Back definitively that they will not have to deal with this kind of toxic testosterone anymore. Rose and susan lacy who created the american masters whose new tournament is called spielberg. The icon in business he is, the most powerful man in who would, i dont feel hes always been given complete and total respect due i think he deserves as a director, as an artist. Rose and we conclude with david litt, his new book is called thanks, obama, my hopi changey white house years. Thats the thing about writing for president obama, he would always open for the professional comedian and the professional comedian would say, really . This isnt fair. This guy has a comedic sense of timing and also is the president. Rose robert costa, tina brown, susan lacy and david litt, 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 we begin this evening with politics, President Trumps legislative agenda and Foreign Policy facing increasing head winds in the wake of ongoing discord with the secretary of state and a top senate republican, bob corker has questioned the president s fitness for office. Corker warned the president could launch the nation on the path to world war iii. Joining me robert costa, National Political reporter for the Washington Post and moderator of Washington Week on pbs and talks about the growing frustration in the Washington Post. Thank you for joining us. Good to be with you, charlie. Rose is this the beginning of something . No, its the continuation to have the unraveling of the presidency of trump. Hes always been an outsider, but people around him, mcconnell, ryan, kelly, believed they could build a project around the president , try to get him to enact key g. O. P. Priorities but they keep learning again and again that the president chafes at this kind of system. He wants to govern by his instinct. He does not want to be pushed in a certain direction. Rose so its just a continuation. But can it continue . Are you suggesting that most people while amazed by this at the same time dont see it going toward some logical conclusion . It is simply a continuation for what well see for the rest of the first term if it is only one term of donald trump . The republicans are agast, when i talk to senators and congressmen on the g. O. P. Side, they think the entire presidency is on the brink. Inside the white house, there is a different perspective especially when you talk to the president s friends. They say he looks at Republican Party right now as a failed business, as a business that has not been able to give him wins and wins are what he wants. He does not necessarily want an ideological victory. And because of this, because of this reality, because of this observation of the party, he is ready to move away from it, to battle the republican establishment now and in 2018 ahead of the midterm elections. This has deep consequences in washington because theres such an expectation still that he could get tax cuts and other things through but there is now genuine concern among Top Republicans that the president is ready to walk away from them and their agenda. Rose but if he does that, hell have no legislative agenda to take to 2018 or 2020. And you see the majority leader in Public Comments saying to the president , in effect, remember you have to get the budget done, remember, we have to get taxes done. But where is the president s attention . When you ask his closest advisors, they say hes focused on the best area for him to fight, the battleground he relishes, which is culture, fighting on grievance politics, fighting against the National Football league, defending his own reputation when it comes to handling natural disasters. Hes not moving forward and rallying on tax cuts across the country, its about President Trump day in and day out fighting for President Trump. Rose lets take the corker situation. Corker suggests, for the chairman of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee to suggest that his behavior may be creating a path to world war iii, that is i cant imagine that, in all the years that ive looked at washington. And it wants more jarring, charlie, because i can remember a year ago i was speaking with chairman corker and he was talking to me on the record about how much he had built a rapport with then candidate trump and even interested in serving as the Vice President ial nominee. He eventually backed away from that process, but he did grow close to trump because he thought of trump as someone who thought about foreign popsy. Corker liked trump wasnt the traditional republican hawk in the george w. Bush mold, but ever since then even corker who tried to build a friendship with and played golf and had a relationship with the president , that he as one of these kind of republicans walked away from the president because they did not see in the president the kind of behavior and character they want in a national leader. Rose steve bannon is on a campaign to challenge Establishment Republicans in primaries. Will the president support that effort . Steve bannon at Breitbart News is almost a satellite to this white house. Hes not being directed by President Trump. Some people in the white house are wary of bannon, they think hes too high profile and too powerful within the republican base, but bannon believes hes working in trumps interest, that Mitch Mcconnell and speaker ryan are not effective for the president and that its time for a clean sweep to run against every republican incumbent in the country, in particular in the senate, sweep them out and have more trumpstyle candidates come in. And that doesnt necessarily mean theyre going to be a populist or nationalist, its more about the outsider per sewna. Thats what bannon wants in congress. Rose what impact is john kelly having . That is one of the more difficult reporting targets, charlie, and i dig into it reverie day, and what i keep finding is general kelly has closed the door to have the oval office, he has a tight grip of the paper flow that goes in front of the president , but he cannot control the president late at night when hes in his residence making calls to tom baric in california, a wide circle of friends that general kelly doesnt control because people will call the president on his cell phone and he finds a way to get back to them whether sean hannity of fox news or tom baric, these are people that general kelly cant stop getting the president s ear. Rose you say closing the door to the office is eliminating something donald trump cherished, a free flow of people coming in and talking to him who he enjoyed having a conversation with, enjoyed talking about the country and general kelly cut that off and it frustrated the president. It does frustrate the president , talking to people who work closely with him. Im so glad i covered him during the campaign because when i used to interview him on the 26t 26th floor of trump tower, it was a flow of people all the time, people coming in with cans of cokes, snacks, throwing magazines on the desk in the middle of a trump interview, thats how he ran the organization, governed his family, thought about his entire political life, a running conversation, anyone can jump in. The last person he would talk to he would listen to intently. Thats not how general kelly wants to run the white house and the president is clashing with that guidance. Rose you also suggest people are not running to take his side in the conflict with bob corker nor are they taking bob corkers side as well. But there is a sense bob corker says of a general sentiment of republicans in the senate sharing the views he has worrying about the president s fitness for office. There are private concerns ive heard from many lawmakers in the Republican Party about the president s conduct. They think hes out of control with his use of twitter, out of control with these brash public battles he has. At the same time, charlie, the sound of silence is revealing because still many to have the Top Republicans in the country stay relatively quiet on the questions of fitness for office because they still want to work with President Trump on Foreign Policy, tax cuts, getting through different regulatory changes. They believe theyre part of a party, hes the president of the party and king of their base, and if they want to run for reelection, they dont want to alarm those trump voters. Theyre trying to nav vat the environment, getting pressure from many allies to speak out in the corker way, but they still think hes the leader of the party, they dont want a total mutiny at this moment. Rose where does the russia investigation stand . Whats happening with respect to bob mueller and his group . Its the cloud that hovers over everything and the issue in a strange way that republicans believe is reassuring because they think mueller with his integrity and reputation, should he find anything on collusion or involvement with the Trump Campaign that that will speak for itself and they dont need to be out front as Republican Leaders trying to legislate or dictate how that whole issue unfolds. They want to see what mueller has to say, hopefully sooner rather than later, but they think hes looking at possible obstruction. They think Paul Manafort whose home was raided in Northern Virginia could be in trouble. Theres a grand juror investigation into his involvement, a grand juror investigation into general flynn. So all these swirl. The biggest asterisk in politics, everyone thinks about it every day especially inside the white house but nobody knows. Rose does anyone know what the president intends for north korea. The president has been toll having a military option is certainly on the table and he likes to wave that idea around in private conversations sometimes on twitter. At the same time, both sides know that a military altercation would be disastrous in terms of the human life that would be lost. Military leaders are trying to avoid that kind of confrontation but the president has a militaristic approach though not necessarily an interventionist, hes militaristic and his advisors are trying to calm down the rhetoric but thats not as easy as we can see. Rose do the people who know him best worry about him . His family knows him best. I think at times they are concerned that hes pulled in so many different directions. This is someone whos never in public life as an elected official, now suddenly president of the united states. There has been alarm at certain times that hes doing too much, that his relentless personality is spilling over day after day as his frustrations mount as well. Some of the people who really care for him have told me they love when he plays golf because they at least believe hes calming down from all the pressures on him. He gets criticized from playing golf often but his closest friends say its probably the best thing that hes take upsome time away from the oval office. Rose bob costa, thank you so much, pleasure. Thank you. Rose robert costa from the Washington Post. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose the Harvey Weinstein story continues to bring forth more accusations against the film executive and investigation by the New York Times published last week reveal allegations that weinstein had been paying off Sexual Harassment accusers for decades. Joining me is tina brown, president an c. E. O. Of tina brown live media and founder of women in the world. She worked with Harvey Weinstein and miramax in the late 1990s and early 2000s for a magazine she created called talk. What surprises you if anything about this story that is now on every front page . Well, its so difficult when you talk about harvey is he was so utterly different when you got into business with him than he was when you met him out and about or dinners and a screening. When i went to work with him after the new yorker, i thought i was getting this big maestro who would be a wonderfully, warm, outgoing exhibitionist, steve, but at the same time a Creative Force who would enable my desire to make a magazine more than a magazine. He promised youre just doing the new yorker here. You can have a magazine which can also be a movie story, books, tv, a whole media platform. That was very attractive to me because thats what i wanted to do at the new yorker and could not do at cy, thats why i left. But roomwithin days of going to work with harvey, i realized that entire part of his personality was unbelievably from the truth. Harvey is a very paranoid, fearful individual who feels all the time the world is scheming against him, who is constantly spinning and lives in this spin factory no other word for it when he has p. R. S and lawyers all spinning stories about harvey which he was great about but at the same time it became per natious clearly what they were spinning is what was going on with all these women, and we heard the rumors but you never saw it. Things like this happen, its like this, but you never saw it. What i found unsettling is how many journalists were on his payroll. Harvey would have everyone on his payroll. All the people at the postand people in the tabloids, people writing stuff, entertainment writers, gossip writers. If there was any stirring of a negative story, harvey would offer them a book contract, a development deal, a consultancy and they used to succumb. Journalists are often short of money and they were also very star struck with the world harvey offered which was movies and hollywood. Every writer doing a small column somewhere dreamed he will be picked up and his work turned into a big movie and his or her life changed. Harvey managed to hold out the protect that he had the ability to take somebody and make them into something more. So he had people around them getting their stories killed north writing the stories. Many journalists did try to do this story but it got killed by the higherups, the editor, the owner, the entertainment editor, whoever was a friend of the editor of the paper, theyd always kill the stories and he could always get it killed. What has happened now, of course, is thats over. Were in a new era, and there isnt anything anymore that you can do. We live in the world of total transparency. There is no place anymore for that kind of subterfuge. Its going to come out. Its only a matter of time. You know, i used to think this was going to happen. I always used to think, you know, harvey could be the next bill cosby because there was so much there that people could get at and hadnt done. So i also feel so badly, frankly, for his wife and children because its a very terrible thing to see the kind of massive epic fall that we have seen with harvey in the last week, and i always felt with him that some of the volcanic rage that i once saw with harvey and i did experience that for sure was his sense of dissonance with who he was. This was a man of incredible taste who had an enormous flare for the movies. To sit in a Screening Room with harvey was to really see a maestro. He understood how to make a film better, in every way, and it was interesting to see, you know, he was as good as that as any editor can be at a magazine. But at the same time, dissonant with that was this personal behavior that was so utterly unacceptable in every way that was so gross that i almost wonder whether that was the source of his own anger that he knew he was a man of taste buried inside a personality that was so, you know rose why didnt this come out sooner . He was very intimidating. Lets make no mistake about it. Rose there is an audiotape out now. Harvey could be very indim at a timing. Physically. Yes, hes a big, imposing man and he could become very snarly, intimidating and scary. He got into my head very quickly in terms of my feeling you have to jump, and if you didnt jump, you know, you could see that kind of sense that everything revolved around him, and if you displeased him, it was a scary sight, and that intimidates. Lets face it, you know, actresses, you know, its so hard to get a good role, its so hard to get a good part. Here was harvey off doing wonderful work, much of it, i mean, the movies he could, as he often said, propel a woman the an oscar, and you know, there was always that hope. Something so humiliating, though, about believing that youre going for bays meeting and finding actually it was a ruse. Its very deeply humiliating. Even if what he did wasnt as aggressive as it sometimes was, theres something deeply shaming about realizing you have been snookered, that you thought you were going to a meeting about a script or you thought you were going to a meeting about a new part and actually what you were going for was so that he could, you know, make an advance on you, very humiliating and i think there was, you know, one of the things that women find when theyre abused quite frankly is they feel shame. Its illogical, that the abused should be the one to be shouting from the rooftops but thats not what happens. Theres no good thing women feel ever in revealing that this happened to you. You know, youre the one whos demonized. Look what happened to the italian actress who did come forward and did report what happened between her and harvey and there was the nypd came into it and the sex crimes came in to investigate it but he managed to spin that away and once you started to read all this bad stuff about this access. This actress was being characterized as a serial accuser, a girl on the make and all this demonization begins. Powerful people can make a woman, you know, can trash a womans reputation. Look