Hes not a performer, this is not a an act of branding, he is the president of the United States and occupies the position in the world as the leader of the free world. Rose there were three important announcements by the Trump Transition Team friday. We talked to Michele Flournoy about those choices. She is a leading defense strategist and would have been high up on the list of democrats that might have become secretary of defense if Hillary Clinton had become president. He certainly has war fair expanding into new domains and i would say chief among those are the cyber domain but also space. Space is becoming a much more contested environment, and both the russians and chinese are developing capabilities that we should be worried about, given our dependence on satellites for communication and surveillance and so forth. Weve always benefited having a technological edge over any competitor, be but now more and more technologies weve relied on for the edge are commercially available and available to others. So in the next four years, we have to make some very targeted, Smart Investments to keep that technological edge. Rose also weighing in on the transition announcement today, david sanger of the New York Times and karen de young of the Washington Post. The president runs Foreign Policy and, regardless of what arguments you have and whos up and whos down and whos strong, what usually happens is what the president wants to happen, and, so, i think youre right that one of the questions will be to what extent the National Security advisor sees his job to put a break on the president as opposed to not only being a spokesperson and counselor to the president but someone who has strong views on his own. Rose David Remnick, Michele Flournoy, david sanger and kern kern, when we 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 David Remnick is the editor of the new yorker. He recently sat down with president obama over two pivotal days the friday before the election and two days after the election. The two delved into the campaign, the shifting landscape of todays media and the president s legacy. It offers a firsthand look into the mind of president obama as he reflects on the reality of his successor and the future of the United States. The piece is called it happened here and is the lead feature in the new yorkers next issue which is out monday. Pleased to have David Remnick back at this table. In our conversation recorded thursday night, we talked about the entire article, but this evening we began with the conversation with the president as he looked at the victory by donald trump and also his own legacy. Heres that part of the conversation. The rest of the conversation and the rest of the article will be discussed on monday Nights Program with David Remnick. Welcome. Thank you. I should say that you could read it now online. Rose its online. New yorker. Com. Rose what are his thoughts about this . When president obama gathered his staff into his office and they came in waves, several groups, on wednesday morning after the election, he told them i want to read it for accuracy he said, this is not the apocalypse, and he wants to buck up these young staffers who have big futures potentially, theyre going to go out into the world, and he wanted to buck them up and said history doesnt always move in a straight line. Defeats happen, reverse also happen, the arc of justice, it doesnt always bend in a straight line, and to badly brutalize the metaphor, and he told me the following, i dont believe in apocalyptic, until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world, until the end of the world. Thats what hes saying publicly, but it is very obvious that he is deeply disturbed. This is not losing to mitt romney. This is not john mccain, whos, you know, plenty right wing on certain issues, but within the realm of imagination, this is something very, very different and very alarming. Rose and what do you think alarms him the most about this . Is it the conduct of Foreign Policy . Is it somehow the moral conscience of the country . Is it keep going. Keep going. All of it. It has to do with his feeling about the advancement of civil rights for his own people, whether theyre africanamerican, hispanic or gays and lesbians, and in addition to which i dont think barack obama ever ignored the notion that things were hollowing out in industrial cities and rural towns in this country. This is not somebody who was deaf to the notion that opioid addiction, for example, and deindustrialization and globalization was taking a toll to all people, to all people. Now, in his mind, and he said as much, and im summarizing here, now trump is not a campaigner, hes not a performer, this is not an act of branding. He is the president of the United States and occupies the position in the world as the leader of the free world. What does he believe . Does he believe that was he just saying things in the campaign the arouse emotions, or does he actually have core beliefs and core convictions and the integrity of those convictions and an inner core of decency . Rose president obama said hes more pragmatist. Thats wheat he said. I think this is the triumph of second marriages, the triumph of hope over experience. Rose this is what his hope is or perhaps hes saying it because he wants to make sure people dont go off the deep end. I think its an act of willful reassurance on president obamas part that hes not just a citizen, for next 60 odd days, hes the outgoing president of the United States, and, lets face it, in the past he has attacked donald trump and humiliated him and at the white house accordance dinner rose hes said worse things than the white house accordance dinner. Right, but he wants to have whatever normalizing influence on donald trump he can while theres time. But in the few days of attempting to do that, of saying our meeting was excellent and he seems to be appropriately awed, whats happened . Were watching going in and out of trump tower, Jeff Sessions who called barack obama boy. We have steve bannon sitting in saved axlerods old office. We have mike pence who, you know, spoke up for the harshest degree of homophobia in the United States of any elected official i can think of, what is the modifying, normal idessing effect other than priebus, and who knows how powerful, and whos the main counselor . His soninlaw. Rose a person who has his ear. Thats very important. Rose heres what he told you, too, lets just stay what might be and what is. Sure. Rose weve seen this coming, he says to you, donald trump, before the election, trump is not an outlier, a culmination, logical conclusion, he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past 10, 1520 years, which supplies with a degree which these tactics and rhetoric completely jumped the rails. There was no governing prince principle. No one to say, no this is going too far, this isnt what we stand for but weve seen it for eight years, even with reasonable people like john boehner, whoa when pushed wouldnt push back, with these parents. So donald trump is the culmination of something that started before. Yeah, its no joke, that he what hes saying is, look, paul ryan looks relatively like a statesman or Mitch Mcconnell and any other number of people in congress, but rhetoric got harsher and harsher, obstructionism got fiercer and fiercer, political life became more observe observe obdurate, this guy who has populist talents and again, i want to make very, very clear, i understand that there are first of all, trr people that would only vote for republican just as there are people who would only vote for democrats and then were talking about this middle thing. Rose about 35, 40 on each side. Thats a lot. There are people that werent necessarily responding to the racist aspect of it, but the aspect of burn it all down, antiestablishmentarianism, we are sick of who we have here and who also didnt like Hillary Clinton, whether for reasons that were misogynistic or otherwise. Rose how much do you think was misogynistic . I am not a pollster and pollsters proved their fallibility. I also think there were people who were soured by clintons and money, and thats a legitimate point. This business of using your office and turning around and buck raking did not start with the clintons. Ronald reagan made speeches for big money in japan, but the degree of it and the fact that they were going back into president ial politics. Rose after the elections. And so did george bush in 1981. Hes done, though, and his wife isnt running for president. Rose how did he see Hillary Clinton and her campaign, he said, quoting you, a little bit like a parent watch ago kid in a sporting match and you dont feel like you have as much control. Did he look at that and sayers oh, my god . It is also said, i heard it said today without being verified by the principals, that bill clinton was upset by the direction of the campaign. He may have said that after the fact or not said it. I think people in the white house were upset for some of the same reasons as bill clinton. Rose right. She didnt campaign as nearly as many events as trump. Rose right. Trumps thing was rallies. Well, hes good at it. But one of the thing that people in the white house that they knew, of course, shes not the retail politician bill clinton or barack obama is and hillary said that over and overo. What confounded them, besides the money stuff and what confounded them besides comey and wikileaks which, obviously, you know, is another matter, was why arent you in michigan . Rose didnt go to wisconsin. Why arent you in wisconsin . What are you thinking about arizona . Why are we having conversations about, you know, texas turning blue . They thought this was fantasy. Rose another point, obama consented trump is less a champion of working people than as an antiestablishment insurgent. Yeah. Rose the president elect said he made an argument he would blow this place up. Hillary clinton was viewed as an insider. I dont think its fair, he says, but thats how it played itself out. 30 years in government and washington d. And she would have been following someone for whom she was secretary of state. Rose and that would have been three terms which is very unlikely to happen in american politics. Very unlikely, but nevertheless what made it seem likely to all of us, to pollsters, to journalists, to ordinary people rose we didnt believe donald trump could be elected president , and the consensus was he couldnt be because of all the things he said and, secondly because he seemed and is, until this point in our history, outside the realm of discussion in terms of his behavior as a human being. Rose is that why you were so both angry and depressed in the online piece i read right after the election. Yes. Rose you wrote it that night later on in the evening. Yes. Ill be perfectly honest about how that came about. In the online world, like the old new yorker you could wait a few days to have a good Online Presence for Election Night. I wanted to do my bit. In the morning, i wrote at relative leisure a piece about the first woman president and Elizabeth Katy stanton and progress of history and how important this was to not only women but to men, to how lounge this had taken and the history of seneca falls. So that was all ready to go with a push of the button and a bunch of other pieces, that was going to run online that night, and i was, as lots of people do, they go to an Election Night party, had a little bit to eat, possibly a little bit to drink, and by about 9 00, its starting to come clear that not only is the election going another way but that piece is on the ash heap of history. And i called krantz, the editor running that show that night politically at new yorker. Com and said i think we need something else. I kind of sat at that party and wrote about what a disaster i think this is, how lets say how deeply alarming it is, and how we should not rush to normalize it not rush to normalize it and what i mean by that is donald trump, in the way he campaigned, in his history and the way hes conducted himself, is in no way mitt romney or kind of a conventional conservative. The republican intelligentsia in this country rejected donald trump wholesale, the national review, david you know, the American Enterprise rose eric ericson. All these people. You know, i dont agree with them, but they just saw him as a demagogue, fraud, dishonest, someone who wasnt honest enough to put his taxes we have a president of the United States who wont even tell us about his tax returns, who has a myriad of lawsuits against him. This is not normal. Rose so your point is we cant forget that, we cant normalize that and, therefore, we do what is this. Well, as a journalist, to do what we always do, which is to be clearheaded and accumulate the facts. Rose truth to power fact to fiction. Absolutely. But remember, were living in a world in which the president elect feels no compunction during the campaign about lying at a rate that we have never seen before. By any meter. By my scoreboard. Rose the point to underline about that, its one thing to exaggerate, its another thing to lie. But it wasnt once or twierks it wasnt here or once or twice, it wasnt here or there, it was just the pattern. And were now, by the way, on the level of appointments, were hearing people, you know, about whom the president elect himself denigrated during the campaign. Rose your point is we cannot but we cannot allow ourselves to be deluded that it is wrong necessarily that somehow, by magic, by the normalization of becoming president aso proposed to becoming a candidate, that he will suddenly become dwight eisenhower. Rose but you cannot also forget i hope that is the case and if it happens, charlie, i want to be the first to acknowledge it. Rose let me turn to obama. Where is he in terms of a what he does for the remainder of his term . And i thought today, think about these initiate i was, the cuban initiative, take one example the iran nuclear deal. Healthcare. Rose healthcare, for sure there will be some modifications. Now, he in speeches in europe, you know, talking about populism yeah. Rose and he is talking about globalism and talking about maybe we need to think about modifying it, maybe we havent taken a hard enough look as we should have, and maybe trump struck a nerve that was, in fact, real. But there was a certain globalist triumphism at a certain point the world is flat, everything is great. What was not taken into account nearly enough in the 90s its interesting, in the 90s we had this triumphant view of everything, democracy was on the march, soviet union had falon so naturally was becoming democratic, Tiananmen Square was the expect, globalization was great, so a lot of these things were advances but, unfortunately, there are winners and losers to this and, in some measure, this, in some measure and i dont think donald trump is going to necessarily do anything for these people, but some of the losers of globalization and deindustrialization have risen up and said, no. You know, the internets great, but my coal factory is shut down, and the town in which i was i made a middle class wage, im now bagging groceries at walmart rose because the company i worked for left town. Now, will donald trump be able to change the world such that that man or woman suddenly goes back to his or her old life . I dont know. Rose well, but that persons attitude is nobody else could seem to change things. I get that. And i really want to acknowledge those people that, of course not, all those people, maybe not even close to a large percentage of those people voted first and foremost because they are responding to the antiafricanamerican sentiment or the misogyny. Some of them it was despite it. I hope youre right in the overall percentage, what you cant deny is that bigotry was there in the came pain. Rose what of his legacy does he worry most about . Where to begin . Where to begin, charlie . A lot of socially progressive things got enacted in the last eight years, despite a lot of congressional rose after the first two years in washington. Especially after the first two years in office. Foreign affairs, take the iran nuclear deal. Now, trump has gone through the campaign saying this is an horrendous deal, were going to make great deals. So if you break the deal, suddenly iran is able to make a nuclear weapon. This is a better state of affairs . Even israeli intelligence, a country whose Prime Minister was ferociously against the iran nuclear deal, will be the first to tell you that iran no longer has whats called breakout capacity. Rose its out at least a year. Do you really want to reverse that . Rose well, there is an indication i read today some people who were against it say we dont want to abrogate this. This is what one can hope for. This is his bargain in the next 60 days i will keep my head cool, try tone courage what good instinct there are in trump and his people and hope for the best because what else can he do . His job is not to be a political fire brown. The question is what happens on january 20th with obama . Had Hillary Clinton won, i think he would have gone off to oahu, had a good, long rest and started to write a memoir, start thinking about what good works he could do, make a living. Hes awfully friendly with a lot of people in silicon valley. Rose did he give you an indication of what he wants to do . Hes pretty reticent about it. Rose because he might hav