♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: the countdown to 100 days. we continue our coverage leading up to president trump parsed that trump's first 100 days in office. that comes on saturday, a day after he revealed his tax pan. dekes plan. meanwhile, republican members of congress worked on a short-term spending bill that would keep the government open for another week. house democrats have threatened to allow government to shut down . joining me now from los angeles, mike murphy. he is a gop strategist and the

host of the podcast "radio free gop." and from austin, texas, matthew dowd, chief political analyst for abc news. i am pleased to have them both on this program. we have a lot of people around this table talking about 100 days. let me just talk about it at the beginning of this from a political standpoint. assess donald trump and his political performance and future. mike? mike: i would say on the plus side, we conservatives are happy with the supreme court outcome. and he has continued to set the agenda, which is what a president has to do. on the minus side, i think there are more things. he has not positioned himself in a place where he has any popularity or strength in the country, other than the voters who are the core of support. he talks to the base with the same campaign rhetoric he used. and on the legislative side, he boxed himself out of working

with democrats by becoming so radioactive, you are a democrat who helps them, and you will he has not done a lot of what a -- president tries to do out of the box. charlie: matthew? matthew: if i were grading his first 100 days, i would give him an incomplete. he needs to turn his homework in and get it done. on donald trump's best day, it was the moment he put his hand on the bible and took the oath of office. every day after that hasn't been good. his approval ratings have deteriorated from that day onward. as mike says, he has the majority of the country that opposes him. what he is done is he has solidified both bases. he solidified the group of voters that is 38% that are for him.

while it is solid and he has a solid level of support in nearly every member of the republican party and border group, he doesn't have a majority he can communicate with. presidents rise and fall on their ability to connect with the country. that ability is very limited. charlie: has he shown the ability to change? matthew: he has shown the ability to change his entire life. as we know, i think he changed parties seven different times over the last 15 to 20 years. i think what people want is we want people that learn. i have this information, but we don't know is what he has learned. i have no idea what he has learned. when he has changed, he has not enunciated why he changed, what his principles are, and what information he came into contact with that made him change. yes, he has changed, but i don't know what he has learned. charlie: let's take syria, the syria strikes.

really looking at him, not so much to the strike itself. the preparation it seems was handled well. it was awell, i think paper that was already written. it was a paper in the desk. he took the paper out, and handed it in, and we gave him a grade on the paper that was done. i think what we are looking for -- yes, the implementation of a tactical action was done well, primarily by the pentagon, but he made the decision. we have no idea what the strategy was, the end game, and the next step. he launched tomahawk missiles. that is done and seems to hit . where do you supposed to hit, but we don't know with the end result will be. charlie: has he made friends within the republican party? mike: he is not a traditional republican ideologically. as matthew said, he is all tactics, no strategy. he will change his positions every day, but we don't know

that the strategy is that is driving that. what republicans in d.c. particularly liked about him was he was a "winner." he won the election. big surprise. we have the house and senate. now we are finding out we don't know if he is ideologically reliable. there is fear in the caucus. there is worry he is going to triangulate himself in left field or right field. when you have a president that is a chaos machine, it can be a negotiating advantage, but it scares the allies. they don't know what to count on. if he starts having wins, he will hold friends. if he triangulates against the r's and d's, he will not have many friends. if we lose the special election coming up in georgia, the runoff, the real power will take over congress, the fear of my own reelection. the golden rule. to thine own political career be true. then the calculus will change. this guy was supposed to be the

big winner who got elected is now an anchor around our necks. what are we going to do about it? charlie: winning in politics is the golden rule? mike: that is why you look at these 100 days, there is a lot that trump folks should be worried about. as we alluded to earlier, he has bad numbers. the president has the toolbox, if you are popular, you can pressure congress. he doesn't have that. he is backed into one part of the republican party that loves him, but that is not enough in a majority when you have the freedom caucus on the right. trying to find a middle ground to change obamacare is a tough public policy problem. he is running out of tools. that is a problem. charley: but matt, as you know, everybody who supports him says you have said that all along. look what happened. he won the republican primaries, got the nomination, and defeated hillary clinton.

matthew: that is true, but i've said this since he took office, he's succeeded by pushing up against someone or something that was less acceptable than him. right now he is pushing up against himself. he stands on his own as president of the united states. he has flailed around trying to find an enemy trying to push against, the press, democrats, whatever it is -- but he is president of the united states without an election campaign for another three years. he succeeded in the primary against a group of weak candidates. he pushed against them. he succeeded against hillary clinton, a person almost as unpopular as he was. can he succeed as a leader standing on his own? now he is on a world stage. he cannot compete against and get a rebound off someone else. he has to do it on his own. that is where he has found the -- difficulty. charlie: what does he have to do to become transformative? mike: i think he has to

understand the difference between a campaign, which is a promise auction, and the reality of governing. you have to use tools of amplification like the white house. we have an essentially dysfunctional staff in the white house. the administration is understaffed. the only exception is that some of the national security team is quite excellent. the president needs to know how to play the big piano. to use of the assets of office. instead, he is hunkered down in the bunker. if you look at the legislative agenda, it has all been tactical. there is no strategy. how he does get some wins in the reality of washington politics has vexed him. he will have to up his game tremendously, or he will be sitting in the white house angrily tweeting all day. that is a dead end for any president. charlie: what about having all that senators come in to brief them on north korea? what about having the security council come to washington to try to flatter them? mike: well look, i think it was a good tactic because we are trying to widen the salience of the north korean issue. that also sends a message to the

chinese in the north koreans. most of the foreign policy tactics have been pretty good. but those are tactics. they get you to tomorrow. they are not a strategy to know 100 days from now, how do you get the wins? it is not how you get the numbers up so you have political power with both parties to get stuff through. the stuff you must to do was really hard. tax reform is the easiest thing to talk about on the campaign, one of the hardest things to do. it is like the bermuda triangle. you fly in smiling at 300 miles per hour and are never seen again, because it is all about sacrifice. they are going to need to be a plus strategists to get the the kinds of stuff they want to do. right now, i will give him a d. charlie: do they need some magic bullet in one person that can make the white house a different place? mike: i don't think so. because, it is him. that is part of it. trump doesn't change. he is on the atomic clock. it is his strength and his weakness. matthew: i don't think you can add anything that will make it

change. this is fundamentally about donald trump. you can't add a series of people that will say, "i will feel better about donald trump, it will be a different brand of leadership." donald trump has to understand his own weaknesses and liability, confront them, move through them, and become a different kind of leader. it is on his shoulders to become something different than he was in the campaign. charlie: what about his relationship with the media? matthew: it is standard practice by the republicans to lambaste the media. i think the media still loves to cover him. he has a huge asset. the media wants to cover him, and anyone around him. it is an asset a lot of presidents don't have. the media gets bored by things. they are not bored at all. the problem is, he has lost a level of trust. it is not only with the american public, but it is with the media. every word that comes out of his mouth, his keyboard, out of sean spicer's mouth, it is automatically questioned. there is not a level of trust.

that makes it hard to reach a consensus if the people covering you don't trust what you are saying. charlie: matt, thank you for joining us. matthew: great to be here, thank you. michael, let's go to the issue of him. -- charlie: let's go to the issue of him. 100 days and our entire fascination has been with his behavior. mike: it is amazing. we have never seen anything like this. he is a very asymmetrical character. he has a genius for holding the media spotlight. one of the ways he is holding the spotlight is by breaking the china and doing incredibly outrageous things that hurt his credibility with the media. over time, he discounts himself. it is like steroids. he is so steroidal he can have grabbed the media and have all this power, but he is killing his political body with the tactics he is using to do it. he has to change things up.

i don't know, at 70, is someone living in the level of success he has created capable that changing? he makes the biggest mistake with the media you can make. he reads it. [laughter] one of the most successful governors in michigan had a rule, never read clips. that is what happened yesterday. trump knows how to drive the media brilliantly, but he reads it and reacts to it, so he is caught in his own feedback loop. it does not help him move the big ball. charlie: not only reacts to it, it influences decisions he makes. my: totally. i am in the advocacy business in d.c. they say this is the ad you put on these networks to get directly to the president. nobody knows how to staff really works with these domestic policies fighting each other. you can go direct to him. it is new territory. he is totally, to use a computer term, open source. charlie: and it is education by tv. mike: you hear from people in

that orbit that he is difficult to brief because he doesn't like to read things, even short decision memos, which is often how the white house works. he doesn't do that. you have to verbally brief him, but when you try he likes to tell the conspiracy of the night in new hampshire or something. it is difficult for the staff to brief the president in a two-way situation where he can gain information. that is the troubling thing to me. charlie: mike murphy, political analyst, screenwriter, and whatever else on the west coast. thank you for joining me. my: thank you. we will be right back. ♪

♪ charlie: syria's civil war is widely considered the biggest geopolitical and humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. the conflict has claimed at least 470,000 lives since it directed are of the protest. millions have been displaced, leading to a refugee crisis that has fueled far right sentiment across europe. joining me is clarissa ward, a senior international correspondent from cnn. she spent the last six years reporting from syria and was a recipient of the peabody award for her series, "undercover in syria." here is a look at that. clarissa: there was just an

airstrike here in this town. we are now driving quickly. it is not clear what was hit, but we are hearing there are still planes in the sky. arriving on the scene, our team found chaos and carnage. volunteers shouted for an ambulance as they tried to ferry out the wounded. for many, it was too late. a woman lay dead on the ground with a jacket draped over her in an attempt to preserve her dignity. russia has repeatedly claimed it is only hitting terrorist targets. this one hit a busy fruit market. >> this is just a civilian market. this is not a military area. >> there are no installations here or anything. it is a market, a market. a fruit market. is this what you want? charlie: i'm pleased to have clarissa ward at this table. welcome. clarissa: thank you.

charlie: you are in town to celebrate with your friends and receive another reward? clarissa: a very exciting one. it's always a tremendous honor to receive an award from your peers, from people who do the same type of work. it's a particularly exciting one to win. charlie: when were you last in syria? clarissa: i was last inside syria when i made that series of pieces, "undercover in syria." that was last march. i have been trying to go again, especially after the recent strikes -- the u.s. strikes and the chemical attack. unfortunately, now it has become incredibly difficult to gain access. "the guardian" was able to get in there briefly but with the , turkish referendum, the turkish authorities were reluctant to allow journalists to visit the scene of the chemical attack and piece together what happened. charlie: of all the places you have seen, you still say that nothing compares to syria? clarissa: it is true. i go through in my mind, and it

is not to minimize the horrors of any war zone. having spent time in iraq and gaza, i know the horrors of war. all people from all different countries and war zones are victims and suffering enormously, but there is something unique to the syrian crisis. the david and goliath element, whereby you have a civilian population being bombarded from the skies relentlessly. where rebel fighters don't have anything like the same kind of firepower that the russians, the regime, the iranians, and hezbollah have put together. and to see hospitals targeted, fruit markets targeted, schools targeted -- there is a cynicism to the syrian war that is particularly haunting to me. one of the other main differences that i would

underscore as a journalist is that normally when we go to war zones we have a hotel we go back to at the end of the night. there is a safe distance, a retreat mentally from the first -- front lines and everything that has been going on around you. maybe you even get to have a beer at the end of a long day at work. in syria, you don't have that, not because there's not a lot of beer around, but because you are staying with families. there aren't hotels. you are living with these people. charlie: not in damascus? clarissa: in damascus, you can stay at the four seasons. i have not had the pleasure of doing that for a number of reasons. primarily because i am told i am on a blacklist and it would not be safe for sensible for me to go. the places i go to, we live with families, experience their lives, and in a sense vicariously live through them the horrors and atrocities, albeit for a sliver of time.

charlie: what are the remaining players and the strength they have? clarissa: the strongest player in the syrian conflict, if we are looking at the syrian factions is the regime of bashar al-assad. that is primarily because its backers are 100% committed to making sure that assad stays in power. whether that is the iranians who are doing most of the fighting on the ground, or the russians who are providing funding, providing funding -- technology, weaponry whether it is the hezbollah, the shia militia from lebanon that is doing an enormous amount of fighting on the ground -- they have all shown a unified commitment to propping up the regime of bashar al-assad. the same cannot be said of the various fighting forces that comprise the rebellion or the opposition. charlie: how large are they? clarissa: the problem is it is

very difficult to measure. you have a group like isis, which is isolated from other elements of the opposition. at one time they had a large swath of territory, which had more control or power than any other opposition group on the ground, which has definitely been hit very hard in the last two years by the u.s.-led coalition, but still maintains a significant footprint, particularly in syria. then you have the coalition of jihadist groups, primarily one that used to be affiliated with al qaeda. charlie: are the names changing or are they changing? clarissa: the names are changing. they are not changing in terms of their real colors and their real objectives. a group like them, their objective is still to get some

kind of sharia law, islamic law, implemented in the areas it controls. the other groups fighting alongside it, more of a muslim brotherhood islamist bent where it is open to democratic processes, like voting, but ultimately is islamist in color. then you have some army groups, the so-called moderate opposition. they are largely fighting alongside turkey as part as the operation euphrates shield. what you see when you look at the picture that is emerging, syria was, to a certain extent, always a proxy war, but now it is an all-out proxy war. whether you're looking at the turkish contingency, the iranian, the russian contingency, the jordanian role, the saudis, the u.s., everyone has some kind of a stake.

charlie: this is a side point, but the turks in an airstrike this week killed a lot of kurds who are on our side. clarissa: this is where things start to get very complicated particularly for the u.s. , we have heard a lot about the imminent attack on raqqa. it is the seat of power for isis, their self-declared capital. everybody is waiting for this moment. the people we were hoping for the kurds to be at the forefront of this effort. charlie: they were the boots on the ground? clarissa: there were arguments if they would enter the city, because the city is arab and they are kurdish, but they would lead to push. the problem that you have is that turkey views the kurds with the ypg as being terrorists who threaten their national security. as being part of the pkk, the turkish side of the ypg, and

view them as a serious national security threat. now, how on earth do you begin to reconcile what turkey views as a terrorist, and the pkk is listed as a terrorist organization by the u.s., with u.s. support? i think with this attack on the kurds, that is erdogan thumbing his nose at the u.s. saying, i won the referendum, am newly emboldened, and will no longer stand for you arming people that i consider to be a threat to our national security in my backyard. charlie: after the fall of aleppo, some said this is the beginning of the end in terms of putting down the rebellion. robert ford was here at the beginning of april and said, "the idea that the united states could still change the assad government or impose a new

government, i think we are just long past that. aleppo was the final nail in that coffin." he went on to say, "essentially the civil war is over and assad has won." clarissa: i think that there is no question when you look at how the momentum has shifted and the enormous significance of the fall of aleppo. we did cec enjoy a not the end of the opposition, but what you are seeing is the opposition turning into a guerrilla-style a sort of twon equals. they were never equals, but 2 fighting factions on the battlefield. the only province that the rebels are in control of is idlib. if the events that we saw with the chemical attack are anything to go by, if there a harbinger

of things to come you can be , sure that the assad regime will try, perhaps in the near future, to push the rebels completely out of the idlib province and regain control of that territory across the north of the country. the problem for the regime becomes it is almost an empirical victory. you take back this territory, but what is left there? there is no one living in eastern aleppo. all you have are skeletons of buildings and almost an apocalyptic moonscape. people are not there. schools are not starting. investment is not going into these communities again, because people do not want to live under bashar al-assad again, many of them. charlie: arab leaders want him in power? clarissa: very few of them.

charlie: iran is the only country that i know. clarissa: iran is the only one that would want him in power in the long term. in the short term, there is a recognition in the region and field --ven further i'm thinking the jordanians. yes, probably, assad can not stay long time. it doesn't make sense. you cannot have a man who has butchered his own people live in a thriving country. at the same time, i do think there is a measured expectation as to the speed with which assad would need to go and the ways and mechanisms which would need to enforce his removal. charlie: can you do that without the russians? clarissa: no. i would argue it is not possible to come to any conclusion or any kind of peaceful resolution, or even a path towards a peaceful resolution, without the

russians on board. at the same time, the russians, from my experience living in russia and watching their behavior through the syrian conflict, the russians are not necessarily going to step up and behave as responsible actors unless the u.s. has real leverage. we saw the obama administration again and again resort to guilt tactics. we heard the then u.s. ambassador say "have you no shame" and "how do you sleep at night?" the reality is that doesn't work with the russians. charley: it doesn't work with the syrians, either. clarissa: they are thinking in cynical and strategic terms. you need to be able to come to the table with the same tools, the same language, and the same strategic cynicism if you want

charlie: at the same time, secretary tillerson is saying, before the airstrike, we want the syrian people to decide what they want. clarissa: i felt that comment from secretary tillerson was a little bit disingenuous to a certain extent because, the reality is the syrian people, unfortunately, have no say in whether bashar al-assad stays or goes. millions of them have been trying to get him to go for years. they have paid with their lives, hundreds of thousands of them, in the effort to get him to leave to no avail. the majority of the syrian people do not have a voice. they don't have a formal structures that they can operate within to try to get the support they would argue they need to facilitate the ouster of bashar al-assad.

the russians understand they are onto a winning thing when it comes to rhetoric, we have been invited here by a sovereign country. the argument you will hear from some is that the strikes against the syrian airbases, what was the legal basis? where those strikes illegal? while many people felt strongly, understandably, that they were legitimate in taking that step and standing up against the assad regime. charlie: because of using sarin gas? clarissa: words like sovereignty almost cease to mean anything when you're talking about a regime engaged in industrialized killing. charlie: and it is like the same kind of issues where we regret we did not go in. clarissa: and we have this mantra we hear over and over again, "never again" post rwanda. yet, here we are again. here we are hamstrung, wringing our hands on the sidelines, not sure how to approach. charlie: the trump government

wants to change that. donald trump said during the campaign and in the last 100 days, we have no desire. clarissa: we have no desire, and the last thing that anyone expected, or certainly that i expected, was president trump to turn around and say "this is a red line for us." when i say something i mean it, and i'm going to bomb your airfields. the use of chemical weapons. that is a powerful statement. charlie: they say it is chlorine gas as opposed to sarin gas. clarissa: chlorine gas has been used on a regular basis continuously. at the same time, what we have yet to see from the trump administration is anything in terms of a coherent policy for what the syrian effort, or what the syrian strategy is going to be going forward. it is understandable that you used force, and it may have given you leverage at the

negotiating table, and it may have highlighted the weakness of the previous administration in not following through on the red line. now you are in a crucial moment for you have to ask yourself, "we have established that assad is really not a long-term option. how do we impress upon the russians they need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem?" charlie: the interesting thing is the phrase "not to act is to act." it is this idea that there are consequences for acting, which worried the obama administration and the same thing concerns president trump, but not to act also has consequences. they need to be weighed with the same intensity and regular. -- rigor.

clarissa: it has enormous consequences. no one imagined six years ago the extent to which inaction had consequences. forgetting empathy or compassion for the humanitarian situation, when you are looking at national global security, having 10 million displaced people, 4 million refugees, they are uneducated, many of them. they are impoverished and angry. that is a real security threat when you are looking forward ahead into the next generation. that potentially feeds into the creation of groups like isis. it drives me mad when people always talk about isis as if it is a separate entity to the rest of the syrian civil war. isis is a symptom and not a cause. we have to understand it operates in concert with the larger syrian conflict. charlie: someone has said no one creates more applicants for isis than assad.

clarissa: assad is the oxygen they need to breathe. charlie: every barrel bomb that is gas creates someone who wants to go to isis. clarissa: i have seen it. for example, i spent time with the young man in a village in northern syria. a young man called mohammed studied english literature, loved to recite poetry, would talk for hours about john keats. he was an incredible young man. he was impoverished. the bombing continued. he lost his next-door neighbor when i was there, a woman and her two daughters were killed. a i used to skype with him after i left. he got married, had a baby, they were living on olives and bread. one day, i noticed i had not heard from mohammed in many months. i kept leaving notes on skype. he finally replied and said "i am in raqqa now." and i said, what are you doing there?

you don't belong there. we used to talk about poetry and romance. he said to me, "you don't know mohammed so good anymore." this is a story i have seen over and over again. when you lose everything, when you have nothing, you are so vulnerable to extremism. charlie: the western world is to provide some opportunity so that there is an art to. -- alternative. clarissa: having a sense of alternative, that there is some order to your life, some level of security. because believe it or not, isis, as abhorrent as they are, provide security in the areas in which they hold territory. they rule with an iron fist. there are a number of reasons and missed opportunities. i remember interviewing then secretary of state hillary clinton in 2012 and i asked if the international community is

standing on the sidelines, others state actors will run into the vacuum and will exploit the chaos. that is what happened. charlie: the civil war had other characters that rushed in because they saw opportunity. clarissa: you know what frustrates me? anyone who was watching syria closely saw the writing on the wall. they knew on some level that was going to happen. now we have the audacity to say these people are extremists and terrorists. it seems a little disingenuous. charlie: you know better than i do, the call is not to come to syria. the call is to do something for us where you live. clarissa: it is so easy. you don't have to be a member, officially, you do not have to speak to any of us. take a car, take a rock, take a knife, take whatever you have at your disposal, kill as many people as you can, and say we

have done this in the name of isis. we will accept your pledge of allegiance remotely, and allah will accept your pledge of allegiance remotely, and you will be rewarded for your deeds. charlie: it is a battle of generations? clarissa: i think it is a battle of generations and ideas. charlie: you can't do it overnight. clarissa: certainly you can't do it overnight. it is going to take, it is not something that can only be solved militarily. there needs to be a military element, quite clearly, and it is important to take out isis in syria and iraq because they are the nucleus communicating with would be recruits across the world. i am not trying to imply that is not an important part of it. what we are seeing in europe right now and other parts of the west as well, is the proliferation of these ideas among a kind of disenchanted class of society that is

potentially very dangerous and very difficult to combat. charlie: congratulations again on the reward. thank you for coming. clarissa ward now at cnn. we miss her at cbs. back in a moment. ♪ ♪

calvin trillin has been a regular contributor to "the new yorker" since 1963. between 1967 and 1982, he wrote a series of papers throughout the united states. he published true homicide stories in 1984. "killings" has been reissued and expanded. i am pleased to have calvin trillin back at the table. welcome, sir. calvin: thank you, charlie. charlie: you look like you are doing well. calvin: i am upright. charlie: tell me about the original book and what is different about this one. calvin: the original book came about because i was doing a piece every three weeks in different parts of the country for 15 years. at some point i realized once a

year i was at a murder, or wrongful death as the lawyers would call it. something like that. so we published that in 1984, just after i got through doing this series. recently, i added four or five longer pieces with the same sort of story, plus a profile of edna buchanan, the homicide writer for "the miami herald." charlie: we now have a television series on cbs that goes through murders every week. a popular series. it is called "48 hours." what is it about murder? calvin: for me, it is not the murder itself, but what it opens up in people's lives in the surrounding community. when there is a murder, the shades are drawn sometimes. the stones are turned over. transcripts are made.

my wife used to say i would go anywhere there was a transcript. charlie: but also you found the secrets that people have been hiding. calvin: it was worth looking into. and trials. reporters tend to like trials because the person on the witness stand has to answer the questions. if he doesn't, the judge can say, bailiff, take this man away. you cannot change the subject or be told he has an important golf game or something like that. charlie: it is also about life-and-death. it is the drama of the courtroom and all of that. calvin: and it has a narrative. it has a beginning, a middle, and certainly an end. there is something to drive it along. "the new yorker" has been a good place. i cannot remember when pictures were introduced in "the new

yorker," but a lot of the stories were written before there were photographs. before there was a description of what the story was about. it is a good place to tell a story without being interrupted. you don't have somebody in a photo caption saying "was he pushed or did he jump?" i might not tell you that until the middle of the story. it doesn't have what the reporters call a nut graph. if i had a nut graph in one of these pieces it might say "this killing is symptomatic of nondescript people in miserable towns killing each other." it is basically a paragraph that says why it is important enough for somebody like you to be there.

"the new yorker" does not demand that. charlie: "the new yorker" writer that set the standard, joseph mitchell. what was it about joe mitchell? calvin: one of the things admired about him is that he managed to get the marks of writing off the stories. they look like they just appeared. i don't know how he did it exactly. the other thing is, he looked at people straight on. there is an epigraph in one of his books. i think it is "mcsorley's wonderful saloon." it says, "it has become fashionable to call people in this book "little people." it is a repugnant phrase. they are as big as you are." something like that. he met people on their own terms. charlie: is there one murder that stands out for you? calvin: one about a farmer in

iowa who got rich, on paper at least, and started hanging around -- this is in a conservative area where the germans have been farming for two or three generations, three or four -- got involved with a cocktail waitress. charlie: i was going to say -- calvin: do not mess around with cocktail waitresses. order your drinks and that's it. charlie: and don't get involved with cocktail waitresses. how many of these stories are about some love affair that creates jealousy, rage, murder? calvin: some of them -- charlie: to get three or do bad. calvin: a couple of them are like that. one of them is about an argument over a right-of-way. i have a friend that was a surveyor.

he said when he read it, he said that he was surprised they weren't more murders having to do with right-of-way. it is very irritating to have someone have the right to go through your place. some of them are about money. charlie: money and sex. calvin: money and sex. charlie: religion, maybe. calvin: some religion. there is one about a scoutmaster who turned out to be a predator of boys. the church sort of protected him, almost the same thing as the roman catholic thing where the institution becomes more important than the people they were supposedly protecting. charlie: who got killed in that one? calvin: the predator. charlie: who did it? calvin: a kid he was abusing. charlie: i was going to say, that would be nice. calvin: that is what the town thought. charlie: how many books have you written?

calvin: that is a strong verb. these are collections. i think it is 31. i remember being at an event with isaac asimov. he wrote about science and other things. he had written at that time something like 540 books. the woman next to me at a charity luncheon said, "mr. asimov seems very quiet. i said, while you are making small talk, he wrote a novella"" i said, that has to be some kind of an affliction for writing. you cannot justify it for monetary, or any other satisfaction. i was saying that at a christmas party of king features. i said, "560 books, he has to be crazy."

the guy next to me that i just met said, "i have written 175." most people who have written a lot of books are science fiction writers, westerns, or mysteries. charlie: when you think about writing today, do editors come to you with what to do? are you the originator of most of these book ideas? calvin: i have done less of that sort of reporting lately. someone told me after a few decades sitting on the hard bench in front of the deputy police commissioner's office to see if he will talk to you loses its charm. i think that is true. i cannot blame the editors. charlie: you said something about, these are things more about how people lived then how they died. calvin: the violence is not what

interests me. the actual detective work is not usually -- charlie: how about the forensic work? calvin: there is a story in there about a lawyer named harvey st. jean in miami that was killed. what interested me originally was this guy was a criminal defense lawyer who knows a lot of bad people. about a quarter of the population could be under suspicion for killing him. he lived the high life in miami. he lived in a place where the manager told me we say the average age here is 40, a 60-year-old man and a 20-year-old broad. you cannot write about that murder without writing about miami, and the tenuous hold it

has always had on respectability. they only succeed if they have some residents with a place. charlie: how do harlan county, which is in kentucky, and brooklyn differ? you make a point about that. calvin: i talk about picking a jury in harlan county and brooklyn. i once watched a lawyer pick a jury in brooklyn. he did it almost by rough ethnic guesses. it was a wrongful death case. he decided his finest juror, his ideal would be a 60-year-old jewish man who put two kids through college, because the death was a college teacher.

he did not like people with thin lips. in harlan county, kentucky daniel boone smith knew everyone in the county. he knew which witness had a border dispute with someone else that was connected with the defense. it is much more grounded. charlie: if you just find one of those, they will not convict your guy. calvin: that is right. the way people might get killed is different, too. i was doing a story in west virginia where the miners went on strike for a schoolbook issue. it was in the 1970's when things were kind of dangerous in new york, walking down the street at night or something. i got to the airport. there was a taxi queue. guys would come up and break the

queue and say, "do you want a taxi?" i thought, that guy is ok new york, but in west virginia someone would hit him upside the head with a number four coal shovel. it always worried me they knew exactly which number coal shovel they would hit someone with. a number three wouldn't do it. a number five would kill them too fast. charlie: i remember a show with you one night here. you remember better than i do, but you came to talk about a book and talked about politics. calvin: we talked about iraq. i came to talk about some eating book ended that time i was not really interested in talking about it. we talked about iraq. you asked about politics, and we started talking about iraq. i think you replayed it. charlie: what do you think of trump? calvin: people keep telling me

he is good material. charlie: all you have to do is look at the late-night comedians. calvin: i have managed to write -- i write a verse for the nation, not every issue, it is only published every other week in the summer although the downtrodden are oppressed every single year. but i had written -- what was last week's poem? it was about failing to close his first big deal in washington. i said, but how? "his book defines the art, reporters often cite it. one salient fact they all forget, he didn't really write it." charlie: tony schwartz. calvin: good question, did he read it even? charlie: people read that book, and they want to look for an

insight into him. people want to seem of importance. i think it was the president of mexico said we went to read "the art of the deal." calvin: so they get an insight into tony schwartz. charlie: do you see any redeeming qualities? calvin: i always thought the most possible redeeming thing was he doesn't have any politics. so, if there is a reason to get applause for something, he might do it. i think applause is basically his goal in life. charlie: that is connected to win. calvin: win, yeah. i don't know, i was wondering the other day what happens if all the stuff about russia turns out to be true? what then?

charlie: the book is called "killings," an expanded edition of the classic book on life and death in america. calvin: thank you, charlie. charlie: great to have you, always. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

jonathan: from new york city, i'm jonathan ferro. 30 minutes dedicated to fixed income. this is bloomberg "real yield." ♪ jonathan: coming up, the president's first 100 days. how the trump trade stalled the market. the so-called biggest tax cuts in history fall on deaf ears. european economic optimism is surging as inflation surges to a four-year high. why ecb president mario draghi -- we start with the big issue, why some investors are skeptical about the president's tax plan.