A memorable line in your acceptance speech. When you wake up in the morning and say, what is my adventure going to be . Friends. Have been my friend. Charlie i remember Charles Kuralt who said, when we see a writer around cbs, we salute him or her, but thank you, mike. Turning to hillary and her much anticipated testimony today, how did she do . Mike she did fantastically. Friends, her allies, she was very smart. Shell most did a rope a dope strategy. She was classic and she was polished at her basic demeanor was if you want to ask me these questions for an eighth time, i will answer these questions for an eighth time. She said earlier that she did not have a lot of new things to say, and charlie, that is what she stuck to. Charlie what about you . This is not something she wanted to talk about, but given that, it she had two new pitfalls, as a leader, she did something wrong, and the second pitfall was, was there going to be a moment when she looked callous or she looked dishonest . That didnt happen, either. So if she can whether those two weather those two things, then she can get through october. Charlie obviously we have no contest yet. , but does in february she face any big hurdle now . Is still herself and her record. If she starts to be measured is why she has competition. That is why the debates went well for her. She has amazing strength in South Carolina and all of the rest of the states. She is ahead in iowa and losing a little bit to Bernie Sanders in new hampshire. If that sticks, she is in good shape. Charlie and then mike, go ahead. Republicans were a little bit gun shy because of the accusations of partisanship about this committee. Polls,r doing well in for the first time, this campaign feels like she is getting her foot in. Charlie go ahead, john. John the committee keeps focusing around this terrible thing that happened and wondered why it happened. What was being said is what was already known. Failure a systemic here. Security was low and that simply wasnt addressed. That then there is the central question, why did that happen and what was Hillary Clintons central role . If you look at this, you just wondered what the double was all of this itrlie she basically said is not the role of secretary of state, so it was on her watch, and therefore some people held her responsible. Right, and you had this ambassador saying, help me, help me, and not getting support. Available andte seemed available to talk about anything. So why wasnt she getting messages about help me from the ambassador but she was able to get information from Sidney Blumenthal . The weeds, down into it quickly became one where you looked at it and thought, what is really the central question . Major thate everybody understood that ambassador stevens was a friend of hers, a good friend of hers, and after his death, she was behind all of the recommendations that this kind of thing did not happen again. John she basically came out and said that the security was handled by professionals. It is not the secretary of state potter job to make sure that thats job to make sure the security is up to snuff. Givens the answer she has before, so there is nothing new coming out of this. Charlie before turning to biden , when you look at the emails, the committee was organized to look at benghazi and then it discovered the emails and that they had been done on a private server. Did anything come out of that story or is there any potential that something can come out of there that would do damage to her down the road . Mike . Mike absolutely potentially. This is the worry for her campaign. In a campaign, you want to know what the problems are. Candidates that themselves. That is why they do Opposition Research on themselves they know the worst things that are out there. Hillary Clintons Campaign doesnt know that. They dont know whether these emails are going to be recoverable, and they dont know if these emails are going to be problematic, and here, charlie, is the biggest known unknown, this investigation has been happening for years, and the problem with having the Justice Department look into something is that they never start with what they are going to end with. So when they start looking into something, the Justice Department can go in any number of directions. Andan go over many months you dont know what is going on if you are trying to plan a national campaign. Charlie ok, joe biden . Goodbye, biden says the beginning of a long goodbye to his career, in his decision of not deciding to run for president. Everything he said in his speech said, boy, i really wanted to run. Thatie he had a message he wanted to take to the country that he believed in. John he did, and one thing that struck me about it is that he said, weve got to try again with republicans. Weve got to think about bipartisanship and there was a little dig at Hillary Clinton when he said that republicans are not our enemy. That is something that you would expect from him. That is something you would expect from somebody who began his career in the congress in the 1970s. But that is not what you are hearing right now. Any people say that republicans are a lost cause and we need to behave that way and run our campaign that way. So he had this whole fashion this oldfashioned method message. Charlie mike, you said today that this was a battle between his heart and his head and his head won. Mike right, this was never going to be feasible. Starting with the president , he would be paying the air force two bills wherever he were to go, and it would be very expensive. It will require him to have a big staff get everywhere in a big hurry, and most of the people in this campaign are already spoken for, and hillary would need to have some dramatic term the fall her turn befall be able to run. So everything that the Vice President has done for weeks and months is something that reflects somebody who wanted to run for president. Charlie, i admitted to you here week thate rose the i had been going back and forth whether or not he was likely to run, i have been fourth for forth for quite is because theat Vice President has been ebbing and flowing. Seemed frazzled and exasperated, and was demanding more operational details about what staff was immediately available, how they would pull this off, so it didnt matter if the Vice President looked bad and whether this was feasible, but for so long, people have heard that when you are going to run, you are going to run and someone told my colleague that it turned out this whole exercise was more fantasy football than football. so he seemed very concerned about cancer and it seemed that his campaign was a moonshot for cancer. John yes, and his whole campaign seemed about armchair psychology, and it was part of what he was thinking about and that is his whole family message when you are knocked down by an emotional thing like this, you have to have this effort, and without that avenue, the avenue that you can imagine would be another avenue and he would throw his heart and soul into it. But you cant get much higher than Vice President. So it will be fascinating to see you he takes all of that energy for a life that has been on the dissent on the ascent. Charlie what do you think about paul ryan . Mike . Will be theyan speaker. And this is so fascinating. Paul ryan, the head of the means and ways committee, and the head which of the councils of he had a long dream of running, and he was the one person in that body who could work with the democrats and work with the white house, and there was such a great hope of among Top Republicans that he would do it. But charlie, he came in and he drove a very hard bargain. Somebody called it a reverse ransom note, and that is, rather than wheeling and dealing as somebody usually does when somebody wants to become speaker or when somebody wants a leadership job, he issued the conditions to the right wing of his party and he said, i will give something to you and i will have some concessions, including giving more power to the committees and entertaining many of your ideas, but the speaker under me will be more powerful and he would remove the ability to constantly threatened to undermine him. And they have gone along. So, charlie, it looks like we are on the path to have paul ryan take the gavel, which is a big surprise. Uni talked about the tough calculus for paul ryan. If he is speaker today, it is a less likely for him to be president in the future. Charlie but why is that . John mike and i talked about that, because he is going to have a tough fight. Paul ryan has been on the opposite side of the Freedom Caucus and a number of other issues. Whether that is raising the debt limit or a budget extension, all of the things that this group didnt like, and that is where his heart is. He is closer to boehner and mccarthy in his tactical views even those he is quite conservative, so that is his scar tissue. If that is your scar tissue and you are going to run for president , youre going to have to explain or talk to the people in the grassroots about this. Charlie let me close with the republican race. We talked about the democrats and paul ryan and then we have new polling showing ben carson winning in iowa, beating donald trump in iowa, and it the same time, we see trumps numbers holding. John if there was a state that you think that donald trump would be iowa. If there is an evangelical vote, and 71 to grab that, that would be iowa. There have been homeschoolers that have studied ben Carson Potter books, they like him. The question is what is interesting is, two things, will they take on ben carson, because he has been doing well everywhere else . His base doesnt like jeb bush, so when donald trump is in a fracas with jeb bush, they dont mind. But they like ben carson, so what is that going to look like . Question is that ted cruz had this idea of emerging in this iowa strategy, and he now in that same poll you mentioned where ben carson is at the top, you then have trump, you then have rubio, and you then have ted cruz. Ted cruz is not rising. Maybe he can wait this out. It i think there is evidence that he could get a little antsy but i think there is evidence that he could get a little antsy. Charlie mike, how does the republican race look to you from where you sit . Mike the factors you were just outlined their means that the republican might just be saying that he cannot believe his life. He is coming in on Single Digits in florida. Carson is rising. Somebody pointed out to me that is totally apart from governor bushs last name. If you look at the message of ben carson and donald trump, we dont trust them and they are antiestablishment in their message, it is a rebuke. It is a rebuke of the record. Just this week, we saw Michael Murphy, and early strategist for jeb bush, out in california, saying that governor bush would last until march, and then after this early stage, then we would see his strength. But charlie, as you and john know, that is a tough gamble to make. Charlie thank you very much, mike. Last word to you, sir. Yes, what about joe biden . He could come back in, charlie. Charlie it aint over until it is over. John thats right, but jeb bush has to show that he has some ability somewhere that would allow him which Michael Murphy talked about and when the moment happens, hey, he is there. On thes yet to happen campaign trail. He has yet to show that he has a talent that he can exploit at the right moment. So that is a real challenge that mike raise, so once you lose a couple of times, it is very difficult to get up again. Charlie john dickinson, mike allen, thank you very much. Charlie john gresham is here. Said thatrk times there is a reason that he has wrote so many books, and that reason is he is very good. His newest novel is called rogue lawyer, about Sebastian Rudd who is a lawyer who takes other cases that other lawyers would not touch. Welcome back, john. John thank you, charlie. Charlie this is the 28th book. 28 novels of nonfiction and five novels for young readers. John book number 305i believe . Written 55 ands i am trying to catch him. He knows i am behind him and he feels the pressure so he is really cranking them out now. Thepelican brief, the king of torts, and on and on and on and on. And there are kids books. You are what they call prolific. Ok, that is over the last 30 years. Charlie, i havent worked 40 hours a week in the last 20 years. Kinds ofut in those hours. I work for or five hours in the morning and when i am writing, i start a new book on january 1. That is my dropdead goal and then the goal is to finish by july the first, six months. Charlie and it will be punished published when . John october. July 1 you spend a month or two of divisions and then it goes to press around labor day and then it takes a while to print books and then it comes out in midoctober and it stays up for a couple of years. Charlie do you have the impression that critics are catching up to you . John i dont care. Charlie i did not ask if you care to, i asked if you are if they are Getting Better of catching up with you . I read what the New York Times said about you. I am not a lawyer as good as you are, but john i think at some point in popular fiction, it probably all heirs in popular coulter, whether it is writing or music or film or television or even athletics, ashen, whatever your area is, your topic. At some point you have been around for so long charlie that you dont appreciate it . John well, you do, but it is like teflon and they leave you alone. Charlie or maybe they see something that john and some books are better than others. You might have a good year with a book, and you write something and you think, ok, this is hard to look back at your own stuff and judge it and say, what is better than the other books . But occasionally write one and you say, this is good. Charlie my name is Sebastian Rudd, and although i am a wellknown street lawyer, you will not see my name on billboards or less benches or screaming at you from the yellow pages. I dont pay to be seen on television though i am often there. I name is not listed in any phonebook. I do not maintain a traditional office. I carry a gun legally. That is because my name and my face tens to attract attention from the type of people who would want to finally. I live alone and usually sleep alone and do not possess the patience and understanding necessary to maintain friendships. An overbearing wife who controls the checkbook. There is no way out. That is pretty good. John it is pretty brilliant. [laughter] charlie where do we find sebastian . Of a he lives in a city million people, and unnamed city, he is a lawyer who works out of his van, his chauffeur is his bodyguard who got off in a murder trial, he takes cases that nobody else would case take, he goes to war with politicians, big corporations, he is not above cheating. He thinks that if the police and prosecutors start cheating in the criminal trial, and they often do, then that clears him to cheat as well, so he has no qualms with cheating. Charlie he figures what he needs to do for his client . John in the book, there is more courtroomt book and stuff then there is in any other of my books. You go through three trials. In the last trial, the prosecutor is not cheating, ok . Tosebastian has a chance cheat bigtime, and he says he is not going to cheat because the police and prosecutors are trying this case. Straight up. Case straight up. When they start cheating, im going to start cheating. He is the kind of guy who charlie he has no problems with cheating . John he is the kind of guy you want in a foxhole when you are under attack. Lawyer the he is the you want. He is the pitbull. He is very colorful and has a lot of issues. Charlie he has clients but he does not advertise in the yellow pages, you dont have an advertisement screaming at you, you dont see any billboards. Nothing that says call sebastian. Ofn he doesnt make a lot moneybut he certainly makes enough to do what he wants to do. He doesnt spend a lot of money. He doesnt have any secretary or a girlfriend charlie he doesnt have a girlfriend . On theell, he has been prowl. He has an exwife and he is at war with her. Charlie and all of this is from imagination or is this sort of a reading of john grisham . John my imagination. I was a lawyer for 10 years and i admired those lawyers who would take the cases that no one else would. Charlie, there are a lot of horrible crimes and sometimes there are crimes that are so bad that nobody wants to take the case and a lot of lawyers will run from them. Some cases are assigned by the judge and there were a couple of cases when i was a young lawyer where as soon as you heard about the trial, you go out in your office, you unplug the phone, and you dont want the judge calling you. But everybody is entitled to a fair defense of trial. And so there are always a few lawyers, not many, like sebastian, who were going to step up and say, ok, what this person is accused of doing is really, really, really awful, but i dont care. I dont care about that. I want to make sure that this person gets a fair trial. There are not many out there, and ive always admired them, because from the very core of their being as lawyer, they believe that everybody is entitled to a fair trial. Charlie do you want to go back ever to the courtroom . Do you ever want to try and other case in your life . Time i have suits all the were i get dragged back to court, but i never want to be a lawyer. Claim i stole a story or something, they are all frivolous. I havent been near a courtroom in a long time. Charlie these are lawyers or . John oh, they come from all over the place. Threatening,re hey, you stole my idea, and then we say, ok, here are my lawyers responding, and they scare them off. I have not been sued for a number of years. Spielberg said one big law super movie is a pretty good average. You are going to get sued by people who claim that you stole seth. Stole stuff. I have no desire to go back to court. I do catch myself all the time, though. I read a lot of bad prosecutions and a lot of bad convictions charlie people on death row . John yes, and i often do, man, i wish i could have been there and provided a good defense, i wish i could take that case or maybe a simple case, i wish i could take the case, you know, i wish i could do that, you know . But its like the same thing of saying, i wish i could play for the cardinals. It is kind of a fantasy world. I am not going i