Many ambassadorships. The u. N. Security council often deadlocked, and the president seems to prefer tweets over talk. I will be joined by ronan far row, fresh off a Pulitzer Prize win to talk about his important new book. They are eviscerating the state department, rather than fixing it. And the present and future of the grand old party, is paul ryans exit a sign of the end of the party of Ronald Reagan . I will examine the republican takeover with two senior members of that party. Also, after almost 60 years, the era of castros rule in cuba is about to come to an end. First fidel, then his brother raul have ruled the island nation since 1959. Will the new president bring any change in cubas relations with its neighbor, 90 miles away . But first, heres my take. The most remarkable parts of james comeys memoir are not about donald trump. Some are gossip and color commentary. But in his discussion of the george w. Bush administration, comey is far more revealing, and highlights something crucial and hopeful about america. The role of lawyers and our legal culture. Many of the battles the Trump Administration is having with the socalled deep state are actually reruns of battles from the bush years. As comey recounts in detail after 9 11, the Bush Administration put in place a Surveillance Program called stellar wind, that Justice Department lawyers decided on review was illegal. In march 2004, comey was Deputy Attorney general, and filling in for his boss, john ashcroft, who was ill. And comey refused to renew the program. White house chief of staff, andy card, and white House Counsel alberto gonzalez, decided to head to ashcrofts hospital room to pressure him to sign the reauthorization documents over comeys objections. On learning of this, comey raced to the hospital and asked then fbi director, robert mueller, to join him for moral support. It turned out, ashcroft didnt need any prodding. He turned card and gonzalez away. Mueller, who arrived a few minutes afterward, said to the bedridden attorney general, who was technically his boss, in every mans life, there comes a time when the good lord tests him. You passed your test tonight. Comey writes that he felt like crying. The law had held, he said. The pressure from the white house was intense, including a Stunning Exchange that comey recounts between himself and the president himself, george w. Bush. Bush explained to his sub cabinet appointee, i say with the laws for the executive branch. Comey responded, only i say what the Justice Department can certify as lawful and we cant here. We have done our best. But as Martin Luther said, here i stand, i can do no other. What is striking about these episodes is not only that comey and mueller were subordinates who owed their jobs to bush, but that they were republicans. Both comey and mueller have consistently put their obligations to the law and the country above personal loyalty and partisan politics. This behavior may be the product of personal character, but it is also formed by legal training. The story is really not just about mueller and comey, but the lawyers in various parts of the government who believe that it is crucial for the country that the government operate within the law. Even if the president wishes otherwise. Recall that when trump wanted to fire mueller last june, white House Counsel, don mcgahn, reportedly threatened to resign in protest. Just before leaving the Bush Administration, comey gave a speech to the National Security agency in which he said, it is the job of a good lawyer to say yes. It is as much of the job of a good lawyer to say no. No is much, much harder. No must be spoken into a storm of crisis with loud voices all around, with lives hanging in the balance. No is often the undoing of a career. One of the often repeated criticisms of america is that it has too many lawyers. Maybe. But one of the countrys great strengths is its legal culture. As ive written before, it was worried that without a class of patriotic and selfless arift toe accurates, america could fall prey to demagogs and populists. But he took great consideramfore fact that americas aristocracy can be found at the bar or on the bench. Tocqueville saw a form of public accountability that would help preserve the blessings of democracy without allowing its untrammelled vices. Comeys memoir re memoir reveald be deeply grateful. For more, go to cnn. Com fareed and read my Washington Post column this week. And lets get started. On monday, ronan farrow was awarded a Pulitzer Prize at the ripe young age of 30. The honor was bestowed upon him for his Ground Breaking reporting on Harvey Weinstein in the new yorker. He has always been an early bloomer. He went to college at age 11, accepted at Yale Law School at 16. He deferred to go work at the state department under the legendary diplomat, Richard Holbrooke. Hes had jobs at state and u. N. Now he has written a book about how the United States relates to the world. For it he interviewed many of the top luminaries in American Foreign policy, including every living secretary of state. This is his first tv interview around the new book, war on peace the end of diplomacy and the decline of american influence. Pleasure to have you on. Pleasure it be here, fareed. At a time when there are sensitive negotiations going on over north korea, at a time when the iran deal seems in peril, i want to ask you, what is the big problem you see with this this sort of short shrift being given to diplomacy, with the state Department Budget being cut . There are a lot of people who say, thats fine, the secretary of state can negotiate. The president can go and meet kim. What is being missed here . America is undergoing a fundamental transformation in how it relates to the rest of the world. We have fewer and fewer negotiators and diplomats and subject Matter Experts on the kinds of complicated occasions like iran and north korea that you just mentioned, and more and more soldiers and spies making policy. And in war on peace, i talk about the ramifications in a very immediate sense, in conflict after conflict around the world. So i look at, you know when i was reading it, what i was thinking of is, with the korean negotiations. There is a very complicated set of background material you need to understand. Those are the kind of details that subject you know, area experts understand assistant secretaries, Deputy Assistant secretaries understand. Is it your worry that thats the kind of texture that were losing . Are literally, you can see the loss of that texture when you look at the structure of the state department. So there were two earlier diplomatic runs at a north korea settlement. Under clinton, where there actually were some concessions made on the north korea side and then they cheated and it fell through. And late in the game, under george w. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. And Condoleezza Rice is one of the many secretaries of state to talk about that in this book. We talk about cris hill, the lead negotiator. When he attempted that, we had an entire north korea unit at the state department. Experts who were steeped in this. And its an oversimplification to say that was a complete failure. While in the end, we didnt get what we wanted, there were huge in roads made. They shut down some of their plants for the very first time. And i think the disappointment of the experts, fareed, is that each time we make those in roads, a new administration steps away. The Obama Administration stepped away. And right now, were at a point where we havent leveraged any of those gains in the past. And indeed seem to be throwing out all of the people who know how to leverage those gains. In fact, you point out in the Trump Administration there really has been its not just that they have not filled positions, but they have actually in many cases swept out lots of area experts, lots of substance you know, people who understand Nuclear Weapons and things like that. The state department is being decimated, as we speak. And i tell the stories of a lot of the frankly brave diplomats. These are people serving their country, being forced out. The top Nuclear Arms Expert at the state department was fired unceremoniously in the first days of the Trump Administration. This is at a time when thats one of our greatest challenges in the world. You can see the lack of logic in that. The interviews with the secretaries of state are fascinating. You have colin powell, former republican secretary of state, saying that trump is gutting the state department. Perhaps the most interesting one was Rex Tillerson, who gives you the only interview ive seen where he on the record describes his frustrations and essentially why he was eventually fired. What do you think is the big story . What did you learn from what Rex Tillerson told you . So i think in each of these conversations with all of the living secretaries of state, people will find something surprising. Some moment of candor they didnt expect. You mentioned how searing colin powell was, saying were mortgaging our future right now. This is a man who cared deeply about the work force at the state department. That was a common sentiment. You know, george p. Schultz saying, you dont have to take a job when he surveys the way Rex Tillerson acted on these orders to gut the state department. And as you say, Rex Tillerson himself really surprisingly candid in his last days in the job. For example, he says, he did not want those state department cuts. He privately argued against them. But he thought i think this may be his corporate background, once the decision was made, he had to be a loyal soldier. He did. Although he also said, look, i may judge just been too inexperienced. He said when he started defending those deep, deep cuts to the state department on the hill, he had only been in the job briefly, and he might not have known better. He said i think with hindsight that maybe he would have done things differently. That seemed to be the suggestion throughout our conversation. He said something very peculiar, that he thought that congress would increase the state departments budget, even though he was not requesting an increase. Which every other living secretary of state i spoke to found astonishing. Thats not how budget Advocacy Works with the hill when you are the head of a government agency. But he said he thought going in that you could just ask them for less money and they would throw more at you, which actually in a bizarre set of circumstances, fareed, he spent a year with congress trying to throw money at the state department and fight this administration and these cuts. What else did you there that you know, with tillerson, people are trying to figure out, was he, you know, fundamentally a good guy, shafted by trump . Was he the wrong man for the wrong job . What was your takeaway . Are you know, with those comments he made about the lack of experience, i do think he was somewhat out of his depth, despite having this track record as a private sector manager, he seemed unable or unwilling to invest in managing the state department. He put a lot of blame on the white house. He said the white house was cumbersome and slow and fought him at every turn, as he tried to fill all of these empty roles across the state department. You know, there was a fair amount of passing the buck. But ultimately, he took on that job, and i think it will stand as one of the most devastating and pretenures of a secretary of state ever. You clearly are in love with the process of diplomacy. You talk about following Richard Holbrooke as he was negotiating various warlords and the pakistani government. And is it your sense that that kind of thing is just not valued any more in america . Well, i would be careful to say i dont think that this book is in love with diplomacy. I think it views some very real problems in diplomacy with clear eyes. No one is arguing that americas diplomatic and Development Apparatus is without need for reform. It is a stalt stoplightfying bureaucracy. Its broken in a lot of ways. But what we are doing is throwing the baby out with the bath water. They are eviscerating the state Department Rather than fixing it. Stay with us. When we come back, were going to talk about something completely different. 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Ask your gastroenterologist about humira. With humira, remission is possible. On october 10th of last year, the new yorker published a 7,000word article written by my guest, ronan farrow. It was entitled from aggressive overtures to sexual assault, Harvey Weinstein accusers tell their stories. Many more pieces would follow. This week he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his work on weinstein, alongside megan tuohy and jodi kantor on the same subject. In the ensuing six months, the Metoo Movement has exploded in the United States and around the world. I wanted to explore some of that with ronan. What did you discover when you were doing the reporting . What surprised you . What startled you . It was always very clear to me, fareed, this was not a story about Harvey Weinstein or a story about hollywood. This was a story about the abuse of power. And the way survivors of Sexual Violence are silenced and intimidated in this culture. And, you know, those words you describe were given for not just this one article about the revelations related to Harvey Weinstein, but for a series of articles by me and a group of other reporters who did incredible work, exposing those systems. Talking about how if you are that rich and that powerful, you can hire, you know, combatready spies to follow people using false identities. You can intimidate and influence the judicial process and the legal process. These are systems that we continue and need to examine in industry after industry and in every walk of life. Do you feel that, you know, when you say its about power, its even it seems to me, its about power more than even about sex. In other words, it is the inequality of the power relation that seems to be at the heart of it. That people almost Harvey Weinstein could have hired people to give him massages, people who do that. But he chose to really humiliate these actresses, partly because i think im speculating here. But he liked that power differential, if you will. He was in an echelon of powerful american man that can command tremendous resources to silence people. And that extended to the reporters working on this story. You know, many of us were threatened and intimidated in various ways, and i think weve all worked very hard to not become the story. But it is important that people know that in this country, you still see a version of the truth filtered by the most powerful people in this country. And Media Companies aid and abet that. The law aids and abets that at times. Those are real problems. Do you think that we are now in a different place with regard to women in the workplace and their ability to work without having t