A president and the media. But in fact, its a long tradition in American Government and American Media history that the president and press do not share the same interests and have been out war, and a sense, ever since george washington. Susan from the time you started this project, was it always it versus the press . Mr. Holzer im glad you asked. No. Originally it was the president s and the press. In my research about president kennedy, i found that he gave a very defensive speech in 1961 for the American Publishers Association in new york city. And during the speech he said, i wanted to call this speech the president versus the press because you are not always living up to your responsibility to protect the american interest. And i have to be talked down so i could call up the president. But i like the first version better, he put it all out on the line and kennedy is the one who got our interest. Susan is that why he also earned the photo on your cover . Mr. Holzer well, i went back and forth on that and went to my wonderful editor team. There is a great shot of Lyndon Johnson looking sour. But the kennedy one, which had photographers and newsmen appealed to me. I must admit that i have a soft spot for jfk. I was 11 years old when i was elected. And his vigor, as he himself would put it, is what really interested me in politics when i was a kid. Susan its clear from your index and your notes that you did Extensive Research for this book. It was interesting to me that one name kept popping up again and again in your chapters. Thats a longterm White House Correspondent helen thomas. Who is she for people that dont will the name . And why was she so important in your storytelling . Mr. Holzer i picked a few people who lasted for several president s and could look at ahead and back. Another groundbreaking woman reporter who was known for her to questions, that often triggered a laughter when president kennedy responded. She started out in the roosevelt era and faced pretty sexist comments and teasing. But she helped establish the right of women to be in president ial press conferences. Helen thompson was the upi correspondent who was sent to cover the birth of kennedys son in 1960. She covered mrs. Kennedy and earned her way into the white house beat. And she lasted, as you know, until the obama administration. She was 90 years old, being helped up the press room to the Briefing Room for press conferences and still reporting. She was feisty and she wrote some very funny and revealing books about her experiences. Those of us who have been watching press conferences for a long time know her. And the woman who always got the first question because she was in the front row and was the senior reporter. She always said thank you mr. President in during those formal structured briefings. In the book she asked very, very tough questions. She was the woman that president s loved to hate. Someone once said that she was the woman president s loved to hate, but she kept asking those ferocious questions. She undid herself at 90 by giving an answer to someone on the white house lawn about the middle east. She was of arabic heritage herself. That did not become known until later in her career. She basically said to this father who had come for jewish history day the white house, she said, the israelis should go back where they came from, to germany or poland. By then she was not , working for the upi, she was a hearst columnist. But she left. Susan we will start this conversation with fdr. About him he right, few president s were more gifted and better prepared in the art of pr. How did that play out . Mr. Holzer he had been a governor of new york for two two year terms. He mastered the art of the press conference and radio address as governor. He then, on election night, in the absence of a victory speech in 1932, in the absence of a concession from herbert hoover, and this was not a closed election, was wheeled into the second floor parlor of his home. Where i should state very probably that i now work, it is now the roosevelt public house policy institute at Hunter College in manhattan. In 1932 it was the roosevelts family home. He gave an address to the people in front of the fireplace. It was, in essence, the first of a series of brilliant two dozen speeches not speeches, but conversations he held with the American People during the depression and during world war ii. It revolutionized president ial communications. Susan the big issue with him was the press willingness to hide his disability. How does that look to us . Mr. Holzer it looks like an abrogation of responsibility. He was certainly capable of doing the job for 12 years and a month. His inability to walk did not hamper his might or his heart, although he did suffer from heart disease, literally, at the end. There was at the beginning a gentlemens agreement between photographers and the president elect and the president. They said, he is this nice guy, hes trying to help us, hes trying to help the country, why should we add to his burden . There was a news blackout, or a photography blackout, and he pursued the blackout. He got a magazine to do a story about his health. It sort of reminds us of what donald trump did when he produced his doctors alleged record that he was the healthiest patient he had ever treated. Roosevelt got doctors to go over his medical treatment and say he was healthy as a horse, with no mention of his enduring paralysis of the polio he suffered in 1921. So what began as a gentlemans agreement and a little bit of nudging from the president , continued when it became the rule of the white house and the very tough press secretary stephen early. The photographs of him in the wheelchair were not permitted. Photographs of him being lifted into a car or using his braces were not permitted. By then, if photographers had violated that code they could have their film ripped out of their cameras. They would purposely jostle a photographer who was trying to take a revealing picture. It showed that there was a connection between roosevelt and the press thats unique. Susan we learned in our first hour from you that adams, and lincoln all crackdown during war. When world war ii broke out, what was the Roosevelt Administration supposed to the Roosevelt Administrations approach to the press . Mr. Holzer he enjoyed hiding a little bit. He went to a conference with Winston Churchill in canada, but he did not tell the press he was going. He said he was going on a vacation and his son reported that he loved the idea that he fooled them. Winston churchill arrived to this conference with his own press contingents. The American Press was mightily annoyed by that. He also exercised loose lips sink ships policy once the war began. He reduced the number of press conferences he had hosted. By the way, its worth noting that no president in American History met the press as often as fdr. He held 998 press conferences over 12 years. Those who claimed that he would diminish to a point where he can no longer leave, should look at his last press conference a day before he died and see how he manipulated the press. How he did not allow a guest, the president of the philippines, to say a word. How he reminded everybody everything is off the record and said i will see you back in washington. We have a transcript for every one of his 990 press conferences. He was a master of that form. Two days a week, tuesdays and fridays. Access, plus, withholding access was the perfect formula for control. Susan he was famous for those fireside chats. We will listen to 30 seconds of one from 1939 and then talk about how he used those. [video clip] will the people of this country, while receiving news through your radios and your newspapers at every hour of the day, you are the most enlightened and best informed of people in all the world at this moment. You are subjected to no censorship of news. And i want to add that the government has no information which it withholds, or which it has any thought of withholding from you. [end of video clip] susan what is your reaction to that big statement, not withholding anything from you . Mr. Holzer it was generally true up to that point. He answered questions. They were off the record, but he would remind them to put things back on the record, or issue a news relief with a statement of the day to conform with the news he had made. The fireside chats were amazing. He assumed a conversational tone. A new deal activist who traveled the country to officially measure the impact of recovery programs, all took note of the fact that americans throughout the rural area of the country thought of roosevelt as a friend who entered their parlors every so often, and whose voice was perfectly textured to the radio microphone. He did not shout, he did not speechify, he talked. The way that geniuses of this new medium converse. They considered him a family friend. They laughed with him, they cried with him during the awful news of world war ii, they prayed with him when he wrote a prayer for the dday invasion, and recited it. His voice was everywhere. Whats remarkable is he did 998 press conferences that he only did 28 fireside chats and people could swear he was always on the radio. Always a part of their lives. Part of it was because he did speeches on the radio. But there is a great story i think my favorite story in the book is a recollection by the person working for the government in a project, and would later go on to win the nobel prize in literature. He remembered being on a big avenue in chicago as a young man and there was a terrible traffic jam during a fireside chat. He could not stand the heat of the summer with the windows down, so he decided he would get out and walk the length. But every place he went, every car window was rolled down and every radio was tuned to president roosevelt. So as he was walking a mile along this promenade, he kept roosevelt with him the whole time and the voice never stopped dominating the space that he was traversing. Susan if fdr used radio to his advantage, john kennedy write about television, he all but weaponized the medium that help elect him. Mr. Holzer he did. The big experiments that propelled him into using television that way or the Nixon Kennedy president ial debates. Which, from the moment they began, gave an advantage to kennedy. Not just because of what he said, but the way he said it and the way he looked. He had great makeup. Nixon was emaciated. Those who watched on television believed kennedy had won by a large margin. Although there was no polling, that was the consensus. Once he became president he used the same team of makeup artists and set designers who collaborated on the background of the first triumphant political debate to design a place for him to hold press conferences. Eisenhower had introduced the live press conferences, but he was clearly annoyed by doing it. He did it in the Old Executive Office building, which was he stood at a desk and fought with reporters. It was not successful, even though he had a brilliant press secretary. The kennedy set was the new state department auditorium, which had great theater style seating, professional lighting, they installed a blue background, they built a famous podium with a president ial field, they had a place in the back for cameras, and they had 400 people for those press conferences. They needed the space to accommodate them and they simply darkened the lights on the outer reaches were people were not seen. The other innovations were that he was introduced ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. That never happened before. With fdr the doors flew open and the reporters filed into the oval office and stood at the desk. Kennedy was brilliant. I listened to all of his press conferences again and watched him, courtesy of the Kennedy Library archives. They were as masterful as i remember them from my afterschool viewing in junior high school. He was informative, he took responsibility, success has a thousand followers and failure is an orphan. He said after the bay of pigs when they failed in cuba. He was funny. He was witty. And again, by this time meg was an elderly reporter and she wore flowerpot hats to distinguish her. And when things were getting a little tedious, you a call on her and she would inevitably ask a question that was almost as funny as the answer. She had a way of doing her questions that got people giggling. Maybe it was a little patronizing, but the giggles were there. And he would giggle when he answered. These became so popular in cultural phenomenon, that they inspired a record album. If anybody remembers what a record album is. A comedian did an uncanny impression of president kennedy, or as jfk said, of teddy kennedy. It became a big bestseller. They were just the optical events. They were just theatrical events. The press did not like the idea of theatricality of it. But one reporter said it was like getting president kennedy to do the equivalent of making love in carnegie hall. They realized they were getting called on and getting airtime and they were getting famous themselves. So they signed on. They like it. Susan we are going to play a brief clip so people can get a sense of it. We dont have too much more time to talk about kennedy, but lets listen to how he sounded. [video clip] the democratic platform on which you ran for election promises to work for equal rights for women, including equal pay, wipeout job opportunity discriminations. You have made efforts on behalf of others, what have you done for the women according to the promises of the platform . President kennedy im sure we have not done enough. [laughter] president kennedy i must say im a strong believer in equal pay for equal work. I think we ought to do better than we are doing. Im glad that you reminded me of it. [laughter] [end of video clip] susan i will just let that stand. One aspect of the relationship between kennedy and the press is that they were willing to cover up his medical issues. His reliance on medications to deal with some of those medical issues. And importantly, his philandering. Why were they willing to do that . Mr. Holzer it was the last gasp of the old network. Kennedy had been a journalist after world war ii. He was a writer of sorts. We can debate whether he wrote the book on which won the Pulitzer Prize or if you just supervised the production. He was a charmer and he has lifelong friends in journalism. Ben bradlee and others, he played golf with supporters and gave them scoops. He was very clever about keeping his friends in his orbit. Giving them stories, giving them exclusives, giving them tips. So they were willing to overlook those things at the time. The prevailing idea that the president s private life is offlimits if it does not interfere with his public life was still prevalent. And years later, the man who had turned the other way defended that practice because they insisted it did not interfere with his conduct of the government. Susan and in the closed to his chapter you recognize the fact that television also canonized john f. Kennedy in his death. What were you thinking about as he wrote that . Mr. Holzer i was thinking about my longtime studies of the lincoln assassination, and how the images of his funeral, assassination and death all caps drive desk contrived into a secular sink that the same could be said about kennedys funeral. It was an elaborate affair in which his body was taken to where Abraham Lincoln was buried. On live tv, this little boy saluting his coffin. Jackie kennedy and his brothers walking slowly across ellington bridge. No one who saw that will ever forget it. It is seared into the national memory, and made people forget the successes and failures of the administration and fall in love a new and permanently with john kennedy. Susan the chapter in your book on Lyndon Johnson is important because of the vietnam war, that we dont have enough time to talk about it. I hope it will interest people in reading it. Moving on to Richard Nixon. But start with a piece of video and then we will talk about it. This is from 1962. [video clip] you had an opportunity to attack me and i think i have given as good as i have taken. Youll now write it, you will interpret it. But as i leave you, i want you to know, just think of how much you are going to be missed. You dont have nixon to kick around anymore. Gentlemen, this is my last press conference. I hope that what i have said today will at least make television, radio, the press recognize that they have a right and responsibility to give the shaft, but also recognize if they are giving the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says. [end of video clip] susan throughout his career it was antipathy between nixon and the press. What was the source throughout the campaign . Mr. Holzer he always believed he got the shaft, as he so charmingly put it. He felt he deserved lionization for his prosecution of alger his. And he never got it because the press did not like his attacks, they didnt like his anger. It persisted into that moment when he was conceding the 1960 to come back bid for governor of california. But i will say that, although he did say it was his last press conference, he famously did have many, many press conferences after that. And most of them were brittle and tense affairs because he did not like press scrutiny. By the way, if there was really a shaft involved in coverage of Richard Nixon, he would end up giving journalists the shaft when he became president and do more than any president to change the relationship and accepted area of coverage of a president of the united states. Susan how so . Mr. Holzer i think the definitive thing was two definitive things was sending Vice President spiro agnew to rail against the negativity with his illiterate if fuming of Television Critics and talking heads and talking stations. That really fueled the press. They do not like it, they do not like agnew, they reveled in his subsequent downfall and they blamed nixon. The second thing, and i wont even deal with watergate yet, the second thing was the white house enemies list. Nixon kept a list, and absurdly long list of people who he believed should be everything from taken off social lists to investigated, and it included many, many new reporters of consequence. Those familiar to the television world. Somebody came up to her and said, mary, you made the enemy list. It said you write an antinixon column every day. She said, thats absolutely not true. She said, i only write three days a week. So reporters took it as a badge of honor, but they never trusted Richard Nixon again. And what followed, nixon trying to prevent publication of the pentagon papers, losing in the Supreme Court, affirming the freedom of the press, really quite consequentially, and of course the watergate coverup in which he said very few true things to the press and the final year and a half of this presidency. Susan by the time watergate broke, was the relationship with the press corps at large just so fractured that there was no reservoir of goodwill towards him . Is that fair to say . Mr. Holzer i would absolutely agree with that. There was no sympathy for Richard Nixon. He was too dark a figure, he was too calculating a figure, he was too aggressive and secretive. Watergate was the latest and greatest manifestation of the general hostility against societal norms. Once the press smells blood, they never relented on watergate, justly so because he tried to destroy norms over the election process, clumsily, defensively, and the coverup was worse than the crime. By the way, nixon has its always good to have a press secretary. I am a former Political Press secretary and its a hard job. You have to tell the truth to the press, keep the press informed, keep your loyalty to the candidate who will be the elected official, and stay informed by the candidate. So if you leak, you have to leak very, very carefully. President nixon had ron zigler as a press secretary who was not trusted by the press. And not even liked by the president. His spin doctors, his operatives, his communication was crafting the dark strategy of his attack on the media. He was really the first president to make media attacks an integral part of his platform in his daily method of operation. And the press were never going to be interested in finding his corner, much less being in his corner after that. Susan your book is the story not just of the president s, but also of the changing press corps and changing technology that enabled them to do their work. It was the outcome of the Nixon Administration on the press corps that cover the president . Mr. Holzer the good outcome for them is, the New York Daily News had helped fund raise for franklin roosevelt, saying that he needed it for physical therapy. Which is close to saying that he needed to exercise his legs. Roosevelt did not like the idea. He invited them. Richard nixon covered up the pool. I use the word cover up, because thats what it was and it seemed to be his mo, covering up. What he did is he gave the press a theater style setting for daily briefings. And it really changed the operations of the White House Press corps. Moving out of closer proximity to the oval office. But also giving them a state of the art and Television Broadcasting to allow more to be allowed in the daily coverage of the white house. It also created a Briefing Room. Which we know too well today. Think, when we see those briefings that they are standing over the old swimming poor that roosevelt used to swim in for rehabilitation. I will give you an image that you cant forget. Lyndon johnson used to take reporters in for nude swimming. Look magazine reporters and others. Nixon ended swimming and replaced it. Susan i know that you spoke to president bill clinton from your notes and newt gingrich, who they famously squared after in the clinton presidency. I will ask one question to capture the flavor of the clinton years. Hillary clinton famously complained regularly over vast right wing conspiracy against the president and herself. In the book you ask, was he justifiably agreed or it rationally self pitying . Did you come to a conclusion . Mr. Holzer my own conclusion is that he was unjustly covered. The residue of the aggressive coverage of nixon, the ability of the press to remove a president , the ability of two journalists to become folk hereos as i say in the book, what journalist does not want to be played by Robert Redford . I think he was a bit selfpity, but he was enormously agreed. I am on record the last time i visited little rock i have a little voice segment in the clinton library, in the video display where i say, it really was a vast rightwing conspiracy. Clinton suffered the arrows of a very aggressive rightwing radio culture. Rush limbaugh and others who said vile, personal things about him and his family. And also just a culture of investigating things that should not have been investigated. I hope i make that point in the book about the tragedy of vince foster, the folly of whitewater and travel gate. I think they were all do digressions and an enormous disservice to the americans. Susan george w. Bush, to talk about him i am going to show a clip from his last press conference in 2009 where he talks about his relationship with the press. Then we will add more context of the story. [video clip] president bush i see a lot of faces that travel with me around the world. Places like afghanistan, iraq and africa. I see some new faces. Which goes to show there is some turnover in this business. Through it all i have respected you. I sometimes did not like the stories that you wrote or reported on. Sometimes you miss underestimated me. But always a relationship i have felt has been professional. And i appreciate it. I do appreciate working with you. My friends would say, what is it like to deal with the press corps . People who are trying to do the best they can. [end of video clip] susan there is the president reflecting on his eight years in office. You wrote about it, what was it like going through it for the president . Mr. Holzer i think there was an ingenious structure in the communication operations of the bush white house. Very much modeled after the reagan system, which is kind of a Good Cop Bad Cop set up with the communications aides were a great deal more negative and aggressive than the president. In which the president was kept relentlessly on message for photo ops, for chats, and even for press conferences. And president bush was a very friendly man and a charming man. I think he made some bad Public Relations mistakes. The flight over Hurricane Katrina where he did not land, but you sort of hovered just sends a terrible signal to americans that he was out of it. At this point, Television Coverage was aggressively liberal or conservative and they looked for a got ya moment and any opportunity. And most famously the dramatic landing at the uss , lincoln with a Mission Accomplished sign in the background years before the mission was accomplished. They think that was also a mistake. Some of them thought it was cute and liked it, others thought it was a southern control mechanism. A subtle control mechanism. So i think he did respect the professionalism of the press. I liked his little miss underestimated joke, because he was quite famous for now props, for malaprops, which the press loved to report. Susan our conversation is how president s become restrictive during times of war. After 9 11 and when he began the afghanistan and iraq wars, what was his stance towards the media is trying to cover the stories . Mr. Holzer it was unlike franklin roosevelt. Think about fdr and his propaganda during world war ii organizing the great filmmakers of the day, john huston, frank camper and others frank capra and others. Getting them to go and form the war and america had the record in battles. War correspondents were at the front reporting back on the blood, the gore and the agony and injuries. It was all covered from the beginning. It was reported home. Lyndon johnson, for all of his in famed demand to control every message did allow the press to cover vietnam. And of course Walter Cronkite raised questions about the war i have lost, if Middle America and it was the beginning of the downfall. The Bush Administration did not allow embedded cameras into the wars against terrorism. We barely were able to see coffin among coffin flag draped being brought back, almost on an assembly line. There were only occasionally glimpsed and unloaded from aircraft because they did not want stories like that to accept to upset the American People or the electorate. Rather they showed to play they showed pinpoint bombing, which was like watching a video game. So i think that was a major change and i think that is really the culture of war coverage right now. Dont let them in. Dont let them cover it. Susan what about the administrations pursuit of leaks . Mr. Holzer the bush reagansation and the administration were very aggressive on cracking down on leaks using lie detectors and trying to find the source of leaks. By this time there is a patriot act that for bids the use of information that might give comfort to terrorists and terrorist organizations. There was a new crackdown and new kind of informal censorship that prevailed through the obama years. Susan speaking of president obama, i would like to do the same thing with him, which is listen to him talking about his approach to information and then talk with you about his record. This is from 2010 and its a youtube interview. [video clip] one of the top questions was Warren Hunter who said, how do you expect the country to trust you when you have broken promises on the campaign trail. Most recently having a Transparent Health debate . President obama first of all, i would say we have been certified by independent groups as the most transparent white house in history. Its important to understand. We are the First White House and since the founding of the republic to list every visitor that comes into the white house online so you can look it up. People know more about the inner workings of this white house, the meetings we have, we have excluded lobbyists from boards and commissions, but we report on any lobbyist to meet with anybody who is part of our administration. We have followed through on a lot of the commitments that we have made. So warren is mistaken in terms of how he characterized it. [end of video clip] susan there is the president talking about it. But you write he finds a place among john adams, Abraham Lincoln on Woodrow Wilson as one of the most aggressive president s in blocking press scrutiny. Mr. Holzer he does make a valid point about listing appointments to his credit. But he also has the most the battles against freedom of information requests about the discussions or those records. He limited his interactions with the press and he was the president who is there at the creation of the really phenomenon of the internet explosion of the web. He created a white house website and the information that was often put out to the press and the public was on the official white house website. I have instances of reporters asking to cover it and they were directed to the website, which is an affront to the working journalist. From the obama administration, there was very aggressive investigations of journalists. And the two bestknown ones, who are the most consequential ones have similar names. James rosen and james rising. One from fox and one is a print journalist. Both of them were wiretapped in the case of the fox news reporter. Family phones were wiretapped all to find the sources of the material. Whether you agree or not that america was in the same kind of peril for its very survival as it was during the civil war, i think you have to see that barack obama was a president who could crackdown on press accessibility and coverage. And if you look at the rankings that resource organizations did at the end of his presidency, i think they come down on the side that he was not transparent, except in the sense that he argues he was. Susan as with bill clinton, you describe how the obamas went around the press and went to Communications Media to tell the real story. Would you talk about that . Mr. Holzer barack obama was the first twitter president. Im sure he still has more twitter followers than anyone in the world, except for one or two entertainers. Enormous numbers. Tens and tens and millions of followers. So the white house website, the twitter account, instagram, all of the things that the obama team originated. They have the first office of Digital Media of any white house, and they were masters of the craft. Of course, they were invented by a president who was in enormously gifted, natural communicator both an art or in , public places, and as a oneonone or one onscreen communicator. The combination of talent and technology was enormous. He is really the first internet president and took full advantage of in the best of ways, the most moderate communications, technology in his disposal. Susan the press at this time was no longer about press. Media spans all sorts of types of communications from talk radio to blogs to facebook and social media. How did all that change the relationship between the consuming public and the president . Mr. Holzer i think it is rendered some of the press more timid and less prepared to be aggressive with president ial questioning. I sort of bemoaned the level of questioning at president ial press conferences these days. I think there are gotcha questions, and the followups have no relations to the original questions. But they are not probing, they are not deep, they are very modern media moments. I think the Competition Among media is probably more important now, to White House Correspondents, than they healthy antipathy between the president and the press. Theyre fighting each other, they are fighting their platforms as much as they are doing just battle with the president , and giving the president an opportunity to really explicate on his policies. Susan the president is a constant presence in our lives, even if we dont wish him to be. Because of all of the various kinds of communications. What has that done for the president s ability to govern, versus earlier president s who can control when and how often they were seen . Mr. Holzer i think President Trump controls how often his messages get out. Its basically many, many times a day. Heres another criticism of the press, if i may. When President Trump tweets early in the morning, as he does almost daily, the new site immediately bends to his latest issue, idea, rant, complaint, attack, and half of the days news cycle is devoted to rehashing his tweet and analyzing it in the case of talking heads talking about it in some networks. This is nothing short of genius. Obama may have been the first twitter president , but trump is a president of such mastery of twitter that he ranks, i think, with fdr in radio and jfk and television as the three most technologically savvy president s. He invented the news cycle, i wont say to his will, but to his whim. Susan we have a clip of him of his first solo conference of february 17, 2017. [video clip] President Trump i am having a good time. Remember i gave you a News Conference every time i made a speech, which was like every day. I won with News Conference and probably speeches. I did not win by people listening to you people. But i am having a good time. Tomorrow they will say, donald trump rants and raves. I am just telling you. The public does not believe you people anymore. Maybe i have something to do with that, i dont know, but they dont believe you. If you were straight and really told it like it is, as Howard Cosell used to say, of course he had some questions also, but if you were straight i would be your biggest booster and your biggest fan in the world. Including bad stories about me. [end of video clip] susan criticism of the press that has continued in the white house. What do you hear in what he is saying to them . Mr. Holzer it is very hard to draw his sentences are so incoherent sometimes, the diversion is odd, its hard to really take anything from it and make any sense of it. I think one of the things he is saying that is sad is, if only you liked me, i would like you. Humphrey bogart says, what are you like me and i would be nicer to you. President trump, his very first press activity as president was going to the cia and attacking the press for saying that he criticized the cia, which he had done during the campaign. It was that moment where sean spicer had been instructed not to talk about policy initiatives, but to go off on this thing that lasted a couple of weeks, insisting the inaugural crowd was bigger than barack obamas. I will not play psychiatrist and try to understand what that was all about, but spicer later says he did not know why trump fixated on it. He was ordered to do it. And then when he did not do it successfully enough he was replaced by a person with no press experience, anthony scaramucci, and the rest is history. Just a succession of adversarial relationships with the communications director. Kellyanne conway attacking the press while her husband attacks trump. Its bizarre. It has never been like this. And i think while, i do say in the book that Donald Trumps bark is worse than his bite. But clearly john adams did more to injure freedom of the press. That Abraham Lincoln did more and wilson did more and fdr. Trump has sort of crushed down the press and its credibility and the professionalism that george w. Bush acknowledged. He may do longlasting harm from which we may never recover, in terms of our fate, our dependence on and our need for the press to ask the tough questions. Susan one of the stories that you tell about george w. Bush and barack obama is how they went into every press conference having rehearsed, to stay on message, and going out there fully prepared. President trump enjoys the spontaneity. How did the two different techniques impact the publics view of the president . Mr. Holzer we wont really know the publics view of President Trump until november, december, or whenever we successfully count votes for the 2020 election. According to the polls his spontaneity leads donald trump into polls that are hurting him. Whether he is talking about saying nasty things about women, who he says are nasty, or advocating bleach as an internal medicine. He tends to get himself into trouble by not being prepared. He is a seatofthepants. Resident he does not read briefing books, much less rehearsed for briefings. Whereas reagan, for example, at his most thought moment, the irancontra scandal, rewrote his briefing book in longhand because that is how he would learn scripts in hollywood. That is the way he would commit his lines to memory. George w. Bush really worked on the lines that he wanted to convey. There is nothing wrong with having a message to communicate to the American People. I just think the press enjoys scraping away the scabs that are barely covering the wounds that trump thinks he has endured. So the kind of circuses we see now are probably helping neither the press nor the president. Susan we spent two hours with you, you have spent years researching the topics of the president s versus the press. What are the most important things you would like leaders to readers to take away from what you have learned and the stories youve conveyed . Mr. Holzer schematic issues that the most successful or influential president s, like them or just like them, are the ones that went around the press and crafted new technologies to circumvent medias coverage and speak directly to the American People. The second thing is that, the media landscape is everchanging, its not frozen in time, that it has evolved, it was more partisan and has become more partisan than it used to be. There was a great middle period when disinterested coverage was treasured. Whether we can get back to that or the news that was put to print. As donald trump might say, we will have to see. I think the major message that i hope i convey is that, this, at its best, can be a very helpful adversarial relationship. It does not have to descend into sexist insults, racially insensitive insults. It does not have to include threats or mockery of disabled people. And it does not have to include wholesale, personal attacks on either the president or the press. It is an adversarial relationship, but it is a healthy one at its best. We always come back from the edge of this. After the civil war the Supreme Court said president s could not ever have the military close down the press the way the press is functioning. Woodrow wilson continued the committee on Public Information the day after world war i ended. Fdr relaxed his propaganda after world war ii ended. I think there are extraordinary moments that we need that sometimes upset us and the president , but there is a tradition of their going at it, these two great pillars of society, the press and the american presidency. That benefits us for the adversarial nature of the relationship. And that has to come back from the extreme in order for the body of politics that we serve and for government to fly. Susan Harold Holzer a lincoln scholar and someone who has contributed many hours to cspan over the years, thank you for two hours on your newest book, what number was it for you . Mr. Holzer 54 or 55. Susan book number 64 called the president s vs press. Thank you for your time. Mr. Holzer thank you so much for having me. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at span. Org. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] washington journal, every day would take her calls live on the air on the news of the day. And we discuss policy issues that impact you. Coming up monday morning we talk about campaign 2020 and the impact latino voters have with a the pew research center. Also a discussion of the president ial campaign in the battleground state of wisconsin with the Political Science professor at the university of wisconsin madison. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern, monday morning. Be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and tweets. Monday night, on the communicators, commissioner noah phillips. One of the interesting things about the antitrust debate is that all of a sudden, there are look of people who seem to at the world and say, if we had more competition, however they we would see all of these. Light,verything from democracy would be restored, to racial dusters racial justice, growth in the economy. Are important policy questions. It is not clear at all that antitrust was designed to our would be effective at solving this problem. Commission noah phillips, monday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, on the communicators, on cspan2. With the ongoing Global Pandemic and many schools shifting to online learning, cspans studentcam competition continues to provide students with a platform to engage in national conversation. We are asking middle and High School Students to produce a five to six minutes documentary exploring the issues they want the president and new congress to address in 2021. The constitutional investment, including the times as shown in the amendment. The issues with equality in the country. It needs reform. When youth are given the opportunity to become informed voters and engaged citizens, they vote, because democracy has been learned. For the decadelong work for illegal documents, to a pathway to citizenship for children who are born here. The immigration system fails many people. We are awarding 100,000, including cash prizes and a grand prize of 5,000. The deadline to submit is january 20, 2021. For competition rules and more information, go to our website, studentcam. Org. During a meeting with members of the house of commons, Boris Johnson took questions on changes to the brexit plan. And the response to the coronavirus. This is about 40 minutes