Consider the meaning of nora leaving. But, you know, over 100 years later, i think its time to sort of revisit that story and think about, well, what does it mean that she left and what would it mean to return and what would even bring her back. Rose dan balz of the washington post, and the cast of a dolls house, part 2, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Donald Trumps decision to withdraw from the paris climate agreement has row voakd an overwhelmingly negative reaction overseas and at home. Joining me from washington to talk about the president is dan balz, chief correspondent for the washington post. Welcome to our program. Thank you, charlie. Rose tell me why the president felt compelled to do this, and lets grant him that perhaps he thought it was in the National Interest to do this, perhaps he didnt believe the accord was the best that could be had. Lets assume that that part of his mindset. But what else . Charlie, i think you go back to sort of First Principles with President Trump, and we saw it during the campaign, and weve seen it at important moments during the first months of the administration. There are certain things that he believes that have to do with kind of the economic status of the United States and the role of global agreements, whether theyre a trade agreement or an environmental agreement. And he has had a longstanding view that i think predates his arrival into politics formed years ago, and im not exactly sure how and why they were formed, but the idea that in one way or another we have been taken advantage of. And i think it is fundamental to the way he sees the world and he sees his role as president. I mean, he said months ago, i was elected to be president of the United States, not to be president of the world. Yesterday, he said, i was elected to represent the people of pittsburgh, not the people of paris, and i think that is deeply engrained in hum. I think when he hears all of the criticism of the possibility of the damage that could be done by withdrawing from this agreement and what it might mean as the u. S. s role as leader in the world and the global arrangements that have been built with u. S. Leadership over the many years, that doesnt register on him in the way that his idea is that these have been bad for the United States, they have been bad for workers, and hes going to try to do something about it. Rose you mean he can be considered a true economic nationalist as steve bannon is . I think thats right. Now, you know, when you look at what he did here, and a lot of people say i believe rightly that this was a victory for steve bannon, its also a victory for a lot of conservative republicans who have long been opposed to the Environmental Policies of president Obamas Administration and i think have wanted to do everything they could to reverse those, and they have been taking steps to try to do that. This is another step in that regard. But, on the economic point, i mean, he didnt talk much about Environmental Issues in his statement on thursday, he talked more about the economic damage that he believed that agreement would do to the United States and the advantage that that would give to others, and i think that more fundamentally reflects his world view. Rose what is the economic damage he believes it will do to the United States . Well, i think his view was that, in one form or another, that this agreement would shackle the United States and that it would cost the United States jobs, and to be freed from it now, you can argue with the facts of this, obviously but to be freed with it allowed the United States to chart its own course and not to have, you know, the environmental regulations that the rest of the world wants to impose on us or that we voluntarily agreed to accept as part of this agreement in one way or another inhibit the way we wanted to run our economy or the way in which Energy Companies wanted to operate and Automobile Companies wanted to operate, big utilities want to operate. So i think his view is that and he cited some studies, some of which have been disputed that said this would have cost a considerable number of jobs over a long period of time, and i think his argument was the advantage in terms of whatever it might do for climate change, whatever it might do for the plant environmentally, it wasnt worth what he envisioned as the economic loss. Now, as we know, there is a huge pushback against that and lots of people who dispute the facts he was offering as his rationale for pulling out and, also, the view that this does great damage to the United States internationally because it is a pullback. I mean, it is an americafirst move on his part and one that could have significant consequences beyond simply the paris accord. Rose do we believe that, at the essence, donald trump, when he means america first, means that america is simply not serviced well by being a part of the larger world, that were better off if america simply goes its own way and does what it does well . I think thats right, charlie. And, you know, this was articulated quite straightforwardly in an oped that h. R. Mcmaster, the National Security advisor, and gary cohn chief Economic Advisor in the white house wrote for the wall street journal earlier in the week was in essence rejecting the idea that we are a part of a Global Community or that there is something valuable about that a idea of a Global Community, and that, instead, nations compete. They compete for advantage. They compete for military advantage and economic advantage, cultural advantage, and that we are well positioned in this country to compete effectively in that way as opposed to entering into these kinds of rangements which arrangements, which, in the president s view, tend to shackle the United States rather than allowing us to express our advantages in a way that we can gain the most from them. Rose yet, at the same time and im not asking you to defend the president or in fact support the president , obviously but, at the same time, did he actually go through a rigorous examination of this, or was he simply Going Forward with the principles he already believed in because, as you know, lots of people stepped forward to express deep opposition to this because of the American Interest as well as the American Interest in National Security of which they see Global Warming as a part . Well, you know, i cant answer the question of how much h he delved into the details of all of this. My colleagues and had a very gd piece in the friday postabout the lobbying that was going on back and forth, and it was intense and it was fierce. He heard from people on all sides, and, you know, there were serious efforts to, in essence, gin up different views to make sure he heard them, including ivanka trump helping to organize some c. E. O. S to weigh in on behalf of staying in on the accord. So we know that he heard a lot. He also heard a lot from the likes of steve bannon and scott pruitt, the e. P. A. Administrator, who came armed with a lot of data, a lot of information to support the idea that this agreement was bad for the United States. So he heard a lot. I think he probably heard as much on this as hes heard on anything. Ive compared this to kind of the healthcare issue where, obviously, he was involved in trying to change some peoples minds, but we never got the sense that he delved deep will you into the details of it or ever fully cared that much about the details of health care. On this, i think he heard a lot, but, you know, he ended up where he began which was he had said as a candidate we were going to get out of this and, in the end, that was where he came down. There was some talk he might offer some kind of appeasement to the people who wanted to stay in or some sop to them to suggest that, well, were mostly pulling out but were going to try to be good about it. But this was a withdrawal. I mean, the only acknowledgment was that, well, we can start to renegotiate a new deal, which there is no forum to do that, theres no way hes going to be able to do that. That was the closest egame to offering anything to the side that lost on this. Rose and then this point, some people have been talking about the different sides within the white house, and clearly this was victory r the economic nationalist steve bannon and mill around others, or was it simply the president listening to his own head, and you cant tribute it to anyone other than the president listening to what he had believed . I have to believe that its the latter, charlie, and not the former. I mean, you can make the argument legitimately that this was a victory for steve bannon because he argued very vociferously to get out of this, and you can argue this is a victory for economic nationalists, but, i think, in the end, this was donald trump acting as donald trump. Im not sure and this, again this is me projecting a thought that he came down where he wanted to be, where he thought he always was and that he was willing to hear various sides but at the this reflected core values at the he has carried with him into the white house and that hes going to operate on not just on this but i suspect on other matters as well. Rose and it had, i guess in his mind, the additional positive quality of it seems to be what his base wanted him to do. Oh, theres no question about that. I mean, when he talked in the inaugural address about the forgotten americans that he was going to represent and that the american carnage was going to end starting on january 20th, i mean, i think this is a Straight Line from that to this kind of a decision, and i think that i mean, one of the things that weve seen in this administration is there has been no particular effort to try to expand the base of support that got him into the white house. It has been at various turns a reinforcement of that support and i think that this was another example of that. I think on any of the economic issues, he plays directly to the base and i think, as we saw in the campaign, he has a visceral instinct for how the people who helped support him and got him to the white house think and feel about many of these issues. Rose and these people dont care what the chancellor of jarl or the president of france say about how they see it as an impact and how they see it playing right into the hands of china . No, i think they see whats happened in their communities. Rose right. And whether it had to do with the paris accords or, you know, nafta or any other agreement, they see an north america in which its economic muscle has been weakened over many years and that donald trump says hes going to do something about that and if this is a step to do that, i suspect that many of them will applaud him very vociferously. Rose and that was, in fact, the political genius of donald trump in the campaign for the presidency. And its what fooled so many people who thought there was no way he could become president. So, again, this is one of those moments when he acts against what all sorts of smart people say is in the interest of the United States, but, as he said, im sitting in the oval office and they arent. Rose there is this, he comes home from many people judge as a reasonably successful trip in saudi arabia and less so when he went to n. A. T. O. And the g7, he comes back from that after nine days, and he will get up next week, and james comey will be testifying, and he will saw, we assume, some of the things that he claims that the president has said to him, and thats clearly going to be embarrassing to the president if not raise questions of obstruction of justice. Absolutely. Its interesting. We will go from this period where he was on the world stage this week and then drawing attention to his world view of how the world ought to be shaped, and next week, with the comey testimony, we go back deeply into the whole issue of russia and the investigations, and it is kind of this splitscreen nature of his administration at this point. They are trying to do things. They have an agenda thats largely been stalled on capitol hill, but on the one hand they are trying to do the things that they made promises about during the election and, yet, they are dogged, literally day in and day out, by the russia investigation and all the revelations that continue to spill out day by day by day, and next week will be a huge week because of director comeys testimony. I mean, we will not have seen a day like this in washington in quite a long time. I mean, you can already envision what that day is going to be like with walltowall coverage and breathless reports and everything magnified because of the world in which, you know, social media has the ability to take an event and transform it into something viral. So he is heading into a potentially very, very difficult week. Obviously, they know that, and they will attempt to be prepared. There is some question as to whether he will try to invoke executive privilege to prevent mr. Comey from testifying. Sean spicer at the briefing today would not give an answer as to whether they have made a decision. They reviewing it, he said. But i suspect, one way or another, well hear from directodirector comey next week. Rose were also looking at committees that have subpoena power and theyre subpoenaing both documents and people to come to different congressional investigation committees. I mean, in a sense, charlie, the investigations which, you know, have been ongoing for months now seem to be accelerating with the issuing of subpoenas, and all of that, you know, will be will continue to crescendo throughout the summer and probably into the fall, and ten, of course, theres the special counsel, robert mueller, whos got his own investigation about which we dont know much other than its potentially very, very damaging to people around trump and, you know, his soninlaw has now been drawn in, jared kushner, with questions about meetings with the russians. There is just so much swirling on that front that they can never quite they cannot get out from under it. They, i think, are continuing to try to figure out how to manage it. I mean, months ago, somebody from a Prior Administration said the smartest thing they could do is, in a sense, figure out what they dont know, that there was so much that they didnt know, but to try to take their own inventory, do some kind of their own internal investigation, they obviously did not do that, and, so, they are left, in a sense, to react to every new revelation that comes out and, as i said, they continue to come out on such a regular basis that theyre playing catchup entirely every day, every day, every week. Rose more and more people are stepping forward, not just columnists and not just people who are pundits and paid to do that, but a range of people from Corporate America and other institutions in america seem to be a rising sense of concern and fear. Charlie, i agree with that. I think people recognize that were in a most unusual period in this countrys history. We have we have not seen anything like this. We have not seen an early stage of a presidency that bears resemblance to this. There is, in addition to the deep partisan polarization, a sense that the country is in overdrive in a way that is just kind of breaking everything apart, and i think there is deep concern about that. Rose right. There is concern about what the investigations ultimately will lead to. There is obviously concern on the part of people who support President Trump that there is a wuch hunt, that there is a determination on the part of whoever to bring him down, and that is pitting people against one another, but, as you say, it has kind of raised the collective level of concern in the country and this notion of how do we continue like this and for how long will ewe continue will we continue like this and whats the way out of it. We dont have an answer to that. Nobody can answer it, but i think we all recognize the gravity of the situation that exists at this point. Rose the interesting thing, too is this president had a domestic agenda. He clearly wanted to do something in terms of health care, he wanted to do something in terms of tax reform, he wanted to do something in terms of infrastructure, and he wanted to do something which has been stopped in the courts about immigration, all of that, except things that are in the court process, are on hold. Well, i guess i would say on immigration, though, the travel ban has been held up in the courts. In other ways, hes moved on immigration, and i think that people who elected him in part because of thum congratulations issue feel as though he is keeping that promise. Again, in the his pampg community, its created a sense of alarm and fear, but i think on that front he is making some progress and it does show that elections do matter. On issues Like Health Care and tax reform, i think one of the things thats happened, charlie, is that the republicans have run into the reality of the difficulty of governing. During the obama administration, it was pretty easy to be against what president obama was in favor of, but to come up with the alternatives to that has proved to be very, very, very difficult. We saw the difficulty the house went through to try to get any kind of a healthcare bill. The senate is struggling with it. The administration planners believed long ago that that issue would be done and signed, and theres no quick solution on that. There is a hope among republicans that they can finish healthcare in the senate b