We stand as a party and where we need to go as a nation. And this is what i believe. I believe that president obama has led this nation from crisis recovery and we are now on the , cusp of resurgence. I am proud to have played a part in that. This party, our nation, will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the obama legacy. Charlie the news ends speculation about his president ial run. It would have been his third attempt at the nations highest office. Joining me from washington is al hunt. In new york, Mark Halperin and john heilemann. sey are host of bloomberg with all due respect. I am pleased to have all of them. Mark, tell me why he did this and what factors contributed to the decision. Mark you had Hillary Clinton building up fundraising, joe biden torn about whether he wanted to run for president anyway, and the death of his son beau a few months ago. The filing deadline is coming up. The Vice President has been dealing with his personal grief and family. All of that caused him to delay his decision until now. Had to be decision time for anybody. The clock ran out on him and he , said today what our sources are saying, the family was prepared to say, we are Strong Enough to do this but he did not , accept his advisors critique that there was time to mount a credible, Serious Campaign while being Vice President , taking care of his family, raising money, campaigning. Charlie should he have accepted that critique . Or should he have said that they are doing it for their own reasons . Mark i think that he made the right decision politically. Personally, that has to be up to him. The people i talked to who would dealing with him said, he was himself stronger than he had been since his sons death. Strength had returned to him. I think politically, Hillary Clinton and bernie sanders, they have tens of millions of people around the country excited about the prospect of being president. For all of joe bidens strengths, i dont think there are tens of millions of about a bidented candidacy. Charlie john you would add . , john i think there was momentum for a while. Especially after the appearance on stephen colbert. John you have a unique situation for biden. He has been running for something since 1972. Whether sentence for the senate or president , it is all he knows how to do. Confronting a future in which he is no longer doing what is his natural mode of being was difficult for him. Around the colbert thing, people were calling him saying, you should run. Donors, strategists, voters, others around the country. I dont think joe biden had had that happen before. It is easy for politicians when they get all of that in coming to think, this is my moment. The country is calling out for me to do this. The truth is, mark and i did focus groups for our show, we talked to democrats, the voters looked at him and said, that guy doesnt seem emotionally ready to be running for president. He still seems to torn up about what happened to his son. I am sure that information reached joe biden. More generally, he came to his senses that this was not a national calling for him to get into the race. At the same time, they were people around him, including members of his family who at , that moment when all of that was happening, hillarys trajectory seemed to be getting worse and worse. The email stories seem to be getting more and more damaging. Her poll numbers were sinking and people were saying, this is coming to you. Just keep waiting. In the last few weeks, that changed with Kevin Mccarthys comment and the benghazi hearings looking more favorable, her performance, other things in the atmosphere, the moment when he starts to doubt that the country is calling for him and the political dynamics no longer seemed favorable and then he , goes back to his heart and he was never fully there. That all leads up to his decision. Charlie is it possible still that if something happens to secretary clintons campaign, whether it is an email that gets out that nobody knows about now that implodes her candidacy, that he would get back in . Al it would have to happen very soon. It is possible, but very unlikely. Voters who elect delegates i think all of this backandforth and this ticktock occurred, there was a genuine discussion, even with top advisers late yesterday afternoon who were pretty convinced he was not going to run. It was not final until he talked with his family. I think that the overarching question here was something that biden didnte fully know all along which was , you cannot run for president as a catharsis, to somehow shed your grief. It is a very hard, difficult, trying painful thing to go through. It is not fun. People think it is fun. It is not. For joe biden to have done that almost from the beginning was not going to happen. I dont think he fully realized that for a while. It just wasnt meant to be. I think that is more important than the polls for the fundraising or the other stuff. Charlie he very much wanted to be president. Mark he thinks he would be a better candidate for the Democratic Party than Hillary Clinton, better president than Hillary Clinton thinks that his , partnership with obama has made him more ready then he felt he was before when he had been chairman of Foreign Relations and chairman of judiciary. I think part of what he said today was to try to put a coda on saying, here is my vision. Here is what i think america should be. Here is what i think the democratic nominee should be like. He very much wants the highest office he is likely to achieve now is Vice President of the United States. He is trying to find a way to make peace with that and put his imprint on the next year of the administration. Charlie lets imagine that he had run, what would be the differences with Hillary Clinton . John this is always a big question. On some areas of foreign policy, he was more doveish, on economics and most domestic policy, they are not very far apart and that was one of the , problems in trying to think of what the path would be. There is not an ideological or large numbers of policy differences that are very dramatic unlike clinton and bernie sanders, where the differences are much more stark. It would have been a Campaign Based more on, i am a more authentic voice for the middle class. That it would have been a stylistic and temperamental contrast rather than a contrast based on issues. Part of the argument on the argument all along was that we are in this moment right now, and you can see it on the republican side, a mirror image with the interest in donald trump and ben carson, this moment where authenticity is prized. That is the argument that biden would have been implicitly making. I am the authentic one, and she is the phony one. Charlie issues that he believes in about the middle class mark from scranton and the guy who rides the amtrak train and has the common touch and the ability to speak for workingclass voters in a way that few politicians do today he , would have that would have been the pitch. Much more of a temperamental thing. Charlie what did barack obama want . Al i think he probably would have voted for joe biden if he had voted in a contest but i , think he is probably not displeased with the outcome. He is a realist. He knew it would be difficult for joe biden to win. It might make it harder for Hillary Clinton to succeed him. My guess is that he is pleased with this, charlie. I dont think joe is all past attends. I think he will be in demand the next year. Russ feingold in wisconsin will want joe in there. Hillary clinton will be , campaigning with joe biden and i think the Vice President worries about what life will be like outside of politics which , he has been in for 43 years. I think he will be i dont think revered is too strong of a term but certainly a highly , respected figure, there will be a role for him to play. Charlie turning to Hillary Clinton, the testimony is tomorrow. Is that now less of an issue . Because of what the republicans have done in shooting themselves in the foot . Mark substantially less. You really need the goods, you need to have the country Pay Attention to what you want to say. It is not clear to me that the seven republicans who question her will be her match on any level and i think they have set , the table in a way not just because of the comments of kevin donthy, but because they seem to have a good sense of the stagecraft ricard required. I thought they were in a good place a few months ago. John, and others suggested that they were not. It is clear to me now that they are going to have to struggle to make this an effective hearing, either as a matter of oversight or politics. Charlie my theory is that the emails might unload something else. John the benghazi investigation, as you know, charlie there have been multiple , investigations elsewhere, it has been investigated pretty carefully over the course of many years. There was some new information that trey gowdy has and new emails from the ambassador, some new things to dig into, but largely the matter has been litigated. The new thing and potentially damaging thing as a relates to the emails, and we do have some accounts that the committee took a sharp turn when the email theyer erected, and suddenly seized on that and a pretty overtly political way. When she gave a good debate performance in las vegas, people pointed out that part of the reason she did well is that she has done this a lot of times before. She had been and 25 debates or forms with barack obama in 2008. And experience helps on the stage. It is the same thing for this committee hearing. This woman has been in front of a lot of congressional committees. She has been interrogated before many times. She not only has prepared a lot, but she has the background of having done this against the very able republican opponents. I think she walks into this, almost inevitably she is going to be better than the Republican House members who were against her because she has been dealing with this issue in a sustained way for a very long time. She knows what she knows and she knows how to make the arguments. Charlie is there any talk as to what might be on the emails that were deleted and then not necessarily all found to have been deleted . Al there is a lot of talk, charlie. Whether it goes beyond that is another matter. Look i cannot help but contrast , this to the hearings held 42 years ago by your fellow north carolinian, sam ervin. What a contrast. That was a much tougher time. That was much more perilous. It was bipartisan from the very beginning with these two men. Trey gowdy was never the right person to do this but it never , should have been done. A congressional hearing on libya would be very legitimate but a , hearing on the tragedy of four americans being killed was bound to be partisan from the beginning. Charlie, in 1983, 241 marines were blown out of the barracks in beirut. There were not hearings up in congress three years later. This never should have taken place. Charlie has the notion has set in that donald trump could win you are looking at me like that is the dumbest thing i have ever said john no, no, no mark first of all, yes, broadly speaking after a summer in which , the establishing media was in denial about him being the nominee, now he is widely accepted not universally that he is leading every national poll, that he is a viable candidate and at this moment, the most likely republican nominee. Charlie and build an organization. Mark he is building an organization, he has the money, all of those things. He is a real candidate. I dont think anybody thinks he is better than a 5050 shot that nobody has a better shot than him but to go back to your earlier question. Ben carson is in iowa a more natural fit for the iowa is,torate than donald trump partly because his evangelical credentials are legitimate. There are questions about trump. You can imagine the scenario where ben carson beats donald trump and i would. Maybe this poll is the beginning of a trend in that direction. Then the question becomes new hampshire, is there an establishment candidate that can be donald trump . If donald trump were to win iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, he might be unstoppable. If you lose the first two contests, does he go on after that . I dont know the answer to that question. I think that many people have some doubt about if he starts losing, whether he has staying power. Charlie thank you albert, john, mark. We will be right back. Stay with us. Charlie seth meyers ended his run as head writer and weekend update anchor on saturday night live after 13 years on that program. He took over as host of late night in february 2014. He is the fourth person to helm the show following letterman, obrien, and fallon. Hulus animated series the awesomes, which he cocreated, is airing its third season. Im pleased to have set meyers at table. Welcome, sir. Lets talk about the animated series first. Do you get some satisfaction out of being a creator . Seth i get a great amount of satisfaction from being a creator, especially for things i am passionate about. From a young age, i like superheroes, cartoons, comics. We always wanted to do Something Like that. We were lucky to find a place like hulu that wanted to do the show. Being able to voice a superhero was a nice bucket list thing for me. Charlie its nice that today there are so many places you can do programming. Seth he has been huge beneficiaries with the things we want to do. I very lucky to have a show on a network where you can reach out into more homes but in this day and age, you can do the ship in the bottle programming. You almost feel like a hobbyist. Charlie is there something to note about what is happening in the sense of taking serious interviews at 11 30 p. M. , whether it is joe biden or other people like that . Seth one of the ways you bring your dna as a host is who you want to book. That is something that joe we were very lucky to have him on our first show. For us, in the same way that it appeals to stephen, not just politicians, but i have enjoyed having fiction authors on. I found authors to be really interesting storytellers. Charlie people who have picked up on that. They have said where are the , shows that care about books . You have gotten on that list. Seth it is nice to use the platform to have people who would not be guests anywhere else. Charlie how has it changed since you began . Seth we made a choice to start the show behind the desk. That was one of the bigger changes we made. Charlie was that your instinct . Was that your producers instinct . Seth i learned a lot of skills at snl. We were just talking about ways even though these are yearround shows you think of fall as the new season. We were wondering if there is any way to shake up the way we present ourselves. One thing i had always felt was that when i was doing a monologue, i was the warmup comedian for my own show another and now the show starts when it starts. Charlie do you see the audience before the show . Seth i do. More than anything else, to make them feel more comfortable, that is when i get a sense of what the house is like. It varies from night tonight. If it is a brutally cold day in august, people are in a bad mood. Its funny. Because we dont have any windows, i dont know the weather is until i go outside. Charlie he always have one or two people who might not expect if they are loud or enthusiastic, the crowd will be more enthusiastic than normal. Seth an enthusiastic crowd gives you a little bit more license to have fun in those moments between the jokes. If you have a longtail of laughter, that is when you can go off script. If they are laughing and cutting it off cold charlie any other changes . Seth mostly just getting better. A lot of the staff we hired, it was their first job in television. We liked that idea. That is something again that i learned from Lorne Michaels at in sl. At snl. It is nice to hire people that dont know how to do these things and you can teach them the way you want to teach them. They have all just, everybody has gotten better. The luxury of these shows is that you do one every night, so your learning curve is a lot faster. It is the best. Charlie i cant imagine people who do Something Like once or twice year. If it goes wrong, your year is wasted. If it is not quite perfect for me today, there is tomorrow. Seth you can be less precious about it. When people are watching you at 12 30 a. M. At night, they want to see somebody who is comfortable when jokes are going well and badly. One of the things i had to hammer out of myself was just not to sweat a bad joke, not to sweat a bad piece of comedy. Charlie you knew that though, didnt you . Seth you know as much as you know and then doing it, it is so funny how you theorize about what it is like to do a latenight show but until you actually get out there, you dont realize how it actually is processed. Charlie do you watch other shows . Seth only stuff they gets picked of virally the next day with. When new people start i am , always curious about their shows. I was excited for stephen and trevor. I really enjoyed watching how they do it. The reality sets in and we are actually put together a show, you have a ton of time. Charlie did you have any regret about leaving snl . Seth no. Charlie even though it was an institution and you followed a rather Remarkable Group of people. Seth the nice thing was, doing weekend update, i followed remarkable people. I at least knew that it was possible and one of the ways it , was possible as you try to think too hard about the footsteps you are following. I was really sad to leave snl, but i was also reaching the point where i was the oldest guy i was writing for staff and cast. I dont think you can do both. It is fulltime. If anything, i wish i had more time to work on my show. Charlie what would you do with more time . I wish i could get in at 5 00 in the morning. We started 9 00, because that is the minimum amount of sleep you need to function. You always want two or three more hours. Whether it is a story that is breaking that day, just the logistics of pulling together the clips or graphics packages. Charlie do you spend more time thing about the monologue or the interviews . Seth i spend the most amount of time thinking of the written comedy in the first act of the show and that being the stuff , that is dayof. Charlie carson did that, everybody else i have known. Seth that is right. You know especially for us, one of the most important things about our show and we are so lucky to be following jimmy fallon. Charlie he is doing all right seth he is fantastic. You want to say, stick around for this. That was one of the reasons to move behind the desk. An hour before us, jimmy was doing a fantastic monologue. So we could understand to some degree that you walk out and stand in front of a curtain, it seems to some degree like a repeat. Making it look different was important. Charlie but what makes jimmy jimmy is not the monologue. It is the skits. Seth i think he has a breadth of talent that has not been is not conventional. He can do all of these different things. He does a wonderful monologue but what elevates him above , everybody else is that he can do impressions and he can sing and he can dance and he can you know he is a wonderful comic performer. Just like he was at snl. You think that cordon is the same way as well. Seth james and i are friends. We are both happy that we are trying not to do the same show. We are giving people choices. Charlie how would you define the choices . Seth james, obviously, james is talented at so many things that i am not even in the zip code on, you know . He is a Tony Awardwinning performer who charlie a very good actor. Seth a skill set that i am insanely jealous of. Where is what we are trying to do is i think with our first act, the hope is, this might be a nice way for you to catch up on the day. I have always been drawn to news and i think coming from that weekend update tree. Charlie what you have a great gift for in addition is you were a head of the snl writers, so you understand stand up comedy, skit comedy, jokes, and all of that. Is that a learned skill or is that something that is mostly you are funny or you are not funny . Seth youre either funny or not funny, but like any talent, you have to refine it. You need to have some stuff. Charlie like ray lewis. The funny thing about comedy is, i have been writing it for my entire professional life and we are into the second decade of doing it. To some degree, you are constantly blown away by how little you still know, like how wrong you can be with a piece of comedy. You bring out a joke that you are sure is going to work but a but it can strike out charlie every night . Seth to some degree, every week. Charlie does that happen every night . It is most likely something you thought would work did not work. Or the other way. Seth that is, i think, what is that is the flame that draws us comedy writers as moths to it. The idea is you never crack it completely. You always try to get better and better at doing comedy. Charlie and you get better and better by doing it . Seth again, at some point, you cant be influenced by things as much as you were when you were young. I was very lucky that my parents introduced me to monty python, snl, to richard prior. Charlie they like those groups . Seth they did not wait until it was ageappropriate to introduce it to us. Charlie because they enjoy comedy . Seth they enjoy comedy. I have said this before, but my mother is a very beautiful woman. My dad is a funny man. My brother and i learned at an early age charlie a beautiful woman is attracted to a funny man. Seth you can try to be funny. Charlie you will be less handsome as you get older but you will not get less funny. Seth old guys can be very funny. They are probably the funniest. Charlie did you go to amsterdam after college . Seth i did. Charlie this is amsterdam, new york . Seth no. The original amsterdam. Some guys from chicago went over to amsterdam. They were a few years older me then me and they started a second city of amsterdam called boom chicago. They were chicago guys. They would have auditions in chicago. Right after i graduated from college, we saw an audition notice. And i did not even have a passport and i lived in holland for two years. Charlie did you pick up any habits over there . Seth i will say this, when i was a 27yearold man in new york city on snl people would , say this must be the best time of your life. It is not quite as good as amsterdam. Charlie not quite as free. Seth living in amsterdam i felt like i was in a childproofed city. There were no hard edges. Everything had padding on it. It was a good time. Charlie a different mindset of liberation. Seth but i will say, you realize there are a lot of different ways you can perform for comedy audiences that are impaired. I will say that the audience can be impaired in amsterdam is the worst way an audience can be impaired for comedy. They laugh at the wrong things did you walk out with a wellwritten skit. They will lose themselves over the hat. Charlie you went to northwestern . Is there something about northwestern that produces a lot of very talented performers . Seth yes. They have a great theater school. You know, i think, we dont have any kind of Great Program that becomes renowned. What happens the teachers are great. What really happens is because what everyone heard it was good, you were surrounded by people your age who are good. So, all of a sudden you go from being the funniest person in your high school to the least funny person whos auditioning for the improv troupe. There was an improv troupe at northwestern called meow. It took me four years to get into it. I auditioned every year. It was not until my senior year that i made the improv troop. I know the guys who made it ahead of me and they were never wrong. They got it right every year. Charlie but how many of them are big stars . Seth theyre all doing fairly well. They do not have talk shows. I would still contend charlie theyre not that many shows. When you think about in the world of television, not that many people have their own show. Seth having your name on a show is surreal. Charlie it is. You get up every day, and you say, what do i want to do today . My god, i get to talk to seth meyers today. I just read a book, lets find the author. Seth either that, especially i read a few books and i thought i would love to talk to this person. You make a phone call and they show up. More often than not they are more delightful in person than you thought. Charlie do you think the audience is smarter than we think they are . Seth audiences now, especially comedy audiences are savvier in than ever before in a very good way. They can tell us something is not genuine. They can tell it if the host does not believe in. So, you really have to be true to your own sense of humor. Charlie be authentic. Seth you have to be authentic. I think that will continue to be the case. People are really hip to stuff that is authentic versus inauthentic. And i do, i think the audience is very smart now. Also because it is amazing to me when i run into the Younger Generation and you realize they are not just coming up on the comedy being made today. They are self educating themselves with the internet. And there watching the stuff i grew up with. Whereas, when i was going up, other than comedy albums, i could not go watch your show of shows. I was really only watching charlie i always had the impression that David Letterman loved comedians and had a lot of comedians on. Also, he loved athletes. He would always have them. It would drive me crazy because if someone won a big athletic event, world series, nfl super bowl, i would know that david would have a better chance of getting that person the next day than i would. Because he developed a sense of being deeply in awe of those kind of talent. Seth yes. I will say i do not know if you found this but it is more fun to talk to retired athletes. Charlie it is. Because it is its unplugged. They are really you just saw ray lewis. Seth and i would say second to politicians, athletes are the most plugged during their career. You cannot blame them. But the stock answers are ultimately even when you interview athletes across all sports, you realize there are certain things they are all going to answer the same way. Whereas you get guys 10 years out of the game, and all of a sudden they are dealing the anecdotes. Charlie it does make a difference, and you can do this. You can make a book or give a movie at least a chance of being watched, of testing. It really is a sense that if you see something you like, and you have the ability to explore that person in a way that makes them interesting explaining the art they do, you can get people to take a look. Seth and it is fun when, there will be people that we will have on the show and look, there is this tier of talk guests that all of us want. We would all say yes to. My Talent Department would not even have to run it by me. It is fun when you have people on and people will say, ive never heard of that person. I do think you have a responsibility as a host as much as you can to, you were basically saying to the audience, im vouching for this person. Charlie thats right. Seth that is why we are having him on tonight. So we try to be consistent as much as we can. Charlie how do you want to change the show over the next year . You will find that out . Seth yeah. At snl, i learned, because we would always have a summer to think and talk. And everybody would show up, and you would get the writers together and have all these talks. This year i think we should do more of this, more of that. Then the first week with start and it was like the building was on fire and all the plans are out the window because you do not have enough time to actually lay these plans into place. They happen very gradually, almost without noticing it. I dont know if we will make another big move like taking the monologue behind the desk. I do not know if we have another card like that. Who knows . A year from now i could be sitting here saying i would love to schedule it now. I would love to get that on the books. Something could happen. I do not think we are lining up our plans too much. Obviously being Election Year is very exciting. Charlie so far it is been a dream. Seth it has really been a dream. And there are so many of them that dont know they cant win. It is lovely to watch them. Charlie Lorne Michaels has meant what to . Seth lorne brought me into show business. That is the first thing. He sort of plucked me out of relative anonymity. In amsterdam . Yeah, the question is what was he doing in amsterdam. Charlie what would he do . Seth he was patient with me, because was not i am willing, the first to admit i was not a great cast member on snl. I really only started adding value commensurate with my pay when lorne made me a writer. When lorne let me do weekend update. He could have moved on in two years and the show would not have been worse for it. Charlie they gave you a chance to be where you are now. Seth yeah. When i think back to the doubts and fears that i feel like are consistent with the other doubts and fears the people have their first years on snl. Lorne called me up and saying, i think you would be good as a latenight host. Charlie when you see a politician or other people reasonably good of having done a good round of humor or comedy in a speech, it used to be thought that obama, for example would , reach out to the daily show or to saturday night live. Does that happen a lot, that politicians and people with a fat pocketbook can reach out and get you and others when you are a writer only to do comedy for them . Seth you know, when i think you are president you can reach out and get jokes. Charlie i wrote that for the president. Seth that was mine. Beyond that, i feel like we are too busy to overcommit to those other things. But i think famously obama has had some very highend talent write jokes for him. I get it. Charlie what is your day like, before we go . You are in there about 9 30. Seth 9 00. The first thing is just, you know, some writers and i will email the night before to try to charlie like categories . Seth is there anything going on that is going to be something that will be better tomorrow than any other day . Something really timely. Because timely is important to the show. Because the shows do not age well. I do not think anybody goes back and binges. I missed june. Charlie it does not work. Seth we try to do that. And over the course of the two hours it is talking to the writers. Around 11 00, we start reading through written pieces, both for that days show and the rest of the week. Charlie and begin blocking at what time . Seth we go down to the studio around 4 00 in the afternoon. Charlie you run through it once . Whole show . Seth yeah, but ultimately so much of the show is interviews. We just run through the comedy. It takes about 30 minutes or 40 minutes. Charlie and youre still cutting, editing . Seth you are always tweaking. To be honest, we always like add three jokes right before the show because the writers, the monologue writers are taking one last pass. It is fun to walk out knowing theyre going to be, the first time you say them are going to be in front of an audience. Charlie this is such a stupid question, but i am genuinely interested. Is there a secret to writing great monologue jokes . Seth i think there is. But if there is, i dont know what it is. The one person i poached from as an out when lorne gave me this job, you cannot take alex. He had run weekend update for years. So, i went to alex and said, i would love for you to come with me on this. I truly believe he is the best joke writer working today. Alex baze. Baze. He just was an incredibly good joke writer on weekend update. He is a great joke writer now. Charlie hes great because he can write funny jokes, but wasnt about his seth there is a real economy. We would look through his sheets of jokes. You could always tell his page, because he uses less worse than everybody else. There is something, you know, Jerry Seinfeld has talked about he is drawn to sports cars because there is not a wasted inch on a sports car. You have to move as fast as possible. You know how baze right jokes. There is a real sleekness to them. When i was doing weekend update, i needed the space of a sketch and the value of characters and performance. Whereas baze just zeroes in. Charlie i once had to do a big speech and had to be in part funny. So i worked with some comedy writers. And it was amazing to me and to watch them work. And you do get into the mindset a little bit of that. Even if you are essentially not a comedian or not even a funny person in terms of everyday life, and for example, reactive rather than proactive about funny things. You do get a sense of if you do it, you begin to think of it that way. You begin to see it in a much more quicker way. If you have never gone to the process of participating in it. Seth and you start realizing how much of it is about rhythm. That is, obamas great gift i think as a president , he was president who is good at comedy he almost has a standups , cadence when he is not being funny. There is such a rhythm to the way he talks in general that when you actually give him comic dialogue, hes predisposed charlie he fits it in. He is not, he is not afraid to take a beat. Seth oh. Ive never seen anybody less afraid. Charlie i know. The other thing he will do, which i love, is that he will, he knows the joke. But hell pause, and he will start smiling because hes thinking about the ending. He delivers the ending and it makes him laugh. Seth after the ending, you know, he does i would not say he laughs at his own jokes. Charlie i would. Like ha will go he doesnt break up. Yeah. I mean, i dont, we are a couple years away from one of these 21 people running for president having to do their First White House correspondents dinner. Talk about a hard act to follow. Charlie you have been there, havent you . Seth i have been there just once. I have no intentions of going back. Charlie congratulations. Seth thank you very much. Great to see you as well. Charlie back in a moment. Stay with us. Buddy nice place, nice car what happened . Well, it all started with my free credit score from credit sesame. Com. They gave me so much more than a free credit score. Credit sesames Money Management tools and personalized offers saved me tons of money and helped me reach my goals. I just signed up with their free app. Whats my credit score . Your credit score is 650. Thats magic no, thats credit sesame. Com you get so much more than a free credit score so do more with your score at credit sesame. Com charlie ron prosor is here. October marks his last months as israels ambassador to the United Nations. His diplomatic career spans three decades. He served as director general in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ambassador to the united kingdom. Monthsmonth policy General Assembly granted palestinians the right to fly the flag at u. N. Headquarters. It was a step that was imposed by israel and the United States. Ambassador prosor criticized the decision. Ambassador prosor let no one be fooled by the outcome of todays vote. This elite would vote to declare that the earth is flat if the palestinians proposed it. The International Community must make it clear to the palestinians that the only way to achieve statehood is through direct negotiations. As long as the palestinians believe they can achieve their Political Goals without making concessions, they will continue to avoid taking the difficult decisions needed for peace. Charlie i am pleased to have ron prosor back this table. Welcome. You say there are rules for dictators, rules for democracies, and then there are rules for israel. Why do you think that . Ambassador prosor it is looking at the facts. It is not a double standard. It is a triple standard. Israel is held to account basically on a bar that is hard to attain. Lets give examples, ok . There is an article iv that deals with Human Rights Violations all over the world. And there is a special article , item vii, that singles out only one country in. The world only one country in the world that is the state of israel , and that is the state of israel now, i went to one of my colleagues, and esteemed colleague and said, hey, dont i at least fit to be in a class with north korea, libya and syria . Charlie what was the answer . There is no good answer. That is the thing. Hypocrisy in the systematic bias against israel can be seen by every day. For example in the conference on the status of women. Everyone comes around, talks about the status of women. The only country that is being condemned is israel. Not saudi arabia, not afghanistan, not iran. Charlie whose fault is that . Ambassador prosor israel began checking people at airports 30 years ago. What are people saying. How can you do this thing intrusion of privacy. Israel has on the in the front line encountering phenomena western democracies are yet to encounter. Do we always get it right . No. But by god, we are trying. I think today when we look at what we face, the United States, western countries, israel, we are fighting on the same thing, we are fighting on the values, values of freedom, values that we all cherish. Charlie john kerry made huge effort to bring israelis and palestinians together. He spent almost a year trying to get that to happen. And hes raised questions as to why it was difficult. And he has blamed both sides. Yes . Ambassador prosor charlie, we have seen president clinton put an offer on the table. I was there at camp david. We have seen different israeli Prime Ministers put things on the table. Weve seen kerry put things on the table. Prime minister netanyahu reached out and said im willing to negotiate every day, every place, all the time. And we saw that charlie what risk is he prepared to take for peace . Ambassador prosor when i look at what the challenges are for the state of israel today. When i see Prime Minister netanyahu reaching out. I look at the region, look at what is happening around us. We see nation states disintegrating before our eyes. Libya, syria, lebanon, iraq. Nonstate actors like hamas and hezbollah basically take over, and boko haram, basically take over states. And yes, we should reach out every day, but we have seen it at the United Nations. The palestinians have learned instead of sitting in direct negotiations, that it is easier to go out and circumvent that by the United Nations although this is between ramallah as jerusalem is much shorter than to new york. Charlie from aman to jerusalem. Ambassador prosor of course. In a sense, we see the palestinians, the more they say no in the negotiation table, the more yes they get in the international arena. And the only way to get them back to the negotiation table, is telling them that there is only one way. It is tough. It is frustrating. It is not easy. We have been there. But this is the only way forward. Charlie what do they say to you . The only way to have successful negotiation is stop occupying additional territory. What if they say that to you . That is not a way to go. Ambassador prosor i can look and say truthfully, i can say, look, when there was we gave everything back. King hussein, we gave everything back. The state of israel is reaching out. But we have to negotiate this, and it has to be done on both sides. And you heard abu mazen at the United Nations. Oslo. Going back on agreements. Inciting. This incitement does not charlie when i talked to Prime Minister on friday of last week, it does not seem to be his highest priority. His highest priority is iran. My impression is he worries more about iran than he does about trying to find a Peace Agreement with the palestinians. Ambassador prosor i think, i think iran is definitely standing out as a huge threat, not just israel but for the whole region. But the palestinian issue is still a centerpiece. For every israeli, it is absolutely clear that we need peace with the palestinians, we need peace with our arab neighbors, but this peace cannot be a piece that would put israel in jeopardy and would create an create additional problems for israeli security. And the best example when i headed israels foreign service, was gaza. Charlie what happens when the demographics, the territory that israel currently occupies goes significantly against israel . More nonjews in israel than jews . Ambassador prosor we are seeing two different trends which are interesting. The israeliarab population, there is a decrease in the amount of births, because they live inside israeli society. You see women going out to work. You see a change. But from my point of view, it is obvious that we should Work Together to achieve peace. But it is also important to know the challenges israel is facing. And how many times in the past, and you of all know it best, people came out and said the israelipalestinian conflict is the major conflict in the middle east. You solve that, you solve everything else. My point is we are basically fighting it is not between israelis and palestinians or between arabs and jews. It is between people who sanctify life and people who celebrate death. That fight is a fight at the end of the day that will allow us to live sidebyside to each other which we really want. , charlie what will you be doing when you go back . Are you retiring . Ambassador prosor i have not decided to retire yet. I want to say one more thing, charlie. Having served in washington and here the bond between israel and , the United States is an amazing bond between the people. Cherished values. It is something, that i mean, how many countries in the region wave the American Flag with pride . And when i go back to jerusalem, i can tell you that when i walk the corridors of the United Nations everyday, i walk them tall and proud knowing who i represent and what i represent in this family of nations. And when i walked in, i saw 15 flags with a crescent on them. 25 flags with a cross. There is only flag only one flag with the star of david. And for some countries this is one star too many. So, the fight on the legitimacy of israel inside the family of nations is something that i am very privileged and proud to have done. Charlie thank you for coming again. Much good luck to you on your return to jerusalem. Ambassador prosor thank you. And we will see each other in jerusalem. Charlie i certainly hope so. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Today is wealthier than ever, but not everybody shares in the wealth. Today, young Business Leaders are challenging this. Changing the way we are thinking about money. This is a new generation. This is the new philanthropy