Transcripts For CSPAN2 Books About President Trump And The 2020 Presidential Election 20240712

Independent you have a lot of leverage in the energy world. Also because we are the recipient purchasers of most countries goods other countries makes stuff and sell it to us they need to sell it to us, we make stuff, it would be nice to sell it to them but mostly we sell it to ourselves. Trump understood those things and realize we can fix the American Economy if he could get us off of middle east energy he could use trade wars to renegotiate the agreements with china, with japan, with south korea mexico and canada. The United States in a far better position, have much more leverage and then start negotiating my advice is that now that you have china in the phase 1 trade agreement, you have a trade agreement with mexico and canada, one with japan and south korea, probably get one with the bricks by the end of the year. We now have a consortium and trading blocs where we can go to china, a lot of us have the same complaints about the chinese treatment and we could go as a block led by the United States and say we demand a new deal. We dont want to keep you down but we want you to stop exploiting the generosity that weve given you over these decades. Thats interesting. I want to talk to you about tech americana. I think its really the ab when we speak about china really relate to him its given us to some extent a world of peace, weve seen abi know youve seen as a complete waste of american lives, and of course american treasure. How do we extricate ourselves from places like iraq and afghanistan . When others can be a vacuum, we know there are concerns how do we get out of those big wars and focus energy and resources at home . I think foreign affair is like life, frankly, like childbearing, you pick your fights and you have priorities, to me the big priority is china. While isis is a problem and all these other things, they are problems but you dont want to lose track of the real problem. I worked with president megan and he was great at understanding what the real gain here . The soviet union and the United States. In its nuclear weapons. Lets not get sidetracked with all this other stuff because it might prevent you from dealing with a major issue of your time. What trump has allowed the Energy Industry and all United States, weve gone in three or four years from net Energy Importers to exporters. Within a short period of time we replace the middle east of the world major source of energy. Once we can get off of their energy, we did have to get sucked into their psychodramas they been fighting each other for thousands of years as now tribal warfare. We dont belong in the middle of that. We dont need it, we could probably replace their oil. I think that to me is one of the important things is all the other stuff you mentioned, thats important but not as important and distracts you from doing the important thing which is dealing with asia and china and the 5g Global Technologies of the future then you should have a very different approach. I was critical of not going into afghanistan because we shouldve killed the people who went after us but we kinda did that after three months. We should not have stayed around to rebuild afghanistan and we sure shouldnt have stayed around and tried to rebuild these countries that dont want to be rebuilt. He talked in the book about the idea that we are trying to nation build overnight even if overnight looks like 20 years. And what is missing is the build of Civil Society is the build of institutions, you cant just make a democracy, create a democracy. He cant just create a government you can just create educational institutions is has to come from the countries where you are. You talked about the invasions being the right thing but the staying being the wrong things. Mentioned your views on institutions of the United States. Ive appreciated that you are candid with the respective with the president s tweeting. Im interested in your thoughts about the importance of institutions in this country as the backbone of democracy. The Administrative State which i know youre not a big fan of. On the other hand, past the judiciary where, for example, would see the president who has a tax judges sort of meddling a little bit to some way or another in the terms of speaking judges in charge of trials and People Associated with him. Can you talk to me about the importance of institutions. One of the most important institutions, the First Amendment is freedom of speech and freedom of press. I think trump understood like reagan did that the press is going to be against it. There against all press. I would argue that. You can see the courts from various abi do agree that some president s get better treatment to the channel youre tuned into, George Washington talked about the press. He couldnt be bothered with the newspaper but continue. I think trump has understood the same way reagan did, the same way i think all of our great revolutionary president s did comey have to find a way to get directly to the American People and jump over the heads of those press establishments. Reagan did it by going around the country and speaking to cities and towns across the country. Going to local radio stations, local television stations, fdr, franklin roosevelt, he did it by fireside chats talking to the American People directly on the radio. How did trump do it . He understands the present and the like him he even says theyre going to hate him and lie about him. But hes found a way to reach directly over the heads of those people directly to the American People, tweeting. Sometimes, i dont like the tweets but some of them make my skin crawl. On the other hand its been very effective for his ability to get directly to the American People. For that to me thats an institution that he and reagan and fdr and lincoln and going all the way back have preserved, which is the free speech of the american leaders to talk directly to the American People. How do we find that balance and freedom of the press also in the First Amendment and we wouldnt have watergate if we didnt have the wall street journal and Washington Post reporters. Where is the balance between a press mob getting in the way of the president and a state thats actually asking the questions that matter to get answers to the American People . Is there always going to be attention. What will happen, i spend a lot of time trying to figure out how, how do you and me you and i we talked about this at the beginning of our conversation we said, theres a lot of people just screaming at each other stop you cant reason its like trying to like trying to reason with it tired twoyearold toddler. Never going to break through. I think you realize that eventually those people just become irrelevant. Thats the ultimate proof. Im a real believer in the common sense of the common american and those voices that are trying to strangle or refuse to listen, they will eventually go by the wayside because nobodys going to listen, they are just screaming. Am i worried about the balance . Yes. Its our democracy. It will get a little out of whack here and there. At the end of the day it seems to find its center. The Republican National Convention Starts next week and we are taking this hour to show you programs about President Trump. Next, author nick adams offers his thoughts on what President Trump and Winston Churchill have in common. This is from may 2020. Donald trump and Winston Churchill have a lot in common now first glance when you look at both men you would think that to be the case. One was five foot six inches and love to drink, the other is a six foot three inches teetotaler. One is famously in his pajamas almost every afternoon. The other would appear barely sleeps. One began their career by introducing tariffs. The other by opposing them. One was this great soaring compelling athe other a rather crude but very effective tweeter nonetheless. On the surface they seem to be profoundly different. It is soon as you start to drill a little bit deeper as i did in my book trump and churchill you find that the men had remarkable similarities. Both intensely disliked even hated, both love their country, both playing speakers and clear thinkers, both alpha males both had an acrimonious relationship with the media, both endured massive battles with the establishment and their own political party, both had red assessors that were considered very weak of course Winston Churchill had Neville Chamberlain and donald trump had barack obama. They are actually incredible parallels between the times and the men and thats why i wrote the book. Rick adams, when we look back at Winston Churchill in history, we often picture him as beloved and with unanimous support. It certainly wasnt that way. Like donald trump was a disrupter. It was somebody that was bold, he was somebody that was brash. He was someone that decided to do things a different way. Whenever somebody like that comes into the fold, often the people that have been in the fold for a long time really dont like it and do everything they can to stop it. In fact, in my book we offer excerpts from British National newspapers written in the late 1930s early 1940s and if i did tell you that those experts were from British National newspapers, referring to Winston Churchill, you might think you are reading the Washington Post or the New York Times and it was about donald trump. So similar are the criticisms, so identical are the accusations. Both men lack judgment abthat they only go with their gut instinct, too optimistic about all the things weve heard over the last three or four years about donald trump criticisms leveled as Winston Churchill. Both were party searches as well. They certainly were. Yes. Winston churchill was fluid. Winston churchill really was a lifelong politician, he had a stint in the military, donald trump of course had been a businessman. Both of them had different backgrounds but they certainly were fluid in the early years in terms of the political affiliations formerly that they had but i think what both men had in common was a love of country, a log of the average everyday regular ordinary person that lived in their country and they had sentiments and tastes that resonated with the people at the time, in the movie the darkest hour a couple years ago many of the viewers will remember a scene where Winston Churchill wanted to in london and revisits with the regular commuters and he had that kind of great relationship with the average person and rather surprisingly because Winston Churchill was this aristocratic guy, born into money, wealthy, in the same way donald trump business billionaire businessman that seems to have bluecollar taste in terms of the food he eats and what he does, both men very relatable. Donald trump loves junk food, Winston Churchill, similarly obviously ate too much like all of us do on occasion. Drink too much, thought gout. These are things we all look at as humans and say, i kinda dont mind that guy, he does a few of the things i do, hes pretty normal. You also mentioned that the times were similar. They were. Certainly right now with what we are going through with the invisible enemy. The chilling phrase that President Trump elected to use to badge this coronavirus with. There were warlike wartime circumstances like now. And we saw new york mayor bill de blasio, recently and accuse the president of peddling a false optimism with respect to the coronavirus. A lot of that is similar. Churchills fight was on the outside. Donald trumps fight is clearly on the inside. Churchill of course was fighting the axis powers, overcoming nazi tyranny and that particular threat from a foreign enemy and in many ways Donald Trumps fight is a cultural fight. A culture war, a battle for values. He of course does have some foreign enemies as well in terms of china and iran and others, north korea, but really i think most people see Donald Trumps most major wars to be a domestic one where hes fighting various elements of the media. Cspans coverage of the Republican National Convention Starts this monday and booktv is taking a look at books about President Trump. From this past june pulitzer prizewinning winner a love is complicated, i think trump love is really complicated. I am told and i am seeing that when they first got together there was a real connection there. I think it was real. He admires her because shes a lot of things he is not. When she gets angry she doesnt scream or do anything impulsive. She just walks away. He loves her cool. She admires him, she admires what hes able to do. She admires his connection to people. They are both really distrustful of most people. They both like the same things in some ways. They both value image, they both devalue beautiful things, wealthy things. They both like a lot of the same things. I think they actually have a lot more in common than people think and there are really tight unit, family, and for her at her family, her mother, her father, and barren, very tight group and very few other penetrate and know the real inner person. I think their relationship clearly has hit rocks at different times, its been up and down, theyve been together for 22 years. I have a lot in the book about this but she was furious after the revelations about his infidelity, embarrassed to no end as she was reading about Stormy Daniels and karen mcdougall. But she has an extraordinary capacity to kinda figure out, whats my next best move . Somebody whos known her for a long time and say, she always think that way. She doesnt do anything in a hurry and did she get more from walking away from trump or staying with him, thats how she thinks. You think those disclosures, they were certainly just embarrassing do you think they were surprising to her . Shucks several people told me that she learned details from all those press reports, she did not know the details. I find it hard to believe that she didnt know she knew something was going on but it pretty clear that the details and the publicity of that, she has a son, the news was everywhere. She hates how he talks. The excess Hollywood Tape was where he was talking, caught on tape, tens of millions of people heard him say really gross route things highly embarrassing. She didnt know that tape existed. She did know all she was gonna be in for when they went into politics. At that moment that was a crucial moment. She could have blown up his president ial ambition by publicly rebuking him, walking away, it was a perilous time for donald trump during the 2016 campaign but she didnt, she stood by him. Whats your sense about why she did that . Theres a bit in the book about this because in trump tower with topex, Chris Christie, bannon, the whole innercircle, its one month to november 2016 election and they hit play and the room listens to that excess Hollywood Tape and just, trump was getting red from here on up and some people thought the campaign was dead there. Other people were moving quickly into, how are we going to spin this . But it was pretty clear pretty quickly that trump was really worried about milani up because he knew that if she didnt stand by him them, think about the female voters. Without her backing him up, he didnt even win most votes he just won the key states. 10,000 votes in one state made a difference in some cases. So i went to pennsylvania right after that because milani melania trumpspoke. They sent her out there and she stood up to a crowded was a daytime crowd, mostly women in the crowd and bashed him. He won pennsylvania. I think nobody would dispute in that campaign how important she was at that moment. Just her presence made a difference in the campaign at that moment but you write about other ways in which she had influence over donald trump, including some of the most fundamental decisions. Who to choose as a running mate that melanias voice was an important one when he was thinking about that. What did she do, what influence did she have on that decision . Again, i think this is why people underestimate her because you dont see her, she famously doesnt go into the west wing. She stays in the first ladys quarters. In the east wing of the white house or even more quiet residential parts. But shes on the phone and he has brought in candidates jobs and the station and mostly run through and the reason, he doesnt trust that many people. He thinks she has great instincts. During the campaign when he was trying to figure out who to pick for Vice President , the last three were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former new jersey governor Chris Christie, and mike pence. She spent two days with the pence, in july 2016 and she knew Chris Christie for a long time, she met Newt Gingrich, there was talk maybe its can be Newt Gingrich because he really needs help on capitol hill. All the speculation but the people i spoke with who were right in the middle of this said, once melania said to donald, pence is your guy because he will be content to be a number two cannot be gunning for your job like the other two alphas. One of the people was telling me, she thought the other two were alpha and pence would be just content to be Vice President. Its interesting to me that both thought that but how to present her argument to trump in a way thats appealing. As Anthony Scaramucci told me, trump likes to be the start and he doesnt like costars and that was a very appealing way to present the Vice President ial candidate. He didnt want a coaster. Up next in our look at President Trump, the Republican Party in the upcoming president ial election of a former republican speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, who in a program from june 2020 made his case for why the president should be reelected in november. When i first set out to write the book i thought that trump had a very substantial advantage and i would have said at the time that my expectation was that he would win and by a big margin. I think now its up in the air but i think it depends in part on what happens. If the economy starts to come back enough the people feel like they see hope then i think the president has a huge opportunity to win. If the economy stumbles and it feels like whatever trumps magic was he a cut it anymore then i think theres a problem. The challenge for democrats is, i did report the other day on biden commissioner pelosi is a machine i said this is not an election between President Trump and president biden, its an election between President Trump and the machine. In which biden has only won the weakest of the three. A. A number of friends romeo and called me and said it really scared them. To think about what biden, pelosi, and schumer would be like in a room with no supervision. It would be wild. I think for the moment its truly ironic, biden is the candidate who is so weak that the longer he can hide the better off he is. The morning he starts campaigning, if he ever does, it will be so painful to watch his inability to function that i think he could melt pretty quickly. He made a point in the book that President Trump made a bet and that is that his use of social media could be the news media and and hes been at it now and that war and using those tactics for several years, do you think that technology is such today that with his grasp on social media, gives him an advantage over unified may be on the left or are we seeing as result of all this cultural war a balancing of that power . I think without social media trump wouldve been driven off the field. This is a guy that we know that as early as i think the summer of 16 people were writing columns that say, we might have to impeach him. On the day he was sworn in the Washington Post had an article about whether or not trump would be impeached. He has had 92 or 93 percent hostility every single day for winning the election until today. If he had not had a huge social media face he wouldve been broken as it is he actually has a slight advantage. Hes gotten them a lot more people thinking about fake news than i wouldve thought likely two or three years ago. I had the experience enough to tour it which has the second largest egyptian collection outside of egypt for strange reasons but we got a guide to take us to this museum and were going to one of the halls he points to a statue and he says people will tell you x but thats fake news and i found myself saying, wait a second i have an italian guy in Egyptian Museum using Donald Trumps language. Thats cultural impact. I would say that, i wish he was a little more disciplined and i wish he would delete at least 10 of his tweets before he sent them. Having said that, his ability to keep pounding away and i think has saved his presidency would been crushed in a free information environment because the media hates him at a level ive never seen any candidate faced with the level of hostility then trump has to live with everyday. Its an interesting point that you make about trumps style of pounding away relentlessly always counter punching whether counter punching up or down. Thats how he plays it. You think the left has learned something from that . I get the sense that they have become as relentless in the attack as well. I think they were already on it, thats what they did to jerry ford. Remember ford slips hit his head getting off air force one that becomes a relentless series of jokes. I think there are two different stories to trump that you touched on and blended together. One is he believes in counter punching and i think he learned that by coexisting with page 6 any work. I think he learned early on that every time theyd hit him he would hit them and as long as he did that he was getting lots of publicity. The member in the early days hes a relatively unknown real estate guy and he wants to rise he wants to get known and manhattan is probably as tough environment as there is for doing that. So one part is this deeply held belief that you always counter punch. But the other parties that hes a genius at ramping. You go back to his first book the art of the deal, which was a best seller for years and years and years, you look at how many trump towers trump hotels, trump golf course, one time i went to see him before he was a candidate he gave me several trump ties and said the reason they were successful is there about two inches longer than most ties so americans are big people. He once did this entire stick where vic was late in the campaign where romney said something about trump is not really a business guy he brings in trump states, trump water, like 25 minutes bringing products out have a number one tv show which was stayed on the air for i think 13 years. I would say, he understands relentlessly positive optimistic randy and thats the apprentice and the trump ties and so forth. He understands counter punching but they are different patterns. They happen to fit together but they are different patterns. Cspan coverage of the Republican National Convention Starts this monday and booktv look at other programs about President Trump and his campaign for reelection continues. Up next to abortion or recent interview with faith and Freedom Coalition founder and chair ralph reed in this video he weighs in on why evangelical christians should support the president. What did you think of the president s walk to st. Johns episcopal. I strongly supported it. I released a statement at the time of the artifact. I supported it for two reasons. Number one, because i think the president was making a strong and powerful statement by walking across Lafayette Park that we are not going to allow our cities or our streets to be taken over by criminals, by looters, and by domestic terrorists, who burned down businesses, shoot Police Officers and in the case of st. Johns, tried to burn down one of the most sacred ecclesiastical spaces in our country. Thats wrong, its over the line, it dishonors the memory of george floyd. Its contrary to everything that doctor Martin Luther king preached, lived, and taught and it ultimately is counterproductive to addressing the very real issue of racism, discrimination and Police Brutality. In the second message he was sending is that while we need to fight the evil of racism and while we need Public Policy responses to racism and Police Brutality and i support all that, my organization faith and Freedom Coalition lobbied for years for criminal Justice Reform so that africanamericans who we believe have been unfairly incarcerated under mass incarceration would get a Second Chance at life. Not just africanamericans but disproportionately those of color. But ultimately the answer to what ails our country including the original city of racism can be found in the repentance, the forgiveness and the redemption that is found through the gospel. And by going there trump was saying that and i strongly supported it. Real freedom another topic you cover in your new book for god and country as Vice President mike pence in pence trump gain what all president s want but if you get, and effective loyal advocate who has no agenda other than to advance and protect the single client, namely the president. Right. Im biased because mike pence is a friend of mine and i talk about it in the book i got to know him when he came to congress and the early off. We became friends. We would have him speak at faith and freedom of events around the country. When he was a congressman. I think very highly of him. I talked about in the book some of the behindthescenes stories about how he ended up on the ticket, stories he shared with me and i think mike pence is one of the finest Vice President s weve ever had. What has been your involvement with the Trump Administration as an advisor. I am a friend of the president and the Vice President and obviously a friend of a lot of the people who have served there or serve there now, that is my main goal, i support them, do everything they can to work with them to make their job easier, its a very tough job, in addition to that i served on the White House Faith Initiative and finally in my capacity as head of faith and freedom, we work closely with the white house on a lot of Public Policy matters including life issues and whats performed, Immigration Reform and many other issues we work with them. I have a great team of faith and freedom in there in the white house on a weekly basis working on those issues to advance that Public Policy. When you look at the hard numbers, what percentage of evangelicals support donald trump over joe biden . In 2016 they supported donald trump at the highest level ever in modern american political history, he got 81 and hillary got 16. I dont know that ive seen about yet that had an evangelical sample that i consider to be reliable enough yet. Right now the president s job approval which is a fairly good indication, depending on the pole is somewhere between 65 65 75 , at the about where he was in the pulling of summer 2016, once we get past the pandemic and have more reopening and a Real Campaign and biden picks his running mate and we have the convention, i think itll be in the high 70s to mid 80s and i predict evangelicals will vote for the president in larger numbers than they did in 2016 and for good reason given all that he has achieved, he is richly deserve their support. Are there enough evangelicals to help bring donald trump over the finish line in 2020 . Not by themselves but there is very critical constituency, 27 of the entire electorate and when you combine the number of mainline christians who do not identify as even the local but consider the bible to be the word of god, they pray daily, go to church weekly, they will subscribe to that term born again but they share the faith and frequently the roman catholics, its roughly 36 of the electorate, is bigger than the africanamerican vote, the hispanic vote in the union vote combine. They will turn out in big numbers and they will really matter, in particular those prolife catholics, they are going to make or break the president ial race in the upper midwest and those critical states of michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. So they are really important and theyre not the only constituency but the largest, the most dynamic and the most vibrant constituency in the entire electorate. One of the things that you do and forgotten the country at the end of the book, you look at 2020 but you do it through the lens of 2016, 6. 5 billion was spent overall in the 2016 election and you say its going to be an increase that the democrats in the left are registering voters at a faster pace than the republicans. What does the landscape look like to you today given every thing were going through . Obviously i wrote the book prior to the pandemic and so that forced both campaigns to go all virtual and all online. For some period of time. The president has announced that hes about to begin his rallies again and i believe the first one is going to be within the next ten days 2 weeks, i understand its going to be in oklahoma, we will see what happens but prior to this, the educated projections were the two sides would spend 10 billion between them, i dont know whether well get that number now or not but were continuing to register voters at faith and freedom, the overwhelming majority of churches are closed but in those states where we can were going door to door and doing online, im sure the left is as well and i think we will have the biggest turnout in American History and a president ial race both in raw numbers and in the share of the electorate, i think the biggest share of the registered voters that we had since 1968. Its going to be big enclosed and hard thought and because there is going to be so much reliance on absentee voting, early voting and mail in ballot because of the pandemic, candidly i cannot predict because it takes longer to vote and cast the votes and they can be postmarked as late as election day depending upon the state, we may not even know the winner intimately states for days. It is going to be Something Like weve never seen before. In advance of next weeks Republican National convention, were taken the opportunity to show you programs about President Trump and the partys efforts to woo when his election. In the past june author and political commentator David Horowitz offers his thoughts on the democratic reaction to the Trump Presidency. They understood human beings are not all that rational. The creation of america is a miracle in founders made the people the sovereigns, the people are sovereign but they distrusted the people, that they were swept up and lets not forget hitler was elected and they get swept up in passion such as we seen in the last couple of weeks that has destroyed sections of her major multipotent areas. In the founders want to frustrate those passions. For the Democrat Party declared war on the trump of administration before it was in office, it was committing fundamental act of treason, the only other time this is happened was in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected and we cant have a civil war like that because the federal government is way too powerful so the war over political war over control of the executive and the three branches of government. How far will the democrats take this, iran through this very briefly but they only took obama appointed of the intelligence agencies and several political allies, clapper, brennan the worst of all, comey, i tell you recruited by the Obama Administration to overthrow the Trump Presidency by framing trump as a traitor himself. Classic case of projection. In the worst, they carried the charade on for a few years at least trying by any means, i think one of my chapters in my book lets us call impeachment by any means necessary. Thats what it was. When i wrote the book there was already enough evidence to know this, we absolutely have proof now because rick grenell who was appointed the acting director of National Intelligence by trump, he classified the documents in all of these treasonous actors pull oc, adam schiff, brennan, comey, they all knew that there was no collusion between trump in russia, there was no evidence whatsoever in eric swalwell, these are such wretched characters who was the ranking number two guy of the democrats on the Intelligence Committee were still maintaining that trump is a russian agent, there is no evidence, think about that mentality. The Democrat Party is ethical, its moral compass, the ends justify the memes, we are going to rid the country of trump but its much worse than that, were going to rid america of its values. And they like the word transform although some of them use the actual word revolution. Theyre going to revolutionize america. But the whole democrat leadership knows that it is lying, they call trump a liar when he exaggerates, they call him a liar and then he disagrees with them. Lying is pretty precise, you have to know what youre saying is false and do it anyway. In the entire impeachment project is driven by democrat lies in selfconsciously want to circumvent the procedures of our democracy that have been in place for whatever it is 240 odd years. This is the most frightening thing about what is happening and whats in my book. The Republican National convention airs this week on cspan beginning monday and call minutes with President Trumps acceptance speech on thursday. Up next on book tv books about the president , former Deputy Assistant attorney general and george w. Bush of administration john you who weighs in on president ial powers in the u. S. Constitution, he appeared on our Author Interview program after words at the beginning of august. I started out weary of President Trump i was not a supporter the 2016 election and the thing that worried me, he was a populist and a constitution seemed designed to stop populace. It is fairly antidemocratic in nature in a lot of ways like the senate and judicial review in the Electoral College, the presence of the states is an important part of the constitution, i was worried when trump came as as a populist who wants to achieve an agenda that he feels he received a mandate for that he would strain against or even go beyond the constitutional restraints of his power and i was worried in the beginning he was doing that like the travel ban, threats to build a border law that congressional approval and i urge them to try to use the president ial powers primarily for National Security and Foreign Affairs at their height and instead to understand Domestic Affairs that his role is to enforce the law and work with congress to get legislation passed. I think what happened since 201s critics have become the ones who have gone too far. And trying to stretch the constitution because i think trump is so arranges and they launched attack attack after on his legitimacy, it is critics who have talked about getting rid of the Electoral College and who have talked about packing the Supreme Court and six new members to get it to 15, who wanted to return us to a world with permanently independent councils which i think criminal lies our politics. They want to nationalize large parts of our economy for green new deal. I think that has left trump undeniably using the constitution as a shield and using it to pursue his own self interest but that leads to him a field of relying on more traditional interpretation of the constitution and i argue either intentionally or unintentionally, he has become more the defender of the traditional constitution than his critics. Thank you, a number of topics from pardons, executive orders, the border wall, the impeachment process, im going to try to go through some of these and get your take on the president s exercise of executive authority in these areas, starting with impeachment, i get the point that you make that he did not yield or apologize, he attacked the legitimacy of the process but you dont hold him blameless for how he handled the controversially of phone call or the ukraine matter altogether. My question is it a win for the institution of the presidency in an affirmation of trumps defense of constitutionalism if hes defending his position in a situation that he himself created and never should have happened in the first place. I think he does, it reaffirms in my mind how the constitution intends us to deal with executive misconduct or abuse of power. Even though as you say, maybe trump created the problem in the first place by his unconventional approach to Foreign Policy or as some people claim his mixture of the Public Interest with his own private political interest, a deeper constitutional question i thought, how does the constitution try to strain executives. It doesnt in two ways, the election process is foremost in terms of the framers view of how you constrain an executive who you think is abusing powers, the new electric congressional majority to oppose him and you get him out of office. I thought the mistake that occurred was impeachment was being used for activity which fell short for the constitutional standard. I dont think that impeachment requires a crime. I think i said misdemeanor does include abuse of executive power but it has to be a serious one. And it seems to me the kinds of accusations that were being levied against President Trump or really designed for the electoral process, not one of the serious levels of treason or bribery, france had been paying off the king of england in the 17th century. Thats what the framers had in mind, i think he can see that in the founders requirement that the senate get to two thirds before it actually would remove a president even though input impeachment in the hands of a simple majority to make it difficult to remove a president through impeachment and that would funnel the kinds of finding that we saw take place which should be funneled into the electoral process. Let me go back deeper into the circumstances that led to that, the president likes to talk about the deep state of officials who he believes in you give them some defense in the book, they did not accept as you point out the legitimacy of the 2016 election and in the president s view they have acted to undermined a duly elected president. That you can address the principal loyalties of people who swore an oath to the constitution and not their branch of government or the president. They believe they have the obligation to honor the oath of bringing to attention of authorities whether its internal oversight or committees in congress potentially illegal or unethical behavior. This issue arises twice, not just impeachment but the russia collision investigation. I think both cases. It raises a deeper philosophical issue of government, im not claiming trump is seeking deeply about political theory but his pursuit of his rational political self interest, he is advancing a greater constitutional good which is tied to the 18th century constitution. Let me describe what he was fighting against and away, whether the fbi and jim comey in the hav Headquarters Staff were members of the Foreign Service and the permanent National Security council staff. I dont think of it as a deep state, i think the phrase comes from turkey, the turkish bureaucracy. I think that is a progressive era bureaucracy, the idea of which was most important Public Policy decisions are technical or scientific or professional answer you want to delegate power over those decisions to those experts and you want to insulate them from politics, not increase control but reduced. This is woodward wilsons thought and it had a great impact on our constitution. I think we see that in the fbi, National Security brought chrissy in the Foreign Service. Trump embodies more 18th century view of what the executive branch is about which we the voters elect the president or any Electoral College, hes the only one charged with executive power in enforcing the laws and everyone in the executive branch is conducting Foreign Policy who is enforcing the laws and doing as an assistant to the president , its a much more political issue of the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is responsive to the president and may hold him accountable through politics. To me thats what happened in the impeachment and russia collision, yet the permanent experts, the Foreign Service or the fbi conclude that the president essentially was unfit for office. So they were to me they would not of computed to the founders, they would challenge the head of the branch as unfit, that is not their job. I think youre right that you say there is an impeachment system in congress does have the right and the power to remove president s to yield the abuse of power. And of course they will gather the information from the executive branch of people who work there. So in that sense i dont think impeachment was off and i dont see how else impeachment would run other than people saying the president misused his powers and a lot of those witnesses would be the executive branch, to me it was a standard that the house and some members of the senate were using as a high crime and misdemeanor that were not high enough, i wouldve thought all those were much more appropriate for oversight hearings to be brought out for spending cuts, the usual tools that congress uses to fight with the executive branch and ultimately putting it before the voters, this is all going to be before us when we vote on the president this november, i think thats a better solution. That wraps up President Trump and his Party Strategy to win the 2020 election. All the programs you have seen can be viewed in their entirety at our website booktv. Org. A reminder that cspans coverage of the upcoming National Convention begins this monday, check cspan. Org for a schedule of events. During a Virtual Event hosted by st. Louis books, the sellers require recall his childhood in denmark South Carolina as a son of a civil rights activist in his experience of South Carolina youngest eight representative. He is a portion of his conversation. When you knock on doors you have this idea that youll knock on every door, i wont knock on Confederate Flag, because i really wanted to meet people where they are in a different belief no matter white, black, democratic, republican that you wanted to have a Grocery Store in your community, that you did not want your grandparents having to choose between whether or not they were going to pay their utility bills or get their pharmaceutical drugs, we went through the steps in my mind and i could literally change the lives of people, i would not get data by reality, im proud to say im not jaded by that reality. And walking in the statehouse, i was agitator son, i was walking into a statehouse where its the same state that put my family through so much trauma and i would bear to help change that, put a new phase on that and tear down the systems within, i dont know how successful i was at that but i tried my damnedest. There was that and then there was a sense of being young, everybody looked at me, i was 21, 22 years old, i was the youngest by a decade and so everybody is staring at you in the first time you open your mouth, they want to see what youre all about, it was a young dude, a young buckeye from denmark who was a son of the civil rights heroes. I dont think people really remember but when i was elected, every day i went outside and i was having a rough day and i took a deep breath and it would go in the office of the Confederate Flag as it flew probably in front of our state capital. To watch the rest of the program is our website booktv. Org and search for sellers using the box at the top of the page. Book tv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend, tonight at nine eastern on after words enter book covid19, on how covid19 became a Global Pandemic and ways to prevent future outbreaks, shes interviewed by center by hel Health Global professor. Watch book tv this weekend on cspan2. Starting now, the summer series that features programs from archive with wellknown authors and tonight we will look at programs with the librarian of congress. Doctor can you remember the first