♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: we begin this evening with a look into president-elect's donald trump transition team, and his appointment of steve bannon. bannon is executive chairman of breitbart news, which he describes as the platform of the alt-right. the controversial pick has drawn criticism from democrats, civil rights groups, and some republicans. this comes as trump promises to unite a deeply divided country. joining me now is ken stern. he profiled bannon in vanity fair. also with us, joshua green and philip rucker and michael shear.

michael, i will begin with you. tell me -- where do you think trump is? before we focus on steve bannon, tell me where you think the principal point might be coming out soon? michael: where we are is in a much more chaotic place than you normally are a week after the election. the reporting we have done at the times and phil and folks have done elsewhere, the transition has been rocky. they had to change leadership in the first couple of days, ended up pushing out chris christie and an entire team. they brought in a new team. now they are working on the 26th floor of trump tower to put together the first big nnnouncement after mr. banno and the announcement of chief of staff. we are waiting for rudy giuliani, former mayor of new york. jeff sessions, senator from

alabama, two names that have been bandied about. maybe for secretary of state or attorney general. we do not have much of a sense of timing. there is no real communication from the transition team to reporters about a timing we might expect or particular role. we are waiting to see what happens. charlie: tell me about chris christie. what happened to him? was it simply infighting? jockeying for power? or was it a sense by donald trump that he did not think chris christie was what he expected and wanted in his administration? michael: it is a combination of a series of things. you mentioned a couple one is , infighting and power jockeying. there is reporting that jared kushner had it out for chris christie and was not eager to see him be part of the

transition and administration. you also have the bridgegate scandal in new jersey. in the last several weeks, there were convictions in that case. there were some feelings inside the transition team that this was not a particularly good time to have a governor like chris christie, who's got problems back at home, to be leading the administration's choice of who to pick. all of that combined to not only have chris christie out, but sort of a purge of all his people. people that had been close to chris christie, that chris christie had brought -- mike rogers, the former congressman, who had been leading the national security effort, is also out today. part of what is contributing to the chaos is a sense that we already had one team and have to build another one. charlie: what would you add to this overview? phil: mike is right.

there is another power center, senator jeff sessions, one of the early endorsers and all the way through the general election. he is exerting a lot of influence in the process. he was at trump tower this week. his chief of staff has taken over the staff level after the transition. we are hearing sessions may be the defense secretary pick. his influence goes far beyond that. he is having a lot of say over who is being vetted for senior-level positions in the administration. we cannot underscore enough the role the family is playing. jared kushner, the husband of ivanka trump, a real estate developer also, is exerting tremendous authority over the process and having a lot of say over every single staff position. as are the other children of donald trump. charlie: let me add two names to national security. one is general flint, rumored as a national security possibility.

phil: that is right. we are hearing he is personally overseeing national security selection right now. he has a lot to do with who is considered for cia, dni, the state department, pentagon. he is donald trump's most trusted national security advisor and considered a shoo-in for national security advisor. he is exerting a lot of control in the transition. charlie: also john bolton. phil: that is right. he is under consideration for secretary of state. he is a controversial figure. he had to be appointed for a recess appointment in the bush administration to become ambassador of the united nations. trump is considering him for secretary of state along with rudy giuliani. they are the top two candidates as far as we know. the important thing about all these candidates under consideration is loyalty, something we knew in the campaign donald trump prized, loyalty from people.

he demands it from people. they are not giving consideration to people for top jobs in the administration who are not on board during the campaign and supporting him. it is not only the people in the never trump movement being considered. even if you were a republican who was neutral and were not saying anything about donald trump in the campaign, that is a knock against you right now. charlie: i want to come to some general questions. that brings me to steve bannon. ken, tell me who steve bannon is and why -- when they made the announcement of new chief of staff, reince priebus, it was steve bannon who led the list. he's going to be the principal strategist and senior advisor, someone that most people do not know, but enormous late controversial.

>> steve is a fascinating character. he was an investment banker. five years ago, after andrew breitbart died, he took over the reins and grew it. 37 million unique visitors last month. they really created a trump movement before there was trump . donald trump really rode the wave of the breitbart audience to the republican nomination, and then brought steve in an august to be the campaign manager. steve and breitbart are professional provocateurs on issues nationalism, trade, antiestablishment. he's sort of an extraordinarily outside figure to be in the white house. i have never seen anything like it. charlie: could you say that,

without him, donald would not have been elected president? >> i could say. i would say more than that. without him, there would have been no political movement that donald trump could ride to the nomination. they called breitbart trump pravda, but it was a synergy that there was no synergy between the two. trumpwas a movement that could develop and take forward. i do not think he would have been the nominee without breitbart driving that energy. charlie: tell me about what influence he has. what is it he believes in that he may have influenced donald trump to believe in? >> bannon is a hard right populist that believes the same populist uprisings we have seen across europe and great britain with brexit is sweeping across the united states as well and trump is the figure that embodied that in the u.s. everything bannon was telling trump was to position himself as

just such a figure. it succeeded in getting him elected. charlie: more than that, the characterization of him as someone that sees politics as a disruptive force, to disrupt the way things are. he was the one that wanted to bring the women who made accusations against bill clinton to the debate. there is a sense of theater people talk about. he has a sense of wanting to push trump to go to mexico to see the president, those kinds of things. what i am looking for is a sense of how his mind works. >> bannon is a creature of the media. at goldman sachs, he was an mergers and acquisitions banker who specialized in deals with tv studios, movie studios. part of the way bannon got rich is he negotiated a deal between castle rock and ted turner. in lieu a payment, he took

residuals from the "seinfeld" tv show. as we know, that has done well, so he moved that into moviemaking. he made documentaries about sarah palin, the tea party, the financial crisis. he's someone sharply attuned to media, theater, drama. if you read breitbart news, it is kind of an all-caps way of covering the news. bannon has been the karl rove figure in trump's ear, advising him, coaxing him, pushing him down the path to become the figure trump is today. charlie: what about the questions of racism? what about the questions of a much harder and a much tougher mindset about

politics at play? certainly reflected in the language of donald trump. michael: right. i think there are going to be two interesting things that play out as we watch steve bannon come into the west wing. one is the way in which he's personally defined. you saw an unleashing on the left yesterday of accusations against him personally, essentially as a racist, misogynist, anti-semite, bigot. on twitter, in statements, everything from nancy pelosi on down, the effort was to characterize him that way. in part to undercut any effectiveness he might have going forward. his friends and supporters pushed back, saying look, you are trying to put stuff on him, articles that might have appeared on the website, that

does not necessarily reflect him. one other thing that will be interesting to watch apart from his personal views, it is correct to say that the idea of somebody who is so incredibly antiestablishment being in that office, that senior advisor office a few steps down from the oval office, the way in which his inclination to blow this place up, to blow up washington, to attack the establishment -- clashes with the other person we know is going to be there, reince priebus, the ultimate staffer, the ultimate establishment figure, who ran the rnc since 2011 and is by nature, sort of wisconsin- nice. someone who believes in working with folks, coming together to get things done. those are two diametrically opposite forces. as of somebody who has covered the white house for the last eight years, that kind of

nuclear confrontation at the very heart of the west wing is going to make this incredible interesting to watch. charlie: does it also suggests something about the way donald trump's mind works? >> it absolutely does. >> go ahead. >> i would say it absolutely does. bannon has been advising trump for several years. trump was a big breitbart reader. that is one of the ways he got locked into this idea of immigration. trump is somebody that feels comfortable having bannon in his ear. as we watch the chaos of trump's primary campaign unfold with campaign managers like corey lewandowski and paul manafort being fired, the guy trump settled on is steve bannon, the guy that he wants in his corner in the white house, the same way he did in the campaign.

>> there is one thing to keep in mind about trump's leadership and management style. as a candidate over the last year, he seeks advice from a lot of people. he would spend a lot of time in trump tower calling people, taking the temperature, getting their advice. that is not the way a president normally operates. it is the way trump operates. he is going to bring that style to the white house. that is one of the reasons he has two very different people at top levels of authority in his west wing with equal authority. >> i think the point michael made is incredibly important. for breitbart, bannon public enemy number two is the clintons. and the obama and the democratic party. public enemy number one is the establishment. that is what they were created to fight. it will be in extraordinarily interesting conflict-ridden four years, or two years, or however long they coexist between bannon and his clique, and the

republican establishment. charlie: reice priebus was chairman of the national committee. he is good friends with the speaker of the house, paul ryan. >> i think one of the things you will see develop over the first few months and weeks of the administration is the two different types of power in the white house. there is institutional power. reince priebus comes in with more of that. the chief of staff has institutional inherent powers that give him the ability to run a lot of things. then you have the personal relationships. valerie jarrett does not have a particularly central institutional role, yet she has the ear of the president more than other people in the west wing do. if steve bannon is the guy who whispers into donald trump's ear before he goes back to new york,

he is going to be the one that has the bigger influence. ♪

charlie: he obviously listens to steve bannon. are there things trump wanted to do that he didn't do because steve bannon said, don't do that? it's not the right thing to do

at this moment, even though you might want to, even though your instinct might be to do that, don't do it? >> i think he did some of that, and i think he did some of the opposite, which is to say, as everybody else was whispering in or weighing in to tell donald trump, don't do this, bannon was saying, no, do it. go ahead. be big, be bold. i think the mexico trip was an example, but there are plenty of other examples. and i think we're going to get a lot more of that in the administration, where we're all going to shake our heads and say, wow, he did that? and it will have been the result of bannon saying, go ahead. do it. charlie: there's also this. he's said to be linked to populism in europe and what happened in great britain with the brexit vote. >> bannon has been close with nigel farage, who happened to be at a party at bannon's house. this was during cap. -- cpac,

spotted leaving trump tower. farage is someone bannon has made an effort to bring into not just politics, but trump's world. for me, one of the weirdest scenes of the republican party is that trump trotted farage out on stage at a rally in mississippi of all places, this british aristocrat, to talk about why donald trump ought to be the next president. bannon has a strange amalgamation of characters, some who may be playing higher or major roles in the trump administration. charlie: after the brexit vote happened, and trump identified with it so strongly it was , because he thought of it as a movement. he thought about what he was about as a movement.

he talked about it much more as a movement rather than a party. >> that is right. one of the things you will see bannon try to do is keep trump connected to the movement. he will be in washington cutting deals, and bannon will have his ear to the ground keep trump rooted in what got him here. i expect we will see a lot of theatrical displays. we could see him out on the road. he could hold rallies. he could roll out a legislative agenda in front of 10,000 people in pensacola, florida as a way to keep himself reviewed to the movement. that will be part of the bannon portfolio, i imagine. >> can i just add on? i think one of the lessons presidents sometimes learn when they go to the white house is it becomes difficult to stay connected to the movement you created during your campaign. barack obama clearly inspired a movement in 2007-2008.

it is very different come to think we have talking about with bannon and breitbart. you you get into office, start having to do things your people do not necessarily like. you are ensconced in washington. it can be difficult for presidents to keep that connection. i think breitbart and bannon will aim to make sure that does not happen for trump, but it will be a challenge to make sure he does not become a creature of the very thing he campaigned against. >> to pick up on michael's point, i think it is going to be especially difficult for bannon himself, who, through his entire career, has been a guy who delighted in standing outside the system and throwing rocks. the fact that he has want up in a west wing office is mind blowing both because of his unfitness for the job and there

was never any sign this was the sort of job he wanted. in a way, bannon is like the dog who caught the bumper. i am not really sure that he knows what is going to happen next. charlie: michael, back to you. a fierce chorus announced donald trump monday for appointing steve bannon to a top white house post even as president obama described mr. trump as pragmatic, not ideological, and held out hope he would rise to the challenges of the presidency. do you see, emerging with donald trump, a pragmatism rather than a movement quality? michael: i don't know that i see it. i mean, we have not had a lot of evidence of it.

in some ways, that was more hopeful on the part of president obama from his perspective than a reality we can see. president obama has had this job for a year and knows it better than any of us do. perhaps he has a sense that the job, institution, office, sitting behind the desk, will confer on donald trump a sense of pragmatism we have not seen a lot of. to the extent bannon has his ear, he will be pushing donald trump away from that. but there are pressures, certainly, that move a president in that direction. charlie: let me go back to ken. we lost you for a moment. we talked about racism and misogyny, all words and ideas that have been thrown at steve bannon. there is also something i think he is proud of, which is the

hard right nationalist movement. what does that mean for him? >> i think for him, he will say he is a nationalist and deny he is a white nationalist. there is a difference in his mind at least between the two. nationalist means the people who are here have to come first. this notion of all policies need to be focused on what he sees as "the real americans," witches were him the american worker. , that might be a white worker or a black worker. he is rebelling against the notion that the establishment has sold out that american worker over a series of years and deals. that is nationalism for him. he looks at issues like trade as selling out the american worker, immigration as selling out the american worker. that is his platform. the race piece comes from -- i think he has found, whether he

is a racist or not, he's found that dog whistle stuff works with his audience. that is where a lot of the energy comes from. but his platform really is the antiestablishment essence of nationalism. charlie: you hear this also, based on what you just said, in what donald trump uses as self description. he said to leslie stahl, i'm an america first. that is how i see the world. >> i think it is an exact quote. that is a notion i think most politicians would view themselves as caring about their communities before other communities. but rooted in that is the notion there are real americans and others who are not real americans. that is where the conflict comes about. there is a notion of -- they

reject the notion of the melting pot. they object to the notion of bringing in others before you take care of "your own." there are efforts on both sides if you want to be fair on the right and left. >> it is particularly virulent on breitbart. breitbart is different from anything you have on the left. part of the reason bannon is so upsetting to liberals and some republicans is they take the "america first" idea not just as a notion that americans should come first, but a notion that americans are under assault from specific people, whether they be illegal immigrants, muslims, or black criminals. if you read the site, they speak in a racially paranoid, inflammatory language that does veer into outright racism.

the idea those views would be represented in the west wing is so upsetting to some of the people right now. >> part of what is really remarkable about a president so closely associating himself not only with a guy like bannon but this website which has spilled out all over all of this stuff, when you become president, your words have a different weight not only to america, but to the world. when you think back to what then candidate obama had to do to disassociate himself with the reverend wright comments, the reason obama had to do that is, the sense was that if he allowed himself to be associated with some of the things reverend wright had said, anti-american renting and statements, somehow if he ever became president, that would take on a whole different tone. the idea that president-elect

trump is allowing himself to be associated so directly with the spectrum of statements that have been on breitbart, whether he believes them or not, it takes on an entirely different magnitude when you become president of the united states. every word that comes out of your mouth is the word of the united states. charlie: how will this play itself out? will will bannon be required to denounce what is there and clearly distanced himself? >> i mean, i do not see how he you>> i mean, i do not see how he can. are some of our other panelists and have talked to him. i have not interviewed him. perhaps they have some insight. i do not see how he disassociates himself. ultimately, they don't want to.

they see breitbart as fueling the movement. and it is a central piece of an what they are about. it will be fascinating to see you will how it plays out. love you will >> if you told me a a year ago that breitbart and steve bannon would play a key role in a successful campaign, i would say, you are insane. a i would have. it would have been inconceivable to me. somehow, over the last year, how they talk and what they talk about has been normalized for a big part of the voting public.++

that is the amazing and scary thing about this. it has become a much more normal part of the conversation. i do not see bannon or trump changing that. in charlie: everyone agree with that? >> i differ in saying that i don't see how it is tenable for bannon to remain connected to breitbart news. trump is going to have a you will realization about the power of their words as an president, as michael alluded to. i do not think they will want reporters coming every day in saying, here is a recent an -- here is a racist inflammatory headline from breitbart. how do you respond? if only in a formal sense, i would imagine bannon would have to cut ties with the site as it exists today. >> i agree he has to cut ties in a formal way. i do not see breitbart news stopping the direction that they have. i think there will always be a connection in people's minds, whether he has a role there or not. charlie: it seems to me that donald trump's campaign and the people he is associated with and what he has said has given power, position, credibility to the alt-right movement. >> no question about that. most people had not heard the term "alt-right" until a few

-- until six months ago. it was hillary clinton that elevated the term in national speech,e, by making a explicitly drawing connections anti-semitism and and anti-muslim sentiment and applying them to donald trump. it just so happens that trump's chief advisor bannon wears the mantle proudly. or at least he did before he won the election. >> bannon is so central to donald trump's strategy and vision for the country that trump knew this would be a huge story. he knew that appointing bannon to be counselor at the white house would create this blowback and accusations of racism and misogyny and so forth. he did it anyway because it was so important to have steve bannon's counsel in the beginning days of his presidency. that tells you something about where bannon sits in the pyramid of power.

>> of this says something important about donald trump, too. we could not imagine steve bannon in any other administration. he is so far outside the bounds of what would typically be considered acceptable in american politics, yet trump has appointed him. that amplifies the point trump himself is so far outside the bounds of what is normal in u.s. politics, that the next four or eight years will be unsettling and perhaps very scary. >> one more point on the notion that bannon may have to sever ties or walk away. bannon has not done any media interviews since he went on the trump campaign, any major news organizations. he's continued to appear on his old breitbart radio show. he was there the day after the election. he is not giving up that connection.

it is terribly important to him and his position and probably important to trump and his constituency. charlie: another name we have not heard from much is roger stone. where is he? >> charlie, if i could mildly correct the record, i actually did speak to bannon on the record the day after trump was elected president, and he gave his outlook of what he thought a trump presidency would be. that is the current story in business week if anyone wants the unfiltered story. i think roger stone is somebody who exists in more of a distant orbit around trump. he has a similar influence to bannon, but i don't think he is the same horse whisperer and strategist that bannon had been. i cannot imagine a role for roger stone and white house. charlie: obviously, i assume some of the things that have been talked about appeared in

the article. the kinds of things we talk about are the kinds of things you address in the article. if you had to summarize steve bannon of all the things we have said, what would be the first paragraph? >> i think what bannon is trying to do is meld this hard right populism he espouses with institutional conservatism the way it has existed in washington until now. for his reputation as a bomb thrower and attacker of fellow republicans, he was a voice in the campaign towards the end urging trump not to attack paul ryan. trump's family members were bitter and stoking that along. there are mild signals bannon wants to morph into a different person and understands trump has a different audience as

president, and a different set of people that he needs to appeal to. six months ago, it was great to win over 20,000 people at a stadium rally. now he has to win over the 535 members of the u.s. congress if he is going to be able to get anything done as president. i think bannon recognizes that distinction and is going to try to shift trump in a healthy direction. charlie: thank you, joshua green, ken stern, phil rucker, and michael shear. it has been an enlightening sense of understanding, a few blocks from where i am recording this conversation. thank you all very much. ♪

charlie: gwen ifill, the great and distinguished journalist, died yesterday following a battle with uterine cancer. she was 61, way too young. she was one of the most prominent television anchors of her generation. also one of the first african-american women to preside over a major national political show with her appointment in 1999 to lead what was then called "washington week in review." president obama called ifill a friend and extraordinary journalist. he described her as an especially powerful role model for young women and girls who admire her integrity, her tenacity, and her intellect. she began her career at the

baltimore evening sun in 1981, went on to report for both the washington post and the new york times. her beats covered congress and many presidential campaigns. most recently, ifill served as the moderator and managing editor of the pbs public affairs program, "washington week" and the co-anchor and co-managing editor of "newshour" on pbs with judy woodruff. as a noted debate moderator, she presided over the 2004 and 2008 vice presidential elections. last spring, she and judy woodruff moderated the democratic debate between hillary clinton and bernie sanders. journalist michele norris was ifill's close friend and colleague. she joins me now from washington. thank you for doing this. i know it's a difficult time for you. and i appreciate you coming here to share. what is so powerfully missing today because gwen has left us? david brooks, i thought, wrote

beautifully, because he was there at pbs with her on fridays. let's talk about friendship first, though. >> that would be a great place to start, charlie. it's really good to be with you. it'd be a great place to start because, for the last three decades, she's been my closest friend. almost more than a friend, really, a sister to me. and i miss her so much already. it's really hard to start to talk about her in the past tense. charlie: just tell me about the evolution of the friendship. >> well, we met at a journalism convention. i i had access to a car because of who i was dating. [laughter] >> and somehow, ever the good reporter, somehow, she knew that. and we had been at a convention where all of the activities were behind closed doors. you i we'd not been outside. and she approached me and said, you i hear you have access to a car. we want to break free and get out of this place. can you get access to the car? are you and it was in texas.

we went to the galleria, this big shopping center, and spent an afternoon together. is an an afternoon together. and then, not long after that, you i'd been working at the l.a. times at that point and then later went to the chicago tribune and then went to work at the washington post. that is where we deepened our friendship. i was interviewing for a job at the washington post, and she saw me and we greeted each other and said hello, and she said, listen. this is what you need to do. before you go in for your interview, you need to ask for more money than you're prepared to ask for, and you need to think about the kind of assignment you're going to ask for because that's what the boys do. in fact, she was more specific. she said, that's what the white boys do. you need to think about your value and push for it. then she was off. it was like a lightning strike. she was off, back to her desk to work on deadline. and it stiffened my spine a little bit, you know? i didn't get all the money i asked for, but i did get more than i would have gotten otherwise. and she served that role in my life over and over and over again. you know, reminding me to know my value, teaching me to be

tough, teaching anyone who was around her, her friend, journalist, young person, may have been an acolyte or mentor, to understand and look for excellence in themselves. charlie: how come she was so wise? >> you know, she comes from a family of really wicked smart people. i know many of them. we really are much like family. we spend holidays together. her brothers and sisters are really smart. and i think for them, it began at their dining room table. her father was a minister, was a general secretary in the ame church, and really asked for much of his sons and daughters, demanded that they read, demanded that they do well in school. and demanded that they participate in this robust family conversation. i think for gwen, she learned how to question authority without being sent to her room really early in life, and that served her well as a journalist, certainly. charlie: did the toughness come from them?

>> i think the toughness came from them. i think the toughness came from being an african-american woman who went to high school and then college in the 1970's. some of it was innate, but some of it she cultivated. and, you know, people know her for her toughness, but think about it, charlie. when you think of an image of gwen, what comes into your mind? probably a smiling face. charlie: a gentle smile. >> yes. and yet she was tough, but was accessible. and in some ways, i think some of it was in her dna, but she also taught herself how to be tough and in a particular way. and as a woman, period, and as a female journalist working in television at the same time she was working in television, i really appreciated it. because for a while, if you worked in television and you covered one of the big beats like politics or if you covered the treasury, you had to carry authority in a certain way. and gwen showed you could do it

in a slightly different way. you didn't have to lower your voice and you didn't always have to wear the dark, bossy suits that make you look like the male anchors. you could do it, express authority and gravitas, but you could also smile. you could show joy in your work. it didn't diminish you or flatten your intellect in some ways. and i think that was such an important lesson for journalists, but also for young women who saw her and saw her strength. saw that she was not hardened around the edges, that she had an inviting nature. charlie: what brought her the most pride? >> young people. knowing she was leaving a pipeline of young journalists who cared about the industry, journalism. she was worried about the way the industry had changed,

worried that young people would think journalism was not a noble profession or they would not necessarily understand how to fill out their resume to be muscular journalists. we would go to these journalism conventions almost every year for the national association of journalists. there would be a line of women who would follow her wherever she went. we want to be just like you, gwen. they dressed to the nines, and they would have their resumes with them. she took this very seriously. she was always encouraging. at the same time, she would say, which newspapers did you read today? when you were in school, did you write for your newspaper in school? did you use your opportunity to sharpen your skills, or did you work for the college radio station? she wanted people to understand that journalism was not about reading copy and looking good behind the camera. you have to understand how to

wrestle a story to a ground, work with reluctant sources, understand how to work with editors. she would tell them, if you have a choice and you have to decide between this market or that job, take the job that will allow you to work with the toughest editor. charlie: you will learn. >> exactly. charlie: david brooks had the following paragraph. once during a walk to rock creek park, she told me if she did not go to church on sunday, she felt a little flatter for the whole week. i spirit as deep and boolean as hers needed nourishment and care. when it came out, it came out in her smile, which was unrestrained. religion was important? >> very important. partly because she was a p.k., a preacher's kid. it was important because it was her emotional refueling station. she went to church because she

loved church. we lived near rock creek park for the last three decades. we always lived within five blocks of each other. we lived near rock creek park. i know exactly where she was walking with david. we would talk about our individual religious traditions. she's ame and i am catholic. we would talk about the homily and in her case, the sermon. she took a lot of strength from that. she loved the music of the service, seeing people every week. she sat in the same place with the same pew. they would often go to breakfast after service. it was important to her. it was especially important to her recently as she was battling an illness. her faith really helped her get through this. she was very private. many of your viewers were probably surprised to hear about her passing. they did not know she was sick, and they would not know it from

watching her. she anchored to conventions. she did a town hall meeting with president barack obama. she traveled the country because she wanted to hear from voters. she did not just want to anchor the broadcast. she felt she needed to go out and hear from people. she was able to do that in part because of her stamina, but also because of her faith. it helped propel her forward. it kept her strong. she had this ability to do something that i think is so important that people understand. she chose joy. she chose to look for brightness. she chose to look for the good things and people. and the small details in life. and understood that god is , sometimes in the details. god is everywhere in his own way everywhere in the world. part of that came from her faith and added to her curiosity as a journalist, her muscular sense of curiosity, and her ability to

look inside herself and will manylf forward when -- people facing her illness she , had endometrial cancer. she was dealing with quite a bit of pain. in the end, she decided she , she lean on her faith would take good care of herself but try to get as much out of life as she could. part of that was practicing the craft of journalism. it was important to her, and she felt it was important to her viewers to put herself in her work. charlie: she was worried, it is said, about the status of racism in america. increasingly worried. >> she was. and for good reason. we learned a lot about america on november 8. not because things were suddenly new, but there were things that were revealed, resurfaced.

she was concerned on a lot of different levels. she was concerned that people were not listening to each other. she was concerned -- she predicted that some of the violence and some of the nature of discourse we were seeing on the campaign trail might blossom into something more pugilistic and potentially ugly after the election. we have seen a sum the incidence of that. she was worried that journalists were afraid to confront the issue of racism. she did it often. it was not always necessarily talking about race. she understood the difference between a racism and race, which is an important nuance that you , could talk about race without talking about racism. that race was this a bright thread, this pulsing vein that ran through body politics. if you want to consider politics in america, you have to contemplate and consider race.

she understood not everyone was comfortable doing that. she used her role as a journalist, as an inquisitor, to raise these questions and have these conversations. she did it in the studio, but she also did it in her personal life. she loved to entertain. she had people in her home all the time. she was out in the world at dinners and maintained several close friendships. she was the kind of person who could keep a conversation going even when things got prickly. she had an amazing sense of humor and comic timing. she would guide conversations by allowing people to talk about things they would not talk about themselves. charlie: david wrote about people gathering the night before obama's inauguration at david and katherine bradley's house, and they were singing civil rights songs, including amazing grace.

many people knew the first stanza, but by the time they got to the end of amazing grace, there was only one person still singing. >> she was so proud of that. she had a beautiful singing voice because she grew up singing in the church. it is true, lift up your voice and sing. even the national anthem. she knew every stanza of that also. when everyone else would get quiet because you are pretending what you're singing but you are really mumbling, she would get louder and louder because she know all the words and she was proud of that. charlie: had life been good to her before the cancer? >> very good. she would tell you that without hesitation. she was rich in important ways. she was accomplished in her career, but she had deep and abiding friendships. she had a lovely home. she was curious about the world and would travel the world. she loved arts. she was out and about in the

city all the time. she really did feel that she had an abundant life. on friendship, i want to make this note. she understood that friendships, much like a garden, need to be fertilized, need to be nourished. she took care of her friends, whether they were personal friends or people who sat at her table in studio friday night. if you talk to them, she knew their parents' names, kept up with their kids and knew who was graduating from high school or who was coming home this summer from college. she really took care of her people. her people was capital h, capital p. it was a really big group of people. she loved that. it has been noted many times, this tradition in washington she , would throw open her doors on new year's day for an open house, which started as a teeny apartment.

it has grown over time as her homes have grown in size. it was this wonderful cross-section of people that came from several professions and several faith traditions. it was a very integrated group of people. as much as we like to pretend washington is an integrated city, frankly, it is kind of not. she was always bringing people together that way. charlie: did she talk about dying? >> she did not. i spent a lot of time with her in the last year. she did not tell a lot of people. there were a small group of us that spent a lot of time with her, including siblings and a few of her longtime friends. she did not talk about it because she was too busy living, not because she wanted to always look for the answers and path forward. the end of that plan was nothing but she was contemplating. she was looking for answers that

would allow her to continue to have joy and music and richness in her life. she did not dwell on it much -- but it is more than that. she did not spend much time talking about that, even in the most difficult moment. she was thinking, let's get a plan. i need to get through this. i have things i want to do. charlie: she would always say to me when she saw me, and i did not see her often. rarely, because she lived in new york and i live in washington. we would see each other covering the same events. she would always say, you are working too hard. how do you do it? how is it you are doing this? i want to make sure you are having fun. >> it is funny. you do burn the candle at both ends. i am laughing because we were watching you one day and had

just seen you the night before. she said, does he ever sleep? how does he do this? charlie: gwen ifill, 61 years old. ♪

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