate, each one of them could have been that. like an amputated limb, that you feel long after it is gone, we felt that this tiny little story at the edges of the holocaust could reveal it just as the structure of an adam looks like the solar system. that we could take this atomic story of his grandparent and if we told it right, we could suddenly relate to a much larger situation. charlie: if someone wants to compare what they did to schindler's list, are you flattered? >> absolutely. schindler made a moral decision just like my grandparents, and schindler was also a human being who was able to make the -- mistakes as well. i think that the courage of

spielberg to make that film about a person in that condition, that transformation that occurred in then the lives he saved is incredible. and remember how it ends. and says he did not save enough. ken: every member how it ends with schindler breaking down. he did not save enough. and that is the sharps' sense. they hid their light under a bushel because they knew they had only gotten out a few hundred. there is a wonderful conversation in the ship that they are taking back with a very famous jew that the nazis are after, and he says, can i address you as a character in my novel? who is paying, what are you getting out of this and he goes, no, i do not like to see the average guy pushed around. he says i feel something worse is coming. this is the summer of 1940. intuit and experiences

from prague and southern france that this mammoth wave is about to break on humanity that we call the holocaust. charlie: how did this man, this reverend and his wife do this, what do they do and at what risk? >> first of all they did not do it overnight. it took time to develop the skills to help people. he was harvard trained as a lawyer, she was a social worker. they had a deep disgust of the nazi fascism, what he represented for the world. they were very invested in the czech republic as a democracy that emerged out of world war i and the leadership of thomas masserik and they wanted to protect people. and so my grandfather declares from the pulpit, which is not a unitarian thing to do.

charlie: how did he do it? >> they got on the ship and it took a long time to get across the ocean. they arrived in london and were taught about spy craft. they learned then that they were going to be spies and at risk being arrested. so they really did not know everything until the got there and then they had to learn on the job in a sense. because everything changed every day. and after the nazis invaded in march 15, their work went from rescue of helping refugees to rescue of getting people out. charlie: that is when the nazis stopped letting people get out in then the war came. >> exactly. there was nine months when they rescued 130 people directly. which is amazing, that they were through the underground through

the networks of organizations they worked with to help that many people escape. >> i remember seeing the statue of liberty. >> the best christmas gift i ever got was being brought here. in this country. >> we arrived in new york and some red cross ladies had a table with cocoa and that was really very welcome. it made us feel that america must be a great place. >> the american liner arrives with child refugees from europe. youngsters scarcely able to believe they are free from the terrors of war. joyous are the triplets. >> the americans, we are very happy that you are here. and we are very grateful that you let us come to america. >> where do you come from? >> [indiscernible] >> were you there during the war? >> yes. >> tell us about it.

>> it was very bad. we had not enough to eat. me to americat for my health. >> i come from france. i saw lots of misery. there was very little to eat. and i saw lots of killed. -- people killed. charlie: when you are making a film or helping someone else, do you look at other stories that have been told like this, what is your own preparation? ken: mine is particularly with regard to films to make myself sort of ignorant. i do not want to be influenced in any way, good, bad, or otherwise. so for me it was saying here is the material. i had to honor things i don't do. there is some reenactments in this film which i have not done very much of in my professional life. there is a score, there is a

composer who scores it to the frame. and i have never done that as you know before in my life. there was some fast, quick guest editing that i left intact but i the kind of down add-ness in places that needed to be opened up and paste. i inherited some stuff that took some structural work. i left a seminal letter but took parts of it in the beginning that invites you in in a intimate way to sacrifice on lots of levels so you understand the broader sense of sacrifice. we are going to help, put our kids in the care of the congregation, we will abandon them so we can save other people's children and we understand the larger threat of naziism to world history but there is a dynamic which is the threat to their relationship because they are altering an established dynamic. she is a social worker, she is a feminist in every sense of the word, he is the pity me -- e

pitome of an american, if tom hanks was not around to do this and we could go back in time, jimmy stewart would have to do this. he is that ultimate american that has enough guile but also a sense of fairness and he described in his letters and his journals, he is laundering money in european capitals and saying i was beyond the pale. he never had been good at this sort of thing and now he was good at it and it was motivated by this profound anger and the arrogance to be able to declare war on the nazis. charlie: was there a lot of people like that in the unitarian church? ken: this was an effort of the unitarian church that supported them and they were other leaders that invited them to go but they were the ones that went and that is the interesting story. 17 people turned down the leadership before they went with them and they said yes. it is telling. they came back and one assumes that they assumed or they would be sitting around the fire telling the stories for the rest of their lives and the church

says we need you to go back and they are going, no way, and they go back, and what is so interesting is that that seminal second trip in southern france in vichy occupied southern france is just an amazing transformation for both of them. and begins to set in motion events that they cannot predict that the audience cannot predict that are smaller than but also transcend the larger story of what is going on. i found this irresistible. charlie: and the film is being screened at the white house in a conversation about the refugee crisis. >> it happened on monday. charlie: what happened? >> it was a wonderful event because we had some policy folks who are dealing with policy but also the individual narratives of refugees. and here you have a story that identifies it. i think there is something extra

extraordinarily existential. both sharp's say anybody with -- would you do this. very few people would risk their lives and leave their children in the care of a congregation to do this so it becomes this question for us particularly because we face a refugee crisis second only to the second world war that we begin to say, what am i supposed to do, what should i do and it was a wonderful conversation with an audience that included a college student who said i am in college but what can i do, can i take some but into my dorm room? and a wonderful dinner at ,- dynamic between narratives history, memory, the intimacy of issues of policy which never change. once it is in your hands, it leads to a contemporary refugee crisis and maybe it helps put human dimensions and maybe there is some of the out there who says, maybe i can convince my church to bring a family or a couple of families or maybe i

can go and do something. we have already seen it happen among the folks who have been in the larger family of the story. >> one of the most exciting things is we have a sharp rescuer prize where we are giving it to rescuers today, going to lesbos helping people today. trying to create an inspiration not just about the sharps, but but what is altruism. encourage altruism? what do we understand what happens when someone chooses to take this risk? charlie: how do you explain the fact that they did and others did not, what about them? >> it was about the sense of loving humanity and i use that word because i think they felt that sense of desperation in the suffering and they connected to people. i think people meant everything to them and children, of course. children, as you know, are the

greatest victims of war. i think they deeply connected with the idea that even though they were leaving their children to help other children. charlie: what happened after the war? >> they divorced. it is sad, i do not want to's -- spoil the story. but like any human being, they had troubles in their marriage and one of the things that ken and i are excited about is we can make comic heroes or we could tell real stories and the sharps were amazing and courageous but they also had challenges. and one of the challenges was that after doing this work, their lives fell apart and they never came back together. charlie: thank you again. great to see you. thank you. the book is called "defying the nazis: the sharps' war." it is the official companion to the pbs film that appears, when? >> the 20th of september at

9:00. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

mark: i'm mark crumpton you're watching "bloomberg west." let's begin with a check of first word news. eight years into the obama presidency, donald trump is finally signing off on the birther issue but with a caveat. mr. trump: hillary clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. i finished it, i finished it, you know what i mean. president barack obama was born in the united states, period. mark: secretary hillary clinton sent out a tweet calling the news conference a disgrace, he