This panel coming up is called freedom of the press. It will contain three authors who will be talking and that panel will begin in just a few minutes. It is live. Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the 9th annual tucson festival of book. A few things to get out of the way before we get rolling here. We wish to thank you for coming. Hang on to your questions until then. After the session, the authors will be signing autographs in the sign and sales area at the bookstore tent on the mall. Books will be available for purchase at that location and we hope you are enjoying the festival and consider becoming a friend of the festival and support the festival and the critical literacy programs in Southern Arizona. You can text us or find the tent out there on the mall and help out if you can. Really encourage you. That is our big ask of the day. Out of respect for the authors, if you could turn off your cellphones that would be great. We have maureen dowd, evan thomas in the middle whose latest book is being nixon, a man divided. And finally to my left, stage right, joe conason, long time political journalist and founder of a website and the author of man of the world when focuses on the postpresidency of bill clinton. Welcome all of you to tucson, arizona. We are on cspan today. [applause] those watching can know our weather is better than yours. Lets start with maureen, how does it feel to be an enemy of the American People in can you hear me . It feels pretty good. Having covered dick cheney for eight years and watched him try to dismantle checks and balances. They think you have a great resume and it is easier fooget away with hurting checks and balances than if you go on twitter at 3 00 a. M. And say crazy things because then, you know, everybody is on guard and the whole country is now on guard and journalists are wide awake with new investigative teams and the post has a new motto democracy dies in the darkness. The la times is selling tshirts they say we will not shut up. Everybody is at the barricades which a healthier situation i saw with dick cheney and with evan and nixon i would think it was the same thing where it just took a long time to realize the nefarious behavior going on. And joe, what are you concerns about what trump might do to the press over the next four years . There is an extent to when i agree with what maureen said in that it is good to have the crazy straight up but on the other hand too crazy is really dangerous for the country and the world. There is a downside to the crazy for sure. But i worry less about trump in some ways because they continue to demonstrate incredible incompetence in the trump white house. The comforting part is they cant find their rear ends with both hands. They continue to screw up their most nefarious plans. There are so many people. Nobody under the secretary of defense has been appointed in the pentagon. The obama people are still held over there. And that is far from the only example. So, whatever terrible things they want to do, they dont seem that capable of doing it. That said, however, in the Justice Department which is kind of the tip of the sphere as far as the press is concerned, there is reason to worry. Jeff sessions is not dumb. He showed he was smart enough to recuse from the russia case the other day. And they will go after journalists and i am concerned about that. The Obama Administration did some of that with leakers. I would not be at all surprised if trump feels he is preparing the way with this base to try to prosecute journalists in the years to come and that would be very troubleliing. Nixon picked fights with the press. How do you see the two comparing . I think nixon actually hated the press and i think sometimes trump pretends to. Trump at some level enjoys it it. I had the impressions he was enjoying it it. Maureen yesterday said trump is a narsacyst and the press is his mirror. They are using each other and each side is exagurating about the other. It is like a sausage factory watching it happen but there is a real relationship here. Nixon hated the press. Richard nixon went out to denounce the negative. Nixon was clever at playing off the press until the press got him. Initially, nixon had success running against the press. We forget he won in the greatest landslide in history winning 35 of democrats and part of that was by vilifying the press. And i think there is a creepy factor when trump calls out reporters by name and there is a backlash against the reports like we saw with megyn kelly. This sort of sexism involved with some of this, too. Yeah, you know, i had many interviews during the book over the course of the campaign but then when i was promoting the book, i guess he was home watching cspan, not cspan. It is highly unlikely. He was watching cnn and i was on this show and didnt know what i said to upset him but it was something so he began tweeting and said i was a crazy, neurotic dope. Afterwards, people asked me if i was upset about that and i think it got about 10,000 likes which was a little upsetting but people asked me if i was upset and i said the only thing that upset me was he didnt put more thought and care into my nickname because, like, you know, he called Elizabeth Warren pocahontas and mine was the same generic words he uses about crazy women journalists like crazy and neurotic. I asked him, i had many conversations with him, which are all in the book. I protested to him that megyn kellys question was fair in the debut and he was being horrible to megyn kelly and horrible to heidi cruz and, you know, i didnt even i am not even sure, though, that it is an issue of mysogany. I think he gets hurt when anyone attacks him and doesnt understand why people should lie down and take his accounts and like him afterwards. That is true of men and women. He just as many slurs with women talking about little marco and talked about rand pauls hair like he did women. I would say it is his narscism that comes into play. I have to ask what is with this guy . You have known him further back than the campaign. Well, one time at the careening of oliver stones nixon i ran into buck woodward and he said ever president gets the psychoanalyst they deserve. So, i am willing to take on that job for you guys. Joe, you also know trump, covered him in the past. Talk a little bit about who donald trump is from your perspective. Well, i think maureens psycho analysis has merit. He is certainly narcissistic and has always been that way. He has always been the kind of person who attacked you. He will attack first. He learned this from roy cone, his mentor, who now is spinning in his grave whfsh trump complains about mccarthyism on the internet. It is a certain ruthless approach to life and business and now politics that i think can be extremely dangerous and very dangerous to trump himself ultimately. I think what evan said about trump and the press is true up to a point. He does like the mirror of the press. The problem that we are going to face, i fear, is that he will differiniate because there are different sectors of the press media and some provide a mirror of him lee likes and others that examine him in a different way that is dangerous to him and the people around him. I am fearful he will take steps against the segment of the press that is more dangerous than flattering. You want to weigh in . No, i just want to say before i forget it is the weirdest fact that came out was reported in politico about how trumps staff, because he for a long time has the top 30 stories of him printed out and he would read about himself and watch tv about himself and would have pictures of himself all over his office, so it was this amplificati amplification. The weird fact is his staff says he is in a bad mood if he doesnt read anything about himself so they will solicit stories and talk about fake news. They are asking reporters to write nice things so they can put it in his press clippings so he will not be a grouch all day which is really pathetic. And evan, compared to nixon with the war on the press, but it seems like nixon, reading your book and other stuff about him, was very deeply involved in International Affairs and aware of what was happening in the world and spent a lot of time studying this stuff. It seems like trump is more winging it as he goes along. Wondering if you comment on that. There are a lot of comparisons about nixon and trump but one big difference is nixon read a lot. As far as i can tell, trump doesnt read or reads very little. Nixon was a deep reader. Nixon didnt like to talk to people. He preferred to read and would retire to his study and read deeply everything Winston Churchill every wrote and deeper. Political philosophies. His private Library Shows him underlining and circling like a graduate student. He had a deep intellectual interest in the world and talked to Henry Kissenger about it. If you listen to the nixon tapes, some of the time nixon is ranting and being antiseantis and scary and other times he is thinking deeply about the solutions. I just dont see donald trump doing that. Joe most people are pretty sure trump hasnt read the book he supposedly wrote. [laughter] there is that. Speaking of books, in 2006, you wrote a book it can happen here we are well passed that with the Trump Administration. There are people who brought that book up to me to sign at the festival and looked at it and thought, you know, we are well past that. That book is about it was to draw parallels on what was happening under George W Bush and his administration and dick cheney and a book written by st. Clair lewis called it cant happen here which was a novel about the rise of a fascist regime in the United States during the period when hitler was rising in germany and we were concerned about fascism in the United States back then. There were some parallels that you could draw and i did my best to do that without calling anybody a fascist. But in fact, the parallels between what Sinclair Lewis wrote in 1935 and what is going on right now are closer. I need to rework that into coverage of trump. Just taking one example that will strike a cord here in Southern Arizona in that book by Sinclair Lewis there is a point where the authoritarian president decides to go to war with mexico in order to rally patriotic sentiments. We are not on the verge of war with mexico, thank god, but the hostility with mexico, long time friend and ally, is being used in that political way and it makes me really uncomfortable to see those parallels occurring. I am sure if we send in the troops it will just be to round up the bad hambres. Talking about freedom of the press and that is vital but the media landscape is fracturing and the power of the press seems to diminish like it did in nixons day. Do you see that happening from the perch at the failing New York Times . No, i think the press is, you know, is in a more exciting and dynamic place than it has been since the newspaper wars in the chicago in the 1930s. With the Washington Post, we are breaking stories all the time and you know, as evan said, it is a codependency. Rachel maddow gets on tv trashing trump and has never had big ratings. The time subscriptions soared and our stock is up. We are cashing in on this phenomenon as well. I just feel that trump has revived a lot of things that were kind of flat lining like feminism and the aclu and journalism wasnt flat lining but we were loosing revenue and he has put a lot of energy into a lot of things that needed energy. You know . We have all learned what the logan act is, and the monuments clause, and you know, when was the last time you had really big ratings for a prestate of the union speech . In a weird way, he is like bizarre civic lessons. [laughter] yes, bizarre indeed. Joe, what about that speech . There has been all this crazy activity leading up to the speech. He gives one speech and everyone is saying what a president ial guy this guy is and the next day he sends out the tweet obama is listening to him. I wrote about the speech in National Memo. If you go back and read the speech, it was a pretty bad speech. It is rambling, some of it doesnt make any sense, it is full of easily provable falsehoods but because he delivered it in a calm way and as he warned us, if you recall during the campaign he said i can be more president ial than anybody which was certainly not true but he could appear more president ial than he usually did. He managed to do that during that speech and the result was that because the press actually bends over backwards to be fair to him, he got good reviews for that speech by and large from our colleagues. And it didnt they were not deserved but they also wanted to, you know, spice things up with a little more variety. You cant bash him every day. It is better if you can give some praise where it is due, i guess. But maureen is right. He has revitalized and been the best thing for business in terms of the press that could ever happen. Bad tr the country, bad for the world, good for our business which is an irony that reoccurs in history. But the business has changed. One thing we should be clear about is lets just take nixon. In 1970, when nixon is president , at 6 30 at night in america, 90 of all tv sets are tuned to three networks, abc, nbc and cbs and they are watching essentially the same news show. The entire country is getting 23 minutes of the same news and that news basically came from the front page of the New York Times. The networks would read the New York Times that morning and get together and put on a news show that night. So the entire country is getting what the New York Times tells them is important on the 6 30 news. That is not the case today. Nothing like it. It is much more splintered because of technology, cable, and the internet. Everybody is a journalist on the internet. It is a different landscape. Yes, it is true the post and times are having a glory day which is great and they are in a newspaper war and have a power. They are not the power that they were in 1970. They are maybe half the power. Because half the country, one thing when they write about trump they are preaching to the choir. Those people already hate trump. The other half hof the country doesnt read the New York Times or Washington Post and love trump. Roger ails was discovered by Richard Nixon who created the box when appealed and made billions for mur dock and helped create this alternative world. Talk radio, alternate universe. What they say is different. Some is true and some is not. So the country is not hearing one thing. They are hearing a lot of Different Things and it is look, i think democracy is incredibly strong and this is resilient country and we will survive all of this. But it is a little disconcerting there is that much fake news out there and a lot of people are getting news from talk radio guys who are making it up. Not only trump, but many on the right, are worker to discredit the legacy media and there is a rise of fake news and it seems people can chose the media diet you want from an all you can stomach buffet that a amplifies your own beliefs. Are you asking me to solve the problem . It is all right here. The solution for fake news is similar to the solution to bad speech which is better news, more news. It is only thing you can do. And fortunately, we were talking about this before the panel started, the Washington Post happily my friends at the Washington Post are the happiest journalists in america. Why . Because some of the money that went into the internet revolution has come back to them. The thing that destroyed the legacy media has now come back in the form of jeff besso money to save and bolster and renew the Washington Post much to the benefit of the country and our business. If that started to happen, if more of the, you know, people who made billions from the rise of the internet and this boom of technology decided they were going to repair the damage that was caused by it in journalism that would be a great thing. You would see a revitalization of journalism that goes beyond what we are seeing now. That would be good for the country, good for democracy and i hope that more of them decide to follow the example set by jeff besos. Maureen, your thought on half of people reading New York Times and half the people hate the New York Times and you have the competing parallels in the media. I guess i am a aware of this trump view of the world from my only family thanksgiving. My own basket of deplorables because when i go home who may be watching. Yeah, there is one in the audience. My sister, peggy. When i go home, my nephews hit me with crazy conspiracy thing as though it is a real thing. So, you know, i have to be pessimistic when they announced the role of kate graham and it came another like that because of this atmosphere where everybody wants to pitch in and protect the first amendment. Meryl streep signed on and amy was like wow, nobody was interested in it before. That could be spotlight. No, they think through the telling of the pentagon papers and i am sure abe is rolling in his grave of a movie about the pentagon papers called the post coming out. Everybody is saying you have to take down trump and explain and that is not our role in journalism. We are rigorous about saying if trump is lying and his conflicts but it is not our role to take him down. I hear people claiming the press deserves this and what do you think about this . I think nixon was right about some things. The press was out to get him. But there was a bias against him that people went to yale and wrote for the New York Times they didnt like nixon. They liked jack kennedy. That was unfair to nixon. Now, he way aggregated this and gave the press plenty of reason who want to get him. There was a bias against him and that ran through our life and we are in an amazingly varied country and there was an east coast media establishment. I am a card carrying member of it. They had a bias. And i mentioned roger ails earlier. Roger ails, this fairly obscure guy, realized there was a lot of money to be made by creating a network that existed to be in opposition to the socalled liberal east coast media. He made billions and tapped a real need. He wildly exagurated it but he was on to something. He had personal problems but the money he made and empire he created speaks to that. I think there was, and is, a liberal bias in the old establishment media. I share a lot of it. I am not pointing fingers here but i believe it existed. And maureen, you hear the word media tossed around. But things are splintered so it isnt like a bord collective coming up with the same stories these days. Yes. But i have a funny story about nixon which i dont know if evan knows. One time in 92, the Washington Bureau chief setup an interview with nixon who wanted to be interviewed by a small group of interviewers who was setup by roger stone who is a trump associate now. The one condition was just to prove that paranoia never dies is the reporters had to be too young to know anything about watergate. So howell took the youngest reporters in the bureau and we had to dress younger and act younger because nixon was so paranoid about it. Awesome. Evan, joe, what do you think about the whole notion of the press coming up through the emergence of alternative news sources . To the extent i agree with evan about that the press has gotten come ups for that and we what to be able to move on because there are more Serious Problems than whether there are too Many Ivy League graduates at a newspaper. That is childish stuff and has been dealt with long ago. There are many alternative media sources that are powerful as evan said. The question is not whether the New York Times going bring down trump or if it brought down nixon or the Washington Post but are they going to bring themselves down . Nixon was a criminal who committed incredibly serious crimes against the country and was prosecuted and caught by congressional committees and prosecutors. The washington job did a great job of reporting the story and revealing aspects but the real reason nixon came down was because of the work of a lot of other people. The same i suspect, if trump goes down, it will be because of trump and things trump does that are exposed and i hope we will have prosecutors and people in congress who are honest enough to deal with this administration as it really is. If that happens, then, you know, peel be blessed to have a press that reports we will that story accurately to the people. That is what i think about that. [applause] if i know this audience, i know you will have a lot of questions and i think there is a microphone here you can line up at on the other side if you want to get in line because we are getting to the point where we will do audience q a. Line on up, folks. Let me ask all three of you the same question starting with maureen. Are you surprised trump won the presidency . I was shocked because even though, you know, i was sort of railing against the rise of big data and that big data very sort of sanctimonious people in junl journ journalism who acted like we were ttrack tapes and we didnt need reporters to go out and do anything. I think politics is the most human of professions. The way we vote for president is the most personal of votes. So, i never believed big data could tell you everything. But i kind of got worn down to the point of the night of the election i was sitting in my office in new york and figured fine, it is the guys saying it. We have a fuel gauge and it went from 85 hillary to 85 trump in a very short period of time. I was so shocked that all i could do was take a picture with my cellphone because i didnt know how to process it. My dad and mom stayed up all night the night truman was elected and i knew my brother kevin would be up all night the night trump was elected and called him at 3 00 a. M. And said just explain this to me and wrote a column with him saying what he thought happened. In the end, i kind of got brainwashed by the big data people, too. Evan, were you surprised about the Trump Victory . Completely. Would you care to elaborate. You know, i live in my own little bubble that was wrong. I am an east coast guy and grew up reading the new york city times and worked for news magazines for 33 years. I am a creature of my environment and my environment could not process trumps triumph. We just couldnt. I didnt have the imagination to get from here to there even though i am supposed to be a smart journalist and all that. I totally missed it. Joe . Well, i mean look, i was surprised he won because he didnt win. He lost the poplar vote by 3 million votes which is a bigger margin than al gore won the poplar vote in 2000. That was all undocumented voters. Besides that, the polls we were looking at which polled the poplar vote, not the electoral votes were pretty accurate. You say she lost the Electoral College was of hundred thousand votes in three states. You measure that against 130 million votes roughly that were cast in that election and that is an infantesimalnumber of votes. It was surprising and shocking to everybody. But it was a fluke as much as anything else. That doesnt mean there isnt a big cohort of americans who are happy with the way it came out and voted for trump for whatever reason but it does place a perspective on what actually happened in the election and the response to it of surprise. So, i think it is important to keep those facts in mind. I heard it was a huge victory and a landslide never before seen since nixon. The guy who had a Million People on the mall. It is that same guy. Over here. Lets have questions from the audience. I would appreciate your advice on how we try to follow the avalanche of information that comes forth every day. How do we pick out what is important and what we should not get sucked into . I read the New York Times. I get a paper called the New York Times and read it closely. I just finished saying i missed trump so maybe i was in the bubble and that isnt the right thing. But i think the New York Times is an unbelievablely great newspaper. If you just read the New York Times you will not miss much. You really arent. As somebody who has criticized the times and wrote pretty much a book about things the times got wrong several years ago, i agree wholeheartedly with what evan said. I read the wall street journal as well. I get the wall street journal and the New York Times and financial times, rioters, the guardian is worth looking at. I edit my own newsletter so i am looking at a lot of sources but the times and Washington Post are up there. The Washington Post is coming back. You should read subscribe ngz National Memo every day. Maureen, want to chime in on the cutter. I am the most cutter person at absorbing media. I read about eight newspapers a day and eight magazines and then i try to look at twitter although it makes me head spin sometimes. And you know, i am trying. But i fail because i do everything in print. Or most of it in print. For instance, i went to new york and i had two enormous bags of newspapers i dragged up there with me and didnt get through it so i have them here with me. I have dragged them here. My assistant who is a side board because he is 30 and always just only reading on his phone. ; right . He caught me with september 2016 Washington Times in my suitcase and just said you are crazy. But i just love print. I told my boss, my editor the other way, we have to change our deadline our because sunday column closes on friday at 7 00; right . Then it is for sunday. So, i said, trump goes completely nuts from friday at 9 00 all through the night through saturday morning. They say some people attribute that to ivanka and jarred being more unavailable. But whatever. So i said we have to change our deadlines. We are just caught unaware. I wrote the column about the free state of the union and then went on twitter and accused his predecessor of tapping his office. So my editor said the era of print is closing and that will be good for my back because i wont be hurting buyba my back. Are we saying trump is a moscovian candidate or are we on a bit of a wildgoose chase . The evidence remains to be uncovered in the relationship between the Trump Campaign and the putin regime. There is enough to suggest a need for a thorough and rigorous investigation. There is not enough to say what the relationship was. What is worrisome about trump is their political advocates. The idea we have a president who even daydreams about dismantling nato and the Atlantic Alliance is chilling, dangerous and foolish and worse than foolish. The idea sitting next to him is steve bannon who is put on the National Security council to try to implement those ideas is sickening to me. What is as worrisome as anything we have not learned about the relationships between putin and trump or paul man ford and putin and the fsb is the things that they are telling us about themselves and their beliefs which are deeply contrary to American Values and traditions. Anybody else want to weigh in on that one . All right. Over here. Evan agrees with me on this. The answer is it is too early. How long has the guy been president . The evidence is not in. 3,000 years ago in ancient egypt the pharaoh was consulting with his chief person who said pharaoh, you are so poplar for the last 11 years. We have had wonderful peace and prosperity in our land but you dont need to go to war like the other pharaohs had to do in order to be poplar. With the comments of Sinclair Lewis and the appointment of all the military and the conversation about atomic bombs, what do you see about a future to get poplar with a war by trump . I think the military people around trump put a restraint on him. I think those generals probably are more likely to hold him back than urge him to do something risky, dangerous, stupid. Real wild card is bannon. I wish we knew more about him. Unlike trump he is wellread. We dont really know. Maureen, maybe you know. How is bannon doing . I just know that like trump, he is trashing the press but giving a lot of access to the press. So i dont really i had never heard of him. So i put in a couple requests to talk to him and if i hear back i will let you know. He is doing less well today if you read the Washington Post expose about him which is a stunning expose of his including the fact he apparently is under investigation by the state of florida for misrepresenting his residency for taxes and other purposes. Great story in the Washington Post about steve bannon that has nothing to do with your question. I agree with evan. I was happy to see trump who worships uniforms appoint a couple distinguished military leaders, three to his cabinet who are the most qualified people in the cabinet for any further jobs and praul the most stabilizing and trust worthy figures in the government now. Liberals have reputation for not liking the military or distrusting the military. I will say the military is one of the best institutions in this country by and large with the exceptions and problems. But i am really happy there are military leaders in the government who may well provide a stabilizing force against unstable and untrustworthy figures around the president. Over here a question. Since president trumps soninlaw is an orthodox jew how will this affect israel . Also, how will it affect america which is 3 of the world religion is jewish. It is a very small minority. Do you think this will help people around the world to learn about judi judaism. Will his son in law being an orthodox jew help the Jewish Population in terms of the world . How will it affect . Joe, you worked for jarred at some point. Briefly. After he bought the observer when i had worked by then for 15 years. I didnt spend that long under jarred and didnt get to know him very well but a little bit. Look, trump and the jews is a very vexed and mixed question. On the one hand, he will say he is the least antisemitic person in the world. I dont know if that is true. If it is as true as the other things he said we rin trouble. They appointed a polarizing ambassador to israel. Somebody who has decided the large majority of the American Jewish community that believes in a twostate solution and peace between jews arabs and jews and muslims are somehow traders to judaism and that is not a good thing for jews, israel or anybody else. It is worrisome. What is equally worrisome is the antisemitic behavior in the country which are racist and kind of attracted to nazism have considered trump to be some kind of avatar of theirs. I dont know if that is completely his fault but he hasnt done enough to discourage them and that is worrying as well. Either one of you want to weigh in . Lets jump over here. I would like to take the press and the whole news place to task for following everything that trump said that was just weird, just nutty, i mean it was like it got blown up and hillary was just a she isnt the most she doesnt say wild things like he did but he didnt have to spend a thing on his campaign because everything time he opened his mouth and said something stupid he got two or three days of round the clock coverage. I just i am hoping and i am wondering if you guys can tell me have you learned your lesson . [applause] no. Maureen should jump in but i would say a lot of people in our business looked at what happened and the coverage of trump and particularly trumps tweets and started to ask themselves whether every tweet has to receive 24 7 coverage. Whether ever tweet or utterance by him merits the kind of attention it was given in the past. You know, he had a great advantage that a lot of us underestimated and that was he was a Television Personality and reached into peoples home for many years on a scripted show that people thought wasnt scripted. It was a show that made him look like a jgenius and hero and it was all rigged. The media cover the tweets since then as each one was an announce. Ment. Some of the tweets are important. You have to write about him when he said president Obama Wiretapped him. It is obviously false. But not everything he says about Arnold Schwarzenegger deserves attention. To some extent they do because they show immaturity and other points that matter. But i agree, there has been excessive attention to every utterance. The press is cable tv and they will watch every tweet. But the press is deep digging by investigative reporters. I think it is incumbent on us to watch. All of you, it doesnt mean you have to respond. That is why i read the New York Times and dont follow the tweets. There are the Washington Post and other papers and you can chose to stick with the wellestablished and intelligent mediators. You dont have to chase, respond, you dont have to have your cable tv on at all times. Just turn it off. Joe, as long as we are talking about the coverage of it campaign. I am curries about the coverage of hillary that you wrote about. I thought the coverage of hillary was sumd up saying remember all the email stuff . Never mind. To me, that suggested there was an ex sesive focus on her emails including by the time and not nearly enough on the issues surrounding donald trump. He didnt learn much about the Trump Foundation until late in the day and the comparison is not flattering to trump. So, you know, i think some of the coverage was wrong headed. A lot of it was driven by our Mainstream Media following the lead of right wing media. Steve bannon was the chairman of a nonprofit, an obsecure nonprofit, that founded the creation of a book called clinton cash which was a highly inaccurate account of the Clinton Foundation that reflected on hillary a lot. It became extremely poplar on the right. But it got a lot of ink on my view undeserved from mainstream sources. The shenanigans of the Trump Administration were neglected in the mean time except by the Washington Post in the end. But the Clinton Foundation had been under attack for more than a year by then. I think there was a problem in the coverage of hillary clinton, yes. It is an appropriate question. I remember malcolmx saying the same thing you said about goldwater versus johnson and liking it straight up. If we oppose trump, what about mike pence . Got a minute left to tackle that one. That was directed to you. Be careful what you wish for. Yeah, i thought tim kaine made a mistake focusing on trump in the debate. When you read pences record it was like the first time i read dick cheneys record. There is crazy stuff in there but he has this nice voice that makes him see more moderate. I agree with you. It has been a tremendous pleasure to be up here with these authors. [applause] [inaudible conversations]