♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin with new set of the white house. anthony scaramucci has been removed from his role as communications director after just 11 days, which he had widespread media attention. his exit comes on the same day general john kelly was sworn in as president trump's new chief of staff. john kelly is someone who is seen as someone to bring order to a chaotic west wing. removal is seen as

a way to give john kelly a clean slate. with me is phil rucker, the white house bureau chief for "the washington post," and jonathan swan from axios. i am pleased to have them both on this program. what happened? they wanted to give general kelly, or he insisted on an empty slate? >> pretty much. general kelly came in on his first day as chief of staff, any he is empowered in a way that reince priebus was never empowered. the staff would report to him, including anthony scaramucci, and kelly decided this morning he doesn't want scaramucci here, that scaramucci was a real liability with that interview he gave last week that brought embarrassment on the white house. a decision was made that he had to go. by all accounts, scaramucci agreed and was fine to leave,

and let general kelly have a clean slate to start over. charlie: do we know now more about the marching instructions that general kelly has from donald trump? is it simply, i want to star in a new direction, i want a clean slate, i want to get started because i'm unhappy about the way things have turned out? >> that's right. president trump notes he's more than six months into the presidency with a lot of chaos and disorder. and because of that, there are no legislative achievements. he wanted general kelly to bring the military discipline and precision to the business that goes on in the west wing. part of that involves getting the staff in line. kelly is now empowered to overrule all of these factions within the white house. everyone will report through him. it is important to note kelly is respected and well liked by the nationalists, the trump loyalists, the trump family like jared and ivanka, and republican establishment figures.

they like kelly, and at least for now they seem to be willing to behave. charlie: have we heard from scaramucci? >> i would rather not comment on my own conversations. he hasn't spoken publicly. he has not said anything yet. we had a statement from the white house press secretary. one thing i would say in terms of what went down is that there are some reports coming out that the trump family women were horrified and disgusted by his language, which is maybe the most absurd retrospective analysis to try and put a coat of paint on all of this. in real-time, we were not getting the horror, the horror, after those comments leaked out.

donald trump's initial reaction was amusement. he thought it was funny. later that evening as he started to see the bad coverage, he started to get angry. my understanding is he called scaramucci that evening and told him what he thought about it. but the next day he was joking about it, saying this guy is crazy, what am i going to do with him, very lighthearted. this was much more a general kelly decision. this was general kelly sending a signal that he was in charge and that everyone goes through him. that was the authority given by the president. firing scaramucci send a big signal to the staff. charlie: there was an interesting interview with james baker, in which he basically got a quote that says "if you are chief of staff, all the good ones have been stabbed rather than cheap." >> scaramucci was brought in for a very specific purpose.

jared and ivanka brought him into destroy reince priebus. he did that. i don't think they imagine it would be as spectacularly controversial as it was, but he is a very divisive figure. a lot of people on the press team couldn't stand him and did not want to work under him. a lot of other people we were hearing from after the interview came out, one senior official said to me, if this kind of behavior is condoned, it really makes me question whether this is the kind of place i want to work. getting rid of him was an important cultural signal to the west wing.

charlie: reince priebus had thought of joining the white house staff for a while. the other question that looms over general kelly arriving is can he say no to donald trump? is he at long last the one person that can say no, and then perhaps influence his behavior? is there some encouragement that maybe he can? >> i don't know. that is the big question right now. it is whether trump is willing to be disciplined and tamed. chances are over the long run, probably not. he's 71 years old. he has behaved a certain way his whole life. there have been countless regimes of leadership in his campaign and at the white house who tried to instill discipline and tried to pull him off of twitter, who try to make him have more decisions in a thoughtful way instead of on impulse. it is not really working. trump is trump. what kelly is trying to do in the white house is change the

structure around trump, get the staff to be working anymore effective and efficient manner, and do his very best to try to impress upon the president how important it is to be disciplined and thoughtful and strategic in his actions. at the end of the day, i'm not sure he will be able to change that much of what the president does. charlie: do we know more about the conversation with ryan lizza, why he did it? >> [laughter] anthony does this. anyone who has covered him for a decent amount of time will tell you he is very colorful. a lot of reporters don't with him -- dealt with him as a political donor to the republican party and powerful figure on wall street. usually he says off the record. i'm told that sometimes he forgets, and reporters cut him slack. but generally, my understanding is that he thought the conversation was off the record but he never said that. , [laughter]

he might have said it later in the conversation for a certain portion of it. but it was genuinely just very sloppy performance. >> i would just add to that, in this capacity, he wasn't a donor anymore, he's the white house communications director. >> that's my point. exactly. >> speaking for the president, you should know to say "off the record." >> [laughter] i'm not excusing it. it doesn't show you -- one of the main arguments that steve bannon, reince priebus, and sean spicer were making for him not coming is that he's completely unqualified and inexperienced. in part of that is telling all this stuff to a reporter without saying off the record. charlie: does he stay in washington?

>> my understanding is he wants to stay in the administration, in the bank, but i don't know if that will happen. sarah huckabee sanders left that open in the press conference today. charlie: and the president has said nothing? >> not to my knowledge, unless something happened in the last 10 minutes. charlie: thank you both. a fascinating first day for john kelly. >> thank you, charlie. charlie: thank you, jonathan. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪ charlie: senator jeff flake is

here. he has served as the junior u.s. senator from arizona since 2013. the senior united states senator is john mccain. his new book makes the case that the american conservative movement has lost its way, and urges fellow republicans to put aside partisan politics and focus on what is best for the country. the book is called "conscience of a conservative, a rejection of -- and they returned to principal." we take this interview at 11 a.m. this morning, prior to the news of anthony scaramucci's ouster. here's the conversation with senator flake. welcome. we just did a morning show, so i saw you a couple hours ago. this has been a busy time. sen. flake: it has. charlie: how does a u.s. senator have time in a time like this to write a book? sen. flake: late nights. i promised my wife i wouldn't be

doing it at home when i spent time with her and the kids. a lot of late nights. charlie: how did you write it? sen. flake: i started, actually, last year. i started thinking that a book like this needed to be written. i started to write parts of it. but parts of it were written a decade ago when i was in the house of representatives. any time i would travel home on the weekend, on the plane, before we had wi-fi, i would write. i have 10 brothers and sisters. they were interested in what happened in washington that week. my wife said, "you better write it and post it on the family website. if you don't, they will be calling you all weekend." so, i did. i kept a journal for 12 years. a lot of that has ended up in

the book. to write this particular book, i thought at that time that we are going in the wrong direction. someone would see this as just a critique of the president. it's not. it's a critique of where the movement has gone over the past decade or so. i think we have been losing our way for a while. charlie: but the emphasis of critique of the president. it's not. behavior does suggest the president. sen. flake: i think that has certainly worsened over the last campaign, but the roots really were before, the staying up and yelling, "you lie," at the state of the union. i give examples. after gabby giffords was shot, a year later she came back to the congress to resign the next day, i was with her at the state of the union. i sat next to her.

she was still unable to stand very easily. president obama, the applause line came, and i helped her standup. i started getting texts and emails and friends from diehard republicans asking why i was standing with the president was talking, why are you standing? that's out of hand, frankly, that you can't even do that. charlie: the worst part was the feeling that on both sides of the aisle leaders were held hostage by caucuses. sen. flake: yes. i think that has worsened over time. us versus them, shirts versus skins all the time. 24 hour media coverage and social media has exacerbated that, but it is our responsibility to break out of it. charlie: steve scalise, the

congressman who was shot at the softball game, you were one of the first people to reach him, if not the first. sen. flake: i was the first. after the shooting stopped, i ran out to him. it was a terrible thing. obviously, the whole morning. charlie: he was bleeding until you got him to apply a tourniquet. sen. flake: he was bleeding and i put pressure on the wound, and then some others came and we did the same for 10 minutes. charlie: and you are the one who called his wife so she heard from a friend rather than on television. sen. flake: after we got him on the stretcher and off the field, i went to grab my phone to call my wife, to make sure she didn't see it. one of the staff members there grabbed steve's phone and give it to him, and asked to call jennifer. i didn't want her to see it on the news and learn of it that way. i just remember 10 minutes

earlier when the shooting started. there was one shot that rang out. i knew it was a gunshot, but i didn't know where it was or why. within five seconds there was a , volley, and somebody yelled there was a shooter. i remember the dugout being the only safe place to go, and seeing the gravel pitching up as bullets were hitting it. it was the only place to run. but i had this thought, why here? really? us? it was very incongruent. i just remember thinking that. charlie: what do we think about the motive now? >> he had asked a few members who left early, "is this the republicans practicing or the democrats?" he said republicans.

he had in his pocket a list of republicans that he posted things, it looked like he had it more in for republicans than democrats, but i don't think he knew anyone in particular or was aiming for anyone in particular. i mentioned in the book that this came after the book was really finished, but i added a couple paragraphs saying how awful it is to have somebody who looks out to see a bunch of middle-aged members of congress playing baseball, and saying that they are the enemy. the fact that we look at each other, other americans, as the enemy. it is really troublesome. it really should motivate us to be a little kinder and a little more gentle. that's one of the chapters in the book. i talk about growing up. 10 brothers and sisters. charlie: snowflake, arizona.

sen. flake: one of 11 children on a cattle ranch. charlie: your family had been in arizona for a while. sen. flake: in fact, brigham young sent my great-great-grandfather to colonize. he found a valley to settle. then a mormon apostle came along and was overseeing the colonization. he asked my great-great-grandfather if he started the settlement, and then he said to collect snowflake for the two of us. it sounded better than flakes now -- flake snow, i guess. that's where i grew up. i have wonderful examples growing up. my father was the mayor of snowflake. he passed away just a month ago. my uncle jake flake from snowflake was speaker of the house in arizona. well beloved.

he passed away 10 years ago after being thrown from his horse. one of the last of the gentle cowboy legislators. he was in his early 70's. my uncle stan was speaker of the house and senate president. these were rural legislators. charlie: was it inevitable that you were going to go into politics? sen. flake: no, i have a lot of cousins and brothers and sisters. charlie: but there's a lot of your family serving in high positions in arizona. sen. flake: what always struck me is jake, and jack brown, a democrat, and all these republicans and democrats got along well. i mentioned in the book how the flakes were mostly democrats.

in the late 1800s, the mormon church was concerned there would be too many republicans or too many democrats. when the new administration would come in, it might favor the other party. the church had been concerned about that after the extermination order for mormons in missouri. that was fresh on their minds. in some rural communities, the church said, you sit on the left for democrats, you sit in the right pew for a republican. in snowflake, it was a little different. those living east of main street were republican -- were democrat. to the west were republican. the flakes were east of main street. we were democrats until this generation. charlie: when he was alive, marlon brando used to communicate with me on the program, because he was up late.

he would always find things as snowflake for the moment. how is congressman scalise doing today? after the shooting, there was a sense that it was worse than we thought, and maybe even a turn for the worse. he seems better now from what i read. sen. flake: he's out of the hospital and now in rehab. i spoke to his wife and saw his wife last week. he is obviously doing better. the infection they had to operate for seems to be taking care of. he has a long road ahead, obviously. it's a tough injury. he is tough. he has the whole country pulling for him and has a great family. i'm hoping to see him -- charlie: after something like this, whether it is newtown, there's always two things that happens -- the country unites in spirit for people who are the victims of gun violence, but at the same time, people come forward to say let's figure out

a way to do something about this. and then the time passes and it fades. sen. flake: i do think, after gabby giffords' shooting, i think it lasted for a while, at least intermittently. it used to be at the state of the union's it was republicans on one side and democrats on the other. it is as republican and democrat as it used to be. i think there is some lasting change, but overall we have got to get away from ascribing the worst motives to our opponents. charlie: is redistricting part of the problem? sen. flake: yes. i talk about that in the book. these days, with the way you can use computer software and mapping, you can choose your constituents as a politician rather than them choosing you.

that's basically what it is. it matters more in the house where we just elected statewide, but it has an impact. it has driven politics. charlie: the idea is that you redistrict so it is primarily republican, and there would not be an effort to reach out to democrats. sen. flake: correct. you have districts that are just completely safe, you only worry about the primary. you just worry about the base and that's it. no matter how you redistrict, you are going to have some of those districts. but right now there are far too many of those. some states like arizona have experimented with independent redistricting commissions of one type or another. that tends to work sometimes, but it is tough. it is tough when the ability is there for the politicians to

choose voters. it has driven politics apart. my biggest concern -- charlie: everything we have talked about is pre-trump. obama could never reach a bargain. sen. flake: the thing that worries me the most is reaching a grand bargain on spending and revenue. we had a commission come forward with a plan for basically three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in revenue. we have got to do some semblance of that. we all know the contours of what that would look like, but even

the way the parties have driven apart, it is almost impossible to see when one party, republicans with control of both chambers and white house, or if the democrats were in control of all three, there's no way the party would take the political risk, because the other party will not help. they think let them there the risk and the brunt in the midterm elections. midterms are never more than two years away. it just really makes it difficult to see how we tackle the big things. i thought it was significant. one of the chapters, when general mattis was asked, what concerns you most, people expect him to talk about a nuclear threat in iran or north korea, but he says the function in washington. the lack of basic civility. charlie: i will give two examples. bob gates has been at this table many times. he says that all the time.

the problem we have is within three or four square miles. sen. flake: if we can't come together on debt and deficit or basic things, -- charlie: taxes and spending, commitments to things like science and research. sen. flake: you bet. and immigration. how we deal with that. long-term issues, health care. charlie: politicians say you will get defeated if you depend on that. sen. flake: yes. that may be the case, but i think politicians have to recognize there are some things that are more important than reelection. that's why it was difficult to write this book. i'm up for election. charlie: i read that you are behind. sen. flake: frankly, a year out, just about anybody in washington in the polls, you can discount them.

having said that, it is a tough time to write a book like this. my family knew, and that's about it. i didn't want to be talked out of it. i knew it was important. certainly it is not the easiest path to reelection. campaigns are risk-averse. you don't want to introduce any variables that make some people upset. but i thought it was important enough. we are in a bad way now. we have to come together as a country. i believe around conservative principles, economic freedom, free trade. but just as much in terms of demeanor and comportment and basic kindness. the last chapter talks about the way forward. i talk about what i grew up with, the saying in our home, i put it on the refrigerator as

long as i can remember, assume the best and look for the good. that was what my mother and father wanted to teach us. charlie: assume the best and look for the good. sen. flake: i think we can use a lot more of that in politics. charlie: how is john mccain doing? sen. flake: he starts today. he starts a regime of chemotherapy and radiation. i can tell you it is a tough diagnosis, but it's an even tougher man. he issuing the country again and again that toughness, and i think he takes it with him in treatment. we are praying and hoping for the best. charlie: what did we think when he cast his vote? sen. flake: we cast opposite votes. i wanted to keep the reform alive. we've got 200,000 arizonans who

will wake up this morning without health care. they will have paid the fine, but they can't afford care. people buying on the exchange are in a bad way. we need to fix it desperately. but senator mccain's reason for voting against it is consistent with everything he's talking about for a long time. sen. flake: senator mccain's reason is consistent with everything he has talked about for a long time. charlie: he also made a sterling appeal for bipartisan work. sen. flake: the committees are more bipartisan, experts in the area, and i am convinced maybe not leadership on the democratic side, but people on both sides of the aisle ready to work across the aisle. charlie: it has to be by now, it seems, a repair of obamacare. even the president, former president, has ignored problems

with health care. everyone seemed to believe pre-existing conditions were one. sen. flake: leaving children on until 26. charlie: willing to any interest of what they thought were higher economic principles. sen. flake: we have to find ways to deal with this better. there are a lot of reforms needed, both on the exchange side to make it affordable for average americans, and on the medicaid side to make sure that is sustainable over time. right now we are growing the programs and spending more money than we can sustain. charlie: does mitch mcconnell say we will have another vote on health care, or we will simply let it go for now? sen. flake: we got out of town

pretty quickly after the last vote, so we have not set down. we will this week, to see the way ford, but my guess is and what he has said publicly is we move on. charlie: to move on to tax reform, infrastructure? sen. flake: that we don't wait to do those issues until we do health care. we have got to. tax reform is desperately needed. we need to be globally competitive, so we need to move tax reform, but that does not mean we leave health care behind. it means we recognize the limits to what one party can do alone. obamacare does not work. it is imploding. charlie: it does not work, imploding?

if you let it stay on its own, he says, it will die of its own weight. people will be uninsured if it goes away. sen. flake: it depends on which part of it goes away. the exchange side and expanded medicaid side -- charlie: was it expanded medicaid or the exchange site or the mandate side? sen. flake: i think it was basically forcing americans to buy a product that they maybe didn't want and cannot afford. charlie: and penalize them. sen. flake: that's right. arizona who,000 in paid the fine because they cannot find affordable insurance. many had insurance before obamacare. charlie: the criticism that if you like your present health care -- sen. flake: a lot of people i know lost their coverage and have not been able to find affordable coverage or have a policy where they are paying exorbitant premiums, but have such high deductibles that the

first insurance dollar does not kick in for a long time so it is , meaningless insurance. those are very real, genuine concerns that we have to address. we need to do it by sitting across the aisle and working with our colleagues across the aisle. ♪ who knew that phones would start doing everything?

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would you give donald trump for the first six months in office? sen. flake: i do not want to give a grade. charlie: but we need to know. book,ou're promoting a you're running for reelection isn't it a responsible question to say, what do you think of doing?e president is sen. flake: on things like, he nominated a great supreme court justice, neil gorsuch. i was pleased to help shepherd him through the senate on regulatory policy. he has worked with congress to do 14 congressional review acts to nullify some of the regulations hampering the economy. some of the economic growth, second quarter good numbers, are due to that effort by the president and congress. charlie: there has been growth, and there was in the last quarter, economic growth. i attribute it not to

macroeconomics, but to changing regulatory -- sen. flake: i think that is a big part of it, the regulatory structure, and that is what i hear from businesses small and large. the prospect of tax reform, and the presidents instincts are quite good. given as a judge by what -- charlie: corporate rates? sen. flake: lower the base, corporate rates, then on the flipside, the president's action on trade has been extremely detrimental. i think exiting the tpp will have long-term consequences that we will regret. charlie: the tpp? sen. flake: the transpacific partnership. it will have ramifications on our economy because it would

have opened up new markets for us, but also has geopolitical implications as well. countries in southeast asia need to be part of our trade orbit, not just china. charlie: and he's dealing with china on a one-to-one basis. sen. flake: china is moving on every front. after the election, i had a scheduled trip to mexico city, and talking to the mexican government about trade and nafta, for example, and at that time we were meeting his when president trump said we will exit tpp. the mexican senate was talking about going for it with tpp. at the same time, the chinese president and russian president were in chile and peru saying if america won't deal with you, we will. we are losing markets that way. the way international supply chain's work, once you get out, it takes a while to get back in. charlie: on climate, we also pulled out of the climate accord.

do you support the president for doing that? sen. flake: i think that the goals were being met because of innovations and natural gas as opposed to coal. charlie: do believe global warming is response when part causing climate change, causing the destruction of the planet? sen. flake: i think the earth is warming and except the science that mankind is responsible. charlie: why would you support the president's withdrawal? sen. flake: i support responsibly moving toward a better climate and goals that are achievable. i do think the paris accord, those may have been achievable simply because of the growth of natural gas or the abundance of natural gas. charlie: an alternative fuels are cheaper.

sen. flake: one beef i have with some of the same once they give republicans a hard time for skepticism, and i am not among the skeptics. i believe science. if you believe science, believe it and recognize we have to have power that will likely involve nuclear, because that is the only carbon free baseload power we have got. too many on the left are reluctant to say -- charlie: are you saying we cannot meet our energy needs if we reduce the level of fossil fuels without going to nuclear? sen. flake: i think very difficult to do. charlie: even death there is dramatic reduction in the costs of alternatives? sen. flake: those are good, great, intermittent.

you still have to have a slowed power, and that baseload power will either be right now natural gas, coal, or nuclear. in the future, we will likely have utility scale storage for, batteries for solar and wind. that will take a while, and in that interim we have to have baseload power, and in the interim i am talking decades, we need more nuclear power. some people on the left won't accept that, and i think they need to if we are going to be serious about the climate challenges that exist. charlie: do you seek president trump support in your election? sen. flake: you always support -- you always hope that the president in your party -- charlie: do you seek donald trump's support? would you like him to go to arizona to campaign for you? sen. flake: i did not support him in the election so i would , be surprised if he came out publicly. president george w. bush became president the same time i went to the house. i was elected the same time mike pence was.

we both ran conservative think tanks in the 1990's and were elected together. 2001, reelected in 2000 comes so anyway, we came in and the first thing on our table was no child left behind. i thought that is not very conservative. as a conservative, i did not like the federal reach into education. then there was a prescription drug benefit and i thought that was not conservative at all. it added $7 trillion in unfunded liabilities. charlie: the previous administration gave you all the surplus. that was an opportunity. sen. flake: but president bush, i agreed with him on most of the things. i opposed him on his cuba policy. i have been an advocate of lifting the travel ban.

charlie: president trump wants to -- sen. flake: that is one area where i agree with obama. you don't have to agree with the president on everything. with president bush, i agreed with most things and he did a fundraiser in arizona because i was with him on most of these things. i think that is the way it should be. i think arizona expects me not to be a rubber stamp for everything the president wants. i appreciate and work with this president, president trump come on supreme court nominees, nominees to the federal bench, regulatory and tax issues, but i will oppose him if he tries to get rid of nafta. charlie: you see the benefit of nafta? sen. flake: i do. you bet. charlie: with respect to president bush, the thing he is proud of is what happen with the idea of providing support. people will tell you in africa

that he did more than any president has done. sen. flake: that is completely true. let me give you an anecdote. i was traveling and southern africa. i did my mormon mission in southern africa, zimbabwe. in 1989-1990, my wife and i lived in the country of namibia, the year it got its independence from south africa. so we traveled back to southern africa a year and a half ago. we were meeting with one of the worst dictators in africa. i wrote my masters about his hold on power in the still 1980's. there. we met with him. it was a two hour meeting we requested out of protocol, but thought he would reject it. he granted it. we were talking and he was ranting about every u.s.

president and british prime minister forever. he got to president bush and was railing on president george w. bush, and finally i could not take it anymore and said, hey, president bush was responsible for pep far. that helped you guys, save their bacon, and he stopped and said, i will give you that. but they do recognize president bush, that has opened more doors and has led to more alliances that we have needed on the security front in africa to fight al-shabab or boko haram because of that initiative. it was incredible. i was pleased when i traveled back to africa with president obama later when he went to kenya and ethiopia. i hope that we continue the progress we made in africa. charlie: on an issue like north korea, you are on foreign affairs. what is the president doing? sen. flake: there is a cliche there are no good options in north korea.

everything is on the table. that is all true, but there are just no good options there. you help we can go to china into some kind of action. charlie: the president got softer on trade in the hope they would be forthcoming. sen. flake: the leverage may be limited than we are willing to admit. charlie: the willing to do less than we want them to do? sen. flake: that is correct as well. i don't know one thing i do know, you mentioned foreign policy as an area of rare bipartisanship. it still is. i talk about it in the book, my work with tim kaine. charlie: vice presidential nominee. sen. flake: yes, we are operating under an authorization of military force from 2001.

only 33 members of the senate where there to vote on that that are still in the senate. more than 300 members of the house have never voted. we like this more than we should in the house and senate because then they can blame the president, republican or democrat, for what they are doing or not doing with regard to isis or responding to other nonstate actors. we should take our constitutional prerogative. we have the prerogative to declare war, and if not that, at least authorize the use of force. charlie: when should a president not have to go to congress for the use of force? sen. flake: if the country is in imminent danger as judged by the president, but there is a war powers act, 60 days, no president wants to accept that, but abide by the strictures generally.

when we have a long-term engagement with nonstate actors, we have to have some kind of template where congress weighs in, and that is what we have tried to put together. i think we will get there with foreign policy in the senate. you have bob corker and ben cardin as chair and ranking minority member of the foreign relations committee, and they are reasserting congress's preeminent role in some of these areas, and i hope we can get that. the senate has six-year terms. we approve treaties. we have more responsibility for foreign policy. charlie: new polls show declining respect for america. sen. flake: yeah. yeah.

i think that is unfortunate. when i talk about being a conservative in the book, it not only has to do with adherence to principles of conservatism, it has to do with comportment and demeanor, and in the area of foreign policy, a conservative is nothing if he is not sober and measured and that the great and predictable in use of -- and deliberate and predictable in use of diplomacy and force. i think that has been missing in the past couple of months. i think we need a foreign policy that embraces our allies and recognizes our enemies. i think that has been missing of late, so i am concerned about the path forward. charlie: western europe, nato, and other places. sen. flake: that's right. we have to give another speech and recommit ourselves to nato, there is a problem. it is a distress signal if our allies have to seek that from us. charlie: that is what the

chancellor of germany said. we can't look to the u.s. for leadership. we have to look out for ourselves. we can't depend on them. sen. flake: i am concerned that our world order after world war ii was to build up our allies to offer a security umbrella and allow them to develop trade and help them, realizing that as they grow and develop and prosper, that we prosper as well. that trade is not a zero-sum game where somebody wins and somebody loses. that has all been put aside, and i think this banner we have taken up is unfamiliar to us and unfamiliar to our allies, and maybe our adversaries around the world. charlie: in this book, what we need from presidential

leadership. sen. flake: not just that. charlie: you think about that. sen. flake: yeah. charlie: it is an implied criticism. let me read you this paragraph. we must reaffirm our devotion to the rule of law, embrace intellectual independence and fidelity to the truth and reject politics of the nasty, punitive, and fact-free and reassert conservativism and high ideals. -- ideals, goodwill, and even better arguments. sen. flake: i think that is right. charlie: when they read that they see you saying i am not happy with presidential leadership. sen. flake: that is true. i am not. charlie: therefore, does it axiomatically follow -- -- idean better arguments. sen. flake: i think that is sen. flake: no, it doesn't. like i said, there are some things the president is doing i agree with. i hope he comes around on the other, on nafta for example. the latest negotiating points were pretty good. charlie: he has changed on a number of things, he said, but

not the wall. sen. flake: right. charlie: do you think he will get the wall? sen. flake: no, i don't. the notion of a 2000 mile wall -- sen. flake: some say it's not a 2000 mile wall. charlie: looking at appropriations in the budget. sen. flake: we will have better barriers in some places, surveillance in others. there are natural barriers and others. there are a myriad of things that need to be done to have a more secure border that does not involve a 2000 mile solitary wall that some people envision, but back on the wall or with mexico, some things are concerning to me as well. it is not just the policy that makes a difference. it is the rhetoric that you use, and talking about the wall and they will pay for it, or you talk about, tweeting out crimes statistics and mexico.

that makes a difference in terms of mexico's political backdrop as well. they have an election coming up. they may have a populist president on the left that would undo a lot of the progress that mexico has made with regard to trade. if we have that, that would be bad for immigration, bad for a number of things that we have worked with the mexican government on, so i am concerned. charlie: there is an intellectual heritage here. this is from barry goldwater, the conscience of a conservator written in 1960, the conscience of the conservative is pricked by anyone who would debate the definition of the individual human being. he is at odds from dictators that lead with terror. and those that play god with the

human race. and finally this, as i mentioned earlier, a dedication to that girl i met on a faraway beach so long ago. to your wife charlie. sen. flake: my wife shirley. charlie: thank you for coming. senator jeff flake from arizona. the book, the conscience of a conservative. ♪ charlie: and finally this evening, look ahead to tomorrow's nights broadcast a conversation indecent, a broadway play that ends on august 6. >> ultimately the story of the play is one that calls out to, for courage and speaking out in times of hatred and in times of real sort of danger and creating art against all odds. as you see in indecent, the odds

keep increasing and tell their story over and over again. it comes to new york at a time of enormous immigration reform, cutting down on immigrants in the u.s. it was a pretty audacious move, and the play calls it out as reminder to love. charlie: somebody in the new york times said it was about new york immigration homophobia, misogyny, censorship, love, and advocacy. all that in 94 minutes. >> it is exactly why it is such a pertinent play today. the subjects are subjects we are dealing with as we speak around this table. charlie: did you love it when you first read it? >> it took my breath away completely. how is this young man writing this gorgeous love story between these two women? is like romeo and juliet in the rain. how did he know how to do it? there is a brothel downstairs and his family upstairs.

it is so inherently theatrical. ♪ ♪

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washington. you are watching "bloomberg technology." president trump is standing by his eldest son on the accuracy of his statement regarding a meeting with a russian lawyer. that is after reports that trump himself dictated the july 8 statement, which says they discussed the adoption of russian children. emails showed it was a means to deliver damaging material about hillary clinton. secretary of state rex tillerson says the u.s. is applying peaceful pressure on north korea. pyongyang raised concerns after two recent icbm launches. he also says the american people want better relations with russia. he will meet this weekend with