>> thanks so much. >> and we are live today from the madison public library for the seventh annual wisconsin book festival, throughout the day today you'll hear from several authors including democratic political strategist donna brazile on her career, author marie on latin american history and growing up american as west borrow baptist show to name just a few, for complete schedule check your guide or visit booktv.org, now we kick off coverage with former diplomat, she will offer her thoughts on how to stop spread of islamic extremist ideology and violence. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone, i want to welcome all of you who

are here in the room and all of you watching at home at c-span book tv, we are delight today start the third day of this year's fourth day celebration, today we will do 32 events, i hope you are all staying all day. [laughter] >> we couldn't be more delighted, thank you for making more time in the morning and check out schedule and come back for more things tomorrow, we will star today, how we win, she's in conversation with hannah and i will send you over to them. [applause] >> okay, what have i don't? anyone who knows me, technology is not my friend. [laughter] >> hi, welcome to madison. >> thank you. >> let me just tell you a little bit about sarah, her bio is on the website, it's in your

information and it's on the book that you all will be buying many copies of. [laughter] >> but sarah is a very incrediblable woman, she was getting ready to leave after president bush the second and getting ready to go until hillary clinton brought her in the office and said, talk to me about what you're doing and she said, i'm doing a lot and hillary clinton decided she was just the right person to create a brand-new job for her and the job was special representative to muslim communities around the world. that little job.

[laughter] >> national security son all, first time ever filled position in the state department, but most important for me is she's a very good friend. when she was at the state department i was at the state department and we worked together but i was always amazed at how incredible by smart she is. strategic inner thinking and she has a way of saying things that you will understand and these are complex problems and when we talk about violent extremism, you once said to me, if you knew what i knew you wouldn't sleep at night, which, of course, made me not sleep at night.

[laughter] >> i knew that i couldn't think of things that would be so bad that would come close on some of the issues that sarah was working on. what we are dealing with is an ideological battle and calls for a different type of response and it's very well detailed in the book. how you win what seems to be a problem, so there's a line in the book where you say, this is intractable but this is not, violent extremism, maybe we should begin by you talking about what it means to have open power. >> well, first of all, good morning, and i am really delighted to be in madison. i've been hearing about madison for a long time from han information ah and i often say and this is the true, that one of the best gifts that was ever given to me as the special

representative from the muslim communities was the opportunity to work with hannah and get to know her and we will get the circumstances under which we met. one of the things that have puzzled me, smart people that know that we have smart people out there and scientists out there who are trying to figure out a cure, there are other issues where we think this is going to take, you know, everything we've got for 200 years and then we will never be able to figure out, some of us might say that for climate change but we will go there another time, but when we look at the appeal of the ideology of

hate of us versus them, that's not an intractable problem. you're not born hating. you learn how to hate. so seems to me after all the work that that i've been privileged to do, we ought to take it seriously, what do we need to do. it is incumbent upon each of us to think think more strategically because it makes a difference in environment which we live but very important that we make sure that both the legislative branch from the government and executive branch of the government understand that for population in america is not going to sit back and say hate is okay, it's not what we stand for and it isn't about a problem over there with some group like the so-called islamic state or al-qaeda or boko haram.

we get white supremacists on the rise, we get neo nazis on the rise. when you ask the question about the intractability of this, it's not intractable, solutions are available right now, secondly, you talk about one of the things i end the book with and that's a particular diagnosis in terms of what is within our government, around how we solve problems and this book talks about the solutions very critically, government has a role to play and so do corporations and so do regular citizens, we will get into this but open power is an assessment based on my time in government, when we look at what our options are, tools in the tool box, i see and you know that our colleagues as smart as they are, there's a way to do things, so with hard power the military executes things in a

very particular way, they study, you know, path to military endeavors and they learn what they must do, they build machinery for the future wars, they have a whole system in place, with soft power, we are looking at the department of states, our tool on the tool box are super limited. we have been looking at things the way we designed the system for the cold war and i think, okay, we are dealing with ideology, here are the bucket of things that we can be doing, the bucket of things that we can be doing, i say that's not enough and 21st century where we have a rise of technology in a way that we could never have imagined, demographic of digital natives, millennials and generation z who are absorbing content in ways that we are all reading in the paper all of the time and we know that there are -- there's a surge in what can happen with ai and other things in terms of how to get content or what they

believe but i'm saying government, listen, you can't use 20th century tools for 21st century environments, open power says let's open, let's look at things differently, sort of a design thinking for government, what do we need at the policy table to help us think about what it is we need to do, government often goes outside and talks to an expert, maybe brings them in, have a round table, we have done that, very, very interesting, they go off and we go on with usual stuff. that's in the for every problem but for the kind of thing we are talking about, i want to see historians at the table, i want to see anthropologist and stenographers and people who think different about culture to help us understand what is happening to millennial young people who are absorbing and now generation z that are absorbing this ideology. >> you were traveling 80

countries or so, she just came from london. >> last night. [laughter] >> how do we, the scale of what needs to have is so enormous breaking to doable parts is the challenge, working with government which you have at the highest of levels, as have i, we realized that the congress to appropriate money, they want short-term answers, they want to see a victory and the program that we funded did it do what we said it would, how do we get the culture and where the real money is which is in government to learn long-term, to not decide that every little program has an answer by the next appropriation's bill, how do we do that because the state department didn't do that when we were there?

>> well, we -- we have to think very differently about what it is our goals are. if our goals are in fact, to radically change the environment so that the majority of young people, not all of them, can push back against hate, if that's what a goal is, then congress needs to understand that the way in which we are asking questions have to change, you cannot ask questions the way you would for the department of defense to say, is that fighter going to -- the new, you know, piece of equipment that we've spent $3 billion on, is that going to work, i'm not against hard power, i think it's important in some circumstances, this is not a solution that means that plane, that satellite, number of troops will fix the problem, this requires congress to say, our excellent colleague, former colleague who are in the department of state

that are in embassies around the world have the capacity to do something really remark financial they are given the tools and we are asking them to do things with one hand tied behind their back with no money to actually execute and the issue here is scale, hannah, it isn't a schedule of program here and program there, i can't tell you how often, you know, i've told you, tell me what the priority countries are, oh, yeah, ideology has no borders, folks, something that happens in trinidad when the so-called islamic state was appeal to go -- appealing to young people and everybody shocked that people from trinidad were going over there. if you were paying attention you would understand that what is happening to the people that these so-called islamic state are trying to recruit, what's

the difference between culture and religion, these are the questions that we know they are asking. that's not only happening in nigeria or in denmark or only happening in morocco, that's happening across the demographic that's connected as digital natives, what does congress need to do, it needs to think globally and think about how we can make sure that we scale and they need to put their money where their mouth is, don't get in front of your constituents and this goes for executive branch too, don't tell me that ideology is important and receiver single politician and policy maker has said that and don't do anything, i'd rather you tell the american public we are not going the fight hate, we will get into it and go on our marry way, options available for

far less than what is spent in the short-term for fighting the physical wars, i will give you a data point that i use in the book and i think it's an important one, it came out of the commission that was done, bipartisan commission by cfis that was -- strategic and international studies that did a survey really and series of recommendations for leadership in government and -- and leading up to the last election, what would we need you to do to fight the ideology globally and it wasn't just the so-called islamic state, it was also the rise of neo nazis, we are looking at the data but the right of anti-semitism and the rise of all of the things that we know we are feeling and it's really shocking to see that in 2019 we are in this state we are in but we -- was look at a number that i think tells a very important story, we spend trillions of dollars on the war

on terror in general, you know that, specifically on fighting the so-called islamic state since about 2014, we spend billions of dollars on this, what percentage of that money have we spent on soft power, meaning the idea of fighting the ideology so young people don't find it appealing, the number is 0.0138%. so how is it that you're supposed to look at, this i'm calling for not eradication of military act but i'm saying a strategy needs to be built that's global, that is sustainable over time not hundreds of years, 2 or 3 years all day every day, 24/7 at the same scale needs to be done and integrated strategy of hard and soft power that will allow us to do what it is we want to do, we want to reduce the appeal of the ideology so it is manageable, you're not going to eradicate it

from the world but reduce it so we are not dealing with the kind of threat we are dealing with. >> have you ever met any people who are coming from other countries and they come to your community, they speak, we bring music, we bring art, we bring things that are culturally important in defining identity, there are other ways of power that obviously you wrote a whole book on, we did a project together that i think, i think dealt with identity, i didn't count how many countries we went to together, but it started with a conference in kasikstan, if you can believe it. you know where that is, and what happens at a diplomatic

conference is you sit down where your country's name is in front of you and you hold the seat and you're called upon and you read a statement that has been cleared by 45,000 people and by the time you get it it's -- it's what you see on tv. [laughter] >> so farah and i were sitting with the ambassador of kasikstan and we decided to do something different. >> no, no, you had the idea. >> she came up with the idea. >> we had before we went decided because like a laser focus, farrah focuses on millennials because that's where the population bulge is with muslims and we invited some millennials to come and observe what was

happening. what we decided to do together when we were in the seat and called upon by the chair of the meeting, we would flip what we were saying, so the jew was not condemning anti-semitism, you know, that does not headlines make but the muslim was condemning anti-semitism and the jew was condemning what they refer to in diplomacy as islamic phobia and i know you don't like the word, hatred of muslims, we just did it and much later when i went to saudi arabia that's all they talked to me about, you are the one, you're the one. so that in some ways, the

message is important and sometimes the messenger can increase the impact and so what did the millennials that were there say to us? they said that was very nice with speeches and we get it, we get it that the messenger can enhance impact but what did we do and as we are flying back and when we got back to the state department, we decided we have to come up with an answer to this when a millennial says to and that person can be from germany, can be from uruguay, can be from malaysia, whatever, what can i do, we felt that we needed an answer, that we always when you're speaking had a call to action and so what did we decide? >> well, i want to first tell you that -- that as hannah is telling the story i'm getting nostalgic because hannah is a

rouser and she always thinks outside of the box and when i think of the particular program it did start there, i will give you the end before how we did it, it ended up being one of the most important, i think, initiatives that we took on at state around fighting hate because it was very tangible and what we said was young people don't have a lot of money, they do have time and weed like them to walk in the shoes of somebody else, we want them to experience in a different way so we created this campaign that we launched on facebook because we had day jobs and we knew that they're not listening and following hannah rosenthal and farah pandith every day. we are asking to walk in somebody else's show, somebody who doesn't look like, love like them or pray like them and we

thought it's a modest thing, we started in year 2011, let's see if we can get 2,000 in year 2011, turns out that it just went crazy, we had kids all over the world doing things for each other, different communities that they had never had the time to talk to or really thought about going into, you know, finding a way to connect and we asked them to post what they were doing online and they then also got to talk to each other, it built so much momentum that we had 7ngo's in the uk that came to us in 2012 and said, hi, we really love this campaign and we really wanted to be part of the london olympics and paralympics game and turned out to be partner and took on the life of its own because hannah and i decided since the olympics wanted it we would go where the

olympics began and we went to greece and asked for a very specific logo that you have seen, we went to olympic committee and said we are doing this, we used the logo which they don't give out very often and so they said this is exactly the way we would want you to use it. this is the kind of thing, universal thing, we are citing hate and we have to do more, it's a very successful program, how simple is this, you know, and i love hearing the stories of young kids who did things for people who were different than they were whether they were making peanut butter sandwiches for kids on the other side of town for lunch or taking a place, you know, volunteering to listen to an hour on something that they never imagined, it was inspiring, i think there's opportunity in thinking about that particular initiative because it means it was born from the millennials but imagine how many more other authentic

credible organic things can happen if we think about what we can do. and there's another aspect to it and we called it hate, we named the problem. there were people including the secretary that said, can't it be about love, can't it be about world peace, how can we all get along and they said, no, name the problem, you can't solve the issue unless you recognize that all the stuff, bad stuff is happening is born from hate and so it caught on, it caught on all over the world. i mentioned before that farah once said to me if you knew some of the things i knew you wouldn't sleep at night and since then i haven't really had a good night sleep, one thing that is amazing and it's relevant to the news today and that is that the epicenter of

hatred is saudi arabia and i don't think we think about it that much and we are putting truth there. i have no idea why, but for a second talk about how the epicenter of hatred is a country that we are aligning ourselves with and what do we do about this? >> well, i think it's important in dissecting what the problem is to be really honest with ourselves and with each other about what we are seeing, what we absorbed and when i talk to a representative to muslim communities, i traveled all over the world and you begin to see patterns, this is about the patterns that i saw, i'm taking you on this journey whether i'm in cambodia, whether i'm in norway, whether i'm in sisily

and i didn't come to this position nor did i come with any expectations about right or wrong and what countries were doing around muslim identity. unless you are going into the communities you're not really seeing, but the patterns that i saw were really disturbing to me and as diplomat and only so far you can go in terms of being, you know, just talking about everything all of the time, but i was seeing a couple of things, i was seeing schools that were built and -- and staffed with teachers who -- who taught a very specific brand of understanding around what islam is and which was monolithic, very stern, very direct, as the u.s. government we are not and should not go around the world telling people how to be a good christian or a bad christian, this is the right kind of islam and it is not, that's not what we do, let's be clear but when you're calling on violence in

the name of religion there are things that you have to be clear about and when you're teaching young people in schools whether it's through textbooks, whether it's through sermons and mosques that the people that are doing the sermons have been trained in a particular way, whether there are qurans that are translated in a certain way that it's the us versus them and distributed around the world for free including american prisons, i want to be clear about that, you begin to see patterns on how that affect it is population, one the diversity islam doesn't deal with -- you know islam has been around the earth 1400 years, it's diverse, it's in every part of the world, you all know that america is the most diverse group of muslims

anywhere in the world, these are things we know. when you begin to bring diversity and make it monolithic, only one way to be a muslim, thises the way you must dress, this is what you must eat, this is how you must pray, this is who you must talk to, it changes the entire character of the experience in terms of your identity and pushes away hundreds of years of heritage, saudi arabia was the commonality in everything i was seeing whether i was in bosnia and talking to people, bosnia by the way has a very old and very special experience with islam in their country. the saudis that are here eradicated any kind of authentic organic islam that came from bosnia and replaced it with the kind of arab infusion of the way in which the saudis believed you had to be, they were changing cg

the way traditional dress took place, they were changing foods and language. i thought that was really interesting because america had said to bosnia, the saudis, please come in and help build mosques when we build the mosques that had been bombed and so they would go in and they would erase everything in that's was in the past and imagine, okay, for a moment for those of you who have visited europe, imagine if the french or the british or the italians were to rebuild their cathedrals in brand-new way because that's the money they got, you would never imagine that, you would imagine that historians would do things in exact way that they came -- when they were built. it was a very odd thing for me and i was seeing it here and there but i began to see the larger and in the book there's a chapter called plague from the

golf that really spells out for all of you to understand what i saw and why it has a bottom line for us, you may say, it's over there, who cares, what difference does it make what people wear and what they eat and i'm not making a statement on what should be worn or how you must pray, i'm simply giving you data point that things have significantly changed and the saudiization on the way people believe that they are muslim are directly connected to the way extremists are able to lure people in because they want you to believe that there's only one way to be in muslim and i talk about the soil that has been planted with these minerals for decades, spent billions of dollars over four decades to do what it is i'm describing and it has been brilliant and successful and i don't understand, this comes to your point, i'm not calling for america not to have a relationship with saudi arabia, what i'm saying is the american

public is owed the truth and you cannot put an american in uniform and ask them to go fight somewhere and tell your -- the parents who are sending their daughter or their son abroad that this is, you know, what we must do and not be honest with them about the kind of relationship we are building with saudi arabia, we are asking for -- for some changes in the way that they have behaved. i don't think that it's asking for too much. so i'm -- it is a central point for me not because, you know, this is not about the jamal khashoggi murder, this is not about the recent, you know, coziness between president trump and his administration and saudi arabia, this is something much bigger that i believe the american public needs to understand and i am very careful in this book to document what i saw and to make sure that you can see with my eyes what i've seen.

i refer to, you know, countries south asia and in africa that have absolutely changed who they are because of the impact of saudi arabia and i find it extremely disturbing when i think about the numbers, this is why i get scared. it isn't just a small pop populn because it only takes one generation, hitler knows this, if you change history it only takes one generation before that truth becomes the truth that everybody believes and we have got to do something about it today. .. ..

you need to recognize that many ways a muslim. there are many ways to be a christian and you, and so forth. we've hit our supposed to open it up for questions i have a whole lot of questions they always tell us listen to people what they're saying. if anyone has a question now would be the time to come

forward. and somebody has to make. as a standup mike. someone who is closer as a question. >> you talked earlier about to give people an action that they can do and some of my understanding of this may be off but i've always heard that there such high unemployment and a lot of the islamic world that the need for young people have some some thing to do when they're not employed as a big part of that.

could you talk to that. a couple of basic framing points you will recall that that was the thesis that everybody believed right after september 11. that the people that got on those planes had to be certainly had to be not educated. why would they ever do such a thing. they were doing things for money. in 18 years in september 11 the one thing i can tell you is a lot of research has been done how people get radicalized. how are they able to convince people about how rich or poor you are. about if you are employed or not employed is not about how

educated or not educated you are. it's about identity and belonging. it's about the experience that happens growing up feeling all of these things about your place in the world what happens post september 11 there's been an all-day expression and after said that in ways that we all know and can feel something different pocket earth. islam and muslim has been on there every single day. at increased increased expression of people looking at me. can i navigate the first tier of the problem. all of these other things can come along. obviously we want young people to have a job. we want to have time and energy trying to figure out

how to make sure that there is more that is done in communities there is no correspondence between i have no job and therefore i'm going to be an extremist and the in the vast majority of cases. there are cases i have to be fair in which extremist to pay to go do something. that does happen but that is not what we were dealing with when all of these young people were radicalized by the islamic state and let's talk about other types of extremism as well. it's not about money for action. the figures of the 0.13% of the budget for something or other. what's being devoted we would refer to as william.

whenever the cia engages in operations. is the one that they screwed up. what they don't see is that 100 successful ones that never make the headlines because they're all done very quietly. through the modern 21st century techniques. you absolutely proved my point about the way that we looked at what tools we head in the toolbox. the way we describe the effort to stop young people right after september 11. his when hearts and minds.

from a different era in american history. for this particular thing when he hearts and minds. import time people who we are as americans and pushing back against those that will say it is a different story. we want to attract people to who we are. a lot of different reasons. in this particular thing to make sure that your building resilience communities that are able to push back the ideologies that are coming in. it's not necessary that you convinced that 17-year-old kid they have to love america. >> you want to make sure that they are not bringing tom to wilson street at the date of the boston marathon. if they don't like particular policy go to the ballot box or be really angry or whatever it is they have to do.

the light is violent. and it's building the momentum to do destructive and horrible criminal things. i don't use the terminology hearts and minds in my book. is a really important thing to understand about what it is that were doing. in terms of the role of the u.s. government we did talk about corporations for regular citizens and i wanted to connect us to that from the government perspective every program. with the facilitator and the intellectual partner with the ideas that we hear on the ground.

from the bottom up and they are from neighborhoods and communities that says we want to build these different kinds of programs and initiatives because we know that will build resilience with our young people. and we need to partner with that and say we can't know what to do this part of madison needs to be able to fight hate what he think it matters. we would talk to the young people and say what are the programs online and off-line. that is the stuff that government can do. what i also advocate is that we don't end we have not understood that the east coast in which we live is critical. an understanding that.

to connect the data that they head about who you are in the slicing and dicing of communities. it can be applied to the kind programs not to be attracted to the white supremacist. we want to put something in front of you. we want to get the narratives of former extremists extremist in front of you. in a way that is actually organic and makes sense. many tears of things that we can do. it's not beside the scenes. what that does there is a supersecret program that were really trying to do. it's also shine spray. to listen to what is happening at the ground level and doing

what we need to do. the work that i've done. i can tell you having worked with them. they need to support they need critical data and information on how to do things and they need the consciousness of mankind to understand. the government is and can be enough. they are our best front line workers to stop the appeal of hate. we have to work with them anyway that we can. >> thank you very much. for 35 years has focused on sudan. what i see in that area of course. i watch the transformation of

a vibrant diversified islam to what currently existed. and what i saw was two things. the blending of hard power and soft power. i also thought of third factor. i wanted to transition for the corporation. in many of these places i see that example. the propping up of somebody in the specific government has been taken advantage of by international research. there is impunity for those other resources. they are advancing in situations in the case of a war and violence that has been backed up by a fusion of this his this islamic absolutism. and i wondered as a frustrated person who has watch this unfold.

can you give me any words to show me how to better understand how the corporate or how you see it in some of these unsavory areas. or something that can give us more hope. for what's going on. i want to thank you. i notified with that cultural anthropologist. the way in which you look at communities and understand the development of people and what is happening to them is critical. if the environment in which we are working. companies, corporate's had people who do understand the cultural ways. understand what is coming. they understand the indicators of the change of behavior.

in the movement of different ideas. i want to see a collaboration between that knowledge and understanding with ngos that are actually building the program and i don't see that. people often talk about a public private partnership there are also things that ngos and companies can do that have not been done and need to be done because of the companies had their operating in these places all over the world whether they are selling water or so. they are understanding what's happening culturally and they can aid in the data and learning. calling out on the corporate sector. it is critically important to understand that if we want to see change around fighting hates.

for waiting for government to do this we will be waiting a long time. it will require us as humans to say this is something we want to take off the table which means it takes all of us. it is not a perfect comparison. i think it's enough that we can get that when hiv and aids appeared in the 1980s and people were so scared of this virus wouldn't even know what it was. we can talk about it because of the context culturally. we were scared, it was the great unknown. if we had waited for government to get with the program and figure out all of this in 2019 we went be dealing with the situation. corporate started putting money into research into try to figure out how to we deal with this. church groups religious people teachers, social workers everybody in the community began to talk about teaching this and learning more and we

began to change our behavior. and how we thought about this thing that have happened. it is nothing we can do but it took other sectors of society to all work together to go towards this issue is something we need to do. what do i see happening. what do i call for. i call for corporate to get real and what they say. and in the work that i have heard and seen your hearing about corporate profits. making sure we do something for social good. i like to call the corporate to say don't you think that that's something you can handle. it isn't enough what they're doing right now is not enough

and we must understand that even though they are for-profit companies. i'm not suggesting that they don't but we have to understand the implications how do i see this changing. i see this with the moment where it's good to take all of us to get to the place where we can manage the threat of hate. that's what i have to say and there is more in the book around these pieces. i did go to suzanne by the way. i think you might enjoy it. so feeding off your statement that it's the epicenter of hatred and since our government has so willingly supported saudi arabia versus for example iran which is the

opposite once a shiite nation. and once a sunni nation. isn't it important in this whole battle against hatred that we stopped supporting saudi arabia. but that we do something in that respect whether it's from the corporate angle or the individual angle are certainly the government angle otherwise how are you can stop the end at the center of hatred if were for supporting it every other way. if you can speak to that. >> i want to clarify what i said. it is the epicenter of everything i have seen a lot of them. the interpretation that they put forward. the us versus them ideology as a lot of people can claim across many different kinds of hate i want to be clear about

that. i just want to say sir, we have relationships with countries that we don't buy into absolutely everything that they do. we sell goods to those companies. do they not have a relationship with saudi arabia. they have done some horrific things. i don't call for that. what i do call for as a whole bunch of very basic things that we've been talking about. they will promote a monolithic approach. i had been able to pick up off of library shelves. they need to get real about the mom trainings. they bring people around the world.

they need to stop the cultural heritage elimination. there's a lot of things to say about things we need and can do. they have an opportunity. i don't see that happening. perhaps there will be a time when we have the courage in america to be honest with americans. i hope that day is soon. >> can i ask one more question. you talk about the so-called islamic state can you define what you think of that. see mac i noticed right out

there. the bush administration i was doing this in the state department. it was right after the danish cartoon crisis. we were really surprised. when they started doing that. we weren't ready for it. we do understand what was happening. i was upstate but i was on the ground in europe all the time. i went to 55 cities in 19 countries. i was second to talking to different generations in europe. i thought it was only happening with communities. i lent learned all my gosh it's happening.

in countries that they lived in majority as well. it was a real change for me. the issue of lexicon was vitally important people hear what they hear and how they absorb it. so anything we would say as americans that would set up an us versus them would have a very deep response to the young people. the american president said this. or it must mean that there's a lot of issues around disrespect. you're seen that in the news right now. with the letter that presidential bro to everyone. around this issue of respect. i say all of the sea because i want to be clear in my language as best as i can i call for us as americans and diplomats to speak american english.

i think it could be very problematic. ways that we don't know or understand. even if it means that there are many more words. when hillary clinton asked me to be the special representative most people at the state department were pushing back against this term why can't you just say muslim world. i mean that as a term that i used in grad school. i didn't think about it. what does that mean. it means that there is a special world in which muslims live. i'm like everybody comes counts everybody gets respect. people living in the mid- story muslim states.

so i take lexicon very seriously i don't like the idea by suggesting that they have the legitimacy and the strength to be some kind of nation. with time for one more question if no one goes to the microphone i guess when they're using the parallel of the crisis. there was eight activists died activist dying in the streets. that the corporations pay attention hundred percent. that they almost that.

it made the difference. and it took years of hard work. it is in the book. i promise you. in fact let me also say something else. one of my classmates from high school and they went to eliza how we began to see it.

what you do as a parent and what can you do at the library, i talk about libraries a lot in the book. i think they're centers of community and we have to be real about what we're doing and what were saying and think you so much for talking about that. as i was sitting it's about this hate and the state and the us versus them. and certainly throughout my lifetime and history. it is a simplistic way in which you are afraid where you're getting a solution saying it's their fault. i think it's so epidemic. and said though i hear that when i talk to hate yet somehow i see that happening all the time so i don't know if you can address that.

it's critically important to understand how long it takes us to get to a place. to move from doing this to something else. the way i think about the other. an action that i take. when i decide to put it in a recycling bin. what did it take me to understand how important it was. it is society setting those signals to me. it is the advertising. we talk about hate in america in the context of politics. we talk about in terms of race. were beginning to talk about in terms of religion and ways that we talk about hate. i'm not pollyanna. i don't think we can eradicate that from the world. but i do believe in who we are as americans i think there is

more that we can do. there's one thing i want to add to that. we only had two minutes. i think where we were warned by the ambassador when you talk about reaching out to people who don't look like you, pray like you or live like you. don't say love like you. it will turn them off. and we did a program of with young people. and all of them said i'm in help with the pride parade. we weren't listening to them. we were told to stay away from that. it was one of those. i can't lettuce let us and without asking is there a special role for them to play.

and three in the special world. we also have a special role. most of the time a mother is a child's first teacher. i urge us to think about that really in terms of what is happening in your home. and the language that you use and how you live your day so that children understand this. when you talk about diversity and diversity of opinions it's really important that the policy cables who are talking about how solutions can be formed around this is not just a bunch of guys. we both know how important it is to look around that policy table and say where is the difference here. it just can't be the same old thing. i think the magic happens when

we all understand that we can do far more than were doing today and is not someone else's problem but it's our problem are in action. our laziness on hate. has gotten us to the place that we are today. >> think you so much how lucky was i that i got to work with her. thank you all for coming. .. ..

>> folks, the intelligence committee gone on offense, to quote peter strzok, we are going to stop him, meaning trump. they take extraordinary measures to try to dig up dirt overseas specifically with russia to push it towards the clinton campaign to make the idea of voting for donald trump a repugnant thing for voters, how did that possibly happen?

>> well, two parts to the plan, part number one was to exploit the dossier which had been pinned by christopher steele. the fbi was unable to verify, they tried but they couldn't. you can't verify something that doesn't exist, simply a lie. part of the plan to leak it to the media and ensure hillary clinton's election in november 2016 and while it's true that many members of the media did pick up the story, it didn't quite gain traction and resinate with american voters when trump was elected, but the insurance policy was plan b, the insurance policy famous from the peter strzok-lisa page text

message. we have an insurance policy, the insurance policy was the investigation and if donald trump won we would kick it into overdrive and really go after him and make our investigation of him as, you know, potential or alleged russian asset public and they did, in fact, they did it in january 2017 before he was sworn into office, comey, clapper, brennan, you know, concocted this plan to ambush trump at trump tower, selectively gave information about dossier, gauge reaction and use that meeting as pretext to leak it to the media and that's how the dossier was published and once it was published the media was off to

the races with the russia hoax. >> seemed to me also the troubling part of that is anybody who works for a president, you to explain sensitive information, it's hard to do with the leader of the free world. >> i don't think we don't know it. >> yes. >> and that seems to be -- >> very hooveresque. that piece of the story, in all of the dossier that we've read about and read and watched all of the in-depth reporting on and everything else, in all of this work that hillary clinton

campaign, any truth to any of these things, what donald trump did had any illegal actions with russia, are there any trues in the dossier that are embarrassing for president trump. >> no. >> all of the collusion allegations in the dossier turned out to be untrue and you can read it in volume one of the mueller report, the fbi created a spreadsheet of all of the collusion allegations and all turned up empty, there was nothing on the spreadsheet, they couldn't vet or cooperate or prove anything, as christopher steele, the author of the dossier, the information that he wrote is unverifiable because it came from, you know, multiple anonymous hearsay, hearsay is generally not allowed on a court of law, double hearsay is never

allowed because it's a farce and this was triple and quadruple hearsay and we learned in subsequent testimony and with emails and such that were passed along within the fbi that steele himself by the characters in the obama administration was actually viewed by the end as unsavorily character. >> totally, he was fired for lying. >> that seems to be a trend which we ought to get into. >> he was on the payroll not just of the hillary clinton campaign, the democratic national committee, he was on the payroll of the fbi and had been since early 2016, the year of the election, but he lied to the fbi about talking to the media and feeding this disinformation to the media and too many people in the fbi found out about it and had to fire him but they still used him, comey

goes to the foreign intelligence surveillance court to get a warrant application to spy on the trump campaign and -- and he vouches for steel as credible knowing he wasn't, he was a liar. >> yes. >> proved that comey felt differently about steele, knew that he had lied to him. >> right. >> and so, you know, the state department kathleen author of state department met before the fisa applications to spy with christopher steele and sized up in the course about an hour and realized he was a phoney and she checked out at least one major part of this dossier, some consulate, she notified, this

guy is a fraud, be careful here. , they ignored the warning and went ahead to the judges in fisa court and lied to them and deceived them and concealed evidence and it wasn't just the state department that warned the evidence, bruce ohr at the department of justice, giving it to the fbi warned them that be careful of this information, it's totally unverified. the fbi and james comey and andrew mccabe didn't care, you know, the fisa warrant application has at the top verified information. >> right. >> yet they relied on the dossier which was unverified. last time i checked it was lying to the court.

>> the inspector general report comes out i expect it to be damming indictment of the people especially with the deception it was fisa court. >> i worked for president george bush and involved in meeting with selecting bob mueller to be fbi director for the president. i went to bob mueller's swearing in in rose garden. i remember looking for candidates, the one thing you heard over and over again about bob mueller, the bush administration, during his time when he's fbi director, perfect candidate to be the fbi direct director. if it was or wasn't true, when did the fbi get on this most

dangerous of rogue paths, did it stuart with mueller, did it start before mueller, is it a really comey-obama problem, what happened inside the fbi? >> it started before mueller but then it escalated using any power. >> they have the white hat and they can do these things, they are truly, you know, elites that can break the rules in the interest of the country. >> the reason i say it began before mueller is because right after mueller was appointed fbi director around the time of 9/11, he gets hauled in front of the fisa court, the foreign intelligence surveillance court. the secrete star chamber court and they confront him with

evidence that the fbi had presented lies for years in applications to spy and mueller promised that he would fix it, institute new rules and procedures, he actually did, it's called the woods procedure procedures. the fbi continued in the investigation of donald trump and the surveillance and spying on carter page. so it predates mueller but it continued under his leadership and then it really escalated under james comey. >> so once again with my experience in the bush administration, that's the first time james comey was considered as a real candidate to come to main justice. i believe we did a checking on it jim comey, wasn't a name i

was familiar with and i'm not a lawyer, most of the checking we did he was politically -- >> yeah. >> he would tell us he loved president bush and he really loved his policies but you would talk to liberals and they would say james comey is kind of secretly one of us, he's pretty liberal on everything, he's a political foe of president bush so you got the hodgepodge story and one person who knew him well summarized him well the best thing to know about james comey he's about james comey. >> yeah. you know i saw it early when he was attorney in 1990's, i attended a news conference that he held about some case that he had launched and i remember my cameraman walked out with me to the van after the news conference and he said, wow, have you ever seen a guy who loves himself that much, and i always remembered that because i

then saw it vividly in my research for the case in following the case, writing columns, james comey i describe in the book as this glorious self-righteous individual who only cares about james comey. >> he ended upturning on president on renewable patriot act, 9/11 era legislation, he obviously, the whole hillary clinton thing back and forth, opening -- reopening the investigation right before the election date, completely infuriating all of the obama-clinton folks, like what is he doing.

to this day he has the social media presence almost of aoc. >> it's rather nauseous when he tweets out, you know, standing by the sea in some philosophical phrase he uses or standing among the tall trees and so forth. [laughter] >> it's actually pretty comical. you know, you didn't say standing behind the curtains. >> james comey is a guy who lied to the president repeatedly telling him, you're not being investigated. the truth was and the document show and the testimony shows he was. he was lying to the president. truly one of the reasons in addition to the mishandling of hillary clinton case that trump fired him, trump knew that comey was just lying to him all of the time.

at one point comey delivers testimony before congress and it becomes apparent to trump that this guy has been lying to me for the last several months which was the final straw and he fired james comey. then comey who had told the president i don't leak, i don't see sneaky things, steals government documents, not his property, it's government property and leaks them to a friend to a purpose to leak them to the media to appoint special counsel, long-time colleague and mentor bob mueller. that's how devious james comey and i think he said 149 times, i don't remember.

in interviews when confronted he pretends that he doesn't know the dossier, i'm not quite sure who i know that is, christopher feel, i know i've heard the name before, those kinds of names that really makes you seriously doubt the credibility of comey. >> then you have the question about the policies using your power to stop trump to push this russia hoax, what -- who hires andy mccabe to the deputy? [laughter] >> how does the cast of characters around james comey come together, is that his doing, internal process where it was inevitable because how do all of the people with left-wing politics and animus towards the dually elected president, how do they all get into the upper -- that can't happen by anything

other than purpose. >> comey surrounded himself and didn't matter their qualifications. i've talked to former top fbi officials who said mccabe was not qualified to be fbi direct or, acting fbi director. >> a question of having a spouse that's politically active in the common wealth of virginia, even that people, you would think ig and lawyers would say the optics aren't great. >> yes, he should are rescued himself, he did and it was at the very end. i open chapter four by observing that rod rosenstein and andrew mccabe are living proof of the

peter principle. people in hierarchy tend to rise to the level of their own incompetence. that's true of rod rosenstein and andrew mccabe, but to answer your initial question, the people that comey surrounded himself with were as i say sick of him but they are all on the same page, not that they're terribly qualified to do what they're doing, these are people who believe in james comey and were willing to do anything even undermine the rule of law and subvert the democratic process which is what they did. >> so you go forward in this process, must be deadly to have this come forward and all the stories and everything else, tell the story of bob mueller

from my understanding of having conversations with people who would know was actually maybe some would say in the hunt to be donald trump's director of the fbi after james comey is let go. >> yeah, i wrote a column recently that posed a question, did -- did mueller lie to congress when he denied that he was interviewing to be fbi director again with president trump in the oval office the very day before he becomes special counsel. documents show that rosenstein who appointed mueller and mueller were secretly communicating, that mueller was already on board to be the special counsel. so what was he doing then in the oval office the day before he takes the job and he denied he was interviewing for fbi

directorship, but i interviewed the president in the oval office and he said, absolutely, that's why he was there, i interviewed personal assistant who set up the meeting privy to the conversation, yeah, it was an interview to the fbi director, multiple administration witnesses and documents demonstrate that mueller was either terribly mistaken or not telling the truth when he denied all of that, but he invites the question, what's he doing there, if he's already decided to take the job as special counsel, why is he in the oval office? was that a conversation under false pretenses so that mueller who gathered information from trump in the oval office to be used against him in the special counsel investigation and the key question is did the president explain to mueller his reasons for firing comey and if the answer to that question is,

yes, then mueller could not have served his special counsel because that makes him both prosecutor and witness in the same case which is strictly prohibited. i put the question to the president when i know i interviewed him a months ago for the book, did you tell mueller reasons for firing james comey, and the president paused and he thought about it and he smiled and he said, no comment, he says i could tell you the answer because i know the answer and i vividly remember the conversation, and as i write in the book, it was clear to me sitting across from the president judging his reaction to my question and his demeanor that his answer was yes, it's inconceivable that they wouldn't talk about the firing of james comey the day before because

trump had been talking to everybody about it. again, mueller shouldn't have been special counsel, he was a fact witness and he wasn't honest to the president, he didn't say to the president, by the way, mr. president, i've agreed to be special counsel to investigate you, he wasn't forthright, he wasn't honest and truthful to the president which to me is unconscionable. >> so the mueller to comey, to rosenstein brings back mueller, if you look through all of this kind of parade of characters in the meantime the fbi is taking quite a black eye which i don't think either one of us or any americans like saying that the fbi, it's awfully important, much-needed agency in the government, do you think they're on the path to recovery? do you think -- >> no, no, because comey's twin brother is the fbi director, i'm

saying that metaphorically, christopher wray and i don't think, to me judging the actions of chris wray since he's been fbi director demonstrates that he doesn't care about transparency and the truth to the american people, he cares about covering up to protect the fbi. how do i know that because he has defied lawful subpoenas issued by congress, he's fought the declassification of critical documents that would expose the witch hunt. they need to know the truth, they deserve the truth, accountability in a democracy is

fundamental. >> jim clapper, john brennan, these are two names that appear throughout the book and we've all had to read and watch their roles in all of this. >> right. >> can they be prosecuted. is that a live wire, should they be? >> i think it's possible and that's why it's very significant and important that william barr several months ago launched an official department of justice investigation and appointed u.s. attorney from connecticut to head it up, durham is well versed in corruption at the fbi and the cia. he's prosecuted and put behind bars people engaged in acts in the agencies, as i write in the book, inventing a lie is easy, spreading the lie is easier.

it will take time to unravel all of the lawlessness and corrupt acts involved in the witch hunt, but i have confidence in william barr and john durham, the inspector general's report will be very important but they're not waiting for the ig report, they're moving full steam ahead, in fact, we recently learned that durham has expanded investigation, added additional personnel which suggests to me which he has likely already found evidence of potential crimes. what's amazing when you read the book and you recollect this amazing path this country, our country has been on. seemed like during the obama years nothing leaked from this group, the deep state, the people in the intelligence communities who know real dirt on us and enemies overseas, they have real information and nothing on the hillary clinton emails, nothing on trying to

stop him, peter strzok. >> amazing. >> yet with president trump there's a delicious leak including conversation with foreign leaders on a regular basis, whole presidency, why is that allowed? >> because of the 8 years of the barack obama administration the intelligence community, the fbi, they were all empowered, you know, the small group of unelected but powerful officials you call it the deep state, so do others, i call it a malignant force, say saw donald trump coming and he was a threat to their power, hillary clinton would have been a third term of barack obama and their power would continue and donald trump vowed to drain the swamp, they are the swamp, the malignant force, they didn't want to be drained. power in washington is like crack cocaine, you know, once you get on and you have it, you

don't want to give it up and you will do anything to stop someone who is going take your power away from you and so that's how the russia hoax began, that's how it began the witch hunt, it's because these people saw donald trump as a threat to themselves and what they loved, power and the end justified any means even lawless. >> this program with gregg jarrett airs 8:00 p.m. eastern and tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern in its entirety. >> here are some of the current best-selling nonfiction books, according to a room of one zone bookstore in madison wisconsin, topping the list is collected schizophrenias, face on mental illness, american singer-song

writer recalls life and career on horror stories followed by netflix clear-eyed cast member jonathan's memoir. after that in the book of gutsy women, hillary and chelsea clinton on thoughts on women that inspired them. opens account of growing up in the idaho mountains and her introduction to formal education at the age of 17 in her book educated. it's been on the best-seller list for nearly 2 years. some of these authors have and on book tv and you can watch them online at booktv.org. >> and we are back in madison wisconsin with the discussion on african-american women and politics featuring donna brazile, yolanda, you're watching book tv of the wisconsin book festival.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> good evening, good evening.

good afternoon. my name is barbara harrington mckinney and i get the distinct honor and pleasure to introduce your panel for this afternoon and i will try to contain my enthusiasm until i get to the end of the introductions. the four most powerful african-american women in politics share the story of their friendship and how it has changed politics in america, the lives of black women in american politics are remarkably absent from the shelfs of bookstores and libraries. for colored girls who have

considered politics is a sweeping view of american history from the vantage points of 4 women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over 30 years, donna brazile. [applause] >> yes. yolanda. [applause] >> absent is bishop leah dultry and menyan moore. [applause] >> group of women who call themselves the colored girls. like many people who have spent their careers in public service

they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. for most of their work on the presidential campaign of walter mandel, michael decacus, bill clinton, al gore, barack obama and hillary rodham clinton. over the years they filled many roles in the corporate role, on campaigns and unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the white house, through all of this, they've worked with those who have shaped our country's history, u.s. presidents such as

bill clinton and barack obama, well-known political figures such as terri and howard dean and legendary activist and historical figures such as jessie jackson. coretta scott king and betty shabas, for colored girls who have considered politics, it's filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who work behind the scene but are still hidden. whatever their purge, the colored girls are always focused on the larger goal of hurrying history so that every american

regardless of race, gender or religious background can have a seat at the table, this is their story. i would first like to introduce donna brazile. [applause] donna brazile, a veteran democratic political strategist is an adjunct professor at georgetown university, author, television political commentator and former interim chair of the democratic party. she is the author of cooking with grease and the new york times best seller hacks. veteran democratic political strategists donna brazile is an

adjunct professor author syndicated columnist and television commentator, vice chair of voter registration and participation at the democratic national committee and international chair of the democratic national committee as well as the former chair of the dnc's voting rights institute, donna brazile. [applause] >> yolanda, yolanda is founder of group, nationally recognized public relations and public affairs agency, she has played a major role in shaping the goals and objectives of the national democratic party with a career in public affairs, strategic

communications and political management spanning 25 years, president and ceo yolanda has a proven track record of excellence that has made the agency a success. that success has resulted in the group working with major clients like microsoft, mg, mirage, bristol myiers, mci, texaco as one of the nation's top political strategist yolanda's extensive work for the democratic national committee and with major political campaigns has reduced relationships with elite

influences and unique influencers and decision makers, through these associations she has consult government and nonprivate agencies such as the congressional black caucus foundation, the congressional hispanic caucus institute, u.s. department of commerce, center for american progress,50 anniversary summit and the martin luther king, jr. national memorial foundation project. i introduce you to -- and i lost my page. [laughter] [applause]

>> they're experts in prompting, right? [laughter] >> minya information moore, considered one of the nation's top strategic thinkers with extensive experience in political and corporate affairs as well as public policy, she leads local affairs and multicultural strategies, practices with clients ranging g from the fortune 100 to to the start-up nonprofits seeking consul for developing strategies that are emerging consumer markets and achieve public policy goals, she specializes in building coalitions and brand awareness strategies for corporations while at the same time effectively addressing their state and local public policy issues. under president bill clinton's

administration minyon served as assistant to the president and director of white house political affairs, in this capacity she served as the principal political adviser to the president, vice president, first lady and senior white house staff with primary responsibility for planning out reach and directing the political activities of the white house. she also developed and coordinated legislative strategy, administration policy and communication's planning with senior white house staff. as ceo of the democratic national committee, dnc, responsible for day-to-day operations and oversight of the political, the democratic party, minon serves as

member of the board of directors for writers gill foundation, ncnw and is a board member and coconvener of power rising summit, named one of the 100 most powerful women in washington by magazine. kennedy school of government and in 2018 she was awarded the american association of political consultants aapc, lifetime achievement award and has been inducted in the aapc hall of fame. and that's it. [laughter] >> that was beautiful. [applause] >> and so let me catch my breathe and the reason that i need to catch my breath that reading these bios was so empowering to me and so i

absolutely thank you for that opportunity and guess what? we all get a copy of for colored girls. [applause] >> this is a generous contribution and we all get an opportunity to share in this. and so let's applaud. [applause] >> and as you receive the book, be prepared to have an incisive, direct and powerful conversation and i turn it over now.

[applause] >> thank you, barbara, what a great morning it is, afternoon to be here in the wonderful badger state, first of all, thank you for hosting the 2020 democratic convention this summer. [cheers and applause] >> i also want to thank cheryl weston for generosity and providing copies of all books to each and every one of you and we look forward to signing it. [applause] >> barbara gave you all bios but in the book chapter 1 we talk about a call to serve and so i thought we would start by discussing the call that we all received to serve, to serve our country, to serve our party and ultimately to help strengthen our democracy, so i will start with my colleague on the right, your right, i don't know, left, right, i don't care, but my good friend, my sister, yolanda caraway.

>> thank you, donna brazile. >> well, i think my call to serve came when i was 14 year's old and i was in high school and this was the year, i won't try to give the year but you will figure it out. the year after president kennedy was assassinated. i was in rochester, new york and a friend of mine came after school one day, why don't you come volunteer for bobby kennedy, he's run if for senate in new york state, so i was always looking for something to do after school, oh, this is good, i could stay, go after school 3 to 4 hours. so i took her up on it and i went down and i took the bus every day after school from the east side town of all the way to west side of town, i worked in the office, i made phone calls, i did -- lick envelopes, if you

remember machines where you put the funny paper and you got your fliers and stuff, we did all of that and actually by the time he won the campaign, i was going out door to door talking to people, actually about -- about him and i was -- i guess i look back at my young age, all the kids are so much smarter, way beyond us, at the early age i understood the issues and i was able to explain them to people can understand it. now, what i wanted to do in life was be a doctor, that summer i was a candy striper, i volunteered, put on candy striper dresses, i went to the hospital, actually the hospital i was born in every day after summer school, had to go to summer school because of algebra >> you learn something new every time you we do this.

>> it's in the book. >> martha stewart. >> failed twice algebra. >> i'm not doing that. >> so i wanted to be ms. doctor until some day somebody came in the emergency room. that's it,i can't take it. >> that was my first experience, i did the bobby kennedy thing and once he won, i always we wanted to help people, i understood of a different way of helping people, much different way of helping people but it was a rewarding way and that's when i got my call to service. >> you want to -- >> i don't know if i found politics or politics found me.

i see many of my contemporaries here, if this is a room full of young people i would have to explain to them. it's not google. [laughter] >> it is an actual book and it was one of the best books we had coming up during my era and i was working there and i started volunteering similar to yolanda at operation push, it was called operation push then and now known as rainbow push and at the time they we were trying to elect our first african-american mayor which was here in washington. and meetings with the chair of operation push and i would hold her person and i would be sitting in the corner and listening to all of the powerful people talk and try to convince them to run for mayor and it was startling to me that he wasn't like jumping at the bid, he had everybody wanting him to do this and i remember what he said, he said to the leaders, if you can

do 3 things then i might choose -- i might think about running, first he said our patch wasn't big enough, a room of african-american leaders so we had to build a coalition, he told them they would have to help him raise money and he also said we would have to register voters, i'm sitting in this corner thinking to myself, well, what can i do, what can i do, i gathered up, once he decided to run i gathered up a bunch of my friends and when he went down to the campaign office and said we we wanted to volunteer, we we wanted to get out young people and so i'm thinking that we would be assigned to someone to teaches how to do it so they gave us the table over in the corner and say, okay, you're doing it, you've got it, you're great and we ended up working really hard and that became my first example of really understanding what it means to serve and to really put your -- put your heart and soul into trying to elect someone but for me it didn't stop there because i was also told and taught that

you have to hold your elected officials accountable, so i started going down to his office once he was elected because i wanted him to come to my turf, i had worked very hard a couple of months he can come to my church now,i didn't realized that i needed an appointment, i would go and show up and i met this really nice man named ed who was scheduler and he would come out can't do it, can't do it, one day i showed up and they said, yes, and that taught me the power of politics, the power of putting yourself in there and the power of connecting back to your community and that's where i've been ever since, i've been weaving in politics. [laughter] [applause] >> so i get to be moderator as well as answer my own questions.

[laughter] sounds familiar. [laughter] >> so i think i will call to serve as extension of our faith, extension of how we were raised and at the time that we were raised, bishop of the church, she's a fifth generation preacher, i'm catholic. [laughter] >> you know, if leah was here she would try to preach. >> and there lies my deep desire to serve, i wanted to be a priest. i grew up in a catholic household. [laughter] >> it's in the book. [laughter] >> a priest? >> yeah. >> oh, lord. the become has been on the road

too long. we are adding chapters as we go. [laughter] >> my said, donna, you're a girl, you can't be a priest. my mom and dad were influential in my life, my grandparents as well, i listened to them, i loved them, i care deeply about what was impacting and grew up in segregated south, i don't think many of us had the opportunity to choose whether we could be this or that, we knew that we all had to give back and give back to your community. we came up at a time we saw our leaders assassinated and one leader martin luther king, his assassination deeply impacted my life and many of us who grew up in the south and i knew my call to service would be one in the political world, public arena and within a year after dr. king's assassination i went door to door because, of course, i was not eligible to vote but

because this was the first time since 1965 that, quote, unquote, people of color had the right to vote in the south, i wanted to help build a playground in my community. now, come on, that seemed to be a big project and then i thought the kids on the other side, the train track, in fact, we were so poor that we lived on the second side of the train tracks, the first set of train tracks separated blacks from white, the second set of train tracks separated those who were so-called middle class or the working class and the poor. every time it rained we had water front property. my desire to serve was deep calling and that's one of the reasons why i am still active, although i turn 60 in a couple of months, so that's the second

anniversary of turning 30 in the millennials in the room, and, you know, having served as party chair twice, members of the committee, yolanda we wanted to retire, i don't know why. it's better when you are on the committee after 60. you know, being out there, i was -- two weeks ago i went door to door back in my beloved louisiana for my governor, i was still putting yard signs down. i went door knocking recently in melvin, virginia, this desire to serve comes from a love of country. are we democrats? yes, do we believe our partisan defines us, it does not define us and our next question and i will start with you, minon, what defines us women of color but what defines us in polarized environment as american

citizens? >> well, for me i think what's missing and not what defines us is the empathy, i'd like to see what the party brings, i think we -- we think about others a lot and we try to make sure that when we are at a table, when we see policy that's not reflective or inclusive we try to raise our hand and say, hey, listen, you're missing women like senator harris had to do the other night at the debate and so for us i think what defines me, i know me personally is i try to bring a set of values to the table that i hope that not only the people that i represent and serve but my own family can really standby because it's not enough to do the back and forth, the democrats who is thennened who is up, who is down, there's more people down than up and so if we don't see the people that are sitting on the sidelines that are not thinking that their

vote matters or are homeless or in poverty and we are the talented tent, i feel like i haven't done my job. then we are not doing our job, that's why i believe the democratic party does, sometimes we do it well and sometimes we don't do it well, i think right now in the current environment we are polarized and so it's going to take a lot of voices to just keep speaking up and speaking out about moral clarity and about making sure that we see the least and for me it fundamentally starts am i my brother's keeper or sister's keeper and if you can answer those questions you'll always be i think to the good that you can. >> thank you. thank you.

[applause] >> yeah, i have a little bit, not a lot to add, i think what defines us as the democratic party we are the party of compassion, you know, when we see people down we want to lift them up. we are civil, we are the party of civility -- these days we are certainly the party of civility. i have never seen anything in my life like i see now. i've been in in this for 30 years and i've never seen such incivility among people. it's horrible and it's terrible, it's a terrible example set for children, it's a terrible example to set for our young people growing up and i think that the democratic party nancy pelosi is trying her best.

>> when when you come to the microphone, questions, please. not we the democrats or we the republicans, we the independent, the largest political party in the country that's not affiliated, we the people and i do think that we need to look at common values now, the things, those traits that hold us altogether like a good gumbo, what bring it is gumbo together and what start is the ability to stir everything in, it's red, it's yellow, it's green, it's white, it's everything, we have black pepper, you put black and white, we have salt and pepper, we are missing that now. we've lost faith in each other, we've lost hope in our future

and we need to figure out a way to remove this pessimism, so i think the ultimate challenge and one of the things that you see throughout the book is stories of not just our journey but the journey that we've had with so many incredible americans and i'm going to bring this person because she's in the news now and minyon was senior adviser and i'm putting her on the spot, hillary clinton minyon said this is a wonderful necessary book, how today when we have so many people talking about how to go forward, why is her voice so important now? >> well, to me her voice has always been important, it's not just now. .. ..

she served as secretary of state, first nominee of the party and also has come under severe attacks which i don't get to this day. part of it is when hillary came about she was a historical figure on her own and was blazing trails for women we didn't even recognize she was blazing at the time she was doing it and her voice was so strong and at times so defiant, i don't think women knew how to understand her but here is what

i can tell you. she is as honest as they come no matter what you read. sears faithful to this country as she can possibly be, she will be a good steward, she doesn't -- two democrats, we love everybody. we are not trying to get everybody in but she will rally the troops and she's not going to let the current occupant of the white house get off. she is not. she's not going to do it. she will be a voice. >> we had central library can't help but think about ernie grant who you worked closely with and jesse jackson, we have plenty of men, we got bernie too. i don't know if we mentioned trump. we don't want to waste our

time. but we do have jesse jackson, we have ron brown, bill clinton, barack obama, jimmy carter, on and on. they have been part of our success and we are deeply rooted in their political campaigns. why don't you share some of these great stories with some of the remarkable men we have worked with. >> let's see. i worked closely with ron brown, a personal friend. we started working at the dnc the same day in 1980 something, 81 after jimmy carter had lost. and we became good friends. i came to work for him when he was running the first inaugural and i was in new york after the

convention and called him up and said i want to work on the inaugural. can you get here tomorrow? i guess i can so i went and i was deputy at the inaugural. i remember coming from lunch, he had gotten a call from bill clinton, the first was to ask if she was interested in being the un representative. his wife was there and his son was there and we all said that is not you. he told him -- before he got back clinton called the next day and said how about secretary of commerce and i said that might be something. you don't want to do the job.

it is -- you have to work all the time or do things you like to do. what does the secretary of commerce do? i don't know but i will find out by this afternoon. this is what he became. he was a great secretary of commerce, great loss to us. reverend jackson i met, i was working on the mondale campaign and after the convention we took charge of the scheduling and that was a nightmare because they always change it and say let's go this way but i have learned so much and went to work with him "after words". he was my great mentor. once i worked for him i knew i

could do anything. of phone call at 5:00 in the morning, need to have a press conference, had to get up at 5:00 tomorrow and better than any degree you could get at any school. it was on the ground training, hands-on. i learned things i never knew about myself, i could do things never thought i could do. i talk about these two, i didn't work for bill clinton other than to be on the dnc but those two where my greatest mentors and i learned everything from them. >> i want to ask a question about the book title for colored girls. how did this concept come about and why do you think it still

resonates today? >> recently i did an article, wisconsin, something. the reporter asked the question, what she was trying to inch towards when saying the word colored. you can that is about the value system and if you have great values as we tried to describe, the title actually came about when donna and i were working for michael dukakis and that great success on the campaign.

donna was on strike and lord knows i don't know how you go on strike on a campaign. she came back but we got word from the higher echelon. we were on the floor with senior staff people and got word to move our office down so we looked at each other and said if we move down that means we are not going to be close to the decisions, we are not going to know where the policy is or where the governor is going so we said we will move. when they left at 5:00 and left at 5 we came back upstairs. we confiscated an office that was the chairman's office. we pulled a long table in and we started writing on a piece of paper sojourner truth, ida

wells, all these names and she put on a piece of paper, colored girls, we should not be moved and i pasted it on the door. it was basically because we decided to represent but let me tell you what that taught us. when you take a stand, not just for your self, you are always taking a stand for somebody you don't know you are taking a stand. that is the office of all women, the office of some men who felt they weren't included and it became the office of everybody wanting to have a voice, they would step in and they came in and called us together and i think it really is a great value lesson of being able to come out and bring the rest of your colleagues with you. they didn't move us and we are still not being moved. >> the book is for colored girls who have considered politics. i am yolanda caraway, yolanda caraway, minyon moore, leah daughtry who is the bishop of

the church and co-author, veronica chambers helped us to write this book. we could not do it without her assistance because as you can tell we have different voices. one last question before we start lining up very quietly. i will start by answering the question if you don't mind. i want to talk about our mentors and heroes, the women who stood up long before we -- the ones that continue in many ways to lift their voices. yolanda caraway mentioned a wonderful, remarkable person in her conversation, and hillary clinton, nancy pelosi. for me it was caretta scott

king. i was a recent college graduate from lsu. i love you all but come on. governors, we need some every now and then and i'm not talking alabama. it is a different conversation. mrs. king was that woman. i was so closely tied at that point to the movement, at least i thought i was as an organizer, but to be asked by coretta scott king to work on the campaign to make doctor king's birthday a national holiday, didn't have the guts to tell my mom the job i was just offered by procter & gamble in cincinnati was going to be on hold because i wanted to work on a campaign and i found the courage and my mom said it was okay, do it for a couple years. only took 21/2 years because mrs. king was such a great leader. he understood even with ronald

reagan as president how we could not only get the signatures but make the campaign more than a movement. with stevie wonder doing the birthday song happy birthday. caretta scott king and so many others in the book, shirley chisholm, eleanor holmes norton who is still a member of congress and doing a fantastic job on the house government and oversight committee, women who dared to make a difference in our lives. i want to say we never asked a man to leave the room. we believe you need to scoot over. [applause] >> i think you will learn this when you read the book. we have been very fortunate to have men who have embraced us, be it black or white. they have embraced us, when we were in that pipeline, we stayed in that pipeline so we are eternally grateful for

everyone, we break out every now and then. >> we do it in a good way. >> young man. >> i would be interested in your perspectives on the process of picking a democratic candidate to run against donald trump. what do you think the outcomes might be, seems like an unprecedented way of arriving at one. will there be unity or cohesion at the end? >> we just got off a conference call last night, it is 90 minutes, this week totally spend 41/2 hours, we spent we 7 meetings making sure we have an open, fair and transparent process. we knew we would have a large group of candidates and both of them will start soon to win on the field.

some candidates have enough fuel to run. some are operating on steel but if you are at 2% or 20% this will be a competitive, enlightening process. once we pick a candidate, it takes 1885 delegates, those of us who are automatic delegates don't get to vote on the first round. a lot of things are super about me but my vote only counts once. i do believe we will find a strong challenger whoever the republicans nominate. [laughter] >> and we will unify not just our party but our country because i think the norms we have seen this president break are enormous. i am hopeful that we will nominate a strong candidate.

>> many people running in the primaries but we will all get behind whoever the nominee is. [applause] >> thank you to the book festival a library. my name is joy morgan and a group of us who are delegates for the state, democratic convention are educated by senator taylor about how the suffragist movement of white women and black women move parallel rather than together. they are working on the basis of sexism and civil rights in general. and i am -- i have to preface, the last episode of blackish showed rainbow growing - white women activists, it would be great if i had black friends with me and they came and

realized it was a pay issue, white women's paygrade is less then that. how do we come together to find a basis of working on all of our issues so there are not parallel lines. >> i think more and more we are finding common ground especially women. we are 51% of the voting population and if that is not enough to tell you, you can vote anybody in or out. and fighting on reproductive rights, african americans have to look at all kinds of issues, we sometimes don't have the luxury of looking at merrill lynch because we have so many issues we deal with but i think more and more especially with young women we see the

coalitions coming together more and more and we have to be comfortable enough to step outside our lines. in washington it is a lot easier for us because we wouldn't get anything done if we stayed in our narrow prism. those who are leaders in the room, have to be very deliberate about looking around the room and seeing who is not present. is there another voice that can come to the table? doesn't automatically happen. the more we do it and the more we are conscious about it the more we will come together. women better come together if we expect to have a female president. >> i've got to say, before georgetown, women were underrepresented and with the majority of voters a majority of consumers, majority of

college-educated individuals, we need as nancy pelosi always stands up and says, we have enormous power. our research, tammy baldwin. you only have one female member of the united states house. when she talks she speaks for women who feel they have no voice. you have two officeholders, state treasurer and eight women in the state senate, 28 in the statehouse, 27%, ranked 29th, thank god for louisiana and alabama.

the point i am making is we have to deal with this on the representation because our voices are not in the room and we are all about common sense, compromise. let us in the room and a seat at the table and we can draw on the history of abolitionists and separatists in the first and second wave of feminism. there was a split but we don't have to spend our futures being divided because we care about the same issues. 7000 black women are registered to vote. hello? >> how many voted in the last election. >> 94% with a high performance in the united states because we don't like to go to bed hungry, we don't want children to severe parade from their families at the border. we don't want to have a country where only a few succeed and the rest must struggle. that's why we stand up and go to the polls and they join us

at the polls for 382 days. [applause] >> i wondered from the national convention, the freedom from religion foundation taking place this weekend. there point is they have freedom of religion in the united states, real freedom means freedom from religion in our government. with the tremendous rise in the last number of years in christian nationalism which is almost synonymous in this country with white nationalism there's a lot of concern among agnostics, atheists, freethinkers, unitarians that we are on a slippery slope of becoming a so-called christian country which william barr

talked about this last weekend put on the website. my question to you, women of faith, fabulous, in the united states government keeping religion out of government. >> thank you. >> right. i am a christian but i believe this is a country founded on christian judeo values. i believe that fundamentally. i have my beliefs but it shapes how i think about my values, not how i incorporate it into the public sphere. we have to become tolerant of everyone whether it is you, me, atheists, agnostics, we have to learn tolerance.

everybody has a point of view. if you look back, what is in the 80s, we had the rise of ralph reed and the christian coalition and eventually we moved back to the center and started dealing with religion as though it had its body in its place and now again we have swung to making people feel like they have no voice and religion is going to dominate their lives. the only way we can beat any of this is to put the right people in office. the louder the microphone, the bigger the voice, the more we have these concerns. i know exactly what you are talking about and if we want to stop it we know what we must do and we shouldn't make people feel they can't have their own religion. i never felt like that. i always believed people embrace me for who i am but i

do not try -- people who believe something different and we are not a tolerant society anymore. you can see it every day. >> our framers and our forebears, i am sure they had some support. i was just reading about edith wilson when woodrow wilson had a stroke, carried out affairs of government. cokie roberts past -- i thought that was another great book to read. we don't hear about that, the future we are dealing with but our forefathers in infinite wisdom, lay down at night. i am on fox news. >> the people you are talking

about, i may have fundamental disagreements but -- i really learned from them. i learned so much when i was sitting next to george will who was always quoting madison and jefferson and hamilton and i'm thinking what about pol pot? reading those books and reading his books has taught me that their wisdom was greater then our foresight. they knew there should be no religious test. they understood that and framed it will. whether you have a religion or no religion or believe or not believe, it should be respected and i disagree with politicians or anyone who use any of our

cultural divides. i may disagree with you on so many cultural political issues or whatever issue, public policy in general but that doesn't mean i have to disrespect you and demean your character or somehow say you shouldn't exist. i believe you have the right to assemble as people who are not religious but at the same time i am a woman of faith. without my faith i would be nothing. i cannot keep up with the daily grind of my life being a black woman in america without my faith, my faith. give me strength, stand up to anybody. reading how those women stood by jesus, locked themselves behind the door. she needs her faith. >> that is what it was but yet you see jars -- matthew and mark, peter.

i want to know about those women. what has them going? >> i do go to church. >> twice in the last month, that is a lot. the church i go to, my knees asking for help. everybody got a belief system even if you don't believe that everybody should be in the room. i'm not afraid to be in a room with muslims and jews. i'm not afraid to be with unitarians. i learned a little bit from everybody. i'm afraid of people with no character or values who want to destroy us along these cultural lines for political gain and i don't like when they call me a socialist but if you're a

socialist that is your business. let me be a catalyst and save my pennies at the end of the day someone is going to take it anyway. let me be a person of faith, let me respect someone who does not. don't demonize me. i don't like that. they are smearing the radical left as if radical left don't have faith. they have faith. anyway i digress. >> i was going to say one more thing. we need to have more conversations like this. people need to start talking to each other and stop talking down to each other. you may have different opinions but you can agree to disagree. we've got to practice this madness in the world. >> george will is -- i could go to his house right now. >> young democrat anyway.

>> how did you get inspiration for your book. >> a good question. we saw folks like you. how old are you? >> 7. >> we saw as little girls wanting to grow up, to -- to get attached we had to go out and work and what inspired us was our mothers and so many others who had their wings broken and save some for others so we got our inspiration very young because we wanted to do something with our lives. you can be president. there is no one better and why now? ambition lies at the heart of politics. tell your mom you want to be president and you can do it.

>> when your mom told her that we will ask your question which was how do we get inspiration. the truth is they wanted to do a series on us. hbo -- your mom probably doesn't let you watch hbo but ill imagine nickelodeon. when they started giving us the script, the script didn't look anything like this. what inspired us to write the book was to tell our story first. and young girls like you will see a path if you decide to go into politics or have good friends and coalesce so we decided to lay a trail for generations yet unborn. if they saw us on nickelodeon looking goofy you would never know it.

that is why we decided. >> what is your name? >> pippa. >> i love it. >> got it, you are destined for greatness. >> every time we meet a nice young lady like you, you give us inspiration. >> i love that name. >> look at him, blessed and beautiful. >> i am blessed and beautiful. only one year old. good morning. i am the deputy mayor for madison. [applause] >> the mayor sends her greetings and regrets, she got a cold and not want to make you

sick. >> you can bring it to her. >> last week someone wrote uw for whites only on the uw campus. it really made me sad to see in 2019. you claim you are 60 but you don't look at. you look great but since you have seen that, i am wondering what advice you offer. we have some issues, the middle class, people leaving, not much for them to do but we had this happen last week in 2019. what advice can you offer to

us? >> i consider madison to be one of the more progressive cities in our great history may be because of the campus come my first visit was 1982 where we selected more than 1000 signatures, all the records and campuses so you have a great heritage and legacy which you should uphold, time for the city to reclaim its future in such a way that brings people together to allow people to have their differences in the open. so many incidentss, higher education campus. we have to make sure our campuses are a beacon of light and learning so our students can go there and get all the great wisdom of our past.

he is ready to talk. we have to rebuke it but we are responsible to bring people together. yesterday when we got here -- that is my kind of thing. >> i would add we all have a responsibility and the silence is a killer and we lost a great giant in washington, elijah cummings. one thing he said is we cannot sit silently by and watch democracy be ripped up and torn apart and i keep trying to draw into this conversation because we cannot do this by ourselves. we have to see ourselves as the fabric, the mosaic that can change the trajectory. we can change how we see things.

we can say enough is enough but we cannot be silent. if you are not drawn in the community to be a part of this discussion they should be outraged, and hopefully you have them as your friends and allies. >> i will write a column based on this story once i get the details and write my column called speaking to the void. the void is now consuming us because we are not speaking into the void of consciousness. i will write that and dedicate it to the people of madison. and might give us a little credit. >> i will mention everyone here. and get to work.

our time has ended. let us thank the wisconsin book festival for hosting us along with central library and cheryl weston for her commitment and once again the book is for colored girls who consider politics, i am donna brazile joined by yolanda caraway and minyon moore. thank you all and god bless. [applause] >> up next in 30 minutes live from wisconsin book festival, journalist and nelson on the creation of the council for national policy. while we wait we want to show you part of the program but here's tomorrow evening. is former defense secretary jim

mattis on his military career and thoughts on leadership. >> the commitment to excellence is uncompromised and personal sensitivities are irrelevant when there is a mistake. when i read that sentence i thought the last 60 years of american culture crumbled because in most schools personal sensitivity is not making people feel bad is a high priority. is that at the expense of excellence at times or is the marine corps its own place? >> it is a good point. the fact is on the battlefield there is no trophy for second place much less ninth place. you have got to win so you have this grim set of skills by people who have been there and done it and they are not interested in why it cannot happen. you have simply got to carry through but what carries you

along is you know everybody beside you is going to be there. when trouble looms they will come even at risk to their life so it is humbling but energizing. that expands you. it does not shrink you to be part of an organization but expand you to have that sense. >> you are doing running recruitment in your home area and northwest and it sounds like you are working 80 hour weeks or some amount and an officer didn't want to do that. and you busted him and ended his career. what about work/life balance? >> there is work/life balance. everybody is doing what they can so you don't dump more work on someone else.

in this case i made it clear the young man, you could be a marine or a quitter but you couldn't be both. i am not going to care more about your careers and you care, you tell me what you want to be. you want to be a marine i will coach you and the thing to remember with the number of students here tonight, you want to help people but i won't waste time. 99% in the marines, i was a coach. i will not waste time coaching someone who's not humble. it is worthless. you might as well just give it up. if they are not humble enough to recognize they need coaching, if i am not that humble you can't help them and in any organization as you become a leader you don't get

to be a leader because you have a rank on your caller or a title on your business card, juniors make you a leader, determine if you are a leader, they will vote about whether you are a leader. they will follow a 19-year-old pfc if the captain doesn't know what he's doing. remember at times jesus of nazareth had one out of 12 go to crap on him. you've got to maintain a firing squad. you've got to get rid of them. >> i missed that part of the gospel. let's go to the coaching. dwight eisenhower had fox connor. did you have somebody? >> i had to think about who are my mentors because on this tour

you look back on things. the point was to pass on lessons, what worked for me, for you to consider, not to follow blindly but to say does this make sense to you? when you are in the infantry your fortunes rise or fall on your in ceos. you are living with 40 sailors and marines, you're in the mud and have no better living conditions, the last officer in the chain of command, represent all the orders that come down to those in our line of work, intimate killings on close quarters battle and my first platoon sergeant was an immigrant from the british and even the caribbean named wayne johnson, corporal wayne johnson, senior enlisted guy, only 21 years old and i was 21 years old at the same time. of course with a name like wayne johnson everybody called

him john wayne. he had been overseas for a long time. he taught me not just what i did but what not to do. what an officer doesn't do. leave that alone, other people handle certain things. i'm starting to learn right then about delegating, decision-making and responsibility. my second student also a corporal, manuel rivera, from 1973 timeframe. you weren't born yet, most of you. he was an immigrant from mexico and he was the same way, he couldn't show a marine who was having trouble how to do something right and i used to admire the way in a few sharp words he could get someone's attention and turn the person the right direction, mostly spiritually, physical and mental followed and then i got a staff sergeant 15 years in

the marine core. an immigrant from québec, i was learning about the immigrant role in the us military, how they were overrepresented and it was a broadening experience. growing up from my hometown, 99% were native born. why do i bring it up? the military by its very nature will expand you in a way no other organization will. the mentors come in all shapes and sizes and all parts of the world. >> when you are leading, one of the things in the book, your affection for marines, i assume there are times you are leading any size unit you have to be unpopular. were you close friends with people around you or was there always some distance between you and those under your

command? >> i was taught to encourage that officers should come as close to the line that separates them from their troops as they can and be themselves but without giving up what else of their authority because there's going to come a time the chips are down and you have to point toward the enemy and tell them to go and at that point everything in that young man's body says don't get up, don't -- you know what could happen and you are going to need that authority but you use the critical word that took me 25 years to come into. you need trust and you need respect. trust is the point of the realm. if you don't have that as a leader you will not got -- accomplish much of anything. i knew the troops respected their leaders, 40% to 60% tried

to become officers but why was in unit so good? why were some 40 man platoons as good as 150 man infantry company when they closed with the enemy? took me a long time to figure out the other word was affection. in four months i had 29 sailors, marines, 17 of the 29 were killed or injured or wounded around me. when casualties get to 50%, the sunni triangle, tough fighting day in and day out. what held them together was an affection for each other is that no matter what happens they will keep fighting, they would keep fighting, fighting and fighting and the affection is the opposite of popularity. popularity brings favoritism.

this is one of the reasons you will see the military so anti-anything that will bring other impulses inside combat assault units. when you are pointing to someone and sending them forward, you can read in some very old textbooks about when favoritism rodded a unit out from underneath. a king here, solomon, and others so the point is that affection is the sort of thing that did not rest on any favoritism. not about being popular. when you make people get up and move when they don't dig to and the first you have to do when they have clean uniforms on and jump into a mud puddle you don't want them to be reluctant to hit the deck, the mud. you are not doing things that make you popular but you find too if you have been honest with your troops, they trust you, they will stick with you. deep inside a city the lost boys have taken half way through it, we know we've got

the enemy on the run and halted and told to pull out. a television camera gets shoved in a machine gunner's face, a blonde haired filthy dirty marine got his machine gun over his shoulder and coming out and reporting this is terrible, you must feel terrible, that is terrible, you lost your buddies, it is terrible and you are being told -- you must feel terrible. he is a slow talking kid from down south, looks at the camera and says it doesn't matter, we will go somewhere else and kill them. it shows the spirit of these young folks who sign up a blank check payable to all of you in this room to protect this experiment we call america. i will also tell you if we hadn't been honest with that

young man all along, hadn't kept informed, if he didn't trust us he could have said yes, it is terrible. when morale goes down in a combat unit you know you will lose more people. it is affection that builds on trust and respect, not popularity. >> the grand study, followed them through life, they got drafted in world war ii, some became colonels and majors and some privates and they want to know what correlates with success and it wasn't iq or socioeconomic status or physical courage but relationship with mother and the men who received the flow of love wanted to give it to their men. a deep emotional reservoir. you referenced collusion. this, the first battle of falluja was an unpleasant moment in a war filled with unpleasant moment, we were given orders to take a cabinet

you didn't like being told to stop it or stop what you started. how do you march yourself personally and your men and women through an operation you think is a mistake? >> you explain a little background, we were in a place, the enemy was rising up, the sunni uprising against us, a guy who had plenty of help, turned out we were outnumbered, we couldn't bring additional troops even though we had them waiting in southern california to come in and after we took over the district from the 82nd airborne division four contractors, one on the battlefield, we used to be upset about this stuff wandered into a town called falluja,

they got killed, burned, their bodies hung up, people very angry in this town and it was a tribal town. we knew we would get hold of tribal elements that hated the people who had done it and find where the bodies were and get the bodies back and find people who had done it, hunt them down and kill them but want to do it with rage into their homes at night. didn't want to charge into a city of 350,000 people so after a couple days of arguing about this i received the order, you will move against falluja and stay in the fight. i knew my boss and my boss above him agreed with me, they fought the good fight with washington and that is white is called orders, not likes, you don't have to like it. so let's do it. what you have to do is do this as well as if i had thought up the plan.

if you go into something like that half way, people are going to suffer. many innocent people evacuated as we could. we went in swinging and i will tell you the one qualification i put on it, i am going but don't stop. deep inside the city, very effective information warfare, footage of artillery rounds crashing into falluja. we never fired one artillery round in the first battle of falluja. i would have if we needed it but the helicopter gunships and tanks had given us what we needed and we didn't fire artillery. it was played as if we were doing it on bbc and other networks in this town, footage

that -- trailers or something, bring stuff into them and we got stopped deep inside the city with hand grenade arranged parts and losing people in this thing and got ordered to pull back and that is when the machine gunner was asked about it. you have to do the best you can because sometimes life doesn't go the way you want it to go. you give it 100%. >> how do you command a bad like that? they are busting through walls, you are a general. how do you command? >> you have to lay out clearly what you want. the commander's intend is what it is called. my aim is to destroy the terrorist stronghold, the innocent is possible and i want to move quickly with the two assault battalions and i bring in more battalions as soon as possible but you most move fast

enough. we knew they hadn't gotten rid of the battle. there was value in doing it this way and what you do, you talk to the assault units, you would walk the line, explain it and ask questions and go back and forth. if you draw out of them what would concern the men's side you have a unit ready to go. once you make it clear if you train your people, the assault units and take hands off the steering wheel, if you trust your young nco and young officers keep the social energy units, young ncos doing their job and blow holes in the sides of buildings so they don't go to the front gate so they don't go in this way. they know what they are doing,

we don't call it command and control. how many of you heard of that word? a lot of you. marines believe in command and feedback. we told you what we need done. now you will see me on the front lines listening to them talking to wounded marines. you get feedback from 100 different directions. take your hands off the wheel and state what needs to be done. >> the phalanx preparing for battle, they were so terrified you could hear, they could hear each other's teeth chattering. have you felt that kind of fear in the course of your career in the battlefield or somewhere else? >> absolutely you feel it. you are trained to overcome it.

there are things you can do to overcome it and your body and mind will help you get through that. is slow some things down. it is going to be there and first time i got shot at it scared the hell out of me. what drives you forward, you are very tired. i can't explain to you how tired, you know what i am referring to. the fear is going to be there with the fatigue that goes beyond words. there is going to be a sense at times of doom and exhilaration going back-and-forth moment by moment and you are pretty tired

out. anyone can get tired enough, it just doesn't work but what keeps you going is the affection, the love for one another. i don't care what happens i will not leave him uncovered so your back on your the going forward in the muscle memory kicks in and the marines are good at socializing people to that level of commitments when they come in so you go into a fight with a lot of confidence. >> after the battle in falluja, your time in that. you wrote a book. and others, the coin manual. what was it like? was it a revolutionary document? what was it like writing a book back home when marines were fighting in iraq. is that part of the rotation as well as the intellectual process? >> it took advantage of the lessons learned.

this is the normal behavior of a learning organization. of the organization's learning you bring people back, dave and i were old friends who serve together as colonels, brigadier generals and two stars and 3 stars, he was at fort leavenworth and i was at conoco so had to write something and map out the chapters, our staff did it. the army will take these chapters in the marines these chapters and we meet like the senate and house of representatives. >> that worked so well. >> we could give them a lesson. and the most important thing in it to me was something called design. go back to einstein confronting a problem, how to save the earth and how to compose his thinking and allegedly they

will save the world, 55 minutes defining the problem, save the world in 5 minutes of the marines defined the problem chapter, the campaign design chapter but for all of you as you go into these issues, in corporations or school districts or local community. wherever you are, take your time for a jesuit level of satisfaction. don't go charging into a war and pull the statue down in the capital and say now what do we do? that is not a good idea. you put the book out and think we learned a lot when we were there and put it out and change -- most of the cultural aspects of the services going in and once we get enough people on the ground we turn it around.

>> helping to lead an invasion of iraq and one of the first things you do is read books about the invasion of iraq and my favorite passage is where you see if you haven't read hundreds of books you are functionally illiterate which is good for politics and prose. he really did, you found time, every day of your career. >> the marine corps expected it. the marine corps doesn't make mistakes. i made a lot of mistakes. the marine corps doesn't look out for your ego. he also promoted me when i made a mistake, promoted me every time and the marine corps made it clear they weren't looking -- expected me to study but didn't expect to make mistakes and for all of you because you are all going to be leaders of

something if you want to be, that is your choice, that is the opportunity you will have an leaders of all ranks in society on the job and families, make sure you know the difference, mistake and lack of discipline. in the marines we used to say if you run the ship on the rocks you will get hammered. this is the varsity, you are going down and if you're a senior you will probably go out. you are young you get a second chance. a mistake, human beings make mistakes. i made a lot of mistakes. let me tell you the greatest mistake i ever made. in the middle of the opened is that i command 1250 sailors, marines and arabs in my battalion and assault battalion. in the middle of an open desert i get my battalion surrounded. that is almost impossible.

it was the wrong gain. as i went into this, you know when your mortar guys are doing it this way, you are not brilliant. later on i see in the marines they got me out of that mess and i was walking down and saying you were checking this. i messed up. we have to break through to kuwait city tonight, they are starting to murder innocent kuwaitis and the iraqi army retreating in front of us and they were committing atrocities and it is getting late. it is going to be difficult. the colonel called us together, those who lead the attack into kuwait city and when we got done and on moving back to our back door units and say here's

the orders, let's go, he called over and says hey, jim, you learn something today? yes, okay. didn't have to rub it in, just wanted to make sure he knew i knew he saw it and make sure it was a big deal but didn't make a big deal of it. he knows i'm going into another attack and don't need a song and dance about tactics. i learned a lesson. if you can help people get through mistakes and use them as learning opportunities, doesn't accept black of discipline and moral turpitude or something like that but in a no mistakes world i went to jail twice before i went into the marines and the marines for gave that too. >> when you make a mistake or make a decision that is not a

mistake and there are losses, you torture yourself about it or say learn the lesson, i can't, and move on. >> you do not forget when your lads lose their lives or what you did and you have to live with it. >> you can watch this entire program with james mattis tomorrow at 5:50 eastern. a reminder the full schedule for this weekend is available on booktv.org or your program guide. welcome back to madison and live coverage of the wisconsin book festival. starting now look at conservative politics and the history of the council for national policy with journalist ann nelson. >> i'm president of the madison institute. i would like to welcome you to this event featuring ann nelson and her new book "shadow network".

ann nelson is a native of oklahoma, an award-winning journalist and the author of multiple books, this being the most recent. for two decades in the school of journalism, more recently in the school of international and public affairs. before we begin, let me thank the madison public library, madison public library foundation. all the sponsors who contributed to making this a successful event and the director of the book festival who organized this celebration of books and authors over the four day weekend. on behalf of the madison institute i want to thank the w foundation, charitable arm of the capital times and many individual donors of madison institute who help our efforts

to support and illuminate issues of public policy. ann nelson will cast light on how the council for international policy which was created in 1981 is worked for four decades to channel money and people to influence the outcome of our elections and public policy. the book is been praised by a number of individuals including nancy mclean who wrote the book democracy in chains. she writes that "shadow network" is a riveting story about an with startling revelations including ties to because brothers and the takeover of media outlets in parts of the country that have outside influence in the electoral college and the united states senate so please join me in welcoming ann nelson.

[applause] >> thank you, fred, and thank you wisconsin book festival. it is exciting to be here especially since wisconsin plays a part in my story. i'm here to talk about my book "shadow network" it is the explanation of the puzzle that began on the evening of november 8, 2016, but in other ways the puzzle began a long time before that. i was sitting in front of my television like many other americans and looking at my phone to see the new york times predicting hillary clinton had an 85% chance of a victory at the time the polls closed and she had been endorsed by 57 of the hundred largest newspapers in the united states compared to two that endorsed her

opponent. people i knew, myself included, believed we understood the situation and the coverage made coherent and clinton's positions on social issues corresponded to the majority of public opinion, positions on questions like her pro-choice position, civil rights for the lgbt population, gun-control. here she has majority public opinion, newspapers of america behind her, the analysis of the new york times and yet the november surprise, she won the popular vote by 3 million but she lost the electoral college by 80,000 votes in three state, pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin. less than 1% in each case. michigan and wisconsin had been traditionally democratic states

that the party had more or less taken for granted and inks went the other direction. my background in journalism and human rights documentation meant the first thing i wanted to do was try to figure out why and to do it through research so i began to investigate how this happened especially with a candidate with as many liabilities as donald trump. i don't need to go into those here. they were adequately documented. a few years and thousand footnotes later here we are, you don't have to read the footnotes but they are there if you want to see where i find every assertion i make. i had something of an advantage. i was born and raised in oklahoma and to my knowledge i was the first female from oklahoma high school to graduate from yale college. a low bar but i will take it. over the past decades i shuttled back and forth from new york city where i lived and

taught at colombia and oklahoma to visit friends and family. part of the story unfolded there. oklahomans like wisconsin spend a lot of time in the car and a lot of time in the car means a lot of time with the radio on. when i began this investigation i stopped listening to npr and started listening to fundamentalist radio stations. i heard a lot of political coverage and it went like this. hillary clinton is a demon. data o'rourke is the son of satan. this was on the news broadcasts which was factually difficult to demonstrate. that i started mapping out radio networks across the country and found that they represented hundreds of stations more or less concentrated in swing states where in many places they outnumbered npr stations, news

coverage for example and in many cases had stronger signals. in a place like oklahoma if you go from town to town and always picking up one of the signals as you drive from one place to another, it fades in and fades out, i learned the three of these networks representing hundreds of stations were run by members of a shadowy group called the council for national policy and before i begin this research i haven't heard of it so i started digging into it and i learned leadership included the devosd family from michigan. and mysteriously after the election, betsy becomes actively defunding public schools was another was kellyanne conway and another was steve bannon.

it looked like right material for research. the president of the council for national policy, tony perkins, was a fellow oklahoman and i had been listening to him on the radio. he had written major chunks of the republican party platform. a southern baptist minister from oklahoma who ran the family research council. this wasn't exactly processing and the chunks of platform he wrote encouraged transsexual members of the military even though the pentagon opposed it. other issues they were promoting was conversion therapy for homosexuals which is regarded as counterproductive and damaging by the american medical association so tony perkins became one of donald trump's spiritual advisers and his evangelical advisory council was dominated by fundamentalist members of the council for national policy. obama had a spiritual advisory

council he was supposed to be a presbyterian himself. it was fundamentalists, evangelical, very unidirectional. with the help of some intrepid research assistants from the university of southern california and harvard i continued to connect these dots. i started with a deep history of the movement beginning in the segregationist south. this is where i was a child in the 1960s going to segregated schools in oklahoma and i found the backlash to the civil rights movement in the south and the southwest was an

integral part of this movement that combined with industries, you had the oil industry wanting to maximize profits and the social issues and economic issues joined forces in this movement. the cnp was founded in 1981 in the wake of reagan's election and he held himself up as a kind of religious theme to the presidency. he didn't always satisfy his fundamentalist supporters because he did appoint some moderates to his cabinet and was more interested in promoting his economic policies than he was pushing social issues so the council for national policy and affiliated organizations had a kind of complicated dance with the republican party for the next 20 years where they would lend their support to candidates who promised to support them, with all the experienced disappointment when republicans made alliances with moderate

republicans and even democrats across the aisle. they knew they had a minority in the population and they understood their advantages way in the senate and alexa oral college, and rural regions of other states. it is quite sophisticated, and focus on the popular vote and national news media. they understood in the intellectual system the popular vote is irrelevant. the electoral college calls the shots. if they could win the electoral college by any means they would occupy the administration. one of the mottos is god doesn't need a majority.

they proceeded with this but in order to execute their plans they needed money, media, and ground troops. the money poured in from the devos family, from oil barons from texas and louisiana and oklahoma and they were interested in fighting environmental regulations that were being instituted, they regarded richard nixon as something of a trader because he established the environmental protection agency during his administration and they are posted and sought to abolish it all together. there media came through fundamentalist broadcasting and it wasn't only radio networks but television network such as christian broadcasting network and the trinity broadcasting network and this occurred over appear go of american history

when you had various broadcasting regulations that were changing. there had been a fairness doctrine that required equal time for opposing parties on issues and candidates, that was dropped so these broadcasters were able legally to broadcast uncontested arguments in favor of one body of the political movement over another and the radio stations proliferated. you had new technologies that facilitated this. the advent of cable television. at one point you had 80% of american households tuned to network news at the dinner hour, some people in this room can remember the broadcast of uncle walter, mister cronkite who told us all in a very reassuring way what had been professionally reported in the world and how we might respond to it.

that changed with the advent of cable networks and dropping of the fairness doctrine you had a proliferation of cable channels that were representing opinion overreporting and representing contention and shouting matches over fact-finding and you had a loss of this broadcast news culture in much of the public and it was replaced by people not really exercising professional allegiance to facts. all of this served the purpose of a movement that wanted to downplay fact in favor of their ideology. the ground troops came through membership organizations and as i look through the roster of the council for national policy i found the head of the national rifle association as one of their most active members, the head of the

antiabortion organization, the susan b anthony list. this is an interesting organization. it had been founded in response to emily's list which sought to raise money for female candidates of all kinds. this organization, the susan b anthony list, claimed to represent the position of susan b anthony in opposing abortion. the susan b anthony scholars say this is fabricated. the quote they are using in their defense is not legitimate but they are using her name nonetheless and organizing women who go door-to-door, make phone calls and get engaged in political activity when operating like the nra under tax-exempt status as a social welfare organization. another head of an organization who belongs to the council for national policy is the head of

the tea party patriots. here you have a network of donors who can write checks in 6 and 7 figures and operate as a consortium and fund each other's organization in a circular manner. you have a network of media that started with radio and expands to television broadcasting and you are talking massive audiences. i didn't watch the fundamentalist television broadcasters very much before i started this project but i learned they could command 100 million viewers. you have a sizable contingent of people getting a 1-sided representation of our political life. then you have these organizations branching out. one of the largest of these whose owners in the lesion of the council for national

policy, the salem media network, salem is a massive media organization in the united states. it has many radio stations in critical areas but also has a large number of online platforms, has a book publishing company where best-selling books are published. it is multi platform and has an extremely large reach which is, i would just largely invisible to the listenership of national public radio. over the past 20 years these organizations have benefited from what i call a colony collapse of american professional journalism. what you had in the last 20 years is a number of newspapers, large number of newspapers that have closed especially in the middle of the united states, tens of thousands of american journalists who devoted their careers to learning figures fast paced reporting thrown out

of work. why? the first reason with technological change and when the ad revenues that used to go to newspapers and classifieds and display advertising migrated online and the advertising that used to support these reporters who were serving their community and serving in city hall and serving in the statehouse, serving in and investigating the role of money in politics, all of a sudden that function is gone and is replaced by useless click bait. that has been a major issue. we have lost one third of full-time statehouse reporters in this country. how are we ever supposed to know what our legislators are doing if no one is keeping an eye on them? you also have the disappearance of the audience for these newspapers so you have a less

informed electorate and more and more of your citizens some informed, misinformed and distant formed by the other media that arise to fill the vacuum. here you have this issue that allows the movement to make gradual progress and they refine their strategy over the years. they chose certain states. ohio was one bellwether state where there were a lot of experiments shall we say inactivating certain parts of the electorate and suppressing other parts of the electorate. going through the 1990s which i document thoroughly in the book you have critical elections affected by leading members of the council for national policy including kenneth blackwell, the secretary of state in ohio. at the same time he was

representing republican interests and there were some investigations into his activities that did not reflect on him well, but this all continued and they were making gradual progress until 2008. barack obama won the election and he won it in a landslide. there were many disturbing things to them about this. barack obama, the council for national policy's worst nightmare. leave aside his identity and look only at his policies. was representing women's rights, supporting marriage equality and advancing environmental regulations energetically and this was anathema but there was also a kind of insult to it because barack obama was a very modern

candidate and had one of the most advanced digital campaigns anyone had ever seen so he had a team of young technologists figuring out things about social media and they figured out how to energize certain portraits of the electorate through facebook and other social media feeds. they learned how to collect data on where the voters were, how they voted and if this was believed by many to have largely contributed to his history among other factors, the cnp and its allies went back to the drawing board. this time they had some new allies because among other people who were very disturbed by the obama victory were the koch brothers. the environmental regulations were not to their liking. their oil industries had been fined multiple times for degrading the environment in

more ways than one can count. oil pipe leakages, toxic residue. if you look at the art of the country i am from, oklahoma, texas, louisiana, you have cancer alley in louisiana, oil spills. there is a broad disregard for environmental safety and they have been fined, they have been taken to court, and they regard these actions to protect the public from environmental degradation as a means of hampering their profits. they also didn't like being outsmarted. democrats data operation appeared to have done that so at this point the carter brothers invest $50 million in a new data platform that is state-of-the-art called i 360

and it started gathering data with the help of a company called cambridge analytic a. where the democrats have been focusing on where the voter lived, what party they were registered for, whether they had voted in the last election this data platform went all out. went after what you watched on netflix, what your cholesterol level is, what you owe on your mortgage and it compiled this and then made a system where it said into and answered to door-to-door canvassers so whereas democratic canvasser would knock on the door and now perhaps whether the person voted in the last election or not there canvassers can say i know you had a burden last year and you must be frightened about your right to keep a firearm.

this was quite an innovation and it was adopted and developed with more money and more independence than anything the democrats had. it was also authored on a subsidized basis to selected candidates. one of those who was one of the most advanced was ted cruz. one of the things people don't know about ted cruz, he comes from a very interesting family. his father was a pro-castro cuban revolutionary and mathematician until he got religion and became a dominion nest preacher. a computer scientist, one of the true innovators, digital

campaign in front of the entire field and he waited this with his own allegiance to fundamentalist christianity and the dominion nest string but he and his technologists worked to develop an apps with a company called you campaign and there was a harmony between the data platform and apps and the organization represented for national policy such as the national rifle association and the susan b anthony list and others so it was a very sophisticated approach and there was a chance to pioneer it in 2016 in the british campaign for brexit and what happened in this case was the apps was working with cambridge analytica and others to go to

the bridge people and identify the ones who did not live in the large sophisticated urban areas, people who felt left behind by the new britain and they told them several things, they told them after test marketing many messages one of them was belonging to the eu for tens of millions of turks to invade britain. and deprive them of their livelihoods and if they didn't go with the eu all of that money could be reinvested in national health and improve their national health service. neither of these things happened to be true, but through this method of identifying target voters, motivating them to go vote and energizing them with messages of these falsehoods they surprised everyone with the brexit vote and we see the

united kingdom still struggling with the results day today. so they were very cheered by this laboratory experiment in their technology and turn to the us primaries. ted cruz -- a lot of these techniques in the iowa primary where he did very well, but over time he lost ground to an outsider, donald trump, who wrote on the bandwagon of his bizarre charisma and celebrity to win enough primaries to become the republican candidate. this caused a great crisis in this movement because many of the fundamentalist leaders said trump was not just there last choice out of 17 candidates, he wasn't even on the list. many of them like the southern baptists denounced him and

published statements that they would never support him. richard land, a member of the council for national policy who was very involved in the fundamentalist get out the vote effort was a true bellwether for the movement. however, they were faced with a moment i described in the book where they had to choose between getting behind trump and watching hillary clinton win the election and they made their choice. people often ask me regarding the book, how could the fundamentalists support someone like trump who is so different from them culturally and in terms of character and values. i read their books at great length and listened to their broadcasts so you may not have to.

what i found was they said donald trump may not be a man of god but he's an instrument of god. they call him osiris. .. marriott marquis hotel in new york in times where they called a thousand fundamentalist leaders to come here donald trump. the leading figures from the council for national policy including tony perkins and a

number of other figures identified with them set up a meeting where they would introduce trump to the fold as someone they could work with. and get buy-in from their community, which would, they hoped unlock the resources of the money, media and ground troops. trump appeared and he represented himself having been coached a bit as a member of their fold. and they all emerged several elements of a major deal had occurred. the first one was that members of the council for national policy, including tony perkins, would be writing portions of the republican national platform for the convention. that was agreed upon. that was going to focus on the social issues. they were largely going to concern women's and gender's

rights. and that indeed occurred. another element of the deal was the evangelical council began to be formed and it was dominated by members of the council for national policy. no other representations of american religious life or indeed the growing number of americans who do not have a religious affiliation. that was also agreed upon. finally, and perhaps most critically was the question of the federal judiciary. there is an agreement that trump would appoint federal judges to the supreme court, circuit courts and appeals courts from a list that these organizations had prepared. the list was drawn up by the federalist society, heritage foundation, national rifle association which became an arbitrary judicial nominations. and after the neil gorsuch

nomination the white house published a video of them meeting with trump in the white house to celebrate in his thanking them for their support in the process. the federal society, heritage foundation, and the nra all run by members of the council for national policy. let's think for a moment about our founding fathers. they instituted a system of checks and balances, as we all learned in high school civics courses. the administration and the legislative branch and judiciary are supposed to check excesses from each other. over time the federal court are appointed as lifetime appointments. but the idea is that they will balance each other out and serve the cause of moderation and will reflect the way that the public involves to represent the american people. what do they deal with?

the federal courts deal with the social issues, such as marriage equality, they deal with women's issues such as access to abortion and women's healthcare. they deal with issues around gerrymandering or not. they deal with voting laws. in the ways these are exercised in different states. they also deal with environmental regulations. these courts are a key to power and the republican congress had created a logjam of appointments for the obama administration, which resulted in a record number of appointments to be made under the next administration and those have gone on a pace. trump has appointed a record number of judges to federal judiciary spots. and they have already tipped one court, there are other courts being tipped from one

persuasion to another. this could have a lasting effect on our life as a nation. the other part of this is the level of qualification of these judges. the american bar association was asked by a republican president dwight eisenhower to create a rating system for judges qualification and they've done that for every president until now and a republican president has gotten higher ratings then a democrat. it's not a partisan exercise that's looking at their professional qualifications will stop trump has appointed a record number of judges who are deemed unqualified based on their ideological allegiance to this movement. as he agreed to do at the outset. after the meeting at the marriott marquis the whole movement turned on a dime,

landed who had announced trump and place it last on his list had ãbground troops went door-to-door the candidate that they had opposed had they now supported.the media turned around and supported trump and all of this went into overdrive. the democrats had me and canvassers too but the republicans had a strategic advantage which was that their data and apps were first of all networked across the country. state levels fed into the master and that was diffused to the candidates they supported across the country and they were also networked into campaigners who were not campaigning on behalf of the republican party. they were campaigning on behalf of the national rifle association, susan b anthony list and the other organizations. by the tens of thousands.

that was involved in many states. so the question going into 20/20 is whether this pattern will avail. i was able to follow the 2018 midterms very closely as i was writing the book. the democrats celebrated the fact that they won the house which was corresponding to the general population. the republicans won seats in the set senate which is something they advertise in their campaign strategy. i looked at the claire mccaskill as a case study and looked at the way the trump organization, the nra, susan b anthony list, and others, joined together and blanketed that state with anti-mccaskill activity. you had the republican party doing its own work on the side

but you had it magnified and multiplied by the other forces plus the media with radio stations that outnumbered npr for example the state of missouri. what you have is a rather uneven playing field. it's one that has continued to this day. at this point the app developers added a special feature which was a texting feature. the argument was that the most likely people to get to vote would be older white fundamentalists, pressured by their religious communities. while the democrats were doing fancy virtual-reality on their apps, the republican developer said that the killer app was text. that's what old people do. what they did was develop a series of apps and when you

don't read the 50 pages of permissions that nobody ever reads and you just download the app, you have given it access to your entire directory on your phone. at that point you also have given them permission to send a personalized text from you to each person in your directory telling them when and how and where to vote. ãb in the world of technology people don't like to think about retro media like radio and tax. they always want to go after the shiny new thing. this movement is very focused on what actually works and get people to the polls to vote and vote in a certain way. one of the problems i have with it is that there is so much of it that it simply based on falsehood.let's start with abortion, which is probably the main emphasis of their

campaign. what they are saying in their broadcast center media is that democrats are in favor of what they call birthday abortion. they say that democrats want to execute babies on the day of their birth. i've scoured the public record every way i can, i've never found a democrat or actually anyone who wants to execute babies on the day of their birth. but this has been said by trump, by crews, by their media and it's being promulgated not only in radio programs but i've seen anna animation films they have near full born babies being extracted from the womb and by them arguing this is what democrats like to do. it simply isn't true. i think there's an honest and important conversation to be had about abortion. i'm perfectly open to that. it should be based on fact.

and at this point, that's not what's happening, it's being used to rouse a motion through graphic and false depictions and that's not the way our political system should operate. we also have the same apps and the same antiabortion platform being implement it for the national elections in canada. so right now where we are is the public is captivated by the daily spectacle from the white house. it's what i called dust in your eyes. there's always something new to stare at, to wonder at and that can be distracting the public from the main event. there is a nubian election next year and it's going to have a determination of the future, not just in the country but in many ways the future of the planet. being distracted at this point is not a good idea. there is a lot of attention

focused on the idea of impeachment. it turns out that mike pence has been an ally of the council for national policy for over 20 years. there are many signs, which i documented my book, he was actually their preferred candidate. it could be that everyone who is focused on impeachment may actually be serving their longer-term purpose. i wrote shadow network at a time when i dropped everything else i was doing because i thought it was important to provide all the documentation of this movement that i could. whatever your political persuasion i think it's important that american citizens know how this works, understand it, and figure out how they respond to it. i don't claim it's the whole story, it's not the only story, but i do believe it's a significant part of the story. ultimately it's a question of

our commitment to democracy. you know who won the election in 2016? didn't vote. trump got 27 percent, hillary got 28 percent, didn't vote got 40%. we should all care deeply about that. the combination of people who are eligible to vote and didn't register, seven percent of people registered and didn't vote, 33 percent. the future of the world rests on some people and some swing states. not that many because that's our system works. if people don't pay attention to it they are ceding their vote for the future. i should add that voters over 65 or 30% more likely to vote than those under 30. so you have an entire generation of americans who are ceding their future to people who won't be around to

experience it. my last two books run anti-nazi movements in berlin and occupied paris. i've been working from the perspective of a historian. i believe when historians in the future look back on our time they are going to ask whether we were willing to defend our democracy through the peaceful means we have at our disposal. and that, at the end of the day, is a ballot box. thank you. [applause] any questions? i think you are supposed to get a microphone. are there any questions from

someone willing to use the mic? [inaudible background conversations] >> you connected many of the dots that i knew were out there. the only dock that you have it connected at all is putin and the russian connection and we've been seeing lately how greatly he is benefiting from all of this. i'm wondering, in your opinion, since we can't necessarily back this up. that's the first part, putin. i'm wondering how distressed he might be about catalonia when you think about history when you think about riots in spain,

about catalonia and independence. a two-part question. >> the question was, how i tie in what has happened with the russian investigation. as the first part. the second part is how i respond to the riots in catalonia. i've taught in catalonia and barcelona but not for some years. as someone who attempts always to be an evidence-based and fact-based reporter i would rather know more about it before i opine. in terms of the russian investigation, i knew there were many signs of connections is always doing my reporting and i had to limit what i was trying to do because as you point out they were all already an awful lot of dots. however, after i finish the manuscript and the book was

printed, the democrats on the senate finance committee published a report that stated that maria bettina had been in touch with the national rifle association and they published an email where the nra offered to pay her way to the cmp meetings. so where there is smoke there may well be fire. i guess the frustrating part about writing a book like this is when you do have to confine it. i felt it would be good to publish it now and that if i did it over a three-year period it might be a postmortem, which was a ãi did what i could in the time i had. i hope lots of other people follow-up because there are so many additional different avenues for investigation and you name the first.

>> given all your extensive research, is there anything that gives you hope? [laughter] >> the american people. i do believe in this country and i think that this country has responded to periods of crisis in the past in ways that they didn't even know they could. but i also look at people as individuals and, my last two books about the anti-nazi resistance in europe i'm writing about individuals who always recognized the nazi threat and when they undertook their most courageous actions this is 1940, 1941 and every indication was that the nazis had won the war. they hadn't invaded the soviet

union yet, the u.s. wasn't in on the war so it looked like they were fighting an impossible enemy. they decided exactly what they could do and they did it. and while their actions may have only affected a small percentage of the lives that they managed to say, those mattered. i was in paris talking to 80-year-old children who been rescued by the network in paris run by suzanne spock. talk with people who are alive because a housewife decided to step out of your comfort zone and do something. her motto ãbyou got to do something. so i think when people realize that the moment is all hands on deck for democracy and they put aside some of their personal interest, amazing things can happen.

and 80,000 vote in 2016 do the math about how small these margins are. of course there is a question of money but it's not all money. a lot of what this movement has actually taught me is that the gold standard for political campaigns is not facebook feeds people click and move on, it is someone who takes the time to go door-to-door see someone face-to-face, listen to them, speak to them and hand them a piece of printed literature. hand-to-hand and asked them to vote. that's what really works. these people are very clever and figuring it out. i was astonished to read that the democratic national party did not manage to get campaign literature to wisconsin in 2016. much less have the candidate's visit. i believe people can learn.

[laughter] and as a historian i will watch and see whether i'm right. >> that's a great segue to my question and you sort of answered it but i will ask anywhere which is we are in a very important state sound like one of the things we can do is go door-to-door but do we want to go door-to-door in other areas because we kick our kind of a blue district. with the single most important thing those of us that want to do something outside of her comfort zone to do. >> and not a political activist.i'm somebody who wrote a book that explains the mechanics of the movement that's affected our national history. i'm not going to be prescriptive. i will tell you there's many organizations that are taking on the job you can look for them and decide what you think will be most effective. that's all out there. but i do think, i will be enough of an advocate to say getting out the vote is very important in a democracy. i don't think that's being

partisan. and i do think that it's very important to help people understand that you can take a single issue like abortion and distort it and inflate it when people should be thinking about whether they have clean water to drink and whether their children can go to school and whether they have healthcare to sweep all that aside over a falsely positive debate over abortion i feel is inappropriate. if you look at the voter guides of these organizations, climate and environment aren't even on the list. they don't exist. so they are making these cases for issues based on how much emotion they can arouse. i have to say it's pretty effective but i do feel that they are probably strategists who could address this in effective ways too. >> you have any indication yet

that there are forces on the other side that have up there arsenal to counteract what you've experienced and what you've written about here and an effective way in this cycle? do you see the tools being deployed now matching with the firepower out there? >> i have interviewed strategists from both republican and democratic party i do believe that both of them are ramping up their forces considerably. people who are interested in following this might look at an article by thomas edsall in the new york times about trumps enormous warchest and buying facebook as it was out last week. the kind of updates some of the reporting i have the book. i think that yes both sides are upping their game.

and both sides understand that this is sort of armageddon. to use such language. because with another four years of this movement in power, you start to have the courts totally transformed. the federal judges who have held on and even delayed their retirement because they don't want to be replaced by nominees from this administration. they can hold on for a year or two there and hang on for five. you could see the united states transformed into quite a different society with this. i think both sides realize it but i have observed one thing, when i look at the republicans in this movement i say, it runs like a corporation, once they make a decision, it's command and control, everything moves in the same direction and you

get the feeling that it's run by people who are business majors. the democrats more like lawyers. let's all contest and let's come up with every possible footnote to contest the other democrat. there is a very divisive culture that goes on that you could say was kind of democratic in its way. but it's not always politically effective. >> good segue into my question. the gop has become, as far as i'm concerned, in a non-entity. they have really become a trump party. and we have a morally corrupt president. what do you see has led to the total co-opting of the republican party by trump and his actions and do you see any ability for the republican party to go back to the old

moderate conservative party or has it been lost forever do you think? >> this is in my book. and what i describe is a set of tactics it evolves over time. that are about purging moderates and reinforcing hardliners. it actually starts with the southern baptist convention in 1960s in texas. where moderates and southern baptist church leadership are purged. by some questionable political tactics at the annual southern baptist convention. then it moves on to the national rifle association which turns out used to be a patriotic marksmanship organization which helped with gun safety. and was not really so apart from the national feeling about

gun safety and gun control. there was something called the cincinnati revolt where hardliners took it over, purged a moderate entered it into a political one organization. over time the same thing happened with the republican party. there were many honorable republicans we could all name, who voted on legislation, worked across the aisle on issues, who were focused on making things work for people and who supported critical issues in the environment and other areas of public life. and many of them were purged. so you can go through chapter by chapter and see who and when they were. can it be recovered? i believe that. but that's an opinion. i can't prove it. but i have a lot of republican friends who are not only dismayed by the current state of affairs, and not only

alienated by the trump administration, they speak with a sense of personal betrayal. this is not the party that i belong to. this is not the party a supported and i really hope they will have something to go back to because we need at least a two party system. we need honorable people on all sides. this may be a chance for kind of renewal of american democracy. she said optimistically. >> evangelicals consider trump the second coming or there is something in it for them. the end of days. what are they getting out of this trump administration? why are they still sold? >> one issue i had to deal with in the book was the question of

some definitions because it's not a bright line between protestant, evangelical, fundamentalist and i had to use some shorthand because there just aren't precise definitions. i will say that within the evangelical community there are many different strains of social attitudes. and there are people such as the group called the red letter christians who are evangelicals who subscribe to the idea that christianity involves the words of jesus printed in red letters in the new testament such as the beatitudes. which are big factors in the movement i described. so i don't think it's right to lump anyone together into a single category and i do feel that many of the fundamentalists who'd been led

to support the current administration are questioning it on many accounts. right now you see a parting of the way on the issue of the kurds. there is a lot of questioning about trumps policies and about his decision-making process on account. and i also suggest that anybody who is seriously engaged in this topic look at some of the more serious analysis available in my absolute favorite is larry sabato operation of that of the university of virginia and he has a center that analyzes holes and lyrical trends in a very academically sound way and it's called larry sabato's crystal ball. i don't think he predicts the future but he charts the present with i think a fair amount of precision. so i think it's really important because they will be a very small group of