Yes, you can clap. [applause] welcome to the virginia festival of the book. And the panel discussion, hot discussion this afternoon. Questions, expertise, and the president. Not just for news junkies and we would like to think the city for providing the venue for todays event, and we want to welcome all of you viewers on cspan and tv 10. During the question and answer pouring we ask that you please wait for a meek crow microphone to be brought for you. The q a is coming up. I want to introduce our wonderful panel of authors. Were not washington. Were in charlottesville but these are top reporters and thinkers that delve into politics and we have a penal for you panel for you. Frank sesno, the author of ask more, be power of questions to open doors, uncover solutions and part change. A former cnn anchor, white house correspondent. He has interviewed dozens of World Leaders including five u. S. President s. Now, i believe it might we six with this one, right . Hope springs eternal. And hes also the creator of planet ford. Lets give frank a big round of applause. Applause maas. Tom nicholls, the author of the death of expertise, professor of National Security affairs the u. S. Naval war college and an adjunct professor to Harvard Extension School and a former aide in the u. S. Senate. He has also a fivetime undefeated jeopardy champion. Fivetime up defeated jeopardy champion. My gosh. [applause] im not sure i want to be on a panel with him. I wonder if he won the spelling bee, too. Next, Michael Kranish my copy editor. Michael kranish is the coauthor of trump revealed, an American Journey of ambition, ego, money and power, political Investigative Reporter the Washington Post and he previously coauthored biographs of mitt romney and john kerry and the author of flight from monticello. Thomas jefferson at war. A big round of applause. And marc fisher, a Senior Editor at the Washington Post and author of something in the air, history of radio and germany after theberline wall and received put litter prices in 2016, 2014, for reporting on Police Shootings and government surveillance and lets give the whole entire panel a round of applause. [applause] and of course, these gentlemen are authors and authors of these major books you see before you and theyre for sale and you can purchase them after this q a session. Want to start off with each author talking i forget to introduce the moderator. April ryan. White house correspondent and Washington Bureau chief for the urban radio narrative. The author of the latest book, black and white. Ive been the white house for 20 years covering now four president s. And with that, let go to frank sis dis frank sis noh. My park is born of be viewer and asking questions of all ranges of people. Artists, scientists and Business Leaders and, yes, politicians. And the recognition and the realization that we ask entirely differently depending on who were asking. And what were asking about. What our outcome is and i wrote this book because i felt that all of accuse incorporate into our lives better, sharper, more purposeful questions to become better, more successful, more purposeful partners and spouses and parents, and workers workerd inventors and learners and citizens. I feel, going into this, that i felt going into this that observing the world round us we are indone dated with information. No before in Human History head so pa many people had so much access to so much information to rapidly but we have driveby questioning etch going al question and get a quick answer and off we go what we need to do, believe, and what i try lay out in the book, in all of these cases, is pause, and question deeply, purposefully, sometimes tough, really tough, intense, and then listen and thats the other part i write about and that is missing so much of in America Today and i know well get into that. How do we hissen . Who do we listen to . What is the intent of our listening . What is the outcome and n and so the book what have done is i have created 11 categories of questions. Decisionic question doing diagnostic questions. What is going on here whats gone wrong . And whether it is your elbow or health care in america, we cannot reasonably suggest responses, answers, and prescriptions if we dont have the diagnosis to the problem. Strategic questions. Thinking down the line. Looking over the horizon. Each chapter revolves ron the character and the character for that chapter is colin powell. Collin powell had to think strategically for war. And he asked president bush, only if we can say yes to these questions should we go to war ask the included do we have the support of the American People in do we know what our and it strategy is . We went to war to push Saddam Hussein out of khweis and the Ground Campaign lasted 100 hours. The questions were not asked in the second gulf war and were thrill and he said, powell said, you know, im left holding the bag because he knows his performance the United Nations and elsewhere was insufficient and he was not allowed enough voice in asking the questions a loud enough voice. Creative questions. What we ask ourselves and others to transport ourselves with the use of he a series of questions into the future. I want to finish and wrap because i know everybody wants to talk and well come back to this. Ill tie my other categories involved all these different and i wont give them because you have to buy the book. But as a culture, as a society, in journalism in media, and beyond, we need to do a better job of asking. Asking the right questions of the right people in the right construct, over time, in the fabled followup question. A to my students questions are like grapes, they come in bunches. You dont ask one and then move on. Ask any reporter, especially Investigative Reporter, its the fourth, fifth, tenth question down where you start to connect. As a culture, as a society, as a body politic we need start asking more and asserting less and understand what goes into the listening involved in crossing the divide. Ill close with this. One of i favorite chapters is bridging questions. This character is barry spodak, the Group Therapist for John Hinckley after he shot Ronald Reagan. He advised the fbi, secret service and u. S. Marshals how to interview, waterboard interview people who issue threats to determine whether they might actually carry out those threats. Dangerous threat assessment its called. His whole methodology of questioning is about bridgebuilding, rapportbuilding. Microaffirmations. Really . I hadnt thought of that before. To draw people out who are angry, alien yesterday or distressed. Theres a lesson in each chapter for all of us but i think that one in the context of todays question will be key, how do we use our questions to build bridges to one another so that we can, a piece at a time, understand those who are very different from us. Wow. Thank you so much. Lets go to tom about death of expertise. Well, ill try to be brief so we can get to questions. I have to start by saying dont represent the navy or the government or hard lot or charlottesville or anybody but myself. One questions gets, why write a book with such an obnoxious title and this very challenging, almost inure face approach, and it was because of was frustrated. I did not start this book actually was not born in anything about the election. I started writing something related to it years ago, and i found that i was trying to figure out how have we got ton this point where ignorance is common but prized. Its a virtue, something people brag about. I dont know how big in the u. S. Budget is, and that makes me a better person somehow. And i the first hint i had this was happening was i noticed that people went from talking to experts skeptically. No one ever i certainly dont ever advise people is your doctor walk inside if a big needle say go ahead, wherever you think. I hit me up. Of course not. I want people to be informed. I want them to ask questions, good questions. I want them to be participants in their own health, society, whatever it is. This is born out of more than skepticism about expertise. This is peek starting to lecture back to experts as though they were peers and i found remarkable and the wordeye throughout the book that caused some controversy, this part of an epidemic of narcissism in our see site that is really out of control. I my background is in russia studies. Know i am useful looking but i got my career started during the cold war and i was a russian speaking kremlin guy. Thats what i kid. For a good part of my professional and academic career. And people would i was used to people saying, you guys are going screw up the world, blow thin planet. It understood that. Then later people would say to me, youre a russia expert in let me explain russia to you. Everybody here has said youre a journalist . I have a few things totle you about journalism. Well, please, let me 30 years of experience go if you have ha thought, i certainly want want to interrupt it. And i started to a question, why is this happening. Why do people think theyre their peers of professionals and operates ignorance . Why did they respond to facts with nonsense im facts with fantasies and i think in the end i think disdove tails back americanes have become a people that dont want to be told anything they dont want to hear. They want to dont want to be educated. The want to be affirmed and have have somebody to blame, nothing is thunder fault and everything has a magical solution and experts walk in and tell youve that number of that is possible, which makes this least popular person the party. But i decided to delve into and it we can talk about it more later. Do identify some culprits. Think that i think the modern University Bears its share of the blame. The media bears some of the blame. Certainly the presence of the internet, the galactic answer machine that is usually wrong bares some plame. But bears some blame. Tried to identify the problem in this book. Thank you. Tom. Michael, trump revealed. Thank you. Its great to be back in share lostville way. Here working on a book about thomas jefferson, contradictory character and fascinating. Throughout my career, i spent a lot of time covering white house and congress and always striking that lot of people think what you do in washington is good to press conferences, write down what they say and write a story, and spent four years covering the white house should you have my sympathies. Im 20 in. April is a very good exam of someone would tries to dig beyond what the spokesperson is saying. My interest is for a long time has been what a candidates live say about and predict perhaps what the person would do if theyre elected to higher office, the presidency. I was the coauthor of the boston globe of biographs 0 john kerr ask and mitt romney and in those case what we had been printing were not the case and i had an editor there the globe, and marty bareron, and his assignment to me is just start over with john kerry. With hey written stories for years and years. Read those and then start over and leave nothing on the table. Which sounds daunting but was a great assignment because, number one, it meant i had a lot of time to work into shim and long story short, john kerry, i have been trust evidence to writing biographs of president ial candidate. We hat wherein that hays ancestry was irish and he was irish catholic. None of that was true. The family was jewish, the family name was koehn and never lived in ireland and whatnotted to change their him in to something that didnt sound so viewish, they dropped a pencil on the map, ended one county kerry in ireland and said, okay, kerry is the family name. And kerry himself did not know this story, and i have ever reason to think, having spent a lot of time researching this, he had some suspicions that one side of the family but knew nothing about this side of the family. Including the fact that his grandfather committed suicide in the bathroom the plaza hotel where kerry has spoken for many years, so theres a lot in there that tells us, okay, this is little bit more complex history. What is the Family History and what does that tell us about this curiosity. In the case of mitt romney, i told him we want to do the same thing for romney and write about his background and career himself spokesperson said to me, why would you want to write a book about mitt. Hes already written two books at himself. In the back of the book there was a 59point about what he wanted to do for the country but they tell you almost nothing about who mitt romney is and what happened in his career. For instance, at bane capitol, he was great everything was wonderful. The more complex story is the only company he was ran was bane capital him and which is profitable but he ran other companies and theres a complex history what happened with each company he invested no. Not ran, actually. Now, when it came to donald trump, we had a much, much shorter time frame. But reality was the same thing. The narrative that Donald Trump Tells about himself is pretty simplistic. He has been an incredible dealmaker, very successful, no one has been as successful as donald trump has been, and therefore he would be a great president. But we wanted to find out what actually happened. The only way to do that is go step by step and we used a team of reporters to try to understand what happened. Want to tell you one example and then move on to take question talk about the genesis of writing the book and that is one of the really surprising thing wiz found in the book, we all knew he had troubles in his career financially. The reality is that in the campaign he didnt talk about his failures but the failures were more illuminating. Corporate bankruptcies, six. He created one Public Company and that was with a stock ticker of djt. That company had a share price of 35, and went down to 17cents ahead. Teaches millions, shareholders. No so much. So there were shareholder lawsuits. Look at what happened yesterday on health care. People who supported while say, hough could this happened . The great dealmaker. If you read the book, he wasnt so great sometimes. He was successful, able to come back but the reality is that far more complicated. We wanted to make sure the end of the day if one who was really interested who donald trump was. And were there all kinds of stores but here in one reading narrative you get the full story. Whatever you think about donald trump, love him or hate him, youll have a better understanding what he did in his career, what was successful, was was not success philadelphia successful. Its surprising how he performed as president. I always say no, i hasnt surprised me in the sleight els because he is acting as he did as a business person, probable problem has been thats not applicable to being president. Even if you have a republican controlled congress. That party is at odds which is why he got elects because the party was torn apart, and were able to defeat other nominees who might be the party powerful favorite but theres more too it than that. We were able to tell a fuller story that gives you a sense about what he was like in the business person and how he is performing now as president. And lets go to mark. Mark, the coauthor of trump revealed. Michael gave you a sense of our mission, which was to find the complexities in Donald Trumps life. That was not really a concept donald trump was into. The entomology of the book, we had done a n number of books on the president ial candidates the Washington Post and in most cycles we had a good sense of year, year and a half in advance who the candidates would likely be and we could set people off to begin delving into the lives of a the candidate. As you recall from last spring, this was not entirely clear and so midmarch rolled around and we said, well want to do a book but know who the candidate will be. So at that it point the republican choice seemed to be down to trump and ted cruz and we thought lets go with trump and see what happens. So i wi made deal with the pressurer publisher on a this and acalled Donald Trumps press secretary on friday to let her know the following monday would we would aoccupies nouns the book. So as a curtsy i called her and insays were doing this biography on mr. Trump and wanted to spend as much time as we can to talk about his life. Before i could get explanation of the book out she said, you are profiteers off mr. Trump. We will not be cooperating with this book. And i said, excuse me in this is a guy who spends all virtually all of his waking hours involved with media in one way or another, whether its watching cable news or talking to reporters, calling reporters out of the blue. Or on twitter. Right. And she said, were not taking part in this. So we thought that might well happen and we had a plan for reporting the book around him, and researching his life and so on. Lo and behold monday morning the first call i got was from hope hicks i and told mr. Trump about your fabulous idea, and he would love to see you come up to trump towers a often as you thought. And so one revelation from that is that hope hicks didnt know the man she was working are for and the other one this tells us something about donald trump and that is that if youre willing to write about him, whether its good, bad or indifferent. He will be there, and that proved to be the case. He was incredibly gracious with his time. Gave us more than 25 hours of interviews of the course of the three months we were reporting the book, because we had such short time to do the back we there was no way that two people could do justice to a persons life in that amount of time so we put 25 reporters on the book and three or four reporters on each chapter so we had report who witness to Atlantic City for six weeks and spend six weeks diving into the casino records and we sent reporters to his ancestral home towns in germany and scotland. We sent reporters to the foreign capitals where he had business projects and kazakhstan and panama and so on. But the core of she book in some ways is the conversations with trump wher