friend, the pulitzer prize winning author and historian jon meach meacham, his latest book, the soul of america, the battle for our better angels. jon, we are friends and because we re friends we can engage in good-natured ribbing. okay, mr. morning in america, mr. better angels, tell us how we re better off after just what we ve covered today and tonight and assure people there s a light at the end of this tunnel. we re at least getting closer to the end of the tunnel. there are three tributaries this week when you think about it. there s the senate, supreme court tributary, where the republican party has to decide whether it values the rule of law and fairness over the most raw kind of grab for power in the form of a supreme court seat. and we re amazingly watching this unfold on twitter tonight where the chairman of the senate judiciary committee is talking to a supreme court nominee on
all right. well put, jon meacham, i take back everything i said about you. thank you very much summing up another week as we prove playing out right at the midnight hour here in the middle east. coming up, a new political ad as this president is fond of saying, the likes of which we ve never seen before when the 11th hour continues.
platform while angering some of our closest allies. a look at the headlines from the week proved some context as to how others see us and the cover of der spiegel in germany is as close to is as close to self-explanatory as we re going to get. jon meacham, michael beschloss continue to join us. i never thought i would have a fronter row seat to this. i thought carter to reagan was the biggest swing to the pendulum. politically that i would ever witness as an american adult, but do you have reason to think that we re in for something even greater, say nothing of the obama to trump swing of the pendulum? yeah, that s for sure, brian. sure looks that way. just the juxtaposition that you re suggesting between george w. bush and donald trump with barack obama in between, you know, people will be arguing for the next 50 years whether george
w. bush was too interventionist, but there is no one who is going to doubt that george w. bush is an idealist about democracy. contrast that with donald trump, who in the people s white house, where every president has lived since john adams told bill o reilly last year, o reilly said putin is a killer, and donald trump replied, what makes you think that we americans are not killers, too? what makes you think we re so innocent? i never thought i d live to see the day when i saw a president say such a thing. jon meacham, same question. i think president bush, whose father received the same award, actually, and it was an award from the atlantic council about diplomacy. it s funny to think back ten years or so when people would not have thought that possible, when the cool conventional wisdom was that bush had torn up our alliances and that sort of thing. we now see that perhaps it was far more complicated, more nuanced than we think.
whether it s a ride to the doctor or help around the house. oh, of course! tom, i am really sorry. i ve gotta go. look, call right at home. get the right care. right at home. the week that started with the white house campaign to be best, as the first lady called it, is ending, shall we say politely, far from that mark. let s bring in two smart guys to talk about it. with us from houston is jon meach meacham, pulitzer prize winning author, biographer of president bush 41 whose book is out this week we note in time for mother s day, and we hate to note things like that is the soul of america, the better for our better angels. with us from washington, michael beschloss, author and presidential historian and