You. Guest thank you. Host i must say i like the title of your book very much. It seems fitting a president who is so brand conscious and likes to see his name on hotels hoteld golf courses and steaks would get his own brand name, trumpocracy. Can you define trumpocracy and explain how you came up with this concept. Guest well, we are all mesmerize bid Donald Trumps outsized personality, and its natural to believe that the permit is the secret to what is going on. Trumpocracy, which comes from the same root as democracy and autoocracy, i this stud another Donald Trumps power, its the system of enabling. Its the system in the white house, its the system between trump and congress, and its the system between trump and the media that enabled him and create an audience. The system that involves his the republican donor elite, traditional elements of the Republican Party and above all between him and that core group of voters within the Republican Party who enabled him to win the republican nomination and then go on the presidency. Host now there have been bad president s in american history, even borderline destructive president s. When did you decide that trump sort of transcended this and posed a threat to the american system of democracy itself . Guest my concerns only secondarily with donald trump. It is with this larger system. So, what i was concerned by is years being donald trump was even thought of as a candidate for president , my interest in repressive populism really intensified in the early part of the 2000s. At i started covering the Tea Party Movement and writing about that. I it was plain to me that the ideological extremism of the regular Republican Party, which was so plutocratic and indrift to what america was going through, the terrible recession, middle class incomes and savings, the first origins of the accelerating drug crisis which you could see shaping up a decade ago. Was opening space for something dangerous, and then you could see this dangerous thing takes form, first in europe, happened in france and then southeastern europe, hungary and hoe poland and i became more bid hi obsessed that such a thing what possible in the United States, it was coming, and i didnt know it would be donald trump. I was quite surprised, but when he showed up i realized, iing this is what we have been waiting for. Host im glad you raised that. Theres these two threads running through the book. One is about the stuff that trump is doing. Right . And you also write, though, about these preexisting vulnerabilities that trump sort of very sagely identified and exploited. So when youre looking at the challenges to american democracy, today under the Trump Presidency, how much are you worried about the man and the family and how much is it more institutional and systemic . Guest when youre well and healthy you shake off infections. They can kill you if youre not well and healthy. There are circumstances where donald trump or somebody like him could have fluked into office the way the did. Then the american a healthy american system of government would stop him. Give yukon crete example. Right now, right now, donald trump is receiving millions of dollars in payments from foreign business parters in the philippines, turkey, the united arab emirates, india weapon dont know how much, whether its a flat fee or getting percentages. Be have no idea. What we do know is that it seems to be affecting American Foreign policy because the countries from which draws the incomes, seem to get much easier treatment from him than the countries which he does not. The most extreme example is the persian gulf where bahrain and saudi arabia, thats have been Good Business partners for the trump family get one treatment, and qatar, which didnt have the national day in the trump hotel but canceled a lease in the trump tower in 2014, they get a different its obviously affecting American Foreign policy. You can imagine in a Healthy Society that congress would do something about this. Jimmy carter, all democratic congress. Bill clinton, all democratic congress. They held the president s accountable. This congress does not. And the complicity between trump and the republican congress, the first Building Block of this trumpocracy. Host there are different schools of thought among trump critics about the threat that this presidency is posing. There are some who worry about the authoritarian den ten si tendencies that are at the emergees. Others that chaos and others, and then the Hillary Clinton criticism you can bait a man with a tweet, et cetera. Obviously these things can overlap but after year one of trump, is there one of these tendencies that worries you most . Guest donald trump is negligent and indifferent to everything a president should do but he is quite active, committed and wiley about the thing that prosecute should not do. So, all a president should not do. Theres truth to all points. Theres chaos because donald trump cannot abide any restraint, even the kind of restraint in his own selfinterest. Dramatic example of this. Want to these things are all reported by other people. And im very dependent on and grateful to the report offering others. One thing trade to do in the book was a pay credit not just to the institution but to the individual reporter. This has become a challenge because one of the innovates of the trump is because the president denies everything, the papers started quoting 42 sources on the story. That means means you get not jue double barreled byline but three and four barreled. Host the Washington Post thanks you for get giving credit to individual reporters. Guest heres the story. When hr mcmaster replaced michael flynn, one of the first things he does is reaffirm at the american commit tot nato. Trump made a lot of noise about how much he dislikes nail toye and so much under russian influence or work, its a big problem. So mcmaster ranges for trump to pay a visit to nato headquarters and brussel and gives a speech standing in front of the monument to article 5, twisted girder from the World Trade Center and there at nato headquarters in front of the monument he will read a full throated no compromise commitment to the mutual defense treaty and to be sure that trump says the right things, mcand a halfer writes the passage himself 0, oversees writing and its in the speech. On the way to europe, mcmaster briefs reporters. This is what the president is going to say. Trump got to that portion of the speech and he skipped it. He passed. Why . Ideology hostility of nato . Treasure from the russian or just doesnt like being told what to do. We dont know. But that is where you see the consequence. What then has to happen is mcmaster now is in the situation where everybody expected this endorsement, and the question is, wow, is the president reneging, i this United States reneging and mcmaster has to brief reporters, dont meant to what youre talking about. The president did exactly what everybody expected. You have the break offering the white house staff, the discrediting of mcmaster in thes ive the thats bun of the most honorable soldiers of his generation so i think these things come together. But i would emphasize, donald trump is driven above all by greed and by the desire for dominance. Very little about ideology. Host could someone else have stepped in to do this . Is trumpocracy only possible with donald trump . Could someone else you think have as skillfully and manner exploited these vulnerabilities that you identify . Guest somebody will. Because one thing, this is going on throughout the western world. We are seeing a global decline in confidence in democracy, belief in democracy and the effectiveness of democracy across the democratic world. In the United States, it happened to express itself in the more right leaping party, but right leaning party but in other country its the molest leaning parties. You say in trump in spain and greece and britain and jeremy corbin, the leader of the labor party and many of the thing that worry me show up inside in the Democratic Party has been a more level headed party than the Republican Party but one theme i stress in the book is racial, sexual and economic tension. Sexual tension i draw special attention to. If you follow the Bernie Sanders versus Hillary Clinton primaries the gender gap between sanders voters and clinton voters war bigger than the gender gap in the general election between Trump Supporters and clinton supporters, and a lot of the things unleash fled social media were as or more misogynistic than the themes you have a lot of disaffected men, isolated women, and that is one of the sources of energy for these antidemocratic movements. Host you in the book you spend time on the conventional notions why trump did or didnt one. You. Youre ospeaker waded by the white middle class. What do we least understand about what propelled him to power. Guest you have to Pay Attention more to the nomination than that was the freakish thing. Once your one of the two most likely people on teether be president of the United States. Host you have a shot. Guest loot that was a lucky bounce. In the general election also, the real question is not about donald trump. Its about Hillary Clinton. Because barack obama in the fall of 2016 was polling well above 50 . The economy was growing. Personal incomes were rising. Political scientists would tell you, the party of the president should doesnt matter, republican, democrat, dont tell me their names. The party of the president should win a third term and so Hillary Clinton got 48point something. Such a big gap between their performance and obamas. That is the first thing that needs to be explained voter supression is part of the but theres more to it. Her weakness enabled then trumps lucky bounce flecker aid from the russians, the comey thing to have impactment had she been stronger she ooh have been able to resist those. But the battle for the nomination, thats the missmer rising. Trump should not have won that. What ought to have happened is jeb bush campaigned as paul ryan plus more immigration. The republican and so he was set up. That bubble was set up to pop. If he went to these tea party rallies you saw with the Republican Base was signal, more health care, less immigration, no more bushes, and what they were offedder was less health care, no immigration and onemer bush. He was visual. White didnt a normal political act youre, scott walker. Host there was a very brief front runner. Guest and yet, okay, not the worlds most charismatic guy but had a story. Or somebody else. Why didnt somebody else intuit these themes trump was intuiting, that the republican votes want medicare protected, not dismantled. Less immigration, not more. Theyre going to need social security. Why didnt such a person take those themes and then deploy them and be the one to lay jeb bush low and thats part of the story of the free conditions that enabled trump is he ideologyat riggeddity rigidity of the republican part. They cant ick. That wrote an autopsy report guest the connection or another to the wrote a help wanted ad with jeb bush in mind. The fix was. In but a shrewder political character should have been able to see this is terrible advice, this report user bass the report said i mean, i start the book by talking about 2012 election and how within 72 hours the entire Republican Party has converged on the message, change nothing. Letter from mitt romney, i think he would have been a fabulous president but the party sent him to campaign on a platform that included gradually with drawing the medicare guerin tier from everyone under 55678 its amazing he got 47 or the vote. Only got as much as that because people did not understand what the republicans were promising to do to their own voters of might have thought that the reaction was we need be a little less dismisssive of people who work for wages. Be more attentive to the fact that even our voters really like medicare and want it to be available, even to those who are now under 55. They couldnt see that. They could only see the part of the romney platform they did not like which was his moderately tough line on immigration. Didnt lining that. Let jet city isson that and make it make gooddebt rid of that and make it 100 rich person platform. Host its ease to to fixate on trump, right . Hes on the title of your book are its the classic overcoat shot and people publishers love these days. Yet you write that this book is not a story of trump or not just story of trump its a story of those who unable, power, support and collaborate with donald trump. Guest uhhuh. Host who are they . Who are the enablers . How do you break them down . Guest lets start with, first, there are those who immediately serve him. Who lie for him. I think often for understandably even novel reasons like hr mcmaster, flying conceal the fact the president of the United States gasol not want to honor the nato treaty. They are he larger executive branch outside the white house. The department of justice and the fbi, staffed we people like rod rosen sign. Theyd never seen Rod Rosenstein seems like a conscientious and not imaginative purpose. Struggling to do the right thing and mollifying the president , trying to walk the line and not understanding what a spirit of destruction and what he is negotiating with. How implacable. So a lot of people are ball offed baffled be this and way widen more and its the republican monday congress not doing their job, nonnot insisting 0 baitic thing, like if the president over thats on tn payroll 0 foreign Business People and didnt understand at the donor class in the first year of a presidency what happens is the president has an agenda and is surrounds be people with human weaknesses and you have seen it in the lbj movie. The president wants a civil rights bill. The house of representatives want the dam and the deal is done. This is the other way around. Paul ryan as the agenda and donald trump is their person with all he human weaknesses theyre the enabler. Donors who believe this guy would be the vehicle for achieving that they wanted, and the price would be something bearable. And finally, enablers are the sorry, one the conservative intellectual world, which developed a series of rationalization. That and justifications and excuses. If they cant defend him, they attack his opponent. If they dont convincingly attack the opponent, they change the subject. Theyve i cant change the subject they quiet. And last through there are in the country these americans who are in the millions, drawn to a radical politics of authoritarianism as a way of achieving what things they want to achieve and then punishing people whom they want to punish. Host a lot to unpack there lets start with the party a little bit. You write that once in office, it was not trumps own cunning that enabled him to defy long established standards of decent behavior way. Come miss si of allied in Republican Party and the once great party united elevate one plan into a position of almost absolute power over itself. Clearly the Republican Party, the establishment thought they were getting something out of this deal. Guest ways. Host what have they gotten beyond tax bill. Guest gotting a tax biehl, deconstruction of environmental regular layings, liking forward to more of those. Obama left behind because he couldnt pass, legislate tv restriction opens carbon emissions, a epa scheme regulating carbon and its intrusive and irrational and a big project will be shutting that down. They got relief from parts of obamacare and some hope that although i couldnt be repealed. It could be damaged enough to collapse. They get important favors for the financial industry. Above all the breaking of the Consumer Finance protection board. That has just been dismantled. Donald trump has his own omb director serving at the same time as the director of the Consumer Protection board, paralyzing that body. So, i think yeah. Neil gorsuch. Guest they got that probably more important to rankandfile than the donor elite. Theyre getting stuff. Theyre getting real substantial, tangible benefit. One of the things that as this Corporate Income tax. Lets not minimize how big a deal that is. One of the arguments, long become argued by economists who pays the Corporate Income tax, paid by workers, by consumers or paid by shareholders . So we now have an answer to that question. When the stock market goes up, 30 , on the expectation of a Corporate Income tax cut the stock market is saying we think the shareholders are getting most of this this because it if went to workers and customers the stock market should not have reacted to it at all. You write that trump has ripped out the conscience of half of the political spectrum and left a moral void where american conservative once was. Did trump do that or when did that excavation of the moral conscience of the republican been. You have been an inhouse critic. In obama years your colleague wrote a book about what he viewed as a moral bankruptcy of the party already. When did this begin . Guest the trend begins i think in reaction to disappointment with bush presidency in which i served. Against the economic disappointment and the iraq war which i was a supporter, and the party began to move in a more radical direction. When i say radical, temperature economic individualism and plutocratic politics. At exactly the same the then middle class was getting into bigger and bigger trouble and especially white america, which the Republican Party has divorces was getting in particularly big trouble with debt diseases and addiction. So that the party moved away from its voters. And that is the beginning the become book opens the step down which the american political system is tumbling. I think its true of both parties that since the end of the cold war theyve been playing the political game much more ruthlessly than between 1945 and 1990. Thats a theme of the book with didnt understand how much the cold war limit evidence what the party bz did to each other because the country was in dade lethal Great Power Competition and depend on president ial leadership and the president had to be respected, had to be respectable and the parties has to set some limit what they did to each so the president could lead. With the struggle behind us the Party Competition has become more savage and the president has become a person that is much less necessary to respect and much more just an ordinary party leader. Host the mutual toleration norm that plated cat scientist talk about. Guest exactly. Host you write that during the first year of trump so much of the attention has been on the president s bullying or raging or his tweets and unpredictability but the most radical attack on american norms of governance were attempted by the regular republicans in the house and senate. What were those. Guest thy undertook two gigantically expensive pieces of legislation, huge tax cat and repeal of obamacare and replacement of a new kind of medical system, details to be filled in later. So you dont know how much you will lose. Sso the if a country was invited twice without hearings without opponents of the legislation getting the chance to be heard and present expert witnesses of what this would mean. That is a real departure. A big piece of the legislation, obamacare past than the legislation in the past but obamacare was a model of the buddha saiissaid of procedure at happened. Host i want to talk about the people around trump and the administration and the white house. There were those early on a International Security realm the true believers in the beginning and then you had those that have made it their piece about serving in this white house or administration and perhaps even as an effort to protect against the president. You talk about him in the book you say that when people do bad things they usually have good reasons. What role do these people play talking about jim mattis. Then we look back on them as enablers or the last line of defense . Guest across the river keys and a giant bureaucracy that has tremendous power and is a fourstar general which doesnt mean much but within their universe that is an overwhelming difference. And the sacrifice of the rewards he is abundantly earned he also knows he cannot be fired. That would be a conflict because it would have to go through. To the point that in various ways hes been able to make clear how little regard. Host the transgendered and for instance. Guest this came into the Public Domain where hes talking to a group of a couple dozen soldiers he says i dont have to tell you our country is and what it should be right now, that we have to get back to being more respectful to one another and kinder to one another and until that happens i am asking you just hold on, so that is a pretty serious critique. Other people have less immunity to. First he said you should surf and later changed his mind. We are not in this dialogues mind. Consider the role whether you are serving the National Security and then you need to know yourself how sure am i that if asked to do something wrong i will say no. Once you are sure that you will do the right thing if the president agrees. Host i guess it is too early to discern in what buckets or categories. Guest we can see the outstanding bad actors and some of the good actors. Some people are good in some ways and bad in others. Rex tillers and is proving to be a disaster if secretary of state, but also to be a non enabler of donald trump. So that is a complicated verdi verdict. Host theres also another risk you identify to this. You warned in the buck to disregard for the behavior and others to turn their own norms of behavior. Guest you worry that the military whether it is activeduty generals and surfing the administration could be tempted to expand into the less deferential to the control. Do you still worry about that and see any sign of that materializing . Guest this is one thing that worries me. I call it the autoimmune disorders. The system in selfdefense does things that are bad. My joke is in seven days so ive seen that movie. Hes in the chain of command and if the way the country is going to protect itself is by military escaping controlled that is very dangerous and it is happening in lots of ways. President trump allows 14 people to read the daily intelligence brief. Normal administrations allow three, four, five, six. Normally it would be the Vice President , National Security adviser, chief of staff, basically thats it. Few enough people. It is highly compromised and of course we know about the secrets to the russian ambassadors either because he wants to just show off for some reason so if you are the people in charge of these and you know the president is very curious, how informative i wonder i if the daily brief today compared. Information begins to stop and maybe you get a wink and a nod to permission. We see it as the generals getting a lot of operational authority. Remember the president was very proud to tell us the commander made the decision all by himself, but they do happen to make a lot of decisions by themselves. You have to undo those habits especially when you consider what is happening on the Democratic Party. Then donald trump is replaced by george h. W. Bush, widely respected in the National Security bureaucracy. They may be able to pull the power but what if they do as much an outlier on the democratic side wouldve donald trump has two terms. Bureaucracies always wont slip. They always remember chief of staff john kellys outburst about his contempt for civilian authority. If you have not served you have no right to ask questions. Could there be an american sentence than that. That is who has the right to ask the question, your civilian masters for who you work. I dont recall if this is an interview when trump first came back he felt there was a shakeup to the party but you thought he could be salutary to rethink some of its policies. Now that you have seen the symbiosis between donald trump and the Republican Party, what happens to his party after trump . Guest it has three future futures. The best Case Scenario is there is a decisive electoral lesson and at the same time as local electorates reject the attempt to make voting more difficult thathen we are seeing spreading across. The methods are not going to be acceptable and the party then evils to the party of Enterprise Business we accept the rules of the game and the social insurance state as it was built and within that context not because they are not legitimate because they have a Party Affairs and so a lot of what democracy is about is you have to do it one way or another that is the most optimistic scenario. Its also possible the Party Remains in the agenda and the defeat isnt so bad. You mean like voter suppression. There were some people i was in dialogue with does a great spasm and that is and you cant look at the most spectacular most hideous democratic breakdown in all of political history in the most extreme circumstances of hyperinflation and unemployment and famine and civil war. That isnt how it is going to happen. The whole point of the modern authoritarianism. If you can can identify the ri but stop that is just as good or better yet you get just as much power and the legitimacy and it turns out you dont have to disqualify very many people and you dont even have to tell anybody, you just tell your se self. Host there is a book out at the same time as yours and it is in dialogue. How simpatico do you think the gop is to that . Guest i think that is a very possible scenario. Theres a huge influence on my thinking. Im going to recommend it but his central thesis bu there is a lot of success in the democracies but is there an ability to reassure her that the democracthat thedemocracy will h of a threat i quote this you see it on the internet but the democracy can only last until the majority can vote from the public treasury. Its attributed to a lot of people sometimes aristotle other times. It seems as best as anybody can tell to come from an oped in the 1950s by the retired state legislator. But wherever it comes from it is the opposite of the truth where the democracies get control and leaving aside the extreme scenario is where people who become convinced that letting everybody vote means they will lose assets and when the democracy survives a. Hes going to take everything from even a few hundred billion dollars and in order to defend what they had, they became more open to the radical solution. Host you talked about the sort of concerted intellectuals that accommodated themselves to trump. What has the rise done to the conservative font . There is an essay in the magazine that says theres this kind of revitalization of the conservative publications. Its how. Do you see that happening among perhaps the conservative intellectuals who have not made their peace with donald trump, i think that could happen, i think it will. I dont see any sign that it has happened yet. We are still at the point that people are being given the moral assets test and i am impressed and grateful at how many people are including some that are sort of shining in this moment and are standing up to. They are one of the fiercest critics of those that do not want with donald trump know where he was at the time. Part of it i dont think they yet understand how big their ideas are and how much they were solutions to problems from one of period of history or circumstance. They brought the conditions of change and this is my life story. I applied this to myself. The conservative as i grew up with in the 1970s and 80s if you have an inflation we know it is monetary and deregulation. In the totalitarian geopolitical enemy, we know it. If you have a lot of crime, we know what to do. If you have international chaos. If america suffers the problems we do know how to solve. I think theyve shown themselves people of character, and should always be saluted. Host there is a passage in the book i wanted to ask about because i was not entirely clear. You said maybe you dont care about the future of the Republican Party that you should. Republicans will always be with us and if they cannot win they y will not abandon conservatism. You will see as many more members of the house that i houi dont think everybody should vote. Voting should be difficult. You should have to make an effort. You shouldnt be just anybody walking off the street. In the democracy in the series of debates 400 years ago there is a right to live just as much and thats the idea of democracy. People are not equal in the wisdom or aptitude or wealth but from the point of view of the meeting of their own lives they are all equal in about one voice for that one person is entitled to equal consideration. If you start saying but not if they are late or not if they cant get off work on a tuesday then you are discarding them if you can do a lot of rationalization and some of it may have a lot of power. Theres something to be said they will be deprived of the information they need. Its not a 24 hour drugstore. And voting from home or theres something to be said of participating in the civic rituals to cast these votes. But there is a mood that says we want to actually stop certain categories of people and that is driven by the anxieties. Isnt that at some level a rejection of the conservatisms belief in individual liberty and selfdetermination . Guest yes they believe in postings and thathose things any theyve been able to make peace. It is a historical act. Many democratic innovations were driven by a conservative minded people in a way. Sometimes in a way that is uncomfortable to much of the Energy Behind the womens suffrage was conservative. It counted on to women voters to do was to suppress the strikes of control drinking. The women were mobilized because they would vote for this kind of society. And indeed, the huge republican landslide of 1920 was enabled by the gender gap in the republican favor either women voters. Host you write in the book about the response to the demonstrations and violence in charlottesville virginia. And theyre clearly appear to be forces still emboldened and both take comfort in the rise. It isnt a huge focus on the book but more broadly what do you see as the role of the Trump Presidency and beyond it and do you think that he has something he cant quite control or understand . Guest i think that is a great way to put it. When you have radical movements, is it something that is so marginal you dont have to deal with it. These are people that do violent things and then cracking down there wont be more than 40 of them. The rest of them, move them from society. Society will be safe. But sometimes you get radical groups that are expressing Something Real and broadly shared. The black panthers. They were in radicalized forms and america was not content with the achievements an and this isa wonderful way to a lot of anger. We can vote. At that point, with a wide conservatism does is to say we have to identify the personalities and isolate and identify the grievances they are exploiting and address them. It is a combination of both impression and obsession thats how you meet those that are broadly based and i think my reaction to things like charlottesville and one of the reasons i was curious int and ae same time horrified. The selfmedication with food and video games. Something is going wrong and if so those people end up sometimes dropping out of society altogether. So, the task of creating the leadership and this is why i see donald trump as such a tragedy. You cant say there is good or bad things. He is taking everything that you ought to be working on and he is correcting an it and putting ito a dead end. The response is to the ones who bear arms. The ones who incite on the internet and basically play the part of the preachers and marginalized those millions. Thethey needed better answer thn being told how much privilege they got. Host i want to shift a little bit to the international scene. Its hard to separate these things that was part of the impact do you think will be more lasting. The president is contemplating a future in which he treats hundreds of thousands of casualties in your country to avoid any nuclear risk to his country into the same time the nagging on deals and attacking the free trade agreement. They ask for the protection of the president of china. They have a history of nationalist conflict and one is in the democracy and one is not. If they can provide provide ande United States cant or wont then you have to talk to china and i think that is in place and the opening of the border which donald trump hails as an achievement. It is able and for some reason its the most important geopolitical enemy and he couldnt be more hostile. The person that hes appointed to the german leadership there is no u. S. Ambassador to the European Headquarters either and they had something obliging to say that they are not going to forget this. What does it take to look for leadership in the way that it perhaps once did . Guest this was going to be a problem for the United States no matter what. 30 of the World Economy in the nixon years a little over 20 and it was on its way to being 15 . The United States isnt reinforced by the wealth of its friends but it wanted to exert the kind of power it did in the 1980s it was going to need a sustained coalition and that is always difficult, so it takes Enormous Economic growth in the United States. Bad behavior from americas rivals and right now it looks to many like a more predictable alternative in the United States. If it becomes unpredictable that may bring some friends back. But it may take careful painstaking tedious work by those that dont understand how they worked or why it was built. Host the origins of this book at its heart are found in this piece that you did a year ago something along the lines of how to build an autocracy. By the way this is a costly decision because these cover stories are linked to the print advertising and this was an economic risk because this was the moment as usual you forget how unusual it is. Host you put your self for years into the future imagining the beginning of a second term and a lointo one of the things w are things like a sort of compliant stigmatize pressed and acquiescent public. I would like to ask you to test forward again in the american tradition defined. Do you see the guard rails holding or how do you see this battle playing out . I think many of them are coming true so they were prosperous, he had immigration restriction policies to tighten the market and he spent a lot of infrastructure and the Infrastructure Program hasnt materialized yet and its not hard to imagine that they will. These markets and people liked it. One of my predictions is 2018 maybe a better year than 2017 as the wage increases flow through the economy. I did predict a compliant congress that depends on outcomes of elections in 2018. If the economy is strong in 2018, the losses may be less dramatic than most people today are imagining they will be. The treatment of the press i spent a lot of time on the use of antitrust and that is a concern for the president as has been the use of the time warner merger to put pressure on cnn. So far the elite press has been resistant but the larger concern is that it is made ever less relevant by a country where more and more people get soft views by social media and facebook is making decisions right now to indicate a greater willingness to play ball with authoritarian regimes outside of the United States and if it were under pressure in the United States, facebook was a Business Model aninsensitive to government pressure. A very few regulatory changes. If the government would deem facebook a publisher, if somebody detains somebody on facebook, somebody writes an article for the Washington Post the Washington Post is liable. Somebody writes on facebook, they are not liable. Why is that . May be they should be liable. Maybe then if they are liable suddenly the number of mps they will face enormous profitabili profitability. Little changes in privacy regulations to adopt would have a huge impact on the model. Its easy to imagine pressures like that to be brought to bear especially as we get closer to the next president ial election. Host thank you so much for being here