Live on cspan. Listen live on the cspan radio app and available ondemand on your desktop, phone or tablet at cspan. Org. This week on q and a, katrina merry, the for correspondent for irelands broadcaster host what was the origin of your book in america . Guest ive been a correspondent for the National Public broadcaster of ireland, r t e, ive seen and witnessed amazing things. Ireland, we have a great affinity to america and what goes on here. People always want to hear about whats behind the correspondent s life experience. I had not intended to do that until id finished my time here but given what happened in last years president ial election, there was massive interest. The irishamerican community here and at home in ireland what had happened here. Publisheroached by a to write the kind of behind the scenes but a bit of an explainer type guide as to what was unique about the 2016 Election Campaign , whats going on in america right now that led the campaign to be what it was and to help people understand its not all black and white, politics are not red and blue. Host how Many Americans living in the United States have irish roots . Guest estimated between 30 million and 40 million irishamericans. A massive number. I huge irish diaspora around the world. Hard to find a family and ireland that does not have a cousin,nt, great uncle, that has moved to this country and never come back to ireland. Greatically it was to our famine and looking for employment and when things were not great on the island, they came over here. Host close to 5 Million People in the republic of ireland. 26 counties. What is the difference youve noticed between living in ireland, being an irishman, and the United States . Wow. they are just two totally different countries. Primarily starting from the point of view of scale. Im a proud irish person, but it is a small country. Very sparsely populated. We dont have the scale there would be here in the u. S. In terms of Employment Opportunities for people are just diversity either. In terms of climate in this country you can have one part of the country bathing and sunshine and others buried under feet of snow. We would not have that in ireland either. I suppose the people are similar and that does come from the fact that so many have irish heritage. I found americans to be welcoming and friendly and polite. Very well mannered. Particularly here in washington, d. C. I arrive not knowing anyone and i was wrapped into the Irish Community but also the general american community. If we were to go into all the differences we would be here all day. Host you say in your book there are some 44 Million Immigrants in the United States, making it the largest immigrant country in the world. Would we see a lot of diversity in ireland . Guest in recent times, yes. When we were booming at that point we had a lot of immigrants coming to ireland from other countries, mostly from africa and eastern europe. Many have made ireland their home and stayed. We went through a recession. Many would have gone back to where there were from our a third country because our employment options were not there. Things are improving in ireland and our economy is back in a healthy position. We would have a narrow history with immigration. Weve traditionally been a nation of immigrants. We are only now seeing the cycling through of that where you have people who are born in ireland but parents of somewhere else. Host can you explain this to americans . The Prime Minister in ireland is a gay man. Given the nature of the Catholic Church and their attitude in some cases toward homosexuals, how did that happen . What impact has it had . Guest firstly i think maybe the view people have of ireland in america particularly in some parts of the irishamerican community would be more conservative than the ireland im from actually is. We were the first country in the world to approve samesex marriage by a vote of the people by referendum. That shows you something. I think the fact that he is a gay man is irrelevant. He was elected through a system through his own party, kind of not by the people. People would have elected him based on an individual. What they viewed his policies to be. It made headlines. It was in many of the newspapers , a gay man, one of his parents is an immigrant. His father is from india. Ireland,n a modern that is kind of irrelevant. Hes just an irishman who happened to make his way up to the top of this political party. Host who did you write this book for . Guest this book was written for a western european audience who traditionally would probably aligned with the democratic party. Many would of been hillary supporters and really struggle to understand how someone like trump, not a traditional politician, could have caught the zeitgeist in the way he did. What was going on in American Life and politics to the result that weve seen. I think it is useful for people in america who may be are used to living within certain communities. The media here is polarized at the moment. People are in a self confirming media bubble. Maybe a different viewpoint people had not seen before. A code of conduct. Tell us the difference . Isst the public broadcaster part funded by a licensee everyone on the island has to pay. The license fee everyone on the island has to pay. That means you have to be neutral and objective. You cant Favor One Party or another when its election season. Literally the amount of time each candidate gets is monitored on a stopwatch to make sure everything is fair. That no one is biased. No one is taking one agenda or another. For me, that has been different notice in america. Particularly the Television Networks are to the left or the right. Whatever anyone from the other side does is almost automatically bad and whatever anyone does from their side is a most automatically good. We leave it up to the voters to decide and come to their own conclusions. That is regulated by law and we would have the National Union of journalists that you cannot have a partisan opinion on things particularly in elections. Host four years in the United States and you traveled for this book. Where did you go . Guest all over the place. I was trying to hit all 50 states but i got to about 44. This book focuses mostly on the Appalachian Region and continuing into wisconsin, michigan. The border was such a big issue in the campaign. It mostly focuses on the States Donald trump targeted, the swing states. Maybe thought were going to lean democratic and did not. It is about meeting the people in those states. We are aware of the core base Donald Trump Voter we see all the time. This is about the middleoftheroad independent voter and what motivated them after voting democratic for not even foritch the Republican Party but specifically for donald trump. Host you right near the end of the book, meeting some of those voters, realizing they have justifiable reasons for being attracted to trump and remaining attracted to him despite actions others consider intolerable or scandalous is key to understanding the trump phenomenon a little better. How long did it take you to get to that conclusion . Guest lots of traveling. As a journalist you cant come to any conclusions based on two or three or five people you meet. You have to get the evidence over a long time. What struck me was, people view there arealmost certain things he said or did that they really did not like but certain things he said or did they really loved and they were prepared to ignore other parts of him and what he stood for for that one bit that spoke to them. Primarily that was economic improvement, feeling listened to and cared about. I think that was interesting and instructive for other politicians around the world. You ignore voters and their needs at your peril and you cant take anything for granted. Host in the early part of the book you wrote this, the one and only five in my life where ive been in sole possession of all of the facts of the story and can see how it played out across the media from that vantage point. Explain that. St you are talking about that is me referring to my interaction in the oval office with President Trump. Which happened last june when the president was making a call to congratulate him. The president called me up to the resolute desk and said a few words. Host let me interrupt. It may quite a bit of news so lets run this and you can further explain it. [video clip] from . Re are you we have all of this beautiful irish press. Perry. Na she is a nice smile on her face. I bet she treats you well. Guest ive seen that video so many times. Knowing all the facts of the story, that incident, as it happened at the time, 15, 20 seconds and i went on about my business as journalist does. In the next 24 to 48 hours it just went completely viral around the world. That was extraordinary. The moment itself, i described it as a bizarre moment. It was not in protocol that we president does things his way. Five been in the oval Office Plenty of times, as other reporters and correspondents have. Usually when a president is on a called a call at foreign leader they are engaged in the call, not involving anyone else particularly a member of the media. It was a surprise when he sort of called me over, but hes the president of the United States. If he says who are you come over here, you sort of dont have an option but to do that. Host i think you said you had over 100 requests for interviews. From allhad requests the major networks, newspapers and news magazines in this country, in ireland, the u. K. , australia, nigeria, across europe. Pretty much any country could name. Which was bizarre. It was interesting for me as a journalist to be inside the story like that. And to see how it feels for someone who is inside a story when you have all of these requests for interviews. Youre not a very good journalists people dont have your phone number so a lot of people have my phone number so at turn my phone off for a while which as a journalist is a remarkable thing to do. People were reaching out through twitter, instagram, facebook, anyway they thought they could get hold of me. I come at the time, decided i was not doing any interviews about it. Polarizeded at how that event became. Antitrustimed by people as meaning one thing and protrump people as meaning Something Else and i thought as a working journalist, someone who has to be neutral and objective at all times, anything i would say about that would be taken to feed one narrative or another and ultimately i would be the loser in that situation. It is so divided in this country. Definitely, one of the most periods ofry p my life. Tv screens all playing that on loop and have panels of people discussing how i mustve felt, what was going through my mind. The laughter on the clip is actually not me. Thats someone else in the room. I did not knowd how to take a complement. Other people than saying the president is mean to the media that he was being nice to this person. Or he was being sexist and the meaning. The full range. It seemed to bring out the full range of opinions and emotions. Host how often when he watched with people were saying he saying, that was not true . Guest almost all of it. I am a journalist whos been around the president for a long time. Rules. S his own he does his own thing. For something out of the ordinary to happen in the oval task much heedot of it at the time. I was more concerned that my deadline was in our from that. Ireland, the fact that the president was on this call a lot of hot topics between the countries. The mere fact that the phone call was a big deal in ireland. Upon leaving the oval office with other members of the press pack and some of the white house aides, we were kind of like, that was a bit bizarre and off we went. I actually went to a national came with some friends, playing the colts. Youre not looking at your phone. I came into an area with a good phone signal and that is where my phone had almost exploded really. I thought this is a bigger deal than i initially anticipated. Host when did you know that you are going to be called back to ireland to be an anchor . About maybe andr, and of october nd of october. My four years were coming to an end, to face the question of what my going to do next. I had not really considered being an anchor before. One dayphone call saying we need you to come home and take over the evening news in ireland which i will be coanchoring with another woman. The first time there will be two female anchors in ireland on a nightly news bulletin. Friday, monday to people can tune in online and watch it they want to. That is my next step. It will be very different to what ive been doing in the u. S. For the last four years. Host we recording this at the end of 2017. When is your first day as coanchor . Guest the eighth of january. Im leaving here and two days later i started the new job in ireland. The rest for the wicked as they say. Host you wrote about 11 states that you went to. Id like to go through the list to give us something you remember from each of those states starting with ohio. Guest ohio, i remember being beautiful. Which is not something you usually hear about ohio. Vista. A stunning too remember being surprised the levels of poverty and some parts of the United States. Particularly in ohio, just how drugs have run rampant through parts of that state to i really liked ohio. Reat food there i think if you dont travel through the United States, itd you just go to the big cities on holidays, you dont see whats really going on in the middle and you dont fully understand the United States and you see ohio. Communities in fentanyl have taken a grip there. People are crying out for help are you when you go into these communities as an outsider they tell you their stories frequently because they need help. They need assistance. There was a story on the front of the Washington Post about a county coroner having to bring in a refrigerated shipping container, such was the number of dead bodies they were going to find over the weekend from drug overdoses. Its difficult to square that scenario with the United States being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and yet you have some small communities that are doing everything they can but they just need help. Host let me jump from ohio down to texas. I know you were in the mcallen area and you talk to a border agent. What did you learn . Guest talking to Border Agents you see atful because different view of things when you talk to those guys who are patrolling the border every day and night. Theres a humanitarian story there for sure. We have a similar situation in europe with refugees. When people walk with the close on their back for a month sleeping on the sides of mountains and they are coming across the border, the conditions they are facing and all of that ahead of them, it is heartbreaking. You talk to these Border Agents who talk about the criminal or smugglingyotes in these people who are smuggling in drugs and guns. They said it was a twoway street as well. Guns and drugs coming out of the u. S. Into mexico as well. They feel overwhelmed. I know President Trump has upped the numbers of funding and Border Guards this year so things are probably a little better than i would say last year. Situationary enough down there at times area that were told not to be near the rio grande. Being tv journalists we had to get the good pictures to tell the story we were telling about the border crossings and all of that and we went to this part of the rio grande and there were shell casings on the riverbank. One flipflop sticking in the ,ud, barefoot footprints obviously some sort of gun battle. Just with whats going on, daily, nightly, it is a situation that does not need to be addressed is a situation that does need to be addressed. There is obviously already a the agents that i spoke to said that it would not help at all. When general kelly was doing his confirmation hearing was saying the same thing. Dont do anything because people to either makeed a better life for themselves or these gangs smuggling in drugs and guns, they will tunnel under or built over, they will find a way somehow. The Border Agents were not in favor of that. They wanted more funding for guards, more funding for. Mmigration more equipment for them to have to help patrol the border area. Very few people were in favor of actually building a wall. They thought that would save solve anything. Host lets go to the most northern state. Massachusetts. Famous irish state. Why did you write about that . Guest i wrote about that because people were interested in hearing about how irishamericans had voted. There be a traditional viewpoint that irish people, and many people in the western part of europe, would align themselves with democrats. Parking back to the jfk era. That is actually not true. You learn that very quickly upon living here that irishamericans are voting like any other voters. Some of them are democrats some are republicans. Mamie fagan many favored donald trump. Many are still quite conservative. So they would favor the Republican Party in particular. Smaller government, lower taxes, these kinds of things. That is why massachusetts is in there. It did not help him in the overall election, but it is just by way my way of understanding how American Voters think. Host you talked about immigrants, and then you quote a man called lewis murray. A proud irishamerican. Who is he . Guest he is a guy i met at the convention. We stayed in touch. Who his heritage is Irish American so he was not born in ireland himself. He has plenty of family members he goes back to visit. He was all in for donald trump. For the