money into sheltering and providing schooling and providing shelter and so forth. turkey is home to 3.6 million refugees. in lebanon nearly one in four people is a syrian refugee. jordan has some 600,000 syrian refugees. it's the countries on syria's borders that are shouldering the largest burden of -- countries often that struggle with their own infrastructure issues, their own electricity and water issues are taking in hundreds of thousands where there are some 21,000 syrian refugees have been resettled in the united states. the fact that so many syrians are dying and continue to die show that it's been a world failure, a failure of the united nations and every country of the world to protect human lives and prevent war from continuing onward. but i think there's room for every country to do, to do more. >> i think those are very good words to end our discussion. i think, can i just carry the book? >> thank you. >> i think for everybody here

and everybody watching, if you care about syria and you would like everybody around you, the best thing you can do about syria is to raise awareness. and this book really does that. so read it, tell your friends to read it. this is how to undand many, many syrian voices because the war is continuing. it's every single day, and these stories go to the heart of why this all happened. and i really thank you for bringing this humanity to syrians and elevating their voices, and i really thank you for being here today and thank you for being a friend of syria. >> thank you, lina, for everything you do. it's tremendously inspiring. thank you for being with me here today. >> thank all of you. >> yeah, thanks. [applause] >> thank you for attending today's program. books can be purchased and signed outside in the auditorium in a few moments. travel safe. [inaudible conversations]

>> and that wraps up today's coverage of the printers row lit fest here in chicago. we have more live programming tomorrow. if you missed any of today's programs, you can watch them all tonight starting at 9 p.m. eastern. and a reminder, follow booktv on twitter, facebook and instagram. @booktv is our address. [inaudible conversations] >> c-span, where history unfolds daily are. 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 are provider. >> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. on june 16th, the fdr presidential library and museum hosts the roosevelt reading festival, a day of author programs on the life and tenure of america's 32nd president. also later this month in new orleans, it's the american library association's annual conference featuring a key note talk by former first lady michelle obama. then from july is 11th-14th, it's the annual libertarian

conference freedom fest in las vegas. for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch our previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on our web site, booktv.org. >> 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, first 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 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, even though we use it. it was an attack. an information warfare attack. and he was hoping that 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 cub -- 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, you know -- >> the election was rigged. >> 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 -- gucifer 3.0, it's all in

operation. chris christie's in the room too, working for trump at that time. has no impact at all, not on trump, not on the campaign. they continue for weeks afterwds and even after that statement comes out in early october to 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 the bank robbers. people go on about collusion. i doubt very much donald trump had a meeting with russian

agents and figure out what documents to steal by hacking and to release by wikileaks. but this is kind of a cooperative arrangement at least implicit, 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 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. >> 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 con 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? >> well, first of all, 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 -- found no smoking gun evidence of, you know, there was a explicit agreement to work together. i think the aiding and abetting pet foris a -- metaphor is a better one to use. there clearly was a conspiracy to attack our election by the russians -- >> right. >> 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 coordination. but it is kind of strange when you take a step back and look at all the various connections that people who flocked 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 -- >> paul, we'll start with paul manafort, the campaign chairman. when we quote vtoria nuland who was -- >> who was also the 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 january -- yanokovic, had 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 manna important ends up stiffing -- paul manafort ends up stiffing a russian oligarch -- >> that's another new one which we're learning 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 the billionaire 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 about 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 there -- >> [inaudible] >> how manafort responds, saying maybe we can offer derepasks private briefings on the campaign. >> he tried to leverage his position -- >> also his position with the trump campaign. >> think about what he's offering. he's not just offering information to derepaska, he's offering information to putin. if you give this information, you have to expect or assume it's going to go elsewhere. and if, you know, and if -- 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. >> booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv. or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. >> i mean, i think more and more cities are realizing they need to have something like a livable wage. and the truth of the matter is a lot of people in the private sector are realizing it as well.

companies like jpmorgan, just to select one -- >> yeah. >> -- have a major commitment in detroit. and they're doing it in the form of banking branches and opening up opportunities for financial literacy. and so a lot of folks in the private sector are realizing we create a better society, a better market, a better set of consumers if income and wealth are more broadly shared -- >> right. >> -- in society. now, let me make a quick point on the difference between income and wealth, because it's pretty interesting. income is what people make and spend, and, you know, whatever's left -- so income is in and out of our live ares every month, every paycheck. and on that score, minorities in the united states make something like 70% or so of what the average american makes in income. >> right. >> in income, right?

but wealth is a different thing. wealth is what you get to save. wealth is what you invest. wealth is what you own. wealth is your net worth. and on that score, minorities in the united states -- both african-american and latino -- make, what would you guess? about 10% -- >> right, much less. >> -- in wealth comparisons. >> right. >> now, there's some understandable reasons why that's the case. because the families tend to be younger, therefore, they haven't invested in pension systems, for example, or insurance for a lifetime. but, and they don't have the money to buy things, so they're not owners of rental property, they're not owners of stocks and bonds, they don't have annuities that'll, that they can act on. they work in industries that don't have coverage for them in the sense of pension systems, retirement systems, 401(k)s. so it's kind of like predictable, it's obvious that there would be that difference. but 10% is a huge -- you know,

minorities own 10% on average of what other americans own, and that means you don't have the ability to get a loan to send kids to college or a loan to start a business because you don't own anything. so -- >> communities of color have a hard time advancing as the generations progress in that situation, right? >> exactly. >> right. >> so for all of these reasons, these subjects are -- need to be talked about. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> if you don't know the name, we want to introduce you to author roger l. simon. now, he's written a couple of books. he's written a detective series, novels, he's written "turning right at hollywood and vine: the perils of coming out conservative in tinseltown." and here's his most recent book, it's called "i know best: how moralle narcissism is destroying our republic if it hasn't already."