what i want literature to do is like raise more questions than answers, be a force of unsettling or overturning narratives, i did that overturn narrative or the complicated narrative of the destructive narrative shows up all over the place in relation to subjects in relation to my own birth story come ince relation to a number f things. so certainly, i calving something that is screening and burning rather than -- very much at the core of this project. >> leslie jamison, author of "make it scream, make it burn." thank you very much. [applause] >> i just want to see if you want to get more of leslie, she will be on our panel later this evening. she will be part of the panel what my mother and i don't talk about. that's at 9:00 tonight in the community with. anyway, thank you very much.

>> booktv continues now on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> good afternoon, everybody. .. >> it's a pleasure to be with you and this merges several of my interests. the constitution,conservative politics , books about those things, the heritage foundation and my friends

jason and julie j fitz. i first came to know the name jason chaffetz when he became a placekicker at byu. this date holds records including the most successful points after touchdown scored in a single game and i think in a single season. and he was also famous for the fact immediately after he kicked a field goal for or pat, the helmet would come off and then he had this awesome slow jog to the sidelines and he became known as the chaffetz and it resulted in something called the chaffetz rule but i actually think it played a key role in his success as a statesman in the state of utah. people came to know him and they knew who he was. i remember many years later,

long after he had played for byu and had a successful career as a businessman, i met him in person for the first time. i was quite starstruck because it was a big deal. met him while he was running governor huntsman's campaign for governor before he was governorhuntsman . and he, jason chaffetz himself convinced me that john huntsman was the man to become utah's next governor in 2004 we had a long conversation about it at the convention and several months after that after governor huntsman got elected he called me and informed me i was under consideration or a position within thehuntsman administration and he said i didn't apply and he said i don't care, we want to talk to you anyway . we hit it off and we ended up working together i ended up serving as his general counsel at the time when

jason chaffetz was chief of staff. but my most important role during that time was when i became his chauffeur. he and i live closer together and any two members of the senior staff and one point jason broke his foot, long story, we won't getinto that . it sounds like the punchline to a joke and it was quite serious but he fell and broke his foot and had to be in a cast, had to be elevated for several months so i'm going to pick him up at his home in utah and he would sit in the backseat of the car he could keep his foot elevated and i asked him if you wanted me to get a hat, chauffeur and i didn'tcharge them anything . the only thing i charged him was he had to agree to be subjected to my empty rants on constitutional issues and to listen to tape-recorded supreme court arguments which who wouldn't want to do that? but i digress.

we're not here to talk about any of that. we're here to talk about the fact that of all, jason chaffetz is a hero when it comes to defending individual liberty and fighting against big government and he someone was willing to call out the left, both those who identify themselves as part of the left and also those who just want to build big government. someone who understands the fact that there is something of a zero-sum game when it comes to defending liberty. that if you are a government as you get bigger, as you become more powerful as a government, you do so at the expense of individual liberty. he understands the fact that government itselfis not and never can be, never will be omniscient, omnipotent or consistently benevolent . argument is itself the use of collectiveforce , organized force and it's run by fallible mortal individuals.

consequently, we have to carefully constrain its power and we have to make sure it's not abuse. in his latest book, powergrab , jason explains how the levers of government power have been orchestrated in such a way as to effectively weapon eyes the threatening power of government. in a way that advances the political agenda of the left for another way of describing it might be advancing the politicalagenda of those who would expand government at the expense of individual liberty . he blows a whistle on how they have weapon eyes the use of criminal investigations in order to achieve a particular political outcome. to be clear, as jason chaffetz makes clear in power grab, this isn't a simple question of the red team versus the blue team .

this is a question of liberty versus centralized government power. we fought a war over that. we won that war and we shouldn't be eager to go back to a system in which government knows best and government holds allthe power. we as a people are the sovereigns and we can't go back to a time where that is not the case . that's why jason chaffetz's book power grab is such an important tool for those who want to live in a land where they are free. whether you call yourself a conservative or a liberal or libertarian or something else , it shouldn't matter. what should matter to you is the concept of liberty and the concept that government exists for certain limited purposes, to make sure we're secure and to make sure we

have an enterprise that uses collective force for the purpose of defending life, liberty and property. the more we deviate from that, the more we run into a very real risk of a power grab where we become less free and less secure in our lives, liberty and property . there's not a day that goes by that i don't miss having jason chaffetz serving in the house of representatives. he was someone who in addition to being a trusted friend and colleague when we worked in governor huntsman's office was someone who i came to trust and love working with when he was serving in the house of representatives and during my term in office inthe senate . it's hard for me to remember an issue where he and i took opposing viewpoints .

he and i worked together on countless issues. i take comfort though in the fact that he's able to do an enormous amount of good where he is and informing the american people about the risks of biggovernment and keeping them informed of what's going on in washington . and he's exercising a lot of influence by writing books like power grab, which i highly recommend so with that join me in welcoming jason chaffetz, the author of power grab . >> thank you, thanks for being here. thanks to senator lee. he had a vote and now he's got another vote on the floor there. so it's probably best that he do that. right now i get totell my stories while he's not here, that's even better .

i first said mike, this is amazing because we were at the utah county convention. there's literally 1000+ people at this event and this gentleman comes up and we start talking and he introduces himself as mike and i said do you have a card or something ? what's your name and he said mike lee. i knew he was the spitting image of his father who was, had been the president of brigham young university and he said mike lee and i said any relation to rex lee and hesaid that's my dad. i already knew that before he answered the question. i could somehow tell he's related . rex lee was solicitor general for ronald reagan and he had argued some 100+ cases before the supreme court. fast-forward, i'm the chief of staff and he's general counsel, one of the best things i did while i was chief of staff and it is true, i broke my foot.

i broke my right foot so i couldn't use the accelerator. i tried to convince my wife i could drive left-footed and she said i'm not going to do that and he would drive me to and from every day and what he didn't tell you is he had a cassette tape player in his car and he would listen to his dad argue these supreme court cases so he would literally put the cassette tape in their. that's how much the guy loved the law and we would listen to the oral presentations before the supreme court. i learned a lot but that's what mike does forfun. he's not listening to music or something like that . you've got to love a guy who's that committed to it. mike is going to walk us through a few things. i want to acknowledge my wife julie who is here with me. i appreciate her being here.

i appreciate all of you being here. i want to thank the heritage foundation for making this all possible. good heritage does in terms of informing people, being a resource while i was in congress, it's such a great resource, so many good minds thinking through tough issues. the quick of why i wrote the book as i say at the beginning, even covey who is from our congressional district wrote basic habits, seek first to understand, then be understood. and i wholeheartedly believe that. i also believe what margaret thatcher said. she said first you need to win the argument, then you can go out and win the votes and i always tell even before i went to congress, i it became more evident once i was there that republicans, conservatives, we were pathetic in our communication. we were getting no help from the mass media, the national

media was not going to be a conduit to which we could get our message out and have the platform or the time to be able to do that. so it was compounded by that. but i've always felt like we as conservatives have the right message. we just didn't say it very well and we didn't say it enough. and i remember when i was first in congress i met with eric cantor who had eight senior positionat the time, because i had been invited to be on fox news and i had , i couldn't believe it. so i called up eric cantor and i said are you all right if i go on fox news and he's like jason, are you kidding me ? go out there as much as you possibly can to get out our message and go on every other network you can get on and talk about why you believe what you believe . it was the right answer. it was good advice and i would argue that we need more people who can get in front of those cameras to go on all

the networks to talk about what it is we believe and give that perspective. i don't buy into the idea that you need to just sit back and well, they're not going to give us a fair shake so we're not going to go on their. i did more interviews on msnbc and cbn, you probably didn't see them. not that many people saw them. then i did even on fox news. so 8 and a half years in congress and i left and i am blessed to have this continued relationship with fox but i always felt like i can still contribute in the public square because now more than ever i can get out there and talk about issues that matter for our country and at least from a conservative standpoint. and i've been blessed to have this relationship with harpercollins who did my first book called the deep state, newyork times bestseller and we launched

this book literally seven days ago , power grab which is bifurcated into two different areas. how is it the democrats are using the levers of power that they have to do things that you all wouldn't necessarily see unless you'd maybe been incongress or were really paying attention , but you need somebody draw your attention to them and what are the things that you're doing outside of congress to change the dynamic and the narrative and that was the first two chapters of the book that scared the living daylights out of you because they are doing some things on the left that will affect all of us whether you realize it or not. we as conservatives and republicans don't play off them nearly enough, democrats are always playing offense. and that's what i think i articulate here but mike is going to walk us through and then we're going to do some q and a, at least i hope so 's

full disclosure, i worked for the former congressman when he was chairman of the house oversight committee so a lot of this stuff in his book are some memories of the good times we had when he was running the committee.i'll go through a couple of those but i'd like to start off with your final town hall after trump was elected. things got ugly. that's a good table setter for whatthe environment looks like now. tell us a little bit about that . >> i write about this in the forward area and i had one my fifthterm in congress . i was left to get 73 percent of the vote. this was roughly 4 or five weeks as i recall after donald trump had been sworn in so we're talking the heart of winter in utah and all of a sudden i'm having town hall meetings. i have had i don't know how many town hall meetings. i love town hall meetings. usually a group of this size, people can interact.

i learned a lot by the questions that are asking, it's a good format. the quick of it is democrats got a hold of this and had this group called indivisible utah which had a national presence, but they had a specific manual about how to take over a town hall meeting . this thing blossomed and blew up into thousand plus people that were showing up and they wanted to create thisillusion . it's a recurring theme but they wanted to create this illusion that a conservative republican in a state safe district who just happened to be the chairman of the oversight committeewith the newly minted president of the united states donald trump , that his voters were mad. that he didn't do his job and we need to hold the president accountable and he needed to do this and do that and they had this long list of demands of things they wanted me to do much of which i didn't think were in the purview of the united states congress .

and so much so that it got out of control and it you've got to read the account but we had 30+ police officers who had people openly carrying weapons withmasks in the parking lot . we had swat teams. it turned into quite a fiasco. the highlight of which i'll give you is that there were two members of the national media that had shown up. i don't remember ever having national media show up to my town hall after i won my fifth election with 73 percent of the vote, we are weeks into the hundred 15th congress. really? this one reporter insisted she interview me and i said let me talk to her on the phone first. and i said to her, why are you here? why are you here? we have a source in san francisco that says there's going to be a writerand

perhaps a fire and i said really . did you ever think thatmaybe, did you tell law enforcement about that ? did you call my office about that? you're only telling me this because i asked you why you're here. and she said no . and i said, you're going to literally put 1000+ people in danger if you think there's going to be a riot and a fire, potentially telling me people might die. you believe there is enough credibility, that's why you're here and these people were doing a live shot from my town hall meeting. and i call it the last town hallbecause it was the last one i ended up doing but this is how these people play . there is this kind of recurring theme in here that they really do believe on that radical far left side, they throw all these labels like fascist and all these negative terms on donald

trump . but what i see them doing is exactly what they claim the president was doing. that in order to protect our freedom, they needed to take it away. in order to make sure the first amendment is safe, they need to take away our rights under the first amendment. it's a recurring theme but i could go on and on about this particular town hall meeting but it was used as a tool and the prop . a paid people to come in, there were people from all kinds of states but they wanted to create this illusion that it was a organic utah phenomenon and that there were all these stories that say look how many problems donald trump's was creating for everybody you get into a lot of examples of double standards or hypocrisy and one of the most telling ithink is when you first came to congress republicans were referred to as the party of no . but now the media and others like to call the left the

resistance. this mythological name that connotes some positive justification. >> how often have you heard the republicans are the party of no. because we're somehow opposed to a public policy position that barack obama and the democrats were championing that we were the party of no but if all of a sudden now you don't wear the liberal credentials, unless your anti-trump no matter what, no matter what position he possiblytakes , they're going to take the opposite one. i did that when i was in third grade. i'd say yes you didn't, no you did. they didn't know how to answer the question. and it's very true. i sent somebody today on the streets wearing a black shirt with white lettering and it said resistance andthey were proud they were part of the resistance . let's be a little bit more adult about it and tackle

this issue by issue. if we disagree but disagree but let's have that debate and i believe the more conservatives actually have the debate, we win that debate and i've been going around the country telling people, i want to share this message with you. i do believe we can't be afraid of havingthat discussion . but let's also talk from our hearts. i'm tired of conceding the compassion card to the democrats. they are not the more compassionate caring group and what i worry about is when we have the debate and discussion we want to smother people with statistics and numbers andthis study . i think we also as conservatives, i've got my campaign hat on a little bit, need to talk about why we believe what we believe . i think we are partly successful because we talk about principle.

but go back up to the principal. my guess is if you're here at this meeting, you have a set of principlesthat you believe in . but i think that a lot of conservatives forget to step one, let's talk about why you believe what you believe, then we can argue about how we get there and individual policy issues. but the democrats want to shut down the debate. i want to create this evil appearance that how dare you, that's why i think all this bullying that we do day after day on television and newspapers, it's just a bunch of hogwash. people don't want to admit out loud that they're going to vote for donald trump as opposed to say on hillary clinton because they don't want their neighbors or somebody else to beat them over the head with it. they just try to embarrass them and that is part of the strategy, they want to embarrass people 's one of my favorite part is when you put your investigator had on and start digging through the tax returns of a bunch of the big nonprofits on the left. what did you discover and how these operations are financed

in some of the shady accounting transactions, full disclosure as a nonprofit i'm glad i learned about the restrictions for the first time in this book , we don't do any of that . >> this is what people need to understand. if you look at the priorities that they have put forward in congress and you look through any hole that's out there about what are the most important issues, you're going to hear about healthcare. you're going to hear about the economy. you're going to hear about immigration . why is it thatnancy pelosi has hr one , house resolution one. what is her first bill mark does it have anything to do on top 20 or top 50 issues mark it doesn't. hr one is about how to reconfigure elections . she wants to reconstitute how we do elections in this country. because it's their calculus that they have to reconfigure how they do voting in this

country in order for them to winlong-term . so one of the weapons of war i think is something that i'm guessing 98 percent of you never heard of before. and that is they have learned to weapon eyes not for profit . planned parenthood, poverty law center, aclu and i've got a laundry list ofthem in their . 990 is a form that they need to fill out, essentially at the top line tax return or a not-for-profit. and what you're going to see consistently in these 990s is a for-profit entity called grassroots campaign incorporated. there are hundreds of different types of organizations that this douglas phelps has been involved with. he's done fundraisers for joe biden, barack obama and the first went out of college work for this organization, accredited disorganization .

the one that itself is involved with and was teaching him all he needed to know about how to win campaigns. believe barack obama, this is how they learn how to dothis . here's the way it works. you are a 501(c)(3) which is a not-for-profit where you can get if you make a donation a tax write off. then there are 501(c) four which are allowed to engage in more politics but have a different tax treatment on how you can write off your taxes and talk to your tax accountant if you have questions over which ones are which these 501(c)(3) organizations as a non-for profit, this gentleman could go and make a $10 million donation and get a tax benefit fordoing so . but that's nonprofit organization is hiring a for-profit organization, grassrootscampaign incorporated who will do fundraising . they will put on t-shirts,

aclu. southern poverty law center, and then they will start knocking doors. planned parenthood will knock on your door and say weare raising money, $50 for planned parenthood . are you with us or against us ? i love planned parenthood, i'll give you $100. what does that tell youabout that voter ? do you think they're going to vote for a democrat or the republican ? you hate planned parenthood, you think they're awful organizations , there's a voter that we have now identified so that we don't want to have voting in this election and what they do is because the for-profit entity has now gathered all this information, then they go and they work for the dietrich will see, the dnc in swing states and they can go out and target individuals bypassing all of the campaign

finance rules. if this gentleman wantedto participate in an election , his individual campaign conservation limit is $2800 and there's certain things you can and cannot do with that money but problem here is if you look at the charts we put in there, planned parenthood over an eight year period, every single year hired grassroots campaigns to do fundraising they lost money . they did not raise as much as they said and then they'd hire themagain and spend more moneywith them. they lost something like $11 million over eight years . why would they do that ? i raise that as a question because if you're going to have the irs do an audit, this is the place you should be doing an audit because there strictly prohibited from engaging in this type of campaign work and yet they are blatant about it and i wish everybody would realize it . the second part and not have to move quickly . i address later, not in the

first few chapters later on hr one, i can't remember which chapter it is about vote listing and you may have heard about thisterm but basically , democrats in legislation have supported the idea, they want to make this law everywhere you go that you do not have to be present to actually vote. vote harvesting allows somebody, not to pick on this gentleman here . he can go around, there's a los angeles time story about this woman who is an undocumented person. she's here illegally. she's not, just here illegally going out and collecting ballots from all of you. and knock on your door and say i knowyou didn't get to the poll, you didn't want to fill out your ballot . i know it'sinconvenient but if you give me your ballot , fill it outand i'll turn it in for you .anything you

think could gowrong in that scenario ? a lot could go wrong. if you look at i believe it's 18 in california that the republicans lost in the last election, there were thousands and thousands of votes that showed up after the deadline that came in oh my gosh, miraculously infavor of the democrats . and in proportions that were totally different. why are we having thisspecial election north carolina ? it's illegal to do vote harvesting in north carolina . ironically joe kennedy, congressman from massachusetts complainedabout it. the republicans are cheating . you just voted on legislation to make this legal everywhere in the country. this is but one thing out of a list of 30 that the democrats are trying to do to grab back more power, change

the way we do things and if we don't open up our eyes and be cognizant of it, they're going to blow through this. i don't know how you win an election in california when democrats play by different rules than republicans and engage in this type of vote harvesting. there is evidence it happened in arizona, there's evidence it's happened in other places . even in utah there's allegations that thousands of votes showed up after the deadline. democrats electedas county clerk ,

>> abraham lincoln, when he came on the committee, this was his committee assignment when he was in the united states congress. it's interesting, he became known as spotty, because he was challenging the president where were the origins of the mexican-american war, and he didn't believe -- there's a great history there of this committee, of what it's been able to do. what's interesting is what changed when i left, because the oversight and government reform committee changed, and now nan is i pelosi and -- nan i city pelosi and elijiah cummings changed this committee, it's called the committee on oversight and reform. see, democrats don't believe that government is a problem, they think it's a solution to everything. they don't need to hook at what government's doing because government is all good. and what you see now are

hearings and a press that go after individuals and individual corporations. that is not necessarily the purview of the united states congress. again, the committee is this wide, probably the widest berth of any sort of jurisdiction. there are two supreme court cases that we lay out here where oversight wings were clipped back to try to get it on the straight is and narrow which is look after government. we had hearings, for instance, mylan pharmaceuticals and the end -- epipen situation, you know, the pharma boy where we did call in individual corporations. but what we also did is called in the fda and health and human services to say how does this happen? what elijiah cummings is doing is now demanding and sending out subpoenas and directives to go and letters in record amount to

look under the books, without any evidence of wrongdoing, by the way. presupposing the outcomes on fishing expeditions to go look into the lives of individuals. and if you have proximity to donald trump, look out. because that is a prime time target. just offering an agreement, which nobody has seen the light of day between lie ya cummings, jerry nadler, adam schiff, maxine waters, and i want to say there's a fifth one in there about how they were going to do investigations and how they were going to do impeachment. these people laid this all out before the 116th congress even started. i think that's what they're doing right here, right now. there is no justification or evidence to you have a lot of -- to justify a lot of this.

they just literally want to find out -- let's go figure it out, then we'll go figure out what the crime is. but it all starts with the idea and the premise that we don't need to look at government, we need to look at people, we need to hook at individuals. it's -- look at individuals. it's kind of scary that the congressional, you know, the branch of government, that they would engage in this kind of witch hunt, this kind of power grab, this sort of diving deep. it is scary, the abuse of the power that is going on there. >> and one of the most high profile examples, obviously, is the confirmation process of justice calf gnawing. -- kavanaugh. you talked about how choreographed it was from the opening scene. maybe you could -- >> yeah. we go through -- i mean, there are whole books you could write on just the kavanaugh situation. but the prework, what we try to focus on is the work that they were doing and the outlines that they had no matter who it was. this was going to be, this was going to be a narrative about a

frat boy who was just out of control and gone awry. the clearest example, it's been out there, it's not brand spanking new in my book, but we remind people about this press release that was already written with xxxx, they just needed to fill in the name. and when you see that in sum total in retrospect put together in the way we did it in this chapter, it reminds you of how evil and how bad it was. and i do think it's almost humorous that these democratic senators, every single one of them had pledged to vote no and then complained about the lack of openness and transparency. you still have senator schumer and the others say -- and this is a trick they always do, right? they always do this. they ask for things that they know cannot be given to them. you cannot reveal, by law, grand jury material. you cannot -- there is executive

privilege that the president has with his seniormost advisers. what jerry nadler does time and time again, and they did it partly in the kavanaugh situation, is they ask for information that the president has executive privilege on. it's the same claim that barack obama claimed. believe me, i wanted to get ben rhodes before our committee to talk about that iran deal. and i started -- i invited ben rhodes to come testify before the oversight committee. he was in the new yorker, he was doing public speeches. well, certainly if he has time to do all the media and public speeches, he can come talk to congress about this. oh, no, no, no. they claimed executive privilege. they said there's a separation of powers issue, and i dropped it. i didn't issue a subpoena. the difference now is cummings and nadler will issue subpoenas and say, see? they don't comply. but they know if it goes to court, they will never win but

they don't care because that court date's going to come after the next election. they want to create a narrative -- i guarantee you're going to hear them say we issued 250 subpoenas, they never responded. most of them are wholly bogus and a court which laughs them out of there. the reason jerry madler -- nadler became the chairman of the judiciary committee is because he went to his colleagues and said i'm better suited to do impeachment. come with me, i'm going to do impeachment. and that's how he beat out zoe lofgren, and he became a chair of the committee x. this is what he's doing, he's abusing his power. >> one last question from me, and then we'll shift. we'll end on a positive note like you do in your book. >> yeah. >> what's the path forward, what should conservatives be looking toward to kind of rein this? >> i don't want to just lay out all the bad, right?

you come and listen to the meeting, and you're bummed out. it's not the feel-good meeting of the year. try to end on a positive note that this is the greatest country on the face of the planet. somehow, some way the american people figure these things out. they stiff out authenticity, they understand these issues, but we have to be aware of them. the very fact i write that you're reading the book is good news, the fact that people, like, want to dive deeper on these issues. but with i also think it's incumbent that we engage in federalism, that we push back on the tenth amendment, we push these -- the federal government does too many things to too many people. so much of this either shouldn't be done at all or should be the purview of the states. somehow we've got to neuter the power of the federal government and just get them out of so much of this business. and i think a lot of those answers will be pushing forward states' rights and doing those types of things. but it also takes making sure

that we're engaged as a people and that people individually get and decide that they're going to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. and so with that, i can't thank you enough for being here and hearing me out, and i hope you enjoyed the book, i really do. but if you have a few minutes for questions -- if you've got to go, but if you have a few minutes for questions, love to do it. [applause] yeah. >> you mentioned the conspiracy behind the town halls and creating disruption, and we know during the rallies, all the trump rallies that project veritas had that tape showing democrat operatives saying they paid people to go to incite violence. those are felonies. what they did to you, what they did to him. i actually went to the party and asked them were they going to prosecute. it's a great way also to get discovery on the democrats. but nothing ever happened. i mean, i think we really have

to pursue things like these. these people that are inciting violence, and we know there's several, you know, last count was close to a thousand attacks on trump supporters and republicans. we've got to do something legally to really lay down the hammer. >> yeah. i, i don't know that -- i think there was one person that was arrested, and they basically took her out and then just released her. they didn't charge her with anything. they did detain her. she was going a little, a little crazy. i can't imagine what it's like at trump rallies. there's good and bad at these things. first of all, the organic energy behind donald trump -- he can go anywhere in this country and probably get 100,000 people. i look at the democrats, a joe biden rally -- [laughter] they couldn't pay enough people to show up to fill a high school on target with those folks. i agree with your premise in

general overall, because i think you see this everywhere from what u.s. attorney durham's dealing with. i think there is a huge swatch of americans who does not believe that there's an equal application of justice under -- it's just, it's one-sided. and it's unfortunate, if and i think -- my grandfather was a career fbi agent, and i think if you looked at the fbi today, he would cringe. what i'm trying to say is i think it happens all across the board. you can take these illegal immigration cases, you can take simple town hall people trying to, you know, yelling, screaming, disrupting, threatening, carrying weapons on school grounds. i don't think they arrested anybody. i've got pictures, body cam pictures from police officers. i trusted their judgment at my town hall to make the right decision and keep the calm, and i think they made all the right

calls. they've learned from some of these others where the escalations happen. then i look at portland, and i see, you know, antifa and others just running roughshod, and nobody's arrested, let alone prosecuted, and i think that's wrong. and i think conservatives are right to point that out, because i think we've been on the receiving end, and it's gone on too long, and there doesn't seem to be any consequence to truly threatening or aggressive behavior where there's an actual assault. thank you. touched on something that much bigger and broader than my up to hall. yeah. >> [inaudible] >> i think they're broadcasting this, so -- >> will trump win 2020? the. >> will trump win? yeah, i think so. i think he will lose some states like california with the vote harvesting. it's going to come down to -- >> [inaudible] >> i mean, i want to be

optimistic. house races are really hard to predict. this is usually a local issue. and at the end of the day, it's one person versus another person, you know? and it's really hard to tell who the personalities are. on both sides. i think in part it's a referendum on donald trump, but it's going pretty well. you can complain about the tweets, and if you're complaining about the tweets, then, you know, you're looking for an excuse not to vote for him. i think if donald trump gets a trade deal done with china, i don't -- i think that's going to play so well, right into the democratic base. blue collar workers but also into the farming community. >> [inaudible] >> man, you've got to -- is your girlfriend, what is she doing hanging out with --

[laughter] i'm just teasing. >> [inaudible] >> oh, i see. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. look, i think donald trump, credit on both sides of the aisle, no matter you get people, talking heads on television, i think people, yeah, we finally have a president who's standing up to make it right, so -- let me get this gentleman right here. >> george soros and all these guys that are funding these activist groups, can't something be done with those guys? >> well, as i point out in my book, what i really think the needs to happen is these not-for-profits that are openly engaging in these types of campaign tactics, they need to be audited by the irs. the irs spent an awful lot of time making sure these 300-plus conservative organizations never got the authorization to exercise their first amendment

rights. the size and gravity of the irs, why are they not looking at these major players in how they're doing this? because it's simple, you can look at it in two minutes, line after line, year after year they lose money. why would they do that? what is the answer to that question? maybe a congressional committee should ask that question, but i think more importantly the irs should do that. i think that's -- and, by the way, we point out how planned parenthood, they park millions overseas, and what they do in africa to insist on allowing abortions, we point out -- and i want to make sure i get this statistic right particularly on camera here, so i want to refer back to the book, but i believe that they spend more on abortions in some of these countries than they do in food and water aid. it's kind of disgusting, what they're, what they do there. yes, ma'am. >> thanks for what you're doing and for the book. i think that, i don't know if you would agree with me, but

don't you think an uneducated electorate is why we have this blatant power grab? >> that's a big part of why the whole premise of my book, the whole idea is that you have -- again, seek first to understand than to be understood, and make sure you win the argument before you go out and try to win the vote. if you don't make this argument and inform people and say do you think it's right that a not for-for profit charity is engaging in politics, i think most people say, no, no, they shouldn't be doing that. >> we have one of the largest, as the millennials come of age -- excuse me -- and the generation behind them, i taught school for ten years. and you probably know where i'm going with this. i would love the see us make a case for a return of the school system to local entities. not national, not the nea, not the -- >> yeah. no, look, i signed on to the bill that said there shouldn't even be a u.s. department of

education. let the money follow the kids. we should do this at the local level. as i look back at our kids, all went through public school system. very grateful, we had a good education system, pretty good, i think, in utah. but history, civics -- >> that's e what i taught. >> and financial education like how to do a checkbook and stuff was, like, almost nonexistent. and it was really pretty pathetic. >> but you have situations where teachers like me who are conservative who never -- i never, ever stood in front of my classroom and said i'm a republican and i want you to vote republican. i told my civics class, i said when you leave this classroom, you will be registered to vote. that's all i care about, that you go vote. the union rep came and talked to me, and she said you will not continue to be covered by the liability insurance if you say things like that because we're not -- >> yeah. look, the whole education system, we're going to need another couple hours to talk about that. [laughter] but thank you.

yes, sir. >> just a quick question. many think we're losing fox, and as someone who's watched a long time, it's changing dramatically, and that's a big, big deal going forward. what can you say and what can you smile at? >>, no i'm not -- i'm glad you asked that question, because, you know, when i show up at fox and i had an offer from another network as well, and i went with fox. and fox -- i said, all right, so what would you -- what do you want from me? what do you need from me? they said just you be you. we just want your gut, we want authenticity. however you see it, you call it. don't think that you have to support the president. if you do, great. if you don't, that's great too. but whatever you want. i think fox is finding a niche and a place, and what i appreciate about fox is that it is the only place that i know that truly opens up the debate to both sides. and i will tell you as a

conservative, we should never, ever be worried about hearing from the other side as well. because you know what? it makes my argument stronger. and if i can't win that debate, shame on me. so i love the fact that they're giving time and opportunity for democrats and liberals to state their point. i look at it and say, are you kidding me? all right, bring me on. let me debate that ridiculous, asinine position that you just took on and win the argument. finish and i wouldn't worry about that at all. so i hear some people say, oh, fox news -- even the president, oh -- it's not there to be a political arm of just one voice and one political side. i like the fact that that they allow and give opportunities to both sides. it's something i think america's striving for, and i think given the chance to have that argument conservatives win. 99 out of 100 times. so -- >> got time for one or two more. >> sure, sure.

yes. >> -- ngo issues. has the irs shown any interest in looking into these, because this sounds like a huge, huge negative impact on the country. i mean, has there been any interest or effort -- >> well, the book's six, seven days old, so i'm -- i wrote an op-ed for foxnews.com, they let me on the air about it, i'm doing all i can to draw attention to it and, hopefully, there are some members in the house and senate that, you know, will also do something along with it as well. but i think for most people it's brand new information, so we'll see. all right, one more real quick. yes, sir. there's a microphone there. yeah, there you go. >> you've noted the nexus between the liberal camp and the ngos, the media obviously. >> right. >> but there's the emerging power of the social media giants, the googles, twitters,

what have you, that not only maintain enormous amounts of information about us, but control the flow of information and influence the actual discussion. you know, what we're talking about, what the issues are. what's the appropriate response to this emerging conversation -- >> you're you're highlighting something that we'll all have to deal with. when i with was chairman of the oversight committee, we created a subcommittee on information technology. not only emerging technologies and how the government spends $250 billion -- i'm sorry, $90 billion on 250,000 employees on technology. that's how much we're spending as taxpayers. but also to look at some of these dilemmas out there. i think it was more than 40, i think it was a bipartisan group of state attorneys general are

now filing suit against these behemoth organizations. as a conservative, i'm a little bit torn because i do believe as a private entity they can do what they want to do, and if consumers don't want to go that direction, they can go another direction. our own son was on facebook and then a couple years ago dropped it. he said it's just a cesspool of negativity, it's a waste of my time, and i think he didn't like that his parents also got on and tried to friend him. [laughter] that didn't help as well. but i think that the court ruling is interesting that the president can't -- the rule was that they can't delete followers, and i tweeted back -- best i could -- saying, well, does the same hold true in that are they, as the twitters and googles of the world, can they hold back from allowing people to see the president's account and other people's accounts?

i can tell you if i put up a too conservative post, barely goes to anybody. and i've got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers. and it maybe goes to 1500 people. i'm like, really? you kidding me? why do you think 250,000 people on facebook signed up as a like and i put out this and only goes to 1500? really? and then the i'll test it. i'll put out something else, and it'll go to, like, 40 or 50,000 people. really? something in those algorithms is not being done in a straightforward manner. so long winded way of saying i think people need to have exposure in terms of content. i think it's fascinating what europe is doing in terms of the right to be forgotten. i think there are child issues that have not been dealt with previously. the law allowed a 13-year-old to sign up. what other instance do we allow 13-year-olds to engage in a

contractual obligation, and if they decide as a 15-year-old that they no longer want their content, in europe now they have to delete it. it has to be gone to the point that they can be sued for that. so lots of issues. maybe heritage will let me come back, because i'm passionate about this stuff. you highlight something that's very imperative, but at the same time, let's just be honest. as conservatives, the national media and the social media, they're going to be fighting against us. but you know what? at the end of the day, there's a reason why donald trump won 30 of the 50 states. i believe as i go around the country and talk to american people, we are still a conservative people. we still believe in the basic tenets of conservativism. but we do have to educate and get out there and talk about these things. i thank you for being involved and engaged, and i hope you like "power grab," and i appreciate heritage for having me today. it's i 1:02, i'm two minutes

late. appreciate it, thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. tonight in prime time, the career of the late republican house leader, congressman bob michael of illinois. journalist megan winter will argue that the left must rebuild through state and local elections in order to increase its political power at the national level. fox news legal and political analyst gregg jarrett will offer his thoughts on the mueller report. former fbi agent mike german will take a critical look at the bureau. and jennifer block will report on the state of women's health care. that all starts at 6:55 p.m. eastern tonight on booktv. >> booktv recently visited berkeley, california, for the bay area book festival where former secretary of labor robert

reich offered his thoughts on economic inequality. >> well, first of all, there's absolutely no law anywhere that says that corporations have to maximize shareholder value. [applause] >> and before the late 1970s and 1980s, actually, there were a lot of beg corporations out there -- big corporations out there, believe it or not, who not only did not maximize shareholder value, but paid their employees a fair wage. part of that was unionization, but they didn't fight the unions. and they also were concerned about the communities where they were founded, where their headquarters was. and they balanced the interest of shareholders with the interests of their workers and their communities. then came the late '70s, early 1980s, and we saw these people

from wall street who were basically in the takeover business. they decided that there was money to be made by threatening to take over companies that were so-called -- and i love this term -- quote-unquote, underperforming. now, what underperforming means is that those companies were not squeezing every single dollar out that could be squeezed out for their shareholders and repressing and suppressing wages and basically leaving their hometowns stranded, leaving rural america stranded and, basically, making and creating this mythology that the purpose of the corporation is to maximize shares. the corporate raiders did it, and the next generation of ceos took over assuming that that's the way it had to be.

now, they could have -- and i, where i get really pissed off -- can i say that? >> we're just getting started. [laughter] [applause] >> is that we've got a lot of ceos out there and a lot of very, very wealthy people at business who will be very influential politically when it comes to changing the rules of the game. by the way, there is no free market. markets are created by government. governments and force rules that are created by government, and anybody who thinks that there's a separate free market in nature out there somewhere doesn't know what they're talking about. [applause] but the real point i want to make is that money and the power of ceos, the power of big money in our society to influence the rules of the game, to go to

washington and make deals and enhance their power is pretended to be some other kind of activity. when people who are ceos say, gee, we want to overcome inequality, what they are really saying is we want to preserve a public image that we are good guys trying to overcome inequality, but we're not going to use our influence and our power in washington and in state capitols to change the laws and change the rules to make inequality less of a sentence in our system. we're not going to strengthen unions. we're not going to go to washington to a raise the minimum wage. we're not going to use our influence to do anything that actually helps workers. we're going to stick to the mythology of the market and corporations that are maximizing shareholder returns, and we are going to pretend that we're the

good guys. that's what pisss me off -- pisses me off. >> to see a schedule of upcoming festivals, visit our web site, booktv.org, and click on the fairs and festivals tab. .. just today in the third that of the wisconsin book festival so thank you so much. i see many of you all day. [applause] i couldn't be more pleased toeie introducing megan phelps-roper for book "unfollow." we were talking in the back, her discussion of life in the religious community, doubt, i decide to leave or stay at how you defend yourself in this context is oneen of those conversations that we need to be having so much me