really an aspirational nation and it's in thoseaspirations , we the people, we hold these truths to beself evident. leader of the free world. those kind of aspirations . it's based on those aspirations and not those hard-core realities where people have fought in order to gain access to their citizenship rights. >> watch this weekend on cspan2's book tv. >> that evening. good evening, i'm bradley graham, co-owner of politics

and prose and on behalf of everybody at politics and prose and the staff here at george washington university, welcome and thank you very much for coming . [applause] you know, i believe we at politics and prose have been working with the folks at windsor for a couple of years and putting on large events like the one this evening and we are very, very grateful to be able to have access to such a spacious and convenient facility right here in the center of washington. well, it's certainly been a day of high drama. we've had all too many dramatic days over the past couple of years and as history looks back, today's senate judiciary committee hearing will no doubt stand out as a truly extraordinary event . if you're like me, many of you are still processing the

testimony of doctor ford and judge kavanaugh and bob woodward will have thoughts to share about the kavanaugh nomination in the context of the trump presidency which his new book fear portrayed in such devastating detail. bob hasbeen observing and reporting on major developments in washington for nearly half a century . working for thewashington post, he discovered nine presidents . he has shared two pulitzer prizes, first for the post coverage of the watergate scandal and second in 2003 as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11 attacks. "fear" is bob's 19th book. all have been national bestsellers and "fear" marks bob's 13th book at the top of the bestseller list.

i think he holds the record for the most number one nonfiction bestsellers of the author. each time oneof his revelatory books appears, the question comes out , how did you get people to talk to him? why did people agree to share their stories? i suppose everyone who confides in bob has his or her own reason, but one thing i know is a former colleague of his at the washington post who has on occasion reported in bob's wake, one thing i know is how hard bob prepares and how hard he pushes and probes. these methodical and relentless, fastidious about facts and hell-bent on obtaining documents when ever he can get his hands on them to verify whether something did or didn't happen. let me just say also again as a former colleague of bob's, but bob can be truly generous with his time and his advice. many of us at the post have been grateful is remained on

the staff as an associate editor, contributing to the paper and coaching other reporters when he could have chosen a number of other career paths. bob will be in conversation here this evening withanother first rate journalist, michael schmidt .bob michael's with the new york times and he started as a news corporation 13 years ago and now covers national security and federal law enforcement. he was part of two teams won pulitzer prizes this year, one for reporting on workplace natural harassment issues and the other for coverage of russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and russia's connection to the trump campaign. ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming both bob and michael. [applause]

>> that's the nicest anyone's been certainly to meand a long time, even though there cheering for you . obviously, along day. everyone in washington glued to the testimony. you've written a book about the supreme court several years ago. how did today compare to previous hearings like this? >> obviously, this has been electric. what happened is the book the brethren which scott armstrong and this book came out in 1979. were you born?

>> it didn't come out in 79, did it? >> i'll send you a copy. and then conclude inclusion in the book at the end is supported is that the center of the court was in control of three or four justices. how they went, the left or the right would join with them. i mean, now obviously there is no center or a very, very small center so that makes a big difference. on the kavanaugh issue, let me tell story about doing the book the brethren. the book came out and this is a story about memory. which i think is very important to kavanaugh issues. the book came out and the clerk called scott armstrong and myself said in the book on a certain case, you say that the clerk apologized

for, it was justice rehnquist's at that point and he said i was the clerk at his absolutely totally wrong. i'm going to sue you. i'm going to hang you outto dry . everything you might possibly do to someone, you have to correct what's there. so we went to our files and this is thebeauty as you know of documents . and we found in the files on that case the circulation in that opinion and the clerk in his own hand and written, i'm sending this around. i apologize for it. so we called in and said here's what you wrote and he said i don't believe this and we made a xerox and he send it to them and i think he

quite honestly said i would have state my children's life that that did not happen and i now realize that it did. so when is memory valid and as you know, in your terrific reporting, you've got to, one source doesn't work. you've got to have two sources. you've got to seeif you can get some sort of documentation and that takes time and that's hard . >> was the contentiousness today, how did that compare to bork or thomas and is it different because of the media? >> what's interesting is the democrats are particularly saying we've got to have an fbi investigation and they talk as if fbi investigations reach conclusions which has

been pointed out they normally don't but sometimes the evidence is so overwhelming, it's implied in what they report, but going back to the nixon case in watergate, the fbi investigation was part of the cover-up. and it was a way to mask and protect nixon and protect people in the nixon campaign and the white house and the attorney general at the time , i remembered this very well, richard climbing went on television and said well, we conducted 1345interviews all over the world . we got it right. it's over. no one else was involved in the original burglars and their two handlers. and there was that sense of well, wait a minute. that's a lot of interviews. a lot of work and they got it

wrong. >> so maybe it's not always definitive and it may not always be right. i'm sure everyone here has seen the book on enormous amount of attention and the thing that struck me the most about the book was that i thought that you drew conclusions in a way that you may not have in previous books. you were very critical of how comey handled his interactions with the present president when he briefed him on the dossier. >> can you imagine you are two weeks away from becoming president and the fbi director comes in and there's no way the ghost of j edgar hoover is not far behind. and says by the way, we have this secret dossier about you being with prostitutes in moscow three years earlier. how would you feel? >> how should comey handle it? ?

>> not that way. and trump as legitimate beef in my view and i say so in the book and being the prisoner of two much history and writing too much about presidents, in the case of bill clinton when he came into office in 1993 and his white house counsel was burning this prompt and -- >> in a burst of six. >> yes that's right, but the first and as you imagine it and add some baggage to and there were all kinds of things that the fbi got about clinton's extracurricular activities, which were abundant so they sent all this instead of briefing clinton on it, they sent it to bernienussbaum , the white house counsel and nussbaum looked at it and said, in the burn bag. and said okay, let's see what

happens, let's see how these things and i'm not sure the burn bag is, i wish he called me and he didn't, but the idea of the fbi director getting in the face of somebody like trump who has a big ego. and i quote in the book, clinton told his lawyer when he was after this briefing, he said delaney can never find out about this. of course, it was about two minutes or days later hedid , as did the world. >> you draw a conclusion that the administration is in a very dangerous spot and i felt, is that the furthest you have ever gone and why did you go so far?

>> evelyn dusty who is my assistant, are you here evelyn? stand up. [applause] a george washingtonuniversity graduate . and the year 2007, she's worked for me since actually at that time and we've done the five books, four presidents and she knows all the secrets. and she knows how to keep secrets and she knows how to kick me in the. [bleep]. and for that, i salute your and gw. [applause] but evelyn and my wife elsa walsh, very much

involved. this was a family affair and they both said you cannot step away from the obvious conclusions of what you found in the book. that there are a group of people which i illustrate very vividly who stand up to trump, steel documents off his desk. on south korean trade because it's connected to lots of various incidents, intelligence operations. documents on nafta, documents on climate change and so forth. it's a regularprocedure . get it off the resolute desk and he will not remember or not incorporated about it. and as i say, you've got all of the other things. john dowd, his lawyer for the russian investigation for

eight months. can you imagine being trump's lawyer?eight months. and he goes through and he finally does a practice session with trump and in the white house, and they're overlooking the monuments. and dowd, the lawyer, please mueller and asks questions of trump as a dry run and trump makes things up, lies. loses emotional control and finally dowd says you cannot testify. if you testify, it will be as he elegantly puts it, an orange jumpsuit . and you don't have to know a lot about law enforcement to not recognize what that is. and so you connect all of these things and my conclusion in the book is that it is an administration in the white house that's

going through a nervous breakdown. >> so it's going through a nervous breakdown, how could this go wrong? what would a manifestation of that feel like? something on the trade or economic side? give us an example of okay, we're in a dangerous spot, what could happen? >> just on trade and it sounds satiric but the trade war with china. 99.9 percent of the economists say tariffs make no sense, they hurt consumers, we buy things because they are cheaper quality and trump somehow has in his head that they are taking money fromus, that they are stealing it and he will not get that out of his head . one of the conclusions i make is that there's a war on truth and part of it is not just what trump says, but

where trump gets these ideas and the experts go in. they have to, i mean gary cohen's chief economic advisor and he spikes them gently in an affectionate perhaps way. and says if you'd shut the fuck up you would learn something. [applause] so you've got a connective, but i think, and it's not partisan. this isn't partisan. may i ask you a question? will you answer it? >> maybe. >> you've done great reporting, great digging reporting on the mueller investigation and lots of new

information has come largely through you, quite frankly. and do you consider yourself part of the resistance? >> no, not at all's what are you? >> i am simply out to follow the story wherever it goes. as a matter of whether it's good, bad or otherwise. >> supposed mueller goes on for several more months and says you know, i can't prove collusion with russia by trump or anyone or somebody close to him and there's no obstruction of justice. are you going to feel badly? >> no. >> what are you going to feel? >> i'm going to try to find out why he didn't get to that conclusion. >> you think it's possible he wouldn't reach that conclusion?

>> very much . as possible as the other possibility, that he would. >> how do you insulate yourself emotionally? we should have had a couple of couches here. rather than chairs. >> three times a week, i feel like that. >> i just simply say that i try and divorce myself as much as possible. i didn'tvote in 16. i didn't vote in 12 and that for me enabled me to push myself away and say okay, i'm sort of an outsider to this . sort of like you look up and it's a little bit like trying to cover the weather. there's a big storm in front of you and i'm trying to see different parts of it and i can't really affect the weather and it's not my jobto affect the weather, it's just my job to figure out the weather . just try and solveit where i

can read . >> and right after nixon resigned in 1974, catherine graham who was the publisher owner of the washington post sent carl bernstein and myself a letter and kind of, it was a lovely letter of personal advice and she said you know, now this has happened. nixon's gone. don't get too full of yourself and then she said beware the demon pomposity. and that was really good advice, because there's a lot of pomposity in our business, in politics, even academia occasionally. and it is the crippling force, i think. and you have to really try to

bleed out. i love your analogy, it's the weather. you can get up and say an awful storm is coming but that doesn't mean you're blaming the creator or it means your reporting. and i think there's a way to stay on this side of nonresistance. and to the very and very cold and very factual and, because i've done this so many years, sometimesyou're just wrong . i thought the ford pardon of nixon was really the last stage of the cover-up that i investigated and discovered actually it was an act of courage to let the country move on. so that's very sobering.

>> i think one thing i had always keeping in the front of my mind, especially with the time pressures, but i mother is i'm always one step from the gutter. i'm always one bad story away from destroying my reputation . one wrong story away from hurting myself. and you know, it can be tough. >> but not only yourself, the new york times. and this is where you got to find, i mean brantley, the great editor of the post during watergate and for a couple of decades used too, i so well remember this. he'd read the story and look at it and he go, you don't have it yet. we'll print it if you do get it but you've got to have moreinformation and more sources . and i always said and believed he was a great

editor, not justbecause of what he published but because of what he kept out . are there those filters at the new york times for you? >> there's a lot of times when we run up to write a story or we get ready, we write it, go to post to get a response and in the last 12 hours, we realize we don't have it. and then we kind of received back. we wrote a story earlier this year on trump, john dowd offering pardons, talking about pardons to the lawyers for manafort and flint. it was a goal line stand and we are three yards out. first down we tried and we didn't have it and we didn't run it. second time and the third but in that process, you flush out alot . >> and you ran it and the officials denied it. >> he denies a lot of things.

>> did you think the president was well served by john dowd?john dowd who left in march? >> it's an interesting question, some people think definitely not, by turning over all the evidence and 37 witnesses and 17 hours of tape of don mcgann's notes. which are supposedly very intimate and other people say you know, it was ample and you had to take it. if you're trump's lawyer, because you have to keep them from testifying. and if he testifies, that would be the legal and political catastrophe. do you agree? >> if he testify? yes. he struggled with the truth more than any public figure right now.

>> how do we deal with that? >> especially cause mueller has shown a quick trigger on that issue so he's wrong up several folks online to investigators. some of the things significant, some less so and the president is not someone obsessed with the facts. [laughter] >> so what are the techniques you use as a reporter to get verification because i think that's very, i think that's something we don't communicate to the public enough about. can you answer that without betraying trade secrets? >> there's a bunch of factors, one of them is your proximity to the information, how close are you to the information? how historically helpful and accurate have you been? there are people in the room that are amidst all these big

decisions that they don't that 1000. they don't have great memory of what goes on in front of them, they don't have great notes, they don't have great documents. you sort of look at the talent totality of all these different things. we've had this recently with the rod rosenstein story about how rod had talked about wiring himself up to oust the president. in the end it fell into two buckets of information. there was months of reporting from folks that had access to contemporary in his notes and folks in the room that knew everything that was going on in real time that had a track record of being accurate and being truthful and in the other bucket we had one person who was a handout from the justice department who was an anonymous personwho said it was sarcastic . step back and you look at it and you look at the totality and how did you do that?

how did you get past that in the book mark. >> that's what i have found over doing this for decades and all these presidents, you can hear something and you can say well, like i knew from all kinds of people there's great tension between hr mcmaster who was the national security advisor and rex larson, the secretary of state and they really had it out . somebody said there was a meeting in the summer and they had a big fightabout it . and then i found somebody who actually took notes and the notes say tuesday, january 18 , 5:15.

reince priebus's office and there are verbatims and it turned out reince priebus was doing a routine review with tellers and, are you achieving your big goals and in walks mcmaster to the meeting and sits down. and tillerson lets loose on the white house, he can't make a decision, he undersides, he re-decides, there's chaos here and mcmaster just rages at tillerson and says you know, the money line is that you are affirmatively acting to undermine the national security process. i don't know what you're doing and i found some examples and evelyn found that oh yes, one of these examples is clearly in the public record that tillerson had made an antiterrorist agreement that was public

with the oil-rich state of qatar and mcmaster didn't know about it and they started talking about it and they realized tillerson had a press conference in qatar saying we've been working on this for weeks but mcmaster says i did not even know. then they discover the president didn't know. >> ..

i think are much more important than we realize. >> we're going to take questions if folks would like to line up. there are two microphones in the back. >> you want to tell them the microphones have been provided by gordon liddy. [laughter] >> how do people who are in college know who gordon liddy is? >> when you put out this book, enormous amount of attention, certain things like taking the letter off the desk gets a lot of attention. what telling reporting died you do you felt -- sometimes do great reporting and it doesn't get as much attention and people sort of miss, and you said, man, i killed myself to do that, anded kind of fell flat.

>> there was a rationale for doing that, and because at risk was a special access program, one of to great secret intelligence operations that i don't -- do not dare describe because it buys a degree of security for this country that we don't realize, and then i actually got the document and got a picture of it and put it in the book, so if somebody like president trump said, oh, if that had happened i would have fired gary cohen who has done it in two seconds but there it is so there's a kind of -- you can't get around that. you can't get around some of the things, but there is this war of truth going on, and some of your best stories that i know are

true have been denied, and sometimes the stronger the denial is, the more truth that is there. and like the rosenstein story about talking about wiring himself or somebody to get the president on tape and talking about the 25th amendment, that story would have been much more powerful if there was action that followed. if you had a picture in "the new york times," here is the wire that the deputy attorney general wore in the meeting with the president, or at 2:15 on this day these cabinet officers gotting to and talked about the 25th amendment. so a lot lot of things are said in the end it's what is done.

i trade to make this a book but what president trump does as president in all the foreign policy areas, the trade, that tax areas, the things that matter to people's lives. there's been a lot of focus on the mueller investigation, for very good reason. there's been a lot of focus on all the untruths that trump tells. my paper counseled 4,000 -- 2 -- >> host: a lot. >> in the thousands, and the real issue is -- evelyn and my wife, elsa, help me with this -- what did he do as president? >> is there a theme to the president's decisionmaking? [laughter] >> it often is people will say,

these are the facts, we win 85.7% of our cases in the world trade organization, where we file unfair trade practices against countries, and the president said, that's the worst norths in the world, they say this is your government, your trade representatives. light heister, call him and check -- i don't want to call. i don't want to know. and often he will say -- there's one scene that startling that they asked, where do you get these ideas? he said i've had them for 30 years, and if you disagree, you're wrong. so there is the -- >> that's the scene. >> the closed mind, which of course leads you to the question, what should we really worry about? we should worry about a crisis. something unexpected. because it's not a team.

>> first question. >> good evening, gentlemen. mr. woodward, thank you so much for being here tonight. it's a tremendous honor to be able to see you. my name is elliott and i'm a proud gw colonial class of 2008 from the columbian college poly sigh. when you and mr. bernstein were covering president nixon and the watergate investigation, you and the "washington post" and other newspapers faced threats and things i can't even imagine in today but today it seems that the free press is under assault worse than ever. how in your opinion does what happened to you and the post and other journalists in 1973-74 compare to what is happening today? >> i'm sorry. what's the question? there's an echo. >> the criticisms of the press when you're covering watergate,

how dogs that compare to the criticism of today. >> well, nixon and his spokespeople were tough. we were called character assassins and -- >> the original fake news? >> yeah, but i'd rather be called fake news than a character assassin. i'm sorry. but to answer the question this way. it was january 1973, carl and i had written these stories that really said watergate was a nixon white house re-election campaign operation, and the key was that it wasn't just the watergate burglary. it was a series of sabotage and espionage operations, and we had a bit of a problem. no one believed the stories. nixon won a massive re-election

in november of '72 so katherine graham invited me for lunch in january of '73, and she supported the story. knew her a little bit but not well. carl had to go to a funeral that day, and so she sat down in her lunchroom and said, well, -- she truly blew my mind with how she knew the facts of watergate, had all kinds of questions. she even at one opinion said she'd read something about watergate in the "chicago tribune," and i remember thinking, what the hell is she read the "chicago tribune" for? no one in chicago does. [laughter] >> there she was, scooping up the information and had a leadership style i later described as mind on/hands off.

didn't tell us how to do thing but was intellectually involved and completely informed. and she said at one point, when this truth going to come out? i said i think -- because the coverup is very effective because people won't talk to us now that nixon has won re-election, because they paying the five watergate burglars for their silence, and never. i remember she just had this pained, wounded look on her face, and any of your bosses at the "new york times" ever have that look? >> sometimes. >> it's -- you hate it. and she said, -- i said, so, the answer is, it's never going to come out. she said, quote, never?

don't tell me never. and i left the lunch a highly motivated employee. but it wasn't a threat. it was a statement of purpose, and she -- this is the strength of real gutsy leadership in the news media. she said to me, why do you think we're doing this? and i was 29. i didn't have an answer. she said, look, this involves the president of the united states. we have triple, quadruple responsibility to get to the bottom of it. so keep working instead of pulling back, go forward, more aggressively, and why do we do this? and, again, i don't have an answer. and she gave in the great answer, because that's the business we're in. and that's somebody really

saying -- [applause] -- ah, willing to assume the risk, the necessity of assuming that risk. >> question. >> we get a postcard and a times guy there and i like to know what the post guy think of "the new york times" anonymous editorial or op-ed or whatever it was, and what the thinks of the substance and what he thinks of publishing an an anonymous piece like that. >> it's a great question. let's let michael answer first. [laughter] suppose anonymous -- somebody in well-placed position in the "new york times" said, i want you to write a story quoting me essentially saying what is in that op-ed piece, what would you have done?

>> we would need many more details and examples. >> 5:15, july 18th. >> specifics. >> yes, specifics. and how would you have gone about that? >> you would -- i would have pushed them, questioned them, and then ask if they have anything to corroborate what they're saying. >> yeah. >> it's easy to sit and say, this administration is a mess, but it's much more powerful to show an example of it. like your book is fill with them. >> if anonymous had come to me i would have said go to "the new york times." [laughter] >> mr. woodward, thank you for being here tonight. feel like you're the most qualified person 0 the planet to answer this question. the great journalist of another era, upton sinclair said you can't make somebody understand something if they're salary

depends upon them not understanding it how much do you get to throughout from someone who genuinely believes the delusion that they're buying into and you need to get through to them but they just can't accept truth. >> wow. this sounds like a philosophy 523 at gw. you want to deal in concrete things and let me answer this question. can we do a little role play here? i'm reporter, i'm me. you're the assistant secretary of defense. and i've come to interview you. now, what's going through your head? >> um, why is he here? what his he going to ask me? where am i vulnerable. >> vulnerable, and maybe the truth. makes you --

>> well -- where am i vulnerable personally and where is the administration potentially -- >> i'm going to come in and i'm going to start asking you things, and then i'm going to get out a piece of paper and i'm going to say, mr. assistant secretary, in an article in "defense news" 32 years ago you wrote the following and i'll quote it. and you might think, i thought only my mother read that damn article. and here's this guy coming in, quote -- now, it's not a ruiz. want know how you think. the larger theory of the case is to treat you as sears youly -- seriously as you take yourself seriously. have to take you seriously and really -- i'm getting that

detail and then if you're helpful i'm going to say, can i come back? and then after two or three interviews can if it's useful,ry sal i you know, how about taking next week. well, i'm busy next week. then i find out where you live and i come knocking on your door, right? >> i say, oh, shit, bob woodward is here. >> right. and do you let me in? >> probably. >> why? >> it's hard to turn people away. i think it's hard for people to turn away other people. >> yes. >> it's harder than people think. >> my line on this is, we're not showing up enough. and we've got to really show up and it means physical presence. we're doing -- people will crowd around the computer and say, we

have asked the white house for comment, theme people at the white house are saying how can we respond to this and not say anything of substance, and you've got to get out of that mode, and you have to get out of of the impatiens -- you read the "washington post" as soon as it comes out and it's a continuum. do you like it when the pose pose has a good story or not? >> i don't like at all. >> not at install. >> well -- actually -- remind me of something i read. what did you do after si hersh,

who came down from the "times" to cover watergate -- nixon had been reelect it. that same period of time when you go to lunch with katherine graham. who'd did you do after sy hersh wrote a story. >> the story but the watergate burglars being paid. called him up and said, thank you. >> why? >> well, because we were alone. and it was a key piece of evidence to the coverup. that they would pay actual money for family support and lawyer fees and so forth. a stunning story. the other side of it was i felt agony that we did not have that story, but it was such a good story, and it really lifted our spirits. >> validated -- showed another experienced reporter sort of on the same path, right in a good

way? >> yes, and not buying the line -- of course the line then 45 years ago was very much what we hear now, let's examine the conduct of the press, not the conduct of the president. [applause] >> thank you both for being here tonight. i'm ethan and i'm currently a tenth grader at sandy spring friends school. [applause] >> mr. woodward you have hat one of the successful careers in journalism in american history and i wonder how a high schooler like myself would go about following a career like yourself in journalism or politics? >> get an internship at the "new york times." [applause] >> they're really easy to get.

[laughter] >> isn't that the way you started? >> i started answering the phones. they wouldn't even let me be an intern. i had to start answering the phones. >> how did you move up? this is -- >> so i started at the "times" out of college as a clerk on the copy -- on the foreign desk it and was my job to do two things, one was to get reporters in iraq and the middle east on the phone with editors of "the new york times" who don't know how to dial their own phone, and the other one was to take calls from judy miller from jail because the only number she remembered was the foreign desk. [laughter] which just being in the newsroom gave me an enormous opportunity and i basically said, i will take any assignment possible. i covered murders in the bronx and got a break in sports by doing steinbrenner duty,

standing outside yankee stadium and getting a quote from steinbrenner. so a lot of low-end thing that no one wanted to do because i knew they could lead too other things and i you take that attitude, you can really -- >> get your foot in the door. >> you have to -- i was in the door. >> and just real quickly, jeff bezos, who owns the "washington post," the amazon ceo, i asked him once, how do you decide who to hire? this applies to your question help said quickly. i have four criteria. i like people who have been right a lot. i like people who listen, really listen, not strategic listening where you're listening so you can think of what you're going to say rather than letting it come in. he likes to hire people who change their mind. i think that's important. and then his fourth criteria is

most fascinating, he said i like to hire people who have failed and are still standing. that you learn from failure, and you can't fail and be gone. you have to still stand. and then bezos will hire you. [laughter] >> will we ever see donald trump's tax returns? between now and the end of time? yes. >> well, maybe not. sometimes they never come out. think in terms of really getting -- traveling that painful road of introspection, i think it's one of the media's failures, i think, personally my failure because i was working on his tax returns in 2016 and we did not get them. did not get them.

and we should have because people in the irs have said, very confidentially -- in a very confidential way, if you had these, theirs is -- this is the road map to his life and who is, and i think also we did not find or the political system didn't find a way to demand that he turn over his tax returns. he just said, no, and of course, that's the trump -- i'm going to do it my way. one of the filature -- failures -- if you ask a group like this, how many people basically mistrust the media? how many people basically distrust the media? raise your hands. not many. you can tell it's a college audience. but you can go to an audience and get 90% of the people who

will say they distrust the media, and so there's enough distrust out there, and whether it's 20 or 30% or -- it's too high and we can't blame the customers. we have to think about fixing it ourselves and being more empirical, being -- getting on tv issue think, is is dangerous -- have you found that? >> yeah. >> tell me. you say things on tv that you won't put in your stories. >> i shouldn't. >> do you? >> no. are you asking me or saying i did. >> either way. >> i try not -- [laughter] -- i try not say anything on television i haven't written. >> one of your editors told me that it heard you say something on television and they said, why wasn't that in the story? >> that's the problem. that's the problem. >> yeah. but you think tv for print

journalists at my paper, your paper, good thing? >> i think that it's another way to reach folks, and i think that when people see us and they see that we're fact-based people that are trying to tell a story, i think that can be helpful. i do. i think that we need to be out there more, explaining our work, and showing ourselves, because when we're just a i byline and there's not much more other, things can fester. >> it can be tough but has to be neutral. hugh hewitt, a conservative radio talk show host, i win on his show, and he said -- he found things in my book that actually made trump look strong, and he like that, and he said, i'm going to buy lots of the books and air drop them into every embassy in washington. that would be a lot of books i

gave him the address where he can buy them at a discount but i don't think he ever did it. quite honestly, i was heartened by somebody like that, saying, oh there are things here, and also the explanatory part of how trump -- >> shows it's fair. it's a fair assessment. >> it's tough, though. when trump -- last month, called me to complain that i had not interviewed him, and first thing i said, i'd like to tape record this, mr. president, and he said, certainly, and then i said i'd tried six people, and didn't get through, and he acknowledged one or two, and it was a -- did you read this? what did you think of that? >> well, what would you have asked him if you could have interviewed him? >> but if i asked a question, the book was already printed.

what do we do? have a kind of pamphlet that we stick in the back? saying well, trump called and i -- i look at it as -- i had -- >> if you had sat down with him, what would you have asked him? >> ultimately you want to get to specifics but you want to ask the question, why? what is the big theory, why -- what are you tying to do? what the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country? that's your constituency. >> host: we have to wrap things up but i want to end by having you read the last paragraph of the book which i think is a great summary of what you had found, and just a good way to sort of end things.

>> well, evelyn wrote this paragraph. she did not but she helped me as did el sample this is about dowd, the lawyer who has resigned because he just said, i cannot sit next to you, mr. president, and have you destroy yourself and not tell the truth, and he said you're incapable of telling the truth. you're disabled. this is dowd. but in -- but in the man and his presidency, john dowd had seen the tragic flaw net political back and forth the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, the crying fakeness, the indignation, trump had one overriding problem that dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president. you're a fucking liar. [applause]

>> thank you very minute. [applause] >> book tv is on twitter, facebook, and instagram. follow us at booktv for a hind the scenes videos and pictures book festival and events all over the country. as we celebrate 20 years of nonfiction authors and books we want to hear from you. post your favorite book tv moments from the last 20 years using the hash tag book of the 20. >> was i freight train number