brian: you could have napped. ainsley: actually it did put me back to sleep. steve: the funeral is one week from today. be in attendance in london. talk about the queen and life and times. we got piers morgan coming up and martha. they are both in london nyles gardner as well part of our remembering queen elizabeth ii coverage. what s coming up. ainsley: the hypocrisy one democratic mayor is showing after dozens of migrants arrive in her city. and wait until you hear vice president kamala harris describes the southern border. brian: plus, the patriotic moment playing out at the jets game since 21 years since the 9/11 attacks by the dawn s early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight s last gleaming whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
cemetery here in moscow. laid to rest next to his wife whom he loved very much until she passed away in 1999. all right, fred. thank you. as you just heard fred talking about there, gorbachev is seen as a hero to many in the west, but was a divisive figure in his own country. some russians praising him for opening up russia s economy. others resenting him for the soviet union s collapse. for more on his complex legacy, we re going to turn now to political scientist and author of gorbachev, his life and times. william calvin. it s great to see you. i know you wrote a fascinating piece in politico remembering gorbachev and you open it by writing quote, mikheil gorbachev was a decent man. too decent to be the leader of his country. what did you mean by that? if you look at the history of russia, it s pretty bloody. years of rule by czars, then
an end to the cold war. earlier i spoke to the pulitzer prize winning author william taubman who wrote gorbachev, his life and times. he said gorbachev was too decent a person for the country he was running. i interviewed him eight or nine times, i forget exactly how many, i also talked to him on several other occasions. my wife is a russian professor. he arranged for us to visit his village where he was born, and stavropol, the southern city where he climbed the ladder of the communist party. what was he like? he was a charming man. an attractive man. an informal, relaxed person. with a sense of humour. we were not asked by him to provide questions in advance. he didn t need an interpreter, he trusted us to understand him.