Transcripts For CSPAN3 Bret 20240703

Meme is the movie you know in just a couple of months i has some of you may know, in just a couple of months i will be leaving my position as executive director of the Reagan Foundation institute. I hope you will forgive me if i take the opportunity to act a little nostalgic over some of the previous visits that our guests tonight has paid to the Reagan Library in the years that ive been here. Ive had the opportunity to have quite a few people on this stage. Imagine the nervousness quotient involved when i have the job of a processional interviewer. Those of you who routinely watch interviews conducted each evening on fox news as i do, you know what i mean. He is among the very best in the business. And you may not take my word for it, that consistently ranked as the top leading program in his timeslot. This has been the case for many years. He has a second career going as a best selling author and we are not talking about the, am i cool or what, autobiography or a selfhelp guide that reveals his formula for how you, too, can be a network anchor. Rather, the publication of this, his fifth nonfiction work. He is a talented president ial historian and writer with a knack for shining a light on pivotal leaders at pivotal moments in American History. That always seem to be worth another look. A very important glimpse into the life of two u. S. President s. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and fdr. All who changed the course of nations history. The newest book is as educational as it is timely and i say educational in that he was far more important in u. S. History than some historians have given him credit for. And it timely in that when it comes to the fragility of our National Identity it with the times we live in today, weve been here before. Its only a pleasure and an honor to have him with us. Ladies and gentlemen if you will, please join me in welcoming him to the lincoln library. Thank you very much. Its great to be back here. Thank you for making the effort to come out, masks and all. We had our show out here today, which we love to do ahead of these events. We started it with reagan soundbites, looking at the big issues that reagan dealt with that our issues that we are dealing with today, so it kind of all works out. I want to say hi to my friends john and lisa. I know i have other friends in the audience. But lets talk grant. You got it. First came here eight, nine years ago. Told us about your first book and the challenges that you had with your son, paul. Remarkable book. Please tell us he is okay now. Is doing great, thank you. The first book was called special heart. Love, hope, courage. Oh my gosh, what is it . Faith, hope, courage and love. Anyway, bottom line, he is doing fantastic. He has had several surgeries. His last one was in december, open heart surgery. He is now an inch taller than me. He is six feet tall, wears a size 13 shoe and he is a golfer, a basketball player and he is doing fantastic, so thank you. It seems in your books, your choices of president s to study, also an Inflection Point for a moment in time when the president change the course of history. Is that how you go after your subject . Interviewed about the series of books. The first one was eisenhower. It took a long time to find that. I did not know about president eisenhower. I knew about general eisenhower. It was a discovery for me. The process of having this team and a researcher who goes into the National Archives that are literally treasure troves of nuggets, historical nuggets. And that book focused on the three days between eisenhower and kennedys inauguration, opened my eyes to moments of history that are overlooked or not focused on enough. Then the second book is about reagan and the final settlement with gorbachev and the speech he gave, which in the span of history, is an amazing speech. At the brink is fdr, churchill and stalin with a conference that is overshadowed by yalta. Another spotlight to give to something that i did not think was focused on. Beginning, middle and end of the cold war. I wanted to find something also overlooked. I looked at grant and thought, i know nothing about this presidency. He was a drunk, scandal filled and basically handed the baton off. I didnt really know. I am a student of history. So we started digging in. Grants people or focused on his time as a general, which is spectacular. There are some stories that go through his time. Not sure where in 800 pages, which i am a big fan of. But they spend a lot of time on his presidency which is very consequential. He takes over for andrew johnson. Who in fact i think was one of our worst president s if not the worst. Racist. I wont sugarcoat it. He, you know, lincoln is assassinated and johnson is erasing lincolns vision day by day. Grants can see that happening before him and he eventually is drafted to run for president , wins in a landslide. He pushes through the 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution, fights the with federal troops. He tries to keep the country together and win the peace after the war. That really thrilled me to be able to dig in and kind of tell that story. And then leaving the contested election of 1876. The file grant was one of the most underappreciated president s . He is ranking, he has gone up 13 spots in recent years. That is before my book. Eisenhower went up five spots. Weve looked back. Why the historians choose to look at it again, i think in this day and age when we are in such a partisan divide and everything that we talked about with race, will look back at all that he did to hold the country together at a really pivotal time. It gives him another look. To this day, known as one of the most if not the most brilliant of american generals. His reputation as a general overshadowed his presidency. Yes. In part because he wrote his memoirs about his time in really eloquent terms. At the end of his life, he leaves the presidency. Were kind of going chronologically in a different spot but after he leaves the presidency he trusted a lot of people during his time in office and they burned him a couple of times and that is where some of the corruption comes from. After leaving, he trusts part of his family, who invests and makes money but invests more and loses everything. He was poor after the presidency and has to start writing articles for a magazine about his time in the civil war. Mark twain was his friend and says, how much are you getting paid for these articles . He is upset and says you are much better than that, youre the president , the biggest general weve ever had. You need to write a memoir and i will publish it. And it was so good, so well written that a lot of people thought mark twain wrote it but he did not. He said he only edited a few pages. He starts writing in his memoir. This was the civil war part. He gets throat cancer to the point where he can barely swallow and they are spraying cohen kane missed cocaine missed at the back of his throat so he can swallow. He is running longhand because he wants to finish so he can provide money for his wife, julia. And he finishes his memoir and a few days later, he dies. Twain sells it. Its the bestselling book of the time. He makes 300,000 roughly, which equates to about 15 million in todays terms. And thereby takes care of his family. When you think of him as a general, actually he was small in stature, wasnt he . He was 57, 58, 130 pounds wet. Why add that part . I said he was 57, 58. No offense. Its like that too much. But anyway. He was really small. He never really wanted to be a soldier. His dad forced him to go to west point. He was not that great at much. He went to west point kicking and screaming and when he went there, they said, well, you have the appointment Ulysses S Grant and he said no. My name is Hiram Ulysses grant. The said well, you can only get this appointment if your name is Ulysses S Grant. So that became his name. The s stands for nothing. He changed his name. He kind of stunk in school. 20 out of 39. Got a lot of merits. But he was a good horseman. It turned out he was an excellent soldier and he showed that in the mexicanamerican war. Went to the northwest territory. He was really lonely and started drinking has some lonely soldiers might do. And he was light, again, and could not hold his liquor that well and got busted by a commander, drunk who said either resign your post or we will courtmartial you and so he resigned. Went back to illinois and spiraled where he was bad at farming and bad in the leather business and finally selling firewood out of the back of the card to make money. Three years after that, he is the head of union forces is the biggest general america has ever seen and a few years after that, he is president of the United States. Graduates from west point and i thought this was really interesting. In the mexicanamerican war, he fought alongside who . A bunch of guys. Zachary taylor, robert e lee. A number of confederate generals that he ends up fighting against. Thats where the intersections between all of these guys and these battles are. They have fought with each other before. So the have these established relationships. I will jump forward again. At grants funeral, just to show you how wellrespected he was across the land, 1 Million People show up in new york city to line the streets and they bring out their old uniforms, Union Uniforms and confederate uniforms and they line the streets of new york city and the pallbearers are to Union Generals and two confederate generals. At the end of his life. And that is the relationships they had that went back all the way to the mexicanamerican war. In covering the fact that lincoln, he looked over her shoulder at some points at grants and thought, oh my gosh, the sky might run for president against me. Yeah, he did. He thought that he was that popular and he was that popular with the american people. He really did not want to run for political office. He was asked all the time to run for president and he said the only office i thought about running for was mayor so i could to the sidewalk for my house to the depot. He finishes at Union General after the end of the war and they hold up a sign for mrs. General, the sidewalk is done. That was his only political aspiration. But he does get recruited to run. Obviously, he has admiration for lincoln. A relationship that lincoln truly believes he is an internal, softspoken guy, but sees this leadership in grant. And lincoln invites graham to ford assassination and they almost go. But Mary Todd Lincoln, julia grant was not a fan of Mary Todd Lincoln and they said that got to go see their children in new jersey, which they did. And president lincoln was assassinated that night. He is bereft with guilt and you thinks, if i had been there, i would have been able to save president lincoln. He was also a target grant was, of John Wilkes Booth. After lincolns assassinated, he stood at the time as the most popular figure by far. Johnson despised that. He despised that grant had that power and ruth to really, really hate him, johnson did, to the point where he was just trying to figure out how to get him out of the way. Wanted to send him to mexico and do these other things and brandt stood up to him and said no. He said if it is a military order, i will go, but im not going if its just you sending me. Union general. You write in your book that because of the approach that he took, and seven soldiers to the confederates, they really, there was a respect for grant, wasnt there . Very much so. He was seen as a victor in the north, victorious and in the south, he was seen as magnanimous because in victory, he gave dignity to those soldiers. He let them leave with their gun and their horse. He offered personal support for the generals whom he knew from fighting with before. And offered to help them out as far as getting back on their feet. Even in the south, he was considered to be somebody well respected to the point that his president ial adversaries were at mississippi state. You call him at some point, i think, the antipolitician. But did he vote for grant when running for president . He did not vote for himself. He was not a self promoter in the least. He was this guy who was so self deprecating, selfeffacing that before he is running for president by the way, his mom, anna, despised pomp and circumstance and formality to the point where she was seen sweeping her front porch when he was being inaugurated. She did not go to the inauguration. She hated all of the pomp of all of that. And she actually crossing books here that reminds me a lot of eisenhowers mother in the exact same way. Did not really care that he was the winning general of world war ii. Not that into it. As he is getting his fourth star, lincoln calls him up to washington. He brings his son, fred. He does not dress well. He has a rumbling in the crown, muddy boots. He walks into the Willard Hotel where lincoln has put him up. A fancy hotel in washington next to the white house. He walks in and the clerk looks at him and says, oh, we dont have a room for you. We dont have any more rooms. And he goes, okay. They said well, we might have this little closet on the top floor and he says that will be fine. That will be fine. At the register, he hands his card and he looks at it in turns white and goes and gets the manager and they are quickly escorted to the bridal suite. Just kind of a selfeffacing guy who is not that into the moment. But in the moment, he is somebody who kind of exudes this quiet leadership. I think that was the case as president. Very, very complex personality. Hard to get to know him. Not a lot of close friends. A couple of close friends. Sherman was a close friend. A man named childs, a philadelphia businessman whom he gets to know and shares time with a Vacation Home. Another quick anecdote of his selfeffacing nature, he goes to his Vacation Home in long branch, new jersey and gets on a steamer and he is by himself and a woman comes with her two children and she is trying to take them to the other side and put them on the boat. She cant stay. She has to go off and she is looking frantically for somebody to stay with the children and somebody will pick them up on the other side and he walks up to them and says maam, i would be happy to escort your children to the other side and she looks at him and he is again, this scraggly kind of man and she kind of looks at him and he says maam, im general grant. And she looks at him and says oh, well, indeed, you are. And they made it to the other side. But i think what i took away the most was that he was very complex. He had an amazing relationship with his wife, julia. For all the people who said he was this big drunk throughout his life, he did not drink at all when she was with him and he she was with him a lot. So the evidence of him being a drunkard in the white house is not there. Theres so many consequential moments during his presidency, not the least of which is the end, the 1876 election. The country is divided. Three states put up two sets of electors. Florida, louisiana, south carolina. So those states are saying, we are not siding. We will send both of them. Within a couple of weeks, the violence starts to bubble up in the country and their threatening violence on capitol hill. At that moment, grant starts to work behind the scenes, keeping the country together. Want to keep it going. In the meantime, it seems like you described some things about grant being antipolitician. At the same time, because he had zero political experience, that is inevitably what led to so many scandals that took place during his presidency, right . Yeah. He trusted a lot of people and he did not have a Political Insider savvy about the possibility of corruption. So he puts some of his friends in positions of power and some of them take advantage of him. There are some decent sized scandals in his administration, but nothing tied to him other than his inability to choose the right person or rather, choose the wrong person to trust. Talk about the 14th amendment and essentially helped grant wanted to enforce it, but not something he could do. Not something he could do, getting citizenship for blacks and eventually voting. It is being fought in the Southern States and there is a palpable stance that if you cant enforce it, what good is it . So thats the argument as he is pushing this. The Supreme Court has enforced, kind of undercutting the 14th and 15th amendments, as well. And he is really battling to carry the torch from lincolns vision to bring the country together on race and it to get past the civil war. Its like these two opposing views. The south wanted to return to its ways and grant wanted to push it along, but then the south was wanting to return to its ways with slavery and a lack of respect for blacks. That had to be the most difficult issue, 100 . And johnson, because of some of the things that he did to empower the vestiges of the confederacy, he kind of gave them the signal like a hat tip. This is it, guys. This is the time so when he takes over, hes got to unwind what johnson has done and remind people of the vision of lincoln before him. It is a fascinating time. You think of president s in tough positions and that is a big, tough one. He is making this bargain with the election inbound and we are a country on the brink of falling back into civil war. We say its the , but in reality is a white militia of former confederate soldiers that believe its the time to rise up again. It is an insurgency. He is trying to make this deal in a way that they will buy him. If all parties are not bought in, the deal falls apart. And looking for a sense of how difficult this must have been. Must have missed this day in history class. Talk about the Dominican Republic and the role grant and others might play in this mess. They were throwing everything against the wall with possibilities. Suing the south, making it so that it was not an issue. One of the things they thought about which was just out there, if you think about big picture is taking the Dominican Republic and have all former slaves just move there. Just everybody. And you know, people are thinking, maybe this could work. Maybe this could solve the souths problems. It was unfeasible from the beginning and it goes down in flames as a suggestion but it just goes to show you they were trying to think of everything to throw up against the wall. Meanwhile, there is the great westward expansion in the United States creating another set of issues for grant to have to deal with. Native americans and the battle that they had. He is the first president to really outreach to native americans. He installs a native american as interior secretary and he is really trying to make this effort. But because of the constant battle and violence out in the last, he loses to circumstances. But its not without trying. He continues to try to make inroads with native americans and try to make peace. You know, if you look at the moments of the efforts to make outreach and the reality that he has to face, it is kind of stark. Sympathetic to their plight. Meanwhile, one general after another completely disobeying the federal instructions and slaughtering people. Once that happens, all trust is gone and they are back to ground zero. Federal instructions. Federal slaughtering and all i dont know. Maybe i was not paying too much attention, but i remember when president george w. Bush was elected and they had that issue with the vote count in florida. That looks like baby food compared to the standards and the cheating and all of the rest of that that went into the election that grant had to resolve. This is not easy to unwind or put back together. There are allegations on both sides that blacks were prevented from getting to the polls and that there was an effort to squash the vote. The republicans had stacked the deck. All kinds of stuff in these three different states and you are right. It was a conundrum. There was bedlam on the house floor. In fact, there were times when people were yelling, standing on a desk on the house floor. I am starting to finish this book. Coming to get it all together. Then january 6 happens and im covering january 6th him of the capital riot. That is actually how the book starts. I did a tiktok of the coverage that day, thinking in my mind of the historical moments that i am writing about in 1876. And how, not similarities, but it gives you perspective about where we have been before and how close we have been before as a country, dating back to the civil war and what is needed to get out of that mess. Talking about, was the genesis of the smokefilled room, but it really was a smoke filled room decision. It was. And this shadowy figure, edward burke, a louisiana guy working for nichols, challenging the louisiana governor. He was a democrat, this guy and he gets in touch with grant and says, i think we can make a deal. Its always louisiana. They figure out a way. He starts talking about, you give the governor ships in these states that are contested currently to the democrats. You promise to pull all federal troops out of the south. The south promises to honor black rights and suffrage, and equality. And they get the autonomy back and they stay in the union. Grant makes this deal, this bargain thinking its going to come together. If Ronald Reagan was there in 1876, he would probably say, my friend, ulysses, trust, but verify. And it turns out over the years, much like bringing in another book, stalin did with fdr, promising he was not going to invade poland. The promise falls apart and that leads to years of strife. Obviously, bringing jim crow laws and all of the civil rights strife that we saw in the years after that. I think grant hoped that they would keep the promise and that the president that followed would take the torch from him, the lincoln legacy and move it down the president ial road. So meanwhile, there is a part in the book where you talk about, maybe there is a town out west where there is a beautiful statue of grant in San Francisco. The end of the book its just kind of perspective. This is after george floyd, the killing and the protest that resulted from that around the country. I was writing and i saw the coverage in San Francisco and there is grants statue being pulled down and reporters there live. She turns around and says, why are we pulling this statue down . And people said because hes part of the civil war and he had a slave and weve got to move on from that. It really struck me in that moment because here is a guy who, yes, did have a slave. His father a boss, colonel dance, gives him a slave, but he freed that man soon thereafter and spent the rest of his life fighting slavery, fighting for equality for blacks, fighting for the right to vote and doing everything he can in his power to help the africanamerican communities get on their feet. In his time, there are black congressmen and senators, blacks who owned farms, making money in the south. Theyre succeeding in the early years of the grand presidency. It just struck me in that moment as the statue was toppling down, how little we remember about history and how sad that is and how much we could do to make sure younger people remember history, so they can affect the future in a different way. Should have paid attention in history class. They can affect the future in a different way. Hes should Pay Attention in history class. Kind of this bleak definition in the average persons mind about grants. Oh hes a drunk and this and that. At the end of the day, we would define grants as an american hero. 100 . I think that history will look a lot brighter on grant in the years to come. I hope i am part of that. Everything we found in the treasure troves of the National Archives suggests not only was he a military strategist and almost a savant when it came to strategy in the civil war, but he was just a leader of men, who was humble, patient, but got things done. I think that hamilton song, you know, who writes your history . Because of the vestiges of reconstruction and everything that happened after that, all this negativity got dumped on g and maybe the drunk thing stuck in the corruption was what led the review of his presidency, and i just think it deserves a full view. If you dont mind, theres a number of questions submitted by people in the audience. These are the lightning round. Who does your research for the books . The first researcher i hired for a history book was a woman named sidney soderberg who was a former mayor of kansas in the town next at abilene. And she worked at the library and i first met her when i was exploring eisenhower and trying to figure out what i was going to write about him and the library said this is your best person. So we met and we talked and she said to me, i just want you to know something. I watch your show. And i said, thats great. She said i like your show. I said thats better. She said, but i am a true blue, kansas democrat. And i said, well thats great. Im a news anchor who likes history so we are going to get along and we did. So, with sydney and catherine whitney, my coauthor, we formed this team where we just bounced these nuggets around until we get a blueprint and then we are stitching pieces of a quilt together until we get the book that we get and it takes a while. I write at night usually with a glass of wine and im a night owl. Fortunately, my wife, amy holds down the fort and allows me to do that. Talk about grants relationship with robert e lee. How they knew each other. They obviously fought together in the Mexican American war. There was a Mutual Respect and they communicated during the war by telegram. And he had a moment. And, lee, by the way, met all the picturesque thoughts of the perfect general. He was dressed to the nines and had a sword. He was perfectly immaculate and well shaven. He looked the part, and grant did not, at all, to the point where, when he is winning battles, some of the early photographers cut off his head of the picture and put it on a different general who is sitting upright and looked better. That was like the first photoshop. But, they did have a relationship and it continued after the war and he invited lee to the white house, which was quite a moment, and if i was in the press, that wouldve been a good thing to cover. They only spent Something Like 15 minutes together. They did, but they kept in touch and there was a Mutual Respect. There was a lot of debate about who was the better general strategically and lincoln was convinced it was grant. Describe your writing process. Do you aim for a certain number of words or pages per day . I usually put in two hours and i put myself in a room for two hours and then we bounce back and forth. Catherine is just amazing at being able to stitch things together and we pingpong and its a great team. Sydney is kind of the digger of nuggets and we go from there. What was your most interesting nugget that you found when writing this book about grand . I do think that grant getting invited to ford theater is a really interesting nugget. I think that grants time as he is, at the end of his life, trying to write that memoir and getting through that moment is also a really interesting nugget. But, his relationships, i think come forward in his book a lot more than other places where ive read about grand. I think we get a little bit more context and little bit more personality to his character and that is a part from other writings of other people who described him. Theres about a paragraph in your book where you talked about feeder and how they almost came together by chance. Maybe you can touch on it its either a rumor or a fact but, John Wilkes Booth appears in front of grants carriage. Tell me about that. Its that night as they are going to get to new jersey, John Wilkes Booth is seen riding horseback and grant then remembers and writes about this strange man staring him through the carriage in an ominous way that night. And that is believed that it is John Wilkes Booth chasing down the carriage as he is going out of town to new jersey. Turns around and goes to ford theater. There was a conspiracy, i recall, around booth and other actors. Yeah, grant is convinced it was him, but who knows. It couldve been somebody else, but it was an ominous figure staring at his carriage as he was leaving washington. Are you planning another three days book . Three days is three days. It is three books and i think that is a good by the way, it makes a good christmas set. Fantastic for under the tree. I am going to do another to rescue book and we will see what we are rescuing next. We call that, in the business, a deep tees. Its in the process, in the works. Sydney has been deployed and the nuggets are being mined. Im going to compress two questions into one. What can we learn from 1876 that would help with conflict today and how do you restore civic discourse to the present day. I agree with you. Oh boy. Whoever said oh boy. That is really one of the big challenges today. And we are a divided nation, clearly. But, i think history can help give us a perspective of where weve been before and we are a long way from where we were. Discourse takes leadership. Social media doesnt help. It drives everybody apart. I dont know if youve visited my twitter feed lately. It can be a very dark place occasionally, but, i think that it just takes leaders and we could use a grant or eisenhower or reagan, frankly. Optimistic leaders. Now we are right in the thick of current events. What is your opinion of your competition at the other Cable Networks . Oh, wow. And this is being recorded . No, not at all. Off the record. All, well, i have a lot of respect for my competition and other networks. However, i will say that i do think that some people, who were regular newspeople, thought they were somehow affected by donald trump and his administration to appoint where emotion factored in more than it should have in some of the reporting, to where they lost some people in the trust factor and it hurt all of us as journalists to do that. So, when i took over in january 2009, he said two things to me. One, the show is not about you and, two, its about the news. Let the news drive the show. So i look at it with these horse blinders of how i can make that our be as as possible and somebody gets to the end of the hour and they know whats happening in the u. S. And around the world and they have some sense of whats happening. Im trying to take the emotion out of it. Of course i have thoughts about things. Im not a robot. But i want to be able to present it to you so you can make the decision. The whole thing, we report, you decide is not just a slogan. Im really trying to do that every night. Any predictions for the 2022 election . Again, the camera is rolling. If you talk to republicans, they feel really excited about the prospects. They feel like they are in a good position. Subject lies and topic lies, they feel they have a number of things they can talk about that they feel good about, so it should be for the house side, according to kevin mccarthy, paint by numbers. They only need a few seats and he is looking at 20, 30, 40 big pickups of seats in the house. The senate is much more difficult in that the battlegrounds are little tougher for republicans and i think that will come down to the candidates chosen. The biggest political thing, the elephant in the room, is the decision of the former president. Whether he runs for president or not. And that will decide a lot about how different parties deal with that and if he does run, he will of course get a ton of attention and every other candidate will be asked whatever the former president is saying or doing. I assume he will be back on twitter which will pick up our knowledge of whats happening inside president trumps head and there will be a reaction to that. Its very cyclical. I think its the biggest political thing that we will see in the next six to 10 months. Fair and balanced. I havent totally decided yet. I knew you were going to ask. I havent decided. Its a huge decision. I dont get to do that on the show that much. What processes are in place on the slogan of fair and balanced and do you have influence over the content . Yes, im the executive editor of the show, so, the buck stops with me. But, i have a great team and i have an executive producer and some lighters and a couple producers and we have a great team that has formed a really good system about trying to be an ice hockey goalie of news and prevent the bad pucks from getting through. And there are many bad pucks out there. So, it is me and i make the decisions. There is a morning meeting that is collaborative. We all talk about things, but i am the executive editor. How did you like being on got failed the . Lets see. Like a steak in the lions den . It was fun, but i didnt know it was happening and once he started talking about hunter biden and whatever else he had a skit about pelosi and i said i should probably exit stage left. I think i have an interview request for speaker pelosi. I hope she is not watching. And then he turned to me and said she is not up this late. That, im sure, helps with the interview as well. Our last two questions and then we are going to run out of time. I think you played ball. You play sports. Your kids play sports. What is your favorite golf course . Just because of the memories, it would be Augusta National but i love playing out here at pebble beach and the at t. There is nothing like that and i talked to three or 4 Million People per night through the camera but when im standing in front of 200 people and i have to make a turn on a three wood, its a different ball game, and i played in college and its still a different ball game. Last question. This one is from me because i know earlier in your career, at the pentagon. You were well informed on the National Security front. What is your opinion on what happened with the exit in afghanistan . Was that a president ial decision or a military follow up . How do you feel . Everything ive heard is that everyone was recommending the troops remain until americans were out and that the president was very determined to have it the other way around so that zero baby and state quickly and i think the recommendations, everything we can tell, are pretty much down the row. The state department was weighing in on that front. I dont know if we know 100 but i do think this was a president ial decision. I think its sad, having been there just a few weeks after 9 11, i landed at Bagram Airbase and to see all that time along the afghan pakistan border i was in the small afghan villages where 20year old captains were essentially mayors of these little villages, trying to get girls to go to school and set up the water system, and they did, and Amazing Things were happening. I just think we bit off a lot more than the original mission, how we got out, not did we get out, but how we got out was sad and i think former defense secretary gates said it well on 60 minutes. It was just sad. I would be remiss if i didnt say, our condolences to the Powell Family and the loss of powell this week. He was a great man and he was largerthanlife when it came to washington, but the stories that i have from researching reagan as his National Security adviser i will just tell one very quickly. That is, they are in moscow at the final summit and they are finally coming to the end where they are going to make the final deal and gorbachev keeps saying there will be a peaceful coexistence and we add this lame, this paragraph, peaceful coexistence, and reagan says it like four times and he is suspicious of it and he turns to powell and powell scribbles on the corner of a paper and he puts it down and he slides it to reagan and reagan looks at it and then gets up and says, the answer is no. We are not adding that paragraph. And gorbachev explodes and gets in reagans face. He is a little shorter and he is like in his face and they are really yelling at each other and the whole deal is about ready to fall apart and then gorbachev backs down and says, okay. And hes kind of defeated. And they dont add the paragraph. So everybody files out of the room, the deal is done, and Marlon Fitzwater goes back to the table and sees the piece of paper and picks it up and it says, if you agree, you can never criticize them again. Meaning, you could never criticize the soviet union again if you put that paragraph in the deal and reagan saw that and trusted powell so much that he risked the whole nuclear deal on that graph. So his influence not only with reagan and the bushes, but a lot of people in washington, was exponential. He was a good man. President reagan stated publicly that he hoped powell would run for president one day and he would vote for him. It has been a really quick hour spent with you. Just wonderful. Thank you for coming in and thank you for a terrific talk. And book. Im so happy to have read it. Thank you. If you are enjoying American History tv, sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures and history, presidency, and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter today and be sure to watch every saturday or anytime online at c span. Org history. Campaign 2024 coverage is your front row seat to the front row election. Watch our coverage of the candidates on the campaign trail with announcements, meet and greets, speeches, and events, to make up your own mind. Campaign 2024 on the cspan network. Our free mobile video app or any time online. Cspan. Your unfiltered view of politics. Patrick murphy has worked for over 40 years in saint louis television, both on air and as a six time emmy winning pro Patrick Murphy has worked for over 40 years in st. Of d television. For the past 24 years, he has emceed the st. Louis speaker