Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Peter Baker And Susan Glasser 20230117

charter is connecting us. >> charter can indication's along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> elizabeth borders, jack dee and, you are in history, the third married couple to ever appear on "in depth" in 25 years. bernadine dorn, rose and milton friedman, now elizabeth borders jack dee and as the third married couple. >> we have no ideology. >> you are somewhere in the middle of those two. what is the best part about working on a book and living with the person, raising a son? with the same person you are writing a book with? >> your spouse can't get mad at you for spending too much time at work. >> what's the worst part about writing a book with the same person? >> it is 24 hours. >> we met in a newsroom. we always worked together even from the beginning of our relationship. it's part of our professional and personal -- never separated them. for us it is natural. >> host: you work simultaneously in many locations. >> that is right. we met first in the washington post newsroom in january 1998, the only good thing that came out of the monica lewinsky bill clinton situation but we have always worked to get her. we followed that, did a stint in moscow as a bureau chief for the washington post. when we came back to washington we had different assignments but whether we worked in the same place or not, i worked at the new yorker, it's part of an ongoing conversation and we feel lucky. we had so many people say to us how can you write a book together? i would say we are so lucky to have this partnership that exists in real-time in all the things we are interested in. >> host: your third book together, kate lewis, is almost accidental. is that a fair way of saying it? you were already in jerusalem in 2016. >> we decided we wanted -- while we were young enough to enjoy it or get something out of it, we made the move in summer of 2016, i was at the new york times and bureau chief can originate -- renovated our apartment but she was going to join us after the election because she was editor of politico at the time but the election changed everything. i remember is that night in jerusalem when the results came in susan texted me and said trump is going to win, second, they don't want you to come back. she was right. >> what did you do with your apartment in jerusalem? >> we turned it over to our success or who got to enjoy it more than we did. >> host: you worked at the new york times and stayed at politico for a while. >> writing a column, doing a podcast but it was supposed to be focused on international affairs but i would say the point here, we've been in that moment for these last 5 or 6 years, the united states is the biggest focal point of global disruption. if you care about foreign policy, i was the editor of foreign policy magazine but this it disruption, this internal crisis in the world's major superpower is the biggest question for anyone who cares about foreign policy, we got to be foreign correspondents in our own country. we had to buy a new house, our house is rented out. even though we were only gone a few weeks from washington, it felt in some ways covering the trump presidency was covering a different city, different world in a way. >> host: when did you start working on kate lewis? was in 2016? >> writing a book is so hard, such an enormous thing. one of the things, there've been a lot of incremental books about the trump presidency during the middle of it. i think our aspiration was to resist doing that and think about what can we do that might be lasting? 5 years from now, or longer, when your kids or grandkids say donald trump was president? what was that like? our goal once we decided to embark on it which we did not do until trump's first impeachment when we thought okay, that is something that will last for history but then of course that was followed by the disruptions of 20/20 and the election year. the concept changed to the fool trump in the white house four years. >> host: elizabeth borders, almost a book and to your book on bill clinton's impeachment. >> that was my first book, there are echoes, it was so different under trump come became so much more magnified. the clinton impeachment put a different light in some ways. we were thinking about and impeachment but didn't start working on it until after it was over. why did you not tell us these things while he was in office? we didn't start working on this book until after he left office, this is a product of 300 interviews in the last 18 months after he left. we tried to put it out and it was worth bearing witness for history. >> the germ of the idea wasn't 24 hours of the beginning of trump's first impeachment, the ukraine scandal and perfect phone call and we were going out to dinner in september 2019 and we ran into lindsey graham a key character in peter's first book on impeachment, that's how lindsey graham came to national attention as one of the republican house managers in bill clinton's senate trial two decades ago and we ran into lindsey graham coming out of the washington steakhouse and he said are you going to write a book about the next impeachment? it was a remarkable demonstration of what was proved to be one of the enduring themes of this book, republicans who privately disdained donald trump while publicly accommodating themselves to him in or even in lindsey graham's case over the top lavishing with praise. graham, for all his public defenses of donald trump turned to us, wanted to prove he was in on the joke, said he is a lying mother f-er. but he is so much fun to hang out with. that stuck with us as we embarked on this project that became kate lewis. >> host: there is a quote from you, jack dee and, the james baker book, you said both peter and i came away reinforced with the idea that individuals do matter in history is not inevitable. i wanted to talk about some of the individuals in kate lewis beginning with lindsey graham. what was his role during the trump administration? >> so few characters are is interesting, he ran against trump in 2016 and was very visceral in saying trump was unfit for office, the most unfit ever, he was a kook, he was dangerous, extremist in all these ways and once trump gets into office, trump start to ruling him giving him access, play golf, has he ever ridden on marine one. look at the view here, fly on air force one with me and he drew graham in. and he loved the access, the ability to call upon his cell phone, no other president had given him that access. it's a fascinating story. it began to draw him away from his mentor, his partner, john mccain, with whom he had been so close, mccain despised trust, thought trump was dangerous and incompetent, terrible for the country, didn't understand why lindsey graham was pulling closer. lindsey graham would tell you, he is a lot of fun and tell people he could moderate trump, he could guide trump until can be a better president but never convince john mccain. on his deathbed john mccain in the do graham were fighting over this, john mccain dying of brain cancer. there is a moment in arizona where lindsey graham has gone down to be with mccain and mccain, why do you have to do this? why do you have to play golf with them and lie about how he is a good golfer and graham is like you were a war prisoner, you for gave them, how can't i can't forgive donald trump? a dramatic break between the which plays out at the cathedral after mccain dies and lindsey graham, his great friend has no speaking role other than to read a quick line from scripture and it is one of the dramatic sub-stories of this presidency. >> host: jack dee and, throughout kate lewis, you talk about the players in washington. is it fair to say that you two are probably washington insiders? i don't mean to be unfair in that term. >> longevity -- scott keeter would donald trump have been accepted by the washington establishment? >> it's one of the truisms about washington the there is a permanent establishment. what is remarkable is there's a constant renewal in the city in the sense that every four years, every we 8 years there' s a new president, a new administration, clinton came to town, they were dismissed as outsiders, rubes from arkansas and fast forward a few years, the evil establishment that needs to be overthrown, the reagan revolution begat a new generation of republican insiders and establishment that today the republican establishment venerate ronald reagan as their patron saint, whereas he originally came to town as the ultimate insider who was going to shake things up. i do think there is that notion. the difference is donald trump will never have conferred a new generation of insiders, because he chose to pursue the maximally confrontational version of the presidency. it was almost chaos and disruption for its own sake. we see now the consequences of that, still dealing two years after the presidency with the damage that has wrought. hundreds of court cases still proceeding related to the january 6, 2020, one insurrection at the capitol. president of the united states, the former president running again for his office seeking to be the first since grover cleveland to return to the presidency, the constitution is optional when it comes to elections and what he thinks he is owed from 2020. that is never going to be establishment, that will not be a new establishment in washington. it's important, normally you write a book after the end of a presidency it is for history and i do think we are hoping for people to read this as a historical document but in this case it is also literally a live-action crime scene, subject of multiple investigations by the justice department. it is also a present day crisis in our democracy too. >> host: elizabeth borders, your book, these are quotes from your book, if only he would, it was a washington parlor game, he could, if only he would. >> there was this idea when he first came in but maybe he could break out of the mold by being someone who worked across the aisle because he didn't have an ideology. he didn't have a party. he switched parties 5 or 6 times, the ultimate chameleon, had no great set of core principles the way reagan did or clinton did or bush did or obama did. he was infinitely flexible. he had been pro choice, very pro-choice before he became pro-life. he was for banning assault rifles before he was pro-second amendment, for raising taxes on the rich before he was for cutting taxes. again and again, he decided he didn't need them anymore. there was the idea, he didn't have a wedded view of things, maybe were crossed out but fundamentally misunderstand who he is and who he is is a disruptor to use a kind word. they are less kind words to use, but he is a divider. he is about division and always has been, he is about throwing fuel on whatever fire is out there. if there isn't a fire he will find want to start. >> host: if he does not get the republican nomination in 24, could you see him leaving the republican party? >> absolutely, shouldn't rule it out. i don't know that he will but you should not rule that out. even if he were to not run, saying we -- he re to pull out, he would constantly second-guess whoever the nominee is, could bolt the party and undermine in some ways, republicans walked into somebody who doesn't believe january 6th attack, saying i will give up on the republican party, then know why won't, you can't count on that. >> host: a lot of people around him were quoted as saying i stuck around because it was important that i stuck around and we didn't want trump to be trump necessarily, or chiefs of staff, john kelly, mark meadows and mick mulvaney. at one point to the chief of staff let go of managing the white house. >> it might be case studies of how not to do it. donald trump likes two kinds of staffers, he likes a staffer who used to work for him and the ones that will work for him. trump, for all his obsession with personal loyalty, he means personal loyalty defined by loyalty to him. he feels no obligation in the other direction and that's an important point, what is the trajectory of those chiefs of staff. in some ways that is the spine of the story we are telling in kate lewis. it's about those who surrounded donald trump because trump in the end is a very unchanging, inflexible man in his 70s. without these others who were willing to work for him for whatever, located set of reasons, he would have been just another old dude shouting at the television watching fox news between golf games and what is striking is as he went through the four years trump was speaking, not only loyalty but a definition of staff who would do what he wanted without pushing back, without questioning him, who would join him in the project of knocking down the guard rails. think about january 6th, the difference between mark meadows, the congressman from north carolina who was his fourth and final chief of staff versus john kelly, retired four times marine general who was his second chief of staff, we can't say if kelly had been chief of staff january 6th wouldn't have happened but you can say pretty credibly that kelly would have thrown himself at the door of the oval office to stop people like mike flynn from getting in and advocating martial law in a 5 hour long meeting with donald trump which actually happened in december of 2,020 one. meadows in the words of one of the people we quote in the book was serving essentially as a matador in that period, waving the crazies into the oval office and those who were peddling conspiracy theories, lies and recklessness. it really does matter who surrounded donald trump but it is important to note that there were many who did in their own way resist trump but that doesn't mean they are heroes, that was a quote a white house official from the trump white house said to us, there are no heroes in this story and that is an important point to make. >> john kelly, when he is pushed out as chief of staff says to trump you don't want a yes-man, he said yes i do, i want a yes-man. that was trump's philosophy. he wasn't looking for somebody to disagree, he wanted people to do what he wanted them to do, took a while to find them. >> how many of those four talked to you. >> we don't get into that in the book but we talk to as many as possible, people who might not want to know that we talk with them. >> we wanted to be as authoritative as possible. you talked to several hundred people which we did, all of them after trump left office and the second impeachment. what was striking to me was how much we were able to debrief people many of whom had never spoken out publicly much to the fury of trump's many critics in and out of the republican party but it struck us as important, you are taking a form of testimony and after action report for somebody who was a crisis for american democracy. >> that you pursue an interview with the president? speech we didn't need to, it was offered. donald trump wanted to give as many interviews as possible. it wasn't for us. we that he is so convinced in the power of his own persuasiveness that he will talk and talk with many of the authors who came forward to write about him. the interview is a bit of a misnomer. donald trump, not like an interview where you ask us questions and we do our best to answer them, donald trump is much more of a monologue is than an interview. there was not really a noun and a verb and a period in almost anything. he said to us, of course if you're going to write a history of the man and his time in office it is valuable to see him in action. i was struck by the fact that even in private, no tv camera, it is almost a live-action version of his twitter feed, slinging insults, mentioned one of his former advisers, for a nasty nicknames at them, make up things on the spot, contradict himself in the space of a short period of time. he wasn't a reliable fact witness. >> host: what was your clearings like at mar-a-lago? >> trump is not the persona of his rally self. he's not yelling, red in the face, attacking you as enemy of the people or fake news. that always is a misconception people have. historically trump, the man who was famous on the apprentice for firing people, as historians and biographies have documented, he was actually conflict averse in person and would often have other people do the firing at the trump organization. maybe that is why he liked to fire people by tweet when he was president. he didn't have the desire or courage to look somebody in the eye and say you're fired. he was personable to a certain extent, can i get you a diet coke? he struck me as a combination of napoleon on elba raging about the rigged election but also a banquet hall, welcoming the guests to dinner in the middle of our interview. >> host: anything to add to that? >> he want to make sure you use the time well so you try to craft your questions in advance to get what you really need. the challenge of the interview is different. you are asking direct questions or trying to answer them. >> doesn't matter what our questions were. >> interviewed a couple others. is so different than anybody else, in which you go in, i remember going in with mike schmidt, trying to 0 in on this scandal of the moment and not going to let him dive into another topic. he made news on the other topic, wait a second, do i stick with this? you don't know what to do with him or how to control the conversation so you actually get a particular answer to a particular question. in some ways you let it go because you want to experience it not as a fact witness, in matters of specific detail. you are looking for mindset, understand what he said and to his credit he is the most transparent president we ever had, not necessarily for his own benefit. he tells us all the things he's thinking that no politician would ever admit out loud which is yes, i am trying to use the government for my own political purposes. he would admit things no politician should ever admit because he doesn't hide in that sense his own motivations, his own self-interest which is the way he defines everything. >> host: great fodder for a reporter. >> not great for the republic. but he is the one i felt we knew what he was thinking at almost any given time. because of twitter, because of his offhand comments, he never had any discipline about what he was saying, he would say whatever came to his mind, he would throw the television -- obama didn't do that, bush 43 didn't do that, those were disciplined people who wanted to stick to their message and say what they wanted to say. in that sense trump is a fascinating character to write about, you don't have to guess what he was thinking. >> host: even though you work for the, quote, failing new york times you had more access to him than to president obama or president bush. >> or president biden. we haven't interviewed president biden yet. by this point donald trump had given us multiple interviews. the truth is he had a love-hate relationship with the new york times. on the one hand he calls it the failing new york times. we are doing better than ever before, the largest staff ever, largest readership ever, we are not failing. but say for the sake of argument he doesn't like us. at the same time it is the paper his father read growing up and he read growing up, to be accepted in the elite which he wanted to be meant the new york times and so he would lash out at us but at the same time was desperately eager to get something good. i was in the oval office with him with our publisher and he said i just want one good story in my hometown paper, don't i deserve this one good story? it meant something to him that was different from other presidents who would write us off and say who cares? >> host: probably too easy but a mafia don in a sense. is that an easy comparison? >> donald trump spent a lot of time around people like that. look knew who his mentor was. the most influential person in donald trump's life aside from his father who was a tough character, his favorite word was killer, make of that what you will. aside from his father the most influential person in donald trump's early career was roy cohn, famous mccarthy investigator who later went on to be a lawyer for people like that in new york, who taught trump the art of hard dealmaking in new york city and 1970s, and 1980s. you see very much that spirit of never accommodate, never given. always the constant contention with the law, the use of lawsuits whether he's under investigation or using the courts against his enemies or buying time, it is a fascinating aspect of a man who has sown division and conflict throughout his entire long career, decades in the public eye. the trump of the white house was in many ways unchanged from the donald trump of the 80s and the 90s. the surprise was people were so surprised about it. the notion that he would become presidential, easily disputed by the stack of excellent biographies of donald trump that had been written before he came into office. somehow people had this ability again and again and again to delude themselves that he would be something other than he was. >> host: has the president reacted to your book? >> not publicly anyway. >> host: privately? >> we haven't got a private response. >> host: jack dee, you mentioned donald trump had trouble firing people in person, one person he fired personally on a sunday night was kiersten nielsen. remind us who she was and her role and how she tried to control her age. >> she was the secretary of homeland security, she belongs in that large category of people who achieved high office under trump who would never have had those positions in any other administration. she worked closely alongside john kelly when he was the first homeland security secretary, she went to the white house with him, there were months and months of looking for somebody to go to the department of homeland security, people said no to them. probably the most hyper politicized role you could imagine and the trump administration because of trump's focus and almost relentless attention to the issue of illegal immigration. although it is a vast agency cobbled together from other agencies all put together after 9/11, trump thought he wanted them to build his wall. he wanted them to fulfill what he saw as a key pledge to his political base that got him elected president in the first place. there is a constant intersection, some of the stories are incredible. he was probably more abusive toward her than any other member of his cabinet. repeated examples of that of from her perspective, not her advisors, remarkable the stories we are able to report in the book the extent to which, constantly demanding they do things they were told by lawyers were ill legal. nielsen had the difficult job of saying no again and again and again to a president who did not want to be told no. some of his ideas were unbelievable. they want to build a most at the border, alligators, shoot the legs of migrants, this constant barrage. she had an incredibly difficult time handling that. >> host: in your four years covering the white house, elizabeth borders, did you witness political -- >> the biggest political challenge in the white house was managing the boss, some are more adept at it than others, some work confrontational which didn't always work, some of them found ways of steering him in the direction they want to steer him but ultimately none of them succeeded because all of them fell out of favor, even his own family. jared kushner was originally expected to be a moderating force, democrats from new york are the ones who will keep him going too far and they discovered that he would get mad at them if they were sent in to stop him from doing something he wanted to do. so he learned not to do that and was disappointed in a lot of people who thought he had a responsibility to interact more and came up with a formula how to deal with trump, his own father in law. it was a 2 to one ratio. anytime i give bad news i will give twice as much good news first. he had a pole to deliver, he would let trump had -- at 5 points, they are not capturing your people. the biggest most interesting moment, he is successful in a lot of ways, helps get him to agree to, justice reform and to pull together israel, and its neighbors in the abraham accords, something's point to that was important but in the moment it came down to it after the election of 2,020, his father in law was heading toward a massive lie about the election being stolen, jared kushner would retreat, i'm not going to fight with you. if you're going to listen to rudy giuliani i want nothing to do with it. that leaves a void open for mike flynn and sidney powell, the moment most people want to jared kushner to play a part, to fight inside the white house, he chose not to. >> host: time is fleeing quickly. we've got half an hour with jack dee and peter baker. this is booktv's "in depth" program where we usually talk to one author and his or her body of work, we are talking to their body of work this afternoon and we will begin taking your calls in a little while but jack dee and is currently with the new yorker, peter baker's with the new york times. they've written 3 books together. there first was kremlin rising:larry boone's russia and the end of the revolution the came out in 2005. in 2020 came the man who ran washington:the life and times of james a baker iii. and the divider, trump in the white house, came out this year. peter baker has written four books on his own. the breach:inside the impeachment and trial of william jefferson clinton came out in 2,000, days of fire:bush and cheney in the white house 2013, obama, the call of history, 2017 and impeachment compendium on american history with john meacham and jeffrey engel came out in 2018. peter baker was the bill clinton part of that book. we put the numbers on the screen, we want your participation if you would like to talk with our authors, 202 is the area code, 740-8200 and the east and central time zones, 202-748-820 one for those in the mountain and pacific time zones, and you can contact us via our social media sites, we will scroll through those as we go@booktv and our booktv email, booktv@c-span.org. we will take those in a few minutes. i've got just a runny nose here and i apologize for that. we left off with jared kushner. in a sense the bureaucracy. i want to talk about somebody featured in your book, don't know if you want to admit you talked to stephen miller of the trump white house or not, if that's an open source or not. he survived the bureaucracy. >> he was there for all four years. most of those except for family or not. >> why did he survive? >> he did figure out how to manage trump the way he wanted to without drying his ire. one of the few. he nudged and pushed and cajoled trump into taking harder positions on all source of immigration issues whether it is refugees, the refugees, the public welfare position, trying to limit the number of people coming in, whether it was limiting legal immigration much less the ban on people coming in from several muslim countries and he played interviews trump already had, figured out how to maneuver around the bureaucracy. and discover her own staff would be called to meetings without telling her and it was sort of a constant struggle in the bureaucracy. finally, stephen, you are in charge of immigration in which case stephen miller tells another person in the administration this is my coronation. i am going food napoleon which is what he tried to do. >> host: did jeff sessions, was it because of immigration that he failed in the trump white house? >> there are three wear-and-tear, russia russia russia. the bottom line, a fascinating story of trump and his definition of what he's looking for in an advisory, very narrow definition of personal loyalty. jeff sessions, the first us senator to endorse donald trump in the 2016 campaign. he was in many respects the archetype of the kind of republican who supported donald trump when the vast majority of the republican party did not support donald trump. the other senators and representatives didn't support donald trump. none of that mattered. when it came down to it, because trump blamed jeff sessions for recusing himself from overseeing of the investigation into russia's role in the 2016 campaign, triggering the ultimately the murder investigation which hung over a very large portion of the trump presidency. trump, the way he treated sessions, was so remarkable. stephen miller started as an advisor to jeff sessions. that's how he got into trump's orbit, felt no compunction ultimately about abandoning his first boss and sticking with his second boss but trump be rated sessions openly, peter was mentioning in an interview he had with donald trump in summer of 2017. that is when donald trump started publicly attacking his own attorney general, daring him to quit, which sessions refused to do. he hung on for a long time. it went all the way on, the spectacle of a president, against his own attorney general, that lasted all the way until the midterm election, the first thing he did. the first thing was to fire jeff sessions. >> host: was it william barr abstract to go in if the president started railing on him or having a topic he wanted to get off of by mentioning one of these hot button topics? >> that is a great little vignette in william barr's recent memoir in which he says he and mike pompeo, second secretary of state, that they would distract donald trump by mentioning the russia investigation when they were worried about something. talk about waving a red flag at the pool, that was an easy way to get trump off on a lecture that can last a long time about how badly treated he wasn't all his grievances. william barr is a fascinating example of the argument that while donald trump broke with many officials, they ended up breaking with donald trump, it is always a complicated story. william barr got the job as trump's second attorney general after trump fired jeff sessions, in part because he wrote a memo saying he thought the muller investigation was not legitimate use of counsel power and was overreach, that was exactly what donald trump wanted to hear and trump thought by appointing william barr, he would help him to fire muller or contain the damage and ultimately many people believe that is what william barr did in the spring of 2018, spring of 2019 when the muller report came out that william barr's mischaracterization of some of his findings helped shape the public perception, when he said there was no collusion, that william barr was a key facilitator cementing that idea with the public and even for william barr there was a moment trump went too far. that moment was what he did after the 2020 election and william barr in many respects was the most significant cabinet official to probably break with donald trump. on december 1st, 2020, william barr came out publicly and said there is no basis to believe there is any widespread fraud that would be sufficient to overturn the election. that was a crucial moment and ever since then, he has been a very public critic of trump when it comes to the election stuff. but again, it is a complicated story. many of these former trump officials and advisers, mike pence is another classic example of that. on the one hand, they say he went too far after the election, but he got crazy later. when i worked for him he wasn't -- it is really a kind of disingenuous thing to invent history so that at just the moment you happened to conveniently discover that donald trump is a problem, everything that came before was okay. >> host: in your book the divider, peter baker, you write trump was not exonerated in the russia investigation. >> one of the things he is very skilled at is shaping public perception and branding himself and selling things to the marketplace and affect. what he sold is the investigation exonerated him even though it hadn't. muller writes this is not an exoneration. he created this -- by sheer repetition, by distortion, he created this impression even among democrats, the muller report didn't find anything wrong, when in fact it did. muller identified ten instances he made a case for obstruction of justice but chose not to because the justice department policy, you cannot charge a sitting president but trump did win because he characterized the russian investigation as a hoax and sold to his reporters and a lot of people. >> host: was there overreach by the washington press when it came to russia in 2016? was there an eagerness to find a story that wasn't there? >> i am a big believer that there is no such thing as a monolithic washington press. if you look at trump's attack and his administration it is important to note that they were purposeful, calculating, and served an important political purpose from the very beginning of his time in politics predating of a presidency, the use of the term fake news, from those who actually pointed out in the 2016 race how much lies and misinformation and disinformation were being used by trump, by and network of russia supported bots on social media that aimed to distort and misrepresent things. i think it is very important to make that point. there is no monolithic washington media. that's important to note. when it comes to the russia story, what i am struck by as peter baker pointed out, the incredible success trump has had shaping a narrative. peter and i have covered in criminal and rising, the us/russia relationship for more than two decades. i have to tell you what people might not understand this, there has never been an example of any president or campaign except for donald trump's 2016 presidential campaign in which there were repeated contacts with the ambassador from russia in which there was repeated effort to reach out in which the campaign manager, chairman powell -- paul manafort, had a long history of maintaining contact even during the campaign. .. officials, the fbi, the treasury department have said were working with russian intelligence. so let's be clear about that -- this is an exceptional situation we are talking about here. the weaponization, the theng weaponization, the hackin, stealing and weaponization of democratic e-mails done by russian intelligence in the course of the 2016 campaign was a dramatic and remarkable moment that the u.s. political apparatus was not really prepared to handle, the obama administration struggled with how to respond to that. this is really an exceptional thing, and to think that often gets lost. >> host: i wrote a note to myself, all roads lead back to russia and ukraine. >> guest: it does seem like that. nancy pelosi once said that to donald trump in the meeting. >> guest: probably her most famous moment where she stands up and white house and she waxer finger and says what is it with you? all roads lead back to putin. >> host: in "kremlin rising," a quote, the trains we saw during our time in russia have only accelerated. this book is a couple years old. it was updated i believe ind 2007. is that still true today? >> guest: i think so, yeah. this book takes place long before the war on georgia, the war on ukraine, the interference in the election but you see the seeds of it. in our time in russia we were there for four years, the beginning of putin's term. you saw his crackdown. you saw his lamenting the collapse of the soviet union. you saw his desire to create a re-create russia as this great power on the stage to be respected and to stand up as an alternate to the west. a lot of those themes are in this book would be very familiar to anybody looking back on it today. >> host: are you fluent in russian?en >> guest: less affluent i would say than when we lived there but we have tried to keep it up. it's remarkable how this period of the post-cold war is the time that peter and i have been reporting larger in washington, but russia was the story that never fully went away, as much as people wanted to believe that we moved on to a different era m in politics.if for peter and i have observed and covered five american presidents dealing and struggling with and in many ways making the same mistakes again and again and again when it came down to understand vladimir anputin. it's remarkable how much even iu the post-cold war era of american politics russia has been a through line. and the struggle to do with vladimir putin. >> host: chechnya, is there a direct connection between chechnya and ukraine and what's happening there? is that a fair connection? >> guest: in a way because putin comes to power in 1999 by waging war in chechnya. chechnya for those who don't remember as small republic within the russian state that was a rake away republic, and putin uses that conflict to gain political power internally. it is a brutal, vicious war against the separatist rebels.s he doesn't just go after separatist rebels. he goes after the civilian population. he pummels the capital of chechnya with more firepower. 100,000 people are killed, civilians. s i visited chechnya repeatedly and it was a horrific wasteland because of the war that putin waged on the civilian population, not just the separatists. you fast-forward to ukraine and use much the same. you see the use of indiscriminate power in order to achieve political goals. the difference is the ukrainians have not, in fact, surrendered and, in fact, have beaten back chechens ultimately did not. >> guest: it's a horrible irony in fact, of this war in ukraine, at the kremlinre essentially hand-picked warlord of chechnya and his men had become some of the most feared and brutal fighters fighting for russia in this war insidee ukraine. it's come sort of full circle but i think the point, if you want to understand putin again and again and again throughout his more than two decades in power, he has resorted to the use of military force to pursue otherwise unattainable politicap ambitions and that by the wayay marks him as very different than had a war since 1979. data conflict with become so that's a long time of china's peaceful rise. now they have been militarized.n if invested things and billions in recent years of course in the military and china but they have resorted to the use of forcee were as i think to putin it an important part of his playbook and, unfortunately, for ukraine and for europe and for the united states, they are notuk really examples of putin sitting down at the negotiating table and come to a long-term resolution of any of these complex.e >> host: there's so much here i want to talk about, latimerad putin's time in east germany in leningrad, the connection to boris yeltsin. how much of that made up to yesterday? how much can you draw a line around that experience and what he is today? >> guest: it's important to remember he is kgb. that's something we often paper over but that is his roots, that's where he comes from. he wanted his child to join the kgb. like watching the old g-men and the united states. he wanted to be part of this and the effect offered and sell to the kgb without an expecting him. sorry, you don't come to us, we come to you. eventually did it come to it and it became an officer interest in each country east germany. it's this moment when the collapse of the old soviet order happens and he is left there in his bank outpost in the middleid of east germany, and there are crowds of people outside the kgb office in there and is hereby himself with a lone gun saying back off, don't you dare come in here and they're burning the documents inside because they are afraid of being overrun. they call for help and answer they get is moscow is silent. searing moment for putin and it reverberates to this day, the idea that the power had collapsed. that's what he has been trying to reverse for 22 years. >> host: susan glasser, have you ever met vladimir putin? >> guest: i have met vladimir putin. he's joking about that. the first time i met vladimir putin was the first time that putin held an interview for american correspondents based in moscow. it was right after the very famous first meeting between george w. bush and vladimir putin at which they looked into each other's souls and saw somebody they could do business with. so it was a moment of perceived opening to the west and the united states. we were invited to the kremlin a library for a roundtable discussion, a small number of american correspondents. interestingly, my first chance to ask vladimir putin a question, we went around the table as i was about two-thirds of the way around the table and i was waiting and waiting and waiting for someone else to bring up the difficult subject of chechnya, and human rights and nobody did so i thought the honor of the americanod correspondent class here requires that i do so. so when it came time to me i asked him about chechnya, and it was really fascinating moment, very revealing because up until this point putin had been determined to kind of projecthe the image that he was a young technocratic leader, unlike boris yeltsin was perceived as old and stumbling and literally drunk at many times. putin was kind of like very in control. he was spouting facts and figures from his briefing books trying to prove he wasn't too young and inexperienced for the job, and then i asked him about chechnya and his entire visage changed and he became very snappish and angry and he said, what do you want me to do? you will need to sit down and talk about the koran with these people?as these are killers essentiallyly and i'm going to respond the way that i need to. it was a really revealing interaction. so that was the first time that i met vladimir putin. >> host: did you ask him in russian or english? >> guest: in english. this was a conversation where there were translators. putin, interestingly, was learning english at this time, and so one of the things is that it doesn't often like conduct conversations in english by the circling knows enough english that that would be an advantage that he would have in dealing with many u.s. presidents that he dealt with because even though he had an official interpreter he could probably understand much of what the president's were saying even before there was the official interpretation trauma he could correct the translator sometimes it feels they got wrong but they get some advantage try to he has to wait while the translation happens so he can figure out an answer. >> host: have you traveled back there since your time andd would you go back today? >> guest: we go back to a lot of times and for that although we've not been there in the last seven, eight years. susan is now banned tractor earlier this year, on the saturday morning they put out many, many lists of banned american officials and some commentators.. they don't send your letter anything saying why you're on the list. my late father, i called him up and he said well, you should think of it as a badge of honor. that's true in the sense that we've been very clear i think and tried to be very straightforward about what the consequences of this horrible russian war of aggression n against its neighbor, but at the same time it's made me very, very sad for the russian people, and have to say like i very much look forward to going back to a free russia someday, i do. >> host: before we go to calls i do want to bring up the name of anna -- who was she? >> guest: she was a crusading russian journalist, one of those remarkable people we met when we lived there. she would go to chechnya and surrounding republics all the time and reveal a lot of the abuses by russian troops there and she was brave beyond measure in standing up to authority. of course she paid a price for one day she's walking home with her groceries and is shot down, murdered, sass that any of her apartment building. and --di >> host: any about it was an official assassination? >> guest: i don't have any doubt about that. his reaction was classic agrees ask and said well, she was come try to say basically why doesn't she was of no importance. her killer certainly is more important anything she ever wrote? in other words, that last west was using this propaganda against him by blaming him. it was done on his birthday, putin's birthday and it was perceived in russia as a birthday present to him by his security services or his loyalists or whoever it was who pulled the trigger. there was no doubt it was connected to him and his people and i must say many of the people that we wrote about in "kremlin rising," those who dared to stand up to putin, people who help us to help us understand this big complicated country, anna politkovskaya is not the only one who is dead. boris murdered in the shadow of the kremlin, many others killed, exiled, and then there are a large category also people that we quote in the book who have become apologists for the putin regime. >> host: let's go to calls and begin with leo was up in the bronx. leo, you are on with authors and journalists susan classic and peter baker. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. my question is for both susan and peter. number one, i enjoy seeing you on msnbc because you are both very knowledgeable but my question is about china. as you know this week china has writing against the lockdown. what isn't clear in is why won't the chinese leadership purchase mrna vaccines from pfizer and from moderna which are more effective than the vaccines thad they produce? aren't they jeopardizing their political stability by not looking to vaccines that aret most effective? >> host: getting a little bit off our topic of the books that they've written about but susan classic and anything you want to address?su >> guest: thank you' i think it's by the way it's a very good question.e we were having a conversation last night on exactly this subject china and its leadershih under xi jinping had really locked itself into what appears to be a terrible corner, almost three years into this pandemic, the zero covid policy. unfortunately has also come with a very low percentage of the chinese population, especially of the elderly who are most vulnerable to it, being vaccinated so it's hard to imagine them be able to liberalize the policy since that would risk large-scale hospitalizations and mass deaths. so needing to vaccinate more of the population but this seems to be coming into conflict with a very nationalistic view that they don't want to have a non-chinese vaccine for it. we're told that there are more than enough global supply of vaccine, that if china were to seek to purchase more effective vaccines that it doesn't seem like that's happening. i should note it's not rioting that's been taking place in china this week as far as i understand, at some examples of protests, peaceful protests, including the symbol of this moment i think is so poignant and powerful, which is people holding up blank sheets of paper, which tells you everything. >> host: peter baker, you are still on msnbc regularly. you were on scene and for a long time. are you still with cnn? >> guest: no, that's right. we are a sickly still promoting the book and things like that but not on cnn. >> host: now, is the "new york times" staff going on strike. [laughing] >> guest: there seems to be, there's a conflict over the bargaining of our newf contract that there has been a statement saying they would like to have a walkout on thursday if is not progress. my hope is that progress and we don't come to them as today you're both employed? >> guest: yes. as of today trended these are tough times for journalism veteran journalist. >> host: in fact, jellico talking about independentuo journalism. and i got here my notes. i'm not even going to look for it. you know what it was, that you are worried about the state of independent journalism. >> guest:ab absolutely. when you look at how vulnerable so many companies are, we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of journalists. just this past week who have been laid off in places like, around the country is on the cnn and other news organizations. it's a time of great tribulation for independent news media, , ad especially when you see the hyper politicization of the public space in the supercharged nature of our politics right now. it is something i would deeply about because to be a free people requires a free press. >> host: why do youou think we seem to be so hyper anything today? we were even -- >> guest: that's a good question. we had this conversation a lot. look, american history is full of moments where we tend to get more hyper about things and then there are ebbs and flows but i do thinki it has accelerated in this moment by social media by the incentive structure to express anger and conflict over compromise. one of the books we wrote is you rightly said, thank you for mentioning is the main him in washington, james baker. he's such an example of somebody in a era when compromise, when it was rewarded for you to sit down with somebody and come up with a deal about something. today to try do that you're punished for it in a political system and that's the difference between now and the past. >> guest: and also i think peter i'm so glad you brought that up, the difference between the era we described in the main who ran washington, from the end of watergate to the end of the cold war, the media landscape is probably one of the biggest single differences and in the era of ford, carter, reagan, first bush. you are talking about an era of three national tv networks and just a very beginnings of cable news. you are talking about a few national newspapers like the "new york times," the "wall street journal", time magazine, "newsweek", and reagan andnd jim baker they were masters of communication at that air of time. but also led to a politics where youcs were seeking to appeal to the broad middle of the country, and your goal was 51%. we have moved into this different era where it's very hard to persuade anybody to change their minds or, you don't see larger swings of public opinion. act in the 1980s when jim baker was that is height when he was a white house chief of staff and treasury secretary, you would have half of the united states sin would be senators who were elected from states that went the other way in the presidential election. these days are talking about a handful of senators at best who can sort of the five the overarching identity of their state as either a blue state or a red state. that's a massive structural shift in the shift in our media we can debate whether the shift in the media led to the shift in the politics or that they are both representations of the same phenomenon, but it's a different. >> host: i promise you will get into the jim baker book becauseea it's worth reading. int want to read one paragraph from it. baker had long aspired to the state department, and ambition board of a success so rapid that it was easy to forget how quickly it hadha all happened. he was 58 years years old and only ten years earlier he had been between jobs, between jobs houston lawyer who are just lost a campaign for the only political office he had ever tried to win. it was a mark of his convincing rise that baker's appointment as secretary of state now was not the least bit controversial. we have got to get back to calls. so james in philadelphia, thanks for holding. you were on with peterba baker d susan glasser. >> caller: how're you doing, everybody? my question is for peter baker. in regards to buys at the "new york times", ak, like admitting the hunter bidenmi story, not really reporting on that, before the election. and how many people actually died on january 6 by the hands of the government on that, ashley babbitt was only person who died. there were police officers who died. they didn't die ontt january 6. mls question is, do you have reporters that go out to the middle of the country and to the small towns in america? america is dying right now. the middle class is dying. and you claim to be elite. you are in an elite class and that's a a huge problem with e country today.th because you are a monolithic thought in washington. you all think alike. yougt upload alike, and you go r people and you don't report on the policies of biden and the democratic party right now that is killing the middle class. >> host: james, we're going to leave it there. there's lots on the table there. peter baker, , what would you le to address? >> guest: nkjames, thank you very much for the call. i understand your point of view on this. i would say that we actually do do a lot of reporting from across the country. we are the onlyy newspaper that has as extensive a national staff as we do in which we report from everywhere. we have reporters in the midwest, the south, the west, nonstate and so forth because of want to capture the american outside of the east coast. we are not a new york paper. we are, in fact, a global paper, and we do i think very extensively right about the concerns and the issues that have been animating opposition frances to president biden if we write a lot about this, the policies have concern among voters and is low approval ratings including inflation, including economic issues. in the end, people are always can be satisfied with also think we are biased? of course people willfi think we'ree biased. everybody is biased in that sense. it's not our goal though.h. our goal is to be accurate, evenhanded, fair, open-minded. those arepe the goals i think fr journalism. we get attacked and we get criticized from the right, understand we saw times. we get criticized and attacked from the left, again understandably at times. i appreciate the thoughts and appreciate james for asking them. >> host: susan glasser, anything you want to add? >> guest: i think peter said it right. the goal here is to be open-minded, to be critical, to be fair, evenhanded, and curious. this is a moment that requires a journalism i think to be humble, to be surprised by what we are surprised by, and to constantly seek to reinvent ourselves and to do better. but it's very hard to do that in this polarized moment. once hard for us as we travel around the country on this book tour, talk to people, by the way all over the country in red states as well as blue states, and again and again and again struck by how much people live inside of news and information environments in which they are really exposeden to information and ideas that challenge their thinking. you know, that push them to consider facts that they might not have pushed,ay or that leads them to reject facts altogether and, unfortunately, that is a huge challenge for people. peter and i've been journalists our entire careers. we are committed to the idea that tax do actually matter and it's very important to establish a v commonality of facts and experience in order to then have a robust and vital political debate about what to do about it. we are living in in a world o years after an election in 2020 in which polls have consistently found as many as two-thirds of republican voters believe the lies about the election of 2020. that the former president has told, and that is taken the country i think to a different and very worrisome place. >> host: susan glasser, harvard grad. peter baker, oberlin grad. get a get that right on? >> guest: not a grad but i went there, yes. >> host: next call is cornelius from louisiana. >> caller: really enjoying the show. peter, you got some great gas. i happen to be an african-american. i was a military police officer and at a top secret clearance. i thought duringfo russians from 79-94. my question for you is that with january 6th, kash patel has paperwork where president trump wanted to send in 20,000 troops or 10,000 troops but nancy pelosi denied him. mitch mcconnell denied him. their sergeant of arms and the d.c. mayor bauer. and my question for you is this. and secret service knew about and the fbi norfolk office knew about january 6th they did nothing about it, but trump tried to prevent it. so do you have that in the book? thank you. >> guest: thank you very much for the question we appreciate that. there's no question there was on the part of a number of people of failure to see the security threat that intelligence have provided enough information to see. and that is true that there was a reluctance on the part of a number of people in washington to have the military and the streets on january 6th because of what happened in lafayette square in the previous june. we have seen in the book where president trump says i want the to be troops on the street but as he tells his military once among the streets to protect his supporters from what he thinks will be counter protesters against him. he's not worried about protecting the congress. he's worried about protecting his own supporters. that's from our reporting from people who were in the room at thero time. the question about president trump tried to stop her, he definitely did not try to stop it. he in fact, encouraged it. he put at tweets encouraging people to come to washington. it will be wild he said. on the day of course would happen when the people stormed into the capital he did not, in fact, act aggressively to stop it. that's been shown time and time again. it's in her book as well. even people like mike pence and others who worked for president trump will tell you they're incredibly disappointed that he failed to act. lots of republican senators who voted to convict him in the impeachment trial were reacting as much as anything to its failure try to stop it once it began to shut stop it withn and the image of him sitting in the little dining room watching this unfold on tv has been very clear for the people who were there at the time saying he was not expressing concern about thw people who were in danger, but he was encouraged that is before standing uppe for him so aggressively. in fact, he suggested that the protesters orth the rioters who were chanting hank mike pence might've had it right, maybe mike pence deserved it. >> host: we will put the phone lines up. if you can't get through on the phones here on booktvot you can also send a text message. that text message is 202-748-8203.. that phone line is for text messages only. please include your first name and your city if you would. we will also scroll through some of our social media sites if you want to participate that way as well. next call is a general in los angeles. please go ahead with yourr question or comment. >> caller: it's fitzgerald and this is for peter and susan. geniusus journalistic mind. i'm huge fan but this is coming from the personal angle. you as a couple, how might you see american journalism change during the reign of donald trump? >> guest: al thank you so much for the kind words, and thank you for readingng and for listening. we are so grateful. added to thank, by the way, one of the positive aspects for us as journalists that often doesn't, maybe isn't fully understood is this has been in some respects a return to first principles for us. if ever there was a moment where it was clear, the urgency and importance of journalism, it's when our political institutions are being tested like this. i think the obama era here in washington, it was kind of a technocratic era. it was a sense of let's focus on how to manage people towards the right policies. let's talk about the nuances of healthcare reform and things likeke that. in the trumpier we quickly became the first principles basic debates about the nature and role of media itself about theio constitution, the limits f presidential power by a president who seem to see no limits of the power for us as reporters i think it's been an important and invigorating time when you see the urgency and the necessity of our jobs. i don'tno know, obviously we wod prefer not to be in a moment in time when journalists are being called the enemies of the people, when they literally are being required to take security details to go cover rallies by the president of the united states because he's pointing and whipping up his crowds into a frenzy at the reporters. peter and as and i as wet lived in russia in the former soviet union. to call someone an enemy of the people is a very resonant and historically horrifying phrase because that phrase, enemies of the people, was literally the phrase used by stalin to condemn millions to the gulags. donald trump, maybe he did know that first-time use the phrase for the second forat the fifth r the 100, but he was told that again and again and again, and he chose to use this, to weaponized his platform against the whole category of people. >> guest: ir: remember i told you about the typos in the oval office with our publisher. in fact, he came that time specifically to deliver that message to president trump and he says to him, you have to understand your rhetoric is putting journalist lives in danger. necessary and the united states. we have sophisticated society, but journalists around the world because it would. be empowering and emboldening autocrats to use authority against journalist like anna politkovskaya, and he tried to succumb if you criticism of us find, please, give every legitimate reason, a legitimate right to criticize us. bring it to me, he said, if you have any criticism and will address in the fairway. but the language of enemies of the people and fake news and things like that is so inflammatory that it was in danger to president trump for journalist. president trump and said you think so? s that's interesting. of course it made a difference whatsoever. within a week is doing it again. >> guest: that's another really striking way in which the trump presidency with such an outlier from any of the presidency, democrat or republican. their eventnt of the president o might have worked with autocratic leaders, especially in the cold w war, but we've ner had a modern president of the united statess who openly admird and shared for the world dictators, strongman, and bad guys. this was something that of course is a major theme in the divider for us but we are trying to look at what is the trump presidency really different from what proceeded at verses may be an extreme version of what we had before. i think this is an area not only demonizing and attacking the press in a whole different level, than any of the previous president, but this admiration for the autocrats of the world who didn't have to deal with the independent media. he celebrated people like kim jong-un in north korea, duterte a in the philippines, sisi in egypt, erdogan in turkey, and at the same time tormented america's allies. it's such a remarkable. back, i think we are, it's hard to process that this actually happened. >> host: next call for susan glasser and peter baker comes from iris inan michigan. you are on booktv. good afternoon. >> caller: well, good afternoon. how are you doing, , peter? haven't talked to you and a while. i'm interested in whether they've ever spoken to people who are bent on the apprentice they raise moneyve for charities and would not have happened without the program and without donald trump? kind of stepping in as an instructor on how to raise money outside of what the knowledge as a profession, like play cards. the other thing is, what brought them to russia and why are there no use of so many other companies with vaccines that are we have known aboutow these companies and the been around for a long time, and yet our country, our president while touching with a ten-foot pole. those: are three questions, thak you for calling pic if you would come address the russia question. why did you go to russia? >> guest: why did we go to russia? tragic because they asked. >> host: were you unassigned? >> guest: the. it's about books for me anyway. when i was a young teenager i remember reading two books about russia. one by henry smith called the russians and one by bob kaiser called russia that came out around the same time ironically. they were both remarkable books by "new york times" or "washington post" correspondent the mosque about this extraordinary, strange and important country that the recovering. ins was so inspired, i want to e someday the moscow correspondent for the "washington post." so one dayay the foreign editor ask, wow, this is something i is wanted to do. for me does a great gift to get a chance to see another culture from inside like that try to was growing up in the 1980s i was fastened by rush and actually i took russian in high school. this was right in the middle of the 1980s at a moment when mikhail gorbachev had just come to power. i recall actually my senior year in high school, we were having our russian class went outside to school in mcdonald's, and some peoples overheard us speaking russian and in this took us for exchange students. they came over to give us their condolences for the chernobyl nucleart accident which was at that time occurring. there was a real sense of can we and the cold war, that this is can look at the horrors . of course inside russia and for mikhail gorbachev that incident was a ea real crisis, a moment at which gorbachev may have realized, you know, part of the unsustainability of the soviet system, the consequences of lying on a massive scale to the own people. so when the did ask us to move to rush it p turned out that per and i who were just getting engaged, and were just about to get married, it wasn't something we talked about, but then when it came up as an opportunity we realized it was something both of us have been interested in since a really young age. >> host: and you let on that you were not russian? >> guest: i can't, i can't speak to what we might have said in that long ago encounter in a mcdonald's. [laughing] >> host: a a fun note in "kremlin rising" is that your son waited ten minutes until after you submitted the manuscript for you to go into labor. >> guest: that's right. it'sab i funny because this wask in 2005. we had just returned from a our time is correspondence and moscow for the post. we were writing this book, racing against the clock of come when your nine-month pregnant believe you write a lot faster. [laughing] than when you're two months pregnant. we thought we had three weeks left and one day we went out to dinner and i just felt a strange sensation. iai said, peter, i think there's something happening here. we stayed up all night. we actually pulled an all nighter to get the last couple of chapters done. the next morning peter said good news, i emailed the last couple chapters and i said i'm in labor, i'm havingor contraction. >> host: to computers, one computer, online, off-line? >> guest: separate computers. i don't how to write with somebody. maybe susan does it better. i don't mean transferring back and forth, that's what we do. we split up chapters. >> host: you do split up chapters because you do not didn't fight in here? >> guest: and each would go through the other chapters? but we both with "kremlin rising" and the divider we had a table of content and organization and outlines the we came up with and we literally split of the chapters 50-50 to do a first draft,t, and then exchanged and sort of edited and wrote through it. >> host: as former editor of "politico", does she edit more than you do? >> guest: yes. [laughing] but that's a good thing. >> host: terra luna in sac a text.wa, since in could you comment on gorbachev legacy? >> guest: yeah, look, gorbachev is what are the most consequential men of our era. one of the most consequential people of the modern times. what's sad is he is not recognized as such in russia. in the west we see them as somebody who in effect whether he intended tote or not freed literally tens if not hundreds of millions of people and that the eastern european empire go without violence and give an opportunity to become a four-year and more prosperous. in russia itself when we were there he was the first person we interviewed only as correspondence. he also likes susan. remarkably impressive guy, and to us seeing a hero, and there as a villain because he led to the breakup of the emperor, they saw as somebody who they loathed. he was a person of great controversy there.e. in fact, you saw putin refused to go to assume when he passed away recently. >> host: what did jim baker think of mikhailke gorbachev? >> guest: low, jim baker and his lifelong friend of george h.w. bush who was the the pt when he was secretary of state, their great accomplishment in many respects was sort of midwifing the largely peaceful end of the cold war. in manyhe respects they forged a unique partnership actually with both mikhail gorbachev and his foreign minister. for them it was a partnership that meant the difference betweenli stability and a world not in crisis. when you see how hostile and adversarial relations have become with russia and with vladimir putin over time, you realize how differently it could have turned out. i think baker met many times with gorbachev, and he would say that that was the defining moment for both of them. >> host: why james baker? why did you choose to write 600 pages about james baker? >> guest: it's a very fast read. [laughing] >> host: i don't endorse books and i recommend it. >> guest: look, nobody had done a biography which was fastened. most secretaries of state it seems like it simply another civil rights a biography even if they were not that take a consequential. and you had in some ways really the most consequential secretary of state of our time, even more you canan argue in kissinger. there's an argument for that. at the end, he was present at the into the cold war, helps steer to a peacefully reunion, helps reunite germany, help system of the coalition the fought the gulf war and created a new world order if you will. top of thet had his hand on political thing that happened in a quarter century. helped run gerald ford's campaign in 1978 and george h.w. bush's in 1980 1980 and 19. while reagan's chief of staff. he has since it's almost everything. so in some ways his story was a story of washington we felt like for generation both in terms of that was event and how it is now. >> host: the subtitle is a man who ran washington. i thought the mark hannon, president mckinley said -- >> guest: you are a great student of history. >> guest: the interesting thing is baker who achieved power in washington because he was so skilled as a mark hanna like fixer, some of the bridge the world of politics and government, somebody who could get things done, a behind the scenes player. but oh, he loathed, he loathed the idea that he would be remembered once used on the cover of time magazine, featured as a handler, a fixer, the guy behind the scenes. he hated that. it was his cousin who coined the nickname he liked a lot better, he was on the cover of time magazine, another time as the velvet hammer. that spoke to them as both a diplomat but one who was brutally effective when need be, willing to bring down the hammer. baker wanted to escape the reputation of, and the great success in some ways that he had as a powerbroker behind the scenes, as a fixer, and to become a principal in washington terms, a statement in his own right. so it'sn that tension i think that is part of the really interesting story of this remarkable, decade-long rise to the heights of washington power. a very unlikely story, too. that's the other thing that peter and i really enjoyed as beingen able to do a work that e started out interest in the story that tells us about washington but we begin interested in the street thatint told us about jim baker, , who s and is very unlikely figure who spent 40 years essentially in his native houston, never anything in the background that would indicate that he would be a global figure. in fact, he was decidedly, barbara bush used to joke that he didn't even vote, that it was the beginning of hunting season and he preferred to be out hunting. so he is like the greatest midcareer change ever, right? >> host: how my hours did you spend with jim baker? >> guest: he is 92, about to be 92. 93 next year. he's out hunting out i believe. he wasas supposed to go hunting this weekend with a friend, a couple of friends. he's remarkable, shape for 92. we should also be lucky. i think we spent, we spent about seven years on this book. i would say maybe 70 hours before remember correctly from interviews. we went to his ranch with him and his wife susan baker in wyoming, , and kobe gracious to have us. we interviewed him in washington. we try to get the major touchstones of his life and we interviewed multiple presidents and vice presidents and secretaries of state about him. but also interviewed all eight of his children, which is extreme here weg. interviewed hs nanny who at the time was still alive. i think password recently at 160 for remember correctly. we were w lucky to be able to de deeper into his life and his personal life was fast that as well. his first wife dies of cancer. tragically is left with four voice and is c heartbroken, devastating for him andnd ends p marrying one of her best friends who has three kids of her own. they have eight between them. it's that story of tragedy and heartbreak and recovery what you don't think i'd ever been told in quite this way as we do as powerfully as well. >> host: for those of us old enough to have arrived in washington in the 1980s, we remember ed meese, mike beaver and jim baker tragedy that's right. it's fascinating story that is almost unthinkable today either way. so jim baker, one of the reasons he gets into politics in his 40s is this tragic death of his wife and looking for something new to do. the other reason is that is very best friend in houston, his tennis partner at the houston country club, is george herbert walker bush. and bush of course sees this as a way to help his friend to move on from this terrible tragedy. so bush and baker international politics together. baker runs as peter said bush is 1980 primary campaign against ronald reagan. and amazingly enough although they are tough on the campaign trail about reagan, they somehow end up with bush on a national ticket as a vice president and reagan invites jim baker who has run two daschle campaigns against him to be as white house chief of staff, which speaks a lot to the reputation he had acquired in a very short time as someone who was highly competent and skilled, and to this day interestingly baker is considered the gold standard for a white house chief of staff, and many democrats as well as republicans over the years have consulted him in that role. it was aas democrat, tom donela, the former national security adviser to barack obama when we told him wer work on his book e said jim baker is the most, most important unelected official washington since really the end of world war ii. >> host: i remember in tallahassee in 2000, sitting in the conference room and there's jim baker ontt george w. bush's recap team. but you begin your book, the man who ran washington, with donald trump, and you end it with donald trump. >> guest: can't quite get away from him come right? we didn't start this book when trump was on the stage. we started when obama was president of what ends up happening is trump does arrive at all of our conversations ultimately kept turning back to trump. we would talk with baker about this because he is a political guy even if he doesn't like to admit it. it would constantly come up and he would be disdainful of trump and this guy is this and of that. he used words like crazy, nuts, and yet he voted for in any voted for and in 2016 and in 2020. that was a constant theme. you are the picture of the establishment moderate republican party that believes in free trade, beliefsub and alliances, that believes in this case believes in compromise when it's necessary to get things done. and how can you vote for this guy when your own friend george h. w. bush didn't vote for him? and george w. bush didn't vote for him. it was a constant source of conversation in which he never fully give us the answer that we really understood. his aunt is look i'm a a republican. he's a leader of my party. i don't want democrats in there. i always thought it was also though ai part of his nature, hs nature is not t be on the outside throwing rocks but to be on inside because on the inside in some small way even though he doesn't need any power or influence you have a chance to have some impact. >> guest:in look, it is the conundrum of the modern republican party. in many ways we finally realize like of the subject of your biography is telling you again and again and again the same answer, you have to listen to them. what was he telling us? i think he was certainly helping us to understand how it is possible that donald trump could have become the candidate of the republican party twice. many, many people were like jim baker, they didn't necessarily agree with donald trump on many issues. they saw his character certainly in baker's case quite clearly, and yet the demands of partisanship in our dysfunctional time were such that belong to override even what they claim to be were very principled objections to donald trump. if you want to understand how is it even possible that trump having done the things that he has done could still be supported by so many millions of americans today. i think this baker story is important and illuminating example of why that republican tribal affiliation seems to have overwhelmed all other clones and objections when it comes to jim bakerji drama let's go back to calls. paul is in new york. thanks for holding on. you on with peter baker and susan glasser. >> caller: congratulations on your esteemed careers. really quickly i am from, a group in new york city. trump wasin a very visible partf the media landscape since i was a kid.a but what i would say though which i thinknk is missed a lots there's a big class divide that for some reason trump was very effective at getting support for or, excuse me, exploiting. i think this is lost on media part because it's perceived to be so elitist, as the guy from philadelphia wasas saying. you don't have to go to the new west to see this. i you can you can be in different parts of new york. when he's talked with the inmates of the people, a large portion of the media is not liked. it's very low in terms of its approval rating. likey it's always been lower tn trump in some cases. i think it's important, right, for us, sorry about that, i think it's important to look at in that context here for instance, the "new york times", it's a local paper here in new york by the way. there's a section called the new york section it doesn't cover street crime. they don't really cover any violent stream -- streak on almost every. the local tv news do or the "new york post", the daily news, they don't cover it, could you put a period of what you're trying to say? >> guest: ? , what unkind to say is if there's such a huge divide, okay, between people are highly educated, for basically driving the media conversation versus the vast majority of americans, doesn't that lead to a better chance of trump, and about as opposed to servicing oh, he's a master liar and all this other stuff? you have an unstable situation in which the media is perceived to be so elitist, attacking the media is popular. >> host: we got it. thanks. >> guest: look, he's a master of outer world reasons to shut out of her grievance. no question donald trump perpetually, i was oysters persona was like i am the guy from queens who is trying to bear on my way into the inner sanctum, whether that was an inner sanctum of the "new york times" or inner sanctum of washington and the deep state. he has made that a foundation of his career but he also was made by the media. i think he was particularly made by the new york media, and that is an important story. we come in the book. it's been told been country for. it's important to remember without the "new york post" donald trump probably never would've been president. it predates all of those sort of free airtime on fox many years before that. donald trump at one point was reputed to have been on more covers consecutively anyone else. he certainly to this day, we can all see it, he's a believer in the sort of like as long as they spell your name right, school good publicity. in fact, there's an extraordinary moment that we report in "the divider" where his campaign manager bradd parscale overhears donald trump telling somebodyai not only is n publicity good publicity but according to trump asac long ase don't accuse you of being a pedophile, literally that, you know, it's good publicity. i think issf a creature of new york, the outer borough versus manhattan tensions. the "new york post" and the tabloid mentality which infuses and suffuses his public appearance. but again it's calculated, the attack on the news media were calculated that only because they read the polls and saw the media as an institution was looked down w upon, but as a specific strategy drive down the approval ratings in the media. in fact, wesley stall once asked donald trump drained the 2016 campaign, she said why do you do this? why do you demagogue aboutai the media? again saying theo quiet part ot loud, donald trump says to lesser stall, well, so that when you write something bad about me, no one will believe it. >> host: peter baker, this goes back to an earlier call asking about the hunter biden story. was it a mistake that the mainstream media did not cover that story, or is it a nonstory? >> guest: i think it's a story but it's one we should cover with facts and investigation, not with political hot air. the trick is trying to get past that this information that was being put out there and find out what is there. because there is something there. obviously there's a prosecution party at him after something at least worth investigating. we don't know what that investigation will produce or whether will produce any charges or not. there's probably a disinclination to believe rudy giuliani after all the things it said that were not true before, take his word on anything. or people like him. that doesn't mean there's not something worth looking at. that's the balance in your time to try to take a look at what is it and not what the politics of it are. the second part is, let's just say this something there regarding the president's son. the real question is what does it mean about the president? all presidents have relatives who do think that end up looking bad in the public light, including president trump of course. the question ise do we have anything that we had a concern regarding the president himself, and that is been less, , there's much more tenuous strain there and that's one of the things that's been important to us. what does it tell us about the president of the united states? ukraine as an example personal evidence of the present anything, getting rid of the prosecutor which has been harped on by his critics, it was a policy president obama and the entire european western allies had nothing to do as far as evidence showing up withh underbite and get that is been linked to that as if somehow joe biden and as vice president did something. there's evidence of that. we have tonc look at what's real and what's the real. >> host: every author we have on "in depth" we ask what they're reading and with some of their favorite books are. peter baker, this is what he told us. carl bernste a bob woodward all the president's men. robert caros o lbj, david halberstam the best brightest. edmunds, history on theater roosevelt richard ben crhat it takes. walter isaacson and evan thomas the wiseman. and henrik smith the parking. obviously a theme with the books you have listed here all politics. but he did at this and we want to add this very quickly. any and everything by doris kearnsth goodwin, michael beschloss, jon meacham, doug brinkley, robert dowling, rob glcm david mccullough, ron chernow, david renda, michael dobbs, robert massey, lynne olson, rick atkinson, david maraniss, and anne applebaum. i'm sure i'm forgetting some remarkable books comes on as a say in congress, i reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks. susan glasser is response. louisa may alcott, little women. what is it about that book that so many, and its women basically who really like that book. >> guest: i wasn't sure if you're asking about nonfiction or fiction. >> host: we could care less attractive. has chosen as as a you questn mark that answer your question, listing everything author that he likes speed we will leave this program here to continue are over 40 year commitment to coverage of congress. we will return to this event after what we believe will be a short pro forma session of the u.s. senate. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., january 17, 2023. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable christopher van hollen, a senator from the state of maryland, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patty murray, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 1:00 p.m. stands in recess until 1:00 p.m. when the senate returns, watch live coverage here on c-span2. we take you back to our scheduled book tv government already in progress. >> there was light about him lioln and getting ready to the senate. mike, western virginia. thanks for holding. please go ahead. >> hello. i grew up learning to be skeptical about tv. i think the news, they cover what they want and don't cover what they want. msnbc covers stories but they fabricate and make up stories and that's a problem. i think division never covid the civil war they can rise again and the plate on the. i think he didn't care -- [inaudible]ir gop, obama he thought all that stuff. i can't believe people, b i respected all my life james baker when he came on msnbc said i support because you are republican, how can you support a man who's a racist and divides people? >> all right, thank s you. any comment for mike? >> we got that a lot. many people admire him a lot and were surprised including many republicans we spokeke with who were surprised he chose to support donald trump twice and he s did speak out against trums false claims about the 2020ai election and make of it what you will but he has to view that he shared with us many times he found much of the policy agenda, especially efforts to change american foreign policy, he profoundly disagreed with that, very uncomfortable with trumps personal behavior and character yet there is this paradox, it's about millions of republicans who share those and overcame them and voted for them because he was a a republican nominee. >> i like our politicians so i'm going to vote for whoever supports my visions and baker says i like tax cuts and conservative juds and the regulations, i don't approve of trump as a person but the policies are more important than personality and if youou are inside abortion voter room that is important that he accomplished what you would want him to do and no other republican president had been which is putting them on the supreme court and overturn roe. v. wade. your policy goal was achieved and i can live with the other stuff because policy is more important and harder to make that argument after january 6 talking about democracy as we see it before a lot of people there were saying he's a buffoon or embarrassing shouldn't tweak as much but as long as i get my policies and were not support him? >> baker never went to the level to say mike pence which was interesting to see, there is an enormous national debate and discussion about donaldou trump dinner at mar lago with a white supremacist after the dinner said how much he admired out of hitler rather than disavowing that person trump has continued to double down on it. fascinating to see mike pence out there selling this memoir arguably this book of contortions on the oneha hand, rejecting trumps view of the 2020 election literally called for mobs, hang mike pence, hank mike pence. he's somehowen tried not all tht successfully to thread the needle saying i am against what trump did with the 2020 election. however, he said i condemn him, he should not have had that dinner. however, i don't believe trump is racist or anti-semite or i wouldn't have been his vice president. that's a fascinating level of disingenuousness, donald trump is the same man today he was in 2016 and selected mike pence to be president, divider and many. other accounts are filled with extraordinary examples. national security official in these incidences reported about trump saying racist things, he said no, trump would say things like that again and again about so many countries andai people. tim baker, he never went to that level of justifying or contorting himself to say the man is not a problem so you have the mike pence trying to get us to believe something that is impossible toto believe who trup is but nonetheless they did support him, vast majority of republicans. >> like i said, you begin the man who ran washington with donald trump and ended with donald trump with the memo in jim baker sent. in 2016, trump invites him to meet withtr him and he doesn't want to be perceived as endorsing him and because of all the reasons talked about, he doesn't particularly like the guy, i will vote for him but not endorse him and says he did not want to give a public embrace so when trump asked him to come in like i would advise candidates to come in but he brings a two-page memo of what he thinks trump needs to do to be a successful candidate and president all of which he knows trump is not going to do which is reach out women and people of color and do all these things in that way baker knew if trump didn't do them, there's no way they could argue he endorsed him. the requirements which trump would never meet. >> lewis in new york. go ahead. >> thanks for taking my call, i always enjoy reading what peter and susan have and it's a fascinating discussion. i want to push back a little bit since you've written so extensively about jim baker and donald trump. i would suggest going back to jim baker andnd his early timesn the administration you can draw an almost straight line between willie horton tactics of george h.w. bush and attacks on barack obama and it's deeply embedded in the republican party and despite handwaving people like jim baker think, that's the reality of it. i'll take your comments off air and thank you very much. >> i want to thank you for that comment because it's important, another explanation why jim baker's of the world supported donald trump and why some of them are breaking now with trump and that goes to running at all costs and that's to a certain extent behind what you are mentioning 1988 campaign with george w. bush running for president, was using. he is down by 17 points after the democratic convention in the governor ofnt massachusetts. the campaign leader and realized they would have to hit him hard and go negative and baker, it wasn't his idea, the b most fams one was run by an outside group not o connected and official campaign but they didn't act quickly or decisively to stop that line of attack and he did tell us it's interesting, we he allowed if you would regret anything, it's not a man who does regret, i do think the streamline there is winning and mcconnell whoitch always has had a very pronounced obvious personal distaste for donald trump nonetheless accommodated himself is one reason you present trump became resident and also why he was able to get many things like transformation supreme court done while hef was president. it's about winning and i think that's where you see many republicans right now seeking a break with trump after the results of the 2022 midterm election, the idea he might be a loser for the party in addition to having been a two-time loser in the national popular vote so we'll see is a party that believes in hardball politics. >> i think that covers it. >> where? >> nytimes.com and i covid the biden white house. i still right because he still other and won't go away. we had ay story the other day hw much he seems to be increasingly embracing extremism, flirting with the printers but increasingly, he mentioned with a video he sent this week to the families of the january 6, he put out yesterday, we should call for the termination of the constitution to overturn the election and put him back in power. extremism in the past but t he seems to embrace it as an almost core of the current candidacy. >> amazing stuff. i write a weekly letter from washington for new yorker and you can see on the website generally comes out late thursday evening, friday mornings. also doing a new podcast with my colleagues in the new yorker, the political seat and it comes up everyal friday and we look forward to your ideas and comments about that. >> three books together, peter baker the man who ran washington and their most recent,mo the divider. we appreciate your time on book tv. >> thank you. this has been fantastic. ♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual piece. every saturday american history tv documents american stories. sunday book tv brings the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including media come in. >> whether you live here or here or in the middle of anywhere, he have access to best reliable internet and that's why we lead the way. >> media come along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> if you are enjoying we, sign up using the qr code on the screen. to receive a schedule of upcoming pogroms, other discussions, book festivals and more, book tv every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online booktv.org. television for serious readers. ♪♪ >> be up-to-date and the latest in publishing with book tvs podcast about books with current nonfiction book releases plus bestseller list as well as industry news and trends through insider

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