so jon meacham, we ll talk about the substance of what happened or didn t happen at that meeting yesterday. but just from your historian s eye, that visual of a sitting president of the united states stepping across the dmz and into north korea. well, by your fruits, you shall know them, right? so one of the things that an american president has an enormous amount of power obviously. the symbolic power is large symbolic power is a large part of that and what is the united states getting in return for an american president walking in to one of the most the territory of one of the most murderous regimes on the face of the earth? usually that s a carrot for good behavior for better behavior anyway. instead, all the diplomatic benefit from kim is coming on the front end. so what we need to know is is
great as this nation. her husband, jared kushner, was in the room for the meeting with the dictator yesterday. i want to play for you the sound bite when the president of the united states was asked about the decline of western liberalism and give you a crack at it. let s listen. do you agree with him that western style liberalism as it s been defined is now obsolete and no longer relevant to today s world? he may feel that way, i mean he sees what s going on. i guess if you look at what s happening in los angeles where it s so sad to look and what s happening in san francisco and a couple of other cities, which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people. i don t know what they re thinking but he does sees that are happening in the united states that would probably preclude him from saying how wonderful it is. jon meacham, your thoughts? wow. okay.
when a reporter asked him about what he has said about 41. do you regret any of your comments about president bush in the past? thank you very much, everybody. thank you very much. his statement yesterday, president trump nodded to president bush s signature phrase, a thousand points of light, to pay tribute to president bush. that happened just five months after he made fun of that statement. we are finally putting america first. we re putting america first. and by the way, you know, all the rhetoric you see here, the thousand points of light. what the hell was that, by the way? a thousand points of light. what did that mean? does anybody know? and it was put out by a republican, wasn t it? joining us now is pulitzer prize-winning historian jon meach meacham. let me start by asking you about the column you wrote for the new york times yesterday. you describe the great tensions that george h.w. bush faced, between competitor and conciliator, between being a gentlemen and po
vision of ultimately where you want things to go, there are a couple of different paths to get there. but you have to have the principled vision. george bush believed in helsinki. he amazed gorbachev when he would be in a meeting and he would say, held, the helsinki accord said, and they were all looking around, thinking, what the heck is the helsinki accord. which is another thing, expertise matters. he knew his stuff. he would read his books quietly at night and tell his staff not to tell anyone because he didn t want to appear to be to intellectual. hopefully there s some secret going on. jon meacham joining us from washington, d.c., appreciate it, jon. president xi and president trump break bread in buenos aires and maybe, just maybe, there s a cease-fire in that ongoing trade war between the world s two largest economies.
about how devastating it s likely to be to the u.s. economy, this is what the president said. i ve seen it. i ve read some of it. and it s fine. they say the economic impact will be devastating. yeah. i don t believe it. you don t believe it? no, no, i don t believe it. you can also say the president s gut instinct overrule career intelligence officials. the cia reported with high confidence that saudi arabia s crowned prince ordered the murder of journalist jamal khashoggi. here s how the president responded to that. the cia has looked at it. they have studied it a lot. they have nothing definitive. the fact is, maybe he did, maybe he didn t. maybe he did, maybe he didn t. mara, i m going to go to you first here. jon meacham a few minutes ago talking to us about the degree to which george h.w. bush prized expertise. he read, he liked to have people around him who had read and had knowledge and established ideas about things. your reaction to just that comment that was