>> i'm really excited. i've gotten into a lot of amazing people over the last 12 years and it's always a little bit intimidating when you interview an interview. i've interviewed rachel maddow and don lemon and a lot of amazing journalist that but i

will say my little bit nervous interviewing mr. chris matthews of "hard ball" and someone i've been following and watching for many years and certainly in my younger days trying to figure out what i thought about things and someone who had a big impact on me thinking more critically about the country in which i live. i was thrilled to see his wonderful new look "this country." chris' met written many books but this is the most personal book that he has written and i thought it was a really interesting insight into her amazing life. so welcome chris matthews virtually. we won the pairs you too much by saying you told us this was the only state you have never been to. we are going to give you a half credit for it. >> thank you. >> congratulations on the book. i was trying to think when i

first heard about the book how you wrote it and actually contained all of the things you have done without giving us a churchillian multivolume memoir. also just to be candid you are known for a shaggy dog story. i was thrilled that you could get all of this in. >> stuart roberts the editor of simon & schuster didn't change anything. those were my words verbatim but he did take me from 140,000 words which is a pretty good book to 93,000. he did things like he always does everything has to end with the opportunities you got and how one thing led to another can't be having digression. so nothing about girlfriends in grade school, nothing like that. nothing about 10 chapters down

to two chapters and i think he was pushing me for one. i wanted to have at least two mod on my two years in africa. if you met anybody from the police or they will tell you two years plus wherever they were was much more out of size report torsion. so many things happened and that will never happen again so you need to experience it and you watch remember everything from it. the best editor is memory and if you can remember its memorable by definition so think about why you remember it. so you are right it could have been three volumes and we think about at 47,000 words is almost the book. the editor was right about his ruthless attempts to reduce it to a book size.

when i think about your career and everything that you've done you are inextricably linked to the boemer experience and at the end of 1945 right at the beginning of that period and your experiences whether with the peace corps, your connection to john f. kennedy, your connection to the cardiff administration valued the work he did read television all the journalism you done, when you see a film like "forrest gump" for example his cultural touchstone. >> thank you for the reference point. it's like it was photoshopped. i was with george herbert walker bush had dinner one night. what am i doing with all these people? jimmy carter. >> what gets me is this inherent curiosity you've had your whole

life have the general idea of america and ended up in that conclusion. >> i were bramborough my first citizenship -- was citizenship in the nation. i didn't focus on local politicians much calmer mayors races and city council. it's always about the role of the united states and the world, the cold war and how we deal with that challenge. for how the federal government how much freedom do we have and how do we protect it and how do we don't solve social legislation with freedom. and personal independence. that's always going to be the issue socialism versus capitalism individual life versus social responsibility in that kind of thing. trying to figure out the natural order of things. it's a socialism or is it free

enterprise as we call it capitalism. my conclusion after my study was socialism if it works out for everybody it's run by a highfalutin politburo that claims they are good socialist masters when in fact they are just looking out for themselves. then i got to goody's germany is the wall was coming down into budapest and to see in hungary in that fateful year of 1989 i was right in my conclusion that if you treated people and give them second-rate currency and you don't let them go to hotels. you grab the good life for the top people. those two are going to be embittered and i think i was right about my conclusion. >> i'm curious you know, you have always struck me as kind of very pragmatic in a certain

sense that but uis have a sense of optimism. but that optimism is tied back to i think a certain couple of moments in your life early on that i think exemplified to you what america could be at certain times and my question has always been elizabeth warren is from oklahoma so she's one of our great exports here and she's always talking about this return to the kind of mid-century middle-class period and i always wondered when you look at the great arc of american culture that post-war boom where america was a thriving middle class that only lasted for 20 or 30 years before began to decline in the reagan era. the question is do you think that inequality is the natural default in some ways of the american system or is that something we can return to? >> the gray reporter and

essayist jimmy carter how do you reconcile freedom of equality. if you have total equality of freedom because the government is in guaranteeing gets the same results and if you have total freedom you probably they don't have much equality. i do think senator warren is on to something that i got from a different direction at different experience. all these equity billionaires, do they do anything? and i look at american history and there is a natural social resentment of people who made money off of money even though everyone wants a good deal when they retire. everybody wants to make money off of money. they want to interest in the bank and savings as a three or 4%. i wonder if the equity people

who make a fortune going to the shop of these companies that they are able to glean the real profit out of this. the entrepreneurs in the beginning didn't get their money. they are are making a profit off of it that i wonder if it separated not just from labor concerned that i think the warren has that labor is being paid for with its wealth is created but maybe the entrepreneurial contribution to production has been robbed from the entrepreneur. you have to explain to me why people are making elite of dollars inequity growth. who are they taking it from? where did that money come from? i do worry about that and i think the ratios are off you know. i do think our market system works as it has with pfizer and with the covid vaccinations and

also with the partnership in the case of moderna and partnership works as well. i do think the worst case in the world is when they are sick they all come here. we have the most amazing advanced medicine. it's not well distributed by any means. it's not fair but it's excellent so the market has changed. i had lunch with elizabeth a couple of years senator warren. it's not like she's an all-out attacker of the principle of profit but it's the ratios of the working stiff if you will. what does explain why someone in erie pennsylvania or wilkes berg or oklahoma have this resentment towards liberals for excess because they feel they are providing for them that the way

fdr's crowdpleaser jack kennedy did. they don't seem like labor union types. they are not walking around shoulder-to-shoulder with labor. suburbanites as well in the better of suburbs for the democratic hearted that's been seeking votes. they have never been able to grab the working class. my answer is she's on to something and i'm in not sure i agree with the way she goes after it and we all have a different style but sometimes when you criticize it doesn't work. is jimmy jimmy carter says you'll never get that person's vote again. they are gone. it's attacking the other side and it's useless politically. what you have to do is find a way to reach them in the middle

politically and i think trump in his devilish genius figured out some things that the republicans had long before he came along which is unlike republicans from jerry ford on he doesn't attack the common folks. it is a cheap shot and he has never taken it. i think he is a traitor in terms of denying the results of the 2020 election but look the first republic and presidential person to come along and say you get your benefits. and without saying so if you have alzheimer's you will get medicaid to. you're going to get it all in what i'm also going to do for you i'm going to make sure your kids will have a job close enough to home too busy once in a while. so we are going to fight the chinese. he knows people will blame it on

foreign cultures for underselling their labor. vander sell us when it comes to labor and they have taken all the jobs away for kids who are working in silicon valley and work in new york and somewhere in connecticut. they are working from here. trump basically promised i'm going to fight to get those jobs back. he didn't succeed but he knew the american working people are not british labour people. they are deeply resentful of wealth. they aren't like that. all i want is what i need. that's the attitude of morphs to working people and country. the voters suggest that islam but they need. c and to that .1 thing that trump also did was he took the wind out of the sails of the hawker cited their public and party. he's talking about stupid wars and things like that that would

be -- would have been for bowden. >> i don't think it had anything to do with wb. they call the wmd so they didn't have to say nuclear but they could suggest nuclear as a smoking gun. the clever campaign to get us into war we had no reason to fight and it doesn't help israel our allies over there. didn't help them at all so i'm not sure what exactly it accomplished positively except it costs four to 5000 american lives and perhaps the 200,000 iraqi lives. we walked in there and said if you'd don't do we tell you we are going to kill you but that so we said. we have never done that in history. if you don't get out of her way we are going to kill you and that's what we did. it was an awful american period. we thought the aggressor was the bad guy and we were the

aggressor and thank god trump his crude study of american working class people said i think they will get this that they were used. >> talking about looks to us for five years people were looking at different looks and things to explain work ran one of the books that got talked about a lot was >> lewis's book it can't happen here but the book that i kept going that i cat going back to us all the presidents men and all the kings men rather and robert warren spoke about huey long in the gated those two characters together. if we don't look at that populism and hugh and as you look at donald trump i didn't see that parallels being drawn as much as you think. we forget our history too quickly. do people in 2021 understand what was happening in louisiana at that time period into he was and what was happening but that

level of democratic populism and how it's varied parallel now. you talk about that too. >> that image of the stranger coming into town all in nashville driving around in the long car very for baiting menacing presence, what was he up to? eat think of tennessee ford and the character-based that andy griffith played facing the crowd. and you think about how we do have that figure figure the comes in and promises everything a demagogue. crawford was fabulous in that movie all the kings men and ironically in our culture are wrote a book or chapter about this. we also had a figure the reverse of that to the outsider comes in and saves us when we can't save ourselves.

john wayne. john wayne comes in and the guy who basically dress like bad guys and they are stern and they are no fun but they get the bad guy and he saved natalie wood from the native americans and he help the ranchers in the homesteaders. the homesteaders were courageous. >> and a good guy almost like a religious figure and why is it that we figure we can do it ourselves and the community can do it quite how about high noon? he was standing alone when the community let them down. we don't have this notion even in mr. smith goes to washington it's the public that saves mr. smith, jefferson smith raided the bad guy who comes out

and says everything he says is true. the verdict came from the bad guy. isn't that interesting? he doesn't have faith in the masses that is faith in the bad guy. all the movies from shane inevitably forfeits of the way through the movie the bad guy does something incredibly good and you go wow life is complicated. the buggy leader ends up in the snake chris callaway the ben johnson character shows up and says i'm getting out of here. the deck is stacked against us and i'm leaving. elizabeth taylor's showing up on death row to me the society girl

that you think is so positive. to say this guy will love you forever. it shows incredible courage from someone he didn't expect it from. >> you mentioned all those westerns and how that dynamic is very much a person up or that the dominating culture superhero media which is the same idea that all through pot -- that the world has all these problems with apocalyptic situations but we have talents and skills that are otherworldly to save all the rest of us. >> it's like the grandson of godzilla. he loved godzilla like he was the good guy. even movies like sam nissan i have certain skills remember the

good line. like a careful bad guy. the vigilante spirit has an inextricable link to the american spirit rebels from the get-go i guess. that you don't want to write a car and you don't want to read it but she don't want to live in an apartment. we don't want to get on the train want to take the car. >> we want our doctor. we don't want their doctor grade >> he's you that playing out in the struggle to get the vaccine and that bootstrap mentality but i want to get back to the book for second which is i loved the parts about you fred so many oaks and the first question i would ask is why did it take so long to write this book blacks. >> at the end of the line i'm

75. these incredible episodes like berlin when the wall is coming down or with bishop tutu in a backroom for a half-dozen years with tip o'neill. again just me and two other guys and being on the air force one armory and when one with jimmy carter. i didn't think i'd get to do this magical mystery tour of life and yet i did and i always want to do it but i signed up for this i guess in 19 wish i'm i'm -- simon & schuster. one morning i got up and knocked it out your proposal to the publisher and he liked it right away. sometimes he would say knock it out it's unpredictable. some predictable when you write fast and other times you struggle. this time i knocked it out and now my way back from my wife and

i went to new zealand for a vacation when christmas and on the way back i had 12 or 13 hours and i went to some bookstore and pick up link up and i just started writing outlines. it took one year to do have the book in the other year 2020 to do the other half rate it was a struggle. >> i left because i commented about to one's appearance in the next makeup chair and i had to admit that i wasn't going to deny it but i said it are the loud so wasn't like it was a secret or anything. i talked to mike lost the next day my wife and i talked to talk to him and i said you know i don't really want to have to deal with this whether they will

suspend me for six months. i said i'm good to make my decision, and leaving and i do want to stretch this out. i didn't like it but it was true and i think people know i'm honest and i wanted to stay on us. >> that's where comes to the book and the thing that parties appreciate about you even if it's something that i disagree with you on you always seemed genuine to me and the person that you paint a picture of evening catholic schools when you're getting in trouble for talking and getting reprimanded that's you now. you are very much the same. you've had so much success and did you have. start your life where you got too big of a head? >> i've had these jobs that have made me well-known and all of my

life in the peace corps has been public record. i've always been exposed and controversial because i've taken the position that it always causes trouble but i said to myself i'm never going to be a sore loser. i said that to myself i lost my first job. i thought i was a big deal and a new boss came in and i was pushed out and had to fight my way back up again. i said to myself back then i will never again think of myself as a celebrity. walk into public space with gazing in the middle distance. you know how works they will walk a certain way. it's just this big stuff attitude than walk around like i know you are looking at me but i'm not looking back. i have repelled that from my beginning so likely when i lost the show i was ready to be

normal again. not saying a sundown during the week for 26 years but i never saw the sun come down to it i was ice on television. you are always up for it but i do like the eviction people have for me and i would see it when people would walk up to me are people give me nice eye contact and say i miss you and i love it. and they'd say my husband loved it and watch until the end of really nice people. i'm company but i'm not just a reporter analyst or commentary. people watch five hours a week like rachel is commentary for people. johnny carson used to be my company when i came home from school. i didn't have anything do and here's johnny carson. i started watching the tube and he was our party and he made you

feel welcome. some people tell me you don't let them get away with anything and they asked the questions that they want to ask which a lot of people don't do but it's our job to work the audience. >> that is what you're best at. i was curious though aside from what you said about what the circumstances of you leaving were does any part of you miss it? there has been so much going on the past year. >> you can tell by reading my book what i used to like about it was that we didn't get it this time was an honest concession speech. there is always a winner at least one loser and that woman has to stand before everybody that knows me and tell them i lost.

the other person wanted that's democracy and if you don't have that in your soul you should never run for office. some great senators serve for 24 years and they were kicked out of key figures. you are gone, thank you and you have to deal to do that with tears in her eyes were get your motions out of that come out. personally rejected by the majority of the people that know you it's tough. trump denied us all of that. after shocking upset facing the country with her husband until everybody that you lost. al gore, they got more votes than the other guy and they had to do maybe less. trump won't do that i think is treason. >> what's the best concession speech? john mccain's concession speech in no way to what's the best one you've ever heard?

>> well my boss speechwriter says adlai stevenson adlai stevenson. i looked it up again today but stephenson said was like oh boy is dubbed as to who said i'm too old to cry but it hurts too much to laugh. but i think al gore's was pretty darned good. al gore only lost by a point and w got 271. and gore believed i'm sure that he could afford a recount in florida. he lost tennessee and it was his fault. he could have won it but he didn't. he didn't have a campaign like the other guy but i think his speech had a certain cadence to it like lincoln's second and not grow which is the best speech along with martin luther king i

have a dream. the civil war that cost 600,000 lives people shooting at each other point-blank range shooting at each other with the same christian religion in most cases. people that were related in shooting to kill this guy across the field from them. it's a thing you think about it just and you had to explain to the american people -- there's a wonderful phrase we argue about it and discussed it and then the war came the way he said that in the war came. everything that suffered would be paid for by the sword. the death of all the way people was going to be penance for all those centuries of slavery. with using people's daughters and selling their wives. what gore did was take like you

said it with the fatality but there was a wonderful way of saying with this recount thing that we had it and now it's over. i thought he was wonderful. al gore has always had a problem before he wrote the inconvenient truth of presenting himself in a way that was likeable. that night he did found a way of being al gore at his best. but it mattered to me and i remember my dad was in the basement watching rockefeller and my dad is a regular working-class guy. he knows one of the richest men in the world averell harriman was going down as a thief. their member ed brooke in massachusetts got elected to the

senate and ed brooke was so -- he talks about but didn't crown the mound and i won't cry in the valley was just unbelievable, so good. i do think there's magic in it. hillary just laid it on the line. overnight in the darkness of night she lost. at 9:00 eastern time she had lost and rachel and i as we are covering it everybody is shocked to and i'm sure there were people scrambling around here trying to explain what had happened. i don't know how you explain that though. >> we are still trying to figure out what happened. >> but she took it and her husband was standing behind her. bill was crying for his wife the trump won't give us that won't give us the truth.

>> i'm curious you are one of the few people on your network that interview trunk around that time and i remember you interviewed him and you guys had known each other for a while. >> he was always playing a game with me so finally the game being i'm going to run for president in the said oh no trump is going to run. trump is going to run. it sounded like charlie brown the football being dropped. and when i had given up he won. i looked back on the transfers of them and there are some troubling predictions within who he was going to be put asked him about monica asked the present he said -- a president of the united states is a mobster you can't take the fifth.

>> they are seems very on brandon very honest in a way. >> wanted to give did get them in the ring -- he knew nothing about the position and that it was somewhat contradictory. if that's the thinking i will go with it. but that is not the case that they present. they blame the doctor but what do you mean by punished? what exactly do you mean by that? >> that was the headline coming out of that interview. are we talking about capital punishment are we talking about prison? >> what are we talking about? i want to get into it it's too what he said. >> we have a question for one of

our viewers and obviously you have a long-standing relationship and a history with president jimmy carter and the question from one of our viewers who says jimmy carter carter's proven to be such a statesman and "time" magazine pose the question and see the best ex-president ever? the question really is do you agree and also what was his major mistake or something that could have kept him from being relayed did or was he just a victim of his times with all the things going on with iran and other issues? >> i think the answer to iran when we had the 50 diplomats taken hostage is a difficult one but the only answer i can come up with and is not pro carter's you have to have the other country the revolutionary religious government of iran afraid of you.

obviously they were historically angry at us. they knew they had an attitude about it. we knew all that so we had to have some counterforce which would be you can't mess with the united states. you can't mess with it. you will pay for this crime. carter wasn't willing to risk the hostages and i think many many ways is many ways is a pacifist. doesn't believe a word he's a christian literally. i really believe that's him. that's not the right person because in the end you have the military like the world is never known he had to be willing to -- i think his gifts were he could do it himself and he could do better than anybody. going door-to-door in iowa or new hampshire are handing out bills and getting elected and bringing together menachem begin

and anwr sadat. he never had the demand of the democratic party. he suffered from that and habitat for humanity and i covered them in tijuana. they were walking around with 2 x 4's. this was a pr stunt. they were building houses for poor people. he's really good at it but i thought about them a lot to good guy probably in the wrong position historically but i don't know what we would have done with another person double-digit inflation double-digit interest rates and to top it off the three big eyes inflation interest rate and iran. reagan might have been able to his credit when he fired the air

traffic controller i think it's in the book that they said this guy is a different kettle of fish. we have to be careful about reagan. he fired all of his public employers. you are done. so sometimes remember george w. bush herbert walker bush debated dan rather on tv one day and he beat rather. he dispute them. remember the time rather was trying to hit him but he was in the loop in terms of iran contra and he said i think it's wrong to judge a man's grip by one incident and he walked off that set during the tennis match remembers the stuff and first of all beating in major network star first. i think you have to show your

strength and carter wasn't willing to do that. he's not a pugilist and he's not a fighter. he's a good man who got himself in a situation. >> when i think of it term civil servant i think it exemplifies what that actually is. >> you would have been good at the department of transportation. i wouldn't knock it. we need executives they can do these things. i think a small one -- he was an honest man and we were all proud of him. the mac when you think about the last 50 or 60 years what is one president election if it'd gone the other way would have had the most impact do you think on the world in the last half-century

or so? and let's talk about this most recent one. >> i was aware of it at the time but if dewey had beaten harry truman the republican party in the big northeast establishment party the moderate republican party might have blossomed instead of began to die in the party of the west and the south and goldwater it just switched to an old dixie party basically but i think the republican center-right position and the christian democrats and the center-right but not right-wing who were the tories in britain. i think that would have been a different political party. the party began to shift to the right and the great society came in and i liked goldwater as a kid to a broad in -- he was

riding around with confederate flags. >> you just said you like to goldwater's a kid and you still identify with what you've written and talking about john f. kennedy obviously and those are two different people. same if they were pals you know by the way. i shifted on issues like vietnam and goldwater against civil rights bill and things like social security. my dad would argue against libertarians saying you need social security because some some people will save any money they end up being dependent on the state in their 60s, 70s and 80s. there's a practicality to that. when i think about the republican party -- part of it. it a big shock.

i'm curious you talk about old water. goldwater's one of those people that selby jr. shared the stories like doris kearns goodwin talks about hanging out with them in later years -- talk about evolution. i interviewed george w. bush a month ago. >> would the say about iraq? >> we didn't get into that too much but we did talk about immigration and his evolution in certain ways and we also talked about his view on january 6 and donald trump and some of those issues to. he got maybe involved in the public sphere. >> what did he say about liz cheney? >> that had not happened yet. the liz cheney thing had not happened when we talked.

>> i don't think he was a big cheney guy in his second term. he definitely wasn't buddy buddy with him in the last four years. >> you think what we are seeing now this kind of come it's very controversial and a lot of people are seeing this public rehabilitation and obviously called him a war criminal but if that is that true to the person he was like in the early texas governor years? >> i like to thank everybody learns and everybody eventually people like o.j. simpson they think the same way today and do they believe he is innocent or were they making it case against the behavior? the start with the l.a. police. i think, i remember when liz

cheney a few weeks ago when people on the left were jumping all over her saying -- but she is right now so give her credit for right now. try to judge people in a way that they can win the argument. if she had stuck with trump he would beat her up but when she runs from trump you are going to beat her up again? you have to give people an out. reward them and i remember years ago with george herbert walker bush with a tax increase which was going to hurt him politically. >> read my lips. soon the newspaper said you can't knock him for the tactics and knock him for raising it. what are you up to hear? yet to be honest and fair and give people a break when they are doing what they think is the

civic good. >> there's no gain in raising taxes. >> we could talk about that moment to bid we have one more question from one of our viewers greg who says and this is a big question so feel free to go a little bit more diverse but who is the favorite person you've ever interviewed and is there some in the pops out someone in their later years? >> probably nelson mandela. 28 years in prison and refuse to leave prison and hadn't seen his wife or had a wife 28 years in the sony said i'm not coming out the communist party can run candidates and i'm not giving up on democracy in this country. i was gifted with the opportunity to be there when they interviewed him and i watched archbishop tutu when he

voted and i saw lines from one horizon to another voters who believed in democracy. the white's numbers are so much smaller than the lax that we are going to have an honest democracy and one man did that. he said we are going to do this democratically and we are going to vote. that's how we are going to get our charter rule. i wish it were younger but whose fault is that? ..

>> yes. pete buttigieg. keep his job and his mind or his eye on the prize that he will not stake his neck out. biden likes one celebrity in the administration and kamala harris does the same thing don't stick your neck out for you will lose control of yourself. i think kamala harris is ambitious as hell. going from and attorney and a senator and then vice president whether president probably will not run for reelection.

so who is up there in the usual ranks of governors? and outstanding senators? who is ambitious? gavin newsom from california. he is facing a recall possibly that he well when that handily. i don't see anybody from the northeast i don't see anybody in new england joe kennedy junior lost his bid for senate he definitely whatever he and first one - - ran but he's out right now. i don't see anybody in the midwest. i do think amy klobuchar is still ambitious she is very likable as a candidate in group of 200 they are attentive she can command a small audience if she can reach the national crowd that you have to reach.

she got hurt by the reports that those that work for her don't like her. >> i have heard it all. think it's forbidding - - for voting to run for higher office you had to have ego and ambition that goes beyond your fear. clinton didn't do it in 88 and then 92 when he with monica he said we will then. so that force of will maybe those that grew up in difficult circumstances somebody says i can do it no matter what i will take any kind of heat because i have a goal. but think about it the thing about our system we may have the only system in the world were a political party you are

not chosen by your peers. people run for the presidency and has nobody else in their corner but themselves how many senators back biden? [laughter] it's not like in britain or germany or israel where they get together in the cabinet picks you. they are not here approved. 's you are not chosen as leaders. they pick themselves. nobody what is that i wish biden would have run nobody would've set i wish trump would have run. it is self-selection. we choose among those who select themselves. that's our job to pick one of the two ego people that chose

to be president of the united states and that's how it works. >> nobody without a large ego with think they could run the whole world. >> i'm thinking of kim young noon but what about those geniuses in china working the long game? what they grab taiwan? what will they do what about ukraine and georgia and the other states if it decides to grab one of them? the kgb officer who is now their leader so what do we do because now china is purchasing africa every day giving them infrastructure and we cannot even give ourselves infrastructure the chinese community build a railroad all they want is underground rights they are thinking long-haul. [laughter] and that's not even bringing up the fact with all the domestic issues and with white

supremacy or caught killings or cop shooting is on you. it is a rugged time. >> grover cleveland is the only president to have run twice into different elections. so the big question of courses will it be 2024? or the chance that trump could win again? you know the guy a little that. you know he sees these things and do you see that as a viable situation quick. >> i think both men are

running against each other next time but yes if biden could be trump twice he is a heavyweight champion trump comes back is a heavyweight champion again but they would be close because most of the states stakes are taken maybe you argue about pennsylvania or wisconsin but coming down to the short hairs it so close it will be like that for the rest of our discussions i don't see a time when either party get 60 votes to pass legislation i don't see democrats 21 states including oklahoma that are ruby red then you cannot get those votes in the senate may be the republicans can get a surge but i see a country divided

are not really functional in years to come i see the biden legislative agenda nothing getting through. >> and the filibuster sits there i think we have to find out what we are doing for the democrats to get away to these people lbj would find a way positively or negatively he would say what do you need young man? i can give you what you need that joe has a problem he has a 40 percent margin for trump. none of the people on the left, the progress is that betray their districts. that's hard to say thank you for voting going the opposite. >> but you are still connected with tempo neil with that

relationship. he was at the helm in 2021 what were those conversations be like with the filibuster? would it be more behind the scenes? >> we had a fight over infrastructure and 82. the republican leader from illinois was trashing the bill on the floor. pretty good rhetoric and the speaker would get on the floor and listed the names and addresses and bob michael's district and he gets red-faced and went to the back of the room. [laughter] somebody does that for him some you know very well. but that political theater can be effective. did the bill get through? yes.

but we had the majority but you have to change the topic what does he need and what is he getting done instead of how many trillions of dollars can we spend? they haven't talked about what they will do with that 1 trillion over the next eight years trump would talk about rebuilding at lax or penn station in new york. he was a draw a picture of the potholes across the country. you have to make a case this has to be done done or we descend into a third world country because the difference is you keep yourself good the buildings are painted you make it look good. some places are so poor they cannot pay anything beyond subsistence payments and don't have the money or the capital that we do.

and to build the cities up again but i'm worried what's going on underneath new york city. all of these wires and sewers and waters what is keeping that up? that is really old. we discovered that when we saw the whole seawall come down of manhattan keeping the water out of these buildings i don't know what it's like to be a civil engineer today in these big cities but i think we have to keep up with of the first world country is about. >> you have this book will there be more? or something you haven't tackled that? where you tackle different moments in history? >> i'm a distinguished professor of american politics and media fulbright university vietnam might now i will do

that for the year there's a great irony in history the kids over there very smart. i will keep writing i was writing before tv and kennedy nixon maybe was at best but before i got on tv. i am proud of writing i like being a writer. >> you should definitely be proud of this book. the author is this country i'm glad you wrote it it's a pleasure band talking with you getting to chat for a few minutes i hope you mark off that 50th stay on your list. [laughter] >> and never should've told you that but i will get down there to see the place. >> thank you for watching and joining us and take care.

>> i was discouraged by the tone of the rhetoric about immigrants the labeling and some of the adjectives used was not real or conducive to even coming together so i decided to enter the world of politics in the unusual way to paint the portraits of immigrants and tell their stories with the hopes every educating americans about what education has meant it will mean to our country. i didn't anticipate the big crisis or not crisis or whatever it is called now that

so the books coming out very unusual not that prescriptive but i do remind people why our country is a beautiful place and why people aspire to come to america and they add a dimension that is very helpful

>> good afternoon the president of the intercollegiate studies institute i'm pleased to welcome you to our annual conservative book of the year award. this year you've all is the author of the book