of the takeaways, this what i think might be fair little bit was at that i wrote this, as we making journalist feel better about the fact that nobody cares about what they do anymore. last but i'm not entirely sure about that line of attack but it recovered enough in some of the island counter i thought i would throw that out there for you. now, of course, there was many people i would say also objected to the notion that i wrote the sentence about the media being smug, insular and out of touch in the past tense. and many breeders of this essay would like you to know that they believe that the media is in the current present tense smug come into and out of touch pics i think that's a fair critique and my point was slightly different one. but there enough. and, of course, been there's just a lot of people who do matter what you say about

election 2016, given how raw feelings are, they really want you to know that we don't understand just how angry white america is and how much we don't get it. that's probably an inevitable table state. what can we talk about going forward? you knowyou know, we're not goie relitigating campaign 2016 except in learned discussions and academic papers for the next few decades. we have to figure out away from both as a country country and as a profession of journalism. that's where it's been most surprising and most interesting. so many people have come forward with very concrete ideas in a way that i'm not familiar with. most of you have a sense of journalists and you know us well enough to know that we are the type like to sit around and criticize much more than we like to build things come much more like that would like to solve problems. much more than we like to take

action. we like to criticize those who take action rather than ourselves. i have been quite surprised at the number of people have come forward including one of our panelists today with very specific concrete ideas. we've got to do something about it, has been a refrain that i haven't heard very much up until now in my career in journalism. i really have been surprised and struck by the extent to which people come some people say we should really fight back with lawsuits. other people say we should create a new website, and we should police take new spirit we should find a way of bedding either news organizations -- vetting -- that we believe our custom provide a we should vet individual stories or in my view, one of the most promising ideas is to get out there and find a way for journalists who affirmatively make the case for reporting for independent

journalism, for facts and why they matter. we have taken it for granted. in fact it's been part of our social contract we thought was so much a bedrock assumption that we haven't needed to do anything about it. it strikes me perhaps this is a moment where we have to change the way we think of it. it's not a spectator sport anymore. these are things that we value. how do we go out there and bring a new generation of people? todd woodbridge this divide in the united states between those who accept -- how do we bridge -- that exist in washington, in blue america? how do we broaden the circle of people who understand why, in fact, that old adage still rings true, which is you can have your opinion but you can't have your own set of facts. you are not entitled to your own set of facts. i feel like that consensus is

frayed, and i've never seen that in 25 years in washington. and i think i'm excited about the prospect of taking concrete steps that address really the crisis of legitimacy of american journalism in a way that we haven't seen before. and so when we get to the questions, i hope you all will step up not only with questions but also with ideas for all of us. i want to invite the panel to the stage right now, and is a very quickly, this is a conversation about washington journalism, about political journalism, about how we got her and where we are going forward. we could have a version of this in silicon valley but i'm delighted because these are people who i have learned a ton from and to a fake health explain why we are not just talking about generic digital journalism there were talking about the role that reporting place in our democracy and politics. so jim glassman is our first

panelist. jim was really a person who taught me most of what i know about journalism, all the good parts. he's not responsible for the bad parts. he was the editor and publisher of roll call newspaper which was my first job out of college at about a bit about that in this essay i do think he's a real visionary becomes a washington reporting. so i'm delighted he could join us today. shani hilton from buzzfeed news is teaching all of us i think about what the possibilities that we haven't thought through for new puffins and ideas when it comes to taking real old-fashioned ideas about reporting and why it matters and journalism, and showing how we can do it both in new formats, new mediums and in news organizations that didn't exist 30 years ago. so i'm delighted that she could be here. and then the other panelist is my friend and colleague glenn thrush with whom i've worked very closely over the last few years in launching political magazine and he's been our chief

political correspondent at politico this year throughout the crazy 2016 campaign, and comes from the world of new york tabloids. because taught me a lot about reporting and thinking about politics in this crazy moment we live in. so with -- without further ado, not and we will yak. [applause] >> thank you, everybody. i thought we would just really jump right in, and the first question i wanted to ask everybody is one that i've

obviously spent a lot of time thinking about since this crazy election. and i'm sure you have, which is, what could we have done differently? and you know you know, what do k about what it's going to take for us to cover a president of the united states who doesn't share many of the consensus views about the role of independent reporting that most of the people and the trim and certainly on this stage you do? what do you think? >> what didn't we screw up? first of all, i want to generally kind of question what one of my sources says about democratic politicians. that bedwetting the reporters tend to do in the wake of these elections is very reflective to the point of, you know the

extreme, being so reflective, being narcissistic. i think to some extent we are being, spending way too much time scouring our own mistakes trying to figure what we did wrong. anyone who read the aggregate of the coverage of this campaign got more than enough information about both candidates to make an informed decision. there were many moments in this campaign giving donald trump 30 minutes of unmediated into airtime of his podium -- empty. i did a piece come when you make a decision saying there is an empty part of that donald trump will eventually occupy, you are saying something qualitatively and elevating him to a level that one should elevate into. but in general i think we are in an environment where we have people who are attacking the present systematically, who are

essentially attacking legitimacy of all institutions broadly in order to make a profit or make a political profit. and i think we need to understand that we are in i wouldn't say it's a war, though there is in or position called info wars. but i think we need to i think they somewhat less reflective and somewhat more deflected spirit so we didn't screw up anything? >> we screwed up a lot of. but in the aggregate i think we informed, i think voters had more than enough information to make a decision spinner i came out and said at the beginning of this essay, and probably that was the thing that kicked off more people than anything else about the essay. but the idea that isn't it nice you are absolving yourself of all blame? i still think it's true and i think it's pretty clear cut just for the record, journalism by and about washington, about government, about this campaign is better than it ever has been before.

jim and i will talk a little bit about when i first started out in the late 1980s. the truth was we were not nearly as good reporters as they are now. no way. we didn't know most of the things that people know now in real-time. what we expect of our reporters and of our journalists is much more now than it ever has been in the past. that to the actual is the really scary part but i'm glad you brought that up. but shani, we did screw up, right? >> i largely agree with glenn. i the end of the campaign, there was a lot of information, to information out there about both candidates. i think donald trump was actually fairly easy to cover in that digging into his past and his background as a type of business. he is, he's been a public figure since so long, a celebrity figure for so long that fighting to information about him and publishing it wasn't a difficult thing to do. the same for hillary clinton. >> so why did nobody care?

that's actually the bigger question which is what you have up there, post-truth, post-fact. for fact. for a lot of people, it's very clear that it given up on their trust, and that maybe if there's anywhere we screwed up, it's how do you bring that back? >> well, so i don't disagree with anything anybody said so far but i really do think the problem is people not believing or not really caring about facts. and that's the subject i think a lot of people have tackled and i spent a lot of time on ever since i was at the state department, which is now eight years ago, where i was confronted with a lot of conspiracy theories and the question of why do people believe these things? what can you do about them? and the answer is in things like michael lewis his new book, or

jonathan heit at nyu nyu, sometg we all understand i think, which is intuitively, our intuition and our emotions are much stronger than our reason. that presents tremendous problems for an institution that is founded on reason. the fact is we are on teams. what we constantly look for is good news about our team and bad news about the other team. i think this election provided opportunities, thanks to the revolution that the internet caused, for us to find, whichever team we are on, whatever proof, in quotation marks, we decide that we want to discover. i think that's really what happened. i'll give you just one little example. the trump team has been saying that donald trump has won a

landslide victory. and i'll bet if you did a survey of his supporters they would say he sure did. the fact that he got few electoral votes as a winner than two-thirds of the recent presidential winners, at least since 1900 1900, including boths of barack obama, both terms of bill clinton and so forth, doesn't really matter because it is this emotional connection. i think the real issue for us is how do we counter that? because things are slipping away i think very quickly. >> i was on an npr show a couple weeks ago, and we had a trunk circuit on the line. we were talking about donald trump's tweet about the 3 million illegal votes, which is i castle made of crap, that assertion speeding i hate it

when you're polling your punches spirit we were pressing the person on this and she actually said, this is what she said. she said unfortunately there's no such thing as facts anymore. add the explanation of that argument was well, you believe that the wasn't 3 million illegal votes that so many of mr. trump's supporters out in the country really do believe there were 3,000,000 votes. she really, really i don't believe in that moment she was understood the front of the difference between those two things. that to me has been the mindbending aspect of this campaign. not that dumb truck one. i think his weight was always a possibility i in our minds but i think the notion that so many people were not inviting fact and the thought process of assimilation of facts and decision making is much different than what i think we assumed by what i've assumed spirit i want to hone in on that with everybody. conspiracy fears have been around forever.

partisan media has been around forever. i divided country been around forever. we fought a civil war here. you can go right back to alexander hamilton to see the evidence of media that spread untrue stories and that people believe different things. what is it that's a different about now or that we feel to be different about now? or is it we just feel it to be different but it's not different and we're exposed to it? that's where we start to look at and understand, are we facing a different and more existential threat either to our democracy or two independent journalism than conspiracy theories lies and falsehoods of the past? so that's one bucket of questions for everybody. i want to come back also to jim's point which i think is very important looking at almost the social science rationale behind it. you could sort of refrain that

as narrative versus fact. one of the things about donald trump as a politician i think, his particular skill and genius is understanding narratives and definitely not understand the facts. he's pretty divorced from the world of facts and he's pretty genius at the narrative. he understood i think in ways that we had a hard time grappling with that creating or reinforcing a narrative around hillary clinton and, whether it was e-mail or corrupt hillary, lying hillary, was going was going to be a very successful way for him to use fax that were relevant and discard facts that were inconvenient. and they do think as a general as we all know the power of narrative and how hard it can be to disrupt narratives, even those does our fundament unto our misrepresentative. and to me that's what a lot of the election was about, was that we couldn't in fact no longer

have the power to disrupt narrative or perhaps the one part of the media narrative was stronger than that. let's go back to this question of, is there any truth anymore and it is this something really different? what do you think? >> i do think a chunk of the media really wrapped the concept of the fact check around itself like a blanket. this is how we're going to penetrate the narrative, but we have long known that people really resent fax the challenge what they truly believe in. and i'm like journalists who, generally speaking, would you give a fact they take that information, they incorporated into the future of how they tell their stories. the average person doesn't do that. and so thinking about that clinging to fact check, i think that was -- >> fact check, one of the things i did discover, when you try to

refute a lot it only emphasizes the light in the first place. i'm not a big fact check fan. i think people should correct mistakes don't expect that to have much of an effect. i want to go back to your very first question of the two-part question. i think what's happened is people are wired to respond to narratives, to respond to come if i say once upon a time, you will all pay a lot of attention to where as if i say this is 50% greater than that, you probably won't. so we are all wired to want to listen to narratives and we are very intuitive. but the big change really has been technological. i don't think there's any doubt about that. when i was in college i want to start my own newspaper. i got out and it did that. let me tell you it was really hard because of the three biggest expenses i had were

paper, ink and distribution. and now it's not so hard. i mean, everybody is a publisher, as you said up there. brookings as a publisher. actually brookings was a publisher before the internet. we are all publishers, and to quote susan glasser, this is going to be a golden age for anyone who cares about journalism and act on new ideas and information. this is she wrote before the election started. at its true. it is a golden age but it is a paradox because at the same time everybody has his or her voice. those sources are not nested factual. i'm going to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but i was trained to respect facts. i knew what the rules were. when i was in college and we went to the same place, if you were a competitor for a place on

the harvard crimson and you made one mistake, you were out. one factual error, that was it. it was very, very serious. now everybody is a journalist. nobody is really a trained journalist. and so i think that a lot of those problems occur. but it's really sort of the collusion to these two things, that technology and the way that we are wired. and by the way, i also want to say one of the good things about the internet is it does correct things and it does -- there are an million voices out there so i do want to repeal it. i think it's great but it does cause problems. it does cause serious problems when people believe things that are not true. >> i think we're in a gold -- what h he said is right and it's devastating. the fact you can't rationalize your way around it. i have an alternative theory. i think we have to wrap around a

brick and filters peoples windows. we have the web and i sex in a way that people like donald trump during the campaign and this is the advice of mine. visit princeton judgment demonstrated as fact checkers, weaponize. we had to be forceful agenda pushing to stop as he is. he is a product of a tablet environment editing people in d.c. may not really understand that. everything that trump does is configured to appear on page six of "new york post." his entire public is based on that priority. i think the way you go after somebody like that in terms, why go after in correcting the record and holding him accountable is by using the tabloid tool. one thing i would disagree with. i don't think we are in an age of fact versus data. we are in an age of brandy. narrative presuppose an attention span and it presupposes that consistency in terms of storyline.

what this guy does is branding. look at what susan was saying about fake news as a brand or as a hashtag. three weeks ago it was a weapon of the left. now if you look at my trolls, and please don't, everything is now hashtag fake news. these are folks and is not confined into one particular political movement though it does seem to be more on the right, right now, people really understand branding in an intuitive way. hope is teaching his people branding. this thing is snowballing. we will have to figure out a way to not stop the snowball but to make her own. >> i think your point is well taken but i would argue that branding is a subset of narratives. we do know how to watch soap operas. donald trump is a soap opera, a running show in which we are now all the extras. i think what you're calling branding, we found his ups and downs. it's not like he's a dramatic flash in the pent-up character

and then goes away, which would suggest the absence of narrative. in fact what, he almost needs to be thrown in the colon in order to fight his way back out and that to be as much of sort of a soap opera type character. i want to come back to a couple quick points and bring you into this because i think the structural shift in immediate is what jim was talking about. when you are in college they were a little desk strict by the time i wasn't there. there were more than -- and i should say as a boss he did not fire people who made mistakes in the reporting, thank goodness, otherwise i would've i would've been fired in my first week as a report out of college. there is a structural shift. we are talking what you guys see as consumers. there's a structural shift and i've long thought again that was a positive peer with god from basically a scarcity economy, when you graduated from college and started a newspaper, you had

to pay to buy the ink, pay for the printing press your paper was expensive. you couldn't print a lot of pages that dictated the content even of the journalism that people saw. my dad who is here today which is great, he said to me never get in an argument with somebody who buys ink by the barrel. it was a scarcity economy and those who could afford to own a platform, to own a newspaper newspaper or a magazine had an outside impact on our public discourse, and on what facts were allowed in a democracy. the gatekeepers are gone. immediate has fragmented. we all know the consequences of it but i think what we're really dealing with now is the fact even though we knew this, this is not the first election cycle of 2016 they which a plethora of information and news undifferentiated has been thrown at us. that is been to at least arguably the last decade.

but we are still grappling it seems to be with the consequences on our political process. we are overwhelmed by information. the cost, the relative costs in economic terms of reporting journalism, to me to getting your facts and your ideas have now dwindled to zero or two less than zero. in the buzzfeed world, right, the costs remain remain, the hun costs of putting reporters onto a story. but i think that's an interesting question, how do you as an editor of not only a new media organization but one that has unleashed a flood, a torrent of content -- i hate that word, content -- but had a think about what matters is are you publishing much? do you ever wake up and think i wish we did less but more impactful or better?

every once i and a while. let me tell you a story, once upon a time. two years ago we may remember there was a flood of content on facebook that was, you will never believe what happened next. that has largely gone away because facebook made it go away. that in turn became a bonanza for a lot of publishers like buzzfeed, like other mainstream media publications. but it has become a bonanza for fake news sites who figured out how to game the system, with headlines that did not flag or trigger that and you never believe what happened next algorithm, but actually your macedonian team is getting her fake story out so your grandmother in ohio, whoever it may be. i think we can't have this conversation about talking about facebook. and i think they are going to reckoning right now internally in trying to figure out, sheryl

sandberg said yesterday she doesn't believe fake news on facebook had anything to do with the election outcome. we recently did an analysis, the top 10 most shared stories both fake and real real, the fake sts were shared much more widely than the real stories. that's happening in other countries, it's happening in brazil right now with their presidential scandal where the biggest stories being shared are also fake. >> we say to that and have a graph, for those of you who haven't seen it, this reminds me of what happened actually with the sort of techno- optimists and it came to international politics just a few years ago. we have at our domestic american version of that, which is i was editor of foreign-policy magazine and number of years ago, right around the print of the arab spring. up until that moment we felt like facebook and google and twitter, these are great and parliament tools and they are flash mobs of democracy

activists are gathering, and death to tyrants, and this is incredible and the world is going to see a whole new flourishing of freedom today on the date of the death of aleppo, which is not something we talk about here in washington. we should be talking about it. today on the date of the death of aleppo remember where we started in syria which is with young people coming out to make a peaceful middle-class revolution in one of the middle east worst tyrannies. instead what happened is we found out that the bad guys have facebook, too. the bad guys at twitter. in places like iran they banded for the regular people and kept it for themselves. and if you like in some ways this conversation that were having about american domestic politics is very reminiscent of the dissolution that detective optimists face when it became clear that the arab spring revolutions were going to lead

to -- i know you wanted to jump in. >> i just think we're talking about mediated content, curated content. the age of, buzzfeed i think it's a bad rap on that. that store you guys get on the fake news stuff really change the game. it changed peoples perspective of the campaign. you are very carefully mediated and curated and manage website. the thing that facebook and twitter and read it had to face up to is the fact that it got to start generating content that you cannot have, using a private platform. the web itself as a much larger question. and it should be i believe it should be an unmediated platform. these are privately owned platforms i do it, like people want, people want to move sewage. that it has a right to have a pipe. and i think facebook and facebook recent hesitated what was it, 70 measures and they all

seemed woefully inadequate. think it's going to cost them a lot of money to get in there and to mediate. they can't do stuff with algorithms. they have to make if i'm not mistaken didn't they dismiss some of the editorial staff? >> they got rid of the humans spirit the notion that he thinks is that running a newspaper went and what was the other study? two out of 10 gather information from newspapers from print stites, at eight out of 10 got from facebook. i think that age is over. i think these guys really need to take responsibility. >> in the defendant survey the pew research center does about how americans get news about campaigns, i say in the essay, more americans in 2016 got their information about the campaign from late-night comedy shows than from journalism. so there we are. but i want to go back to what none of us know about algorithms. none of us on the stage our engineers or write computer

code. let's talk a little bit about journalism here in washington and in sort of national news, and what we are responsible for and what we are not responsible for. remember, people called ronald reagan the teflon president. if donald trump suddenly more armored with a new kind of teflon that the technologies have given him? or is it something really different in american politics? >> into different in the sense that he understands media, and he has been able to tell the stories the way he wants to, in an unmediated meaty way. i think that's important at a think that's, there wasn't any twitter. i guess you could keep having press conference every night but you have a hard time getting your story out in any other way. i do want to just comment about something you said earlier. i'm a techno-optimist myself and

to think what the things about technology is sort of a close check is short competence to disappoint and in the long-term it can stay be more rewarding than anybody ever believe. we can see that filing with television which is gotten really good, the content part of television. and i think -- >> parts of it. >> parts of it is terrible. in fact the news part is terrible. aleppo, this morning i watched the cable networks in vain to hear anything about aleppo. unbelievable. this is a really seminal event in world history, and nothing. but i think what will eventually solve or helped solve the problem is, is people finding ways using technology itself. i think the basic issue is the one that was brought up which is generation which is what we used to call editing.

and maybe we'll get to my idea at some point but i think there are lots of ideas floating around about how to do that. but i do think it will happen. if we look back on this we will say while, this is a period of tremendous chaos. everybody, people will believe the conspiracy theories. they will believe lies forever. there's no doubt about that but the facilitation i think is going to become more difficult in the future speaker glenn, you have to cover the trump white house. this is not a mere hypothetical. this is actual real-life put your suit on sooner and have to uncover -- cover the trump white house. you talked about weapon icing facts and reporting. but in a political sense what does that mean? politicians have always lied. what is it you're going to do differently? >> you're going to put on the spot on that? beats the hell out of me. i think you to write stories i

think i'll give an example. i think the "new york times," this is something that needs to be judiciously. when donald trump came out and said that he no longer believes that president obama wasn't born in the united states, the new times put the word lie above the fold on a one. that was an important moment for them to be able to identify the way this guy defines what a lot is. with trump what's the cliché about eskimos? they have 100 different ways to identify still. i think trump, there's hundreds of different ways i can find that varies ways he says the truth lies by the extreme end of the period when it's appropriate calappropriate, stuff up and alo think you can't allow, hate this term normalization. but you can't allow these guys to dictate the terms of the debate based on this information.

so if they are going to essentially create a playing field in which you are being forced to accept the terms based on false premises. and then the last thing, maybe the most important thing is we've got enough die for every shiny penny. donald trump has the capacity to change the subject. and i'm not calling anyone out on this, but there was the day, i forgot, he he put up some tweet on something, a saturday live tweet and it was a whole spate of stories that have come out that we can about his business and i was going to divest your donald trump change the narrative on one of our internal story budgets, like okay guys, we have five reporters need to be deployed to deal with this donald trump tweet on unsigned not live. it was a bowling tweet. as morris dutchman this guy shooting this platform to set the agenda. it's super important for us to

say no, we are not going to play along with this. as print folks we need to pressure and shame basic cable. if they're going to play along with this guy and given a platform, we have have got to be more adversarial. i cover the white house for three years but that is always been a tension in the briefing room for we don't even know if we will have a briefing room by the way. between the print folks who would prefer thinks not to be on them as much and the people in the front row who are wonderful, brilliant journalist but you need the visual and in you to conflict. i think print folk need to be a little bit tougher on our cable rather if they're going to continue to give this guy the platform. >> i can challenge you on whether the president using his bully pulpit, whether the bully pulpit as an old-fashioned bully pulpit or a press conference or twitter. it's probably in my view, unreasonable to expect that a certain large percentage of

media isn't going to end effect amplified that speech. that's the power in part of the office. but i want to get to this equation of what you think there are concrete things that you plan to do tivoli or you think could be done differently in covering a trump presidency and recovered a trump campaign? >> that's a hard question. we come out of, we don't buy paper or ink but we do come out every newspaper tradition, which you do, think as they happen. you dig into the past, they can do the businesses. you do investigations when it's warranted. it's hard to imagine, i mean we have no interest in becoming an advocacy organization. to that and a lot of what we're going to do is continue doing the same things we have been doing. one area where we can improve is understanding that people who are on facebook and who are sharing fake news and understanding the kind of conversation they're having. i think that something a lot of publishers have done has been invested in facebook as a tool,

because it made news so viral. without understanding the people who are actually looking for that traffic, looking at those stores spent that goes to the question of solutions and are there any, and what is people's response? as i said, i've since the tremendous desire on the part of the journalists that i know to find a way to take some more concrete action. jim sent to me his idea for sort of a good housekeeping seal of approval, if you will for news. what did you have in mind? >> it pains me to think it is companies because i think journalists have always resisted any kind of a -- accreditation. that shouldn't be any state accreditation. the idea of having some sort of optional accreditation agency, you know, nonprofit, a good housekeeping seal of approval, a bug that is the result of some

kind of an audit i think is a really good idea. sites, individuals, logs don't have to subscribe to it but if they did they would get some kind of an assurance for the readers that these folks follow certain standards. and i think, when i was at other rod casting board of governors, and i'm sure they still do it, we used to do annual audits of all of our many 60 language services. and they were quite effective. so you could have one part could be standard standard, people trn certain things. another part could be an audit, and another part could be some sort of response to criticism. it could be funded by the sites, the purveyors let's call them, then sells.

that would also, could be part of whatever facebook and google and everyone kind of series of algorithms are. and i think it's sort of a market-based not a government kind of solution. it's not really a solution but it gets people thinking in the right way. we were talking about fact checking. i don't think fact checking is the answer. you are constantly running to catch up and also i think it emphasizes the lies. so that doesn't really help. but to say yeah, these people are serious. you can take what they say as being the truth or they have shown in the past that they have been truthful. i think that will work. >> there is one large platform that does not have fake news problems and that is apple news.

that's because apple uses human beings who vet every single part of that comes into the platform. spirit i think the solution is local news. i think it is no accident, no coincidence that all this is taking place at a time when rinsing the extermination of viable local news outlets. that's the way you get to know reporters. people trust fax when they can verify themselves on the ground. when you see the photographer walking of your blog taking a picture, we are a dehumanized industry. you talked about what ticks you off. what takes the all and have nothing against the museum, what i would like to see is a percentage of the money that goes into the building of these edifices to go into maybe building and local news coverage of people can have more, more of a tactile experience with news

gatherings. i think that's the way people are going to really understand what the truth is when you're able to really relate directly to the lies. that's the other problem in our society in general becoming more fragmented and disconnected. we thought that a lot of these institutions are going to be community building. a lot of these are isolating. >> we will be staring at her phones to interact with anybody. >> i also think there's a national security issue and we've seen in the last election. this is going to get worse and worse, and internationally i think the russians are terrific at this. there's no doubt about it, but as in some of the things they will be the model of the chinese will be the model. the chinese will follow the russians. i'm not blaming the chinese because they're not anywhere near as extensive as the russians. but people are going to see this more and more. i do think that maybe some kind of accreditation or something might help with that. >> all right.

i want to invite all of you to join in with questions, and also ideas. but do try to keep it short at any question for an id yourself if you would. we have some microphones around the room. >> tony, former editor of the oxford university newspaper and a journalist in london before spending 25 years here. the thing that really strikes me about the u.s. is the lack of direct questioning by politicians, that the president does not hold the press conferences, he's not held, he doesn't have to reply on the prime news every night. in the uk it some story happens overnight, the bbc radio band will be outside the ministers house at 7 a.m. cautioning him directly pick yours on television programs questions on where you hear from different parties cross questioning each other.

i just don't see that in the u.s. politicians stand at the bottom like trumpeted for weeks on end and self-reported uncritically. >> i completely agree. i am so sick of what goes on, especially on cable news were first of all you have these surrogates who know what the talking points are for the day. one says of this. but i completely agree. i don't understand why a reporter can tolerate somebody just mouthing the latest talking points. just go in for the kill. ..

donald trump was playing to an audience that did not care what the facts were, that responded only to the narrative, especially as is underscored by the race. i think that had a big impact on the gathering of these findings and if that is the case, then argue continually vulnerable to penetration by someone who is astute at picking up those kinds of divides in the culture? >> i just want to say that i mean, i don't disagree with anything you said but i think, as i was saying before, we are all wired that

way no matter what side we are on so those on the left are also more willing and eager to do things that may not be true or that aren't slightly jaded then people on the right. i'm not sure there's not much of a difference. i think the difference in this election was you had someone who was very adept at exploiting that fact and also adept at using the tools of dissemination to get his ideas across. >> you had a different response from different parties. do you believe this is a bipartisan problem even if it's been more pronounced in the form of donald trump? >> i think there have been studies that show something might be getting those numbers wrong so i will get those facts checks but between 70 and 80 percent of democrats trust and that number is from the 20s for republicans and i think a lot

of that has to do with the fox news phenomenon, something obama has spoken about. the one thing i would guard against year is over our over reading the results and i know this has been an incredibly dramatic thing that's taken place but there are a lot of factors, let us not forget that , i forgot the number of counties but a lot of these things that have turned out not to be complete roles, a lot of counties that were previously obama counties into elections voted for trump so he was tapping into something and there's no question it's a phenomenon that there is a racial component. but i think it is a mystery that that's the only reason or that there are people who really want to change and there are people who didn't really like hillary clinton who are racist or sexist . i think we've got to understand that trump's appeal, a lot of people if

you look at the numbers, if you look in his disapproval at the time of his election, it was 67 percent. there were a large number of people who went into the voting booth disapproving of donald trump and another number who rated him low character who were cool with that. so the notion that every person who voted for donald trump took the whole package i think is a misnomer and i think that's where it's going to get interesting. >> does that make it more reassuring or less reassuring? >> i am not reassured at all. >> that suggests the job description of president that many voters have in mind is perhaps not the same job description as presence around the panel or in this room might have. let's get some more folks into the conversation. >> yes, i wonder if there's somewhat of a slugfest within the washington press looking for validation and what makes me ask that is the washington

post articles by mister frank in first or whatever. >> david farrand holt. >> yes, about ... >> he doesn't go by frankenstein. >> forgive mefor the mixup of the names but the point is, it was like a bulldog looking for a bone . and he clearly didn't expect to be writing big stories when he first started looking at the charitable contributions. it became harder and harder for him to track it down and an editor who let him do more tracking down to find out that there was no there there as it were. but the reporter wasn't going to be rewarded for that story. the people who like trump are going to ignore it and the people who didn't like trump were going to like him less so my point is, maybe you shouldn't be looking for validation when in fact you're doing good work.

>>. [laughter] sorry. i don't think we were looking for validation and i think the swing component of the electorate were educated whites but it's funny, we were talking about the post swing, post battleground, a lot of democrats were frustrated but the truth was there not a rocksolid party the electorate and that part of the electorate is registered voters. there's some evidence that komi letter pushed them in a direction but we are talking about a great series and a lot of people thinking he should documenting donald trump's history of his charity being distinctly uncharitable so when you say he was finding nothing, he was literally finding nothing because there were no contributions but why should he have done that? that is precisely the kind of work reporter does.

the other thing about their revolt, we were talking about weapon eyes in fact, farenholt did this clever thing where he had a yellow legal pad and he would like right names on the yellow legal pad. did you think farenholt didn't have a spreadsheet, you're crazy, he added yellow legal pad, use it as a way to demonstrate to people and people would check in and he would do that and it's perfect example of how to do that. he wrote a brilliant article and the one thing that really moved the numbers was also, he thought it would take. the problem is you had trained warfare, world war i which is a very volatile, small group of people moving back and forth. >> again, to me that's the point. i'm glad you raise this issue of leaving out the smugness parts because this is the best demonstration but it getsback to the basic question of , do we have an

impasse or not or and this grand suggestionabout how do we need to weapon eyes fact or reporting . i feel that it's not that we've not done that. there are great examples whether, the new york times is very aggressive reporting about taxes and many other issues. that succeeded, it succeeded with a part of america that already wasn't going to vote for donald trump. you know what, if you took a survey, a scientific, rigorous survey of even those who were exposed, guess what? probably it was an unprecedented turnout against donald trump if you correlated the boat and readership of those stories. we are living in a country in which people are suffused in a crowd of not only like-minded people on their

facebook feeds but also with brands that support the version of truth that they support, it's a cultural choice now that is reflected in our politics and that's what scares me, that's why i'm so scared. >> the one answer to that is most people knew that donald trump had screwed around with that.what people do that and except that donald trump, they still voted for him anyway. it's not an issue of not penetrating, people understood that he wasn't uncharitable guy. >> all right, all the way in the back. >> john cummings. question on not so much looking at the past but looking at the present, when the biggest thing on the horizon is precluding the electoral college, why isn't this plastered? inside and out, what did the founding fathers intended? what are the responsibilities of it? what trump characterizes as an unfit president, why is this dominating the front page of every one of your things and looked at in every possible angle?

>> good question. on one hand i would say the electoral college is getting more attention this year that's gotten since 2000 in some ways. on the other hand, you're right that it is basically foreseen as sort of an antiquated 18th century, it's a residual version, it's an appendix, it's a belly button on our democracy. nobody's really sure what function it plays and so therefore we have not imbued with function. you could argue that the bottom line is the numbers are the numbers here and i don't think there's anybody who thinks that any outcome is going tochange . it's something to talk about in parlor rooms, jim is in favor of abolishing the electoral college, are you? he's a great writer of editorials about illuminating doctoral flaws in our democracy. >> i am actually to some degree less popular about adding to the number of members of congress in the

senses which we used to do and we stopped doing it in the 20s and as a result, the average member of congress represents two or three times as many people as they used to. i am in favor of structural changes as far as the election is concerned such as changing the rules that the commission of presidential debate has which are basically excluding anyone but a democrat or republican. i think there's a great middle in this country that is not represented by the two parties and i think this election shows because of the candidates that each of the two parties split up, the bankruptcy of the party system. but that's for another discussion. i just wanted to get that in. >> this lady. >> thank you. i am henry r jimbo, congressional correspondent

for the hispanic outlook magazine, i write about a lot about immigration and of course latinos. and i know lots and lots of people who voted for trump. and none of them are angry white men, none of them. most of them are highly educated internationally thinking language women and i just think this conversation is missing it. it's issues, there's certain issues that turned them off. it didn't matter what his provocations were with women, it didn't matter that he's on intellectual. he was four, he was saying things about issues that they needed and wanted and hadn't heard from the democrats and one of them was immigration. immigration in terms of law and order, not being anti-immigrants . not being racists, neo-nazis. they want law and order and you never hear democrats talk

about enforcing immigration laws, anything. deportation become like a crime against humanity but the big issue was the supreme court. i think the obama trends that have a number, the supreme court was the thing. they didn't care as long as he's going to change it and get a scalia type guy. i think the democrats miss that and the press misted to. >> when you covered president obama on this question of immigration and deportation, obama was very aggressively deportingimmigrants early . >> why you keep giving me the tough ones? >> yes, in fact it was a huge issue, particularly for both bernie sanders and hillary clinton came out against it, the deportation of american minors and by minors i mean most people.and when you sort of crunch numbers in a certain way, he had more deportation than any president in history so

again, there's sort of different facts here. >> i think we probably only have time for one or two more questions. >> street brown with foreign capital. i'm wondering if this discussion is only taking place on the left. when i talk to my clients or friends on the right, they simply don't believe there was any false news out there. they don't think there was any fake news. when i report that there's a 4.6 percent unemployment, they gave goare you not? there are 100 million unemployed americans right now. where you get your information from? if it comes from the new york times they go , there you go. if it comes from the department of labor they say something else. >> i think we as journalists worry every day that we are talking to ourselves.

this question of insularity . >> don't look at me because i'm the right-winger. i served in the republican administration. i voted for a republican for president every year since 1980 except for this time. i'm deeply concerned about what's going on. i don't necessarily, i do not think that donald trump won this election because of fake news, no doubt about that and i think if donald trump didn't even exist, this was still a gigantic problem that needs to be addressed. >> lots of hands still up. sir, ... or no, farther back. >> sorry. >> thank you. my question is, what plans with the media have with respect to handling what i call misstatements or mishandling of the facts and specifically with respect to

mister trump, his tax issue. the claim was that he stated whether he did not pay his taxes which implies that he did not pay the proper amount of tax. if as reported, he took a net operating loss which allows you to pay back a certain number of years, they paid the proper amount of tax to. that amount was zero. but the allegation was that the statements were made, therefore he didn't contribute to the country, etc. etc. i thought he have obligation to point out he had to forgo the standard deduction just put a couple bucks extra into the pot but that was something that became a central issue, one of the central issues and i think the media has an obligation to treat him fairly.

>> you want to take that one on? >> i would say the reason that became a central issue is people wanted to see his tax returns and had not. that is where that came from. the bottom line is that every single president and a presidential nominee going back to the last several decades has released their tax returns as a part of the campaign. donald trump defined a significant one and in fact we are now going to face an interesting question because the president also has historically every year as a matter of course released their tax returns. is donald trump going to find a way to blow that up? >> yes. [laughter] >> we will learn the answers and i'm afraid we are just about out of time. i want to thank everybody. i think it's a great conversation and we are leaving so many questions on the table. i hope we will continue the

conversation, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversation] >>. [inaudible conversation]

>>. [inaudible conversation]

>> all today's discussions available online at c-span.org. were going to take you shortly to another discussion, google hosting a look at the advertising of postelection review of advertising and digital advertising strategies in the 2016 campaign and it was set

to get underway about 10 minutes ago, they are running a little bit behind and we will take you there live on c-span2 once that starts. coming up tonight, donald trump back on the road, part of his thank you tour heading to west allis wisconsin. live coverage of the rally this evening at 8:00 eastern over on c-span and streamed live at c-span.org. things continue to be busy at trump tower in new york city, lots of meetings and visits up in new york city. and we will take you live now to the google event just getting underway, we will take you there live on c-span2. >> ...

>>. [inaudible conversation] okay. okay, i'm going to take this off.we have the bookends and the majority of the senate, house and the whole administration.i mean, come on. i'm going to kick us off with a video because most of you heard me say over and over again and most of you say over and over again, this is the year of the video, tell a story and no one taught candidates better how to tell a story and someone who's going to be our first guest today. i'm going to kick it off with a two-minute close video, both candidates did two-minute closing videos in the campaign three, four days before the campaign . i argued that to watch

hillary it's a lot hillary facing the camera and through our process, this is the closing argument that the trump campaign made to voters so gathering, roll tape. >> arm movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by noon, the american people. the establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. for those who control the levers of power in washington , and global special influences, they partner with the people that don't have your good in mind. so political establishment that are trying to stop stoploss is the same group responsible for our disastrous, massive, illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry.

so political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they leave to mexico, china and other countries all around the world. it's a global power struggle that is responsible for the economicdecisions that have robbed our working-class , strict our country of its well and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. the only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. the only force strong enough to save our country is us. the only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the american people. i'm doing this for the people and for the movement and we

will take back this country for you and we will make america great again. [applause] i'm donald trump and i approve this message. >> that video ... that video became the sixth fastest trending video on youtube two days before the campaign. it told the story, it motivated people and it motivated voters so i won't steal brad sowder, i will let him tell you how he came up with that ad but let's dive into 2016 beyond the presidential. so everybody has heard us say over and over again this year, voters had more time online in 2016 and were more influenced online by what they read and saw online

about candidates than ever before. we are finally at the point where voters are spending more of their time online and persuaded more often by things online by a friend, a neighbor, an advertisement and this might actually lead us in politics to corporate america. in 2016, corporate america will spend more money on additional online advertising than tv. politics tend to be 10 years behind corporate america. our party doesn't have 10 years to wait to catch up but let me tell you, the good news is we did a great job in 2016 the cause of many of you. this graph is going to blow the minds of media. on average, people sent earlier and more on google products and i would make the assumption on other online products as well. but nobody ran a better race online and rob portman and

nobody opened up a wider lead against their opponents sooner on the gop side than rob . i will let you make the correlation. one of the top lessons from 2016 that i think all of us learn and i hope we carry to the next cycle is go big. go big online, don't go small. go really big. gop candidate on google products three times the amount of their democratic opponents spent on google products. i'd like to credit that to a great frailty but i honestly think it's because people that were running set campaigns heard about the debate but they also believe in the products and they saw the results. what's really striking is that gop candidates outspent their democratic counterparts between april and july, not the traditional time when people spend money, it's not post-labor day. april to july the outspent their democratic opponents

one online on google products, that opens up a huge lead for a candidate and that's important. this wasn't only on the candidate side, we saw this from super pacs as well. gop super max portal one on the democratic left-leaning super backs on products and some campaigns like a presidential campaign went even bigger, one of the things we learned from the trump campaign, do not make assumptions about voters. you may find voterswhere you least expect to do so. where most presidential campaigns want to also concentrate on money and nine or 10 states, they also then forget that there are a lot of other americans out there that need to be motivated to vote . the reach of 300 million questions , throughout the entire us, motivating them, activating them and the trump for president campaign was the first candidate to ever buy a youtube masthead. complete with just obama and not only did the presidential

campaign by one masthead, they boughttwo. i bought one after the first debate we received huge surge of online traffic and one on election day . and the hillary campaign bought one. when you think of going big, believing bigger. lesson two: go early. a lot of you saw this, i had a gop campaign manager told me the other day he decided how and when to drop off his research on the opponent using this graph because as you know, if you drip, drip opposition research and news, that's where voters are seeing that on google so they made sure that every time someone googled the opponents name, there was a news story up there that was not flattering and he made sure he did it early. the percent of the interest in elections, candidates, the gop race, the race for president and senate happens by july so the next time you're campaign manager told

you we want to hold our money until after labor day, there being very foolish. the best thing about going early if you can define yourself as a candidate but what you should really be doing is defining your opponent. to set campaigns that define their opponent early and never to define their opponent was the todd young for senate campaign and the bob portman campaign. you can even see here that the opponents even have search ads up to counter these attack were being run against them. i am proud to say that in every gop senate campaign, either the candidates or the nrs he was up with search ads not only for the candidates but the opponent. and rsc and candidates find themselves and they defined their opponents, they didn't let anyone define men. the other really interesting thing about going early is that it really allows you to save money in the end and pull away. for the green grass is the amount of money and win portman for senate campaign on google products. he quickly gray line is the

average senate team that's both thenand republicans. if you look closely, when portman spending spiked which you can see is early april, may, june, that's when he started to pull away from his opponents . and remember how many points portman pulled away from his opponent on election day? over 20 points. start early and start big. and start often. so let's see. go big, go early, go often. to get asked all the time was the rate of an ad? corporate america goes to tends to go seven or eight times for frequency, with most campaigns on the political side they were going three or four times. three or four times showed two times greater favorability shift for the candidates and four times greater intent to vote and it was even greater when it was a proof you add, somebody opted in to watch it.

if the confidence is good enough for the voter to watch your content, you could win that battle online. we found that senate races were particularly open to voters look at advertising and part of it is as presidential candidates are so well defined by the media, candidates have to get out there and define themselves is another reason why to go early. so 2016 lessons we learn thanks to all of you who ran gop campaigns, go big, go early, go often and you will go home to your constituency and hopefully again and again. so thank you all for a really interesting meeting where we learned a lot and now i want to turn it over to natalie and brad prescott. what? everyone, fill the seats . can't figure out what that hand gesture was. [applause] i brought my

water. >> where's the fire? >> brand, thanks. all right. i'm glad where here to talk about 624 days and counting. [inaudible conversation] >> tell me about your first role at the trump organization. what were you doing then, how did you get involved? you started in 2011. it's a very condensed version but yes, the defense version

and how you got digital director and how crucial the digital director was in 2016? x in 2010 i was hired, the phone call happened before that, it was very basic. however, i knew it was probably a good step to the trump campaign, being from san antonio texas. so it was a good opportunity and so i got a contract making a website and put it this way, i knew that i had to have a very competitive site in the new york market and since i've only been to new york once in my life , that's how i first started over a six period of time, i got more and more contracts with the trumpfamily . kind of brought the entire organization, knowing the family and different things that were going on so when the campaign came, i got an initial contract and it was

$1500 for a/page for the exploratory committee and at the end, we all know now it was about 90 million. >> so calling you that would be an understatement. >> i've never worked in a political campaign before this. >> now $93 million later, what would you sum up as your biggest things that you brought in from the business world and politics? >> i think you have to understand the entire process of the campaign. when you look at the campaign, it was three major stages . if you followed the media that was tied along with two major firings or people leaving. you had version 1.0 which i pretty much called from the day he came down the escalator to pretty much the republican convention. that's version 1.0 of the campaign and in that, my role is the smallest.

it's not minuscule but it wasn't as large as it was in 3.0. you take 2.0, from the republican convention , right before the convention to somewhere in august, august 22 and that's where 3.0 started and 3.0 which is i call them the general campaign from the media engine. you go to the first version of the campaign, my role was more of a consultant. i ran most of the entire primary in advertising from the laptop in my living room. he didn't want to pay for any of my staff at that point, he had no budget . most of the major vendors like twitter, google, facebook didn't know i existed. i got on calls in the night, areyou the guy doing the digital stuff for trump? as it became more obvious that mister trump was really in this , i don't most of all, i didn't have any news site that i had later in the

campaign. i had to pretty much on this marketing effort to maximize their effort on the social media platform. one important things and politics is the 1.0 version is a much more ideological competition than version 3.0 . the media works different. and i think as you see as we progress on 2.0, i would actually say my rolewas the least around the convention . you start to see operations, you see all these people having a big implementation or just, 2.0 is more into the fundraising and into media operations and persuasion. 3.0 turned into kind of what i would say is the closest to what i've done for 20 years which is larger advertising, conquest and bringing down the vote. the bring things you have to touch are appropriate within this.

>> quite famously, you talked a lot about how you didn't need data early on and things like that. did you need to do any of that convincing, did you need a break on data. or what turned that side? >> if you ask trump he would say, i think there was other people within, jerry kushner who was involved as husband and two trump, he said he didn't rule it out, he just said that i think that how does the 1.0. i think at that point what mister trump to the media was the important role is one percent same here or there to win but it wasn't the overall thing that was driving the

campaign and version 1. i think if youstart looking at version 2, the significant thing , the digital operation brought was the turnkey fundraising in just a few days. and that partnership came with the relationship with the rnc, an individual like jerry kobe who made me look really smart and he does not get enough credit. garrett lansing and the prt stepped in to help us build this kind of centralized fundraising opportunity because we had to in a week raise money which we end up raising $2 million online and i think that was animportant step for that and 3.0, that changed again . >> you brought a lot of people together, like you said in a short amount of time how did so many different lines come together? all together in such a short amount of time? a lot of different people from a lot of different egos. what worked best in such a short amount of time?

>> i think all things to dip different types of leaders. i had a great leader above me in donald trump who obviously does have a lot of room for error and you have the second one, jerrykushner and myself. but this team , all of those leaders are people who let people do their work. there was a lot of things i'd heard about previous campaigns when i come in because i had no preconceived notions about how things are supposed to operate . why are you doing this or why do you need me to do this? one thing i heard right out of the gate was if you get an email or get content approved, there were like 14 people in the last campaign that had to approve it. in our campaign, there was just one, myself in most respects. i could approve content without and mister trump and mister kushner had trusted me to do so. i didn't need to have every single piece of content

within the means of what our goals are so i think simplifying that approval process is one example of how we streamlinedopposite operations so we could move fast and by the end of the campaign, i had other people said we have to have the ability to approve this now . just don't mess it up. >> i said in a forum not quite like this but a few months before the campaign, i think it was august, they were criticizing the trump campaign. it was a republican based firm and they were worried they were going to lose and there was criticism of the trump campaign. they were worried the party was doing doing wrong. there were worried that there was a lot that wasn't being done right but they were worried that their candidate wouldn't win . how would you interact with your peers now and how do you see politics, the change in republican politics in the future? >> the good thing is i didn't

have any peers in political digital so i didn't know that everybody didn't think i was getting a job until a newspaper or something. the second thing is, through the entire campaign i made the initiative to do any of the marketing about myself until the bloomberg article that came out 10 or 12 days or something or a couple weeks before, that was the first time i ever officially talked and that was about a month before, we gave a little bit but still people didn't know what we had running. it wasn't until the last couple of weeks people understood we had a huge operation. there's a lot of things, we did significantly different. the entire campaign for the last couple months ran around digital data meaning where mister trump went on the ground, where we bought our media and how we bought our shows, how we made our tv commercials, i in august

became the center point of how the ground game was going to operate and connecting back from a budgetary standpoint. the budget ran around the digital operation so i tried to explain this on tv but when you have 90 seconds to explain it, if you look at the campaign previously, it's a flat hierarchy with people about it and this time the campaign ran a circle thatwas around the data and by doing so , our universes and our people didn't have to double work because we had a third of the money or half the moneyhillary clinton did so we didn't want to do the same work quite . i would sit there with the political director and say we are doing this here or here, what money do we need to spend there? and i can't imagine many campaigns in history wherethe digital director was making the budgeting decisions . that was a significant difference but i knew how much money we had in by the

data i knew how much money we needed. i didn't perfectly highball that but we got pretty close and we did the last day with $300 a day and that maximized itself including the commercial that we produced, getting that in the right social media spots to have the right persuadable targets over so if you look at that central point of view, that was a significant change. we started off 50 percent of our money in digital, almost $100 million on tv. that's a big change. now cmt was happy to tell me that they didn't think they needed any more money on digital. they spent plenty. they spent even more on digital and i think all the data shows clearly that mister trump had a huge impact on the digital social media and advertising so you can't not spend on tv. that's one of those things,

you couldn't just spend on every newspaper, all your money is digitally lost. so you had to have a balance. >> it's hard to play the hindsight game but we are going to play. if you look at i mean, when you look back, can you say oh, we won because of data or did we win because of the message? yeah. do you balance those things out now or say okay, if we look at the midterms, what do you advise future campaigns to do? >> what's funny is i didn't have any previous campaign experience and it either made me really good or bad at explaining this question but i think there's a few things. one is i got into political advertising, i don't know how many digital people are here

in creative but one thing that was significantly different was i never looked at media in a way of being a content produced line item the way political people look at it so i was lucky enough to be in a.com in the late 90s, i'm older than i look and i remember one thing that advertisers all electronic did then and i told this story a couple of times i apologize if you heard this last week. you've got particular types of advertising, back then everybody was there when the ipod came out and we had whatever the other thing was from microsoft area they would advertise those products and have these line items area you would see them, they would be like we are the fastest processor. what did apple do? apple showed a picture of a woman, a microphone and a silhouette with no color and said if you buy this ipod you will feel this way. we were like, greatest product ever. anyone still have an ipod?

we all knew how it was going to make us feel if we bought it. what i didn't understand about political advertising was how do you sell candidates by the pros and cons instead of what you are going to feel like if you voted for them so if you look at our advertising it was based on the emotional pull area and what it meant if donald trump would win. it if people vote like they purchase things, they vote with their emotions and i think political marketing is in the same bad rut that microsoft and other companies got in advertising which was it's hard to sell the pieces . say, we have this for peace and you have those four pieces though we are positive one, we win. and unfortunately, humans don't think that way. just think about that original ipod commercial. why was it so amazing? it was amazing because they wanted to feel that happy and i believe voters wanted to feel that. if you look at the chili's commercial very times where

he went into detail on the item but it's not about the detail. it's not about the selling. he's going to make that the country feel great again and that's important because that's how we make consumer decisions, why wouldn't we make our political decisions the same way? that was one of the most significant things i didn't understand, why there was a line item content with no other great products selling that way. >> it's a very consumer side of you but that's when i crossed over. >> in an election where we had a lot about twitter, a lot of contests on the internet, did you ever wish donald trump had tweeted about something particular or be distracted from the newsday were distracted from the message you are trying to get out that day? >> i was never distracted from the message.

was my life ever complicated by things that happened onthe campaign? yes . it's a very tough question. luckily it's not my job to sell their problems. however it was perfect that he's a genius and he won. the goal was to 70 and he won, then he won. and i never played sports all those years and said hey, i only won that game by one. >> you do a lot of things in campaigns and there's always things that don't work but still win, what didn't work? what are things out there where it's like okay, we still one. >> what didn't work? we didn't have enough money. i wish we had more of it what were things out there that look like, it's new in

chinese toys but maybe it didn't look like chinese toys. >> i think what doesn't work in politics in my personal opinion is i think life calls don't work. i think there a waste of money and politics. i think romney made 200 million live calls or something. i just couldn't understand that. i'm not in, it wasn't my decision to make those but dollar fordollar, there's money that goes so much further. i feel like there's this thing where we've got to do everything, sprinkle money here and there, we don't even it all out . and i think no one starts a business and goes let's just double everything because we have all this money. no, let's do this because we have this much money and let's not do this because we lose money. that's a consumer thing. the first thing is like, let's respond.>> i pulled from phone budgets as much as i could and other things.

traditional mail still has its place. i think 50 or $60 million in romney there, i don't know if we spent more on digital but i'm sure we did. i think tv and digital and the messaging was very important. but part of me says what doesn't work, that's tough and we won almost every state we competed for but colorado. i'll tell you the mistake in colorado, we should have spent more money earlier. i didn't expect how many people were going to mail in their votes, 44 percent in the first few days. i thought people were going to be lazier but colorado people really wanted to vote. that's a big number. that first week, i thought i had time. a couple days after videos came out, i was like we should have attacked them. >> let's talk about the canoes. as you are going through the campaign ... did it ever, the

fake news, did it help or the candidate? was it something you guys talked about, being spread on different sites? >> you know, i studied at harvard and i think everybody here, first of all, i'm siding with the largest super back in the country which was the wall street journal which i respect, i think the media bias was horrible for the campaign. calling him a racist, misogynist, and anti-semites, there were a few others in there. oh, he was a white supremacist was the other one. this entire genre of people. and i think it's pretty sad what the media did. i think fake news what people

determine, it's not a hard line. it's a gray area. the whole media has a sensitivity to it, there's people who write all truth and there's people who write opinion and people who write to make money and somewhere is a line in between that and i think that's probably a first amendment thing. i'm not a person who makes those choices luckily so i'm not a politician but i think at some point the consumer has to make a choice no different than is that tv any better than the other tv and it's up to me to make that choice. when you get online you should recognize that not everything might be absolutely true and you should self educate whatever that is. i think as americans we have a responsibility to see what we believe and not believe what other people say but maybe i just have a different view of that. i think you can't expect everyone around us to be perfect and we should check what we do is write. >> we talked about how you

write your business experience in politics, what do you thinkbusinesses should learn from campaigns and stuff like that . >> businesses should learn from campaigns? i don't know. >> there's a definite? >> there's definitely a set deadline. >> a lesson from business to politics. i don't think i've ever been asked that. i think what i learned in politics, i think i learned that, see, it's different. i feel like in business, the media is kind of your friend. politics, i learned they are completely not your friend. there's so much more emotion in it and opinion and roger doesn't go god, i want to destroy your whole restaurant. let me take this down because i hate your enchiladas . this doesn't happen, right?

we are like we are all friends, let me give you free enchiladas if you write this story about us. maybe write a negative story and you don't like the food but it's nothing personal. one the one thing i learned was the media, i met reporters that i thought were my friend and then they terrorized me and call me names around theglobe area and i guess they don't like me. that was lesson one. but that had nothing to do with business because that doesn't exist on the other side. i didn't know that was a thing , now i do. what else did i learn? it was really nice to have a big budget. to show what you can do, the beautiful thing about politics is the marketing was, i've been doing this for 20 years and i never had the opportunity to play my game, but i can show when this happens, bring teams together. i think that was an amazing experience and a little bit of luck makes a lot of hard work. it's weird to be sitting up here through all these years .

and that's a humbling experience at the same time, i think businesses can learn, sometimes you should send somebody to make it and i think politicians know that there's no reason any money on the day after, i think businesses are so scared sometimes to spend the money to make it that makes them a little weaker because they don't want to spend it and what happens is they don't make it but in politics you don't have a day off so it's other people's money. there's this certain difference of opinion but i think businesses can learn from that. maybe we should spend $1 million on advertising and maybe we will make it area i think it's a different risk reward program. >> what's next for you? are you moving to dc, going back to san antonio? >> i think san antonio would be a unique experience now. i have an apartment in new york , and i'm close to the

familyand i will continue to workwith the family. i got a lot of great people i learned along the journey , like i said before , matt stokowski, gary kobe, mister senates, i can't say her last name. i think those people, there's new opportunities to be an inspiration that i think all those people did amazing things and i think there's a lot of room for us to go out and show people what we can do and if anyone can look and see how we did this, there were some of those meetings with garretts, that, people like that and to actually see what we did and how much we did, i think they would be shocked. we got a lot done with a little team. and the dnc probably had 100 people for every 10 of hours and i think a couple things. one, people felt more connected, more pride.

it's amazing when you get a group of people that feel so driven to do something it doesn't take a lot of team to do that. i think i'd pick one of those people against 10 people with that job and i think you saw that in the republican group. the republican national committee has set up a team that was just ready for this and whentrump came along it was the perfect opportunity . we didn't have that team so all of a sudden we could all come together and i think when those people, i'm excited to see what all those people can do and what i can do with them. >> thank you very much. [applause]. any other questions? >> get a drink. rad said he's going to stick around so i know you will have a lot of people asking questions for you. next up we will do this in silicon valley style so we have a few lightning talks so next up is daniel huey to talk about the internet and extended arms. >> hello.

sorry. okay. i'm dana huey and the cycle i managed the miniature program. i got tenfold things i want to show you here. mostly about the mentality of how we approach our advertising in this title and simple principles that we stuck to that i thought served us very well. so none of this was rocket science. they are very old problems that are getting worse all the time and the solutions are all extremely simple. the devil is in the details and implementing and executing and all. so we always talk about more clutter than ever before, audiences all over the place in different streams and you have more ways to buy each of these types of things so our solution is we have three principles thatguide this thread and i will walk through but starting with the same audience , layering our

media plans and an intelligent way and creatively consistent through all our advertising. the first one, we use the exact same voter file in our model target voter audience, the exact same file used for television, same one we sent to facebook and obviously the same one we targeted for the audiences online and built up from there. one, a lot of this compares apples to apples better about what is the most financially efficient way to serve one member of our target audience but then also a lot of us do something we thought was innovated and tried to measure total message penetration. but our media plans, this is the more novelties that is difficult to execute once you get out of the nitty-gritty of it. the efficiency is great going into the cycle, everyone talk about data and efficiency and being hyper targeted and that's great but on television at some point you are so efficient you are talking to a small percentage of the audience but you are not buying advertising. online you might have, you

are located in lithuania. but at some point you can't scale with that and you can't penetrate a message though i think there's bias or deficiency that we need to move away from a little bit. second of all, we constantly fight about a broadcast impression the same as a digital impression and that's the wrong argument to be having. we should be talking about attentiveness impression. so sorry, but it has banner ads on websites are basically a digital yard sign. it's the television yard sign during daytime news, no one is watching it but there's a place for that at a certain price. but we should place a premium on advertising such as true viewpeople opting to and are paying attention to so that's why i think live sports is more important than television by far, video on demand on the cable side is true on television . and the final piece of is a

holistic media plan. instead of seeing media budget is x, this person will go to dd, this percent digital, we said let's allocate the budget that the thing the medium itself does so broadcast is best and generating a lot of reach, targeting a lot of people at once but the price efficiency of frequency and ability to scale down to retrieve target audience has tremendous financial diminishing returns so a lot of times we have situations where we have 500 broadcast points and we would get approximately five impressions to our target audience but then we would use cable and a tremendous amount of targeted digital to the same audience so that we were getting a culture of 45 or 50 impressions of message penetration before we would change traffic. that situation didn't play out in every instance, budget realities happen, etc. the guiding principle we had was creative messaging not based on arbitrarytelevision point level, arbitrary true viewpoints but rather a holistic delivery of impressions .

final creative consistency. everyone understands this principle. everyone understands the idea of having a theme, characters and stories and everyone here is rolling their eyes a little bit but the reality is we don't do this often at home. it requires a lot of planning, requires a lot of commitment to something in particular and i think in order to cut through, this is what we are competing against more so than the other side and i think we need to stick to this principle as often as possible. you have to state that are tired of this, one is in pennsylvania, we had this bike messenger who carried all our spots, we had a complicated message system and he was able to old people's attention long enough to deliver complex messages effectively over time. we did another example, i don't have it up your but arguablya more creative example in ohio where we had eight fake newscast , we had an actress who had several

states to show all the places where we are testing to send jobs in ohio so this idea of having a character in a story and a consistent brand across all our digital and analog television advertising how to develop. group is in the pudding. it's a majority their own bike messenger at talking about how our bike messenger was ridiculous but that's how you know it works. the tagline was shady katie mcginty and a basketball game at saint joe's that we got the election, the student bolick body was trolling the other body in the tagline because that was our alumni. so inconsistency, it can be simple as we did in some states as having these are the colors, these are the fonts, this is the look and feel of everything all the way up two years are geico gecko. it takes a lot of early planning, it takes a lot of committing to the idea by the whole team, it takes a tremendous amount of research to look, i think we all agree on the problems. i think we all agree on the solutions, the devil is in the details and researching and budgeting upfront, that's

the name of the game so thank you. >> thank you daniel for holding the senate to republicans. before going to get on the next panel with andrea, betsy, faye, michael and peter so i will let you guys come up here. while they are coming up, this year was the first year we saw political ads fit on the youtube leaderboard. so political ads are known for being really bad content. leaderboard focus of each month on the top 10 performing ads online. whether they're organic or have some advertising behind it area this year, the cycle, we had five political and youtube leaderboard and i want to show some of them to you today. we kicked off with a closing

at from trump, were going to show you another one from a candidate next that was on the youtube leaderboard and show you three ads from the senate campaign and there's a theme here daniel hit on so i'm going to let you figure out the debris as shown after this one. >> . [dramatic music] i understand that when the mainstream media covers immigration, it doesn't often see it as an economic issue but i can tell you, it is a very personal economic issue.and i will say that the politics of it will be very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the rio grande or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press . then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is been falling our nation. if i'm elected president, we will triple the border patrol. we will build a wall that works.we will secure the border.

i'm ted cruz and i approve this message. >>. [singing] oh say can you see, by the dawns early light, what so proudly we hailed ... >> we lose 129 kids a day to heroin and the only person i've seen standing up there greening almost daily is the senator. he gives birth, energy and love to this and any of us parents who have lost, truly listen and try to implement plans that make a difference. tara is such an important step. it's in what's happening. i'm so thankful that we have senator put them on our side.

>> throughout his career, john mccain has been a true friend to our hispanic community. he has fought for comprehensive immigration reform, for good education for our children and for our small businesses. i urge you to vote on november 8 and i are to devote for my friend, john mccain. >> my name is nicole craig. >> and i'm kevin craig. >> we live in green bay wisconsin and just came home from the democratic republic of the congo. it was a nightmare we couldn't wake up from. 25 children died waiting to come home and there wasn't a reason as to why the children couldn't we area they were final, we have to go to washington. we had a father and grandfather and he was going to do whatever he could to

get these kids out here nicole, thank you for visiting and sharing your stories. openly we can find a solution and you can bring elizabeth home. you and your family are in our thoughts and prayers, >> i couldn't even tell you how that felt. i don't thinki believed it . that was just great because i knew at that point it was as important for her to come home as it was for us. >> either ron johnson and i approve this message. >> come on up here from the panel. >>. [inaudible] >> managed the wisconsin senate campaign that took us all by surprise.

after both party committees had written off the race in their advertising. campbell, a digital advertising specialist who raised races that he could have should have been on the most competitive list in retrospect. i say that because of the incrediblework behind the team . and rob portman in 2016. michael duncan, a digital strategist with cavalry, he worked for the mcconnell now and raises like indiana senator elect todd young and senator john mccain's reelection area michael started working first for insurgent campaigns like ted cruz for freedom works and peter who managed another one of the most uphill races of the 2016 cycle for pat toomey. we want to talk about those as we just saw. so the great ad that you just saw was something that had been in the works for a long time. we did a lot of research early on identifying the

constituents in thestories that we wanted to tell . you know, we knew this was going to be an uphill battle. we knew we were going to be outraised and outspent so we knew we needed to be creative and think outside the box and really be scrappy and we also knew that the feingold team was going to try to see ron johnson as a coldhearted billionaire who only cared about special interests and billionaires so you know, we got out of it. we did our research early and we had someone on our team in house who is whole job was to go around and make sure that we pass constituents stories like this one so this was thought that it ultimately end up on television but the original intent was to have it just beyond digital and when we got the footage, it was very powerful as you saw

so we decided to run withit and ultimately we had a two minute video , a 62nd video and a 32nd video area those of you on digital and youtube and then ultimately we moved in on tv and we did have that running toward the women on youtube on a low burn from the minute it went up through election day and we saw with the youtube brand list that the survey, it was those that watched it 62 times were more than likelyto vote for ron johnson so it was a great story to tell . it served its purpose and it's something that we are really proud of. >> republicans talk about tendon advertising in that race for the end . shifting resources round, is that part of that? >> from the get-go, we knew we were going to be outraised and outspent and we talked about spending early and we did do a lot of things early in terms of laying the groundwork . but ultimately, we knew that

we were going to largely be on our own and we knew that we were going to be outspent but we did do some things earlier and ray laid the groundwork but we did save a lot of our budget for post-labor day so this was you know, part of that post-labor day resetthat we did . once wisconsin was not enjoying the summer time anymore and we were back paying attention, we hit the ground running but we laid a lot of background work early to make sure we were ready to do that. >> about this time in 2014, the executive director ward baker was up for reelection in 2016 and show them a slide for technology changes since the last time they run in 2010 and said the most successful campaigns of 2014 spent as much as 12 campaigns,, the committee said on digital. michael, you are part of

these conversations with the senate campaign including an unlikely early adopter in richard shelby so will get back to that later. can you tell us what that means, what aspect of the modern campaign was digital? >>. >> what efforts from modern campaigns? i think if you go back to like 2010, people saw digital as part of the commerce department. we were the people that took the press release and posted it on facebook or twitter and that was it. it was like, that's a victory. and then people started to realize the potential for digital so raise money and so then it became also part of the fund-raising operation. and people started to really invest in building and that

sort of thing. and then people started to realize that the way media consumption trends are shipping that more eyeballs are on digital and they were in all these other platforms so the ability to get frequency was so huge and that was a huge part of the advertising budget and because of part of the advertising budgets, it can be part of the dot and part of the data digital really went from being on the periphery to being kind of thing that touches everything, right? and i think successful campaigns, whether it's richard shelby who we worked on in his primary or todd young or mccain or portman or ron johnson or to me recognize that a digital aspect of the campaign needs to be at the ground level. i use to work at harris media with my buddy here chase and i remember that portman's campaign, if you wanted to know how investedrob portman was in the success of his

digital operation , rob portman called me on christmas day to hire us. because it was that important that he had that part of the campaign locked up two years before his election. there are a lot of candidates out there that recognize how critical the digital component of the campaign and is starting early kind of gives you that make up. >> these four people will probably need to get on it right now. steve, when we talk about the digital advertising, something portman campaign credit for. they did it often and slice and dice the electorate in ohio and delivered messages to the electorate. how did you do that and what should campaigns be doing in the future that you learned from the ohio race? >> so yes, the center as michael was saying was

concerned with starting as early as they could and we began building his online audience an email list and began a message on search and that we can begin spending money and i think the company often in 2014 had the success that later mcconnell had in his race and he started early and we began doing something that like that in march 2013 for this race that set the framework for 2016 candidates and you know, senator portman, we were testing video messages for him in the beginning of the summer and so a lot of her example pollyanna that we saw, we began running that in tests online at the end of april, beginning of may long before it ever came on television so that the online audiences, heroine being a huge problem in the northeast that the senator was a leader on, the online audiences and audiences exacerbated in

seeing the video by the time it made it to dv so that it was more of a reminder and we did use some cool tools that i have used before with the gray screen that worked at google. here he was talking about display advertising before this and we did a test actually because it's a common conception that digital advertising, that display advertising is junk and that no one is seeing it and it might be on a computer, it's not even a person and that something we wanted to test with google so we ran a display campaign or a week on the care legislationrelated to that holly video .and all we said was, look at the work that senator portman has gone on curbing heroin addiction in ohio. for the two week. after that, we ran against his target audience of likely republican voters and for the two weeks after that, people

who were exposed to the impression, not people who clicked on it but people who saw the ad somewhere on land went and searched for the senator 600 percent more often than someone in the audience had never seen it and that was a cool tool that we use to bring some validity back to the display advertising we were running for the senator.>> that was also matched up on websites overhead on media hits with heroine stories as well. because max, you are asked to our media? >> we targeted advertising through those who are likely to search on heroine issue. >> something that senator toomey talk about early on, as a republican running in pennsylvania was independent of the presidential campaign no matter who the nominee was, in the end we saw these interesting results when you compare toomey's counties to trumps . that surprise you that you

want different voters been trumpeted and does that speak to where senate campaigns can run more independently than we thought? >> we knew, we always knew pennsylvania was going to be an uphill climb no matter who the nominee was so we plan to always have to run ahead of them. i think what is amazing is in pennsylvania you had to statewide republican wins and they mastered two totally, they are different from one another. the president-elect trump found the path through the rest of the state outside of really the media market that we didn't know if that path was available to us and i think we went in and it knew we were going to have to find a large number of voters who wanted to go after them and find out what issues matter to talk across all platforms and really feed them information that they would

care about and i think the media market alone, there was 120,000 potential voters and just the media market alone and we won statewide by 100,000 votes. i think it is amazing the two different paths but we were a little surprised that it all kind of came about. >> the media cycle, all we heard was that senate races can only run so far for the presidential race in every cycle was the same way. does that mean that there is potential for a senate race to turn towards this especially with the new technology you are using this time around? >> yes, we invested heavily in using data and digital to target people and really brand the senator on conservatives. ultimately, as an

accompaniment, you have a record to run on and the other side will let you know about it in a negative light and you need to highlight that in a positive way and there was a number of things from the center work on child predators and keeping them out of classrooms to the issue of senator monahan who worked to really save this little girl's life and getting the rule save to get her among transfer and we ran an ad on that in the philly media market. we talked about the senator's independence on the toomey legislation, a lot and we talked about the gabby giffordsendorsements, we talked about the senators , record and who he was and how really the work he had done and we spent the entire primary talking about the jobs he brought to pennsylvania. we ran targeted male all around the city and delaware

county in southeastern pennsylvania, we talked about the refineries you were to say, 911 airway in pittsburgh, we sent mail to all the surrounding towns talking about that work and all the jobs related to that and on digital, we matched all those same universes on a monday, a digital ad would go up on a wednesday that share the same messaging. we were, it was all about reputation and then taking the work that the senator did and talking about who he was and getting people to vote for the senator and really his work as a legislator that he deserved another six years ago back to washington.>> our next question is for all of you guys, i think the portman campaign would say all the cool tools that you have and all the cool media you are using is without

small interiors on the ground, discrimination on the voters but you are delivering it to, is that a big part of the campaign and did you guys do anything similar with the portman campaign, you recruited 500 volunteers. >> for senator portman specifically, the field operations in the campaign was accessing the same database we had on the digital side so they had all the same information we had every day and i think it was a real key components to his victory because everyone was working off the same information. everyone could this, sometimes it felt like your fundraiser likes to use their own donation process, your digital person but use their own email platform and it's all working off different things and that was never the case on senator portman's campaign and i think that's actually not looking at digital is just a piece but something the entire campaign can be a part of.

and including every piece in it. i think it's a real key to success in today's digital world. >> same thing with us, we had a director who made sure that everything we did on twitter, every door that we knocked on , the digital universes that we were targeting, rtv and everything, our mail pieces and everything were singing from the same song book and it can make a difference. for our team, we had a limited budget and we had to be efficient about everything we did and we were able to track every target effort that we had so that we knew, you know, where there was movement and where we needed something and where we felt good about things and it did make a huge difference at the end of the day in terms of our efficiency . >> connecting all those systems ... >> the mccain race, the same

anecdote. in the primary, john mccain actually lost by 10 points. but because there was a huge drive in arizona that brad talk about with mail-in ballots, in arizona it was like a certain percent of the election will either early vote or mailing their ballot before election day so we have this permanent early voter list that we were targeting online in the 26, 27 days before election day. all of our voter file targeting, anywhere that we could possibly match somebody or i keep target somebody or match registration data on facebook or mobile numbers on twitter, anything we could do to maximize the reach and frequency to that permanent early voter list was

absolutely key to winning the primary and all that data was spent utilizing the field team and volunteers to call through and chase those ballots because if we could find somebody online and say oh, by the way, that ballot is on your kitchen table, you need to mail it in right now, mail it in before kirkpatrick goes up on television and kelly ward gets $200,000 to put in the last 10 days. and so basically using the digital as something that could feed into the rest of that field operation was the number one thing that was used. >> this is something our director, i know you guys worked with the scott campaign. i am interested in whether all the information about voter id has a strong digital campaign can help another campaign down the road. >> the things you guys are pulling in. >> absolutely, it might be sitting back here, it was a huge part of the effort. yes. i think it just continues to

be built on and to take it matter and be refined. and we parted with our target universe ducking at what we call the walker johnson gap. we use the walker post 2014 as a high watermark and went back from there and i think we want to make sure that's available and all living in the state party and whoever runs in 2018 against tammy baldwin in wisconsin will have that available to the so it's something that continues to be refined and made better. with every point of contact that we have, every volunteer knock, every crutch across any medium that's made ultimately refines that file and is used down the road. >> are all these run by the state party or did they have trouble with the campaign? >> i will leave this to josh randel. >> it was running a different primary in ohio but all i can

tell you is senator borman is not opting out now that election day is come and gone, he's going to continue to keep his file active and make sure the people that are in his database are communicated with on a regular basis so whoever is the eventual republican nominee for governor and senator and on down the line have a particular file from which to work. >> it was particularly interesting to me this cycle the way you guys got involved in primaries because the digital advertising changed the way you think of digital advertising not being able to be afraid of that. >> on primaries, that's a really good point and is not one that i think was lost on you know, the leadership on our side. i think the whole attitude has changed. these cycles go as always but we are not going to talk about the primary opponent limiting as it might be because we don't want to raise their awareness .

but what we've seen and having worked on both sidesof the coin , having worked in primaries and candidates and having worked for more established incumbent candidates, you see that the problem where republicans get in the primaries is online. those voters use the internet and spend their time and organize against you there so if you are not going online early months before primary date and defining your opponent before they have the chance to get on tv and someone says shop pole three weeks before the election and suddenly you are not in that with this guy who only had 20 percent name id, you want to get them underwater and early because people know who they are and the one way you do that is, i think what we see in these primaries is especially the digital shows

in those verbatim statements that you get red back to you from the people that you are calling and so if you use digital to really change that sort of inflow flux. >> it's literally what people are reading every day and reading it on facebook or sing it on twitter, or basically what i'm saying is your number one task in these primaries is to change that info flow.

it is to get people to read your content and not what you were deemed to be fake news or biased news of what some radio host this thing about why you are an awful person because you took some vote for cloture that wasn't the correct vote. long story short is, if you have an insurgent candidate against you, if you not spend money online you will lose. >> quick lightning round. since we're listening to bad talk about with a top campaign did and you are all professionals is it anything that surprised you that you want to take forward going to -- [inaudible] >> i think the use of media with everything they did is something that should be -- digital ads are treated like tv ads now and i think that it's a lesson that the trum top team did really wed i think we all can use to our

advantage. particularly when you got limited budget, you know, treating your digital ads i get you the added making sure you're raising money off of them, making sure you're putting on, pitching stories on it like it's the greatest thing that just happened is really important and it only expands your reach. that something the trump team did very well and we can all take a+ from. >> i can only hope -- like brad had the opportunity to do. but i think of all the things he said one of it was hierarchy. there wasn't a whole lot of hand in the cookie jar when came to approving content. everyone in the film heard the stories about 2012 romney, 100 people had to look at a tweet before it went out. that's an exaggeration but it was a lot. we say that after elections and we joke about it and it would forget about it and then we go into the next campaign and some of the same problems come back

up again. we still had candidates today to want to look at every email before goes out. you want to change one word. that's a problem. as much as it is a seamless hierarchy for decision-making it will be better for all campaigns. >> i really like the square video for fundraising on facebook. i thought that was very unique. i like the native use of subtitles. i think that's really strong and it disrupts the new seat in a way that draws peoples attention. this isn't a thing that exist on facebook. we need to as a party like not rest on our laurels and think we won and where the best think about ways like that that can disrupt these other advertising venues or other social media platforms to really engage with the user. not just take the 30-second spot and run it. >> two things. one is, i think brats ability to

understand donald trump's voice is actually critical to what they were able to get done, building acting on a campaign, especially a team that is putting a public information that understand so your candidate is an how they speak and being able to capture that helps to streamline the process. and the social media following. i will be completely honest, i didn't totally buy into it when i started. my job in 2015, i knew there were benefits to when you get down the road but it was like we're just going our facebook likes and what always kind of asking like what's the point cracks but really what i found was the belief to turn people out at, to events, it was cheap. like $5 cheap that you could be able to target, do through social media to build a get people to come to an event even

in a senate race were as much harder, we may not get the sides of crowds mr. trump got been to get 100 people in a rural county with joni ernst equals a good press story. it helps in ways that you don't really see when you're getting up and running but know that in the end and ask it does give you a lot of benefits to be able to talk to people and get them involved. >> somebody who covered these races of the past two years it is a privilege to have all of you on the stage. cool things happening all over. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] okay, next up, ted peterson. >> high. what's up? all right, i'm rolling. i'm ted peterson, digital director for the inner cc independent expenditure. they played in 29 races the cycle defend republicans largest majority in 80 years. immediate expected us to lose around 15 seats going into election we lost six. the inner cc spent over 8 million on digital out of her seven 5,000,000 dollars budget.

digital came out to about 13%. our digital budget increased by 60% compared to 2014 for the first summer budgeted for digital first grade digital. i want to do to prevent relevant topics. start with search. okay, some when a voter search, this is what they saw. and never voter guide 2016, and negative ad and -- [inaudible] if they click on the voter guide add this is where the linda. learn more about jim but you may notice the things about them are kind of negative. if you scroll to the bottom you

notice paid for by nrcc. search was the first thing to go live for our entire ie. i may look like real clear politics. it's the site and information about our candidates and house races, the content was positive and the continent about democrats was negative. notice what appears to be at inventory on the top and sidebar. these were linked to the store. we want to get this site a new like if you ever feel like it's an example at handling content. voters avoid attack ads so we credit the site that did look like an attack at but it housed all of our attack it. we had over 125,000 visits and what's great about these visitors is, these were individuals who are actively seeking information about democratic candidates in our target district. we were able to reach them through our voter guide.

back to the surge results. another nrcc at on this page. it's the wrong for us at. when voters click to this at there were directed to a page that had the 32nd tv spot running on tv and elsewhere on the internet. the wrong for us.com pages were what we directed users to click on the rolling display at. they're designed to look similar to the video so every page looked different. you can watch the video and this image doesn't do justice but scroll down to read more about the candidate, what other vendors at icon sushi or sign sign up for more information here back to the surge ad. one thing we did differently this cycle was bidding on the same search term with two different ads. some might argue we were stupid to be bid against yourself and i will note our buyers did

intimate a strategy that we were not, you know, bidding too too much against ourselves. but we purposely made an effort to own search fo we owe the democrats and names. when anyone search for a democrat and one of our target districts we have two ads with two totally different creative style to increase chances of voter would click it and we could deliver our message to them. i think we benefited from owning the top two search results. let's move on to some of our digital first creative. most of you probably saw this running in the dcc market. if i can get it to play. is there a play button back there likes it's not going to be able to play? so everybody saw this. the when bennett, developer, own a parking lot. she was supposed to build a

preschool, yada, yada, yada. she had an ad, everybody saw it. we also did it for almost every tv ad was break it down to 15 seconds we had this version that we wouldn't have seen on your tv but in virginia can you would've seen it because we are running it on youtube targeted view. and i can't play it. but it had the same message. and for some districts we went even further and we developed youtube bumper ads. this was an ad that showed a small clip from the tv creative. anyway when it was all over with different version of the figures with the same message running on youtube. it was a multichannel effort at a big part of our success on election day. one last thing to leave you with how i think we were particularly successful because we started with a plan.

we planned to tell the continent for the medium with digital first created. we plan to spend 8,000,000 dollars. we we built a strategy and executed it and stuck to the plan. thank you. [applause] >> next up we have a panel on ballot props. i want to welcome amanda, chris, and lauren. there were more ballot props issue that we worked with than ever before and i'm sure all of you will start seeing the same. >> there we go. my name is lauren and i am industry development manager supporting our elections team at google. i am joined on stage by amanda

bloom, director as well as chris georgia, so thank you for joining me. but before we jump into our panel i have a very exciting topic which i know we are very close to so we will go rfs is a can for the results ballot props so don't get too excited. so in my role at google i have the job of focusing on voters, what are voters doing on digital? the way we understand voters and their intent in election cycles is look at multiple different data points. everything from what they are typing in the google search box which are typing in very interesting things all the way to partnering with third-party research firms. so today we walk through our evolving of research and her findings on pallet props this cycle.

but at the end of every cycle we seem to be in this position. questioning the effectiveness of advertising at the overall level all the way down to digital. if i had a nickel for every time i was asked in the research industry to show me the effectiveness of digital ad i might be the next billionaire running for president. this is the number one asked that we get. so how we set up our research this cycle was to focus on three different buckets. really focus on the ship we're seeing in the the brandt in consumer world of the time spent on media. and as mentioned we are saying two hours online for every one hour on tv. but really where it gets interesting is what we go into the influence in the way of digital on the voter decision process. and finally rounding out the effectiveness. at google we don't want to stop. if ads are working to want to go beyond to understand how, where

and for whom the ads are working. so we took an innovative approach this year and i wouldn't be on stage without the help of chris and demand and their partnership. so we looked across multiple digital research firms and we worked with, score, the leading digital research measurement company working with a national panel. but we know that elections are won and lost at the local level. we thought there was a huge opportunity to understand more on the ballot props would look across the winter signify ballot props in 35 states and identified a few that we could work with. within had comscore cut their panel at the state level and also screened in for likely voters. but the third step is tagging the creative so we could say with a significant lift and a

true controlled and exposed experiment if digital ads worked. so we will spend the rest of our panel really talking about the strategies and a chris and amanda executed the strategies and pivoted throughout the cycle. we have some results. we looked across all persuade ability metrics from awareness, favorability, knowledge ability and tend to vote as well as some recall. we saw significant lift in the double-digit percentage points across multiple metrics. so more to come and reaching out to your google team this is scratching the surface. but i wanted to start with both chris and amanda. so the first question that we had is as we know and wavered a lot today about what means a successful digital camping on the senate, presidential level, i would love to hear from your perspective working and ballot

props as people of worked on campaigns, what were some of the challenges and differences executing that strategy? [inaudible] >> really come it is up to the campaign to solve the initiative itself to raise the level of awareness. there's no, you know, there's very little awareness going into all of this. in california, for example, over 17,000. the voter guide was 250 pages long. it's just a statewide voter guide. that doesn't include your local races and local initiatives. so we have to battle awareness of our side and one of the

benefits about initiative is in general awareness does lead to favorability which is not necessarily the case with candidate campaigned sometimes but we have it in a paper. [inaudible] >> public and voters with high propensity. you have to go figure to that audience is. [inaudible] >> we were able to take great micro-targeting data, combined our online targeting not only what was in the mail but what we're doing on tv as well. we were able to go to board cutters were able to target online. all of that kind of, we had to go find this audience that we

specifically had to -- [inaudible] >> great. chris, you came behind in double digits and came up meeting and exceeding by think we said 70 points? >> it was a good night. >> it was a great night. >> one of the reasons that happened was not just a well-funded effort. we ended up with about proposition, and new jersey -- [inaudible] new york is the most expensive. talking about for outside groups, $5000. so to go in and play incredibly expensive. we had well-funded effort. we had because of that well-funded effort we would start very early on in the process and we had research starting back in may on this before it was even decide what number on the ballot. this was going to be yet, the once we decide we're going to go and play winnie bick and never

came down. >> great. amanda, with this research what did you find ways the most surprising? was there any pivoting? >> yeah, so one thing, we were in a similar but with one of these campaigns. we were down i 29 points and we ended up four points. among one certain group, those were digital only, people that you could only reach with, they either watched tv over the internet or they did not want any type of tv content whatsoever. that was huge. one thing that came from the study we did was, there was daily play going on which was dictating like how we change the message and we need to target and how we needed to change. but with the comscore study the

thing that surprised me the most we all believe that digital can move voters. we all believe it was nice to see it in numbers and be able to present that to our clients. the thing i really enjoyed saying was as we change of messaging, the list in message recall popped. i would sing on the results that the messaging that we are running september was popping and then we were kind of integrating some of her october, november messaging at the same time but you really didn't see it move. and then we basically found that the message we were weaving throughout was really wrong polling and from focus groups was a message that was going to win us this campaign. so we went fullbore the last couple weeks of the election tv, digital radio, everything digital, direct mail. everything had the exact same imagery in it. the exact same tagline, everything, search all across the board. we saw a list of i saw a list of

i think 32 points, i can't member exactly but it was huge. to be able to see the difference in message recall as were changing the messaging it shows it is working. [inaudible] >> what tools from a digital perspective did you use to educate voters? this was pretty different from the awareness levels when working with unpresidential and senate? >> on our end it was particularly challenge because ours was about casinos in the state where you can gamble. we had to go in and do an education component of this campaign. that made our surge strategy challenging. and so people much smarter than the on our team worked closely with the google team to figure out the best way to efficiently make that by picking was something we are constantly with an bidding against the same folks that we were trying to

stop in some of these. >> we went up early on with advertising before we even had a valid number. because if anybody with you about something, we're basically using -- [inaudible] even loosely related to this, let's be able to get our message out. search was an important component of all that. another thing was how confusing all of this was was that we had to figure out how to word our strategy a properly. for one ballot initiative we were running, we were the no side and the initiative was basically to fund education. we knew that people in that state supported more funny for education and what he thought education needed more funding so we couldn't go at this from the state doesn't need more funding for education, so we had to figure out how to word that

appropriately at all translated into the surge we were doing. we went up for most of these campaigns in early summer and went apart and didn't come down. >> another component is frequency. it's something that in dealing with an education campaign you need to get your frequency up in order to bring that message effectively especially when there's not a face or candidate that will go along with it. we did two things along those lines. one of which we figured out cross medium what individual voters are likely to see on frequency. where we could we augmented that with digital. tv is an example of that, making sure frequency was higher amongst those cord cutters because we know our broadcast live was less likely to be thin. our cable why was less likely to be effective in. the other thing we're able to do is download to data transfer two point oh the logs of frequency

on a daily basis and match that ups would go in and identify folks and online universe that were below the frequency that we needed to hit them. at the increase that as we saw fit. >> i think with time for one more question. so what people think is on the horizon? we pushed some boundaries of even pushing comscore look at state-level panels and had some fun i think kind of pushing industry forward and upward in this type of research. what do you think is next or what would you like to see us go with the digital research frontier? >> it was discipline disappointe comscore cannot measure the mobile impact of what we were doing. with the shift entrance towards mobile consumption, 80% is coming from mobile devices. we had a huge mobile component on youtube and we could measure what the lift was from that mobile component of it. i would really like to see that get push forward in addition it was hard to get significant sites and we were offered one of

the largest geographic in the countries. the research into the still has a fair amount to go even though the targeting is certainly where it needs to be. >> yap. we were kind of concern of the sites as well but i think from a research standpoint, it's, that's hard to say. one thing, this is loosely related, that we spend with a few other ballot initiatives we were running from polling numbers was that 20-25% of our voters message were not able to be reached with tv advertising. and so i'm not sure how many of those people were actually measured to the comscore studied because the panel was relatively small. it would've been interesting to see the difference in impact those individuals specifically versus everybody else out there on the internet who could've been getting the tv add on top of the digital advertising.

>> okay. thank you both. [applause] >> thank you. matt, you're up next for our next lightning talk. and thank you, everyone for dealing with our av problem. and for your pleasure, matt has decided to go like timko, no slides, just him. >> i do like the accountability of the slides. but before you start what are splitting up talking about i want to share something that struck me as i was in the back and listening to the panels and all the earlier discussions. that's the assemblage of people who are here in this room. i see digital strategist and add strategists and political minds and people who have worked on committees and causes. i see people to have worked their way up from the bottom and people that come in at the top and been able to make a difference. all of you have been -- digital

is changing the way that campaigns are being run. whether it's a local initiative or the presidency of the united states you also been willing to take the risk, put your repetitions on the line, and to fight for this new and better way of doing things. i think as we are collectively maybe get ourselves a round of applause from what we've achieved and what's ahead. so give yourself a round of applause. not for me. [applause] >> ward and brad and brian, it's a really great group of people that have really fought and stood up and put the reputations down when the chips needed to go down to make those change. now we have the opportunity to change the country. so to my real talk, essentially we are seeing a change in medium, and its present all this disruptive change that we run campaigns and how we do marketing and how we sell products and news and

entertainment, politics, et cetera. it's challenging but i think it's something that our democracy has seen before. if you look back to abraham lincoln, he said want that matthew brady and the speech made me present. matthew brady was of a talk for and believe it or not at that time still photography was this disruptive new medium. most political leaders thought still photography was kid stuff or entertainment or this entertaining distraction you throw to the site. matthew brady and abraham lincoln were able to realize that this is how you could shape the opinion of a backcountry lawyer and turn him into a national leader. he leveraged that to lead a country to some of the most divisive times we've ever confronted. set the head a few decades and you see fdr. you realize radiohea radio could to communicate with people in their living rooms and forge a

connection with the american people and guide them through a depression and a world war. sit forward to the rise of television and jfk has the audacity gives -- to do something weird and usual and where stage makeup and be in tv. serious politicians would not necessarily want to do that but he realized a master new medium meant to do something that's maybe a little weird at first but is the core to what makes that medium distinct and different from its predecessors. as we look to digital beauty one of the things that strikes me about how digital is differ -- different is its activity. it still has great sound, still has to have great audio, still a great image but it also has to be really fundamentally interactive and strike people as an emotional connection to interactive medium. so many people did that really well the cycle. as, obviously we are at this peak moment with the opportunity to run the country with the

house, the senate and the white house but i think we need to challenge ourselves because the media is continuing to change. digital will continue to rise and we need to find new ways to leverage disruptive thinking and to make interactivity more central to how we run campaigns, how we sell policies and ultimately how we govern. sort of a wrapup thought, one of my favorite economic theories is the sailing ship phenomenon, which is this idea that if you look back at sort of the mid-19th century, there were four or five major shipbuilders, and they had been dominant for centuries. yet by the end of the 19 century not a single one of them existed. so why when faced with a self-evident truths that steam taken only was going to fund may disrupt this holding these tall ships, why wouldn't these

shipbuilders just rebuilding steam? there are human pisces, were unable to make the leap that the world was changing. it's not an isolated story. if you look at why didn't xerox embrace graphic user interface quirks of why didn't blockbuster embrace media streaming? as technology shifts if you don't disrupt, you will be disrupted. i think as the leaders at the conservative and republican candidate at least as it relates to campaigns and campaign strategy in this room we have an obligation not to rest on our laurels but to continue to push ourselves. because we need to disrupt ourselves or we will be disrupted. so thank you and appreciate the opportunity. [applause] >> thanks, matt. now we will have the war room from san antonio from the trump campaign. come on up. we have jonathan swann, garrett,

gary, brad. where is matt? and i got to say this is a little bit better looking than the war room in san antonio for any of y'all have been there, and drinks are flowing. who doesn't have a mic? >> well, this is a fantastic panel. i'm sure most of you are familiar with this but this really is the donald trump digital team. these guys were the core of the team. garrett kushner obviously approving things but these guys

really were indifferent respects responsible for the operation. we have seen so much reporting, some of it correct correct, somt slightly incorrect about the various roles, just slightly. so i'm keen to dig into that. one thing i think everyone would be interested to hear, and maybe we will start with the rnc folks, is can you just give us some insight into what it was like to walk into the donald trump operation when you first did? how much did resemble a normal digital operation? was it something completely different? give us a bit of a flavor of it. [inaudible] >> is that working out? cool. a beautiful office, but as he

found a chair for the winter he was running kind of a solo operation. he's balding guys here and there. but it was, you know, something he was running solo. pretty impressive they got so far in that way. and our first meeting, is kind of a rough around the edge i would say. we were like these rnc guys showing up down in texas. [inaudible] >> totally. so i'm saying, so through that, so we hung out there a couple days, came down a couple of times, grew really good relationship working together. still i think it was pretty sparse when we got down there. i think and, therefore, surprising, but we had a good connection. everyone wanted to win.

i think from our perspective, i knew coming in to the rnc that there was 16 or 17 campaigns, and out of them because of the resource was really going to be able to have a digital operation that could scale into general election size very well. i think it was a well size and scale operation that could've done it but we knew back in june, or assumed back in june of 15 it wasn't going to be the case. i wanted the rnc operation to be as large as possible and have major e-mail operation list and staff ready to go. and so it was ironic or maybe perfect that the campaign that came out of the primary really had the smallest digital operation in terms of just manpower, not footprint. but ended up being a great match that we sowed together over the

first few weeks, and the rest is history. >> this one is for brad. i want to know to the extent to which you think not having the hillary clinton superstructure was an advantage, so actually being smaller, not having a summit said 42 lawyers to sign up on a tweet. do you think that the work advantages as well as disadvantages? >> it was cheaper. at one point it was all mr. trump's money so cap\cap me around longer. i mean, so i think we said two point $4 million total on digital and i would say 3 million of that was probably all ad buys. so we had not spent much. build entire website, everything. i i build less than 30 grand at the point when we were in iowa. that's not very much money. we don't distort them all the pieces, then everything but

again i did that from the house. >> what about in terms of function? >> function, you know, i think it's hard to look at version one and version two and version three that way. if you look at the end, i think our digital operations, by that point, i can't say our scale was smaller. i might say our scale was larger. i don't know exactly how many people they had we had a pretty big, we were 100 plus people by the time of the end. we had a lot. it's unfair to look at 1.0 because it had nothing to do with hillary. spirit that would be much more question of the other candidates. it really, it wasn't as much about us then. if you look at the general, i i think we build, we put pieces together fast in partnership with the gop and the rnc, cambridge analytic or, other

partners, i have money to pull out. my money is not small. it's 70 people. you know, it is is a whole city block. so it's not like it is a little building. i just had not pulled resources because i did bill for those. we started pulling more and more resources and a group, we outgrew our offices. we had moved to another location in the city and then we got a whole floor of that building. and then that force a lot of them to fly here because i didn't like flying to d.c., the san antonio. which wasn't a bad place in the united states to be stuck. it's sunny. no direct flights that we can fix that now. [laughter] [applause] >> it's good to see the powers don't go to your head. can we send the mic down the other end? one thing i think that a lot of people archers about, i was talking talking to some republican operatives and thing won't you be interested to know

about, they would be interested to what extent in your digital operation was that persuasion and to what extent was fundraising? can you just talk about apple of those elements worked? >> i think one of the cambridge people may be. >> obviously as brad talked about -- that was a much about infrastructure getting both new e-mail addresses, being able to -- [inaudible] as well as direct fundraising. a tremendous amount of success doing. but then as we came for the dent into the cycle and started to understand the voters need to understand more about mr. trump's story from a persuasion perspective, then as those identifying our supporters and ensuring they had the tools to request bows and understand where to go on voting day. those became extremely important parts as well. in so many ways it was a digital first. whatever the various

perspectives, whether raising money for getting supporters to come up, digital tools were used for that. >> moneywise, gary by far got the most avid. the gop and the rnc handled all of the digital fundraising for the most part. in partnership with the campaigns. so we would produce content. and gary would lead the team and that we had partners that we brought in from third party companies they came in to push the content. that was the majority of the money i think, i don't know how many millions of that is that i was a 70% range. then we had a persuasion budget and we had at tv budget. that budget was many run again to the rnc to another portion of the operation that garrett ran. i don't think we did much digital to the campaign itself,

and then, but we produce content and then worked with them and then you had the persuasion budget which i believe was, i don't know, 10-15% of that, maybe 20%. give or take. however i do think we ran our fundraising effort in a way to be persuasive as well. so that's a little different. i think that's a big difference of the way we did fundraising to try to kind of meat two goals at one time spent first the we were running our fundraising in terms of our return we were extremely aggressive and when it might set up like we're getting three extra terms, we are not doing it right. because we're leaving money on the table. given with such a short window to operate, bring in as many dollars as possible. getting great return, great roi, we really kind of ramped up our volume to try to push it down to bring in more total dollars.

and if you're operating like one point three x that means we're doing better than my mind. because 3x were leaving money on the table. in terms of how the operation -- [inaudible] persuasion, trump followers amazing kind of engagement. i thought of our content that engagement. a lot of our content got shared. we were extremely aggressive with testing and pushing envelope but what kind of messages worked. we found sometimes that you didn't have to anything to do with actual ask. the content was just important to get the users to stop and watch it, sort of like a first step to the funnel. whether that was relevant to the actual ask of why we're asking them to give us $35 didn't matter. whatever video got the use of eyeballs is what we use. that something that typical campaigns i don't think would be able to do.

i think people would stop us and say that doesn't make sense. but we are just with a focus on the ultimate goal of getting the conversion, getting the donation so we were able to push through and do those things. additionally, because her ads that so much engagement, lead to even more reach with those ad units, in swing states we would try to use persuasion style ads, message style ads, knowing that the ad unit would be seen by the donor target and then their community. their friends just buy them engaging with that content. so we were able to garner incredible amount of kind of social impressions, more reach with users we weren't even targeting for donations. >> you double dipped, that's good. i'll come back to fundraising but before we do that i want to talk particularly to the

cambridge guys about targeting. and, you know, after 20122012 and to some extent 2014 i think micro-targeting was fantasized by some on the left particularly, and there was a lot of intrigue about what cambridge was doing with the profiling. i just want to understand, because we hear about that and then we see what were very kind of generic in some cases big scene, big emotion ads, and, and daniel, i think was daniel before saying in some cases targeting and we need to actually stop being so efficient and we need to pull back a little bit. i want you guys to talk about how you use the tools that you have an just that field in general. >> i do want to break your heart but we actually didn't really do any psychographics on the campaign. i personally did woefully little on the digital site as well so most of my role was on the digital side we provided

audience persuasion and geo tv ad budget from that and those i just help manage the rodeo and zach went to new york. i'm sorry, that's that's it, zach went to new york. zach was in my background, my periphery, right there. that's funny. so we didn't really use psychographics that much because when to walk before we could run on this campaign. similar to the story that kerry told them we started around the first week of june in san antonio with relatively no data structure existing. we are parsing together files, getting all this organized in one place. deal with a few weeks or months before could even build a model and the emphasis was always on fundraising. to gary's point of wanting needed to raise money is because the campaign was fueled by fundraising which is very much an anomaly. mitt ron had a fantastic dollar

donor operation which could feel the campaign. mr. trump team did not have that luxury only on for every dollar that came in, low dollar program went into every other department of the campaign. a lot of times brad was robbing peter to pay paul to get stuff done. but on the targeting piece we're talking about building a database, working with the rnc, working with the database which you may have heard about which was a intro first data base of the campaign and leveraging cambridge is database, combining this together, together, talking up building partisanship models, turnout models, persuadable voters, 12 voters, 12 different issue sets the basic building blocks needed from a campaign o overtime week did get into things like sentiment, darren who is in the back with working on a facebook bot linked late in camping the leveraged technology. but we had five months to scale extended fast and talking about doing sexy profiles requires a much longer profile.

>> the other thing that cambridge provided and the rnc provided me was if i would've made to make budget decisions everyday which is making lots of them, i wanted kind of two sets of data what people thought was happening. i did want to make all my decisions off just one set of data. cambridge started helping us with bowling in totally, making 1500 life calls, 500 web -- 1500 life calls per state plus other stuff. i don't member the numbers but we were -- the rnc would provide so i would have two data sets to look at all the time. because the rnc said you were down five in georgia, you know, and cambridge think i don't think that, we're up three, i could say why is there a difference? what's going on? i had other pollster at data to a larger post going on on the ground. i was able to bring all that data in and have a better

picture of what i thought was happening. cambridge provided a full-time employee tickets could sit next to me all day to put in a visualization standpoints i did have to digest the data. i could do in a fast, in a method that was so fast i could make a decision in 20 minutes because we are going so fast. so the ability to digest that much data even if sometimes it was the rnc data going back to cambridge back to us, they were able to visualize it in the way i could then consume it to make better decisions. >> one benefit brad had is yet control over research, data and digital and tack which is kind of a dream if you're someone has been a presidential before doing this you can give you a ton of leverage and also how to make more holistic decisions where you are not fighting with the digital team to talk with the audience you want to end unified with the tech to build you a new landing page everyday. since brad at operational control over those, we can go into his point, 1500 surveys a

week roaming every day, mixed methods between online samples, live. that goes into rerunning our models every wednesday. molly gets new audiences, gary gets new audience. the rnc is providing data at the same time and going back and testing performance off the back of that with the google and facebook and also traditional survey work and i'll testing. the campaign was consistently learning from itself which is very rare. much more runs like a business and bot most campaigns have beea part of. >> in terms terms, to borrow ine fundraising, everyone is sassy about that. i you guys raise a quarter of a billion, something in that range, which is phenomenal. i know that there were days when you're broke, was it 7 million some days, more than that? can maybe, nine. [inaudible]

>> i want to ask two questions. what is a macro question. can you break that a raise that money -- and equity get you to say we spent x with facebook. i know you will not do that. i want you to give me some idea of a ratio between e-mail versus ad spot versus ex. give us some idea how you raise all that money. >> the general breakdown was about 50-55% e-mail raised and then the rest basically advertising. some of that comes over testing some people come visit the website. huge social presence. e-mail, i was happy to say i was expecting it to be more like 75%. i think gary and the cambridge team had an aggressive advertising style that really

has never been seen before in politics that brought in so many extra donors initially, and an e-mail was able to get them the second time. yoyou know, the e-mails, like i was saying before, so many campaigns running in the summer of 15. we knew we had to have an email list because of the time value of these assets which means the only way to build a giant list when you need one is out of, if you don't have one, is i to spend a ton of money and catch up really fast but you will spend 10 or 20 x for email than he would have if you started earlier, or build a time machine, go back and start the email list from scratch. not from scratch but the rnc had a good when we came in. we build it up much larger. having assets ready was incredibly important. i think going forward in the next cycle, the next presidential, i think text is going to be more like 10-50% if

-- >> talk about that a little bit. that's pretty that's pretty interesting i think. >> so gary -- people were signing -- you guys had those, the banners on the podium all throughout the primary. you walked in with like 600,000. i totally dismiss the company away we can raise any money on it. ended up doing several million i would say. >> towards the end when hitting it a lot heavier. we had messages, radio messages where we raise half a million dollars off of one send. rather absurd. yoyou know, brad switched up the event. you start running your own event sign-up where you are capturing mobilephone at that helps a lot of growth within the list. also stamped out a lot of

protesters but also, that was the goal but also gave us a massive sms file which we raised a ton of money off of. >> combined together you got a huge e-mail list, a huge text message list. this is why the assets are so proud of the white if you're running any campaign at any level i would be going to the clinical director and finance director and say the email, the money that i need for e-mail you should be arguing for because that's going to turn our photos, persuade voters and get people to events, help the entire campaign. i'm not sure what is a more value assets besides e-mails and sms. >> you have to remember, the reason why they raised so much money is because donald trump was really good candidate to raise money for. >> i'm glad you said that because the next question is how much of these replicable and how much is because of donald trump? i want you guys --

[inaudible] replicable. you twisted me in circles. that's good. >> if you are a campaign gearing up to 2018 what things can you take a look from the trump campaign and what things do you think were uniquely trump ian and maybe can be so easily replicated. >> good candidates with good candidates win elections. like on the margins, but my life before helping brad in cambridge was walker in wisconsin. doing my fund-raising for that. i would've died to be able to say pass this stuff to mr. trump would say fund-raising. a lot of typical republican candidates, others of you who work for marco rubio, would've loved to say that the kind of message that mr. trump had in fund-raising because that message matters.

even software choices means the difference at 10-20% of% of e-mail and deliverability. i think that mr. trump was that vehicle but they're able to harness it very quickly. >> can you give people some more insight into what were some of the messages that really resonated? what were some of that really popped? i don't know whoever is best. give us some insight into how that worked. >> one of our biggest days outside of the third debate was august 31. the last day of the quarter, so great day but also the date he went down to mexico. totally dominated the media. tv for us really felt kind of like, create an echo. whatever we are doing online would be juiced up if he is nominating the television because all the users were watching. very relevant, front in the face.

8:31 he was like he was the president, playing that role. he's also talking about an issue, immigration, wall that does really well for us. when i talked about earlier how started using persuasion adds to raise money, you know, talking with immigration was a really are persuasion add, but we had an ad from early on, just direct the camera, started going up newark and writing the scripts for the kids from filming in. we had one where trump was talking about the wall. it's slaughtered for months. we just kept running it and running it. most would burn out after a couple of days. we are pretty aggressively pushing it but it was just like poland have a couple days and bring it back. stop the user, get them fired up and what ever we are asking for getting membership card, this or that, they are interested now.

>> are we done? >> one thing very interesting, we had all this in one kind of shop. fund-raising small dollars literally followed two days ahead of polling data. that was really the truth, meaning you could take that graph and show as fund-raising wind up our polling data, earned media and when things happen cap\cap people excited which made the move to trump's colander they would go with their wallet first spirit did the fund-raising plummet? >> don't get me on anything but as polling, as the votes came as you saw as we improved or as the avenue and flows up intent the campaign, fund-raising would match that. people vote with their wallet. it was nice to see with such a small dollar fund-raising that you could see this. it was nice because i could see as a result of the data started to our victory, fund-raising continue to grow as well and it

would all go to the last day before trying to vote with the wall. when they were not happy they would vote with their wallet. >> one last question. outside group, what could happen? are you going to be working with kelly and? can you give us some insight? >> i will have a job outside the white house. >> are you going to be the chief digital dude on the outside group? >> i have, right now i am enjoying life, dinner with my friends across the street. that's as much as you're going to get. i will have a job. will probably be outside the white house. those are two answers to that. >> i think we're all fairly confident. thank you, guys. really appreciate it. [applause] >> you are good. we are going to show a few videos from the super pac for our last panel and then we are on to cocktails.

.. trust me. why aren't i 50 points ahead you might ask. >> responsible for the content of this advertising. >> hi, i'm ruth. it has been said there are two things that are certain in life, theft and taxes. up with thing is certain for me. with louian bennett you get higher taxes. bennett flat-out refuses to raise taxes, saying there are times you need the revenue. doesn't the government take enough already. mean time she is out there criticizes for supportings largest tax increase in history. higher taxes on families, higher

taxes on business, you can count on louian to heat the charge. congress doesn't need more of your money. congress doesn't need louann bennett. ♪ >> my home, my family and my marriage. i have a lot of things to worry about besides some politician's future. empty promises of special treatment are the last thing i need. i want a leader who will fight for me and my family. from my home to my job, there is a lot depending on me. i know i can build a better life if we can finally get the economy on the right track and there's no limit to what i i can do when my family and my job and our security are priorities for my elected leaders. that's why i'm supporting carlos corvelo for congress. he knows i deserve equal pay for equal work. he understands when i succeed, my family succeeds, and america succeeds.

♪ >> what is at stake in this election? it's not just who goes here? it is who rules here. the supreme court. the justice who guaranteed your rite to own a gone is gone. now the next president's choice breaks the tie. four supreme court justices support your right to own a gun for self-defense. four justice would take away your right. >> the second amendment is outdated. >> the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right. >> what does the second amendment mean to you? >> not the right of an individual to keep a gun next to his bed. >> hillary says -- >> when it comes to guns, we have just too many guns. the supreme court is wrong on the second amendment. >> hillary's made her choice. now you get to make yours. defend freedom. defeat hillary. the nra institute for

legislative action is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> in iran a woman's life is worth half her husband's. christians persecuted. it is illegal to be gay. people stoned, beaten and hanged. for what they believe. how they were born, and who they love. ted strickland supported giving billions to that regime. without concessions for human rights violations. when we had leverage, ted strickland didn't stand up for the vulnerable. that is why we can't trust him to stand up for us. american unity pac is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> why aren't i -- [inaudible]. >> can you guys hear me? hello? okay. so future 45 didn't start running ads until later in the race. at which point there had already been hundreds of millions of

dollars spent against hillary clinton. what made you guys decide to get involved at that point and how did you guys decide what kind of messaging to use, who you wanted to target and how you wanted to run your ads? >> is this on? >> and hundreds of millions is probably an overstatement there. >> i would object to the promise of your question as they say because i think at the point that future 45, we were formed in early 2015 but we certainly didn't spend the bulk of our resources until after labor day of 2016. at the time that we got involved i think something like $10,050,000,000 had been spent against trump by secretary clinton -- $150 million. and 80 or nine million dollars was spent for mr. trump mostly

by the nra the playing field was wide open in types of issues you could define secretary clinton. from our point of view we always do research. we undertook a large research project both on subject matter and what voters cared about. we tried to target our ads to the right office. we had ads as lee know, aimed at millenials. that were aimed at folks who really cared about the women's issues, and ads that were aimed at people who might engage with politics on a humorous basis. so we did a lot of humorous types of ads or tried to be funny. we had a lot of ads aimed at issues like the supreme court, like the economy and so forth and tried to match those creative opportunities with the right audience. >> and what was it like running ads for a super-pac, for a candidate who was already so well-known in the media? was that part of the reason why you decided to mostly just go after clinton rather than airing

ads promoting trump? >> we did both. the media like to talk about the anti-clinton effort but reality is there were a lot of opportunities to postively talk about the president-elect and vice president-elect. in fact the ads aimed at economic opportunity and the economic plan i think were real bulk of the advertising we did, especially in september and especially in pennsylvania, some of these will sound familiar, michigan, wisconsin, ohio, iowa. so we definitely focused on that. at a certain point everybody understands the role of an outside group versus the campaign. at a certain point the campaign itself put up some really high-quality, positive ads aimed at talking about mr. trump's economic message. and at that point when it became clear that they were carrying a very effective, positive

message, we then altered our strategy to go more negative. there was another group run by alex castellanos. they had a great number of high quality ads and we focused more on defining secretary clinton. >> how did you determine what effect your messaging would have on down-ballot races, a lot of states you aired ads in also had very competitive senate races? >> the map is the map. so i believe that whoever won the presidency would also carry the senate and one of the targeting opportunities was there were a number of voters who were really core trump voters who were not necessarily for the republican senate nominee. then there was another subset that they were for the senate nominee but not necessarily for candidate trump. so we tried to aim our messaging both on air, more significantly through digital means and to a

lesser extent, mail and phones, to marry up those audiences. so if you could persuade a rubio voter to also vote for trump and vice versa, a trump voter to vote for rubio, we felt a rising tide lifts all boats. as todd ricketts used to like to say, hillary's slogan was stronger together. our view was we're better together. if we could be better together and get folks to turn out for the entire ticket, both presidential candidate and senate candidate and as my friend mike shields will be happy to say the house candidates. i would say finally that was the reason why future 45 spent the bulk of the resources buying national advertising. we were up on 18 different cable and broadcast networks nationally including $30 million in the last week alone as people were making their game-day voting decisions. >> so to open it up a little bit, this is obviously an unusual election year and in one way that was we saw less

spending on tv advertising on the presidential level but more in congressional races. would you guys each talk a little bit how you worked to make your ads kind of break through that noise, particularly on digital platforms? why don't we start with you, mike. >> with me, i'm sorry. we can talk about the roots ads, that is one of the things we did. the concept for the ruth ad that you saw really was me looking over the shoulder of my 14-year-old son who watches a lot of youtube content. and thinking through about how, you have websites that are mobile sites, that are different and a lot of the content that we created in campaigns over the last two, four, six, eight years, argument about whether or not we should put things online and what the budget should be i think has changed. it's sort of been settled in campaigns to a certain extent you're going to have to do this, right?

now, what does it look like in my opinion and taking a television ad and cutting into 15 second throwing it online was sort of 1.0. can we get to a version take exact same research a do creative same message, to the same audience we're trying to hit on television but do content that works online, that is going to be in someone's speed they are going to recognize noise or not just swipe past because it's a political ad or doesn't have clouds over the capitol with lightning like typical political ad, something you can't see and what it is people look at looking on small screens and what do they pay attention to? that is how we came up with the idea of ruth, who is sitting right here, talking straight to camera in sort of a familiar way. a part of that too we came to google. we said to going get, you manage youtube stars and create these personalities. if we wanted to create a position at our organization that was online spokesperson, so

we have comes director, press secretary, can we create a new position, online spokesperson talking to audiences, building a relationship with them, same way youtube stars do that and personalities they build on there? and so, brian lyles right here, our digital director, emily davis, our communication director, i have to say this, i sort of came up with that stuff. i was off doing other things. they executed all the stuff and made it happen. and they could tell you a little bit more but they crushed it in terms of people paying attention, clicking, staying, watching the whole video, feedback they got, how they moved numbers. so for us, our approach was creative is king. buying online and all those sorts of things has now reached a point where we can hire a lot of firms to do that very well but what i'm not seeing as much of, people paying attention to the specific online creative and so that's what we focused on more at congressional leadership fund and american action network. >> i would like to jump in there too.

i think what we did for the nra, we did two types of creative. i'm from tennessee. they say to make a good country song, you need three chords and the truth. that works a lot on digital creative. with he did authentic personal story with black screen behind them, nothing else. something you feel like you can watch on the phone and have conversation with another person and not have content be forced on you. if it wasn't that, next thing we did was stuff that looked like a movie. we're platform agnostic. most of our creative was designed to have parts that would work on all platforms. we didn't want to interrupt people's entertainment each night as they watched whatever their favorite content on hulu, netflix or nbc, cbs with advertising that looked like a piece of crap, a piece of junk mail. we invested heavily, ads that got $5 million put behind them. we had several for the nra, those things looked like a movie. we spent money to make it. we spent months in development.

we spent months in testing. one of our ads we made 12 different versions before we got it right. we went to focus groups in four different states and kept getting it wrong. we were learning from our mistakes. you ask difference what works on line versus what works on tv, we take blended approach. we're a blended agency. people use all devices. we don't pit platform versus platform. we pit how do we persuade the people we need to persuade with everything. we did 15 tractor-trailer loads full of mail. it was holistic approach. i don't know that i would argue that you make those distinctions. you say how can this help me deliver that message? we thought youtube and google did a great job helping us own big events. we thought this was a race with two national stars and big events would matter. so we were ready to go with youtube and search traffic for conventions, both conventions. we had specific creative only

ran in the conventions. kim corbin, who was a violent crime survivor, only ran during convention night when hillary gave her speech and we had a massive surge budget running it on national tv ads. third debate, we took advantage of surge more than anybody else did. captured 250,000 searches on our topics during the debate. google and youtube helped us own it. when world series came along yes, we bought 400,000-dollar tv ads. if you were searching for teams, searching for candidates, searching for the second amendment, we knew those big events were really important. we would have the whole country standing by some device. >> so i think that the question of how did we break through on digital one of the things that drove us at american unity pac, we didn't have a choice. my peers right here are running

much larger organizations than american unity pac. we have our own budget. we've done $12 million as super-pac over last couple cycles, but you might do that in a single state. so i think that for us, you know it is not only that we are a leaner organization, it is that we're single issue organization. so american unity pac has a pretty focused mission helping those republican candidates for congress who believe in lgbt freedom. and so you know, for us we can also afford to play in those races because we're dealing with a smaller universe. it was hard for us this cycle because we had so many outlyers. that is a good problem to have. we had people like john mccain running in arizona, rob portman running in ohio, joe heck in nevada, kelly ayote in new hampshire. as you looked at battleground senate contest, a lot of people running in the races were incumbent, pro-lgbt senators or in case of joe heck, a challenger we were excited

about. looking at that at the outset our team started to assess what we can afford to do, especially we want ad very clear niche helping these candidates. we knew we didn't have the budget to be overall a definer in the ohio senate race but we you knew that we could take on some part of the mission to reelect rob portman. and for us the clear path there was digital. to refine that further, knowing that if we were going to break through with our message, we needed to understand what was going to motivate the voters. i think you're hearing some themes. research, multiple versions of that, testing multiple times. we did that it is an interesting theme because if you look at the lifespan of american unity pac, even though we're lgbt issue advocacy organization, at this point about 93% of our advertising dollars haven't mentioned lgbt issues. mostly we're running ads on tax cuts or corruption or attacking democrats for being lousy or

boosting our republicans for being great in supporters of limited government. this cycle we wanted to play with our issue a little bit to see to find if we could find effective way to bring that in. we told ourselves we can't do that unless we prove it is effective. that we can inject lgbt issues on behalf of republican candidates in a general election and be successful in doing so. we researched the hell out of that. we worked with a group called the women's initiative. there are two ladies here with the women's initiative, amanda, rebecca. we started to understand the group. research women's voting and opinions, a deep research program. you should learn about it. you should subscribe to it if you haven't already. we learned in that process, women voters, especially independent women voters were hawks. i'm dramatically simplifying this. we learned there were hawks. there was real foreign policy message. one of the ads you saw about the iran deal, we developed out of

that deep research process, we could talk about the iran deal in a different way. instead of focusing on the nukes, focus on the human rights abuses of iran and things, horrible things the regime is doing to women and also to gay people. to show images of that. in the testing process we learned that it had amazing impacts with young center-left women which is prime group that we want to peel away from our democratic senate opponents. by working with google, we put serious money behind that in ohio in a first wave, do brand lift advertising and understand where was it being effective that great recall, driving huge search traffic and again, we saw that that, it was borne out by the real world advertising that our testing proved to be true, that young center-left women really responded to this human rights message and then independent baby boomers responded to the national security aspect of this message. we felt so confident then having run it in ohio we then took it

on the road to illinois and nevada and i think there was maybe one other state. was there another state? pennsylvania, on behalf of senator toomey. but we couldn't have done that unless we had deep research on the front end and ability to test it as we were live online, airing the ad, refining our audiences. able to once rob portman started to perform so well we shifted resources that is the great thing working with google and nature of digital, you can make a lot of those judgment calls in real time. >> anything to add? >> i think part of your question was how did we know if what we were doing was working and i think think the moment where thought, you know what? i bet trump wins this thing. i don't remember what point, it was late october, lee dunne who runs the google operation, sends out thing, top five searches. i think trump was like jobs,

economic plan, sure there were couple other crazy outlyers on there, the one about secretary clinton, what happens if she gets indicted? how many foreign countries have given to her foundation? how many, blah, blah. all five completely negative. and, what it showed was a lot of messaging that all the outside groups were doing and especially the biggest megaphone, the president-elect was doing, was breaking through to people and the trust issue, really was being driven home. and so i think, you got that real-time feedback from the google platform. >> brad, to go back to you, the nra was one of the first groups that aired ads on behalf of trump during the cycle and one of the top spenders. when did you guys decide to get in. >> one of that was research what we did wrong in '12.

we did efforts after the romney campaign loss, a lot of people we hoped to reach made their mean up early and we didn't talk to them until late. we adjusted our schedule. first group to run an ad in the general election. did did it first before republican convention, with mark geist, survivor of benghazi. that got 2 million views on youtube. a million were purely organ. part of that because it was controversial and we managed the controversy. the white house came after us for shooting at a veteran as cemetery. baited it hook and made va write a letter and went on tv as much as we could to spur it on. we have a group fine with managing controversy and chaos. an experienced with doing it well. our postelection showed 71% of the voters decided before august. and so our creative was weighted pretty heavily to that. later, as campaign went on, one thing i would say that really

worked for us with google and youtube, because of their large-scale and the rest of the economy beyond politics, this was, trump coalition was very different. most of what we do on data is republican operatives is driven by a lot of things are really grounded with our republican or independent voter history targeting but trump was going to win with a lot of people who didn't fit those heavy voter, a lot of partisan data. we used google and youtube's resources of information from the other side to find people whose life-styles matched. in our case it was rural women. we you knew trump had problem with women. we knew 3% of the voters in the country who skippedded' 12 elections were likely to vote this time. 79% of them backed nra viewpoint. most of them were rural women. we went if you're interested in do it yourself projects, camping, there are a lot of things that, a long list is long but we specifically aimed at that kind of data from google and youtube.

really can only get it from a platform that big. >> great. to go back to you for a sec, who is the target audience for the ruth ads? how did you decide what content to focus on more than just the style itself? >> the target audience really depended on the district. we had some audiences that we're using built through the data trust working through our own -- we had worked with a deep root analytics and opt at this must. some of them had districts building out audience for us. depended which district we were going into and which audience we were trying to get to. what data showed ruth ads crushed it with women. i don't think we would be shocked with that. most place as big part of our audience and what we're trying to get through. that is current theme among all republican campaigns and target audiences. i'm sorry, what was the second question? >> i think that was it. >> oh, okay. >> thanks.

and to highlight for you start focusing on digital out of necessity in part. if you were to do tv ads with the content change or or you think you would adapt it? >> one we would have had to change. i don't know if stations would have aided our iran deal ad. almost didn't make it through google content approval on first round. no, we wouldn't, it was highly refined and our audience was, we were doing this probable listicly. it was overwhelmingly women and independent, leaning left, soft partisanship scores. we built into that a few other very interesting audiences. one we set out, lee and i talked about this very early on. we started to doing this planning a year out. one of the things that we knew from previous ballot measure fights, trying to win the freedom to marry in the states, is that we knew republican voters who had a preference for sushi were dramatically more

likely to support gay rights. [laughter] whatever that means. but we knew that. so we had a hunch if we built in a profiled audience and google has custom sushi lovers audience, it is not huge but it was highly efficient. you can't do that on television. that was on our iran deal campaign. we had another campaign promoting the value of equal pay for equal work for women. and we were really limited in that for starters. we didn't have enough republicans who support the policy. if we had more republicans that support that, we could have done most effective ads on their behalf. think of that for 2018. for this cycle we would not air that with huge audience, there are wrinkles on the right with policy on that. we knew from research with the women's initiative that issue as a wedge is more likely to grab the attention of an independent woman than any other economic or pseudo economic issue we're aware of. so by being able to go into ohio, again on behalf of senator

portman, or south florida on behalf of congressman curbolo, we could target independent women audiences using digital that you just can't do on broadcast tv or even cable. >> here is a closing question for you guys. are there any super-pacs, maybe in the democratic party thought digital ads really well and effectively this year? [laughter] >> i think they showed up today. >> okay. >> this is not quite answering that question but many so of the people are in another conference heard me talk about this before. one of the things that frustrated me after election, i give google all credit for having trump team here and people involved in winning here and press come here today to talk about this but after the '12 campaign, you know, republicans had to face the music, even though brilliant things were done in the '12 campaigns.

rnc data were good. a lot of good things happened but democrats won and they're sort of geniuses. we had to whip ourselves for years to get ourselves into shape again to be ready for 2016. we did all the hard work, with a lot of hard work of people in this room doing it and we won. i'm waiting on books and long articles and magazine articles to talk about how smart we all were. [applause] and the articles about how bad the democrats were, because, one of the frustrating things from the dccc and house majority pac, and articles, we were wrong about all the race, we were, because our polling was bad. as if that is an excuse. we're held accountable for our polling being bad. if the poll something bad, means our data back end was bad. means the system we created to build the polling infrastructure was bad. we got it right this time. our polling was better. voter scores at rnc were better. and so not only should we be

celebrating we got it right and more articles written about that, the democrats should being held accountable how wrong they are were and have introspective argument amongst themselves about they got it wrong. >> i agree with mike. to refine it slightly the best thing that the obama people did in '12 was the number of creatives matching up with number of audiences. we all read the articles. they were advertising on tv land, aimed at folks who watch tv at 4:00 in the morning reruns or whatever. the republican candidates and republican groups and party committees did a great job of huge numbers of creatives, matched up with audiences. the one thing you asked about the democratic super-pac, i did want to answer it. i was stunned, i don't know what the trump foles have said about this but i was stunned that priorities usa basically ran the same playbook against trump that the republicans ran during the primary, ads arguments and messages that didn't work during the primary.

they repeated it with 150 approximately million dollars of ads that didn't move the needle once. i'm stunned that those donors to priority usa didn't ask for refund. it didn't really work at all. >> that is interesting. the ad that, one ad they had that worked really well was the i think they called it the role models ad, show a bunch of kids watching trump on television. i tested that thing everywhere. it worked like a charm until hillary clinton came on in the last 15 seconds of the ad. then it went in the tank completely. i think they got that for a while. they cut it back to 30 and took her out of it. lo and behold the last two weeks of election, they brought the version back with hillary back in it. i think that they couldn't get out -- they couldn't get out of the way of their own success in '08 and '12. i am glad you had gerritt and bret and they built fund-raising list bigger than hillary clinton's and she has been

working on it since watergate. they did it in three months. so i think they're really does need to be a lot of covers not only fact that a lot of guys on this side got it right but they ran 2008 playbook again. . . it doesn't make you want to drink and take a rest, then i don't know what will but it should be familiar to you. ♪ ♪

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♪ >> so that's it for this google hosted postelection review looking at what digital advertising strategies worked and which ones didn't. show your life look now at the lobby of trump tower up in midtown manhattan. government officials and others have been making the trip up those elevators to meet with president-elect trump throughout the day. let's watch a little bit of what's going on now. [background sounds]

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[background sounds] >> so that was going on right now at trump tower in new york city, but earlier today former senator and republican presidential candidate rick santorum was in the building as was philanthropist bill gates, also former nfl players jim brown, a hall of famer, and ray lewis from the baltimore ravens. they both paid mr. trump a visit. here's what they had to say following that meeting. >> yes, sir.

[inaudible] >> how do you think it with? >> i think it went fantastic. spin what did you talk about? >> we talked about marrying or emerging the american program with the trump administration to make america great again. we've already have a vehicle, a very great, tremendous vehicle already in place in mr. brown and ray lewis have spearheaded for several years, and to me it's a match made in heaven. it's something that rather than try to go out and invent a vehicle to enhance the african-american community we have a vehicle in place that we need this country to get behind. not just the administration but the country to get behind so thewecan affect positive changen our community. [inaudible] >> couldn't have been a better meeting. the graciousness, the intelligence, the reception we

got was fantastic. >> what are some of the policies you guys talked about? >> i think talk about what we are really trying to do from the urban development and job creations are everything but we are talking a really weird entrepreneurs, from the individual themselves and i think what our program has done for so many years is put that in place at number 30, 40,000 former members who change their lives. what we believe with the trump administration is, if we can combine these two powers of coming together, forget black and white. black-and-white is irrelevant. bottom line is job creation and economic development in these urban areas to change what are kids see. [inaudible] >> i think what it do feel is that he is wide open to helping us change. what hasn't been changed. you talk about you gone the way

back to $22 trillion since president johnson was around, think about what that is, talking about solving poverty, 22 trillion that we have. so for us as a black community for trumpet to step up and said i'm going to do that, that means everything. that's why me and mr. brown is here today. [inaudible] >> no, i did not speak to the election is over. spin talk about going forward. spirit going forward. >> we definitely have a partnership. >> and it's an extension of the outreach program that we put in place that you follow so very closely. mr. trump made a commitment to improving the conditions of the lives of african-americans in this country, and this is going to continue to work that we started during this campaign with the national guard was a collision and now with jim brown, ray lewis and it's a great accommodation. the president-elect was very enthusiastic about it and

committed to doing it. >> i think is excited. he made a commitment, he's given a verbal commitment. this was the first of many meetings pick is given us a verbal commitment and they were going to go forward, strategize at the next it will be implementation. we are not going to drag our feet talking about this for the next three years. this is something -- the vehicle is already in place. the model already works. which is going to energize and empowered this model with the government behind it, with the trump administration b.i.d., with the african-american committee behind it and we will get busy. >> does it concern you at all -- trump has not appointed a woman or a minority? >> no, it doesn't concern me. we are not going to talk about that we're here to talk about this. our focus is right here on this program and implement this program. >> any questions for ray or jim brown? >> how do you hope to help usual

platform and hold the administration to the work? >> i think one of the things, it's no secret that, you know, if mr. brown picks up a phone call and calls anybody in the nation right now who's in the role of athletics can entertain, that phone call is easily picked up. and so for myself the moment he picked it up for me years ago is the reason why i stand beside him with every vision he has put forth. he has asked me to carry that now but to reach anybody, there's nobody we can't reach. i think that's why we have here, because we can bring a lot of people to work together spirit we are not here because of politics but we are here because to help the president of united states help the people that need help. [inaudible] >> i think is an excellent choice for this. absolutely.

[inaudible] >> i just think it's one thing even mr. precious book but is that the things you can easily be educated on. why people go to class and school for everything. i'm pretty sure i'll trouble the caught up on housing very quickly. >> brilliant guy. >> any other questions? thank you, guys. >> thank you. have a good day. >> which way do we go? [inaudible conversations] one step at a time. >> you've been doing this for a long time now i've been doing this but it ain't been doing that.

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follow the transition on c-span as president-elect donald trump selects his cabinet and the republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress, we will take you to key events as they happen without interruption. watch live on c-span, watch on-demand at c-span.org or listen on our free c-span radio app. >> i do think you can learn from failure. i think that if the next president wants to aspire to be like somebody, if i want to aspire to be washington or link. you can't re-create the country to get at the civil war. what you do next question do you aspire to be james munro? i don't know. what you can do is you can aspire not to be james buchanan. >> sunday night on q&a, historian robert strauss talks about james began his presidency in his latest book "worst.

president. ever.." james buchanan, the potus rating game and the legacy of the least of the lesser president. >> i think the differentiation of good presidents and bad presidents in washington, lincoln and fdr are always at the top of the surveys that historians take. they were decisive men. you can't come to the top of the ladder and not be decisive. buchanan was a waffler. james located him for being a waffler as second estate. he always went back and forth on decisions. you have to tell you what to do. so that's how he was as president. >> sunday night at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. >> c-span studentcam documentary contest is in full swing and this year we're asking students to tell us what's the most important issue for the new president and the new congress to address in 2017.

join ashley lee, former lee, for studentcam winner of 2015 for her documentary. actually, tell us about your studentcam documentary. >> in 2015 my partner and i produced a documentary where we covered issues of homeless veterans on the streets of orange county, california. we decided that these were people who fought for a country, have given their all for our country. the fact they are now living on the streets not having family, not anyone care for them, were not okay. we decided that we are going to talk about this issue within our team and we decided to make a c-span documentary about it. i encourage all seniors in high school, even juniors in high school, even middle schoolers to use this platform to speak your voice, to raise your voice, to say that your generation deserves to be heard in the government, and is a better place to speak these issues, this is it.

i think my advise or the students who are on the fence of starting a documentary is to really look into the community and see what is affecting those who are around you. because they are the ones who you love. they are the ones you see the most they are the ones you are around with almost every day. and so if there is an issue that you see happen every day on the street, that is probably where you can start. the apart of this documentary because you want to be a voice for your community. spin take you for all your advice and tips. if you want more information on our studentcam document contents go to our website, studentcam.org. >> the supreme court recently heard oral argument and bethune-hill v. virginia state board of elections. a racial gerrymandering case examining how race can be taken into consideration when states draw district maps. in 2011 virginia lawmakers

lawmakers used the 2010 census to redraw 12 state legislative districts where african-americans made up at least 55% of the eligible voters. black voters sued arguing that by packing minorities into this districts their vote was diminished in other parts of the state, by letting the 14th amendments equal protection clause which prohibits the government from using race as a predominant factor in redistricting unless it serves a compelling state interest. the court is expected to give a decision before the end of their term in june. this is about one hour. >> will your argument first this morning in case tranfifteen, bethune-hill v. the virginia state board of elections. mr. elias? >> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court. the district court created out of whole cloth a new legal standard that permitted virginia to apply a one-size-fits-all,

55% racial floor to all 12 of its predominantly black districts. virginia applied in this 55% rule to move voters in an new voters out of districts on the basis of race, regardless of the differences in voting patterns, geography, demographics or demographics or the actual interests of black voters in each of those districts. this actual conflict test which the d.c., sorry, which the district court intended for predominance has no basis in this courts jurisprudence. instead, he confers a sort of judicial immunity to visually appeal districts that nevertheless were drawn with a predominant purpose of placing voters within and without based sold on the color of their skin. >> are not quite sure i understand how uss predominance, which i think is the challenge

here. and to take a hypothetical, let's say you're trying to select people for a particular board or something. and you say they have to come from a city with more than 500,000 people. absolutely. and then you say and they have to come from such a city in california. can be anywhere else. now, which is the predominant factor? the 500,000 or california? >> in this case under the jurisprudence of -- >> i don't really care. i'm not talking about this case. it's a hypothetical. >> i think that you can set aside the population center and you would look at the state of california as the predominant factor because it is of the criteria to which all others must yield. >> how do you know that? it seems to me that the 500,000 is the criteria to which all others might yield. >> in that hypothetical, each of

them might be an unyielding criteria. >> right. >> in this case there is only one. >> that's why i'm looking wide this is called a hypothetical because it's not about the particular case. obviously what i'm trying to highlight is the dominant means one that dominates over all the others. it's easy to imagine situations where you cannot say the one dominates over all the others. what do you do in a situation like that? >> i think i now understand your question. in that case neither cried -- need to criteria would predominate. in that case we would not admit our burden of predominance. as a result we wouldn't get to the second step of strict scrutiny where you have one criteria though, then you can fairly say there was predominance. >> you are going to figure out which predominate. i think this is where the inquiry or the test that you challenge comes from. one way to tell which is the predominate is to see if they conflict.

if they conflict then how do you resolve it? whenever trump's the other, that's the predominant one, right? >> that is one way that evidence is adduced to determine predominance. it is not the only way. if, in fact, to use your hypothetical, the legislature of california, let's assume they are the one setting these criteria, says our predominant factor, the dominant and controlling factor is that it has to come from the state of california, the fact that it may also, from the members may also come from a city with more than 500,000 members doesn't mean that the first criteria didn't predominate. we know it because the legislature told us, this is the common criteria. and that's what happened in this instance. >> what if the legislature says look, we want to follow the traditional districting, applying all the traditional

districting factors. however, one thing we absolutely do not want is to be held to have violated section five or section two of the voting rights act. so we had these 12 majority african-american districts, and we don't want to do anything to them that results in liability under the voting rights act. is that predominance? >> it is predominance if race was the controlling factor that could not yield in the drawing of the districts. now, it may very well be that when the court then completes its inquiry, there will be a strong basis in evidence that drawing the districts that way was to comply with a good-faith understanding of the voting rights act, and then the state wednesday in this case though, what the state did is get started with -- >> i didn't really understand the answer to the question. if the state says the one thing we absolutely do not want is to be found to violate the voting rights act, that is not

necessarily predominance, in your view? >> that is not necessarily predominance. because there are any number of ways to comply with the voting rights act that do not require race to be the dominant and controlling factor. for example, you have any number of districts, i would hazard to guess, and it is only a guess, a majority of the dishes in this country that are gone by legislators that are majority-minority, where they start with traditional redistricting criteria and the district is over 50% or whatever the applicable threshold is, and they never need to trump the traditional redistricting criteria with race. in this instance, they trump -- >> what is your evidence of that? i'm sure you have read in the alabama legislative black caucus, which i had hoped would into these cases in this court, which it certainly doesn't seem to have done, all right? but if you make the comparison

it isn't enough, i don't think, for you to say that they just saw some traditional factors and he didn't take into account other evidence that they were using race predominantly. well, if you look at the other evidence on page 127 one, the west thing, it was pretty strong evidence. they added 15,785 new 15,785 new voters, and of those, resizing 12 were white. right? and when you looke look at the f the factors, the traditional factors, we were pretty irrelevant. it makes a point of that in the opinion. that's meant to guide the district judges. what's the equivalent here? assuming he didn't say exactly the right words, no one can say exactly the right words, what's his mistake? >> his mistake is setting an arbitrary threshold at 55%. >> no. what is the evidence that you

say which showed that, in fact, they did use race? what's your strongest one or two pieces of evidence? >> i think -- >> you saw the 15,785. that's pretty strong. >> i think if you look at district 71, okay, what you find is this is an inner-city, just to orient to the court court, ts an inner-city district at the core of richmond. this is a district that had 46% opec, and because of the 55% rule that had been set out, the district court agrees that that was a role that kind of drawing of districts all of the districts as result of that rule, what you see is a racial gerrymandering. you see that district went from 46, to 55, by essentially rating every other district around it.

essentially the suburbs and exurbs, rating this districts and bringing black voters in big notwithstanding the fact that it was a classic cause over district, a district in which essentially white liberals who had moved to the city were voting in harmony spirit what was the number roughly? of the new people in the district, how many are black, how many white parts of the people moved out of the district, how many were black, how many were white, proximally? >> i don't have a precise number that were moved in and out but there were a significant number in that many thousands of voters who were moved in many thousands who were moved out spec significant number of matters because after all that was the key factor. how do i find that? >> i think it's in the joint appendix on 669 has the movement. as i stand i don't know them but

for all told district but it is a significant number. it's not two or 10 or even 100. 100. several thousand in a district that is only -- >> i found what it wanted to know. i just wanted to know where to look. >> could i make sure i understand what your view, the policy or says 55%, and it says that across the board as to each of these 12 districts. and it says effectively this is the most important criteria, in the sense that it will trump other things. all right? but as i understand your argument, you are not resting your case on the fact alone, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> and why is that? we would such a policy not have the requisite impact on a voting district? >> right. justice kagan, i think this gets actually to justice briars actual point. if you had a district where it had no impact, it actually

didn't cause voters to be moved in significant numbers, then we agree with the solicitor generals office and this court in alabama that, if a significant number of voters are not moved as a result of that racial threshold, then strict scrutiny is not triggered. >> so we really are looking to what justice breyer suggested, which is, we are looking to the movement of voters in and out of a particular district? >> yes, and i don't think that is in dispute. we'll hear from my colleague, and made i'll be surprised but i don't think that's the dispute. i think the issue is the legal error that was committed by the district court in saying that, if we find a district that loos like it's abided by traditional districting criteria, that's the end of the inquiry. spivak even if we concede that there were, you know, essentially all the african-americans were moved in and all the whites were out

spirit even if those done for an avowedly racial reason. but under the trial courts test, the legislature of virginia could say, we want to corral all of the african-americans we can because we think they all vote alike and we don't want them infecting the neighboring districts. and so we want to get 70% of them into a district. and if, lo and behold, they didn't draw a circle, pride, and visually, the most the most compact district you can, under the opinion we don't ask the question about race. we never get to the evidence of -- >> so you are saying you do not need a conflict between traditional criteria and race? >> correct. >> do you agree with the solicitor general who says, nonetheless, quoting on page eight of the brief, in the vast majority of cases, a conflict may be necessary evidence to

establish racial predominant? >> i think that overstates it slightly. i'm not sure that i would say n the vast majority of cases. in many cases you're going to have a correlation. >> even if you're saying not in the vast majority but in the majority, why is that? based on your answer to justice kagan why is it that you are almost always or vast majority for the sg, or something less than that? >> in the real world away in which population distributes, you're going to need to create as our districts in many instances, in many parts of the country. you're going to need to visually unappealing districts in order to conduct what is essentially a shaw violation. the reason why appointed to richmond is at richmond is exactly the instance of a place where that's not going to be necessary, because you do have a crossover district to give a district where you have white college students and white young professionals moving into an urban, prior urban center voting

in harmony and reinforcing with the african-american population in that area. so it will not necessarily be visually bizarre but it is nevertheless that distraction of a crossover district to create a 55% for the sake of 55% is not going to be, even be -- >> we haven't said that for a reason. we haven't said just the use of race is wrong. we've said it has to predominate. and my problem with your argument here if you want to go on with the district court said, which you may be right, but this is such a complicated area that it's the easiest thing in the world to go through a district court lengthy opinion and to find a sentence that is not exactly right. that's why seems to me if we're going to have ever had districting done back in the legislatures rather than in the courts, you've got to prove your case that not only did what he said was wrong, but it mattered,

with pretty strong evidence. >> i agree. i would make two points in response. number one, this was not a stray sentence. this is, and everyone of of those hundred plus pages, this is applied over and over again. you look at page 111-115 and in which is a discussion of the same district and read that analysis and he says well, it's visually appealing, therefore we don't need to address it. and by the way, as to six was we shouldn't be in the biz of assessing credibility over witnesses. ..

even if there's no distortion in the shape of the district. >> i think that is inappropriate relief. with respect to some of these districts, the court can simply reversed. with respect to the richmond district, the analysis the analysis is that the facts are not generally in dispute. >> it's kind of hard to do it just with respect to one because that means you can't push it back and now another district has an issue. >> i think that's a fair point. if you look at the math, what

were talking about is three geographic pockets. there is a richmond district, a southside virginia, which is up against the border of north carolina, there are two districts, then there is a lower hampton roads and an upper hampton roads. each of those pockets don't really impact the other. yes i agree it would cause redistricting in general around the richmond area but if you recall in the hubble case which was hurt last term, we dealt with a single district, bobby scott congressional district which had been racially by the same 50% floor. then they did the read districts. it only affected the two neighboring, the two districts next to it. i understand the point and it's the fair one but it would not be an unreasonable step to a take

to apply it correctly. >> i can understand yours strength of the relativity of your argument, if this was a standard and it was wrong and this is the right one and they will do it fairly, where do you think he would have to change his view, where do you think there would be a question and where do you think the result would. [inaudible] >> to answer your question fairly, i think in the richmond area there is no question that it would lead to a new districting, in the richmond area which are districts 71, 69, 70 and 74. i think there is no question it would lead to a different map or

a different result. i think in the south side of virginia which is two districts, 75 and 63, this was a curious one. he actually found race did predominate by splitting dinwiddie county on racial grounds. they did not find race predominated with respect to 63. it's difficult difficult to understand how it could of predominated in the division of voters on one side of the line. >> did he not say that strict scrutiny was met? other factors were considered. >> he did say that 75 is the strongest case for the district.

>> along the legal path he still said we met our burden of predominance. i think it's a week finding on part of the district court, your honor. if you look at what the evidence was, once predominance was found, now the burden has shifted, their strong base of evidence was the following. it looked like she said she needed more african-americans in her district. >> most incumbents feel like they need more voters in their district who are going to support them. the second is they alluded to the fact that there were prisons

in the district. this is exactly what they are intended to avoid. there's nothing to believe that those prisons included or excluded, raise or lower the overall population. they assumed if they had 8000 people, it had 8000 black people. that is exactly the kind of racial stereotyping that cannot form the basis. >> wasn't their primary in 2005 in that district where the representative won over a white candidate by less than 300 votes. >> yes your honor and i'm glad you raise that point. that is the third one and that is the most important one. >> let us take a step back, because it's interesting that they won by only 300 votes. the districts were drawn in,

following 2000. in 2001, there was an incumbent that had been there for 30 some odd years was a candidate who one and they won in a landslide in 2003 where they then retired and it was an open primary. in that primary the delegate one by five percentage points. what's interesting is 300 votes is five percentage points. this was a 6000 vote primary, five, five way. to say she won by 300 votes, she won in a landslide. she she won by five percentage points as a nonincumbent in a multiple fields. >> i thought she won by only one and a half percentage points. >> what happened next is that being, and who had retired whose son had run against her in the primary, who she had beaten, he then endorses the republican

opponent. you have this one time opponent who endorses the republican opponent and she wins by 1.3 percentage of the vote. >> these districts are going to last for a decade, are they not? >> there's. >> there's no guarantee the same candidate is going to be running throughout that decade. >> you think they have to take into account this very complicated analysis. >> i'm saying the complete opposite. i'm saying in 2001, 2003, 2007, 2009 this performed without a close election. in 2005 it was a five-point election. that leaves us one election which was the 2005 general where she won by 5% of the vote. >> you're saying it's an idiosyncratic. >> yes. and they never said it was a guarantee it would win.

there was a statement that it is not a guarantee. >> packets to an interesting point. to what degree of confidence will remain a majority minority district to have a strong basis in evidence. >> if there's no other questions. >> thank you counsel may please the court, the district court was right to hold that it's not right to hold for scrutiny but it was wrong to hold a conflict with traditional redistricting principles. court cases have drawn a distinction between the use of

race is a factor and the predominant use of factor in drying district lines. as courts explained in alabama, when the critical question is whether it was a dominantly used , evidence is used but not conclusive proof. to take one example, if a district starts out 75% black, voting age population before three district did, that's on demographic patterns and then the target is set and it doesn't drop below 50%. district lines bring the district into compliance with one person one vote aren't necessarily going to be based on race rather than traditional

districting. this would deprive the state of the flexibility they need to comply with the voting rights act. if it was 75 and it's down to 50, that does not necessarily mean. >> i did not say that. i said if said if the target was that it shouldn't go below 50, not that it was a had to get to 50. okay, if that 75 and what were going to do is not let it dip below 50. they could end up right at 70. it's just not necessarily the case that the use of a target may have had little or nothing, that that's so low at 50% when you started up here at 75. unless the lines that you are

drawing are probably likely to be drawn based on traditional districting factors, it's not necessarily the fact. >> no matter what you do you're going to end up above 50%. >> are those the only kind of district that you would say it would not have an impact on district lines? where the district has a population that so far above the target but nothing they're doing on the margins is affected by the targets, are those the only kind? >> no i would not say that. i would say districts, for for example in this case where you start at 60, there's no reason necessarily to think that race is going to predominate in order to bring the districts in compliance with the voting rights act. they started out at 60 and let's say it could end up at 60.

>> what if we started at 53 when prodded 55? >> i'm with you there, you don't necessarily, you would need more evidence than that. the one that raises -- >> more evidence than what? >> so the most important would be a conflict with redistricting principles. if you could establish that and it affected a substantial number of voters. >> and what if they said well were at 53, we have a 55% floor and we want to bring this up to 55. we can do that by drawing it district that's more compact than it was before. >> ordinarily speaking will be very difficult without showing redistricting principles but there's no hard and fast rule. >> when can you?

you can imagine it happening. >> we have two examples in our brief and most are variations of those. the first relies on direct evidence and the second is where it's discredited by the evidence to be more concrete. if you have tens of thousands of predominantly white voters and minority voters have moved in and the mapmaker says i did that hit the target, then the finding of racial predominance could be made even if justice, even if it was reasonably compact. if the state says politics is what explains that and you look at the evidence and they used racial data rather than political data, then a finding of racial predominance can be made even if politics is also

playing a role in there's no conflict. >> maybe there's no way around this but as you laid out, it is very, very complicated. a large number of districts in a short amount of time using a multi- factor vague predominance factor and if it turns out that it was deemed they had a strong basis in evidence that there would be a voting act claim is quite unclear. maybe there's no way around it but isn't this just an indication for litigation? >> we are very sympathetic of the state and being able to comply with the voting rights act as well as pursuing this traditional redistricting policy. we proposed a version of the conflict case test to muller.

but we read muller and shaw to have rejected this conflict requirement and instead to replace it to what you said is a complicated test about whether race predominated, even if traditional factors also played a role. >> is still their position that it would be preferable to have the test that was adopted by the court here before you find that race predominated? >> putting aside the court's decision, yes, except we wouldn't want that to bleed over into other claim. >> so the objection of the court below is that it required conflict. >> cracked. >> and you say the vast majority, in your words, of cases will need to show a conflict a conflict. >> correct. >> you think showing a conflict

should be the correct legal standard. >> well i wouldn't want to ask the court to overrule its decision. >> putting aside, that is the position we advocated in our version of it. >> in the alabama case, certainly what i tried to do in changing what my position had been previously in order to get a court that would have a clear set of standards on page 1271 there are two paragraphs that address the issue you are talking about. they basically say what you say and then, at the end, with the problem that you are raising we say there has to be a strong basis in evidence because you don't want to put the district court in a position and not a legislature to do the impossible. so it tries to do that. that is the decision of the court. i had thought having done that it would be lots of lower courts that would rely on that decision. is it a good idea now to change and go to some something

different question and. >> no i'm not saying you should go to a different test. i think the considerations are what they are. the alabama approach is the right approach, but under under that approach, you did not say that it is is essential to's show conflict. >> write exactly and then there's the two paragraphs that talk about, which are meant to illustrate what that predominance means and they are pretty much what you said. >> yes, we would agree with that >> what is it that you said. >> i think what we said are two things. one, simply because you use the racial target you're not using scrutiny and that's from alabama and second, a conflict is not proof of claim and three there has to be strong evidence besides just the use of the racial target to put you in strict scrutiny.

>> can i asked the same question that i asked mr. elias, if we did vacate this on the ground that that's the correct standard, what you just said and that is not the standard that the district court used, what do you think would happen if the standard that you just stated was fairly applied, would anything change? >> so we have only gone through and on close analysis of three districts as you can see from our brief. into those three districts without there was a pretty strong case, but not one where we could save it would deftly come out one way or another. >> but a strong case that it would change. >> those districts are? >> 71 and 95. >> thank you counsel.

>> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court, the 2011 redistricting of the virginia house of delegates was a bipartisan delegates was a bipartisan success story. there was a wide agreement that the 12 majority minority districts that existed in the benchmark plan should be preserved. there was a consensus on the bipartisan privileges and elections committee that a 55% level was the appropriate level to ensure that african-american candidates and those 12 districts had an opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. >> how is 55% arrived at? >> testimony in the rack record shows that was arrived at by the members of the bipartisan privileged election committee. was principally done by the principal architect of the plan delegate chris jones by talking to members of the public and members of the african-american caucus and they told delegate jones and reinforced this on the floor. the floor debates in house of delegates are something on the cd in the joint appendix and it

is worth a look because the african-american members of the house of delegates testified that based on their knowledge of their districts that afghan american voters did not vote in the same numbers as white voters. therefore, too simply have 50%. >> i thought the 55% was based on a single district, 75 and they said okay, we've looked at 75, you need 55% there and that was applied across the board to every other majority minority district without any analysis. >> i don't think it would support that characteristic of the evidence. i think it would based predominantly on hd 75 and also based on the testimony from the district 63 who testified but it has to be north of 50%.

it was also done from district 77. also it was based on the characterization of the district and the voting tendency. >> isn't there something strange about this kind of rule, and it's not to say this is the end-all be-all, it might be that you can have this and be absolutely fine in the way they suggested, but the idea that you would look at 12 districts and say that every single one of them wants to meet the same standard without looking at the characteristics of those districts, who's in them, how they vote, it defies belief that you could pick a number and say that applies with respect to every majority minority district

>> justice kagan, i think if you were picking one number for every district in the state from big stone gap to arlington, maybe that would be the case. if you're trying to apply one number to latino districts in one part of the state and african americans another part of the state, you might have a point. although there are 12 districts in regions, these are all pretty much in the same part of the state. they all started on a benchmark map somewhere between 46 and 62% for starting. it's not like this number comes out of thin air. with air. with respect to nine of the 12 districts, there has already been north of 55%. two of the other ones are very close. they are 5054 and 53 and district 71, i hope we will get a chance to talk about it because there is strong evidence that the read drawing was reed drawing was not done solely on race. >> let's talk about 71.

i have a particular question. remember what i was trying to do at least in alabama. >> free alabama, i am trying to reflect what is in muller, for better or for worse and to make it clear. the column i have referred to talks about evidence showing predominance. does it or doesn't it. there are two things that are crucial in those two paragraphs. one, there was direct evidence that they knew 15,000 people people were all black. two, when you look at the redistricting criteria, they are pretty weak to that case. they don't have much relevance to what i'm talking about. now let's look at 71. same kind of thing. they moved, i don't know, you have it in the brief, they moved

11293 people out and 17,000 in. let's look at those people. the ones they moved out were three quarters, or something white, and the ones they moved in were three quarters or something black. that's pretty similar. it seems to me they paid a lot of attention to race. then they say, let's look at the traditional criteria. the one they mentioned, they say they did it to keep it richmond centered but their changes had nothing to do with it. what they are saying is in that case, look at that specificity and the judge and listing the criteria made a difference, send it back, getting to do it right. that question is designed to focus you. >> i'm glad to be focused on that because with the district court did is not apply any sort

of analysis. he looked at the district as drawn and it preserved 78% of the four of the district which is higher than the statewide average of 70%. you have the core of the district being preserved which is a traditional districting principle. you then look at those horns and he looks at him and he doesn't just say they look a little funny, they say he has direct testimony from delegate rounds and he realizes that they were drawn in order to preserve an incumbent in the neighboring district so they could stay in the district. events looks at precinct 207 where he says he doesn't want to get into conflicting testimony between two delegates and what he says absolutely correctly is that this is a briefing, whether it's in or out, it conforms with traditional districting. >> so you have two possible

districts, each of them look conventional in the same sense that you been describing these factors, but the stated reason, the stipulated reason for choosing district a over the district be is that they have more voters of a certain race, black, latino, white, whatever white, whatever. is that a predominant motive based on race. >> i would say the right answer to that, predominance within the meaning of your case is now. >> i think there are two reasons. >> that's what the district put in it and i have a problem that because predominance is designed to measure intent when there are multiple causes. in my hypothetical, the tipping point, the principal motivating factor was race and you say in the district court that they are conventional in all other respects that strict scrutiny

doesn't apply. i have a problem with that. >> okay justice kennedy, i thought you might, but i would i would let you say three things to try to convince you. when this court says predominance, i assume they mean predominance over something else but i think the something else is districting principles. when it dominates over those principles, they are subordinate. that's the way to make sense of this case. i think if you apply the test that way, what you are doing is a shock claim. you may disagree with me on this but i think what makes a shot claim a shot claim is not that somebody is kept in a perfectly formed district in a community of interest based on race, it's the particular injury in the shot claim is that people from

different parts of the state would share nothing in common except the color of their skin are grouped together in the same district. that's what makes that district different from other claims. i completely agree with the sales solicitor gen.'s office that and thinking about this question, you should be thinking about shot claims and thinking about them separately from other claims. i think there's a real problem in this area of the law. what has happened is that shaw which started as a doctor and for outlying districts has become the weapon of choice and redistricting litigation. people see shot violations everywhere. that is just not the way shaw was constructed. it ignores that there is a separate vote dilution claim that has a much higher standard of proof and people are trying to evade that by bringing junior diversity dilution claims under

the guise of calling them shot claims and i think it's distorted the law. the third point to put on the table is, at some point, you have to ask the question, if you disagree with me on those first two points and you think you have a different conception of what a shock claim is, there still has to be the question of is the game worth it given the stated need to the first state legislatures. eighty members of the house of delegates voted and favor and everyone wanted to preserve majority minority district. >> going back to the question, it seems clear to me in the cases aftershock, you could've looked at it as this is all about the way the district looks then the court makes very clear that it's not all about the way the district looks. >> i stop you there, in muller, what this court confronted was that bizarreness was an element of the claim.

i don't thickening they think that's right answer. >> if you look at shot and shot two and muller and you think about the hypothetical that justice kennedy gave you which is essentially, maybe i'll change it a little bit, it's essentially a mapmaker who says look, we really want to do race-based districting here. we can manage to do this in a way where the maps what kind of continuous and kind of regularly shaped, but what we are doing is race-based decision-making. it seems clear to me if you look at sean through or miller, that's for bidding. that's exactly the opposite of what the district court said here. >> i don't think you have to read those decisions in that way. i think if you're going to read those decisions in that way it's appropriate to pause and reflect where it has gotten us. i think everyone of those

decisions starts out by saying this is a very difficult task for legislature. it's hard enough to draw districts without the voting rights act, but to draw them in compliance with the voting rights act is exquisitely difficult and we want to have difference with state legislature. >> then i'm with brier who suggested that if you years ago we took those concerns into account and we try to figure out a test that was responsive to those concerns and that is not the test that the district court used. >> i beg to differ. i think you have to give the district court a little more credit than that. the district court had alabama in front of him. he also had the argument of the party. i think if you go back and look, with all due respect to my friends on the other side, they did not argue this in terms of let's look at all the people moving in and out. that was not the thrust of their case. they argued this was a direct evidence case based on the fact

that. >> that's what i have to do after this argument, isn't it? you gave me exactly what i needed. he gave me the things to look up in the things on the other side and they didn't use exactly the right test, but does it matter? the reason i approach it that way is because the reasons you said. you have to give leeway here. but the government makes a pretty good point that it really was important evidence to look at. that's my job, isn't it? ? to go back and read things and figure out -- >> absolutely, but i think you should look at the evidence in this case and you shouldn't look at the evidence that could have been mounted, you should look at

the way it was argued to the district court. if you look at the closing arguments of this case, you will see that the other side did not say this is a case about moving too many people in and out of a particular district. they said this is a direct evidence case. they they told you what the problem was. they told you they would apply a 55% floor and really they tried to get, not just some tailwind from the fact that there was a floor, they tried to make it a way to rest their case on that proposition. as a result of that, it left them with a vacuum in the evidence because we have extraordinarily good evidence on the side of the case because the principle map drawer, delegate jones, testified for hours and hours about why particular lines were drawn and in every case, he provided explanations for why they thwarted traditional principles and he told you why the lines were there. the lines weren't there because we had this 55% target and everything else had to go out the window, he said well, down here in south hampton roads we have three incumbents who are all close together because this part lost a lot of population.

i drew some zigs and zags to keep them separate which i think is a perfectly nonracial explanation for it. then down and district 77, that looked a little a little funny but i got together with them and they said they wanted to reignite the old city of south north folk. that made sense. there's evidence of that and there's really a vacuum of evidence on the other side of us. i do want to rewind the tape a little bit because the revis and it's so problematic to think that just because they apply, you're already three force of the way to applying strict scrutiny is, what else is a state legislatures supposed to do. i don't think in this context it is inherently sinister. one way of think about this is the voting rights act itself. in those situations where it requires the majority minority, that's a plus 01%, but

everywhere is a qualitative is a qualitative floor that you have to preserve the ability to elect it is nothing in this context and i think that's exactly why this court has gotten where it's gotten and i'm not so sure so sure you couldn't further refine alabama to make it closer to where the law should be in this area, but here's the point, the reason this area uniquely allows race to be considered is in part because the voting rights act makes the consideration of race absolutely necessary and i don't think you want to send the signal, unless you want to take the first step toward declaring the voting right unconstitutional, you don't want to send the signal that one legislatures approach this in a way that i think is perfectly appropriate to what's going on,. >> it's one thing for legislature to say we view it as

a core priority up there with one person, one vote to comply with the voting rights act. that is a terrific terrific thing. it's another thing for the legislature to do what it did for example in the alabama case which is too just say something about there can't be any retrogression from whatever there is, notwithstanding that that's not just section five law , and similarly it's another thing for the legislature to pick a number out of one district, apply it to all 12 districts and say that's compliance with the voting rights act. i agree with with you and with mr. elias, that does not get you all the way there, but there is something about, as alabama suggested that this was evidence that as a state they were going to do something that on its face you know is not required by the voting rights act. that's a problem. >> i'm with a lot of what you had to say, i think where i'm not with you is that there is

something particularly problematic about picking a 55% number and applying it in richmond in south and in the hampton roads area. i would say two things about that. in the universe of possible numbers, 55% is about the best number you can come up with. my friends on the other side agree these all need to be majority minority districts. if the whole debate is that it has to be somewhere north of 50%, 55% which gives you a little better margin for little bit of margin for the fact that there may be differentials in turnout and where the rubber will meet the road, remember the incumbents are always going to win and most of these are majority minority but their way majority democrat. where the rubber will meet the

road to opportunity to elect will be in the open primaries. that's when you really are going to tell if the african-american community has the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. those are relatively rare. the idea that it's unconstitutional for the state to look at one of the most recent open primaries and say you have five percentage points but five percentage points in a badly splintered primary, she herself is saying these need to be north of 50%. everybody is basically saying that. i don't think it's fair too put this, i guess this this is where i really take issue. i don't think, i think it's a mistake to put this in the same basket as alabama. the idea you can't go from 80 to 79% is a cartoonish version of the voting rights act. to say to say in an area where nine of the 12 districts are already north of 55%, to say

that 55% is a pretty darn good threshold for compliance with voting rights act is just not in the same category at all. i know they try to get a lot of mileage out of the idea that it was one-size-fits-all, but the two things i would say about that, one a sort of already said is that were talking about the same part of the state and there's no reason to think there's a different dynamic. all of these are majority minority districts. it's not like they are applying one rule in trying to say that it fits for the complicated districts in northern virginia with multi racial groups and those districts in the south. they're all similar districts. that's one thing. the second thing is, keep in mind, whatever rule you adopt is just not for relatively sophisticated legislatures. it will apply to all sorts of school boards, consumer districts, there has to be, i don't think the analysis is that you have to go district by

district in order to comply with the voting rights acts. i don't think that's the rule you want to lay down and i also think, and this is responsive to justice kennedy's earlier question, the idea that they have on the other side, they're not against racial targets, they agree they need to be majority minority districts in north of 50%. the real beef is with the legislature making commonsense judgment based on the evidence in front of him that it should be 55%. what they want is more use of race in more in minute detail were you in minute detail for you go district by district and say all right, it's instead of 75 is going to be 55 and then it's can be 56 bit i don't think that gets us further along the lines of compliance of the equal protection clause. i also don't think it's practically possible. >> i think the real difference between your standard and there's is that in your standard , the shape of the district functions as a threshold inquiry such that if

the shape is okay we don't look at anything else, and in particular we don't look even if the districting was completely race-based in motive. that's just what that three-part test does. it sets up a threshold inquiry about how the district is shaped in a way that some people thought shaw was when it was addressed and in this court it made clear it wasn't. >> first of all, i think the real difference between our position and there's is the difference in the real world. they admit it won't make a difference in 99% of the cases. given the stakes, it's going to mean that lets more state legislatures get sued over districts that don't even look particularly suspicious and this is the perfect example.

they existed for four years and too complete election cycle before anyone perceived there was a racial gerrymander working here. what changed was the resident of the gov.'s mansion in richmond and what happened as these guys realize that if we can get these districts thrown out and they had to redraw the district we will now have the veto power that we didn't have before. that why lines that look square relatively, and were approved with a majority of democrats supporting them, some of them were opposing them because the numbers were high enough. that was the dynamic in 2011. you go through a bipartisan success story where everyone points to the house and says these guys did it right. the senate, not so much. the house, they did it exactly right. they did everything they were supposed to do. four years later, they can still draw a racial charge and have to

litigate for years based on the theoretical possibility that maybe, just maybe in drawing these lines -- >> it's it's more than a theoretical possibility. he seems to be pretty sensitive to the idea of giving state latitude but he looks at this and set the standard did make a difference on the ground. there were districts that were kicked out and said this isn't race-based because it looks good , even though it was race-based. >> i would put, representing the state legislature of virginia, my goal is to look out for the state and it's easy for them just throw the standard that theoretically. enforce lots of other people to litigate for years. these districts were good enough for everybody for four years. they were good enough to be precleared by the justice department. having this detailed inquiry out there does not seem.

[inaudible] >> thank you you have two minutes. >> may please the court, i want to clarify a few factual points and answer any questions you have. the first is, the timing of this case followed the page decision. it was the page that ruled on the congressional map. that case was filed when there was a republican in the governor's mansion and had nothing to do with who was in the governor's mansion. this is a factual matter. prior too the question that you posed to me earlier which is at the heart of this, we completely agree with the analysis in alabama that there needs to be, that you need to show voters in and out on account of this rule, and if you look at ja 672, you

will see there is a 50.8% differential between the white voters moved out and though white voters moved in. three quarters of the voters moved in were black. >> you make a point of that. >> yes. >> i think i heard them say. >> this has all been brought up after the cases over. >> it's in our experts report from trial. it's just not true. >> you can find it in the ja. >> it was in our experts report at trial. point number one. point number two, this court in shaw specifically dealt with the dissent saying there should be an. [inaudible] what this court said is that he argues that it does not apply where estate respects are complies with traditional

districting principles. that however is not the standard announced and applied in muller. shot to resolved for this three-judge court well before alabama that an actual conflict test was not the law and the district court simply ignored it >> thank you council, the cases submitted. >> we have a special website at cspan.org to help you follow the supreme court. go to cspan.org and select supreme court near the right hand top of the page. once on our supreme court page, you you will see four of the most recent oral arguments heard by the court this term. click on the view all link to see all the oriole arguments covered by cspan. in addition you can find recent appearances by many of the supreme court justices or watch justices in their own words

including one-on-one interviews from the past few months with justices kagan, thomas and ginsberg. there is also a calendar for this term, a list of all current justices with links to quickly see all of their appearances on c-span as well as many other supreme court videos available on demand. follow the supreme court at cspan.org. a group of activists talked about the increasing use of military equipment by local law enforcement. this event is organized by the group code pink. >> i guess we will get started. i was expecting some sort of grand introduction. i think we will just introduce ourselves very briefly as we get started and you may be aware that we just had a similar session in another room that was packed and i see some of the same people are here so we apologize for anything we repeat, but we will try not to repeat and we will try to be brief to make this largely a discussion. we will start with too money.

for those of you who weren't in the last session, i am a third-year student at emory university in atlanta and i am studying international studies and environmental science. i also work for a grassroots activist website. and the advocacy coordinator and i work with incarcerated people, legal activists in the the media to try to bring attention to these issues that are happening inside the prison. i just want to speak briefly about what domestic police militarization looks like and what we mean by police militarization in the united states. for those of you who weren't in the last session, police militarization, we are talking about the use of military tactics, consulting with military groups like the marines about strategy, training of police forces in israel,

alongside u.s. troops in israel. we are referring to the dramatic increase in parliamentary units known as heavy weapons units or swat teams and were also talking about weapon transfer programs like the 10:30 three weapon transfer program that allows and encourages local police departments to borrow military equipment from armed forces as long as they use it within a year. so we have seen the local police department taking increased advantage of these weapon programs and the ability to militarize through protest in ferguson and north dakota, protesters in both cities have been bombarded by military, shot with rubber bullets, sprayed

with toxic chemicals, rested at high rates. something i really want to bring to the strategizing session is this idea that the increase militarization of police forces is an attempt by government to address our social problems with military force. we see conflicts like the war on poverty, the war on drugs and the war on terror as attempts by u.s. government to combat social issues like poverty, racism, drug, drug abuse and religious difference with military style tactics, and finally, i just want to bring up the reality that there's a disproportionate impact of high-end surveillance and control on community of color so in the wake of high profile whistleblowers like edward snowden and chelsea

manning the victims of high-end control currently have white faces. although there is room for an alliance between groups it's important to recognize and acknowledge and facilitate increased. [inaudible] >> a guest jeffrey stirling's fae should be in there too, african-american victim of the espionage prosecution rage. my name is david swanson. i am the director of a group called world beyond war. i think what's new in police violence against

african-americans is people having video, people having phones that make video. violence isn't new. also what's new is police armed and trained and mobilized to act as if they are at war and think they are at war with the people they're actually supposed to be serving. this is also new. we have a movement divided. we. we have groups and energies focused largely on gun violence and gun availability, domestically and others on opposing war and building peace internationally and these would be much stronger together. most of our allies in gun violence prevention are pushing hard for greater hostility with russia. it's an absolutely bizarre new cold war and there are people outraged about the drone murders who aren't looking at the much higher numbers of murders by u.s. police forces. we have to merge these movements, we have to go after the profiteers, we have to have boycott divestment and sanctions against weapon dealers. we have had a threefold increase in the past 15 years and small

arms sales abroad and amazingly enough, a threefold increase in violence and death by small arms from the sales. the violence follows the weaponry. the wrapper and he is not made in the neighborhoods that suffer most from it and it is not made in the countries where the wars are. none of them. the weapons are made in wealthy parts of wealthy countries, overwhelmingly the permanent un security council members plus germany, especially the united states. go to world beyond war.org to get involved in the divestment campaign. the bombs from the war do explode at home, in the form of lack of money, lack of jobs. military spending eliminates jobs and in the ideology, the racism, you cannot be bombing

muslim countries and not having people looking at their neighbors at home and thinking certain thoughts. the racism at home feels the racism of the war in a vicious cycle. these feed off each other and the violence of both of them. we have to stop focusing on one thing and say let's and the violence at home and keep that militarism where it belongs in those foreign wars. it doesn't belong there. this is as bad as let's reroute the pipeline in some of the else's backyard. it won't work. you will not d muller tries the united states without the muller sizing form policy. you cannot have someone come into the white house and sam going to have wars and a bigger military. it just doesn't work. history tells us that military spending produces the wars and militarize as the police. it is in times of war making

that we get the racism into u.s. entertainment and news and propaganda and we get the movies about killing zombies and monsters, what drone killers call blood bug splat and we get the blowback from the wars. we have seen president obama take a baby step in the right direction on weaponry for police war and hank johnson's bill would do good, but the place to focus our energy is locally, on your college campus, in your campus, in your city, county, state and globally, just say no to accepting even free instrument of death and destruction that we do not want or need and we should think about what we could have instead. the black lives matter platform which is absolutely excellent on every issue said cut half of military spending, take it back to where it was 15 years ago.

for that amount of money, you could transform anything you dare dream of from sustainable energy to education and housing and healthcare in the united states and abroad. it will make the united states the most love nation rather than the most resented. the way to do this is not by getting our hands on the gun. it's by nonviolent action. i'm convinced that if people, people who weren't white or cowboys, people didn't go to oregon went to standing rock, that pipeline would already be in the ground. it's not going to work as a strategy for a spread we need a nonviolent movement that's united on these issues. >> i am leah, i work on lots of issues related to u.s. militarism abroad and at home and challenging it. i will be brief. i just want a low layout briefly

why we resist and how different people have been resisting. for starting, what i'm focusing on his police exchange programs between the u.s. and israel. what what that means to me is that you have war on drugs tactic in the u.s. that are being explored exploited to israeli police which then exploits the israeli society. then you have it's a islamic state violence which is imported to the u.s. from israel. they want to understand the method of control has a lot to do with how similar situations look for palestinians. there's a great video if you go to black palestine solidarity.com, a lot of activists put together, when i see them, i see us. it sparked off a lot of collaboration.

i can't speak for the experience of those targeted communities, but i can observe that when you look at pictures out of ferguson, it looks like an occupation. that is why these collaborations are so dangerous because you see two governments with a lot of violence towards their people and people outside their countries collaborating. i think something to note is that if colonial controls are put in concepts, they actually came from british colonial that predated and there's a lot of research out there that i can't speak toward but you can trace israeli military tactics back to british colonial control. we see this stream of information about how to oprah's

people in horrible ways by trying to live their lives and we wanted to put a stop to to that collaboration and say that it's unacceptable that the police in the military be targeting people in this way. just as one example of what folks have been doing, i think stop urban shield is the best example, it's an incredible collaboration by. led organizations in oakland to kick out a really icky example and say this is unacceptable. what happened was natural disaster responders are being trained by other companies and officials and you had this information being told to people as opposed to responding to other natural disasters earthquakes and their taking props from how the israeli government are highly militarized allies, how they oppress their people and it's. [inaudible] it was incredible resistance to push that out of oakland and say

this is unacceptable, and we can mimic that in our own communities. >> i'm name is mirian pemberton and i'm a research fellow here in washington, it's the oldest progressive multi- issue think tank in washington. i direct the peace economy transition project. in the last session, i touched on supply and demand in the gun manufacturing market for police and the military and individuals. i thought what i would do, just in a brief couple of minutes is just run through what are the requirements for the d muller tries in our economy because that's really what i work on. there are two things you have to do. the first is you have to move the money. these are obvious things.

it's not enough to cut the military budget, you really, really have too reinvent that money in the domestic economy to create a sort of demand pull for what economists call a demand pull for the economy to move. so things are not looking very good for cutting the military budget. there's clearly going to be a big move to have a big military buildup. once again, we will have to be fighting the idea that we have a gutted military and we need to give more money to the military despite the fact that the military is sitting on more money now than it had during the reagan administration military buildup. so, we are going to have to be fighting hard on that front.

in in terms of moving the money to the civilian side of the ledger, i think what i've thought in the past as the most likely opportunity for that in the next time. with this unbelievable administration is their commitment to infrastructure spending, but now when you look more carefully at what they are really planning to do, this is basically a plan to privatize everything in sight, to deplete the public treasury with tax breaks so businesses can do the repairs they are interested in and then ignore all the rest that they're not interesting in because they can't make much money on them. i've always thought of this as having potential for investment in the clean energy and transportation sector. i think we can forget about that in terms of an infrastructure

plan that any trump administration is going to be putting forward. we are simply going to be have to resist on all of those fronts i was going to mention what i think is the great blueprint for resistance and an alternative, but it's already been mentioned by david which is the black lives matter platform, particularly the part that talks about divest, invest, it's comprehensive and it's just a great blueprint for shifting resources, moving the money to move which will, if that happens will d muller tries our economy. i will just mention briefly, the other thing that is necessary beyond this fiscal shift, moving the money is providing targeted assistance to communities and workers and businesses that are

defense dependent and want to move into other areas of economic activity. in the post-cold war period, there was a whole range of programs to help communities, workers and workers and businesses and now there's basically only one. it's a program that gives planning grants to communities that are defense dependent to help them transition to a different form of economic activity so this is what we've been doing, we've been in defense production, what else can we do and how can we get there, and this program, like most federal programs has been compromised by the people who are really involved in it so i've been working with organizers in four states in maryland, pennsylvania,

tennessee in connecticut to try to push those programs in the right direction and make them into the kind of vehicle that communities can actually used to think through what do we want to do that's different from what we've done before. i will stop there and we would love to try to recover the momentum that we were getting at the end of the last session. it seemed to be the opening to a rich discussion and then we had to cut it short so we would love to hear from you all on that. >> the question is should we try to abolish guns or ban guns from the united states and wouldn't that lead to guns or criminals only criminals have the gun and

i think the examples of other nations around the world are helpful. it's always interesting in the united states to consider what the other 96% of humanity does and whether they might have some ideas once in a while. as i mentioned in the last session, when session, when australia had a mass killing and said we don't like that, were going to ban guns and they band guns, he became the reality now that cost more to buy a gun in australia then you're going to get from robbing just about any house or building in australia. it isn't advantageous to any would be criminal in australia to seek out a gun. if you've got enough to afford a gun in australia, you've got enough to afford a good life without the gun. as we should look at other countries for the abolition of militaries, it seems seems to work very wellin other countries

, as we should look at other countries for the sorts of programs that bernie sanders found rather popular in his campaign. we have one out of every 40 adults in prison or jail or probation or parole. we have one out of every 102 adults in the military, not counting mercenaries, subcontractors, these are all people who need a decent humane sustainable form of income. we need a basic income provided to every human being because when you just provide targeted assistance to certain people, it doesn't work. those are the people without political power. we need free college for everybody and then try to see anybody recruit anybody into the military. we need single healthcare. we need systems that give useful things to everybody equally. then we can all fight for those things together.

>> so i feel like from my personal experience, when people want guns or the reason why people want guns is because they want to protect themselves in their communities from other people who have guns. >> when people want guns, they wanted because they want to protect themselves and/or their communities and their block or whoever from other people who have guns so pushing the abolition of guns in general, i feel would would remove a lot of fear from these people who want guns in the first place. >> i think one example to look at is that in australia after this horrible mass shooting, unlike in america, they actually took action to create a giant buyback program that is d muller tries income you try to

actually, i think the government paid a lot of money for it, but people basically sell their guns back to the state but i think what i'm hearing is there's a need to critically think about how to d muller tries the streets, how to think about criminalizing gun ownership like criminalizing drugs when in this country and there's implications and the purpose of that so we need to think a lot about what it means to try to abolish guns and do it in a way where we can take guns out of our community and not just create power differentials or redoubling police enforcement. i think of people have ideas that would be great because i don't know that much and it's a really good question. >> we have a lot of hands and someone in the back has been very patient. [inaudible]

>> this is part of how you muller tries the police. you have the police hire more veterans, just as you have the military hire former police and former prison guard to take their ideas of what's acceptable in u.s. prisons to prisons in nearby islands like cuba and other countries. what we have to do is stop producing veterans. we have to stop training people in war or for policing. we certainly have to stop treating war as if it were policing. americans think of war as

policing the rest of the globe. they are generally marketed as punishing some wrongdoer for two years ago this month, gallup, the u.s. polling company surveyed 65 countries and said what's the greatest threat to peace on earth. the overwhelming winner in most countries was the united states of america. that means the policing isn't really appreciated by the people being policed anymore than the people in baltimore are appreciating the policing by people who have been trained by israeli military and armed by the pentagon. you know, we have to break out of this whole cycle of these two interlocking institutions of war and policing that are out of control. a lot of hands will go here in back here and appear. >> my question is what are incremental steps that we can take towards gun abolition that don't actually take us further from it. i know that conversations around

that are always pushed to the side. that's not possible. i think this kind of group would be okay with having a conversation that sounds really pie-in-the-sky because until we start putting it out there, i have been an activist for ten years and i have never heard anything about incremental steps towards gun abolition and that is all that i want. :

that might make it less practical, if that makes sense. >> yeah, we will take a few more questions and try to answer them all. yeah. >> my questions related to that. with everything we have touched on you know military station of arms is one thing but it's also militarization of the state of lined essentially and so part of that i feel is mental health and how we view society and how we view our relationships with other countries so i guess kind of going off of what you said earlier david how do you treat misogyny and how do you treat these things because i mean i don't know if it's a rhetorical question but what can we do on an individual level to address this idea or these big ideas i

guess, i don't know. >> good questions. we have one in the back. and then one from jamani. >> we work in public health and there is this big push now for global health security that has become a huge thing in the field and it started with ebola and trying to control and contain certain populations. you saw the military being deployed to these areas and so i'm just wondering if he could speak to the militarization of other fields and how we can get that -- and at that in the bud before gross. >> should we all. >> should we off or try to answer those questions to the stand do we can? jamani do you want to go first? >> yeah, sure. i feel like taking incremental steps to abolish prisons i mean

to abolish guns, sorry. so i feel like the strategy that is taking place right now in australia would definitely work well with lower class communities but i don't feel like it works particularly well an upper-class communities or more rural communities don't necessarily have that immediate access to police departments and drop off your gun for cash or you know something like that. i feel like in terms of speaking to the lower class, that's something that could be proposed that we should definitely strategize more about what to do with guns that are in the hands of more powerful people. especially in thinking about removing guns and general from the united states if we want to first start with citizens or do we want to first our with people

who are people of authority, police officers and school board security officials and things like that. which would be the most effective? >> i had a quick idea to add to that. i have heard the idea of trying to eliminate and make very expensive which is an issue to think about class analysis but in some ways ammunition knowing that it would be difficult to get all the guns out of the u.s. society but attempting to and the flow of ammunition. also again buybacks because whenever there's a crazy of the premises and crazy is not a good word to use but potentially someone who wants to harm people. seems like every time that happens in the news at home they had six military-grade rifles and thousands of rounds of

ammunition. so thinking about ammunition and also thinking about how we can challenge manufacturers of ends on the supply-side rather than just the demand side. >> i could say one thing i'm thinking of gun violence as a public health crisis as you were mentioning. there has been a lot of for done on that and a lot of effort to sort of change that destructive frames around this issue by defining it as a public health crisis and i contributed a chapter to a book coming out next year. turns out there's a prevention of war caucus within the american association of public health professionals and so this book is going to sort of connect all these dots under the frame of a public health crisis to use

as a resource. >> there have been some great papers on this theme in recent years and months that war is as great a cause of death and mortality and morbidity as anything out there and is accepted as normal and not treated as a threat to public health. it may seem like i'm going off topic but i just read this book called viking economics and looking at places like norway and sweden etc. and when there was a mass killing in norway they reacted by expanding civil liberties from, pushing acceptance and inclusion and aid to those in need and the elimination not acquisition of more guns and it seems to work better. whenever you say while something is working well in another country we hear well they are smaller or they don't have our

racial issues or they have -- while this book looks into all these explanations for why we have a higher life expectancy and happiness and wealth and so forth in a place like norway or sweden or denmark or finland and none of them hold the slightest bit of water. the differences are number one activism, it engaged aggressive nonviolent activism pushing not against bad policies but for good ones and for good once better all-inclusive, that are not aid to certain people but aid to everybody. we have the level of corruption in this country that has to be dealt with but doesn't compare with australia but to suggest something that works in australia probably wouldn't work here in this in particular i don't see any basis for it. i think you want to reduce gun violence you start with giving everybody at schools and free

college and single-payer health care and income security in combination with going after the guns. can't just resist a symptom of the fundamental problems. you don't send soldiers to fight diseases. you send a thought is to fight diseases. you stop thinking as -- of the military as an answer this new pairing of antiracism anti-sexism and anti-bigotry and pro enlightenment with pro hostility with russia and bombing syria. the bizarre combination for democrats and liberals in this countries put together. and to be nipped in the bud and split apart so you can be against racism and sexism on and on and war. >> i think the first demilitarization needs to take place inside of schools because the students in a lot of communities like i grew up in

northern new jersey and the high school and middle school and elementary school that i went do we had metal detectors and there were bars on the windows. there were police officers essentially walking around with guns to enforce zero tolerance policies. having a criminal record a young age and just preparing this military brutality in the students. i need a gun to mcinerney to protect myself or you know it's just a lot of visualization is going on in youth that makes them eager to you now have guns and to involve themselves in this society. >> here in the back. i guess we are headed over here first and you'll be second in third is in the back.

>> when you are talking about the list of things we should hand out free education single-payer and all those. i wonder if we should add starting a public dollar to -- dialogue in this country about white supremacy as a system and not as something to point at people and accuse them of. we should add reparations to that list. >> we will discuss. >> i have noticed i am an immigrant from lebanon and i've noticed in america being a schoolteacher and talking to other teachers that america has this very strong in general, very strong narrow-minded attitude that our forefathers gave us the right to bear arms, period. they had this very strong conviction that it comes with the constitution we live by this constitution or we wouldn't be great.

i haven't heard anybody mention that. >> there was a hand back in the back. >> the more i think about what i was going to say the more i see how complex it is. he came up in the last group we were and which was about investment and investment that could be in your savings or your pension or your teachers pension i'm a teacher and i was thinking you know how this would unravel that money trail and how does one make people aware of what they are invested in. i know that, i don't know if there's a vehicle for teachers unions or teachers associations that would be able to sort of

make people, teachers, at least teachers at least that pool of huge people, middle class people in the united states pull their pension money out of those types of mutual funds. we talk about those funds and how complex they are and how creative, how they are created and how many shares of rolling are in your funds and how many shares of you know, you don't even know if glock is in there and you don't know anything what's going on with these large investment schemes. so i just wonder if the think tanks can come up with ways or great minds and ways to educate people to campaign, advertise, whatever. >> good question. who wants to go first? >> i will mention the iccr the

interfaith center on corporate responsibility. they do a lot of shareholder actions and a lot of disclosure and campaigns directed at companies that are investing in guns and ella terry production and a whole range of other things so i would look to them as one resource for that. >> we don't have time for him or questions. in a brief closing remarks? >> if you see a coalition for a fair budget looking at divesting at that level and a platform for investments. >> jamani. >> i would add the word to fester go to a world beyond words.org did we just started working on a campaign on exactly this issue of getting funds of

the weapons company would love to work with anybody in the two would want to work with us on it. the shorter i've -- answer on reparations is yes. two foreign countries that have been destroyed in their so-called operations and reparations to african-americans for absolutely incredibly unfair treatment from the u.s. government right up through today. the greatest subsidize generation, the generation after world war ii the white portion of it was given college and cheap loans and training and handouts and housing loans in white neighborhoods and so forth and you now have 13 times the wealth in the average white family is in the average client client -- black family. i also just in closing want to

recommend a book to everyone that was published yesterday called military recruitment in the united states which is a problem. aggressive in fraudulent military recruitment targeting neighborhoods and populations with lies and marketing an incredibly unhealthy product that deserves more warnings than cigarettes or alcohol. pat elder is the author. to be continued, thank you all for the discussion and thank you all. >> thanks everyone. [applause]