now have access to affordable quality health care. and insurance companies cannot hold it against you to have pre-existing conditions. we need to keep making it easier to access care. oft is why we recruited some the best talents from silicon valley and the private sector. one of their very first innovations, veterans now can apply for v.a. health care from anyanywhere, device, including your cell phone, simple, easy, and in as little as 20 minutes. just go to vets.gov. the days of waiting at the the a office or mailing it in our over. we are moving into that when he first century when it comes to helping our veterans. it's about time. we are reaching more veterans, including rural veterans, with

telemedicine. so you can see somebody at the v.a. without leaving your home. we have a women's health care provider at all of our clinics to make sure that women veterans get the tailored care and dignity and respect that you deserve. [cheers and applause] and for our disabled vets, we for increased funds prosthetics, eliminating co-pays if you are catastrophically disabled, made progress on canurrent receipt, so you receive your military retired pay and her disability benefits. [applause] we are doing more than ever to make sure your devoted families and caregivers get the skills and support they need to stay strong as well. here, i want to thank veterans across our country for being part of another mission. our precision medicine

initiative to revolutionize health care with treatments that are tailored for each patient. as of today, more than 500,000 veterans, maybe some of you, have stepped forward and donated information to research. it gives us a better understanding of genetics, which will allow us to improve treatments for things like traumatic rain injury and posttraumatic stress and diabetes and cancer. and that won't just help veterans. it will help all americans and it is just one more example of how our veterans keep serving our country even after they've come home. [applause] we need to keep improving mental health care. i will never forget the soldiers i met at fort bliss. they were proud of their service, but they were struggling with issues like posttraumatic stress.

with ptsd wens have made it possible for you to qualify for the medicare that you need, regardless of when you served. we havehem proved -- improved it by 75%, billions more of dollars. any shame ord stigma that comes with going to get mental health. [applause] we have that in place more clinicians, more councils -- more counselors, more peers support, more research. $100 million to approach pts. and today, we are providing more mental health care to veterans than ever. we are saving lives. [applause] veterans stilly aren't getting the care that they need, we all have to be

outraged. we all have to do better. veterans a day are taking their own lives, that is a national tragedy. we all have to do better. taking those 20 vets their lives each day are not in the v.a. but we know that when vets do v.a.he eight care, -- care, they are more likely to survive your so we need to get more connected to the v.a. and when you have a urgent need from and to health care, you should not have to wait two days or weeks. you should get those services the very same day. [applause] and congress can help by providing the funding applicability we need to hire highly qualified mental health professionals. and medical schools can help us recruit and train more psychiatrists. , military andican civilian come i can help as well by learning those five signs that somebody is hurting so we

can reach out and help our veterans stay strong. we are one team. one american family. of our family is suffering, we've got to be there for each other. we also need to keep fixing the problems that came to light, long wait times, veterans denied care, people manipulating the books -- inexcusable. i know bob gave you an update. but i want to repeat. we have hired thousands more doctors, nurses, staff, opened more clinical space. and with the choice program, we are helping more veterans get help outside the v.a. it all amounts to billions more appointments, delivering more veterans -- delivering more benefits to more veterans. access, as we improve more veterans are seeking care. so we are putting more and more resources in, but you have more and more demand for care at the same time or it and this surge in demand -- same time.

in this surge in demand means the need for more appointments. i know i am not satisfied. bob is still not satisfied. and we will not let up or bob and his new -- let up. bob and his new team will transform the the a and hold people accountable. this is someone who cares deeply about veterans getting what they deserve and what they have earned. exposen whistleblowers misconduct, they will be protected, not punished. i have to say, here is one thing i want to be very clear about. here's one thing we will not do. we cannot outsource and health care services for american veterans. applause]d there are folks who keep pushing this.

they don't always come out and say the word privatize, but you read what they say. that is what they mean. and these radical proposals to dismantle the v.a. system that millions of americans depend on every day in that would hurt veterans. that inter study show many areas like mental health, the quality of care at the v.a. is often better than in private care. so let's listen to our veterans who are telling us don't destroy the a health care -- v.a. health care. fix it and don't destroy our covenant with our american veterans. [applause] this brings me to the third area where we have to take notice. we have to keep cutting the --klog heard from its peak backlog. from its peak, we slashed itt

by 90%. time whena chunk of the backlog was where every day, no matter what was happening around the world, he and i would take these walks around the south lawn to keep our exercise, , and everyeps up day, we talked about how are we going to get that backlog down. we will look and see what kind of progress we are making. that is how we reduced it by 90%. lower than when i came into office, even though there are more people eligible for claims and claims are more accurate the first time. [applause] [applause] and on both these fronts, we are keeping at it. but as we all know, when , youans appeal a decision

are put into an appeals system that right now is broken. and you shouldn't have to fight for years to get a straight answer. reforms.posed major and i want to thank the dav and all the other veterans groups for raising your voice on this. we've got to keep up the pressure. congress needs to pass comprehensive reform of the claims appeals process. because if we don't fix the appeals process, it even when we get the backlog down on the original claim, too many folks are waiting on the backend. we've got to fix it and we can. but we have to push congress. i don't know if you have noticed, but that is hard. [laughter] keeph, we've got to fighting for the dignity of every veteran. and that includes ending the tragedy, the travesty of

veterans homelessness. [applause] this is something within my administration that we have said this is all hands on deck across government. we are joining forces, michelle and jill have galvanized mayors in many communities across the country. states, 27 counties have effectively ended veterans homelessness. [applause] , i can announce that nationally we have now adduced the number of homeless veterans -- now reduced the number of homeless veterans by 47%, nearly half. we have just about cut [applause]

veterans homelessness in half. we have helped bring tens of thousands of veterans off the street. slowing down. we are going to keep up the momentum. this fall, michelle will bring our partners from across the country together at the white house to share best practices, figure out what has worked, what hasn't worked. because we will not stop until every veteran who fought for america has a home in america. this is something we've got to get done. [applause] keepinally, we've got to fighting to give our troops and veterans and your families every opportunity to live the american dream that you health defend. -- you helped defend. the our overhaul of assistance programs, families have received training to start

a job or a business. tohave extended it vocational training and apprenticeships. we have empowered veterans with new tools to find the schools that are right for you or to get the support you need to succeed on campus, to make sure you capt get ripped off, to your student loans to make sure you and your family get in-state tuition, which is true now in all 50 states. [applause] and so far, we have helped more than 1.6 million veterans and their families realize their dream of an education. [applause] an investment in you and america that will keep us strong and keep paying off for generations to come. we are doing more to help you find jobs worthy of your incredible talent. a team if you could lead

and religious sticks and manage a budget or save a life in a war zone, you sure as heck can do it right back here at home. [applause] i called for states to recognize the training and skills of veterans when issuing credentials for civilian jobs, licensing. now all 50 states do it. than half the states made it easy for military spouses to get credentials and licenses. today, all 50 states do it. starting this fall, we will close loopholes to protect our troops and military families from predatory payday lenders. so today,applause] all across america, more veterans are at work, on the job . beginning the next chapter of your service to our country. veterans who are physicians and nurses have been hired by community health centers, cities and towns hiring veterans as teachers and police officers,

firefighters and first responders because we made it a priority in the federal hundreds ofhiring thousands of veterans coming clean disabled veterans, nearly one in three federal workers is now a veteran. [cheers and applause] i challenged america's companies to hire veterans. and then comically -- in case they weren't listening to me, i sent joe and michelle on them. through joining forces, companies have hired and trained more than 1.2 million veterans and military spouses. [applause] so all told, we have cut veterans unemployment from one half, down to 1.2%, which is already lower than the already low national average. [applause]

it is one of the reasons we have been able to help 1.6 million veterans refinance or buy a home of their own. so i will keep saying to every company in america -- if you want talent, if you want dedication, if you want to get the job done, then hire a vet. [cheers and applause] hire a military spouse. they know how to get the job done. they don't fool around. [cheers and applause] so, dav, we have made a lot of progress. it is not always focused on because, understandably, the news a lot of times focuses on what is not still working. that's ok. it keeps us on our toes. it keeps us working. but every once in a while, it is good to remember the progress we have made. because that tells us, when we focus on it, we can do right by our veterans. and as this new generation of veterans joined your ranks, we have got to keep on setting up

our ranks, giving better as the resources you need for transforming the v.a., delivering the health care you earn, reducing the backlog, reforming appeals, standing up for your dignity and helping you share the american dream. and i know we can area because over the -- we can. it is over the last eight years, i have seen the spirit of america. and i have seen time and time again that spirit of our veterans, the unbreakable will of our disabled veterans. you teach us better than anybody that we may take a hit sometimes . we may get knocked down. but we get back up. we carry on. [cheers] and when we take care of each other and uphold that sacred covenant, there is nothing we cannot do. like that soldier i told you before, army ranger veteran corey rumsfeld, nearly killed in learned to talk

again and walk again, and who recently stood up and walked into the oval office and shook my hand. [applause] we all have to keep on rising. like metal -- like medal of honor recipient who struggled with post-traumatic stress and is now helping others stay strong, troops, veterans, civilians, we all have to keep on healing. like the wounded warriors and disabled vets who are out there running and jumping and swimming and biking, including charlie linville who just became the first combat amputee to reach the top of mount everest. [applause] we all have to keep on striving. [applause] taking care ofns each other, including here at gain -- oscar all olgin, carmen mcginnis, who says

that helping veterans gives me a sense of purpose. that is something we all have to recognize. we all have to keep on serving. like air force technical sergeant jason miller, who considered taking his own life, but who wrote me a letter. and after i put him in touch with team rubicon, went to work rebuilding communities after disasters, found a new purpose in life. we all have to keep building this country we love. and like the race of error military and our veterans, whether they are black or white or latino or asian american or young or old, whether they are gay or straight, for whatever women,aith, men, americans with disabilities, we have to keep on uniting as one team, as one people, as one nation. that is what you have taught us.

that is what you are an example of gave the disabled american veterans of america, i am grateful for everything you have done for this country. i am grateful for having had the opportunity to work with you. god bless you. thank you for your service. thank you for set -- for your sacrifice. thank you for your patriotism. god bless our veterans and god bless the united states of america. thank you very much. [cheers and applause]

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]

[no audio]

announcer: the president heads back to the white house from atlanta this evening. he will welcome the premise or from singapore. we are watching video from earlier today as the prime minister arrived. this is the first official visit since 1985. tomorrow, there will be an official arrival ceremony on the south one of the white house. he will be laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown at arlington national ceremony and hold meetings with self -- with defense secretary ash carter. , today, he will

be speaking at the u.s. chamber of commerce and take part in a conversation about the importance of the transpacific trade pact. that will be here later on c-span. tonight, on the communicators, we visited a technology show on capitol hill and spoke with several developers of started technology companies, including one whose company who intends to deliver broadband homes wirelessly. they talked about policy issues they would like to discuss with members of congress. you are looking at 10 times, 15 times [indiscernible] the big advantage of that is that it gives you a thousand times more data. is of the first uses of that

wireline broadband imitation. tonight onwhat's the "the communicators" on c-span 2. ♪ this week on q1 day, joshua kendall -- q&a, joshua kendall. book,scusses his "first dad." brian: what is this book about and where did you get the idea? joshua: my last book was "america's excesses," american phoenixo were control -- control freaks. with characterle disorders that had difficulty

relating to other people, but were amazing movers and shakers. i wrote a chapter on jefferson. jefferson, of course, is america's most articulate proponent of freedom, our most fighter of tyranny. but he was a control freak with his daughters. .e know how brilliant he was but in the election of 1804, he was reelected by about 75% of the vote. it brought up the question of how one leads a nation and how one leads a family. great visionary thinker and a great leader. but as a dad, so-so. he also neglected his daughters a little bit. when he goes to paris, he sticks them in a convent school. one of his daughters famously has to be shepherded out of london when she comes to visit him in paris. to how one leads a

nation and how one leads a family. a big disconnect between the public and the private man. another example would be franklin roosevelt, who is a great communicator. is one of the great presidents of the 20th century. he got us through the great depression. he gets us through the not these. he -- through the nazis. he gets us through the war with japan. and when he dies, it is like the country has lost a father. but with his own kids, he is kind of distant. his own kids hold him up. in 1921.polio and his comeback in 1924, he is leaning on his son james. where fdr holds up the nation, his relationship with his kids are topsy-turvy and his kids

take care of him at various points in his life. so his kids kind of hold him up so that he can hold up the nation. another president of the same old, perhaps the best republican president, ronald reagan. , great communicator like fdr got americans to feel good about themselves. but with his own children, he was also very distant. this came out when nancy reagan died earlier this year, a lot of the commentary was about their terrific marriage and they had this amazing bond. but the bond often left their children feeling excluded. that was some of the governing .hesis of the book i wanted to look at how one leads a nation and how one leads a family. is sometimes, the president the same in public and in private. john adams was an authoritarian president. he gave us the alien and sedition acts.

if the press spoke ella his administration, he wanted to go after them. ill of hisress spoke administration, he wanted to go after them. he tells john quincy, the elders, you are either going to be a president or you are going to be a tailor. john quincy -- be a failure. john quincy lives of to the challenge. truman was a connector as both a president and a dad in the same way that obama, i think, is a connector as a president and a dad. and truman are communicating dads.

most are very proud that he has read all seven volumes of harry potter to malia. yet republicans have been criticizing obama for giving away the store to the iranians. truman had that he was too soft in his decisions. but his public self was very similar to his private self. i think that is also true with obama. brian: 43 men have been president. 153 children? mr. kendall: that depends if you count the illegitimate children. brian: i'm not. five presidents had no children. he most children born to anyone legitimate what about the five , 15. that did not have any children? what impact did it have on them

and the presidency? mr. kendall: the first, george washington, that was very significant in our history. washington writes in his first inaugural, he never actually says it, but he says something to the effect of -- you can trust me, americans, because i do not have any biological children and is therefore there is no danger i will pass on the reins of power to a child. the last thing we wanted in the 1780's was a monarch. americans seem to the dynasties, to this day. i wrote an op-ed a year ago when jeb bush announced -- and i think some of his problems had to do with his hatred of dynasty. washington was one. washington was actually a very sweet dad. he is an interesting case because he had a very critical mother. this comes out -- the argument

lays out-- ron turnout his terrific biography, that washington had a very difficult mother. he developed a sense of control as a child. that became his sense of control and decorum as a leader. he said to himself, i will not be the lousy parent i had. his father died when he was about 14 and he decided to be very sweet. made an effort with martha's children. he is a nurturing dad. not quite as gifted as a parent because it did not come naturally, he work at it. but i think truman and obama naturally because they had a lot of support as children, they were very nurturing. james polk did not have any biological children. another case is james buchanan. james buchanan is our only bachelor president.

his new biography i read about in the works that will argue that buchanan was gay, and that seems to check out. but buchanan adopted his niece. harriet lane. so, the five who did not have biological children all adopted children. you can see from those relationships, you can get a sense of what they were like as family leaders. what is so interesting about children as opposed to wives, his obvious leave and tell something about character, about how i man interacts with his wife. but the children are really powerless. women, it is certainly -- is more of an equal relationship.

maybe not so equal in the 18th century. but children just have -- they are really at the mercy of their parents. what can they do? you get a sense of how a president treats someone who is powerless. a really interesting example was james garfield. president in 1880. the book starts with garfield -- i was so moved by how sensitive he was to his boys. the book starts in july of 1881, garfield is about to go to the 25th three union at williams college with his two sons were about to start at williams college. he is jumping around the bed with them and singing gilbert and sullivan songs with them. attuned a sense he is to what his children were feeling. garfield also had tremendous empathy to african-americans. in his inaugural, he wanted to make that a centerpiece of his administration. sadly, that day he goes to union station a few blocks from here and gets shot. he dies a couple months later. of course, jim crowe sets in and

race relations are horrible for the next 80 years. if you have an watching a news the summer, race relations are still in not great shape. brian: oren harding had no children. but tell the warren harding story. mr. kendall: his wife had a child and he also had some grandchildren. he never was seen with those grandchildren. so, he had some grandchildren through his wife like washington. washington was very proud of taking care of his grandchildren. harding, no one knew about it. harding, i have a chapter in the book called double dealing dads with illegitimate children. harding is one of the well-known examples. he had a mistress, a young woman -- he was in his 50's when he was president. he had a young woman from ohio

in her early 20's and they had a sexual relationship. no one knew about it and the first inkling came in 1928, five years after his death, when she writes a memoir. no one believes her. she said the president fathered her daughter. no one believes her. the rest of the mainstream press says, no way. in the 1960's, a harding biographer stumbling upon some manuscripts ohio, and he -- in ohio, and he finds 200 love letters that harding wrote to another woman, kerry phillips. those letters were recently released by the library of congress. then people say, if he could carry on with this other woman, maybe there was something to her allegations. then last summer, ancestry.com did dna testing and she was telling the truth. brian: how long do they all live and how long did kerry phillips

live? mr. kendall: kerry phillips lived about 20 years after harding's death. brian: how close to the oval office did the harding love affair get? mr. kendall: if you want to go for details, i think it was sex in the coat closet. brian: of the oval office? mr. kendall: yes. and he does not leave the daughter any money in his will, and that is why she writes the book. the harding family thinks she is a money grabber. but the evidence does seem to check out now especially with the dna. brian: how many interviews did you do with ancestors or people who knew something about these presidents? mr. kendall: i do 18 of the presidents in depth. i have six chapters.

each chapter i focus on three presidents with illegitimate children. i focus on harding, grover cleveland, 1884. and then tyler. john tyler, who apparently had lots of slave children. i do 18 presidents in depth. in many of those cases i spoke to descendents. for instance, john tyler, he is born in 1790 and i spoke to his grandson, which is amazing. his grandson was born in 1928. brian: his grandson has alzheimer's? mr. kendall: yes. i spoke to him about three years ago, harrison tyler. the reason for that huge age discrepancy has to do with the theme of that chapter, that tyler was a lusty fellow and he was having children when he was about 70. one of tyler's sons was having children when he was 70, and

that's when harrison was born. brian: let me quote something you used from a professor. you say that tyler often boasted about having fathered a staggering total of 52 children with black women over the course of his life. did you happen to talk to jail dance?- gerald mr. kendall: i interviewed darrell dans and she has written a book quoting a lot of present-day people who claim to be tyler's. in that chapter i lay out the case and circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling. i'll so have a photo of one of the black tyler's who looks a lot like tyler. i think be tyler allegations are kind of where the jefferson allegations were a generation ago.

now there is dna evidence, but until annette gordon reed -- harvard professor, started writing her terrific books about sally hemmings, most journalists and historians poo-pooed that. there was compelling circumstantial evidence about jefferson. i make the argument that the tyler case meets the same -- there's a lot of circumstantial and may one day be dna evidence. brian: his life was extraordinary. 15 children. how did that divide up between wives? and those were legitimate. mr. kendall: i make a joke that 1840 was the most fertile ticket. there are allegations that he

may have had four black children. 10 from harrison and 15 from tyler with two marriages. eight from his first wife, 7 from his second wife. his first wife dies in 1842. then he marries a beautiful woman 30 years younger with an hourglass figure in 1844, julia tyler. then he has seven more children with her. the allegations about the black children go back 30 years. brian: how much of these former presidents having children by black slaves, in most cases, is new information?

mr. kendall: the jefferson is well-known but the other presidents, it is not well-known. what i found was so interesting, was that martin van buren's vice president, richard johnson had , black children, and that was known in the 1830's. johnson was eventually kicked off the ticket in 1840 because of opposition. as i quote one of tyler's alleged slave children who told a newspaper in the 1840's, such things happen on plantations, of slave to the birth masters having children with black women. it was not as rare as we think today. brian: from your book, in 1845, a critic accused the president

of staging wild sex parties with his two adult sons, robert and john junior, both of whom worked as presidential aides. again you are talking about john tyler. what kind of a person was he? mr. kendall: john tyler was a very tempestuous person. -- this isi guess the chapter on doubledealing i focus on harding, tyler, and grover cleveland. an argument that runs through that is that these were all compartmentalized men, often men who have affairs are that way. in fact, both cleveland and harding had dual personalities. cleveland refers to himself as having two personalities -- grover the good, who was the politician and cleveland is considered in the top half of a lot of presidential polls. he had grover the good, and big

steve. he was known in buffalo as a drinker and a womanizer and harding had dual personalities. he even had a name for his member. he called it jerry. jerry was the kind of sexual side of harding that had the affair with kerry phillips. brian: did he use that word in his relations? mr. kendall: privately. jerry, he would use that name. i think tyler -- i did not come up with evidence of a second name, but very compartmentalized. he can be a southern gentleman but he also had an aggressive side. when he was in grade school, he bound and gagged a teacher. i wrote a piece comparing it to donald trump. donald trump punched out his third grade music teacher.

you may remember he then went to military school and had behavioral problems. tyler was a little like that. so tyler was very compartmentalized. he could be a southern gentleman. with his children it was, do as i say, not as i do. brian: and those were his children we are talking about? mr. kendall: yes. i try to relate the parenting to the politics. for instance, grover cleveland had an illegitimate child that he really had nothing to do with, and i argued that he kind of bird trade that betrayed that child. but grover cleveland had grover the good. he was compartmentalized. as a president, he was quite solid. when the civil war starts, we have five ex-president's and

tyler is the only one who signs up for the confederacy. he will be in the legislature of the confederate house of representatives. lincoln can't stand tyler, even though lincoln was a wig in the 1840's. tyler is the only president whose death was not mourned. lincoln refused to have a day of mourning. brian: he left some of his kids out of his will. mr. kendall his first family, he : left them out of his will. i argue he kind of betrayed his country and had this penchant for betraying his kids. at the same time, what is so interesting about tyler's he was kind of a wheel ordeal and got some things done. his biggest economic was getting us texas. he was kind of a trickster. i guess what i'm really interested in looking at

fathering is trying to capture the complexity of human beings, and fathering is kind of a way into character. we tend to think that this is a bad guy or a good guy, but you see that a lot of these men who had been president had different parts. they were compartmentalized and some can be very laudable and some could be disappointing and horrify us. brian: where do you live? mr. kendall: boston. brian: what do you do? mr. kendall: author. brian: full-time? when did that start? mr. kendall: this is my fourth. -- force by. i've been writing one every few years. brian: what did you do before that? mr. kendall: journalists. i freelanced, a lot of health and science. brian: did you grew up in boston? mr. kendall: manhattan. brian: where did you go to college? mr. kendall: yale.

brian: i think you did some lecturing? mr. kendall: i have a small affiliation with my college i spent a lot of time researching at yale. that kind of reconnected me with my alma matter. i had to spend time in new haven. brian: what led you into writing in the first place? mr. kendall: i guess maybe -- this book is dedicated to my own father. my own father was kind of a tiger-dad. i really to john eisenhower, ike's kid. my father was -- i resume he -- i recently wrote a piece in slate about my father because his history was amazing. i father was a secret nazi jew. my father was born in romania in 1925.

my grandfather was a soldier in world war i in austria, saw some anti-semitism and decided to convert. my father was raised catholic. the nazis marched in, and he served in the nazi army as a jew. that was the safest place for him to survive the holocaust. brian: did they know? mr. kendall: they did not know he was a jew. my father then moves to new york in the 1950's. i thought he was catholic. brian: did they raise you catholic? mr. kendall: they raised me without religion. my father went to jesuit school languageske like 10

would recite latin. i loved words and writing as a kid. i have a very complicated relationship with him. on one level he very inspiring, was another level, very tough. dwight eisenhower, he was very tough. john eisenhower died a couple years ago, he wrote military histories and was very inspired by his father. but he also found his father tough to take it eyes. brian: what does it mean to be a tiger-dad? mr. kendall: ike is a tiger-dad. john eisenhower graduates from west point on june 6, 1944. as a writer that was tough to , turn down. i have a scene in the book where he graduates. right after he graduates he visits ike at the front. he is a nervous wreck, he has no idea how d-day is going. he loves his kid. he's happy to see him, but he is

in full tiger-dad mode. he criticizes john. he is all over john's bidding. john gets a speck of dust in his uniform and is horrified. how could you do that? forget because we tend to remember ike from 1950's footage but he is a great , physical specimen. he played tackle football for the army and he once tackled jim thorpe in a game. john said that ike never hit him, but if he had he would have killed him. john said he was born standing at attention. he was terrified of his father. at the same time, he admired him. that is kind of what tiger-dad -- tiger dad's do. they push the kids really hard. brian: when do you remember your own father push you the hardest? mr. kendall: when i was in high school and he was telling me to

be in the military. when i was 16, i was fighting for hitler. and pushing me to get into college and study. i could relate. again john adams was very tough , on john quincy. in a weird way, that was my inspiration to be a writer. i've always want to be a writer. brian: how much of being in hitler's military impacted the way he was as a father? mr. kendall: it is very complicated because on the one hand, he knew that hitler was a nut, a mass murderer. on the other hand, there is some kind of weird admiration for hitler. my father, as i mentioned in the , the horse vessel was a nazi martyr. the nazi national anthem. if you sing it berlin today, you

will get arrested. this is serious business. i was exposed to that. there are not too many jews for whom these chilling lyrics bring out memories of a frolicking father. he has this sort of weird tie to the nazis. the rise and fall of the third reich, and the 1970's my father's copy was framed. he takes the dust jacket off and clips out the swastikas and saves them neatly. he says, i do not want the swastikas to go to waste. at the same time he would say -- my mother was jewish and i would say, dad, i consider myself jewish. he would say, josh, you are just like hitler. hitler considered judaism a race.

what he is talking about is a very interesting argument and i wish i could have had it with him in terms of fleshing out the intellectual side of what judaism is. is it a race, a culture, a religion? he got so adamant. what i talk about in the slate piece is the terror that he must have felt. it must never have left him. at age 16, if it had been discovered that he was jewish, he could have been shot. brian: when did he die? mr. kendall: about two years ago and the book is dedicated to him. obviously i was thinking about him a lot, especially after he died. brian: back to tyler in cleveland. we really haven't talked about how john tyler became president. mr. kendall: william henry harrison, 68 years old, has a cold on inauguration day after giving a speech for a couple hours.

tyler, his vice president under harrison. harrison dies a month into his administration. he's the first ice president to become resident and tyler took a very strong stance because there was a question about whether he president -- acting president or if he was actually the president. tyler took a strong stance and said i'm the real deal. that was part of his personality. tyler liked to the control. he would say that no matter what the constitution said. he had a strong constitutional argument that was eventually fleshed out in the 27th

amendment that the vice president takes office. that is part of tyler's doing and he set the pathway for all the other vice presidents. going to gerald ford, people who are not elected president. brian: the story about how he married his second wife and the story of the vote is worth hearing. mr. kendall: his second wife, tyler's first wife dies in he is quite flirtatious with every eligible woman who comes his way. brian: you said he chases them around the white house. mr. kendall: he chases julia, the belle of long island. she's on a boat with the ship of -- with her father. an accidentets into and dies and tyler literally -- she literally jumps into tyler's arms and that becomes the basis for the courtship. i argue that tyler, he ends up becoming a father to his own wife. he is 30 years older than her and he ends up becoming a father figure to his wife just like

harding was a father figure to his 20-year-old. brian: the story, it is on the potomac. was it a navy ship? mr. kendall: yes. there was an explosion on board and several people, including her father and i think his secretary of state also dies, there were some prominent people. brian: you call this chapter the doubledealing dad. you say this doubledealing dad, meaning john tyler would also , emerge as a surrogate father for his own wife. mr. kendall: she's not interested in dating tyler at first and want to loses her father, the loss is so severe plugs the kind of hole. so he becomes her husband, but also very much a father figure. julia becomes very influenced by

everything that tyler says and she is from the north from long island and she immediately -- i think the saddest paragraph in that chapter is that she immediately sort of starts parroting everything that tyler says and they go away for a couple months and they go back to the house in sherwood forest. brian: down in southern virginia. mr. kendall: that is where i met harrison, the grandson. he gave me a tour. so they are in sherwood force. while they were away, about a 10-year-old slave boy ate some dirt and dies. julia writes a letter to sibling -- to a sibling and says there goes $300. it just seems like she has totally bought into, you would think someone from the north

would say she would accept it, but she buys into his mindset and it seems like her, she is not a fully formed person when she marries him and that's where he is a father figure to her. brian: and all the presidents that you covered, did you find out anything that no one knew? mr. kendall: i interviewed chip carter and i say some new things about jimmy carter. first of all, people forget most , of us only think of amy and we forget that jimmy had three sons and as jimmy has acknowledged in books, without those three sons, he probably never would have been president. he is on "what's my line" in 1974. he's governor of georgia and he stumps the pound. no one knows who he is. if we have long campaigns today,

i think we have jimmy carter to blame. he is the first person who really takes iowa seriously. the reason he can take iowa seriously is he has three sons and they're all married and has a staff of six and, he did not have any money. without that staff, they are going all over the country raising small donations. jimmy carter, we tend to think of -- i mean, his biggest accomplishment as president was the camp david accords. he won the nobel peace prize.

and there's no question that as a politician and post president, he is committed to peace and extremely concerned about talking problems through but what was shocking was that in his own family he was very tough. he had a philosophy of spanking and jack carter, his eldest son came up to him in the 1980's and said dad, i think you run my life with your harsh parenting. to carter's credit, he takes jack seriously. he takes jack seriously and has written about it in a couple of his books. and he tells jack, my own dad was tough. jimmy carter was born in the 1920's. getting whooped by your dad in the south in the 1920's was common. and he realizes unwittingly that he passed on the harsh parenting he received to his sons and makes amends. i was in atlanta giving and talk and i ended up passing on a book to jimmy carter to his grandson,

a political consultant and his grandson, james or a carter, is carter, is the one who found the 47% tape that mitt romney said last election that is not concerned about the 47%. jimmy carter's grandson found that. gave it to "rolling stone." i met him and i passed on a book to his grandfather and i said, to america's best post president and also to america's best post presidential dad for the courage to become a father he had always longed to be and i was so moved by how carter really acknowledged that he had not been the dad. carter is in my first chapter and that is the largest category. most people who become president are obsessed with politics and

if you are obsessed with obtaining power and keeping power, you're not going to have a lot of time for children and that was true of the three people i profile in that chapter. franklin roosevelt, lyndon johnson who famously said i think about politics only 18 hours a day. brian: what did you learn from his daughter lucy? mr. kendall: i learned he did lucy the johnson treatment. i was so amazed, i'm not a lbj expert, but just how much he got done on the first couple of years before vietnam, amazing amount of legislation. through the johnson treatment arm-twisting and cajoling, he also did to his daughter. the public and the private. brian: how much did his daughter know about all of the mistresses he had? mr. kendall: i don't think his daughter knew much about it.

johnson also comes out in the doubledealing dad's chapter. there is a mistress who wrote a memoir which includes canceled checks about a son who died in the 1990's. johnson once bragged to his staff that i had more women by accident than kennedy had by design. johnson was quite the ladies man and that has not come through in a lot of biographies. brian: which children, 153 legitimate children, 43 men, which had the worst relationship with the father or went on to live bad lives? mr. kendall: the saddest case was a suicide that may have been a result of a contentious relationship with a father. i told you that john adams was a tiger dad.

he says to john quincy, be president or else. john quincy does the same thing to his firstborn and gives him the name george washington. with that kind of freight, you know what is expected. george washington adams was a smart kid, goes to harvard, wins the boylston prize, a big award over ralph waldo emerson. he goes up there and is smart as a whip but is a little shy and he just finds his father very oppressive. in his 20's, and 1820's, george washington starts drinking, is trying to work as a lawyer and that has an affair with an irish chambermaid which results in a kid. in 1929, john quincy adams is voted out of office, going back -- i'm sorry, 1829. in march of 1829, he is coming from washington going back to boston, writes george washington

and says please come to washington and help me move. george washington is terrified that his father will find that his life is a mess and he has an illegitimate kid. on the boat to washington, he committed suicide. he jumped off the boat. you can't say that his father killed him off. that would be crude. but you can say there was a tremendous amount of stress in that relationship. probably has a mental issue or other factors involved. what is so moving is that john quincy has an amazing comeback. after his presidency, he goes to the house of representatives and becomes this fire abolitionist or quasi abolitionist and i think that death changed his life.

brian: you talked to a couple psychiatrists, medical doctors. why? mr. kendall: my interest is in personality. i think we have to try to understand the psychology. at george washington university, he's done psychological profiles of political leaders from bill clinton to saddam hussein. this notion of trying. i'm interested in understanding what makes people take and when we think of presidents we tend to think of list of policies. coolidge, low taxes. roosevelt, the new deal. i'm trying to change that and have people think of them as decision-makers. how do they make decisions? i think seeing how the decisions inside the family can flesh out

our understanding of them. brian: chapter five is the grief stricken. i want to ask about somebody, william mckinley. you have calvin coolidge and the loss of his son and think what appears in the loss of his son and a couple children. what about william mckinley? mr. kendall: mckinley loses two children in the 1870's and as with john quincy adams, out of that tragedy comes some kind of energy and resolve and mckinley goes into politics in 1876 and his wife is very shaken. she developed a stroke and will be invalid for the rest of her life. i think there is a comparison between mckinley and roosevelt. at some level, franklin roosevelt, polio makes the politician, that he becomes deeper after he has polio, develops more empathy and is

just a better speaker and i think the same with mckinley. out of the tragedy, he kind of develops a brand of, even though he did not have children, he is a sensitive family man taking care of his invalid wife. americans fall in love with mckinley for that reason. he is very popular in 1896 and his wife is very fragile. mckinley, out of the tragedy, comes the political identity and tries to -- he is even keel and try to get everyone to get along. the pearce case is on the most horrific things i discovered. pierce in january of 1853, he is on a train going back to new hampshire and his third and only surviving kid gets his head

split open during accident and pearce have to pick up his own son with a hole in the head and if you talk to a psychiatrist, that is the worst kind of experience. losing a child is horrible. but losing a child in an accident is the worst of the worst. his wife literally goes psychotic and starts writing letters to all favorite dead children. pierce is considered one of our worst presidents and he did nothing to stop the slide into the civil war. and i think that at the record. it was not an effective president, but i think you need to understand that something was going on inside of him. it doesn't explain away the lousy presidency, but it adds some context. i think grief has a huge impact on america. that's affected campaign 2016. joe biden would have been fighting tooth and nail against hillary clinton this past spring if he had not lost beau.

and also a child before that. that is part of my argument. a lot of historians ignore the family life. it think it is squishy stuff. why should we care about the kids? look at this election. this is affected by biden family life and franklin pierce, his presidency. family life may be huge impact. coolidge is another case. calvin junior dies in july 1924. when coolidge dies nine years later, dorothy parker of "the new yorker" famously said how could they tell? what she is referring to to the fact nine years coolidge was not really alive. he was sleeping, taking these long naps, sleeping as much as 11 hours a day. before the death of his child, he was a dynamo.

there's an earthquake in japan in 1923. he's one of the first national leaders to respond to it. his very energetic. he loses it and becomes lethargic and probably would have run for president in 1928. he could have run. there were no term limits. he could have run it would have been a second full term. he would have run had it not been for the loss of a child. brian: back to franklin pierce, you say the president who would continue to don black gloves for years everyday? mr. kendall: the observers in washington said that the white house is like a morgue. it cast a pall on the entire administration. what is so moving, lincoln loses willie. his 11-year-old son. one of the first people he years from his franklin pierce, who is still around. he says, mr. president, i know exactly what you are going

through. i wrote in "the new york times" about presidential great that --about presidential grief, that there are two pathways. one is post-traumatic stress, some only coolidge was out of it or pierce who is out of it. the other pathway is hinted at, posttraumatic growth. which means that the person still expenses lost and is sickened by it, john quincy adams, out of that pain, come something amazing. some kind of energy. i think that happened with lincoln. he loses willie in 1862 and right around the same time he becomes this amazing civil war leader who is hell-bent on winning the war. he steps of the military campaign and uniting the country and willie was his favorite kid. and a few days his shot, i -- and a few days before willie i thoughthe said

about willie every single day. out of that pain comes some kind of heroism. brian: franklin pierce went on to be defeated and the election, his wife did not make an appearance for the first year. you say because the sun was killed. he put his hands in his pocket while talking about his beloved hawthorn. who is hawthorn? mr. kendall: nathaniel hawthorne, the scarlet letter, he was his buddy from college. brian: the response was, i will not take them out of my pockets. i am in the country and i like to feel the comfort of it. mr. kendall: his wife becomes really crotchety. hawthorne writes a letter and says don't worry about not sending the invitation to the white house, as long as jane is there, i'm not so keen on going. she becomes really difficult. pierce has a problem with alcoholism early in his life and she makes some references to it, undermining her husband.

all of the stress that pierce had to deal with, he had the violent death in front of his face, his wife collapsing, i think we have to take the family considerations, they are part of the historical record as well. brian: who else did you talk to? mr. kendall: what i really enjoyed with franklin roosevelt, i spoke to a lot of the grandchildren. franklin roosevelt had five children. franklin roosevelt's children did not do so well. he was kind of a distant father. he had five children who had 19 marriages. one was ellie seagraves, daughter of anna, roosevelt's eldest child. she was at roosevelt's inauguration and john botegur, another child of anna, he told

me this amazing story, roosevelt was very charming, he did not connect. people felt like they did not know him. but they could be charmed by him. that is why the skills of a politician are not the same as the skills of a parent. roosevelt was a consummate politician but he really charmed john and had this wonderful memory of sitting on roosevelt's bed and reading the sunday funny papers. brian: in the acknowledgments , you talk about belong to the biographers association. biographers international association. what is that? mr. kendall: a group of biographers and we meet every year at a conference. i'm on the board and every year we celebrate a biographer. ron chernau i guess is a household name now because of hamilton.

stacy schiff, just america's -- a worldwide group led by the american contingent. we get together for annual conferences to discuss biography and how to tell stories. brian: how would you describe a biographer? mr. kendall: i think biographers just love information. we just had to go after everything. we can deal with the writing later. i think readers know what is on the page, but they don't know that to get that one paragraph it took, sometimes it can take a two-week trip or going to mountains and mountains of documents. it is wanting to know everything. i think that is what characterizes us. brian: you said that since 22 presidential children have attended harvard, 15 more than

yale, the second-most popular ac found it useful to visit the harvard university archives. did these children that attended harvard, did they get in because they were smart or because they were sons or daughters of presidents? mr. kendall: there was a piece for politico because molly obama is going to the number 23 at harvard. she is taking a gap year this year. about nine presidents have attended harvard and when the president goes to harvard, they often do very well. barack obama was the editor of law review. john f. kennedy, his senior thesis became his first book. rutherford b. hayes was a distinguished graduate of the law school. until recently, the kids have not done so well. i spent some time at hyde park

and a lot of the kids were roosevelts. franklin roosevelt's son james, i read his letters to his father from harvard and he struggled with german. he ended up flunking german and never graduated. roosevelt's kids were partyers. brian: another thing about sources, i viewed additional unpublished letters between charles adams and his father. it letters have been reported as missing. there's an unpublished memoir. on the page before that, there's another unpublished memoir. how is it that after all these years, someone like you, you walk in and see something never published? mr. kendall: what you're talking about is archival resources. letters that are in the archives or a memoir in the archives and

publishers, george washington adams wrote that is not a well known figure and wrote a memoir about his life. if you put it in barnes & noble, no one will read it. it will be of interest to historians. my method was to read to make biographies and then do my own digging. i went to major archives. the massachusetts historical society has all the adams papers. john adams and john quincy adams. it also has the jefferson papers. people think, tom jefferson, virginia guy, everything must be in charlottesville. actually, his family marries a coolidge, and all the papers, bulk of the papers are in massachusetts.

brian: have you decided what your next biography will be about? mr. kendall: i haven't finalized the topic. i spent so much time on the presidential families, i'm just not sure what the angle is. this is a new angle. there was a book on presidential children that came out. what i thought was so exciting was, it is not just about presidential children, it is about the interactions with the fathers. i want to look at a new angle. brian: you associated closest with john eisenhower the son of dwight eisenhower. of all the other dads, who would you not like to have been the son of? mr. kendall: i think john quincy adams was really tough. brian: number one reason? mr. kendall: he had a son who is 30th in his class at harvard and he said don't come home for christmas. i will feel nothing but shame.

there were 75 students in the class. brian: joshua kendall has been our guest. he is the author of "first dads." he lives in boston. we thank you very much for joining us. mr. kendall: it has been a pleasure. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts.

singapore's prime minister is here this week. atre will be a state dinner the white house tomorrow. today, he is giving keynote remarks to the u.s. chamber of commerce on u.s. trade. you can see it here starting at 6:30 eastern. nation conference, discussing the next steps of a political movement that developed during the sanders campaign. here is a preview. a lot of people thought i would never get on convention. i won the primary by a 19% margin. [applause] >> let me repeat that, 19%,

outspent four to one. just because you spoke the truth. he had a million dollars, which actually isn't a lot for a senate race. there are no donations coming in. with a attention, a lot of that thee realizing next step in the political revolution is we have to start -- a senator in utah has just as much power over your lives as a senator from texas or from vermont. in order to have a dialogue in the nation, we need to have more progressives elected. the easier it is to support a progressive agenda and start fighting for the policies that bernie sanders talked about. we need more progressives in congress.

every victory you get is another vote. that is where we need to go forward. announcer: you can watch all of that conversation from the net roots nation conference. that starts tonight at 8:00 p.m. here on c-span. issue spotlight looked at police and police relations. obama: when the bullets started flying, the men and women of the dallas police, they did not flinch. and they did not react recklessly. announcer: and tim scott giving a speech on the senate floor about his own interactions with police. scott: i was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong

neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial. announcer: the program also includes one family story about an encounter with police in washington, d.c., followed with a panel with the city's police chief, cathy lanier. getf lanier: people defensive when they feel you are being offensive. being respectful in encounters and requests come if it is not a dangerous situation, request versus demand. those things change the dynamics a little bit. announcer: saturday at 8:00 eastern on c-span and www.c-span.org. peter cook held a briefing with reporters to discuss u.s. airstrikes against isis in libya. it was requested by libya and authorized by president obama.

peter: i want to begin with the campaign to defeat issa wherever it tries to spread. today come at the request of libya, the united states conducted precision airstrikes against eiffel targets -- against isil targets. were authorized by the president, following a recommendation by secretary carter and chairman dunford. they are consistent with our approach of combating isil. additional u.s. strikes will continue to target isil. you may have seen earlier today, the head of the gna announced he had specifically requested these strikes in the campaign to defeat isil in libya. the united states supports the

provideare prepared to any request. as you have heard the secretary say many times, combating isil's spread and defending the homeland against external isil primaryare the three goals of our campaign plan. that campaign is showing results. on thursday, president obama will receive a not date on the campaign. that will take place here in the pentagon. we look forward to his visit. is meeting with prime minister lee this afternoon, of singapore. they participated in a wreath laying ceremony at arlington cemetery.

with that, i would be happy to take your questions. >> when did the gna make the request? when did the u.s. approve it? how long will this air campaign began? -- begin? and can you talk a little bit about the targeting? who requests the targets the u.s. will hit? and how does the air force vet those targets before striking them. tim: i will not get into the specific timetable. it is something that was after consultation with the national security team, both the secretary and chairman making the recommendation to president obama. the requests will be carefully coordinated. there are specific requests from the gna and they will be closely coordinated with the gna going forward.

this all stems from their request for this assistance. and the specific area is where isil has maintained its most significant presence. > if you don't want to save money gna put in their request, when did the u.s. approve the gna request? how long you campaign continue? previously that the bolivians had requested via strike? going to getm not into specific details about the timing of the request or approval other than to say it has an in recent days. it follows again and ongoing conversation with the governing national board. the specific targets will be precision targets. the gna, as we have indicated, they have already made significant progress on the aread against isil in the

and are precision targets that help with.sked for targets, for example, one of them struck today was a tank. it is that kind of precision location, that we will be targeting that the gna at this point felt like that would be a helpful, helpful support for their efforts. quite how does the u.s. of that those targets? -- of that -- >> how does the u.s. that those targets? when the u.s. -- when the libyans request, will they vet before striking? sec. cook: yes, they will. >> are their americans on the ground do that? 8 there is -- sec. cook: there is a closely collaborative process that we engage in with the gna regarding process when determining -- precisely

determining specific locations to hit. the u.s. military will be specifically involved in every after closeprocess consultation with the gna. >> how long will the consul -- confrontation last? sec. cook: it depends on the request for support from the gna. we don't have an and at this particular moment in time, but we will be working closely with the gna and we hope it isn't something that requires a lengthy amount of time. we've seen great progress from them on their own. we have seen the isil numbers produced in libya. we think that this precision thisrike capability, unique capability that we can provide to their efforts can make a difference in the campaign. yes? >> thanks, peter. going forward, your statement indicated that there would be more strikes going forward to

basically dislodge isil. sec. cook: with close coordination to the gna, if they feel it's necessary. >> will each strike be approved by the president? how will that work? sec. cook: this will be done in .lose coordination with the gna the president has authorized these strikes to move forward. correct. it will, again, we determined that the pace and frequency will be determined by the close quarter of the gna. >> is that like the endpoint at which these point -- at which these strikes. ? sec. cook: again, the goal for the gna is to get rid of isil from the cert, from the country.

they have their forces on the ground conducting the effort. this will be in support of their efforts. the numbers of isil have been reduced. they have made significant progress already on their own and we believe that this can make a difference in ultimately short amount of time and he will be working closely with the government. >> broader question, strikes in libya so far have been one offs. as far as i can tell the last one that we were told about was in february. greater u.s. involvement in a wide-ranging campaign? sec. cook: i think that what it heralds, as we have said that sometime, the most of thing to addressing the threat of isil in libya was the formation of the government. we have seen that now.

the gna has made significant progress with forces on the againstaking progress isil. we applaud that, support that, and have asked for specific assistance in that area. >> from what you have said, this indicates greater confidence than was held previously in the gna. sec. cook: i think it indicates, yes, our support for the gna and from the military standpoint to the extent that we can be helpful. we want to carefully consider these requests. again, at the recommendation of secretary carter and chairman bill ford, we felt we could do it specifically as they move aggressively to eject i -- isil from their territory.

yes, tara? a peter, can you give us sense of -- why now? that the president was more comfortable in moving into this phase or was there something critical regarding these airstrikes being a game changer? what has changed now is the specifically west from the gna. they have been in progress on their own. but i will refer you to the prime minister's comments this morning. they felt that there were capabilities that they could conduct. specific airstrikes in an area like this, reducing the risk of civilian casualties was a risk on the part of the gna. a concern and part of the ability to strike with precision was the capability that they had

sought out and request specifically. >> as you said, precision environment. our u.s. forces on the ground helping to spot target to avoid civilian casualties? sec. cook: we have close coordination with the gna, but there are no boots on the ground. >> we talked about it throughout the spring, but there is not right now? role of those forces was to establish communication contact in libya and that has not changed. there is not a specific role for u.s. forces insert as part of this operation. collects their was an understanding that small teams had been moving in and out of libya over the last two. you expect this to continue, for there to be occasionally temporary missions on the

ground? again, with regard to this particular operation in certai, no.in i will not be speaking to other forces overall. we don't talk about their disposition. in the past we have indicated that forces in the past have gotten their picture there. that has been helpful and successful but it is separate from this operation. yes, andrew? i keep calling you andrew, i don't know why. apologies, it's monday. air --we expect nearly daily airstrikes, likely see in iraq and syria? it will depend on the progress that the gna makes. after we have

carefully assessed the target and we will be preparing to conduct more if needed. aircraft? is u.s. the coalition also a part of the campaign? >> we are referring specific to u.s. aircraft. >> is there a change, going forward? are they supporting ground forces or hitting deliberate target? they will be in close sec. cook: they will be in court -- close ordination. they had a very successful effort so far in doing so.

this will give them the opportunity to take strategic advantage, to push their offensive even further. >> you said the numbers have been reduced. previous estimates had them at a fighting force of up to 6000, i believe. is that the current assessment? sec. cook: the assessment numbers i have seen, and again it's hard to gauge those numbers anywhere, but i have seen that number -- our assessment is that it has been reduced and is close to 1000 now. >> altogether? sec. cook: in libya. cert.ic to start -- >> got it.

the u.n. had agreed to on libyan forces. those special ops guys were specific the trying to identify potential partners on the ground. awas wondering if we had seen progress on that front. our military support to the gna is limited at this point. it's not part of what we are doing. i really sorry about the end or thing, but he's a nice guy. >> any sense of there is a higher target than there were in the previous two strikes? that was notok: the target of today's strikes. >> you said that this would continue by evaluating the gna requests. will they get updated?

we will provide you with as much information as we can. we thought it was important to inform about the strikes. it -- >> was it drones or fixed flight? to. cook: we are not going talk about specifics. it was capable had in the region. collects there was a strike today, one in february the confirmed previously. is this the third strike now? >> yes, there was an earlier strike in november, the first strike against isil by u.s. military. >> that's it? sec. cook: yes. september, november, and now the gna. >> to clarify a couple of

things, peter, to make sure i understand correctly, a few weeks ago they saw -- they thought there were only a few hundred. are you saying that there are , the numbers i have that they are under 1000 possibly into the several hundred thousands. and you seemed to clarify later the human specifically to the there are no u.s. teams of any kind on the ground? sec. cook: this is specific to

this operation. they have been in and out and i'm not getting to that any further. >> we shouldn't think that there are none anyway. sec. cook: correct. lucas, yes? >> why are you reading these operations just to their? sec. cook: that is where it has been requested. >> the united dates is outsourcing its counterterrorism to the libyan government? sec. cook: no, we are helping the internationally recognized witht of libya and locale, motivated partners carrying things out in u.s. interest.

>> another example of leaving it isehind? sec. cook: andt surprise -- providing and to people of india >> came the united state spectrum or airstrikes? horses, wasthese this an effort to ramp up operations against isis and its affiliate? one off -- sec. cook: our specific efforts is not just andhough it is necessary

and in placesof because we want to which isike at isil made directly in this in the country. and i think you know what we are and the decision and in what wes

believe is important for now houses of the government in their own efforts secure the country. >> can you characterize why this strike is different from the one in february? is this the beginning of a more direct like operation? and in terms of the goal of and theo take them isil butrow yesterday,

-- what has changed? sec. cook: look at the international community market for. the of the thing that we see and up until now and then i and we saw opportunities for us and our precision making

capabilities in injecting certain -- great location. and i think the secretary area and welcome, furthers or year and not just ones there that are towards the effort. >> is that difficult, to include isil? chinese behaving >>

younovember and for sure take up the ice? >> is fair to say. >> can you give a broad characterization of the type of end is this hitting the first time? yes, it is the first typee have requested that of assistance. specific targets of real things that he with precision, even at

the risk of civilian casualties. things that gna itself and its forces have been unable to and thereective the and they two isil via were after's civic individuals. my understanding is that this was the beginning of a military air campaign in libya in which and they supporting the gna costs --

>> they don't have to put in the request every time. there is now just a blanket authority. sec. cook: these requests will be carefully coordinated. the president has given the authority for us to carefully consider them. >> to be clear, i think that comparing this to the previous sounds as if those are ones that were carried out today but this is the beginning of an air campaign over libya. sec. cook: we are prepared to carry a strike coordination with the gna. 's requests are forthcoming. requests have been granted, right? sec. cook: the authorization has been granted. the gna has requested airstrikes to help in their campaign as needed.

today we delivered on that request after careful consideration are prepared to carry out more strike careful ordination with the gna each and every death of the way area lacks have is that authority up does each high strike have to be approved? >> am not going to get into every single aspect of the coordination, but the president to approved this operation carried out the command of ofica -- on the command africom. it will be determined by the thisnders there overseeing operation. >> the head of africom has to approve everything will strike? sec. cook: i'm not going to get into every single aspect. it's under africom.

>> they have to approve every strike request that comes in? sec. cook: correct. >> does the gna have to request every single u.s. airstrike? or now if there is a target can they act without having the chain? this will be coordinated with them every step of the way. >> do you have to coordinate with them or can it the target of opportunity where they say -- advantageous? be sec. cook: it will be careful collaboration coordination with gna. right now these first strikes we are conducting, selected by the gna, are working close it with us. >> do you have a figure on how many fighters were hit? i don't. -- sec. cook:

nancy? >> legal authority [inaudible] sec. cook: the 2001 authorization of military force. i would like to go back to previous questions, as i'm not very we're. does the gna have to ask strike? i don't understand how the strike authorization happens. do they have to offer blanket requests or just each strike? requests will the be court mated with the gna. >> is it specific request every time? each time there will be a strike with a specific request made with the gna. >> i understand that, looking at it, but every time?

this is the request from the gna, each and everyone worked out with the gna in coordination with other forces. >> helping with the campaign in certain? search -- search -- cert. sec. cook: we will work with them in the circumstances where we are not able to because of other actors. >> [inaudible] gna? sec. cook: we will coordinate with them. it will be critical to assessing the situation. be will be working at closely coordinating each and every strike, as i said.

>> what is the end stage for the united states? what does cert have to look like? for the strikes to cease? isilcook: i want to see eliminated from that stronghold. significant had success. we hope that those airstrikes can be conducted over a short time and those airstrikes will be able to move faster. >> i'm asking what the military considers their objective. having a hard time understanding what the specific u.s. military objective is.

eliminate it is to isil in its key stronghold in libya and doing that in conjunction with internationally recognized government there that has asked for our assistance, so that's what i'm doing. -- what we are doing. >> forgive me for asking a dumb question, how could taking up a be sond to isis vehicles important to the liberation of cert? why was it so critical to the elimination of isis? sec. cook: this one tank in particular have been in the location where we had seen for some time that it had posed a threat directly in challenging not only gna is but indiscriminately targeting civilians in the area. we thought that the gna and our forces agreed this was an appropriate target to strike at

this time and a strategic position within cert that the forces thought it would make a difference in terms of their strategic advance. to eliminate the target. that's one example. >> the vehicles? sec. cook: as i understand it, the vehicles themselves pose a threat to gna forces on the ground. with a specific request from the gna, because these vehicles and fighters there posed a threat to local forces on the ground trying to recapture a particular , withoutood in cert exposing civilians to risk, that was the reason the strike was conducted this time. >> you made many references to civilians. what is the u.s. estimate as to how many remain? sec. cook: i will try to get the number for you.

i don't know it, off and. >> how close are the forces to takinghe gna they had made progress in the last few and months. i had seen a percentage number, but i want to make sure this is right. in terms of the share numbers of forces, we think those numbers are down and there could be several hundred within the city itself, and the number previously was higher than that. let me see how much they had. i do not know if i have a precise number. >> is their part of the city

still left to take in? do you envision a greater role as requests come in for greater airpower, because in iraq and afghanistan, there is a model where local forces are calling for airstrikes, but they are doing so in conjunction with u.s. forces assisting them, but we do not have those forces. do you see a greater role for them -- mr. cook: i do not see any expectation that forces would be part of this operation. -- before the airstrikes? mr. cook: i'm not aware. >> have assets been moved into the region? tot would be a long way continue a regular pace of operations. mr. cook: we have a variety of

assets in the region we feel are adequate to the task at hand. going back to afghanistan, concerning the battle last week it against isis involving hundreds of american troops, has there been a commitment to raise -- are there combat operations happening in afghanistan? we have had a mission in afghanistan for some time and we continue to carry out that poses a threatil for the stability of that country and we will continue to partner with afghan fortresses in carrying out our mission, and missiontrain and advise so afghan security forces can secure the country themselves. they are making excellent progress, but we think they need more support this time.

last one. >> is there any intelligence sharing, isr support, or a provided to these forces on the ground? is isr support, so that will be important with our coordination with gna. >> is legal or nonlethal supplies being provided? mr. cook: no, these are airstrikes. >> you have an update if there will be a funding request for additional troops were iraq and afghanistan? mr. cook: there will be, but i do not have the process. there will be a need to provide funding, but in terms of how that will be carried out, i do

not have the answer for you yet. thanks, everyone. >> prime minister of singapore is in washington this week old meetings with president obama tomorrow, also attending a state dinner in his honor at the white house. today he will deliver a keynote address at the u.s. chamber of commerce, speaking about the importance of the tpp trade pact. that will be at 6:30 eastern. a technologyisited show on capitol hill and spoke with developers of startup technology companies come including a person whose -- companies, including a person -- >> the next years in wireless communications -- and you are looking at 10 times the frequency of cellular operators.

[indiscernible] you can pump a thousand times more data -- and the uses of that -- [indiscernible] eastern tonight at 8:00 on c-span2. addressed thervis national press club on the 100 anniversary of the national park service and how the service is addressing recent allegations of sexual misconduct. our guest is jonathan jarvis. we would like to welcome our c-span audiences, and you can follow the action on twitter.

now it is time to introduce our guest. i asked each of you stand briefly. these hold your applause until i have finished introducing the entire table. brown, the director of an technologies, correspondent from mcclatchy newspapers, president and ceo of the national park foundation, warner,h miller, john former secretary of the navy and senator from virginia -- [applause] burr: a medical device reporter at a press club board , a reporter at a

the chief ofmpany, public affairs for the national park service, a reporter at the los angeles times, assistant director for communications at the national park service, and andy fisher, director of communications for the pew charitable trust. thank you, all. 40 years ago our speaker put on uniform of a ranger and went to work on the national mall. the national park service was a mere 60 years old. later this month the park service turns 100 and jonathan jarvis is still wearing the uniform. he has the hat he will put on any minute. no longer a temporary employee, he is the leader of 22,000 employees who maintain the

system of more than 400 national park unit across the 50 states and most territories. as the national park service enters its second century, it challenges,le balancing needs while the agency man's it do more. more --y command it do agency demands it do more. addressing well-publicized occurrence of sexual in the grand canyon, dealing with the effects of energy and other developments in proximately to the parks. jarvis has warned every hat you could wear in the park service. been a scientists, ranger, director, and now director. i would like to thank him who agreed last fall to come to my

january 8 nonaggression -- january inauguration. that was before the snow that crippled washington. to the inaugural. today we have slightly better weather. this is the first time the park service has stresse addressed t. jonathan jarvis as he speaks about the 100th anniversary of the national park service. welcome, everybody. in a great to be back little warmer weather than we were here. thank you for organizing this as well, and, senator, thank you for joining us. this year the national park service will be 100, and i will 48 as usual so i have

a few opinions about the second century. start with an excerpt from the atlantic magazine. the president wanted all freedom and solitude possible while in the park, so all newspaperman and other strangers were excluded. even the secret service man in his position private secretary were left at gartner. he craved to be alone with nature. he was hungry for the wild and aboriginal, a hunger that seems to come upon him and drives him on his trips to the west. in the morning he had stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. his detail did not quite like that idea. no, put me up a lunch and let me go alone. i will surely come back. back he came, about 5:00 when he east ton the path from the camp. it came he had tracked 18 miles through very rough country.

he came back looking as fresh as when he had started and at night sitting before the fire related his adventures. this is john burroughs' account teddyveling with roosevelt in yellowstone in the spring of 1903. later,, almost 110 years i was hiking out at the same yellowstone wilderness. we were defending an open force on a slope when the ground began to shake over the hill behind us charged a stampeding herd of bison. we jumped behind a boulder and -- and thecreatures furry creatures passed. i had the privilege to have not only while experiences that put them in context. that ifif you think this nation decided hundred years ago that places like

yellowstone could be set aside for the enjoyment of future generations, that concept that you and i can have a similar experience that teddy roosevelt had over a hundred years ago. in 1914, and independently wealthy borax mining company director, observed the deteriorating condition of the national parks, and he wrote a letter to the secretary of the interior complaining about that, and secretary responded, if you do not like the way the parks are being run, come to washington and run them yourself. i would imagine such challenges have launched many critical careers in washington, so to support the establishment of the knional park service, mather if he got right people in theseew landscapes they would

become converts. mather led15, them for a trip in the high sierra. ders included aiters and a publisher of newspaper. it had photographers, attorneys, businessmen, the california state engineer, and gilbert grosvenor, the director of the national geographic society. there was one park ranger and two chinese cooks. one was considered the best camp cook in the west. he proved that every day with meals of suits, silent, fried chicken, and hot sourdough biscuits warm on the side of a sweaty mule that was laboring up

the area we know today as sequoia and kings canyon national parks. group plungedthis into gold streets and reveled under a starlit sky. mather let the mountains do were swept away and bonds were formed with the land. each night around the fire they talked about observation and future of the national parks. bonfire night,fire mather said i should confess what i wanted you to come, not only for your interesting company, but hope you see that significant of these and the picture what we are to do. hopefully you will take this message and spread through the land in your own avenue and

heightthese valleys and just one small part of the majesty of america. although sequoia in yellowstone and glacier and crater lake are already set aside the of that vast areas that should be preserved in the future. think of the grand canyon or the wonders of our territories in alaska and hawaii he said, unless we can protect the areas currently held with a separate government agency, we may lose them through selfish interests. that evening every member without to go back and provide their active support the establishment of the national park service. grosvenor without the national geographic society would march and he fulfilled that promise by publishing in april "the960 an entire issue, t land of the best." the press coverage was

extraordinary and it influenced congress when it came to a vote in the establishment of the national park service in august 2016, 100 -- august 1916, 100 years ago. this year the national geographic society devoted every issue in august on some aspect of the parks. npsmedia coverage of the centennial has been unprecedented. we are now over 8 billion media impressions for the centennial, so thank you for all the coverage we have gotten. take the future conversation for grant. we must magic of our parks and land to inspire and empower a new generation of conservation and history preservation. in many ways this centennial year has been a national mahter mountain party.

i asked everybody to find their national park that creates practical and our goal has been to create the next generation of visitors and advocates for the national parks and public land. if we do not in the words of my predecessor, we may lose them .elfish interests i want each of you for the moment to take a little bit of patriotic pride that our nation created this idea of national parks and today that system embodies our highest ideals, are most symbolic places, and stand as the best national park system in the world. they also tell the story to place, 412 worthwhile places, places of great inspiration like

the statue of liberty, faces of like gethsemane, conscious workplaces of great ecological restoration like returning water flows to the everglades, one of the most ambitious restorations. they are places of great history like for him and henry, where bannerar-spangled inspired francis scott key. there are also places a great health. the father of landscape architecture, olmstead said if we pursue business lives without the occasional contemplation of nature and parks, that men and women would be prone to a class

of disorders including softening of the brain, nervous excitability, monomania, process, the colleague, and iraq ability. i wondering if people -- ira scibility. these were also places of social action like the steps of the lincoln memorial marian anderson sang "my country 'tis thee," and dr. martin luther s "i have ared ihi " dream." hise are sentiments of

speech that 50 people in different ways, and i find a connection at this closing when he called for freedom to ring from every mountainside, "the landthe line from where my fathers died." these lands are national parks and public lands, like gettysburg, freedom trail, yosemite. they call for us to experience that healing and transformative power of nature and history. are also bringing the bells of freedom and justice, respect for truth, and calling us to live us to the values our nation. the national park service is unlike any agency. these are not only as stewards of the nation's please landscapes, but also at keepers of its cultural memory, and recognizing the american mayor to is many narratives me that is

telling its story in its entirety. when i became the director in 2009 with encouragement, we recognize there are gaps in the american narrative as told by the national parks. we must recommend to the president do designations to fill those gaps. inclusiveness and equality that had been part of the american vision, if not always the reality, we needed to start from the beginning. when summer day in 1619, issue appeared off of what was known comfort.port that ship later was known as the african mayflower. time of the civil war, point comfort had become the union stronghold known as fort monroe, to standunion fort st

south of the mason-dixon line. general butler was at a command, and when slave owners demanded return of property, he refused, acting on his own. recent was slaves were confederate contraband and could be confiscated by union troops. thus became known as the contraband decision, and lincoln traveled down to four monroe to spend the evening with butler over a brandy or two and traded their legal views. lincoln returned to d.c. conspired with his own legal theory and the first draft of the emancipation proclamation. the three fugitives were the first slaves freed the civil war , and many more would follow, so themonroe bookends beginning and the end of slavery, and november 1, 2011,

under the authority of the antiquities act, president obama designated for monroe as part of the national park system. during its struggle for independence, in a colonial courthouse in newcastle, delaware, this nation set itself on a course of president and more. it was here that delaware ratified the constitution, the first state to do so, and asserted under the laws of this new nation, they were creating unalienableith rights. in march of 2013, president obama designated first state national monument as part of the national park system. nearly 100 years after delaware ratified the constitution we were a long way from liberty and justice envisioned by the founding fathers. no one knew this better harriet tubman. for 12 years and wrist, repeatedly led fugitive slaves into secret places in the tidewater region and on to

safety by way of the underground railroad. 13,march 2003 president obama designated ubman as part of the national park service. a career took a person from a cavalry unit known as buffalo soldiers to the philippine burial aton and to arlington cemetery. at one point colonel young served as the superintendent of sequoia and kings canyon national parks. obama designated colonel charles young national monument. decided in 1862

on a new business model, to build and lease fancy train cars that could be coupled to the fleet of trade across the country as we entered the 20th century. safed those cars with african-americans, because he felt they would be most subservient. he trained them, pay them a living wage, provide uniforms, and a code of conduct. these men developed pride in their work as porters, and emphasized education in their children, and defeated the growth of the black middle class. randolph,organized by and resulted in the creation of labor day. randolph's organizational skills be applied to the civil rights movement that swept the nation, including the bravery of those at little rock 9. 2015, president

pullmansignated national monument. 75 years ago, next year, on the outside of world war ii, fdr issued an executive order 9066 of theg all residents western united states who were of japanese ethnicity to be rounded up by the military and prisons and can find camps. were forced people homeses, leaving behind and most of the repossessions. they were transported to remote locations like the owens valley ain ofrnia, a pli

idaho, and in 2015, recognizing that tragedy of racial profiling and injustice during wartime, and its relevance to today, designated ama national monument as part of the national park system in hawaii. 19m the upheaval of the arose,nother figure cesar shabazz. -- chavez. october 2012, to immortalize this man's sacrifice, president obama designated cesar shop as -- chavez national monument. in washington a group of women determined the liberty and opportunity granted to citizens of this nation should be applied

to the other 50% of the population who were female. party wasal women's drafted and helped pass hundreds of pieces of legislation that changed that his women in america. 2016, president obama designated the women's quality national monument in d.c. village,in greenwich then shaped the modern lgbtq movement. the police conducted a raid that resulted in harassment and rest. in crowd held their ground the meeting civil rights and refused to disperse. test expanded -- the protest expanded a group several thousand people, lasted for six days, and marked a

turning point in the struggle four lgbt -- for lgbt writes. obama6, president designated stonewall inn as part of the national park service. these nine new monuments in the system represent people believe in the aspirations of our country, and the places where they acted upon their faith, spirit, and convictions. their stories are part of the national park system where they will inspire teachers generations, carry on the message that the blessings of liberty must he defended from all threats, whether external or from within. to aentennial commission promise to america that we will keep not only sacred places, the memory of its most defining moments.

a few months ago, i shared the dais with dr. sonya sanchez. she reminded us all about truth. i cannot tell the truth about anything unless i confess being a student. going and learning something new every day. the more i learn, the clearer my view of the world becomes. i invite all of you in our country to come to the national parks and gain a clearer view of the world. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. we have a lot of questions. not making us a national park. mr. jarvis: that is in the future. >> you talked about new

resignation. you talked about the challenges backlog.d with the new acres, hundreds of thousands of acres added to your portfolio, does that benefit the park service or does it become more of a challenge because you billion backlog? mr. jarvis: we are of 22 new units to the national park system since i became director. in almost every case we have minimized our footprint. the actual amount of land or resource that we need to take care of and we have brought in, particularly through the work of philanthropic, partners and have been quite

successful at raising funds. to ourhand it does add overall responsibility, but i think we have been judicious in ensuring that it does not add sick effectively -- significantly to the backlog. >> we have crumbling roads and bridges, outdated electrical and sewer systems. how are you going to tackle that backlog? mr. jarvis: let me characterize the backlog. we understand our maintenance backlog at an excruciating level of detail. we know this down to the brick. about half of our backlog is in the transportation side. roads and bridges. that is not an easy thing to raise philanthropic money for. that is the responsibility of appropriators and we get a

significant amount of funding out of the transportation bill. there is a five-year bill to address high-priority roads and bridges. the other half, about half of that are high-priority assets. these are directly related to experience or of high significance value. the lincoln memorial is a nice asset you might consider a high-priority asset. in some cases we can raise philanthropic dollars for. we have had terrific contributions from individuals to address that is well. you will also need a steady supply of federal appropriations. we have asked congress to respond to that. we have something in front of

them that would give us greater flexibility with revenues such as fees and address new revenues. >> we will talk about the public-private partnership at some point. how do we ensure that we don't and depth with the -- we don't end up with the disney trail or something like that? how do you avoid the situation were congress says you got private money from corporations. we don't need to give you as much. mr. jarvis: as a young woman spoke to me earlier about the railroad industry, we have always had relationships with corporate america. from the very beginning of the national parks, it was the railroads that built most of the historic lodges. throughout my 40 years, we have had long-term relationships with corporate america without selling out, without renaming or

this park brought to you by. we don't do that. we sit down with corporate america and say, what are your goals? these are our goals. these are the areas you can't go and we will not allow that. i think you should trust us that we are protecting these assets from branding and labeling. it is not the direction we are headed. what we are trying to do is modernize our philanthropic capability for the service, the park foundation, and all of our friends that raise money. what ifecond part was congress says you are getting money from corporate america, you don't need as much? mr. jarvis: we have the find a bright line in the sand for what philanthropic support the duty of the

taxpayer through the .ppropriations we feel that the basic needs of the park are the the duty of appropriators. is things on top of that. >> do you see a reason to raise entrance fees or fees for campgrounds or tour operators to whittle down the backlog? mr. jarvis: we have a fee program. we raise about $220 million a year in our fee program. we have the authority to retain all of that money in the national park service. park retainsecting 80%, 20% is pulled for non-fee parks. we never want fees to be so high

that they exclude some component of the american public. the parks are for everyone, not just for the rich or the elite. that was the whole point of the way we created the national parks of this country. in europe, some of our ancestors thatfrom special places were just for the rich. we will always keep our fees low enough so they will be affordable. >> you will not say if we will see an increase in the next couple of years? mr. jarvis: we already have. 2009, i put a moratorium on fee increases. moratorium until 2015. we froze fees at their current level. in 2015 i allowed the national parks across the system to consider to go to public comment for fee increases. we did allow some to increase

but we will probably hold it there for a while. you get pushback from the public. i is still a great deal, but am not planning on raising them again anytime soon. >> i always known at these moments that the general public is allowed at our luncheons. if you hear applause, it is not necessarily from the journalists. [laughter] >> i did have a question from a senior who was concerned that you might raise the golden pass. is it still $10? mr. jarvis: yeah. i have one of these. this is a senior pass. it is $10 for life. i would say it is a little undervalued. [laughter] mr. jarvis: this price was set by congress. i don't have the authority to change it. we do have a proposal before congress to increase this pass.

it will still be lifetime, but to make it equal to the america the beautiful pass, which is $80. you pay $80 once for life. that delta between $10 and $80 will generate about $35 million for us because we so a lot of these and that would be used for the backlog. >> for most of the park service's 100 years, support from congress and preserving wilderness, battlefields, and other wonders are strong and bipartisan. in recent years, that's has been rattled. rift? there a political mr. jarvis: i will probably get for telling this, but when i go on the hill to meet with members of congress, there has been historically bipartisan support

for the national parks. a long tradition of great support from both sides of the aisle. sometimes different priorities. when i go in testify before a lot ofee, there is a finger-pointing and accusations made about the national parks. , fori go into the office certain individuals they pull down the shades and get out there park pass and want me to sign it and tell me the latest trip story. part of the issue in my is there is a political agenda around that nothing in government is good. it is hard to admit. if you say this, there is an aspect of government that they actually like, which is the national parks. what we have been trying to do through the centennial is reintroduce ourselves to the american people.

the ones who don't know sincerely know who we are -- don't necessarily know who we are and have that translate into support across the aisle, something that we enjoyed for much of our first 100 years. >> i will not ask you to name those members of congress. we talked about this before. i was planning to go to a national park later this month. what are you doing as part of the celebration to control the overcrowding we are seeing at some national parks? mr. jarvis: we are experiencing record levels of visitation as a result of the centennial, to find your park campaign, the outreach, the media coverage. , 2015, weyear surpassed 312 million visitors. many put that in perspective. that is more than all of disney, more than all of national

football, national baseball, national basketball, nascar combined. [applause] mr. jarvis: and we do it on the budget of the city of austin, texas. we did fact check and that is correct. theway i view this is when parks,comes to national something happens. yes, it can be somewhat overwhelming for our employees. you are deepening that connection. that connection translates into support. as a volunteer, as an advocate, there are a variety of advocacy groups out there, at the local level, support in congress.

i think there is an upside to the visitation. it also is inviting a generation that perhaps did not know about these places. our goal is not to just raise the numbers, that to increase the diversity of that visitation as well. >> thank you. when the centennial is over, what is in the works to try to keep this energy and excitement going past the eight centennial? mr. jarvis: we have had a lot of discussion about what happens when we block the candles because there has been a huge push. like, wey staff are are through. connect has been to with this next generation and inspire them. i think the next phase is empowering them to bring the concept of conservation and

historic reservation back into their own communities, within their social networks, to give them the tools and the power to execute on that from what they have learned about the national parks as well. many of the initiatives that we have launched, the theme studies around the contributions of latinos and women and asian-americans pacific lgbt, will be recognizing that. >> is there an effort now to try suchucate visitors about milestones, the history of national parks in washington or the national corridor? mr. jarvis: education has always been a core of our mission. we like to say come to the national parks, have a good time

and learn something at the same time. and as then he would say, don't fall down, -- danny would say, don't fall down, either. programs that we have created serve asoolteacher rangers during the summer and then go back to school. you can learn something in the national parks. in some ways it may stick with you longer than something you learn in a classroom. is of interestn to my home state of utah, but what is your thought of turning federal land over to western states? some states say they could manage the federal land better. mr. jarvis: i think we need to step back and look historically at the portfolio of how states

were established and the goals bigstablishing the four land management agencies. there are four that manage land. service, national park bureau of land management, national forest service, and national fish and game service. the forest service and the blm have a multiple use mandate and energy, gravel, timber, as well. they are already benefiting the entire american people, not just one specific state. i think we have to think very hard about retaining the public land of state and national parks as well for the benefit of all the people and not just those

within one state boundary. >> do you have a specific reaction to some states who say they can manage the parks better than the federal government can? have a lot of friends and the national association of state park directors and many of them are struggling significantly financially, that they have lost it will -- lost a lot of state operations as well. i think it will continue to be best managed under the federal government. >> there were a number of high-profile cases of wild animal attacks this summer. what message do you have for recreation ing the forest and rangers overseeing recreation involving wildlife? mr. jarvis: the thing about

wildlife is that they are wild. tried in thewe national park service to let the public know that that bison laying down over there is not tame. it is not behind a fence and it can out run a horse. you really should not pat it on the head. there are risks in these wild places. we want the public to be educated by those risks and learn how to experience them, which can be a fantastic experience, but there is a risk element and we are working hard to help educate the public about it. >> florida officials said they up to 10tigating cases of locally transmitted zika virus. the you see a threat of the virus spreading to the point where you may have to close parks in the southern united states? mr. jarvis: we have not gotten

to the point of considering closure, but we definitely feel that zika is going to be a significant problem in southern tier parks. -- everglades, big-ticket thicket.et -- big this particular species of mosquito is not a species that breeds in the water of the everglades. it is a human contact species. we have been working with the center of disease control prevention on information for the public and our own employees that work in the park as well. >> there is only one jamestown in america. why isn't the administration onhing back harder transmission lines being built in the historic city of jamestown? mr. jarvis: i know whose

question that was. [laughter] mr. jarvis: i am pushing back and thered on that are a number of people pushing back hard. you are right. there is only one jamestown. it should not be marred with a transmission line. gashere is oil and exploration in close proximity to national parks. the you think trucks used in exploratory cause no harm to the system? mr. jarvis: i don't think it causes no harm. i think there can be harmful any of that type of activity. we are in litigation over that right now so we cannot go into details. it is something that when we have a split state and individuals have rights to islore that state, it

putting us in a bind. >> what threat does mining opposed to the park system? for example, gold and uranium exploration near the grand canyon. mr. jarvis: secretary salazar withdrew about one million acres adjacent to the grand canyon for a 20-year withdrawal of uranium mining. without getting down in the weeks to deeply, the concept of -- weeds too deeply, the concept of uranium mining is you drill down and you permeate geological layers. look at the grand canyon and you can see springs and seeps. the radioactive or could come out of those springs and and up in the colorado river and and up in the potable water systems of

millions of people. it is a concern for us. mining of lands could have a significant effect on national parks. >> in the west, and this is happening in maine, often local residents are hostile or against the idea of creating a new national park. what assurances do you give local residents that this would be a benefit to them rather than a detriment? mr. jarvis: it is interesting. if you look historically at the establishment, there is always a fight. there was a fight over the grand canyon. ultimately the president had to use the antiquities act to protect the grand canyon because there were many people opposed to the establishment early on.

i was recently in seward, alaska. those of you who were allowed during the alaska land act days, the city of seward passed a resolution. a nationalition of park. recently the city council rescinded that resolution unanimously in support of the national park. park andok at estes seward and even forks, washington, outside of olympic, you will see communities that have benefited economically, quality of life, the kids can find work, all of that from the establishment of the national park system. mr. jarvis: this quest -- >> this questioner wants to know that -- from citizens who feel

order 21 will over commercialize our parts. can you explain what order 21 is willhen the parks system announce? mr. jarvis: it governs the relationship between private philanthropy and how that is recognized. board a citizens advisory and i commissioned them to essentially give us a state of the art report on how for p is done in this country today, how donor recognition is done, and they made a recommendation to me for a revision of director order 21 so that the park service could consider a range of options to increase the potential for philanthropy but do it in a way that is respectful of the stewardship

that we have for these places. they have done so. we have taken public comment on that. we are in the process of finalizing that and we will have d.o. 21 completed and signed by me why the end of the year. >> members of congress have criticized the park service for complaints about sexual conduct -- sexual misconduct. mr. jarvis: most of you know there was an inspector general report that was specific to the grand canyon river district where there was a horrible sexual harassment by our park service employees. we recognize and admit to that. there have been other cases that have emerged in a few other parks around the system. a couple things we have done right away to address this in the canyon specifically, we have

a new superintendent on the ground, chris leonards, first woman in the history of the grand canyon. i traveled out there with the secretary last week and introduced her to the staff. she was the former superintendent at golden gate. she will do a fantastic job addressing that in the canyon, how they route this out and restart the relationship with their community. we have engaged another of organizations that have been .een dealing with this we have learned a lot from them. first and foremost, we need to establish a baseline of understanding how prevalent this is in the national park service. i honestly don't know. we are not going to know until we do a well-crafted survey of

all employees that is done with protection and anonymity. once we establish that baseline we can understand more specifically how to take action. we are jumping on top of any reports right now and i set a standard with my senior leadership with how to expect a zero tolerance policy with protection of the victim and zero tolerance for this horrible component. i will say that our employees once theyepping up see we are taking action. i expect the numbers of reported incidents to increase. not that there are more cases, but employees are now feeling more in power to step up. not only in the national park service, but with other agencies

that are seeing what is happening to the park service and are following our lead. >> are there protections and have you communicated those protections for whistleblowers or people who have been victims so people can raise their concerns above the person they normally talk to? mr. jarvis: we're in the process of establishing an anonymous hotline. the harasser may be there direct line supervisor or in the reporting chain. they can go around that chain and get immediate response. >> earlier this year, the interior department inspector faulted you for writing a book about the national parks without getting clearance because it may interest a conflict of . what you not go through the ethics committee? mr. jarvis: good question. i have apologized to the

department interior, the secretary, and my employees for that lapse in judgment. 2020 hindsight is often perfect. i would ask -- next time. >> can you talk about the perceptible effects of climate change on any specific national parks or monuments and what, if anything, can be done to address that? mr. jarvis: i have said many times that climate change is the most threatening aspect of the future to the national parks. we are seeing direct effect on two specific parks. i was the superintendent at mount rainier national park and at the cascades outside of seattle. historically, if you look at climate rep. pitts: -- find records, it is -- climate records, it is a lot of snow. normally you get snow in the

fall and rain in the spring. the rain will come down on the snow and soak it up and let it out in the spring. to snow starts and converts to rain in the fall. you get rain on snow in the fall. you don't have enough snowpack to absorb it and it creates a flood. had about $35 million worth of damage in one event in the fall at mount rainier, just sweeping down one of the river valleys and wiping out a campground that had been there for 100 years. glacier disappearing in national park. predictions are they will be gone in a couple of decades. fires burning a month longer on either end of the season. we are seeing pose fire situations with

vegetation not coming back in the same way, species moving up the mountain to stay cooler. we are seeing effects across the system. >> if you had a magic wand or a ,agic hat, whatever it may be what would you ask for? rangers, scientists, money? what would you ask for? mr. jarvis: i would ask for public support. i think all of those things that you mentioned come from public support i want the public to love their national parks. i want them to see their national parks and feel that their story is represented in the national parks. if they feel that in a deep way, that will translate into funding and support for our mission to be accomplished. >> before he asked the final

question, i have a few announcements. the national press club is the leading organization for journalists and we fight for free press worldwide. i would like to remind you about upcoming programs. on thursday, we will hold its annual award journal. on august 14, michael york will address the club. i would like to announce our guests for the international press club month. mug.ub forll give you two options the last questions because one of them is a tough one. to name youru favorite national park or, you have been with the park service 40 years. if not announce your favorite

park, what was your scariest moment at a national park? mr. jarvis: i love all my children, so i can't name my favorite. i will tell you a great scary moment. i worked in alaska. .s a cap my national park if you have seen those pictures with the bears and the waterfalls, there are only two places in alaska you can go to see that and one of them is brooks falls. it was late in september. i was above the falls in the river flyfishing, which i like to do. thed a fish on and one of gigantic coastal brown bears jumped out of the bushes onto my off and i snap my line that there took a very strong -- that bear took a very strong

interest in me. hours, i the next two was probably never more than about 15 feet from the bear, who followed me through the woods. i crossed the stream three or four times. i wound up swimming across the mouth of the lake and the bear slam behind me the whole way. i finally got to my cabin, which was hard sided, fortunately, and crashed through the door. my brother was sitting in front of the fire reading a book, of , completelyhe said soaking wet and out of breath, he said what happened? i said, come here. look out there. the bear was standing on the porch. [applause]

>> thank you, director jarvis, for being here. thank you for being here. thanks to the staff of the national press club. we are adjourned. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> singapore's prime minister is visiting the u.s. as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of their association. it will include a state dinner at the white house. one of the issues is the transpacific partnership.

we will have the prime minister live on c-span this evening when he speaks to the u.s. chamber of commerce. eastern.:30 p.m. bloodpan's issues spike -- issues spotlight is on race relations. >> when the bullets started flying, the men and women of the dallas police, they did not flinch and they did not react recklessly. >> and republican senator tim scott giving a speech on the senate floor about his own interactions with police. >> the vast majority of times i was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial. >> our program also includes a story about encounters with police in washington dc,

followed by a panel with the city's police chief. get defensive if they feel you are being offensive. inng very respectful encounters and requests, if it versusa crisis, requests demands. those change the dynamics a bit. >> watch our spotlight on police and race relations saturday on c-span and c-span.org. agencies, federal including the housing and urban development and veterans affairs department today announced that the number of homeless drops in that home is veterans in the u.s. has been cut nearly in half since 2010. president obama talked about that today when addressing the 95th national conference being held in atlanta. this is just under 50 minutes.

>> ladies and gentlemen, to introduce present of the united states, please welcome the past national commander, bobby ferrera. [applause] >> good afternoon. and especially my fellow veterans, family, and president,are 26th teddy roosevelt, understood the importance of honoring the sacrifice of service. he said that anyone who is good enough to shed blood for our country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

therefore, it is indeed a privilege and a great honor to the been asked to introduce most distinguished guest at the 95th national convention. the current president and first lady and his administration have taken the words of president roosevelt into action. president barack obama's leadership and steadfast commitment to our nation's heroes is a matter of public record. he has demonstrated that he is a strong supporter of our nation's veterans and their families. he has fought for the resources and that the dav keeps his promises. he has proven himself willing to to vital issues, but more

importantly he has taken our views to heart. he used them to make pivotal policy changes on many dav key priorities. one of those interval areas was and improvedding appropriation for veterans' onlth, including a focus wounds of today's wars, including traumatic stress and brain injury. president obama has made it a priority to extend and improve health care for one of the fastest-growing segments of the veteran population, women veterans, in order to meet unique needs, such as maternity care and targeted suicide prevention programs. the fee a has reduced the disability claims backlog that peaked at 600,000 just years ago to less than 100,000 today.

[applause] ferrera: he has taking on veteran employees, offering tax credits to businesses hiring veterans and extending them.ment benefits for yes extended his support to brothers and sisters, which inulted in a sharp decrease veterans' homelessness. ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor to introduce our special guest and fierce ally, the 44th president of the united states, barack obama. [cheers and applause]

president obama: thank you. thank you, dav. thank you. thank you. everybody have a seat. what an honor to be with you today. thank you. and thanks to bobby. i will never forget the time bobby came to the oval office carrying a baseball bat. secret service got a little nervous. but it was a genuine louisville slugger. i thank you for going to bat for our veterans. and i want to thank bobby for your devotion to our veterans, especially your fellow vietnam vets. give bobby a round of applause. [applause] i love you back.

i do. i want to thank our outstanding leadership team for welcoming me today, including national commander moses mcintosh. senior vice commander dave riley. national addison mark burgess. executive director barry jessen ascii. your voice in washington, gary augustine. and don't forget pat kemper and all the thousands of families of the dav auxiliary. thank you. i also want to knowledge mayor reeves forhn welcoming us to the great state

of georgia and the beautiful city of atlanta. i am pleased to be joined by bob mcdonald. i know he spoke to you yesterday. he is working hard, hard, every single day to transform the v.a. to serve our veterans better. he still gives out his cell phone number and e-mail. not many people know this, but so far, he has received more than 45,000 calls, e-mails and text. i don't know what his phone bill is looking like. i hope he has a good plan. but bob and his team worked to deal with each one of those texts or e-mails or phone calls he receives because he thinks every single veteran matters. thank you, bob, for all the great work you are doing. it is great to be back with the disabled american veterans. what a journey we have had

together. it is great to be here. we worked together when i was a senator. you were one of the first veterans organizations i called when i ran for president. i welcomed you to the white house as a partner. i came to your convention in my first term and my second, along with michelle. and so it is fitting that my final major address to our nation's veterans as president is here at the dav. [cheers and applause] and as i reflect on these past eight years, some of the most unforgettable experiences that i have had have been moments i spent with you. americans, veterans and your families. we stood together in arlington to honor corporal frank buckles.

110 years old. our last veteran from the first world war as he was laid to rest. i ordered our flags to be flown at half staff. because even after 100 years, we will not stop saluting those who have served in our name. [applause] we stood together at normandy to thank an entire generation, among them my grandfather, who was in patton's army, a generation that literally saved the world. there was harry who returned to the beaches he helped to liberate and was told he could have anything he wanted. said with the humility of a soldier -- a hamburger will do just fine. [laughter] i think of ruta mcgrath. this past veterans day, just before her 108 birthday, then

the oldest known female veteran of world war ii. which was a reminder that women have always served to keep america strong and free. [cheers and applause] we have stood together at the memorial for our korean war veterans and recalled how a soldier marching through the snow had a tiny pair of baby booties hanging from his rifle to remind him of his unborn child, the story that had been lost to history. but we tracked him down. we found him. and we shared the story of korean war veteran dick schaap who made it home to that baby boy and lived out his life. at 84 years old, he was still rollerskating. because no war should ever be forgotten. no veteran should ever be overlooked. we've stood together at the wall

and remembered the lessons of vietnam. even when americans may disagree about a war, we have to stand united in support of our troops. [cheers and applause] and that from others like sarah shea, who honored her missing son for more than 40 years, we will never stop working to bring home our prisoners of war and our missing in action. we leave nobody behind, no one. [applause] and we have come together to welcome our newest veterans into your ranks. in desert storm, the balkans, afghanistan, and iraq, and our proud 9/11 generation. this is a time of transition. when i came into office, we had nearly 180,000 troops in afghanistan and iraq.

today, that number is less than 15,000. most of our troops have come home. [applause] to all of you who served in afghanistan, you can take in a -- take enormous pride in the progress you helped achieve, driving al qaeda out, toppling the taliban delivering justice , to osama bin laden, helping afghans improve their lives. there are millions of boys and girls in school democratic , election in a democratic government, training afghan forces who take responsibility for their own security so we are no longer engaged in the major ground war in afghanistan. that is your legacy. and today, we salute our forces who are serving their in a more limited mission. we must never allow afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again. [applause]

to all of you who served in iraq, we saw your heroism in pushing out a dictator whose brutality must be condemned, never praised, and the feeding -- and defeating an insurgency and giving the iraqi people a chance. no matter what has happened since, your valor in the deserts and fierce urban combat will be honored in the annals of military history. let me say something else about this generation. as commander in chief, i am pretty tired of some people trash talking america's military and troops. [cheers and applause] our military is somewhat smaller after two major ground wars come to a close. that is natural. and we are going to do

everything we need to do to modernize and improve our forces. but let's get some facts straight. america's army is the best trained, best equipped land force on the planet. our navy is the largest and most lethal in the world. the precision and reach of our air force is unmatched. our marines are the world's only truly expeditionary force. we have though world finest coast guard. we have the most capable fighting force in history and we are going to keep it that way. [cheers and applause] and no ally or adversary should ever doubt our strength and our resolve. and we will keep pounding isis and taking out their leaders and pushing them back on the ground. and united with a global coalition, we will destroy this barbaric terrorist group.

[applause] they will be destroyed. in the face of russian aggression, we are not going to turn our backs to our allies in europe. we are going to stay united in nato, which is the world's strongest alliance. [applause] from the asia-pacific, to africa to the united states, our armed forces will remain the greatest force for freedom and security and peace that the world has ever known. that is your legacy. that is what we have to protect and that is what we have to defend. [cheers and applause] and let me say this. no one -- no one has given more for our freedom and security than our gold star families. [applause] michelle and i have spent

countless hours with them. we have grieved with them. there is a reason why last week in philadelphia i was humbled to be introduced by sharon from ohio, goldstar mom who's son, a lieutenant colonel in the army, gave his life in afghanistan. sharon introduce me. i understood that our gold star families have made the sacrifice that most of us cannot even begin to imagine. they represent the very best of our country. they continue to inspire us every day, every moment. they serve as a powerful reminder of the true strength of america. and we have to do everything we can for those families. and honor them. and be humbled by them.

dav, i know that your service has also been defined by another battle. this is a group that understands sacrifice. [applause] you have been defined by the battle here at home to persevere through wounds and disabilities. i think of a veteran from iraq who lost her arm who said she decided to focus not on what i had lost, but on what i still have. i see that same spirit in you. maybe it was there in the hospital bed fighting for your life that you really learned what it means to have faith. maybe it was during rehab, learning how to live without a leg or both, you learned what it really means to persevere. about a month ago, i went to walter reed. i do this periodically. i was in the rehab unit watching

some of these folks work out. you might have seen this. i was doing some push-ups with them, trying to keep up with them and i was sweating and getting all tired. they took it easy on me. but he gave me just a small sense of what perseverance really means. maybe it was during the night when the memories came rushing back and he summoned the courage to reach out and get help and stay strong. i was proud to help recognize her patriotism and resilience in the heart of our nation's capital when we dedicated the american veteran disabled for life memorial. [applause] this organization shows us, shows this nation and what it means to be strong. nobody is stronger than our disabled vets.

i know you didn't make this journey alone. you are here because of love and support them your families and your caregivers in your communities and your fellow veterans. [applause] they were the shoulder you leaned on, who carried you when you couldn't walk, who picked you up when you stumbled, who celebrated your victories with you. who sometimes made you laugh and reminded you how good life can be. and that brings me to what i want to talk about here today. for more than two centuries, this country that we love hasn't just endured. we have thrived. we have overcome challenges that would have broken a lesser nation. person thanks to anyone or one group of people. but because, like you and in the military, we are all one team.

we believe in taking care of each other and lifting each other up and leaving no one behind. and in meeting the collective responsibilities that we can only meet together. the security of our nation, the education of our children, dignity for our seniors, equal rights for all of our citizens, health care, which is now a right for everybody. and the care of our well-being of our veterans and their families. that is a responsibility for all of us, not just a few. we all have to do our part. and as i said before, america's commitment to our veterans is not just lines in the budget. and it can't be about politics. it is not even really about policy. our commitment to our veterans is a sacred covenant. and i don't use those words lightly. [applause]

it is sacred because there is no more solemn request than to ask someone to risk their life, to be ready to give their life on our behalf. it is a covenant because both sides have responsibilities. those who put on the uniform, you took an oath to protect and defend us while the rest of us, , the citizens you kept safe, we pledged to take care of you and your families when you come home. that is a sacred covenant. that is a solemn promise that we make to each other and it is binding and upholding it is a , moral imperative. [applause] and at times, our nation has not always upheld this covenant. our vietnam vets, they sure know this. [applause] when you came home, you deserved

better. veterans who at times have struggled to get care at the v.a., you deserve better, too. if there is ever a breach in the covenant, then leaders in this country have to work hard to regain trust. that is what bob and so many hard-working people at the v.a. are doing. but upholding this covenant has to be the work of all of us. it is not just the v.a.'s job. it is everybody's job. the government has to deliver the care and benefits and support that you have earned. veteran services organizations have to be held accountable and be our partners, like the 1.3 million members of the dav are doing every day. and citizens have to step up, too. which is why michelle and dr. jill biden, through joining forces, have honored our military families and our veterans.

now, we have got a lot more work to do. working together these past eight years, we have delivered real progress for our veterans, and we cannot let up. for complacency. we have to understand that when andut our sweat and tears our shoulders to the wheel, we can make things better. about 200,000 service members are becoming veterans every year. at americans are going to have to be there for you for a lifetime in five important ways. number one, we have to keep fighting for the resources you need. since i took office, we have made historic increases in veterans funding. the biggest boost in decades. that is a fact. [applause]

president obama: and i have proposed another increase for next year. [cheers and applause] president obama: altogether, during my tenure, we will have increased funding by 85 percent. with advanced appropriations, we are protecting veterans health care from the annual washington budget battles. thisi do have to point out. republicans in congress have proposed cutting my v.a. budget, and when they return in the fall, they should pass the budget our veterans need and fund it fully. you not just talk about standing with veterans. don't just talk about me. do something to support our veterans. that is what you need to do. [cheers and applause] obama: number two. we have to continue to fight to

deliver the health care you were promised. today, more of our veterans are getting benefits because of your experience to agent orange. that is a change we made. desert stormour veterans because of the gulf war. these are changes we have made. altogether, we have made benefits available for more than 2 million veterans who did not have them before. just as -- [applause] president obama: let's face it. sometimes, folks do not know it, but it is a fact, and i have to say, thanks to the affordable veterans obamacare, not covered by the v.a. now have access to quality, affordable health care, and insurance companies cannot discriminate against you because of pre-existing conditions, like post-traumatic stress, and more

veterans are getting access to health insurance. but we need to keep making it easier to access care. that is why we recruited some of the best talent from silicon valley, and one of their very first innovations, veterans can now finally apply for v.a. health care anytime, anywhere, from any device, including your smart phone. simple, easy. in as little as 20 minutes. just go to vets.gov. the day of having to go to the v.a. office or mailing it in, those days are over. we are finally moving into the 21st century when it comes to helping our veterans. about time. we are reaching more veterans, veterans, with telemedicine, so you can see somebody at the v.a. without leaving your home. we now have a designated women's health provider at all of our the a clinics to make sure that our women veterans that the

tailored care and the dignity and the respect that you deserve. vets, weur disabled have increased funds. we have eliminated co-pays if you are catastrophically disabled. made progress on current receipt, so more severely disabled retirees can receive your retired pay and your disability benefits. applause]d president obama: and we are doing more to make sure your designated caregivers get the support they need to make sure you stay strong. and here, i want to thank people for being part of another mission. our initiative to revolutionize health care with treatments that are tailored for each patient. as of today, more than 500,000 veterans, maybe some of you, have stepped over it and donated your health and genetic data

, and thereresearch are millions doing so. what this does is it gives us a better understanding of genetics, which will allow us to provide treatments for things like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress and diabetes and cancer, and that will not just help veterans. it will help all americans, and it is just one more example of how our veterans keep serving our country even after they come home. [applause] president obama: we need to keep improving mental health care. i will never forget the soldiers i met at fort bliss. they were proud of their service, but they were struggling with issues, like posttraumatic stress, so with veterans with pts, we made it easier for you to qualify -- register for the v.a. help. billions more dollars.

more awareness and outreach. any shame have to end or stigma that comes with going and getting help. [applause] president obama: we have in place more clinicians, counselors, peer support, more research. $100 million for new approaches tbi, and today, we are delivering more health care to more veterans than ever. we are saving lives. [applause] that, when the: are many veterans are still not getting the care they need, we all have to be outraged. -- but, when it too many veterans are still not getting the care they need, we all have to be outraged.

those vets taking their lives each day, many are not in the v.a., but we know when they are is v.a. care, they are more likely to survive, so we have to get more vets connected to the v.a.et -- to the an urgent need, you should not have to wait days or weeks. you should get those services the very same day, and congress, congress can help by providing the funding and flexibility we need to hire highly qualified mental health professionals, and medical schools can help us recruit and train more psychiatrist. every civilian can help as well by learning those five signs that someone is hurting, and we can reach out to help our veterans stay strong. we are one team, one american family. any member of our family is suffering, we have to be there for each other.

now, we also need to keep fixing ,he problems that came to light long wait times, people manipulating the books. inexcusable. i know bob gave you an update, but i want to repeat, we have hired thousands more doctors, nurses, staff, opened more clinical space, and with the choice program, we are helping more veterans get care outside of the the a -- outside of the va..a. that is progress, but more veterans then and there are seeking care -- than ever are seeking care. surge in demand means there are even more veterans waiting for appointments, even though we have done a lot more, so i know i am not satisfied. bob is not satisfied, and we will not let up. bob and his new leadership team

are going to keep pushing to transform the the yet -- the va..a. this is someone who cares deeply about our veterans and what they deserve, and when whistleblowers step up, they will be protected, not punished. we need to make it easier for veterans to get care in their communities. here is oneo say, thing i want to be very clear about. there is one thing we will not do. andannot outsource privatize health care for america's veterans. [cheers and applause] president obama: there are folks coming out to push that you they are not always saying we are privatize, but that is what they are meeting, and these radical puzzles -- it affects the health care millions of veterans depend hurtery day, and that will

veterans. study after study shows that in many areas, like mental health, the quality of care at the v.a. is often better than in private care, so let's listen to our veterans who are telling us, do not destroy veteran health care. work, but doke it not break our covenant with our veterans. -- fix it and make it work. this brings me to the third area where we have to stay focused. cutting theeep disability claims backlog. slashedm its peak, we that backlog by nearly 90%. my chief and -- chief of staff and i, there was a chunk of time when that backlog, every day, no matter what else was happening around the world, he and i, we would take these walks around

the south lawn, to keep our , andise, keep our steps up every day, we talked about how we talked about how we're going to get that backlog down. week, we would look to see what kind of progress we were making. that is how we reduced it by 90%. thanacklog is now lower when i came into office even though there are a lot more people who are eligible for claims. claims decisions are more accurate the first time. , weon both of these fronts are keeping at it, but as we all know, when veterans appeal a , you are put into an appeal system that right now is broken. not have to fight for years to get a straight answer. now, we have proposed major reforms, and i want to thank the

veterans groups were raising your voice on this. we have to keep up the pressure. congress needs to pass on our hands of reform of the claims appeals process, because if we do not fix the appeals process, even when we get the backlog down on the original claim, too many folks are waiting on the back end. we have to fix it, and we can, but we are going to have to push congress, and i do not know if you have noticed, but that is hard. [laughter] obama: fourth, we have to keep fighting for the dignity of every veteran, and that includes ending the tragedy, the travesty of veterans' hom elessness. [applause] president obama: now, this is something that within my illustration, we said this is

all hands on deck, across the government. everybody has to be involved, and we are joining forces. michelle and jill have organized across the country. states, virginia and connecticut, as well as cities and towns across the country have effectively ended veteran'' homelessness. so today, today, i can announce that nationally, we have now reduced the number of homeless by 47%, nearly half. applause]d president obama: we have just about cut veterans' homelessness in half. bring tens of thousands of veterans off the streets, but we are not slowing

down. we will keep up the momentum. this fall, we will bring our collaborators together to the white house to figure out what has worked and what has not worked, because we will not stop until every veteran who has fought for america has a home in america. this is something we have got to get done. [applause] obama: and finally, we have to keep fighting to give our troops and veterans and families ever opportunity to live the american dream that you all defend. with our overhaul of the transition assistance program, hundreds of thousands of departing servicemembers and their spouses have received training to plan their next career and find a job or start a business. we have expanded the post-9/11 g.i. bill for guards members, including goldstar spouses of children, and then we expanded it for vocational training and up to this ships. we have empowered veterans with

new tools to find the schools that are right for you, where you can get the support you need to succeed on campus, to make sure you do not get ripped off, to cap your student loans, to make sure you end your families get in-state tuition, which is true now in all 50 states, and so far, we have helped more than 1.6 million veterans and their families realize their dream of an education, and investment in you and america that will keep us strong and keep paying off for generations to come. we are doing more to help you find jobs worthy of your incredible talents, because if you can lead a team and run logistics and manage a budget or save a life in a war zone, you sure as heck can do it right back here at home. [applause] obama: i called for

states to recognize the quality and skills of veterans when issuing credentials were civilian jobs, licensing. now, all 50 states do it. before, less than half the states made it easy for military spouses to get financials and licenses. today, all 50 states do it. starting this fall, we will close loopholes to protect our troops from predatory payday lenders. [applause] obama: so today, all across america, more veterans are at work, on the job, you getting your next chapter of your service to our country. veterans who are physicians and nurses have been hired by amenity health centers. they are being hired as firefighters and police officer's and first responders, because we made it a priority in the federal government, hiring thousands of veterans, including the disabled. nearly one in three federal

workers is now a veteran. [applause] obama: i have challenged american companies to hire our veterans, and they can -- i will sic michelle and jill on them. 1.2 military veterans and spouses, so all told, we have mployment to' une 4.2 percent, which is lower than the national average, and it is way down for post-9/11 veterans, too. have one of the reasons we an able to help more than 3.6 veterans buy or refinance a home on their own, so i will keep saying to every company in america. if you want talents, if you want dedication, if you want to get the job done, then hire a vet,

hire a military spouse. they know how to get the job done. they do not fool around. [applause] we havet obama: so dav, made a lot of progress. it is not always focused on, because the news is often focused on what is not working. that is ok. that keeps us on our toes, keeps us working, but every now and again, it helps us to look at our progress, because we can do right by our veterans. and as this new generation of veterans joined your ranks, we have to keep stepping up our game, getting the veterans the resources you need, transforming the v.a., delivering the health care that you need, reducing the appeals,improving the and helping you share in the

american dream, and i know that we can, because over the last eight years, i have seen the spirit of america, and i have seen time and time again the strength of our veterans, the unbreakable will of our disabled vets. you teach us better than everybody that we may take a hit sometimes, we may get knocked down, but we get back up. we carry on. and when we take care of each other and uphold that sacred covenant, there is nothing we cannot do. like that soldier i told you of before. the army ranger. nearly killed in afghanistan. who learned to talk again and walk again, and who recently stood up and walked into the oval office and shook my hand. we all have to keep on rising.

of -- medal of honor recipient who is helping others to stay strong. we all have to keep going. like the wounded warriors who are running and jumping and swimming and biking and climbing, including charlie, who just became the first combat reach the top of mount everest. we all have to keep on striving. like the veterans taking care of each other. oscar, a navyran reserve veteran, charity, a marine corps veteran mcguinness, who says helping veterans gives me a sense of purpose. that is something we all have to recognize. we all have to keep on serving.

to was sergeant jason miller, who consider taking his own life but who wrote me a letter, and after i put him in touch with team to work rebuilding communities after disasters, found a new purpose in life. we all have to keep building this country we love. and the ranks of our military and veterans, whether they are black or latino or asian or young or old, whether they are gay or straight, whatever their faith, it men and women, americans with disabilities area ashave to keep on uniting one team, as one people. as one nation. that is what you have taught us. that is what you are an example of. the disabled veterans of america know what it means to be one team. we draw inspiration from you. i am grateful for everything you have done for this country.

i am grateful for having had an opportunity to work with you. god bless you. thank you for your service and thank you for yourself or fives you thank you for your patriotism. veterans, and god bless the united states of america. thank you very much. thank you. [cheers and applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

[cheers and applause]

announcer: the house veterans affairs chairman responded to the president's speech, issuing this statement. it reads -- during his speech today, president obama threw around a lot of impressive sounding talking points, but like a lot of the information coming out of his department of veterans affairs these days, the rhetoric does not match reality. timeresent decried wait manipulation, even though v.a. leaders routinely tolerate such practices, and according to the government accountability datae, the v.a. wait time is still misleading. he spoke about protecting whistleblowers, even though employees is spotlight problem is still a major problem, and he tried to make their poor performance with a lack of funny, even though -- with a lack of funding even though the budget has more than

quadrupled. it is widespread and pervasive lack of accountability. issues willv.a.'s continue while veterans pay the price. is from jeff miller, the chairman of the house veterans affairs committee. singapore's prime minister is in the u.s. for a weeklong official visit, which will include a state dinner at the white house. he will be speaking at the u.s. chamber of commerce in washington, d.c. our live coverage begins at 6:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. and a little later here on c-span, this year's netroots conference, featuring bernie sanders supporters, three of whom are running for office. they discussed next steps for the movement that formed during this sanders campaign, putting effort -- including efforts for local elections. >> a lot of people

underestimated me. a lot of people thought i would not win the primary, and i won -- 19% margin, , and%, and you won, 4-1 that is because you are talking about the issues. >> it was not a lot for a senate race, but a lot of people do not think it is competitive, but there are no donations coming in. i think that a lot of people are realizing that the next step in the political revolution is we have to start supporting our candidates down the ballot, like a senator from utah has just as life as a over your senator from texas or florida or the senator from vermont. dialogueo change the and get more progressives elected, because more progressives you have in

congress, the easier it is to support a progressive agenda and to be fighting for the policies that bernie sanders talked about pre-we want to have a $15 minimum wage forget we want affordable college. we need more progressives in congress. it does not matter which state they are elected to, because is where we- that need to go forward. na uncer: more from they 8:00ts nation tonight at p.m. eastern. and four states, including missouri and washington state, and the primary is the first congressional district in kansas , the republican house freedom caucus member's third turn, the representative facing challenger dr. roger marshall.

the race is deadlocked according and theversity poll, mercury in kansas reporting that likability is a factor in that campaign. look at key house and senate races from today's " washington journal," and we will show you as much of this as we can't to take you to our live coverage of the u.s. chamber of romerce and the visit singapore's prime minister. kyle with the university of virginia's center for politics, also the author of the bellwether, why ohio picks the president. we will broaden that to the battleground states, but we will start there since you have written a book on ohio and hillary clinton just launched her campaign into pennsylvania and ohio. what makes it so important? guest: it has been a microcosm of the nation ever since it was founded. it was the 17th state in the

union, but some people call it the first american state because it had new englanders sub -- settling the northeastern, southerners settling the southwest, it has remained that microcosm and it very close to the national average. if it skews a little from the national average, it is more republican and that is why you hear the famous line that no republican has won the white house without ohio. trump once the white house, he has to win ohio. host: you said we should expect the clinton campaign to run a textbook race, focusing almost exclusively on states likely to decide the election. candidates health postconvention visits in 12 states, and a third of those in

a single state, ohio. she started off there, how about the approach of the trump campaign? guest: they have also been hitting some important swing states, although i believe donald trump is going to be campaigning in new york state which does not make a whole lot of sense. is it that he wants to compete in his home state, but new york is a state that typically votes in the high single digits more democrat than the nation. donald trump wins new york, it means he is almost winning every state which is not where the race is. host: the conventions are over, talk about a postconvention bounce for donald trump after the convention in cleveland. polls are out now after philadelphia. a headline from cbs, hillary clinton gets a slight bump across the battleground state, coming out of the convention

answering the bump trump got. a pushes clinton back to narrow lead, overall, standing at 43% support, ahead of trumps 41% -- trump's 41%. guest: when he to let things settle down a little bit. if you look at a number of different polls, clinton is getting a decent sized bounds. typical ort the average medium bounce has been about five points for both parties over the past several cycles. clinton is doing a little bit better than that, but i would advise little caution. -- advise a little caution.

clinton had a solid five point lead nationally about a month ago. we will see if she can regain that and hold it. if she were to, that would show that she is heading to a victory along the lines of what obama won. -- the -- we invite your participation. (202) 748-8001 four republicans republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8002 for independents. what is the crystal ball? guest: a nonpartisan newspaper. we typically come out every thursday, and we do ratings of electoral college, the

house-senate, and try to predict the winners and sort of track the state of the race. it is not just about handicapping, it is a broader look at american politics. host: back to ohio, it seems to fit neatly in the economic message of both the clinton campaign and the trump campaign, that it is partly ground zero of the stalled american economy. guest: there are parts of ohio that are not doing as well economically. there is some thought that donald trump could make some significant inroads that are places -- in places that are historically democratic. is your ohio near the pennsylvania border. a lot ofide is that people think of ohio as being this kind of rust belt state and not doing well economically, but there are parts of ohio that are

doing well, and there are a lot of wealthy, typically republican leaning suburbs in places like cleveland and cincinnati. that are typically republican, that may be donald trump will not do as well as mitt romney. he might be gaining in the valley, but losing in the suburbs and maybe it just cancel the elf out. host: that is a different approach for democrats. charles schumer did the new york incoming leader and talked about that and in appealing to pennsylvania to republicans in the suburbs, would this have been done by democrats in the past? guest: i think donald is a different type of republican. mitt romney was kind of a stereotypical republican does he was a wealthy business guide who acted like a wealthy business guy. donald trump is, too, but he is rough around the edges and hold

less conventional republican views. the map could get scrambled and i do think the democrats are going to try to make inroads in which is a lot of places that are typically republican. athael bloomberg's speech the convention, in particular was targeted at those kind of suburban republicans who may not like hillary clinton, but might also be turned off by donald trump. host: i refer to the piece in the hill, titled why the number of swing states is dwindling and what are those swing states? , you: in the 1976 election had 20 states the cited by five points or less. , a lead -- little bit less close of a race, you only had four states decided by five

points or less. what we have seen generally is the states are becoming more polarized and i think politics are becoming more politics -- politics are becoming more polarized. beas and illinois used to states that would vote closer to -- national average and now ohio has always been voting close to the national average. the difference between now and 50 years ago is you see a lot -- do you see a lot of states like ohio and the answer is no. host: -- making the states more red or blue? is onlyhe redistricting really important for the house, but you do have an interesting scenario in states like ohio or pennsylvania or those are states that voted for barack obama twice.

pennsylvania is generally a little more democratic than the nation, but in ohio, republicans have a 12 to four advantage in the house. as democrats try to take the house back, they are kind of stuck in some of these states because you would think that a future democratic house majority would have more than four or five seats. and: let's brought that out get to -- let's broaden that out and get to your calls. mickey on the independent line in new jersey. you, on national security, i think the biggest threat to our national security right now, watching the selection and politics as a whole, i think the biggest threat to our national security

is conspiracies to tamper with and rig our presidential election. -- i'm 61 years old and i have paid attention to politics. i am independent. i have paid attention for the last 45 years. what i have seen this election, from the beginning seems like a fix. the media is not reporting news, they are reporting personal opinions, and everything is getting spun. as far as the hacking on the dnc , yes it is a crime to hack, and we should find out who hack that

, but we also need to pay facts that were leaked, which point to a conspiracy to rig a presidential election. host: we will let you go, there. the russian hack entering into the conversation as an issue in the campaign. guest: as though the callers point, i do think that cyber security is definitely something that our lawmakers should be focused on and i think these hacks at the dnc and other things have sort of brought that into focus. as to whether the election was rigged or not, i don't see much wouldce of that, and it be one thing if hillary clinton had beaten bernie sanders by a point, but she won by double was the dnc more supportive of hillary clinton then bernie sanders? that is probably right, but i don't know if it -- if it was

that meaningful as -- in the result. host: our next call is in maryland. caller: with our current election, i think what it comes down to is a leader who actually understands foreign and domestic policy as it currently stands, as well as how it has been over the past arguably two decades. when it comes down to foreign policy, we need a leader who understands relationship building as well as things like our current military involvement that may not necessarily be shared with the american public. on the domestic side, we have issues like gun control, discrimination and currently, i believe that hillary clinton would be the best leader to get us through that. it is not a matter of republican versus democrat versus

independent. i hope the american public actually looks at other candidates across party lines in the future. as it stands with two candidates, i think hillary clinton can get the job done. --ebody mentioned con man donald trump's response, his question of even -- have you even read the constitution, all of that was a simple question, it was not necessarily an attack and for donald trump to respond is not just he did disappointing, it is embarrassing to our nation. host: thank you for your call. is the introduction of the third-party candidate like jill stein or gary johnson, is there

any sign so far that either of those are making any inroads? thet: typically when third-party candidates are in the poll, they take about evenly from the two major party candidates and i will say that if jill stein were to gain in strength, the green party's more liberal and you would think that would hurt hillary clinton a little bit more and she has to be concerned that may be at least some small number of the disaffected bernie sanders supporters might go to jill stein. there was a cbs poll that had clinton up seven, nationally but it was five when jill stein and gary johnson work in it -- were in it. host: we welcome your comments as well on twitter. c-span junkie asks about ohio, will kasich get over his issue with trump? what is the governor's role in the campaign? guest: it was striking that we

had john kasich, the popular republican governor in ohio who was a pretty biggest are in cleveland who does not even speak at the convention and shows how deep the divide is between kasich and donald trump. the republican party is almost an arm of the kasich political operation in that the chairman of the ohio republican party is a big kasich supporter, and given that trump does not have much of a ground operation, you would think you would need the support of the ohio real -- republican party. the thing that might bring kasich and trump together in ohio is that kasich wants to get senator rob portman reelected. best way to get portman reelected is for trump to win the state, because you would expect portman to run a little bit ahead of trump so if trump

wins ohio, you would think that portman would be in goods shape -- good shape. at somet's take a look of those, the senate races that you have. we go next to chicago and hear from kathleen on our democrat line. caller: please hear me out, because this is important. khan came of the dnc, he spoke about his son and all he asked was have you ever read the constitution? donald trump could not even take that. rnc, fast-forward to the one of the mothers the lost her benghazi, he said he personally blamed hillary clinton for her son's death. it hillary clinton come out and talk nasty to her?

say all kinds of ugly things to her? she said she understood this woman's pain. you cannot stand to your some ask you if you read the constitution and you want to be head of a party? i hate donald trump saying he wants to bring jobs back. why don't you go on that little computer and pull up all the jobs that donald trump could be adding right now with his businesses, to bring back to america and get the people in ohio and wherever he is talking about a lack of jobs. his ties, his suits, you cannot keep hiding stuff like that. host: thank you for that. any thoughts? donaldthis stuff with trump and the con family shows that he cannot just let anything go. even if somebody disagrees with them, they can

gracefully try to end the conversation or with the family, they could see i this reason -- i disagree with your assessment of my qualification but thought trump just keeps going and i think it makes it hard for him to whatever method she has to get that out, he just -- he never lets a go. . host: managing editor of the crystal ball at the center of politics at the university of virginia. you mentioned the rob portman race in ohio. play, sixix states in tossups. we talked about the ohio race. run us through the other ones you are keeping your eye on. guest: senate is 54-46 republican. there are some republican seats that are already leaning democrat.

we think the democrats are favored. you have a bunch of tossups. six of them, five are controlled by republicans, the other three are controlled by democrats. -- jumps -- just jumped back into the senate, running in indiana in that race is a tossup. rob portman running for reelection in pennsylvania. pat toomey running, marco rubio in florida. all of those states with the exception of indiana are presidential swing states, once you would expect the winning candidate to win or come close and there is high correlation between presidential and senate voting, so you might expect the presidential winner to my field to carry their senate candidates across the finish line. what will be different is if donald trump does lose the election, it may be that voters

may see donald trump as different from their senate republican incumbent. if donald trump wins, i would expect the republicans to hold the senate and house. host: -- guest: there is a whole lot of money you might expect to come in on behalf of the presidential candidate that might not be there. they will spend a lot of money on republicans and the senate, but not necessarily for trump. host: john a republican in connecticut. caller: thank you for having me. my question is, it does not look atatter, you republicans becoming big deficit spenders, the thyroid a dollar by two thirds.

1990, the berlin wall came down, we are at the peak of our foreign power and our gdp was 40% of the world. 2008, all of our systematic deregulation endorsed by republican democrats since 1980 resulted in the 2008 financial crisis which is essentially making europe totally broke. and the ratio is 125% u.s. gdp has not been that high since 1946. looking across the oceans, china has built islands hundreds of , which is ahe coast big flashpoint. u.s. gdp has gone from 40% of the world to 17%. china has gone to about 1%.

it is clear that this trend with china will continue and they will be larger than us both on a gaap basis and militarily -- on a gdp basis and militarily. guest: one of the things we saw at the dnc is is the country and decline or not? the donald trump campaign would argue that it is. the democratic convention was a much more up beat a fair -- upbeat affair. it seems like it is almost a role reversal in that the democrats can sometimes come off as the party of gloom and doom and the republicans are the more patriotic party and it was totally flipped in the last conventions. what the caller gets at is, which vision is right and what people -- what do people was aly believe? there lot of pessimism, but there are a lot of people doing pretty well.

we are seeing this gap between noncollege whites and college educated whites and the reason for that is after the recession, college-educated whites did a lot better than not college-educated whites and the question is, who's vision comes through in this election? host: because the jobs were there? guest: that's right, so recovery for some people, not necessarily for all. that feeling was quite clear about the pessimism versus optimism, but from a more fundamental standpoint, republicans are arguing for change, democrats arguing for continuity. host: we talked to the governor who helped clinton get elected and here is what he had to say. >> if the electoral college map and i could say the argument is, we can have more states in play than we have seen in a long

time. you hear about arizona. senator mccain said he is in a very tough race. if you look at the senate map, the opportunities that exist in north carolina, which has been more difficult recently. , presentinggeorgia a huge opportunity. >> can the democrats win if they lose pennsylvania and ohio? >> that makes the map much more difficult and that is what the trump campaign manager i to figure out. nowinia, very solid right in north carolina, the numbers have been consistently up or us. it is tight, but in our favor in florida. if you take ohio and -- that isa -- those the only hope donald trump has and they are trying to figure out how to work those working-class white males to bring them to their side.

get them excited to come out and vote for them. that is what they want to do, but i do believe pennsylvania -- i was just with the governor and i asked him that question and he said trust me, we are going to win the commonwealth. the only hope donald trump has is to take a couple of those states away from us. host: what did you think of the governor's insight? guest: i thought it was pretty realistic and that donald trump's best possibility to win the white house is not simple. you take mitt romney's 206 electoral votes in the only close state among those was north carolina. 206 and you had ohio, pennsylvania and lorna and that gets donald trump to 273. ohio and pennsylvania have that rust belt character.

the message that would win ohio and pennsylvania is not this -- not necessarily the one you would use in lorna, particularly because i do think that virginia look like a great state for donald trump and states like colorado, which has all mail voting as in mail-in ballots. has is an innovation that helped democrats in states like washington and oregon and generally increases turnout. virginia and colorado may be trending away from republicans and that leaves donald trump with ohio, pennsylvania and florida. maybe he could make bigger inroads in the midwest. host: we will get back to calls and hear from tom in california, independent. caller: everybody is talking about hillary and how

experienced she is and all the years she has been in office. e-mails, sheut the should have known better and what the russians have an able to hack into the government servers like that, i don't think so. what are these people talking about with hillary being the best for the job. how much money is she receiving from these countries that don't even like women? host: a reminder to viewers to turn down the television or radio when you call in. aboutller's point experience, is it helping or hurting hillary? guest: i would say overall it is helping, although her national or ability is only a little bit better than donald trump. clinton has paid a significant political price for this e-mail scandal. she did not get indicted which

is positive for her, but her numbers started to colonel a little bit after the james comey press conference -- colonel -- curdle a little bit after the james comey press conference. there is a path for donald trump and it has a lot to do with imputing her personal credibility. host: he talked about the wall street journal, looking at the travel schedule for the presidential ticket and a look at the disco candidates on their bus tour. in swing plan stops states and the

there is some talk he could i believe trump's campaign sop

stop is in portland, maine, when portland is in first congressional district so i'm works.e how that the new york thing i don't get because there's no indication new york is in play and it's democratic. host: do you think she was emboldened by the big primary wins? >> it could be. i would think trump would do upstate new york it's just that new york city will be candidacy.o his host: hector coles, apple valley, california. line. the democrats caller: thank you for taking my call. i have been watching this for a long time. caller a few minutes arethat said the emails hurting hillary clinton. i worked with