Larry her rare row recalls the assistance france and spain provided the communist during the revolutionary war, and then an examination of the economic value assigned to slaves. Those are just few of the programs youll see on booktv on cspan2 this weekend. For a complete Television Schedule visit booktv. Org. 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. Television for serious readers. Hello, everyone. Welcome to powerhouse book. Were very excited to host dispatches from the 2016 by matt taibbi. Matts book isnt a blowbyblow recounting of this bizarre and disturbing election season but the wider temperature of the seeming collapse of the american democracy. Matt will talk about his book and read a section from the book, too, and then you have a chance to ask questions and get your book sign. So we have copies up front and we encourage you to pick up a book that allows us to do this great event and support independent publishing and book stores. Just a little bit of our tie matt is the author of a New York Times best seller, the divide, grifftopia and the agrees dry rangment. Contributor for Rolling Stone. Join me in welcome matt. Tie [applause] hello . Thats better. There we go. Thank you very much for coming. Before i start tonight i just want to speaking life with a heavy heart. Just got the news on the way here that the great Investigative Reporter wayne bare Rhett Barrett that died this afternoon. Wayne was my first boss in this business him was a mentor to me and to hundreds of other reporters and other media people in the city. He dedicated his life to rooting out corruption in new york and i think new york was a better place because of him and so a very sad day. Think its also knob no journalist in america new more about donald trump than wayne. He was really waynes first biographer and party of me things he couldnt face tomorrow, and theres he has been ill for a long time but in a way i think its almost good he was spared the he took the election very hard. So, i thought i just tell a story. Not to go on about this is but rain apartmented an Old School Approach to this job that is kind of rapidly disappearing and i thought i would tell a story about what it was like working for him. When i was 17 years old wayne was obsessed his thing was to get obsessed with, like, evil characters and then just dig into everything they did and hope to find something. And at the time he was obsessed with donald manis, thence bo borough president and involved in scandals involving cable tv and other things. Baby lieu luigi, and wayne want met to find something on manis so he sent me to dig up an application he made for permission to build a Swimming Pool in his backyard, and i got all the plans for that, the permits and everything, and brought it back to him me and said did you do the house to see if he but it . So i had to good to house and theres an enormous fence and also you have to pass through his property to the back of the house get to the fence, and so you cant see the Swimming Pool. So i went back to wayne and told him, i couldnt see the pool and he sent me back there and insisted eye climb over the fence to see if there was in fact a pool there. So, that is old school journalism. Want it wasnt into the internet. He was into seeing it withdown ore eyes and one of the last great ones. Goodbye, wayne. So, trump. I was looking when i was getting read to do this speech i dug up my old notebooks from last year and this is New Hampshire 2016 and i found dish used to write down comments and jokes from journalists who were standing next to me the peanut gallery and this one says. A year from now when youre giving a speech about the Trump Administration this shit wont seem as funny. Typically what i used to do is i used to this side of the page would be the actual speech and then this side would be the peanut gallery comments from other people in the media. So, for instance, you have one where it says trump is saying the heroin problem, the drug problem, all the stuff theyre bringing in here issue its credible. Its incredible and over here it says i want some now myself. Theres another one where trump is giving a speech in while talking the microphone went out and the first thing he says is, were not going to pay the rent. If the mic doesnt work im not going to pay the rent. You wont get anything from me. Here it assess, everything is a fucking conspiracysive with that guy. Really funny stuff. Actually kind of interesting thought. Exercise for know go back if you combine trumps stream of consciousness crazy way of thinking with my bad hand writing, you get this amazing sort of stream of nonsecond nonsecond we tars this is the poem i called the trump not taken. And its just trumps rambling. Youre not going to do. That dont want your cars. I send torches millions of condominium. They send it back and dont want the beef. Dont make televisions anymore. Its funnier i dont know. Thats the problem with trump. On the one hand its simultaneously the funniest story in history and also the most horrible thinger. Unfortunately like funny horrible is my own personal professional niche. So even though e though i was actually working on other books throughout this time period i kept getting sucked into the vortex of trump throughout the last couple of years, and graver tating over and over gravitating toward and it in the end all the report wes wrote for Rolling Stone became the core of this book. This is the fourth president ial campaign ive covered for Rolling Stone, and i said this earlier in week in the magazine, covering the campaign trail for Rolling Stone is kind of the sacred iconic job that is passed down from generation to generation, like being the dread pirate roberts, and ive never not been sort of conscious of the tradition and how the amazing work that came before me, and the highlight was obviously Hunter Thompsons coverage of Richard Nixon in 1972, and that was the Gold Standard and it always will be and its hard not to be conscious of it when you work for the magazine because every time you come in first thing you see is this amazing sort of tapestry of original illustrations by Ralph Stedman of people like nixon and George Wallace and so this is the tradition of Rolling Stone, what you have to astaire all the time. And so for both myself and for victor, who drew the illustrations, the amazing, weird, freaky illustrations for this book, weve always been conscious of the idea that this is what were aspiring to in this job. The problem is i think what made Hunter Thompsons work in 1972 special and made it our as opposed to just really crisp, snappy magazine writing, was that thompson had this level of obsession, hatred love disgust. He had this relationship with nixon that was far beyond the pale and beyond anything he felt for any other politician. Thompson had an ear for evil that made him i think uniquely and maybe congenitally attuned to the particular vibe of moral death that nixon radiated and the had this satan link in their lives and nixon touched a nerve in thompson that made hid convulse and these funny observations came out. He entoward the end of his life talked about how he defined himself by nixon in his oobituary of nixon he said some of my best friends hated next job all their lives. My mother, my son hates nixon, hate nixon and this hatred hawse brought us all together and another line he wrote nixon was so crooked he needed sir vans to help him screw his pants on in the morning. Even his funeral was illegal. And the thing about obsession is you cant force it. Its a once in a lifetime thing, combination of disgust, physical and more revulsion mex its with fascination and attraction. For some people the ugly is just ugly but other people who are uniquely sensitive to the horrible side of life and endless gradations of ugly. Im one of those people, and its the inverse of beauty. Everybody in the world has a sense of beauty and if you grow up looking at thousands and thousands of faces, until one day you see that one face you feel was put on earth just for you and thats instantly that you fall in love in that moment. For me, trump was like that except it was the opposite. When i first saw him on the campaign trail i thought, this is a person who is unique, horrible, and amazing, terrible characteristics were put on earth specifically for know appreciate or unappreciate or whatever the verb is. Because i had really been spending a lot of the last ten to 12 years without knowing it preparing for donald trump to happen, and in order to explain this i have to go back and give a little background about how the campaign trail works and how covering the campaigns works because i even within the world of campaign trail of reporters had unique Vantage Point on everything. Most people who are sent out to cover the campaigns have these hellishly busy schedules. On top of all the travel, which the end of the campaigns can be really genuinely gruel, from 6 00 a. M. To midnight every night with three or four flights packed in between. You have to be constantly working. The newspaper people even dating back to 2004, had to write at least one story a day. Usually more. The Television People had to file and do at least one report a day. And as the years progressed and the internet exploded and there were different forms of media the work load expanded soldier people in the newspaper business not only writing a story about the number but they were blogging and had to tweet, all these things. They had to do ten, 15 things a day, and the tv people were the same. They had to constantly be tranqing out cranking out material. So as we traveling from place to place they were constantly busy, constantly writing, and after every event, we would have they would kind of herd the press into whatever of the worst room in every building was, they found it for me media. Called it the filing room and would put is in there and they usually give you like 45 to 50 minutes to do your story, and then they would drag us all out of that room and take to us a bus and then to plane and then to another bus and another event and then its rinse repeat again and do it all over again. And so all these reporters theyre just constantly busy. Never not focused on either a candidate, what the candidate is saying, or theyre writing it up and that ways everybody in the plane, except me. Because i was a magazine writer and i worked for a magazine that had a very, very long lag time the at most i was writing once every two weeks, but in reality it was usually less than that. Usually either once a month or once every six weeks so while all these other reports were working their asses off wife be sitting doing nothing for almost the whole time, and this started to arouse a lot of resent independent the plane resentment in the plane. Orlando, florida, once enwhen i was was folly kerrie got trouble because i was too loudly flipping the parents a Sports Illustrated while everybody else was working and this is back when actual magazines existed and you couldnt just look online. I had a rubics cube once in new orleans and they shushed me about that. I put it to the side and the only thing i could do after a while was nothing. And i had to sit there and hour after hour and you have to remember this is the super naturally boring endeavor, watching politicians give the same peach over and over again. Had to sit there and think and all those hundreds and hundreds of hours of just watching this process and after a while, while everybody else focused on thing like what the candidating saying, Urgent Campaign trail questions like, who is up in the polls today, will this or that running mate make a difference, is the person getting a convention bounce or are these poll numbers really just fake or whats going on. Was having darker motion metaphyseal thoughts like what the fuck are we doing sneer what actually is this that were doing in what is this activity were engaged in, and i looked around and i started to have thoughts like, wow, this costs a lot of money. This all this stuff. All these people traveling around, this gigantic jet airplane and all this expensive equipment, at the best food in the world, they cater it to a t wherever you go and who is paying for and it why and what are the financial incentives of all this activity, and then as you actually unpack that and think about what is actually going on, its really bizarre. To think about what actually youre doing, theres really two things going on here. Clearly i think its obvious that if were flying around the country and were giving a speech and report what the speeches are, its the kind of traveling says trip. Were selling something ultimately thats what is going on. But what are we selling and who are the customers . You might think that the voters are the customers and the product is the vote but its not really that way. Ultimately. If you actually think about it. There are two groups of actors who are in the plane in the Campaign Plane. There are the politicians and then their staff on the one hand, and they are sponsored bay very more or less a very small group of super wealthy financial donors and they have very particular interests, and on the other hand these, group are the reporters and theyre ultimately supported by advertising dollars and by the general public. And so what are these the two commercial activities . The Campaign Donors, theyre buying a service, basically. Theyre employing these politicians to try to sell the public on policy prescriptions they want, and and why . Theyre not doing it to help the poor and make life better for america. Theyre doing it because their selfinterested. So the donors give money to whichever candidate gives them the most stuff policywise. Conversely the reporters financially they are completely dependent, were all paid according to how many eyeballs we can attract. We need ratings. Hits, news stand sales, subscriptions. Thats what were trying to, trying to generate activity. Its an entertainment activity. So, the entire time, even if reporters were not con sunday of it there was a huge unspoken financial subtext to all this activity which is that we were unconsciously most of the time lifting up and embracing candidates who were entertaining and who helped us toward that goal of making money. And even if we werent conscious of it thats what we were doing. And the campaign sort of operated according to these this dualistic financial endeavor. The victors park whom won the president ial races had always been people who somehow managed to most effectively synergize the two dynamics going on inside the Campaign Plane if you could find the sweet spot between the candidate who is multily the most eyeball grabbing on the one hand and on the other hand gives away the most stuff to rich businessmen, that typically was what your major Party Candidate looked like. And after a while reporters sort of got a sixth sense of what that was, what that thing was and we have a word for it. Called electability and we say we mean Something Else but in reality what we mean is were looking for somebody who is entertaining enough on the win expand has a lets say mobile flexibility on the other hand and the candidate who sort of manages to toe the line between those two dynamics the most effectively is always the one who wins. So these imperatives, sort of exclude certain types of politicians automatically. People who dont have the right look for television. People like dennis kucinich. Excuse me. Have a cold. And it also rules out people who are sort of too earnest in the wrong bay about their politics, including somebody like ron paul or for that matter bernie sanders. As a reporter, with the whole idea of electability, its kind of like the goldilocks story. Always look forth they ever porridge that is just along. Not too boring north interesting, not could ideological and not too shallow. So, how trump fits into this, the whole dynamic was crucial to howl he got elected. But another thing i noticed over the years in all of the years just sitting and watching this stuff, was that there was an incredible dichotomy in terms of how much Mental Energy the people on the plane were devoting to different types of activities. So they were devoting a lot of thought to certain things and almost no thought at all to other things. So, for instance, the politics portion of the Campaign Experience is just incredibly simplistic and stupid. Bet actually most of your hear if you listened to Standard Campaign rhetoric from the past you probably couldnt even identify the party. Thats how clicheridden it became. Just going to read a couple of campaign cliches from pressure campaigns and see if you can guess which part theyre from. For minimums and millions of americas the group with which i grew up has been shattered. The choice is between the right change and the wrong change, between Going Forward and going backward. We instinct growth that makes a difference for hard working men and women, who dont need reminding the economy more than the stock market. We believe in prevent crime and punishing criminals, not explaining away if the behavior. That last one was a democrat. Believe it another nor. That was bill clinton. After a while, if you listen to enough of these speeches and they get to boring after a while i ended up having a coding system for the cliches. So i met for instance, live howard dean imenemy ride all of his cliches. Im knot just a product of the i dont just believe in the american dream, i am a product of it. That was two so i would just write, two, three, 19, 11, et cetera. I didnt even rite it write didnt write it down. You notice over the years the speech were becoming less and less specific and they were being written more and here haphazardly and werent even in a real sense rhetoric. They were just sort of strings of words piled together almost randomly so candidates could deliver key phrases for the voters and this was born out later on, if you look youll find things if you want to google things like dial surveys, for instance, that campaigns would do things like bring in focus groups groups and have. The listen to lists of words and say if you like it, turn the dial this way, and they strung together speeches that were really just collections of pleasing word. And after a while, thats really all you really hear is just the key words. Its blah blah family values blah blah blah work ethic blah blah blah men and women serving the country abroad. And the dichotomy, the only way to tell the difference between democratic and republican speeches is that the democrats like certain words, words like smart and future and compassion, and the republicans like words like responsibility, and tough, and tradition. But other than that the connecting tissue is pretty much the same. So, you think about this. This is a level of sophistication in terms of marketing strategies, this incredibly high. They put a lot of thought into how to get people to respond to just collections of words. And its enormously sophisticated the technology they had to try to figure out to try to use technology to test and create speeches that were essentially mechanized. But the level of political thought was completely simplistic and ideologic. You think about burg kings and mcdonalds can you remember what color are the walls in most burger kings and mcdonalds . Anyone nor . Yellow and orange, duo know why . Because scientist discovered that people eat more when theyre in a room that is pained yellow and orange. So most fastfood restaurants can use the iter colors. The same reason the prisons are painted light green and light blue because people are less violent in those environment. The same thought process that going into making political speeches. They are trying to sort of move people in the direction of making a decision by using these key words that are the equivalent of a paint color on the wall but theres no painting on the wall. Its just the color. Unsophisticated verbiage. If you look at a lot of thingness the campaign theyre incredibly sophisticated and advanced, not just this marketing technology, these techniques they use, but also the production values and the Television Shows, the amount oft thought theyve put into things like the backgrounds and the staging and the lighting, the music they play, the during everything looks fantastic, its a very, very high Production Television show but seven the content is completely stupid. And you ask yourself, why that is . Its ultimately, again, so strange because theyre choosing the lead over the free world and on the one hand the level of sophies tick nation says job was incredibly high but the level of thought wasnt all that high and its like building the worlds most advanced rocket ship to build the worlds worst to sends the worlds worst cheeseburger the moon. Was a very strange activity. So why . Is if you think about the answer its bizarre, and the reason is, there or two Different Things going on the campaign. One hand the candidates are trying to get your vote, but on the other hand its also Media Companies trying to get people to renounce all other activities to turn on the television and watch this program for a period of time. Now, what is harder, getting People Choose between one of two Political Parties or getting people to reject all other forms of entertainment and not watch monday night football or keeping up with the kardashians or cat videos or porn or whatever, and getting them attracting them to watch political show for a period of time. That is clearly much harder than getting People Choose between one of two Political Parties that theyve probably been a member of their entire lives. The reason that the politics arent that smart is because they didnt have to be. The amount of effort to get people to make the Political Choice was much, much they needed much, much less effort to do that than they needed to get people to actually just physically watch the show. Because people really only have three choices in america politically. Either vote democratic, vote republican or not vote at all, and amazingly for almost a generation now, the most popular choice has been the third, neither. But why is that true . Well, its because apart from the welfare of the country nothing really depends on people having a high turnout. Certainly nobodys job on the plain was at stake if turnout was low. In the actual plane on the campaign trail, the only thing that really mattered to those particular people was taking eyeballs and getting them to vote between one or the other. And so thats why they put this enormous amount of thought into one and not so much into the other. And so you think about this, and after a while i started to develop this incredible contempt for the whole process thought this is the most serious thing we do in america. Here we are supposed to be engaged in picking our leaders and who are going to make our world a better someplace theyre going to address the most serious issues in the to country and in reality, it was really just to a very long and wellproduced but very boring Television Show that whose entire purpose was mostly financial on the side of the media and for the donors, their motives were hidden and so what were we really doing at reporters . We were just involved in a really long and nihilistic moneymaking effort and i thought, well, eventually somebody is going figure all this out. And theyre going to point the finger at us and say, all of you people in media and this entire campaign process, this is part of the problem and the first person i newell the first person would be selfaware enough or deb smart enough to point the finger testify process, that person would score a lot of points, and donald trump was really the first person who did that. Trump very smartly back up for a moment and just talk about it. Another thing that goes on in the campaigns which is the assignment of blame. Elections are like criminal trials. Theyre ultimately about assigning blame. The same way that a da or defense attorney wants to get the people in the jury box to decide who is at fault. Somebody is dead but they want to the jury to say, well, this person was the reason or it was prayer in school he was upset about that. Eulls trying convince people somebody is to play. And . On the left with the democrats we do essentially the same thing except we see the corporations and Insurance Companies, it is wasting in the Health Insurance system, it is x, x, y, nc, and it is right wing in the that doesnt want to let legislation go through. He sort of broke the mold. The republican politicians set with one set of the democratic politicians stick with the others. She is a gluttonous personality which eating, women, attention, payment political positions. He swallows up everything in sight. So he also appropriated all of the boogie man. He said the boogie man. He said he is against corporations and against the Health Insurance companies. Ms. From he took from the bogeyman from both sides said that freaked out people in the political world because it was beginning to be effective. I remember watching him in New Hampshire give a dissertation on the anti trump put on by the Insurance Companies in it bizarre. No republican politician would ever do this or edge of this territory. Its a different kind of politician. So, he had already swallowed up this claim, cliche. He had swallowed swallowed up the entire spectrum of normal cliches by the time the middle of the primary came campaign rolled around. And then around New Hampshire around this time he started to point the finger at the process. This is what i was talking about before. He made us part of the act. For me this is the moment where i first realized that donald trump was different and he was onto something. Even if i could not have been more repulsed by him as a politician, but what he was doing was brilliant. So reporters werent typically a hall we would be in the middle of the hall and theres a rope line usually theres a riser where the cameras are the cameramen are filming at the rest of us are sitting with our pads and watching the event. We are surrounded physically by the audience. Trump started to say things. He would say things like look at these bloodsuckers, they have never come so far for an event. They dont want to be here, they didnt think i could win. They thought i lost the they thought i lost the debate last night but i won the debate. He would take the crowd on physically turn it in our direction. It would his sudden boot. He turned again the campaign the speeches are typically almost supernaturally boring. Its hard hard to sit through them. He turned the campaigns to speech into this physical, immediate pulsating, angry wwe like wrestling event. And we were part of the act. Unfortunately for the press, we are the only representatives of this conspiracy of elites he kept talking about who are against ordinary people. We were representatives of the process. Were the only ones in the room. So even even though he talked about the Campaign Donors and how they control people like jeb bush and Hillary Clinton. And he talked about Companies Like goldman sachs, obviously its funny now that he has five golden people in his white house. At the time he would talk about them is that i know those people and im not going to be controlled by them like ted cruz and Hillary Clinton. He would talk about the leadership of the two major Political Parties. He would make fun of the leadership of the rnc. But, none of those people were in the room. When the press was in the room and trump correctly identified that there is this interest that had been a barrier to outsiders getting through in the past. In the past you needed the donors, the two major Political Parties in the press all on your side in order to become the nominee. Thats a process i was talking about before. To be the person who told the line and found the sweet spot you needed all of those people. Journalists would not write if a candidate was electable and for incidents he get his money for the right place. If you remember howard dean early in his campaign he was the antiwar candidate at one point and he had made a decision he was going to issue the regular democratic donors and get his money from ordinary people through small, online donations. Reporters pounced on him because this meant that he was an outsider and without being conscious of it that was a signal that he was not electable. And so the disapproval of the democratic leadership, of the donors and some of the press any of those could be fatal. You had to have all of them to be a nominee. Trump identified the whole dynamic and said this is undemocratic. I know this because im a traitor to my class and i know how things work. You remember him talking in the debates about how he donated money to Hillary Clinton because he knew he could get something for it and she would come to his wedding or vice versa. And he talked openly about this is how things are done, we buy influence in this country, do you think jeb bush is going to do something about pharmaceutical prices because Woody Johnson the head of johnson and johnson and his Campaign Finance of course hes not going do something about that. And that was true. This is something i think on the eve of donald trump becoming president its really important to remember that as horrifying as it is that he was elected that there were concrete reasons why he was successful. It wasnt just that the country is completely stupid and racist and zenith phobic, because we are those things, but it was because he animated his campaign with small truths, sometimes even large truths here there and he use that energy to direct people to get them to feel as though trump was a true outsider. His victory over us in the media when the geeks who are in the room throughout the campaign was one of the primary ways he was able to demonstrate to his audience that he was for real. Look they set i wasnt aware and i go down in the polls. After our call john mccain i said this is not about john mccain they set i would not compete but i have a look at me now. People love that. Its important important for those to try to understand it come to grips with why donald trump is president , its because he did things that even if you did not think them through he understood that he could make the process and put that on trial and win. Thank you very much. This is the final irony, horrible irony of the stories that donald trump isnt this a great iconoclast and isnt a messiah of truth sent from above to bring down cleanout the stables and destroy fake political process. In the ultimate demonstration of murphys law he was a perfect wrecking ball for a system that was falling apart. The the solution is that he offer 1,000,000 times more more stupid than even the original problems. This is a characteristically american thing. The moment that we finally decide to act on our suspicion that everything is wrong and we lash out and search for the truth. The first thing we do is replace one truth with us to better and worse truth. This is another big theme of the book. There is something ive been thinking about for many years. In fact, ten years ago i had been covering Different Things including the iraq war, corruption in congress and at the same time covering extreme extremist movements on the left and right. I notice people were beginning to lose faith in their leaders and in various National Institutions like the political media. They were beginning to see through everything. Again, this, this being america when we finally decided to open our eyes and to one set of ugly truths the first thing we did was replace it with the truth that was more vicious and corrupt than had been in place before previously. So, this is the core idea of a book i wrote in 2006 called the great arrangement. Theres an extra from the book thats included in the front. I will read it for you now because for me its foreshadowing as to what was going on during the year. The country was losing its i National Political system is doomed to because voters were no longer debating what another using facts. There is no common narrative except in immediately that had long ago lost touch with the general public. A nation of reality shoppers were shutting the blinds on the common landscape to tinker with their highly paranoid respite first elevation. They voted in huge numbers against enemies and against the system in general but not really for anybody. The elections had basically become a forum for organizing the hatreds of the population. There were no viable principles and play, just hate and distrust. The system had nothing left off for the people said they were leaving the reservation. Where were they going . That was ten years ago. And i guess where they were going was to inauguration. I cant say that i saw donald trump coming out, i dont think anybody did but i think what the book is about is that it for trying to understand why this happened we have to understand first wire system was so dysfunctional and so weak that all the mechanisms we should have had in place to prevent someone like this empower all failed. They fail because they had been weakening and corrupted going back a generation. This is something is something that shouldve been obvious to people for a long time. I saw some of it but not all of it but it became obvious during the selection that donald trump was able to walk right through to power almost on a post by the traditional mechanisms. If you think about the mighty Republican Party and its chosen favorite was jeb bush who struggled to get two or 3 of the vote and he didnt even get any delegates. He had 100,000,000 dollars. You think about. You think about the power of money in politics. When he didnt work in politics this time. Trump managed to get past that because the system have been feeling for a long time. Thats what the book is about. Its not a story, even though its probably funny at parts to relive it was certainly a crazy narrative and many things happened along the way that were on believably entertaining in the moment, although their less funny now in retrospect. But it may make you feel better in terms of understanding why this is happening. It should not be a mystery to all of us. I think we have to come to grips with the reality of the Trump Presidency and understand this happen for a reason. That might help us move forward and find a way to make it on happen Going Forward. Thank you so much. I would would love to take questions about the book. [applause] [inaudible] i lived there for 11 years. Thats part of the reason my Campaign Experience was weird because that was the first thing that i did after coming back to the united states, was go out on the plane and join this weird atmosphere. So so going from russia to that was very odd. I think, like most people im fairly convinced that the russians hacked the dnc. Ive talked to people who are Cyber Security experts and they make a convincing case that circumstantial case that it had to be them. Theres some evidence they gave it to wikileaks but the rest of it for me is problematic is dangerous for journalists because we dont really know, clearly is someone who lived over there im talking to my friends were journalists at the time and like when did the kremlin turn into a High School Cafeteria where everybody could hear these amazing rumors going on. They they run a tight ship over there. So its hard to imagine that dossier is real. On the other hand, none of it really defies belief either. I remember 1999 turning on the television and seen the new chief, Vladimir Putin given a broadcast about the prosecutor general and say weve conducted an analysis and know that this is indeed him in the video and it was a sex tape. They had had another person a couple of years before that. They do this in black male people routinely. The x Prime Minister got blackmailed a couple of years ago. So i think they do it not only to russian officials but also businessmen of high profile like donald trump. So its not a nonbelievable story, but i dont think anything they showed us constitutes real evidence. The only thing thing we know for sure is that the fbi thought enough of it to investigate it. The Intelligence Community is clearly convinced enough of something theyre doing things like tell the Israeli Community not to share information with donald trump because they believe him to be compromised. I like to see with their basis for believing that is but they havent shared that. So on how it puts us reporters in a bind because its hard to accuse someone of treason or bring it up. You mentioned thompson in fear and loathing on the campaign trail of 72 at the beginning. Some of my favorite portions of the book are on the democratic primary side. Poor humphrey and muskie and just what he gave them. In size curious if you put your hunter hat on, what you think he wouldve made the democratic primary on the selection go around . Thats an interesting question my hunter hat is a bald head so they say you may not be Hunter Thompson but yours bald as he is now. It actually came up during the election cycle because hunters editor at the time wrote an endorsement of Hillary Clinton for Rolling Stone last year and he specifically referenced the fact that back in 1972 Rolling Stone had back George Mcgovern who was almost an exact figure to bernie sanders. And the reasons were very well thought out. Basically what he said was you cannot win an election running that far to the left. Cannot rely upon the enthusiasm of young people to carry forward. Weve learned that this leads to the we need to win. So support Hillary Clinton and i asked permission to dissent from him and that is in this book. I gave my reasons why did i think that was true. I dont know, i think hunter is not alive now but i would guess that he wouldve been a bernie supporter just because the things he liked to help mcgovern and some other politicians Going Forward, carter before he became president , he thought mcgovern was nerdy on a policy geek but he loved the fact that he was honest. Mcgovern is almost like an angel he has non jelly character. Some is like a religious quest for salvation. Hes hoping that mcgovern will win. Its more than just a political book with this literary story. I think hunter was romantic at heart. He wasnt a pragmatic pragmatist. He wouldve been caught up in the bernie thing. I dont want to speak for him but that is what i would guess. [inaudible] i talk with sanders after the election and this is it really my problem. What he was saying is that if you think about how the conservative movement had succeeded and how trump succeeded, trump its a lesson for everybody that i think everybody was depressed by politics going into the election cycle. They felt the matter what they did they cannot achieve everything. In a weird, twisted way trump showed that he knows this mighty power of america are not so mighty. Actually people are organized enough and if they have a good enough plan if trump did not have a plan he had a few overheated ganglia behind his head, but he conquered the system. Sanders is very explicit about it and said we should take this as a lesson that power and influence in our ability to achieve things are rich. In order to do that he points to the fact that people on the right are much more involved in politics. They join volunteer organizations and organizations to the church. They organized and get out the vote. He thinks that if there is double the number of people involved in politics especially among young people that would have an impact. The Democratic Party especially considering the Democratic Coalition that obama put together, demographically and 20082012 they should be able to stay in power a long time and achieve great things. But people need to get involved more. Just dont be so depressed about politics. I think thats what happened is that people were turned off by politics itself and they didnt get involved because so oppressive and horrible that they turned their eyes and watch netflix instead. Thats the real enemy. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] it is so funny because i talk to Wayne Barrett about this. One of the things he noticed is that donald trump cannot stand prepared remarks. He has a problem with it. His entire life he had never given a prepared a prepared speech until his fathers funeral in 1999. When you follow trump on the trail, sometimes they would hand to the speech in advance and or you would see the teleprompter from where youre sitting and you could read the first sentence of jose, hello hello citizens of erie, pennsylvania. Trump would look at it go yeah, no, whatever. He would go off on a tangent like he couldnt even read one sentence. I think it. I think it was a physical problem for him. There is speculation among the reporters on the plane like george bush that he maybe had a learning disability or was dyslexic or that he was just phobic about rehearsed remarks. We know he has a speech, he tweeted a picture of him writing it. Did it. Did anyone see it . Its amazing. Who takes a legal pad any of that amazing leg look on his face. I dont think he has ever written a word. Clearly he did not write his books. He obviously had a ghostwriter. So its hard to say. He he doesnt like saying what other people have given him to read. At the same time, the eyes of the world are going to be on him tomorrow. I will say that at the convention he read the script to most word for word thats because i think he was extremely nervous. I think if you watched him that performance he was down, clearly during the entire week. I think he thought he was losing in the convention was a fiasco and he was not pumped up so he did not improvise. But hes on top of the world now so anything could happen tomorrow in the speech. I have no idea. You talked about him doing things instinctually. How much of any selfawareness is there about him having the strategies that have totally defeated the political system versus it all just be an instinct or lock or whatever. Thats a great question. Its like an unknowable mathematical puzzle. Was it intentional or was incredibly lucky . I think its a combination of a couple of things. On the most simple level trumps main motivation of the campaign this is just a Television Show in a bad Television Show to show those trying to have stars like Lindsey Graham and scott walker. [laughter] if those are your leading actors its a crappy Television Show. Then trump is a reality star. He understands how television works. Hes good at tv. Instinctively he understands how to generate drama and controversy and how to be talked about. Hes good at this not only in tv but with twitter. His whole psychological mechanism is perfectly designed to keep people talking about him. So on one level he manipulated all of us. He understood the financial of the business which were not in the Public Service industry anymore. We have have to make money so we need entertainment and we need the ratings. He probably on some level understood that thats how he got all of the free coverage. I dont think he went into it saying im going to navigate my way through all of these obstacles. I think he just was who he was and that happened to work. Another interesting side effect is that he understands celebrity and celebrity as a quantity that other politicians dont have a great grasp of. What been super famous does being talked about does even if youre being talked about in a negative way, it makes it appear bigger in our society. Your largerthanlife character. When trump with his fame and attention when on the debates it was like all of the gravity in the room was sucked toward him. He got more more camera time than anyone else in the debates. When his opponents became physically smaller standing next to me and if they werent like jeb bush. That had a psychological impact on voters made him think that he was more substantial. All it was was just more talked about. It is probably both. You talk about journalists being in the business, and this last year and a half that you been following this, which journalist or which people amongst year. Group would you say have bucked the trend and were good journalist and spotter things that the rest of us do not sear the rest of your group to density . Who are the bright lights among the journalists to cover this . A lot of them are friends of mine, like davids rotor i thought it a good good job even though he wasnt really on the trail. People answer this generally be a by saying there was a tendency as the year went on for reporters to divide up into camps. The New York Times even talked openly about this. They they said trump is such a unique and threatening figure that maybe we need to rethink normal journalistic practice and become more like advocates and less like reporters. On the one hand i understand that that thinking on the other hand that was the reason a lot of his people have us confidence in the media to begin with. They had a perception whether whether it was accurate or not that the media was too liberal and where were not factbased and trying to push a narrative on them. So i guess what i would say is the alternative media i thought did a better job of looking at both sides of the story and trying to be balanced and how they cover things wheres the legacy media i think they actually helped trump why this all negative, all the time approach that they adopted in the middle of the summer because it created among people the perception that these ivory tower journalists were all against him. And he said to his advantage i thought. [inaudible] i dont know if you talked about him publicly but i think to hear your thoughts by your dads career and work and how it affected you as a kid. I never get that question. For those that dont know my father is the reporter he was a News Reporter in new york city, he worked for w nbc, is probably the big story is the nono. [inaudible] story. My child is basically the movie anchorman. My dad when i was growing up had the mutton chops these crazy bowties in the 70s outfits. Hes very oldschool journalists. Hes been been doing this since he was 18 years old. He taught me so many critical lessons about how to do this job in fact some of them influence the way looked at the selection. When i was a little kid when my dad came home from work i was always one to play with him when he came home but he had to do the sink on the phone attack first. He was going get the pack of camel cigarettes and a drink and he would take a telephone and rolodex and he would randomly through his rolodex and call people that he knew from various Government Departments and cops and stuff like that and touch base with people. He had to do that for an hour and half every day. After he came home from work. What he taught me through that was set a journalist job is about human contact and staying physically in touch with people. You have to be able to perceive tiny gradations of things like what peoples moods are, how they feel about things, whether something is extremely unusual are only a little bit. You only get that from talking to this huge array people all of the time. One of of the things going on with modern journalism is that its internet based we do things and we rely on polls and experts too much. When journalists want to Research Things they google it. They link. To really understand things you have to go to the place and talk to people. You have to be willing to be surprised. You cant go in with the preconceived notions of what things are. Sometimes you think a story is one thing and it turns out to be Something Else completely. My dad was great about that. Is different from me had not much of an editorialist. He gave a speech a reset i subscribe more to a factbased is supposed to my son. But its totally righteous, oldschool, great journalist. He taught me really so much. Thank you for the question. Thats really cool. Thank you for your talk. What teske Many Political scientist on hundreds of books about the consolidation of the media in the Mainstream Media that took place over the last 40 or 50 years. Forty years ago you had 45 companies that owned the major forces. Now you have 45 companies that own the whole process. The mainstream aspect of the process. If you look at any research talking about consolidation of the media among industrialized countries would be how hard pressed to find another industrialized country that has more consolidated media than this country. So having said that having seen what took place in this election, what you think, how do you see the role of the 45 Major Players in the future . This cnns of the world, the fox of the world, to think that all of them lead to a disservice to the process. Would you, gemma . I think what youre saying about how other industrialized countries dont have the system its a fancy way of saying third world countries have the system. I lived in russia and ive been to other third world countries and its typical of what you find in a hypocrisy. You you have a smaller car key of interest. Its a few powerful financial interest to control all of the major press. That through typical of a country that is undemocratic and has concentrated power. Of course in this election cycle the legacy media was upended. People like alex jones and breitbart. Com became these major powers in media, because i think what youre talking about his people had been tuned into the reality of only a few people who control the flow of information that is part of what trump was hitting that nerve. He was saying these people are controlling information dont Pay Attention their liars. In our problem is legacy media has gotten like lazy. And had it done its job well enough and so in the future i think the thing you can be encouraged by his the internet has created this new world where you can get a gigantic audience emotional most overnight. The problem is in order to be good at it and do things like backcheck and research and devote time into journalism you need money. Independent, small Media Companies dont have money. So what do they do . Theres a lot of conspiracies linking american that leads to a lot of what was on the last year with the fake news phenomena and people not knowing what to believe. Thats dangerous. I worry about that. One more question. Thank you so much. First of all, thank you so much for all of your work. I think that only has your work is first contributing to overall discourse theres something about the Current Affairs in the way in which you look at and examine power. Through these relationships also bring about and raise questions about human nature and an interest in a powerful way that i appreciate. If i could, curious now looking at many of the different points you raise while being on the campaign trail and some Different Things on marketing and these responses that i think trump voters or supporters have for him and his approach, what are some of your thoughts or analysis on overall human agency moving forward people who want to think critically, analytically, and those that want to enter gravitating toward these more emotional responses. Where is it that politics in your view manned up going in the next few years especially for a Trump Administration. And if i could one other question you can pick one of the other. Looking at rhetoric and you mentioned trumps ability to leverage celebrity and take advantage of social media. One one of the things i have noticed is how powerful a channel like you to and among other social media platforms. How powerful that is in promoting i think a new particular right that is unique and interested in appropriating white male oppression and censorship in these notions that i think for me personally or credibly scary. Im curious if the question grabs you more, what are some strategies that may be you have seen her view to combat this rhetoric . Is the same question actually. Its how to we were going do to combat this hyper simplistic trump really, he succeeded on the level that was almost suburban. He was signaling things like defiance. He discussed but have the time it didnt have anything to do with what he said it was more about his posture and his responses to things. He tweeted short bursts of like half thoughts. And they rocketed around the world when they impacted these people. In in order to unwind that people on the other side were writing articles and youre never going to get the mass audience to respond as well to the complicated thing as well as to the simple thing. Thats part of his effectiveness of him is that he uses small words. They did that analysis that he speaks at a six grade level. The lowest level of any politician in history. A mess what thats what its going to be Going Forward. Before going to have some kind of movement that will up in this it will have to use those techniques. But with different messaging. The problem is that hate translates better in short verse them of acceptance, peace and harmony two. Those are more complicated ideas. So its a challenge. I dont have the answer to it. I think people have to look at what he did say this is unfortunately the future. We have to figure out a way to communicate with people in this elemental level that is even more simplistic than what were doing with codewords that candidates were doing before. They have to use emotion, intimacy. Trump was in these crowds they were incredibly intimate. Their physical. Like he connected with people. They fell to a was in those rooms. Other politicians havent done that. Theyve relied on media and meet the press, those dont connect with people as much. I think its getting back to pounding the pavement and physically interacting with people is where it starts. Thank thank you so much. I appreciate it. [applause] thank you so much. The sign in line will go this way. We have copies at the register. We have all of his book here. Every weekend book tv brings yo h