Unfiltered. Cspan. Your unfiltered view of government. Next, a former advisor to president s nixon, ford, reagan and clinton gives his assessment on the state of the nation during a virtual conversation hosted by jews united for democracy and justice. He was asked about Donald Trumps legal challenges, the state of the Republican Party, and President Bidens influence heading into the 2024 election. This is an hour. It is great to be back. A minor absence. Only a temporary absence. Im happy to be back with you and excited to speak with david gergen, political analyst who i grew up watching on my television screen. White house speechwriter for president nixon, director of comedic asians for both president s ford and reagan, and as a Senior Advisor to president clinton. He graduate with honors from yale in Harvard Law School and has been awarded 27 honorary degrees. Hes a professor of Public Service and the founding director of the center for public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy school. Also a senior clinical inlaws for cnn. Welcome. Nice to see you. David thank you, marilyn. Looking forward to the conversation. We have something to talk about. David its so quiet. Do we have anything to talk about their . The latest indictment or maybe the fifth if you proceed include the superseding out of georgia. Donald trump and 18 others covering racketeering and 40 other crimes. What is your assessment so far about the strategy you can surmise through reading this indictment from the da . David from the prosecutor or donald trump . Madeleine we will get to donald trump or start with the prosecutor. David one thing that is striking is how sweeping and how many charges and counts there are verses the kind of approach which was taken by jack smith. When he was going through his portion of the investigation. The questions were very precise and to the point. He really had done his homework. It appears the new set of allegations could knock down a lot of things that it may not be as compelling. As compelling when youre more precise. Madeleine because it is so diffuse . David you have 19 people with 90 counts. You can see this becoming a Cottage Industry over the next two years. Few years. You cannot treat all people alike. You have to consider what the role was. Does that merr merit being asserted in the group or should they be dropped . Those of the questions you face. Also, is it easier for jack smith . Hes in federal cases. The four indictments, two are federal and two are not federal. A question on the federal ones, if you are indicted for violating a federal law and you are found to be a criminal, the president of the United States cannot pardon you. Nor can the governor of the state where this occurs. You are in a situation where two people would very much like to get into a position where he can be pardoned. It is much tougher with the prosecutor in the case against the 19. She can carry that case. The chances of her getting the only way trump gets off his he would have to win the general election and somehow navigate the Justice Department to get away with the case. In that case you can see trump walking away. Otherwise, the chances are rising rapidly hes going to jail. Madeleine yeah. Imagine that. If he wins and hes also in prison, what happens then . David iffy wi if he wins he s no longer subject to the laws of georgia but subject to federal laws. Under federal laws he could arguably, and this has never been tried before, but he could arguably get to victory and then resign from the presidency for one day, give it to the Vice President to pardon himself, and then test that in the courts. That would have to be tested constitutionally. The other way is to, in with guns blazing come in with guns blazing, fire the attorney general, play someone else in charge of the apartment and fire everybody. Start again and ride it out. He could do that but i think its extreme the unlikely to succeed. Madeleine fani willis said she wants a march 3 trial date. Looking at all the other trial dates that have been announced or the desire for these trial dates to be announced you have january 2 for jack smiths federal case. The generally six case. Then you have the march 3 georgia case. Then the new york city case, the Stormy Daniels case. And then in may the classified document case. During the gop and democratic primary season. The georgia primary is march 12. All of this would happen next spring. Mr. Gergen there are 19 people involved, this is complicated. In my judgment, i dont know the prosecutor personally, she has a lot of experience and is wellregarded. On this particular question, that she has a big trial date in march, that is the people of the march 4 primaries, that is super tuesday. It does seem to me it may be it was chosen randomly, but there will be a lot of suspicion on the right that that is a manufacture date to overwhelm whatever comes out of the primaries and force trump into a minimal position. I thought that was not very smart. It gives the enemy ammunition. You could be sure of the enemy will use them. Madeleine they are already saying it is politically motivated. Mr. Gergen but particularly tied to the primaries. That is a magical date in the minds of people in politics. Madeleine if you want a speedy trial and want to get it done before the election, there are only so many days you can choose. Mr. Gergen thats true. On the other hand, you could do it on thursday or friday after super tuesday. It just adds fuel to the fire that this is somehow a political job. That argument is making headway unfortunately, i think it is wrong. But i do concede the politics of it playing out in ways that one would not have imagined. That donald trump would have survived four different cases. He is probably going to go down. But it is going to be a fight. Madeleine you think you will actually see the inside of a prison cell . Mr. Gergen i think the chances are less 5050, but i think they are more than 25. Madeleine should he be convicted, and sentenced, and joe is reelected, for the sake of the country, should joe biden pardon him . Mr. Gergen well, i impartial, i was in the Ford White House when this question arose. Nixon had just left, the first president in america to be forced to resign because of a scandal. What ford found is he could not when he was trying to govern as a new president , he had to keep reverting and spending time worried about nixon. Instead of looking ahead, he was looking over his shoulder. And he decided he could not govern the country that way. Out of the blue, he pardoned nixon. That caused a storm. I think he could have handled it a bit better in terms of public perception. But ford lost reelection over that issue. We are in a heavy duty place here. It is very important and how these things are handled. I would much prefer that the president not be put in jail. It would leave a stain, the polarization in our politics, it could take a generation to recover. My hope is we will have fair trials, everyone will come away feeling it was fair, no matter how it comes out. And if he is found to be guilty and a felon, that is when you take a hard look. It may well be that you may want to get the hell out of dodge so you can go ahead with governing. We are losing. We are in a race for time, the environment, are losing the race because we are invested in the past. What happened yesterday and not enough concern about tomorrow. We should not be having these storms that we see, we should not be having fires we see. We should have been better prepared for that. You go back and look at 9 11. I happened to be living in boston during this. The people in boston knew there might be a strike and practiced and practiced. They were looking forward. When all hell broke loose because of the bombs that went off, it was a striking thing. If you are in a crowd and were hit by something, at 911, if you could make it alive to the ambulance which was nearby, every Single Person who made it to the ambulance live. Lived. It was because they had practice, and that is what leadership was about. What we are lacking is leadership. Serious leadership, leadership of compassion. It helps us to reunite as a people, coming out of these dark times, strange years. We need to find each other in a new way, to redefine who we are and our roles. In particular, it is time to pass the torch to a new generation. To a Younger Generation who are not as scarred by all of this, not as poisoned by all of this. And let them get a fresh start and put this country back together. Madeleine what are you saying, i will try to parse it when it comes to joe biden. Are you saying that he is not doing the right thing when it comes to Climate Change . He is not doing the right thing he should not run for reelection he should step aside and let someone else younger run . Mr. Gergen i think it is better for the country for biden and trump to step aside. And i think what we have seen since then is a large majority of this country not want to see them as the only people on the ticket. They are looking for fresh faces. There is a hunger for moving on with fresh people. I admire joe biden. I am a biden fan and fundamentally because i think he responded to the death of his Young Children and his son in the war. I think he had admirably handled it and is going through rough times right now with hunter. Hunter biden is in headlines and has become the hunted. One understands that given the facts. He was convicted. People deserve more leeway. We are using hunter biden as something we can beat up on to make political points. There was a general understanding among president s that you did not go after each others kids. You made a habit of trying to stay off of things like that. Madeleine thats gone. Mr. Gergen it is gone. Madeleine i dont know about hunter biden, there is an argument to be made that the mainstream news media ignored this story and to let it fester in the right on fox news news and elsewhere. And it became bigger for that reason. One of the reasons it became so big. Had the mainstream media, the new york times, washington post, npr, had they been really looked into this and talked about it instead of brushing it aside, maybe it wouldnt be as big a deal now . Who knows. Mr. Gergen that is a worthy question, i do not know the answer to that. There are probably points on both sides but after all there was a council and special counsel that has been put in place. Madeleine now. Mr. Gergen you cant necessarily get things done, it is the dynamics of our system. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to get these things up a month that is why fox has been successful, up to a point. Because it takes these things so seriously. Youre right it would have been better, but i do not think that is the issue we are dealing with. The issue is how much responsibility do you take as president , if your son has become an addict, has a disease . Joe biden could have walked away from his son, been angry with his son, and instead he is taking the heat, stood up for him. And you have to say, he has a humanity about him which i admire. It is just he is also adding age and condition which makes it difficult to govern with as much knowledge and fortitude. Especially with being president is a hard job. Something more is expected of the president of the u. S. Then we expected 20, 30, 40 years ago. It is not that simple. What worked in the past can work again, have coalitions, bring in to bo neil. One of the bring in to pony on tip oneil. In todays word 20 years ago, 30 years ago, when reagan was president , they worked together. I worked in that white house, they developed bonds of respect, they did not agree with each other on all things. Eventually they had bonds of affection. If you would permit a story. When reagan was president , tip was speaker of the house. It was her birthday coming up, it was the 65th, a significant one. Reagan started a Birthday Party in the white house and invited her and her friends for lunch. After lunch, he got up. He said, tip, if i got my ticket back, and went to hell with you. That was the humor of the time. We played tricks on the chief of staff, it was so much fun. Madeleine it does not seem very fun right now. I wonder why anyone would want to be president at this time. Mr. Gergen we are slogging through. It sure aint fun. Madeleine it is hard to imagine the same thing happening when you see Kevin Mccarthy voted against certifying the election. Mr. Gergen yep. I think my fear is that, and the next few years, we will not find the leadership we need. There is too much poison, it is too much Kevin Mccarthy, too much cowardice about not standing up against trump. If you cannot stand up against him for the fourth indictment, there is something seriously amiss in the Republican Party. That is not the Republican Party i knew 20, 30, 40 years ago which was the party that believed in law and order, that you Pay Attention and abide by the law. Now it is the party to overthrow the law. A lot of changes have taken place, it will take time to work through them. But the critical thing is to get moving on making sure we have generations coming up who are going to be strong, resilient, courageous. We need that kind of leadership again. We are not seeing it. We are seeing young people drug addiction, a corner of the young people in the country who wanted to go into the military, they cannot pass the test. They cannot past the physical test, all of these tests and they cannot make it. That is a remarkable drop. It is true that youngs the Younger Generation does not trust institutions and do not trust the leaders. When i was growing up, we looked up at the world war ii leaders and thought, thank god we had people like roosevelt and churchill. To help save the western world. My friend in los angeles, he was asked a question. How is it that when in the early days of the republic, he had 3 Million People who lived in our republic, and among them, we were able to find six worldclass leaders . Washington, jefferson, adams, franklin, madison, and leslie. Today we have 330 Million People living in this country. We cannot seem to find one worldclass leader read we need that. We have to have strong, firm, inspiring leaders. Madeleine you do not see anyone waiting in the wings. Mr. Gergen i do. Madeleine it seems like there is a group waiting for this. And one of them would be the governor of this state, gavin newsom. Mr. Gergen gavin newsom and someone on the east coast with many of the same qualities, the new governor of maryland. Maryland was governed by a republican who stepped down. There was an election and a young man on the election, he is 44. His name is wes moore, keep your eye on him, he is a hot commodity in politics right now. He is a young man, black, grew up on the wrong side of the track. He wound up in handcuffs. Police were after him all the time. In order to save his life, his mother put him in the military academy in philadelphia. He turned around because of the care he was getting, the leadership training he was getting. Wound up going to Johns Hopkins university, wound up as a rhodes scholar, wound up running the Robin Hood Foundation which was the largest antipoverty organization in new york city. And ran for office, and one and won. He had never run for office before. He is charismatic. And another thing that democrats dont usually do, he volunteered for military service and was a paratrooper. This is a young man, everyone who meets him says, this man has possibilities. I do not think he is the only one. The governor of north dakota, and unknown, is a compelling governor. And it deserves being the leading part of the pack. He is good on economics. The governor of michigan, she is another person could bring a lot to the table. There are people waiting. Madeleine but they are not going to go against biden. Mr. Gergen yeah, they will be there i do not think biden will go for a second term. That is out of the question. I do think the question is, whether they will stay the course for the first term . He need somewhere else in there to win the election. We will have to wait and see. There are people are willing and ready to stand up and want to save the country. And they are tough enough to do it, and some of them have enough money to get started. But they will have to appeal to peoples sense of fairness and duty. And a sense of we must get deal with the question of race, in the sense that we need people of all races, all backgrounds, all vendors, genders, to put aside conversations that do not matter. And so we can have things that matter and get back together again. Madeleine Kamala Harris, you do not think is viable . Mr. Gergen i am not the best judge on Kamala Harris. I will tell you this. I think she has a tough set of cards in the beginning, she was asked to be charge of immigration. There has been nobody in washington to solve this problem in the last 1520 years. I would anyone think the Vice President , no formal authority, may be able to succeed . Unfortunately, kamala has gotten off to a rough start. It just did not seem to click in the beginning. There were a lot of strategists who came to the conclusion, white and black, we need somebody else. I will tell you. Kamala harris, during these recent times, on the question of violence and the lawsuit, they have been doing a better job. I think biden wants to keep her. He may face a terrible dilemma, youre up at 53 , but Kamala Harris hasnt cracked 40. We may lose the election over this. Joe biden will not make that change. He will probably go down with the ship. But if he does not stand behind Kamala Harris, there will be people in the black community who will say, wait a minute, he stood by you when you were in trouble and put you in the white house. And you owe us, and if you take her, we are splitting. Madeleine where would we go . Not to be too cynical, they are not going to vote mr. Gergen they would look for someone, they would prefer a black woman. Some people think there