Charlie welcome to the program. We begin with the testimony of former acting attorney general sally yates as the spoke to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary committee. You opened up a new can of worms or point to the finger directly but gave Additional Details how much urgency there was with her concerns and how often she was in touched to the White House Council in short order. The time line, two phone calls, two inperson meetings from january 26 to january 30. And her knowledge of what then happened in the next 18 days goes cold because she was shown the door herself. Charlie and continue with the aftermath of the president ial election in france. A lot of people like me have the thought that is someone has a chance its this young man. Now a new frontier and new voter, sure but he was probably the most positive candidate having the will to embrace again and to revive again the european dream. Charlie and again with karr carlos ghosn. And electric cars are a small percentage of the industry as a whole. But it probably has he biggest potential not because theres consumer demand for electric cars but the emission standards and limitation governments were not talking only about the u. S. Government particularly european government and japanese government and Chinese Government are putting as a trigger as the take off of the electric cars market. The testimony of sally yates and aftermath to the French Election and the future of selfdriving cars when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Charlie we begin with sally yates testimony to the Senate Judiciary committee the former acting attorney general testified today alongside james clapper. They were questioned on a range of issues on russias meddling in the election and the conduct of Michael Flynn saying he was vulnerable to black mail. We feel general flynn was compromised by the russian. Charlie joining me now what did she say today . She gave more detail of what she said at the white house and gave a time line of when she called to in form them there were concerns of the meetings they had in the office and the offer she made to detail the evidence they had showing reasons they had concerns that general flynn would be prime ministerized for black mailed compromised black mailed and we heard more detailed on that front and from yates and clapper as to the extent of what sort of unmasking there was in the white house proper and one instance where a trump team members name was unmasked in an Intelligence Report and whether they were the source of leaks. She took a lot of heat during the hearing about various issues related to things that didnt have to do with the Russian Investigation. It was the details and she doubled down that she was very concerned not just informing white house officials that heads up there were conversations between flynn and russian officials but real concern he could be compromised or black mailed. Charlie what was the most significant thing for you . When have you the acting attorney general say im so concerned the sitting National Security adviser of the white house is compromised and susceptible to black mail you have to rush to the white house for two separate meetings it speaks to the urgency they felt at the fbi and what took them 18 days. If donald trump fired Michael Flynn because he felt he couldnt trust his National Security adviser anymore what changed . Because originally he kept him on for a long time only of the news broke he couldnt trust him. Charlie did obama say he had profound concerns with him as a top military adviser . And we know that in their private meeting after the election president obama warned president elect trump against hiring Michael Flynn. You can see obviously obama fired Michael Flynn from the Defense Intelligence agency and flynn was a controversial figure at that time anyway. He talked how sharia was spreading across the nation and theres a reason to be scared of muslim. There was you can see from president elect trumps standpoint he may not have taken the concerns as seriously. Charlie and President Trump is tweeting today about et was the Obama Administration that first gave him top security clearance. Right. Of course as matt mentioned they gave him security clearance but they also showed him the door at a certain point too because they were dissatisfied with his service. Theres been a lot of tweeting. The president. Ed up the day tweeting the day how members of the panel should be asking yates about whether intimating she would be the source of the leaks and she got those questions from members of panel and then tweeted the Fake News Media must be upset because they didnt say anything new. Its true yates didnt open an entirely new can of worms or point the finger at any other member of the Trump Administration but gave detail on how much urgency there was behind her concerns and how often she was in touch with the White House Council in expressing that urgency in short or the. The two phone calls and two meetings happened in four days from january 26 to january 30 as she was describing. And her knowledge of what then happened in the next 18 days goes because she was shown the door herself. Do we know what the Legal Council is saying they did with the information . Just what the white house has said so far which is an incomplete picture of what theyve done. So far the white house said they went immediate to donald trump. You can imagine the situation where they say boy, this is a holdover from the Obama Administration. Whats she up to . We know sally yates said let me show you how you can have access to the raw underlying intelligence. Dont take my word for it. See it yourself. The question well want it know is what did they get the transcripts of the call between flynn and the Russian Ambassador and when did trump read them and how long did he know with what the white house said publicly was not true. And if there was discussion about letting flin go before that became public and published. Charlie theres also what clapper said and he confirmed British Intelligence officials shared information about trumps campaign. I assume thats different from the dossier stuff from a former British Intelligence agent or not . Nobody wants to talk the dossier. Clapper said they werent able to confirm a lot of what is known as subsourcing. Sources blind it the people reading it. They did confirm intelligence agencies passed information to the United States about potential meetings between Trump Administration officials and russians. This was part of the real flurry of information coming in last year that was causing great concern in the Obama Administration in the final weeks and months. Charlie with what knew do we know about what trump has said about the wiretapping of trump tower . Did it come up today . Was it mostly about general flynn when he said to the Legal Council in the white house or are the senators that questioned her go to other areas . The wiretapping didnt come up that specifically. It came up in the general category and came up in the line of questioning about unmask. The panelists did ask both yates and clapper if they had requested unmasking if they were aware of unmasking. Clapper said he once requested unmasking relate to someone on the trump team and yates said no and they were asked about their opinions about unmasking and who might in the greater Intelligence Community may have been privy to that and she said she had received reports where the names were already unmasked and spoke about the intelligence value sometimes knowing who the u. S. Persons are in the Intelligence Reports. In terms of specific grilling on wiretapping that wasnt a focus. The one thing that seemed to be the other topic that was addressed there was questioning that happened about the decision yates made when she told the Trump Administration she wouldnt uphold the immigration ban the First Executive order in court and she took a lot of harsh questions from republican members of the panel and shot back a lot of directpointed answers as well. There was some interesting fire flying across for those exchanges. That obviously not related to the Russian Investigation but as you said up your introduction its the first chance the members of congress have had to grill yates in an on forum and the first time she has been in front of them and there were many questions pent up people wanted to ask about various topics not all exclusively to the russia probe. There was one oblique preference where no one followed up where clapper said im unaware of someone in the Trump Campaign being a surveillance wiretap and he said i didnt know about the fbi investigation into possible collusion between russia and the Trump Campaign and sally yates added her two sent where she said im unaware anybody on the campaign was wiretapped. Theres a lot wiggle room because carter page was subject to foreign intelligence collection after he left the campaign. And the point clapper made about not having been aware of the counterintelligence investigation when it started there was pushback on that point too and that was something that had not been said publicly before the hearing. That was a point various people leapt on to see why that wasnt publicly shared and what it meant about the information they the fbi was looking into. Charlie new both. When we come back the French Election. Stay with us. We continue with the French Election. Independent centrist Emmanuel Macron won against farright Marine Le Pen. He is the youngest president for france and the youngest sinceuw napoleon. Many caution there would be division and a quarter abstain from voting. The landslide say rebuke to the election of trump. He said europe and the world are waiting for us to stand up to the values of the enlightenment threatened. Charlie joining me is adam gopnik and michiel vos and Emmanuel Saint Martin and from london bernardhenri levy a philosophy and author. Im joined to have all of you. Bernard, i begin with you. Was this a victory for mac reason or defeat for le pen . Were people voting against her or voting for him. Both. It was a huge defeat for le pen. She was predicted to be the winner and lost very strongly. It is a strong defeat. Veep a sort of stop to the wave of populism in france. A very big defeat and by the way sort of suicide. She committed suicide during the Main Television debate by unmasking herself. She dropped the mask of her respectability and revealed her true ugly and extremist face. This is one thing. But the other thing is that is also a positive vote in favor of Emmanuel Macron. He was good during the campaign he did his best to overcome the other parties and had the most modern part of the left aligning with the most progressive part of the right. He is going to be winning and this is what happened in france and what they voted for. It is not only a vote anti but for Emmanuel Macron. Charlie how did he do it . . Part is luck. He was the first to benefit from several things. First of all a very weak candidate on the right with a lot of judiciary problem and a weak socialist party with franccois hollande at the botto in terms of polls. That was something for him and he understood what the country needed and he was someone different and young and someone people were not scared of. Those two things being different and being reassuring for a lot of people. Charlie but he ran a Good Campaign and had a good debate. He had a good debate and ran an efficient campaign. Its just the beginning for him but impressive at 39. Charlie the Parliament Elections come when . June. Whats it say about france . Two things that i think are important. One is the republican traditional is still strong and powerful in france. The greatest difference between what happened in france and america last year is the respectable right infant the former president sarkozy formed together against le pen. They said theres certain fanaticism we cant align with. Charlie they said it after the first round. I dont know if sarkozy said it on the day but if not 24 hours later. And thats a huge thing. And hes as distant as marc yo o rubio is to hillary clinton. He said Marine Le Pen is a threat to the republic and we have to go elsewhere and thats a strong sign of how powerful Republican Values remain in france. In part i think because of and we can talk about this more, the still traumatic experience of the war and the price paid by collaborating with the extreme right. Thats one thing. The other thing i think it says is that macron and i agree with bernard very strongly, macron is a thing onto himself. Hes not simply a candidate people voted for because they didnt wantle le pen. Macron represents another way into politics. He clearly is inspiring for people truly exhausted by the spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy of the Establishment Party and left and right. In the debate he wasnt just good enough but knew how to confront evil and confront someone very bad and do it without shame and aggressive and did it consistently. Hes a very impressive guy. Charlie what kind of presidency will we see from here. When he called her the High Priestess of fears and that was a high point for him during the debate. Charlie the priestess of fear. Shes sitting right there and its very close and highs hes sitting there 39 year old and a career politician and she showed herself and they wanted a normal president and they got franccois hollande. In that debate the young macron who will have to save france and save the European Union and the euro and the axis with germany but at least he stood up during that debate charlie so what should we expect from him, bernard . First, hollande was not a bad president and in many respects he was good and macron had an incredible series of chances above his head. This is absolutely true. It is even the worst novelist in the world could not have imagined such an intrigue of what happened in the last year. The failure of him and so on. But a great politician according to machiavelli is nothing but someone who is able to save the moment. Macron did that. Number three, he must thank mrs. Le pen because she was so disgusting her hatred was so visible macron took credit immediately. Last point, hes young. This in my old country say great thing to have in hand to be young. Charlie so you just phrased franccois hollande and at the same time he suffered enormously poor rating. But in his cabinet at one time was mr. Macron. Now as president how will he be different . He will have a different program. The main point with macron he is a liberal in economics its not a bad thing. Its not an insult. In france a leftist including sometimes mr. Hollande to be a liberal is a bad thing its something you have to avoid. Macron coming from the left and saying liberalism is great. Globalis globalization is great. He dares to say that. He dares to express this probably will be the main part of his novelty. Charlie what role will his wife play . It will be interesting. Shes 25 years older. Shes 64 and hes 39. We dont know how the wife doesnt have it same role as the first lady here. That was the idea and macron talked about that having status for the first lady. We see what she does but shes very important for him. Theyve been together forever. He has in effect grandchildren and hes 39 years old but her grandchildren are his grandchildren. Shes been a big part in his career. Shes there but doesnt have any public role so far so we see if she takes one. Were not so sure. The way in politics is not the same in france as here. Charlie he was be an investment banker. A minister of finance but a centrist french people in new york, albeit, theyre entrepreneurs, they live in new york but they said hes more like trump than you would think. He doesnt does like money. He doesnt doeislike business a its not common in france every politician wants to put people to work. Hell adjust the capitalist society but hell work with it and hes going to be in that sense i think also an easier to go partner for mr. Trump than she would ever be. Charlie might he do some of the reforms sarkozy said he wanted to do and then moved away from. Sarkozy you mean . Charlie not from the socialist party i remember being in paris the week after sarkozy was elect and everyone around him was talking about a program of radical reform and then the moment when you attempt to make change in france theres always a response and usually theres a response on the street and usually the government then backs down. I dont know how he will evade that formula and i dont know what he will do in response. Actually i think centrist has a meaning in france a line of political inheritance as michiel was saying but its a mistake to see him as a centrist in a be confused, befuddled pragmatist. He has a program of liberal reform. In that debate he talked again and again good flexibility and bringing flexibility to the topheavy french system. Charlie is france ready for that. Market reforms are at the center of his platform. He was one of the only candidates and he put work at the center of his candidacy and the demonstrations started today. It started actually yesterday night. If he has the majority in june he can do that if not its a different story. Charlie for a long time when john f. Kennedy was elected and after french politicians fashioned themselves like him and wanting to create because of age in part and because of style in part wanted to create a sense of new frontier. Is this possible . Is this what he wants to do . Will he attract a lot of young people in france who want to come to work in government and have an opportunity to change their country . When he was under the pyramid of the louvre and it was sort of a family portrait kennedy like and a lot of french people like me had the thought that if somebody is a french kennedy it might be this young man. Of course he recalled that. Now a new frontier and new border, sure. But hes new border and this is a chance he is the most positive candidate having the will to embrace again and revive downtown the european dream. Macron is a european citizen of french origin. This is the thing we saw in his speech. Charlie one question always in france has been the role of the state. Will that change . Im asking adam. Macron talks about flexibility and doesnt regard free market as the work of the devil and french tradition is the statist tradition and his background is as someone who works within the state and believes the two arent contradictory. I remember the great french philosophy and journalist said about an earlier french candidate and he meant there arent many problems that cant be resolved by tecnocratic solutions. He was brilliant in suggesting the power of fear could be overcome by the power of intelligence and thats what he did is that theres some problems that cant be solved by the technocrats toolbox. Its a challenge of being overcome the weakness as obama faced the problem of pragmatism and pragmatism is not always enough. Charlie obama campaigned for him at least two i saw. The hacking. What do we know about the hacking at this stage . At least macron was more proamerican than prorussian. She was not prorussian, not at all. This serves himself. Russias the bad guy here if we all find out what it is. I think its back to europe now. Europe sighed a big sign of releas releast big sign of relief because its a big sigh of relief. Heres the problem as it seems to me, he cannot fail. We have had a series of failed presidencies in france. Macron cannot if he were to fail the road opens to the extremes its never been before and we had a series of failed presidencies because france has been a difficult it was supposed to be a long wave maybe since yesterday the wave was stopped and this young man has this responsibility of having maybe made his way against this. His success depends not only on france but the rest of europe. The populist was defeated yesterday night. Charlie thank you all very much. Bernard in london, thank you. Thank you, charlie. Charlie well be right back. Stay with us. Charlie carlos ghosn is here and credited win saving the automaker from collapse after taking control 15 years ago and was voted chairman of board. Im pleased to have had him back at the table. Welcome. The question is with respect to nissan youre stepping down as ceo, remaining as chairman or not . Yeah, im remaining as chairman. Charlie whats new role there . Ive been at the head of the company for 17 years. Theres a certain point in time when the companys doing well its time for an interesting. So theres a new guard coming. I feel strong about the team in place which allows me to concentrate more attention to renault and mitsubishi from the other side and continue to construct the alliance between the two companies. Charlie there was no sense you had too many jobs and stretched too thin . Without doubt. I am nay certain way leaving the ceo position of nissan and taking the position of chairman of mitsubishi. Youll have to pay more attention to mitsubishi and have to leave the attention on nissan and put somebody in charge of the company as chief executive officer. Charlie do you believe you can do for mitsubishi what you did for nissan . I believe i can help. With the experience i have and the fact i know very well the environment in japan i can help move it faster to revitalizing the company. Charlie what did you do at nissan that made it better . If you look at the score cards its one thing. The company more than doubled it size, 20 billion of that and the assets have gone a lot. In some ways we reestablished the companys vitality. Charlie werent there failures of emission standards . Mitsubishi asked for support from the partner and this is where we moved in and became the main shareholder of mitsubishi. Charlie everybody talks about acquisitions and culture clash. We have west and east. Was there a culture clash . No. There was conflicts but well managed. In fact the conflicts didnt lead it a clash. Have you a could be conflict and you dont manage it it ends up in a bigger clash. Asian companies dont act the same as western companies. Its different in terms of priorities and practices and values. Lots of things are different except when you put a common project on the table and its explained and everybody buys into it you can manage all these differences for the common purpose. Charlie you also have a knack for costcutting dont you . It always starts like this. The ceo of Many Industries start with cost cutters. Now, if its limited to this its a failure because at the end much the day its about growing the company and building value. It has to be tight on cost and then you have to manage innovation and products and it shows to the evolution of the revenue of the company. Charlie we know the stories where one auto Company Acquired another with failure. Weve watched it in the last 10, 15 years. What mistakes are they making your not going to make . Im not merging the company. I like to keep the identity of the company separate. Because most the failures are due to the fact one identity is lost or people feel theyve become secondrate citizens to a bigger entity and you dont want this to happen. You want people to feel motivated within the lines. So the mitsubishi people are part of it and everybody has its own identity and proud of their brand and company and working together. When you know how to manage this its more powerful. Charlie as you know because of populism which has been true here and in europe wing with brexit and the recent election in france. What are we missing when populists want to point the finger to globalization and say youre responsible for the loss of jobs and one item after another. Macron did some of that in winning. In a certain way without doubt it will continue. What were seeing with the emergence of populism in some countries is the fact that people dont understand anymore the benefit of globalization. When you are losing your job and people are telling you youre losing the job because theres competition from other countries. Charlie or Somebody Just bought your company and moving overseas. Globalization is just a bad trend because if its the basis for you losing your job you dont want globalization. Somehow we need to explain theres a benefit to globalization and from time to time globalization has excesses and they kneaneed to be correct and theres ways to correct the excesses much globalization but you cant just take away and not defend the benefit of globalization because at the end of the day you leave the share of voice only for certain people. Charlie who should be responsible for the people who are victims of that and cant find another job because the primary manufacturers in their Community Left . At the end of the day if some jobs disappear in some markets its because of the pressure of the consumer. We know this with the car industry its a competitive industry. We cant afford anything the consumer refuses because theyll reject us as a brand. You have to give the consumer what they want. From time to time this means changes in our supply chain to be always relevant. This being said theres a way to prevent this by training and participating and automizing and avoid the heavy consequence into the country and when youre a supporter of globalization it cant not only be a shortterm vision in what you need to accomplish but put it within a certain horizon including the mid and long term. When we see Artificial Intelligence we need to anticipate that by reskilling our own people. Charlie reskilling . That means training and you have engineers give them more Computer Science skills and technology for them to continue to do their job without becoming obsolete. Charlie do you say when you read the paper and it says the market cap of tesla is good for ford and General Motors. Its good for tesla. Thats all i can say. Charlie General Motors is 70,000 versus 10 million. It means for some Companies People are looking much more in the future than the present and for some companies theyre looking much more in the present on that the future. Tesla benefits and its good for them that people are betting on what theyll do in the future. Charlie called betting on the calm in some circles. For nissan and renault the bottom line of today is the main driver it and we dont get much credit for the. Charlie at the same time didnt you have an electric car before we even thought about tesla . We did. We are the biggest seller and producer of electric cars today but wereuj not addressing the premium market the core of the market. 30,000, 35,000 and tesla start from the premium market. Were not competing. We are in a certain rate colleagues to promoting certain cars each addressing it from a different segment of the market and we know theres more attractiveness for premium cars and sports cars than for the common cars of the core market. Charlie its much more you give the impression tesla is the main producer of electric cars is wrong. Charlie how much of the future is electric cars. In urban regions globally were predicting 25 of the cars sold in cities will be electric by 2030. Particularly in the urban concentration where you have more than 50 of the market. This will be driven by emission constraints and in many cities were starting to see a lot of restriction on circulation of diesel and gasoline cars. Charlie and im telling you what youve taught me in other interviews. It depends on how fast they can get up to speed with power stations. And how fast we can produce the cost of electric cars. The consumer is looking at the Sticker Price and wants the electric car to be a good buy also. Charlie thats why tesla is trying to develop as fast as it can. 92 million cars were sold last year globally. From the 92 million cars 500,000 were electric cars. So they present in very small percent ac of the industry as a whole but it probably has the biggest potential of the government not because there is consumer demand for electric cars and the emission standards ap the limitations governments were not only talking about the u. S. Government but european and japanese government is going to trigger the takeoff of the electric cars market. Charlie do you have a significant presentation in japanese market . We do in normal and electric cars. The market of the electric cars is one of the most vibrant in the world. Because theres so much incentive the government is putting behind electric cars. Charlie so they incentivizing you to buy an electric car. And incentivizing car makers to make them. We have expanded plans in china but before getting the authorization to expand we had to commit to make electric cars. Charlie chinese know what theyre doing dont they . Are they difficult to deal with . No, they have their plan and you have to follow their plans. Charlie they do plan well. Whatever you can contribute to the plan youll receive the appropriate incentive. Charlie you explains the difference between selfdriving and autonomous. Whats the difference . Autonomous car youre in the car but you decide if you want to drive or not or want to be driven. Im very optimistic it will come to the market first. The driverless car theres no driver if the car. Thats he robo taxi in a certain way. It will take more time not only because technology is more complicated but second you need the reg regulator to accept they can be mass marketed. If something goes wrong the person is responsible and can always take back the control. Charlie what do people do while the cars being driven . As were building connectivity in the car and youll be able to take your hands off the wheel and take your eyes off the road and go for a Video Conference or finish your homework or talk to kids while your going to school. These prototypes exist today. Ive driven in jerry in palo alto and we have authorization to drive some prototype. A car drove me true the city stopping in front of lights and passengers. Charlie were you sitting in the drivers seat where you can take control . I felt safe. As you know in the United States people spend on average i think an hour and a half a day so you can do something else. Its extremely useful. Charlie heres whats intriguing to me about selfdriving cars or autonomous cars. Since theyre so driven by software you can could be stantly innovate and change constantly innovate and change the model you bought. That seems to be a huge advantage. Dont have to buy a new car to take advantage of new developments. Youre talking technology. Except the car is irrational. This is a rational aspect of the car where youll be able to update the technology and put in new applications and change a lot of the intelligence existing in the car without having to trade the car. At the same time when you come to status, design, power, brand, people trade. Charlie its emotional. Theyll trade the car though the car theyre driving is still in good condition. Charlie the used car business is a huge business . Its a big business. For one now car sold in average have you two to three used cars sold. The size of used cars is big. In developing count ris its bigger than that. Charlie how long do most people keep a car they change . Depending on the market. In the United States they trade pretty quickly because there are leases. Usually three and four years and they change the car. But in other markets people keep their cars much longer. Charlie when i asked about a. I. You said you may change because of something looking better to you but you said technology will not replace it will only support the Forward Movement of cars. It will not. What youre seeing is an opportunity. Were seeing the car become smarter. Were going from a mobile device to a mobile space and the fact its becoming more environmentally friendly. I think the next ten years youll see more transformation in the car industry than what you have seen in the last 30. Charlie can you imagine buying another car company so you dont have three but four . The way were organized today is trying to put something in for technology and everything that consumers dont care about. And leave to the brand everything that consumers care about which is a design, the choice of the material, the functionality of the car, the driving performance and tuning of each car. It means logically when you build the platform you can have more Companies Joining you. Its a winwin because in a certain way we have a lot of technology. So the more Company Joining the platform the more the Technology Becomes affordable. You share the technology with many companies. Charlie its more economical to build different bodies and different vehicles on the same platform. Yes. It is. So you want to minimize the number of platforms you have. Or limiting them but having as many cars using the same platform. You cannot build on the same platform in small car, medium car, large car, suv, crossover, pickup truck. They need different platforms exem theyre extremely expensive and they drive a lot of costs for the suppliers. If you have the same platform if different brands use the same platform you save on investment and cost which allows you to be more price competitive. Car makers are having as many platforms as they need. Charlie what percentage of the workforce in an assembly line, if that is the right term, robotic and what percentage is human. It depends on the country you are. If youre in United States, france, germany, more robots. When gou to indonesia or thailand, creation of employment is very important for government. The government puts a lot of incentives for creating jobs. They want you to hire people. So depending on the policies and taxation existing in the countries you have a tendency to select morthink thats one of the big political questions government wills face. As we have more technology and robots how do you develop policies for the people who no longer find there is a workplace for them to go to. Its a central question for the future of government. It is a central question. In fact you have two roles. You have the role of technology. What can be done should be offered but then you have the policies through taxation and what you can and cannot do youre giving an orientation to the technology. When he think when you know how to make an electric car we have to offer it. The government can favor the intelligence or not defending on the in sensitives or for the rules on editions. Our role hand in hand is to be able to propose and at the end of the day the consumer will make the buy or not. Charlie thank you for coming. Great to see you again. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs