♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." andrew: good evening, i'm andrew ross sorkin of "the new york times." it is my privilege to sit in for charlie rose tonight who is on assignment. the media's coverage of the president shall campaign has been a topic of heightened interest throughout the primary and election season. donald trump's handling of the press was a decisive factor in his path to securing the republican nomination. this week, hillary clinton's health is the latest source of rampant speculation after a delay in revealing she had pneumonia. brian skelter is the host of cnn's "reliable sources." it examines the week's top media sources each from los angeles,

sunday. ben shapiro is a columnist, author, and editor-in-chief of "the daily wire." he was formally a top editor at breitbart and newspaper. i am pleased to have both of them with me. brian, let me start with you, and let me start with the issue of hillary clinton's health. there was a lot of speculation about hillary clinton's health in the news media prior to the revelation of these images, prior to her disclosure about pneumonia. you called some of the speculation back then reckless. you called sean hannity reckless. now that this news is out there, was it still reckless? brian: some of these figures feel vindicated. i don't think they should. baskets are a popular phrase. let's use baskets. there is a basket of legitimate questioning about hillary clinton's health, and some conservative media figures fit into that basket. they are right to wonder about her health in some cases. then there is this other basket, a truly deplorable basket. sean hannity fits into it. so does rush limbaugh, alex

jones and others. they bring up innuendos about people's help -- health. i am not saying hannity or rush limbaugh fit into this, but some of these figures want her to be sick. they want her to be dying. they want her to be on her deathbed. it's wishful thinking. that is some of this bs that is on the web. that is on facebook, and that is the problem with media today is this stuff that populates our facebook feeds and twitter feeds, and it becomes this innuendo we don't just see on the front page of "the national enquirer," but it also seeps into the public discourse. that is why the hannitys are responsible. brian: let me ask you a question. -- andrew: let me ask you a question. do you think the mainstream media should have been asking questions about her health? brian: i think the mainstream media was asking those questions. it wasn't necessarily all broadcast, right but i think , many reporters have been questioning her health, especially with her coughing fits and things like that. it's interesting to think about friday to sunday when she was diagnosed with pneumonia that reporters did not know until sunday. part of that is because the campaign kept it a secret, and

partly it is because it is very hard to get into the inner circle of the campaign. maybe saturday morning and reporters should have been sunday trying hard to get that information. it's disturbing the campaign withheld that, and it's disturbing the campaign kept them in the dark for 90 minutes when she left the 9/11 memorial. andrew: you are listening to brian here, and i curious where am you land. ben: when it comes to the media coverage, no i don't think the , media were asking the appropriate questions. chris alyssa of "the washington post" wrote a column about why we shouldn't be asking questions about hillary clinton's health, and then she collapses, and it's all of a sudden perfectly legitimate. are you going to release your health records? why do you have a consistent record of hacking this much? none of that is illegitimate. i agree with brian that baseless speculation, these videos going around saying she has parkinson's disease or ms -- all of this is nonsense. having doctors on the air to try to diagnose hillary based on the fact that there is a tape of her coughing it is silliness. , my wife is a doctor, and she

would not be basing diagnoses on people after 30 seconds. brian: it's the difference between reporting and rumormongering. there has been too much wishful thinking, rumormongering. what we need is less guessing and more reporting. andrew: this is jim rutenberg in "the new york times" in a column called "trump is testing the norms of objectivity in journalism." he says, balance has been on vacation since mr. trump stepped onto his golden trump tower escalator to announce his candidacy. democrats say that trump has gotten $2 billion in free advertising, free media. republicans say mr. trump has gone unchallenged. i am going to go to then first -- ben do you think there is first. true and utter bias in the media? ben: yes. andrew: do you think it is a conscious bias? ben: yes, obviously there is conscious bias in the media, and then there is the generalized unconscious bias. most of the people who are in the mainstream media are democrats and will vote for hillary clinton, and they don't reveal that before they go on

air. so yeah unconscious bias has an , impact on how people perceive these particular issues. cnn, msnbc have run chiron's fact checking trump. there has never been a chiron fact checking hillary clinton. that is bias in one direction. in the other direction, i will say there has been this unconscious lowering of the standard of decent behavior for trump in the sense that if donald trump shows up in mexico and doesn't really do anything supremely noteworthy, this is considered a victory for his campaign. if he goes into the debate with hillary clinton and doesn't act an insane loon bag, that will be a big win for him. there is sort of a lowering of the standard because the new standard for normal campaigning has been left behind. if they held donald trump to mitt romney's standards, there is no way he would've gotten nearly this far. andrew: brian, do you think the media is truly down the middle? brian: i think there is a complicated definition of fairness in the selection. not all the statements are created equal.

sometimes if you look at the chiron on the bottom of the screen it may not be fact , checking a hillary clinton lie because the line may be more complicated, may be more nuanced, may take more explanation versus what trump is saying. in this selection, fairness does not mean 50/50 coverage of each candidate. and 50-50 treatment. these candidates are not equal. they are not even in that way. and i think ben is right. there has been a lower standard for treatment for donald trump. andrew: if you believe donald trump has gone unchallenged, why do think that has been the case? brian: i think he has been challenged many times, but the treatment has a different for many reasons. number one, he has been up until recently very accessible to television networks in particular. he is at the same time, he is simultaneously running a tv driven campaign media-driven , campaign and an anti-media campaign. this is the definition of having it both ways. he attacks the press on a daily basis, and there are reasons to think he is a true threat to press freedom, even though he has relaxed his so-called blacklist. so that is all true.

at the same time, he's been accessible. answer lots of questions and can be held -- andrew: to the extent people think he has gone unchallenged, is it because of his accessibility? brian: i think it's because of this saturation, the saturated news environment we live in. you may read 100 stories where it feels like trump is being let off the hook, where it looks like the press is going easy on him. there are 100 other stories on your facebook feed where he is being severely scrutinized. we live in a choose your own adventure, choose your own news environment. it makes it difficult for the audience at home to get to the reality. andrew: and i assuming that the am assertion that there is balance in the coverage of trump or that he's gone unchallenged, you will disagree with. ben: i mean, i wildly disagree with that. he has gone unchallenged on virtually everything. the problem with trump is he gives 10 different positions for the same issue, so it makes it difficult for anybody to get down to, what does he believe about something? because he will just shift on a dime. that is a challenge for the

media for sure. the idea that hillary clinton gets off scott free because her scandals are just too complicated, hillary clinton scandals are not complicated. brian: what about the banners on the bottom of the screen? she should be held accountable. ben: she will say things like, i never had classified material on my server, and the fbi said, no, you did have classified material. the chiron underneath will say "clinton: no classified information on my server." there is no parentheses that says, not true. it does not really exist. trump is always perceived to be fibbing. sometimes that is true. a lot of the times he is fitting. with hillary, she is always perceived as telling the truth, and later if it turns out she's lying, the media will rush to cover it. this is what happened with the health situation, the e-mail server situation. for months, all we heard was it was a big deal until the fbi revealed it was a big deal. brian: i don't know what shows you are watching. what i hear sometimes is a

victimization narrative from conservatives. i would point out there are many liberals who are equally frustrated by news coverage. i interested in how much anxiety and fear there is an outright fear, among liberals about the prospect of a donald trump presidency and how they are taking that out on the media in many cases. andrew: let me ask you this. both of you have talked about this issue of fact checking. and i wonder how you feel or what you feel the role of the journalist is supposed to be. we have a series of debates coming up. chris wallace is going to be one of those moderators. he recently said, truth-squading was not his responsibility, that he didn't see the idea of fact checking on the fly being something that he should be doing. it's a show, don't tell approach. what do you think the role of the journalist is supposed to be when it comes to these upcoming debates? brian: we work for the viewer at home. we work for the reader who is reading our work. to the extent a viewer is misinformed by a candidate the

, moderator has to help the audience understand what the truth is. sometimes, that is a carefully crafted follow-up question, as you do on cnbc. the follow-up question can be the fact check. but sometimes the moderator will step in and explain what the facts are. not all allies are treated equally. it's hard to fact check what a grayscale story is, but some stories are black and white. that is why donald trump is a unique challenge. you could argue he's the biggest journalistic challenge of this decade. it's not that clinton should be let off scott free. she should not be. she does make misstatements, but trump is uniquely challenging. then you add clinton to the stage, this is the hardest task of these debate moderators have faced in modern times. then, -- ben, the role of the journalist, the responsibility as these debates approach? ben: the role of the journalist when it comes to these debates is going to be asking follow-up questions. there are a lot of these fact checkers out there that do have a bias where they will simply grant certain credibility is to

candidates based on the political leanings of those candidates. it is dangerous to me to have a moderator up there who says, donald trump, what you are saying about vladimir putin is not true. hillary clinton, what you are saying about your e-mails is or is not true. there are many interpretations unfortunately of a lot of these issues. it would be good to be able to say, donald, you weren't saying this a year ago. here's a clip of you not say this year ago, and let's stop pretending this is that difficult a job. we have seen these candidates for a year. we know what they are going to say. if you been watching donald trump for a year, you can predict what donald trump is going to say before he does. donald trump is predictable. hillary clinton is absolutely predictable. if you know what they are going to say, you should have a follow-up prepared for every one of your questions. brian: if moderators don't step in, the television networks, major papers have a real responsibility even more than normal to provide fact checking to the audience after these debates, and of course, it is on the viewers at home, readers at home to actually check, to follow-up, to look into the

information ourselves. i know we are so divided, we are so on our own sides as tribes, but the information is out there if we want it. there is more information than ever before. we have to work harder to access it. andrew: let me ask you a question about the mainstream media, and i'm looking at you because you work at cnn. >> mainstream media. andrew: there's an argument that has been made that the mainstream media has not been aggressively covering hillary clinton and that much of the most aggressive coverage has actually emanated from some of what has been described as conservative or right-wing media -- i am thinking of organizations like judicial watch, which has requested some of her e-mails. do you think that is a fair assertion? brian: i think to some degree it is. that is a valuable part of the media system. we are better off having outlets that are explicitly conservative like fox and others. we are also better off because there are outlets that are liberal, places like slate and salon and talking points memo.

we are glad to have that variety. "the new york times" assigned amy cozad to the clinton beat years ago. there have been thorough investigations from mainstream media. there is just this distinction from outlets that come with a point of view like fox news and outlets that try not to come with a point of view. andrew: ben, i'm assuming you think nobody comes without a point of view. ben: obviously trying to language using brian's fox news into the opinionated , basket and cnn into the non-opinionated basket, anybody who views both networks knows there is an editorial bent to both networks. when it comes to the idea that flowers bloom i agree. , i would point out a distention. brian you shifted away from the , fact that judicial watch was named. judicial watch has been doing much of the heavy lifting on the clinton documentation. it is not a media outlet. judicial watch is a 501(c)(3) organization that foia's these documents. why "the washington post" wasn't

doing that or the new york times or you at cnn, it is a question that really ought to be looked at. brian: where i disagree with you is that judicial watch is now a media outlet. all of these groups are now media outlets in the way media matters. i would also say donald trump's campaign and hillary clinton's campaigns are media outlets, as ben smith and other media outlets have pointed out. all of them are now media outlets. we should take that seriously. that has been a change in our media ecosystem. that all of these outlets, all of these nonprofits, all of these companies are media outlets. again it's harder for the , audience at home. it puts more of the onus on us to sort through it all. ben: ok, but the fact is the way judicial watch works, and i know this because i know the folks there -- if they receive documents from a foia request , it is not like they have the power of putting in front of millions of people like cnn. they are 501(c)(3). they pitch their information to media outlets who either pick it up or don't pick it up. putting everybody in the media basket says there is no such thing as the media. an individual cell phone is the media. brian: i think you are a media company. i'm glad you are, because i can subscribe to you now.

i appreciated, and i hope everyone subscribes to thedailywire.com. i do run a media company, but it is a media company that actually has readers ends -- and spends money to market our material. judicial watch is getting documents from the federal government. why is it that -- right now, we know the media are trying to unseal donald trump's divorce records in the ivana trump case. why weren't they foia'ing hillary clinton's documents? brian: they went to court for years to get them. ben: and you watch cnn the obama , administration was trying to crack down on the ap for various other reasons. earlier in this segment, you were talking about the fact that you thought trump was a threat to press freedom. i don't wholly disagree with that, but the idea that hillary isn't when she has been less than forthcoming with the press, and barack obama has been maybe the worst guy for the press in the modern presidency, is i think, again evidence of bias , on your part. brian: it is not bias on my part. i would agree with you clinton is also in some ways a threat. trump has taken more explicit steps to curtail the press. there are behaviors that are

more troubling, but clinton is no friend to the media either. it would seem either of these candidates would continue president obama's troublesome relationship with the media. andrew: gentlemen, on that note we are going to have to end the , conversation there. i appreciate it. it's a debate that isn't going to end anytime soon. thank you. thank you both. ben: thanks so much. ♪

♪ andrew: ray kelly is here. he was new york city's longest

serving police commissioner before stepping down from the force in 2013. following the attacks of september 11, he created the first counterterrorism bureau of any municipal police department in the country. he established a new global intelligence program with new york city detectives stationed in foreign cities. he writes more about this in "vigilance, my life serving america and protecting the empire city." it is currently out in paperback. he currently serves as vice chairman of k2 intelligence. we welcome him to this table. ray: great to be with you. andrew: when you go back to september 11, 15 years ago now, and think to yourself about what you thought could and would happen to this city when it comes to terrorism, if i had asked you then whether this city would have suffered some form of terrorist attack, what would you have said? ray: i would have said absolutely, and it would've been very soon. you could feel that in this city.

there was a lot of gloom and doom. it wasn't a question of if but and when. and quite frankly, the pundits were saying that. they were writing that. we knew that. when the bloomberg administration came in, we wanted to do things that gave people a sense of comfort, sort of, you know address those , concerns. so we did a lot of things, and we did it quickly. we put in place a counterterrorism bureau. voted over 1000 police officers to it. we assigned officers overseas, but there was in the 12 years of mayor bloomberg's reign, 16 plots against the city. andrew: you write about it in this book. ray: i do. some of them were defeated on the part of good work from law enforcement and the nypd, and some of them just as a result of sheer luck, we just did not know about these events and plans that were aimed at us. andrew: dare i ask the same question 15 years from now when

you think about new york city -- how well-positioned are we to prevent the next one? ray: well it depends on what the , next one is. i think the lone wolf threat is going to be with us for a long time to come. that is a self-radicalized individual or small groups who, through the internet, become radicalized and then decide to act. what we have seen is that after they do radicalize themselves, they act pretty quickly. it's difficult to predict who is going to react to the hundreds of thousands of tweets that come out. andrew: why haven't we seen a lone wolf in new york city? ray: well, we saw the attempts, and i think we have to be ready for one. it is very, very difficult to prevent. i think the country and new york city has done a much better job of addressing the 9/11-type, complex, lots of moving parts type plot that is directed or

could be directed at a city. we've spent a lot of money and devoted a lot of resources, but it is that individual who sitting in his basement who , decides to kill his fellow countrymen, that is what we are concerned about. andrew: what aren't we doing that we should be? ray: you know i think we are , doing everything we reasonably can do. you can look back in history and say, hey we should've done this , or that overseas, but we are where we are now, and i think the fbi has done a good job of rolling people up throughout the country for material support to terrorists. they have arrested over 100 people probably in the last 2, 2 and a half years. we have the tsa in place. those sorts of agencies and resources have been put in place at great expense to the taxpayers, and i think they are doing a reasonably good job. andrew: when you look at the security of the city and compare it to others in the u.s., what

is the margin? what is the difference? ray: well the difference is , significant, but new york has a much greater threat than other locations, although san bernadino and orlando threw us off a little bit. new york is the biggest target in the terrorists' minds. it's the capital of the world. so anything that happens here definitely will reverberate throughout the world. we have devoted, as i say, a lot of money, a lot of resources, and the federal government has devoted a lot of money here. 10 million people here on a business day. andrew: i want to ask about the relationship between the american public, the citizens, and the police. it seems there is a greater divide, a sense of distrust that hasn't been there before, at a level that is greater than ever. you see it with black lives matter. you see it with football players like colin kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem.

what do you make of that? what is that about? ray: there is no question that some of these very disturbing videos and shootings have set back the relationship between the police and certainly communities of color in this country. from my vantage point, having been in policing for 45 years, the relationship is much better than it was many years ago, but the advent of these videos has set it back. people have lost some trust in the place. -- in the police. i think it is something that has to be worked on everyday as far as a police commissioner, police chief or police officers are concerned because of the nature of policing. police are asked to do the dirty work in society, make arrests, give you summons, being the bearers of bad news. so it is something that is problematic. and i think certain developments can increase that trust, like

the wearing of body cameras. i support that. i think it's the smart thing to do to have police officers in the field wear body cameras. we have to try to regain the trust everyday. andrew: how much do you think at , least in the city of new york, that stop and frisk played a role in this? ray: not as much as you might think. activists certainly campaigned against it. it was a skillful campaign. it lasted for 14 years, that was something that just didn't happen overnight. but i think the people in these communities want help. they are the ones who are being victimized. i know that from being in those communities so much. but i think the videos of the ferguson incident and the so-called ferguson effect that has emanated from these incidents is troubling.

i mean by that, police not in -- not engaging on the level they did engage. crime is down in this country or was down in this country for two decades based on smarter policing, and some of that is proactive policing. if you see somebody acting suspiciously you have to , intervene. that is what you are paid for. now we see the police backing off from that. because they don't want to jeopardize their own career or the well-being of their families. so as a result of that, we see certainly murders in the 50 largest cities going up. but time will heal some of this. andrew: let me ask you about this. you say this about mayor de blasio who has stopped a stop and frisk as a policy -- you say the fact that he has walked away from this what you call a routine and useful policing tool, the result is, "people will lose their lives as a result." have people lost their lives as a result? ray: well, you've got to look at

some of the numbers. numbers can be very selective. last year, there was a 22% increase in murders by gun in the city. we have an increase in slashings and stabbings. this is not a be all and end all. this is not a panacea for crime, stop and frisk, but it's a valuable tool, an essential tool for police officers to have in their toolbox. to the extent it is held back and not used as a natural consequence of our police officers' encounter, it will bring about more crime. yes, i believe that, and i also believe that is the reason you see this increase in murders throughout the country. andrew: i want to go to the issue of body cameras. you originally did not support the idea of police wearing body cameras. what is it that changed your mind? andrew: -- ray: it was the shooting of walter scott by a police officer in north charleston, south carolina.

walter scott was stopped for a traffic violation. his encounter with a police officer, apparently, he hadn't paid support payments. he thought that is what it was going to be all about. he runs away, and the officer shoots him in the back. i thought, how could any, you know sane person do that if they , are wearing a body camera that would've captured all of their actions? so the police officer shoots the individual, and then the trial is going to go forward here, but it certainly appears a lot of people planted evidence. andrew: do you think ultimately the body cameras will protect the police more than the citizens? ray: i do. i do. because the police, and i say this based on my 45 years in policing -- do such great things, such beneficial things for society every day that certainly it will greatly outnumber any untoward events.

but i think it will also restrain officers from acting in an inappropriate way. you know what happens is people video police all the time now, and they will take that video and put it on youtube, and you will see maybe half of the entire event or two thirds. now with police wearing cameras, there's the potential for capturing the entire incident. you know, with the police department. andrew: while we are on the issue of technology, i want to ask you about apple and this debate that took place earlier this year between the fbi and apple and the idea that potentially terrorists and other criminals are going to use devices like iphones and other phones other products to , communicate in a way that makes it inaccessible to the police. ray: yeah. andrew: how do you think about that issue, the idea of privacy on one end and the need to know on the other?

ray: i think ultimately at the end of the day, security trumps privacy. we have to have a system that is in place that will enable legitimate law enforcement efforts to capture information, to make it available to them to keep us safe. now i don't think any company, certainly apple, should be able to go out and say hey, we are , going to make it so you can't access this information. i think that is -- i think congress has to get involved in a decision like that. andrew: i framed it up as a privacy versus security debate. technology companies would say, it's an unfair comparison, which is to say that the moment you create a backdoor effectively, you get rid of the security, and it is not necessarily simply helping you.

it is also the bad guy on the other end we don't know about. ray: this argument is going to continue, but as i say at the end of the day, security has to prevail. we saw the fbi say that they couldn't open a phone until they reached out to an israeli firm, or reached out to what i don't know, and they were able to access the phone. i would like to see some sort of agreement, compromise on the side but if not, i think , congress has to make a determination here. andrew: talk to me about new york city right now. you have been critical of mayor de blasio. mr. braddock is no longer in charge. how do you look at the policing that is taking place right now? ray: well i think you have to , look at the quality of life in this city. i mean, people are saying -- it's not just me -- that the quality of life has slipped in new york. a lot of homeless people -- andrew: how much do you think it has slipped? 5%, 10%?

how do you think about it like this? ray: it's much more of a feeling then a number. you can feel it. people tell me they can feel it. i can feel it. andrew: the mayor would say the stats don't suggest that. ray: well you can always do , things with numbers. mayors have problems with numbers in a lot of different agencies. i don't think it's a question of policing. i think the police want to do their job. but the chief law enforcement officer in any city is the mayor. the mayor sets the tone. so to the extent we have seen slippage in a certain quality of life issues, i think the mayor is ultimately responsible. there is a move to lessen the penalties for these violations. i think that is a move in the wrong direction. certainly when people feel that things are slipping, to do that i think is an unwise political move. andrew: the book is called "vigilance." ray kelly, thank you. ♪

♪ charlie: china's rise on the global stage is reshaping expectations for leadership in the 21st century. the success of future leaders around the world will depend on all understanding china's increasingly influential role. the schwartzman scholarship program seeks to meet that challenge. 110 scholars will begin studies next month at a university in beijing.

students will engage in a rigorous one-your program and pursue degrees in one of three disciplines, public policy, economics, and business, or international studies. steve schwarzman is chairman and ceo of blackstone, one of the world's leading investment firms. we are also joined by three students who will comprise the inaugural class of schwarzman scholars. bethare jr thorton, anna and -- [indiscernible] butchered his name. i will have him say it. you pronounced it for me. the way that your parents say it. >> [indiscernible] tell me how this idea came to you? some say it is modeled on the rhodes scholarship. how did the idea come to you, and what you hope it will do? steve: the way that it came is that university -- i am on the board of their business school.

because the chinese government invested in the blackstone ipo. $3 billionthey asked me to go on the chen hua board. several years later, they asked me to make a significant donation for their 100th anniversary, and that was during the financial crisis. so i was otherwise engaged. a few years later, they came back to me again, and i was thinking about, what does the future hold? how can i do something that is consequential? it began pretty clear as populism was spreading in the united states that eventually it wouldn't just be directed against 1% or financial people or other types of groups. it would eventually reach china, because china appeared to be the winner. historically, in 12 of the

last 16 times that a challenger country was challenging an incumbent power, world power there have been wars between the -- cumbents and the charlie: the principles -- annabeth: i guess it was -- steve: i guess it was graham allison who did that at harvard. the deck was sort of stacked against a peaceful world, at least probability-wise, and that is not possible to happen in the modern world. and so i thought we needed to do something that would be a bridge that could take what china is doing, explain it to the rest of the world, if it was being marketed into a populist situation, it could hopefully diffuse those tensions. if china was doing something that in effect didn't really feel right, you could go and talk to them. so the idea was to form a group of students, and then i looked

thea model, and i liked rhodes model, because i knew a lot of people who were rhodeses. charlie: you had a couple working for you somewhere. steve: yes, well, that is different. but you know people like bill , clinton and other people really had their lives changed through the experience of going somewhere else. and so i thought, wow, if we can , do something similar, select amazing people who have the capacity to be leaders in their fields of interest, and if we can assemble 200 a year, so we end up at a steady state of 10,000 students over a lifetime who become grown-ups, have influence, whether it is political, whether it's media, whether it's business, whatever their field, that we can help create a network which, in the modern world, unlike when you and i went to school where you lost track of your classmates

because, how do you keep in touch with people, but in the internet world, you can keep track of everyone. and so, we formed this network of students, not just in your class of schwartzman scholars, but across the years, and this could be a very powerful group for change. charlie: what happens as you went in search of the best and the brightest, to use tim's terms, who are 20 years old and find them and take them and give them the opportunity to go to ching hua for a year? steve: for a year, but it is more of a business year than an academic year. not that much happens in an academic year. this is pretty intense. besides the academic part, we will be studying all things chinese, chinese culture, chinese history and other things as well as the type of area of specialization. what will make this truly

extraordinary for the students is that they will get to meet the leaders of the country. they will get to go to different parts of the country. they will have people come in from around the world, who, people who, you know you , interview on a regular basis. we will get to spend time with them. they will get mentors from the top of chinese society, whether it's government people or business people or diplomats. and so they will get to have an , exposure to china, which will be truly unique. nobody else can do that. charlie: tell me about you and and how you what you hope to get , out of this. why did you want to do it? annabeth: i studied engineering at college, but in high school, i had the opportunity to study chinese, and i continued at college. as part of my university program, i got to spend some time in china. i really fell in love with the chinese language and the chinese

culture and the people. after graduating, i worked in consulting, but one thing i found was i missed working with china in some way. so for me in addition to the , degree and meeting everyone, the opportunity to reintegrate into what is going on in chinese culture and society is a big draw for why i wanted to participate in the program, and getting exposure is a big thing. charlie: what excites you about china? what is it about china, other than its size and its growing impact and also its growing problems and challenges? annabeth: they do have those. however, it's the rapid pace of change, which is most exciting to me. i find that when i first went to china eight years ago, i used to have to take a scooter ride and then a bus ride and a change and a walk. i went back just two years later, there was a high-speed subway that took me to the center of the city. in no other place i have visited was there that much change that quickly, and that pace of change is only accelerating. charlie: why you? why china?

i mean, you have already written a novel. while i studied creative writing at harvard, i was primarily a history major. going back to mr. schwartzman, i think this is a unique moment in time where this relationship is defining itreally for the next, i think it will really define our lives. charlie: the relationship between china and the united states. jr: yeah. i do feel like there is a real need for people on this side of the relationship to be engaged with china. i'm going back to what you just said about the a to one of studying here or there i think , we are operating with a dearth of knowledge and understanding. and to be sort of a part of that, i think, is something that , to me, seems very important

and valuable. charlie: i said that your mother was a novelist, and your father was a businessman, and at the same time has an ongoing relationship with china. are you set in your mind as to what you want to do with your life? jr: well i -- charlie: are you a confirmed writer, and that is what it is? jr: i have loved it since i could walk. i will definitely continue writing fiction my whole life. i don't think i want to limit but myself to just doing that, is -- and ithis think this is part of that. i'm not sure exactly what direction i will be going in, but potentially journalism. charlie: oh, journalism? jr: i'm keeping my options open. [laughter] charlie: it's a wonderful way to spend a life. hear it from me. what does this mean to you? >> this program is, you know,

definitely an unparalleled opportunity to improve my understanding of china, and having been born in mongolia, a place that is always in the back of my mind, you know, no matter where i am, i've always understood that china is the both mongolianin history mongolian politics, and , mongolian economics. it is merely a question of to what extent is it a positive role. and as it has transitioned to a democratic free market, there has been a growing push for chinese investment in mongolia, but it has been hindered by , you could say populism and a , sense of fear among mongolians about what china represents for the country. charlie: a lot of neighbors feel that way about china. enkhmend: exactly. charlie: vietnam and others. enkhmend: it's understandable if you look at history, but for the countries to both develop and maintain a positive relationship, there needs to be a foundation of mutual understanding, and i hope to do this with the program. charlie: so what do you think,

where is your professional interest at this time in your life? your professional interest? enkhmend: i an aspiring am entrepreneur. charlie: you've come to the right place. enkhmend: having worked on several on-campus ventures in college, and i hope to make entrepreneurship more accessible to mongolians and people in the developing world. charlie: you speak mandarin or cantonese? enkhmend: no. charlie: will they learn the language? it is hard to learn. it's a difficult language to learn. you can tell us. you certainly can't do it in a year. annabeth: it's just the tip of the iceberg in a year. charlie: are they primarily going there to develop a sense of china, its culture, its politics, its economic base, how it is changing, how it may become a stakeholder in the world, to use robin selleck's famous phrase -- are they going there to learn something specific in terms of the curriculum like a business degree?

steve: i think it is more the former than the latter. because the students in the program are very substantially advanced in all types of areas. the kind of thing you can't get from any other program that is dealing with china is the kind of experience you will get with this. now we have the curriculum half taught roughly by the ching hua professors and half native professors and a professors from around the world. all the courses are uniquely designed to be at the highest level. but the students who are coming here have all been super successes academically. and i have learned, just as a person, to have good lifetime success, you have to have unique experiences and understanding of

what is going on not just simply academic input. because the academic input is great at all the places where they are. so this is something where, if you finish this program, academics will be excellent, but what you are getting is a unique look at a unique country that is the second biggest economy in the world inevitably will be the , largest, the largest population in the world. this is not a normal place, and it's quite alien for other people. so we will have 20% chinese students, leaving aside all of the rest of the people at the university. roughly 40% to 45% u.s., and 35% roughly from the rest of the world, and just in our first class. we have 31 countries represented and 71 universities. charlie: so between the time you announced this program and the entry of this program, it was three years? steve: it was three years. what we've got, charlie, which is amazing, could only happen in

the modern world, our world -- is we have got about the most selective program in the world . 3.7% of the people who applied were offered the opportunity to come, and 95% agreed to come. and that is just year one. this year, our applications will aroundy be up somewhere 50%. charlie: you've desperately wanted this year this, fair to say? enkhmend: absolutely. charlie: this is a remarkable opportunity to see part of the world you may not have known, you more than others. annabeth: it's an amazing opportunity. charlie: how was the interview process? annabeth: oh man. [laughter] charlie: i kept getting these notes from steve schwarzman saying, i want you to sit on this board and interview these kids. i said, that sounds like a great thing to do, that i am pursuing -- but i pursuing four jobs. am i better not to a bad job at interviewing. and then when i realized i also , realized he had such an impressive group of people doing

the interviewing, you know, that i might not shape out. annabeth: the adrenaline was certainly flowing during the interview process. we were, there was a group component and a luncheon, but there was also a six or seven on one panel with me on one side and them on the other side. charlie: what did they ask you? annabeth: they asked us about what we had written about in our essays in our application, just our experience of what brought us to that point, what we wanted to get from the program, and they threw in a wild-card question about something else going on in the world just to see -- charlie: to see if you can think freely. annabeth: to see if we knew about other things other than our scope. charlie: political institutions all have to have a broad sense of the way the world works. we are so interconnected by the shortage of time and distance, as well as the internet. you learn from professors, and we are actually having a joint leadership module with the rhodes, and we are

quite friendly, but another way you learn is by being around people who are natural leaders. and i remember when i was a younger person -- i still think i'm a younger person, but when i was, you are always looking to pick pieces of people who you think are terrific and incorporate that knowledge and modify yourself somewhat. and because the group of students is so unusual in the program just by being on their own, let alone other types of instruction, they will learn things from each other in terms of what becomes successful. charlie: what do you think is the most significant learning experience you have had so far? steve: so far -- be ao far, it has got to lot of the experiences i've spent abroad away from the classroom. i spent a summer in bolivia on my own roughly two years ago.

charlie: traveling or working? studying? enkhmend: studying. it was essentially a language immersion program with a home state component. i was basically on my own for two months in this beautiful city. you know in a city that wasn't , necessarily the most international or cosmopolitan, i learned a lot about how people definitely do have preconceived notions about who you are and where you come from. but these preconceptions or stereotypes don't have much basis as long as you contacted -- you can talk to them and explain who you are and where you come from. charlie: what has been your most maturing and shaping influence? enkhmend: when i was 14, i lived in beijing for a year, and i spent that year training with the chinese junior national tennis team. that was experience that led me to write this book. at the time, the sport system in china was still very much a carryover from the soviet union

in the 1970's and 1980's. and all of the players i played with her played -- paid a salary by the government. practiced eight hours a day and didn't really have a chance to go to school. and to sort of be immersed in , from school in the of the it assured me side of life i had never seen before. the fact that my teammates had to worry about things i never had to think about. charlie: a world that you don't know. jr: i don't throw this phrase around lightly, but it really changed my life. and so, that is why i would like to go back there and engage in china again. get to china again. charlie: was china one of the more interesting and shaping experiences of your life? annabeth: i'm definitely shaping and influencing. -- it was definitely shaping and influencing. one thing that changed it for me was my undergraduate experience. i studied engineering at m.i.t., and i had to work really hard

when i was there. so like, learning that discipline -- i was a student athlete, as well -- meeting people from around the world who were studying there, that rigor like i think gave me the motivation and made me feel like, if i can make it to -- through m.i.t., i can apply and seek out other things. it's one of the things that helped me apply for the schwarzman scholars. charlie: do you have a sense of the five-year plan announced last year or early this year is the right direction for china? do you think china is prepared to take a full role in the world in the sense that china appreciates its power? steve: i think china is one complicated place. to break this into pieces, charlie, economically, they really had no choice but to emphasize the consumer part of their economy and internalize it. because the just exporting, when the objective of the president

of the country is to make everybody have a better life, better health, better wealth, and so if everybody is becoming more wealthy, then you can't be a low-cost exporter. so the economy, economic model needed to change. this is like a hard thing. and so overall, economic growth, , at least as they report it, is in the 6%'s. charlie: as they reported. steve: i said, as they report it. the consumer side of their economy, which is about half, is doing quite well. they are hiring a lot of people. wages are up. charlie: there is a huge overcapacity in real estate. it's the business you are in. steve: there's a shortage of warehousing space because of the internet. there is always some way to make money. but it is really important that they do pivot their economy, and

it doesn't come without friction, but the consumer part is holding up quite well, and if more people are being hired, and higher wages are being paid, then that will be somewhat enduring. it is interesting that the world declare that china had a huge set of problems i guess in january, and the markets all went off, and that didn't come to pass. i think that element, which is a core part, will continue to have excesses and other problems, but the chinese are so adaptable and energetic. and as he said, it is odd in china. change happens so fast. they are sort of like dog years. like one year in china is like seven years somewhere else. and so, you know they've got , political issues that they face. charlie: issues of authoritarianism and human rights. steve: a variety of issues, a

whole different model of governance. so it's never a smooth ride when you are the world's fastest-growing large economy, unprecedented growth in the last 30 years. never happened in history. charlie: it is a fascinating place, and i can never get enough of it. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

mark: i'm mark crumpton. let's begin with the check of first word news. after being sidelined with pneumonia, hillary clinton to the campaign trail today. she told a rally in greensboro, north carolina that the time off gave her moment to reflect. donald trump today unveiled his economic plan, one that promises to lower taxes, cut regulation, and create jobs. he told the economic club of new york the only thing hillary clinton can offer is, quote, "a welfare check." >> not one single idea she has got will create one net american job, or one new dollar of american wealth.