Additional funding is provided by. Corporate funding is pvided by. Welcome to firing line, dr. Rice. Great to be with you. Y served in president obamas cabinet as National Security adviser and ambassador to the you were alsos. In president clintons National Security council. Anbecause of the covid pandemic that continues, we are practicing social distancing. Thank you for joining me fr your home. Good to be with you. You are also the cochair of the reopen d. C. Advisory group, and you are focusing on how to reopen the economy in our nations capital. How aryou thinking about balancing the urgent need to reopenhe economy with the nd to curtail the spread of the virus . Well, we are adsing the mayor, muriel bowser, and were thinking aboutis ery simply. The simple point is that the health and safety of the residents of the district of columbia is paramount and we cant successfully reopen the economy without preserving and protecting to the greateste extent possi help the people of the district. And so the mayor has been quite cautious. And obviously we all have an interest in getting the economy back going in a sustainableay. But we recognize that if make a false start, if we come out of the bo too fast and too soon, we risk a major setback. D. C. , as you know, a city that has a large has large economic disparities or people who are doing very, ry well and people who are suffering and struggling and disproportionately,e ronavirus has affected lowerincome communities, communities of color, higher for africanamericans and latinos in the district of columbia. And were deeply concerned about that. Two white house officials just this past week tested positive for covid19. Weve seen pretty striking images of white house staff, White House Press corps showing up to work in masks. The new guidelines is that they wear masks, though these guidelines dont apply to the Vice President or the president. How important from your perspective is it for tone to come from the top, to seeen prestrump in a mask . Would president obama have worn a mask in these circumstans . I think tone at the top is hugely important. And yes, if we were in this circumstance, my expectation is that present obama and Vice President biden would have worn masks because they would have modeled to not only the staff of the white house, the prescorps visitors, but frankly, to the rest of the country, the guidance that theyre giving and the reason for that guidance is to protect all of us. And, you kno when the president is not modeling that kind of behavior you saw, it wasnt until, you know, fose cases arose that the presideally said, okay, everybody around me wear masks, even though i wont. Before that, the macho tone he was setting was, you know, m n going to do it. And nobody wanted to look like a wimp in the eyes of the culture of that white house and come in with a mask. So you think its about a certain machismo in the white house . Its a false machismo. And in the casof a Massive Health crisis thats claimed over 80,000 americans, this is not the time for machismo. This is a time for science for facts, for clearcut communication, for honesty and a responsible, ber tone sett the top. You have just published your memoir, l toue my story of things worth fighting for. Why do you call itough love . I call it tough love, which to me means loving fiercely but not uncritically,s because th its that characterizes my whole my parents, who i wre aboutife. At some length in the book, who are extraordinary influences on me wa my mothethe daughter of immigrants from jamaica who came to portland, maine, of all places912. My ather was the grandson of slaves who was a tuskegee airman and ended up being a governor of the Federal Reserve. They were extraordinary influences on me, but they raised me and my younger brother with tough love, meaning th they were there for us all the time, but they were very quick to tell us when we were falling short, when we could do better, when we were not doing our best. And, y know, ive tried to lead my teams and government in the same way i benefited from colleagues and subordinates and superiors lling me when i was not doing optimally and could do better. And its very much how ive tried to serve our country. I love our country deeply and passionately. I think we are the greatest country on earth. Even in tough days like now. But were not infallible and we can always do better. And we ought to be on a quest to do better and be honest about those areas where we still have room to improve. Encompasses all of im glad you mentioned u ur parents history and your father ntioned was a tuskegee airman and a Federal Reserve board governor, but only the second africanamerican man to be a governor of the Federal Reserve board. One the things thmo was striking to me in your book was how he summarized key lessons about race i want to just read a paragraph. He said. So, my father wdom and thats a good excerpt of his many bits of wisdom that i tried to capture in the book came from his experience of being born around 1920 in segregated South Carolina the height of lynching, in the height of jim crow. He was the son and the grandson of collegeeducated men. And yet, you know, he really never knew a white pson to have a conversation with until he was in the latter years of high school and then in college in new york city. He was really burdened by this challenge of how do i fulfill my potential . I know im brigh i know im capable, but the world around me is telling me, no, cant. Youre not allowed. You cant go in this restaurant. You cant serve in a integrated army. Well, these messag were very fraught and heavy for him. And yet, you know,ra he went toate school at the university of california at berkeley, where he got his phd. In economics. Fr an that point on, he sort of began to be liberated psychologically, emotional, and to realize that despite the color of his skin, he could become who he set out to be. That was a critical lessonua and hugely ve to me as a woman, as an africanamerican, as a young assistant secretary and policymaker, where the people i was working with were mostly 20 to 30 years my senior. And you know what thati think, getting to youquestion, you know, ive operated with a sense of conf and selfesteem that my parents and i think to some people, perhaps at certain stages of my caer, that was offputting that i wasnt seeking permission affirmation from them. I was confident in who i was and what i was trying to become. You have been quite outspoken since the beginning of the pandemicou how the administration might be handling the vid pandemic differently, and audio has also recently emerged of president obama, who agrees with you. And we have some sound from that call. Look, it is a departurefo president s to be critical of previous president s. Vathough he said it in what he believed was a p setting, when there are 3,000 people on a call, the likelihoodth it gets out is quite high. Why do you think president obama is speaking out now . I dont think hes speaking out. He asnt gone on television to say that. And he said it to perhaps he was lessareful now than he had been previously. Well, hes be extraordinarily careful and respectful of his successor when his successor spends virtually every day trashing him, lying about him, calling him a criminal, you name it. This is a crisis of historic proportions. It the greatest National Crisis weve faced at least since worlwar ii. Weve lost 80,000 americans in the space of barely two months. Our economy is in the worst place since the great sion and may exceed that mark. Over 33 million amerans haveost their jobs. And the reality istr presidenp didnt invent the virus or cause the panmic, but his handling of it, as ive said many times, has been abysmal. And the loss of life and the loss ojobs and the ruin to our economy is substantially worse than it needed to be or would have been had he and the team been on when they first gowarning of what was happening in china. So youre havg been im sorry. No, no, i didnt mean to cut you off. I was just going to point out that you in your book, tough love, which wasct published iner of 2019, five months before covid19 wasr declared awide pandemic, you said this. So tell us why this was inevitable. Because if you look at the span of history, weve had global pandemics every 30 to 40 years. Weve heard a lot about 1918. But there was also a pandemic in the late 50s, again in the 60s. We actually had one during the bush administration, the h5n1 avian flu, k as yw, having served in the bush administration, it rightly caused president bu to put real emphasisde on pc preparness. When the Obama Administration came into office in 09, within the first four months, we faced the h1n1 flu pandem, which killed hundreds of thousands around the world. So we were wrestling with that right out of the blocks. I set up an officeou in the white at the National Security council, reporting toe and through me to the president solely to prepe for this kind of challenge. It was called the Office Security and biodefense. Unfortunately, that office was dismtled by this administration in 2018. When wwent to the transition, we not only gave them a 69page playbook on paemic preparedness, but we sat down in the onlmeeting that the obama cabinet had with the Incoming Trump cabinet, and we conducted a threehour exercise to prepare them for different scenarios is a terrscenario, a cyberattack scenario, ana pandemic scenario. And we picked pandemic because we viewed it on the scale of these other threats, if not greater. So is your principal criticism that the president do the majority of the escritiques about the fail of the Trump Administrations effectiveness in confronting the covid pandemic really stem from the lack of executive and throughout, because, yes, thats a good way to summarize. A lack of president iallevel leadership, because in fairness g many of the folks labor in the vineyards at the working level inside the administration, from wt i understand, many of them did understand the importance of this, but the couldnt s get the president of the United States to focus himselfic and puttention on it. But it also gets to how hes communicated. s deliveredisleading, dishonest, mixed messages about the severity of this. You know, when we had c se down, he clearly did it reluctantly. He reopened prematurelybe and ha, you know, on the one hand issuing guidance opas to how states should and then cheerleading when states violate that guidance. You know, touting hydroxylchloroquine, which is now considered to be more harmful than beneficial. This inot what we needhe fromresident. Of the various players that you see out in front of the podium, from dr. Fauci to Vice President pence to dr. Deborah birx,vo who are thes that you trust . St i tr. Fauci. I know him. Ive worked with him on crises in the past. I know him to be a man of tegrity. Hes completely apolitical. Hes a scientist and a physician with extraordinary knowledge and experience. And he is the one person at gives me confidence. So id like you to take a listen to two things. One first from President Trump and then after that from d fauci. Well, i feel about vaccines like i feel about tests. Thiss going to go away without a vaccine. When you talk about will this virus just disappear, and as ive said that is just not going to happen because its such a highly transmissible virus. When you have directly contradicting messages, what is the effect of that . Its very detrimental. It has given the American People license to not take this seriously, to hear the message thats convenient for them to hear. And its not just a failure of president ial leadership. Its deadly, margaret. Those parts of the country that are reopening prematurely before theyve hit their metrics that are not doing adequate testing, a whe lot more people are going to get sick and die. And its going to set back the president is running this as a political enterprise. He has, you knowencouraged hes pitting states against one another. Hes disparaging democratic governors and governors from blue states. Hes saying were not going to do any blue state bailouts. Were all americanulous. And were facing a crisis. And this is a moment where the president the United States should be unifying us. Has the president s response cost american lives . Theres no question. There is absolutely no question that it has cost us lives. Its cost us jobs, and ited has deephe economic pain that were all enduring. Theres one part of your book with respect to the ebola crisis that caught my eye. And it was you said that the World Health Organization had initlly botched the response but finally, in the end, seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation. Th how diWorld Health Organization botch the initial response with respect ebola . This is now eight years ago. No, x years ago, 2014. The World Health Organization was under dierent leadership and the World Health Organization had not yet beenze revitaand reformed. They just missed ebola in 2014 and werent a positiones tond effectively. They recognized that. They retooled. An then when the ebola crisis occurred last year in the democratic republic of congo, they were mu better prepared and much more effective in stamping it out. The World Health Organization haits flaws and challenges but it doesnt deserve t the acrimony a blame and the elimination of u. S. Funding that the Trump Administration has imposed on it. And let me explain why. Its imperfect, like mostrg multilateralizations, but its essential. Its the only body in the world that has the capacity to provide support and assistance to all counies, importantly, the least developed countrie and without that, margaret, without that funding that were providing, without the abilitof those countries to provide testing and treatment to get a vaccine, ultimately, thats widely distributed, we are in danger still here in the united state theres no version of this where we just protect ourselves, distribute 330 million vaccines to americans and say were ne because is a disease that can come back and reach our shores, just as this one did in the first ins so funding for the World Health Organization aside, do you believe that theresponded effectively to covid19 . I think theres multiple things here. I think we have a problem with china and how it responded. We have a problem y pick holes at how the World Health Organization l me just read you a twee can i just read you something and have you respond to it . I mean, they tweeted on january 14,020. But according to the associated ess, on january 14th, china already knew they had a potential pandemic on its hands. So how do you explaithe World Health Organizations response . I think they prably, like everybody else in this, have made some mistakes. Ey were hamstrung by what the chinese were prepared to provide them. T we can talk abe relationship between china and the who. And i have no doubt theres room for criticism there. I my concenot to say by any stretch, and dont represent the who, that theyve done a great job or that anybody else has done a great job. Im looking at the u. S. Response and what i kno we are capable of, and we are blaming everybody from the who to china to thebama administration, to you name it, to distract from the reality that this administraon under President Trump 3 1 2 years into their tenure, have failed utterly in their response. Let mshift to china. This program, firing line, was originly hosted by william f. Buckley jr. For 33 years on pbs, and it ran from 66 to 1999. Buckley had opportunity to debate and discuss the role of china with henry kissinger, who served in the same position th you have served in. Of course, kissinger was arguing for the liralization of for the acceptance and the normalization of tradewi relation china into the global community. Let me just let you take a listenhe to his part ofrgument. I believe the future of china is open and can be affected by american actions. I have been meeting with chinese leaders for 30 years. And the evolution of their thinking from mao tthe present leaders is extraordinary. Do you think the internatiol community was too hopeful about the prospects of liberalizing the Chine Communist Party . You know, we can debate historyan we can debate the failings of every Administration Since 1949 as they related to china. I dont think it really matters. Eri think what matters is we are now, and where we are now is a china that is very wealthy, that is trying desperately to match us and surpass us from a military and a strategic perspective, that has a powerfueconomy and is playing in many wayst agaie rules. Right. But having said that, margaret, i still believe, as irote in my book and as ive said many times, that the. S. China bilateral relationship, for better or for worse, the most consequential relationship in the world. And china does noteed to be our military adversary. We do not need to view conflict with china as inevitable. In fact, thats dangerous. And if we make it a selffulfilling prophecy, then all that were dealing with toy is going to, you know, potentially pale in comparison. We dnot ne a global confli between the United States and china. And yet we need to compete with china forcefully and effectively those areas where our interests diverge, whether on the economic side or on the strategic side. And to do that, margaret, effectively, we need our allies and partnersith us. But we also need to be able to cooperate with chinaon hose areas where our interests converge. For example, we have a shared interest even now, even after all of the d blood over the panmic in stamping this out fully and eectively across the globe. We should be working together with china and other countries on that. The uned states is is awol instead. Do you think that, bad on u. S. Policy, we can somehow im