this is "gps" the global public square. welcome to you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the show, summit diplomacy on steroids. >> what history looks like in the making. >> what an extraordinary day. >> history in the making. >> history on the korean peninsula. >> kim jong-un meets his south korean counterpart for the first time ever. angela merkel and emmanuel macron press trump not to dump the iran deal. what is the fallout? i have a great panel to discuss. and -- >> we have gangs roaming the street, and in many cases, they're illegally here. illegal immigrants. and they have guns. and they shoot people. >> you wouldn't know it from

trump's campaign rhetoric, but there is good news about crime here in the united states. we explain the surprising, stunning decline in american crime. also, from abraham lincoln to arch duke france ferdinand, assassinations of political figures have altered history. but what happens when it's the political figures ordering the killings? we'll examine the extraordinary case of israel and its policy of assassinations. but first, here's my take. emanuel macron came, saw and conquered washington this week. but the french president is trying to do something much harder than just generate buzz and goodwill. he is trying to stop donald trump from dividing the western alliance and disrupting the already turbulent middle east. watching macron at work, flattering trump and politely

disagreeing with him, all the while proposing compromised solutions is like watching a skilled dancer. it remains to be seen if he can pull it off, but thank goodness he is trying. on wednesday, macron told me and a small group of journalists, he believes that donald trump will get rid of the iran deal for domestic reasons. tehran has signaled if trump pulls out of the deal on may 12th when he faces a deadline on whether to restore sanctions on iran, the most likely result is that tehran would also withdraw from the deal. iran's foreign minister, mohamed zarif, pointed out to me this week that iran has made a much stronger pledge than most realize. president trump does not seem to have read the agreement. the third line of it states, iran commits to never developing nuclear weapons. there is no time restriction on that. the word question use is "never." the time restrictions relate to voluntary limits on our nuclear energy program that we have undertaken to give the international community

confidence that we are sincere in our intentions, end quote. macron has pushed trump privately and publicly to keep the iran deal. it sets a terrible precedent for the world's leading power to renege on an agreement that it spearheaded and signed, he said. and macron sees it as part of a dismaying pattern from an administration that has decided to pull out of the paris climate accord and the trans-pacific partnership, weakened its commitment to the world trade organization and now seems determined to scuttle the pact with iran. in any event, emmanuel macron is determined not to wring his hands but find a way forward, hence his artful proposal for a new nuclear deal. while this may sound like trump, macron is suggesting something quite different. his new approach has its as first pillar adherence to the existing nuclear deal, unamended and unabridged. but he proposes three additional pillars that would address the ballistic missile program, counter iranian influence in the

middle east and extend the commitments iran has made beyond various time lines in the current deal. in other words, were iran to agree to start talking about these new issues, the current deal would stay intact. now it's not clear that the iranian government would accept this demand, and it's not clear that trump would agree to a framework in which the agreement that he has branded the worst deal ever negotiated would remain in place. both sides would have to climb down from their positions. one iranian who is well-versed in the issues made an interesting observation about why the nuclear deal has had so many critics in both washington and tehran. for 40 years, america and iran have settled into a pattern of behavior. america sees its role as applying pressure and threats to iran. while iran thinks its role is to bravely resist. the nuclear deal was an evident to break with the past and create a new dynamic of dialogue. but it generated a backlash in both countries. macron is trying to forge a new

path for dialogue and diplomacy. if he fails, it will be because too many in washington and even in tehran have gotten comfortable with the old pattern. by mindlessly sticking to it, they seem to be leading us down a path of tension, conflict and perhaps even war. for more, go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. and now the big korea news. president trump said last night at a rally in washington township, michigan, he expected to meet with kim jong-un in the next three or four weeks. this comes, of course, after friday's historic summit between north korea's leader kim jong-un and south korean leader, moon jae-in. after pledging to end the korean war and denuclearize the korean peninsula, the two leaders

declared a new era of peace has begun. but has it? that is the big question for my panel today. sumo terry was a senior analyst at the cia. she is now a senior fellow at the center for strategic and international studies. elliot abrams was a national security adviser for george w. bush. now senior fellow at the council on foreign relations. tony blinkin was a national security adviser, as well as deputy secretary of state in the obama administration. he's a cnn global affairs analyst and the managing director of the penn/biden cent center. how do you make sense of kim jong-un? this is a guy who a year ago was threatening war, taking actions that seemed to suggest that. and now seems to be thinking of every way he can to make peace overtures. he's just reunified the time zone, so north korea had deliberately chosen a different time zone than south korea.

south korea was on the same time zone as japan. and he wanted to make the point that the north was different and independent. he has even reunified that. so is this all symbolic overtures, or is there more to it? >> well, that remains to be seen. certainly, he has made a tactical shift. and we have seen that. and i don't want to minimize the historic moment that this was between the two korean leaders. i'm akorn-american. i've been to tmz. i grew up there. it was very historic. it was very moving. question is, is it really serious, or is he trying to buy time to really wait out the trump administration? when you look at the joint statement that came out, it was great in symbolism. but the question on denuclearization was still not clear. and, of course, you know, there were other summits in the past, 2000, 2007. there were five joint korea declarations, and it's not so

different from those. so there's a lot of feel-good, symbolic stuff. but i'm wondering about denuclearization. he said in the joint statement, there was commitment to denuclearization of the korean peninsula. but, of course, north korea used to have a very different definition of what that means. they used to mean also south korea. ending u.s./south korea alliance, getting u.s. forces off the south korean territory. ending extended u.s. nuclear umbrella over south korea. so there's more questions that are raised than there are answers right now. so we have to see. >> tony blinken, what about all those past deals? are they worth bringing up, or is that sort of unnecessary skeptical? in other words, the south korean -- the north koreans have signed 2007, 2000. they pledged not to do any further tests. but this does feel different. this feels like, you know -- i mean, one thing, just the scope

and breadth with which he is approaching it does feel different. >> look, some context, fareed. a couple of months ago, before the olympics, we seemed to be heading inex horribly toward conflict. now we're talking peace and diplomacy. that's a good thing. but i think sue me is right to inject some notes of caution and restraint. how did we get here? first, relentless economic pressure initiated by the obama administration and smartly continued by president trump. but second, north korea has made so much progress with its nuclear weapons and missiles, it can afford a time-out. and third, there was probably some effect of fire and fury from president trump, both koreas desperately wanted to avoid some kind of preemptive war. now is the hard part. we're at the beginning of a process, at best, not the end of one. it's incredibly complex. it took two years to negotiate the iran deal and there are so many traps. north korea has been a master at basically stringing along negotiations, wringing out economic insessions and walking away. and as sue me said, we have seen

declarations in the past that are at least as forward-leaning. on denuclearization, far more leaning forward language. and kim has gotten a very, very important thing out of this. they have put peace before denuclearization. obama, bush said that peace would be a reward for d denuclearization. the peace track is on a faster track than denuclearization, whether trump actually goes with that and supports that really remains to be seen. >> elliot abrams, i think the fundamental question that in a way tony is raising is so far it does feel like trump has made all the concessions by which i mean for 30 years north korean leaders have wanted to meet the north american president. for 30 years wanted to talk about ending the korean war. the problem was always that south korea and the united states always said, first you have to stop your aggressive

actions. first you have to in substantive ways denuclearize. stop being a rogue state. then we will reward you with these things. aren't they getting rewarded with concessions before they have done anything more than things like reunify the time zones? >> i don't think they are being rewarded yet. first of all, we have to say, 30 years of american policy under presidents of both parties have failed. under those years, that's when they got ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. so continuing the same policy doesn't look like it would be a brilliant move. we'll see if they get any concessions. my own view is that kim looks at the jcpoa and basically says, i want one of those. i want a deal where i can pause on my ballistic missiles, and on my nuclear weapon development for let's say ten years. and get a huge economic reward. and i don't think the president is going to give him that. but we'll see what happens when they meet. >> just quickly, i want to ask

sue me terry as a korean-american, it must have been fascinating to hear from this guy. most of the time we never knew what they sounded like. we learned things like whether he has a kid, what he sounds like. has that been revelatory to you? >> absolutely. this was a huge intelligence success in terms of trying to get to understand kim jong-un better. we didn't even have a recording of kim jong-il's voice. i think he spoke once publicly. he was very introverted guy. kim jong-il was. and i actually heard his voice, the way he was speaking, his mannerism, how he acts with others. i mean, i think this is a huge intelligence benefit in terms of trying to understand their leader of north korea. >> all right. we are going to talk a little bit more about north korea, but also iran, the clock is ticking. donald trump is less than two weeks away from making a decision on the iran deal. and despite entreaties from

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this morning on fox news national security adviser john bolton said that president trump had made no decision whether to stay in the iran deal or pull out. but let's not forget, trump has called it the worst deal ever, and all of the readings of the tea leaves point to him pulling out. what would it mean if he does? joining me are sue me terry, elliot abrams and tony blinken. >> tony, let me ask you as a proponent of the iran deal, you said in the previous segment, north korea is probably dreaming about getting a version of the

jcpoa, the iran deal. isn't it fair to say that if what you're trying to get north korea to sign is something not even -- probably not even close to the iran deal, because the iran deal doesn't allow iran to have any nuclear energy program that could lead to a nuclear weapons program, and north korea by contrast has the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world or fifth largest nuclear arsenal. it would seem bizarre at a time you're trying to get north korea to do some watered-down version of the iran deal to tear up the iran deal. >> i don't think so. i think that if trump stays in the iran deal, which i think he won't do, then i think that kim jong-un says, i can get a deal like that, which does not cause me to abandon anything. it just means a pause for a while. and he can do that pause, and i think it's a very -- like the president does, i think it's a very bad deal. i think if he gets out -- if the president gets out of the deal, the message to kim jong-un is,

i'm not going to do what the president views as a weak deal like that. you are truly going to have to denuclearize, which means abandon nuclear weapons forever. remember that the iran deal, the jcpoa, is just a ten-year deal. parts of it are even a five-year deal. and two of those years are already gone. >> 25 years. but tony blinken, what do you say to that? because the iran deal -- again, one has to remind people, iran has no nuclear weapons. this is a deal which freezes their program 20 years before north korea is, in a sense. >> i disagree with my friend elliot. look, i think the president has tweeted himself into a corner. first, if he tears up the iran deal on may 12th, as everyone expects, it does send a terrible message to kim jong-un, we are not worth the agreements we sign. and that's going to make it more difficult to negotiate something with kim. second, in calling it repeatedly a terrible deal, the worst deal in history, trump has set the bar very high for himself in any negotiation with north korea. is he going to be able to get

the north koreans like he did with iran to actually dismantle the bulk of their program? is he going to be able to get the most intrusive inspections regime in the history of any arms control agreement? that's the bar he set for himself. we should be dreaming about getting an iran-like deal with north korea. that would make us infinitely more secure than we are now. i think that's a very high bar. it's going to be very challenging to see the president clear it. >> elliot, i have to ask you about both the iran and north korea deals. one part about this, it seems to me that becomes clear is, for the longest time people said about north korea and iran, these are crazy regimes, they're irrational. they want the end of the world, they want to blow themselves up in a great conflagration. and there are those that said no, they're rational, they're strategic. you can make a deal with them. if incentives are aligned correctly, it will work. it seems as both in iran and north korea has become

abundantly clear, these people are not crazy. >> well, i would say in the case of north korea, it is still the most vicious, violent, brutal, murderous regime on the face of the earth. >> that is different from being crazy. >> i agree with that. and i think what we're seeing with kim is he's a lot more calculating and more concerned about his image abroad. i think in the case of iran, i would generally agree with you. but i have to say that their hatred of israel does seem to be irrational, from the point of view of iran's national interests. this death to israel stuff, their desire to be a confrontation state with israel is not about iranian-national security and not about the interests of the people of iran. >> i would argue that that's actually a clever public relations ploy of trying to win some arab mass support. they don't do very much about it. but i have to get to sue me terry, because we still have the great puzzle of kim jong-un. and i want to understand how you see the reversal. at some level is it that what

he's done is he built up, built up, built up, was very hostile to the united states, to japan, south korea and china, while he was building up. now he has what he wants. so, of course, he's making peace overtures. if that's the case, it's tough to imagine he would give up what he and the regime has spent 25 years building up. >> you're absolutely right. so there are two ways of looking at this, is a maximum pressure, sanctions, all this talk from president trump about fire and fury that brought kim jong-un to the table. or -- or it could be and/or, kim jong-un feels he has completed his program, he feels he's coming into this program from a position of strength. and in that sense, i'm afraid he's going to offer a deal to the trump administration on intercontinental ballistic missile, icbm, that might take care of our interests in terms of protecting our mainland homeland, but, of course, that does not protect our allies,

japan or south korea's interests. and, in fact, it's basically recognizing north korea's nuclear status. so i'm concerned this is a deal that kim jong-un will bring in the meeting with president trump. >> elliot abrams, is that -- is that a fair concern? a number of people have privately told me, their concern is donald trump loves the idea of being a deal-maker. he loves the idea of this is, you know, going to be a -- you could almost pay -- you could turn this into a pay-per-view summit in terms of the level of interest. is there danger he will give away the store to get a deal? >> i don't think so. i mean, he's wanted to do an israeli/palestinian peace deal, but we're, what, 16 months into the administration and they have yet to offer a trump peace proposal, because he realizes it's not going to work right now. i think the president will be more careful than that. i do think that he will pull out of the iran deal, and i think that that is a good prelude to

negotiating with the north koreans. remember the iran deal isn't really a deal. it's not an executive agreement. nobody actually signed it. it's just a political agreement with barack obama. and if the north koreans are concerned about that, then we should do some kind of more formal agreement that congress approves. remember that congress never approved the iran deal. >> all right. we've got to leave it at that. fascinating conversation. thank you all. next on "gps," you might have heard the news recently that more murders were committed in london than in new york both in february and march. does that shock you? not when you consider the amazing decline that has happened in new york city and more broadly, america, over the last 30 years. we will explain the reasons for that decline when we come back.

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now for our "what in the world" segment. although you would not know it from donald trump's campaign rhetoric, crime is down in america, and at a stunning rate. let's look right here in this neighborhood, where cnn's new york bureau is located at columbus circle. in 1990, this police precinct handled 16 murders, 2,135 robberies, almost 3,000 burglaries and more than 1,000 auto thefts. last year, there was just one murder, 135 robberies, just over 200 burglaries and just 42 stolen cars. each of those is a drop of about 95%. if you looked at all of new york city, 1990 was also the worst year for homicides in general, with 2,245 people killed and on the flip side last year, new york city recorded its lowest number of murders, going all the way back to the korean war, according to the police chief, just 290. and it's not just this neighborhood or new york city.

it is america. according to the bureau of justice statistics, violent crime has fallen by two-thirds from the early 1990s and property crime is down by more than half. why in the world did this happen? and why are we not talking about it and studying it more? i sat down with adam gobnick, doing just that. he wrote a terrific "new yorker" arlen titled "the great crime decline." so adam, let's start with this first. why? why the dramatic drop? >> many competing theories. hypotheses about it. the strongest seem to be it is no one thing. it was the convergence of a thousand small sanities, fareed, happening at once. new kinds of community policing, where communities took control of their own safety. new kinds of community policing coming from the police forces where instead of chasing crime after it happened, the police were in there to stop crime before it could happen. because most crime takes place in relatively few places and relatively nameable locations.

those things mattered a great deal. huge thing that change, simply the virtuous circle of eyes on the street. you know, the one best prophylactic against crime is having a lot of people on the street watching what's happening. that's been the classic urban solution to crime. it's why we had relatively lower crime rates when you had highly populated neighborhoods. more people coming into this city, more young people coming into the city, more people using the subway late at night. all those small things, seem, according to the best sociological guesses, to converge together to make this extraordinary decline. >> so why do you think it is that the image is still one that you can play with, trump harks on american carnage, talked about chicago as if it was the country at large. and it seemed to resonate for some people. >> i think because we live in the long shadow of the crime rise. you and i both grew up in a time when crime was dramatically in the increase. and the images of that period if

you were here in new york in the 1970s, the taxi driver in new york, steaming man holes and guns on every corner, that had an if effect on people. out of proportion and even long after, the reality had altered. and i think that trump, for instance, is able to profit from people's long-term memories and also to profit from the reality that, you know, it's very hard to report good news. a mugging on a street corner is something that makes the late news. no muggings on that street corner for years is not something that we report. normalcy is very hard to dramatize. >> the hero of the story is sharky, who runs the crime lab in new york, and he says in 1990s, americans came together, mobilized, saw violence as a problem, and it's a fascinating story to me about how we often talk about negative trends in the world. but we often forget that every negative trend produces some human response. >> i think that's exactly right. and one of the encouraging

things about the story, hugely encouraging things, that positive response largely was community-based. we think about nations and then we think about states and cities. but this is a story about saving cities block by block and seeing these enormously powerful cycles of virtue. you know, if it becomes easier for you or me to walk from the subway stop to the river, then more people will do it. and then more people will do it. and the way that people converge positively to create their own safety is an enormously stirring part of this story. >> are there any signs that this decline is kind of a new, low plateau or are there indicators that once you look at that cause one to worry there may be an uptick? what does the future look like? >> it seems as though we can continue to rusin carsration, new york particularly and reduce crime the. the negative side, you see homicides and rapes in new york and so on.

and it's impossible to know what's just a bubble on a genuinely declining vector and what's a new trend that we'll see. that takes decades to decide. but what we can say with certainty is that over the last three decades, the vector has been dramatic and in the right direction. next on "gps" the investigative journalist bergman says israel has assassinated more people than any other country. he'll crack open the history of israel's targeted assassination program. polk county is one of the counties that you don't think about very much. it's really not very important. i was in the stone ages as much as technology wise. and i would say i had nothing. you become a school teacher for one reason, you love kids. and so you don't have the same tools, you don't always believe you have the same... outcomes achievable for yourself.

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assassinate. the oxford dictionary defines it as murder of an important person for political or religious reasons. we can all conjure up assassinations that grabbed headlines or changed the course of history. arch duke france ferdinand, gandy, lincoln, jfk, martin luther king, julius caesar. my next guest, ronan bergman, a terrific israeli investigative reporter has done a deep dive on the mostly untold story of israel's secret assassinations. it's all in a new book called "rise and kill first: the secret history of israel's targeted assassinations." ronan bergman, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you, fareed. >> the big question, i suppose, everybody has is, did israel need to have this kind of a

lethal policy, targeted assassinations, to survive? was this a crucial part of what israel needed to do, or could it have done without it? >> well, it's very hard to play counterfactual history, what if. but i can tell you that israel from day one had to use force. even putting aside the trauma of the holocaust, every decade, they had at least one enemy, and a very important one, who calls for israel's destruction. n nasir of egypt. that all the jews who came to israel after 1917, all of them. and any should be expelled. saddam hussein, who threatened to burn half of israel. the most important jew in the last 1,000 years thought that israel could not sustain long wars, so instead he established his very strong intelligence community that could bring an alert for preemptive attack, but not just that. that could launch, pinpoint,

focused operation, way beyond enemy lines. destroy an installation. plant a virus in one of the computers. or kill an individual in order to prolong the time or even prevent the next war. >> what about arafat? what are the most interesting stories about the israeli war? >> arafat was by far the target for numerous attempts on his life. some of them in retrospect look a little bit funny. one israeli military psychiatrist said, i looked, i watched the movie "the manchurian candidate." do me the same. i will hip no advertise him, and i will send him jason bourne style to kill yasser arafat. and they give him an installation with pictures popping from the table so he was shot. he was fully hypnotized. in september 1968, they helped him to cross the jordanian

river, fully hypothetical hypnotized. the guy had a message of a gun, only a few hours later israeli intelligence learned that he went straight to one of the police stations in jordan and said the stupid jews thought they hypnotized me. i am loyal to arafat, here is the gun, i want to come and swear allegiance to yasser arafat. but not all were funny. >> how difficult was this to do? you think of israel surrounded by a sea of arab countries that did not recognize it, were formally at war with it and spoke a language that almost no jew spoke. so how difficult was it in effect? you have to penetrate these arab societies. >> yeah. so that's the masters of israeli intelligence. they would be able to recruit agents from the enemy country, offering them money or other benefits. but do that under false

identity. meaning it would be much easier for an arab, syrian, senior air force commander to work for a nato officer than for an israeli officer. >> so the israelis would -- impersonate a nato official to a recruit. >> yep. >> because the syrian would -- for no amount of money be willing to work for israel. >> yeah. but in comes a french businessman who says, listen, we are competing in a bid for syria for water supply or whatever, we need your help. that would be much easier and this opens the door to extensive cooperations. so these israelis have not just the ability to manipulate someone, to recruit him, that's the manual, to betray everything that is important to him. his country, his family, the organization. but also have the ability to work undercover vis-a-vis the authorities in europe and wherever they are operating. >> one of the things i've noticed when talking to some of the former heads of assad and

other senior intelligence officers -- >> they do talk, huh? >> they do talk, very off the record, as you know. they are very -- i would put it uncomfortable with -- or they have grown very uncomfortable with their role in the occupation of the west bank, and previously gaza. that it felt -- it's one thing to protect israel against its enemies like egypt and such. you see that in that movie "the gatekeepers" where you have every intelligence chief on camera, on the record, saying we should get out of this, we're in favor of a two-state solution. do you find that, or what is the mood now? because israel has essentially solved the problem of palestinian terror between the kind of operations you're describing and the wall. israel is secure. so how do these intelligence folks feel now? >> i have done 1,000 interviews for this book. and i can tell you that the vast majority of people, mosad,

military intelligence, they all support the two-state solution. and even more, i think that today in israel, the people who keep democracy, values of human rights, by far are people from these circles. active informer. and i think a country when the mature grownup are the intelligence chiefs, where usually they're the trigger-happy and political leaders want to push them, i think such a country has a difficulty. >> i hope prime minister netanyahu reads your book. >> i hope so too. thank you. >> pleasure too much you on. up next, we have a treat for you. jake tapper on his new novel, and on the trials and tribulations and trials of covering the trump white house. , hotel, car and activity all in one place. ♪

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my next guest is immersed in the inner workings of d.c.

politics on a daily basis. jake tapper has covered every twist and turn of the trump administration. on saturday night, he and a team of cnn colleagues won the prestigious merriman smith award for their coverage of president trump. trump was not in attendance. he is also the author of a new book, a fictional political thriller titled "the hellfire club." the novel is set in washington at the height of mccarthyism. people often say novels are in some way autobiographical, that you write about what you know. so in what sense is this about what you know? >> that's a great question. i think it is an expression of concerns i have about washington. the hero is a young republican congressman, the eisenhower era, world war ii hero, thrust into this world and he and his wife experience a conspiracy. but one of the themes of the book is the compromises that the main character, charlie martyr, makes, along the way. he comes to washington to do

good. he wants to be a good congressman. he wants to protect people. and little by little, bits of his soul are eroded by the system. and that's something that i've seen happen. a lot of people come to washington to do good things. and they find themselves immersed in the swamp bit by bit, and next thing you know, they're in over their head and they lose themselves. >> what do you think is the system that makes all this -- you know, all this -- all these good people turn bad? is it partly pandering to special interests, pandering to voters? what is the incentive that makes people make all these compromises? >> i think the first one is money. money really runs washington. people's self preservation is about getting campaign contributions and about big donations. so that's one. and two, a lot of people go down to washington to do good and then they ultimately end up

getting trapped in the system and they're all of a sudden all these favors they're getting and all of a sudden they're living a lifestyle they're not used to. and then preserving that, holding on to that power becomes more important than why they were sent there. >> and now you -- you used the title, "the hellfire club," comes from a british -- >> you know this. >> 200-year-old society. what i'm struck by, there was a great deal of personal immorality involved. that was part of the old -- >> it was obscene. >> do you think that washington actually has a lot of that or is it actually quite stayed and tame, certainly compared to the rumors of the old hellfire club? >> it is hard to imagine that people can get away with the kind of bakkenel that the members of the 1700s hellfire club experienced. i mean, those were -- i can't even go into it on the show. but really obscene. and it was -- >> since they had that info on each other, there was a lot of

deterrents. >> exactly. mutual distraction. this member of royalty would do what this nobleman wanted to do because they had dirt on each other. >> so have we progressed from that? >> i don't know. i can't imagine that there aren't secret societies. i don't know of any. but i can't imagine, especially what -- >> washington seems so boring. >> maybe not washington. maybe it would be in virginia. maybe they drive a couple or take a plane down to the caribbean to a private island. but knowing what we know about powerful, rich men, i can't believe that there isn't something like the hellfire club today. >> no one has invited you? >> i would never be invited. nor would you. but it's -- i mean, i don't know of it. this is a fictional book. and the flight of fancy is that the hellfire club from the 1700s in england is replicated in washington, d.c., in the 1950s. but do you think it doesn't exist? something like it?

i mean, all these rich, powerful men, who are under more scrutiny today than they have ever been and in the '50s under more scrutiny then. do you think there aren't places they go, and do things they would love to do without cameras around, et cetera? >> is mccarthyism a parallel you intentionally wanted to draw to today? there are people who say after 9/11 the united states overreacted in many ways, just as it did in the 1950s. >> joe mccarthy and donald trump stand for very different things. but the techniques of joe mccarthy, the smearing, the disregard for the truth, that's similar. and so when i wrote about that phenomenon, there were things that i wrote about with the perspective of 2018. and there's also this factual connective tissue. joe mccarthy's protege, roy cohen. roy cohen's protege, donald trump. so there are similarities. now a trump supporter might read

the book and say this is the washington swamp that trump rails about, and he would be right too. >> the pervasive theme is, the degree to which money tore ru s corrupts, to which politics and special interests are all in collusion. it's a pretty -- it's a pretty sad, cynical view of washington. >> i don't know that it's sad. i prefer to think of it as a fun and kind of vaguely disgusted view of washington. but i think it expresses a lot of my feelings about washington, about the compromises that one is forced to make. there's also the larger theme of, what does mccarthy want to do to protect america? what compromises is he willing to make? what compromises is president eisenhower willing to make in order to protect america from both the communists and from mccarthyism? so the question of compromises in an evil system or a tdegradig system is one that's pervasive. >> jake tapper, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you so much, fareed. i appreciate it.

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. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hey, welcome to washington. i'm brian stelter and this is "reliable sources." our weekly look at the story behind the story of how the media really works and how the news gets made. this hour, the white house correspondents' dinner aftermath. we'll get into it with the head of the association, margaret taleb and trump insider, anthony scaramucci, and trump's stunning phone call to fox. and allegations again