republican majority. i was a law clerk on the united states supreme court and i was united states attorney and have argued cases before the court. i have extraordinary respect and reverence for the court we need to fill that vacancy assess possible because a deadlock is damaging for the whole country that's what i've been leading the fight to a point and confirm the next justice for the united states supreme court your i cannot deadlock on the court simply insects that branch of government with the kind gridlock we've seen all too often and all too prevalent in the legislative branch. and i believe the united states supreme court should do its job, hold a hearing, have a vote and confirm merrick garland to be on the united states supreme court. >> mr. carter, two minutes. >> think he very much for our dissent thank as well because as we know has been difficult to

get a debate and i think you have provided a source for us to give these questions out in the open. it's really something that's pretty important to do. with respect to the supreme court we get the question a lot what kind of justices would you want to put on the court. i would say this. number one i don't think anyone should be afraid of hearings. i think the republicans should have supported him and. if i were in those shoes i would advocate of the leadership that we have a case. whether or not justice garland is the one we should put up eyed about anybody can make that case prior to actually having to hearing in place. with that said it is important that we provide the court with the ability to do its job and that's a question. can 4-4 make a big difference was i would like to see and i've never on the supreme court but for that matter it simple with the right person in that job. when other to somebody to be on the supreme court want to look for somebody who's not a judicial activists on either side of the aisle. i want somebody whether the

judicial history that you take a look and find they are not biased one way or the other. i think that's very important. i think it's important to the citizens of the united states and of connecticut because we have seen gridlock. it's not the supreme court giving us the gridlock. it is the legislature. i'm sure, and the congress. will have a lot of discussion a gridlock over the next hour or so. it will be my answer. >> you have one minute to respond. >> i think that the next justice on the united states supreme court ought to be a mainstream thinker who believes in the rule of law, regardless of partisan differences and who has respect for past precedents and, therefore, will uphold roe v. wade. i believe that the next justice on the supreme court out to be someone who has experience as a litigator, perhaps as a prosecutor but a kind of

hands-on experience that is essential. the decision should be made on the basis of the merits. merrick garland is a mainstream thinker with experience as a prosecutor, and fits the profile of someone i think should be confirmed. but at the very least he should be given a hearing and a vote before the end of the year. the senate should do its job and its constitutional duty. >> the second question is for you, which concerns the economy. the job of a u.s. senator in part is to look at your states interest in washington and to bring home federal dollars. yet the state is decline in this population and polls show people are unhappy with the high cost of living. as a senator what did you do and what would you do to improve life in connecticut? and make the state more affordable? >> that is an excellent question. i'm glad it's one of the first one because that's what of the most important things a senator should be focused on.

ladies and gentlemen, we've had years of financial ruin. over the last six years we lived through two of the largest tax increases in our own history. jobs are fleeing the state. i met a family the other day who was searching for way to earn enough money so they can go get a job out of state. that's been a big problem for a long time. we all the friends and neighbors were leaving in droves. as the job of us did what i should be focused on is making important changes to the tax code, looking down the line, we have to make changes to tax cute to make it fair and flattered. we need to reduce the number of brackets available, reduced levels. we need to do something important to bring corporations back. the reason across the world you tax havens down in the caribbean it's those folks bring in those companies because they're going to statement the economy with those dollars. i don't understand why the united states -- we have to make sure that we review the

corporate tax haven. myoclonus talked about the fact he supported that bring jobs homebuilder it was bill that was a message bill, it was empty. it didn't do anything to bring jobs on. if you look out come is widely known it would be very little help getting people back in this country. at the end of the day we need to reformat the corporate tax could impose interest rate and actually get these corporations back in the united states and get jobs to the folks who live there. that's number one. number two is control our spending. part of the province in connecticut has been spending has been out of control. no question. the same at the federal level. you've almost $600 billion in deficit every year and $20 trillion in debt shows were not spending was at the that needs be important that we need to support balanced budgets. >> senator blumenthal, two minutes to respond. >> thanks for the really important question. here's what i've been doing to

create jobs and drive the economy forward in connecticut. and the federal government should help more and do better and i've been leading the effort, principally focusing on investment. investment in our national defense which is bringing thousands of jobs, investment and our roads and bridges and rail and ports, our infrastructure through the surface transportation bill that i helped to lead and is bringing thousands of construction jobs to the state of connecticut. investment and skilled turning. people need the skills to fill the jobs that exist now, and there are jobs open but also the jobs of the future. thousands of more jobs to be brought to this state by those investors. and, of course, lowering taxes, tax credits for investment in r&d, investment in new capital and plant and machinery.

lowering the medical device tax, all of that is accomplished through my advocacy in part and i'm going to continue to fight for tax credits to bring jobs home and stop the rewards and special breaks for companies that send jobs overseas. that's the idea of the bring jobs home act. it's also the idea of the veterans hiring tax credit act which gives tax breaks for hiring veterans, rather than the kind of breaks for the big oil companies and for billionaires and lowering the cost of doing business in connecticut and investment in our roads, bridges, rail am a investment our national defense and and skill strength that will provide the workforce we need to attract more companies to connecticut.

>> mr. carter, one minute rebuttal. >> it always strikes me as interesting the answer to try to prove our economy is investment, spending more. i'm not going to argue that we have a crumbling infrastructure. we need to work on that. we recognize that and we're doing that and we need to work together federal and state to make that happen. i don't think and everything is going to be spending more money into whatever program you can think of when at the end of the day way to make sure we're spending a little more wisely. with respect to the bring jobs home act with my opponent mentioned, senator, that act did nothing to bring jobs home or even penalize companies are moving out. moving out the state doesn't cost very much for these countries. it does cost on anything at all. attacks revocations with som sof them may be one of the $50 million over the entire course of a 10 year period for the companies. that's not a big benefit and doesn't help us. we need real structural change the way we do business in washington.

it's broken, it's time to fix it and people have been there for 30 years are not the people are supposed to be fixing it for us. >> our next question is for senator blumenthal. iis a very important question on gun legislation here in connecticut some of toughest gun laws were passed and now the effort in congress to do that, but not much has been done. can you talk to is that your position on guns, and no fly now by, credos on the no-fly list allowed to buy guns. do you support this envoy speak with i strongly support the no fly nobody law which would prohibit people who are deemed too dangerous to board a plane from buying a gun, along with other sensible commonsense measures like universal background checks, and taking guns away from domestic abusers who are under a court order. i've been working on this issue for two decades, and with the

sandy hook firehouse and in the church that night with a newtown families, but i've also stood and held hands and worked with loved ones of the victims of 30,000 people every year who die. this is a public health emergency, a crisis for our country. and these commonsense measures must be passed, and congress seems to be complicit with the gun lobby. we are breaking the grip of the gun lobby. now, my opponent and i have a disagreement on this issue. he voted against these kind of comments is measures including most recently the ban on domestic abusers having guns. he has received and on this great from the nra, and that maybe the reason. i think the nra and the gun lobby have enough friends already in washington that i'm going to continue the fight for

these commonsense measures, including a ban on terrorists buying guns. because i think they are essential to health and safety of 33,000 people who are dying in this country, the greatest, strongest country in the history of the world, we would deemed it a public health emergency. we would take drastic immediate action. that is the way we need to regard our gun violence problem in this country. >> mr. carter, you have two minutes. >> thank you. there's one thing we will agree on i think that is we do have taken problem in this country. we have people dying in our streets every day and it does need to be solved. the question is how do you get there. first let me find where i stand. just after the shooting in sandy hook i proposed an important legislation come universal background checks. of those ways to look at continuation training the people understood not to be complacent with firearms. i addressed one of the most important challenges and it's

how do we keep firearms out of the hands of somebody with a mental illness? none of that was looked at because politically speaking delete think people need to do at tha that moment were dividedo giunta was used in a single shooting. that bill that i voted against, the 2013, would have been nothing, nothing to prevent sandy hook from happening. i believe my legislation would. i will also say my opponent and folks like you did not get to corner the market on compassion. i have been represent newtown. i understand that divide people are on this issue. i'll tell you this, people want to solve it weighted is to look at illegal gun trafficking in this country a provide resources to keep those guns off the street. do a lot of good democrats who voted against that bill. the recent they did is they understood this bill does nothing to ask to protect life. so i say to you, my opponent, why is nothing getting done on this issue? right everybody is focused on

one par part of the company make and a in the pro-gun groups the bogeyman when meanwhile, investors problem that we have to challenge, go after. they been totally impotent to do anything so far because their busy raising money, busy trying to a boy to anyway they can for their campaign coffers. i say it's time to get out there, do background checks. it's important we don't have people who are labeled a terrorist to duplicate again. i agree but let's go after these criminals on the streets of its address where guns are falling into the hands of the wrong people. >> senator blumenthal, one minute. >> the reason why congress has been complicit until the is very simply that the gun lobby and the nra have congress in its grip. they give grades as they did to my opponent, honors great for endorsement. we need to break that grip and we can do it as a show by connecticut. we are a strong bipartisan majority voted in favor of

common sense apostles, putting connecticut at the forefront of this effort. to stop gun violence. but connecticut's law is only as protected as the weakest state law. because guns travel across state borders. that's why we need national effective law. i know it won't be easy, but i'm going to work for the bipartisan majority just like we had in connecticut, involving a ban on illegal trafficking, a mental health program and school safe safety. >> thank you. the next question goes to mr. carter. hillary clinton's use of a private e-mail server has been in the news and it could continue to be fallout from it if elected. should other public officials be able to do this in the future? if not what should congress do to prevent the same thing from happening and what you the punishment be for someone who does this in the future? >> that's obvious one of the biggest questions going on in

this whole campaign era. the way i look at it is this. i don't think every public official should workable was not there on private or public server. that does a better so much that when you of certain public officials have access to classified information, that is the issue at hand with secretary clinton. think about it, i was in the air force for 10 years active duty. i had a class of information along the way. i was trying to. i understood, so she. the question is should some is access to that kind of information using a private server? probably not because i think the rules with the otherwise the it gets to the heart of the larger issue. the fact this has been so i would say controversial over the time, ghost a question of trust and honesty in washington. that's the thing we should be focusing on. like that we talked about ago about the hearing. we should have hearings because transparency is more important than ever. that's why we have these debates. it's what i've been asked labor to make sure have an opportunity to actual answer questions that

are important. people don't trust politicians in washington because it's very clear that they could washington and the one thing and come back and say something else. that goes to the heart of what's wrong with hillary clinton and e-mail server. than that of trust with the american people. as far as classified information goes, if there ever comes a time it's totally prevent shia classified information, she handled in a properly, she should suffer the same sort of fine or punishment any of the rest of us would. >> mr. blumenthal, two minutes. >> very simply, dennis, private servers should never be used for classified material. and, in fact, we didn't get clad briefings and we see classified material, but only in a special room in the capitol building that is designated for the giving of the classified material.

we are barred from taking any electronic device into that marriage. these kinds of precautions are all the more important in light of the potential for hacking into our system, and cyber warfare and cyber attack our increasing threat to our national security. and the united states should be formulating stronger policies to deter and prevent those cyber attacks, which are a danger even to the classified systems that we have. the department of defense literally every day is fending off attacks from russia and from shiny and from hackers around the world who seek access to the systems. the deterrence of those kinds of attacks have to be strengthened. we need a policy of what constitutes an attack on the united states when cyber isn't bald. and we need to respond to quickly in kind and deter and

prevent those kinds of cyber attacks because they are a threat to all of our servers. and including even our electoral system. i've abdicated our electoral system should be considered potentially as a critical infrastructure that is entitled to special protection along with utilities and our financial system and other kinds of critical infrastructure. >> mr. carter give one minute. >> i would say yes, we need to go after providing resources to combat cyber terrorism, cyberwar. we understand that's important with respect to hillary clinton, it is important we handle people who do with classic information in a properly. i think you should investigate a long way and find more information about the e-mails. if she was someone who did something wrong we were challenger. i would caution everybody listening, i don't think for a minute that our electoral system right now is in jeopardy because of what's happening across the

world. we have a lot of -- i caution people to understand we have good people all over the state right now who do these operations for our elections individually. they are not hooked into some big mainframe and i'm not worried about cyberwar for in those cases yet. we will pay attention to the news and see what happens next. >> next question to mr. blumenthal. a two-part abortion question. ministate or parental notification for a girl under the legal age to get an abortion. connecticut is not one of the states. should the parents of under age girls, why shouldn't they be killed if their child is getting an abortion? senator blumenthal can you said you want abortion to be safe and rare. in 2012, 12,000 abortions were performed in connecticut, an average of 30 what a day. do you consider that to be rare and what are you reducing test of what he doing to reduce that number? >> abortions should be safe,

rare, and legal. and the law of the land is that these decisions are to be made by women individually, in consultation with their clergy and their family and others who are involved. but it should be their decision, not the government interfering. those health care choices are vital. not only as a matter of constitutional but as a matter of public policy. i've been a staunch advocate of a woman's right to health care, right to choose, right to reproductive rights since late as a law clerk on the united states supreme court which i worked for blackmun who authored world the way before i was a law clerk to in as attorney general i have helped to protect the planet. i held right the statute that embodies the standards of roe v. wade.

so i think a woman who faces this decision not to be making this decision on her own, decide whether she wants to consult her parents. and doing so if she wishes to do so but without the government telling her what to do. women's rights are under siege in washington. there is a constant attacks against them, and that helped to lead the effort to protect them in the united states senate just as i did when i was attorney general. but they are under siege in state legislatures around the country which is what i wrote the women's health protection act which would bar those kinds of threatening measures that pretend to protect women's health care by setting clinic with admitting privileges but, in fact, prevent obstacles to a woman's exercise of her constitutional rights, which i will staunchly advocate and

defend. >> mr. carter, two minutes spirit that is an important question. first i do recognize the woman tried to choose be it is guaranteed by our constitution under the 14th amendment added don't think we should be going after that. no question. to your point about what should we do it was not we should decrease abortions, i would say yes. obviously, we want to make sure fewer people go through that. the way to do it is through education. we talked about the importance of a woman's right to choose effort to get to talk to family and their clergy and people more important to work. it's important to have all the information available. we need to make sure as legislators, state legislatures and the federal government as a u.s. senator i make sure people of all the information available about adoptive services can all the options available. it's not on an even playing field that all the information, like my opponent mentioned, you are right on the money when you say you don't want to pretend or

trickery or thinking unequal. i don't support the equal. too often athletes to problems in washington. we need to make sure we're handling it in a very fair way and the government is not stepping in and telling people what to do. >> mr. blumenthal, one minute. >> this issue goes to the core of what i've tried in washington which is stand up for people when special interest i do get their way. women are entitled to make these choices on their own about contraception, about having a child. every time planned parenthood has been under threat, and it's been five, six times i have stood with planned parenthood and advocated for them because planned parenthood provides education, contraception services to enable women to

avoid pregnancy, if that's their choice. in fact, only a tiny fraction of what planned parenthood does involve abortion. a lot of it is education so that, in fact, abortion will be safe, legal and rare. >> mr. carter, i think the average american voter feels frustrated with what is perceived to be gridlock in washington but those bills that are raised many cannot get debated or voted on. what would you do if elected to be more productive and make congress more productive? >> everybody is frustrated with washington. the approval rating is probably 14, 11% of something like that. it's a huge issue. one of the problems is when you talk about the different bills f things, we just mentioned planned parenthood. that's a good example. recently as we spoke about in the news a few months ago we

were having the zika virus crisis. we were talking about that, basically this came from gridlock in congress. the way of the added they were putting money out for zika and the democrats took hold of it as a group including my opponent and what did it is we are not giving money to planned parenthood specifically because they don't accept medicaid funded down in puerto rico. instead of finding a way to give money to public health channels, they blocked it and made a planned parenthood issue, which by the i support planned parenthood. it's that kind of politics that gets us in trouble. oftentimes they say we support something important. my opponent talks about the fact equal pay for women. ..

carter: i work with both sides, and i think that's how we're going to get rid of gridlock in washington. >> moderator: senator blumenthal, you have two minutes. blumenthal: this job gives me the opportunity to fight for the people of connecticut even in the face of gridlock and partisan paralysis. what i've seen is that too often special interests get their way. my job has always been to stand up to those special interests

and fight for the people of connecticut, for consumers who are ripped off, for women who want equal pay for equal work and for our veterans who deserve quality health care. and for all the people of connecticut who simply want a fair shock. those special interests with campaign funds that now are often anonymously donated, corporations with virtually unlimited access to the political process, all too often are responsible for the gridlock that exists there. i will make no apologies for opposing a bill that would have defunded planned parenthood as a price for meeting the zika crisis. in fact, the zika bill was passed initially with a strong bipartisan majority in the united states senate without

those restrictive poison pills. we can reach across the aisle and do better. i have reached across the aisle on measures like the gain act which cuts the regulatory burdens for pharmaceutical drug companies when they develop new drugs for antibiotic-resistant strains of viruses. that gain act, which i did with senator corker, republican of tennessee, went through the united states senate and has already been used by a connecticut company to create drugs and new jobs. >> moderator: mr. carter. carter: well, it's important we talk about special interests. first off, by the way, the bill they were talking about did not defund planned parenthood. that is not true. it did not give extra funding to them as they were funding through public channels, and planned parenthood didn't qualify for medicaid at that point. let's just be truthful about that. but we talk about special interests, all right, let's talk

about special interests. my opponent has about $1.5 million from special interest groups in his campaign fund. the question is, does that affect every vote? maybe not. but with respect to taking care of veterans, as he heptioned, my opponent stood in front of the v.a. accountability act last fall, it was marco rubio's bill, he single-handedly blocked it ostensibly because the v.a. public unions didn't want him to do it. i'm all about putting veterans first especially at a time when one out of every three phone calls to the suicide hotline rolls over. how do you account for that, senator, when you block that act and hear our veterans are having the -- >> moderator: mr. carter, you're running out of time. senator blumenthal, this is a question that certainly has come up many election cycles, and that regards term limits. patrick leahy, senator leahy, of vermont has now been in office for 41 years. there are several members of the house who have been there for decades. do you support term limits? blumenthal: we have term limits

now, susan. they're called elections. and what i have found is that some of the best republican members in the house or the senate have served a long time, same is true of the democratic senators. the biggest area where we need reform is campaign finance. the existence of the deluge of dark money where there's no accountability, no reporting, anonymously donated through super pacs not only at the presidential level, but in united states senate and congressional races is the greatest threat we have to the integrity of the system. and so i really have not supported term limits because i think the democratic process should work to throw out of office people who have exhausted the patience of the electorate and also who are failing to do

their job as well as they should be and as well as their opponent i want to just correct the record on something that my opponent has just said. i opposed the marco rubio accountability bill because it was unconstitutional, would never have passed muster and would have helped no one in accountability. i supported an alternative called veterans first, a wisconsin partisan bill which i crafted with the chairman of the v.a. committee, senator johnny isakson of georgia. he and i as the ranking member put together this bill on accountability, on caregivers, on health care, an omnibus bill that will eliminate bonuses for poor performers, remove wrongdoers and protect whistleblowers. it passed unanimously from the united states senate v.a. committee, and i hope to see it become law. >> moderator: mr. carter, you have one minute. carter: thank you. first off, speaking of term limits, you know, i think we've

gotten to a point where we even see in a race just like this when you have a powerful incumbent with a lot of funding and time behind him, it is difficult for people with good ideas to come up and challenge. in fact, this is the first opportunity i've had to have a debate and ask my opponent answer questions. my gosh, even trump gave three debates. but i'm okay with that. what i'm not okay with is the fact that we can't in our democratic process do term limits. if the united states congress and the senate want to get together and do a constitutional amendment and change the term limits, i would be very supportive of that. i think the distrust in this point in washington or about washington is very clear, that people don't trust washington. so i think it's important that we do consider term limits, because maybe it's about the time we don't have the same people going year after year after year. now, if you work so hard to help the veterans and you blocked the v.a. accountability act last year, how can we still have so many problems with our veterans? every politician wants to talk about how they help veterans,

but -- >> moderator: apparently, it was not your turn for a rebuttal, so you do have another minute. please do. [laughter] carter: that's fine. i think i made my answer very clear. a lot of times in the legislature, we talk about veterans all the time, and all of us want to help veterans. by the way, i do not think that senator blumenthal doesn't want to help veterans. i get that. but we don't make it the priority, and we come back and say we do, that's the problem i have. because, you know, senator, you made a career out ott of fighting for the little guy, and most of the time i feel like you're fighting us, you're fighting the little guy because, you know, none of these things ever get fixed after 30 years in service. i think it's time to give somebody else a shot. >> moderator: senator blumenthal, now you have a minute for rebuttal. blumenthal: thank you, susan. let me, first of all, thank my opponent for his service, as i do can every veteran. as a veteran, i respect that is service. and i have worked in the united

states senate and before i went to the united states senate for this country to keep faith with its veterans. two of my sons have served, one is serving now, the other was in the marine corps in afghanistan and is back safely, and i have a essential affinity for this problem. that's the reason why in the wake of the arizona debacle i helped lead the veterans choice bill which created more choices for veterans to go outside the v.a. health care system. i wrote a measure with john healthcare cane, veteran suicide -- mccain, veteran suicide prevention act because 20 veterans in this country still take their own lives every day. and i'm going to continue advocating and work for the veterans first bill to make health care and accountability each better. >> moderator: thank you, sir. mr. carter, in five states the issue of whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use will be on the ballot including massachusetts. in the eyes of the federal

government, it's illegal. do you think the federal government should legalize marijuana, and do you support the use of recreational marijuana? carter: this is one of those interesting -- coming from the legislature, i've been in the position to have this question posed to me a number of times specifically about medical marijuana. you know, along the lewin of i realize that medical marijuana has shown there's some real promise for people, there's even promise with people who suffer from, you know, very debilitating conditions, you know, seizures and such. but the use of recreational marijuana is a real struggle for me. and here's why. number one, i don't think we have the ability to really regulate in such a way that we make sure we understand the ramifications on people who are operating machinery, who are police officers, and how do we handle that to know to the degree that they may be under the influence or not. that's a problem. i also understand if we support recreational use, then for anybody under 25 years old who's using it regularly, it's proven to cause a problem in your

development. and i think that's a real issue from a public policymaker. now, i'll also say i understand the other side, you know? there's a strong libertarian streak in me that says why are we regulating a plant like that, why are we putting all the money into defending or putting people in jail for it, and i think that's a whole other issue we have to handle separately. and from the federal government's side, i think that's what we should be looking at, is how do we handle law enforcement activities with respect to marijuana but still not let the drug dealers off the hook? i am not in a position yet where i'm going to advocate for legalizing it. i am open-minded, i'll listen to hearings and i'll listen to the important people across the country who have an opinion on. it is something we have to face because we have some real problems with marijuana. >> moderator: mr. blumenthal. blumenthal: dennis, we are in the midst of the greatest opioid abuse and heroin addiction epidemic ever to face this

nation, and we need to act much manufacture a agrandsonnively -- aggressively and robustly to save lives. i held round tables around the state of connecticut, more than ten of them, and they were heartbreaking and gut-wrenching as i listened to stories of young people in recovery who started on opioids when they broke a bone or had wisdom teeth removed and were prescribed percocet or vicodin or oxycontin. i sued the maker of oxycontin, per due farm that, when i was attorney general because of inadequate labeling, and we prevailed in that lawsuit. and as a result of those round tables, i came up with a report with specific recommendations including guidelines on opioid prescriptions, better training for pain management to prescribers and be caregivers a crackdown, use of law enforcement to crack down on the drug trade. but the law enforcement

officials told me, and i know we're not going to arrest our way out of this crisis. so we need more treatment. and more investment in treatment facilities. what i also heard many those round tables is that legalization of marijuana will in no way solve this crisis. it may only aggravate it. and that gives me pause. as much as i may support medicinal use of marijuana, i would oppose for now its legalization because i think this nation needs to do more than we've done already to save those lives. the comprehensive addiction and recovery act passed the united states congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. now it needs adequate funding. >> moderator: thank you, mr. blumenthal. mr. carter, you have one minute. carter: thank you very much. with respect to legalizing marijuana, it doesn't sound like we're far off base, but with respect to the opioid addiction

issues and heroin overdoses, it is a plague in our state, a plague on our country, we all know that. and it's more important that we do more than strongly-worded letters and round tables. obviously, i've talked to people in our districts as well about this, but we need to put things in place that actually address the issue. for my six years in the legislature, one of the things i've been behind all the way is how we manage our prescription drug monitoring program in the state to make sure we're going after people who are doctor shopping and taking that medicine and selling it on the street to somebody else. there are ways to do it and work with these companies and work with the government to make this work. now, i would take objection to the fact that in everything that my opponent talks about, he talks about suing somebody. i'm a believer that we work with companies, that we work with every stakeholder there is to come up with things that will actually solve the problem working together and not create adversarial relationships with business. unless they're truly a bad actor. >> moderator: thank you. our next question goes the senator blumenthal. aetna has essentially pulled out

of the affordable care act, obamacare, citing the cost. many are saying the health care program needs to be improved to survive, others say it should be replaced, others say it should be repealed. if elected, what specific action should be taken regarding president obama's signature legislation? blumenthal: a key question. thank you, dennis. i've advocated that there be improvements in the affordable care act but not that it be repealed. we can't turn the clock back to a time when millions of people were denied coverage under their health care policies because they had supposed reexisting conditions. pre-existing conditions. or women were charged more simply because they were women, victims of discrimination by those insurance companies. or a time when children couldn't be on their policies. now they can be until they're 26 years old. those reforms and others have enabled millions of people to gain effective coverage.

and i'm not willing to throw those people out of health insurance. now, there need to be improvements. the cost of medical care needs to be reduced. ask one of the major costs are pharmaceutical drugs. that is why i have advocated reducing the cost of pharmaceutical drugs through negotiation with medicare. right now medicare is barred from negotiating drug prices, raising their costs. the v.a. can negotiate, medicare cannot. another example of profiteering, we've seen very recently in the state of connecticut and the country mylan's increase in its cost of epipens, 600%. astronomic price rise. i've asked for an investigation. the federal government is doing it both criminal and civil. but in the mean time, i'm going to continue pressure on hi lan to reduce -- mylan to reduce the cost of end be by pen.

there needs to be more competition on those exchanges, more competitors in the health care market, and that has to be another improvement. but lowering costs for small businesses, a major goal, lowering the costs for small businesses and providing support in greater subsidies so people can afford it. >> moderator: thank you, mr. humannen that would. mr. carter, you have two minutes. carter: thank you. i mean, the rob is we know it's collapsing, we know it doesn't work, so let's move forward, you know? we need to change obamacare into something that works that, you know, we want to keep the things that are important goals with respect to pre-existing conditions. we understand that. we want to make sure that health care is affordable for everybody in connecticut and across the country. we know that. so let's get a system in place that works. you know, everybody gets in a fight whether they're going to repeal it. well, why not the fixes that were proposed just a couple years ago that senator blumenthal v actually cost moner

own hospitals in the state of connecticut with respect to increasing funding available to health care centers. and we know how difficult it is in health care. you know, we need to make sure that that works for folks by creating something that looked for fee for service years ago where the decisions are made between a patient and a provider. that's where care is rationed and that's where the decisions are made, and we get behind that decision and make sure the health care exchange is something that's available to everybody and affordable. we've watched small businesses and families' deductibles go through the roof as well as their premiums, and it doesn't have to be that way. my point is we need to act now, and i don't know why there's so much gridlock in washington over this, because both sides, evidently, say we have to fix it. he said it right here. but we haven't fixed it. with respect to mylan, it's interesting that from 2009 til now that, you know, senator blumenthal supported obamacare which raised the cost of the drug with the epipen, mandated that it go to every school

around the country -- again, raising the price -- but then, you know, now all of a sudden where were you all this time while the price was going up? i think we should be working with these companies all along to make sure they get generics to market, to make sure they have opportunities to lower their costs, and we don't do it through this heavy-handed, i'm going to ck sue you to make press for -- >> moderator: thank you, mr. carter. many blumenthal, you have one minute to rebut. blumenthal: here are the facts. i've strongly supported improvements in the afford be bl care act from the time i came to congress, but the votes have been about repealing. completely eliminating the affordable care act. more than 60 times in the house of representatives, time after time in the senate. the votes have been to repeal it because that's what the republican majority wanted over these last two years, not to help improve it and fix its

defects. that has to be the goal. and i'm going to continue championing efforts to keep down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. they need to be made available. and that's why i was a leader in providing them in our schools, because epipens are life saving when a young child has an allergic reaction. they can literally save lives, and and i'm going to continue to advocate. >> moderator: thank you. >> moderator: mr. carter, this question has to do with jobs and concern that many companies are finding it much more affordable to either relocate their headquarters or their operations overseas because labor is cheaper. the republican nominee for president has proposed punishing companies or some kind of disincentive for companies who do that. do you support that, and is that possible? carter: well, okay. first part of the question is, yes, jobs are moving overseas, and we have to find a way to keep them here. i don't think it's entirely because of labor costs because

we know that if we kept the corporate tax within limits here, we lowered the corporate tax, we got rid of loopholes to make it fairer for all companies and they had a tax structure and a regulatory environment that was, made sense and that was something that would be predictable that they could count on, a lot of those companies would come here voluntarily. in fact, i mentioned before we would be our own tax haven. i don't think we always have to use the heavy-handed approach and say we're going to punish. we were talking the bring home jobs bill. you know, in that bill it had a piece that would not allow people to take advantage of a tax deduction for moving their company overseas. well, that's not the way it works for companies. they see a better tax rate, it's not like that pick up all their stuff and take it. they go over there and build their facilities and build their production, and that's what we've got to keep people from doing. until we get the rate down below 15% or something like that and make it reasonable, that's what's going to help us. and here's the other part. we talk a lot about corporate

taxes. what we have to understand, corporate taxes themselves bring in probably less than 10% of the entire federal revenue, so why are we so focused on that when, actually, that's something that would actually help get people back here? that's how we get those jobs. now, we also have to reduce regulation here at home. get barriers out of the way for people. and until we find a way to do that here -- be which, by the way, even as a state legislator, i've done that. we've tr tofo get something called a growler bill where you could take home a 64-ounce jug of draft beer. we finally got something silly like that removed from regulation where now people can do it, and it meant $2 million to the state in taxes, a thriving craft beer market in the state does well, and it at means people have a new product they couldn't get anywhere else. that's when we talk about removing regulation. >> moderator: senator blumenthal, you have two minutes. blume p that would: addressing

that question, our tax code is riddles with loopholes, special breaks, giveaways to big corporations and special interests, sweetheart deals. and one of them concerns moving headquarters overseas to so-called tax havens whether in the netherlands or ireland. mylan, the maker of epipen, ironically, was one of the companies that moved overseas in that way. and and they avoid taxes to this country. moving jobs overseas is a different kind of loophole that needs to be closed because companies can deconduct the expenses -- deduct the expenses and then keep their profits overseas. i've proposed that they be enabled to bring those profits back, maybe at a lower tax rate, but that they be required to invest in an infrastructure bank that would be a public/private partnership investing in our roads and bridges and rail. there are ways to close those loopholes and create jobs and

drive our economy forward. but those two loopholes are only a fraction of the ones that should be closed. the deductions for the big oil companies, the writeoffs for companies that give multimillion dollar bonuses to their executives, the kinds of loopholes that basically deprive taxpayers of what we deserve and don't benefit economic progress because a lot of corporations are paying much higher taxes. we should reward investment, broaden the tax incentives for the investment in capital machinery and plants such as i have advocated, and we have those measures going forward as well as in renewables such as wind and solar. we need to extend it to -- >> mr. blumenthal?

blumenthal: which are made in connecticut. >> moderator: you have a one-minute rebuttal. carter: ladies and gentlemen, there are a lot of complicated tax issues that we all talk about, but the bottom line is it's all talk. what i'm seeing at the federal level right now is a lot of gridlock and a lot of people who will talk about the loop 40es, but they're not acting on any of them because they're too busy doing other things. i've taken on my opponent about the fact that he's fighting for somebody. he's always out there taking on an important issue, shark fins, saline solution, whatever the issue may be. meanwhile, we are suffering from jobs hemorrhaging from this state, and it's because of fact that all these thing we're talking about never get done in washington. and i think the american people, that's part of the trust issue we have down in d.c. so, you know, it's easy to talk about all the things we've supported. i'd really be interested to find out if they were actually in a bill that mattered. like i already said, the bring home jobs act we talked about was a total farce, and that's what we're talking about one of these major loopholes, and there

are many others to look at. >> moderator: thank you very much. that concludes some of our formal questions, and we wanted to end our debate with a few minutes of rapid-fire questions. senator blumenthal, in your opinion, who is the best u.s. senator in connecticut history? blumenthal: the best u.s. senator in connecticut's history. i think that probably abe rib cover. carter: [inaudible] >> moderator: i want to follow up with a couple you avoided earlier in the broadcast. number one, do you think the number of abortions in connecticut, is that considered rare? mr. blumenthal, you first. blumenthal: dennis, you're asking me the question -- >> moderator: fair or not? blumenthal: i think that the number of i abortions isn't the measure of the effectiveness of our constitutional law. it's individuals exercising the right of choice.

that's what's important, that constitutional right. i'm going to fight for that right. and by the way, i'm also going to fight to bring jobs home -- >> moderator: mr. carter. blumenthal: a real act that accomplished real -- >> moderator: [inaudible] carter: no, that is not rare. >> moderator: our next question, do you support congressman larson's plan to build a tunnel? mr. carter? carter: i'll have to see the detail. it's a big idea, going to cost a lot of money. >> mr. blumenthal. blumenthal: it's infrastructure. it will create jobs and improve our transportation system. whether it's cost effective should be determined. >> moderator: senator blumenthal, role model. who do you look up to? blumenthal: i look up to role models in this country but also a abroad. pope francis is someone whom i greatly admire. >> moderator: mr. carter? carter: james earl jones, of all people. here's a guy who overcomes a

major stuttering problems to be one the -- to be one of greatest voices we'll always remember. intestinal fortitude. >> moderator: do you think the indian name so offensive? do you think they should change it? carter: it's not offensive, they should not change it. >> moderator: mr. blumenthal. blumenthal: it certainly offends some people to have native american imimagines and identities -- images and identities asthmas cots, and i've advocated that the redskins change their name as well. >> moderator: mr. carter, several buildings in connecticut are named for slave owners, should that be renamed? carter: i don't think we should go back and rename build beings based on our past. i think we should look forward and handle some of the important issues with respect to race. i think going back and renaming buildings is not going to accomplish that. >> moderator: senator blumenthal? blumenthal: these decisions have to be made by individual institutions, and i don't think there's a broad rule that can be

applied to everyone. but in certain instances like calhoun college, i think they're well advised to rename. >> moderator: hillary clinton has said donald trump is a racist, is he? blumenthal: donald trump is many things that, in my view, kiss qualify him from the -- disqualify him from the president. he has mocked people with disabilities, he has indicated certainly his prejudice, he's a misogynyst, he has demeaned women, and racism certainly is a plausible label to be attached to him. >> moderator: mr. carter? carter: you know, i don't necessarily think somebody's a racist. i know it's about character. i've taken on my opponent on husband character, but i do not think that makes him a racist. >> moderator: what do you do in your free time? what are your hobbies and interests? carter: was that for me first? >> moderator: yeah, sure. carter: i love spending time with my kids, i've got a great

dog, molly, she's a rescue. i like to the walk with her. i like to read. i'd love to fly more but since i left the air force, i haven't had time or the money. >> moderator: senator blumenthal. blumenthal: i love spending time with my wife, cynthia, who is here today as well as our four children. and they are truly the pride and joy of our lives. >> moderator: donald trump has called hillary clinton a liar, is she, mr. carter? carter: i think she's dishonest, yes. >> moderator: mr. blumenthal. blumenthal: no, she is not a lawyer. i think hillary clinton is going to be a president that stands up for ordinary people. >> moderator: thank you. susan? >> moderator: and do you have a gun permit? carter: i do. >> moderator: senator blumenthal? blumenthal: no. >> moderator: how would you grade dan malloy's performance as governor? be blumenthal: i don't give grades to fellow governing officials. carter: i think malloy has

definitely failed the state. >> moderator: do you want the governor to run for a third term, mr. blumenthal? blumenthal: that's the governor's decision and, more importantly, the people of connecticut. i hope the people of connecticut will choose me for a second term. thank you. >> moderator: mr. carter? carter: i do think he should run again because i think it's going to be a very strong year for republicans because, obviously, he's not done what's right for our state. do you support early voting? carter: i do blumenthal: i do. >> moderator: that is our time for this sunday morning. we thank you both for being with us, richard blumenthal and dan carter. >> and we'll leave this here and go live to new america for a look at terrorism in the digital age. panelists will discuss how social media impacts the way we view terrorism. this is just getting under way. >> i'm very much looking forward to the discussions this afternoon, and so without further comment, on behalf of my colleagues at democracy fund voice, i would like to pass the mic to sharon. thank you.

>> great. thank you very much, tom, and welcome, all of you here today, and all of those who are joining online. i'm sharon burke, senior adviser here at new america. i run the program on resource security and adviser to the international security program and the future of war and a co-author of this report which is war and tweets: terrorism in mud america in the digital age. i'm going to introduce my colleague, peter singer, in just a moment, but i do want to thank tom and democracy's own voice. when we started this project some time ago and, you know, i thought their mission was great, it was about revitalizing democracy and strengthening civil society, you know, what he talked about in terms of erosion and those long-term concerns, and i was with him on that. i didn't think it was an urgent, immediate problem and now, of course, i mea culpad, you were right. this is something for right now. not a concern about what happens next year or ten years from now.

so i'm glad to be a part, to be supporting their mission and supported by them. i also want to thank the people who worked on this project, lisa simms was the project coordinator, or david sturmen and peter bergin and his team advised us and helped us. so peter is currently in iraq, so he couldn't be here today, but we very much appreciate his work and all of the communications team here at new america that puts on these events. so i'm just going to start by summarizing our report briefly and then get into a conversation with dr. singer because he just came out with a few article in the atlantic -- a new article in the atlantic that i commend to everyone here about war going viral and war in the age of social media, and we're going to talk a little bit about our report and his work and whether some of the similarities and differences there. then we're going to have a wonderful panel, and i will introduce them to you at that time, and we will have a discussion and then have some audience q&a.

and i just want to preset with you, with the audience and with the audience we have online including the university of central florida is joining us on line today, i just want to warn you that i may look nice and friendly, but please keep your questions to a question or, as peter says, something with a question mark at the end. if you monologue, i probably will cut you off. so i'm not that friendly. first, peter singer is here at new america, he's a strategist and a senior fellow, and i'm looking at his bio to make sure i get the key points, but i don't need it. he's one of the top national security experts in this country, is and he has a really interesting focus on technologists. he is a trend spotter. he's always ahead of the game can, and he is operating in just about every sector that you can. he's advising government, he's advising hollywood, he's advising technologists. so i'm really delighted you could join me to open this up and have a conversation. so first our, our report. when we started this report are, we wanted to look at terrorism

in america and how people react to terrorism. of course, in the middle of our study, the attack in orlando at pulse nightclub happened, and that changed what we were looking at a little bit. peter bergin and his team have done a lot of work on what's happened in america since 9/11, and there have been 147 americans killed in terrorist attacks, 94 at the hand of jihad dists. so more recently, the places that will ring a bell are san bernardino, orlando, of course, which is a case study in this report, minnesota, the stabbing in minnesota, new york city, new jersey and maybe even north carolina recently. it's too soon to tell what the details of that attack were, but it's possible that was also a terrorist attack. political violence in this country, we have had a history of it for a long time. it's not all jihadi violation are, of course. this is everything from, you know, the weather underground to possibly this new attack in north carolina, as i said, hard

to say at this time. it's not possible to stop all attacks for all time no matter how good our intelligence operations are, no matter how good our military is -- and they're very good, gentlemen, we know that. we've had a couple of army officers here, which is terrific. we can't stop everything for all time. so what do terrorists want? more than 30 years ago prime minister margaret thatcher said that, you know, publicity is the oxygen of terrorism. what they want is to affect how you feel, how you act, how your government acts, and they have their own goals, and that is the definition of terrorism is a group that uses violence for a political or ideological cause. so that's what they want. so in other words, how you act is part of their strategy and resilience to such an attack should be and is part of any nation's counterterrorism strategy.

and it's certainly part of this nation's counterterrorism strategy. so when you look back at the recent attacks that have happened in places like san bernardino, i think when you look at polling, a lot of americans feel like they're at personal risk of a terrorist attack. now, the risk of any individual american being attacked isn't that high, but why was san bernardino a target? because the perpetrators lived there. so in other words, even though any given individual is not at a high risk of attack, any city could get attacked at any time. so every city in this country needs to be prepared for this kind of crisis and what they would do. and this is what our report is looking at. so dhs or, the department of homeland security, defines resilience as the ability to resist, absorb, recover from or successfully adapt to adversity or a change in conditions. and we looked at what determines resilience, what shapes resilience. and a big part of resilience is who tells the story. and what kind of story they

tell. how do they choose to shape the narrative. and this is something that's changing dramatically in the era of social media. so that's what we looked at, is how is the way the story's told changing. we have a historical section in our report that starts with the world trade center bomb anything 1993. and the reason we started with that bombing is that's when you start to see live television coverage coming into play in a big way. it's also when cell phones first started making an appearance. they're so ubiquitous today that it's hard to believe there was a time to recently when they weren't. but that's the first time you started to have people with cell phones that were going to be calling news organizations, calling government and first responders with information. so we started from there and tracked how media and this personal ability to communicate from eyewitnesses, victims and even perpetrators starts to shape the story. we went from there and we looked at, also, the oklahoma city

bombing, and, you know, pretty much every attack that's happened since then. starting in '93 and of course before that, news media was largely the gatekeeper. they were the narrator and the ones that told you what the story was by how they covered it, what images they showed you and what they told you. that starts to change in the 2000s when camera phones arrive. again, i know it's hard to believe, probably everyone in here has a camera phone on them right now, but that was just starting in the 2000s. and you saw that particularly in the 2005 london metro bombing, that cameras -- that phones, pictures people took from their phones were making it on the heightly news and making -- nightly news and making it into newspapers for the first time really. 2009, fort hood. that was one of the first jihadist attacks in the united states that was using social media, social media picked up the story and began to shape it. the boston bombing, and we will

hear from one of our panelists firsthand about what that felt like. we also saw some big changes with social media coverage. officials were using it stops to good effect and sometimes to spread misinformation, such as the story that there'd been a bomb at the jfk library, and the boston police repeated the story, and then it becomes an article of faith. also a social media platform be, reddit, the users kind of ran away with the story and started speculating on who the perpetrators might be. and when law enforcement tried to get ahead of the story by putting out some early photos and the reddit users tried to guess who they might be, they guessed wrong, and they identified a picture and matched it with a student who was missing. he was not the perpetrator, but the pain and suffering it caused his family was awful. so this is when we first saw social media starting to play that kind of role, for better and worse. in 2013 the westgate mall shooting in kenya, you had for

the first time terrorist group al-shabaab live tweeting their own attack. i mean, again, this is a big change, right? from when news media decides what the story is to the perpetrator decides, directly communicating with public what the story is. and then all of a sudden way to today where not only do you have that, you also have live streaming. so now as i said, we pent a lot of -- spent a lot of time on orlando in our case study because it happened in the middle of our research. i'm not going to go into too much detail right now about what we saw and what we found, because we're fortunate enough to have the mayor of orlando here today, and i think he can best tell you what that looked like. but what i do want to say is, you know, as we're entering this -- as we're in, firmly in this era now where news media's not the only gatekeeper and public officials don't necessarily control the story, what did we learn from orlando and all the other cases we looked at at a time when

eyewitnesses and perpetrators and even observers thousands of miles away are going to shape the story and decide how the public reacts, what did we find? first, we found that leadership matters. even though you have so many people telling the story, first responders and public officials still have an authoritative voice in telling the story. so how they shape it, what they say, when they say it, to whom they say it really matters. and what you'll hear from mayor dyer is that he thought very carefully about that and about what he wanted his city to feel and to think. and that matters. also a part of that is that leadership matters, you also have to be prepared. not only prepared exercises for a crisis, but prepared for the communications aspect and for the pace of it. in the case of orlando, this happened at two in the morning, and the city had a little time to think about how it was going to respond be. if it had happened at two in the

afternoon, they would have had to know right away, and the fact that they were prepared and knew how to use social media for this kind of crisis would have made a huge difference. it did even as, even though they had a little time to craft their response. so social media and the pace of information has to be built into exercises. second, i think we found that it's really important to give the public a constructive role, to give them agency. so one of the things that we found that was very interesting is after the paris attacks, the recent paris attacks, there was a police operation in brussels where they were hundting for some of the suspects -- hunting for some of the suspects, and the brussels police communicated to the city, please do not post pictures or tweet where we're conducting operations, you'll just tip off the people we're looking for. and the city and the wider twitter community responded and began tweeting cat pictures to -- i don't know if people remember this, to the hashtag

brussels lockdown. and what that did is it effect ily buried anything that people were posting that might have helped find where they were doing these operations. and then the brussels police posted after that a picture of cat food and said, you know, thank you, help yourself. so, again, i think not just by being sophisticated with social media, but by also giving the victims a way to not feel like victims, it helped with resilience. include communications and social media uses and exercises in planning and also in real life. you really do as public officials and first responders need to know, need to have incorporated social media into your operations even for a small city. finally, what we found was it's really important to empower your local press. of all the press that tells the story, they're part of your community. so they have a vested interest in the community because they live there, because their families live there, but they also have the most local knowledge.

so local press even though they're under a lot of pressure right now from all this competition still has an important role to play, and as they change and become a different kind of press, that'll continue to be true. and then finally social media companies, we think need to embrace their responsibility here. they are the mass media of choice for many, many people now. whether they see themselves in that light or not, it is the truth. and some companies such as facebook have been pretty forward leaning in trying to understand what that means. they have community rules, they're experimenting with how to improve them. they're experimenting with how transparent to be, they're experimenting with collaboration with government. but, you know, facebook is by far the most used media, social media company, and they've tried to embrace this role. they have people who look at counterterrorism on their staff. so that's a good thing. but there's also a lot of companies that'll say things like twitter has in its community rules, we speak truth to power. that's great, but that tension

between dangerous speech and free speech is very real, and it's not something you can easily dismiss, you know? a place like reddit where they can say, well, we don't get boo that, but, you know, that rings, that really rings hollow when something like what happened with the boston bombing happens where you ruined somebody's life. so social media companies, we think, really need to embrace their role and the fact that they are mass media companies at this point. so with that, i'd like to turn to peter. so peter's article in the atlantic is called war goes viral, and he really focused on another side of the same equation, i think, which is partly how this is a weapon is and how isis and others use it. i have my notes about all the things i want to talk the you about, but the first thing i want to ask you about is can you define 40 ofly for us? >> really dig down into the details of it. that's one of the things we're seeing play out on the internet, and it should be familiar to

you. it's the definition of love of self. and what's happening is the idea there's a seeming kind of contradiction where this technology is supposed to be bringing us together, but it's -- we're searching out and finding validation in people who think like us already. so, and you can see this in everything from sports, you connect to people who like the same team or hate the same team to the election where, you know, look, all the information is online. but if you watch the facebook feed of a trump supporter versus a hillary supporter, they're in fundamentally different worlds. so you create these kind of echo chambers. and it's the same thing happening on the violence side as well. and that's really what the, you know, to pull back on all of this, what we were wrestling with in the project, and this was with emerson brooking who's

an analyst at council on foreign relations, is how the internet itself is changing and how that affects all of us. so the internet has gone from being used merely to transfer information back and forth, me e-mailing you, to also collecting information about the world around us. so it's your average smartphone has over 20 sensors on it. the camera to geolocation, you name it. so, actually, when you crunch the numbers, you know, we have roughly six billion things online right now, we're with the internet of things as you get smart cars, etc., you get up to 50 billion. actually, that leads to a trillion senators out there, things collecting -- sensors out there, things collecting information. and the other shift that you're talking about is the rise of social media. we're not just collecting information, we're sharing it. we become districters of information in the way -- distributers of information in the way media used to be.

so the result is every single actor in violence is online be it isis, be it the u.s. military, be it the russian military. and every single act of violence is being talked about online, usually in realtime now. often first. and, again, that's true whether you're looking at the case of the attack in orlando where, you know, it's literally the club's, if i recall correctly, the club's facebook account -- >> seven minutes. >> seven minutes, and it's telling people inside the club to run, and yet you and i can track it from afar to right now you can track the battle of mosul via, you know, everything from a youtube channel to instagram. this is something new. this is something different. >> well, and the reason that i started by asking you such a specific term is that so you're painting this picture that it's this world of information and of incomers, but it's also a world -- informers, but it's also a world of selective truths.

and that makes it different, right? people are deciding which pieces of that they want to hear. >> yeah. and the way i frame it is there's arguably no more secrets, but the truth is being buried beneath a sea of lies. and, again, we can see that playing out in everything from electoral politics today and how that links to russian information warfare campaigns to the discourse over terrorism, you name it. and the that of lease side comes in because one of the things that's strange -- it's the way we think. and we're measure likely to believe information that connects and links to the way we already viewed the world. so when they did a study of what goes viral, it's not -- what you are most likely to share online, what you are most likely to share online not defined by itself truth, whether it's true or not. it's by whether it validated what you thought for and how

many of your friends already shared it. so there's a little bit of a peer pressure side. one of the other things that's disturbing is when you confront someone with a counterargument, even if it's true, they're actually more likely to dig in and hold to their old belief rather than change their mind. so if i say you're wrong and i present facts to show you're wrong, you're actually less likely to be persuaded. >> you don't mean me personally -- [laughter] >> again, we all kind of feel that playing out in the election right now. >> so now take that and tell us in your article then you went to, you talked about isis, and so that's the general sort of swirling backdrop against which they're operating. and if i remember right in the article, you know, a lot of people are talking about they're social media geniuses. i think you called them talented plagiarists? >> strategic plagiarists.

>> so isis is using social media in a way that's new and not new and talk a little bit about that and how they're using it as a weapon. >> so they are in some ways new. as one analyst put it, the they're the first arguably terrorist group to own physical territory and digital the territory. but you see echoes in what they're doing to the classic story of terrorism itself. as you put it, terror doesn't take place in alleyways. you go back to, you know, the attacks in judea back when the zealots are attacking romans soldiers or sympathizers. they're making sure to do it in the square where everyone can see it, to more recently terrorism was defined as the feeder of violence, this is one of the top analysts putting it. so they're trying to do it in public, or persuade, it's all about, as you put it, the emotion, the publicity. the same thing if you look at their use of social media. on one happened, they're an advancement. it's amazing to compare how

al-qaeda communicated, you know, back using vcrs and cable tv to now the social media side. but much of what they're doing you can see parallels in what are simply best practices online. so, you know, they were going, oh, my goodness, they launched their mosul offensive with a hashtag which is what any video game or movie would do. they're highly visual. again, they try and work the system to their advantage. so to cogo back to that mosul operation, they created an app for it that then spun out 40,000 retweets so that then their message started to trend. they had twitter's algorithm sort of work for them the same way, again, you know, a political campaign would do it. they try and hijack conversations. so so they jump into conversations on everything from the world cup to interviews with minor youtube celebrities so

that they can get attention. another example would be the buzzfeed style. they don't just have one message. they push out to multiple messages, and then it's sort of like -- you know, buzzfeed puts out roughly 200 stories a day. one of them takes off and the others don't. same thing in i isis messaging. the other part which is a tactic used by, you know, everything from, you know, the real strategists of social media, katy perry and taylor swift, is it's the combination of being very strategic and tailored but also simultaneously authentic. so, you know, katy perry masker you know, arguably has the most twitter followers. she mixes promotion with very personal kind of messages that are dashed off quickly in a style that sort of connects to her followers. the same things if you look at what eye us is doing -- isis is doing, it's a mix of messaging

and very kind of personal so you see everything from battle footage to, you know, a guy complaining about everything from having potato peeling duty to putting up instagrams of his cats to musing on the death of robin williams and what the eye us fighter thought about -- isis fighter thought about jumanji. and then what's happening is they're connecting to people who are, or again, like-minded, and then they're taking the message into kind of a different space where the cultivation begins. the same thing that happens in online dating. you meet someone who sounds like you, and then you take the message to the side, and you connect further. that's where we're seeing kind of the recruiting. it's partly in the open, but then it's also moving to a more personal level. >> so it's not just a nonstate group that's trying to look bigger than it is that's using this technique to great advantage. it's also the russians, both with rt, they're news media

source that's online, and their use of social media, their hacks, all of that. but it's also you talked about in your article the cyber or nationalists of china -- cyber nationalists of china. and you talked about rt's role in the brexit vote. and also the quote that really caught me was you said something about it's a world without facts. so my question bundling all of that together is so what do we do in this world? how, you know, how do you counter or how do you fight or how do you deal with the fact that you've got everything from isis to rt to cyber nationalists who are trying to influence your public and tell the story? what are, have you seen good strategies? what do you think a good strategy is? >> actually, i love the message that you have in your report. in discussions of everything from terrorism to cybersecurity, we are constantly using the two

ds, defense and deterrence. keep the bad guys out and/or scare the bad guys away. and in terrorism, in cybersecurity and in this information warfare side, that is a losing game. as you put it, it's never, it's never going to give you 100% security because it's, one, there's some actors that aren't deterrable. there's other actors that are already on the inside, so you can do whatever you want on the immigration, on the wall side, but there's inside -- same thing in cybersecurity. instead, the magic word should be resilience. how do i power through the attack? how do i, to go back to use the taylor swift reference, shake it off? [laughter] how do i recover quickly when i've been knocked down? and it's the same thing when you're thinking about information warfare. the best way to respond is to be resilient.

the best way to keep from being manipulated to know that someone's trying to manipulate you. and, again, shrug it off, power through it, push out alternative messages that are just as adept, bury the lie in a sea of truths. ..

a gatekeeper in terms of a politician. are they incentivized to ramp up the anger, ramp up the sphere factor, ramp up the uncertainty or are they incentivized to say now we will power through this? i worry about that right now. of course, you get the partisanship side where we go back to where we were before. is even worse where their existing into different worlds? it's hard to be resilient if we have a different set of facts of what happened. one of the major challenges of our democracy right now is how does it become more resilient to these forces. >> that's great. decrepit opening conversation for us to bring up the next panel. talus before you go and then please stick around for the q&a as well, you have a book you're working on? >> there's been a project that's going to try to pull back and

look at this not just with these big individual couples but what's going on over all in terms of politics. >> we will look forward to the book. can't wait. get busy. if i could invite the panel to come up as they are taking the places i will introduce them to you. and going to use my notes to make sure because this is a very distinguished panel. i want to make sure we get them all. absolutely correct. at the far end we have katie wheelbarger occur served as policy director for the senate armed service committee an and o access senator mccain's staff lead on the senate select committee on intelligence. previously she served as the deputy staff director, i will call uk become on the house permanent select me on intelligence bring the tenure of chairman mike rogers. before capitol hill katie was counsel to vice president dick cheney and the council to secretary chertoff at the department of home security in its very early days. she's a graduate of ucla and

harvard law school. next to her we have juliette kayyem, one of the nations leading experts on homeland defense and national security having served at the state official in massachusetts and also in the department of homeland security. if that were not enough she's also today an entrepreneur who's running her own company they give strategic advice and risk management planning that's called solutions. she's an on air security analyst for cnn so she may look familiar. she should look familiar to watch tv. chisels with podcast and author of a new book called security mom. and then to my left is mayor buddy dyer. he has served as orlando's mayor since 2003. is a really important leader for central florida, and you think about orlando, orlando is not your average city of its size

but it is one of the most visited cities in the world, serving this country. something like 49 million visits a year? >> sixty-six. >> 66 million visitors a year for a city that is i think 250,000 in the city proper and 1.4 million in the area. when you were mayor gavin interesting set of challenges. i think i have listed a consequence he opened three community venues company and was in a, dr. phillips center for the performing arts, the camping world stadium, the number two national best place to buy real estate anybody looking for investment, number three job growth and my favorite, number four the happiest place to work. that has a familiar ring to it, happiest place to work. before he became mayor he served in the florida senate including as the senate leader. he's a very experienced politician come and again i come back to he has been mayor since 2003 and if i remember right in

2040 started his tenure offer three hurricanes and tropical storm all in a row. so he got trial by fire what it means to crisis communications. as i was going through your background i also was intrigued to see you have a degree in civil engineering or brown university and a jd from the university of florida in some other florida city. and that he started out as an environmental engineer which is a topic that's near and due to my heart. so delighted you can all join us today. katie, i would like to start with you. a question for you, you look a lot the threat it tell us about the threat biggest terrorism something americans still need to worry about and specifically at home, is this a threat that is growing, getting worse? give us a sense. >> first, appreciate you having me here today. i think peter explained, data backup of what we worried a lot on capitol hill when we analyze the threat, morphing and changing behavior of the terrorist organizations, the

extent to which they are harnessing new media and new communication techniques. bring new members into the fold and also inspire others around the world even if they're not directly members. i will say in some ways look at the threat now and partaking of the public dialogue, oppose isil era is almost, there's a silver lining to this that i believe people are paying to give attention as figure -- deserve. those of advocating beginning to worry about terrorist threats, metastasizing threat around the world, different branches of al-qaeda were opening would continue to partake in different military actions and more and more countries, that there was a sense in america is not something we want to think about anymore. or it was something we thought we have sorted solved, we could do with overseas by military action but we defended ourselves

and make ourselves less secure and homeland was a much of a problem here. defensthe events not on the risf isil but the attacks in europe and in america over the course of the last couple of years have brought the attention that it deserves. the numbers we cite in, don't necessarily reflect the true extent of the threat. yes, you're unlikely statistical to be a victim of terrorism in many ways the number of terrorist attacks we have or have not have gives somewhat aside the success our post 9/11 counterterrorism effort. we've been lucky couple of times, and so i think the numbers are not necessarily what we should be looking at what we should be looking at the fact that there are growing organizations that has a sizing organizations that might not continue to have people that are completely absorbed everything into an external plotting against the united states, weather, i just came back from

afghanistan. i was there two days ago, met with general nicholson for a long time he likes to remind visitors that 20 of 94 chairs or decisions designated terrorist or physicians operate within the afpak area. many of them attending to attack the u.s. personnel in those countries. jalalabad continues to be a hotbed, goes back to where we were pre-9/11. of these issues were still confronting. i think the organizations are resilient. i think they are emboldened. i think they can absorb a lot, our military efforts, the coalition against isil is doing great things. some of us on capitol hill wish they could go a little bit faster. the slower the military efforts take overseas each year it is for the organizations to absorb the effort and adapted in the these are very resilient, about

the organizations. i will end with one thought. i am heartened to see the report because we do spend so much time when we're looking at the threat focus on how is the in using social media for their advantage. it's really important for us to get a better sense of how we can better use it to avoid the fear and the tea terror that the terrorists actually want us to adore. >> one more question for you, katie, which is, if you to characterize they need from congress and how congress is looking at terrorism and specific that counterterrorism in the united states, is there, how would you describe the level of mistrust and what members of congress want right now? >> i think they want us to be secure. if i was being perfectly on the perspective i have as little schizophrenic at times. write out an attack or even a thwarted attack that talk for the first few weeks after it is how can we begin harden our

defenses, how could the fbi have let this happen with what could we be collecting more of? how can we not have known what the person was thinking. that's something else i want to kind of put stop what you said earlier we can't expect myself to be perfect especially in defense. we are an open civil society. i believe we need to do everything we can overseas to stop the organization some existing to avoid them inspite others to do so, did you ask in the united states but we can't expect a level of perfection from our intelligence and defense agencies. they can't read peoples might in some ways we would be expecting them to be professionally to require that. schizophrenic in the sense immediately after an attack or a thwarted attack the want to know what would happen until we could do everything to stop it. been mighty civil liberties issues that come up later at a different time and why are these agencies doing x, y and z or collecting information. they are trying to find i think

the balance and the american constituency trying to find come and to get back to something i think peter said to sometimes we can find ourselves in the media loop of we get more attention if we are hysterical, whichever direction it goes, whether it's the hyper libertarian or the hyper security site. we do see that i bought on capitol hill. the little bit of the loudest voices sometimes gets the attention. most folks are pretty strong on security and balance on how to achieve it. but we do see the same things trying to address in your report. we see up on capitol hill. >> so take that view, juliette, and never really interesting perspective on this. that just because you, but a federal official a state official, and then at the time the boston marathon bombing happened, you are at -- you are a cnn analyst. not only that it was your town. what, a mile from your house? all of a sudden you're living a terrorist attack as a

journalist, a public official, a parent, a resident, a victim. it was your city. you are right there. so can you give us your perspective, or multilayer perspective? >> i write about in the book. thank you all for coming and thank you, mayor, it's an honor to meet you. katie was my husbands student, so i'm sure she did but it looks like. the boston marathon bombing both as in some ways set the stage for what worked and didn't work for what happened in nevada but my various roles i've had, and i've had one career but many jobs. in state and federal government, and state homeland security adviser in massachusetts i was in charge of planning the boston marathon many, many years before the attack. so with th was the intimate witt of fairness and planning that had gone on.

as some people in the audience know, the sarnoff brothers went to my kids at school. they lived two blocks away from us. the father's office was, or mechanical auto shop on one of the kids schools corner. so that was cordoned off we went back to school a week later. i had this beauty role in which a shine to describe things, and to talk about the local and national here i am on cnn and all the anchors are saying well, in newtown, no, it's newton. those of you who know massachusetts, it's not newtown. trying to give a sense of what was going. part of what i see my role, why does look like accomplish a standing there and what are they doing. and also interesting is the social media both good and bad. it shows the example, cnn had a major re- courting air on

wednesday when one of the reporters announced that they been addressed and that wasn't. but also think about thursday night win for the first time the fbi, those who work with the fbi now historic this was, crowd sourcing and edification. we didn't have any record of the sarnoff brothers were. they're all these pictures and you saw the fbi and the boston police becoming much more comfortable sending to the public look, there are millions of cameras at the finish line of the boston marathon. the irony was given all those cameras, it was not good position at public cameras to figure out who they were of public safety cameras. so you saw the good and bad of sordidness crowd sourcing social media over the course of a week. for me personally confirmed what i've been think about since i left dhs and the number of teachers people in the office, and back to your point, we

contain to try to rationalize away the threat of terrorism, particular in homeland by saying that statistics are so though, whatever. want to remind people is as the mother of three having been in this, you can say that but if my kid is that .0001%, so we have to accept this, public officials, the intimacy that people feel and fear that they feel so that does get to what i thought was so interesting about the report, if i could comment on a few things, that in homeland security we actually don't talk about the department has been homeland security. any more than you would see the department of education is education policy. we really talked in terms of the homeland security enterprise. also talked, another pivot essentially after 2005 hurricane katrina, department of homeland security came out in 2001 at the

terror attacks and to those five is what i call a course correction after hurricane katrina it would also talked about all-hazards. so those two things combined really to try to invest the communities with a sense of trying to minimize all risks for the kennedy, you're trading a public official for all sorts of hazards. you try to maximize a national defense, not just federal because the department is very small. people from fema, less than 3000 people that work at fema. the muscle of public safety is on the state and local level. also tried to maintain our openness as a society. so those shifts really do confident what's going on and social media. saw wanted to talk about after the boom sight of this and something to think about in response to the report. it is true that i think social media has the capacity to engage

entities have any disaster but we could talk about terrorism specifically. in my field, in 2001 we had a tendency to talk about the public in a way that i've made to not offer each other. we probably still do that. oh, god, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, i can't pay attention. or mechanical outside the house and my kids have to wear helmets in the basement. that's how we talk to people. trying to use social media to engage people to actually do something rather than read about it, or whatever. so that's were i think social media actually has empowered, engaged people in what we call the enterprise, which is the public, state and local, first responders, ngos, churches and the faith-based community, and certainly the network. one thing that is worth noting that the extent to which we've become very reliant on social

media, and i sort of put crowd sourcing and shared economy, i put all of those things together, so using the web or whatever to engage people who are not physically in the same room. a lot of you're familiar with facebook sort of disaster, if something happens in pairs. i advise airbnb, to give them full credit, airbnb after orlando but certainly after paris and in the buildup to the hurricane, airbnb renters, not even cold winters, but airbnb, people who put up their homes, we notify them and say look, there's going to people who may need homes. it's an incredible community, that's something you can do whether it's a hurricane or a terrorist tactic you can engage in use the platform.

over -- uber is helping out with flu shots because public health is part of homeland security in the sense you want a strong resilient nation. so uber is trying to do a lot to try to get people to get the flu shot. there are creative ways in which we can use people's enthusiasm but also the way that people communicate now which is no longer, i pick up the phone and call you but we followed the same people that we may get to know each other. this really optimistic and helpful ways given as we will all the great that you're just not going to get the vulnerabilities to do. not in this nation. >> that's a terrific overview i don't come back to you because of the question of what to ask and i will put you on notice, so you can think about it, but one of the things that's happened in the way that disasters and attacks are being communicated right now is its immediate and echoes profound pick and again sometimes how the story gets

pulled and spread. it's not always right information and is not always helpful information. one of the things, an ongoing concern, communities that get targeted for secondary violence. and in particular americans or muslim-americans, and i've managed to pose it to you but your family is originally from lebanon, and i wonder, that's the other way of juliette kayyem, official journalist, the parent, but also in arab-american. i wonder especially right now, because political rhetoric is part of this picture. how you feel about that and people look to you, as i am right now, to be an expert on that as well and how do you think that community reacts well to do any other community to what's happening the way

information is moving speak with you want me to answer that now? it's not that easy. spent the mayor did think about it. >> we look at the case state and we spoke to you and the number of other people, reporters, your police wouldn't talk to us but we did a lot of research about them at about all of the police reports during the shooting. we spoke to people on your staff, you know, people who live in orlando about what happened and how they felt about it. we've were down there looking around. we came away with the conclusion that orlando was pretty resilient and how it dealt with the aftermath of this attack. and what we heard, and you don't have to agree with this, but we heard from a lot of people in the city was they saw you as a hero of this story, and look to

you to tell them how to feel, and she did. so i think what would be great rather than be walking to the case study is have you talk about that day and tell us the sort of chain of events and when you made decisions about specific about how to communicate with people and want to communicate. i mean, just starting with how did you first find out that this had happened? >> do things just to start off with select and set the stage just a little bit. everybody knows orlando. there's been any but i don't think the whole world that doesn't orlando but within it is disney is there and universal is there and actually 66 million visitors came to orlando, not 49, which is the most visited place at least in america, not the world. they don't really know orlando and its residents. you saw orlando and its residents during the course of

the night and aftermath of pulse. but we are very young city people are very open city. you don't have to be third generation to do whatever you want to do there. people come for opportunity but we embrace diversity, equality, fairness. we are very multicultural city. and that's who we were on that day. it wasn't something that we needed to form and tell people it's who we were. so we have that advantage going in that day. and the second thing is, after 9/11 and then the three hurricanes that you referenced, and we had a workplace shooting that come in downtown that had one fatality and three injured. we did a lot of emergency training. and a lot of it, a lot of it is with weather related as you might speculate, but we also do a lot of shooter training. and we do it not just in the

city of orlando but we do it on a regional basis. so all our law enforcement people know each other. so when they showed up to not it's not like they meeting each other for the first time. there are altogether. they know how to talk. and how they act. they know what to expect. and then interestingly we have been following the national trends like everybody else and were usually do hurricanes. we do active shooter but we did a tabletop a civil disobedience after first and then after baltimore. there's a wild sender that i don't think of it could happen but was an african-american been shot by a police officer in one of our troubled neighborhoods with the naacp convention convened in town and then a wrapper that was going to perform that night. so you can imagine, that was an interesting scenario to deal with. but through that we understood how important communication was

also out this. we actually now had an esf function of simply social media. we actually have that -- bsf, right. spirit i usually don't do acronyms spent a lot of my life independent of us going to call you out on acronyms. >> but anyway, we have plans on how to communicate. for instance, in a civil disobedience it would be through police twitter, through hurricane it would be through our twitter. speak the roles and missions were defined. >> right. but you can never anticipate. we never anticipated -- it would be hard to ever imagine that that could occur. so the first shots were fired at 2:02, 203 time in a friend and i got a call at home. i was asleep at about 3:00 in the morning. that call was mayor, this is deputy chief, i have to inform

you that there has been a shooting at the pulse nightclub. there's an active shooter, multiple casualties and it's now active, or is it is now a hostage situation. the command center we set up a certain location on orange avenue which i guess you saw at some point. so my first thought, i'm a dad. i immediately go to the extent it was, 26 your old son to see where he was. i do know that he's ever been to pulse or whether he frequents there or not but i just wanted to make sure because it makes your job a little bit easier to know what to do if you know your family members are all safe. my wife was in bed. it turns out he was in bed as well. my next call was to my deputy chief, heather fagan, who is our communications guru or queen, and she's here with us today smiling. >> make sure you tell heather that we talk to you and that we were helpful.

heather has a lot of sway over the situations. >> so my pleased liaison was already on the way to pick me up and we agreed we would pick up heather second such would have an extra ivan's to do her hair, brush her teeth, whatever she needed. we went on down to the immense in the gut to the command center. it's a big giant rv trailer type of thing with basically two rooms, a commandment and then won that has a lot of technical equipment that is being manned by the others. we come in and its achieved a majority of the deputy chiefs, the fbi, at three sheriffs from orange or surrounding county. we discussed on the way there what's my role. we have done all these types of singers and everything but i never envisioned in the middle of the night in that type of situation. heather and i determined i did what needed to stay of the way

of the law enforcement and let them do their jobs because they are trained to do that. number two, we need to make sure that i supported and did that undermine the chiefs authority can even though i am his boss, and make sure that everybody saw that i understood the chief is going to make the final call on any decisions that were made. and the fbi and the sheriffs were acting in that same fashion, which i just took is very professional. and then third was to gather as much possible information as we could because we are going to have to communicate in some fashion at some point. >> you told me that was really important to you, that you would to be able to communicate as much information as you possibly could as early as you possibly could. why did you think that was so important? >> i have seen this time and time again. if you don't provide as much information in a concise, accurate way, somebody else will

fill in those gaps and probably would not accurate information. the more information we could get out in an accurate manner and not any manner that people stop listening but they want that information, i think it helps to serve the purpose of your going to serve. so when we got there, the chief updated us on what had occurred and i could go to that if you would like or move on. >> at what point then were you ready, it was not until about 7:30 a.m. that you your first press conference, right speak with i will shorten the five hour time period to a three hour time period. the incident occurred. the opd and the swat team had the shooter confined to a bathroom. all of the living victims were evacuated. they evacuated a couple dressing rooms that have not gotten out early on. so really early on everybody

that was in the main part were on the way to a hospital. and by 430 everybody else except those that went to two bathrooms where the shooter was. >> we know some of these people were sending text and phone calls and videos. will be found was, i wonder if you can confirm this, that it was mostly point-to-point. meaning they were calling or sending videos to family members or to first responders to a were not broadcasting the they were sent it to someone. >> they were not broadcasting. they were either texting or in some cases actually calling family members who we've been calling 911, or directly to 911 in some cases pick some of those calls have been released, and they gave us -- that's how we found the people in the dressing rooms. were able to get out. we knew roughly how many people were in the bathrooms and we knew where the shooter was in which batman how many people were brought in there. what happened though, from those

you also got some inaccurate information. so the shooter was in process with 911 and hostage negotiators three different times and indicated that he had an explosive vest and who's going to detonate those come and that he had explosives in his vehicle parked outside. that was confirmed by some of the people in the bathroom. so they must have overheard him tell the hostage negotiators that and then they confronted the 911, the guy has an explosive vest on. we have to assume at that point since it was verified that that's the case and to give an indication he was getting ready to act. the chief make a determination at that point that it was time to breach the building. swat had gotten into place, placed explosives. there's a hallway between the two bathrooms. they were hoping to break into the bathroom with the shooter was not selected get them out. they put explosive charges and it did not break through the wall. we have a piece of equipment

called a bearcat which was then deployed and just as an aside, i took a lot of heat when we bought that. we had discussions about the militarization of police force -- >> a little satisfaction. >> i was very happy we had a bearcat. they breached the wall in 17 place17places and we evacuate at kicking people out of the bathroom that did not have the shooter. we had thrown diversionary explosive devices in there so he was probably a little disoriented, but he came out of the bathroom and engaged want an action shot one of our guys. fortunately, it was in his kevlar helmet to our guys returned fire, killed i him and that was 515 thymic or some point. >> so at this point, and by the way, all throughout this, the shooter agent never named and you told me that but you never said his name and that you just don't consider him a relevant person. >> once he was dead, i did need

to think about it. i did need to act upon. that was someone else is job, the fbi's job. answered everybody else could accommodate about who he was, what he was, why he did it. i'm not sure even now today why exactly he did it. there's a lot of speculation about that. and by the way, the instant he was dead, the fbi said we are in charge. terrorist event or a went from opd being in charge to the fbi be in charge, so we need you follow the direction. because it was an active investigation. but they had even been determined he was the lone shooter at that point. so we have that knowledge. they had a lot of information on word about who he was. >> all throughout the attacks he was using facebook and posting to facebook. he was googling himself and see if he was trending. facebook was taking them down. i don't know fast that they were taking his posts down so that

they didn't necessarily get wide play at all throughout the attack broadcasting and trying to -- >> we didn't know that at the time. fbi assumes control of the investigation. we start the discussion about how do we inform the public. we had -- 530 thymic, six in the morning. we are glad a little discussion about whether the fbi or police were going to lead outcome and we push back and said no, i have to because i'm the person that they know. ron is the best fbi agent i know that when he goes out there, that's going to scare people. nobody is going to know who he is whether to trust them or not. the opd leads out that's a whole different tone that if you're elected mayor comes out. so we got them to agree to that and it going to take -- tell you quite on the second we are fortunate in that regard because the fbi's federal spokespeople were not there yet the next day

we might not have been able to convince them that we are able to convince the local agent in charge but that's the way it out to be. >> fbi headquarters officials that are listening, it's really good to after local officials who are known by the committed in charge of setting the tone in the committee patients. >> so we were able to, i do want to say to date, the kind of lead throughout the course of the first day in setting the tone. and heather and i had a substantial discussion about what we want to do go out for that first press conference. let me the verge just a second we delayed a couple hours. 7:15 a.m., 7:30 a.m. in the range there was still a possibility that were explosives in into the building or the vehicle. >> i remember you telling me he thought this is going to end with an explosion and a suicide. >> i did think that because we believed he had the explosive vest and i was prepared for the

building blowing up with everybody in it. fortunate that was not the outcome what we still thought there might be explosives in the vehicle and we didn't think that we would instill confidence in the public if we came out and had a press conference and his car blew up in the background while we are having the press conference. so we delayed having a press conference. and what we wanted to do was convey accurate information. we wanted to talk specifically about this, we wanted to calm everybody down and instill confidence that we had this, that we were in control and we want everybody to know we were safe. so those were the words and types of things that we crafted. but i also from the very start, and i guess this might be an intuitive, i don't know why we said this exactly but we came out and will begin our guiding principle was we are not going to be defined by the hate filled act of a convicted killer. we will be defined by our response, which is going to be

love, compassion and unity. and that kind of rally i think our community behind. >> then it was another press conference a few hours later. and you add some players to the stage for that one. and directly germane to what you just said. tell us about that because you also were thinking about the potential for secondary violence. >> so while we didn't mention the killer nor know for sure what is rationale was, we did know who he was and is religious or ethnic background. >> and we knew what he said. >> that he had claimed -- >> i suspect he was a little bit vague on the details and use arabic phrases. so you knew that from the very beginning. >> and we certainly have seen in the past that there can be hostility towards muslims or