>> and that wraps up booktv's live coverage of the gaithersburg book festival in maryland. now, if you missed any of our coverage today, watch a reair of all of our programs beginning at midnight tonight. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> president obama did not want to be perceived as political, and, you know, there's an element of his own image,

self-image there that, you know, i don't want to be out there and be accused by my foes of trying to tilt the election. >> and paul ryan and mitch mcconnell weren't going to help. >> no, no, we tell that story too, how the president tried to put up, come up with a bipartisan response. he thought, you know, this was an attack on an american election, and, you know, i don't always like the word meddling in an election even though we use it, it was an attack, information warfare attack. and he was hoping he could get paul ryan and mitch mcconnell to join together in some sort of public statement saying this was happening, and these are steps that the country had to take to deal with this. and we describe in the book that paul ryan was somewhat sympathetic to trying to work together and that mitch mcconnell just adamant, no, this is b.s., this is politics. and he was also boxed in because he had -- >> his candidate.

>> -- his candidate, the nominee of his party, donald trump, was out there saying this isn't happening or it's a hoax or it's -- >> the election was rigged. >> or this is part of rigging the election. and he was doing this even after he had been briefed, on august 17, 2016, as the republican nominee. he gets an intelligence briefing. and in the book, james clapper -- who was then the director of national intelligence -- confirms to us that at that briefing trump is told all this hacking, all this dumping going on, ambiguouser if 2.0, wikileaks, it's all a russian operation. michael flynn's in the room, chris christie's in the room too who was working with trump at that time. has no impact at all, up in on trump, none -- none on trump, none on the campaign. they continue for weeks afterwards and even after that statement comes out in early october say it's a hoax, they're making this up, it's not happening. and one thing we do say in the book, you know, a little bit of

editorializing perhaps or at least coming to a conclusion, is that if you look at what trump is saying at this point in the campaign onward towards election day, in a way he's aiding and abetting. those are our words, the russian effort. and we don't put this in the book, but the way i like to think of it is -- and mike might think of it differently -- is if you're in front of a bank and you're told there's a robbery going on in the bank and people are walking past you and you keep saying there's no robbery here, that only can help bank robbers. people go on about collusion. i doubt very much donald trump had a meeting with russian agents and figured out what documents to steal by hacking and to release by wikileaks. but this is a kind of a cooperative arrangement, at least complicit, you know? that he was helping them by making the picture confusing. and, you know, if you're moscow and you're watching this while

the campaign's also reaching out to you through various -- george papadopoulos and other means that we haven't discussed yet -- i don't know, if i'm putin and i'm running this operation, i'm getting a signal trump is not unhappy with us. >> well, and i want to ask you about that now, because the country has really been, quite honestly, torn up -- >> right. >> -- for a while now over this, over the question of collusion. >> yeah. >> whether donald trump or his campaign associates colluded or conspired with the russians who interfered with our 2016 election. >> right. >> so if somebody was going to make the case for collusion, what would it be based on what you found? >> first of all, i mean, you know, to some degree the debate has been sort of clouded by the use of the word, because it's kind of elastic. one can define it the way you want to. i agree, we found no smoking -- with david, with we found no smoking gun evidence of, you know, there was a explicit

agreement to work together. i think the aiding and abetting many metaphor is a better one to use. there clearly was a conspiracy to attack our election by the russians, and trump and his people aided and abetted it. now, they did it in many different ways, and they may not have been acting necessarily in coordinate mission. but it is -- coordination. but it is kind of strange when you take a step back and look at all the various connections that people who flock to the trump campaign had with russians or russian cutouts. leave aside trump, we've discussed him and his interest in doing a business deal -- >> you're talking about carter page, george papadopoulos, paul manafort -- >> paul manafort, the campaign chairman, when we quote --

victoria nuland who was -- >> who was also victim of a dumping in her own right. >> in many ways the first victim of the putin information warfare campaign. when she finds out putin -- manafort is the chairman of the trump campaign, she goes, manafort? he's been a russian stooge for 15 years. she knew this because manafort had been a very major presence in ukraine as the consultant to the pro-russia political party to yanukovych, the president of russia -- of ukraine, and collected millions of dollars for that. had as his chief assistant in kiev a guy who we write about in the book who was a known russian intelligence agent. in fact, we just learned in recent days -- >> former. >> no, no, in the recent filing by robert mueller, the fbi assessed he has ties to the

russian military intelligence agency, the gru. so you have manafort -- >> and paul manafort ends up stiffing a russian oligarch -- >> well, that, it's another new one which we're learning even more about as days go on. he'd been a business partner of a guy who was a billionaire oligarch who was as close to putin as anybody who also had been tagged by the fbi, blocked from entering the country because of his suspected ties to organized crime. manafort and this man had a falling out, he was pursuing manafort for millions of dollars. he thought he had stiffed him in a ukrainian cable deal, and this is all while manafort is about to take over the campaign. he's being hounded by this putin-connected oligarch, and how does putin respond? he starts e-mailing with his trusted deputy -- >> [inaudible] >> manafort responds saying

maybe we can offer briefings, private briefings on the campaign. he's giving him -- >> he tried to leverage his position. >> leverage his position with the trump campaign. >> but think about -- yeah. thinking about what he's offering. he's not just offering information to the oligarch, he's offering information to putin. if you give this information to the oligarch, you have to expect or assume it's going to go elsewhere. and, you know, if you're -- and starting june 14, 2016, is the day that "the washington post" reveals that the dnc has been hacked. and right away, you know, the news reporting is that the russians are behind it. so at that point in time, any point from that point on, if you're talking about giving information to the russians, if you're meeting with the russians, if you're reaching out to the russians the way george papadopoulos was, you are working with or agreeing to help people who there's at least strong evidence if it's not

conclusive yet who are attacking our campaign, our election. >> right. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some of the authors recently featured on booktv's "after words," our weekly author interview program that includes best selling nonfiction books and guest interviewers. jerome corsi argued that there's an effort to thwart the presidency of donald trump. facebook co-founder chris hughes shared his thoughts on a guaranteed income for the working class, and journalist ron kessler reported on the inner workings of the trump administration. in the coming weeks, former defense secretary donald rumsfeld will recount the presidency of gerald ford. he'll be joined by former vice president dick cheney, both veterans of the ford administration. also coming up on "after words," former national intelligence director james clapper will offer his insights on the u.s. intelligence community. television and radio host bill

press will retrace his transition to progressive politics. and this weekend author barbara ehrenreich explores the science behind how the body ages. >> it's or very hard to face -- it's very hard to face death if that's what you're like. >> right. >> you have concern. [laughter] i'm not a buddhist, but i'm going to say a buddhist-sounding thing, i think. you have to lose yourself, lose yourself in your work, in your art, in the movements that consume you. and then death becomes kind of incidental, because consider, you know, i can myself my long -- i consider my long involvement in the women's movement and the movement for economic justice. when i'm gone, they're going to go on. other people will do things i've been doing or do them better. so that's good. it's not scary. it's wonderful. and i, one of my tasks in old

age is, in fact, to reproduce myself, to help younger writers, writers of color, people in poverty become journalists and get an airing and get a start. and those are, you know, like children to me. and my own children, of course, are amazing. >> that's true. >> yeah. so i just think of, you know, that's one of the jobs of being old is passing the torch. taking what you know and have done or accomplished or want done and passing it on to younger hands. >> "after words" airs on booktv every saturday at 10 p.m. eastern and sunday at 9 p.m. eastern and pacific time. all previous "after words" are available to watch on our web site, booktv.org.

>> the past couple of days i've been thinking about the me too movement, and i've been thinking about harassment particularly in metropolitan spaces, basically street harassment. and a couple days ago when i was back in har -- well, manhattan, i was talking about street harassment and talking about the difficulty of keeping safe as a woman, particularly a black woman, and how it's often the fact that we talk about these issues amongst black men. and there was a man in the audience during q&a who raised his hand, he did not have a question -- [laughter] and he said, you know, the reason why men follow women down the block or pursue them relentlessly is because they have no home training. and he kept repeating himself. and id nodded and tried to be gracious. but in the back of my mind, i was, like, how can i think about someone's home training when i'm

fearing for my life? and so i'm going to read a section about street harassment and this sort of push and pull i thought as a black woman with regards to my safety and someone else's. so i hope you like it. an nypd sniper tower was set up on lennox avenue between 129 and 130th streets in harlem, just a short walk away from where i lived during the summer of 2016. i do not know for sure why it was there, it looms in front of the pioneer supermarket which is not exactly a hub of illegal activity besides occasional shoplifters. central harlem in general is not that crime-heavy. i have walked home at 1 or 2:00 in the morning unscathed. i've never been mugged or heard gunshots. i first thought that because the tower rose around the 4th of july maybe the nypd was preparing for something to go down during up dependence day

celebrations. but, no, that couldn't be it. i moved in around this time last summer, and there had been no sniper tower. its tall, white presence communicated to all of us that we better not try anything or else. sometimes the police car would be parked beside the door, and when one was not, quite a bitted to see -- squinted up there to see if there was anyone up there. i wanted to ask what was it doing in the neighborhood, but i assume anyone's guess would have been as good as mine. i always said to harlemites that if anything happened to me, i would go to the black men who sat on the upturned crates outside the laundromat before i would ask the police for help. philando castile had recently been murdered. many late july 2016 -- in late july 2016, i went to a jazz

concert in brooklyn. i took the 2 train home and got off at my usual stop. usually, if i'm in a good mood, i'll reward myself with food or drink. a bottle of pair yea, some gelato, strawberries. that evening i decided i could go for some mentos before i returned to my apartment and ended the night with a shower and netflix. there was a deli open at 16th street -- 126th street and lennox avenue, and despite the drug addict hoping someone would spare some change, i headed inside. this was the same drug addict i had avoided two blocks earlier. a man at the side of the entrance kept calling me sweetheart and attempting to promote a dmx concert. everybody laughs at that part about dmx. [laughter] that always happens. i kept my ear buds in until i approached the counter as i

needed to hear the cashier. no sooner did i pay than the man called out to me, and i made eye contact with him before stopping. supposedly, dmx was having some concert in harlem, and he was in charge of promoting it by passing out flyers. i do not know why he was so aggressive, but nevertheless, i felt sucked into continuing the conversation. i asked when the concert was and repeatedly nodding my head, feigning interest in an artist who i thought hadn't been relevant in over a decade. the man wanted me to take down his number and call him in order to get tickets at a discounted price. i told him i would memorize it, but he was not satisfied with my suggestion. there was disgust in his raspy voice. now, see, why you playing games? you harlem girls are something else. you think everybody trying to hit on you, and i'm trying to do business. i'm trying to make money, i mean, i'm handsome and all, but i ain't trying to hit on you or

something. you out here playing games, you harlem girls. i'm not from or harlem, i said drinkly. what i wanted to say -- dryly. what i wanted to say was you don't know me. in retrospect, i think it was about a way of diluting his confidence. but in that moment i was scared. his voice was steadily increasing in volume, anger punctuated each word he uttered, the rest of harlem disintegrated as if both he and i existed in a vacuum. i felt alone. what if he hits me, i thought. what if he grabs and pins me up against the outside wall of this deli. so i took out my cell phone and pretendinged to -- pretended to enter his number. luckily for me, he didn't lean over to see what i was doing. the woman who went into that deli was not the same woman who continued home. as soon as i walked to the end of the block and waited for the light to signal that it was okay to proceed, i knew something had

changed. i had been violated, but i could not name the line that had been crossed. charlie did not follow me down the block, he did not make lewd remarks about my body, he did not rape me, and yet men whether posted up outside a deli or enroute to a party now terrified me. the soul food restaurants and nail salons became two-dimensional as if they could fall down like poker cards. a police car was parked beside the sniper tower, its red and blue lights flickering. two male police officers, one white and the other black, leaned up a aside the car chatting with ease. the black officer inadd very tently glanced at me, and i looked back but said nothing. yet i wanted him to comprehend that my eyes were compensating for my closed mouth. they were yelling for help. but if either or both officers had run to my side and asked what was the matter, i would have gazed at my arms and legs,

free of bruises or marks, looked behind me to see if charlie had followed, which he had not, and said nothing. they would have scoffed thinking i was crazy. and if i had found it to speak up and say there was a man harassing me, then what in this was harlem, after all. such things were, for all intents and purposes, normal. i scurried home. once i made it to my room, i dropped my purse at the floor and sat at my desk in silence staring mindlessly at my computer screen. i wanted to grip on to the side of my desk, fearing i would lose balance and crash onto the ground, but at least i would have confirmed i was still on this earth. i was on the verge of tears and angry with myself for it. he did not spit at me, he did not call me a bitch or a ho, he did not put his hands on me, he did not rape me, i did not deserve to cry. i had to earn the right to allow my tears to fall. i repeatedly told myself that it

could have been worse and that emotional distress is less senate than physical distress. if i didn't have any scars, then my you are turmoil should have n something i could easily get over. it should be kept private. i've always been the kind of person who mitigates negative experiences particularly with men by telling myself that they were never that bad. i texted my male friend with whom i had gone to the jazz concert. i secretly wanted him to fall in love with me. i told him what happened and he replied with a sad face emoji. i was dissatisfied with his response, but what was he supposed to do, take the subway up to where i lived which would take two hours at that time of night so we could go searching for charlie? besides, it wasn't like we were dating, so what could i have done, what could i have better done to defend myself? the summer has never been kind to black people. the charleston massacre happened in june, george zimmerman was acquitted of killing trayvon martin in july, michael brown

was murdered in august, and now that summer the murders of alton sterling and philando castile, i could not have lived with myself if i had report charlie to the police, because who knows what they would have done. they could have tackled him and taken him into custody and done god knows what else. i would subject myself to a brach man's harassment a thousand times over rather than watching his face hit the pavement with a police officer's weight on his back. that's not justice, that is a betrayal. when i think about how harlem's streets are a place of conversation, economy and community, i start to second guess myself. maybe the only goods that charlie was trying to sell were ticket toss a dmx -- tickets to a dmx concert. maybe i misjudged him calling me sweetheart as patronizing when he really just was trying to be nice because he didn't know my name. maybe i cried because i was still getting used to the city

environment, not because i thought he was going to hurt me. the more excuses i made for him, the less trusting i became of my body and my own instincts. and that sniper tower, it is still there. i do not acknowledge it now when i walk by. i keep my head low and my headphones nestled against my ear. i walk in a fashion similar to that of all the other black women with whom i cross paths every night as i return to my apartment. i wonder what kind of secrets they are holding in their bodies, what kind of experiences they have buried to protect someone else at their own expense, whom they can run to for help. thank you. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> you're watching book with tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup. first up, rosemary gibson talks about the risks of the u.s. depending on china to supply the essential ingredients for many of our most widely-used

medicines. then at 8:30, stuart eizenstat, chief domestic policy adviser to president jimmy carter and other carter administration veterans, discuss the legacy of america's 39th president. at 10, barbara ehrenreich explores the science behind how the body ages on "after words." and we wrap up at 11 p.m. with former cia director michael hayden. he assesses the current threats to american national security. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend, television for serious readers. >> so you're probably wondering how this all started. i mean, writing a bunny book about the life of a vice president. so charlotte's going to try to take it from there. >> yeah. thank you, everyone, for coming. this is really, really cool and

really special. it's definitely been a dream of mine since i was very, very small to have a book out, especially a children's book, especially about an animal and with my dad. so it's really fun. so i wanted to talk a little bit about marlon in general because a lot of people ask how long we've had him, how old he is, and when we got him. so i just wanted to introduce you to him a little bit since he is not here tonight. he's resting. he had a lot of press interviews this week. [laughter] so we thought we'd let him rest up. but i got marlon when i was studying in college at depaul university in chicago. i was studying digital cinema and english, as was said. so i wrote a short film. and so i had a short film, and it needed a bunny in it. and a lot of people told me, you

know, change it, change it to a turtle or something that's, like, easier to find. [laughter] i don't know why a turtle would be easier to find than a bunny, but concern. [laughter] i thought, no, it really needs to be a bunny. so it was really fate that i was going to happen across marlon. and so i looked online, looked at pet stores, and i found him on craig's list. [laughter] yep. he's a craig's list bunny. [laughter] and he -- no price was listed. and is so i asked the owner, you know, how much for the bunny, and he said make me an offer. and so it became this godfather joke with my friends. so they said, well, we should name him marlon brando, and i said, no, we have to name him marlon bundo, because gotta get that bunny pun in. so that's really how marlon came into our family. he lived with me in college in the dorm for only like a week,

because that's not actually allowed -- [laughter] but then he lived at home with my parents and then lived in my apartment in college. so now he's really a part of our family, and he's one of our, one with of our pets. >> so then, lo and behold, you know, we got kind of thrust into this new role after the election -- [laughter] and we were moving to d.c., and so of course we had all of our pets with us on air force two. we weren't going to leave them behind. and some staff people were helping us unload marlon in his cage. i don't know if some of you saw that picture, because it seemed to go viral. and all of a sudden, the bunny was famous. [laughter] and we really didn't understand why he was so famous, but that kind of started the whole thing going. >> yeah. so right after the

inauguration -- actually, i think it was on inauguration day, we had moved into the naval observatory which is where marlon lives now, and my mom and dad live there too. [laughter] that's important. >> we're just an afterthought now. [laughter] >> and so, you know, we thought -- i thought, okay, we should get an instagram handle. just get his name, marlon bundo. because i think the twitter was taken. like, somebody took it when he was all over the news that one day. so we got the instagram handle for marlon, and i remember the first post we put up was marlon in his little cage on our second floor of the naval observatory which is where we live. and he hopped out of his cage, and so i put up a post that said, you know, marlon's first steps in the naval observatory. and my sister's boyfriend dan actually gets credit for saying

he's the botus, and he just is came up with it right away. [laughter] so he's botus, he's bunny of the united states -- [laughter] and that's his, that's his official role. and, yeah. so that's, the instagram is kind of where it all started. he got really popular on there. >> so his first steps in the naval observatory, that's one thing that we wanted to talk about in the book. and so just to let you know, we keep saying naval observatory, but a lot of people don't really know what we're talking about when we say that. in 1974 the first vice president to live in the naval observatory was mondale. actually, rockefeller was the first one who could have lived there, but he decided to -- he decorated it and entertained there. but every vice president's family since the mondales have lived at the naval observatory.

the naval observatory actually is a naval base. there really is a working observatory right across the street from us. the whole property is 72 acres, but then there are 17 acres that are like gated off where the actual house is where we live. and the naval observatory is kind of like a victorian home, is what it looks like. it's on the cover of the book. it has a big wrap-around porch. it's very private, right in the middle of washington d.c. because there are no tours at the naval observatory. so the white house there are tours, people come there all the time, but the naval observatory is a little more private. now, the way the story got started, started years and years

ago when charlotte first learned to talk. because from the moment she learned how to talk, she became a storyteller. and she would line up her stuffed animals outside, and she would tell them stories, and she would regale them with all kinds of adventures. at night she would tell her little sister stories for her to fall asleep. they shared a room, and am really into high school years audrey would say, tell me a story, charlotte, i can't fall asleep. and charlotte would start a story, and then the next night she would continue that story. and so we weren't surprised when she went to college and majored in digital cinema and english, because we knew someday this book was going to happen. >> yeah. so to get to the book really, when people ask us, you know, how did you come up with the idea, we always say it all start

with marlon. it really did. it started with this instagram page. we had no idea will anyone even follow this page about our bunny. [laughter] >> how many is he up to now? >> he masker like, 27,000 followers. -- he has, like, 27,000 followers. [laughter] which is, like, way more than me. [laughter] >> and i don't even have instagram. >> she doesn't even have one. [laughter] so he's very popular. but, i mean, it kind of makes sense to us because marlon is so adorable, and he's fun to talk pictures of. he has a very real personality. he'll follow us around the house when we let him get his exercise outside. we let him, you know, he'll kind of pose for pictures when we're taking it. people ask us all the time, like, how did you get him to do that? how did you get him to, you know, sit in front of the fire or open the book, and he just does that. like are, we don't do anything. he just starts doing it.

so he really has a little personality. but it started with instagram page. we thought we should do a children's book on this. like, it would be really fun, and it was always really a partnership. i feel like it was always going to be -- my mom did the water colors, obviously, she's so talented. so we decided to do it together. and when we wanted to do, to pick a theme for the book, it made a lot of sense to me to make it educational. so it wasn't just a story about marlon, but it also would teach about the role of the vice president. whoever he or she is, every vice president has very specific, official duties. and i didn't really even know about a lot of them until my dad was vice president. so that's kind of where it all started, was that we kind of wanted to help kids and adults and teachers and educators, you know, have a way to teach about the vice presidency. >> you can watch this and other

programs online at booktv.org. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> and you're watching booktv on c-span2, it's television for serious readers. this weekend on booktv on our "after words" program best selling author barbara ehrenreich explores the science behind how the body ages. she's interviewed by science reporter natalie anger. also in this weekend former cia director michael hayden assesses the threats to american national security. booktv visits selma, alabama, to tour the area's literary sites. mary gibson talks about the -- rosemary gibson talks about the risks of the u.s. depending on china to supply ingredients for our most widely-used medicines,

and we bring you this year's lucas prize for books on an american topic of political or social concern. now, that's all this weekend on c-span2's booktv. it's the television for serious readers. for a complete schedule, visit booktv.org and follow us on twitter, facebook and instagram @booktv is our address. ♪ ♪ take 'em up and lay 'em down. ♪ right, right. ♪ pick 'em up and lay 'em down. ♪ right, right. ♪ pick 'em up and lay 'em down -- >> i think the greatest victory of this period was not in terms of an external factor or an external development, but it was something internal,. the real history was what this period did to the psyche of the black man.