ng in seconds, what used to take... minutes. that guests would compliment our wifi. that we could video conference... and do it like that. (snaps) if you'd have told me that i could afford... a gig-speed. a gig-speed network. it's like 20 times faster than what most people have. i'd of said... i'd of said you're dreaming. dreaming! definitely dreaming. then again, dreaming is how i got this far. now more businesses in more places can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. this is "gps" the global public squarp. welco welcome. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show, with delicate negotiation, a possible ruptured, the question is -- can you have diplomacy without

diplomats? the state department has gutted many ambassadorships, the u.n. security council is often deadlocked and the president seems to prefer tweets over talk. i will be joined by ronan farrow to talk about his important new book. >> they are eviscerating the state department rather than fixing it. and the president and future of the grand old party. is paul ryan's exit a sign of the end of the party of ronald reagan. i will examine the rep takeover with two senior members of that party. also, after almost 60 years. the era of castro's ruling cuba is about to come to an end. first fidel and his brother raul have ruled the island nation since 1959. will the new president bring any change in cuba's relations with its neighborhoods 90 miles away? but first here's my take.

the most remarkable parts of james comey's memoir are not the -- but in his discussion of the george w. bush administration, comey's far more revealing and highlights something crucial and hopeful about america -- the role of lawyers and our legal culture. many of the battles the trump administration is have been with so-called deep state is reruns of battles, after 9/11, the administration tunnel in a surveillance program called stellar wind that lawyers on review decided was illegal. james comey was filling in for john ash chron, his boss. he renewsed to renew the program. they decided to head to

ashcroft's hospital room to pressure him to sign the reauthorization documents over comey's objections. on learning of this, comey raced to the hospital and asked then fbi director root mueller to join him for moral support. it turned out ashcroft didn't need any prodding, he turned card and gonzalez all. mueller who arrived a few minutes afterwards said to the veteran attorney general, in every man's life there comes a time when the good lord tesss him. you passioned your test tonight. comey says he felt like crying, the law had held, he said. the appreciate from the white house was intense, including a stunning exchange that comey recounts between himself and the president him very much, george w. bush. bush explained to his subcabinet appointee, i say what the during at the he said you do, sir, but only i can say what the justice department can certify as lawful

and we could here. we have done or best, but as martin luther said, here i stan, i can do no other. what is striking about his episodes is not only that comey and mueller with subordinates who owed their jobs to bush, but that they were republicans. both comey and mueller are consistently put their obligations to the law and the country above personal loyalty and partisan politics. this behavior may be the product of personal character, but it is also formed by legal training. the story is really not just about mueller and comey, but about the lawyers in various parts of the government who believe that it is crucial for the country that the government operate within the law, even if the president wishes otherwise. recall that when trump wanted to fire mueller last june, white house counsel don mcgann reportedly threatened to resign in contrast.

comey gave a speeshl to the national security agency, where he said it's the job of a good lawyer to say yes. it's as much of his job to say no. no is much, much harder. it must be said in a storm of it voices, no is often the undoing of a career. one of the ofh-repeated criticism is that it has too many lawyers. maybe, but one of the country's great strengths is the legal culture. as i have written before, alex -- america could fall prey for demagogues and poppy ulists, but took great comfort, as pet hut it america's air stock crazy can be found at the bar or on the bench. lawyers with their sense of civic duty created a form of public accountability that would for a help the blessings of

democracy without allowing its untrammells vices. comey reveals that america does have a deep state, one of law and lawyers, and we should be deeply grateful for it. for more, read my "the washington post" column this week. let's get started. on monday, ronan farrow was awarded a pulitzer age at the ripe young age of 30. it was for his groundbreaking reporting on harvey weinstein in "the new yorker." he went to college at age 11, accepted at yale law school at 16. he deferred to go work at the state department under richard holbrooke. he's had jobs at state and the u.n. now he's written a book about

how the united states relates to the world. for it he interviewed many of the top loomnaries in american foreign, including every living secretary of state. this is his first tv interview argues "war on peace, the end of diplomacy and decline of american influence." a pleasure to have you on. >> a pleasure to be here, fareed. >> at a time when these sensitive negotiations are going on, at a time when the iran deal seems in peril, when i ask you, what is the big problem you see with this -- this sort of short shrift being given to diplomacy. a lot of people say it's fine the secretary of state can negotiate, the president can meet kim. what is being missed here? >> america is undergoing a fundamental transformation in how it relates to the rest of the world. we have fewer subject matter

experts on the kinds of complicated situations like iran and north korea that you just mentioned, more and more soldiers and spies making policy. in "war on peace" i talk about the ramifications in a very immediate sense, in conflict afflict around the world. >> when i was reading it, what i was thinking of is, with the korean negotiations there's a very complicated set of background material you need to understand. those are the details that area experts understand, assistant and deputy secretaries understand. is it your worry that's the texture we are losing? >> literally you can see it when you look at the structure of the state department. there were two earlier diplomatic runs at a north korea settlement, under clinton, then they cheated and it fell through, and late in the game, under george w. bush and condoleezza rice, and condoleezza rice is one of the

many secretaries of state to talk about that in this book. we talk at length about chris hill, the lead negotiator on those six-party talks at that point. when he attempted that, we had an entire north korea unit at the state department, experts who were steeped in this, and it's an over-simplification to say that was a complete failure. while in the end we didn't get what we wanted there were huge inroads made. they shut down some of their plants for the very first time. i think the disappointment for the experts is each time we may inroads, a new administration stepped away. right now we're at a point where we haven't leveraged any of those gains on the past, and indeed seem to be throwing out all the people who know to you will leverage those gains. >> it's not just that they have not filled positions, but they have actually in many cases swept out lots of area experts, lots of substance, people who understand nuclear weapons, things like that. >> the state department is being

decimated as we speak. i tell a stories of a lot of frankly brave diplomats, people serving their country being forced out. the top nuclear arms expert at the state department was fired unceremoniously in the first days of the trump administration. this is at a time when that's one of our greatest challenges in the world. you can see the lack of logic in that. >> you interviews with the secretaries of state are fascinating. you have colin powell very bluntly, a former republican secretary of state, saying that trump is gutting the state department. perhaps the most interesting one was rex tillerson who gives you the only interview i've seen where he on the record describes his frustrations and essentially why he was eventually fired. what do you think is the big story? what did you learn from what rex tillerson told you? >> i think in each of these conversations with all of the living secretaries of state,

people will find something surprising, some moment of candor they didn't expect. you mentioned how searing colin powell was. this is a man who cared deep by about the workforce at the state department. that was a common sent moment george p. shultz saying you don't have to take a job when he surveys the way rex tillerson acted on these orders. the as you say rex tillerson surprisably candid. >> for example, he says he did not want those state department cuts. he privately argued against them, but they thought once the decision was made he had to be a loyal soldier. >> he did, although he also said, i may have just been too inexperienced. he said when he started defending the deep, deep cuts, he had only been on the job briefly and he might not have known better. he said, with hindsight, maybe he would have done things differently. that seems to be the suggestion.

>> he said something peculiar, that he thought the congress wouldic in the state's department budget even though he was not requesting an increase. >> which every other secretary of state if you want living thought was astonishing. that is not how it work. he thought going in, you could just ask them to less money and they would throw more at you, when in a bizarre set of circumstances, he spent a year with congress and fight this administration and these cuts. >> what else did you think -- you people, people with tillerson, people are trying to figure out, you know, was he fundamentally a good guy shafted by trump? was he the wrong plan for the wrong job? what was your takeaway? >> you know, with the comments he made about the lack of experience, i do think he was somewhat out of his depth despire a peerless record as a private seconder manager, he seemed unwilling to invest in

the state department. he put a lot of blame on the white house. the white house was cumbersome and slow, and they fought him at every step. there was a fair amount of passing the bug, but ultimately he took on that job. i think it will stand as one of the most devastating and brief tenures of a secretary of state ever. you clearly are in love with the process of department sit. you talk about following richard holbrooke around as he was negotiating the warlords in the pakistani government. is it your sense that that kind of thing is just not valued anymore in america? >> well, i would be careful to say, i don't think this book is in love with diplomacy. i think it views some very real problems with clear eyes. no one is arguing that america's diplomatic and development appear rat is without need for reform. it's broken in a lot of ways, but what we are doing is

throwing the baby out with the bathwater. they are eviscerating the state department rather than fixing it. stay with us. when we come back, we're going to talk about something completely different, what you won your pulitzer prize for harvey weinstein and me too, when we come back. and i don't share it with mom! right, mom? righttt. safe driving bonus checks. only from allstate. switching to allstate is worth it. let's team up to get the lady of the house back on her feet. and help her feel more strength and energy in just two weeks yaaay! the complete balanced nutrition of (great tasting) ensure with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. ensure. always be you.

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on october 10th, the "new yorker" had an article written by my guest ronan farrow. many more pieces would follow. this week he was awarded the pulitzer price for his work alongside megan tuoy, and -- for

their work in "new york times" on the same subject. the me too movement has exploded. ied to explore some of that with ronan. what did you discover when you were doing the reporting? what surprised you? what startled you? >> it was always very clear this was not a story about harvey weinstein or a story about hollywood. this was a story about the abuse of power and the way survivors of sexual violence are silenced and intimidated. the words you described were given not for just this one article about the revelations related to harvey weinstein, but for a series of articles by me and other reports who did incredible work exposing thor systems talking about how, if you are that rich and that powerful, you can hire combat-ready spies to follow people using false identities. you can intimidate and influence the judicial process and the

legal process. these are systems that we continue to need to examine in industry after industry and in every walk of life. >> do you feel, when you say it's about power, it's even, it seems to me, about power more than even about sex. it's the inequality of the power relation that seems to be at the heart of it, that harvey weinstein could have hired people to give him massages, but he chose to humiliate these actresses, partly because i think -- i'm speculating here, but he liked that power differential, if you will. >> he was in an echelon of powerful american men that can command tremendous resources to silence people. that extended to the reporters working on this story. for him of us were threatened and intimidated in various ways, and i think we've worked hard to

not become the story, but it's important for people to know in this country, you still see a version of the truth filtered by the most power of people, and media companies aid and abet that. the law aids and abets that as times. those are real problems. >> do you think we are not in a different place with regard to women in the workplace and their ability to work without having to live under, you know, some of the things you describe or even the kind of double standards that women have always dealt with in the workplace? >> i sincere his hope so, fareed. i think we have a long way to go. a lot of this story was driven by women who were tremendously brave and put a lot on the line, but also have the benefit of some spotlight, some platform. in industry after industry these same stories are playing without the benefit of the spotlight or the marquee names. this is happening from the boardroom to the assembly line, and i hope what people take away from this is how far we still

have to go, that we can't rest on our laurels on this. >> ronan farrow, a pleasure you have to you on. >> thank you, fareed. next on "gps" what would ronald reagan think of the republican parties? what would he think that donald trump has done to his rep parties in we'll talk more about it when we come back. market volatility may do to their retirement savings. that's because they have a shield annuity from brighthouse financial, which allows them to take advantage of growth opportunities in up markets, while maintaining a level of protection in down markets. so they can focus on new things like exotic snacks. talk with your advisor about shield annuities from brighthouse financial- established by metlife.

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$34.90 more per month. call or go on line today. ronald reagan preached free markets, free trade and limited government. he signed the largest amnesty for undocumented immigrants in american history. he talked about america's god-given miss to spread democracy abroad. today president trump has a different definition and we'll talk about that with dan, and mona, a columnist. what do you think the significance of paul ryan resigning is. >> he no longer fits in the republican party. in the first place, he took seriously some accumulating national debt and attempted to

drag his party and country towards a bit of fiscal sanity, but under president trump, who insisted that there were no compromises needed whatsoever, no reforms needed, he found that, i suppose, the only republican reform that he could do was on the tax side, and so the combination of this blowed eye nomar out budget that these passed and the tax cuts ironically has paul ryanian, fiscal hawk, leaving congress having presided over a trillion dollar -- >> he's the second speaker to resign in the last three or four years. >> less than three years. >> speakers donnell generally just leave their job. >> the speaker of the house is one of the most powerful elected positions in the world. members of congress work their whole lives to be speaker and then never lever. tome foley lost his seat. newt gingrich faced major setbacks, he had to step down. you have boehner and ryan

leaving basically because the institution has become dysfunctional. it's very hard to lead the rep house conference. >> why? >> 23-seat majority right now, the freedom caucus is 30 seats. so you just do the math, it's just -- it's very heart to get much done. if you look at the average midterm loss of the party in the white house, about 28, 30 seats, you know, it's going to be very hard to have any kind of congressional governing goods forward. >> could i add another -- >> you the internal polls are are they showing -- in the posts we see, the gap has narrowed. >> so the generic ballot has come down, now democrats up four, which is down from where it was, and everyone talks about these retirements. 42 rep incumbents retiring, but most of those are safe republican seats i just think

what's not quantifiable at this point is the energy on the other side. the only data we have on that are the special elections we have seen so far, in every with you, the democrats are turning out in almost presidential year levels, massive, and the residence are not. they don't seem to have that much to be excited about. the democrats are amped up, so i think the generic data numbers are important, but you have to grab the enthusiasm. i worry that's like a fright train. >> i want to ask you about the issue of why trump's ratings are so high. i think you experienced that as cp cpac. you didn't -- you just talked about character, and you said how can we celebrate a man who has these many strikes against him in terms of his character. you got booed. do you think -- what did that tell you about the republican party today?

>> well, it was that and there was one other aspect, which was this invitation to marine le pen, and was an honored guest. >> and the national fund has a history of anti-semitism. >> exactly, which she has not separated herself from. all right. what it says is that the party is becoming -- it's in danger of becoming a cult, a personality cult for donald trump. the conference, the three-day cpac conference was established to be a cheerleading session for him. there were very few people who were skeptics who are invited, so that's the danger. but as we just heard, that is a part of the republican coalition, but it is also true that suburban, college-educated voters are very dismayed, disheartened, now showing up, especially women, so there are many parts of the party, there

are many moving parts. we don't yet know how it will all shake out, and i don't believe that the time has come to give up on the republican party entirely and say it's a lost cause, it's become a trump cult. i think there are still many, many republicans who are very -- who do not like trump, preferred him to hillary, but would love toss a challenger. >> what trump -- i think he's a symptom of it, not a catalyst, but a level of hyper-populism and native-ism, that i think many didn't see, didn't anticipate. i think there's a couple things going on. i think traditional republican ideas still have support among the base. i think we're going to face an entitlement crisis in ten or 20 years, and conservatives will

supportive of doing something significant, but again what i didn't foresee was sort of the social/cultural nastiness, the toxicity. >> you don't see the trump takeover of the republican party as complete? >> no. historically the party is defined basically by who the most senior elected official is, and right now that person is donald trump. when donald trump goes, someone will succeed him, it could be tom cotton, ben sasse, some young military veterans in this cycle, they sound a lot more like paul ryan on many issues than they do like donald trump. one of those people will succeed. mike pence, his own vice president, nikki haley, mike pompeo, look at the people who you would see as the bench of the republican party. they sound much more like the pre-trump party than the current trump party. fascinating conversation.

we'll have you guys back. thank you so much. next on "gps" ronan farrow told us about how the me too movement spread. we'll focus in on india and a story there. when we come back. don't forget if you miss a show go to cnn.com for a link to my itunes podcast.

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to many, when india comes to mind, it's the tinsel, is the colorful festivals or the vibrant film industry, ownership the economy taking 1.3 people on a path to modernity. but over the past week we've seen a different side, darker in everiens. protests have engulfed the country over a series of rapes. a girl tending her family's horses was kidnapped taken to a temple in january, there a group of men took turns drugging and raping her. after five days, they stringled her with her own scarf and left her body in the woods. she was 8 years old. if we could show you her picture you would see the image of a clear-eyed child. she was a muslim.

the majority of if india is hindu, and the largest minority is muslim. when leaders encourage harmony, tensions tend to wane. when they foment hatred, tensions often turn into persecution and violence. sim prime minister modi ascended to power, tensions have been rising. newspapers are filled with reports of environmental lande gangs, many tied to modi's party, lynching muslims and other minorities for supposedly slaughtering cows, a crime in most of the country. what does this have to do with a child's rape? investigators say the men who attacked the child wanted to expel her nomadic community from the majority hindu area. if true, it would a tart -- a

mob of lawyers, and at least two lawmakers from modi's party came out in support of those accused of the rape and murder earlier this month. right-wing hindu groups allege that the investigators, some of whom are muslim, were biased, that the charges they filed against the eight accused, now all arrested, were politically motivated and an invention. for days as outrage mounted, prime minister modi said nothing. when he spoke, his comments were perfunctory. >> translator: as a society, as a country, we are all ashamed of it. in any part of the country or in any region, incidents like these shake human sensitivities. i want to assure the country that no culprit will be spared. >> what does all of this mean? the defense of the accused like the lynchings themselves is a

part of a political pattern that serves as a message to minorities, as a professor at brown university. the message says v is this, muslim rights are secondary and to be decided by the majority. that message through modi's lukewarm is it condemnation india has made progress and it will make more. modi was silent about the little girl who was raped and killed, but he has launched an enormous campaign to educate girls. this is the kind of initiative increasingly seen globally as the only way forward for developing countries. he's also been a good steward of the economy, he himself is hard-working and honest with no taint of corruption around him. this is the paradox of progress. look at places like china, turkey, even the united states. in many of these countries, the

economies march forward, but administrative reforms proceed, but in social and cultural terms, things are actually more complex. it's a sobering reminder in this arena, as in so many, all good things don't go together. up next after 60 years the people named "castro" ruling cuba, there's a new name. will it change for the better? we'll explore when we come back. o replace one meal or snack a day. glucerna products have up to 15 grams of protein to help manage hunger and carbsteady, unique blends of slow release carbs to help minimize blood sugar spikes. every meal every craving. it's the choices you make when managing blood sugar that are the real victories. glucerna. everyday progress. i had a very minor fender bender tonight! in an unreasonably narrow fast food drive thru lane.

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until 1959, fidel castrol was a revolutionary in a fight again general batista. in that year, against all odds, castro took over cuba, and for the last 59 years, someone with the last name of castro has been running the island nation, either fidel himself or more recently his brother raul, but a

new era dawned on thursday when miguel diaz canel was sworn in as cuba's new president. will it alter anything else significant in the nation? joining muss are julia swage, and research fellow he lbj school of public affairs, and paul rathbone is the author of "sugar, king of havana." julia, is this symbolic or more? >> clearly it's a symbolic change, but it has to be more than that, if we look at the good-bye speech that raul castro gave on thursday and then the inaugural address of the new president diaz canel, what we heard was both continuity and

change. both brothers, one is no longer with us, the other one has stepped aside. a matter of continuity that was so intensely emphasized, of course, makes the notion of change one of gradualism and one of always invoking the legacy that those two brothers brought to the cuban revolution and how it will remain present. >> john, this is happening at the time that the trump administration is reversing the limited opening to cuba that the oboopa administration made. what's going on on that front, and does it matter? >> it's been a partial reversal of the approach that obama began. there have been some concrete measures such as making american visits to cuba more different and to clamp down on the military owned company that is dominate cuba's tourism sectors, but a lot has been more

rhetorical than actual and there's been a curious sonic beem attack which has affected american diplomats and canadian diplomats and their families. that has been argued for the united states a fig leaf that something has that that, but a fid leaf for the ratcheting up of conversation there. the legacy of the cal tro-- castros, is there a sense things couldn't be done when the castros were alive that not just the cuban people but official are just waiting to do? that's been often been the case in other authoritarian or communist rejet stregimregimes. >> raul began formally ruling in 2008. we've had ten good years of a reform agenda by cuban communist

revolutionary standards with beginning to private sector, more foreign investment, more, small f, freedoms, cuban can travel more freely, open their own business form the state is much less present than it once was, but the impulse to look to other transitions in the former communist world or elsewhere i think should be controlled. cuba is looking for a hybrid version of sort of socialism with prosperity, with pockets of capitalism, with a sovereign foreign policy, this notion that a rapid overnight liberalization a la the restructuring we saw after the fall of the soviet bloc, is really nowhere on the agenda. john, what do you think cuba looks like five years from now? >> a poor country, probably, much the same way it does now,

with hopefully a more mixed economy. hopefully more joint ventures from foreign businesses. i'm just thinking from the point of view of havana. the one reason why the reforms haven't advanced is because there's a political fallout to liberalizing the economy. it implies necessarily less economic control and political control. that is the lesson, and once you start down that road politically thinking it's a very slippery slope. >> julia, what is the cuban attitude towards the united states? do they want more contact? do they feel again like this would be a moment post-castro to normalize relations? >> fareed, i'm glad you asked that, because the dynamic with the united states is relevant to the pace of reform at home, and when we had the last two years of the obama administration and the opening of commercial and diplomatic ties, what you also

saw was a political case that raul castro was making and others internally that cuba could in fact open not rapidly, but at a steady pace without losing its sovereignty and its control over its future. so now what i think we see is still in cuba and among the cuban people, a very positive and natural feeling towards americans. it's unnatural for us to have this dis nance for so long. i think what we are looking at is a long history of waiting out washington, but now a kind of social and political attitude, which bakely says the door is still open, but with caution. >> fascinating problem. now, i have two questions i want you to think about -- how many books did you read last year? and what percentage of americans read no books at all in 2017?

we'll get you the answers when we come back. ♪

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if there is something i love and actually tried to sell on this show is books. i like talking to authors about their ideas. i try to always be reading a book or two, which of course leads to my book of the week every week, but today some 750 million adults around the world cannot read or write, according to unesco. that's a big number. the good news is adult literacy rates are on the rise globally increases by an average of 5% per deck wade since 1950. tomorrow is world book day t brings me to my question -- what percent of american adults say they have not read a book or even part of a book in the past year, according to the pugh research center? 4%, 14%, 24% or 54%? before i tell you the correct answer, let me recommend a book. this week it's a classic --

mortimer adler's "how to read a book." it explain not just why we should read them, but how we should read them. it also makes you understand how to learn, comprehend and analyze any written material, masterfully done. the book was revised with charles van doran of quiz show fame. the correct answer is, c, roughly a quarter of american adults say they have not read a whole book or even part of a book in the past year, according to the pugh research center. that goes to books in print, electronic and even audio form. this means 60 million did not curl up with a novel or quick play on a single audio book in 2017. >> pugh research found that certainly demographics correlated. americans who never attended college were five times as likely to not reading than

cleanse graduates. people with annual incomes house holds of less than 30,000, hispanic adults are roughly twice as likely as whites to be non-readers those u.s.-borne hispanics read at the same rate as whites. it seems that rural and usualing america for all their cultural and political differences read at about the same rate. as the president, who is not known to be a big reader his solemn might say, sad. while some americans choose not to read books, we must remember others still struggling to try to. in fact, 18% of american adults perform at or below the lowest level on the literacy scale, meaning they would struggle to read and comprehend a whole book. please donate to year favorite local or national literacy organization on world book day,

and help improve that number. my favorite here in new york is literacy partners, go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to it and some nationwide institutions, including the late former first lady's organization, the barb bra bush foundation for family literacy. thanks to alps of you for being part of my program this week, i'll see you next week. \s. this is or weekly look at the story behind the story and how the news gets made. ahead this house "new yorker" ed tore david rem nick is here. and comey is not the only one on a media blitz. michael avenatti is here. he says sean hannity should be worried, and i'll ask him why. there's a rebellion at the "t