♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin this evening policy agenda and facing headwinds in the wake of ons -- ongoing discord with top senate republicans. bob corker of the senate relations committee has questioned his fitness for office. he said the nation to be on the path to world war iii. joining me is robert costa who on pbsed washington week and talks about the growing frustration in the washington post. thank you for joining us. robert: good to be with you,

charlie. charlie: where is all of this going? is this the beginning of something? robert: it is the continuation of the unraveling of the trump presidency. he is an outsider, has always been an outsider, but there are people around him whether it was mitch mcconnell or paul ryan or general kelly, who believe they can build a project around the president, get him to enact key gop priorities. they keep learning again and again, based on my reporting, the president changed this system. he wants to govern by instinct. he does not want to request in a certain direction. -- to be pushed in a certain direction. charlie: can it continue? are you suggesting most people while amazed by this at the same time don't see it going to some logical conclusion? it is simply a continuation of

what we will see for the first ofm, if it is only one term donald trump? robert: the republicans are aghast. when i talk to congress people, they think the entire presidency is on the brink. in the white house there is a different perspective, especially when you talk to the president's friends. he looks at the republican party now as a failed business, a business that has not been able to give him wins, and wins are what he wants. he does not want ideological victory. this reality and observation of the party, he is ready to move away and battle the republican establishment now and in 2018 ahead of the midterm elections. this has deep consequences in washington because there is an expectation he could get tax cuts and other things through. there is genuine concern among the top republicans in the country the president is ready to walk away on them and their agenda. charlie: if he does that he will

have no legislative agenda to take to 2018 or 2020. robert: you see the majority leader in public comments saying to the president in effect, you have to get the budget done, we have to get taxes done. where is his attention? when you ask his advisers, they say he is focused on what he believes is the best area for him to fight, the battleground, which is the culture, fighting grievance politics, national football league, defending his own reputation when it comes to the handling of natural disasters. he is not moving forward and having rallies on tax cuts. it is about president trump day in and day out fighting for president trump. charlie: let's take the quarter situation. corker suggests -- the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee suggests his behavior may be creating a path to world war iii.

that is, i can't imagine that in all the years i have looked at washington. jarring,nd it is more charlie because i remember a year ago i was speaking to determine corker, and he was talking to me on the record about how much he had built a rapport with then candidate trump, how he was interested as serving as the vice presidential nominee. he backed away from that. he did grow close because he saw trump as someone who thought about foreign policy differently. corker liked that he was not a traditional republican hawk like george w. bush. but even someone like corker that tried to build a friendship, had a relationship, he, one of these kinds of republicans, has walked away, because they do not see in the president's behavior and character they want in a national leader. charlie: steve bannon is on a campaign to challenge the establishment republicans in

primaries. will the president support that? robert: if steve bannon is almost a satellite to this white house, he is not being directed by president trump. some people are wary abandon. .hey think he is -- bannon they think he is becoming too powerful in the republican base month but steve bannon thinks he is working in the president's interests, and that it is time for a clean sweep to run against every american republican in the country, sweep them out and have more trump style candidates come yen. that doesn't mean there will be a populist or nationalist -- it is more about the outsider persona. that is like bannon once in congress. charlie: what impacted john kelly have? robert: that is one of the more difficult reporting targets. general kelly has closed the door of the oval office. he has a tight grip on the paper flow goes in front of the the --

the president, but he cannot control him late at night when he is making friends -- calls to friends. there is this implied circle of friends general kelly does not control because people call him on his cell phone and find -- he will find a way to get back to them like sean hannity or tom barrick. these are people general kelly cannot stop getting to the president. charlie: you are suggesting closing the door to the oval office is something that has eliminated something donald trump cherished, which was a free flow of people coming in to talk to him, people he enjoyed having conversations and talking about what was happening in the country, and general kelly had cut that off, and it frustrates the president. robert: it does. i know this from talking to people who are close to him. i am so glad i covered him during the campaign.

i saw him in trump tower, it was a flow of people in the time -- people throwing newspapers and magazines on the desk. when you are in the middle of an interview, constant conversation. that is how he ran the organization and governed his own family. that is have you thought about his political life, a running conversation. anyone could jump in. the last person he would listen to intently, and that is not how general kelly wants to run the white house. trump is clashing with that. charlie: you suggest people are not running to take his side in the conflict with bob corker nor are they taking bob corker's side as well. there is a sense of workers says of general feeling among leaving republicans in the senate that share the views he has worrying about the president's fitness for office. robert: there are private concerns from many lawmakers in the republican party about the

president's conduct. they think he is out of control with his use of twitter, out of control with the brash public battles he has. and the sound of silence is revealing, because many of the top republicans, they state relatively quiet -- stay relatively quiet on the questions of fitness for office. they still want to work with him for tax cuts and regulatory changes. they believe they are part of the party. he is the king of their base, and if they want to run for reelection, they don't want to alarm trump's voters. they are getting pressure from many allies to's beak out more they speak out more, but think he is the leader of the party. they don't want a total mutiny at this moment. charlie: where does the russian investigation stand? what is happening with respect to bob mueller and his group? robert: it is the cloud that hovers over everything. it is also the issue in a

strange way some republicans even believe is reassuring because they think mohler with his integrity and reputation, should he find anything on collusion or involvement with the trump campaign, that will speak for itself, that they don't need to be in front, republican leaders trying to legislate or dictate how that issue unfolds. they want to see what m ueller has to say. they think he is looking at possible obstruction and the chairman, paul manafort, whose home was raided, he could be in legal trouble. there is a grand jury in with grand -- general flynn and his involvement while he was a member of the trump campaign. i do not want to speculate. , everyonet asterisk thinks about it every day. nobody really knows. charlie: does anyone knows what the president intends for north

korea? robert: the president has been told having a military option is on the table, and he likes to waive that idea around in private number stations, sometimes on twitter. at the same time, both sides know that a military altercation would be disastrous in terms of human life that would be lost. military leaders are trying to avoid that confrontation, but the president has a militaristic approach even if he is not interventionist. he is militaristic and his advisers are trying to calm down the rhetoric. that is not easy. charlie: do the people who know him best worry about him? robert: his family knows him best. at times they are concerned he is being pulled in so many directions. this is someone who was never in public life as an elected official, now president of the united states. there has been alarm he is doing too much, that is relentless personality is spilling over day after day as frustrations mount

as well. some of the people who care for him told me he loves when he plays golf because he is calming down from the pressures on him. he gets criticized for playing golf, but his closest friends say that the best thing he is taking time away from the oval office. charlie: thank you so much, pleasure. robert: thank you. ♪

♪ the harvey weinstein story continues to bring allegations against the film executive, and the new york times published allegations that he had been paying people for decades. today a new yorker article online shares accounts from several women who have come forward about sexual harassment and assault. joining me is tina brown. she is ceo of tina brown live media and founder of women in the world. she worked with harvey weinstein and miramax in the early 2000 for a magazine she greeted called talk -- created called talk. what surprises you about this story? tina: it is difficult when you talk about harvey. he was so different when you got into business with him than he was out and about four at a screening. when i went to work for him as part of the new yorker, i thought i was getting this big, anonymous maestro who would be a

wonderfully, warm, outward, creative force, who would enable my desire to make a magazine more than a magazine. that is what he promised he. he said you will have a magazine and stories that can be books and tv. it can be a whole kind of media platform. that was attractive to me. that is what i want to do at the new yorker and could not do where i left. this was in days of going to work for harvey. i realized the entire carapace of his verse analogy was different -- personality was different. he is a very paranoid individual, fearful, who seems to see the world is against him. be in thisnstantly spin factory where he had pr and lawyers spinning stories about

harvey which he was great about. at the same time it became strange when what they were spinning was what was going on with these women. universal rights. happened,hings that but universal rights. -- there were things that happened, but you never saw it. on the payroll, everyone would be given the payroll, which all the people at the post or tabloids, people writing stuff, entertainment writers, gossip writers, if there was any stirring of negative story, he would offer them a contract or development deal, consultancy, and they would come. journalists were assured money. they were also very starstruck with the world harvey offered which was movies in hollywood and every writer getting in on dreams that he could get a big movie and his life would be changed. or her life would be changed.

harvey would have that ability to take somebody and make them into something more. he had this retinue of people around him, people getting their stories killed or not writing stories. many journalists tried to do this story. it always got killed. it got killed either higher-ups, editor, owner, the entertainment editor, lover was a friend of the owner. they would always kill the stories. what has happened is, that is over. we are in a new era. there is not anything anymore people can do. we live in the world of total transparency. there is no place for that kind of sublimation. it will come out. it is only a matter of time. i used to think this would happen, harvey would be the next bill cosby because there was so much there that people could get out and had not done so. but i feel badly for his wife

and children because it is a very terrible thing to see the kind of massive, epic fall we have seen with harvey in the last weekend. i always felt with him the volcanic rage we once saw with harvey, and i did experience that, was his sense of dissonance with who he was. this is a man of incredible ,aste who had an enormous flair and to sit in a screening room with harvey was to really see a maestro. he understood how to make them better in every way. it was interesting. he was good at that at any editor can be in a magazine. but at the same time with his personal behavior that was on it -- utterly unacceptable in every way, i always wondered if that was from his own anger that he knew he was a man of taste buried inside a personality that was so, you know. charlie: why did this come out

-- didn't this come out sooner? robert: he was very -- tina: he was very intimidating. he could be very scary. he is a big, imposing man, and he could be snarly and intimidating at scary. he got into my head very quickly in terms of, you have to jump. if you did not jump, you could see that kind of sense that everything revolved around him. if you displeased him, it was a scary sight. that was intimidating. as actresses, you know, it is hard to get a good role. it is hard to get a good part. here was harvey doing wonderful work, much of it in the movies he could propel a woman to an oscar. there is always that hope, and something so humiliating about believing you are going from a business meeting and finding it wasn't. it is deeply humiliating.

as aggressive not as it sometimes was. there was something deeply shaming knowing you happen snookered. you thought you were going to a meeting about a new part, and actually what you are going for is you could, you know, make an advance on you. and one of the things women find when they are abused if they are ashamed. it is illogical. the abuse should be the one shouting from the rooftops, but that is not what happens. there is no good thing women feel ever in the revealing that this happened to you. you are the one who is demonized. look at the italian actress who did come forward and report what happened between her and harvey, and there was the nypd into it, and special crimes came in to investigate, but he managed to spin that away. suddenly you start to read all

of this bad stuff about this actress. as aas being characterized girl that was a serial accuser, on the make, all of this demonized nation. -- demonization. powerful people contrast a woman's reputation. look at the made from the -- maid from the hotel. ultimately -- he did rape her. and this for made who was at the hotel -- poor maid just trying to clean a room, suddenly she was on the front page of the new york post that said she had hiv. it was ugly what happened to her. women become afraid and they think i will never work again. it happens again and again. charlie: what happens to him now? i, i cannot imagine how terrible this must be for him.

wonder, i wonder if this is some kind of a relief? with all the covering up and pretending, it is out there. nothing worse now can be done. he has been absolutely unbelievable moving forward. charlie: what happened to roger ailes and bill o'reilly, what does it change? tina: what we are seeing is women have just decided and pushed back definitively, that they will not have to deal with this toxic testosterone anymore. in a way, some of these stories, you see the surrogate for trump in the white house. a serial harasser is in the oval office. on tape was boasting about assaulting women. but he was elected president, and that women's market marches on a different guys. the women are saying, that

happens, but we are not going to let it happen in other parts of our lives. and out of allod this mess and horror we are hearing is, powerful women are standing up and saying, this happened. women's of means and profile are saying this happened. women who are not powerful and do not have means since they are not alone. women who do not have means, you are working as a waitress and being groped by the manager of the restaurant, you are -- you are stuck. you are trying to make your children's lives better. so there are many women who are trapped in terrible situations, and they have not got, they feel afraid to speak up and afraid to leave. gretchen carlson was a giant killer by bringing down roger ailes. she suited him because she was

affluent, her husband was affluent. she carefully documented it, and if you speak to her, she will give you the bible on this. don't ever go to hr. hr reports to the boss. take notes, chronicle it, document it, and have a case. then you can go and tell a lawyer. if you can afford it, which is a catch 22, because most women can't afford to do that. so i think it is an incredibly healthy thing that this is happening now. clearly, some may say, there are stranger things. it is good because it is saying the culture has changed. it is no longer acceptable to do these things, and if you cross that line, you will be called out. ashley,-- huge kudos to rose mcgowan and with the two

who actually spoke first to the new york times, which was really brave, and is brave to be early. now i am glad the other people like gwyneth paltrow and others have talked to the new yorker, i think it is a good thing they are doing that. it makes people say, makes them worried that if they behave like that, it will come out. charlie: tina brown. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪ charlie: steven spielberg is one of the most acclaimed directors working in hollywood. his films have grossed a combined total of $9.3 billion. a new documentary film examines his remarkable life and career. the hbo documentary spielberg will debut october 7 at 8:00 p.m. on hbo. this --angeles calls los angeles times called it surprisingly intimate.

here is a look at the trailer. >> every time i start a new scene, i am nervous. when that verges on panic, i get great ideas. ♪ to get intoery hard the film school and i did not have the grades to get in. i realized this was going to be what i was going to do or i would die trying. when i got into the group of the movie breast, it was -- >> get the camera arranged. >> that was going to be a disaster. opened, thisjaws is it. >> there were people who hated it, people who blamed him for ruining the movie. >> all my films come from a part of myself i cannot articulate. should i change my entire approach to cinema? sense of a dynamic

real filmmaking. >> making his way into a studio and manifesting his own destiny. pretty fantastic hollywood story. charlie: susan lacy is the person behind this. that program has received 27 emmys and some peabody awards. i'm pleased to have her. susan: thank you, very happy to be here. charlie: what happened to you? you had this perfect thing with american masters, you got all the awards. then richard steals you. then what happened? susan: kind of. you know, i had been thinking that i had begun to direct as executive reducer of the series and creator of the series along the way for almost 30 years, i have directed some films. i loved it, and i have been wanting to focus more on directing. it was an interesting, perfect

storm of richard giving me -- he had loved my films i have directed, and he actually asked me if i would consider doing some films for hbo. i said, i have my own series. why would i do that? he said, aren't you tired of raising money? and that clicked. something went, i am tired. i would like to focus on directing. i would like to not have spent so much time doing that, so it came together. charlie: tell me how you came together to make this film and what do you want us to understand about steven spielberg? susan: i think, as idolized he is and as much of an icon in the film business he is and represents, the most powerful man in hollywood, i don't think he has been given complete and total respectful do as a as ator that he -- due

director that he deserves as a director, and an artist. when most people think about stephen, most, they think of the spectacle, the epics, the blockbuster, the franchise, and schindler's list. they don't realize -- and et and close encounters, but there is a huge body of work that is a bit of stephen in all of those films. his autobiography is in a general sense seen through the work. that is what i wanted to make, looking at films as a reflection steven's's values, , hisas, his health insecurity, that,s of his -- the traumas of his childhood, his. divorcing, being an outsider growing up in a gentile community, the only jewish family experiencing

anti-semitism. there is an outsider element to him when he said i began as a movie breast, like an insider. -- brat, divorce,fect of the running through many of his films is the image of the absent father. together of families is so consistent in his films. i really wanted to explore that. his range of experience was limited. genius from the moment he picked up a camera. his frame of reference was smaller than other filmmakers. in his earlycted

films, which are masterpieces, but rooted in suburbia, his own family story to some degree, influenced by experiences he had with his father, close encounters. he made an early version of close encounters when he was 16 called "firelight." the things he wanted to make movies about changed. an exploration of american character, history, race running through quite a bit of it, fascination with constitution and rule of law, and he became a courageous filmmaker. i think he was 19 years old or

20 years old when he made a small film. charlie: he was 17? >> he was 19 or 20. he left college. he had been turned down by film schools, mostly usc. he said universal became to homeschool. he did everything. he did the pilot episode for colombo. marcus welby, all of those things. crawford in aan night gallery when he was a kid. he was 20 years old. he won her over. charlie: very tough lady. people have talked about

his brilliance and genius, and obviously he has the skill, but what separates a spielberg film from other films of good directors? for one thing, he understands as well ase of film anyone outside i have talked to about it. he understands the emotional impact that film has on the audience. he connects to do the audience ,ncredibly come instinctively and that has served him well. he made the movies he wanted to see, and those with the movies the audience wanted to see. charlie: he has always had a child's curiosity. >> he still does. of his: that is part genius. there is a freshness and innocence of his questions. i don't think that has

changed. he is making different kinds of films. , i don't think this has left whim. with a he is somebody tremendous curiosity, a curiosity that is in list. endless.osity that is i think he really likes changing it up. he likes making different kinds of films, working in different genres. charlie: does he have any professional insecurities? himhem film starts with saying that before a movie starts, he is terrified. a little disingenuous because he is the most prepared director in the world.

he said it is a good thing because if you are a little bit scared, you will not be complacent. it will push you to getting out of the corner, solving that problem. charlie: take a look at this. this is not from the film, but my show. i have been fascinated by steven spielberg and have never had him at this table, which is a loss for me. quentin turrentine are explaining why steven spielberg is one of his favorite directors. >> he is such a perfect filmmaker. the taking of shanghai sequence sun, and i talk to him about private ryan, and he said we will create the greatest taking of omaha beach ever. the greatestill do

taking of omaha beach captured on film ever. that kind of filmmaking language, i think i have got it to, but in a different way. charlie: another very good filmmaker. how does he prepare? he used to storyboard more than he does now. he has an amazing gift. he can see the film in his head before he shoots. amazed by that, tom hanks, leonardo dicaprio dicaprio, marty scorsese, brian de palma, he has incredible visual sense. iscan see the movie as he shooting it, so he knows what he is going for. 't turnesn't mean he can

on a dime. story fromwonderful tom hanks about shooting saving private ryan which he had thought out and was looking forward to, and when it got set did notweather cooperate, the son was in the had notace, somebody given tom hanks the right coordinates, and but at first he was angry, then goes for a walk and comes back and says, i know how to do it. describe theto whole scene, but he came up with a solution on the spot that was every bit as good. he has a vision. he has courage and the way he makes films. the fact that they are also successful does not mean everybody knew they would be successful. film -- was a jealous

jaws a surprise to him? >> nobody had ever done it before, and for good reason. it turned out that it made it a better picture. theever felt you were in back lot. you are on the ocean. you were scared for these people. and the fact that a lot of things didn't work turned out to be a blessing in that town because as he said, the script has a lot of shark, the movie has for a little shark, and you are more scared by what you them what you do see. he thought every day on that film he was going to be fired. he won his first oscar was schindler's list. i don't remember the exact date. he had made many films before that. had 3-4 of the top best-selling movies in history, and only won an oscar with schindler's list. it was a big moment.

schindler's list was a big moment for him anyway, brought him back to judaism. charlie: he had wandered away. >> he didn't want to be jewish. it did not make him fit in. he wanted to fit in. it made him a pariah. he said he didn't want to be a pariah. reason is the synagogue -- i feel like i'm facing my first movie. that gave him an a dreadnought and, that fire, that of alertness. i have never felt the same level of energy and focus. he seems to breathe cinema. i would not say he is an intellectual director p i think he feels things intuitively. -- intellectual director. i think he feels things

intuitively. he just doesn't know what color to put on screen first, but once he has committed to that color, he was firing on all cylinders. there was times when he was physically running with that a lot of thee stuff he shot himself with the handheld camera. he would be running saying come on, come with me, come quick. we would be inspired. charlie: he also went and built the studio, dreamworks, which was not a riproaring success for them. >> i didn't explore that in detail. i am not a business person. they also have a string of big hits and one a lot of oscars, so i don't know exactly why it failed in business terms. i don't know the answer to that.

somebody else probably has a better answer. they had a string of hits. i think he did not make every movie there, and the mod have had something to do with it. -- and that might have had something to do with it. here is tom hanks talking about steven spielberg. >> i don't know what it is that stephen has other than an odd and almost in humid genius -- in human genius for making people do things on sprockets. mated -- nota intimidated by any single aspect of it. me movies i made could not have been more different. everything was shot in a fast style, stopping to linger over a

needs the. the best i can liken it to is that stephen is to filmmaking what edison was to lightbulbs. he could see a better way of eliminating a room. he did not stop. charlie: you walk away from every film, every contact, learning something new. the opposite. he is more of a mystery then the first time i worked with him. no one knows how he sees what he sees. what is the difference between being done with the scene after 32 setups as opposed to being done with the scene after one. he has done them both. i don't know what it is. aesthetic a meter in his head that is calibrated to some scale that is not in english. >> that is actually true. charlie: here is wedding you

said, having a vision, sticking to it, and not letting anybody get in the way is the best lesson you can learn with steven spielberg, the decision to makes chandler's list, a 3.5 hour film in black and white that did not come out of any focus group. what is your favorite film by steven spielberg? that's like saying which are favored child is. i have several favorites. i think schindler's list is at the top. i love munich, empire of the sun. et, close encounters, and jaws stands up well today as well as when he made it. charlie: thank you for coming. much of success to you. >> thank you. ♪

♪ 24, he was hired as a speechwriter for president obama and became a special assistant and senior speechwriter and was the lead scribe on for white house correspondents dinner's. he has a new book. i am pleased to have him at this table. welcome. you did not grow up obsessed by politics. >> not at all.

the 15-year-old at amateur standup comedy nights around the city and things like that. charlie: doing what? improv comedy at college. i worked at the onion before i worked at obama. that is the path i was on. i saw barack obama speak and did a 180. charlie: what was the impact of the speech? >> i was on a plane and watching the little airplane television the night of the iowa caucus january 3, 2008, and president obama then candidate obama was delivering his victory speech. i was not watching because i wanted to see him's week. -- see him speak. he looked at the organizers and the crowd come young people about my age, some younger than said, you represent

that most american of ideals that faced with impossible odds that people who love this country can change it. in that moment, i felt like he was talking to me. i think millions of young people felt like he was talking to each of us. that ability to speak to everybody individually is the hallmark of a great speaker. by the time the plane landed, i was a different person. charlie: what did you do? >> i immediately emailed my more earnest friends and and said, what can i do to help? i became a volunteer on campus at my last semester in college. i was in connecticut, so the primaries were on super tuesday. hydro to ohio after i graduated and spent five months as a field organizer for the general election. my job was to run an office in wayne county, ohio south of .leveland

the volunteers there were knocking on doors, talking to voters. this was not a democratic county. it ended up going for john mccain 60% to 40%, but that was the biggest margin democrats had one in a long time. i got to be part of that. charlie: you were a political operative, not a speechwriter. >> that's right. i had no plans to be a speech writer. i moved to washington without a clear idea of a job i would get it i was the world's worst intern at eight communications crisis firm. i went rogue. i brought in my laptop from home and set up an office in the break room of this firm. i almost got fired as an intern, which is difficult to do, but i got a second chance and got an internship at a speech writing firm. that i hadealize

lucked into a job that the best boutique speech writing firm certainly for democrats in the country, but that is what happened. that turned into a job. to years later, i was ready go back into the field and i was going to move to chicago and work on the reelection campaign, and instead the president senior advisor was looking for a speech youer and jon favreau said can stay here and work in the white house and the us speechwriter here. charlie: for her or for him? other valerie and the senior staff. every so often i would do something for the president that no one else wanted to do, a weekly address some arising a speech that week. i might do that. in 2011, i wrote a speech wishing america happy thanksgiving. that was my white house specialty, stuff nobody else wants. pretty soon you became

a senior speechwriter. >> i became a senior speechwriter and 2015. i took on more responsibility. i moved to the campaign to write speeches for president obama in june of 2012 and got to be part of the campaign team. in 2013, i was a full-time speech writer on the president's team. i also began to take on more of persones because the running the correspondence dinner in 2011 when i started, , he was our token white house funny person, but he left for hollywood in 2011, so i became debt in house funny person. that meant that when jokes came up, i got to take on more responsibility. charlie: that job is primarily corralling some of the best comedy writers in the country to contribute to funny material. >> it was in that.

that was a team have for it in a way that other speeches were not. i got to work with some of my favorite comedians pitching jokes come or people who went to college while i stayed in politics. i wrote more than half the speech in-house or by former writers. john lovett would pitch jokes from los angeles. of curatingnice mix jokes and also writing myself and working with the president and others in the room to figure out what is funny and what he does not think is funny. charlie: he does have great timing, so he can deliver jokes. a lucky thing for writing about president obama. the professional comedian would say, really, this is not fair. this guy has a comedian sense of timing and is also the president. charlie: what do you do other than write a book about what you have done when you leave the

white house job, which has a certain power and potential in it? writing speeches for the president. i assume you want to write other things. >> i wasn't sure what else to do. i work for funny or die now. that was interesting to explain to my parents. that is one of the questions -- charlie: will ferrell's company? >> that's right. one of the things i have been thinking about is the way we communicate. speeches are part of that, but by the last few years, we were doing internet video, pieces where we would bring in celebrities are well-known people and amplify the president's message that way. a snapchat account. the way politicians and leaders communicate to the american people is changing and i wanted to figure out how to be part of that and something old-school like writing a book.

charlie: bud schieffer and i did a conversation a couple of nights ago, and he has written a book about that. how do we come to the sense of the way we consume a huge amount of information these days. there are so many different ways to consume it. how do you know what is real and not real and all of that. what is your sense of not only how we consume information, but how we distribute information? we are in the business of trying to send a message, sell a message, have people aware of what our narrative is. it is easier than ever to get your message out the door, but harder than ever to break through and get attention. that is something we discovered in the obama white house. jack gala forhen nack's came in to do between two ferns. that was because we were having

trouble getting our message to young people. it ended up being doing a comedy video on this youtube comedy show that was distinctly weird, that was very proudly weird, that was a way to reach millions of young people in get them to sign up for health care. it worked. the day the video came out, it was watched 11 million times on youtube. carei wrote a health speech, if 10,000 people saw it on youtube, that was a pretty big deal, so it was an extraordinary number. because you can link to the health claire website, we could track and many people were signing up. the exact numbers was a 40% increase in the number of people going to healthcare.gov to look at health insurance that day. many of them had never been on the site before. that was an eye-opening moment throughout the white house where you need to figure out not just

whatyour message is, but your medium is, and both need to be right to break through. charlie: what did you learn from barack obama? i learned a lot. i'd learned the power of focus. this is not something i necessarily thought makes a great president. time, president obama could isolate the most important element of whatever he was doing , policy or a joke. he could figure out this is the thing i need to focus on and execute on that specific thing and block out the distractions and noise. that is so underrated as a leader as a skill for a politician or president. charlie: the book is called, thanks obama. a speechwriter's memoir. thank you for coming. >> thank you. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

♪ alisa: i'm alisa parenti from washington, and you are watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of "first word news." president trump is expected to try to sell his tax plan in pennsylvania. he will say the typical american household would get a $4000 pay raise from the planned legislation. trump's own economic advisor has said this benefit would materialize over four years or on an annual basis would be closer to $500. you can watch the speech right here at 5:45 p.m. new york time here it -- new york time. president and mrs. trump welcomed the canadian prime mi