Recent polling shows show most americans disapproving of president trumps handling of the virus what do you think. Yeah its a mixed record its kind of surprising because d leaders tend to go up with a time of crisis because theyre given an opportunity to really do what the people. Need them to do because no one else can do it so i meant a long story larry but i would say that the Trump Administration was d a bit slow at the outskirt but it wasnt all their fault because honestly they were not left with a lot of place where the preceding ministrations and i can tell you by coincidence d in 2014 tom ridge the former secretary of Homeland Security and i were arrested cochair a commission a Bipartisan Commission on bio of the fence and a big focus of it was are we ready for an Infectious Disease pandemic we put out a report yeah 2015 and we said the country is not prepare made a series of recommendations a number of them are actually put in the statute by congress and the president trunk not all rob but trump got around to doing one of the things we asked the president to do which was to adopt a National Strategy of what we would do in the case of an Infectious Disease pandemic or a bioterrorist attack but the truth is that very little was done by our government the congress requested or the president s strategy outlined so when the pandemic hit we werent ready and i think the president any administration or slow response when they serve a response i think they have none of this as much as the one put expect in a very difficult situation including some strong bipartisan agreements with democrats in the house and some but admittedly he is not an inspiring money there. No you know it can be a bit a lot of the times its not as just as personality im at some of these its not surprising to me that he finally stopped holding these long press conferences was normally thats were an opportunity for a leader to speak to the people who have country for that long and you know it just ended up being negative because hed get into it its true the press is aggressive sometimes hostile but thats just the way it is and if youre in office as president or governor or mayor you know thats the case city that will be ready for that and dont get into so that of the mud responding to tough press questions or didnt are humans with unfortunately he did i think Something Else happened which is he is a natural and then see when he faces a problem to say its going to be better quickly and and i think he feels thats a way to make it better and give people hope and part of what happened here im afraid and why is the numbers of approval for a month about how are settled this crisis are down is that after 00 people began to not trust his optimism because it wasnt reflected d in the numbers they were seeing your every day on the t. V. Hes saying he praises themselves a lot for closing down travel from china saying he did so against the advice of almost everybody in that it actually same tens of thousands of lives you agree. Well i dont know how many lies did say but i think it was the right decision. And i applaud him for but really he should have done a lot more then another if he acknowledged this isnt the end of january so basically he was acknowledging this was going to be a real threat to our health was a pandemic. But what he what he also should have done was focused inside america and it would have been tough but move right away to this show caring and place a request that followed about a month later and right away to urgently trying to use the powers of the presidency getting the place all the supplies we needed to this is not the time for an extensive post mortem unfortunately were really on what are after action review of what happened when and how we could have been better prepared we needed an independent bipartisan investigation once this viruses and control just the way we had one after 911 that really helped us to avoid another 911 but but theres no question in my mind as you look back now that the month of february was in some ways the last months of opportunity to immediately inside our country. Get us ready to protect our people and take your those sick from the virus they still you and tom ridge did we can say that you would terribly surprised by a pandemic or you. Not really and its not that tom and i here are our prophets and jesus is honestly larry we just talked to a lot of people who are experts in this field and they just said its coming. And of course you have the extraordinary spanish flu pandemic of 918 which between 50000000 and a 100000000 people died incidentally my father his mother died in that epidemic in new york city he was less than 3 years old and never knew it was mother really in a chorus line it were nor was a great loss to the family but and thats what the thousands tens of thousands of people in america are experiencing now both but in more recent years weve had sars and murders an ebola. And it was pretty clear it was coming also unlike when you compare it to 918. 00 my god were all traveling so much more goods are troubling and so theres a d theres a and then fictious disease on virus in china is so much back and forth with china that inevitably is going to be around the world and here we are are you concerned that so many states are opening up maybe prematurely. I am concerned about that unfortunately you know we always say we think were thinking about laws that states are the great lever tours of democracy when the federal government doesnt do something the states try to work unfortunately this is a real like real time experiment you know im worried about it but were going to learn. Which states do it right which states are able to continue to flatten the curve of Infectious Disease and death and were fortunes it go up as and so through prematurely lifting those those limits. And how about the experts who say the this pandemic will come back in the fall well it may im not an expert in bradmans but i learned a lot on the work on the commission with d bridge d you know and i think 18 in that the awful epidemic and. That it started in the winter one year it stopped this the weather got warmer which we hope it will and then came back with ferocity that actually killed more people the following winter than it does before so i think its best to. Assume that that may happen and get ready for d it and thats why im so encouraged but all the effort thats going on the plan to treatment drugs for the corona virus d of course most important will find a vaccine if we can do that we can blunt this this letters and. Use it with him in the senate. Both democrats. Immediate thoughts on joe bidens current situation. You know its as though the city personally amass or 24 years of them in the senate is the strange person of the fittest of fate i was a state senator in the 1772 joe biden its elected to the u. S. From though hes not even 30 when he gets elected 3rd institutional minimum age when he takes office in january 2 years later im running for reelection i have a friend in. New haven almost as a mirage harrison writes us and says how do you like to have a u. S. Senator come up and campaign for it so i cant imagine who would want the lowest its well i would the series with a guy named joe biden edit him up and he was very splendid there together weve been friends ever since just a flying human being. He knew how to make the senate the senate work i mean he he by the virtue of his personality the fact that people liked him and trusted him he has on unusually strong relationships with republican senators even people like Strom Thurmond but certainly people like orrin hatch of utah who as with whom he collaborated to get some big d boss passed so i have a lot of respect for him do you worry that the maid to movement will now attaches itself to him you know if he were divided i mean its look this woman terrorist made a serious a decision i mean i will say. Myself from. All these decades on show 24 years 7 and there are so many like the behavior these are even suggestive d. d is that he uses a mode but shes come out and its not easy and made him as part of them so. She deserves to be taken seriously in the investigation and the accusation investigated one of the most significant things in these cases is that is there a pattern of behavior i mean there are others who will say that joe biden did something similar and im so poor i havent seen it so. My guess is because of the d way politics is that this will chase him and hound him this kid is right through the action but i dont really think its going to this how many people unless something more is proven about this kind of behavior joe barton right now its just an accusation or joe you look great i agree shooting my good health. Thank you and ill ask you to go over this kid who would take care they care senator thanks for your time today more politicking right after the break. The underlying narrative some call it a myth of American Foreign policy is the countrys exceptional position on the world stage this is the artisan consensus reality is very different the global condemning has demonstrated the u. S. Should focus on its own exceptionally. Thinks. Weak to ask. Welcome back to politicking Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell says the senate will not pass another economic aid package unless it includes protection for businesses against lawsuits will it do a virus for analysis on this im joined by dan abrams hes the chief Legal Affairs correspondent for a. B. C. News and founder of media i the coauthor d of the new book john adams under fire well talk about that later cant wait to talk about that john adams the Founding Fathers fight for justice in the boston massacre murder trial then is like everybody else holds up a new york dam for some other things what do you make of much more connell asking for more liability protection. Well look this is kind of like tort reform right what mcconnell saying is that in exchange for this next round he wants to make sure there are protections in place for companies so lets take a step back and talk about if that doesnt happen where are we and so the standard then becomes like in any other case which is negligence and there are going to be a lot of lawsuits there are going to be people who are going to say that they were exposed to the virus either by going to work or being at a particular place etc but the standard still requires a level of irresponsibility on the part of the person being sued meaning if you just go to work and you happen to get the virus from someone else at work that doesnt mean that the company is legally responsible for it there still has to have been some sort of knowledge there has to have been some sort of action taken or not taken by the need to hold them responsible on a list saying is lets avoid all of that we just want to basically immunize the Companies Moving forward do you buy that i mean look its really a. Typical pull argument right i mean typically the right has been more supportive of tort reform limiting the amount of money that can be available to people suing for example a company typically the left has been more supportive of the people who are doing the suing so it becomes a fairly typical divide between republicans and democrats over an issue like this once again is this going to be sure as an issue is that going to change will new policies be written. Well the Insurance Industry i think is going to be a super interesting question coming out of this which is you know when you talk about policies right and they have clauses in there which talk about force measures we call an act of god at a is this an act of god is this going to be determined to be something that was so un for seeable ringback that Insurance Companies shouldnt be responsible for losses etc that no matter what passes or doesnt pass in the in the senate its going to be an issue moving forward is going to be a question of how much liability do Insurance Companies have for damages for losses that companies have incurred based on the specific language in their policy. This is going to be an upheaval in the legal system is it not oh theres going to be litigation over this for years and years and look and you know were probably thinking about it some of the smaller cases theyre going to be some really big ones right some deals that got called off at the last minute putting aside insurance for a minute a lot of contracts that say for example you know this contract is valid unless there is an act of god and his district chairman to be an earthquake a tornado those are the typical things that we think of and that language is used but theres going to be if youre debate moving forward as to whether this applies or doesnt apply in terms of contracts and about privacy people going to sue over being tested and they import. Well you know thats going to be a tougher one the government has a lot of authority and power when it comes to a Health Crisis you know i hear people saying that you know Civil Liberties are being impinged on and maybe they are but the constitution is not absolute the 1st amendment is an absolute we have libel Laws Congress shall pass no law well libel law is one of those logs on the 2nd amendment we ban machine guns the 2nd amendment is not absolute either and so there are exceptions in the constitution and one of them that the Supreme Court has ruled on in the past has been this question of how much power the government can have in a Health Emergency and this is a perfect example of that i think the more interesting legal questions about sort of the rights of citizens is going to come a little bit down the road were already seeing the 1st of these lawsuits thats basically saying for example wait a 2nd state how can you treat a drive through differently than a religious nation and those are interesting lawsuits but theyre going to have to be specific its going to have to show an even treatment its not going to just be able to say my Civil Liberties were violated here and as a result im entitled to damages. Who got an election coming do you see a lot of issues to purring there based on the virus no no boating by mail in some states will lead to probably you know conventions you know conventions. Well though theyll have online i would assume theyll have online conventions right to be a Virtual Convention that dont have but they wont have a Live Convention i dont think in the in the typical way the interesting question of course from the from the election point of view is going to be what happens if business 2nd round of corona by then if things havent continued to decreased and then do people not show up to the polls and in certain states there is no absentee ballots and how do you deal with these questions because you cant just postpone the election that would be the president certainly cant postpone the election so so its going to be theres going to be some very tricky questions that come up as the election approaches in connection with the coronavirus usually trump would have better Approval Ratings right now if you hadnt tried to shift blame in this crisis on the tag of a miss expand on that. Well i said this on my radio show that i thought that the president could have had a 60 plus percent Approval Rating right now if he had been to this and just gone for supporting unifying not attacking that this is an opportunity for a political leader in an environment like this we all want our president to be the person we can look to for information and theres a reason that the governors across the country according to polls are more popular than the president right now because the vast majority of republicans democrats whatever they are theres a sense within those states theyre doing what they have to do to do whats best for us and when the president engages in these fights with the governors when he attacks people on twitter rather then in this time when the country is nervous and afraid simply saying im here for you were going to do everything we can that that i think that that Trump Supporters in particular should feel like it was an opportunity lost for the president to to really emerge from this even more popular than he had been before and now hes back exactly to where he was maybe even a little bit low. Lets turn to the book before he became the 2nd president of the United States john that im swiss and distinguished lawyer and boston you know what was this case the boston massacre this was a case where british soldiers in 1770. Fired on american colonists and killed 5 of them and as you can imagine this is a time right before the revolution when tensions are high and the colonists wanted justice otherwise known as revenge they were angry they were furious at what the soldiers had done and john adams took the very unpopular case of representing the british soldiers at trial and there are actually 2 cases one of the captain one of the 8 soldiers he represented them in both cases and he i think became it became one of the the most important moments in his legacy we used a transcript from those trials actually someone had been handwriting what happened in court to tell the story of the boston massacre trials in this book that they hire adams or that he volunteered to do this to good question and he was hired and he was later frustrated that he felt he was appropriately and you know without giving it all away ill tell you that the captain is found not guilty and adam said that he later bumped into him in london and the captain basically ignored him and was not appropriately appreciative either psychologically or financially for the amazing thing that adams did in helping to get the captain acquitted the case of the soldiers was a much more complicated case because it became clear the captain had not given the order to fire i cant wait to read his book john adams is a fascinating character in American History like the bush years later his son became president he was also was he brighter than most or you thought he was brighter than most. He he was brighter than most and he thought he brighter than most. Both are true he definitely had a very high self esteem when it came to his intellect but he was also a very smart guy was also a very difficult guy. And i think that you know as president there were certain mistakes that he made there were certain things he did very well but he really i think is underappreciated and hes felt this way too for what he did in this case for taking on such an unpopular case of what he did is he also did not attack the citizens of boston someone else in his position might have felt the only way to win this is to really place the blame on them because it was a selfdefense case adams walked a very fine line in this trial of on the one hand saying it was selfdefense there was nothing else they could do but being very specific about the blame without sort of casting a wider net which also would have made him even more unpopular in that area at the time because his wife Abigail Wright was a very important figure in the early American History and the letters that she wrote the letters between them were some of the the greatest historical artifacts that we have i mean you know we dont have George Washington letters with his wife we have some letters from Thomas Jefferson etc but we dont have the kind of treasure trove of exchanges that we have between Abigail Adams and john adams that ranged from the political to the personal and she was i think if she were alive today she would be running for office herself and pretty darn successful at it dan i cant wait to read this book thank you so much for being with us. Larry always great to see you and great to be with you the new book is john adams under fire the Founding Fathers fight for justice in the boston massacre murder trial its out now and available everywhere including to download and thank you for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my Facebook Page or tweet me at kings things dont forget to use the politicking hash tag and thats all for this edition of politicking. Is youll be via reflection of reality. In a world transformed. What will make you feel safe from. The isolation full community. Are you going the right way or are you being led so. Direct. What is true what is faith. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the depths. Aura made in the shallowness. Be so throughout the course or at least so your need for good can each other than the human one. But on the better side going to the book on the song that is dismissed. Instead of. Me emotion learning t. Months ago i feel still be stuck or even muscles from the course for me which muses to that of im sure hes just woken up from the gut feel the church. Before going into business compassion. We think he minds be soviet soldier to piss off the boot shes wearing. To church so the soul looks like to move to oppose an opinion with a book and then you only like it on the show stuck in it and that summarizing the story. Of course. Greetings and salutations since the start of the pandemic amazon dot com has quickly become one of the most essential tools of survival during these bizarre and brutal stay at home times from groceries to face masks to board games you can damn near find anything you may need or desire to help you survive and get through living in these sequestered in this sequester era but apparently one thing not a bailable the order of the online giant is workers rights and a little thing called courage at least thats according to top engineer and now former