Transcripts For KQEH Charlie Rose 20170327

Not confidence that ryan can deliver. Rose and we look into the question of truth with nancy gibbs, the editor of Time Magazine and David Leonhardt of the new york times. What we have here is a case in which the current president speaks so many untruths, just again and again and again and again, about the murder rate, his electoral marge, about the crowds during inauguration day, about j. F. K. s assassination, about 9 11, about president obamas worth i about president obamas wiretapping, and i could go on with 20 more, he speaks so many untruths that i think with we have to conclude that he doesnt feel bound bid truth. Rose finally, Actor Richard Gere talking about his new film, norman the moderate rise and tragic fall of a new york fixer. The interesting thing i found out about norman and playing him, which surprised me, is that there was no anger in him. He gets hurt, and hes humiliated time after time. This is kind of a charlie chaplain side of him. Theres no anger. Rose a look at health care in washington and a conversation with richard gere when we continue. 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. Rose President Trumps vision to remake American Healthcare was dealt a surprising and devastating blow today, the president and House Republicans leaders decided to pull legislati to repeal the Affordable Care act after facing stiff resistance from both conservative and moderate factions within the party. Speaker of the house prine rushed to the white house to alert the president he lacked votes to move forward. He addressed reporters later this afternoon to explain why the vote did not take place. We came really close today, but we came up short. I spoke to the president just a little while ago. I told him that the best thing i think to do is pull this bill and he agreed with that decision. I will not sugar coat. This this is a disappointing day for us. Rose joining us from capitol hill is kelsey snell, she covers congress for the washington post. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Rose what a week. It has been quite a whirlwind. We started out thinking we would be repealing the Affordable Care act and here we are having it all gone up in smoke. Rose what does that mean . That its gone up in smoke . For the president , the speaker of the house, the Freedom Caucus and democrats . Weve already heard the in reality, the republican couldnt coalesce around a single message. They agreed repeal was the goal but the details got the best of them. I think there is a real question about what kind of governing coalition exists within the Republican Party and how republicans in the house will Work Together, with the president and if anybodys really in control here. Rose does it mean that the Freedom Caucus has some kind of veto in close votes . I mean, they do at this point have enough votes that if they stick together they can stop any legislation. This was a real test for them. If they had back down, met with the president and walked away saying he was charming, a good salesman and won us over and walked away, they wouldnt have that power. But they reaffirmed something theyve established for years is they can stick together better that be their factions as a Republican Party. Rose what does it mean for trumps ability to use the bully pulpit . Actually, we dont know. We know he can pressure some people but not everybody, and we dont know exactly how voters and his core constituents will respond. Its entirely possible they dont blame trump and they blame House Speaker prine. As trump said, he did not want this to be called trump care. He wanted to call it Something Else and the name ryancare stuck so this may fall to the speaker of the house rather than the president. Rose doesnt the president need ryan for every other aspect of his agenda . He certainly does, butths important to remember ryan shares some of these goals. Ryan december play would like to get tax reform done, its something he was been talking about since i remember. They agree on that. There are some people who feel like repealing the Affordable Care act was kind of an adopted issue for President Trump and that tax reform is more at the core of the principles that eran on and things he has believed in his Business Career. Rose tax reform and reform in regulations together. Yes, and those are two things where they can find common ground. Tax reform is hard. I was a tax reporter for many, many years and i think People Discount exactly how complicated it can be. Theres a reason it hasnt happened in a generation and there is a reason why this is something that takes time. So well watch closely for when they actually get started on the process of doing tax reform. Rose does it affect immigration . It affects immigration if they want to build coalition with democrats and consensus. But they feed to reset and figure out what their next step is first. Rose at the end of the week, where is the confirmation of neil gorsuch . Well, we were expecting that to happen not this next week, but the week after, and we havent heard yet from Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell about whether or not he wants to move up that process in any way. So where it stands now is democrats say theyre willing to filibuster him and we are going to see a big blowout fight in the senate once that actually happens. The question now is just how long it takes. Rose what about Infrastructure Spending . Infrastructure spending is one of those things that we have heard about for a long time, it was a goal of this Current White House and the campaign, but we havent seen any legislation or really any solid proposals beyond the idea that the presidens to make a large investment there. Thats also an area where details matter. Are we talking about roads and bridges . Are we talking about highways or trains . That all still needs to be flushed out before they can move forward. Rose is the president s credibility damaged . You know, i think it is for some people. Its yet to be seen how his core voters feel. His core voters have seemed to be flexible in how they view trump and they support him as a person. Its about personality first, many of his core voters. So this may or may not actually change their feelings about him. If he can successfully deflect the criticism of what h. P. D. This week over to the House Speaker or someone else, its possible he walks away unscathed. Rose we continue with althe. Hunt of bloomberg view. Youve seen lots of weeks in washington both as a reporter on the hill and in other remarkably interesting stories that you have followed in different places. How does this match up . Charlie, when i was with you on tuesday, i thought it was an exhausting week, and this is its ten times more exhausting today than three days ago. This is just i dont think ive ever quite seen a week quite like this. Maybe watergate. I suppose you would have to go back 40some years, but other than that, i dont think weve seen a week like this with all the legislative and executive and Law Enforcement thing. But the vote today in the house and friday, the decision to full healthcare bill i must admit was a shocker for me. I thought when you get this close you will pass it and the stakes were so big. This is a devastating defeat for prine forks trump, but also for the Republican Party which, for seven years, has promised something that they couldnt deliver on. Rose does this mean, according to what paul ryan said, that after pulling the bill, you know, that for the foreseeable future the Affordable Care act will remain in place . They have no choice. Theyll probably you know, theyll try to nick it and do this and that, but trump wants them to move on to other things, taxes in particular, and they have to. But once there is blood in the water, it doesnt go away, and sharks continue to cinch that blood. So, yes, i think they will be able to turn to other issues now, but this defeat will last for a long time, including on the campaign trail next year. As i say, go back to 2010. If there were any centerpiece to what hundreds of republicans promised, were going to repeal and replace obamacare. It ended up as an empty promise, charlie, not just because they failed, but because the product they came up with was almost one no one liked. Doctor didnt like it. Hospitals didnt like it. Consumers didnt like it. Liberals, conservatives. It had 17 approval in a quinnipiac poll. The old saying you can market dog food as well as exquisitely if you want to but if it isnt any good, the dogs wont eat it. Today you not only had right wing conservatives, members to have the Freedom Caucus, but the chairman to have appropriations committee, barbara comstock, a savvy politician from suburban washington, said, no, i dont care what you say are the stakes, we cant do this. Rose so what does it mean in terms of the rest of the president s agenda . What it means is that they wasted a couple of months. You know, the first was pat ma linnehan who said they wasted the first two months. They will turn to taxes as soon as they can. Thats not going to be easy. The one thing thats apparent now that was probably apparent before hand is trump is really not a political threat to these members unless its a member from a conservative district who is voting against trump on liberal grounds or on more moderate grounds. None of these members were afraid that trump was going to come out against them in a primary and hurt them, they really werent. Let me give the president his due. I do think he lobbied this and went member to member as effectively as any president in a long time. A lot of people didnt think he could do that. He did that very well, but he had a product that i dont think he knew much about and you couldnt sell. Rose we now talk about the health Freedom Caucus. How is it different from the tea party and the caucus it bred during the house and reign of john boehner . Similar. People like jim jordan in ohio, i think they feel they have been emboldened, elected two or three times, safe now. Theyre uncomfortable with trump. There are things they like about trump a lot. Immigration and some of the social issues. They dont think hes a real true believing conservative because hes not. I think they will be with him on some things but theyre not well, i think they would be with him on immigration. I think the problem you have there is to put together a coalition i dont think you can get any kind of major immigration through, charlie, without democrats. Right now, the mood is not very receptive in the democratic side to Work Together on much of anything. At the may change by the summer or by may. Right now, its not very promising. Rose and what does it do to whatever factions there are within the white house . Does one gain and the other lose . As i said earlier, there were hundreds of members. That was the prime commitment they made, were going to repeal and replace it and, again, the repeal part was very easy. The replace part was impossible. They ended up with a bill that 24 Million People lost their insurance. By the time they were making deals, it really wasnt going to cut the deficit any and was unpopular. So you cant blame this one on the white house. So, therefore, im not quite sure it changes the internal dynamics a lot although im sure steve bannon will say, see, i told you so. Rose al hunt in washington, thank you, my friend. Thank you, charlie. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose would they have the votes or not . That was the question in washington all week long. President trump insisted house of representatives vote at 3 30 this afternoon on the republican bill to repeal and replace obamacare but at the last minute speaker ryan told the president to pull the bill. Mike allen, cofounder of axios and axios a. M. The newsletter. Let me begin with what some may say san assessment, some say is an autopsy. What happened . Epic miscalculations at both ends of p pennsylvania avenue fm beginning to end. The president decided to plunge ahead with health care rather than taking up perhaps the easier win of tax reform almost on a lark, a very quick conversation where he didnt really delve into the pluses and minuses. At the other end of the pennsylvania avenue, at the beginning, speaker ryan, looking at this from a more of a matter of policy than politics. When you talk to house leadership about how rough this looked for the different parts of their conference, they would also retreat to policy answers when in the end charlie this came down to pure raw politics, person to person. Miscalculation at the end. So, charlie, axios told until the very end people thought it would be nip and tuck, looked very close. They were hoping they would limp over the line, but, in fact, the bottom fell out. The numbers were going to be terrible, and thats in the end why they reversed their curse and pulled the bill instead of having a vote. The thinking in the white house, charlie, the calculation was, say you tried, that you blamed democrats and, if youre the more mack vallian members of the white house team, you have a list of whos with you and whos agin you. You have a list of what republicans werent being helpful. That was appealing to the white house. Heres where they were wrong, charlie. They were looking at this as a vote unto itself. But life is not a series of oneoffs. Charlie, as you know, life is a story. Life is a ta tapestry. Whatever happened today is going to have huge consequences for the rest of the trump agenda. Thats the big takeaway from today, charlie, is that, now, Everything Else will be harder. Tabs reform and eventually infrastructure and whatever they want to do on immigration, just among republicans there is not trust, there is not appetite, there is not sea legs, there is not confidence that ryan can deliver, and it makes anything that they want to do more complicated and is going to cause them to have to pull in their the sites of their ambition. Rose and does it mean members of congress, the Republican Party and certainly members of the Freedom Caucus are not afraid of the president . Well, its true and the fact thats been true for a while is part of this. So, charlie, you and i have talked about how President Trump, because of the way he was elected, had a very powerful tool, and that is the digital bully pulpit if a way that no other president has. He could use his twitter feed and his direct communication to lobby and punish and stroke individual members. But looks like the president focused on the membertomember, individual part of this fairly late, and we were talking about how there must have been a lot of trips in the last invitations to maralago. But you would have thought that would have been happening sooner. So the president wasnt directly engaged with these members, and at the same time he was getting less popular. This is where hes paying the check for some of the distractions that you and i have been covering over these weeks and months. So not only were they not afraid of him, they werent as aligned with him. Heres the twist in what happened is that there is an argument that, for the politics of 2018, for the politics of 2020, republicans actually may be better off. The reason that they had so much trouble figuring out how to work this rubiks cube is the politics of it back home for these members were terrible. Whichever way these members went, they were going to have a problem back home. After campaigning on this for seven years, after taking repeated votes to get rid of obamacare, they needed to try. But, charlie, and this is something that you dont very often hear talked about in the corridor between us and washington and you in new york, but the realworld effects of this bill were very worrisome to a lot of members of congress and should have been worrisome to the white house. Charlie, youve covered how much of the trump coalition, some of the struggling, hardworking americans who are having a rough time were dependent on obamacare. A lot of them either needed parts of the obamacare program, or people that they love were involved with that. And, so, the effect of it hadnt really kicked in and was going to take a while to all kick in. But republicans may be better off being able to blame obama, blame democrats and not own the Health Care System which, under the best circumstances, was not going to get better overnight and, under this bill, would have given them a lot of splaining to do. Rose what does it say about prine speaker of the house other than he had some of the same problems that john boehner had . Yeah, so a great tweet said, somewhere john boehner is sipping a glass of merlot. laughter its hder than a lux, isnt it, young man . There is no question about that. This marriage between the speaker and theup, as you know, was always going to be an arranged and difficult marriage. Then, at the end, when they were in such different places, the white house clearly was planning to take credit if this passed and blame prine if it didnt, and the president trying to bully the speaker at the end telling him to go ahead and take this vote, the president thinking of it in classic deal terms, and that is, on wall street, deals die again and again before theyre finally done, and, so, the gamble was you go ahead and get this vote and eventually youre going to be better off. The speaker saw his support evaporating and knew that that wasnt going to be the case. So, charlie, the republicans now saying that theyre going to move on, that theyre not going to try and fix thisn monday morning. Theyre not going to retake this up, plunging into tax reform this morning at an axios news shaper event, i had a conversation with the treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin. He was arguing in some way tax reform is simpler than healthcare, and i say you talk to anybody who was around here in 1986, i think you will get some skeptics on that because hes arguing that tax reform is goodies and, yes, tax reform has goodies in it, but there also are people who lose out on the other end. So now were plunging into another completely politicallyfraught argument, something, again, where, on policy, white house, house, senate, all in slightly different places, speaker ryan insistent on moving ahead with this border adjustment tax, which makes it more expensive to bring goods into the country and could raise a trillion dollars that could be used for tax relief elsewhere, but that makes things cost more at walmart. If youre a senator from arkansas, like thats not a very tough decision. I asked Steve Mnuchin today about the border adjustment tax and i said to him, lets say i work at walmart, lets say i shop at walmart, which i do, explain to me why a border adjustment tax is good for me. And you saw in his answer that there was no particular embrace by the white house. So why thats important, charlie, and these packages always come and go, as you know, but the white house already is in a very different place than the house, and in the tax code where a break for one person is an egregious greiges outrage for another an egregious outrage for another, trying to work that at the truss after the experience is very hard. Rose i think this will show President Trump is facing collision of some of his campaign prom jess and some of the things he promised he cant deliver because it affects some other things he promised. A very brilliant point, and its like why you couldnt make the math work on health care, that for every single change you made that made it more pal latable to conservatives, you made it not only less pal latable to people in swing districts, you made it less likely to pass the senate, more likely these members were inhe memorable words of senator tom cotton of arkansas, walking the plank, taking a tough vote for something that had no chance of becoming law and thats why there was so much pressure on the speaker in the last 12 hours. There was no way his members wanted him to have to take a vote that clearly was going to go down or is going to go nowhere. So youre right about this collision, charlie, not only within the issues but among the issues. Rose michael, thank you so much. Treat to be on. Happy weekend, charlie. Rose well be right back. Stay with us. Rose what is truth in politics specifically as it amice to President Trump . Is truth dead . , thats the story of Time Magazine. The latest article of David Leonhardt in the new york times. Nancy gibbs, tell me, where are we in this question of truth and how difficult is it for journalists . Journalists have been debating for a long time about when you say someone is lying, and the challenge there is that its much easier for us to check facts. We always do that and know this statement is true, this statement is not true, this statement is partially true. When you talk about whether someone is lying, there is an added layer of intent, of what is it that they know and believe . Are they mistaken . Are they intentionally stating a falsehood . Thats where this president has posed a particular challenge to the people covering him. A great many things he says are demonstrably false. But there is the second question of how many things he ss would qualify as lies, he knows what hes saying is false, and how many are things that are actually untrue but he believes are true. I think separating those things is very important because what president s believe se normsly important in what they decide to do, what issues they care about, what wars they start, what wars they end, what challenges they face and how. So a president s knowledge and his understanding of facts is critically important. Rose and his credibility. And his credibility of what is it that we believe in what he says. He has made it very hard for people listening to him to believe him because so many of the things that he has said are demonstrably untrue. Rose as you said in your letter before this piece, it is viet that we be able to believe our president. It is also viet that we know what he believes, and why. The president has made both a severe challenge. David leonhardt, when you wrote the column you wrote and raised the question about the president as a liar, tell me how you approached that and tell me what it is that you wanted your readers to understand. To be honest, i approached it uneasily. I agree with nancy, the word lie is not a synonym for untruth. It conveys intent, just as she said. I dont believe that george w. Bush was lying when he said there were weapons of mass destruction in iraq and i dont believe barack obama was lying if when he said if you like your Healthcare Plan you can keep it. I think they were both careless and proven false. In this case, we have a current president who speaks so many untruths, again and again about the murder rate, electoral margin, crowds during inauguration day, j. F. K. s assassination, 9 11, president obamas birth, president obamas wiretapping and i could go on with 20 more, he speaks so many untruth that i think we have to conclude that he doesnt feel bounded by truth and, so, while it is hard, probably impossible, to know on any individual case whether he knows the truth and is lying or whether he believes something that is false and is stating it, i think we can comfortably say he isnt is happy to lie, and thats what i find so alarming about the situation. Rose push comes to shove here when there is a national crisis. And the president needs for his allies, his citizens and his government to believe him. Weve with already seen the implications of what these last few weeks have brought, and there was a poll in germany asking people whether they think the United States is a reliable, trustworthy ally, and that number propped precipitously from Something Like 59 to 22 in a short period of time. So there are real implications for not only what american citizens will believe from their president but what our allies will. You know, if you look back to other critical moments in american history, think about the cuban missile crisis, when president kennedy has to do on television and state to the country that this tremendous threat was now facing the country, and the people thought we might be looking at the possibility of a nuclear exchange, the stakes of president ial credibility in a case like that could not possibly be higher. Similarly, when he went to our allies and told them about what our intelligence was finding, it was critical our allies believed him and he had not in any way docketed or exaggerated the evidence. Rose you are an editor and reporter not a psychiatrist, but let me ask you this, why does he do it . Well, all we can judge is what we see and what he says to us, and when we interviewed him this week on exactly this subject, i think, to go to what david was raising is he doesnt view truth, i think, in the way or treat it in the way we are accustomed to in our public or private figures. Its much more of a answer the action. In a number of cases where we pressed him on exactly these false statements, it was as though the truth itself was something negotiable or something where, okay, i havent been proven right yet but will be, and he cited this statement about this terrible thing that happened last night in sweden. Nothing happened the night before in sweden. He said, yes, but two days later, there were these peecial riots. So truth doesnt matter so much if youre a prophet and you can see whats going to happen in the future. He talked about a number of times where he said things where he was ridiculed in the moment and turned out to be right. He cited brexit over and over again, he cited the fact hes the president of the United States over and over again where a great many people said it could never happen. He ended that interview where he said i cant be doing that badly because im the president and youre not is that does he understand the significance of credibility, is the question. Its not clear it has ever mattered. Rose he was in real estate. He talked about truthful hyperbole. He talked about playing to peoples fantasies, that, in his life, and what has worked for him and its human nature if something works for you youre more likely to keep doing it, if it has worked for him to invent, exaggerate or distort, then that has been validated over and over, in his experience, as something that is an effective tactic. I think a greasm people who even knew this about his Business Career did not expect it was a behavior that would follow him into the oval office where the stakes are so much higher. Rose in a transactional analysis you can move the goal postand say whatever i said is simply to begin the negotiations. David, so how does this change . If all of this is at stake, the credibility of the president of the United States, and there is a record, as you suggested, the current president has lied, he lied in ways no american politician ever has before, and then you cite the things hes lied about. Does it have to stop . And if it doesnt stop, what then . Its a good question, and, obviously, its alarming, right, because, for many reasons, americans, whether they are republican or democrat or independent, should be rooting for a presidency that is functioning well because many things depend on it. The safety of our country depends on it, the health of our Society Depends on it, and, so, it really is quite alarming. I think there are a few possibilities here. Nancy just basically said one of the reasons its likely he does this is because its worked for him. It worked for him in business. His company basically collapsed but it was too big to fail so his creditors decided it was better to keep the name going than to put him out of business. Then it worked in the campaign. He h told a huge number of lies during the campaign, proveably false things, and he was elected president. So i think one of the issues is, if it starts to not work for him, if he cant get things through congress, if republicans abandon him, if his approval ratics remain low, does he say, wait a second, this is hurting me and change his course . Thats an amoral way to start telling the truth, but it might be the best we can hope for. Rose another tenet of his believe is there are winners and losers and he wants to be a winner. Yes. Rose so you raised the question of what is he prepared to recognize and do in the interest of being a winner . Well, there are some things that im not sure we have ever seen in his entire public life. I dont think weve seen him admit error, i dont think weve seen him apologize, i dont think weve seen him express shame or remorse or regret, all of which are perfectly human functions that most people do quite normally in the course of their lives. So whether or not i think its quite true that if he feels like he is paying a significant cost, that it would be logical for him to change course, unless it is just it isnt in him. We dont know if the truth is in him. Rose you worry that somehow in the world that we live in falsehood has taken a new power. Well, that is a really important part of this conversation because one of the things we studied, he has tweeted 298 times since taking office, and over this period of time, and if you look at which of his tweets have been most retweeted and most covered, it is the most outrageous ones. What social scientists find is that, even when a false statement is repeated often enough, the number of people who believe it tends to grow. Some of this is confirmation bias and some is what people are increasingly concerned about part of the intrusion into the electoral process where the hacking of social media in order to promote false stories, and the more they were promoted, the more people saw them, the more the number of people believe them. We even saw this with the original sin in terms of trumps falsehoods which was the birther controversy. Rose sure. That the more that controversy was covered, including reporters disputing and debunking it, the more the number of people who believed it grew. I always wondered why was it that president obama ultimately felt like he had to produce that long form . Which donald trump took credit for. Why would he give trump what he wanted . Well, partly because the polling showed the longer this went on, the more people were believing it, even though the stories they were reading overwhelmingly were stories that knocked the Conspiracy Theory down. Rose social media is with us and is not going to change, is it . No. Rose david . Some of this, charlie, is a reflection of the partisan polarization we have in our society. So its not just that, when people hear a lie, they tend to believe it, its that, when people hear something coming from the other side of the political spectrum, they tend to disbelieve it. And, so, having the socalled Mainstream Media which obviously all of us are members of debunk falsehoods from donald trump may actually cause a segment of the population to believe those falsehoods even more. Rose because we tried to debunk them . Yes, because we are the ones doing the debunking. One of the costs of partisan polarization is people stop list upping to each other and just say, wait a second, is the person saying my ally or not, and if theyre not my ally, i not only am going to be skeptical, im actively not going to believe them . Rose this may be naive, but where is patriotism here . I mean, you would hope that we and not only would you hope, i know there are people who have gone into the Trump Administration, who are horrified by watching their boss, the president of the United States, say patently untrue things. So what you would hope is one of the roles that patriotism plays is members of congress who are supposed to be members of a coequal branch of government and, so far, many House Republicans have not been, theyve acted like trump staffers on things like russia, you would hope that republican senators, republicans in the house more so than they have, and even members of the Trump Administration would say that patriotism and National Interest outweighs Party Loyalty and even their loyalty to any one individual and that they would be willing, first behind closed doors, to try to push the president back toward reality and, secondly, when he wont do that, to speak up against him. Rose weve seen an interesting week. Weve seen an f. B. I. Director say ive seen no evidence that president Obamas Administration bugged trump tow. Weve seen a confirmation hearing of a Supreme Court justice and weve seen a debate about healthcare. Will we look back and see this as a defining week in the Trump Presidency . In any other age, anyone in our positions would say, yes, of course, and, yet, we have been living through the last year and a half in which day after day and week after week takes us into territory for which there are no maps. Rose how many times have we all said, thats it, he cant go further than that . I long ago got out to have the prediction business about just where this is going to be taking us. Rose david . This is probably a mistake. Nancys answer is the right answer, but ill make the mistake, which is, if, for the, the Health Care Bill fails, i think there is a significant chance well look at this as a significant week in the life to have the Trump Presidency. To have your First Priority fail when your Party Controls congress is a very, very damaging thing to have happen. It happened to bill clinton in 1993, and it really damaged his presidency. Both george w. Bush and barack obama got their First Priority through. If donald trump and the republicans cannot pass healthcare despite having spent years promising to do so, despite controlling the house, to me, it will be a sign that some of these issues with the president is his lack of connection to the truth, his inexperience in politics, his lack of interest in policy and in detail may, in fact, cause him substantial problems as president. Rose it also is a reflection of the danger of promising things that most people believe are contradictory and cannot be achieved. Thats exactly right. The republicans dont have a coherent policy on healthcare. They can say we dont think government should be in the business of healthcare and its fine if many, many people are uninsured. But what essentially they did is paint obamacare as a socialist bill when its quite moderate and left themselves no place to go. The only place they had to go is where they were uninsuring large numbers of people and thats the problem. They promised vastly more than they can deliver. Rose and many of the large number of people voted for them either at the state level or voted for the president. Precisely. Well, were going to be watching the natural political calculations of, you know, who do i answer to if im a member of congress, is it the people in my district or is it it the leadership of my caucus or the president of the United States if hes a me of my own party and how much power does he have to do me damage down the road, and i think thats what well be watching play out. To go back to your question that all these things are happening within the same sort of news cycle and ecosystem of, you know, how strong the president is and how strong hes perceived as being, perhaps more important, is he the guy who can get the deal done or not, you know, i think this is a critically important moment yet here we are 60 days into a presidency, and we have to keep reminding ourselves of that, its 60 days. Rose with many careers on the line. Time magazine, is truth dead . Nancy, thank you so much. David leonhardt in washington. Thank you. Thank you, charlie. Rose well be right back. Stay with us. Rose richard gere is here, actor and activist. Stars in Joseph Cedars new film, norman the moderate rise and tragic fall of a new york fixer. He plays an aspiring power player in the new york jewer community who sees his fortunes rise after befriend ago man who later becomes the president of israel. Film comment calls gears performance superb. Heres a look at the trailer. This is good. Ive thought it through. I know. Ive just got to find someone who can actually do this. A lot of money. Bill, hes a friend. We decline to do business with him. I dont want the look like im asking him for a favor. Can we say were related . Can i say im your uncle . No. Good morning, bill. Norman oppenheimer. I have to leave. This is unacceptable. So ill tell my partners that we had a good conversation may i ask what you do for a living . What do yowhat do you need . Ill help you get it. It will be my privilege to help you buy these shoes. You dont have to. Is ive h is everything okay . Yeah, enjoy. Explain how your business works, im curious. If you ever need anything, feel free to call. We need to raise approximately 14 million to save us from the wrecking ball and this is where our friend norman open b heimer comes in. Do you know Norman Oppenheimer . No. How nice to meet you. Would you mind joining me . You were in arthurs house. Es, this is my private home. Ou cant just walk in and sit at my table. Could i introduce you to him . You know who he is, right . Dont waste my time this is time sensitive. You spoke to him . Im not following you, norman, did you speak to him or not . Why dont you return my call. I get the feeling nothing you tell me is real. Rose get rid get ready for a surprise. Youre like a drowning man wading in an ocean liner. Im a good swimmer. Dont forget that. Something good will happen. Trust me. Rose pleased to have rich richard back at this table. Wwelcome. Welcome to you, man. Good to have you back. We were just talking about what youve gone through. Rose why do you say this is the best film youve done in a long time, maybe ever. Certainly one over the best. Rose good director. First rate. Joseph cedar is an israeli director whos made several wonderful films, one of think was foot notice, which he won the can prize for best screenplay, and the first one i saw was bofort, about a young israeli soldier. But people will see, you will see this movie, firstov al, its something ive never done before. Rose in what way . Its as far away from my instincts as it could possibly be. Rose your in60s are you could do a certain kind of thing . Because youve done every kind of thing. No, my instincts as richard gere were not at all of this character so i had to get out of myself to embrace this guy and let him do the walking and talking for me. Rose who is Norman Oppenheimer . Norman oppenheimer is a macca phonetic . We use the word fixer. Hes trying to put something together all the time. Hes got a keel here working a deal there rose he wants to be on the inside. He wants to belong. He wants to be part of whats happening. He wants to be one of the cool kids. He wants to and you can see this was his whole life of inventing himself, changing the story, name dropping, pushing, pulling, anything to get in, scratching, and a lifetime of doors being closed in his face. And then he meets somebody that he befriends. Well, he never quite knows whats going to happen. Hes kind of open to all the possibilities around him, and he goes to a meeting of israeli ministers in new york, and he sees a younger one. Its part of commerce and oil, younger, not very powerful. No ones paying any attention to him. Its all about the Prime Minister. But him, maybe hes got a possibility, and he kind of follows him out of there and creates a meeting with him. Rose this is apropos so where we are. To exactly where we are. Norman oppenheimer from new york. Norman norman, my friend where have you been . I have been trying to each you norman laughter hannah, do you know norman . Nice to meet you. This is my wife. Norman is going to be my special honorary ambassador to new york jew. My personal advisor. There are over 500 organizations represented in this room. It is a tremendous force of nature. Unprecedented in our history. We feed towns how this incredible force united on the issues that are important to the jewish people and to the world. Stay with us. Congressman. Hello, how are you . You know Norman Oppenheimer . No, i dont. Nice to meet you. This is my wife joyce. Very nice meeting you, too. This is my nephew, philip upcohen, i think hes the youngest partner in the firm. We represented toby. He married solomons daughter rose so whats happening . Well, this is in the middle of the film. Rose right. He realizes he has power. Hes in. Rose hes in, on the inside. The rest of the scene, im glad, because its an incredible scene, of being embraced in reality but also an impressionistic way of the heavens open up, and its the first time in ammans life that the whole world is going, yes rose and hes desperately wanted it to happen . Oh, we all do. We all want to walk in a room and people turn and smile. Theyre happy were here. Rose its a nice feeling. Yes. Rose but you say its the best thing youve done in a long time, ever, lets say. Its one of the best things. Rose is it because of the director . Is it because of a combination of a lot of things. He wrote a great script, hes a great director, the cast is extraordinary. Rose and what about you . Its harder for me to see myself. Im happy with the work rose so its possible a director got a performance out of you other directors had not . Or i got a great direction out of a director. How do you know . Rose but it feels good. And do you know when its happening . Did you feel how good this film was when you were no, there is no way of knowing ho if a film is going to work. You can bet on a script. Im smart enough to know a terrific script at this point, but you dont know in the end if those bizarre elements that make up a twohour form of storytelling are going to come together or not. You never know that. You can bet based on instinct and empirical things like good director, good script, terrific cast, d. P. , the whole thing. Rose how much of it is you simply got this character . Well, thats a lot of it, of course, but that wont tell you that the movies going to work. It will tell you that youre going to have a good time every day you show up to work because the thing is going to flow, some magic can happen because youre able to let go. We worked joseph and i worked eight or nine months on this before we started shooting. What did you do for eight or nine months . Well, the process is kind of funny. We were talking about it today. As soon as that script is delivered, and he says im going to send you the script, from that moment, youre rehearsing. You read the script, you go, oh, okay. And immediately something starts happening. You meet the next time, already, youre working on the movie. No matter whats going on. You go for a walk, you make some the tea, you read the newspaper, youre talking to each other, youre not. You have an idea, you go see a movie. Whatever youre doing from that point on is on some level rehearsing what youre going to do in this movie and what its going to be. So and i like this process. Its a eslow dreamlike process where things get keep deeper and deeper all the time. Rose whats interesting is heres a guy who was struggling to be in as a fixer, as whatever he wanted to be. Yeah, i mean, hes pretty low level. Rose i see. This is not a power broker. Rose but you said you could identify with this guy. I mean, you were a major movie star when you were, what how old . I dont know. I dont know. Movies started coming out in my late 20s. Rose i would say late 20s. And you also had the critical success to go with it. I was fortunate. There are no classes for this, no books. No one, no matter what you think its going to be like, you will never know till it happens. Rose until it happens. And you are either smart enough to take a deep breath and step back a little bit or not. Rose what is it that the Prime Minister sees in norman . Is it just friendship . Just somebody who was there for him . I think he sees a good heart, to tell you the truth. Its bizarre because everything the guy says is a lie. Norman has only a very faint acquaintance with the truth. But there is something hes a truehearted person and hes a loyal person and i think that may be part of that initial falling in love of just hes kind of a sad sack. Hes actually kind of a charley chaplain charlie chaplain character, and i think he sees a sweetness. Rose take look. Abbi its norman. I know, i have been calling you all morning, why dont you answer your phone. Answering now. Do you want to hear what i have to say . You spoke to him . What did he say . Lets say, get ready for a big surprise. How many zeros are at the end of the surprise, can you tell me that, at least . Come on considerable surprise. Thats it. Ive got to go rabbi. Norman, you realize how important this is, right . Were going to be kicked you need to give us a firm answer. No games. I cant hear a word youre saying. Norman norman goddam it how with the rabbi connected to this. What am i doing this . You want the rabbi to marry you or not . Pick up the phone, call one of your buddies at harvard on behalf to have the Prime Minister of israel. Is that so difficult . Dont belittle what im doing. In the world overharvard admissions its like incest. Rabbi blumenthal will feel like the same thing when he find out im asking him to marry a convert who isnt officially converted rose what is the tragic fall you wont tell me this but the tragic fall. laughter the interesting thing i found out about norman and playing him, which surprised me, is there was no anger in him. He gets hurt, and hes humiliated time after time. This is a kind of charlie chaplain side of him. Theres no ager. Rose norman the moderate rise and tragic fall of a new york fixer opens in theaters on friday. Friday april 14th. Richard gere. Thanks, charlie. Rose thank you for joining us. See you around. Rose for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. 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. The following production was produced in high definition. And their buns are something i have yet to find anywhere else. cause im not inviting you to my house for dinner. Breaded and fried and gooey and lovely. In the words of arnold schwarzenegger, ill be back youve heard of connoisseur. Im a commonsewer they knew i had to ward off some vampires or something. Lets talk desserts, gentlemen, cause i see you