tv Mark Blyth Angrynomics CSPAN August 15, 2020 11:00am-12:01pm EDT
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issues the real sense of sincerity and in a very real sense of activation movement. >> to watch the rest of this interview and defined more episodes of "after words", visit our website but tv.org. click on the "after words" tab to the top of the page. : : : . market is the director of the road center for international economic and financing the william r rhodes national economic public affairs. we are going to chat for 25
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minutes or so but we will take questions from the audience. if you have a lot of questions we will cut the check shorter and go to your questions. for those of you joining us soon it would be great if you could write your questions in the queue and a window and for those joining via youtube live, those questions will get to us. please start writing those questions especially if you had the privilege pleasure and privilege of reading economics. let's get started. i love this book, really provocative and fascinating. you mentioned in the book, the work is intended to restore economics over angrynomics.
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what does that mean? >> his life goal was we figured out how the world works, such a thing that it is like a root canal. painful, you fix it. nothing special or spectacular. becomes part of the process and to engineer the world in that way. a world that seems to make more and more people angry and the motivation, it has never been retro. and and in the lockdown protest.
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then we have racial strife in a global context. we have democracy protesters, the complete breakdown of many european parties, the rise of populism and the scottish referendum. our challenge was why we think this was happening. >> the distinguish between angrynomics and economics, we know there's a lot of angry things out there. anger is motivating for what was economically sound. why angrynomics. >> the way we talk about that, the middle of the book, what do
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we mean by this. there is an analogy in the book, when you break them open, they have the same components about arranged in different ways. and with certain economic -- they accumulate, when you have computer processes, you can't to do your work anymore. at the micro level it creates what we do to chase through the middle of the book on a macro level and microlevel, what produces these. we define angrynomics as the contention that pertains when the economy stops serving the
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interests. that seems to be the feeling under the countries but in a sense it is a rigged game, a bunch of insiders, for these advantages by themselves and everyone else is working harder and harder for less and less and not to take that seriously and that is a way to make sense of the different types of anger expression. >> the way i understood is crises are important. there are moments the systems breakdown, but there's something more long-term about the nature of anger that builds up. the way i read it, overlong periods of time, a disconnect happens, then there are experts
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that push certain paradigms, these dominant paradigms, at one level those paradigms, as smart as experts are or think they are. and and you view that is expert huber us. there are other things you referred to which is out and out self-dealing, people in power financially or politically. tell me how to make sense of long-term trends, bad ideas but experts are not smart enough to figure out versus soft to dealing elites. >> why choose? let's do both simultaneously or environment in which one comes
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to prominence where we are in the moment unfortunately. not sure it is a case of the not smart enough but thinking about it, we tend to think about it this way, software surrounding the economy, it is a moment in time. the certainty of the crisis for inflation, with price stability is reflected in that moment, for 20 years, do you still run the hardware. with that. that is where we create problems. for the dealing of this this is -- if anger is released in the
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system, the volatility blows off, who gets to weapon eyes the anchor. we live in a particular moment with other media technologies, the end of the old -- to weapon eyes this in a way we haven't seen before. the original example takes over the media, those types of dynamics to act if you will is no longer running and ordinary people on the ground, the cost of it, housing, college and healthcare, with a loss of credibility, weaponization of all of it which is the way of
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watching before stoking the anger. why choose? they are working side-by-side. >> that make sense to me. let's push a little more on why it is important to choose even though these are intertwined. i think about myself in the 1980s, 90s, grew up in a neoliberal moment. regardless of my political views i nodded accordingly when i was told markets are the most equitable efficient way of allocating resources and all ships will rise with the rising tide, globalization is good but those are good ideas and we all nodded and all the while that was going on there was this evidence of the process, wage stagnation in the middle and people suffering and i heard
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that, and in the end it will work out and maybe i am an idiot, but that is a mistake of huber us, the idea is new paradigms, change coming through better ideas but fundamentally the problem is the norms of leadership on the left and right, and all about self-dealing. and they are intertwined. but which one is the issue today. >> think about protests going on, the second wave of black lives matter, these are clear claims that we are dealing with. you don't need to apply it equally.
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it varies by area in this regard. another one, the huber us on one side and self-dealing on the other but simply the fact as the world becomes more integrated and globalized, it doesn't go without trials. we see this in politics and economics and everything else. if you grew up believing in free-trade you will defend the arguments and lots of evidence coming either way. doesn't mean the whole thing is wrong. the total of escaping from old ones. they combine with the self-dealing basically, no longer matching the hardware, that leads towards the type of
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dynamics. >> let me restate it to make sure i have got it. a bunch of bad ideas that obsolescent before people recognized that and because they were slow to respond it creates this opening for in your words tribal identity, tribalism, the danger to be used as a technology that some people weapon eyes this wildly experts are slow to respond, you get you name it, who weapon eyes this stuff and you get where we are today. >> it is not just manufactured but real things people are responding to. the american media, the mainstream media, when you have a lockdown you have everybody, a dozen people with the
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militia. . you, 2000 people without guns essentially seeing what we feel a few years back 40% of americans have trouble getting $400 together but by the time of the michigan protest, in the check department, meanwhile they are watching television and basically said don't worry, we will buy everything. you have a -- don't have to have a degree in economics to understand who has the earbud and who doesn't and who is staying the course and who doesn't and that is personally weapon eyes to. and that is a never --
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>> >> regardless of my political views. and nothing was done punitive only against the banks. with a big bonuses, nothing punitive, made me nuts with anger or moral indignation. it seems to me this is a fairly extended long-term process. >> there are parts of information in different ways, obama's response, new administration coming to power, with innkeepers, sellers and all those things. you end up in a world with fail, fail and send to jail.
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and that is how it ended up. and not just socialism, the system we have been running for the past decade and a half. and in the american story, and other national contexts, suffuses a lot of this discussion involving rage and anger and moral indignation but also access to prosperity. >> i would never be foolish enough. has its own history, its own
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drivers but i will give one example i posted last week, there was this study. for families in boston. your average white family, a bunch of superrich pushes it up a bit. middle family income in boston is 247,$000 a year. the black family in boston is $8. those types of any qualities, you have serious institutions pushing things in this direction. unable to access the financial system.
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a particular form of anger and moral outrage, what we see in the current process. >> you have a number of interesting proposals called policy proposals for national wealth funds, direct transfers to household income which are quite novel and provocative and persuasive, but how would that play out? the new dealer great society, we had pushes like this which get filtered through race and other kinds of biases that lead to important parts of the population not benefiting. is there a way these new proposals could get away with that. >> to take that into account,
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who is this group for, basically everybody with these questions, threatening a dialogue. there were a couple of fallen's -- and into normal tech. it sounded -- all the solutions that have gone on and all you need is -- it is uncertain, back into a dialogue, with these proposals that are negative. >> tried to explain that.
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and - your point if you get it right you are locked into this politics of the techie answers people don't want to hear the raw meat of 0 from the enough a big identity, so what is the new politics that will reshape the fissures that currently exist in so many societies. >> so people have sovereign wealth funds, what we are going to do with them, without getting too much, if you invest in stocks, and it was - to
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to make a difference, - >> if new well-being - if there's a sense of solidarity, it is great, if there are tribal identities. that poor guy, he or she is lazy, or the welfare mom which is racialized when deep void in early american politics, to what extent are proposals vulnerable to the angry attitudes, hope for more solidarity's and take on
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citizenship. >> it was emptied of all volume. to enrich that, a mistake in their society which is something else that was the this are rated in the politics you are talking about weapon eyes to that way. for these types of reactionary process moves, exclusionary zeal, they were all falling down, all he was doing, apart from that. real wages were rising. when you actual be change the money in people's pockets it
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works wonders. not the only thing that was going on, you take african-american families in boston, forget community banking, really seems to enforce society. make the houses that they are able to borrow against, changing it and some people will feel it is against their interests but the majority will benefit, leading to a better more prosperous society. in the opinion polls around the black lives matter protests, really heartened because the united states public with her it is a combination on youtube with the police are doing that in protests. the majority is not the protesters but you are not putting this back in the box
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and these policies and institutions change their conversation or the way we think about these things and really interesting, that is tied up in a set of questions about economics and access and justice. >> i agree, the audience could tell, a really great read. we have a lot of questions for the audience. let's turn to them. a question from chris harding. chris asks do you see a bigger, 500 year cycle going on? are we living at a time we are due for a massive reset.
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>> i get very suspicious, economic historians with cycles in the world. any color you want through any type of thing so i am skeptical in the optical stuff. one of the richest people around and there are limits to how much you can take him. i read these interventions and analyses of the world is a mea culpa for what we have done and if you look at other things, declarations on inequality and insignificant limited this other stuff this is a resignation that the system must and we want to edge toward a solution. we don't do we want to understand angrynomics is normal and will gathering societies can't survive it.
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>> makes sense. i was going to follow it but i will shut up and let the audience stopped. what is the trajectory from austerity to angrynomics? is it due to endogenous factors? what led you to write previous book to this book? >> great question. everything is endogenous. what we think is outside going in, the financial crisis, the balance sheets are back. in that sense it has basically been the failure to change the business model. we packed the software, didn't really change anything and basically said everything is fine, helps austerity and it
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will be fine and it wasn't fine. quantitative easing and other policies, they have assets. it is all 20% and above. when we started to see beyond that for global trump is him, started to identify that, the sense that the working out of the global trump is him moment if you want to put it that way. >> thanks a lot. a rather broad question. under which conditions can anger be productive? >> good question. we make a distinction between anger and tribal energy that can be weapon eyes to. an example came from an ibm process. the one thing that came out is
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poor response. what do sports fans do? it is insufficiently loyal, it is in group solidarity, doesn't tend to be a response in the later world for uncertainty. think about the micro-stressors here, 18 million americans caught on paid hour with no substitutes and very few likes is where the shock is going to be. what makes it good or bad? when you think it is moral outrage, that are to be listened to. hedge funds talking about the value of their assets going down.
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and and that is something you should listen to. it years later, banking offshore, not the second of all, how you modulate what anger is telling you, moral outrage, in group norm regulation and that is how we play it out. >> successful political leaders, navigating through different kinds of anger. the reagan revolution, he gets a bunch of people to vote
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seemingly against their economic interests, by accessing their anger about the state or accessing attitudes about race but tapping one kind of anger. bill clinton, you could trace it along. doing that or tapping that anger conditions are created by which new kinds of anger are generated. is that the right way to think of it? >> exactly. if you look at less angry societies, the call of duty and income inequality and equality across business. there are others that are not just wasted spills.
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really making a profit, they dominate the stock market and everyone else, you are better off buying one month treasury bill so there is enormous inequality as well as northern income inequality and they compound a lack of control or ability to set the terms of unemployment or precariousness of your own investments and 20% or 80% that is the fundamental driver not just about income inequality but among races all compounding in that sense. >> let's go to a question from doug who writes did you address
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the effect of campaign contributions? if you have self-dealing for positions of power how do you get them out of power and constrains them? >> what we are trying to do is a couple dialogues between an academic, essentially what went wrong and what to do. it is germane to the united states. it is not my field. >> are related question about the difference between that, apart from quibbles over precise metrics, what are the differences between you, mark, and eric with respect to solution for capitalism. are you on the same tracker different? >> probably on the same track,
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measuring things in different ways. eric thinks the inequality is fundamentally important but there's a bunch of other things going on. i am sympathetic to that. that is where that comes out. what is alluded to his concentration and this is something, elizabeth warren's campaign was very much about it, consolidation across the board. it is deleterious to the consumer but strapped -- cash-strapped etc.. the focus on income inequality, look at the way corporate
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governance works, buybacks are a big deal not because of that but if you haven't buybacks, next week they will figure out a new way so if you focus on that rather than corporate governance that is the way we disagree. >> would it be fair to say you are focused more on the issue of fairness. and >> it is not just that but the equality of outcomes and opportunity. it is fine to talk about equality of opportunity, and outcomes you want.
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otherwise it is house of cards so i tend to focus more on outcomes generated if you put it that way. >> moving into the details of the proposals, christopher garrity asks. and and social security trust fund. that make sense? >> you are not buying bonds. they are the global reserves but equities because equities have long-term premium 6 persons considering the growth rate. it is more than the growth in the government.
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and my solution is why can't we all get where we are as opposed to diminishing slightly, that is why it is equity-based. another question i saw when wanting to address -- where did it go? a fantastic name. would it create that which politicians are capitalism at the height of it, with that, you can also design part of the funds with needle .2% and completely independent board with the electoral cycle, that is more a design for intrinsic political economy question.
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>> that wealth funds can invest in a bunch of domestic companies and an equity position in our apple or wherever else. >> this is the angle on basic income. if you think of the stock market, 20%, how do they do it? they are using a platform. the keystroke, something himself. why are we giving it up for free? that is 20% of the stock market. if we were talking to sprint or t-mobile and they wanted 5g, 15 year lease will cost x billion
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but facebook, billions of dollars because you keep giving the appeal. why not license our data that is equivalent to that, what they didn't use for their investment, new information and asset-based response, because they make so much money. >> there is a different kind of perspective, the surveillance capitalism argument, something fundamentally wrong or intrusive, whether it is amazon, accessing personal information but weapon icing it, to understand the deepest, most emotion and manipulating us. if one agrees with that
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argument, they are selling this and legitimizing this corporate access to one's personal data selling yourself into slavery. if you choose to do it, i was a little uncomfortable the data dividend. >> the stock market, might as well take a stake. it is superexpensive just now, make sure what they use as their profit engine. one of my more liberal moments, much more on the surveillance for regulation of this stuff. >> it is about the regulations,
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he doesn't care. i love the convenience of it. you give me things that i deeply value. if people are willing to make the trade off and shoot them down you are doing it anyway. >> let's turn to a slightly different angle, they restart economies and countries like railways for infrastructure target. and to quit you do this. if you want the technical version of this, have a look at
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markets of belonging, you name it, but infrastructure, put this in a covid-19 moment. what happens as we continue to destroy natural infrastructure the you get more transmissions that we deal with much more frequently. it becomes obtainable as it once was, what kind we do. carbon emissions come from buildings, if you want to retool, with every building in the united states.
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and financial assets over the last 3 months. in the balance sheet, what we've shown in this crisis everywhere in the united states to pay 80%, britain is done and commented, the financial constraints on doing those things. and and quantitative easing and that is what it has done. that type of investment was better than we thought.
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>> moving to a different question, philosophical one. he was not sure whether he could fix this policy if we don't articulate some shared philosophy what business was really for with life and society. my earlier question about solidarity. do we need a new philosophy to motivate people and if so, what and how? >> the 74,$000 question. my challenge is this. with performance politics, you fix things with policies, rcts score, what is the policy, and
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what do we mean by that. if we think of the successful reform projects, when sweden came out with multimedia trying - that is what we are asking for, here are things to those outcomes that are normalized for every one. whether it is infinitely technical, or a transformative deal that alienates half the people, they do stuff, they build on top of that.
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>> i agree. the 64,$000 question. a few questions about the eu and the euro. let me go with this one. any alternative to the euro, our floating currencies. is that a bad idea and i would add about the eu in general. >> what they are already doing, helicopter, check and this stuff, sovereign wealth funds in certain places. maybe you can manage the decarbonization better, they need to pass some kind of fund
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for a vehicle like this, a special vehicle for the whole economy. on the euro itself, checking out half your savings in the euros own but i think the events that moved us to a different position, the recent franco german proposal shows that the writing is on the wall for the north to sell the south what to do, you have a couple things, china came and said to germany, the germans went hang on and now particularly if trump wins america will tear the hell out of europe, the
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people, we don't care anymore, the world is moving in these spheres, apolitical place that doesn't have an instrument, doesn't have a euro which is a nationalized currency, the wealthiest part of the world, is unified and was will drive this to gather is a recognition among those states that is in their interests to nationalize the debt and asset. in the united states and china particularly with that business model. it begins to see the reliability and going in that
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direction. >> host: is it possible without a strong european identity among individual with different countries. >> guest: think about the american experience they try, with tons of currency and local - in the nineteenth century. only civil war brings it about, let's start with the controversy in central bank and the political and physical agenda in advance for years is difficult the alternative, which nobody wants to see or a place with a lot of assets first something and what we
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have seen with france and germany, whether or not they like it. >> you feel the electorate buys that position. >> the populace moment is where we are. there is no solution to national populism. you can try it but will fail. >> you end up with a lot of value. >> the virtue is not getting out of the euro but without destroying themselves, if they destroy themselves you move on. >> given the kind of nihilistic a moment we are arguably in there may be a certain passion of self-destruction of political leaders. >> the fastest growing party -- forget the leak, these - they
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might do - what will make them come to power would be the eu stating, your debt is blown to 170% of gdp, a terrible population that hasn't grown a lot. if you do in austerity binge those guys went. >> a couple more minutes, the last few questions, a question from chris gong about climate change. chris asks do you think there could be bipartisan support for climate change if and when it is framed as a national security question? is there some way to get support for climate change remediation? >> we have the biggest solar
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farms in the united states in texas. the windfarms in the heartland. the problem with technocrats telling people what to do in dollars, people driving around in previouses on the west coast lecturing this is a moral problem and these people are wrong for living in a carbon economy, it is already happening. at the end of the day:defunct. a great example britain hasn't generated electricity from coal for three months and have no intention of switching them back on unless they absolutely have to. it is needlessly politicizing it by turning it into a moral concern that those on the right side versus the wrong side of the transition. >> there is a lot more. at least one more. we didn't talk about technology and demographics.
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darren sweeney asks to what degree, silicon valley with the investment of workers with automation? >> you are talking my language. i've been deeply suspicious of that for a long time. talk about who is proposing an idea. if you're redundant, you are suspicious and by the end of that, in conversation with advocates i've come to realize these are not necessary conditions, what we are talking about is minimum wage plus. rather than publicly contested minimums, it is the citizens in command you force on presumptive labor-intensive jobs, force businesses to invest more in capital, not least a shift in the
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composition of employment but income goes up and employment and wealth is generated and should be positive. with that version of the employer, the state of the employer, there are lots of ways that are not the silicon valley version that are interesting. >> to wonder about the issue, the total amount of jobs but the nature of those jobs changed. what is the transition look like? not so much what we do with free time but how is that dislocation handled even intergenerational he? >> time for one last question. one that shows up in several different audience members. how bad is the recession going to be?
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are we looking at another great depression? is it something short of that? how bad will things be? >> nobody knows to be honest. we haven't read that future yet. the wonderful thing about the way we think about the economy is key insight, how you think about the future determines your presence. if you think the next 3 years will be awful you will not do any investing which makes the future guaranteed to be awful. the socially contentious expectations of the future. the united states, the basic way, allowing people to be unemployed is better in the long run but all of the costs of the united states recovers
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and not trying to preserve jobs which are now destroyed. there will be a read deployment of carbon on labor markets and net on net better because didn't do this, not a plausible argument. another plausible argument by begging the building better airbags, european economies are able to control the virus and maintain those industries. we just don't know yet how that will play out and anyone who tells you they do - >> host: among citizens, the electorate, one of your points is it depends what their age is. the notion of the future is contingent on how old they are ended underscores throughout the dialogue. i think you for a really terrific book and i want to thank the audience for your great questions.
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the great conversation the we find enriching but cause for optimism that people are thinking creatively and different solutions from what we have seen in the past. >> great dialogue. >> booktv on c-span2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. coming up saturday at 5:30 p.m. eastern, elizabeth hinton, robin kennedy, cornell west talk about the black lives matter movement. sunday at 9:00 pm eastern on afterwords, university of california berkeley law professor and former deputy assistant attorney general in the george w. bush administration john you with his book defend or in chief looks at presidential power in the u.s. constitution.
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and the founding dean is policy and government. watch on c-span2. >> the washington post's robert costa interviewed trump national security adviser john bolton, this portion of the event mister bolton expresses concerns over the relationship with foreign leaders. >> i don't think the president has a worldview. and approach national security, a grand strategy and policies, there is not much there for the russians or anyone else to manipulate but my fear, whether it is vladimir putin, angrynomics jinping or other authoritarian leaders they to
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see the president as easy to maneuver around to achieve their objectives. >> visit booktv.org. search for the room that does it at the top of the page. .. of his bestseller. in this clip he looks at the aneurysms that biden suffered from following his failed run for president non- nation for it and how it impacted his life and political career.
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