Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Charlie Rose 20170401

He is the ranging democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee. We also have asked chairman richard burr to join the program and hope he will do so soon. Let me begin with the question of todays testimony. What is the takeaway from what you heard today . Sen. Warner todays testimony focused on the foundation. What did the russians do, why did they do it . This is part of russian doctrine that goes back to the oviet era of spreading misinformation and disinformation. They have now taken it to a much more modern space in terms of using cyber techniques. So it was revalidated one more time. I think everyone with perhaps the president would accept the russians were behind the d. N. C. Hack, the hack of the john podesta emails. They were behind the use of distributing fake news. The way they do this is they have close to 1000 paid internet trolls in moscow that create bots that can flood Search Engines like twitter and facebook and others with false news. Real fake news, not the kind of president has sometimes referred to. There was complete consensus from the technical experts and the more historical and policy experts that russia was behind this, and two, it was based on the assumption that russia was trying to create havoc and chaos, and they want to try to split countries apart and drive as big a social wedges as possible. If you look at the 2016 electorate in terms of some of the tools they used, they did that. A lot of the websites they pushed and promoted would be viewed as far right. The usage of words reinforced those views. What i thought was surprising was to hear some of the witnesses say part of the reason they were successful is thencandidate trump used some of this fake news in his normal comments about fake numbers of people voting, about some of the other outlandish claims trump made as a candidate. And that amplified the fake news. The truth is we live in an era now with great benefits from technology. We are now seeing where the manipulation of some of these particular Technology Platforms can create National Security risks, as they did in this attack on our election last year. Charlie the committee has subpoena power. Sen. Warner yes, it does. Charlie who do you expect to hear from . Sen. Warner what we are doing, unlike maybe the other committee, is we need to do this in a deliberate, methodical process. As somebody who is impatient, to say the least, this is not happening near as quick as i would like. We have some of the Intel Community that still needs to get us full access to their underlying documents. What we want to do first is go through those documents. We have gone through and had our staffs reviewing thousands of pages in the three binders that created the january 6 intel report that reached the same conclusion about russian interference favoring trump against clinton, and also in terms of some of the possible onnections, particularly between the Trump Campaign and russians before the campaign. There is a lot of smoke in those issues. What we want to do first is go through the documents. We are starting interviews next week with some of the intelligence analysts who created those documents. And then, we will get to some of the names being bandied bout, people who have been indicated they wanted to testify. We have only released one name we plan on calling. That is jared kushner, the president s soninlaw. We do not want to call him until we can get a lot of this preliminary work done. Charlie what have you learned from the way the house ommittee conducted itself . Sen. Warner well, charlie, i have learned when we are dealing with something as explosive as a foreign adversary intervening in a president ial election, and when the ramifications are at the heart of our democratic process and possibly there may have been some level of collusion, conversation, ties between some folks affiliated with the Trump Campaign and the russians, the only way you can do that is you have to do it bipartisan. In a country that in many ways is a split as ours right now, if we were to come out with a report that was not bipartisan, it would not have credibility. I am not going to comment on a lot of the specifics on what has gone on in the house, but it has been bizarre behavior by some of those characters. Charlie bizarre meaning . Sen. Warner bizarre meaning at least the press reports of the chairman of that Committee Going down to the white house and perhaps getting information by a white house employee and coming back the next day and briefing the president before he shared it with any members of his committee. That is just not the way the Intelligence Committee in the senate works. Our responsibility first and oremost is to follow the intelligence wherever it leads, to make sure we do this in a bipartisan fashion, and to make sure the Intelligence Community cooperates with us. We owe that allegiance above anything else and that is how we will conduct ourselves. Charlie it is hard to make a judgment when you are beginning this, but you have seen a lot of the evidence so far, have you not . Sen. Warner i have seen a lot of the underlying evidence that went into the january 6 report. I have also seen some of the materials around the socalled dossier. I have also seen that raises a lot of other questions. And i have seen press reports that indicate there is a lot of smoke here. I am not ready to say there is ire, but there is a lot of smoke. Again, if the white house, if we were to believe the white house and they had done nothing, you would think they would want to get out of the way and help this investigation ove forward. Charlie in other words, if they have not done anything, they should be the first . Sen. Warner i think the jury is out on that. Charlie what is most troubling about this for you . Sen. Warner we have never had this kind of extraordinary intervention by a foreign power. Vladimir putin did not do this to help republicans versus democrats. E did it to make america weaker economically, socially, in terms of our political ystem. I have candidly been a little upset there has not been more general outrage on the public. I know there is a lot of news coming at folks every day. But we cannot accept this as the status quo. What we have seen russia do in ther countries is literally go nto legislators websites and plant false information. Suddenly, they go into your website and put child pornography and call the media on you. That is just not acceptable. What they tried in 2016 they are trying now in france and germany, number one. Number two, we have with that kind of adversarial attack on america, we have at least the allegations that there were members affiliated with the Trump Campaign who had a number of contacts and potentially had some kind of collaboration. We dont know that by any means. But it troubles me when we have seen a National Security advisor have to resign already. In a Young Administration because of his previously undisclosed ties to russia. We have seen the attorney general have to recuse himself because of previously undisclosed ties with russia. We have seen people affiliated with the Trump Campaign as advisors, one in particular who said he tweeted he was familiar with the wikileaks folks. He predicted the podesta email eaks weeks ahead of that time and then said he has been in contact with lucifer, a persona created by the russians as one of the agents to distribute this false news. Hat troubles me greatly. It seems like every week, theres a couple of more names that pop up that we have to run down. Charlie have you seen evidence the russians provided information to republican officials in the Trump Campaign, gave them information they could use as a negative way against secretary of state clinton . Sen. Warner i am not going to comment on classified information i have seen at this point. We have a lot more fact gathering to do. One thing i do know, and part of the challenge is we have got to protect the Intelligence Community, the men and women who serve not only do people put some of our techniques that we use to gather this information. Some of this has to be done in private. If we are going to prevent this from happening again in the future, we have got to be more transparent than ever from this investigation. That is why we are pleased we have much wider access to some of this information than sually goes to the leadership of the Intelligence Community committees, the gang of eight. We have broadened it to our whole committee. They have got to get a lot of the Additional Information i have seen and look forward to seeing. Charlie you have seen a lot more information than we know about because it was classified and only sent to the gang of eight. Sen. Warner i will simply say this. I have said this before. When i started this process a month and a half or so ago, i said i thought this was the most serious thing i have ever tried to take on in my public life. I have been a governor and a senator. I feel much more strongly the truth and validity of that Statement Today than i could have ever imagined when i first made it a month and a half ago. Charlie senator warner, thank you so much for joining us. Sen. Warner thank you, charlie. Charlie we continue our discussion of the relationship between russia and the United States with carol lee of the wall street journal. Her article today looks at the prospects of, with russia. She joins us now from washington. Let me begin with this question. The headline says, trump cools on russia rapport. What has he done to cool on the possibility . Carol he has not moved forward with the policy. The policy is still under comprehensive review in the National Security council. Certain decisions have not even made it to the president s desk. He has been frustrated with some moves that russia has made, particularly the missile deployment the administration believes violates the nuclear treaty. And they are frustrated with russias continued embrace of iran. One Administration Official told me there are still attempt at cyber intrusions and the president has been frustrated by that. Also, the political atmosphere in washington is making it very difficult for the president to try to move forward as quickly as everybody thought he would with establishing normal relations with russia because if he were to go and establish some grand bargain as he had hoped with russia, it would come under renewed scrutiny because of the investigation clouding over his white house. Charlie he also has declined an early meeting with putin. You laid this out in your article. Carol that is right. That is really aggravating the russians. The government is getting frustrated. The feeling is becoming mutual. They are frustrated watching, not just the president take meetings with foreign leader after foreign leader. And lets remember in the campaign, donald trump had few kind words for any world leader. He did praise Vladimir Putin on a number of occasions while also disparaging angela merkel, china, and nato. He met with a number of foreign leaders, including angela merkel. He is hosting the president of china next week at his maralago estate. That really irritated the russians. Meanwhile, there is no meeting on the books yet for putin. Moscow asked the administration for one in may when the president will be in europe for a nato summit, and the white house declined. They are saying it looks more likely if one happens it will happen closer to a gathering of the g20 leaders in july, which is in germany. There is growing frustration there. That is just the meeting piece of it. Vladimir putin has looked at a number of different policy moves this administration has made that are not necessarily in his favor as much as he thought they would be. Charlie on one hand, Vladimir Putin as recently as this week saying we had nothing to do with the things alleged. At the same time, there are reports of Vladimir Putin being disappointed with some aspects of the Trump Administration and not being as enthusiastic for rapprochement as he might have been earlier. Go ahead. Carol right. Some of the examples are this white house said it will maintain sanctions on ukraine until russia abides by the peace accord the two sides agreed to. That is not a position russia likes. The administration is backing ontenegro. Its ascension into nato. That is not a position russia likes. Earlier on, the ambassador to the u. N. Had tough rhetoric for russia. This has not been what president putin thought it ould be. Charlie what President Trump has done, as i understand, and i am asking this as a question. He has basically said i recognize the russians made an effort to interfere in our election but other countries did as well, or something to that extent. What is the most clear example of where President Trump has reflected his understanding of what the russians did or attempted to do . Carol in terms of the cyber attack . Charlie yes. When i was talking to people in writing this story, there is a recognition internally that russian did have involvement in the election, but also that they continue to do things that obviously are classified. The public does not see it but the president sees them. That has given the president pause as well. Charlie what was his hope during the campaign when he refused to criticize russia for the relationship . Clearly, he thought the russians might cooperate in antiterrorist measures. Carol yes. And the white house would still like to find ways to cooperate on counterterrorism. I think the hope was this is a president that likes to do big things and certainly likes to do things people before him were incapable of doing. His predecessors have struggled with maintaining a positive relationship with russia, so it was kind of a challenge to him. This is just setting aside all of the issues the russia issue brings to him because of these investigations. I think he was hoping to do some large bargain where you can take the different areas of tension and try to relieve them by cutting deals on other areas where they can agree. The white house is still considering this even though they are not considering some grand, sweeping bargain with russia. They are considering looking at sanctions the Obama Administration imposed in relation to the intervention in the election. And they are willing to roll back some of those sanctions and other measures if they could get something from russia that could be taken seriously even on Something Like cybersecurity. I think he had hoped for some very big, sweeping gesture and warmer relations where they could cooperate on a bunch of different areas. Now it is much more a tactical relationship, and that is more traditional to what we have seen in the last few administrations. Charlie what do you think the Trump Administration fears from the Senate Investigation that began today . Carol i think they do not know. There are a number of people in the white house who keep getting caught by surprise by different pieces of information that are coming out. I think that is the big ear. For them, their argument is theres nothing to see here. It is not going to lead to anything. But it is something that keeps distracting them from their agenda. It is hanging over them. It does not look like it will wrap up quickly. It will linger on and on. From their point of view, they do not expect something to come of the investigation. But they do not really know what is going to come out. You have seen this dripdrip of things coming out every day. That has been a distraction for them. Harlie do they feel they have been transparent around forthcoming in terms of trying to get to the bottom of this . Carol i think they feel defensive. As you saw today when you have the white house offering up intelligence for the chairs and ranking members of the committees to come to the white house to focus on a specific piece of this broader look at the russian intervention, which is where the leak is coming from. They feel frustrated. So they are making these moves to try to position themselves or shape the investigation to go in a way they want. The problem is it can be perceived as intervening in these investigations. The one place i would say they would point to in terms of being transparent is their willingness to offer jared kushner, the president s Senior Adviser and soninlaw, to testify to the senate committee. That is an unusual thing to do because typically any Time Congress asks for somebody inside the white house to testify, the president will exert executive privilege. They seem to be going out of their way to offer that up. They are trying to find ways to get ahead of this and appear more transparent and cooperative. At the same time, they are doing things like offering senators to come view at the white house which looks like intervention in the investigation. Charlie when will secretary tillerson arrived in russia . Carol he will arrive in mid april. He will go to moscow. Part of the white houses goal is to have this comprehensive review of the president s russia policy wrapped up or at least have the key elements in place before he goes there so the conversation can actually be substantive and they can try to move forward on some of the things they want to do. I think he will be coming there with specific messages on some of the concerns the white house has about what russia has been doing, in syria, in terms of its relationship with iran, and in terms of its use of cyberattacks. Charlie i assume they are hopeful because of the relationship between secretary tillerson as a Corporate Executive that there might be the possibility for better communication than has taken place. Arol right. I think they are hopeful about that because they are not starting from two who are not familiar with each other. There is a familiarity there. That is something they feel like would work in their favor. I have talked to people about russia this week. They are very down on their ability to do something major with russia just because of the way things have been in the last two months. Charlie carol, thank you so much. Carol thank you. A pleasure to be here. Charlie trumps plan to revitalize the economy retreated last week. After the republicans inability to pass a health care bill. It fails to call into question whether the president can deliver on an ambitious pro growth agenda. The administration has turned its attention to tax reform and is expected to unveil a 1 trillion infrastructure plan later. Larry is the director of president obamas National Economic council. I am very pleased to have him back at the table. Welcome. Good to be with you charlie, and great see you back at this table. Charlie lets talk about the u. S. Economy. Where is it . We have seen what is happening in the market. What do you anticipate . No one can know. I think it is about as it has been. I think this growth has been on one side or the other of 2 consistently. Right now it looks like that is where it will be this year. Markets have been up, but how long that will last i think very much remains to be seen. A bunch of what people thought was driving up the market was the expectation that there would be a huge new wave of businessfriendly policy. That doesnt look as likely as it did given that the administration seems to be having more trouble moving hings through a Republican Congress than people expected several weeks ago. I think there is an increasing sense of unease and uncertainly. I dont think an extra session is around the corner. But then again, we never see recessions coming nine months or a year in advance. I think the best guess would probably be growth around the range we have seen, with at least as much risk to the down ide as to the up side. I have a suspicion that people may look at some of the very high sentiment figures on things that have been said as a bit of a sugar high when people look back at this episode. They talk about 3 growth this year, and they talk about reaching 4 . Is that reasonable . No. Anything could happen. If you forecast and say things are inconceivable. You are usually wrong in economics. But if somebody said i am going to flip 10 coins an expect that seven or eight of them would come up heads. That would be kind of a crazy forecast even though it was a conceivable outcome. That is what i would say about the forecast of 3 or 4 growth. They dont have anything in place that offers the prospects of an acceleration of growth in that magnitude, and i dont think they have got particularly the right economic policies on some important dimensions. But even if they did have the right economic policies, dont think we know how to push the growth rate up by nearly that much nearly that rapidly. Charlie the two hallmarks of what you have been saying to me over the last few years is one, growth is essential, and the best way to get that is through some kinds of fiscal actions . Thats right. It was much more true when we had higher unemployment and lots of excess capacity than it is today. I still think a program of real Public Investment could yield some very important benefits by putting people who have dropped out of the labor force back to work, by making the economy function more efficiently. I dont think tax cut schemes and tax credit schemes for infrastructure that the administration has talked about are likely to be particularly aveiling, and i am not sure they will be able to form a consensus on it. I think the right deal is a deal where the administration and the republicans in congress agree to commit substantial money for infrastructure, and the democrats accept regulation changes that will permit some streamlining of doing Major Projects more quickly and more efficiently. I have heard it said that the Second Avenue subway cost five times what an equivalent subway would cost in france, and france isnt usually regard as a as an economy that is a paragon of efficiency. We need to look at what we are devote to go infrastructure and the efficiency with which we do it. But i tone think that is centrally about adopting some kind of private scheme with a tax credit. I think those ideas, such as the ones that now secretary ross put forward during the campaign. They may do something by making there be more appliance, and thats fine, but i am not sure that is getting at the most critical of our infrastructure issues. I fly into laguardia and kennedy airports all the time. They dont make one proud as the gateways to the greatest city and the greatest country on earth. Charlie what would be your priority as far as infrastructure spending, and what would be the level of spending that is essential . I think the economy could probably be absorb an extra 1 of g. D. P. Over the next decade. That would total over 10 years about 2 trillion to 2. 5 trillion. You would have to phase into that. I think the priorities would be many. They include a lot in transportation, roads, errants airports, bridging to some extent, in some strategic areas, railroads. There is a substantial need for an infrastructure related to water, clean water, levees so that we dont have another katrina. There is a need for reforms that will permit more satisfy transmission of power so that we can make greater use of renewables and move electricity from where it is windy, where it is sunny to the places that need the locate. Some of it is storage capacity, and some of it is a transportation problem, but both of those involve infrastructure in important ways. I think all of that would be very constructive. I think there are issues around our telecommunications infrastructure. It has gotten better in the last two or three years. But if i make a phone call from my office on the road from the beige airport to beige, that phone call is less likely to drop than if i do it in on the road from kennedy to new york or from logan in to boston. That is not about the government being willing to spend money. That is about various rules that bear on siting, and the ability to site cell phone towers and the like, and the way we have managed our endowment of spectrum. Charlie would you make the budget an expending deficit neutral . I would be willing, in order to make investments, to be short of neutral, and heres why. Deferred maintenance is a deficit. It is just one we dont count. If we defer maintenance, it is placing a burden on to my children that my childrens taxes are going to have to pay for many years from now just as surely as borrowing money. It is just there is one different. When you defer maintenance, the cost compounds at 5 , 7 , 10 a year according to the best estimates. When you borrow money in the markets, now details you pay 1 , 2 , maybe 3 . So borrowing money in order to invest in reducing that backlog of deferred maintenance is an arbitrage. You are borrowing at a lower cost than you are earning, and therefore you are making it better, not lesser for future generations. That is why i would feel comfortable engaging in borrowing for investment. I dont think this is the right time to borrow for consumption at the public level. We should have done more of that years ago, and if we had, we would have had a more rapid recovery. But now as the economy approaches full employment, i think the primary consequence of doing that would be to push up interest rates, and the better course is for the government to finance what it needs to spend. That is why i am not enthusiastic about large unpaidfor tax cuts. Charlie a number of people have suggested that is what is happening in terms of taking away regulations in the area of energy, it will cause the chinese to seize leadership of Climate Control and their own development. Other people have written about it. Is there a risk, if the United States budget as suggested, does what it is going to do with respect to energy and also with the lack of a commitment to science and the National Endowment of arts, will have a detrimental effect on our leadership in the world . I think it is a huge thing, charlie. Some of it is leadership in the world. Some of it is what kind of society we want to be. Helen vandler, one of the most distinguished professors at harvard, said in her jefferson lecture to the National Endowment of the humanities, that civilizations are remembered much more for the acts of beauty that they cultivate than they are for the decisions of politicians, something to that effect. I think they are remembered much more for their great creations than they are for any deals they cut. We team to have forgotten that. And so in terms of what we are remembered for. Are we supporting the next generation of great works of music, or art, or literature . Are we contributing to the adventure of mankind and understanding our world . That is the ultimate historical significance. But i think it also goes to something that my harvard colleague, joe nye has talked about for many years. Our soft power. Ultimately it is the ability to be an attractive example that makes a big difference in how much influence a nation has. If we stop being the nation that is pushing science, if we stop being the nation of cultural creation, we are going to be much less attractive to others and that is going to mean ceding influence. That means other will have systems that will be emulated around the world. And i think that will be very, very costly in terms of our influence, and also very costly directly to our economy. Charlie do you think chinese have a, want to assume leadership in the world, want to be competitive with the United States in that dimension . I think the chinese see a world where 200 years ago they were a dominant civilization on the global stage. And that hasnt been so for the last 200 years. If you just listen to ping, that is something that is very important to chinese to restore. Do they look to march into other countries, conquer them and invade them . I dont think so. Do they look to export a revolutionary ideology the way the russians did after world war ii . I dont think so either. But do they look to have a level of influence for their values and on behalf of their companies that is quite questionable from the point of view of our interests . I think that may be the case. I think we are much more likely to do what is more important to do, which is to find a successful coevolution with the chinese that . A big world finds room for both of us if we maintain our sense and commitment to national greatness, than if we look only to the short run and cricket and constrict ourselves to deal cutting. Charlie so the principle that your colleague at harvard has spoken to need not be true . I think the trap that graham has spoken to, going back to athens, and sparta and the tensions that exist between strong powers and rising powers is best thought of as a hugely relevant warning, not as an inevitable prophecy. I think that one part of the response on the part of the United States has to be maintenance of the power of its example. And if we descend into a kinney costcutting marketism, looking costcutting mercantilism, which is my concern, looking at the policies we have pursued, i think it will embolden the chinese in ways that are problematic. It will cause others to shy away from us and bandwagon toward chinese in ways that are problematic. And i think ultimately it will undermine the quality of lives that people here are leading. How can we really say that we cannot afford what is far under 1 , what is far under. 1 , what is probably way under. 1 . 1 of the federal budget for supporting culture. Make no mistake, a substantial number of people whose lives would be saved are going to be lost because weve decided to cut the budget for basic science way back. Jim watson was in his 20s when he discovered the structure of d. N. A. Charlie 28. Today, typically young investigators arent young. They are in their early to mid 40s before they can get their first grant to purse their ideas rather than a senior professors ideas from the n. I. H. Look at creative science. Whether watson, einstein or newton, it mostly happens long before people are in their early 40s. That is the consequence of the kind of cutbacks that we are going through, and it is just and it just does not make any sense. If history teaches us anything, charlie, it is that from things that seem entirely abstract, great things come. Einsteins theory of relativity was about abstract as you can imagine. And yet no g. P. S. System would work without internalizing it. The algorithms that make an a. T. M. Transaction secure came out of number theory, which is the most basic and theoretical part of mathematics, which is the most basic and theoretical of the sciences. So when we cut back on human curiosity, and wonderment and the support of knowledge, we do something that is devastating to the long run. Charlie and can i add one thing . Charlie go ahead. Something that has really disturbed me in the last weeks has been the approach of our Business Community. Our Business Leaders always when it is them, talk about the importance of longtermism. And activists and shareholders need to get off their back so they can think for the longterm. They know that it is in the United States interest for there to be a World Trading system. They know it is in the United States interest for there to be a big increase in science. But because they are so focused on getting a better deal on a tax cut in 2017, or they are so nervous about a tweet, that is not what they talk about. That is not what the washington reps talk about. I think more of those Business Leaders who do have real influence was it is what this administration expects, need to use that influence in addition to talking about their own regulation, to talk about the real large issues of isolationism, openness. It is important. Charlie it is a fact that businesses in america have, either because they saw uncertainty or for whatever reason, have not made the kind of investments both in human resources, that we would hope that they would do. It may have had to do with economic times, but they also say they are stimulated to do that because of some regulations they felt were unfair and limiting, as well as the tax policy prevented them from doing it. Fair enough. I am the guy who said twice a week for two years in the Obama Administration, confidence is the cheapest form of stimulus. We have to focus on business confidence. I think that we have a better world with the Keystone Pipeline than we would without. I think the new administration came to the right decision on that question when it licensed the Keystone Pipeline. I think there are other areas where the regulation needs to be changed. I think the Business Community is right about that. But where i think they are wrong is in paying no attention in their very energetic participation on Public Policy to broader, longer run themes and talking only about what they want, and the next tax break, and the next bit of deregulation. Charlie let me just raise the other question. When you look at the United States today i once said this to president obama. You say we have the strongest military. You say that we have the highest level of scientific advancement. You say that we have the strongest development in technology. You say that we have the strongest economy. What could go wrong . He said our politics could go wrong. My question is are we add risk now . When you look and see the kinds of things that are happening in washington, for our politics to go seriously wrong . Yes. I dont know that it will happen, and i tend very much to be with churchill. America does the right thing, but only after exhausting the alternatives. But i think we are working on a variety of the alternatives right now in some areas. If we manage to not be at a reasonable place in terms of health care, we will have millions more people who are Getting Health Care without insurance, which is going to mean higher costs for everybody else, which is going to mean less competitive business. That is a threat. If we are completely gridlocked, and we are not able to do tax reform or infrastructure investment, which looks like an increasing risk, that will be very costly for the economy. If we move further towards a latin american style economy where the best way to get ahead is to have friends in the government and have the decide to bestow you favors and thank you, and avoid being punished by the government, where everybody wakes up every morning thinking about what the head of state is thinking, that will be devastating to our economy. I have never heard in any previous moment before 2000 im worried that the president of the United States is going to call out my company. Therefore, i have to do x. That pervasive sense i think becomes a preoccupation for business, and i think that can be very costly for the economy. And probably most important, we are now hugely an internationalized economy, and as an internationalized economy, we depend on the government to maintain successful relations in which we assert American Values strongly, but also in a way that is conducive to reaching compromises with the world of the world. That frankly looks in doubt right now. We have the government, as i was explaining with all these innovations, as a basic steward of our technological future, i was floored to hear the treasury secretary say three days ago that Artificial Intelligence and its consequences for job formation wasnt on his administrations radar screen was it wasnt going to happen for another 50 to 100 years. Hello, bill gates, hell owe ilan muscala. Hello, elon musk. Charlie hello, every corporation in america of any size with any technological component is looking at that to meet the changes that are with us right now. Absolutely. Alexa or a siri knows how those kinds of systems are moving forward. In all those areas i am very worried that our politics, and there four our Public Policies are going to let us do let us down. I think there is a really important lesson, which is what i get out of the study of economics around the world. That is that the government cant make the country rich. People who work hard, people who save, people who create in a good economic environment charlie but they cant do that. But government can sure screw things up by not creating an environment. It is something that happens slowly, but it all accumulates. In 1900, argentina was closer to the United States economically than most of europe is today. Today we think of argentina as a poor developing country. Argentine growth only has lagged American Growth by. 7 over all of that period. So when you get things wrong, when you have dysfunctional governance, it doesnt undo you in a year, or five years, or even a decade. It does over time. In some ways think of the United States as being like the automobile industry. General motors at one point appeared all powerful. The concern was that it was too powerful and needed to be broken up by antitrust and all of that. But then mismanagement, lack of functionality of the organization, you had the japanese threat and all that meant, and then you had the bankruptcy that basically wiped out what had been there before, and it needed to be renewed. Charlie and now a General Motors that is more competitive, better run than it has been in a long time. I think one of the things, having served in the Obama Administration that i am very proud of is the way we managed that situation. But i think the General Motors of several decades ago is something we need to think about as we think about what can go wrong in the United States. As i look at what is happening politically, i think there were storm clouds that have been forming for a long time, but the directions that we seem to be taking in the last few moments, particularly as regards our approach to the global economy, particularly as regards the approach we are taking to basic Public Investments, and particularly as to the approach we are taking to trying to make individual pitches be dependent on government rather than focusing on the overall environment is something that i think is very dangerous. You can think about it as there being law and marketbased capitalism or dealsbased capitalism. What of what is special in the United States is that we have been the leader of market based capitalism for a long time, and we have left it to the argentinas and thailands to be deals based. Next time he stands next to a c. E. O. And celebrates there has been some uninvestment in jobs, or every time president threatens some particular company, i see us moving towards being deals based capitalism, and that is something i think is very dangerous. Charlie great to have you here, my friend. Good to be with you. Alisa i am Alisa Parenti and you are watching bloomberg technology. Lets start with a check of your first word news. Vowing to level the Playing Field for u. S. Workers, President Trump signed executive orders today aimed at cracking down on International Trade abuse. The directives will enforce penalties for potential violators. The white house says it will soon share Financial Information about top Staff Members on its website. This comes after concerns the president has start his team with some of the wealthiest people ever to serve in government. Congressional investigators rebuffed Michael Flynns offer. Of testimony in exchange for immunity from prosecution