officials on twitter, made destabilizing foreign policy announcement on twitter, has even potentially obstructed justice on twitter, but with his 56 million twitter followers, 40,000 tweets and counting it seems the creature cannot be stopped. >> mer yes wriry christmas, far zakaria starts right now. this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show a bombshell from the pentagon, defense secretary james mattis announces his resignation, just a day after we learned president trump intends to pull all american troops out of syria. first mcmaster, then kelly, now mattis. where have all of trump's generals gone and what does their departure mean for

american foreign policy? i will ask richard haass to make sense of all of it. and we'll take a step back from the apparent onslaught of bad news. is the current situation in america and europe, around the world, as bad as many think? or are we, in fact, living in one of the most prolific productive safe times in history? steven pinker versus neil ferguson. finally, i will introduce you to a young woman whom you will surely want to meet. >> we have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. we have come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not. >> she's trying to do nothing less than save the world. but first here is my take. emanuel macron has been the great hope for those who worry that global politics is being dominated for populism, nationalism or racism.

in his presidential campaign last year, macron was able to rally france around a message of reform and even multilateralism. now macron has been humbled by the yellow vest street protests. he was forced to backtrack on some of his reforms and adopt new budget busting subsidies in an attempt to nullify the mob and there is the mess in britain as it keeps trying and failing to brexit, italy's budgetary west coast get worse and the embrace of illegal democracy in hungary and poland continues. it all adds up to a depressing picture of europe and the west. but are things really so gloomy? as "politico's" matthew karner ship points out support for the eu is at its highest level in decades an on closer examination while the forces of populism do continue to surge in tomorrow places mostly the story of the last few months has actually been one of push back. consider poland and hungary, in

many ways the poster children for the populist nationalist movement. in poland efforts to reshape the country's supreme court ignited massive national protests and europe's high court ordered the move to be reversed. on monday warsaw complied and scrapped the law. in hungary the prime minister's latest authoritarian steps changing label laws have strig triggered widespread protests uniting the nation's op simple forces as never before. in france macron's demise is premature. his poll numbers are way down but voters prefer him to the far right la pin by a wage margin. he has a five-year term. his party controls the legislature and most analysts agree that his reforms are inevitable if france is to compete for investment and generate growth. he may end up a one-term president but he will have spearheaded the most important changes in france in a generation. in italy the new coalition government had introduced a populist budget that promised a

universal basic income and early retirement only to meet the steely opposition of the cure european union and it was the populists that blinked. rome retreated from the populist measures and announced a budget conforming to the guidelines set by brussels. britain remains more complicated but the basic story that every time the country comes close to actual brexit it pulls back appalled by the costs. proponents of brexit sold the country a fantasy that it could get the benefits of access to the european union's market without the costs of having to obey its rules. as time passes, more and more britains are coming to realize that they cannot have their cake and eat it, too. finally, look at the united states, where a president who proudly embraces populism and nationalism reins. >> i'm a nationalist. okay? >> but in november the opposition democratic party had its strongest gain in the house of representatives since the watergate wave of 1974. perhaps more significant, there

are now 17 separate investigations into president trump and his associates, some of which have already produced indictments. and that does not include the series of congressional inquiries certain to begin once the democrats take control of key committees in the house. i don't mean to minimize the populist wave that is still coarsing through the west and other parts of the world, but concern should not give way to despair. there are many people in every country who oppose the politics of anger and identity. they are also strong and they need to run fast but not run scared. for more go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. ♪ >> on wednesday we learned of president trump's plans to withdraw american troops from syria.

isis trump claimed in a tweet has been defeated there. on top of that shock, a bigger one came the next day as secretary of defense james mattis announced his resignation in a letter to the president. in it mattis made his own priorities clear, maintaining alliances, showing respect for allies, using american power to provide for the common defense and to stand up to those nations whose strategic interest are in tension with america's. retired four-star general suggested his views were not aligned with the president he is a. to help make sense of all of this i want to bring in richard haass. haas was director of policy planning in the state department under george w. bush, he is the president on the council of foreign relations and the author of "a world in disarray." richard, let's first talk about the process here because my suspicion is that james mattis has always known that he and trump had disagreements but that he felt like on the issue of syria and maybe afghanistan he had gone to the president a year

ago, he had gotten authorization for a new policy, 2,000 troops, more use of bombs, remember trump used to boast about how they were using bigger bombs in syria, and that they had informed the rest of the world, allies, et cetera, and it's the way in which this policy was just upended with no process, no strategy, no informing allies. my gut is that some part of it was just the chaos of policy making that has gotten to james mattis. >> i think so and i think he made the calculation all along that he was never going to agree with everything. he was traditional and mr. trump is many things, traditional is not one of them. mattis basically said, i'll stay here so long as on balance in the in et i am either accomplishing good things or preventing really bad things from happening. i think what actually happened in the last couple of days is he reassessed and came to the conclusion that whatever he was accomplishing or preventing it wasn't happening anymore. mr. trump essentially has become not only his own national

security adviser, he has also become his own secretaries of against. >> you saw that reserve that mattis had, if you remember that early meeting of the cabinet where trump forced cabinet officials to go around almost in a north korea fashion pledging loyalty to him and mattis was the one guy who refused. he said it's an honor to serve the american people and lead the armed services. he made no reference to trump. again, in this letter of resignation to me the most interesting part is the omission. he doesn't thank trump personally. >> no, again, he ended it with a reference to the men and women in uniform. he was in that sense true to himself. there were so many signals in this letter. this is one of those great things that historians will look over. what i liked about it, it's so rare in washington where people actually resign and then resign on matters of principle and policy and it wasn't add whom numb, it wasn't strong, it was big. he was basically saying we are not on the same page. you might as well have somebody who is on the same page as you because you are sure as had he

will no the listening to me and he spelled out his differences. big things, fundamental issues of american foreign policy, actually thought that was healthy. those issues started at the beginning, again, the story we know, both you and i know that's true is that mattis was alarmed at how trump didn't seem to get the big picture, asked the joint chiefs to arrange a briefing for him in the tank, the joint chiefs kind of facility and laid out for him what the goal of american foreign policy had been for 70 years, which was to build a world of stability based on institutions and alliances, why these were important and how russia and china were trying to destroy that or destabilize that world. at the end of it trump apparently said, i don't buy any of this, and what's interesting is mattis' letter replays that difference of opinion. >> what's also interesting is so many of us kept thinking that somehow what mr. trump would learn in office, the realities of office, would make him more traditional, would make him more

of an establishment foreign policy figure, and guess what, he's not. he has stood by his earlier views. he thinks the costs of american foreign policy and leadership simply aren't worth t he doesn't see the benefits, he doesn't believe in trade accords. donald trump is an outlier. he is a radical. he is not in the post world war ii foreign policy tradition of the united states and what i think we've seen in the last couple of days is further evidence that he is not going to change. >> and it's felt like a kind of isolationism where he was saying we're just going to get out, but we have a big stick if anyone does anything to us. it reminds me of that book that was written in the council by walter russell meade under your tutelage where he -- where meade talks about jacksonian tradition, this is andrew jackson. we're isolationists but if you come after us we have a big stick, we will beat you up and retreat back home. >> it's a narrow conception of american views in the world.

he was also saying if you don't come after us directly and go after others, have at it, boys. it's such a narrow view of the potential of the world to have adverse affects on the united states and it almost undermines his own philosophy. if you believe in making america great again it's not obvious to me how that can happen in a world that's unrafg. mr. trump seems unable to see that connection. >> let's talk about the specifics. the syria decision. i have never thought the u.s. has had a very solid strategy in syria, we basically -- we don't have a team to back. the russians, the iranians they have a team to back, they have assad, this he back him, he's got real power and with some legitimacy in the region a brutal dictator. we don't. we are looking around so we keep playing the game with some hope. will it matter that much that we take these 2,000 troops out? >> it will matter in the narrow counterterrorism effort. the idea that you've defeated terrorists and they go away, that's not the way it works.

they will reconstitute themselves so that will come back. that will be a decision either he or his successor will rue. in terms of the future, long ago we had accommodated ourselves to the reality that this government, this regime, wasn't going anywhere. the question now i think is whether the united states and others can use the incentive of economic help for rebuilding to try to bring about a degree of political reform, a bit of restraint on the part of mr. assad before he and others settle any scores. the fact that we don't have 2,000 troops there obviously reduces our leverage. >> afghanistan, reports are that we're going to drop by 50%. that worries me because it feels like afghanistan is actually a moderate success in that we have kept the country sort of together. >> right. >> and what i worry about is if we are destabilize the government, that is the case where we know who will take advantage, the chinese have been waiting to have greater and greater control of afghanistan. >> you will see -- basically the

pack sustaipakistanis, the chin our goal in afghanistan can't be who win. we are not going to turn the place into switzerland but simply to keep it from falling apart because we saw what happened just before 9/11 when that happened. unfortunately we are on a trajectory where the possibility of syria's back sliding is real and, again, we can't insulate ourselves from that. i don't understand why it's so difficult for people to understand that what happens elsewhere can sooner or later or will sooner or later affect the quality and security and prosperity of life here. i would have thought 9/11 was enough of a class in that, but i'm afraid we may have to basically learn that experience again the hard way. >> one final thought. you've worked in four administrations and i'm told that a third of the spots at the nsc are empty, something like that that in the national economic council, key white house positions are not being filled. it feels like really a kind of

chaotic and very thinly staffed white house. >> it feels that way because it is. and then mr. trump doesn't -- he tends not to use what little staff he has. i think one of the lessons of the last week or so is process matters. process is there to protect. it's meant to inform people, to say, hey, if you do this, there's a decent chance this will come of it. are you sure you want to do that? by not having the place staffed up, by not using the staff that you do have, by essentially flying by your gut the united states dramatically increases the odds that bad decisions will be taken and then there won't be any serious execution or implementation. government is hard. foreign policy is hard. particularly in this world where so many others have such power. and the idea that a president wouldn't totally staff himself up and use the resources around him from the cia to the pentagon to the state department, it's like going to a card table and basically saying don't deal me all the cards, i'm prepared to play five card stud with only three cards. not a very smart way to play the

game. >> richard haass, pleasure having you on. >> thank you. it may seem like a frightening time for america and the world, but is it really? is it perhaps actually the greatest time to be alive? are those two options in conflict? two terrific scholars, neil ferguson and steve pinker have a discussion and a debate when we come back. - [narrator] the typical vacuum head has its limitations, so shark invented duo clean. while deep cleaning carpets, the added soft brush roll picks up large particles, gives floors a polished look, and fearlessly devours piles. duo clean technology, corded and cord-free. and fearlessly devours piles. do i use a toothpaste that whitens my teeth, or one that's good for my teeth? now i don't have to choose. from crest 3d white, the whitening therapy collection with new spearmint and peppermint oil.

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sea ice, rising ebola infections and looks at the big picture of the world today. are we in a dark moment as it may seem to you if you read the front page of most newspapers or spend a few minutes on twitter on any given day, or are we in one of the best periods in all of humanity, where a few bad trends overshadow all the good news? well, it's a big crucial debate and we are going to have it here today. steven pinker is a professor of psychology at harvard and a best selling author, perhaps best known for his 2011 book "the better angels of our nature," and neil ferguson is a senior fellow and also a best selling author, his latest is "the square and the tower." steven, let me start with you one you feel as how that there's almost a systematic way in which we ignore good news and overemphasis bad news in the media. explain what you mean. >> well, the nature of journalism is going to emphasize

the negative because bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day and they can creep up on us by stealth. if something explodes, if there is a shooting, if a building collapses, that's news, but if the global extreme poverty rate declines by a few percentage points there's never a thursday in october in which it happens in which it makes the headlines, but when you track the data year by year, you see that the world can be transformed and there's never a point at which it makes the news. >> and, steve, your thesis as i understand you have two books that essentially make this point with a lot of detail. you think we are living in the most peaceful, prosperous and progressive, you know, in the sense of greater and greater rights for more and more people in human history, correct? >> yeah, and it's not a matter of what i think, it's what the data shows. now, of course, these

improvements don't happen inn ex trablly year after year after year, there are always wiggles and bumps, sometimes there are nasty surprises, but the overall trend over the decades, over the centuries is for every measure of human well being to improve. >> neil ferguson, what is your response to that? >> well, i don't violently disagree with steve that the world is a good deal better at the end of 2018 than it was 100 years ago or for that matter 50 years ago, there have been enormous improvements in most economic measures, even in equality which is something that people worry about a lot has actually gone down global globally not least because of the extraordinary economic miracle in the world's most populous country, china. where i disagree with steve is the inference that he draws about the future because you could equally well have

published a book a little -- along the same lines as steve's in, say, 1911 and it would have been true that the world was significantly better in 1911 than it had been in 1811, but that wouldn't have been a reason to be naively optimistic about the future because you were just three years away from cataclysm in the form of world war i. the middle decades of the 20th centuries were catastrophic for really large proportions of humanity. so i think the right way to think about this is that history does have some very pleasing trend lines when it comes to economic welfare and indeed to conflict, another thing that steve emphasizes, but history teaches us to watch out for sudden discontinuities and in a highly networked, highly integrated world of the sort that we've built in the last 30 years, there are enormous vulnerabilities. so the story could change from a good news story to a bad news

story in a day, and that would not be fake news if it were a global pandemic of the sort that the world was struck by at the end of the first world war. i don't entirely agree with steve in the sense that sometimes there really is bad news and history doesn't necessarily prepare you for it. >> steve, let me pick up on the point niall was making in. 1911 this was auch is a book written "the great illusion" in which it was said essentially war will never happen again. >> he did not say that. >> he said that he thought it would be so expensive that it wouldn't pay -- >> he was right. >> it was read by many people just to mean that wars are not going to break out. and the point is you had world war i, you had the great flu epidemic in which more people died than in many countries in world war i, you had the great depression, you had stalin and his madness, you had the second

world war and then you had mau and his madness. so from 1914 to 1954 let's say it certainly looks like it was a pretty bleak period. >> it did. by the way, normal angel did not predict that war could not happen, he just predicted -- >> many people read the book and said that, you know -- because it represented what seemed like a century of peace and progress that had taken place. >> well, only if you look at certain parts of europe. it wasn't so peaceful in the united states which had the worst war in its history, the civil war, it wasn't so peaceful in china which had the worst civil war in human history, not so peaceful in southern africa -- >> but then you're making my point. i'm not -- the point i'm trying to make is that despite that illusion of peace the next 30 years proved to be war-filled, violent, bloody -- >> yes, and it can happen and i'm not predicting that it can't

happen, no one could predict that, but of course one could also make predictions of impending doom repeatedly, that also turned out to be false, if you pick, for example, predictions that i grew up with that world war iii between the united states and the soviet union was inevitable, it would be a nuclear war. if you looked at predictions after 9/11 that were going to be weekly massive terrorist attacks that shoulder launched missiles were going to shoot planes out of the sky, there were going to be massive explosions at football matches, if you look at predictions in the early '90s that a new generation of super predators was going to shoot the crime rate up just before it plunged. you can have false predictions in both directions. i'm not making a prediction that these positive trends will necessarily continue, but we should inform our predictions by which way trend lines have been going, while being aware of the possibility of nasty surprises. >> we have to take a break. when we come back i will did

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and we are back with steven pinker and niall ferguson talking about the world, is it falling to pieces or better than ever? niall, let me ask you to give us a sense of where you think the world is going because you and i have had this debate while i was taking steve pinker's side in toronto and i recall some of the points you were making, which i thought were quite valid which was if you look at the world from the point of view of the state of democracy, there seems to be a retreat both in important countries and smaller countries. if you look at the support for kind of international order, what was often called the liberal international order, that seems to be declining, the you see the right of nationalism, populism. many political trend lines don't seem as positive as they might have ten years ago. correct? >> i think there's some truth in what you say, fareed, though i'm careful in saying that there are very clear trends with respect to, say, democracy.

the trend that i'm most interested in which i think has the greatest potential to disrupt democratic and undemocratic societies is our trend towards being a networked world. one of the argument i made in the square in the tower i think has been vindicated that by creating a highly integrated network online with giant network platforms such as facebook and google, we've created a much less stable public sphere in which fake news and extreme views are, in fact, pro river rated because of the way that the algorithms work in the business models of these companies. now, that's a trend that is disrupting all kinds of different countries, from the united states all the way to myanmar in ways that i think are actually quite troubling. i don't think we have a good answer to the question what do we do to preserve democracy and the rule of law in an age of

institutionalized fake news on social media. that seems to me a big worry and coming back to the discussion we had a moment ago with steve, if you're asking the question what could possibly go wrong with this best of all possible worlds, the thing that i think is most likely to go wrong is that the unintended consequences of highly globalized, highly integrated platforms are likely to be disruptive in a whole range of dimensions, disrupting our politics, potentially also disrupting financial markets if you think about some of the impacts that technology can have there, and ultimately even disrupting the climate of the planet. it wouldn't take much to derail the trend lines that steve talks about in his books and that's why i'm fascinated by the one law of history that really matters and that's the law of inn untinded consequences. nobody who built facebook expected that it would be a decisive variable in the election of donald trump, but it was. >> that is certainly true,

although whenever there is a new medium such as the printing press there is often a period of a wild west where stories, conspiracy stories pro live rate until the system recalibrates and mounts an immune response and figures out how to control it. we haven't done that yet with the rise of social media, but when the printing press originated there were fake books of the bible being disseminated, we had the protocols of the elders of zion which blamed the world's problems on jewish conspiracy, there was massive plagiarism, fake outers. eventually a regime settled in place that got rid of the worst excesses. it remains to be seen whether we will fail to implement that in the says case of social media. >> steve, that was after 130 years of religious conflict that the printing press undoubtedly fueled. it took a long time to get from martin luther to the peace of west failure. i think one of the lessons of our time is that that analogy that you just made is very good

that in many ways the personal computer and internet have done the that i am to our era as the printing press did to the 16th and 17th centuries, but that's a disquieting thing because it really did produce polarization, epidemics of crazy ideas. you didn't mention the best example which is the idea that witches live amongst us which went completely viral on both sides of the atlantic and led to thousands of people being horribly killed for absolutely no good reason. that seems to me a reason to be quite cautious about where we're going from here. it may not be 130 years of religious conflict, but we could certainly have, say, 13 years of really bitter ideological political conflict with the potential that it shades over from verbal violence which we currently have plenty of on the internet to actual violence. that's a reason to worry, i think. >> steve's great peril is that one day future historians will look back and they will cite steve pinker the way historians

today cite normal angel as somebody who was broadly speaking too confident in the trends and underestimated the black swan low proeblt high impact events that can completely change the historical trajectory. >> i have to give you a sho short response. will you be cited like norman angel. >> not to anyone who reads me because i do talk about distributions, low probability, high impact events and, why he, they can occur. again, norman angel did not predict that war was impossible, just that it would be ruin ous and he was right. >> on that note, good news and bad news. i have to thank both of you, it was a fascinating discussion, wonderful way to close out the year. thank you both. next on "gps," president trump says he's not building an ugly concrete wall on the mexican border. no, he tweeted, he plans to build a wall of artistically designed steel slats. it will he says be beautiful,

but ugly or beautiful, what can the world teach us about walls and whether or not they work? we have the facts when we come back. don't fore get if you miss a show go to cnn.com/if a lead for a link to my itunes podcast. are you taking the tissue test? yep, and my teeth are yellow. time for whitestrips. crest glamorous white whitestrips are the only ada-accepted whitening strips proven to be safe and effective. and they whiten 25x better than a leading whitening toothpaste. crest. healthy, beautiful smiles for life.

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over trump's insistence on a big, beautiful border wall. you might consider the president's fixation singular or even quick sod dig, but trump is hardly alone in this quest. across the world we are in an age of walls which is the subject and title of a new book by tim marshall. at the end of the cold war there were only 15 border walls around the world, after 2000 the number spiked and by 2016 there were 70 according to elizabeth valet, a professor at the university of quebec at montreal. the reason shouldn't be hard to fathom. they include unprecedented levels of migration and the conflict in the middle east. there is the rise of national leaders eager to fence off their countries some of whom have succeeded. the question is do these walls work? well, sometimes they do. take the massive wall that separates the west bank from israel, it's forbidding, made of 25 foot tall concrete slabs and

electrified fencing. construction began in 2002 after a rash of suicide attacks from the west bank. suicide attacks did fall from 16 in 2002 to just five in 2006 according to the political scientist hon has ner and jason whittenburg. fatalities similarly lunged and have stayed down. the 1,700 mile longwall made of sand that morocco built along the disputed territory of the western sahara. construction began in 1980 to defend against the is a that ary people who reflect morocco's claim on the territory. the wall is flanked by land mines, hundreds of soldiers and violence reduced by 1991 when the u.n. brokered a peace deal. take the fences along hungary's

borders built in late 2015, within days of hungary closing the border with croatia migrant arrivals virtually ceased, the "washington post" notes. but whether or not the walls achieved their narrow objectives should not be the only criteria used to evaluate them. as after as marshall notes the berlin wall technically suk seeded, it stemmed mass desertions of east germans but also turned a ton kree into a prison. in israel the suicide attacks have come down but the wall has also deepened palestinian dis affection. the moroccan wall stemmed violence but is estimated to have cost 40% of the country's gdp to build and defense. the fences compelled others to follow suit mark the idea of an open europe with creeping divisions. so what bearing does all this have on trump's wall? well, a colossal expense, ali alienating neighbors, promoting divisions, trump's wall seems to

have most of the costs and few of the benefits of these examples. unlike in israel and morocco, there hasn't been any real threat of terrorism coming from the southern border since 9/11 and net migration from mexico has been zero for years now. the wall is geographically implausible, the terrain at parts of the border would make its construction all but impossible and for all these reasons a majority of americans oppose trump's wall. and they are right. up next, i saw a video this week that stopped me in my tracks. a young woman from sweden making a passionate plea for the world to finally do something about climate change. >> we have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. >> she will join me here in the global public square in just a moment. ♪ a wealth of information. a wealth of perspective. ♪ a wealth of opportunities. that's the clarity you get from fidelity wealth management.

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that is what a brave and powerful 15-year-old said to the assembled world leaders, other dignitaries and ngos at the cop 24 climate conference in poland. greta is a young woman from speeden who has decided to make it her life's mission to save the world from climate change. listen to her speak truth to power as she looks to the future. >> the year 2078 i will celebrate my 75th birthday. if i have children, maybe they will spend that day with me. maybe they will ask me about you. maybe they will ask why you didn't do anything while there still was time to act. you say you love your children about all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes. >> greta went on to tell the grown-ups you are not mature enough to tell it like it is.

well, she certainly is mature enough to do so and she joins me now from stockholm sweden. thanks for joining us, greta. >> thank you. >> you first came to our attention at least when you began to skip many, many days of school, i think it was three weeks in all, and you went and protested outside of sweden's parliament. what made you think of doing that? >> i got the idea from -- there were a few youths in the u.s.a. that refused to go to school because of the school shootings and then someone i knew said, what if children did that but for the climate. then i thought that was a very good idea. and then i decided i was going to do that because no one is doing anything and nothing is happening. so then i guess i have to do something. >> so it was the parkland shooting in florida and those children who decided to protest in that way that in a sense

inspired you. when you decided you wanted to do something like this, did you -- you talked to your parents, did they agree? how did you -- how did you proceed? >> i told them and they said, are you sure that's a good idea? isn't there anything else you can do to make your voice heard? and then i said, no, this is what i'm going to do. and then said that we are not going to support you with this, you are going to have to do this alone if you are going to do this, because they are parents and they can't support this. >> why do they not support it? and what is it they mean not support it? they couldn't support your taking time off from school, they felt that that was inappropriate? >> yes. i mean, a parent's duty is to make sure that their child goes to school. of course they can't support that i'm skipping class like this. >> what made you decide that this was going to be the thing that you wanted to do?

have you always been looking for some -- for a cause? you always felt like you wanted to make a difference in the world, or is it that climate change just strikes you as so big that you felt moved by that? >> yes, i mean, the climate crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced and if we don't do anything right now we're screwed. then i thought that i want to be able to when i grow up to look back and say i did what i could back then and it is my moral duty to do what i can and then i just decided to do it because there's nothing i have to lose. >> and you are not just talking about it, but as we say in the united states, you're also walking the walk. you have changed your life, your lifestyle, to try to have as low an impact as you can both in terms of climate and sustainability.

outline some of those measures. >> yeah, i have stopped flying, i have stopped eating meat and dairy and i have stopped consuming new things and buying new things. >> so we're coming up on christmas and new year. you're not going to get any new -- any new things as gifts? >> no, not me. my parents, they don't get me many presents because i don't want any presents. >> greta, what would you say to people, particularly in places like the united states, what's your message to, you know, to the adults in the room, as it were? >> my message to the people in general is that we have to understand the emergency of this situation and we need to realize that our political leaders have failed up and then we must make our voices heard and to say -- to put pressure on the people in power and say to them that we

are not going to allow this to continue anymore. we young people need to say that we must hold the older generations accountable for the mess they have created and expects us to live with and say to them that you cannot continue risking our future like this. so we need to get angry and then we need to transform that anger into action. >> well, i admire your conviction and your garage. greta, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. it was a pleasure to be on here. next sunday in our time slot don't miss my latest documentary, presidents under fire, the history of impeachment. you won't want to miss it. happy holidays, happy new year and we will see you in 2019.

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well, merry christmas eve eve, i'm brian stelter and it's time for "reliable sources" our weekly look at the story behind the story of how the media really works, how the news gets made and how all of us can help make it better. a lot ahead this hour including a year full of trump's complaints about the media. we will look at some of these unhinged tweets, and we're also going to get into the boycott against tucker carlsson, it's a growing boycott but is targeting advertisers the best way to protest a tv show? we will get into that plus some surprising news about hollywood, the big screen doing better than you might have heard, but the small screen also surpassing expectations. but first here on "reliable sources" it'