[inaudible conversations] [applause] this is great. We have a full house tonight. Good evening. I am Jean Mccormick and i have the honor of being the president of the institute for the United States senate. It is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight along with our special guest for this Evenings Program, katie and robin who will be coming through this door in a minute. We are doing something a little different tonight. We are really thrilled to be joined by so Many Community leaders and we are especially excited to welcome our new members of the institute, membership is one of the ways we make it possible to have programs like this evening. For those of you who might be visiting the institute for the first time, welcome to our replica senate chamber. It is truly spectacular in the way that senator kennedy envisioned it might remind people about the Important Role of the senate. Every day, students and adults like you and i come in and become senators for a day and try to grapple with the very same issues that congress is dealing with today. There reminded of the Important Role of participation in a democracy. We all have to be involved. Through our interactive exhibits and our Educational Programs and these Public Programs like tonight, our goal is to inspire a new generation, and i keep thinking to myself re inspire us of the older generation to see ourselves as shapers of our community and to take an active role in civic life. That is what senator kennedy hoped for. This Evenings Program is part of our getting to the point series, as you can see its not always easy to get to the point through our winding construction. Sometimes its not always easy to get to the point in our conversations, but we invite people from all walks of life to talk about important issues in our government and our country. This year, as many of us continue to reflect on the impact of last years president ial election, we also consider the role of the press in our political system. Perhaps no one can speak better to this than our special guest for this evening, katie turner. In a historic 2016 campaign, katie was there from the beginning. She spent over 500 days on the campaign trail covering the Trump Campaign. She fact checked the campaign falsities. That is an interesting word. I read it three or four times. Its not one we been using much before now. She did find her self singled out by candidate trump herself. She became one of the most visible journalists during the 2016 election cycle, and she was part of the first women led Politics Team in the history of network news. She has documented her experience in her exceptional new book, unbelievable, my front row seat to the Craziest Campaign in american history. Today, she is a correspondent for nbc news and an acre for msnbc. She is also the recipient of the 2017 Walter Cronkite award for excellence in journalism. We are so thrilled to hear more about her experience. After discussion you will have an opportunity to purchase or book in the gift shop in the lobby. We are also thrilled to welcome robin young to help lead this conversation. Robin, as you know, is the host of here and now on npr and uvr. Without further ado, i would like to invite katie and robin into the chamber and ask you to join me in giving them a warm welcome. [applause] [applause] this is so cool. Can i get you all to smile for a selfie . , get one too. I just want to take a panorama. I think this is the only circumstance were will be sitting in a room like the. Actually, when she does that, everybody, when you are ready, everybody waves. Hold on. And you are on cspan2. Waves. How many of you use im with her. Check it out. How does that feel . That reception . Really amazing. Its overwhelming, undeserved, surreal, exciting. I dont know. About the undeserved part. Lets review. You are a Foreign Correspondent when nbc assigned you to be one of the first and only two follow the campaign. There would be those infamous moments long before President Trump referred to corker as little bob corker, you were little katie. Huge rally back where the Trump Campaign kept reporters so is sort of like indicating to the rabid dogs were the meat was. Little katie is back there, shes such a liar, what a liar she is. Unheard of in the history of american politics. Its no secret that politicians dont like reporters, generally. Nixon had a fraught relationship with his press corps, there are legendary stories about rod zigler, his press person, and getting into it with reporters, what was unusual about this was the very public nature of it, the way he would go after reporters, myself included from the stage of rallies, and have the crowd, encourage the crowd to essentially turn on us and blew us. There were moments, where i spoke to someone on the campaign, late in the campaign , after we had Armed Security and after i had done Death Threats and after not only the networks provided Armed Security. I said does he know he is potentially putting us in real harms way, in danger, that something really bad could happen and the person said yes, he knows and i said does he care and he said i dont think he cares. What you think it was that you in particular were so singled out . From the very first interview, the very first rally in 2015, he had said something about the television reporters are here and there is katie and shes not even looking at me. That was the first time we had ever shared the same error. I knew him from television and the new york tabloid, from the apprentice, not as a serious political candidate. I had no reason to believe he knew who i was so i was standing in the back of this rally which was just a couple hundred people who were at a backyard pool thinking what the heck am i doing here and what the heck is this guy talking about because he was talking about the wall whos gonna build and defending his comments about mexico sending rapists and how he gets more Standing Ovations and anybody, and then how the press is terrible and oh, katie, you havent even looked at me once. I was like who, me . And he was, and i remember just screaming right back at them, im tweeting what youre saying and he liked that. He said i did a good job and then he continued on. Thats important. She said i hope so, and by the way you do a good job. When i read over these again in the book, which is terrific and you all have to get it and get it signed after words, but when i was reading back over it, and the current climate of Harvey Weinstein and also since these comments yelled at you, we have had the tape of the donald trump, billy bush tape talking about grabbing womens ladys parts. Reading over these comments now, in this climate, this feels like Sexual Harassment from the stag stage. While he went after all reporters, it wasnt just female reporters. And he talked about charles not being able to get a pair pants. This was an interview and of course hes in a wheelchair. So theres that, but with you there seems to be something, have you thought about it, theres some sort of powerplay going on. Think theres a powerplay going on, i was doing my job and he alternated between trying to charm me and trying to bully me. If i wasnt reporting what he was lik what he liked he would go on the attack and the offense from the stage. Then he would tell everyone how great i was and introduce me to a crowd at the rally. He kissed me on the cheek one morning when he liked my reporting, adding morning joe townhall and then bragged about it on television which is unusual. But at the same time, its what he does, to this day when he is sitting with his counterparts to the republican party. He will have dean heller sitting next to him at a senate meeting, and joke around with him, not so jokingly to say if you dont do what i say, im in a go after you when it comes to the health care vote. Thats just the way he operates. To ascribe certain, another label to it, im just not prepared to do it. We have questions by the way that were super committed by many of you and im in a try to work in as many as i can without dropping all of these papers. Obviously people turned on you, you needed support, you were spit at, you would see families, what looked like lovely families but look closer in the dads wearing a tshirt that says hillary socks more than monica does, but not like monica and youd be taken aback like wait a second, theyve got small children with them. That was in the worst brother was that, then there was the father with his two kids and his wife wearing a shirt that called Hillary Clinton a cu nt. There was a man who wore a shirt that said i wish hillary married oj. I dont care what your political beliefs are, i dont care if you think democrats have all the wrong ideas for this country, that was a shirt that said i hoped essentially that Hillary Clinton was brutally stabbed to death in the 1990s. That is so far beyond what should be acceptable for common decency, for behavior, let alone politics. But do you think, you got to know the Trump Supporters, this is boston, but im sure theres many in this room, and faith asked, you talked about running into a supporter who helped you with your hair, and active kindness. You cant paint an entire group of supporters with a broad brush. I thought it was a huge mistake to call donald Trump Supporters deplorables. You dont go after voters in this country and i dont think its a good idea to say this swamp of voters are racist xenophobes, misogynists, whatever name you want to ascribe to them. They are a varied group of people from a number of socioeconomic backgrounds. Some of them voted for president obama in the past, a lot of them were women, there are a variety of supporters, and at the same time they are the kind of people who often times, probably live their lives in a very polite rule abiding way, nonoffensive way, but there was something about walking into a trump rally that allowed people to shed all of those rules, to shed those burdens. I wrote in the book that he had a halo of crudeness, and in that halo, he allowed everybody else to recruit around him. He said whatever he wanted. He never backed down and a lot of people found that refreshing. People maybe couldnt tell a joke any longer because it was a politically incorrect joke. People who were worried they had to watch what they said and watch what they did, people who thought their patriotism was being mistaken for racism, and they walked in there and they said i can say and do whatever im thinking. We talked earlier about covering the primaries, and very early on i was in iowa, and you could see the lines at the trump rally and was calling back to the station saying im meeting a lot of young people in particular who are trying to decide between Bernie Sanders and donald trump. There was a certain pro culture that would come out to the rallies. Men who would wear tank tops and big make America Great again hats, that College Fraternity culture that would show up in like the enthusiasm of the event. The same people that would say , and this is kind of a broad brush, but this is a demographic that im talking about, they liked Bernie Sanders or donald trump, and it was because they wanted an outsider. They wanted somebody different and refreshing, somebody who wasnt part of the establishment, somebody whose name they hadnt been hearing their whole life like Hillary Clinton, 70 who wasnt afraid to take on the system, Bernie Sanders had that quality, so did donald trump and they both had jobs messages. These were young people who were either just in the middle of the search for a job or soon to be graduating from college and they wanted a better opportunity. They wanted the disruptor. Definitely. Do you think, i thought i observed this, i constantly saw people who saw things that people on the left might see as appalling, like those tshirts you mentioned, and they thought they were perfectly acceptable parallel reality of what they may have seen, for instance when george bush, the invasion of iraq and so many people who were against that. If you had gone to the antiwar rally in washington, you wouldve seen disparaging tshirts about george bush, and they really felt it was the sam same. And theres an argument to be made for that. I think thats just a sign of how corrosive our politics and our Public Discourse has become. The question is, where does it go from here. Do we correct it . Does it get better for 2020 or 2024, or are we going to see even more crude language, crude behavior . Will there be a line that is too far, a bridge too far . Where do we go. Do you feel somewhat validated in your reporting that we now have a President Trump who hasnt really changed his style. He 71 years old. He is never going to change for the guy you saw on the camcampaign trail is the guy you see in the oval office every day. Just yesterday, he would make these broad statements on the campaign trail like i saw thousands of muslims cheering on the streets of new jersey after the towers came down. Not true. Didnt happen. Then he forced his Campaign Staff to try to find evidence to bolster him so theyre running around trying to find anything that might point to some shred of truth. You cant because is not true. Yesterday he did the same thing which was to say that past president s including obama didnt call the families of fallen soldiers. That is not true, but he said it. He put it out there. People will want to believe that and what does the white house do, they would run in circles to try to find something that backs them up and what they found was that john kelly, president obama didnt call him well, he was at a number of events with obama who was honoring fallen soldier soldiers, but what theyve done now, and this is what sad about this, beyond politics beyond donald trump, beyond whatever you think about republicans or democrats, what sad is that were not politicizing the death of john kelly son. Thats awful. That should not be happening. We already politicized goldstar family. Exactly. That happened in the campaign as well. By the way, general kelly. [inaudible] what should the press do . We have a question about whether or not the press should boycott. We cant boycott the president of the United States. Im sorry. You might not like him, but thats not what we do in this country. He is the democratically elected president of the United States, and so there is , we have a service to everyone in this room and to everyone in this land to cover the president. It affects you, every single day. You have to cover it. Lauren asked if they should boycott white house briefings as a sign of solidarity and press accountability. What you do, if that happens, say you boycott the press briefings. You just validate Donald Trumps complaints that the press corps is out to get him, that theyre not on his side or looking for any reason not to report on the things that hes doing. Its a doubleedged sword in that way. Barry also asks, from what you saw on the trail, do you think the president intentionally attacked the credibility of the press to rally his base . Is it just a technique or is he really hurt. Some suggested when he lashes out is that for soldiers were killed and most americans dont know why we still arent talking about that because the question now becomes whether or not president obama did not. Everything gets clouded. It just makes things cloudier. Hes very capable of distracting. Everything comes around and its always about him, how does it make him look, how does it affect him, what does he need to do about something. Its not about the death of the soldier, its about what has he done or what has he done in separation with his predecessor. Every policy, every subject, every interview, every topic, it all goes back to him. He uses eyes so much. The governor called to say i was doing a good job. Its me me me me. What was the first part of the question . Is it to do that, to distract us, or do you feel theres something. I think its both. I think he likes to dominate the headlines, and on days we would see this in the campaign, on days where he wasnt the main focus, he would make sure that he took it over. The muslim band day is a great example. The day before he had given a speech on terrorism so today was being dominated by that speech, by the president , and then donald trump announces the muslim ban and recaptures the narrative. Then he wants to be liked. He really wants to be liked. He wants to be accepted. There is a chip on his shoulder that has been there since he was a young man in queens crossing the river to Start Building skyscrapers in manhattan. His father said he could never do it and he was trying to prove him wrong. He was never really accepted by the ruling class, if you will, of manhattan so hes always been trying to prove himself. Thats why, with reporters, he will be extremely friendly and very charming because he wants reporters to like him. If you meet him in person, hes very charming. He wants you to like him. Your family, you were born into the News Business. Your parents, bob and marika,. I was born while they were covering a breaking news story. As they changed the face of local news, maybe not for the better, your mom is from a more stable foundation, they teamed up and had a small news service in l. A. Chasing gang fights or fires, car accidents. They would go out in the middle of the night and cover news stories when the local news didnt have cameramen and then they would sell it to the morning shows in the afternoon shows during the day and they built up a business without. They bought a helicopter at one point, there was a b