we have thispportunity to finally make workplaces work for us. because theyev have. >> watches program any time at booktv.org. just search for the title of her book pay up. >> the next book tv in-depth program with near times chief white house correspondent peter baker and new yorkers to staff writer susan glasser by the husband-and-wife team wife team have written three books together, kremlin rising the man who ran washington about former secretary of state james baker. and the divider trump in the white house 2017 -- 2021. petern glasser, you are in history. you are the third married couple to ever appear on "in-depth" in between five years. bernadine dorn and bill ayers and rosa milton friedman.

and now glasser-baker. peter: an illustrious group. susan: we have no ideology to propound. host: you are somewhere in the middle of those two. susan glasser, what's the best part about working on a book and living with the person and raising a son? susan: your spouse can't get mad at you for spending too much time at work. host: what's the worst part about writing a book with that same person? susan: it's 24 hours. peter: we met in a newsroom, so even from the beginning of our relationships there's always part of our professional and we've never separated them so for us it is natural. >> host: you've worked simultaneously in many

>> guest: from january of 1998 so we like to say we are the only good thing that came out of the whole monica lewinsky and bill clinton situation. we'vetu basically always worked together. weed follow that and were in moscow as when we came back to washington we had different assignments but whether we work at the same place or not right now t it's part of an ongoing conversation and we feel so lucky. believe me. in real time and all the things we are interested in. >> host: it is almost accidental was that a fair way of saying it? you were already in jerusalem in 2016. >> we wanted to try while some

were able to get something out of it. we made the move in the summer of 2016 i was "the new york times" bureau chief. i remember that night in jerusalem and the results came in first of all, trump is going to win and the second of all, they don't want you to come back. >> host: so what did you do with your apartment in jerusalem? >> guest: we turned it over to our successors. >> host: and youy came back and worked at "the new york times" and stayed at politico for a while? a.a. >> guest: was writing a call amanda doing a podcast it was supposed to be focused on international affairs but i would say the point here and we've been in that moment the

last five or six years now is the united states is the biggest focal point of global disruption that there has been. if youn. cared about foreign policy, i was the editor of the foreign policy magazine but the truth of the matter is this internal crisis in the world's major superpower is the biggest questionge for anyone who cares about foreign policies we get to be correspondence in our own country. we have to buy a whole new house our house was rented out so even though we were only gone a few weeksho in washington it felt in some ways covering the trump presidency was covering a whole different city and world in a way. >> host: when did you start working on the divider was it in 2016?? >> guest: not at allll in fact we were writing a book with such an enormous list and one of the things is there had been a lot

of great but incremental books about t the trump presidency during the middle of it and to me our aspiration was always to resist stand think about what can we do that might be lasting. that five or ten years from now or longer when your kids or grandkids say donald trump was president? what was that like. so our goal once we decided to embark on it which we didn't do until the first impeachment when we thought okay that's something that will last for history. we will do that but then of course there was immediately followed by the disruptions of 2020 so we thought it's changed in the white house years. >> host: it was almost a book and to your book on bill clinton, correct? >> guest: my first book was on the impeachment at the time and there are obviously echoes in theus later impeachment but it s

so different under trump obviously it became so much more magnified end of the impeachment kind of a different light in some ways, but we were thinking about him impeachment and we didn't start until the last why did you not tell us these things. 300 interviews done in the last 18 months afterhi he left therefore we tried to put it out as soon we could and it was worth bearing witness for history. >> it was within 24 hours of the beginningou of trump's first impeachment. the ukraine scandal and perfect phone call we were going out to dinner one night in september of 2019 and we ran into lindsay graham a key character in the first book on impeachment and that is how lindsay graham came

to serve as one of the house managers in bill clinton's trial back two decades ago and we ran in the same as and he said are you going to write a book about this next impeachment. it was a remarkable demonstration of one of the enduring themes of republicans who privately disdain while accommodating themselves or even in lindsay graham's case over the top lavishinge, with praise and for all his public offense offensesdonald trump at that tie wanted to prove he was in on the joke. he is so much fun to hang out

with and that is stuck with us after we embarked on this project that became the divider. >> host: there is a quote from you about your james baker book but you said both peter and i came away reinforced with the idea that individuals do matter and that history is not inevitable. i wanted to talk about some of the individuals that were the divider and that is lindsay graham. what was his role during the trump administration? >> there are few characters as interesting because he would be very visceral and saying he was unfit for office. he was extremistxt in all these ways and once trump gets in office he starts getting him

access. we will look at the view. flight on air force one with me and he really drew him in and love to the access and ability to call on the cellhe phone anytime they'd given him that access becausese it began to drw his mentor, his partner whom he had been so closein for so many years and he despised trump that he was dangerous and competent and coterrible for the country and didn't understand why lindsay graham was closer. he is a lot of fun and he would tell people he would moderate and guide trump too be a better president but it's never convinced him even on his deathbed. there is this moment in arizona where lindsay graham has gone

down to be with mccain and his last months of life he and he's like why do you have to do this. why do you have to lie about how he's a good golfer. how come i can't forgive donald trump as a break between them thatat plays out at the cathedrl after mccain dies and lindsay graham and his great friend has no speaking role other than reading a line from scripture and it's one of the stories of the presidency. >> host: throughout the divider, you talk about the players in washington. now it's fair to say you are probably washington insiders. i don't mean too be unfair -- >> guest: >> host: what donald trump ever have been accepted by the

washington establishment? >> guest: it's sort of one of those truisms about washington this idea that there's this permanent establishment. there's a constant renewal in the city in the sense that every four yearsrs or eight years thee is a new president and administration the clintons came to town as they were dismissed as outsiders from arkansas and fast-forwardfa they are the evil establishment that needs to be overthrown in the reagan revolution that got a new generation with insiders and establishment that today they are their patron saint whereas he originally came to town as the ultimate insider who was going to shake things up so i do think that thereis is that notin but the difference is that he

will never have conferred a new generation of insiders because he chose to pursue them maximally confrontation version of then presidency almost chaos and disruption for its own sake and of course we see now the consequences two years after the presidency with the damage with hundreds of court cases still related to the january 6th 2021 insurrection at the capital landed the president of the united states the former president running again for his office seeking to bees the first since grover cleveland to return to the presidency into the constitution is optional when it comes to elections and what he thinks that he is owed from the 2020so that's never going to be.

normally you write a book after the end of a presidency for history and i do think we are hoping for people to read this as a historical document, but in this case it's also literally a live-action crime scene the object of multiple investigations by the justicent department and, so it's also a present-day crisis in our democracy. >> host: peter baker, your book, and these are quotes from your book but if only he would. it was kind of a washington game. he could if only he would. there was this idea when he came in that he could break out of the mold by being someone who workedac across the aisle becaue he didn't have an ideology or party. he switched parties five or six

times. he had no set of principles the way that reagan or clinton or bus' or obama. he was an infinitely flexible and had been very pro-choice before he became pro-life. he was for banning assault rifles before he was pro- second amendment and for waiving taxes on the rich and cutting taxes again and again his positions change over time and he didn't need them anymore so there was the idea to understand who he is as a disruptor and there are less kind words to use but his whole thing is to be a divider which is why we call it that about division and it always has been. if he doesn't get the republican

nomination in 2024, could you see him leaving the republican party? >> guest: i don't know that he will but you shouldn't rule something like that out. even if he were to not run, let's say he weree to pull out e would constaly second-guess and undermine in some ways. he already said that right back following the january 6th attack on the capital. >> host: a lot of people around him were quotedst as sayg i stuck around because it was important that i stuck around and wei didn't want trump to be trump necessarily. john kelly, mark meadows.

at what point did the chief of staffhe let go of managing the white house? >> guest: these might be case studies in many ways of how not to do it. but he used to tell people donald trump likes two kinds of staffers, staffers that use to work for him and the ones that will work for him. for all of his personal loyalty what he means his personal loyalty defined as loyalty to him. he doesn't feel any obligation that goes in the other direction. and i think that is a very important point though is what is the trajectory of those chiefs of staff and in some ways the stories that we are telling in the divider it is a story about of those who surrounded the donald trump as much as donald trump himself because in the end, he is a very unchanging, inflexible man in

his 70s without these others who were willing to work for him with whatever complicated set of reasons he would have been another old dude shouting at the television watching fox news between golfhe games and what's striking is as he went through the four years, trump was seeking not only loyalty but a definition of staff who would do what he wanted without pushing back and questioning him and who would join him in the project of knocking down the guard rails. think about january 6th and think about the difference between mark meadows, the former congressman from north carolina who was his fourth and final chief of staff as the retired four-star marine who was his second chief of staff we can't say for sure if he had been chief of staff january 6 wouldn't have happened but you can say pretty credibly he would

have thrown himself out to the doorro of the oval office in orr to stop people like michael flynn from getting in there and advocating martial law in the five hour meeting with the donald trump what actually happened in december of 2021. one ofof the people that we quoe in the book was serving as essentially a matador and that period of time waiving the crazies into the oval office and those that had to the conspiracy theories, lies and recklessness. so i think it does matter who surrounded donald trump but it's also important to note there were many who did in their own way at various points but that doesn't mean that they are heroes a in fact the white house official from the trump white house said to us there are no heroes in the story and i think that is the important point to speak to.

when he is being pushed out as chief of staff and says that was trump's philosophy he wasn't looking for a way to disagree. he wanted peoplean to do what he wanted. it took a while to find them. >> host: how many of them talked to you? >> guest: we talked to as many people as possible and people who might not want them to know we talked to them. >> guest: we want it to be as authoritative as possible. when you talk to several hundred people, which we did all of them after trump left office and the second impeachment. i think what was striking to me is how much we were able to debrief people many of whom had never spoken out publicly to the critics out of the republican party but really struck us now

is almost your taking a form of testimony and after action report for somebody in a crisis in the american democracy. >> host: did you pursue an interview in the president? >> guest: it was more of us offered we interviewed donald trump twice forr this book and e wanted to give as many interviews as possible. he is so convinced in the power of his own persuasiveness he could talk more or less with the authors that came forward to write about him. though the interview is a bit of a misnomerer and i don't want to mislead people because it isn't ant interview where you ask us questions and we do our best to answer them. it's much more of a monologue than an interview. it wasn't a noun and verb and

period in almost anything. he said if you're going to write a history of the man and his time in office it's a very valuable to see him in action and i was struck by the fact even in private there is no tv camerain it almost is like a live-action version of his twitter feed. we would mention one of his former advisers and he would've wrote nasty nicknames he and he would ke up things on the spo and contradict himself and in a short period of time it was a reliable fact witness. >> host: what was your experience like? >> guest: on the one hand, he is not the persona rally. he is not yelling or read in the face. he's not attacking you.

in fact that always is a misconception many people had. he was often having other people doav the firing in the trump organization. that's why heni liked to fire people by tweet when he was president because he didn't have the desire or the courage to look somebody in the eye and say you're fired. he was personable to a certain extent.. can i get you a diet coke. he served as a combination of napoleon and the rigged election but also ati banquet hall welcoming the guest to dinner in the middle of our interview. >> host: peter baker, anything to add to that? trepidation us going into this?

>> guest: you want to make sure you use the time well to try to craft your questions in advance and make sure you are getting whato you need. the challenge is different. >> guest: you're asking direct questions. i've interviewed aes couple of others and he is so different than anyone else in which even when he was in the white house i remember going in and we were trying to zero in on this particular scandal of the moment. we were not going to let him just dive off on this topic except he made news on the other topic like wait a second joystick with this or go there and you don't know what to do with him or how to control the conversations for the particular answer to the particular questions so in some ways because you want to experience

it not as a fact witness as a matter of specific detail what you're lookingwh for his mindset to understand what he says and to his credit he is the most transparent we've ever had not necessarily for his own benefit because he tells us all the things he's thinking. great fodder for the reporter. he is the one we were thinking at any given time because of his offhand comments and he never had any discipline for what he was saying he would say whatever

he was seeing at the time and obama didn't do that, bush didn't do that. they said what they wanted to say so in that sense a fascinating character to write about because you didn't have to guess what he was saying. evengo though you work for the failing "new york times" you had more access to him than president obama or president bush. >> we haven't interviewed president biden yet. by this point president trump pp had given multiple interviews and the truth is he has a love-hatede relationship. on the one hand he calls us the failing "new york times." i should be clear we are doing better than ever before. we have the largest readership and a subscription. we are not failing. for the sakeg. of argument thate doesn't like us at the same time that the paper his father read

to be accepted in the elite which he really wanted to be met in "the new york times" and so yes he would lash out at us but was desperately eager to get something good. i was in the oval office and he literally bags unisys please i just want one good story in my hometown paper. don't i deserve one good story. and you know, it was his men do something to him that was different to other presidents that could write this off and say who cares. >> host: i know it is probably to easy, but is this an easy comparison? >> guest: donald trump spent a lot of time around people like that. look at who his mentor was. the most influential person in donald trump's life aside from his father who was a very tough character literally so make of that what you well. aside from him the most

influential person in donald trump's early career was roy cohn's. the famous mccarthy investigator that later went on to be a lawyer for people like that in new york who taught that the art of hardball dealmaking in new york city in the 1970s and the 1980s so you see very much of thery spirit of never accommoda, never give in. always in constant contention with the law and the use of lawsuits and whether he is under investigation or he himself is using the court against his enemies or vying for time it is just a fascinating aspect of a man that has shown division and conflict throughout his entire career in the public eye so i

think the white house was in many ways unchanged from the donald trump of the 80s and the '90s and the surprise in many ways is the notion he would somehow ever become presidential easily disputed by the very big stack of excellent biographies that had already been written before he ever came into office. somehow people have this ability again and again that he would be something other than he was. >> has the president reacted to your books? >> guest: not to publicly. you mentioned president trump had trouble firing people in person. one on a sunday night was

kiersten nielsen. remind us who she was and her role in how she tried to control. >> guest: the homeland secretary security belongs in that large category i would say of people who achieved high office under trump so probably wouldn't have ever had of those positions in e any other administration. she worked closely alongside of john kelly when he was the first homeland security secretary and became white house h chief of staff and went to the white house into there were months and months of looking for somebody to go to the department of homeland security. s people said no to them. it's probably the most hyper politicized role you could imagine in the administration because of the focus and almost relentless attention to the issue of illegal immigration and although it is a vast agency

cobbled together from dozens of other agencies all put together after 9/11, trump thought only as an immigration agency you hewanted them to build his wall. it was a pledge to his political base that got him elected president in the first place. it was a constant friction point and some of the stories are incredible. he wasas probably more abusive toward her than any other member of the cabinet. there were repeated examples of that from her perspective and not of her advisers and just remarkable the stories that we are able to report in the book about the extent to which he was constantly demanding they do things they were told was illegal. if nielsen had the difficult job of saying no again and again to a president that didn't want to be told no.

some of the ideas were unbelievable. they wanted too build a moat at the border and alligators and shoot at the legs of migrants. she had an incredibly difficult time handling that. >> host: in your four years covering the trump white house, did you witness political ad aptness? >> guest: the biggest political challenge at the white house is managing their boss. someme of them were confrontational which probably didn't always work. some of them found ways steering him in the direction none of them succeeded because they fell out of favor. ntone of the interesting characters is jared kushner who

was expected to be a moderated force. he would get mad at them if they were sent todo stop him from dog something they wanted to do so he learned do not do that and disappointed a lot of people and thought he had responsibilitiesi to interact for how he would deal with trump. it was a two to one ratio. two timestw good news, one time bad news. trump had five points to his name. they are not capturing. but the biggest most interesting moment successful in a lot of ways to agree to criminal justice reform he helps hold together israel and its neighbors he has some things he can point to put in the moment

it came down to he was headed down the road towards this massive lie about having the election being stolen. he takes himself out of it and says i'm not going to find with you on this. i don't want any part of it. he heads off and as a result that leaves the void open. to fight on what is normal and the slide the white house and he chose not to. we've already gone a half-hour with susan glasser and peter baker. this is the program where we usually talk to one author and his or her body of work we are talking to their body of work this afternoon and we are going to begin taking your calls and just a while. susan glasser, with "the new

york times" they've written three books together. the first is kremlin rising vladimir putin's russia in the end of the revolution that came out in 2005 and then in 2020 came out the man who ran washington the life and times of james baker the third and at the divider, whichk we've been talking about trump in thehe whe house came out this year. peter baker has written four books on his own. the breach inside the impeachment trial, william jefferson clinton came out in 2000. the days of fire obama the call of history in 2017 and an impeachment compendium along with john meacham we are going to put the numbers up on the screen we want your participation if you would like to talk with the authors.

748-8200 in the east of central time zones. (202)748-8201 for sows in the mountain and pacific time zones. and you can also contact us on our social media site. we will scroll through those. remember@booktv, and/or booktv e-mail, booktv@c-span.org. we will begin taking those in a few minutes. in a sense, the bureaucracy. i don't know whether you want to publicly admit you talked to stephen miller of the trump white house or not. if it is in the open source or not he survived thet. bureaucra.

he is one of the ones who did in fact manage to the way he wanted to without ever drawing one of the few. he nudged and pushed into taking ever harder positions on all sorts of immigration issues whether it be refugees, the cap capson refugees, the public wele trying to limit the number of people and the ban on people coming in from several muslim countries and he played two views with the trump already had a.ea of the maneuvered around the bureaucracy and kiersten wilson was angry of course because she discovered her staff would be called toe meetings by without ever telling her and it was just sort of a constant struggle

within the bureaucracy. at one point he said finally you're in charge of immigration andph another person in the administration i hope you understand this is my coordination. which is exactly whatgo he tried to do. >> host: did jeff sessions, was it because of immigration that he failed and the trump inp white house? >> guest: there's three words here.tt the bottom line is a fascinating story about the definition of what he's looking for in a.m. advisor and it's a very narrow definitionow of personal loyalt. jeff sessions is the first attorney general the first u.s. senator to endorse donald trump the 2016 campaign. in many respects he was the archetype of the kind of republican who supported the donald trump when the vast majority of the party did not

support donald trump the other senator, the other representative. they didn't supported donald trump in 2016. jeff sessions did. none of that mattered when it came down to it because trump blamed jeff sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the investigation into russia's in the 2016 campaign and of us triggering ultimately the more investigation that hung over a very large portion of the trump presidency. the way that he created this was so remarkable by the way. it hadn't started as an advisor to jeff sessions. that's how he got into trump's orbit. he felt no compunction ultimately aboutut abandoning hs first boss and sticking with his second. about trump be rated as sessions openly and was mentioning in an

that he had with the donald trump in the summer of 2017 that's when donald trump first started publicly attacking his own attorney general essentially defying him, daring him to quit which he refused to do and he hung on for a long time. in fact it went all the way on against his own attorney general. that lasted all the way up until the midterm election the first thing m he did when they were decisively rebuked to fire jeff sessions.ss >> host: was it bill barras trick to go in if the president started a railing on him or having a topic that he wanted to get off of by mentioning one of these hotspot topics? >> guest: that is a great little vignette in the recent memoir in which he says if he

was the second a secretary of state that he would distract donald trump by mentioning the investigation when they were worried about something and that was talking about waving a red flag that could last for a long time about how badly treated he was. but you mention bill barr. to me, he is a fascinating example of the argument while donald trump broke with many people and officials ultimately ended up breaking with donald trump is always a complicated story. bill barr got the job as the second attorney general after trump fired jeff sessions in part because he wrote a memo saying that he thought of the investigation was not and it was he an overreach and of course that was exactly what donald trump wanted to hear and thought

that by appointing him as an attorney general, he would help him to either fire mueller or contain the damage from the investigation and ultimately many people believe that is exactly what he did in the spring of 2018 and the report finally came out that he missed of the characterization of the findings and helped to shape the public perception and donald trump when he said there was no collusion but he was the key facilitator cementing the idea with the public and get even for bill barr, there was a moment arthat trump went too far and tt moment of course is what he did after the election and in many respects he's the most significant cabinet official to break with donald trump. remember december 1st, 2020 bill barr cannot publicly undecided

there is no basis to overturn. that was a crucial moment in diverse since then he had been a public critic of trump's when it comesco to the election stuff. but it's a complicated story. many of the advisors and vice president, former vice president as another classic example. on the one hand they say he went too far but zero no, he got crazy later. it's a disingenuous thing to reinvent history when you happen to conveniently discover donald trump is a problem and everything that camedo before ws okay. >> host: trump was not exonerated in the investigation.

one of the things he's a very skilled at of course is shaping the public perception and branding himself and selling things to the marketplace in effect and what he sold his this idea that the investigation have somehow exonerated even though it hadn't. he specifically writes the dose does not exonerate him and he created this repetition by distortion this suppression and then report didn't find anythig wrong when in fact it did. he could have made the case from obstruction of justice. you cannot charge a sitting president, but trump didn't win because he characterized the investigation as a hoax and a lot of other people. >> host: was there overreach by the press when it came to

iarussia in 2016? was their eagerness to find a story that wasn't there? >> guest: first of all, i am a big believer that there is no such thing as a kind of monolithic. i think that if you look at the attack and those in his administration it is important to know that they were purposeful, calculated and served an important service from the very beginning of his time in politics that you are predating the presidency. the use of the terms fake news was an appropriation for those who actually pointed out in the 2016 race how much lies in the misinformation of disinformation being used by trump and diane network of supporters that out about the social media that aimed toon distort and misrepresent things.

i think it's important to make that point. there is no monolithic media and that is important to note. when it comes to the story, but i stuck by as peter points out, trump has had kind of the shaping narrative. we've covered and we will talk about criminal and rising but we have covered the u.s. russia relationship foror more than two decades and i have to tell you people might not understand this. there's never been an example of any presidential campaign except for donald trump with repeated contact with the ambassador from russia in which there was repeated efforts to reach out in which the campaign manager had a long history of maintaining contact even during the

campaign. the weaponization of democratic e-mails done by the russian intelligence was a dramatic and remarkable moment the u.s. political apparatus wouldn't prepare. the administration handled how to respond to that but this is an exceptional thing, and i think that often gets lost. >> host: i wrote a note to myself. all notes lead back to russia and ukraine. >> guest: it does seem like that. nancy pelosi said the two donald trump in a meeting. >> guest: she waves her finger and says what is it with you, all roads lead back to putin.

>> host: the trends we saw during the time and russia only accelerated. now this book is only a couple of-years-old and updated him in zero seven. but is that still true today? >> guest: this book takes place long before the word on georgiaon and ukraine but you se the seeds of it because in our time we were there for years first to the beginning of putin's term. use all the crackdown on disse and lamenting the collapse of the soviet union and the desire to create or re-create russia as a great power onus the stage to stand up as an alternative to the west. so a lot would be very familiar looking back on it today. >> host: are you fluent in russian?n?

>> guest: we've tried to keep it up and it's remarkable how this period with the post-cold war is the time that we have been reporting in washington but russia was the story that never went away as much as people wanted to believe that we've moved on to a different era in politics so i think having uncovered five american presidents dealing and struggled with and making the same mistakes again andnd again whent came to how to understand of vladimir putin, it's remarkable how much even in the post-cold war era of american politics, russia has been a through line and the struggle to deal with vladimirru putin. >> host: isa there a direct connection between chechnya and ukraine and is that a fair connection? >> guest: putin comes to power

in 99 and 2000. it's for those who don't remember it is a small republican within thech russian state and putin uses that conflict to gain political power internally and it is a vicious war against. he goes after the civilian population and pummels this capital of chechnya with more firepower than has been seen. 100,000 people are killed but i visited chechnya repeatedly and it was a horrific wasteland you fast-forward and see muchmu of e same, the indiscriminate power to achieve political goals and the difference is they are not in fact surrendered and in fact have gained back the way that

they ultimately i did not. >> host: with the horrible irony of the board and ukraine that the kremlin's essentially handpicked warlords and his men have become some of the most feared and b brutal fighters fighting for russia in this war inside ukraine. estimates come sort of full circle. if you want toin understand putn again and again throughout his two decades in power, he's resorted to the use of military force to pursue otherwise unattainable political ambitions. they had a conflict with vieam so that is a long time of china's peaceful rise now they free militarize and invested billions and billions in recent

yearsey but they haven't resortd to the use of force that is an important part of the playbook and unfortunately for ukraine and europe and the united states, there are not examples of putin sitting down at the negotiating table and coming to a long-term resolution of any of these conflicts. >> host: there's so much i want to talk about with vladimir putin's time in germany and the connection to boris yeltsin. how much of that made up who he is today and how much can you draw the reader lying around that experience and what he is today? >> guest: it's important to remember the kgb that is something that we often sort of paper over but that is his roots. so he wanted a child to join the kgb. it was like watching the old g-man of the united states and he offed himself the kgb without

accepting. you don't come to us we come to you. eventually they did become an officer or any us to germany and it's this moment when the collapse of the old soviet happened that he is left there in east germany know there are crowds of people outside of the kgb and he was there by himself with they are burning the documents inside because they are afraid of being overrun and they call for help and if the answer they get is moscow is silent. it reverberates to this day the idea that the power collapsed. that's what he's been trying to reverse for 20 years. >> host: have you ever met vladimir putin? >> guest: he is joking about that. the first time i met vladimir

putin is the first time that putin building an interview for the american correspondents based in moscow it was right after the very famous first meeting between george bush and vladimir putin. m it was they saw somebody they could do business s with and so the moment of perceived opening to the west and the united states and we were invited to the kremlin library for a roundtable discussion and a small number of american correspondence and interestingly, my first chance to ask vladimir putin a question. we went around the table lamp i was about two thirds around the table waiting and waiting for someone else to bring up the difficult subject oft chechnya and human rights but nobody did so i thought the honor of the american correspondent class when it came time to me i asked him about chechnya and it was

fascinating because up until this point he'd been determined to kind of project the image that he was kind of the young technocratic leader unlike boris yeltsin who was old and a stumbling into literally drunk and it many times, so putin was kind of like very in control and have the factsac and figures to prove he wasn't too young and inexperienced. i asked about his entire change and he became snapped and angry and upset at what do you want me to do. you want me to sit down and talk with these people. i'mg going to respond the way that i need to and it was an interaction that was the first time i met vladimir putin. >> guest: this was a conversation where there were

translators and putin was learning english at this time. one of the things is he doesn't often conduct conversations in english but he certainly knows about english and that would be an advantage that he would have dealing with the many residents he dealt with because even though he had an unofficial interpreter he could understand much of what the presidents were saying even before there was the official interpretation. >> guest: that also gives the advantage to think about his answer. >> host: have you traveled back and would you go back today? >> guest: there's a lot of times though we haven't been there in the last 70 years. >> guest: they put out many

lists of officials and commentators. they didn't send you a letter or anything saying while you're on the list. my late father i called him up and he said you should think of it as a badge of honor. that's true that we have been very clear about what the consequences of this russian war of aggression but at the same time it made me very sad for the russian people and i have to say i look forward toay going back o me at. >> host: before we go to calls i want to bring up the name of anna crusading the russian journalists one of the most remarkable people we met. she would go to chechnya and the surroundingsh republic all the time and revealed aloft by the

russian troops and beyond measure standing up to authority and of course she paid a price. one day she's walking home and is i shot down and murdered or assassinated. >> any doubt it was an unofficial assassination? >> official assassination? >> putin's reaction was classic. he said basically of no importance her killer is more important than anything she ever wrote and it was perceived as a birthday present to him by the loyalists. no doubtig that it was connected to him and his people. >> many of the people that we

wrote about in kremlin rising helped us to understand the complicated country. it is and the only one in the shadow of the kremlin that were killed, exiled and then there's a large category also of people that we quote in the book that have become apologists for the putin regime. >> guest: thank you for taking my call. my question is about china as you know they have rioting against the lock down but it clear to me purchased of the

vaccines from pfizer which are more effective than the vaccines that they produced. aren't they jeopardizing their political stability by not working with vaccines that are most effective? >> guest: anything you want to address?s? >> guest: i think by the way it's a good question. we were having a conversation last night on exactly the subject. thed leadership has really locd itself into what appears to beaa terrible almost three years into this pandemic zero tolerance policy. unfortunately has come with a very low percentage of the population especially the elderly that are the most

vulnerable to it being vaccinated, so it's hard to imagine them being able to liberalize the policies that would risk the large-scale hospitalizations at thison poin. so that he seems to be coming into conflict with a nationalistic view thatco they don't have a non-chinese vaccine or they are told there are more than enough global supply vaccines to purchase more effective vaccines but it doesn't seem to be why that's happening. i should note it's been taking place in china as far as i understand it but some examples including the symbol of this moment i think is so poignant and powerful which is people holding up blank sheets of paper that tells you everything. >> host: you're still on msnbc regularly but you arep on a cnn

for a long time. are you still with cnn? >> guest: we are basically still promoting the book and things like that but not on cnn. >> host: is "the new york times" staff going on strike? >> guest: >> host: is that an open question? >> guest: there's a conflict over the bargaining of the contract saying they would like to have a lock out if there isn't progress and my hope is there is progress and we don't cover that. >> there's a quote talking about independent journalism and i've got it here in my notes. you were worried about the state of independent journalism. when you look at how vulnerable soso many companies are we are

talking about hundreds of journalists this past week who's been laid off as well as cnn and other news organizations for the news media and especially when you see the public space and supercharged nature of the politics right now it is something that i worry deeply about because it requires -- >> host: what does it seem to be so hyper anything? >> guest: that is a good question. we have this aloft. history is full of moments where we tend to get more hybrid about things and there are ebbs and flows but it is acting courage and accelerated by the incentive

structure to express anger and conflict over compromise. one of the books that we wrote and you said for mentioning is james baker. such an example of somebody in a different era when compromise is the value for you to sit down with somebody on the other party to comee up with the deal. today if you tried to do that if youie are published in the systm andd that is the difference between now and at the past. >> guest: i am glad you brought that up the difference betweene the era that we described and at the men that ran washington from the end of watergate to the cold war, the media landscape is one of the biggest single differences and the era of ford, carter, reagan, bush. you were talking aboutki an eraf three national tv networks. the very beginning of cable news. you were talking about a few

like "the new york times," "the wall street journal," time magazine, "newsweek" and reagan and jim baker. they were masters of communication at that era in time but it led to the politics where you were seeking to appeal to the broad middle of the country and the goal was 51%. we had moved into a different era that it is hard to persuade anybody to change their mind. you don't see large swings of public opinion. backblbl in the 1980s when jim baker was at his height and treasury secretary, you would have like half the senate would be senators that were elected from states that went the other thway in the presidential electn and these days you are talking aboutng a handful of senators after best that can define the overarching identity as either a red state or blue state. that is a massive structural

shift and the shift in the media we can debate whether the shift in the media led to the politics or both representations of the same phenomenon, but it's so different. >> host: and i promise you we will get into the jim baker book because it is worth reading but i want to read a paragraph from it. bakerr has long aspired to an ambition of a success so rapid that he was easy to forget how quickly it had happened. he was 58-years-old and only ten years earlier he'd been between jobs and who'd just lost a campaign for the only political heoffice it only tried to win ad it was a mark of his convincing rise of the appointment as the secretary of state now was not the least bit controversial. we've got to get back to calls. thankk you for holding. you are on.

>> my question is for peter baker in regards to bias at "the new york times" admitting the hunter biden story not reporting on that before the election and how many people actually died on january 6th by the hands of the government? the police officers dieted they lived and died onas january 6th and my last question do you have reporters that go out to these small towns in america. the middle class is dying and you claim the elite, you are in a middle-class and that is a huge problem today because you are in a monolithic fault in

washington, you all think alike and voter like and you don't report onn the policies of biden and the democratic party right now that is killing the middle class. >> host: there is a lot on the table. what would you like to address? >> guest: thank you for the call i do appreciate and understand your point of view. i would say that we do a lot of reporting across the country. we are the only newspaper that has as an extensive international staff as we report from everywhere. we want to capture the america outside of the east coast. we are not a new york paper. we are a global paper and we do very extensively right about the concerns and the issues that have been animating the opposition too president biden and we write about the policies

that have caused concern among the voters into the approval ratings including economic issues. in the end, people will always be satisfied with things that we are biased. people will think we are biased. everybody iss prepared he doesnt our goal though. to be accurate, evenhanded, fair, open-minded. those are the goals for journalism. we get attacked and criticized understandably so. we could criticized and attacked from the left understandably so i appreciate the thoughts. >> host: anything you want to add to that? >> guest: i believe peter said it right. the goal is to be open minded and to be fair, evenhanded. it requires journalism to be

humbled and surprised by what we are surprised by. to do better it is very hard to do that in this polarized movement. what's hard for us as we've we traveled around the country on this book tour talking to people by the way all over the country and red states as well as blue states again and again i'm struck by how much people live inside of the information environments in which they are exposed to information and ideas that challenge their thinking and push them to consider facts they might not have pushed for to reject altogether and unfortunately wepe have been journalists our entire careers andjo we are committed to the ia that the facts do actually matter and it's a very important

to establish a commonality of the experience in order to then have a political debate about what to do about it. we are living two years after an election in 2020 in which they've consistently found that as many as two thirds of the republican voters believe the lies about the election of 2020 that the former president have told to a worry someplace. >> caller: peter, peter baker and susan glasser, enjoying the show. you've got some great gifts. i'm the man african-american and military police officer and i had a top-secret clearance in the russians from 79 to 94.

my question for you is with january 6th, there's paperwork where president trump wanted to send 20,000 troops were 10,000 troops but nancy pelosi denied, mitch mcconnell denied and the dc mayor. the secret service knew about it and the fbi office knew about january 6th, but trump tried to prevent it, so do you have that in thek book? >> guest: if there is no question to the failure to see the security threat that intelligence had provided that information, that is true that there was the reluctance on the part of the people in washington that had in lafayette square in

the previous june. we have a scene in the book where he does in fact to say i want there toer be troops on the streets but he wants them on the street to protect his supporters from what he thinks will be counter protesters against him. he isn't worried about protecting them a bit about his ownec supporters. that is the reporting from people in the room at the time and the question about trump trying to stopt it, he definitey does not try to stop it. he encourages it and people to come to washington on the day of course when it happens. he didn't act aggressively to stop it and that has been shown time and time again with others who worked with tell you they are incredibly disappointed that he failed to act among those in

the end teach meant trial and that is the image of him sitting watching this unfold on tv. he was encouraged people were standing up for him so aggressively and he suggested they were chanting they might have had it right and maybe he deserved it. >> host: we are going to put the phone lines up. if you can't get through on the phones, you can also send a text message (202)748-8903. that is for text messages only. include your first name and city if you would. we will scroll through some of thees social media sites if you want to participate that way as

well. next call gerald in los angeless go ahead with your question or comment for our guest. >> guest: it is fitzgerald end of this is for peter and susan. journalistic mind as i am a huge fan. you as a couple how have you seen the journalism change in the reign of donald trump? >> guest: thank you so much for the kind word. thank you for reading and listening. we are so grateful, and i think that by the way, one of the positive aspects for us as journalists that maybe he hasn't isn'tfully understood is that ts has been in some respects a return to the first principles if ever there was a moment that it was cleared, the urgency and the importance of journalism is when the political institutions are being tested like this and

the obama era in washington was a technocratic era. it was a sense of focus on how to nudge people towards the rightth policies and let's talk about the nuances of healthcare reform. in the trump era we have the first principles and basic debate about the nature and the constitution and limits and presidential power by the president that seemed to veto these limits and power. i think a it's been an important and invigorating time when you see the urgency and the necessity of our job. i don't know. obviously we would prefer not to be in a moment in time when journalists are being called enemies of people when they are literally being required to go

cover rallies by the president of the united states because he's appointing and whipping up the crowds intoro a frenzy. peter and i as we talked about in the former soviet union is a very resonant and historically horrifying because that phrase was literally the phrase used by stalin to condemn millions to the gulags. maybe you didn't know that the first time but he was told that again and again to use this and weaponize his platform against the whole category of people.

to use authority if you have criticism, fine. you have every right to criticize and we will address it. but the language if fake news and things like that is so inflammatory that it was endangered. president trump said that's interesting. thenth of course it made no difference whatsoever. within a week, he was doing it again. >> guest: that is a striking way in which the trump

presidency was such an outlier from any other presidency, democrat or republican. there've been other presidents that might have worked with autocratic leaders especially in the cold war. but we've never had a modern president that openly admired and cheered for the world's dictatorsdi and strongmen and bd guys. this was something that i think of m course it is a major themen the divider for us. but we are trying to look at where is the trump presidency different from what preceded it versus an extreme version of what we had before. and i think this is an area in which not only demonizing and attacking the president and a whole different level than any other previous president, but the admiration for the autocrats in the world that didn't have to deal with of the independent media he celebrated people like

kim jong-il north korea and the philippines and egypt, turkey and at the same time tormented america's allies, and it's such a remarkable period. it's hard to process that this actually happened. you're on booktv. afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, peter. haven't talked with you in a while. i'm interested in whether you've spoken to people that have been on the apprentice that raised money for charities and would that have happened without the program or without donald trump and kind of stepping in on how to raise money out of what they do as a profession.

the other thing is what brought them to russia and why has there been no use of so many other companies with vaccines that we've known about the companies that have been around for a long time and yet our countries and presidents won't touch them with a 10-foot pole. >> host: why did you go to russia? >> guest: it's about books. when i was a teenager i remember reading twoer books one by smith called smith and one that came out around the same time ironically and they are both remarkable by "the new york times" and washington correspondent about this extraordinary and important

country that they were covering. i'm so inspired. i want to be someday the correspondent.n so one day they actually asked. for me that was a great gift to see the culture from the inside like that. when i was growing up in the 1980s i took russian in high school and this was right in the middle of the 1980s at a moment when mikhail gorbachev had come into power andom i recl my senior year in high school we were having a class one day outside of school and some people overheard us and mistook us from exchange students and came over to give condolences for the chernobylfo nuclear accident.

can we end the cold war and look at the horrors of this. it was a real crisis and moment. it turned out t peter and i who were just getting engaged and just about to get married, when it came up as an opportunity we realized it is something that both of us had been interested in since a young age. i can't speak to what we might have said that long ago.

your son waited ten minutes. >> it's funny because this was back in 2005 we just returned from our time as correspondence for the post. we were racing against the clock when you're nine months pregnant you write a lot faster. we thought we had three weeks left and one day we went out to dinner and i just felt a strange sensation. i said i saw something happening here. we actually pulled an all night or to get the last couple of chapters done and the next morning peter said good news i e-mailed the last couple chapters and said i am in labor. i'm having contractions. >> one online, one off-line.

we write separately. we split up chapters easily. >> you do not identify here and talk -- >> guest: then we each go through. but both with kremlin rising and the divider, we had a table of content and a sort of organization that outlined what we came up with and we literally splitd up the chapters 50/50 to do a first draft and then exchanged and edited and approved through it. >> so she edits more thanu you o perhaps? >> guest: yes. can you comment on gorbachev's legacy? >> guest: one of the most consequential men of the era of the modern times.

what's sad is that he is not recognized as such. in the west we see him as somebody in effect whether he intended to or not who freed hundreds of millions of people and left the empire go without violence and gave the opportunity to his own country to become free and more prosperous. he was the first person we interviewed as correspondence. he also was a remarkably impressive guy and to us see him as a hero and a villain. they saw him as somebody who they loathed. he was a person of great controversy there. use all putin refused to go to his funeral.

>> whatae did jim baker think of mikhail gorbachev? >> guest: his lifelong friends and george hw bush who was the president when he was secretary of state, the great accomplishment in, many respecs was midway the largely peaceful cold war and in many respects they forged a partnership with both mikael gorbachev and his foreign minister. for them it was a partnership that meant the difference between stability and a world not in crisis opposite. when you see how hostile and adversarial relationship has become with russia and vladimir putin over time, you realize how differently it could have turned out and so i think that baker

met many times with gorbachev. there was a defining moment for both of them. >> host: why did you choose to write the 600 pages? >> guest: the biography was fascinating. it seemed like at some point or another even if they are not that controversial and here in some ways you have the most consequential secretary of state of the time. at the end of the cold war to steer to a peaceful conclusion and how germany helped assemble the coalition and on top of that

had his hand on every political thing that happened. gerald ford's campaign. he handed almost everything so the story was a story of washington. both in terms of how it was then and here's the contrast to how it is now. >> host: i immediately thought of mark hanna. >> guest: the interesting thing is that baker, who achieved power in washington because he was so skilled as someone who bridged the world of politics and government who could get things done and a behind the scenes player but he loathed the idea once he was on the cover of "time" magazine and

featured as ace handler, the fixer, the guy behind the scenes. he hated that. it was his cousin that claimed the nickname. he was on the cover of "time" magazine another time as the velvet hammer antitheft spoke to him as a diplomat but one who was brutally effective and willing to bring down the hammer. baker wanted to escape the reputation and success as a powerbroker a statesman in his own right and the intention i think that is the interesting story of this remarkable decades long rise to the heights of washington power. a very unlikely story. that is the other thing that peter and i just really enjoyed

being able to do. we started out interested in the story of washington but we also became interested in the story that told us about jim baker that is a very unlikely figure. he spent 40 years essentially in houston and never anything in the background that would indicate that he would be a global figure. in fact hehe would decidedly barbara bush joked that he didn't even vote, that it was the beginning of hunting season and he preferredon to be out hunting so he had a midcareer change. >> host: how many hours did youhoth spend? >> guest: he is 92. he smelled hunting now i believe with a friend and he's

remarkable for 92. we should all be so lucky. spent about seven years on this book may be 70 hours of interviews. we went to a ranch withterv himd his wife in wyoming. they were gracious to have us. we interviewed him in washington. we tried to get that major touchstones of his life and we interviewed multiple presidents and vice presidents and secretaries of state about him andut all eight of his children which is interesting. and wete interviewed his nanny o at the time was still alive and passed away i think at 100 to six if i remember correctly. so we were able to dive into his life and his personal life was fascinating as well. ..

>> one of the reasons he gets into politics is the death of his wife and looking for something new and the other reason is his best friend in houston and his tennis partner is george herbert walker bush and he sees this as a way to help his friend to move on from this terrible tragedy. so bush and baker international politics, bushes 198080 primary campaign against

ronald reagan and amazingly enough although tough on the campaign trail about reagan they somehow end up with bush on the national ticket as a vice president and reagan invites jim baker who has run to national campaigns against him to be the white house chief of staffm which speaks a lot to the reputation. someone who was highly's, competent and skilled he really considered the gold standard for the white house chief of staff to make democrats as well as tarepublicans to consult them in that role and it was a democrat the former national security advisor to barack obama he's most important elected official of washington since the end of world war ii.

>> those sitting in the conference room was jim baker on george w. bush's we count fee. >> the man who ran washington. >> . >> and we started when obama was president and what has happened right when trump does arrive so ultimately he keeps coming back to trump because of the political guy and it would constantly come up and he would be disdainful using words like crazy and not see yet he voted for him 2016 and 2020 as the fixture of the establishment modern republican party believing in

free trade andrn alliance and in his case and compromise to get things done and how do you vote for this guy when your own friend did not? and then never fully gave us an answer we never understood that i am a republican i don't want democrats in theren but also and then to be on the inside because in some small way you have a chance to have some impact. >> it is that conundrum of the modern republican party. in many ways we finally realized it is telling you again and again the same answer you have to listen.

he was certainly helping us to understand how it is possible that donald trump could have become the candidate of the republican party twice and many many people like jim baker didn't necessarily agree onon many issues he saw his character quite clearly and that demands of partisanship for such that they were willing to override even over printable objections to donald trump so how is that even possible to be supported. and that is an important to have that example of why at tribal affiliation seems to have that overwhelmed goes to

jim baker. >> congratulations on yourat careers. trump as the physical part of the media landscape since i was a kid that what is missed is that there is a big divide. to exploit. and it's lost on the media and you don't have to go to the midwest to see this. when talking about enemies of the people large portion it is

very low in approval rating. so it's important for us if they don't cover the violent street crime almost ever. they don't cover it. >> very simply if there is such a huge divide between people who are highly educated versus the vast majority of americans does that leave a

better way for trump to come about so that the media is perceived to be so elitist that attacking it is popular. >> we gotot it. >> he is a master no question. that is the persona and the guy from queens that is the interesting to move minor washington. but also was made by the media and that is an important story thatit has been told many times before and it's important to remember without the new york post donald trump never would have been president it predates all of that free airtime on fox.

many years before that at what time he was reported to be in more covers consecutively than anyone else and to this day we can all see it as long as they spell your name right screw good publicity there is an extraordinary moment we reportex where his campaign manager overhears donald trump telling somebody not only is all publicity good publicity but according to trout as long as they don't accuse you of being a pedophile literarily it's goodhi publicity. so he is a creature of new york and that outer bureau and that mentality which infuses his public appearance. but it is calculated those not only because they read the

polls and saw the media institution but specific strategy to drive down the approval ratings of the media and trump was once asked why do you do this then demagogue about the media? so that when you write something bad about me no one will believe that. >> this goes to the earlier caller was it a mistake the mainstream media did not cover that story or was it a nonstory? >> that we should cover that with facts and investigation not just with hott air. and trying to get past the disinformation that is put out there because there is something there obviously

there is prosecution currently looking at him that was worth investigating. doesn't produce any charges but and that this inclination and not to take his word on anything. >> it doesn't mean it's not worth lookingev at so look at wide is in there and not the politics of it but let's just say there's something there but the real question is what do you mean about the president? those that look bad in the public light. and the question is do we have anything of concern and that is a strain here. and there is no evidence that president did anything to get

rid of the prosecutor harped on by his critics. and then that like as the biden did something regarding his son. >> so what they are reading and what their favorite books are? >> .

>> >> what is it about that book? thatomen really like book. >> i wish if you're asking fiction or i nonfiction. >> with every single author. >> no question that for every

book is shown woman for a century to delight in the story of their sisters i love that book so much and i word read it again and again and talking about reading again and again that's what i was doing with little women i would finish it and start all er -- zora neale hurston, their eyes were watching god, a bright shining lie. sendhand time, common ground, becc west -- black lamb and gray falcon. and the art of eating. susan: to anybody who knows about food writing, she sort of

defined it for a whole generation of americans and and as escapism goes i highly recommend. >> in your currently reading the after lives? >> it is a great novel we are reading. >> speefourteen hello. i grew up in the middle east and i grew up to be skeptical.

and they don't cover what they want. as they cover certain stories. and then to make up stories and that's a problem. >> it never recovered after the civil war. and then to divide people. and as a symptom and then with

obama and all that stuff. and i expect that all my life with james baker when he said i support because he is a republican how can you support a man who is a racist? and the gop divides people that doesn't make sense towa me. >> . >> many people admire jim baker and were surprised, including many republicans who are really surprised that he chose to support donald trump twice. and he did speak out against trumps false claims about the 2020 election make of it what

you will but he has a view he shared with us many times that he found much of trump's policy agenda, especially the efforts to change american foreign-policy, he profoundly disagreed with that. he was very uncomfortable with his personal behavior and character. but yet there is a paradox. not just with jim baker but million to share those calls and overcame them then voted because he is a the republican nominee anyway.om >> and like the deregulation. i don't approve of trump as a person but theli policies are more important than the personality. andgu if you are antiabortion

and then to do it no other president has done in a generation to overturn roe v wade so the policy goal was achieved and in that view i can live with the other stuff because the policy is more important it's hard to make an argument after january 6 as we seee it that for a lot of people he would say he is embarrassing but as soon as i get my policy then i should support them. >> that baker never went to the level to say mike pence because just the other day over the last few days there has beenhe an l enormous nationl debate and discussion about didn't there with mar-a-lago with a known white supremacist

who just days after the dinner said how much he admired d from hitler rather than to disavow that person and has continued to double down but mike pence is out there from this memoir that is the book of contortions were on the one hand rejecting trumps of you are the election and then literally that somehow he has tried and not all that successfully to thread the neil needle to say i'm against what he did but however he said i condemn he should not have had that dinner at mar-a-lago however i don't believe that trump is a racist are enticed i might or a win have been vice president.

that is a fascinating level of course donald trump is absolutely the same man today that he was in 2016 when he selected mike pence to be a president and we asked a senior former national security official with these terrible incidents were reported about trump saying racist things and he said not only that but he would say things like that again and again for so manyd different kinds of people and he never went to that level to contort himself to say the man is not a problem to have these different gradations trying to get us to believe something that's impossible about food

trump is but nevertheless the vast majority of republicans. >> you begin and end with donald trump. >> so trump invites him to meet with him invite take it doesn't want to be perceived and for all those reasons he doesn't like the guy i would vote for him but not endorse him but he did not want to give public embrace so when trump asked him to come in he said i would advise other candidateshe but with a two-page memo of what he think trump needs to do to be a successful candidate and president which

is to say reach out to women and people of color to believe in free trade and that way baker knew of trump didn't do them that he had endorsed them for his requirements in effect for a bigger dorsum it that trump would never need speefourteen thanks for taking my call i always enjoy what peter and susan have. but i will push back a little bit since you have written so extensively about baker and trump so going back to jim baker and his early times with the reagan administration you can draw almost a straight line between the tactics of george h w but she and donald trump and that is deeply

embedded in the republican party and despite the handling they make that's a reality and not going away anytime soon. i will take your comments off air. >> thank you for that. it is important which is another explanation why the jim baker's of thet'ot world supported donald trump and why they are breaking now with trenton that goes to winning at all cost and that is behind what you are mentioning with the 1980 campaign when george w. bush is running for president he was losing in fact down by 17 points after the democratic convention to michael dukakis and the governor massachusetts and that's when baker came in as campaign leader and that they would have to hit dukakis hard and go negative the most

famous one run by an outside group not connected at all to this official campaign that baker certainly did not act quickly to stop that line of and he did tell us that one point he allowed if you read anything he doesn't regret and i do think the true line is winning like mitch mcconnell who always has had a very pronounced and obvious personal distaste for donald trump and accommodated himself essentially one of the reasons you could say he became president and why he was able to get many things with the iktransformation report done it's about winning and you

will see many republicans right now to break after the results of the midterm election and then in addition to having bad then a two-time loser in the national popular vote. we will see they believe and hardball politics. >> you can find me at nytimes.com and also covering the biden white house sometimes i write about trump because he still out there we had a story the other day how much he seems to be increasingly embracing extremism but with this dinner with kanye west and the video he sent to the families of the january 6 stormers and then

this tweet he just put out yesterday calling for the termination of the constitution to overturn and put him back in power so he seemed to embrace that almost as the core the current candidacy. >> i write a weekly letter from washington in the new yorker you can see it on the website generally comes out late thursday evening also doing a podcast with my colleagues and that washington bureau from the political scene that comes out every friday and we look forward to all of your ideas. >> three books to gather from

kremlin rising and the most recent the divider we appreciate your time on book tv. >> this has been fantastic >> the media has driven itself into a ideological cul-de-sac but it's why colin kaepernick became a symbol of hairless and —- heroism that for the rest of the country it was an act of disrespect but the president doesn't see it that way but that was intolerant bordering on racism and this

is where i blow the whistle. when you have so many people cut from the same cloth that see the reporters the same way you reinforce a very narrow thinking that donald trump is a danger to the republic we need to protect america by gaining donald trump leading to false stories that later have to be retracted. and for more ideological diversity i think a booster shot would be very helpful to keep newsrooms going back to beorobjective and fewer errors and his wife betsy, and her father. [applause] i would like to begin >> i like to begin withf a brief history lesson it's only appropriate