Transcripts For CSPAN2 Game Of Thorns 20170318 : vimarsana.c

Test. Were really excited to have and we have one with to two authors plus our weekly book club two stories per week and variety of social gatherings and if you enjoy your time here tonight please check us out on social media and ecity books on twitter and sign up for newsletter and hearing cool things that we have coming up. But tonight its our pleasure to welcome doug wad new york best selling author an advisor to two american president s an is one of the few living his toirns to have written about all of the american president s hes interviewed seven first ladies coauthor to book with one. Has entertained two in his own home. A and has served on a white house staff to the assistance of the president. And cofounded with first Lady Nancy Reagan and heres here to talk about his new book game of torns and introduce shortly. After the talk we have a q and a from the awngs and then youre welcome to purchase a copy of the book signed at the back. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much hannah, its my privilege to introduce kenneth wolch, he was the president of the White House Press Core Association they put on the big dinner that donald trump refused to attend this year. [laughter] one of the most prestigious events in washington, d. C. And he has covered how many president s, ken . Sixth one. Six president s in the white house as part of the White House Press corps. Hes worked at u. S. News for how many years . For 33 years. 33 years and senior writer, he said almost every title and position you can think of at us news. Hes a remarkable journalist. He may be among theyre almost extinct ill put it to you that way. He may be among four or five journalists that i know of who i dont know where he stands politically. [laughter] all of the others i can tell you if theyre left or right. I cant tell you where ken is because hes absolutely objective and pursues a story whatever it may be. So i guess we can call him a a journalist or Old Fashioned journalist. But its a profession that is disappearing pretty quickly, and only had a brief time where it flourished so ill turn it over to him the author in many book was his own right. The one i love is the places where all of the president s lived. Like nixon, san clemente and the kennedy written a book on that when you can find here in this bookstore and another is the celebrity president he writes about how president s have become celebrities and thats part of their power today. The extension of the bully pulpit and to see what that is. Thank you, towing. As doug said im a traditional journalist so i hope that by the end of this discussion you dont know my politics. And im glad i succeeded in that for 31 years of covering the white house because i dont believe i could have covered ranging from reagan to barack obama, now both bushes and donald trump if i could take the talk about things right down the middle. But the other thing i want to mention is doug and i have known each other for 25, 27 years now u, and so i hope that we can conduct our talk here like we talk over lunch. That was sort of informal and i find whenever we have lunch and i do this with many sources the best information comes in the more informal given take what i hope we will do. So with that, i, you know, were very interesting time for dougs book to come out and he mentioned kind of mentioned that i have a book coming out that is called ultimate insiders about white house photographers who are staff and personal photographers ultimate flies on the wall. Hear things that no one else hears. See things that no one else see os so thats my next book coming out in september. So it is an interesting time for this discussion and for dougs book. Game of thorns because the town is a biggest parlor game is what is donald trump all about . What is he going to do next. What is going to happen and whats the Republican Party mean anymore . And i hope doug can can explain a little bit of that as we go on. Whether the democrats go now and whats become of clintonism and so on but really it is donald trump who is dominated the daytoday and with his tweets the the overnight because in every News Organization we basically have to have somebody cover donald trump from 11 p. M. To 4 a. M. Because he puts the tweets the then. So theres another layer of coverage thats been added but i wanted to start by asking doug, basically, just a basic question which you talk about in the book at great length. What did donald trump do right and what did Hillary Clinton do wrong . And what just jumps to the top of your mind as to how this election turned out so many people were wrong. So many pundits wrong and people in my profession were wrong. People of both parties were wrong, what happened . Yeah, i rattle off numbers that she off staffing fiveone and out if you counting money and trump did have a superpack that started ed rollins and jesse benton got something going but raise 32 million. She her superpacked more money than any superpack in American History and they spent it all. She had a ground game with 960,000 volunteers on the ground. It exceeded Barack Obamas ground game. She had eric schmidt, the ceo of google in charge of social media. [laughter] she had hollywood. She had acedemia she had banks, wall street, 240 newspaper endorsements. He had 19. But he had a message. And the message was burned like a brand. It just, everybody in america knew what his message was. Everybody in america didnt know if you ask them right now what is hillarys message, but they knew Donald Trumps message make America Great again and jobs back and what i would say at a tower off the message supertweet with about no were on message because part of the message is hes not a politician. And i think the American People were tired of politicians. They had the last two president s, the rich got richer, poor got poorer. Some would argue and felt Free Enterprise was deeds and you had to be an insider they saw it as corruption both on the left and the right and hear was somebody, iconically a billionaire, but a troublemaker, and they wanted to see everything june upset so in a funny way is offmessage, quaint, mistakes were reassurance to them that this guy when you talk about the hillary and clinton advantage. What was that and it really wasnt an advantage in the end in . She had advantage of experience and all of these things going for her. But there was some humorous, obviously. And yeah. Yeah. So is on because i was out at the rallies for both sides really. And i remember people in washington saying, yeah, rallies are intenses. Theyre in giant crowds for trump and so on far outnumbers clinton rally in number and intensity. But it really doesnt tell you how the election will come out. And trump said rallies do matter. But it turned out they did. I wonder if you saw that coming and felt that intensity around the country. A lot of people also said they went to places in these rest belt states like pennsylvania and ohio and some in extent washington saw all of the trump signs. All a of the signs for Hillary Clinton and in washington it was dismissed. Oh people put signs up but that doesnt indicate what is going to happen on election day. I want to when do you see it coming that trump was going to win yourself . [laughter] i have bob potter here by the way going to have a book the next book party. He was telling me there are trump signs all over pennsylvania saying boy, i dont see them and the thing that i kept thinking of, ken, was i remember George Mcgovern het intense rallyies and i cant forgot him saying i dont believe these polls. I see enthusiasm of these crowds you cant tell me this doesnt equate to something so i heard that echo in my mind when i would hear trump say these rallies i kept remembering George Mcgovern who was misled by those rallies, and impacted those rallies. But i have to admit that it took me offguard. Im portrayed on youtube as one of the few that said he had might win. I could see a specialty of mine evangelical vote and i have to say my wife miriam thank her because she was running everything while i was working on this book an my daughter chloe who is around here somewhere taking pictures. They were helping me do the research on the book one one of the things they hit an they missed it and barack obama saw that and he called up there towards the end and he said you are losing the white evangelical vote and you dont have to. And they laughed at him and after the election was over one of obama assistants wrote on sed in the Washington Post say why did hillary lose part of the headline was she ask for it. That turned out to matter because 81 of them voted for donald trump and i can tell you from our experience, they were or very conflicted right up to the end. He was lewd, with he was not someone they wanted to support. But when had on november 4th when a bunch of celebrities got together and started using f word and profanity saying get out to vote using jesus i thought wait a second, would bunch of celebrities use the name muhammad as a curse word in a campaign, song what kind of reaction would you get . One 1 of American Population are muslim. 70 are christian. Is that going to work . So nobody, you know, on the flyover state from east coast, west coast they dont pay any attention to this. It doesnt matter. But it does matter in those flyover states. But trump did not have the roll model qualities. He was not he didnt live his life as evangelical and conservative christians or practicing catholics feel that someone should love their life as far as studio 54 mystic lifestyle how he talked about women and so on. How did people get past that . He knew buzz words. Theres a moment in the book, game the thorns hes in trump tower and depressed and misses sold preacher Norman Vincent a and hes watching tv and sees this sex blond evangelist talking about hope, and he calls her up on the phone and says gosh, youre trirveg and he flies her up to new york city, and she walks him through the neighborhood, so to speak, buzz when you study Donald Trumps life he would also move into a neighborhood and rent. He wouldnt buy. And hed rent and hit the pavement and walk around and listen to people and talk to people and wouldnt buy a thing sometimes for several years and then when he thought he knew the area hed buy. Paula white this walk withed around the evangelical neighborhood he knew the different subculture when is you talk about 26 bt of the American Population and compare that to 12. 9 a lot of subgroups. He understood those and when he had say things that would be little hints that they pick up to go over the heads of the Washington Post and new york times. Sat one point he said to paula jones, this donald trump should know ive been married three times and she says, me too. So she wasnt judgmental to him so thats the story it has hardly been told in game of thorns and then catholic story was there a story where bill clinton takes his trch, cell phone and he throws it off the roof of his president ial pad in little rock, arkansas, because hes so mad at hillary and the staff. Theyhe wanted her to go to notre dame to give his speech and wouldnt do it and when emails came out you can blame it on russia. But when they came out, what was in it, with the catholic spring that was damaging and bill clinton answer was you need to get in front of that and speak up, and basically catholic spring idea once we get into power were going to set up and these committees and well coop the Catholic Church and well influence their dinner to make it what a catholic spring. Well to make it more of a liberal, more of a liberal, more socially acceptable a lot of bishops are are thinking one thing for you to separate church and state and get mad social policy but youre going to take over our church bill clinton wanted her to get in front of that and say were not doing that. This is strong, i denounce that. I just like a republican would denounce a donation for the wrong person. But her fear was theres no reason to call attention to this. A lot of people dont know about it. News media is not covering it so lets keep it underwrap and bill clinton would say you cant do that. Its out there going from bishop to bishop from diocese to diocese you have to get out front and say nope, we have nothing to do request this. Well, that you mention some of this came out of the email 22 the population are catholic. Right. But this is part of that email, so massive emails from the Clinton Campaign and from pedesda and jennifer part of that a Communications Director both of whom were catholic as i remember. Yes. Which was why they had the expertise to feel they could influence. So how much was what is elite, how much difference did that make . I think they were big because the catholic vote if youll think back and remember when george h. Bush won he won with a tremendous landslide and he split the catholic vote 50 50. And yet he won a landslide becae of the evangelical he had and he took it substantially over Hillary Clinton. She could have gotten a portion of that as barack obama afterwards if shed asked an bill clinton felt if she had gone after them. So she could have had some of those so i think those leaked emails did have a big impact and that clintons belatedly came to that conclusion and first reaction are was this is all jim comeys fault and they said that. That was the fbi director. At least thats in public statements all jim colenys fault and then later you dont hear them talking about jim comey anymore but then the russians fault in fairness. In fairness the russians gave money to Hillary Clinton. They didnt give any money to trump they gave money to her foundation. Right. And they got the Silicon Valley deal. They got the uranium deal and there was potentially theoretically, an exchange. There was no exchange with trump. If they helped trump, okay hes in power. First thing he does is increase military spending what did you he do that for russia . Well, other thing i wanted you to talk about with doug is the White Working Class because i know in the book, you talking about how you picked this up and i was fecking up from a reporter standpoint on how Hillary Clinton was completely missing problem she was having in these rest belt states they were confident. They were going to win pennsylvania. I mean litany republican talking about winning pennsylvania but almost never do. Dont ever do they . They didnt. Ohio i didnt expect it this time. And of course florida different area of the country. But what happened with the working class . I know in the book, you have i actually put it tag on it because i personally come from working class background heist, and i know you said people overlooked, stomped on used taken for granted, this is their moment to speak. They had been shamed into telling the pollsters what they wanted to hear but in the privacy of their polling booths they have struck a blow. Talk a little bit about that. How did trump, hes not a working class guy. Hes hes an American Business aristocrat. How does he sense this . Yeah. And Michael Moore was right on the money when Michael Moore did his event in ohio, he kind of tease the audience if you remember that, he looked out the audience and said i know with what youre going to do and they all kind of laughed like he caught them like they were little kids and he caught them in the act because he knew they were going to vote for donald trump. I think they resented being pushed and they resented the media, the may have overplayed it and they just reacted to that. Dont tell me what to do. A little bit it might have worked but ting might have been overdone and the media came u off desperate and did in reagan years and they didnt like being called racist they had voted twice for barack obama the same group. All through those rest belt states they took great pride in the fact especially the catholic, white, union voters, twice they voted for barack obama, they were proud of themselves. They loved to see that that stigma of racism ended and they took pleasure in voting for barack obama now being culled a race racist because they didnt vote for another democrat who wasnt africanamerican . I think they thought nim not pushedded into that. The deplorable moment. Talk about that a little bit f Hillary Clinton used that word. To describe a lot of Trump Supporters that is taken as observancive by a lot of people. Worn like a badge by many people because i guess it shows the humor, again, it was overplayed. So people said oh, you know, were quick to think of the worst thing about ourself ourselves that somebody says something that is critical were going to say thats true and assume vote were defiant like im deplorable give me a break they think thats overreached and they kind of pushed back and took pride. And wore deplorable on their lapel. I wanted to get to, sir, what you make of whats going on contemporary here with President Trump before i do that what did you learn about the country from this campaign yourself . What did you learn about where the country is and what they want from the government and how much change do people really want and what did you learn about donald trump . I would love to hear your answer to that question. Well, sarah and i have talked about that a lot. Shes worked for hashet they turned this book around on a dime. I dont know how they did if. Theyre pretty very impressive to me. But what i took away is that the american electorate were, therm on to things that i i couldnt believe they were on to. And in some cases it was almost instinctive. They didnt know how they inport, exfort bank works average person doesnt know how the Federal Reserve works. Didnt