Booktv and nonfiction books and authors, booktv, television for serious readers. Booktv, on cspan2, the key west literary seminar held annually in florida. We will hear from several authors, and politics and literature, Time Magazine columnist and joe klein. Good morning. It is a pleasure to be back here. Joe and i were just comparing socks, crucial political issue. You can see he has the best ones. [applause] and so numerous and varied. And the fact that joe told me i have a few Public Service announcements. Since we are coming to the [applause] it has been your joy. The endorphins going crazy in my brain. And and against the idiot hordes on the stage. On your panel the other day. The idiot hordes came after be with primary colors, she defended me too and defended the act of writing anonymously. Dont screw up my questions. And young cubanamerican High School Teachers who may be in the audience today with dinner last night in miami and inspirational to hang with them and an observation, Abraham Lincoln, for the last four days, the rendering of Abraham Lincoln isnt hunting, did they have photoshop, and he looks like a cross between mitt romney and gary cooper, they had political doctors back then and donna brazil is a good friend of mine and she gave me many questions in advance. Fire away. The answer to the first one is the Supreme Court is a crucial issue. And to get the Supreme Court you want evidently. In payback, your book about, the book about vietnam veterans, start with something else. I dont want to this is a question you dont know, in the beginning a guy beginning to attach himself to the president ial candidate, trying to make a decision about whether to keep following these, i was curious, that was a sentence that struck me even though it is pretty clean speech. And comparison and in relation to your careers as a journalist, where does a journalists curiosity come from. In payback, you go back and talk to i think five veterans of Charlie Company and you want to know why. This is a nice biographical question. It comes from having been a child of the 60s and my head my way through College Without ever going through college and graduating from College Without having learned anything except when brilliant course about the history of the south and came out and was angry about the war and segregationist and i started to write and overtime an incredible thing happened to me. When i went out and reported things, the results didnt always conform with my preconceived notions which i covered blessing in boston for the underground press. I dont know if any of you remember that million publication, one of the most talented staffs i ever worked with and i couldnt find any black people who favored busing. I would talk to these women, black women at Columbia Point Housing Project and they would say things like we spent the last four years trying to get a Breakfast Program in this place and they are making the fact is 20 of jeremiah high school, black high school went on to college and 4 , southy i graduated more than they did in college. It seemed like the beginning of my political education. This has been imposed by liberals who didnt know anything about the poor people they were imposing this on. Over time, just picked up things i wanted to know about, when russia is collapsing, did china, did veterans because notion of service has always been a huge thing in my life and in fact charlie mike, my most recent book, it was an educational process, that is all. Lets talk about, one is a novel. Save the column which is let me ask you how, since we are here to talk about revealing power but also literature, how did those three categories affect the way you write . Do you feel different . You are not writing fiction anymore. The journalism, i came from the underground press. I was Rolling Stone bureau chief. And writing a column was a natural thing. And never wrote it the way other people did. And i had to go to afghanistan, go to iraq, go across the country many times, go to tea party meetings, see these things and experience them because of the First Experience in boston. In a more general way. The process of doing journalism and writing fiction are the exact opposite. Both involved some research obviously. In journalism i report the hell out of something. I get the lead in my mind. And the running mate which is a semiequal, and i do remember that. And and both of them before the end this one was i said to him the deal was the gimmick was going to be he was going to lose but he wouldnt. Throwing the stupidest scandals that are out there at this character. And i know you liked me, lets talk about i did not know who wrote it before the press conference. There would not be higher praise then a male writer can receive. Why did you decide to write it anomalously. The first is cowardice and whimsy. The cowardice parts sound like a law firm. They were bob cutting and urban the sheer. Cowardice and women. It was a really stupid conceit. It was an entirely different thing. And loved 19th century english literature. Jane austen, pride and prejudice by a lady, the first semitolerable, not the first, and early semitolerable it was written anonymously by henry adams and his secret wasnt revealed until three years after he died. That was the first part. The second part cowardice. No, the cowardice i was afraid i would make a fool of myself. The second stage was things started happening to these point Susan Stanton tells the story about jack stanton as a young politician that had no basis in reality and in fact the dialogue in the book had no basis in reality. I said where did that come from. Then libby, my favorite character, my heroine, 6foot lesbian with a mouth on her, suddenly appeared in a job betty wright had in the campaign but didnt know that the right, i had kathy bates in my mind when i wrote her and i would write during the day and bring the pages up to victoria at night and she would start reading and laughing hysterically saying where did this come from . I didnt know it decided i wanted to have a book judged on its own merits, rather than on my relationship with bill clinton and i do if my name were on it it would not be treated fairly by my fellow journalists. The third stage was after it exploded, which none of us expected, why did random house keep reducing the printing week. Are you kidding . They couldnt keep up with it. After it was published. That is publishing. It got scary as hell. To have a feeding frenzy going after you and when i became a target, two little kids going to Elementary School and i said to victoria she said no no no no. In the end i probably should have come out earlier but there is a lot of fear going on so that is why. How did you decide to take the voice of a young, black, political worker . What led to that choice of narrator . An homage to arthur warren, anonymous name your second novel, we give you a pass. Why black . And why young . The most crucial part of this is he was the most middleclass, uppermiddleclass character in the book which i thought would be ironic and hilarious. Blackness is important because i had several people in mind. One of them was myself. George stephanopoulos and the third was bill morton, who was an aide to ron brown. It was a wonderful, smart guy who died in a plane crash. This has happened to me in primary colors, a woman dating bill morton came to me and said how did you know clinton had him come to an event in brooklyn and wanted him to be on task . He said i have no idea. It just happened. In the novel it was in harlem. Did the choice of that narrator affect your voice . Did you inhabit him . Did he inhabit you . Who knows. Some kind of melding going on. I wrote the book on mondays. I was looking at newsweek at the time, tuesday through saturday was the work weekend on saturday and sunday, i was doing commentary for cbs news. I would sit down and all of a sudden it would be four hours later and 5000 words would be written, that never happened to me before or since. I have had some good days but those days were kind of scary. The act of disappearing is an important thing for all of us. The purest state of intellectual nature, we are so involved with what we are thinking about. That you disappear, you forget your corporal existence. You use the word scary, insofar as we ever share the experience that most writers i know would say the same thing. A little puzzling to me why it is frightening. Do you have any idea when you got in this thing called the zone and you forget your self. It is not frightening when youre in the zone but when you leave the zone, am i ever going to get there again . Can i come back . I promised we wouldnt talk about the controversy so lets talk about the controversy. What were your experiences going through that firestorm before and after. A fabulous learning experience. It was a fabulous learning experience. I was shocked by the anger. We did the first press conference, we shook hands for the first time. You handed me groucho glasses, i walked out and held them up and said you wont be needing these anymore, the New York Times reported subsequently that i gave the press Conference Wearing groucho glasses. And she said that well know immediately who wrote it because of who the villains are. When mike nichols bought the movie, bought the rights to the movie, he said the thing i like most about this project is that there were no villains in this book, which is why i wrote it. [laughter] which was a good part of my motivation. So i had that terrible press conference, and that night random house put me up at the the waldorf, we were up on the cape where we spend our summers, and at a certain point i couldnt sleep, i couldnt eat, i kept on drinking water, and i was going to the bathroom, and i was shaking uncontrollably, and i had this moment, and i said do you know what you just experienced, joe . You just experienced an average day in the life of bill clinton. [laughter] and its true when you think about enduring a press conference. I mean, it almost gives me enough watch it. [laughter] its almost enough to make me sympathetic with donald trump, but i cant be. [laughter] i knew thats where we were going. [laughter] but then a very interest thing happened. Interesting thing happened. In the weeks after that, i started getting phone calls from politicians. And they, it had absolutely no ideological consistency. System or were good friends like paul wellstone, a dear, wonderful guy. Others were john mccain on the right, you know, people from across the spectrum, you know, said to me we know what it feels like to be in the position youre in now. There were people who were trying to drive me out of the business. Newsweek laid me off for a week, and then kate graham, bless her heart, called me up and she said, how are you feeling . I said, im pissed off, i want to write a column about welfare reform. And she said youre in the magazine this week, im going to tell them that. And all the politicians said the exact same thing. They said weve been through this. And the way you get through it is go to work. Get out there and start reporting about other people. And the final thing that happened was that i decided to change the rules of journalism. I for me, at least. I decided that i would have a no gotcha rule that if a politician said something really stupid that didnt involve, you know, a matter of life and death, national security, war and peace, and i would tell this to them if i were interviewing them for the first time. If you Say Something really stupid, you can take it back. Because i really feel that, you know, politicians are no day in the park. I mean, but theyre not as bad as we have come to portray them. And if we want them to trust us and to tell us what theyre really thinking, we have to make some concessions to them as well. And i thought, you know, at that point i had so much notoriety, i didnt need to make my name by saying, oh, Chuck Schumer said shit, you know . [laughter] it didnt, i didnt need to do it. And ive upheld that principle ever since. And ive only and theyve only called it on themselves once or twice in the last 20 years. So lets talk about the elephant in the room a little bit, and with regard to literature again on this stage during this seminar, dont you think its called a seminar and not a conference, not a festival . Yeah. Makes me feel academic, which ive never really felt [laughter] we have heard people say that that donald trump and perhaps others like him if there is, are any others oh, there are going to be many more. Are not easy to sort of write about. That, for instance, to do because he is so onedimensional that he could not be jack stanton in primary colors, for instance. Do you share that . Oh, absolutely. Although i am planning to im writing a novel now that takes place in new york city in 1896, and im thinking of making, of having a trumplike character because i really do believe hes a figure from the period before there was, you know, selfobservation. [laughter] you know . [laughter] he was, i had one line in the running mate which was the unexamined life is not worth living with [laughter] and i think about donald trump, you know, that line comes to hind when i think about comes to mind when i think about donald trump. But the phenomenon of donald trump is something that we have seen in literature in the past. What was the movie with andy griffith, a face in the crowd . There, you know, the demagogue it cant happen here, you know, the charming demagogue whos come along and raped people, raped the public is not unknown in the american or overseas lit cher. Literature. In this case, i well, let he tell you you know what . How about chinatown, the movie, the megalo maniac who yeah. But hes interesting. Thats the difference. And in a way, trump is too but only, as i said a couple of days ago here, because of the quality of his misdirection. That, you know, whenever hes concerned, whenever he talks about sex, dont listen. See what else is going on, because hes trying to, you know, lure you somewhere else. Right. Could i just say that as i actually went around the country and talked to people, trump supporters, there were, there were three reasons people voted for trump. And, you know, and hillary was right, there were a basket of deplorables, just pure haters who were part of it. But im talking about other people, the rest of the people. There were three types. One were convinced that he was going to get them a better job. The second or a job. Well, no, theres listen were they employed . Yeah, they were employed. Oh, okay. We have unemployment 4. 7 . I know the Work Force Participation rate is lower, but thats because were an aging population, and im really sick of people saying that barack obama was a failure when he saved us from the second great depression. [applause] i know, that was a slam dunk line. [laughter] but the second type were people who were more comfortable with reality tv than with reality. And they like the way he talked, you know . They said he talks like, he talks about arabs the way we do. Hes telling the truth. The key, the thing that i missed that im really pissed off at myself about was when he slagged john mccain very early on in the campaign, and his popularity ratings went up. And we were all shocked. And i realized that the reason why was that people would say, well, thats a stupid thing to say, but at least this guy speaks his mind as to opposed to the focus Group Language that, you know, hillary uses. And that was the third reason. There are an awful lot of people out there who dont, who didnt like hillary, men and women alike, who felt that she was too staged and not and, and not authentic. What was the question . Donna didnt give me that one. [laughter] im not sure i remember. When you, when you again, returning to the three things you do, the three kinds of writing you do; that is, fiction, reporting and column writing, which i think the latter two are more distinct from each other maybe than you do, do you, do you what are the commonalities among them . Did you already say and i no, i didnt. The commonalities among them are that they all involve observation, obviously, and they all involve words. And theres nothing like a good sentence. Boy, is that the coolest thing. When that happens every once in a while you melee down one may lay down one, and you say, boy, i couldnt have done that any better. Usually you think, oh, god, why are these words not cooperating with me in. All good sentences are alike. All bad sentences [laughter] are bad, each in their own way. You have a great interest in folk music. I believe your first book biography of woody grutly. Guthrie. Not just folk music, all music. Right. All music. I think you said the other day that it was frightening or, i mean, the music was scary or something. You you know, john bennett, o was my editor at the new yorker, once said to me music will really mess with your mind. And thing is that music has been a huge part of my life because and this is kind of at the basis of what this novels about. My family existed at the intersection of politics and music. My grandfather on my fathers side was the jewish guy who kept the books for tammany hall, and my grandfather on my mothers side was a songwriter and layed the drums and played the drums for the dorsey brothers and other big band orchestras. And when i survived scarlet fever at the age of 4, which was no big deal because they then had penicillin which treated it like that, they got me an accordion. And he started he taught me how to read music before i read words. And i always thought thats another thing. One of the things i love most about writing is creating rhythms. Its fun to do it in dialogue, but its also fun to do it in a column. When do you think theres a connection between that love of music and, well, youve just explained one thing, the commonality of tempo and sort of tone, but politically speaking and literarily speaking, your interest in folk music in particular strikes me as having a continuity with your interest in politics, strangely enough. Well, you know, i knew pete seeger, and he was a real jerk. Im sorry, he was. And he once said its impossible to write a rightwing folk song. [laughter] thats not a jerky thing to say. And i immediately said to him , okie from miscoegy. Of course, one of the greatest honors of my life was Merle Haggard when he won the national hue hannitys award, the Kennedy Center honor, was asked who he wanted to write the tribute to him, he said either dolly parton or joe klein. [laughter] happily, they said, no, dollys going to sing. Didnt he recant that song . No, he didnt. What he did was he was stoned when he wrote it. It was a joke thats what i mean. But he then wrote fighting side of me yeah. Which was, which he did it for the money. And, you know, im a huge Merle Haggard fan, a huge Country Music fan as well as folk singer songwriters. And, yeah, when i wrote with the payback, my second book, i saw that as i had just written the biography of woody guthrie, and i saw that as five ballads in prose. So, yeah, i was trying to tell a political story just as he often did. And ever since then i have found and this is why i do dispute that column writing is different there was a time back in the 80 when i was working for new york magazine. Andrew cuomo called me up. [laughter] very funny. He said that mario and i had a father and son relationship which said such weird things about him and andrew and mario. He said youre so cynical about politics, about politicians. Why dont you ever write about anything positive . Well, i didnt think i was all that cynical because ive always been kind of a romantic. But i said, what . He said, well, i have this welfare to work program up in the bronx. You want to come see it . And i did, and it was great, it was a really it still exists. Its called help. And from that day forward, i decided that every month or two just to clean my pallette of politics, i would written something i thought was really exciting. There are answers to all of our problems out there. There are. Its unfortunate that Interest Groups of the right and the left prevent us from thinking creatively about them. You know, the i think youre one of the few journalists that i know of who after an evolution of point of view and style and so on continues to as you just said go out there. And especially with column writers. It seems to me, i wont pay you a compliment for immersing yourself in actual, in the world rather than in just in front of your computer. And i think that that sort of expresses itself but the worlds cool. Yes. People, you know, very rarely will politicians tell me, Say Something interesting to me. Civilians say interesting things all the time. Right. Right. You know . Its just, its bracing, its wonderful. Lets see what the civilians have to say. [laughter] if there are any questions. I hope theres some time. This seems to me a particularly good person to ask questions of at this particular we can talk about politics as well as primary colors, as we have. Yes. I tried. [laughter] i was very involved with primary colors, and ill tell you one story. Yeah, i want to ask you about that. Anonymity yeah, thank you. You want to change chairs . [laughter] anonymity. Everybody at random house thought it was a terrible idea to have anonymous author. Why . Nobody could tour, nobody could do readings, no one could be interviewed. What is going on . I shared, because i was a graduate school dropout, shared joes affection for anonymous writing as a literary tradition. And and that was my very effete reason really for thinking this was a great idea. Lets read the book, not worry about who the author is. So we got the reason those printing estimates went down is your anonymity. Did you know that . No. Okay. [laughter] because you wouldnt come forward. Well, you know, i did tell a few people. I told my editor at newsweek because she had to tell them youre right. You did a freelance project. And he read the book three months before it came out, and he said, joe, this is really funny, but you know books like this never sell. [laughter] that sums it up for publishing in general. So anyway, there was a panic, i mean, within the offices of what are we going to do . We dont have an author. Who is this person . And after the book was published and after we couldnt find enough Printing Presses to manufacture the books that were in demand and we actually ran behind, everyone took credit for the an themty. [laughter] anonymity. [laughter] harry evans, who is the publisher, dana browns husband right. Said, and, you know, i have it on tape somewhere, said, oh, yes, we knew, i knew that would work very well. And he was one of the people who was most insistent about trying to get an authors name on it. Publishing, like many businesses, is an exercise in retroactive credit taking. [laughter] and i found that again and again. Okay, sorry. Could i just, before we i promised the other clinton story which relates to this in some ways. At the end of his presidency, i, you know, i was working for the new yorker, and i decided to do a piece about what had actually been accomplished because so much space had been spent on the scandals, most of which i thought were nonexistent. Most of which turned out to be nonexistent. And so i started by, like assistant secretary level talking and interviewing people across the government, what did you do. And i was at an event in the white house, and clinton saw me, and he said i know what youre doing, i want to be part of it. So we did a series, a long series of interviews. The piece was eventually 22,000 words, and it became my book, the natural, which is out there in the back. And the first thing we did was two hours on health care and welfare. And one of the reasons why i glommed onto him in the first place was that he was a onestop Shopping Center for policy. I would read an article in the times about someone who was doing an interesting thing in Public Housing in omaha, and id call him up in arkansas, and hed say, oh, yeah, that guys pretty good, but youve got to see the guy in tacoma. Unbelievable. So wed have this passionate discussion for two hours about health care and welfare reform. And hillary walks in afterwards, and were all having a diet coke, and hes feeling great, you know . You could always tell when he was just feeling great, that someone got him. And he said, so whyd you write that book any . And i said anyway . And i said, mr. President , i always saw it as a tribute to largerthanlife politicians. At which point the first lady snorted derisively [laughter] and i said, first lady, would you rather have a largerthanlife president or a smallerthanlife president . And at that point she was looking at the prospect of two human beings she absolutely despised, george w. Bush and al gore, being bill clintons successor. And so she shrugged, and i said, you know, largerthanlife politicians have largerthanlife strengths and weaknesses. Then she looked at me and looked over at him x shes starting to laugh, and she said, thats for sure. [laughter] please. Sorry about that. And not really. It was a good story. Yeah. Hey, joe. I was a clinton, president clintonappointed ambassador and have been in out of government as a lawyer all my adult life. Thank you. Oh, youre welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I want to applaud your nogotcha rule, and i wish that would be universally applied. That could make a big difference. My question is this. Youve talked a a lot about the way you pulled together information for primary colors, but did you use your Investigative Journalism background to informer yourself for inform yourself for that book . I swear i know people who must have contributed to you no. I did not research at all. I mean, my research was having covered, you know, having covered clinton for a number of years and having known him. And what happened was i was having a drink with a friend in washington, a place where i only lived in the mid 70s. I didnt i felt it was, you know, that i would become an utter prostitute if i had to have dinner with these people all the time. And i was having a drink with a friend who was in the administration, and she said to me these people are a novel. And, you know, i didnt have to do any more research than that. There you go. Anyone else . Yes. Politics is the art of the possible, and i wonder if you would bring your perspective to whats going on today. We were lucky to have robert caro here tell us about a president who did an enormous amount of research in order to apply his agenda to what he wanted to accomplish. I tend to think of the presidency as a linear progression from washington up to the present. Have we taken a turn, and will we come back, or is this rather than vacillate every eight years, we tend to go left, then we go right, then we go left and we come back, is this different . There was a piece in the wall street journal on saturday arguing that it is different. And my honest answer is dont know. I mean, you know, i was someone asked me about the Rex Tillerson hearings, and i said he sounded pretty good. He was sounding kind of mainstream conservative, you know . He isnt going to get us blown up, i dont think, and he was reasonable on most of his answers, you know . I agreed with some, disagreed with others, and i think we have to be prepared for the fact that we may be looking at a successful presidency here in the minds of the people. I mean, the jawboning that he did with those companies and i know the numbers of jobs were small is very popular with our people. And should be, you know . John kennedy did the same thing with the steelmakers. And i think trump has sent a really Important Message to american corporations thatll headache them think twice make them think twice before they leave. Im horrified by him as a human being and what he represents. I think that, as i said the other day, you know, i named the character in primary colors after this concept, orlando otsio, the governor of new york. Machiavelli said that otsio is the greatest enemy of a republic. What is it . Its indolence. And what he was writing about was how do you keep a public coherent when hes not at war . Well, i am 70 years old, and during the past 70 years we have had the greatest experiment in otsio in human history. I mean, weve had some bad times, but the prosperity is unparalleled. Weve had some, we had a scary cold war, but none of the wars that weve actually fought have been existential. And during that time, weve developed all of these other ways to entertain ourselves. And, you know, the if this is the golden age of anything, its the golden age of marketing. And marketing is fundamentally unamerican. Because the founding principle of this country is that the things we have in common as human beings no matter where we came from or look like or believe are more important than the things that divide us. The fundamental principle of marketing is you sell to the niche. And we now have a thousand channels of nothing. And we have a million news outlets, most of whom are sitting in their pajamas in their basement. And during that time, i think that weve lost the habits of citizenship. Weve retriballized ourselves. I mean, my daughter was a member of the mtv tribe, my dad was a member of the espn tribe. Im kind of a cspan kind of guy, and im not saying that because the cameras you have to say that. [laughter] and i wonder, i worry about our coherence as a country. As i said the other day, weve been trying to do democracy without citizens. And you cant and and thats just not going to work long term. So im really worried about the impact that this guy is going to have on future politicians. Are they all going to think that they have to be obnoxious in order to succeed . Im afraid theres a whole generation of kids coming up who learned a lesson from that election. And the other thing is this. I had this thought the other day that isnt quite so terrible. I was watching Howard Schultz, the president of starbucks, give a speech. And i said to myself, holy shit, that guys running for president. And i think that, you know [laughter] in the past weve had big trump supporter, right . No. No, no. [laughter] he is who there is a surprising, successful chain store owner who is a trump supporter, it really surprised me. I take it back. No, no, no. Howard schultz is the exact opposite. Three strikes and im out. Okay. Howard schultz makes sure his baristas can get college funding. Right. He is theyre working right now on a really interesting Public Service project. Ive tried to convince him that given the state of bookstores in this country except for the independent ones that he should open a chain of starbooks. [laughter] because he wanted to, you know, hes, he wanted to curate my last book, charlie mike. And i realize that in the past weve had in the Democratic Party the working class and the intellectual class tracks, the beer track and the wine track. And i think that in 2020 were going to have the beer track and the champagne track, that people like Howard Schultz and mark cuban and other performer ceos may be throwing their hats into the ring. And well see whether thats a good or a bad thing. There other questions . Yes. I came to the microphone because i suspect i may not be the only person in here whos forgotten the particulars of all the controversy that followed when you were, when you admitted that you were the author of primary colors. I remember the speculation about who might have written it, but what happened that caused you to be suspended from newsweek for a week and all of that controversy . Im tempted to say cowardice and whimsy. [laughter] but in the case of newsweek, it certainly was cowardice. And both kay and don graham were appalled by that decision. But what happened was that an awful lot of journalists thought i was a liar because i had denied writing it. And, you know, its an interesting existential question, but if you write an nonhouse novel, my anonymous novel, my feeling was now, first of all, the if anybody had gotten hurt by the book or hurt by the speculation, i would have come out. There was a moment early on when the focus shifted to paul begala whos a very sweet guy and very, very loyal to the clintons, and i didnt want to see paul get hurt. But happily, you know, pauls a clever guy, and he was able to talk his way out of it in, like, 30 nanoseconds. But there were an awful lot of journalists who people on the left thought it was an attack on the clintons. I was equally appalled. I went to the Republican Convention in 1996. I went to a party hosted by the National Review which is a rightwing publication where i was toasted as this hero, and tell me how much ofs it is true. And i said, none of it. But, you know, there are an awful lot of journalists who mistook fiction writing for journalism since i was able i am able to do both. And i want to once again come back to the New York Times. There was and this is what really pisses people off about us, about journalists. At a certain point, i was sued by a librarian in harlem who thought that she was the character of the librarian in the first chapter who winds up in bed with jack stanton. She sued me for 120 million. [laughter] and i thought, why not a billion . [laughter] and i said, i said, you know, the lawyers said you cant say anything. I didnt know the woman, i had never seen the woman. You know, there were photos of the event that she claimed to be part of, and she wasnt in any of them. And the New York Times editorialized, you know, against me, ran oped pieces against me, misreported, reported that i did the press Conference Wearing groucho glasseses. It was a huge, huge glasses. It was a huge, huge, or as donald would say uge, controversy. And there were all these pious things written by journalists, how joe klein is finally getting his comeuppance for, what, having entertained a million people. A million and a half, actually. Okay. [laughter] put a word in for, at least a little word for your publisher. We did print some books. [laughter] yeah. And in 30, 33 other countries as well. But, so we go to, we go to discovery proceedings, the case gets laughed out of court, and the times doesnt print one word. Not a word to this day. And, you know, you talk to politicians about what pisses them off about journalists most, its that when theyre accused of something and they didnt do it and we dont note it. Can i just rant one second about benghazi, or are we out of time . No, we have some time, but i want to give a oneword diagnosis which differs radically from yours. I think they were terribly jealous. Well, maybe so. Period. You know, im sure some were. And theres nothing, theres nothing is so pious as a journalist scorned. You know . We are so, i mean, the things that the the things that ive written in my life that im most embarrassed about was when i got up on my high horse and decried something. Because there arent any horses high enough, you know . [laughter] to do that. You can talk about benghazi but not if there are more questions. Somebody else . [inaudible] were out of time. What was that, what was that . That was wrong . We take one question and then yeah, okay. And then ill do benghazi. [inaudible] what . How is hillary . I dont know. And im not going to, you know, im sure that shell get in contact at a moment that she wants to. And at this point, i dont know that id want to talk to her because i remember i talked to bill a lot right after he left office, and, or you know, you just dont want to listen to two hours about the mark rich pardon. You just dont. As for benghazi [laughter] lets end on this note, because were i watched the Republican Convention, and i watched this woman get up there and accuse Hillary Clinton of being a murderer, of murdering her son. He was one of the navy seals. I saw this widely reported. I saw i talked to some of my friends at fox. I think fox news had a very good year, actually, if you, if you eliminate hannity and so on. I mean, i think they ran the best debates. And i said why dont you guys ever tell the truth about benghazi . And, you know, i couldnt get a straight answer. And heres what the truth is. Amy, have you ever heard of a temporary consulate9 consulate before in your life . The temporary consulate in benghazi was a fig leaf. It was a front for the cia annex. The cia ran security there. The cia, led by one of my mentors, david petraeus, provided the talking points that poor susan rice was inflicted with. Hillary clinton had absolutely nothing the state Department Security service had absolutely nothing to do with benghazi. Ive written this like three times. And yet this myth is perpetuated. And i, you know, i guess this is a depressing way to end this, but this is what im most scared about. Im most scared about the fate of the truth. And, you know, i can criticize hillary about an awful lot of things and an awful lot of policies, but the idea that someone could have that happen to them in this country where you are accused of murdering people and you had nothing to do with it and the press doesnt call you, call those people on it is, to me, the most terrifying thing out there right now. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Ill be signing books out back. Me too. You too . Yeah. Well both be signing books out back. Okay. We have book signings. We have joe klein, Daniel Menninger and rachel pushner out here in the lobby signing books for you. Next up on booktv from the 35th annual key west literary seminar, author and yale professor stephen carter. [inaudible conversations]