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im that stores deputy director of events. welcome to politics and prose. thanks for coming out tonight. if you haven't picked up a copy of our monthly calendar, we have them for july and august. those are at the desk in the center of the store. you can also go to the website, politics prose.com and see a list of everything confirmed for the next three months at this point. so, in the moment if you could silence your cell phone that would be great just so everybody in the room has no distractions. there's also c-span filming tonight and we are also filming for our youtube channel so you

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again, thank you all for coming out. tonight it is my honor to welcome the chief political correspondent for politico and whose book american carnage on the frontline of the american civicivil war and the rise of president of trump has become one of the most talked about books of the summer if not all of 2019 so far. it's not a small number of books that have so by this stage it speaks volumes when it speaks out from the pack. the book clearly has so far and that is in part because the canvas as the is broader than the scope. it is epic covering the years of political terrain over the course of 600 compulsively readable pages you see in the republican party grappled with

the eventual nominee for 2016 but you also see the fallout from the position to stand behind him and the party's internal changes in the years running up to the election that eventually landed a trump on their doorstep. opening with mitt romney overtaken john mccain as the gop candidate in 2008 and closing in 2019 with romney once more. what lingers at the end of the book is that recent personal encounter with romney as he is reeling from the indictment of the trump adviser roger stone in the course of the investigation. one of many scenes like that in the book i was other figureheads examining the situation paul ryan, mitch mcconnell. joining us jonathan swan fellow reporter himself covering the nation in the current

administration pleased join me in welcoming both speakers to politics and prose. [applause] how are you doing. fired up. thank you for coming out to see jonathan. this is exciting. i've had the pleasure of reading this already. i think this will become one of the indispensable books of the trump administration tracing the origins of how the republican party can do the order of the republican party is today. one word that comes to mind when i read this book is meticulous. it's meticulously reported.

i reached out as you do to primary sources. the response i got was too many people talk so you don't see a lot of denials because he went through the trouble of getting to primary sources and the reason i make such a thing about this is that it shouldn't be a celebration that is meticulous reporting but actually the kind of do need to in this area where they are publishing without making any efforts to fact check fiction under the banner of nonfiction so when you see something that actually is the finest of what we do and what we care about we should hold it up and respect because is too ch stuff out there that isn't

reliable so congratulations on the book. now you are a celebrated author. it's very germane to what we are talking about so this is a direct quote from the league of jonathan swan, ask the host.com. president trump has directed his administration to work to have been freed from custody in sweden after a te tim kardashiad last contacted white house adviser jared kushner about the issue as first reported by tmc. [laughter] how did we get here?

[laughter] with a blazing introduction. thank you all for being here. seriously, this is great. how did we get here. so i think it's important to understand donald trump did not materialize out of thin air. we are living in a news environment that is moving so quickly it's difficult to take a step back and take a deep breath and contextualize everything that's happening and why and sort of trace its roots. to trace their roots back 50 or 60 years you can certainly trace it to pat buchanan taking on george w. bush or newt gingrich and the revolution of 94. the reason i chose to start the book in 2008 is because they believe you had a phenomenal convergence of events with the

selection of therapy when is the running mate and this gives schism between the governing class and base of the party and the inkstand resentment that was out there simmering below the surface that not many people saw and of course you had the financial collapse this fall with the bailout of the banks and a lot of americans even angry or feeling as though washington and wall street for playing by one set of rules and they felt the system had been rigged against them and obviously you also have the election of barack obama the first african american president and you have such socioeconomic disruption millions of manufacturing jobs. virtually overnight in america. you have a demographic transition sweeping america the likes of which we've never seen before. an incoming democratic president and a super majority in congress

that go about executing a decidedly progressive agenda that certain elements in the country were not ready for and when you layer the cultural and socioeconomic on top of the political, this was building into something of a powder keg and it became clear i think in the early years of the obama administration certainly and then as it moved forward, this s was building towards something and i don't want to get too far ahead of jonathan's question but i think all of us who were covering politics specifically republican politics in 2010 campaign and the 14 campaign as well we had the sense that the insurgency was coming and it was already beginning to break down the gate. the wave was building and we were not sure who was going to ride it and obviously president trump wound up writing it and it's really important i think for us to reckon with those forces i was describing a minute

ago because donald trump is going to come and go he won't be president forever but those forces at work will be here long after he's gone and there's a conversation we all need to be having about how we deal with them. >> to what extent does he understand or think about these forces and understand his own rise to power in that context? >> it is a good question he isn't always a linear conversation. you're the one whyou were the os when we were having breakfast the president responds to topics rather than questions so i was asking him about populism and

nativism. the president seemed less interested talking about the forces at work and talkin than o the republican party itself i think is sort of and a proxy for those forces which is to say that they gave money in 2008 and then he was bitterly disappointed to watch as he characterized it john mccain and essentially vouching barack obama's character during the 2008 campaign he felt as though john mccain needed to get done idownin the mud and run a nastyy no holds barred campaign against obama and his chicago style machine politics. mccain had a different outlook on how the campaign should be run and it was a similar story.

you've got to fight back and romney never did fight. he ha had polling presented on a number of occasions showing there was an opportunity to be had by going to the dark side of politics and playing the identity card against obama. he refused to do so and they mentioned as examples because he is really running after threatening to do so for decades trumped up and be convinced that the republican party was weak and spineless. there's a lot of folks like they

have been trampled upon and they were under siege and they needed somebody to get in and start throwing haymakers on their behalf and trump was great president and identifying that force specifically. it takes him seriously. ben carson holds his hands like this. donald trump didn't take these folks seriously. the one person he feared was ted cruz. he started to worry about his constituents back home. trump could bring a nuclear weapon. there was nothing cruz could do but he wasn't going to go further with and i think

identifying that weakness in the party was his greatest asset as he began his takeover of the gop. >> one of the things that stuck out to me in the book you spend timspenttime with paul ryan, jor in prefigured the last ten yea years. they misunderstood the tea party movement. this wasn't about fiscal conservatives or the animating feature and i thought one thing that was telling you talk to newt gingrich who is as keen an observer as anyone about how to sort of pleased and satisfied the republican primary voter. what did he learn in 2012 do you remember that?

>> he tried just about everything to get the media's attention and gain traction in the polls. you may recall this was a long time ago in these political years he had done poorly in iowa and new hampshire and he was hanging by a thread. there were two debates before the primary was being held and newt gingrich decided no more going after barack obama or mitt romney or any of these other tricks. he was going to turn his fire on the media and his devastatingly successful. he had these sort of nuclear confrontations first with paul williams of fox news and then cnn and then essentially rallied not just the crow crowd and the auditoriums behind him but an

entire television audience and he wound up winning the south carolina debate going away winning the primary i should say during a of a independent would have been a quick and easy campaign. if you were to look at the reasons he one i would be first in no particular order but i was the first is this incredible distrust of the mainstream media among the conservative base and i've written about that at length in the past politico magazine. it's hard to explain just how disdainful and distrustful many of them are on the mainstream media and not only without reason i should add. to tap into that in 2012, he effectively created a blueprint for donald trump four years

later into to quickly touch on the party i do think it's interesting to recognize when you watch the campaigns unfolding in 2010 the dozens and dozens of congressional candidates running under the banner of conservative first and a republican second. they believe the bush administration has been a betrayal of conservative principles medicare part of the no child left behind. it was the fiscal issues the country was going bankrupt and we know that was a farce because if you look at the voting records of almost all of these republicans who came to congress in 2010 as soon as barack obama went into donald trump came in,

they suddenly didn't care much about the debt and deficit and that is putting it very generously. but the results of this cultural undercurrent in the republican party where people felt as though they did not recognize the country that they were living in anymore and that has only accelerated in the years since, especially during the obama presidency. and when i talk with some of the leading conservative movement figures they said the same thing. thing. but, candidly, knowing what we know now that 2010 has nothing to do with the debt and deficit fiscal restraint fo but everythg to do with people realizing this is and my country anymore. when making the biggest computer and make america great again it tapped into that in a way nobody

else could have. >> i'd never seen this interview that you found it and i think it narrows this down. as a quick background, he's a congressman from kentucky and he is a character. he is a curly haired former mit robotics engineer who always has a mischievous grin on his face and is very unique in the congress. he was excluded from the freedom caucus for being too crazy conservative strategist in an interview for the examiner. all this time they were voting for libertarians and go back to ron paul in 2012 and ron paul but then after some soul-searching i realize when

they voted for rand and yvonne and me and the primaries they were voting for libertarian ideas, they were voting for the craziest in the face into donald trump won the best in class. [laughter] you go through the book int ande scene after scene of these republicans who were seemingly grounded in a petri dish at the heritage foundation and were cultivated and thought that there was an army of voters out there who wanted nothing more than entitlement reform and it turns out they quite liked the social security in their animated like attacking the media and like immigration at all these other things. there's an amazing scene in the book that i want you to describe which gets to this. you were having breakfast with john in the summer and you ask him whether the republican party will survive our outlet trump,

and what does he say? he stops himself. >> without hesitating, he looks up and says there is no -- he stops and says he were about to say there is no republican party and he says there is on paper but what did he do any more? there was a red team in a blue team and as ugly or unpalatable as it may have been, parties were strong, pretty, pretty leas were strong they had an ability to get into a room, smoke a couple cigarettes, hammer out a deal and that's too many of us is distasteful and too many of us read this sort of insider politics and look, i'm not here to suggest we need to bring back the smoke-filled back rooms and that's going to solve all of

america's problems, but the institutional beginning of america is a huge recurring theme throughout the book and something we should all be quite concerned about. and the lack of confidence in the american institutions, whether it is organized religion, public education, the government itself, obviously john mccain use used as to say l of congress is now. when you think that the institutions that matter, political parties don't often o, as they should because it is important to have strong political parties. donald trump wouldn't have been able to take over a strong republican party that is really worth understanding. he hijacked the republican party that was ready to be hijacked. there's another scene in the book where the rnc chairman is doing everything he can think of to appease donald trump because in the late summer of 2015 as you may recall is threatening to run as an independent in the

trump runs as an independent, he thinks that the republicans are done because trump will peel off all the conservative votes and hillary clinton will coach the white house said he's trying to do anything he can to appease donald trump and convincing they are not going to stack the deck against using he comes up with this idea in concert with his advisers and it is a loyalty pledge they are going to have all of the candidates sign a pledge swearing their allegiance i will not run as an independent and trump gets on the phone and says i will sign your pledge but i'm too busy to come down to washington, d.c.. i need you to come here to new york. this is a symbolic but it's incredibly important because when the advisers hear this they say to him don't do it. you are the party chairman. tell him to get down to dc. we will call to march hi both me camera see him. he will sign the document and then you go to the cameras and declare victory but you have

teamed donald trump does and what happened. he said that doesn't matter. and he goes up to new york to the trump tower, he signed the document and the then shoved hif the back door and goes on and addresses the cameras by himself and declares victory. i'm not saying that's why he won the nomination but when you think about the 2016 campaign nomination, who were the two candidates that energized the party base is the most? donald trump for the republicans and bernie sanders for the democrats. what do those two have in common? neither of them ever belonged to those parties. that's something we all have to reckon with. the institutional beginning of the two parties have only just begun to see it's getting worse and where that takes us is a political system is very scary to think about. >> you have the 2012 election

and the result is misunderstood. the republican establishment do an autopsy. they have a great plan to win over the minority voters and hispanic voters and trump does the exact opposite we can talk about the destiny of that discussion but which of it is a deeply reported in spite of the rain documentation of the republican party doing everything they can to stop this trashing over their autopsy, doing everything that the consultants told them they couldn't and this brings me to my favorite quote in the book and i want you to tell the story behind it. the quote is mother is not going to like this. [laughter] please explain. >> judging by the [laughter] i am assuming some of you read the excerpt in the magazine last

week. the excerpt in question is from chapter 16 of the book and what i was abli wasable to do is rece weekend of the access hollywood takes being released and on the morning of friday october 2, donald trump were held up in the 25th floor of the trump tower inside of the conference room td they were giving debate preparation because on sunday night he wa was set to meet hily clinton for the second presidential debate. so, trum trump is in the room ad he's acting as the moderator sitting next to them and chris christie is impersonating hillary clinton. there are some other advisers and family members in the room going through the debate rehearsal section and all of the staffers in the suddenly they look up and realize it is just the three of them and he knows in his gut something is wrong.

they say this is the transcript of the audio that we have of the president, donald trump, rather than candid if trump taking these remarks about ten years prior, and we would like a comment for the story is running this afternoon. well, trump sees these comments and says that doesn't sound like me. i wouldn't say that. and he's beginning to pull his hair out. he's very worried and the one person in the room who is not beside himself at this point is jared kushner who says, i'm sorry, couldn't help it. >> i'm making no comment and let the record show my face has no expression. >> if you haven't seen the hbo interview it is a master class of journalism. he says to the room i don't think this is all that bad. and he says what are you talking about, this is as bad as it gets and trump says again this

doesn't sound like me and just beethen an advisor walks in the room, they pressed play, trump hears his voice and says wow, that is me. where this gets interesting in the ensuing 12 hours of insanity inside the trump towers and everyone is running around like a chicken with their head cut off those calls coming in over the country for donald trump to quit the race including from paul ryan on the phone with his longtime fd saying this is fatal you have to get him out of the race and he's fielding calls from governors, congressmen, donors and the party and they say the same thing, this guy is toast you have to kick him off the ticket. the problem is is the former general counsel and there is no mechanism to kick him off the ticket. the only way is by persuading him to step aside if you know anything about his relationship with the party committees not going to be pushed aside by these people that he viewed as

the claims. the one-person donald trump is worried about that day is mike pence. the two of them have been a relationship that is widely misunderstood, and i hope that you will pick up the book and relse from the book i hope that you get a glimpse inside of their very unique relationship essentially mike pence wants like so many others viewed as repugnant and the washington political ascent in 2155 p. stands for nothing that we embody as conservatives, republicans. he always called himself a christian conservative and republican in that order. donald trump would have never hr identified as any of the three. and yet when he pursues him becoming a running mate and he begins to have a genuine change of heart. i can tell you from spending time in this story and with

people around him he likes to see the good in people and he said he gets to know trumped, begins to convince himself that this is not the same person that everyone else sees. that there is a character portrayed by the bloodthirsty liberal media, an nyc somebody different. the trump really appreciate the fact that he genuinely seems to like him and sincerely seems to believe that he is not a bad person and filling that everybody believes that he is. ..

>> and he would look at them and say and mike pence also did something peculiar he had the nickname for his wife, mother. donald trump thought that was the funniest thing he ever heard so on the afternoon during this apocalyptic follow outline - - fallout donald trump gets a call from mike pence and he is beside himself and very upset and agitated

and says in a very curt debris phone call, donald you need to apologize and it needs to be sincere we need to pray and think i will be off the campaign trail for a couple of days and that is it. he looks at his senior aide and said oh boy mother will not like this. [laughter] sorry that's a long explanation. >> reading this book i feel like with mike pence you might dispute this but i felt the harshest judgment for him i think the word that you used was obscene. why did you view him so

harshly? >> obviously history will judge all of these individuals and i think it's one thing on policy grounds it's one thing to recognize you prefer candidate does not emerge as a standardbearer and shouldn't have to make lemonade and we have seen a lot of republicans do that and on a policy basis on comprehensive immigration reform he was once the biggest free trader in all of congress used to torment the bush administration he was so offended by the disney film move on and the implication of women serving in combat wrote an op-ed about it warning that the film would have dangerous

repercussions of women serving in the military. so he has been and during the campaign he did speak out mainly when trump put out a statement to say no more muslim should be put in america at all. full ban on all muslims entering the united states of america which of course not just is insane but blatantly unconstitutional and mike pence called him out and said it was unconstitutional and offensive. and it is understandable and eventually to the president of the united states but for

republicans on on capitol hill who know mike pence working with him for a long period of time personally and politically they have been aghast watching him at every inflection that he had colored so far out of the line and do something blatantly unbecoming of the office he holds that pence has done nothing, nothing to voice his displeasure. and the cabinet meetings and he has been asked to open the proceedings if you have not seen the clips you should watch them. it's what i refer to the boot licking on any number of occasions essentially has a two or three minute worship

service at the shrine of donald trump. is that unfair? not to put you on the spot. and supporters of the president they started to call him the bobble head and then he just nods very solemnly and as george will wrote that there is a special status reserved for pence in the minds of so many people more than any other republican in washington was the polar opposite than trump. and was just unimpeachable the decent and true to his convictions and spoke truth to

power and to do something clearly racist or misogynistic and playing to the worst angels of our nature. that mike pence are one of the few in washington you could reliably count on to speak out and to see him recede when it has upset an awful lot of people for those who simply cannot. >> but you could say pence has been vindicated donald trump is giving you everything you want those are what george w. bush could not deliver ultra

impeccable conservative to shape the country for many years to come and to fill up the deficit i understand the rhetoric but has he really change the republican party that much? and that is absolutely right and to say something that would blow your mind and that's in their first four or five months so now there were more meetings those first four or five months that all during

the george bush presidency and mike penn supported that. some other religious liberty or abortion those that are near and dear to social conservatives so one can make the argument that i have to remain quiet publicly to input mode - - maintain my input over the man or i would immediately lose my seat at the table. to put themselves in the shoes of paul ryan but the question that all of us have is you have deregulation and to the second question a really

important distinction if he has transformed the party in the country is important to recognize one of the reasons america is unique like so many other nations on earth the american presidency invokes government and the head of state you are charged with lawmaking with those coequal branches of government and assigned with the everyday business of the country but american presidency is indispensable important setting the tone for the nation projecting what the values are. my parents are here tonight my wife is here i can remember being a little kid adhering from my parents not only the

difference between right and wrong which they would hammer into my head but the difference to have the courage of your convictions but also the president is supposed to be a role model and moral leader someone that we can all look up to. that they conduct themselves in a way that is worthy of the country in the office that they hold so if you see an incident like last night at the rally not all that many of the president supporters most of them white in the crowd chanting about of dark skinned member of congress coming here from a refugee from a war-torn country chanting send her back and he steps away from the podium allows it to gon even

just in the last hour a couple people close to the president 's daughter or even the vice president came to him today and said you have to fix this that was an ugliest scene we have seen in a very long time last night and despite a conservative agenda being executed in a way that would be the envy of a lot of republican voters it is the failure of the head of state that lingers over that trump presidency. with his record of achievement he should have a 55 or 60 approval rating coasting into his second term yes they are polarizing in the media is hard on him but the recognition that we all have

even the staunchest supporters in the west wing saying something isn't quite right donald trump will come and go but where do we go from here this is something we all have to grapple with. >> so now we will open up to audience questions. >> so on election day did it happen here? >> first is know it was suggested he pursued john k sick as his vice president but

trump did not see him at the town hall as the ideal running mate so he was convinced not to pick chris christie who was his first choice because pence offset chris christie though was election night decided here? i don't think so. [inaudible conversations] i am not in a position to sit appear make any comparisons like that.

i will say the story of the past five or six days in my view is not what donald trump did and said but what people in the party did not do or say. when the vote came to the floor in the house to reprimand the president for his remarks only for reported yes one is from the 23rd district and will hurt is one of the most competitive districts inrican thed district of the mexico border from san antonio to el paso and is firmly in the crosshairs of the democratic party to represent hispanic district 20 or 25 points but

despite the unfavorable ratings he is a professional lawmakers summary who was exceeding that somebody i want representing me in congress i want somebody who will do the job and to be honest but the good news is it's not just the democratic party that in the crosshairs but it will be very difficult for a guy like him to hold onto his seat in 2020 because he has publicly crossed the president so the lack of pushback it is a much bigger story.

>> to the use the judiciary as a unifying issue for the conservative base and what you could galvanize those conservatives. >> obviously you had hobby lobby and the sisters in any major number of court cases during the obama years that were extremely polarizing but conservatives across the board on top of the forces of the cultural left so that obviously the added sense of

urgency to the 2016 election and i will mention that what is vital to the entire narrative. [laughter] because let me say this. you are certainly free to disagree but we would not have the president today of 2016 that supreme court seat was not dangled out in front of voters but locking the hearings to fill that supreme court seat when scalia died and then to be confirmed mitch mcconnell help to mobilize those voters who may not have been willing to turn out to vote otherwise. we had a discussion about this in detail when you think about

the fact donald trump won the presidency by three states michigan and wisconsin in pennsylvania by a combined margin 77744 votes in those exit polling states the issues most important between 18 and 22 percent of the republican voters said the number one issue is judges and do the math. mitch mcconnell love him or hate him a liberal or conservative mcconnell delivered the white house to donald trump by holding open the vacancy. so those conservatives are much more vested and that is a big source of concern on the left. and then to match that apparatus but to is the

question absolutely that is critical to the outcome of 2016. in there with a large level the same attacks to come off the boy who cried wolf. and the answer is yes. so it was perfectly put that at least through the prism of the mainstream media in 2012 and in 2016 the white knight of the republican party.

but that coverage of mitt romney's weirdness and then to own a couple of cadillacs. and then he said finally i can wear out in public from what i wear around the house. [laughter] it was absurdity and then this presidential debate from barack obama the need to diversify the federal workforce and the high-ranking government position. that was a well thought answer he made that top priority that

all the resumes were men. say i want to get more qualified women and answering this question he then says she wants to bring me these binders full of women. not to any reasonable person listening to that you would say good for him. that's a thoughtful answer and then for the next 96 hours all you heard was mitt romney is a misogynist and doesn't know how to talk to women i am just sitting here and telling you i have talked to a lot of voters and i will tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the desensitization people have begun to feel because the media always beats up on their guy they are numb to it and

12016 came around this criticism that he is immoral and unethical and a hypocrite and a womanizer he does these disgusting and vulgar things they fell on deaf ears and tuned it out. that perception plays at all of this. and hold a mirror up to all of us and how he got to that point. these are individual. >> so to what degree will voter suppression and gerrymandering be a factor to keep the majority moving forward?

know what would be chronicled to chain reaction and now to the bullhorn races with trump? what accounts for that transition? >> to complicated questions but first into as a party not just the takeover in congress but the state legislatures across the country and then to redraw the maps they could structurally get a foothold. now the 2020 census there will be an opportunity to draw the maps and that is a huge focus right now for democrats who feel that they have been targeted systematically and effectively by the republican

gerrymandering. and then to promote their own. and as high-minded as i would like to be i believe that democrats will not abuse gerrymandering it is a picasso painting. every state in america not ls but that to haveu mus creative ideas. but let me say this quickly because it shocks people i talk about congress and it blows ople away.

forty seats is a big deal a sweeping review to the president's party but yet how many voting members are there in the house? 435? >> eight and a half percent. if you go back to 2010 do you remember how many republican pickups there were in 2010? >> 63. the biggest in our lifetime. and then 86 percent that those remained loyally partisan. and then in 2018 to remain

locked down. so what does that tell you? the overwhelming majority are not chosen in november but in the primaries. in the off fear would be between seven and 14 percent who was that are they reasonable middle of the electorate? that are willing to listen to arguments on both sides? know what is tncle who sends the weird e-mails. and god bless them because they are engaged but he keeps sending these people back to congress and expect to get a different result but congress as a huge personal problem because the overwhelming majority are elected in primaries if you never face a general election threat you have to protect yourself in a

primary and if you are oriented to protect yourself every day you wake up it will have bad results for the country and as worried as we are about the executive branch and the unsteadiness right now there is a much bigger concern that that legislative branch is structurally in deep deep trouble. it's not a dog whistle at this point but donald trump is a test if you talk to people around the president he talks excessively about the base generally very narrowly about the core people who come to

his rallies and where the hats and would be the blue-collar working-class americans forgo white evangelical and they are the true believers. they are with him no matter what. but what trump is missing like last night with every one voter he may be mobilizing he's alienating a suburban college educated socially moderate republican maybe even conservative judges but they are scared out of their mind why would a republican ever address the naacp? because you will not pick up any more black votes it's not

but the white suburbanites who want to see you engaged. politics is a coalition business he won the presidency what we read about from middle america they are big supporters because had a overwhelming support traditionally republican suburban moderates also in 2018 a significant chunk of those moderates voted for democrats from detroit to atlanta all across the country but he is playing with fire because he is potentially alienating the other half of the coalition he needs to win.

>>. >> during the campaign i thought it would be to win the popular vote that he is cheated. >> and i want you to weigh in and also. not expecting to win because i did an awful lot of reporting

and those who can credibly tell me he did not want to win. so we handle this for 18 months to all the talking heads that this was just to get his name back in the news that donald trump was before the iowa caucus he didn't want to be president that he is fiercely competitive and he loved the grind of competition. i don't think he expected to win all of my reporting say he did not expect to win. election night he had to write a speech he did not have one prepared and when they said we thank you will win and he said we have to go upstairs we have to go to the residence i don't have a speech. so from everything i know was

certainly not expecting to win the presidency because he saw the same polling that we saw everybody inside his campaign said they thought he would when they are lying to you even steve bannon says he knew that from day one. the one republican i did not interview was him because for crying out loud talk about an unreliable source that is the distinction i would draw the you tell me what you think. >>. >> i covered the campaign 100 percent he wanted to win. and i remember being in

virginia over the last few days of the campaign doing his eighth rally of the day and he really wanted to win. he hates to be humiliated. and then to describe the world's greatest infomercial but with those interviews early on to say it's on the record. and then to say 20 percent chance of winning but then he got addicted to the crowds i have been to a lot of them in the best way i can explain is that i never saw a politician have such a connection with

the crowd and it's like being at a rolling stone concert. they know the lyrics. he will say hillary the crowd will immediately start to chant lock her up or the media they will say cnn sucks. it was a drug and he was intoxicated and he loved it. steve bannon does like to remind he does have the e-mail where he did predict i do think it was after but he really was saying he would win but the other stuff to pre- brief us here are all the reasons why he lost and here's the way you can spend it. that is the reality.

>> to add a final quick thought to that the final week of october i was on governor pentz and now vice president as surely as i am sitting here with you that nobody on that plane maybe mike pence believed they were going to win. it is interesting because they were all beginning to spin on the mike pence 2020 as a stable figure of the campaign. and as it his plane went off the runway at laguardia and i was on the plane it was a remarkable scene. nobody knew what the hell. [laughter]

and all the top step - - top staffers said the way we have seen the numbers he cannot win. and just coming down into pennsylvania into cell phone range every phone blew up that james comey sent a letter to congress reopening investigation into the hillary clinton e-mails. it is indelible in my mind and i can see it today there were five reporters and five secret service and staff and they were all in clusters a kid on christmas morning does not begin to explain the looks on their faces for the first time there was a flicker of hope.

can you believe our luck we might actually win. i will remember that until the day i die. >> it is my recollection that access hollywood tapes released was when john podesta was released how has he forgot he's an anti-communist and to focus on this administration but with the president says is of enormous importance russia is a interesting example

because if you examine on a policy basis that administration approach it is a pretty typical cookie-cutter republican approach to russian relations with some hope for allies in the region and the relationship with vladimir putin is so bizarre i'm not sure forever get to the bottom of it. i don't know if we will ever understand. we have seen this time and again in to the people in the administration that they will ever be thoroughly explained. but with russia in particular there is a chasm and then to

joke on election interference and then to contrast that with the administration itself with a republican congress and how they approach russia it is a little bit odd in that respect. >> thank you for coming tonight. [applause] if you did not already purchase copies i encourage you to do so. thank you. [inaudible conversations]