Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20170502

Rose welcome to the program. The tonight, John Dickerson from cbs news talks about his interview with a President Trump, about 100 days in office. And with this president , perhaps like no source i have ever interviewed, you never know where it is going to go or what claim she going to make so you have to prepare for eventualities that really span a wide swath. Rose John Dickerson by the hour, next. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the 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 President Trump marked his first 100 days in office this weekend. This period is historic, in a time in which president use us the momentum of their popularity to set the agenda for the next four years and also a common benchmark for evaluating their performance in office. According to the latest poll, President Trump has the lowest job Approval Rating of any president in history after the first 100 days. He has failed to achieve certain of his Core Campaign promises, including the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care act and the construction of a Mexican Border wall. Today President Trump released a Campaign Advertisement declaring his time in office and the first, in the first 100 days a success. Donald trump, sworn in as president 100 days ago, america has rarely seen such success. A respected Supreme Court justice confirmed, Companies Investing in american jobs again, america becoming more energy independent, regular regulations that kill american jobs he he eliminated, the bigt tax cut plan in history, you wouldnt know it from watching the news. America is winning and President Trump is making America Great again. I am donald trump and i approve this message. Rose the president spoke with cbss chief washington correspondent on face the nation, John Dickerson naah wideranging interview on saturday. Among the topics discussed were healthcare and the President Trumps guarantee that preexisting conditions may be covered in the next bill. So what i hear you saying is preexisting is going to be in there for everybody preexisting is going to be in there and. It is not and it is going to create pools, and pools are going to take care of the crucial question it is not going to be left up to the states a . Everybody gets preexisting no matter no but the states will have a lot to do with it because we ultimately want to get bank account down to the states, look because if you hurt your knee, honestly, i would rather have the federal government focused on north korea, focused on other things than your knee. Okay . Or than your back as important as your back is. I would much rather see the federal government focused on other things. Bigger things. Now, the state is going to be in a much better position to take care, because it is smaller, people out there with preexisting conditions they are worried, are they going to have the guarantee of coverage if they have a preexisting conditions or if they live in a state where a governor decides that is not part of healthcare or the prices are going to go up, thats to the worry my, worry the American Medical Association says that is going to make healthcare unaffordable for people. Forget about unaffordable, that is obamacare. I am not hearing you say, mr. President trump there is not a guarantee of preexisting conditions. We have a clause that guarantees it. Excellent. Rose John Dickerson joins me now, welcome. Charlie, great to be with you. It is a great interview and i as i know you heard from many people. You were clearly prepared for. This yes. With he intent the entire team of face the nation, in a sense we have been doing it to the last two years, a lot of those questions and the same a with you, you carry questions around in your head and always asking them and sometimes yeah, you ask smaller versions who people who arent the president and finally get we have been collecting them in the last week and really wanted to try to sort of get at some core issues and the question was which specific topic was going to get you there and then contradictory in his answer, contradictory within the answer, right, exactly or give you an answer that doesnt seem to be even within the realm of the ones you were expecting so you have to and this is such a challenge as you know, you have to listen to make sure you are getting what is going right and then kind of build on that as you try to build an answer, because sometimes as you say it is fragmentary what he is saying. Rose and most of the times he speak in generalities rather than specifics. So thats one of the things away. Ed to try to do is not play a quiz game that is not interesting or important but how by the likes of his own administration and the light of his own objectives does he talk about policies, so for example, he said about his healthcare act, it has got to help my supporters or i am not going to sign it, well he said that six weeks ago, wha what has he donen the interim to make sure that is the case a . Thats a policy question, what specific things, abc have you done and also a negotiating question, sea great negotiator, he says, so how have you used those skills to advocate for those supporters, the story of this election is he is fighting for the deport, forgotten man, cents of really what rose things like medicare. Well, that is right. And on medicare, in talking to him about that, that is also connected of course to taxes, because in congress, the president s tax plan is going to have a big deficit impact, now he says that can be fix bid growth but the committee for responsible budget said even if you have three percent growth he still creates 5. 5 trillion in new debt over ten years. So congress is not going to be able to pass something with that kind of deficit number so what kind of savings might they get . Well, paul ryan might look to medicare and his premium support plan as he called it, some people call it vouchers, donald trump campaigned against that but we see him as a president change okay an number of fronts, will he change on this . When i asked him about that the key idea was to get a new benchmark, i think you quantity to get new benchmarks with this president because he is changing and sifting so you want to find out, okay, he said he wont touch medicare today, that is different than when he said it, you know, six months ago or so, so that is his position now, that is really interesting because if he walls that off from possible savings, then it is going to be awfully hard for congress to do all of the things he wants and keep the budget anywhere close to on track. Rose and back to this special, discussion you were having in terms of preexisting condition, scwhrat the final sort of in your understanding of where he is . I am not quite sure. The original question was, how have you changed the bill in order to help your supporters, and thats really about the subsidies they would get under obamacare, those go away, older voters you can charge more for though older voters than under obamacare, those are some things that needed to be fixed, he said the fix was preexisting conditions, which is not really the case. So but then there is, there are some changes that they are trying to make to preexisting conditions in part of the negotiations with the conservative freedom caucus, because they think that the mandates that are part of obamacare basically drive up prices, so they have been asking for more flexibility at the state level, and included in some of the things that governors can be more flexible about is the rules for preexisting conditions. Now there is a lot of debate about whether the suggestions they have made about how to reform preexisting condition coverage end up actually removing that guarantee. And o i was trying to find out understands he went down that road, and frankly i wasnt expecting him to, and in answer to the question about his supporters, once he went down that road i was trying to say are you saying that no matter what people can be assured no matter what state they live in they are finding to have coverage for their preexisting condition and it is not going to be so expensive that, yes, you have access to it, but it costs what a rolls royce would and therefore it is effectively not there, and it took a little while to get ar und the mulberry bush on that one. Rose what do you think it ended up . I think it ended up, it seems he said there is a guarantee tea for the coverage of preexisting kpts, but what still was. Clear is, you can guarantee it but can you guarantee it in a way that is, that the price isnt through the roof, and therefore the guarantee doesnt mean anything and i am not quite sure we ended up getting exactly there. Rose what else did you want to see conning out of the healthcare . Was it where you thought you needed clarification . And a new benchmark . I wanted to find out how involved he had been, his argument is he is the one in there fighting for the forgotten man, and so what does that look like in practice . I understand what it looks like on the rally stump and we went with him to harrisburg on saturday night and it was asterisk as it has ever been with donald trump and his connection with his voters,. Rose electric as it has ever been. Oh, my gosh yes, it was like the campaign and what is of course different he wasnt relying on beating up his opponent, which he did often. Now, he was relying on beating up on the press and the variety of other things so he still uses that tactic but without the energy of the campaign, does he still have the connection to his people. Rose and he does. He absolutely does. You suggest to me whenever we talk it is almost like they just wanted to touch him. Oh, absolutely, i mean, it was amazing when he was in this plant that workers who were there who were his fans and who had been corraled, corraled into a special area because they were, that they just wanted to touch him and felt you could just, and in talking to them, you know, they just love he is in there fighting for them. Rose and you corrected me this morning as well, when we talk about this a little bit, it is not about leadership, it is about what . It is about understanding them, and where they come from. Rose that he is listening to them and will take their case. Exactly, will take their case to fight against washington so when he is bedeviled by the press or congress or the courts, they see that as simply, you know, him in this titanic struggle against all of those stupid forces of elites who dont understand them, at a cultural level and who have created policies that picture them, and they just see him in there as their champion, you know, in the middle of the ring and so the bloodier, the more bloodied and scuffed up he is is more proof of his, how strong his night is for them. Rose jumping all over here as my curiosity takes me but it is clear he already is thinking about 2020. Yes, i mean he is absolutely thinking about twenty20 thats part of what he talks about how big his victory was in the last election, i think he wants to keep reasserting that because it gives him leverage over politicians but i think they also. Is absolutely thinking about the next sort of judgment, real judgment, i in an election and he will have to mess with 2018, get in the way, but really the next ratification comes four years from now. Rose 18, 2018 could be a terrible, by election for republics. Bye election for republicans. Nd of fibrillation wes havethes seen from republicans saying things like joanie earns saying you shouldnt go to marla go so often and some saying he should release his tax returns and thinking it is okay to take, keep a distance from the president because it affects the base. You see what the republicans are acting on is a political dynamic that could suggest trouble for republicans but such a good landscape for republicans in 2018, ten vulnerable democrats in states trump won th the playg field is really tilted against the democrats. Rose you the can tell how much he likes to go to marla go because he said Prime Minister of japan wanted to come there, he likes to play golf but also he has said that the president of china wanted to come there. Right. Rose rather than washington to have their conversations. Well, it has always been with president s and they like to go to crawford when george w. Bush took them there as well and it is a sign and we see when american president s go visit heads of stays at their villas, relationship symbolically that is closer, more intimate and all the rest, but of course the trick with marla go is not just his house but as club that upped its entrance fee by a good amount so he runs into all of those conflict of interest issues where clearly as a marketer and he knows this the havvalue of the property and the membership of the club every time he goes visit it because it is associated with him and while he may not have broad public support, his supporters are quite. Supportive and therefore they really would love to be a member of a club or go to a place that is associated with him, because of the way they see him in their, you know, their support for him. Rose everybody talked talks about changes in his positions, more so than he does, and that the presidency has changed him, but also he changed the presidency. It is clear he changed the presidency because we have never seen anybody act like he does. Right. Rose clearly it changed him because he changed his position based on i assume advice from the people he respects within his own administration. I think that is right. And also tradeoffs in terms of what he now, once he cops into the full grasp or a fuller grasp of the issues and the tradeoffs in those issues, it becomes quite clear for him, so on china, he says well of course we are not going to declare china a currency manipulator, because they are helping us out with north korea, i am not going to anything to china that is going to slow them down in helping us and said go easy on trade or be less tough on trade because we want them to help us with north korea and at the end of the day that is more important than trade. Rights. And he says the easiest thing in the world, come on, just be real lierveg when people would raise the exact issues during the campaign, he was not going to entertain that, it was full speed ahead on china, raping the United States, and china is horrible in these ten different ways. So he is coming either to the realization or he was being coy in the first place and by the way there is an american tradition of beating up on the chinese in the campaign and bill clinton did it, certainly, but is one of the Great Questions of President Trump is, were his first bombastic statements on nato, on china, on and a half tax were they an opening gambit in a negotiation in which you make an outrageous claim with the full well knowledge knowing you are going to need to back down and you give them something you always knew you would give away anyway or make the bombastic claim out of ignorance and learns more as he comes in touch with tissues and changes his mind so that is the great question to ask about any of these switches of mind. Rose one of the interesting things about hip, as you actually point nowtd this interview and we will see a dramatic moment that reflects that is that, you know, in the beginning, and during the campaign, he seemed to be, you know, on chinas case and friendly and open to possibilities with russia. And saying nothing really negative to putin, or about putin, he is now flipped that over, he is now speaks often of his friendship with xi jinping and has not yet be gown criticize russia but a lot of the people around him have be gown criticize russia. Absolutely. I mean, particularly in a room , of course this is the mulled of, muddle of russia, syria launches . Weapons attack and secretary of state is tough on russia, russia allowed this to happen, mainly not fully cognitive through be they had the syria behave yourself brief and they had to have known about it and then, you know, i mean, russia is doing other things as well, supplying according to the u. S. Commanders supplying weapons to taliban in afghanistan, and pressing on the United States in other ways and the president is still maintaining that favor russia posture but the u. N. Ambassador, secretary of state and even his secretary of defense have said much tougher things and i think it is president support of nato is a kind of a bank shot, i mean, in other words russia doesnt like having a strong nato, and so the extent that the president has changed his mind on nato that is perhaps the hardest or the harshest thing he said about russia is just his support for nato because of the relationship between the two. Rose after all that has been said and done, he refuses to say russia was solely responsible for hacking and trying to influence the american election. It is in that case, what is it . Is it somewhat this curious favoritism he has for Vladimir Putin that is a curiosity that still is kind of unplumbed, or is it the fact that you accept for a moment that the russians were trying to hack into the election, it puts a cloud over his victory . But now her is what i think the answer is, which is that if any hacking in the election puts a cloud over his victory then it doesnt matter whether it was the Russian Organization the chinese or, you know, the hungarians they are not named but i am picking well he said it could be china, so in that case, it does seem to be the special protection for russia. And that is still a curiosity. Rose it goes against the grain of every intelligence source in the United States as far as i though. The intelligence sources, the fbi, the republican chairman of the two investigative committees in the house and senate, so, yes, everybody and this is just the simple question of whether the russians tried to mid until the election, not the question of collusion. Rose and you get to the question of collusion which he always denied. Oh for sure. Rose for sure and i comes up in this clip i want our audience to see, in which he still seems now to live with the idea that he is not prepared to change what he has said about whether president obama was trying to wiretap him at trump tower. Here it is. If you saw what happened with surveillance. How is that . Well, you saw what happened with surveillance. And i think that was inappropriate. What does that mean . You can figure that out yourself. Well, the reason i ask is you called him sick and bad. Look, you can figure it out yourself, he was very nice to me with words, but and when i was with him, but after that, there has been no relationship. You stand by that claim about him. I dont stand by anything, you can take it the way you want. I think our side has been proven very strongly and everybody is talking about it and frankly, it should be discussed. I think that is a very big surveillance possess our citizens. I think it is a very big topic and it is a topic that should be number one and we should find out what the hell is going on. I just want to find out, though, you are the president of the United States, you said he was sick and bad because he you can take it anyway you want. But i am asking you, because you dont want it to be fake news i want to hear it from President Trump. You dont have to ask me. Why not . Because i have my own opinions and you can have your own opinions. I want to know your opinions you are the president of the United States. Thats enough. Thank you thank you very much. Tell me what you were thinking. What are were you feeling . Did you feel the temperature rising . No not particularly, we were in the oval office and talking about the weight of the job, what better room to do it in than the oval office and talk talked about the weight of so the job, and what it is like to take orders that might kill people and then kill people who are innocent and so i said who do you he calls around, he likes to seek opinion, and so f decisions i asked if he spoke with presiden president obama ae said, no, and then basically suggested rose h he did say in the beginning, but we stopped. S sick and bad and comparedo, him to nixon, now there is no you know, the fbi director said the president s claim that president Obama Wiretapped trump tower, that there is no evidence for that. Also, the idea that the president himself was the one who is responsible for this is also legally impossible, and there is no evidence for that. And yet the president despite what the fbi director has said and what the heads of both the house and Senate Committees have said and the form never National Intelligence have said, he nevertheless maintains this idea that presiden president obama iy responsible and therefore he is essentially cutting himself off from probably not a bad source in terms of guidance on the complexities of the world. Rose thats exactly what he talked about was positive, when the two were talking. Right. Exactly. Rose is,. Rose i am listening to him and all of that. And it is hard, then, at this point to figure out whether that, whether he is offended by what he thinks he believes, he is offended whether he is in a box because he made this assertion and now he cant back down from it, but i think it is also possible that a president who had john mccain and Lindsey Graham to dinner a week ago monday, is a guy who can be adamantly against somebody one minute and then by breakfast be having them over by breakfast and thats one of his qualities. Rose what happened in this case, as you have said, he, what did he do, he simply said the interview is over. He said that is enough he went over to his desk and left me there stranded in the corner of the desk. I was yeah. Rose and nothing was exchanged after that . There were no communications . No rose he didnt come over and say, you know, you have to leave, the president finished this interview shnchts no, but if there had been a neon arrow to the door, there was no more questioning about this, and yes, it was a great sense of finality. Rose that was part of the original understanding you flew out to indiana, was it . No, harrisburg, pennsylvania. Rose pennsylvania, right. And then we had several more conversations, and ended up having dinner that night. So on the plane on the way back. Rose did you make reference to it . He said ineffective he was ie expressed his displeasure again with it but that wassed not the purpose it came up in conversation and he reminded me that he didnt like it. Rose so why didnt he like it is my question . Well,. Rose is it because of what he thinks the president obama did . Erroneously thinks according to the Intelligence Committee . I dont know, i dont know whether because i was really just trying to find out what he was saying. I mean this is a serious charge. Rose yes. And also what exactly what is the charge . Because he may not, made not just a charge that president obama tapped him as he said in the teat but that his character, he was a bad and sick man. Okay. So this is a character claim, and it is also a claim of testified, what do you know about this thing that happened and what exactly are you saying happened . And also by the way you think about it so seriously that you now have cut yourself off from this person you once said was so helpful and by the way, who could be helpful on things like north korea and other areas where it was, you know, this is a developing situation, so you kind of sometimes you can imagine president s wanting i have done this in the past to kind of check in with their predecessor to kind of see what the nature of the landscape was like. Rose do we know in wha whatn what way he is trying to connect susan rices own admission as a National Security advisor she did what she is able to do and legally can do which is ask for the unmasking of some at that tapes that took place between someone that they legitimately was following and who talked to American People would have a reason to find out more . So the president made the unsubstantiated claim she did something criminal. Rose what would that a be . He didnt say, so the speculation could be that she unmasked, which was within her rights, but then the question is did she unmask too much . In other words, she was unmasking more than the situation would allow. Rose on some kind of hunt. Precisely and once she unmasked did she pass that along . Did she leak it to somebody . Did it get did it get into public quash the public water in some way. Which she denied a variety of different ways, and there has been one nbc report that the house and intelligence, that in the intelligence communities in the house and senate that are on both sides there have been people have said there is no evidence that she did anything wrong. That is one report and, you, you know, it is a like a lot of this there is a lot of anonymous this and that going around, but President Trump made this claim and nobody else brought up any evidence either about whether she unmasked once or once having unmasked she spread it around in any possible way. Rose what is amazing to me, too, about this interview, it was what 20 minutes . A little over 20 minutes in the. Rose 20 minutes in interview i thought this was an hour interview. You know, as you know it felt like about four minutes to me, because the sheath of questions was longer. Rose a lot of questions got in. He would talk over you, repeatedly talk over you because there was a kind of edge to the way he responded. There was. I have liked that edge, because one of the things he understands that good politicians understand is that they look better if they are engaged directly with the question. Now, a lot of times he was running around, but like a good giveandtake is, you know, you can cover a lot of ground, and so it is a kind of giveandtake in an interview 19 times during the campaign, and so i we have had those kind of exchanges, and but this was a little bit he was on he was he was a little faster than he had been in the previous ones in terms of interjecting, and so but they were, yes, it was at types spirited exchange, just really sometimes to get to nail down exactly what the terms of the conversation were at some times. Sit your impresentation he loves the job . It is a good question. You know, i think he does when he was in the plant, and when he is in the rally, he loves it. I mean, he loves it. Rose he loves the campaign . He loves the campaigning part and he loves the idea of being reconnected with the people for whom he is fighting. I dont think he likes being nibbled by 1,000 ducks in washington, part of it and that includes us and congress and the judiciary. And all of the people like that. And thats why he has some affections maybe is the wrong word but alsisi and even putin, i think he can find some appreciation for their a ability, to move to a result without the obstacles of a democratic ins institution front of them. Rose not many checks and balances on those leaders, like erdogan. And this is what all president s come into, and i have been reading recently about, portions of, when i was reading about kennedy recently in ted sorensons book, and, ann schlesinger, story, schlessinger about the bureaucratic state and how kennedy had all of these days and the bureaucratic state kept getting in his way and kept thwarting him and just a slog dwi washington bog, and thats exactly what steve bannon would describe it as. Or President Trump would as well. Rose and talks about the administrative things. When he talks about the administrative state. So you leave aside what the objectives were of the two president s but the washington, these lilliputians in washington throwing ropes over your kneecaps to make any kind of progress, that is a very familiar phenomenon, and then of course that is where president s start to go wrong, because they start to try to get around those prohibitions and that is where they start, you know, running afoul of the law. Rose or the executive orders in which they go to the point of crossing of a thats right, or they do that or they put too much pressure on a senator, you know, it is funny, and everybody has a different breaking point but there was one there was once a tradition in washington where sometimes senators woul would be as being lobbied by the white house, agnew got in a bunch of trouble when he put pressure on must be senators, and if you call me i cant remember the senators name but he said if you, Vice President , if you ever call me again i am going to vote in the opposite direction of the way you want even if i dont believe that, so now there are obviously many, many Lyndon Johnson was on the phone to Richard Russell all the times so not a tradition it is a tradition often prone but the idea sometimes that, you know, you can press too hard and then break a relationship is not illegal, but it makes it hard to get anything done. Rose he clearly has changed though, i mean it seems to me he changed position but he is clearly changed, i mean it seems to me that he is to me, you cant reach out as much as he does, to ask people what they think about what he is doing, to talk about what he is doing, and i think he lacks that aspect of it, i mean he is the go to guy in terms of whoever you are, and if he wants to see you most people go. Yes. Rose or they talk to him on the phone, he seeps to have this place where which is a virtue of the office, that he can reach out for the opinions of everybody, he can reach out to talk to anybody, he can solicit everybody and that he is doing that, he did that during the transition, i dont know if he did that during the campaign, maybe he didnt have time for it but it has to have some cumulative impact on you, i would think. I would think. So then the question is, is that what he is doing . Is he taking i mean he is new at this in all different kind of ways so h this is he building an understanding of the world on all of these interviews or looking for a fixer, saying is he shopping in a 1,000 different opinions to say yes here is what you do, you two to the toadstool and you turn left and turn right and you will find the golden key to get your legislation passed. Rose so he is looking for a Silver Bullet . He is looking for a Silver Bullet. Rose to show him where it is. Or doing it no new york permitting terms, new york office says two months but if you know a guy who knows a day you can getting the permitting in a week or day, you know, and these people do exist, you know, if you can get your passport, you can get it renewed very quickly if you pay a guy, you know, and so instead of having to wait for six months or something, but i wonder if that is in part what he is looking for, which is like this cant possibly take this long and be this complicated, surely there is a smarter way, and that is in part what his success in business was built an, i mean his knowing how the world really works, not the, you know, and this is you know plenty of people who are like this, who are sort of like, you know, the people who, when i was growing up that used to be referred to, they never pay retail, they know a guy who can get you a thing, and i wonder if there is not some of that and in washington, you know, you are always kind of looking for that except it doesnt really ther there ara lot of people with can help you get there in that way. Rose he seems to be guided, it seems to me even after 100 ideas, the idea of everybody everything is about winning. Yes. And the enormous sense of how does it look . The sense of vanity . And the sense of optics. Well, that is right, main from the campaign, but also from his life, i mean when you talk to those assess his career in business, it is really as a marketer. And so as a developer, but then as a person who really thought about putting the name on the building and turning that into a at a lot of these executivesning orders are about ashes lot of them are orders to his administration to study a thing, or, you know, as far as practicable use u. S. Steel it doesnt say you must use u. S. Steel so if you read the actual executive orders a lot are less than delivered. Like obama used to sign they are acts of marketing as well, they show i am on the case and they extend a message to your administration, hey, the boss wants this, it shows the people at the other end of the gauche negotiation you care about it. So it is not without it is not without import but it is also not it also has a big some bic legal, symbolic value as well, that is true with the legislation he signed also, why do we get into the question of what legislation he signed, we want to know if he can negotiate in washington as well as he negotiated in the real world, a lot of legislation he doesnt have to negotiate for, a lot is because of the Congressional Review Act that allows basically congress to remove regulations that were passed in the ending days of the obama administration. No negotiation necessary because there are special rules under the Congressional Review Act that make passing that legislation easy. So we still dont have a sense of his real negotiating skill in the legislative arena. Rose is he the most compelling, for better or worse, political figure you have seen in a long type . What word would you use to describe dot donald trump as a politician . Why is it he, during the campaign, if you wanted to guarantee you have good ratings you put him on . Right. Well when he wasnt there it was different, thats why he got early success. The people who love him, love to watch him, i mean i have members of my family, one who is who is probably to the right of donald trump, and one who is the left of, to the left of Eugene Mccarthy maybe, i am being you get the point. And i love them both, and one loves him to watch see him, yes, cheer him on, sees him it is a final solution to a country that this person loves and sees going in the wrong direction, and the other looks at him and sees just the opposite, that in that he is taking the country in the wrong direction and they both a watch to see for those Different Reasons but find hip compelling for, both find him compelling so i think that is those who love to love him love to watch him and those who love to hate him, love to yell at him while she on tv. Rose do you think he has a problem with truth . Yes. I think he has a problem in the following way. I think if he were to be judged by the same standard, for example, that he cruzs with the press,. Rose right. Which is to say if a piece is written that he doesnt think has accurate evidence he says it ings he said that have beenes evidence free, then he would be hung by his own claims, and he said things that just factually incorrect about the rate, the crime rate in the United States, in philadelphia, obviously he claimed that rose or he will Say Something like somebody told me that. Well, right. And that is a dodge, of course, but the idea that ted cruzs father was part of the Jfk Assassination and he said well that was in the national enquirer. Rose thats the point i read that somewhere or somebody told me. Right so the question is what is the standard, you are the president of the United States, is there any standard and shouldnt you stay above that standard . And thats the question. But i think he also believes in and has found success, and he writes about in this in the art of the deal, the kind of hyperbole that is necessary to get things done. And so he is willing to use hyperbole to try to get to the end. Rose exactly and doing so doesnt always match up with the truth. Rose two last questions. One, what did you what did you not get to that you really wanted to talk to him about a . Some of it i may save for the next time, although there may not ever no, there may not ever be one, i would like to talk to him about that question. He talks about the fake news a lot, and what is it that is fake about it . And why . And if that is and what are the the question is, he is a norm breaking president , he is changing the standards of the office. Rose changed the presidency. He changed the presidency, so what rapes and why does it remain . What are the values that retain the structure of the presidency as he wants to reshape it . Why is that important . Because he is not going to be president some day. And there is a reason we have all of these structures in washington, either the presidency or the shared power system, it is so that chaos, which is supposed to be the part of the american system, there is supposed to be fighting and chaos and we build structures so it didnt spill over and everybody would be shooting each other in the street so when you start pulling out the girders that hold up that system, what is left . And does that leave a hole open and why are you leaving a hole open, and if you are not going to leave the hole open, what are you goin going to fill it in . A values, or tactics or winning for winnings sake so all of that interesting to find out, what is the thing when everything goes haywire to rely, on what is is the set of beliefs he has that give him shape and purpose . Is it only to get to a winning result . If that is the case that is pretty unpredictable, you know, so what is that guiding set of principles. Rose . Rose what you said was in answer to any question, what did you not have time to talk about the other is, what did you most want to know about this president . Well, that is i actually really want to know if he really likes the job, because i dont i think rose why is, what why does that interest you . It doesnt interest me at all. Because i believe he does. Yes. I think he likes the job, parts of it. I think the key in all of our lives there are things that we we just dont want to do them and fortunately we have people in our lives who say you have to do that, either, a, because guess what you have to do it, you this or that, it is your role and second thing is you have to do this because when you get through it you will be glad you have done it. And a so there are parts of the presidency that are like that, and it is a sweater and you voluntary the put it on and have to go do it, and a, does he have anybody around saying you have to go do it and b that can wear on you after a while, the presidency, one minute you are making a decision you love and like and the next minute you yoe having to pardon a turkey and the next minute after that you ice, and i think a small price he may not like it, bloomberg didnt like campaigning in the beginning but he learned to love it. Is he learning to love the parts of the job he hates now . Rose for example, he would start off not liking parades and ended up liking parades. I think there is a coupe latif weight of the stuff you continue like, if it gets too heavy then every day is a slog and there is an cumulative i mean bad decisions come to the president , thats the name of the job. Rose i will ask you this question, i mean what politician do you know that loves attention more than donald trump . I dont think any, i think even negative attention he doesnt mind. I think he likes negative attention too. Rose i rest my case. I rest my case. This place, this job, this oval office has given him more attention than he could ever have dreamed of. So you are saying, he doesnt like it . Thats what what i dont under. Thats why he doesnt understand either when people say the other job is tougher. He gets caught you have in that stuff, whether he thinks it is tougher or not, i believe he thinks it is tougher because the stakes are higher, because it is a different dimension, and because, you know, it is more than about money. Rose . Yes. I mean it is a fair case to make. I think that if that is the good part of the job, there is other stuff that is not the food part, and how much does the adulation and attention balance it out. I mean, there are other parts of the job where he is not getting any attention, you are stuck in the routine of the job, and that can weigh on people more than others. And i am not saying this is the case with him, i am just saying i wap to know that. Of the part what is the accretion of the bad parts . Or maybe he doesnt, he just doesnt like them and there is no act cruisings accretion, those are the bad parts i will spend my time doing the good parts. Rose my sense i dont know this, the answer t to this and i know him reasonably well. What does he really care about . I mean, he is not a reader, he watches a lot of television, he loves conversation. He loves conversation. He likes strong people in his judgment, he likes beautiful things. So i think he wants you couldnt imagine you could imagine him wanting it to be said of him that he made America Great again by the definition of america as he sees it, which is working people are, you know which is everybody in those rallies will not just love him for what he says he is going to do but will say he did it. He had done it. He was able to rose so contrast that to barack obama. And what he wanted. And how much he you know what what . Yes, yes. Obama is admiring of bush 41 because he thought he saw and took the country ahead of his own ambition even. Also that he was a man of great honor and a man of great integrity and someone who always put the country first. Right. Rose now, you can argue that about a lot of people, but that was who he was. I mean and i think that probably reflected how obama felt about the himself. Yes. Well, it is interesting where you would find the president obama obviously from the beginning of his presidency to the end, because there is that great line i think he said it to David Remnick about, you know, you want to just you dont get to write whole chapters of history, you get to write about a paragraph and you want to make sure you get your paragraph right. Rose and dont screw it up. So more than once he said, dont screw it up. Everybody. Right. So if you recognize, if you recognize the limitations of the presidency, that it is not an action hero presidency, that the congress has a role to play, and that the Foreign Policy interrupt it is things you are trying to do and the judiciary has its role, that you cant do these grand things and so within the limited scope you have, you set things up to make life better for those people that you remember from your days as a community organizer, that is Barack Obamas sort of Touchstone Group you can imagine and i am out of my depth a little bit here but you can imagine having in his mind those people who were struggling and he wanted to help in the same way donald trump has the about the people that come to his rally and you want to do better by them and that is setting up an economy that is a doing better than the one you inherited and i think on Foreign Policy, well ann we cant revisit the entire obama legacy, but i think if you believe what he told Jeffrey Goldberg about not not making mistakes in Foreign Policy, the action you dont take, in that case, search syria is as smart as the actions you do take, then i think it goes back to your point about not doing stupid stuff. Rose that is an interesting thing about saying we often do not say to ourselves about decision making, you know, and people who oppose obama make this point. Sure. Rose , you know, he did not weigh the act of not acting. I mean, the decision not to act. That has consequences. Sure. Rose he didnt seem to weigh that as much as he the did although in the case of the syria and the red line, he says not acting was itself a great decision, that he didnt give in to the Foreign Policy blob that said you have to act and stay in the grooves of the Foreign Policy consensus and to remove and to get out of those ruts hurts american credibility across the world he said i am not going to buy into that world view and breaking that, deciding not to buy into the world view at least as he articulated it to goldberg was itself a success for him. So in that case, he did understand the weight of not acting now. Maybe the critics would say that is his spin on not acting but there were consequences to not acting that are longer lasting, certainly lots of people rose well, critics will say too, that what expressed that on the other side, the flip side of that if in fact you draw a red line, you know, and you dont act, there are consequences for that. There are huge consequences for that. Yes. And the secretary of defense mattis tells a story about hearing from people when the red line was not crossed in terms of,now, i guess america is not on the field anymore. In other words, not just about the region of syria but it having global ramifications. That was ramification of a red line the red line of the decision not to actor not to back up the language. Now, the thing of it is, when the President Trump told, said in our interview that, you know, if the North Koreans test he would not be very happy, i mean, he didnt specifically say, military use and i asked him specifically and he said we will see. This was a small missile, this was not a bigamies sill, this was not a nuclear test, which he was expected do three days ago. We will see what happens. You say not happy, what does that mean . I would not be happy if he does a nuclear testily not be happy. And i can tell you also, i dont believe that the president of china who is a very respected man, will be happy either. Not happy mean military action . I dont know, i mean we will see. You know, red lane drawn in a ways other than being perfectly explicit and if that is one of the dangers of a presidency that is so oriented towards action, we all expect action from our president s, and that is one of the Great Questions about the presidency is there are lots of times that great leaders have chosen not to act and that was the smarter thing to do so when you set up yourself for conditions where you have to act if certain things happen you take away part of your power as president. Of course well, we can go on. Rose no, no, i with a top go on a minute too, i dont want to hold i dont you up, just a minute or two. The other thing that intrigues me about him and i asked him this question when i run into him, what is it about you and your story that you dont think is getting out . And his answer to me, i will tell you that when i do an interview with you, is nothing. He didnt tell me. But i mean, did the idea of what it is he thinks we dont me about him, we dont understand about him . I think it is he just doesnt get enough credit for the things he has done, not that there is mystery but we are not noticing the pile of gold he has accumulated but just noticing these other things. Rose and what should we be saying about him at 100 days is. What you would say on his terms. Rose other than some legislative success. Well, i dont think i mean, the problem for him by counting the 29 bills that he signed is like saying, i have got a 29 story building, but there arent floors in the first 5 of the building, all 29 pieces you dont do legislative by value. But he didnt have ho much i think. Rose tax reform is a huge piece. Thats right, Neil Gorsuchs nomination and confirm ma nation was a big deal, because he managed that, it was a smart part of his president ial campaign to tell conservatives, look here is my list of people i would put on the court, and they were very skeptical he would do the right thing, this is a person who changed his mine a lot on key issues like abortion, on what party he blongd belongs to, he is a movable object and therefore when you put that list out and said i will name somebody from this list that helped him electorally, some people i talked to voted for him only because of the Supreme Court. Picked someone good, get it there 2 senate, of course Mitch Mcconnell helped him by changing the rules of the senate but that is win in both the way it was managed and done, i think it is head of a hot of these agencies, at both the department of just but it is food an food and drug administration, the epa, the ftc, they are taking directions that are very, very much different than the obama administration, and those are fund me changes in the way those industries operate and if you, for example, just the one thing, if it is the fda starts changine the way in which they evaluate new drugs is a big deal and so there are those kind of changes that are happening based on the personnel he has put in place and way behind even naming the people to be in a lot of these agencies which creates these conditions where you have the kind of ghost agencies in part because he hasnt put the names in the pipeline but the people he has named are changing things in a way that is, a i think going largely unnoticed and b is going to make a real change in things that really affect tell and that is another big thing he has accomplished, even though he may not even cite that that as the things he has accomplished, it is quite, you know, when reason magazine can give him credit for being a real deregulating president because of the people he has named, that is a surprise, the reason it was, not a big fan when he was a candidate. That is a long standing rose taking down epa, he made some Real Progress in that. He has, i mean look at the people, he named basically people who were opponents of the administration of the agencies that they now head, so you have got a Key Educational choice advocate at the head of the education department, the epa is headed by somebody who sued the epa, you have the texas oil guy head of the Energy Department. Leaving aside that energy does more than just Actual Energy there is a big nuclear piece, but that is those kind of things. Rose the head of the Energy Department you said energy guy i meant the oil guy. But, you know, so those are big changes that matter and then i think tonally there is the message i talked about, the message he is sending to those people who feel the government was letting them down, there was no voice for them, they dont see it in the media and the culture, and they see it in him. Rose what is it most people fear about donald trump . That he is erratic and impulsive and lead to irrevocable mistake on the one hand, or, b, these changes that are being made in these agencies will be will end up harping people who dont have the means to fight back and so that but i think probably that first one, there will be a an irrevocable act of impulse. Rose if he does everything he wants to do that brings him, you know, huge change to america and depending on how you see what he wants to do, you either like it or dont like it, but he has he wants to be bold. Oh, that is for sure. Absolutely. I mean, and and i think bold going back to what you were saying in terms of what he wants, he is not i mean, he puts his name on buildings in huge gold letters, i mean, i think that is the the presidency cannot end with a tiny little footnote trump, i think he wants to see it in big gold letters. He ran his presidency on fundamentally reshaping the entire American Experience but he has a big he has a big goal here. The make America Great again is not, you know, hey lets see if this sunday we can have a picnic, it is not a small goal. Rose is this the best time to be a journalist . Hmm. It is a great time in the sense that opponents and supporters and those who are area i are of President Trump and those in the press are being forced by the disruption to reevaluate why it is what, they believe what they believe and what is it the bedrock value in terms of massive change that you hold on to. Do you change your standards . Do you keep your standards . This is not a great time to be a reporter . This is the plus column. The minus column is that it feels like people in both parties, but also then in the public arc are in a move to motive question, the sense we are in this all together as americans is harder to find, except on greeting cards. Social media exacerbates that, it elevates the hottest voices. And then it allows misunderstandings to happen. Everybody can saddle off into their own self soothing news outlets that just reaffirm what they believe which is a a set of facts which may not be straight and b that the person on the other side is not just wrong but they are evil. That leads to a vinegary, acidic awfulness in the public conversation, and that makes it very hard, if you believe this trying t to maintain a certain t of standards and reasoning to a conclusion, and then you bring forward your little reasoned Conclusion Even if it is preliminary and just gets doused with this acidity that is not so great, so but back to finally close ending this, i have taken you much longer than you wanted to come here. It is my great joy to be with you, charlie. Rose i have asked this of president s. Are there skills you wish you had, books you wish you had read, academic courses that you wish you had taken, maybe shakespeare, that would enable you do your job better . You know what i mean . I do, i do. I wish it is a great that is one i am going to sale because it is a, sale because it is a, steal, because to understand your own weaknesses is crucial in any job, whether it is rose and it is an interesting question for donald trump, does he understand his weaknesses. Right, thats what i asked you about in terms of no, who do you put in the hole a that a is your blind spot . There are a range of things that can tell you and that is really an essential question about him. Yes. Rose does he understand his weaknesses . Right, right. So. Rose go ahead. Well, one, one great advantage i have had and a huge weakness is i was born in washington, i mean, now, i have worked very hard and have had the blessing of marrying somebody who was not born in washington and spent a lot of time where she she is from and connected with her family and other parts of my family that is not in washington, and then spent my whole political career trying to get the heck out of washington and spent a lot of time on the campaign trail talking to people, trying to live that life, collecting names of people i am in touch with back here, but the cocooning nature of washington is and the benefits of living here are a constant thing you have to keep pushing against, so that is one thing. Intellectually, i wish i dont know. I had that sort of classic liberal Arts Education. Rose the classic liberal Arts Education . Rights. And i think although in signs of business, i have covered them, but i wish i knew a little bit more about them than as much as i knew about literature and politics. Rose i have a sense about you, john, there is a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, you know, that in 2000 2017, it is a little bit like, and i dont want to overdo this, when churchill walked into 10 downing as you know because you are a man of history, everything i have ever done has helped has prepared me for this moment. Thats chat churchill said when he went down to downing, in 39, 40, and there are times in which you see someone there in their element, it seems to me those things have come together. Thats why i have taken at least an hour of your time. So thank you. Well, i am always beat for, better for being in your company, thank you, charlie. Rose John Dickerson, cbs news, political director there, and for all of us, the great moderator of face the nation. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and early episodes visit us online as pbs. Org and captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs