United nations. How many times in the past, and you of all know it best, people came out and said the israelipalestinian conflict is the major conflict in the middle east. You solve that, you solve everything else. My point here, that we are basically fighting, you know. Its not between israeli and palestinians or between arabs and jews. Itbetween people who sank fie life and people who celebrate death. Rose an analysis of the biden decision, seth meyers and ron proser prosor when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by American Express. Additional funding provided by . And by bloomberg, a provider much multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. From our studios in new york city, this is charlie captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin this evening with Vice President joe bidens decision not to run for president in 2016. He made the announcement from the white house rose gaferred enearlier today with his wife jill and president obama standing at his side. The Vice President said hes out of time to launch a winnable campaign but promised to play a role in the race. While i will not be a candidate, i will not be silenced. I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully, to influence as much as i can where we stand as a party, and where we need to go as a nation. And this is what i believe. I believe that president obama has led this nation from crisis to recovery, and were now in the cu sp of resurgence. Im proud to have played a part in that. This party, our nation, will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the obama legacy. Rose the new brings speculation about a president ial run, it would have been his third attempt. Joining me from washington is al hunt, a columnist for bloomberg view. Here in new york, Mark Halperin and john heilemann. They are host of bloombergs all due respect and managing editors of bloomberg politics. Im pleased obviously to have all of them at this time. Mark, i begin with you. Tell me why he did this. And what factors contributed to the decision. You know, you had several streams running at once. You had the normal clock of the president ial calender. You had Hillary Clinton building up, fundraising an orption. You had joe biden really torn about whether he wanted to run for president anyway. Then you had the death of his son beau a few months ago. The process of the family recovering. The filing deadline coming up, the fact that the Vice President has been dealing with his personal grief in the family. All of that in a big swirl caused him to delay his decision until now when it really had to be a decision time for any sort of conventional campaign. Meet the filing deadline, begin to build an organization, raise money, for iowa an New Hampshire starting early february. The clock ran out on him. And he said today, what our sources are saying behind the scenes which is, the family was now prooped to say were Strong Enough in the wake of beaus death to do this. But he did not accept his advisors critique that there was, in fact, time to mount a credible, Serious Campaign while being Vice President , while taking care of his family, raising money, campaigning. Rose and should he have accepted his advisors critique . I mean his advisors recommendation, if that is what it was, or should he have said theyre doing it for their own reasons . I think that in the end he made the right decision politically. Personally, thats got to be up to him and whether he was Strong Enough or not. The people i talked to over the last week when we were dealing with said he was himself stronger than he had been since beaus death. There was a palpable focus and a strength that had returned to him. I think politically, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the two democrats now who stand almost 100 percent chance between them of winning the nomination, they have tense of thousands, millions of millions of people around the country excited about the pros peck of their being president. For all of joe bidens strengths, for all his following in elite circles, i dont think today there are millions let a known lenders tens of millions of americans excited about a biden candidacy. Tand would have taken that level of excitement to win this with figure of a bank shot of sanders knocking offer clinton and bied inbeing there to pick up the pieces. Rose you want to add . I think there was momentumf. Rose especially right after the appearance on colbert. Well, yeah. And look, you have a unique situation for biden. He has been running for something since 1972, whether for the senate or twice for president. It is all he really knows how to do is run. So confronting a future in which hes no longer doing what is his natural kind of mode of being, i think was difficult for him. And after and around the colbert thing and around the time when people learned that beaus dying wish was that he would run, he started getting a lot of incoming. People callk him saying you should run. Donors, strategists, voters, others around the country. I dont think joe biden has ever had that happen before. Where like dozens, hundreds of people were calling. It is easy, i think, for politicians when they get all that incoming, or human beings to think man, this is my moment. Like the country is calling out for me to do. This and the truth is mark and i went and did these focus groups or for our show, we talked to democrats out there. They didnt want to see him run. The voters looked at him. They looked at the colbert appearance that we thought was very effective. They looked at it and said that guy doesnt seem emotionally ready to run for president. He still seems too torn up by what happened to his son. Im sure that information reached joe biden. Those focus groups, and more generally, he i think came to his senses in some sense that there was not, this was not a national calling for swroa biden to get in the race. At the same time, there were people around him including some members of his family who at that moment, when all of that was happening. Hillary clintons tra ject ore seemed to be getting worse and worse e email seemed to be getting more and more damaging. Her poll numbers seemed to be sinking. People around him were saying this is coming to you, just keep waiting, its coming to you, its coming to you. In the last few weeks that changed. With Kevin Mccarthys comment and the benghazi hearings looking more favorable to her. Her debate performance. Other things in the atmosphere, the moment where he starts to doubt that the country is really calling for him, and the plilt kal dynamics no longer seem so carable. And then he goes back to his heart and he was never really fully there. And that all adds up to the decision. Rose okay, al s it possible still that if something happens to secretary clintons campaign, whether its an email that gets out that nobody knows about now, that it implodes her candidacy. That he would get back in . Or he would get in. Well, charlie, it would have to happen very soon. Its possible but its very arts who elect del cats inyour this process. You know, i think all of this back and forth and this tick tok occurred. There was a genuine discussion, there were top advisors at his naval observatory home late yesterday afternoon, early evening, who left pretty convinced he wasnt going to run. But it wasnt final until he walked with his family. But i think the overarching question here was something that maybe even joe biden didnt fully fully know all along, which was you cant run for president as a cath ar sis to show shed your grief. Its a very hard, difficult, trying, painful thing to go through. Its not fun. People think its fun. Its not. And for joe biden and this state to have done that, i think, almost from the beginning, was just not going to happen. I dont think he fully realized that for awhile. But it just wasnt, wasnt to be. And i think that is more important than the polls or the fundraising or some of the other stuff. He very much wanted to be president. He has a very strong feeling. Youre smiling. Wants to be president today, thinks he would be a better candidate for the democratic than Hillary Clinton, thinks he would be a better president than Hillary Clinton. Thinks that his partnership with barack obama has made him even more ready to be president than he felt he was before when he had been chairman of Foreign Relations and juddishary, and i think part of what today was about in giving that extended set of remarks flanked by his waive and the president , president obama, was to try to put a codea, on heres my vision, here is what i think america should be. Here is what i think the democratic nominee should be like. And very much wants his i mean the highest office he is likely to achieve now almost certainly is Vice President of the United States, as part of the obamabiden administration. And i think hes trying to find a way to make peace with that and put his imprint on the next year of the administration and of the successor of whatever democrat is nominated. Rose lets imagine for a moment he had run. What would be the differences with Hillary Clinton . This is always one of the big questions. On some areas of policy, Foreign Policy in particular, he was more doveish than she was. He could have pointed to those distinctions in some ways. On economics and most of domestic policy, they are not very far apart. And that was one of the problems in terms of trying to think through what the path would be. There is not a clear idea logical or large numbers of policy differences that are very dramatic. Unlike say Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders where the differences are much more stark. It would have been a campaign, i think, based much more on i am a more authentic voice for the middle class, for the working class, that he was it would have been a style statistics and tempermental contrast rather than a contrast based on issues. And part of the argument all along was that we were in this moment right now, and you see it on the republican side in a mirror image with the interest in dofn ald trump, the interest in ben carson, were in this moment where authenticity is prized, it is always prized but its more prized than ever. Did Hillary Clinton have that. The argue that biden would have been implicitly making is that i am the authentic one and she is the phoney one. Rose and issues he believed in about the middle class because he has always heralded his own rise from the middle class. Straight from scranton. And the guy who rides the amtrak train and the guy who has that, obviously has the common touch, and that ability to speak for, especially White Working Class kind of voters in a way that actually few politicians do today. He would have been, i think, that would have been the pitch. But again, much more of a tempermental thing than i differ with her on the minimum wage, that would not have been the differ rent yaiting point. Rose so for barack obama, what did he want, al . Well, i think he plobly probably would have voted for joe biden if he had voted in a contest. But i think he probably is not displeased with this yowlt come. I think hes a realist. He knew it would be difficult for biden to win. It might make it harder for a democrat, probably Hillary Clinton to succeed him. So my guess is that he is pleased with this, charlie. I want to say one thing. I dont think joe is all past tense. I think he is going to much in demand next year. Magazineie hansen in New Hampshire, russ fine gold in New Hampshire l want joe biden in there. Hillary clinton if she is the nominee will be campaigning with joe biden. And i think the Vice President worries about what life will be like outside of politics, which he has been in for some 43 years. But i think he will be not only a i dont know if revered is too strong a term but certainly a wellliked and highly respected figure. But there will be a role for a joe biden to play. Rose all right, let me turn to Hillary Clintons testimony is tomorrow. Is that now less of less of a big sloo because of what the republicans have done in shooting themselve in the foot . Substantially less because doing a hearing like this if its not bipartisan which this committee has never been bipartisan, you really need the goods. You really need to have the country Pay Attention to what you want to say. Its not clear to me that the seven republicans who will question her will be her match on any level. And i think they set the table in a way, not just because of the comments of Kevin Mccarthy suggesting this is all political to hurt her. But because they dont, i believe, seem to have a good sense of the stage craft required. I thought they were in a goods place a few months ago. I thought they were doing this in a met odd kal way, al and john and others suggested to me at the time that they werent. And its pretty clear to me now that they are going to have to struggle to make this an effective hearing. Either as a matter of oversight or as a matter of policy. Rose my theory is that they have always been hoping that they could do something about benghazi. But in fact, the emails might unload something else. And once they knew about the emails, they began to focus on that rather than the spervegs of benghazi. Well, the benghazi investigation, as you know, charlie, there have been multiple investigations by multiple bipartisan committees in congress and elsewhere. Its been investigated, pretty carefully over the course of many years. There is some new information that tray gowdy has, emails from ambassador stevens that havent been in the Public Record so there are new things to dig into. But largely that matter has been litigated as Hillary Clinton has pointed out many times before. The new thing and potentially damaging thing as related to the emails. And we now have some accounts from within the committee that the committee took a sharp turn when the email scandal erupted. That it suddenly seized on that in a pretty overtly political way. You know, when she gave the great, what i thought was a very, very good debate performance that she gave in las vegas, people pointed out that part of the reason that she did very well was that she has done this a lot of times before. She had been in 25 debates or forums with barack obama in 2008. And experience really helps when you are up on the big stage, right. Its the same thing for this committee hearing. This woman has been in front of a lot of congressional committees, she has been intergated on this issue before many times. She is not only prepared recently a lot for this committee hearing, but she has the background of having done this against very able republican opponents on multiple occasions in the past. I think she walks into this, almost inevitably she is going to be better than, as a performer, better than the Republican House members who are against her just because she has been dealing with this issue in a sustained way for a very long time. She knows where she knows what she knows and she knows how to make the arguments. Rose al s there any talk in washington as to what might be on those emails that were deleted and then found not necessarily to all have been deleted . There is a lot of talk, charlie, whether it goes beyond that is another matter. Look, i cant help but contrast this to the hearings held 412 years ago by your fellow North Carolina sam irvine, what a contrast. That was a much tougher time, that was much more perilous and it was bipartisan from the beginning with theetion different men, irvin and baker. Tray gowdeer was never the right person to do this. But it never should have been done. A congressional hearing on libya, which ended up a disaster would be very ledge the legitimate. But a hearing on the tragedy of four americans being killed really was bound to be partisan from the beginning. Charlie n1983 241 marines were blown out of the baracks in bay route. There were not hearing up in congress three years later. This was never, never, never should have taken place. Rose has the notion set in that donald trump could very well win this nomination because he had been able when you look at me luke that is the dumbest thing i ever said. No, no, no. Well, first of all, yes, i think broadly speaking after a summer in which most of the establishment and most of the establishment media were in denial about the possibility that donald trump could be the nominee, it is now, i think, t universally, that he is at it for a hundred days of leading every national poll, every important state poll, that he is a viable candidate and indeed at this moment the most likely nominee. Rose and building an organization. He has the money, all those things. He is a real candidate. And i dont think anybody thinks he is a better than 50 50 shot of being the nominee. But there is no one with a better shot. But i will say this. To go back to your earlier question. Ben carson is in iowa a more natural fit, i would say, for the iowa electorate than trump is. Probably because his evangelical credentials are genuine and there are questions about trumps. You can imagine a scenario where ben carson beats donald trump in iowa. And maybe this quinnipiac poll is the beginning of a trend in that decision. And then the question becomes New Hampshire, is there an establishment candidate as mark suggested without beats donald trump. If donald trump were to win iowa, New Hampshire, south carolina, he might be unstoppable. Donald trump loses the first two contests, a guy who does not like losing and who has taken such pride in being ahead in every poll for so long. He loses the first two contests, does he go on after that, i dont know the answer to that question. But i think many people have some doubt about if he starts losing elections, whether he has staying power, whether he fights all the way on. Rose is the politics of 2016 so far, this is my last question, so far the idea that the country is fed up with washington and somebody who offers a different course might very well have viability, merging with the idea that the country is very concerned about what has happened to the middle class. And those two ideas have come together . Yeah, because sanders, carson and trump really have almost nothing in common except the fact that they are all antiwashington. And theyre all doing well in the polls right now. And you look at both iowa and New Hampshire and you look for an establishment vote. Should be about, i dont know, 40 in eye way, maybe 60 in New Hampshire. But you dont see, you just dont see it emerging. Maybe when there is 110 days left, maybe it will. And i find it difficult to see ben carson as a nominee. You know t was only a month or so ago that i found it very difficult to see donald trump as the nominee. I think maybe all the old rules have been thrown out. And that this is just the most unpredictable election that any of us have ever seen. Im okay with that. Are you . I was going to say, it sounds like fun to me. Thank you, albert, thank you, john, thank you, mark. Rose well be right back. Stay with us. Rose seth meurs is here. He ended his runs ahead writer of weekend update on saturday night live after 13 years on that program. He took over as host of nbcs late night in february of 2014. He is the fourth person to helm that show following david letterman, conan obrien and jimmy fallon. This summer the mock documentary series documentary now which he could created with bill hader, premiered on ifc. Hu lu animated series the awesomes which he also cocreated is currently airing its third season. I am pleased to have seth meyers back at this table. Welcome. Thank you, lovely to be back. Rose so lets talk about the animated series first. Okay, wonderful. Rose do you get some satisfaction out of being a creator. I get a great amount of satisfaction from being a creator, especially for things that im passionate about from a very young age. I liked superheroes. I liked cartoons and comics. So my cocreator is the producer on late night. We always wanted to do Something Like that. We were lucky to find a place like hu lu that wanted to dot show. Being able to voice a superhero was sort of a nice bucket list thing for me. Rose bucket list. Its nice today that there are so many places you can go do programming. Yeah. Its been weve been huge beneficiaries with the things we want to do im very lucky to have a show on a network with you can reach out and get into more homes. But you know n this day and age theres not just streaming sites but cable. You can do the sort of ship in a bottle type programming that is gsh you almost feel like a hobbyist. Rose is there something to note about what is happening over at cbs with steven in a sense of taking serious interviews at 11 30, whether its joe biden or whether its other people like that . Well, you know, i think stephen, one of the ways you bring your dna as a host into the show is who you want to book and who you want to have on. And thats something, you know, joe, we were lucky to have Vice President biden on our first show. For us in the same way that i think it appeals to stephen, not just politicians but you know, ive really enjoyed having fiction authors on, something i care a lot about and i found authors to be really interesting story tellers. Rose what is interesting is people have picked up on that too. I mean people who write books now say where are those shows that care about books. And youve gotten on that list. Its nice. I grew up being a big reader. Its nice to use the platform i have on the show to have people that maybe wouldnt be guests anywhere else. Rose how has the show changed since you began . Well, we made a choice, i guess almost like two months ago now to start the show behind the desk. That was probably one of the bigger cosmetic changes we made. Rose is that your instinct, producers instinct. You think like a producer, dont you . I think based on my role at snl i learned a lot of prowr yam skills. With he were talking about way, i think even though these are year round shows you think as the fall as the new tv seasons and were wondering if there was a way to shakeup the way prepresent ourselves. I will say one thing i always thought doing my show, i felt doing the monologue i was the warmup warmup comedian for my own show and nowed show starts when it starts which i like. Do you come out and see the audience before the show. I do. I like to come out, say hi to the audience. Not only to make them feel more comfortable but thats when i get a good sense of what the house is like that night. Rose and it varies from night to night. It wary varies night to night. If it is a brutally cold day in augustk people are in a bad mood or a sunny day in february, theyre in a good mood. So its funny. Since we dont have windows i dont find out what the weather is until i. Rose if you had one or two people you might not expect, they could have influence in the crowd and the way the crowd reacts, if they are loud or enthusiastic, the crowd will be more enthusiastic than normal. Of course. And you know, an enthusiastic crowd just gives you a little bit more license to have fun in those moments between the jokes. If you get a long tail of laughter that is when you can go off script. If they are laughing and cutting it off cold you get a sense of lets keep this moving. It changes other than sitting behind the desk . Mostly just getting better. A lot of the staff we hired, was it a first time job in television. We like that idea. That is something again that i learned from lorn at snl, it is nice to hire people that dont know how to do these things and you can train them the way you want to. Nobody has bad habits. Everybody has gotten better the more we do it the luxury is you do it every night so the learning curve is faster. Rose it is the greatest thing about daily television. I cant imagine, i cant imagine people who do Something Like once or twice a year, because if it goes wrong, your year is wasted. If its not quite perfect for me today there is tomorrow. Being less precious about it and then that just, again, i feel like when people are wamping 12 30 at night, they want to see somebody comfortable when the jokes are going well, they want to see them comfortable when the jokes are being badly. I think one of the things i had to hammer out of myself the First Six Months doing the show was not to sweat a bad joke, not to sweat a bad piece of comedy. Rose but you knew that, didnt you . You know as much as you know. And then doing it, its so funny how like, you know, you ther orize about what it is like to do a late night show and until you get out and you are road testing it, you dont know how you actually process it. Rose do you wamp other shows . That sort of gets picked up virally the next day. Obviously when new people start im always cur yuses how they are doing their shows. I was excited for stephen and trevor. And i really enjoyed watching how they do it. But the reality sets in, and when you tilely put together a late night show you dont have a ton of time to watch other late night shows. Rose did you have any regret about leaving snl to go here . No. I mean at first. Rose even though snl ask an institution and you followed a rather Remarkable Group of people. Yeah, that shall it. Rose from david to jimmy within the nice thing was i also, doing weekend yuch dailt, i followed remarkable people as well. And so i at least knew its possible and one of the ways its possible su try not to think too hard about the foot steps you are following in. But yeah, i mean i was really sad to leave snl but you know, i was also reaching the point where i was the oldest guy in the room as far as the writing staff and cast. Rose could you do both. No i dont think could you do both. Its full time. And if anything, you know, i wish i had more time to work on my show as opposed to that i wish i was splitting it with somewhere else. Rose what would you do with more time. I just wish i could get in at 5 00 mt morning. We start at 9 00 in the morning because that is ultimately the amount of sleep you need to function. But you always want two or three more hours, especially when you are writing something day of. Its a story that broke last night or a story breaking that day, just the logistics, of pulling together the clips or pulling together the graphic package. Rose do you spend more time thinking about the monologue or thinking about the interviews . I think i spend the most amount of time thinking about the written comedy in the first act of the show, yeah. And that being the stuff that is day of. Rose everybody that i know has that. Carson did that. Everybody else i have ever known. Yeah. Rose that is the hook. Rose that gets them in, if you can do that. Especially for us, one of the most important things about our show and we are so lucky to be following jimmys tonight show, is we just want to make sure he is doing fantastic and you want to say to the audience, hey, stick around for this. That was another, you know, one of the reasons one of the cat lists to leaving the desk. An hour before jimmy was doing a fantastic monologue. So we understand to some degree you saw another person walk out, stand in front of another curtain t seems like eye repeat. So making it look different was important. Rose is it fair to say that what makes jimmy jimmy is not the monologue, its the skits. I think jimmy has a bretd of talent that has not been is not conventional to the position. Like that he can do all these different things. I think he does a wonderful monologue but what elevates him above everybody else is that he can do impressions and he can sing and he can dance and hes a wonderful comic performer, just like he was at snl. Rose you get the impression that corden is the same way. I think corden, again. Rose who is up against you or vice versa. A monster talent. James and i are friends. And i think were both very happy that were not trying to do the same show at st qu 30. Were giving people choices for what they can watch. Rose how would you define the choices. I do think that james, obviously, mostly james is talent at so many things that im not even in the zip code. Like he is a Tony Awardwinning performer who, i mean. Rose a very good acker. A skill set that i am insanely jealous of. Whereas i think what we are trying to do is, i think with our first act to some degree, the hope is hey, you know, this might be a nice way to catch up on the day. Like here is, ive always been draw to news and i think certainly coming from that weekend update, tree. Rose you have a great gift for, in addition, you were head of the snl writers. Yeah. Rose so you understand standup comedy. You understand skit comedy, you understand joaks, and all of that. Is that a learned skill or is that something that is mostly youre funny or youre not funny. Ut like any talent you have to refine it. I dont think anyone who is born has the equal opportunity to be an nfl quarterback. Like you need to have some stuff actually in you. Rose like ray lewis. I met ray lewis. Rose he is born with certain things and. I think if i worked just as hard as being a linebacker as ray lewis it wouldnt have worked out the same. Rose and are you lucky for that too. But you know, the funny thing about comedy, though, is you know, look, ive been writing it for my entire professional life. And you know, were into the second decade of doing it. And to some degree, like you constantly are blown away by how little you still know. Like how wrong you can be with a piece of comedy or a comic choice. You bring out a joke that you are sure is going to work. Rose it could happen every night. To some degree it happens every week. But it is the part. Its most likely that something you thought would work didnt work rather than something you thought well this maybe okay. And it goes through the roof. Yeah, its the other way, the other way. But thats, i think, what you know, is the flame that draws comedy writers as moths to it, is this idea, it is like an you know you can never, you never crack it completely. You are just always trying to get better and better at doing comedy. And you get better and better by doing it. That, i think, is, you know, again at some point you cant be influenced by things as much as you were when you were young. I was very lucky that my parents introduced me to monty pie thon, to snl, to Richard Pryer at an age. They like those groups. They loved them. They did not wait until it was age appropriate to introduce it us to. Rose because they enjoyed comedy. They enjoyed koment de and i have said this before, but my mother is a very beautiful woman. And who, and my dad is a very funny man. I think my brother and i learned at a young age. Rose that a beautiful woman is attracted to the man because he is funny. We thought that is good. Because you cant get handsomer but you can try to be funnier. Rose and you can get less land some as you get older but you wont get less funny. Exactly. Old guys can be very funny, probably funniest. Rose did you go to amsterdam after college. I did, yeah. So. Rose amsterdam, new york. No, the original amsterdam. Some guys from chicago went over toz amsterdam, they were a few years older than me and they started sort of like a second city of amsterdam called boom chicago. And they were chicago guys and they would have auditions in chicago. So right after i graduated from college, we saw an audition notice and i went and auditioned. I didnt even have a passion port and i lived in holland for two years. Rose did you pick up any habits over there . Well, i will say this. When i was a 27 year old man living in new york city in snl people would say this must be the best time in your life. I would i sa its not quite as good as amsterdam. Its not quite as good as being 22 and living in amsterdam. Rose and not quite as free. Living in amsterdam i felt like it was a child proof city there were no hard edges, everything had padding on it. But it was a good time. Rose a different mindset. They have a different mindset about liberation. But i will say you realize that there are a lot of different ways you can perform for comedy audiences that are impaired. I will say the way an audience can be impaired in amsterdam is the worst way an audience can be impaired for comedy. Because they laugh at the wrong things. Will you walk out with this really well written skit and they will lose themselves over the hats. Rose you went to North Western. Uhhuh. Rose is there something about North Western that produces a lot of very talented performers . Yes. I mean they have a great theater school. I think when you have a great, any kind of Great Program that becomes renowned, what happens, the teachers are great. But what really happens is because everybody heard it was good, you are surrounded by people your age who are good, and you know, so you all of a sudden go from being the funniest person in your high school to the least funny person who is auditioning for the imprf trowp. There was an imprf trowpe at North Western called me ou. It took me four years to get into it i auditioned every year and it wasnt until my senior year that i made the imprf trowpe. And i know the guys who made it ahead of me and they were never wrong. They got it right ef every year. Rose how many of them are big stars now. They are all doing fairly well. They dont have talk shows but i would still contend. Rose there are not that many shows. When you think about it, in the great were world of television not that many people have their own show. No, having your name on a show is sur real. Rose it. Is you get up every day and say what is it that interests me. What do i want to do today. Oh my god, can i talk to seth meyers today, or, i just read a books, lets find the author. Its that part of it. Rose will northbound town, lets get them. Especially, you know, this year i have read a few books where i thought i would love to talk to this person. Rose an you can. You just make a phone call and they show up. More often than not they are even more delightful in person than you would have thought. Rose do you think the audience is smarter than we think they are . I think audiences now, especially comedy audiences are saffier than ever before, in a very good way. I think they can tell if something is not genuine. They request tell if its something that the host doesnt believe in. So you really have to be true to your own sense of humor. Rose and you authentic. You have to be authentic. I think that will just continue to be the case. People are really hip to stuff that is authentic versus inauthentic. And i do, i think the audience is very smart now. Also because its amazing to me, like when i run into sort of a Younger Generation and you realize theyre not just coming up on the comedy that is being made today. Theyre selfeducating themselves with the internet and theyre watching the stuff i grew up with. Whereas when i was growing up, other than comedy albums t wasnt like i couldnt go watch your show, while i was also watching snl. I was really only watching the stuff that was available. Rose i always had the impression that david letterman, a loved comedians so therefore had a lot of comedians on. Yeah. Rose also he loved athletes. It would drive me crazy because if someone won a big athletic event, world series, you know, nfl super bowl, i would know that david would have a better chance of getting that person. Right. Rose the next day than i would. Yeah. Rose because he developed awe sense of being, you know, deeply in awee of those kinds of talents. Yes, i will say i dont know if you found this. But it is more fun to talk to pretired athletes. Rose it is. Because they just. Rose its unplugged. Yeah,. Rose they are really, you just saw ray lewis. And i would say second to politicians, athletes are the most plulged during their career. You know, they have you cant blame them. But the stock answers are ultimately, you know, even when you you interview athletes across all sports and realize there are certain things they will all answer the same way. You get guys ten years out of the game and they are stealing the dealing the anecdotes. Rose you can do this. You can do a movie a chance of being wamped or testk. If you see something you like and you have at toibility to explore that person in a way that makes them interesting in explaining the art that they do. Yeah. You can get people to take a look. And its fun when, you know, there will be people that well have on the show and obviously, look, there is this tier of talk show guests that all of us want. Right. We all say yes to. My Talent Department wouldnt even have to run it by me. But then its fun though when you have people on and someone will say to me oh, i never horde of that person. Do i think you have a responsibility as a host as much as you can to, you know, you are basically saying to the audience, im vouching for this person. Thats right. Thats why we are having them on tonight. So we try to be pretty consistent with that as much as you can. Yeah. How do you want to change the show over the next year . I mean do you will you find that out . Yeah, i mean, you know, we would always, at snl i learned cuz we would always vay sum tore think, a summer ta to talk. And everybody would show up and you would get the writers together and have all these talks about like this year i think we should do more of this and more of that. And then the first week we would start and the building was on fire and all the plans are out the window because you dont have enough time to actually lay these plans in place. Like they happen very gradually, almost without noticing it. Like i dont know if well make another big move like taking the monologue behind the desk. I dont know if we have another card like that to play. But who knows, like a year from now, i could be sitting here saying, and i would love to schedule it now, get on the books. But i mean something could happen. I dont think were sort of lining up our plans too much. Obviously being an Election Year is very exciting. And it will. So far it has been a dream. It has been a dream, really been a dream and there are so many of them. So many of them that dont know they cant win. Its lovely to watch it. Lorn michaels has meant what to you. Well, lorn brought me into show business. I mean thats the first thing. He sort of plucked me out of, you know, relative animosity. Found me there. And the question is what was he doing. No one ever asked lorn that. But no, you know, and then he was patient with me. Because i wasnt, im willing, to be the first to admit that i wasnt a great cast member on snl. I really only started adding value, commence rat with my pay when lorne made me a writer, when lorne let me do weekend update. I think if he was less patient he could have moved on from me in two years and the show wouldnt be worse for it. Rose but it gave you a chance to be where you are now. Yeah. And when i think back to the doubts and fears, which i feel like are consist ents with the doubts and fears that other people had their first year on snl, where lorne calling me up saying i think you would be good at late night post. Rose when you see a politician reasonably good at having done a good round of humor or comedy in a speech, it used to be thought that obama, for example, would reach out to the daily show or to saturday night live, does that happen a lot, that politicians and people with a fat pocket book can reach out and get you and others when you are a writer only, to do comedy for them . You know, i think when are you a president you can probably reach out and get jokes. But below that. Rose i wrote that one for the president , did you hear, that i wrote that. Exactly, that was mine. Beyond that, i feel like were all sort of too busy to overcommit to those other things. But i think, you know, famously obama has had some very high end talent write jokes for him. And i get it. What is your day like, before we go here. You are in there about 9 9d 30. Rose yeah. And a meet being 10, 10 30. Yeah, the first thing is just some writers and i will email the night before just to try to sort of. Rose like categories. Yeah, like is there anything going on that is going to be something that will be better tomorrow than any other day, something really timely. Because timely is pornlt for the show as well. Because these shows dont age particularly well. I dont think anybody goes back and binges, oh, i missed june. It doesnt work that way. So we try to do that. And for the course of the first two hours its talking with the writerring and trying to recognize those things. Around 11 00, we start reading through written pieces both for e week. Ys show and the rest of you begin blocking at what time . We go down to the theater at around drk dsh the studio i should say around 4 00 in the afternoon. Rose you run through it once. Yeah, we run through it once. Rose the whole show. But you know ultimately so much of the show is interviews. We just run through the comedy and that takes about 30, 40 minutes. Are you still cutting and he editing. Yeah, youre always tweaking, to be honest, we always, we always like add three jokes right before the show because the writers do, the monologue writers are taking one last pass. And its kind of fun to be walk out knowing there are going to be three, that the very first time you say them will be in front of an audience. Rose this is such a stupid question but im genuinely interested. Is there a secret to writing great monologue jokes. I think there is, but if there is i dont know what it is. You know, we brought the one person i poached from snl that lorne, when lorne gave me this job, he said you cant take alexs base, i said no, he is the one person i have to take. And we had run. Rose he had a reason to. Yeah, so i went to alex and said you know, i would love for you to come with me on. This because i believe he is the best joke writer working. Rose the best joke writer working today. Yes. Rose what is hays name. Alex base, ba did e. Rose okay. And he just was an incredibly good joke writer on weekend update. Rose is he great because he can write funny jokes, but what was it about it his. There is a real economy in the way he writes jokes. When we would look through the sheets of jokes could you tell his page because he fits more jokes because he uses less words than anybody else. There is something, Jerry Seinfeld has always talked about hes drawn to sports cars because there is not a wasted sort of inch on a sports car t has to be, you have to move fast with as little engineering. And that is how baze writes jokes as well. I think there say real sleekness to them and they just they snap off the tongue. When i worked at snl even with weekend update, i would get a joke on every now and then but i was a far better sketch writer. I needed the space of a sketch and the value of characters and performance. Whereas baze just here. Rose i once had to do a big speech and it had to be in part funny. And so i worked with some comedy writers from one of the shows. And it was amazing to me, and to watch them work. And you do get into the mine set a little bit of that. Sure. Rose it began even if are you essentially not a comedian or not even a funny person in terms of every day life. For example, i am a reactor rather than proactive about funny things. You do get a sense of it. If you do it, you begin to think of it that way. You begin to see it in a much more quicker way. Well. Rose if you have never gone through the process of participating in it. And you start realizing how much of it is about rhythm and i mean that is you know, obamas great gift, i think, as a president who is good at comedy is that he almost has a standup a cay dense when hes not being funny am like he has such, there is such a rhythm to the way he talks in general that when you actually give him comic dialogue, hes like predisposed to make it. Rose it fits into a formula. Yeah. Rose is he not afraid to take a beelt. Yeah. I a investor seen anybody less afraid. Rose will just, and the other thing will do which i love is that he will, he flows it the joke. Yeah. Rose but will pause and will started smiling, because hes think being the ending but when he delivers the ening t makes him laugh. And after the ending, you know, he will i wouldnt say he laughs at his own jokes but he was hell go like heh, just like a little, he doesnt break up but he yeah. I mean, i dont you know, we are a couple years away from one of these 21 people currently running for president having to do their First White House correspondent dinner, and talk about a hard ago to follow. Rose you have been there. Just once. Have i no interest in going back. Rose congratulations. Thank you very much. Great to see you. Great to see you as well. Rose back in a moment, stay with us. Ron prosor is here. October marks his last month as israels ambassador to the united nations. His diplomatic career spans three decades. He served as director of general of israeli minister of for enaffairs and ambassador to the united kingdom. Last month the General Assembly granted palestinians the right to fly their flag at the u. N. Headquarters trk was a sum bollic step oppose bid israel and the United States. He criticized the decision in his fairwell speech. Around the dont be fooled by the outcome of todays vote. The assembly would vote to declare that the earth is flat, that the palestinians proposed it. A no vote concerns an empty symbolic gesture into a the International Community must make it clear to the palestinians that the only way to achieve statehood is through direct negotiations. As long as the bleefer they can achieve their political goal was making concessions, they will continue to avoid taking the difficult decisions needed for peace. Rose im pleased to have ron prosor back at this table. Welcome. Thank you. Rose you say there are rules for dictators, there are rules for democracies. And then there are rules for israel. Thats right. Rose why do you think that . Well, its not just thinking. At looking at the facts. Its as not double stsd, its triple standards, israel is held to account and basically on a bar that is very hard to attain. But lets give examples, okay. There is an article four that deals with Human Rights Violations all over the world. And there is a special article that singles out only one country in the world, that is the state of israel. Now you know, i went to one of my colleges, an esteemed college. I said hey, dont i at least fit to be in the class with north korea, libya and syria . Why single me out . I mean israel. Rose what was the answer . There is no good answer. Thras the thing. Democracy and the systemic mind against israel can be seen by, you know, every day. For example in the krns in the status of women, everyone comes around, you know, talks about the status of women. The only country that is being condemned is israel. Not saudi arabia, not afghanistan, not iran. Rose whose fault is that . Now lets look at this. Israel began checking people at the airport 30 years ago. What did people say, hey, how you can do this thing. Invasion of privacy, you cant do this stuff. Israel is on the front line in encountering phenomenallen phenomenons that western democracies have yet to encounter, we are trying to protect and if the go overboard. Do we always get it right, no. But by god we are trying. And i think today when he look at what we have faced, the United States, western countries, israel, we are fighting on the same thing. Were fighting on the values, values of freedom. The values that we all cherish. Rose let me tov to john kerry made a huge effort to bring ises rheals and palestinians together. He spent almost a year trying to get that to happen. And hes raised questions as to why it was difficult. And he has blamed both sides. Uhhuh. Rose yes. I, and you, charlie, we have seen president clinton put an offer on the table. I was there, at camp david. We have seen ehud olmert, put things, we have seen kerry put things on the table. Prime minister netanyahu just a couple of days ago reached out and said im willing to negociate. Every day, every place, all the time. And we saw that. Rose what risk is he prepared to take for peace . When i looked at what the challenges are for the state of israel today, and when i see Prime Minister netanyahu, you know, reaching out, i look at the region. Look at what is happening around us. We see nature status integrating before us. Libya, syria, yemen and iraq. Rose and therefore. Nation states, baism taking over, and boko haram take over states. And yes, we should reach out every day but we have seen it in the united nations, the plibs have learned, instead of sitting in direct negotiations, that its easier to go out and sir cum vent that by the united nations, although the distance between ram add ar haman and jers lem is different. So in a sense we see the palestinians as the more they say no in the negotiations table, the more yes they get on the international arena. And the only way to get them back to the negotiation table is telling them, guys, there is only one way. Its tough, its frustrating, its not easy, weve been there. But this is the only way forward. Rose what do they say to you the only way to have a sick sesful negotiation is by occupying additional territory. What if they say that to you. That is not a way to go . I can look and say, you know, truthfully i can say look, when there was a serious, you know, in egypt we gave everything backk king hussein, the father of abdullah, we gave everything back. The state of israel is reaching out. But we have to negociate this, and it has to be done on both sides. And you heard, you heard abu mozon on the united nations, going back on agreements, you know, inciting, this incitement doesnt help. Rose when i talked to the Prime Minister on friday of last week, it doesnt seem to be his highest priority. His highest priority is iran. My impression is he worries more about iran than he does about trying to find a Peace Agreement with the palestinians. Well, i think iran is definitely standing out, you know, it say huge threat not just to israel but for the whole region. But the palestinian issue is still a centerpiece. And for every israeli, its absolutely clear that we need peace with the palestinians. We need peace with our arab neighbors. But this peace cannot be the peace that would put israel in jeopardy, and would create additional, additional problems for israels security. And the best example that we always, when i had it, was gaza. What happens when the demographics of the territory that israel now occupies, goes significantly against israel . What i think when there are more nonjews in israel than jews . What we think two different trends which are interesting. Ands israeli arab population, there is a decrease in the amount of births because they live inside israels society. You see women going out to work. You see a change in trends. But from my point of view, its obvious that we should Work Together to achieve peace. But its also important to know the challenges israel is facing. And how many times in the past, and you of all, know it best. People came out and said the israelipalestinian conflict is the major conflict in the middle east. You solve that. You solve everything else. My point here that we are basically fighting, you know. Its not between israelis and palestinians or between arabs and jews, its between people who sank fie life and people who celebrate death. And that fight is the fight at the end of the day that will allow us to live side by side to each other which we really want. What are you going to be doing when you go back, are you retiring . No, i havent decided to retire yet. You about i want to say one last thing, charlie, having served in washington and here, the bond between israel and the United States is an amazing bond between the people of israeli. Cherished values. Its something that i mean how many countries in the region, you know, wave the American Flag with pride. And when i go back to jerusalem, i can tell you that when i walk the corridors of the united nations, every day, i walk them tall and proud, knowing who i represent, and what i represent, and the family of nations. And when i walked in, i saw 15 flags with a kres ent on them. 25 flags with a cross on them. There is only one flag with a star of david. And for some countries, this is one star too many. So the fight on the legitimacy of israel, inside the family of nations is something that im very privileged and proud to have done. Rose thank you for coming again. Thank you. Rose and much good luck to you on your return to jerusalem. Thank you, and well see each other in jerusalem. Rose i certainly hope so. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs. Org and charlie rose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org funding for charlie rose is provided by American Express additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of plult media news and Information Services worldwide. On tomorrows pbs newshour extended excerpts of hill rae clinton before the Benghazi Committee on c announcer does your back ache . Do your knees creak . Do you have a stiff neck . Over 100 million americans suffer from chronic pain, but that doesnt have to be you. 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