Welcome. In the coowner of politics and prose thank you for joining us here online. Holding all other talks since last spring. The pandemic for those who abandon interesting events. For those of you not familiar how this works, you still ask a question of the authors youd like. To do so, click on the q a at the bottom of your screen. Attack , you will find a link for purchasing the book, donald trump versus the u. S. By michael schmidt. Michael started as a news with the New York Times 15 years ago. He became a Sports Reporter at the paper. He went on to report in iraq, pentagon and department of Homeland Security to his work is focused on federal negotiations one of two teams in 2018. One on Workplace Sexual Harassment issues and the other for donald trump, his campaign ties to russia. Trumps abuse of president ial power focusing primarily on two individuals to confront the individuals and constrain him, james comey former white House Counsel, gone with the cans. This is a story of a central inside attempts to stop him. The New York Times review called a revelatory portrait, alleged investigation for instruction of justice and Washington Post review said the book offers a powerful accounting and lawlessness chaos and President Trump. I want to show the spirit between the New York Times and Washington Post, michael will be in conversation with ashley parker, the white house reporter. She has inside knowledge of New York Times, she worked there 11 years for joining three years ago. You may recognize her from the nbc news and msnbc. I should let everyone know everything you dont want and journalist which is wildly biased, we started the New York Times together the same year in 2005, the exact same job which was the lowest job you could be and we both worked our way up. I attended this for the party he writes about in his book he and i spent a memorable new years eve week covering President Trump and i even want unsuccessfully set him up a blind date with my younger sisters. Ive known mike as a competitor, colleague and friend and he teaches, hes a wonderful human you should absolutely by his book. With that, that is sweet of you. When are trying to think of who to do this with, i thought his more contemporary i have then you given our history and the chances that i would have, it was just a wonderful time, a fun way. The only book of the things i have, this is the closest thing. When i was reading your book, i did a couple take this paragraph, i think its in the middle of the chapter in the middle of your book but i want to read it and ask you questions to get you started. The weekend passed becoming president , President Trump, the National Security advisor had lied to the fbi, the president asked the fbi director for his loyalty. The fbi director was keeping every major interaction he had with the president and he did not trust. A significant portion of your book details, is in the first 26 days of his administration, donald trump had done enough to completely and utterly imperil his presidency so i thought that was a good way to get started. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to tell his story. At one time, i thought about doing it just on the first 26 days of the administration. As you understand the first 26 days of the administration and how they dealt with a highly unusual problem of National Security advisor being potentially compromised by a foreign adversary, if you could understand that. Of time, you can understand the Trump Presidency because by the time the 26th day, when the president clears the oval office and asks to end the flynn investigation, theres enough thats been created, call me goes home and writes a memo about it, when the memo is disposed, it rocked the administration, it forced to confront in a true x potential strip threat to an investigation. I tried to figure out where you start the book, where you and the book. If you understand the first 26 days, it answers the question because as i studied the administration, you start to see the story starting to repeat itself. The president wants to do something, its usually out of bounds and ethically norms were legally and the people around him have to respond. Im sure deborah brooks calculations about how she deals with the president around the pandemic is very similar to the ones jim comey made decisions on, john kelly had to make decisions on. Interesting part, the differences that trump means a human mri machine shines a light on to these people and it reveals them in different ways. Comey would never have, he is never going to bend, he was never going to work. Began had never again opportunity to remake the courts. Hes going to put up with Different Things but always until a certain time and then you have some people around the president , which you have to wonder what they have done to continue to be the. Speaking of mcgann, the two men at the book, theyre not quite antiheroes, they are not exactly heroes they are kind of Human Experience characters up against forces much greater than then, they sometimes dont even understand themselves but they are two men exerting tremendous influence in ways they dont always understand or intend over the course of the presidency. I want to talk about why you chose to focus on that and if you could tell us more about what you learned about them. There are several reasons why i picked them. One, i think besides trump and obama, the decisions comey made had more of an impact on how we live in the world today than anything. If youre democrat, you think he helped get donald trump elected because of the email investigation. If you are a trump supporter, you think he created the most to take down the Trump Presidency. There usually things that directed that. Began will have an impact for decades to come because began we named him in federal court. He didnt just do it with the public and judges, he renamed them with some of the most conservative justices out there. The impact of mcgann, that single act of trump would allow one person the committee of one to nominate the judges, the unusual part of trump colliding with mcganns, we will be living with the impacts of that for a very long time. Historically, i felt there was enough in these two people, this isnt just an aid, these are people who have had enormously larger impacts. The second thing, there are similarities to them i thought was striking and made them compelling. They both thought they had it figured out and then it got worse. Then it got worse and worse. The last in the trump ship, the worst what is possible and then it got worse. I got worse. Comey thought okay, im going to hold this press conference, i can tell theres something off in the country about truth and fact that if i hold this press conference, ill put the issue to rest and be able to move on. Just as simple as that. It will be painful, this is not a civil bullet but it will make it better and is more likely to move more quickly. He does that and it sends him down a path where by the time trump becomes president , on the seventh day, comey is sitting there, trump asked him for his loyalty. Here is jim comey, the guy when i interviewed him covering the fbi, said right after he became director in his office, he says, i said we can play obama basketball. Obamas basketball game have been played in the basement of the fbi and comey said to me i would never play with him because he would be too close to the white house. Okay. So here he is alone with the president is campaigning and asking for his loyalty. Jim kobes life jim comeys life was far more than he got his life could have been six or sevs earlier. With mcgann, began comes in and said russia, the campaign revealed, theres probably a bunch of nonsense, nothing here. Trump can play reagan. The trapping of the presidency and you know the sound and press conferences, go out, as do the agenda simple as that. Four days into the presidency, the acting attorney general walked into his office and said hey, once in a generation problem. The National Security advisor may be compromised by russia. Mcgann struggled but it is a difficult thing and from there it gets worse and worse and worse. Began began pushing through it. Then going to comey, by the time you start writing your book, comey is youve written about him more than anyone. Hes all over the news, testified in written a memoir so how daunting was it . How did you approach trying to tell the reader something new about jim comey we didnt already know . He presented a pretty unique challenge trying to tell a story. As you said, there was so much written about him and to understand his story, you have to go back, hed talk about, october 28, youre never going to be the fbi director and i want, its a hard thing to relate to. I can understand the logic of how he got to where he was but no one wanted to go back, no one wanted to try and understand it. For lack of a better term, people just didnt want to hear it so i said, i talked with the editors, you have to write about comey, ive written so much about him. He is a historical figure and i understand, youre going to write a book about him. I thought about it and thought about it and i thought, weve got to come up with something different, theres got to be a different way thought here is away, try and tell the story through his wife, lets move the camera. We been all looking at comey on a 45 degrees angle, lets move the camera in a different direction see it through the eyes of someone else. It can be hard to relate to us in fbi director, we all know what its like, we all have loved ones, we know what its like to watch a loved one go through something brutal. In this case, her husband was being blamed for the election of donald trump to which he thought it was awful someone who she probably thought her husband was deep down. So we can relate as a reader to watching a loved one you know, in pain and struggle and feel you have no control over the situation. I said lets try tell the story through her. Lets see comey in a different light. If we just tell his story, we are going to lose the reader because no one wants to hear it. The other character, don mcgann, the book opens up the first 25 pages or so are cinematic of you, hopefully everyone by the book, downtown washington, trying to catch him before he enters into the fortress of the white house, you finally catch him, you catch you back and you try to keep him talking and turn him into a source so selfishly, im curious if you can share about how you make people who really should have no incentive to talk to you in particular. I think you have to pull on the strings of Everyone Wants to talk, no one wants to be identified they want their story to be told and they want to be done accurately. Almost everyone thinks their story has not been accurately told. Away trying to talk to them, he just basically get out of the way, let them talk. People like to talk. They just like to hear themselves and they like to think someone is listening and they like to correct the record. A good, very comfortable way of talking to people is talking about story said this, they said this about it and want to correct it ultimately, everyone think there is something about them that is wrong, theyve been wronged by this and this wasnt there and this is what really happened and you dont understand. In the process of that, you get closer to the truth. You also talk about things on the Public Record. Lets say youre trying to get someone to talk, person in the white house, you can walk up to them and say lets talk about this, you cant say lets talk about this supersecret thing you can say i saw this story on the Public Record and then people feel more comfortable. A baby step to take in the direction of trying to get people more comfortable. Followup on that, what are the different challenges trying to get someone to talk to you for Something Like this, versus the daily paper and is easier or harder, is it different, other different motivations and having the story told . I think are different motivations and its easier and harder in different ways. Spent hours and hours with people and got very nothing. And theres people i spent just a little bit of time with an got a lot of. You can tell this is where you can really get into things and explore things, you can get into detail and you can really tell a story in a way a newspaper story you just cant. I realize the book, limitations of the newspaper, i had to realize how much the newspaper story and the way we come at it, especially the way i did, one style story, go out and find one to three facts about something sort of important in the investigation trying to get a story out of it and us do it again and again. This was completely think i was in my journalism, there i was just coming out of one way then you have a book its like theres Different Things, i found this interesting. Don mcgann relationship with donald trump is really interesting. Is that a newspaper story . No, maybe, maybe not maybe its a paragraph in a newspaper story but in terms of trying to set the table to tell his story and give you a sense of who he is, where he comes from and potential parallels in foreshadowing, that, tell that story. Since you mentioned it, i loved the story of patty again, dons uncle. Can you tell everyone about that . Theres just striking similarities between them. When i found out about mcgann, i just thought wed start in a way i hadnt in many other places in the book. Donald trump shows up in Atlantic City and like 1980 and he wants to get in on the new casino business and need to meet someone in town, a guy named patty again and he brings him along and he knows how to do all the tricks and all the things he can get in, the properties needs to buy, he knows how to work the locals and building connections between buildings so to casinos is only one, all sorts of tricks things like that. Knows how to do it, patty and all this stuff over tom, all of these successes, relationships start to deteriorate and patty sees a different relationship than most people see and he starts having to take notes with conversations and he starts bring a witness, another lawyer with him, the document, to document what trump says. He sees building records and trump doesnt like it. One thing leads to another and all of a sudden they are in court against each other and patty is explaining depositions, he needs to have witnesses to protect himself from someone who was basically a liar. Patty began, he goes to his grave saying he owes him millions of dollars. His nephew from the Republican Convention in philadelphia that year, he goes to the burial the Arlington National cemetery, passport 22015, donald trump needs an election lawyer and mcgann identifies with trump and trumpism in a way that many insiders had not. He been the head of the and he was a high profile elections profile for republicans in washington but began believed in the sort of forgotten people left behind, trade deals, he believed the news not to run to the middle but you needed to run to the far right of the base to do that and hes the kind of guy who identifies with the idea of breaking things. Mcgann is a libertarian, a little counterintuitive. He was an ice hockey goalie, he did take he kind of did his own thing. He played in rock bands and identified as that. Is not offended but he convinces himself, even though he knows a bit about the relationship with trump, he convinces himself hes a different man and in the end, you can see don mcganns experience with donald trump, while different in many ways, has enormous amounts of similarities. Going back to your book specifically, you call russias 2016 election meddling, and intelligence failure. September 11 style intelligence failure. Not a lot of people call it intelligence failure we are not seeing the response typically see when there is intelligence failure of the 9 11 mission. Im curious, why did you make that distinction and why do you think it is so important . 9 11 clearly and intelligence failure and the country responded as such. A mission created to study happened and provide recommendations, the federal government essentially remakes a portion of itself to be counterterrorism putting forth, the airports look very different, Police Forces look very different, the fbi looks very different. I was a natural response to a horrific attack on the country, which many people died. Now i say what happened in 2016 will probably the largest intelligence failure and 11 but it had not gone that treatment, its not like trump came in and said im going to get jim baker from the republican and the equivalent on the democrat side, put together and have the powers what they need to do to get to the bottom of what happened and provide recommendations to the country, to the government and the way the country can deal with it. As you come into this election, theres this stuff theyve done theres nothing robust ever to figure out how to deal a multi dimensional threat that involves disinformation and hacking and stuff like that. Emails and all sorts of stuff. As we come into this election, the country just hasnt gone through that, to come off of capitol hill but theres no authoritative accounting, and even the Mueller Investigation which looked at what crimes would be in connection with election, it doesnt provide what we know of the election but it doesnt provide recommendations on how to do it. He also writing a book about top fbi officials trying to make the Justice Department and the 2016 election, if the euro should physically be able to look at specific contents of flash drives that contain thousands of documents the russians had hacked. Ultimately, they are not able too because the Obama Administration makes the decision this is privileged information in the can categorize it but they cant read the specifics. Do you think, had the obama ministration made a different decision, it would have played out differently . If so, how . I dont think it would have fundamentally changed our understanding of what the russians were going to do in a way the u. S. Responded more robustly but failure on the intelligence side, as far as i can see is the fact that they didnt understand what was going on on the social media site. The fbi was knowing this was going on at the time and on top of that, the Intelligence Community and fbi didnt think all the hacking the russians were doing was to recognize the information. They thought this is regular fbi, they are not going to run out service in washington and look at whats going on. Okay. We do that, we do not. Its the weaponizations, taking the emails dumping them out there the way they did, that is the game changer. Thats the thing that makes this different and there was no intelligence, no ability to know that and respond. The 2016 elections, im not sure even if you knew in real time he be able to respond in a way we could really stop it but certainly the government was doing that in an incredible way. Another theme of your book, the question of obstruction of justice. When i the average person thinks of this, he thinks the money doing something secretly or perversely but what about the brazenness of how trump basically directly asks call me to let the flint medical. You think the president was shameless about it and did so out in the open and a lot of ways that it made it harder to name is what some people believed it was . Challenge did that pose . Its sort of the unusualness in the way he tests us all, the media and law enforcement, he tests everything. Hes testing the fbi in a way that doesnt really know exactly how to respond. Im pretty sure comey would say when he asked about the flint investigation, its pretty clear hes trying to obstruct justice the president is doing that, it is a very it is such a typical way for the government to be functioning. I think they do this open investigation after coming is fired. I think there is a delay because the president of the United States and they are not sure what to do. I get that, i get it to big monumental decision, coming is trying to get rosenstein on board and the Justice Departme department, he thinks he has time and he he has time, he thinks hes going to be there ten years because the norm of having and fbi director the ten year term is something trump wouldnt be able to survive, trump wouldnt do that. That would be crazy, why would he do that . Comey thinks he has time on the clock up until hes fired. A few quick questions before i turn to questions from the book, i understand you considered doing a new title, basically after your book was done, what were you trying to do with the title . Was the ultimate goal . Naming the book was hard. It was particularly hard and i constantly was grasping for sort of the modernday washington equivalent and i thought about all different sorts of things and originally one title was obstructing trump but i didnt like that and eventually we had trump versus the United States and then we add on in the days after settling, inside the struggle to stop the president because the United States didnt say enough about what the book was. If you are going to take the unusual construction of and said it looks like court case, it would give your reader more guidance on what the book was about and what you were going to tackle. Then i thought about inside the president , at first i liked it and that i hated it and whatever but i never found the title as grasping for, i never left that title and never came up with it. Then after the title was done in basically the whole project was coming to an end, is doing some Fact Checking at the end and i found out john kelly was referred to the instances they had to go in to do something, the typical thing, how do you contain a president . Basically describing the struggles without a president , they would say lets go get the chainsaw. In talking about french dip in the chainsaw. To me, i was like aha, that and some really stark poetic but stark terms what . Provocative. Provocative, a better way of saying it. In these provocative terms, that explains the struggle of the president , to go in and tell donald trump he cant do something is like kissing a chainsaw. I was thinking, could we rename this book . I was struggling with that. I think some people would have been put off but it would have had that feeling to it i was searching for. I want to read the last line of your book. Your book ends, the epilogue ends, he right the president has asked washington to his will. People who havent grown up with it, can you tell us what specifically you are referring to . Second, is it more existentially, at what cost at washington to his will . Its a more permanent shift. Im flattered you got that far. In terms of what the legacy or the impact of terms in the administration, trump is this admiral politician and whoever comes in, whether its more typical republican president , washington will step back. Im less convinced about that today, i think sometimes when you see the way the machine of government or politics can be used in ways you didnt think they could be used, my guess people will want to do that, that trumps abnormal use, us described in the book, theres a lot more they should get away with and they taught good, im less convinced it will step back then ever before. My sense is that especially, we are going to look at this question of what trump meant for the last of our lives. It goes back sort of normal, maybe less interesting but there may be harder things to come, its just hard to know the pivot. In history but it is certainly highly unusual. I think we will live to this area and trying to understand it a long time. Maybe i look back in five or ten years and say i have that completely wrong. In terms of trump and washington, what im trying to say is that on the 25th day of the administration when trump asked coming to end the investigation, comey was never going to do that and when we want about the, i write in the story about that a couple of months later in may 2017, mueller was appointed the next day but the disclosure of that, the idea the president asked the fbi director and the investigation was such a big deal and earth shattering that is a real feeling of something highly unusual going on and its widely condemned by people from both parties so fast forward to spring of this year and bill barr goes to court on behalf of the Justice Department and receive open case to throw out the flint investigation. Throughout the flint plea and essentially and the flint investigation. To me, here trump was, he was trying to end this investigati investigation, he searched around for someone to do it three, four more years and finally, his own Justice Department had gone to court and asked the court to do that, something comey would never have done. To me, it was a great example of how trump had done the. To final quick questions, the first, ive seen a lot of people watching, we are all wondering why you always wear that what you know about fashion that we dont. Ouch. I am serious. I saw something, they said they were a uniform. I think a little before the trump era, started wearing the same thing every day and i think the vision is jeans, buttondown white shirt and at the time, a black one that went all the way up. I get very cold pretty easily, especially inside, especially in d. C. In the air conditioning so i cant do it at my desk just a buttondown shirt, i need Something Else to wear on top. Then it just became easy and we just wear the same thing every day, white and black zipper ups and shoes and sneakers so i just fell into that. Folks who love me seen another version of what i had before and the lululemon version, its more of a sweater. Im cold, im sitting here right now and i am cold. Ending this part on a serious note, he dedicated the book to your cousin, john the third was born 19 days before you. Can you tell us more about him and why he dedicated it to him . He was the first great grandchild of my fathers grandmother and he, i knew him when i was a baby and when he graduated high school at the same age, i hadnt seen him in many years after being a baby. Then i spent a year in iraq in 2011 and i walked away from that experience with the much deeper appreciation of life in general and i had gone to his funeral in 2005 and i think part of the same generation of people, theres something in my generation that paid an enormous price in these wars we fought after 9 11 and i thought if i did this, it would be harder, some way for his name to live on, this would be another way for his name to live on so thats why. Questions in the q and a, is the people can add some more. We do start with some of the ones on top. Someone asked, help us understand a note, too much to drink, how did it work . That is a really hard question. How do we get the information we do . Just talking to people, its that easy. You could answer that question, how do you do it . Just going to go on to another question. [laughter] when you come up to a situation try to get to know the people and they tell you about whats going on inside, and the way that you can get the information for them okay, let me go out of order with a different question that might be easier to answer, im going out of order because happened to see a question from one wonderful 9yearold stepdaughter on the second floor, what advice would you give to a young person who wants to be a reporter . I think you have to have a deep desire, you have to have someone who wants the story. It is the kind of thing, michael said the great part of journalism is that if youre willing to work harder than the person next to you, you usually get the story and you will do better than the others and that is really true. If you put in the time, whether its to get to know people or study a subject or work on your writing or anything, he will get there. Anyone starting, there is a part to it that if you are willing to outwork the folks around you, you can do it. You dont need special talent, they can help a lot of it is a willingness to work really hard. If you can do that, you can really accomplish things. Going back to more traditional order, someone asked, you think comey regrets what he did to hilary . I think you understand how it all played out. I think if you were to ask him that question, would say based on the information he had at the time on what he saw have been uncovered, its just take the reopening of the emails in october 2016, he would say hed make the same decision again and if he tried to get to, donald trump would be election if you did that and the things you care so deeply about would be obliterated and youd be fired, he would say well, do i also get to know if i reopen the investigation, you have to figure out in a matter of days that there is nothing there and we are not going to charge Hillary Clinton so i dont think i think of your jim comey to go to that entire experience, to blame the country for the election and then be blamed by another portion of the country for undermining his presidency, when he was a kid, basically said the trueness in the world is basically to do what you think is right, not what other people think is right. My guess is he takes some strength from the. Another question, journalists refer to the Trump Administration as in your experience, are they more eager to find the administration . Totally. We have more insight into this administration and what goes on inside then its exponentially larger than any other presidency especially the obama presidency. Obama, there was like one fact, obama bought something or may have saw something. Its like oh my gosh, with trump is like i call them tricks, is highly unusual things he did, story after story after story and insights and i dont know, i had an opportunity to write out white House Counsel did and understand the president and because of the Mueller Investigation documents that have come out, he has insights and what the white House Counsel does, things that i didnt have before, on the president s authority so in a sense, you can learn, and other administrations cant. This is a question, i guess your competitor, is a great book out, but i also recommend everyone by but the question is, you delivered this while coming under fault of the president of the u. S. And senior government officials, is it ever a moment is personal and what inspired you to stay motivated . You could answer that question, to. [laughter] i took an enormous amount of strength in this process from my relationship with maggie, i have great admiration for who she is and her ability to function in this administration. She is so selflessly true to herself and the fact the left hates her one day in the right hit or another. She has a true ability to call on things get to the real political problem in a way i think is so admirable. So i gave it to her as soon as i could and relied on her and need in working with her as much as possible. If theres anything being said about me, there is always people going after her. They wanted us to answer questions and it was a way of seeing people going after her and targeting her, leaders and she has it a lot worse than us. If she can do it, the rest of us can do it. I just think she is a great example of someone who has worked under the pressure so i just try to learn from her. Another question, basically, she asked, do you think our desensitization to the crazy will diminish over time . I mean, i dont know. That is the thing, things going on today the story just continues to go and go and it is hard, jarred by this story. What trump said in france a couple of years ago, there were some awful, said about American Service members. I was like wow, that is really significant. Is it different than things heard in the past . It is worse, it is bad, there are a lot of awful things that have come out so i dont know and i think certainly by the end its a big story and i often think back to the early days of the comey firing, it plays itself out as the first guess, was he going . And he wasnt and he gets fired and it is a gigantic mess but there are so many other gigantic methods that have come. Carol asks in the interest of getting to the question, there are two. The take away from your book and looking forward, she asked if trump should be reelected. Theres no right answer to that but what i tried to capture in the book is this phenomenon, there is no name for it, its basically standing between the president so we have studied how president use their power for most of american history. People around them help them do that, what it says about the president , the moment, because of trumps abnormal behavior, we get to see what its like to try to stop him. If you are the white House Counsel, here are the same thing as a 911 operator. Theres no other fbi director of white house call, there is no other 911 call, you are the thing standing in the way. Standing toe to toe with the president try and stop the president from doing something, what does that reveal about you . What is tell about them . I think to me, that was something im sure some of it on with nixon and every administration but what is the Human Experience like . John mcgann and jim comey are human beings who had to go through this, what does that feel like . What did it look like . What can we learn from that . Thats what i set out to try to do. That makes sense. Do you buy into the speculation trump will refuse to leave the white house if hes not reelected . I think donald trump has done nothing according to the book what you mention on many major sittings so i think we have to keep that in the back of our heads as we look at anything because whether its you cant fire the fbi director because of the ten year term or youre supposed to criticize adversaries that target your truth, he is not in those norms so i dont know you have to wonder, why would he do that if he hasnt to others . When someone says they are reading your book now, they also watched the documentary on the New York Times when it aired but basically it says your doing it highly scrutinized and contentious stories on your own, how has that experience having editors one second, having reporters and trends and colleagues, the people responsible for making sure hes stories make this possible, what is it like . I would say especially with goldman, closer to people ive entered with, its an evil where i can close my eyes on the Basketball Court and know where they are. I dont have to think twice about it and i know, i trust them implicitly. Its been incredible in terms of camaraderie, the trump story has been something that brought me to those people in ways i think will stick with me the rest of my life. I spent a year in iraq, the times that i spent there, i dont see that at all but i can the xrays with him saw him, i have admiration for them that is incredible. I never got to become a professional baseball player and have teammates but those are my teammates. People i really love. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Thank you for engaging discussions. The more this reveals about the efforts to stop them but more astonishing, your book adds much to deepen our understanding. The title of michaels book is donald trump versus the u. S. All of you watching can get a copy, or several by clicking on the link posted in the chat column. From all of us here in politics and prose, farewell. Wellrun. Sunday 7 00 p. M. Eastern, with discussion with Pulitzer Prize winning author, Bob Woodwards new book, rage which looks at President Trump national and Foreign Policy decisions. Watch tv on cspan2. During this years festival, congresswoman barbara lee of california discussed Voter Suppression with Emory University professor, carol anderson. Here is a portion. What rained down on obama, the obstruction, the hatred was intense. You see this, as these republican legislatures and governors and them going after those folks in this community, so just like the mississippi plan, if this one doesnt get them, this one will. Thats right we got this book, the way gerrymandering works, the way as you described, in black and brown, they will have fewer operational Voting Machines and fewer poll workers with lines that will stretch for hours. Basically in white communities, you get in and get out. What we know from working class communities, which again, demographically, black voters most often are, brown voters most often are, is that what you dont have his time and money. When you have to stand in line five to seven hours to vote, youve lost a day of pay. To watch the rest of this program, visit our website, booktv. Org