are profound and are strong, based on our enduring national interests. politicians and government, congressman, senators, prime minister's and cabinets will come and go according to the will of the people of australia and the united states. but the bond between our two nations, our shared common interests, our shared national interests are so strong and so committed that we will continue and work with our friends in the united states through the trump administration just as we have through the obama administration, just as we always will. we have so much in common. shared values. democracy. the rule of law. maintaining the international order upon which our security and prosperity depends. so, the american people have made a great and momentous

choice today. we congratulate president-elect trump and we look forward to working closely as ever with his administration as it is formed and when it takes office early next year. thank you very much.

and is brought to you today by your cable and satellite provider. want to welcome the ceo and editor at "foreign policy," and dr. of "national insecurity: american leadership in the age of fear," david rothkopf. good morning. by the title? guest: since 9/11, we have been focused on foreign threats, particularly threats from terrorist groups, which are serious but they are not , and meanwhile, the world has been changing in profound ways. we have not been tracking those changes or dealing with the future. what i wanted to do was to try to take a step away from the means of fear. i thought that might happen in this election. as it happens, we came to an election cycle where the winning candidate is very much a fear mongering candidate and

continued to play on those games, the fear of other people, other racial and ethnic groups, that thisso it shows problem continues in the u.s. and this tracking is from the future. news,let me ask you about cnn confirming that for americans, to service members and to american contractors killed in apparent suicide bombs that took place yesterday at the largest u.s. airbase in afghanistan. the explosion also wounded 16 other u.s. service members, as well as one polish soldier. the tall been claimed responsibility in a tweet praising "the strong attack on the bagram airfield." of what we face around the world's especially in iraq and afghanistan. guest: political campaigns are tidy. you have to assert that you can control things in the future and where you will not be able to. is in office, president trump will do with

afghanistan, iraq, syria, unexpected crises around the world. he will have to deal with those, and that would take them off of his agenda. it will also introduce them into the real world in a way that he has never been exposed to it before because he has no foreign policy experience. every president has been tested by foreign-policy issues, kennedy, the iran hostage crisis with jimmy carter, the attacks in the marine base of ronald reagan, so how do the president trump should prepare for the unforeseen circumstances? caller: well, -- guest: well, i would have preferred to have a president with foreign-policy experience. we tend to elect presidents with not much experience. six of the last seven presidents had virtually none. as far as what he can do now, he could appoint a team of people who had that experience, and you

could listen to them carefully because he is now going to go of on-the-jobod training that is at higher stakes and more challenging than any individual anyone the planet. host: that is the essence of "the washington post's" front .tory for trump, the art of the transition, and basically, how we extends beyond playlist to get people to go with them on national security issues. one says, i think it is time for them to be professional and second that. we work for the president and congress and that is what we do. we are capable and have to do our job. guest: of course they will do that. they always do that. they do that with every president of the united states. the assertion that they might not actually echoes trumps content for the intelligence community during the campaign.

he says he was smarter than that, who he attacked and said he was smarter than them and go to the intelligence community and said he wasn't trustworthy or did not want to trust them and he would have to extend the olive branch to say, i am here to listen and learn. i also think one of the things to watch closely is who he picks to be his tutors in foreign policy. right now, he is a blank slate on foreign policy. the people who are closest to him, giving him advice, are also instructing him, and are shaping him as a future foreign policy leader. those choices in the next couple of weeks will be extremely telling. host: let me get your reaction to european reaction. you'll hear from angela merkel, but first, theresa may, the british prime minister, reacting to the news of donald trump as our 45th president. [video clip] theresa may: congratulate donald

trump, britain and the united states will remain close partners on trade security and defense. we have a long-standing and enduring, special relationship, built on shared values as freedom of democracy and enterprise. i look forward to looking with president-elect prompt to ensure we can maintain the security and prosperity of our nations in the future. >> given what he said in the campaign about women, muslims, ,nd plans that raise eyebrows will you be able to work with him? forward to -- theresa may: pilot for to working with president-elect on. american people elected him. burton and united states shared values of democracy and enterprise, and avid forward to building on the special relationship between our countries to ensure the security and prosperity of our nations in the future. host: your reaction to what the british prime minister said? guest: fairly predictable.

these reactions tend to be anodized and she's a political cousin of trump's. , right of xena phobic center politician, who has gone into office talking about getting out of europe guest: getting out of europe and attacking refugees. she is part of a wave. we need to see trump in the context of a global wave toward and thatg, xenophobic, includes leaders across europe, vladimir putin. there was a report not too long ago, a couple days ago, that stephen bannon, a right-hand aid to trump, reached out to the le pin group in

france and election happening in , france, see extreme right group in france, and said, let's work together and they responded absolutely, let's work together. i think we need to see donald trump as been part of something that is bigger globally and is very worrisome if we have any recollection of what happens when right-wing movements like this take power in places like host: -- places like europe. host: angela merkel saying "on the basis of these values, i am offering to work closer with the future president of the united states. we are bound by democracy, freedom and respecting the rule of law." also vladimir putin said, our , radio audience will hear this through a translator. [video clip] vladimir putin: we have heard when he was still a candidate of the presidency. [speaking russian] translator he spoke about : restoring relations with russia and the united states.

vladimir putin: [speaking russian] translator: we understand that the way to that will be difficult to take into account the current state of the relation between the relations of the u.s. and russia. vladimir putin: [speaking russian] translator: as i have repeatedly said, it is not our fault that russian-american relations are in the poor state. vladimir putin: [speaking russian] translator: but russia is ready, and we want to restore the full-fledged relations of the united states. host: the comments of the russian president vladimir putin. many critics saying he had hands in the election, with wikileaks and his friendship with donald trump, indirect support of donald trump.

guest: those are not just critics, right? that was the u.s. intelligence community. that would be we just talked about trump learning to respect and work with. wikileaks is an agent of the russian government. they were present throughout the campaign. think about how close the campaign was. hillary clinton won the popular vote now by approaching 2 million votes. she lost the electoral vote by several tens and thousands of votes in michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. this is a slight difference. could the constant drumbeat of wikileaks have made a difference? absolutely. we do not know for sure. there are a bunch of other factors that have played into this, and we should not minimize the fact of how divided the country is, but could the russians have played an important role in tipping the scales? yes they could have. ,did donald trump repudiate the support of the russians? no, he embraced it.

when asked about whether we should stand up to putin, who has been a bald-faced aggressor in ukraine, georgia, throughout the near abroad has been , responsible for atrocities in point trumpt any step up and offer criticism of that? no, he did not. i suspect that what you just heard was a measured statement from the russian president, when trump was unexpectedly elected and the russians did not expect them to win either, there were champagne corks popping in the kremlin. theyis exactly the outcome wanted. there has not been since the end of the second world war, an american president who has ended office with a more warm tilt towards russia van putin -- russia than putin. angela merkel was offering and

admonition, not a full throated embrace. values, toe have the the extent to which the president embraces those values, we will be able to work together. there were other leaders, nicolas sturgeon in scotland and elsewhere, who said similar remarks, which is essentially, let's wait and see with regard to trump. host: we have comments through a translator, so we will go to luis first from virginia. your comments or questions? good morning. caller: good morning. mr. rothkopf i think you are the , right wing, the extreme right. you are the neo-conservative the , person who wants to push us into war. we do want to be friends with russia, syria, turkey, the whole world. and you and your groups, you are the people who are constantly pushing for war. you are at the extreme right, and you want to call donald trump right? he is dead center.

remember what ronald reagan said, "there is no left or right, just up and down." you are the right wing that brings us down. you are no better than the left that brings us down. i hope americans look at the foreign policy of all you so-called experts and see what you brought us for the past 40 years. thank you so much. guest: [laughter] what am i supposed to say to such nonsense? so, first of all i am not a , neocon. i was in the clinton administration. for those who want to accuse me of the a left winger because i was in the clinton administration, i was also in -- the managing director of kissinger's association. i think in the tradition of foreign-policy experts for a long time, which is that we try to look at the facts. the facts are that being weak with aggressive people like putin is more likely to produce conflict than with sending a strong message.

i was enormously critical of what i saw in the face of -- as the hesitance of barack obama in dealing with russia just as i am concerned that , putin. your question was about does it matter foreign power tries to manipulate our elections and probably had some effect? i think it does. should we be wary of a foreign power that would seek to do such things? i would think we should. and so, names and labels and name-calling and silliness like all of that aside the reality is , that stings had taken place here recently, which deserve attention and deserve the attention of the incoming administration because they are signs of problems to come. host: comments from our viewers, two this is from dawn -- ike, or to eisenhower, would love trump. he is the first president in the have century that is not the holding to the military-industrial complex.

and then there is this from -- who says better relations with russia are not a bad idea, especially after the coup in ukraine by economic hitmen. guest: [laughter] oh my god. first of all i think ike would patience at all with trump. i have respect for eisenhower and based on his world war ii experience and time in office, he was very, very skeptical of these inexperienced commentators who came onto the scene as trump did. when eisenhower was resident, he -- president he sought to strike , the right balance between strength and aggression within his own party because of the fact that he had the kind of experience that he did. trump says, you know,, "i am beholden to no one. "

let us look at who is on his team. he said "i am going to drain the swamp." yet people tied to giant defense contractors. the is not a step away from , ittary-industrial complex is a step toward the military-industrial complex. based on what we are hearing, the appointments that trump is likely to make are going to deliver the message that he is at the core of the establishment, as he always was, and that this myth of the independent is going to give way to the reality of someone trying to feather his nest and that of his friends. host: let's hear from angela merkel. you will see the subtitles on the bottom of the screen. [video clip] angela merkel: [speaking german] host: the comments of german

chancellor in german with english translation below. your comments? guest: look, she said, "i'm happy to work with you if you embrace people of our region. hew races them if , you treat women properly. if you share these values. " these were references to things he said during the campaign. she was saying, "we are not a blank slate, we will not follow blindly. you have got to stick to the values that have underpinned the

alliance since it was established in world war ii." or, we are going to go our own way. i think in this statement, you saw merkel make a strong pitch, that a lot of what will happen in the near future is going to be driven by her because trump phyte and some people in europe are distrustful. host: is the future of nato in doubt? guest: trump ran with criticisms of nato, with comments about them not sharing the burden. i think a deep understanding of why an alliance exists. he was critical as if we offered a one-way street of protection for them, when in fact we , entered into the alliance because they offered an important buffer and support for us militarily, politically and otherwise. and, you know i think that is , something we need to watch carefully because the atlantic alliance, particularly the way

behaves, is absolutely vital to our future. one would hope that any new president would focus on revitalizing it, strengthening relationships, and making the institution effective in the context of 21st century challenges. host: you can read the work of our guest, at david rothkopf, at foreign policy.com, the former managing director of kissinger associates and served in the clinton administration under secretary of commerce. primarily focused on international trade issues. his latest book "national insecurity: american leadership in an age of fear." christine from sarasota, florida republican line. ,good morning. caller: good morning. how are you today? host: fine, thank you. caller: good. my question pretty much is the foreign policy immigration. do we feel that donald trump will put a change on when women coming to the country legal,

illegal, and suddenly have a baby that they are automatic , citizens? host: do you understand the question? guest: yeah. i think she is concerned about policies that have made children born in the united states automatically to citizens and -- automatically into citizens and she wonders if it will , change. donald trump said he would change the policies, rudy giuliani has said he would change the policies. he has someone on his transition team whose sole focus is building a wall and changing our immigration policies. i would see no reason to assume that he is not going to try to change them. now paul ryan, who recently just , said he doesn't expect massive deportation, so somewhere between trump's most inflammatory rhetoric and the status quo is where we are going to be, and i suspect that will mean tougher requirements for new immigrants, more and by the way, i

think that will be quite interesting. you know barack obama supported , twice as many people as george w. bush. it is not in his first term in office. it is not really well understood that the republican party was traditionally very tolerant and embracing of immigration within certain rules and limits. and what trump's rhetoric, and some of it of course has been racist and vile, but even the more moderate rhetoric represents a departure, particularly when you consider that united states is a nation of immigrants and that our strength and one of the reasons we are one of the major countries in the world that has not suffered from rapid aging of the population has to do with the fact that why we embrace immigrants. he ignored the fact with regard to mexican immigration that net flows right now are out of the

u.s. and into mexico, as opposed to the other way around. they are the ones facing inflows and the challenges of a pose. host: let us go to susan in tulsa, oklahoma republican line. , good morning. caller: yes, i just wanted to say about wikileaks, i think most americans are tired of the media and are happy to get information from any direction. most work all day. the working people work all day. they come home at night and they hear stories on the 6:00 news about dogs and movie actors. secondly, i would like to say , you know that they would like , to be helped, all of the people already here. is it ok to put a temporary hold on immigration and help the people here in our black communities and the working class people right now? and then we can go back to , whatever they think is proper, but i think, that is where we stand. people are hurting right now and nobody seems to recognize it. host: thank you. we will get a response. guest: well, first of all, if

you don't trust the media, then i think you need to first examine what your definition is of the media because you get information from everywhere and wikileaks was part of that. you need to find places you trust. the u.s. intelligence committee says it do not trust wikileaks. the u.s. intelligence agency believes that they are agents of the russian government. if the u.s. intelligence community believes that and evidence supports that, find someone else to trust. if you don't trust the 6:00 news , and you don't trust wikileaks there are plenty of choices. , as far as dealing with immigration and putting it on hold, let's be realistic. we do not accept that many immigrants. it is not a burden to our society to absorb the ones we do accept. i think in fact we have accepted , too few immigrants from crisis torn regions during there are 63 -- regions in the world. there are 63 million people in the world dislocated. many are extremely helpless,

pose no threat to anybody and we are the richest and most powerful country in the world. that goes to the final point of we are the richest and most powerful country in the world. we have never been richer or we have never been more powerful. we don't have to make america great again. america is already great, but there are people in the u.s. who are suffering. inequality is a serious problem. i think we ought to have some confidence that the united states government, which is after all the largest organization on the planet earth, the largest entity on planet earth of its kind has the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. we can deal with problems in the cities, education, infrastructure, security, and we can continue to be humane and recognize the many benefits that immigration has brought us. host: this is from jim, who says, "we need, in my opinion, nato. they need us.

but do we need the united nations? not sure about that. u.n. headquarters should move." your thoughts? guest: do we need a community of nations trying to resolve problems through discussion, dialogue, mutual understanding and collaboration? you know i think almost three quarters of a century after the founding of the united nations, the answer is a resounding yes. could the united nations be doing a better job? does it need reform? i think the answer to that is yes. do we want to move? that is a personal decision. i think having the united nations in new york has benefited the united states and new york, so i would not advocate a move. host: helen, republican line from louisiana. good morning. caller: god bless c-span. it came to pass when the men of god began to multiply on the

face of the earth, that the daughters that were fair and wise. the whites and when the god choose whites, and that is on page 257, white, peer and -- pure and innocent, beautiful, perfect features, free from the black, wicked evil -- guest: i will jump in. host: we will move on to another call. i apologize for that. let's go to randy from wisconsin. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i was wondering what his opinions were of trump supporters, white supremacist, s, kkk and other groups that are quite disturbing. host: thank you, randy. both calls connected. guest: you did that extremely well.

it really illustrated the point. donald trump, as a candidate, fostered the tensions that now are embroiling u.s. politics. he attacked mexicans as racist. s. he said he was going to ban people based on the religion, contrary to the spirit of the constitution. and i think, importantly as the , second caller indicated, he allowed himself to benefit of the support of the kkk, the white supremacist groups, nationalist groups, and never once repudiated them, just as he never once repudiated putin. you know i think that is , troubling, particularly as he says he wants to be president for all of the people. you cannot be a president for all the people when a key group supporting you prefers whites, prefers anglo-saxons, attacks jews.

in the finaln ad days of the campaign that the anti-defamation group attacked as being anti-semitic because it was anti-semitic. he is anti-muslim, anti-semitic, he has supporters who are openly racist, he has never repudiated this and it has created an atmosphere reflected in your prior call. a lot of the groups feel empowered and the tensions we see in our schools today and in the streets are driven by this. i have to say personally, i am unsettled by the current tenor of american politics, and i blame that to a large degree on a trump campaign that seemed to be willing to do anything and embrace anyone to become elected. host: let's go to al from ohio, good morning. caller: hello? host: go ahead.

we can hear you. go ahead, good morning. caller: i did not know i was going to get on so soon. i just called. i am 57 years old, and i have been watching my whole life foreign policy. as you know we had the vietnam , we have the body count every day i watched this. and i watched as we actually in my view became aggressively worse. i mean we started from bombing , subsistence farmers in vietnam, setting villages on fire, people who live in height and we go to iraq now and we do , the things we are doing. is there any time we will start negotiating with people? i am like the prior caller, your man who worked for kissinger, who has a long list of crimes he committed, i would just like to with-- i would like peace people and negotiations.

we are going the opposite way and i believe this man is part , of the reason we are doing that. guest: well, i mean, first of all i think kissinger did a lot , of things that were wrong too. , i was a democrat in his office and he tried to have balance and i think it was admirable. host: let us be clear you worked , in his private office and not when he served as secretary of state. guest: that is right. i served in the clinton administration and i think the policies of the clinton administration are closer to my own. in every case possible, negotiation is better than conflict. certainly, what we did in iraq was appalling and indefensible and i would only encourage this , diet, since he is interested in these issues to read what i , have written because i have attached them as vehemently as possible. i attacked the use of drones and -- drones indiscriminately. i worry about automated militaries that have rich countries invading poor countries without shedding rich

countries' blood, and i worry about consequences. i worry about the morality of a lot of things we have done. by all means, let's find peaceful avenues for resolving problems if that is possible. having said that, let's do that from a position of strength. that is what enables the united states to maintain the path americana since the second world war. there are enemies out there and i think they need to know that they will not be able to continue unchecked and that we will use international law, and when there is a direct threat to us or our allies, we will act in defense of ourselves and allies. that has been the core of american foreign-policy since the end of the second world war and it has worked extremely well for us. have we made mistakes? yes, all countries make mistakes but the best thing about the , united states is we have a system to air out differences and we can move toward undoing the mistakes and be better in

-- being better in the future and that is what i hope we can continue to do. host: i realize this is a general question in a complex world, so take it in that vein. but what will president trump inherit in terms of what the obama administration will be leaving behind? guest: well, you know, i think you have to sort of take each region in succession. the middle east is a mess. syria and iraq will be unresolved. afghanistan is going to be in real turmoil. some of our key allies, egypt very unsettled, turkey, very unsettled. russia is making inroads into the region, not just in syria but through relations with turkey through making , initiatives with regard to egypt, even talking about basis. -- bases in cyprus. the balance of power is changing in the region. trump is concerned about the iran deal. careful as toery how he handles that because the

balance of power in the region is at play. many of our allies are nervous and don't know where he will go. china is rising, being assertive in the south china sea and east china sea and he has to deal with that. north korea is going to test him. ong un is a wildcard and extremely dangerous, another problem. i think the key to counterbalance is stressful and we have not mentioned global warming, a mass effect two discounts altogether. that's a massive threat that he -- global warming is a massive threat that he discounts altogether. i think the key is rebuilding alliances and reimagining them for the 21st century. i think we have to see whether they ascribe to the unilateral policies of the changed wing of the republican party voiced their more and the george h.w. bush link of the republican -- wing of the republican party, and might seek to build alliances as james baker did in the first gulf war.

and i think strength in america, i am certainly hoping for the latter. host: let's go to willie in michigan, independent line. good morning. david rothkopf of foreign policy magazine. go ahead. guest: yes, my concern is about the media. the media is in a way that talks from both sides of their mouths. a lot of people do not understand when they bring people on their show, and these people are saying things that are not true, not real and the commentator who is talking to this person never says anything , whether it is wrong or right or brings someone on the show to have a different opinion. i think this is wrong. i think the media has done a hold the service -- i think they have to a lot of harm to the united states host:.

-- united states. host: willy, thank you. we have media coverage of both sides of all sides. guest: what do we mean by the media? right? there is a mass of people with hundreds and thousands of choices out there. wing, fox, so forth, left wing, msnbc and some of those. there are some that have tried to be more the centric. the massive amount of stuff on the web. i think listeners and viewers need to think carefully. i think we have not had sufficient appreciation for the facts. i think we have misunderstood what objectivity means. i think if you're coming candidates like trump, it is not objected to simply say, well he , is like any other candidate and i will treat him like any other candidate if he is not. objectivity requires focus on facts, and without prejudice and report them as you see them. if the candidate is unqualified

, if a candidate is using hateful approaches, or a foreign candidate -- or a candidate is playing footsie with some foreign power, that is dangerous to the united states, you have to report that. if that makes the candidate different from any other candidate that existed, you have to say, this is different from history. i think a lot of media failed to do that. when you look at the close margin of the election, we will have a huge amount of dialogue about with what tipped the election the way it did. hillary clinton's campaign, as a candidate? was it trump's genius? people disgusted with washington? wikileaks? russians? that african-americans did not vote for hillary the way they voted for obama? is it about the rust belt is changing in its orientation? all of those analyses are potentially right. another one is right, also, the media gave hundreds and millions of dollars for coverage to donald trump, treating him like a legitimate candidate and like what he was doing was not

reprehensible and not challenging him on it and allowing him to have this stage in the way that they do not allow others to have the stage much has been written about the close relationship between ronald reagan and margaret thatcher. president bush had a close and special relationship with tony blair. who do you envision filling that role in a trump white house? david: hard to imagine. we don't have any track record for trump. he might become close to theresa may. there is this emerging group overseas. he does seem to have a certain fondness for vladimir putin. bill clinton had a certain fondness for boris yeltsin. that is not entirely unprecedented. we just have to wait and see as we will have to on everything with donald trump and foreign policy. he really is a tabula rasa. he has no experience. we have no idea which direction

he's going to go. one thing we might end up with, which is a little unexpected is that trump might be the blustering unilateralism of the cheney ring of the republican party and a lack of desire to get overseas of obama. he may combine the least good qualities over the last two administrations or he may surprise us all. host: the book, national security, david rothkopf, the ceo and editor of foreign policy, thank you for stopping by. we appreciate it. journal"'s "washington live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. monday morning, as congress returns this week, francine kiefer of the christian science monitor talks about the proposed legislative agenda of the republican congress and president-elect donald trump and what's ahead during the lame-duck session. and kenneth gross on how

president-elect trump must deal with the management of his various businesses and potential conflicts of interest. watch c-span's "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on monday morning. >> with donald trump elected as the next u.s. president, melania trump becomes our nation's second foreign-born first lady since louisa catherine adams. learn more about the influence of america's presidential spouses from c-span's book, first ladies, a look into the personal lives and influence of every presidential spouse in american history. it is a companion to c-span's tv series and features interviews with 54 of the nation's leading first lady's historians, biographies, and archival photos from their lives. first ladies, published by public affairs, is available wherever you buy books and now

available in paperback. republican national committee held a news conference after the election to talk about the results and the party's agenda moving forward. speakers include senator roger wicker and representative greg walden, who each had a role in maintaining the majority in congress. this is 15 minutes. >> thank you very much. let me begin by congratulating president-elect donald trump. majority inat the the united states senate looks forward to working with him on a positive program, confirming supreme court justices, and on the program that he has outlined. i think it's also important at this hour to acknowledge the fine concession statement that secretary clinton just made.

i think it's fair to say that mr. trump and secretary clinton both rose to the occasion and spoke for unity and struck the right chord at this profound and pivotal moment in our nation's history. my hat is off to both the winner and the loser in that race. i think it's a step toward healing. let me say a word or two about our races. i want to congratulate reince priebus. i think if it were not already after this year and after last night, reince priebus goes down as one of the great rnc chairman in the history of the united states and in the history of the republican party.

thank you to the rnc. thank you to all the staff. i know chairman priebus intended to be here, but he's in other locations, speaking to the press, and continuing the job. a few points. there's nothing like having good candidates. you can't take away from the fact that republicans maintain the majority in the united states senate because of our superior candidates. one by one, they ran on their records, on the way they were able to respond to their constituents, and so we won our victory in part because we had very good candidates. my hat is off toward baker. thank you for acknowledging our great staff and our team. we put together a program to the necessaryaise

funds. totalsed $115 million all over a two-year period. we wanted to train the candidates, train the campaign managers, avoid costly primaries, pull together when we could, and so we wound up with andnominees that we needed that's a credit also to our staff. my hat also goes off to our majority leader, mitch mcconnell. it's not quite totally understood, the fact that after we gained the majority two years ago, we went to work. we had 10 times as many recorded votes as our predecessors in the leadership. we send bipartisan legislation to the house which in turn sent it to the democratic president and we accomplished bipartisan

achievements for the american people. think in essence, state-by-state, candidate by candidate, the voters rewarded republicans in the majority for the accomplishments the previous eight years. now it is back to work. we look forward to working with the president-elect. we look forward to working with our strong majority in the house of representatives. it was wonderful when i was over here as a member of the house of representatives to work with people like greg walden. my hat is off to him and speaker ryan and their team and i want to give my heartiest congratulations to greg and our new house majority. thank you. mr. walden: thank you very much,

senator. it is an honor and a privilege to be here. back when i got involved in this and pete sessions said we're going to fire nancy pelosi, that was a time when barack obama was at 72% approval, and we did it in 2010. we held illinois. i became chairman after that election cycle. we learned a lot out of that cycle about what our deficiencies were. one of the big deficiencies was the lack of data and digital mechanics and the ability to do what the democrats had done to us. dataointed the biggest digital team in republican history at that point. i think it was seven people. we have come so far with everybody involved. tales last night and we did it knowingly, willfully, thoughtfully, and with a lot of planning. our polling was spot on.

our turnout models were spot on. our data was right on target. our messaging worked. we got the job done. says, it isicker also about recruitment. they failed. we succeeded. the results show. i want to congratulate president-elect trump and vice president-elect mike pence and look forward to working with them together to get america in a much better place. i also want to thank our speaker of the house, paul ryan, who shattered his own set of records for a speaker in support of republican campaign efforts doing what nobody had ever done before, to raise money and to campaign. he and i were around the country the last three weeks, together, in i don't know how many states and cities. it was a lot. myself, just since

october 4, 22 states, 58 cities, 38 candidates. we were all over the country. that is just in the last month. you stand here today with what we think will be record historic majorities, and it made those 285 nights on the road worthwhile. we are ready to govern and we have the tools and people that will govern with us. i want to congratulate senator wicker, leader mcconnell. i want to give a shout out to my staff. up aially rob sims, heads terrific organization of very talented, capable, hard-working men and women who know their stuff and they knew how to get it done. donald trump gave voice to americans who felt left behind and left out. i want to thank him for giving those people a voice. i look forward to working with him and getting things done.

i also want to conclude by thanking my fellow colleagues. our conference stepped up in record numbers to support our effort and help us have the resources necessary to achieve this success. thank you very much. it's an honor to be with you. i'll turn it over, i guess. >> we're going to take a few questions now. >> what about working with donald trump? if you can explain if you are working with him, working for him, and if he has a mandate or if it is your role to be a check? mr. walden: i think he has a mandate to do what he campaigned on, to repeal and replace obamacare, to put constitutional scholars on the supreme court. i liked what he said about rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. i think it will be a partnership and i think we all understand

our role. mr. walden: a lot of time went into creating this document of ideas to tackle the nation's biggest problems. this is a house produced document, but one that speaker ryan spent a lot of time working with president-elect trump to go through point by point. knowing paul it was probably powerpoint by powerpoint and we are on the same page. constitutionally, you don't see it your role to be a check on his power? mr. walden: he's just been elected. we will do our constitutional responsibility. he will do his. we share common principles and goals. we will work together. >> i want to follow up on the point. the president-elect has never been in government. -- do you think there's a learning curve that the president-elect has when it comes to congressional relations?

do you envision any shakeup in any senate or house leadership? mr. wicker: to your second point, i do not expect any shakeup in the leadership. i think senator mcconnell and the leadership team will be reelected with the glaring c chairon of a new nrs and that will be a welcome change. we all understand our role. do you think he understands? mr. wicker: i absolutely do. frankly, he's been surrounded during this campaign by a team of people who are a part of that fast center-right majority that reflectshis country and i think we will be just fine. >> what do you think? mr. walden: i think this is an inside the beltway question that doesn't match up with the

reality i come from. he ran on issues. we ran on issues. they expect us to work together but that doesn't mean we are always on the same page. of course we have our constitutional responsibilities. >> katie, i was in a room like -- is thisars ago the party you wanted to see? what is your message to the all right and white supremacists who now feel involved in donald trump's party? ms. walsh: i think the voters spoke pretty clearly. donald trump is going to get 276 electoral votes. again, i think this is a little bit of a inside the beltway question. you had voters come out and state that, i want change. they went to the ballot box and voted for donald trump. i think another story you will see is his unbelievable turnout

with hispanics. over 30% of hispanics voted for donald trump in florida, texas, and north carolina. we spent the last couple weeks and months talking about how the hillary campaign was going to turn out hispanics. they believe donald trump is a voice for the american people that hillary clinton didn't have. walter, we had historic wins down ballot that mean huge things for the future of our party. >> thank you, katie. congressman, you nailed it. there are too many inside the beltway conversations. you are missing what's happening out there. this is not something that just happened this cycle. this has been building for a very long time. this is the culmination of something we've seen happening. we went into this election at the state level as a counterbalance to obama's failed

policies here. and voters recognize that. that is why republicans have been at or near all-time highs in offices all across the country. in states red and purple and blue. and that is going to continue. right now, we defeated the speaker of the house in kentucky and have picked up the chamber for the first time in 100 years. defeated the senate president in iowa and have all republican control of government there. i think it is critically important that people listen to what the voters said yesterday and recognized that those wins have been coming for a long time and it is now manifested with a new messenger in donald trump and the incredible leadership of and thete and the house things they've done. the american people have listened and they've been listening for a long time and this is something that has been

coming and will continue to move forward. ms. walsh: thank you all for joining us this morning. >> now that the elections are over, congress returns next week for its lame-duck session. we are joined by scott long, senior staff writer with "the hill." you covered donald trump on capitol hill and the headline of your current piece says trump and ryan signal new chapter in their relationship. how does this play into next week's elections for speaker? how does this bolster paul ryan's chances in the house? mr. wong: i think it does. before the election, the hillary -- the conventional wisdom was hillary was going to win the

race. and donald trump had been threatening to make life miserable for paul ryan. that he had not supported them during the campaign trail, he would come after ryan. now that donald trump is the president-elect, the dynamic has completely shifted. the two men, who met yesterday, were praising each other. speaker ryan rolled out the red carpet for donald trump, hosted a lunch for him in the capitol hill club. then brought him back to the capital where he took him out on the speakers balcony and showed him the view of the entire d.c. skyline, the platform where he would be inaugurated and sworn in on january 20. and so, the dynamic and the relationship, which has been a pretty testy one throughout the campaign, has completely shifted.

>> ahead of that inauguration, congress has plenty to do. walk us through this lame-duck session next week in addition to the leadership elections. mr. wong: the presidential race has completely changed everything as one leadership source told me today. the thinking before the election was that congress would try to tackle an omnibus bill, perhaps break it up into smaller pieces with a minibus type of approach that would extend funding for the 2017 fiscal year. now the thinking, with republicans controlling both the white house and both chambers of congress, is that republicans specifically try to push for a cr that will take funding into early 2017, perhaps february or march. that would allow then-president

trump and a republican-controlled congress to hash out a much better deal on spending levels than republicans would have gotten in the lame-duck session with president obama. again, donald trump's victory on tuesday night has changed almost everything in washington. >> on that cr, on the spending measure, let's take a look at some reference on where things stand. we'll go back to september 28, hal rogers on the house floor. >> mr. speaker, i rise today to present the senate amendment. for hr-5325. the legislation includes the fiscal year 2017 continuing resolution and full-year appropriations for military construction and veterans affairs. it also includes funding to fight prevent the spread of the zika virus and assistance to

communities affected by recent devastating floods. this is a reasonable and necessary compromise that will keep the government open and operating, address urgent needs across the country, and provide the necessary support for our service members, their families, and our veterans. first and foremost, mr. speaker, this bill helps us avoid the unwarranted damage of a government shutdown by providing the funds required to keep the government open and operational past our september 30 deadline. the funding is provided at the current rate of $1.067 trillion and last through december 9. the short timeframe will allow congress to complete our annual appropriations work without jeopardizing important government functions. secondly, the package contains the full year military construction, the v.a. bill for

fiscal 17, which was conferenced by the house and senate and passed by the house already in june. in total, $82.5 billion is provided for our military infrastructure and veterans health and benefits programs, $2.7 billion above current levels with targeted increases to address mismanagement and improve operations at the v.a. it is important to note that once the president signs this bill into law, it will be the first time since 2009 that an individual appropriations bill has been conferenced with the senate and enacted before the september 30 fiscal year deadline. third, this legislation includes $1.1 billion in funding to respond to and stop the spread of the zika virus. this funding is directed to

programs that control mosquitoes, develop vaccines, and treat those affected. this funding is spent responsibly, balanced by $400 million in offsets, in unused funding from other projects. lastly, this legislation includes important provisions that address current national needs, including an additional $37 million to fight the opioid epidemic, which has struck my district especially hard, and an additional $500 million in disaster designated funding to help states recover and rebuild from recent destructive flooding. i believe this legislation is a good compromise that this house can and should support. it is not perfect. but it ensures we meet our nation's current critical needs. i have said many times before,

standing in this exact spot, that a continuing resolution is a last resort. but at this point, it is what we must do to fulfill our congressional responsibility to keep the lights on in our government. so i urge my colleagues to vote aye on this necessary legislation so we can send it to the president's desk without delay. >> hal rogers from september 28. scott wong of "the hill," that short-term cr runs to december 9, a couple of outstanding issues. the president requesting additional military spending just this weekend also the house republican study committee wants a short-term cr into the beginning of the trump administration. who will win out in the end on this? mr. wong: it probably depends on what donald trump wants. he has a lot of political capital right now. of course, president obama still has a few months left in his

term and will be the one signing any sort of funding bill at the end of this year. but president-elect trump will be dictating a lot of what happens during the lame-duck session. he had the support of the voters. certainly, members of congress on the republican side are falling in line behind president-elect trump. we have not seen any signals about what he wants, but i expect that there probably will be a short-term cr into either february or march. >> on that to-do list, is aid to flint, michigan. the u.s. house passed that in late september. the congressman talked about that package before they resist. -- they recessed. >> this amendment is something i've been working on for some

time and it would bring urgently needed aid to my hometown of flint, michigan. for over a year, the flint water crisis has been public. we have not yet been able to act here in congress. it has been even longer since the residence of flint that have been using water that is poison. poinsed with lead, for two full years. to be clear, what happened in flint was a failure of government at every level of government. through this amendment, congress can take its rightful place in fulfilling its obligation in its responsibility to help my hometown recover. the amendment would authorize $170 million to restore the safety of water infrastructure in communities like my hometown of flint that have lead in their water. more importantly it would create a concrete commitment from both bodies of congress to get aid to

my hometown, for my hometown, to the president's desk. the senate passed similar legislation by a vote of 95-3. this amendment would ensure the house also supports communities like flint that are suffering with this terrible problem. we have waited an awful long time for this. we worked very hard to get this amendment in a bipartisan fashion to the floor. i want to thank all of our friends. >> michigan congressman dan kildee. scott wong, he mentioned that the senate passed their own measure. what is left to do? mr. wong: the two sides, the senate, house, the negotiators need to come together and settle on a final product and present that back to their respective

chambers. that is another item that needs to happen during the lame-duck session. in terms of the flint funding, the house bill that was negotiated is about $170 million. the senate bill contains a little bit more, $300 million. they will probably have to meet somewhere in the middle. the good news for the people of flint is that donald trump has been very supportive of those efforts. he visited flint back in september. he spoke to a number of the residents and has been talking a lot about infrastructure spending on the campaign trail. so, i would expect -- everything is up in the air, but i would expect the two sides will be able to come together on flint. >> majority leader mitch mcconnell prioritized getting

down the defense authorization bill and this 21st century cures bill. tells about that, briefly. mr. wong: i do not have too much information on what is happening on the senate side. i do know when mcconnell spoke to reporters the other day, one of his top priorities obviously was the repeal of obamacare. i think a lot of the discussion that will be happening is going to be about what republicans do in the first 100 days of the new trump administration. that was part of the discussion that happened yesterday between trump and mcconnell and trump and ryan. reince priebus was there as well, who is one of the. who is being talked about for chief of staff of the white house. i think a lot of the focus, what i'm hearing from members today, a lot of the focus is going to be on the top priorities of those first 100 days of the trump administration.

probably at the top of that list is repealing obamacare. retiring, it reid is likely to be chuck schumer. what is the relationship with chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell like? >> somebody who would often throw up roadblocks in the process. although accusing republicans of doing the same, he was a fire he leader. a former boxer. chuck schumer is from new york, if former boxer. it will be interesting to see how he works across the aisle

not only with mitch mcconnell but with his fellow new yorker, donald trump, who i assume he is known for decades. that is one relationship i think all of us can,, will be watching. from our guest is scott the hill. you can follow him on twitter at dc.t wong hosted by bloomberg government, watch noon and eastern u.s. infrastructure on c-span. about how trade was a big issue in the 2016 election and what to expect from a trump administration. that is live at :00 eastern on c-span. >> we're asking students to

participate in this year's studentcam documentary competition by telling us what is the most urgent issue for donald trump and the incoming congress to address in 2017. the contest is open to all students grades and 6-12. students can work alone or in groups of up to three. a grand prize of $5,000 will go to the student or team with the best overall entry. in cash prizes will be awarded and shared. deadline is january 20, 2017, that is in our duration day. for more information go to our website, studentcam.org. >> now, a look at the nuclear exposes.at north korea this was hosted by the institute for north korean studies.

>> good afternoon, everyone. thank you for joining us today. i know we are competing with election day and i am impressed that we have a good turnout and thank you. and thank you for your vote for ambassador gallucci. i am president of icas and i would like to welcome you to the icas for a special symposium 2016. it is wonderful to have ambassador gallucci with us again today. since we last spoke at the spring symposium about korean peninsula issues in may of 2610 years ago appeared right in this room, welcome back, ambassador. many things happened since then in and around the korean peninsula for the last 10 years. many ideas and theories have continued to flood in the way of possible resolution for the korean peninsula issues, yet no

promising signs have yet to be formulated. then, the most recent development that captured much of our attention on the informal dialogue between the u.s. team led by ambassador gallucci. one of our most highly respected democrats in north korea, experts for the last quarter-century nsa chief architect of the name and 94 agreed framework. for the north korean side, the air who is the highest-ranking north korean official engaged in such dialogue.

today we are delighted and privileged that ambassador gallucci has generously accepted our invitation and joining us and he will share with us his end site index. from the median and his vision towards the peace in the korean tenant to laugh and the region at the dawn of the new administration in the united states. as far as the preceding today after the presentation of the ambassador, there will be a q&a session between ambassador and discuss and plan on the floor will be open for the audience for your q&a. our discussions today are all icas fellows. joseph, nonresident come in senior associate. william brown who may be stand in line at the voting booth at the moment. he is at georgetown university. [inaudible] strategical analysis at mitchell institute.

and tom kean who is also joining us a little bit later. and columnist of korea times. and larry nacht, senior associate. and with that, and enjoy the welcomeand let's ambassador gallucci. [inaudible] >> thank you, dr. kim for this great opportunity to introduce the honorable robert gallucci. ambassador gallucci served as dean of the school of foreign service for seniors until he was last in july 2009 to become president of john d. foundation.

appointed dean in 1996 after 21 years of service in a variety of government focusing on international security. as the ambassador at-large with a special envoy for the u.s. department of state, he dealt with the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. he was the chief u.s. negotiator during the north korean nuclear crisis of 1994 and served as assistant secretary of state for political military affairs and also as deputy executive chairman of the u.n. special commission overseeing the disarmament of iraq following the first gulf war. he earned his bachelor's degree at the state university of new his at stony brook and masters and doctoral degrees at brandeis university. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the honorable robert gallucci. [applause]

>> thank you. good afternoon, everybody. i am pleased and honored with this invitation, happy to be with you as noted it has been 10 years. i wish i could say it was 10 years of progress but that would be appropriate under the circumstances. notwithstanding the title and i didn't stop him, i am going to mention kuala lumpur. there was a small group of us, four of us, who traveled the 20 hours or so to meet with north

korean delegation for a couple of days and that was just about three weeks ago. a word about that. for the dpr k side in that meeting, i think one of the main things they wanted to do was to explain to us why they were anderned about u.s. policy specifically, why we were there. which is to say that they did not wish to meet with the u.s. government. that is why we were meeting in i track 2you know, the government than the track 1. from our side, we explain what we understood to be the washington newbies days on north korea, north korean policy. we focused particularly on the

dangers, the threats that we could see. the threats or danger to the region and the united states. not represent anyone except ourselves, so we did not issue any warnings. only observations. the key question, i think, on the minds of the representatives was said by the vice foreign minister, the chief question is what should both sides in this discussion, the what should they expect and what should they want

to have happen early next year in the new administration in washington? i think we could usefully talk about that. you have a distinguished panel here. you are all it's clear to me have been around the block on this issue. this is not your first rodeo so we can have a useful discussion about that. what i want to do with my time this afternoon is lay out what i think are six key questions that are for me at least the most important, the most timely for consideration. all the questions i want to ask are framed in terms of what that translates beliefs and then we will give the subjects. let's try this out and see if it works. first question. does the dprk believe it own narrative on recent history? in other words, what do they

think caused the collapse of the agreed framework of 1994 and brought us to the events that began in 2002? they have been a narrative. led to they think failure to implement the agreement of 2005 and 2007 and 2008? what happened? what do they believe was the role, if any, of the dprk in the construction of a plutonium production reactor in syria which was destroyed by the israelis in 2007? what is their explanation for the failure of the leap day agreements, the events of 2011 and 2012?

now, the question i ask is, does the dprk believe its own historye on that recent ? my answer to that is, incredibly, yes. they do. let me be clear about this. i have no doubt that the dprk acted inconsistently with the terms of the agreed framework or to put it in the vernacular, cheated on the agreed framework with their deal to accept uranium enrichment centrifuge and equipment from pakistan during the late 90's and into the next decade. i have no doubt that the agreed framework excluded their service reference to the north-south declaration on denuclearization. that is not their view. that is my view.

do they believe their own view as they presented? i'm saying i think they do , incredibly. i have no doubt that it was north korea's overbuilt young beyond alkyl buyer in syria. they say it was a nice. -- they say it was not us. i say it was them. today, some of them believe north korea is innocent of that? i believe some of them actually think they didn't do that. i have no doubt they did. i have no doubt that over the last decade or so since i last spoke here, the dprk bears the principal responsibility for both sides adopting postures that both have characterized as strategic patience. in other words, i believe they bear most of the responsibility for the failure for engagement to succeed between the dprk and

the u.s. side. but for whatever it's worth to you all, i believe also that some in the dprk believe their own rhetoric on history. they believe they have been wronged by the united states of america. what i'm trying to say in the first point is there is room for possible misunderstanding dprk and the u.s. side. one of my favorite movies is cool hand luke and there's a line in the movie are the bad guy says to the good guy, what we have here is a failure to communicate. this is supposed to be irony. because it wasn't a failure to communicate. i am not telling you all that is

going on between the dprk the united states of america is a failure to communicate. i am not saying that. i am saying that in this interpretation of recent history, there is room for misunderstanding and i think there is some. that's one of the things i conclude. does the dprk believe that when it achieves the capability of making an icbm with a nuclear weapon that could reach the continental united states will change everything. dangerously,hink, yes they do think that. they think everything will change when they can threaten the united states, continental

-- withates with en an icbm with a nuclear warhead. some in the u.s. defense community would agree. they think u.s. vulnerability to a new third country with nuclear weapons will offer our -- will alter our relationship in fundamental ways. i don't. they do. i believe the u.s. deterrent will remain credible vis-a-vis the dprk, just as it has been vis-a-vis russia and china. i believe the u.s. deterrent in northeast asia and seoul, tokyo, will remain credible just as our

extended deterrent in nato has remained credible vis-a-vis russia and before that the soviet union. but here comes the interesting part. what will change is the dprk's vulnerability. ladies and gentlemen, even those of us who are opposed to preventive war would support, indeed insist on a preemptive strike if we judged in north korean strike against the rok, japan or the united states has -- as being imminent. do you see what i'm saying here? preventive war, no. preemptive strike, yes. and what the north koreans will

achieve is that they will create a vulnerability that they do not now have when they get that capability. so i am arguing here that the , dprk security may be fatally compromised rather than enhanced by this capability that they are so dedicated to achieving. the third question. does the dprk think that its current nuclear weapons capability, the ability to strike the republic of korea and missilesh ballistic armed with nuclear weapons will deter the united states and its allies from responding to provocations in the dmz or at sea.

the answers to that question i think possibly, yes. they do think their nuclear weapons capability gives them this deterrent. i believe they are wrong if they believe that. but i think they may believe it. the united states and russia have long experience going back to the time of the united states and the soviet union with nuclear weapons and with deterrence. mistakes are still possible between us. the question here that i imposing is, what does the dprk think nuclear weapons are good for besides deterring an enemy attacking them with nuclear weapons?

or to put it differently, when is the threat of the first use of nuclear weapons by a state credible, particularly when the state is dealing with another nuclear weapons state? what good are nuclear weapons to the dprk is the question? my answer is they are only relevant. they are on the useful when national survival is at risk. it's certainly not useful for small gains. they are not credible. they are not useful to protect them against a retaliation for incidents at dnc or at sea. as it turns out, my answer really is not very important. kim jong's answer is very important and i worry he may expect more of the nuclear weapons capability than good

appreciation for deterrence would warrant. -- does theion dprk think that if a new administration -- and we are -- begins byone proposing talks about talks, negotiations rather than immediately seeking tougher sanctions. do they believe that would be a sign of weakness? answer i think maybe. let me be clear about my own view here. i would like to see the new administration in the united

states that takes office in in consultation with the rok and japan. would like to see the new administration pretty early on, maybe after a policy review seeks talks about talks with the with only one condition and that is that while they are talking, there will be no test of ballistic missiles are nuclear weapons even at the very preliminary stage. those of you who are very attentive on this issue will

develop that one of the candidates, secretary clinton has been quoted as saying that is not what she would do. and i know some who advise her belief that a different course would be more prudent. something i would call the iranian model where instead of seeking talks early on, you immediately seek tougher sanctions earlier on in order to create the right state of mind in pyongyang. show your toughness first so that talks would be a way of releasing not pressure. so that is an alternative view. it is not mine. i told you what mine would be. this question is on the minds of those who will be in the next administration and i believe it deserves thought and discussion and i hope we can have some here.

the fifth question -- does the dprk believe it can keep its nuclear weapons program, it can keep its nuclear weapons program and still negotiate a peace treaty? in other words, does the dprk believe it can take its nuclear weapons program off the negotiating table? i believe it is not sure whether it could do that. i would note that some who are in this administration now certainly believe they will. they meaning the dprk will never give up their nuclear weapons program. if we went around and asked everybody here to comment on that, i dare say at least half the people say they will never up their nuclear weapons program. i believe by saying that, you

give the dprk hope that they can keep it. my view is we should destroy that hope. explicitly, we should not repeat, repeat, not settle for a freeze on their nuclear weapons program unless the freeze were simply a step to denuclearization. to put this another way, i am opposed to talks with the dprk that they take their denuclearization off the table. i believe to engage in talks they cannot buy agreement ahead of time produce denuclearization would legitimize the nuclear weapons than i am opposed to that.

sixth and final question. does the dprk beauty that can -- believe it can resist international pressure to improve its human rights behavior? as with the previous question, i k is not sure it can get away with that. i can tell you from first-hand experience that they are concerned that the phrase improving human rights behavior is code for ending the kim regime. our position i believe should be the following. that we cannot address

legitimate dprk security concerns unless we ultimately reach a political settlement and probably one that includes a treaty of peace. and since i believe that, i do not think therefore that a political settlement of that type of that weight is possible unless the dprk adopts basic internationally accepted standards on human rights. this does not mean they have to accept an american-style liberal democracy. it does not mean at the end of their whole system. it does mean over a period of time substantial changes domestically. but i think that is the only way out of our current issue mission -- situation by negotiation.

ladies and gentlemen, i am going to stop right there and assume that you all now will carry the weight. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible] >> i am going to do that. >> ladies and gentlemen, we going to get into q&a session. please, who has the microphone? ok. hold on to this. all right. there was quite a sustained question numbers six through the other way around one. now first crack, joe. , >> thank you, dr. kim for hosting this program particularly with the honorable ambassador who was my dean at

the school of foreign service and it's been an honor to participate in a program with bob gallucci despite the fact he raised very, very perceptive and disturbing questions for those of us who don't live with the issue day after day. i found the answer to your first question, bob, the most disturbing one because it affects all the others, that is their perception of reality. it is one thing for regimes to disagree on motivations, ideology, that type of thing. when we get down to raw facts and your impression is they actually believe certain facts did not occur when the rest of the world knows they did occur. their grasp on reality is highly suspect and their motivation and actions in the other contacts of questions you raised seems the

-- seems unpredictable and unbelievably dangerous. so i wonder, given the fact you say this detachment from reality, how can we rely in any other areas where they don't see the world as the world is, not just as we see it, but the itod -- but the way objectively really is. >> i do not descent from -- i do not dissent from your drawing that conclusion from my comment. in other words, i think this is not good news that their perception of reality is so much different from our perception of reality. i was really driving that question towards one sentence in that they believe they have been

mistreated. they have been wronged by us over these years. so their characterization of this captures that of the aggrieved party. i presented my own view so you didn't confuse me with the dprk. i don't share their view. but after having listened to them and we didn't, by the way, spend a lot of time on history because i didn't think it would be functional or useful. but we spent enough time in kuala lumpur that i got a message. in june may know that three years ago, steve was worth in die met with them and the new foreign prime minister in berlin for a two-day session.

i had the same impression then that as we say they are smoking their own stuff here. they really believe they characterization of history. what that should tell us is not in my view that we should not still tries to engage and understand the many opportunities for misunderstanding or purposeful misunderstanding to be sure an honest misunderstanding, too and we need to be careful about that. if i don't get another chance, i am going to say that we shouldn't let the dprk or a country like that in which we have a history that is fraught, i don't think that the idea of fort makes a lot of sense quite a long time. so if we make any kind of

agreement, even tentative ones kind, we should be planning on monitoring and verifying under should not simply enter into understanding with an expectation that everything will be fine. everything between us and the dprk will not naturally be fine. it has to be made that way. you took this as making the idea of engaging the north with this background as being especially challenging and i think you're exactly correct. >> thanks. anthank you, i love the

engaged ambassador on the framework. i love to make that issue. in your top, i must say i agree with almost everything you say. i would put it a little bit differently, especially this last conversation. she made the north koreans over -- to me, the north koreans have been very objective, rational, organize, deliberate, in going 1984 to now this long, long period of developing impossible things in a nuclear weapon under the constraint of the world out to get them. and they are so close to doing that. maybe they have done it. they have not demonstrated quite yet enough. it is critical for us to see in this short gap, maybe a year or two or five years they themselves need to convince themselves first and then the south and then ask, that they of got this capability. and then at that point you are

right. not quite yet. i think we have a little bit of room to maneuver. my main concern, my main question on north korea if he -- that you really did not address, i think a lot of people here when you look at u.s.-north korea, i think it is fundamentally a mistake to look at it that way. i think we fundamentally have to look at north korea in south korea. what are north korea objectives against south korea? i do not think they have given up yet. maybe they have. i don't know that. they haven't given up. if they haven't, we've got a really big problem. that is where what you call the deterrence of facts of the nuclear weapons place and you corruptly put out. you said you don't know what -- as you correctly point it.

you said you do not know what they are thinking. i think that is what we need to figure out and convince them very quickly that south korea is off the table. otherwise if you remember back in the 1970s when they had a very large artillery capability against seoul, before we ramped up to challenge that, they were doing all kinds of mischief in south korea if you all remember and they were not getting punished for it. later on in the 80s we showed that we could punish them for it and they stopped. for the last 25 years they have not monkeyed around. i'm very afraid that once they get the nuclear deterrence, they don't want to use nuclear weapons. they never will. i can imagine the south and us being a lot more nervous. if they've got nuclear weapons behind. so if they are still thinking of the south, what i mean is unifying the country. it is a rivalry i don't think the peninsula can tolerate two different regimes on the same peninsula. that rivalry, and told that his

-- until that is defanged, i think it requires a much more aggressive stance point from our side. your last point on the engagement part i quite agree. i think we should engage them right up front but not on sanctions. i think the sanctions -- i'm an economist. i have been watching the sanctions. frankly, they don't work. the north koreans know that and what were sanctions. that is what they have seen coming at them forever. i would change tactics. i would say, you are in danger. your regime is in danger. i'm not going to stop you, but you are in danger of being overthrown. moreover, we need a preemptive different military in south korea that can hit them really fast, really quick and pinpoint it. you know, not a massive nuclear attack, but they need to learn that we mean business and i am afraid this 25 years we've never really done anything tough to them and they've gotten to that yet so it seems to me we could

change and get much more up front, much more provocative, show them that they are thinking of south korea is not going to work. >> so there is a lot there. i'll pick out just a couple of points. the sort of strategic objectives of the dprk i have assumed and i can't defend the assumption, but i have assumed that the long-term objective is the unification of the korean peninsula under a regime center

in pyongyang. i assume that is their strategic long-term object. in the short term, they would like sanctions lifted. i'm pretty sure about, even though i'm probably very close to your position about the impact of sanctions in terms of their economy. but i think they would like sanctions lifted. i am certain that they would like u.s. rok military exercises first tune down and then stopped. i know that, that they would like that. i think they would like as we used to say, to drive a wedge. a wedge between seoul and washington. would like to loosen the alliance if they could. and i think that the question about how we should deal with the north under these circumstances, i came out and my remarks in favor of an early effort at engagement, but a fair question that comes from your comment is if that doesn't work, then what?

i don't have a good answer to that other than containment. and, i mean, there are other words for containment, but essentially that means maintain the regime of some kind, keep the dialogue with beijing operating so that you get some support for the implementation of the sanctions regime, continue the exercises, make sure that the alliance is between a mutual security treaty between japan and the united states and the bilateral alliance between rok and the united states are strong and viable and do that are

intensified consultations to deal with contingencies which may arise. that is the kind of thing i would imagine. but i'm just saying i'd like to engagement initially to see whether it can go anywhere. >> it is good to hear dr. gallucci. been a long time since geneva 1949. i'm sorry -- 1994. [laughter] it is fascinating to listen to your analysis and a assessment of what they might do , what the perceptions are, what can be done about them. coming down to a specific area of talking the talk, beginning with the next administration installed in january. what types of talks which you first see for people to follow in line with some of the things and that's what i would hear about.

as you pointed out, some views who might say, well, the new administration might be hard on sanctions right on the beginning of the administration so it can increase leverage. and your view is that is not the way to go. you'd discuss that. but to capture the momentum of the opening dialogues with north to eventually go around to say dismantlement of the nuclear weapons and the korean

peninsula, i think i agree with what you said one someone like james clapper says north korea would never give up a lost cause when i pursued the denuclearization of the north korean program. but he is also right, though, when he said a new sort of read -- north koreans, and you sort of agreed, that north korea has to keep nuclear weapons as a key to survival. so, i see these things. course they affect all of your experiences and your throughout the talking with the north koreans and kuala lumpur recently and other things. want to just mention one

thing about the south korean thing and the whole occasion. i do not think north korea believes it can unify korean peninsula under those terms forcefully. l saideve what kim jong i back in 2000 and told secretary albright that north korea would be opposing any unification. that has been long. number one, because they know they cannot unify the south korea, i mean, create under their own terms as long as there's alliance with united states and also it is too much a difficult system. it is going to be a long-term passage through the stage of unification.

to peace onitment both sides and mutual cooperation, there is so much they agreed to during that administration in south korea jong un. but i think, i mean, we heard kuala lumpurd writing up a report on the result of your talks as your recommendation is the incoming administration or a transition team. how is that coming along, also, specificwould be your recommendation for the next administration to follow? we do not still no, but there is a view that if clinton gets

elected tonight that she is going to take, ironically, not like her husband when he was in the white house, everything was proceeding very well. quarrel. no to [a, he was not going indiscernible] -- but one more thing i think is also important to discuss the chinese role and it's not been released with russia but it will be preempted and the real problem the u.s. foreign policy will face will be how we will deal with china with the north korean situation. >> a couple things from your comments and thank you for them.

i have a tendency to want to warn about expectations for beijing's role what in solving this problem. my concern is to-full. have uphat the chinese until now figured out that while pleased with everything that pyongyang does, they are not sufficiently displeased that they are prepared to support sanctions which might in fact cause such pain that it would destabilize the regime. so there is a kind of thermostat operating here on the role the chinese will play from as far back as 1993 and 1994 when i was sent to beijing a number of

times with the task of enlisting the chinese to use their influence in pyongyang. the second reason i am hesitant and there is a phrase in my mind, and that is that we should not take the biggest, arguably the biggest and most important international security issue and -- in the asia-pacific region majorbcontract it to our rival in the asia-pacific region. in other words, we should take the leadership on this and not the chinese. that we will not do ourselves proud, we americans will not, certainly with our allies if we deep or to the chinese to manage and get their help.

i wouldn get their help like it, but there is a limit to how far i would go in that direction. i caught the second question in there. is there a connection to kuala lumpur in the new administration? we promise the representatives that we would come back and talk to people in washington and share whatever we thought we had learned in terms of insights about the dprk that the dprk wished us to take away. we have been doing that. lee siegel in new york city and with the person with the logistics for this meeting and put them in place did do some writing and has shared that writing with various people. i have done several oral debriefing and so we are trying to be good to our word that we

gave in kuala lumpur. so i do not want to overstate anything we might have accomplished, remember this is sharing views and insights and not more than that. and for whatever it is worth, we have done that. >> thank you. >> thank you, kim. mr. ambassador, thank you for your remarks. it is very useful to hear people talk about what does north korea believes as opposed to what we see a rhetorically and what we see in terms of their actions. i am going to continue and ask you what you think north korea thinks about some additional things. i take them from the current news, which i think is important. one, josh grogan writes in the post this morning that any attempt to dramatically increase

sanctions because of parenthetically say i don't think the sanctions against north korea are as bad as they are against iran or were, that he says the chinese will really push back on that very hard and it will get nowhere. i'm curious again, what do you think the north thinks about that? second, the u.s.china commission will be issuing its report said, soon, the its report congressional chinese commission, and they say that the chinese modernization of the military is increasing much was predictedat by either of our intelligence community's allies in the east asia. rarely hearis we this. does north korea see itself as part of the effort to enhance and cooperate with china in terms of its military objectives.

third, mr. carlin of sis writes that there have been an enormous number of what he calls missed opportunities between north korea and the united states since the framework in 1994 and he particularly chastises the bush administration of failing to understand that north korea was trying to achieve. i'm curious the extent to which i don't north korea that has felt it was aggrieved. i am curious from the perspective of it is now 20 years down the road. where are they? i wonder, do you think north korea believes it doesn't have the ability to put a warhead over the united states when it now .2 satellites over the united states, including one right over the super bowl. second, a surreptitious attack from a submarine or a freighter

in which it is not easily identifiable in terms of who did it means that the deterrent to equation like an emp attack kind of goes away. i'm curious what you think, whether the emp commission in a very lengthy explanation said that the russians had given the -- and the chinese, had given the north koreans very significant help in developing emp capabilities. and so that to me is very critical. the next thing is to what extent does the missile defense, whether it's that or ground-based interceptors deployed and columnists have an impact on the north koreans. -based interceptors diploid have an impact on the north koreans.

i know what the rhetoric is. i always find it fascinating the chinese are really upset they frozen on relation, all military to military relations over the deployment. if they are interested in stability in the region, which is what we always say they are, why would they want to give north korea an unimpeded shot with whether nuclear armed or nonnuclear armed direction doesn't have any impact on the chinese strategic system. they know it, but they don't think so. i am curious the extent to which -- what do you think if they saw robust knowledge of the state department say let's get this thing done as soon as possible and get going. and finally, my friend mike dunn du and afa anda he made a point and interviewing the former tutor of kim jong il in seoul and asked why he thought the north koreans have nuclear weapons. the individual was quite shocked. he said don't you understand? and, general dunn said, tell me

from your perspective as someone being very close to the effect her. he said, it is very true. they want to see the united states withdraw from the peninsula and then they will use their nuclear forces as a means of deterrence united states to defend south korea should the north koreans decide at that time to reunify the peninsula with which this gentleman said he thought was there goal. and i'm curious does north korea still believe that? i think that explains it's not just the exercises they want and rok and theng the northwest alliance. the fundamental objective is to say often in a lot of communiques and statements, always kind of at the end and of course the united states should withdraw their military forces.

>> peter, that was at least seven questions. peter: you are right. i thought it was six. >> i scrupulously avoided taking notes. i am going to skip around here if you would just let me know the ones i miss. one of the first questions went to the chinese calculation. i don't have any special insight to that calculation these days, other the and the evidence which a number of people have written about that the chinese -- that one of the reasons if not the chief reason that have been applied to the dprk not having the impact causing the pain that sanctions advocates might want is because the chinese have not

allow those sanctions to work and indeed, have provided a means by which the sanctions can be circumvented. if any of you have been to the dprk recently, many of them describe a city that is unlike the city eight used to be. there is traffic, restaurants, construction cranes. it is looking like almost any other asian city from 30,000 feet. now is in the only place in the , dprk that appears to be thriving? the proposition is not the only place but maybe the principal place. this would not all be possible without to beijing. so i take from that that we have

work to do in beijing, even if you take my view that there is a limit to what we can accomplish, there is still work to be done. the second question i thought was one that went to, do the chinese view the dprk's military capability and maybe particularly its nuclear weapon capability as part of its own modernization? i would say absolutely not. i think that if the chinese could wave a magic wand and have the dprk's nuclear weapons program disappear from the planet, they would wave the wand. that program is a potential source of catastrophe for the chinese because it could end up bringing the united states of america and its military and naval forces right to its doorstep, the last thing the chinese want. if you look at the rationale as

the chinese have offered for their modernization program, both from the blue water navy, for what they've done with her strategic systems, the increase in numbers, increase in mobility, this has got nothing in my view, to do with the dprk. really, it has everything to do with, ironically, the american robert: the american de-emphasis on nuclear weapons that we have assorted not in favor of conventional forces both our conventional prompt global strike and our multilayered ballistic missile defense, which goes to another one of your points, and that is what are the chinese worried about? they are worried about our radars to begin with. they understand that the system is limited. they may think it is less limited than we claim it is against sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missiles that have reentry

speeds of the kinds that they will have and have multiple targeted range vehicles, et cetera. but they are still worried that this is a system that can be upgraded. so it is a comparable worry to the russian worry about what's happening in europe. they don't take any comfort in hearing president obama talk the de-emphasis on nuclear weapons because they look at the words surrounding conventional and prompt global strike, forgetting we don't have the capability. they worry about the viability of their strategic systems, particularly when compared, excuse me, when combined with a ballistic missile defense. because this puts at risk their deterrent, their second strike capability. and for me, that explains a lot of what the chinese are about, and how they could have, if you will pardon this expression, the

chutzpah to complain to us about offering ballistic missile defense to our allies after the dprk launches a ballistic missile. instead of complaining to us about that, they might use their influence in pyongyang so there will be fewer missile tests. but be that as it may. the idea that the polls from a nuclear weapon is something that the dprk is interested in is actually not something i have thought about, but i don't think it figures prominently, and i would be surprised if emp is high on the list on the minds of the technologist in the dprk when you think about the nuclear

weapons. i just don't think that's what they are about. it may be something we may be interested in, but i do not think that's on their list. when it comes to the deterrent calculations in getting the united states off the peninsula, i want to say, if i was not clear in my remarks, that i don't believe that american political decision-makers in the past or in the future will be deterred from executing their alliance responsibilities because the dprk has nuclear weapons. the question about whether it could deliver nuclear weapons now with its mrbm capability to the republic of korea and japan. let's, for the sake of discussion this afternoon, stipulate as lawyers like to say that they can. i think that we will not come we

-- we will not be dissuaded, in the united states of america from executing out alliance , responsibilities and i would , want every bit of signaling that we could to go to pyongyang so they don't misconstrue, and that's what i was talking about, they are misconstruing effectiveness and what they could accomplish with nuclear weapons. y'all may remember that when we first had nuclear weapons in the early 1950's, we had delusions of grandeur. we have massive retaliation and -- retaliation enough the enunciatedtaliation by john forster dulles with the thought that we could cure everything with these nuclear weapons. it turns out we couldn't. they still serve all purposes because they are not credible. might we be credible launching

regime change against the dprk? yes. they might, but my point was at levels lower than that they are not credible. not to us. but the question is what do they think? and i don't know. >> thank you. gallucci gave everyone a lot of food for thought. i have noted your comments so i will try to be brief in terms of my comments and also a couple of questions. now, ambassador gallucci correctly stated that north korea has borne a major responsibility for what he described as the failure of engagement with the united states. larry: that is correct. but i would add the caveat that the united states also bears some of the responsibilities for

failure to realize u.s. objectives in negotiations. we have been un-smart in many instances and how we have negotiated with the dprk. a naive assumption going back to the 1990s behind our negotiating strategy that north korea would soon collapse or that they would -- there would soon be regime change. listening too much to the chinese, when the chinese would advise us to ease off on ensuring that the north koreans comply with the agreements they have made with us, 2005, 2007. going into negotiations with the

north and agreeing to two unwritten handshake agreements? october 2008 and february 2012. how naive can you get? [laughter] larry: when you make a handshake agreement, unwritten, with the north koreans which, of course, they disavowed any knowledge of within a few weeks after our diplomats told us they had made these handshake agreements. so, there is some blame to go around, and there are some of the other mistakes we have made as well. now, i want to comment on the preemptive strike issue, because this is being talked about both in the u.s. and south korea. i'm not advocating preemptive strike, but i will say this.

the time, if you're going to do it for a preemptive strike is probably now, and within the next year or so. a strike against their nuclear and missile test facilities, to put those out of action and to buy us much greater time before the north could achieve that icbm nuclear warhead capability. the situation that ambassador gallucci describes, i don't believe, if it came about, would prevent north korea, after a u.s. preemptive strike from hitting us back with nuclear weapons, because frankly, i think at a time when we would pick up perhaps legitimate perceptions that they're going

to strike us with nuclear weapons, when the time comes, the north is going to have multiple delivery systems both on land and at sea, that no preemptive strike would be able to take out. and a preemptive strike under those circumstances also means an all-out war. you are going to accomplish nothing by hitting just a couple of command and control centers in a preemptive strike. the stakes are much, much higher than that. now, these are my questions, and

this is about the sanctions issue, and generally, it's along the lines that ambassador gallucci has laid out with regard to china. there are only really two avenues, viable avenues, to toughen sanctions that might cause the north koreans to begin today and in negotiations about the nuclear missile issues. one is sanctioning chinese banks. many chinese banks allow the north koreans to move money back and forth to support these programs, and any toughening of sanctions i think would require the united states to do that, to start sanctioning an array of chinese banks that we know are engaged in this kind of collaboration with north korea. the second option, and this is what i have written about, is to lay a resolution in the security

council calling on all u.n. member states, i.e. china, to cut off oil shipments to north korea, which i believe would be the toughest sanction, and where i think with a sophisticated public strategy could put some real pressure on china, and at least spark a much more open debate in china, within china, about china's policies towards north korea. besides those two options, is there another option? ambassador gallucci, that you could think of to pressure the chinese, other than those two options with regard to sanctions? and finally, i'll make a quick last point. when the north koreans have that

capability to hit all of our bases in the pacific and the u.s. west coast, they are going to want to negotiate at that point. they are going to sit down and look us across the table and they are going to say, "are you americans going to be willing to jeopardize san francisco so you seoul -- defend seoul? and i think the american response right now is in the realm of the uncertain. when we get into the early 2020s about what the answer would be. but in terms of what they would lay on the table to us, what did the north koreans specifically say in kuala lumpur about the peace treaty? that would be basically my second question. did they really lay out what they want in the peace treaty, whom they would want negotiating with them? did they give you any real details about this?

and also, the priorities of the peace treaty in any new round of negotiations between the u.s. and pyongyang. >> larry, thank you. i want to respond to some of these things, but one thing principally, and i would like your attention. i was thinking of jumping up and running to the back of the room and locking the door before anybody left because i wanted to get this out. i wanted to make sure nobody left here not understanding what i wanted to convey because i wasn't good enough at conveying it, so let me try it again. robert: there are two different words. one is preventive strike, preventive war. the other is preemptive strike.

when the united states of america, in 2003, moved into iraq, that was a preventive war. the administration at the time used the word "preemptive." it did because the word "preemptive" have standing both in terms of international law and in terms of just war theory, the ethics. you are allowed under international law and under loss -- laws of ethics, you are allowed if your enemy is on your border and about to attack, you are allowed to attack him first. you don't have to wait and suffer that strike. that is preemption if you were about to be attacked. if you get up one morning and look at trendlines in another country and say, in five or 10 years, that country is going to

be our enemy still but a lot , stronger, let's go to war now, that's not a preemptive strike that is a preventive war. what it wanted to say but maybe not clear enough is i am opposed to preventive war, opposed to preventive war with north korea. i am not opposed, indeed, i would insist that my government, as a citizen, launch a preemptive strike against north korea if it came to that confident and serious judgment that north korea was about to attack the united states of america or one of its treaty allies. there is no reason to wait until tokyo is destroyed or seoul is

destroyed or san francisco is destroyed if it's about to happen. ethically, morally, and legally we can strike them. that is why i said the north koreans are creating a vulnerability that they do not now have. did i share this view with them? yes. i hope they got the right distinction here between preemption and preventive war. not worriedw, i am about them. i am worried about you. i want to make sure you got this right. i don't mean you have to agree with me about preventive war and preemption, just that the distinction is a real one and governments have reasons why they blur the two. right? so i'm not for preventive war with the north korea. i am for preemption if they are about to attack. unlock the door.

[laughter] robert: now, what is it that i accountable say about what the north koreans, the dprk, said to us in kuala lumpur? i think i'm comfortable saying that i was asked rhetorically "how could we trust you? you want us to give up our nuclear weapons. how could we trust you not to launch regime change? look what you did in iraq. look what you did in libya. look what you talked about doing in iran. how could we trust you?" so two things are in my mind. one was, "how could they trust us?" [laughter] robert: the other was, "what

were we thinking back all those years when we were negotiating the agreed framework," which was as far as we knew, or at least i knew, was going to stop their nuclear weapons program? because i didn't know they would engage with the pakistanis for an enrichment program, facing a program on highly enriched uranium. i knew about the plutonium program. i knew lots about the plutonium program. we were going to stop that sucker. so what was my view event that about why they would trust as? we would develop after the framework was signed a political relationship. we would open offices in john yang, they would open offices in washington. pyongyang, they would open offices in washington. we would develop cultural ties, political ties, situation would war between north and south, et cetera, et cetera. i have the same answer now and i said the only way i can conceive of you trusting us is in the context of a political

settlement that includes a peace treaty to replace the armistice. that's how i got to the human rights case. how could we do that? we could do that if you move to accept international standards that transcend sovereign borders with the way governments treat their own people. that does not mean you have to give up your regime. so we had that kind of a discussion, and i would say we had a discussion that went into some of the questions that i put here in a little bit of depth i don't feel comfortable trying to capture their words to me that was said in private. i want to see what other thing here while i have got the floor. that is, that while we were very focused in kuala lumpur on the coming american election today , and a new government which at

that moment i did not know who was going to win and i don't sit ,ting here in front of you now, but i observed that there was another election going to take place towards the end of 2017 in the republic of korea, and i was going to be important, too. and that i could not imagine any sustained and serious engagements of the united states with the dprk that was not done with the concurrence, there i -- dare i say enthusiasm, of the government in seoul. we would also want to tokyo to be aboard to those discussions, too. so i haven't emphasized the role of the republic of korea this afternoon, but i don't believe

what i have talked about as engagement is plausible if a government is elected in seoul that doesn't favor engagement. our alliance comes first, and i think we will take care of that alliance. i don't know of another one of your points was about how you get the chinese to do what we want the chinese to do, and i don't have any keys to that. i think, what i worry about is the reverse of that in a way. anybody who has been in government knows that governments do not stay in lane. [laughter] robert: so we might want to talk to the chinese about the north koreans, and they might want to talk to us about taiwan. we don't want to talk about taiwan. right? not particularly, not the way they want to talk about taiwan. nor do we want to talk about the south china sea at the same time as we're asking for something in northeast asia.

in a way, i worry about the of how of your question do you influence the chinese? politics buto the , they can do it, too. you have to think that through before you start doing that. otherwise you could end up with the short end of the stick rather than the long end of the stick and that's not too good. >> okay. i would open to the floor. any questions from the floor? would you please come to the microphone, the roving microphone. you, over in the back? in the back. >> thank you very much. i have a question. this year, many senior diplomats and officers defected from north

korea, and it would suggest that the inner politics is drastically changing within north korea. maybe less stable direction. did you feel anything which changed, compared to before the conversation at kuala lumpur? and if the situation is changing within north korea, less stable or more volatile situation, what do you think the probability of they're going to run into

dangerous adventure, is increasing or decreasing? >> it's not a bad question. i'm just not up to the answer, which is to say, i don't have much to base an answer on in terms of engagement or even reading tea leaves from the news. robert: i don't sense a particular vulnerability of the regime right now. i mean, what i've heard about the economic activity in, at least in pyongyang, it sounds as though, i don't know how to say that the dprk is thriving under international sanctions, but it is not apparently suffering as much as some might have anticipated, or those particularly who hope that the iran modeled might be applied to the dprk. it doesn't appear that it could be. so i see nothing in all of that that would suggest a particular vulnerability or instability right now. i just don't.

>> thank you. >> grace? >> hi, excuse me. i'm with grace, north korean refugees in the united states. thank you so much for your very insightful comments, ambassador gallucci. i just had a question on a very out of the box idea. it's a way to greatly increase diplomatic, political, and legal pressure on the regime, and china, without being threatening militarily. and that is to have the adoptnational community

a one korea policy. you mentioned taiwan, and history shows that it is possible to recognize a different china than what was originally in the u.n., and it was done through action in the general assembly. i'm just wondering if the legitimacy of the dprk could be raised as an issue in the general assembly? as the year after year passes, could political will be built up enough with all the countries of the world, instead of only focusing on china or the usual states, to get the world to accept a one korea policy based on the fact that the general

assembly, after the end of world war ii, stated that korea needed to be independent from japan and united, and so this is a way to address this unanswered korea question, while putting a lot more diplomatic and political pressure on north korea and china. >> thank you, grace. robert: thank you. so, the closest i've seen to that, as i understand it, delegitimize the government in pyongyang as representative of korean people on the korean peninsula is the idea that is flowed and the council of foreign relations report, and i've seen elsewhere, which is to consider, in a sense, if all

else fails, denying relationship rk denying the dp membership to delegitimize the government might have the -- and they are thriving. so if you don't do anything in -- in thee the pariah state international community at this moment and they know it. they are thriving. if you do not do anything in terms of impacting their life, and their life goes on because

essentially beijing ensures that it does , notwithstanding what the rest of the international community does, i'm not sure how much one would have accomplished. but it still is a possibility. >> thank you. peter, the microphone is here, please. >> i would like to raise a different issue. recently, korea is going through kind of a turmoil as a result of a woman who has been fighting influence including tremendous financial problems and the opposition parties are telling

her to resign and there has been massive demonstrations going on in korea. this is not directly related to our present conference, but i am concerned, and i want to hear from you or other panelists about the relationship between the u.s. policy toward korea and , you mentioned briefly about next year's election but we have a much more urgent issue with us now, and if the leftist government comes out, they might as well accomplish what kim jong-il tried to make korea together with north korean leaders, together, i can't think of the right word right now so , are we going to pursue with

the president who has been singing the same song with president obama and us u.s. policymakers, it has been great so far and we still have a problem even so, but now, we are getting into a real difficulty what happens in the next couple of months. i would like to hear your comments. robert: thank you. i think prudence and wisdom on my part is to stay far away from the rok politics in right now. i would say that i'm absolutely do believe that the ultimate k will bear ine ro a very substantial way the outcome of our election on one source of policies can be

-- pursued to deal with dprk so i think that , connection is real. what is happening now and the difficulties the president is having in the rok is not something i think i can use so i'm going to let go. gallucci, i was stunned to hear you say you did not know anything about acu's program. why you are negotiating such a successful framework and i don't remember you ever mentioning that. but in that connection, you also mention mistrust, a degree of the the dprkeen and the u.s. is so high that we

still do not trust or take whatever we say , washington says either taking it at face value. now, with respect to the motivation for north koreans to pursue the path of developing nuclear weapons by way of enrichment, which administration later claimed cover for all kinds of programs, although it did not specify a term for the program in that sense. my point is, whether north koreans still could not trust the united states, even after they signed and agreed framework which they liked it, they , welcomed it and consequently your counterpart became a hero as a result of that and i heard a lot of commendations from north korean officials in their negotiators afterwards. was it because they still

could not trust the united states and they could not rely on what the terms were provided, for example targeted the , completion of the reactor projects and they said you got to be done in 2003, and you have not done anything, and they were complaining about that and with the expansion, you've got to remember, this is not the only project that we tried to do i t by that time, but we did not promise we were going to do it by that time. that's one question. another thing is you mentioned preemption. while its international law and all that, but the problem with that is, that not only the incomplete capability of taking out all the nuclear arsenals in north korea, but more than that, how are you going to adjust?

you are going to need evidence, clear evidence that they are , about to attack you with their nuclear weapons, so how are you going to get that, and how can you depend on it? another thing is the consequences of preemption in terms of damage to south korea and even to the united states. do you consider that also when you do it? lastly, i am coming back to your point of meeting for the next administration to start seeking, talk in the talks again. talking the talks again. washington atmosphere has been for the past 20 years, especially after what it perceives as north korean breaking away or unkept promises that they made in terms of the denuclearization.

there is no atmosphere or support either in congress or in the media or politicians in general population that would support kind of a dialogue that it and some other people -- is really great to have someone like you keep engaging this issue, very important, because people learn from your experience. how is it going to turn around, and again, when you make recommendations to the next administration, will you make a different set of recommendations depending on who gets elected tonight? one for clinton, one for trump? [laughter] robert: no. thank you. on the first question, you shocked orntly

stunned that when i was negotiating with the north koreans in 1993 and 1994 that i did not know that they were at the same time negotiating with islamabad or at least with a q khan for uranian interest meant -- gas centrifuge technology. right at the moment, i still don't know that . in other words, what i'm telling you is there came a time when i did discover that from our intelligence community, that there was this ongoing exchange to transfer from islamabad the dprk. but, by the way, i never gave up

my security clearances. i kept them. so this is based even with full access, i did not know about this until i think a safe thing for me to say is after the 1996 -- after 1996. the agreed framework was 1994, not only do i not know about it, i am virtually certain, neither did anybody else in the american administration in so if 1994. you were to tell me you had evidence that the contacts were happening then, i could easily believe you and say well, we missed it. it wouldn't be the first time that we've missed something. on the deterrence question and the preemption question and how could we be confident that we knew, that we know we are going to be attacked?

how could we know? there be the adequate basis for preemption? well, it's a very high bar. right? it's very hard, especially when you are talking about nuclear weapons. this not a bunch of militia on your border and the question is do you call in an airstrike? this is a proposition here, a scenario we are talking about is that a country, the dprk is going to launch a nuclear strike with missiles at united states of america or its allies. the republic of korea and japan, and we are going to launch an attack on them in advance to decrease the damage that they would do by such a strike. well, it's hard to get that information in advance. not impossible, knowing something about the american intelligence community being

after 20 years of being in the u.s. government, but it is hard. and we are capable of getting it wrong. and i have been part of getting it wrong more than once. so, i don't say this easily though. you know when you take a job in , the administration, and i've done this a number of times, raised my hand and took an oath, you swear to protect the united states of america from enemies foreign and domestic so you take an oath and i would say, i said a few minutes ago, not only what i support, i would expect, i would insist on preemption if we had that high confidence. if you don't, then it's not a good idea. it occurs to me that, and i already questioned whether we could actually succeed in the preemptive strike. well, what your capability is

aimed at reducing the enemies ' capability. it doesn't mean that you completely are confident you are going to hit every mobile missile, every submarine they may have been able to deploy. you may not. but if you think you're going to be struck, you can do serious damage, and unlike other people here, and i think there are people in this room who do not believe the american assurance once they are vulnerable to , attack by the north koreans, in assurance that we gave our extended deterrence assurance in our alliance context to japan and republican korea, i spent over 21 years in the u.s. government, and i believe us. i believe we will fulfill our alliance responsibilities. we know what's at risk here. remember, and i know joe at least remembers, when the chinese said you won't trade los

angeles for taipei. well yes, we will. , i'm not enthusiastic about the prospect. i have family there. but that is what we sign up for. so those who would question this, i warn them to be careful. and don't assume, don't ever assume that the united states will fail to fulfill its obligations. it would be a mistake in my view. yes. >> ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for ambassador gallucci. [applause] >> thank you so much. >> thank you. [inaudible conversation]

[applause] >> thank you, meeting adjourned. > [inaudible conversation] >> c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. this morning, as congress returns it this week, francine of the christian science monitor and meal of rollcall talk about the proposed legislative agenda over the legislative congress

and the lame-duck session. gross onney kenneth how president-elect trump must deal with the management of his various businesses and potential conflict of interest they might cause during his term in office. watch c-span's "washington 7:00al," live beginning at a.m. eastern this morning. republican donald trump is elected as the next president of the united states and the nation elect a republican-controlled u.s. house and senate. follow the transition of government on c-span. we'll take you to key events as they happen, without interruption. watch live on c-span and on-demand at www.c-span.org, or listen on our free c-span radio app. call posted a recent conference to analyze the 2016 election results. the discussion focused on polling, the congressional

agenda, and what to expect from a trump administration. this is two hours. >> good morning. thank you, david. we should just get -- it is a very packed schedule. we are going to jump in very quickly. the title of this panel is "now what?" what did we choose, "can this country be governed?" "after the revolution: what is next?" the personification of the bernie sanders campaign. the filling in this morning for a woman named michelle bernard who had a family emergency. my colleague, our white house correspondent john bennett. i want to start with you, sir, because you are the the second,ve of third, or fourth most reviled industry in america this week, the polling industry. should you all just declare collective bankruptcy and go home, what is next for the

polling industry, what did we miss, and keep it snappy. one.e shooting for number >> we want to make polling great again. [laughter] >> there is many stages of grief. the denial phase. first, the polling failed. here is what it failed out. if failed to give certainty to an uncertain event. i think that is, in a lot of ways, the problem with polling right now. we can go to the methodological issues. it is well-worn territory, something we need to think of in the industry. for all of you, you also have to aink about what you are as consumer of polling and what you are looking for. i will say this. going into this election, everyone called me, what is going on, doug, what is happening? the question is to reassure them

that they can know what is going to happen. to that end, i think that we created an illusion for polling which is that bad things happening down the road, and because we have done this many polls, and because we have this much data, we have certainty. worse, point has never been and is not now very different from weather forecasting. only difference is that each day is another opportunity for new weather and forecasting. even on election day, the exit polls got it wrong. those of us in the liberal media elite, and i really guilty to being a member, we essentially wrote stories saying she won because that is what the exit polls told us we were safety start writing. the methodological issues go beyond that land lines and cell phones and polling and

go to something else, which is willingness of people to take polls. that is what i think led to the most misleading outcomes. i will say briefly, i do not think there was people lying and saying i am voting for clinton versus trump. i think there has been a trump voter who was never a reluctant trump voter, but reluctant or difficult to reach, and that is a problem that we cannot solve by either adding more calls or andust trying to get data higher levels of analytics. mr. hawkings: jeff, what is your view of the polling industry? >> i think we should separate exit polls from the rest of the polling. they have been disastrously bad. they over our present young people in exit polls, -- they over represent young pul young people in exit polls. we were only losing new york by

four, and then one hour later, by 13. i have not had a lot of confidence in exit polls in exit polls from the very beginning. when you look at what -- people want a crystal ball. in terms of a campaign, what you use polling for is not the horse race. mr. weaver: the horse race is at the least important part of polling. you want to be able to allocate limited resources. what polling will tell you is that bernie sanders had an hour and a half stump speech. you cannot cram that into a 32nd television ad. what is most persuasive with which segment of voters you are try to reach? polling is very useful in that regard. , in theings: what did aggregate, what do all of the polls, should they tell us about where this country wants to be taken next? important: the most

poll is the one we had on tuesday, the pull of the american people. that is the one we should look at in terms of where we should go. mr. hawkings: 47% voted for hillary clinton and 46% voted for donald trump? absolutely. that is the important poll. that is the poll that matters. clearly, we can talk about this more in depth but clearly, the democratic party had lost touch. the establishment party is out of touch with the working-class voters, young voters, and those problems persisted throughout the general election. mr. hawkings: i think that is a real failure in washington. i do not mean this as an outsider from washington. i mean it as someone who lives here and is from here. >> without about bipartisan compromise and people coming together, and everybody wants that, but there is only one issue within the last 25 years that has had consistent bipartisan support. mr. usher: that is trade. there is only one issue

bipartisan support in washington . there is only one issue that brings together sanders supporters and trump supporters, and it is the thing activating and getting people going more than anything right now, and that is trade on the opposite side. people made the argument that they just do not understand how trade helps them. after 25 years of doing the same thing and seeing the same result, we have to realize that maybe here in washington, we are not hearing people and you cannot educate people out of their firm beliefs. you have to figure out what is going wrong. mr. hawkings: you think the obama white house feels like it has understood the american electorate until the end? what would be the president's message to mr. trump today? it is today, right? >> yes, today, at 11:00. >> i believe the obama white

house thought they understood the electorate at least to the point of helping hillary clinton get to 270 electoral votes. until about a week and a half ago, and well you may have heard on cable news that president obama is having so much fun on the trail and let us play this clip and years good at this, and he is the happy warrior, he is like to push her over the finish line, i saw some thing else. mr. bennett: i believe i saw the president for what he was, the leader of the democratic party for what he was, i believe he realized a week and a have to may be a beacon ago that she was in serious trouble in pennsylvania, in michigan, in north carolina, in florida. i think, what may be woke up the president or really got him out of there like we saw him last week, was michigan, and i think the numbers scared him to death, and you saw the president talking about the republican --

the world is teetering on this election. warranted oficism any president, this one included, but he says what he is thinking and feeling. he does not posture a lot. i think that was really striking in his rhetoric on the stump last week. mr. hawkings: what do you think you will tell president-elect iump today in terms of -- wonder, do you think he'll say, "here is what you need to understand about the country you are taking over," or will it just be promises of constitutional responsibility? mr. bennett: i think the latter. president obama was very impressed with how president bush and his team handled the transition. thought it was thoreau, rough,sional, very -- tho professional, very in depth. they have talked about this for months and months even when secretary clinton was comfortably ahead.

that the to make sure trump administration is ready to go on day one. i think that is what today will be about. team xyz.d my he wants continuity to the greatest extent they can get that. mr. hawkings: the country, the base of trump supporters and in part, the allied collection of -- i amporters betraying something i guess -- they want to roll back the economy to the last century in some way. that is not happening. so how can donald trump govern the country? look i think the way you put it is completely wrong and it is why people

suddenly do not understand what is going on in the world. mr. hawkings: that is why i asked it. mr. bennett: all of the things manufactured in the world are being manufactured some rows. people are buying these products and these to manufacture them. mr. weaver: it is not like we are going back to make product no one uses or wants. there are a tremendous amount of parts we all buy, but you cannot get an american-made .people seea product all of these products and are buying these products, not making these products. i remember bernie sanders went to china to visit a walmart in china and he was we get a by the american chamber of commerce about how great it was we had a walmart in china and so on and so forth, breaking into the chinese market. he asked how many products are made in america? they said, 1%.

people see these products, they are not making them anymore. you look at michigan as in many ways a classic example. if you look in the newspapers, ozziell see these 1950's and harriet track housing and cars in these suburbs, but they are african-american. there is one reason hillary clinton in the primary and general election had problems in michigan, and the black vote was impressed was because -- was suppressed because in that community, there was a memory of middle-class african-americans that have been decimated by these trade deals. backdo not want to turn the economy, they just want to make a product their family buys. mr. hawkings: to me take this a different direction and get it to the notion of what pollsters are looking at, which is how they feel about the economy, how they feel about their job. the reality is, the promise of trade has been that you will have better jobs, smarter jobs, and more jobs than the alternative. mr. usher: that is the promise.

also, you will be able to buy things cheaper. leaving that third piece aside, people do not perceive either "a ," any sense of job security "b," a job they want in the long term. most people have no idea what they are going to look like in five years. people say the answer is to have more trade. i'm not talking about truth, projections, i am talking about the visceral action of people raising a family. when you talk to them, and we need to do more listening in addition to polling, you hear and uncertainty that says, "why would i does either side? neither side has delivered for me." i'm not saying rolled :00 back. people want -- role the clock --

clock back. voter turnout was much lower. >> thank you for mentioning lower turnout. it was significantly lower, correct? mr. trump actually received 2 million fewer votes than loser john mccain? when you control for growth and population, it looked like 2004. 2004 and 2016 look similar. mr. hawkings: he got fewer votes by a lot then mccain and romney. that sounds right. i don't have the numbers on the, but that sounds right. mr. hawkings: can any of us think of something tangible that the trumpave administration due to address the issues that you two gentleman just described? ? looking for a job >> the work

for him. bernie sanders and donald trump talked about trade. how they approach it will be different. donald trump is talking about putting -- in charge of the trades, ripping people off. that is not somebody want protecting the middle class during trade negotiations. bernie sanders would have had somebody very different. unless people want to keep losing elections, that is what you do in a democracy, right? if people want to be elected, they have to listen to what people feel in the country i li in a nice suburb here in northern virginia, cranes are building buildings. looks like the guilded age here. but drive through michigan, wisconsin, it's a very

different reality. >> companies want to make money. people are my biggest expense. in automation you can make things faster, cheaper, more efficient with machines. so i think those are really big hurdles as to how he's going to revive this manufacturing economy. >> we can say that he sounded

racist, we can say clearly he has no understanding of the community. but i will say a lot of people that you're talking about hear that and say you know what? maybe they don't have anything to lose, but i hear that argument that says well there's no hope for jobs. what do i have to lose then to go with a guy that says there could be jobs? >> i'll start by spinning way down the track. what happens, you two, sort of avatars of the outsider here? what happens in two years when the mine isn't reopened and the walls aren't up? >> says the democrats will do well in the mid-term. that assumes he has not solidified the base. maybe the wall will be up. i don't support it but it is

actually a concrete accomplishment that could be done. it's just a question of bulldozers and steel. >> and a willingness of a republican fiscally conservative -- >> mexico is going to pay for it. >> what if that doesn't work out? >> first of all, i think to go back to your earlier question, a way that he could make progress and make a lot of people happy and sats if i his voters would be to push on infrastructure. but you're right that congress may go against it. the panel was originally called can you govern? regardless of who won, the answer is you cannot govern but you can get things done. i think that's what we've seen. the notion of governing in the traditional sense. we have a leader and people have disagreements but in the end they fall in line. that's not there right now. that might change but as of

today it's not there. >> the convention was the first administration of the hillary administration would be an infrastructure funded by repat ration. so there was an appetite to do work. >> there's an appetite among trump and among -- nancy pelosi reached out to him on that one point and said we could probably work together on infrastructure. but his alleged colleagues in the republican majorities don't -- they're not in the mood. paul ryan said that's not part of my agenda we just did a highway bill. we're not going to spend $5 trillion which is the number that trump's been throwing around. the guess i wonder, does electorate want this? where's the juice for this? how is this president, with a narrow mandate ultimately 290

votes in the electoral college and a nabeo loss in the popular vote -- does he have a mandate? >> everybody who was -- i'm trying to think of a major candidate who did not advocate some kind of significant increase in infrastructure spending. sanders was out there with a trillion dollar plan, hillary clinton had a plan. i do think this was an issue among people returning for president that there needs to be an infusion. it brings together industry, union. so the players in washington around this will come together pretty nicely. it's the paying for part that ends up being the messy part. >> the reality is we don't know which trump we're going to get. the vengeful, angry trump, then he's going to be looking to punish segments of the

republican party and democratic party. if that's the case nothing is going to get done. but there's another side of trump, the guy loves to build big stuff. we can argue about how he does it and whether he pays for it, that type of thing. but he actually has pride in standing beside big holes and new bridges and things like that. o if that's the trump that gets there -- and he loves to stand in front of new hotels -- there's a chance he could do that. i think republicans are going to come in line because as much as we talk about how if hill we won republicans would be a huge obstacle because she has no support there. if he says, jump, they're going to say how high. >> i think it will be interesting to see. that's entirely correct.

what happens and how does he and his team respond when congressional conservatives say we're not voting for that. we're not paying for that and then he doesn't get his infrastructure built. how does he respond? the trump presidency, first term but it could pivot on how he reacts. then does he become the vengeful trump? >> i think from a polling perspective if he came out strong on infrastructure and actually started to say we're going to build this wall, i think that his numbers would go up and i think that is what will make congressional leaders change their mind. >> the other thing is he is not a traditional washington type of personality. so we don't know to what extent he's willing to put together congressional coalitions that may have majorities of democrats involved. republicans have traditionally tried not to push an initiative that didn't have support in the

congress. so what extent would he say i have republicans and democrats and i'll put together the coalition on this issue. what's his willingness to do that? >> and what's paul ryan's willingness to pass bills with democrats pushing them across the finish line? >> so you all would agree that he is -- well, would you all agree that he is the least ideologically grounded candidate -- president since x -- since clinton i guess or maybe before? is he a nonideological president? are we actually going to get this sort of break of the gridlock because he's a nonideallog? >> i think so far we've talked about the optimistic side of this but i think there's a real fearful side of it. some of what he did and talked about on the campaign trail scares people who understand both foreign policy and

domestic policy. so i don't think he's driven by ideology. i think he's driven by ego and by his belief about what's right at any certain time. so certainly in terms of the traditional way we think about ideas. >> he used to be for single payer now he's getting rid of obamacare. he said things about gay rights. he used to be pro choice now he's pro life. o what extent is it just a performance? i think it's an open question at this point. >> we don't really know his ideology that is still being defined and will kind of fill in the lines as we go starting in 70-something days. or is he going to hue more closely to a traditional republican or even something

farther to the right? and i don't think we know that yet. >> other than infrastructure, which was the one thing he did mention in his victory speech early wednesday morning, what's your best sense of where he wants to go with priorities and where you think the electorate said he should go? >> i think he clearly wants to go around taxes are clearly an issue that he talks about a lot personally and otherwise. during the campaign. obviously there will be a tremendous amount of pressure to push forward a tax reform, particularly at the corporate level. again, trade we talked about briefly. there's a tremendous amount. to the extent he has a mandate from sort of the grassroots, people who voted in small towns in michigan, north carolina, it's on trade and he has to start doing something on that fairly quickly or i think his redibility with that constituency will fade quickly.

>> to go further into what trump wants to do, if you look day to day he wants to negotiate and build stuff. the best opportunity is infrastructure and trade. i think also the area of foreign policy becomes a place where he's going to become interested in a real hurry because of the way in which he'll have unilateral control over a lot of those decisions. i think that gives a lot of people pause right now. we talked about ryan, mcconnell. i think that's a place where certainly for another panel but where he may find he can do things he likes to do there. and i think that's in the end a lot of what i think people across the aisle would agree drives him to do what he does. sort of what feels good to him and what feels right. >> that ability to do things i feel there's going to be a huge push on regulations and executive orders. around a whole host of issues,

is going to happen very, very quickly. >> the president who spent so much of his second term of what was the three things, the pen, the phone, and the microphone. sort of a mantra there. it will be interesting to watch whether a republican congress that was so angry at president obama for his aggressive use of executive power, whether they will be internally consistent or probably not internally consistent at all in welcoming a donald trump using assertive executive power. >> if you look at the numbers on executive orders, they're becoming more and more populars. the thing about lawmakers, sthay hate executive orders except when their guy is the one signing them. and donald trump is a business guy, accoupled to making the calls. i don't think there's any

reason to believe he won't use executive orders liberally. maybe not at first. maybe once he sees how difficult it will be to get things done, in a year or two i would look for that to pick up. >> do you think that the electorate was volting for somebody who would just come in and break -- just assert himself and that while they want congress -- they want washington to work -- which those of us who live inside the beltway and inside the bubble and took ap civics thinks means one thing that maybe the country thinks it means something totally different which is some guy who will come in and get things done all by himself? >> let's go back to the most important part. the remains of an incredibly divided electorate. he doesn't have a mandate in terms of the lyndon johnson, ronald reagan type of mandate.

having said that yes. i think there is a lot of people that voted for him because they want to break stuff. most important they want to break stuff because they don't believe the consequences will be worse. by telling people who are desperate who see their lives coming apart at the seams and see their future coming apart to say you don't know how much worse it can be? the response is, no. you have no idea how bad things are right now. so i think that is a mandate for both parties for the next couple of years and for elections going forward. >> look, if people don't -- they used to poll george w. bush he was popular at one point. then he polled his issues and they were all unpopular. barack obama won in 2008 was not a particularly ideological candidate in terms of having super detailed policies. certainly clinton will tell you they had more. people vote for president for a

lot of different reasons. they vote for people they like. i think this time they saw two candidates that they didn't think were very likeable. different factors go into picking a president i think more important than where you are on this issue. >> interesting to know one bit of the exit poll being repeated by everybody is so he gets 46% of the vote from an electorate 63% of which think he is temperamently unsuited and 60% think he's unqualified to be president. o discuss.

>> it's becoming pretty clear that the idea that we need to have a fully functioning supreme court and not have executive power, that gets lost and the norms that held us together, could actually cause electoral consequence. >> we may have time for a couple of questions from our udience. >> i'm julie. do you think budget deficits matter any more? >> that was going to be my next question. thank you. >> is that from a political or economic standpoint? because those are different questions. >> of course they matter from

an economic standpoint but from a political standpoint. does trump and the republicans have to pay for tax can you tell us for infrastructure, repealing obamacare cbo said costs billions of dollars. >> i think from an opinion perspective from the way people process things that issues like debt and trade inside of washington and i think among a lot of folks you say the word trade and debt and people understand the consequences or benefits. i think for most voters they're just a piece and you need to go the next step, which is to say what's the consequences. for that reason, i don't think debt per se, i don't think trade per se. going earth way on them. causes either opinion shifts or electoral shifts. i think you need to convince people that running up debt would be a problem. i think if a president trump aid i need to run up debt to

put up infrastructure people will accept that. >> it is not -- this was certainly not a driver among people i met on the trail or encountered. part of the problem is there is sides incurred tremendous amounts of debt. nobody paid the political price for that. there isn't much. >> two questions. first, given trump's own background that a lot -- many of his products were made cheaply overseas and that he bought chinese steel instead of american steel, given his own background, why was he considered such an effective

messenger on trade when the -- his own record didn't match his rhetoric? that's the first question. the second question is, now we've had two elections in the past 16 years where the popular vote has been different than the electoral vote. why are we still holding on to the electoral college, something that many argue is a very outdated anti-democratic system? >> jeff, you represent the candidate who thought the electoral system was not -- broken in some way? >> well, it's broken -- we could have a whole four-hour panel about the democratic primary process and how that's broken. but -- i mean, it has to do with money and what have you. but in terms of trump being a messenger, i think trump was effective in saying i work in a

certain mill you, hang out with rich people, hang out with candidates including the clintons. i would change the rules and function differently now. i didn't find it that convincing but i guess many people did at the end of the day. they say we understand it. you've got to lobby and do all the things that we find distasteful but that's the nature of the beast. for the electoral college i think it does have to be some kind of reform. i come from vermont. it's a small state, a little more impact but i think we need to do something, if it's only to go to some sort of proportional allocation. maybe that's the first step. i would not be opposed to abolishing it. but you have to look at the implications of doing that. we had 20-some odd battle ground states. if you do a way with that are you going to have candidates

only advertising and hanging out in popular centers? you have to think of the ramification not only the election but how people relate to people in various states. are some people going to get left out. so i think there's broader ramifications of making changes. but change i think is necessary. >> that's precisely right. you're going to take the money and allocate it all to california, new york, texas, and florida. o -- you've got to pick your poison. sure, we've had two elections where the popular vote differs from the electoral college but three of the last five elections have been elections in which one side thought they won and the other side thought they lost. at some point in the evening. and then really believed it. and that shifted. i think that sort of swing is something that was noteable and

for those from the democratic side, the democrats are the one on the short end of the stick in all three examples. but i will also say that that i think is one of the reasons why a lot of folks are feeling a little traumatized in this election. it's not just that they lost but people who thought they lost won and people who thought they won lost. >> thank you so much. thanks for joining us. we are going to make a quick transition for our next panel. [applause] >> the conference bro shure has

hasos.-- brochures -- has all the bios. this is the new members guide. the conference as i mentioned has been held every other year since 1980s. inside this is a terrific amount of information about every newly elected member, the power structure of congress, and where the landscape lies. now i'm going to join my distinguished guest. i think i may have to be -- i don't know can you hear me? all right. this gentleman doesn't need much of an introduction. so i will keep it short. erik canter is at the moment a he started in nd

the virginia house of delegates in 92 and moved over to the house in 2000, 2001 was when you entered office. you have a reputation for pro growth policies and sticking to principles and you were the early warning system i think of what we had happen on tuesday because you lost in a shock primary challenge in 2014. let me start with where the other panel ended, which is do you think the country can continue to have elections where somebody gets the most votes but doesn't take the office? >> i think that our constitution is quite a document. it's a brilliant document. i know that there are parts of it that some speak to and say

it doesn't work. my sense is right away that if you want to change that document, that's a tall order. uphill climb. but i do think, and one of the comments in the prior panel said, if you want to concentrate all the dollars, all the conversation, all the money on the coast and in the big cities, that's what you'll do if you get rid of the electoral college. the beauty of our country is it is diverse and part of that drersty is geography. clearly one of the smantics coming out of this campaign is there is a lot of country out there that does not think like this town thinks, like new york thinks, like l.a. thinks. again, part of the richness of our culture and the brilliance of the vision of our founders was to make sure that we didn't get so single-visioned and maintained that broad sense of

vision that the country can offer. so i'm thinking we're fine. >> ok. tell me -- my six-year-old said to me. i told him i was interviewing somebody very important. he said you always should start by saying, how is your day? so i want to ask how is your day? >> i'm good. i'll really good. >> but how surprised were you really? >> i started the day by thinking, listen, i am no stranger to elections that can give you a surprise. i talk to my kids -- i have three kids, two in this town one in palo alto. i said, look, because as you know, there's been a lot of chatter, there's been a lot of activity in the streets of the big cities especially, san francisco, washington, new york, where there were heavy

concentrations of hillary clinton supporters and that have now taken to the streets in demonstration. but i think my kids, having been through two years ago what my family went through in a real shocker, they too say, look, worst things can happen. we live in a great country. life will go on. nd so i saw the election returns, and like many probably couldn't sleep afterwards because of all the thoughts conjured up of what lies ahead of our country. as a republican, very heart rned to see that both the house and the senate republicans now able to work with a republican white house. i did caution myself in that positive vain of thought and say there are no excuses now. my party has to act. >> and david hawkings who ran the other panel banged it out,

you broke it, you earned it. you own it. >> we can have that discussion. >> let's have that discussion. how do we put this thing together? and let me ask, one of the reasons i'm really excited you're here is you're now a businessman so you have both perspectives. we'll get into that on how there's a gap. let's start with that. this election both primary and general revealed a real gap between the political class and middle class americans. so let's start with that. because if you're a -- if you're advising the democrats, do you say your only hope is obstruction? is if so that per pet wuts the broken nature of the institution. >> i think when you look at this election -- and i can't really say if i ask this question of who's read that book called hill billy allergy.

but i just finished the book. i don't know if it was purposefully written and published around this election, but it is sort of indicative, i think, of a culture in a certain region of the country that perhaps is reflected elsewhere of a broad swath of demographics that really has been disaffected and left out. and just for a variety of reasons, generational, just hasn't seen that kind of hope and aspiration and ability to rise that i think most of us would like to say that we or our kids have. that is what donald trump tapped into, is that disaffected sense, that anger, that notion that washington is really broken when it comes to solving problems for that group of people. and it is quite something. and if you look at the way that

he spoke to the voters and -- and listen, i was one of the first when he would say some of the things that were vulgar or distasteful to speak out. as many people in this town did on my side of the aisle in denouncing that kind of language or those kind of things. but peter teal said it at the republican convention in cleveland something that -- very, very wise. and that was media for many in this room -- media took trump literally, where voters took him seriously. that is something to think about, because when he said some of the things that seemed so outrageous, there was a general sense that he was conveying to people who may not be living in this bubble of washington, new york, l.a., and the rest. so i think it is about not

speaking in this washington gar billion, approaching problems in a way given our society today of the 24/7 rapid information flow to penetrate through to demonstrate that you hear somebody. and again, now you get to the point where you've got to go and excute on those sort of visions you put out there because there's not a lot of granularity yet as to what exactly that means in a trump white house. >> do you think that the legislative agenda is really going to be provided by paul ryan? >> well, i know that paul and certainly kevin brady in the house ways and means committee have been working on tax reform now for some time. goes back to when i was leader and dave camp presented the initial white pamer. so i think they will be ready. i think most of us were taken by surprise with the outcome of

the election. i guess no one or neither party's ever really ready until the time comes. but i know there's some smart minds, hard-working people on the hill ready to take the mantle and drive. now, donald trump seems to me to be one that clearly is going to have an idea of where he wants to take things. so having worked in congress and being elected during the bush years when we controlled everything, i look back on those years and the white house has a lot to say and a lot of influence on what happens. so i do think there will have to be some initial trying to feel out whose role is what and how it's going to play out. >> let's talk more about the politics. because on paper donald trump is the last vessel for that kind of discontent. billionaire, glitzy, television, famous. and people who come from much more modest circumstances who

are traditional politicians weren't able to speak to that. so how does the republican party absorb, process, and speak to that in legislation over the next two years? >> right. because if you were going to ask how do we absorb it politically, i would say done. done. because certainly donald trump has brought those voices, those people with that disaffected sense in to the republican fold. i think david you put your finger right on it. that's a challenge for the party now, is how do we go in and i say more practically respond to the problems that exist and not always adhere to just a strict ideological view. and so much of what i remember the struggle was when i was in office and in leadership was to try and say to fellow republicans and conservatives, we need to be able to put our

conservative principles of limited government, individual empowerment, free markets to work for people. and we've got to be able to demonstrate the benefit of those principles, not just say because it is limited government, because it will work towards balancing budgets that it is necessarily good. and i do think that donald trump probably has a much better way of being able to convey that. >> i don't think i know him very well. but the thing i feel i really know about him is that he wants to be a winner. and ideological purety may or may not be the path to being a winner, on legislation, jobs, reelection. >> my partner and the founder of the firm that i'm now with on the board of directors of as actually was one of donald's bankers a while back, and he actually predicted a

month ago or so at another press event in new york that donald trump was going to win. again, many of us were obviously as the prior panel said, i think most people were to ng that wasn't going happen. he said what donald was selling is yes we like to win, but he's selling i'm a good deal-maker. i know how to go and get you the better deal. and if you think about the swath of the electorate that came out that the parties had difficulty bringing out, especially in the rust belt states in the last several decades, that's what they're looking for. they're looking for the shot in life. they're looking for somebody to say i'm going to deal you a better deck. i'm going to give you a better shot to climb up the ladder. so i think that will probably

be the narrative or the prism through which this white house is going to look at what happens through the legislative process. >> let's talk about the junior partner in all that, which is the democratic party. it seemed to me in the last 36 hours people have been in a feetle position. there's a very -- there has been a very low representation of lawmakers, party leaders, out and about. they're still processing this. help them process it. i mean, because we do want a two-party system, even you i think. if they go to obstructionism, that may be the first instinct but is that the right thing for them? >> no. listen, the obstruction -- again, much longer discussion about how that obstruction, how the minority party that i was 2010 was in the

beginning we faced an incoming president obama with 70-some approval rating and we were able to -- we had to do the same thing. we had to pick ourselves back up and say how are we going to work together? and there were plenty of attempts on my part and john boehner's part. he was the leader and i was the republican whip at the time. to say to the white house and the president we want to work with you after they invited us in and we tried. and many of you remember in the days it was the stimulus, it was obamacare, it was dodd-frank. and the first shot out of the bow of that one was the stimulus bill. i remember viveledly, the president actually coming over to then leader boehner and i saying come to the white house, present us with your ideas. we're putting together this bill. remember, shortly after the collapse of the markets in 2008. and we want you to be a part of

this. and we did. we had sessions after sessions in the roosevelt room of the white house. i remember being so anxious at the time i even brought in a one-page white paper to the president. the president even said you know, there's nothing crazy in here. we've got a little juice out of that thinking, ok. because at the time the discussion with republicans was are we going to advocate for the elimination of the capital gains tax and all that knowing full well you're dealing with a one-sided town here. and we didn't. but again, all that sort of good will dissipated very quickly. and obviously we have our interpretation, they have theirs, as to why it seemed we were let out of that bill. which that started we're going to be against what you're doing if you're not bringing us in which snowballed and the overreach that occurred in my opinion, those two years in

2009-2010, allowed for the rebounding of the republican party in the house. i think that's lessons here for my party now. we don't want to make -- we don't want to go and commit an overreach as a party. the democrats, they owe it to their constituents and the country to try and be a part of things and at least try and work. i know president-elect trump said he wants to do that. and see if we can make it work. because my sense is the country's really had it with the sort of blaming two parties blaming each other and basically leaving so many people out. >> let's talk about some of the specific policy areas. now, trade has been a bipartisan consensus area. sounds like the election is going to send a strong signal that a lot of people feel it's

not working for them. i felt months ago that trump had been winning the argument ond that and shifted ground. now, you as someone in the business environment now care very deeply about trade. how do you square those two things now? >> in spending a significant amount of time in asia, both in southeast asia, in china, hong kong, japan, there is a real priority that i see when i'm ere being placed orn tpp prospects. as much has been written in this country and reflecting that notion that they see tpp more than just a trade sort of blueprint. they see it as a demonstration of american commitment to the region. that's why most in the foreign policy arena, in my opinion, think it's a really important thing. but then flip back to the voters that really came out this election and said you know

what? trade's not working for me. so i think first of all this luck there's no question there's no -- lame duck there's no question, there's no trade and no tpp in my opinion is going to happen. but with donald trump and his insistence that we're going to go in and rework the trade agreement, i don't think there's many people that disagree that you could improve upon the existing agreement. so i think it all depends on what you mean when you say rework them. you know, if you take a sledge hammer to the situation, i think it's really bad for our economy and for america's role as an exporter. and the imports and what that will rebound to, the american consumer. so i do think there are ways to actually deliver on his promises, depending on who the ustr is and how he works with that individual to go about

affecting things in a positive way. but sledge hammer, no, very damaging for us as a country. >> strikes me that's really barring a crisis the first diplomatic challenge for president trump. because these are an array of nation whose didn't want to reopen negotiations. so he has to find a way to do that and to -- needle rather than a sledge hammer. >> yeah. >> are you up for that job? >> no. i'm good. >> so taxes. i mean, tax reform has been on the table with all the brilingt lines in the republican party. what are the parameters there? and is it repatriation, tighter infrastructure? >> i heard one of the -- walking in one of the individuals on the prior panel. the question being are republicans going to pay for tax cuts? when i was there and still today the rules are we don't pay for tax cuts.

and that was contrary to sort of the philosophy that we're about. but the infrastructure bill is something else. the infrastructure bill is something that will run into what i believe is an insistence by the fiscal hawks in my party that infrastructure will be paid for and not just be borrowed. and that's where tax reform can come in. and that's when i think you have the marying up of things that either or both sides want. certainly the democrats and hillary clinton was out there saying that she wanted to see an increase in infrastructure spending. donald trump wants to see a big increase in infrastructure spending. so that will be the test as to how much of an appetite there is on the part of the fiscal hawks on the hill to go for that. and again, related to tax reform in particular the international piece when you

get to that deemed repatriation. as most of you know, that's a very controversial subject. but i believe when you're talking upwards of $300 billion plus in terms of infrastructure package, who knows what the number will be, but that's where really the money is, because i don't know where else you get it. so i think the prospects are pretty good for donald trump to drive the infrastructure package, kevin brady, paul ryan, others in the house, to design and put forward a real tax reform in a comprehensive way. >> and chuck schumer's already said that he favors the idea of repatriating. generally, accepted number's about $1 trillion overseas that could be brought back in a favorable tax holiday or a lower rate. did you ever have any sbrack with schumer and the democrats on that? >> absolutely. and there was a lot of discussion in a bipartisan way

going on even two years ago when i left about that and about the marrying up of these two things. but it's not just a tax holiday. it is putting in place an entire new regime so you don't get nicked on the scoring. and then, again, if you you're looking for tax enhancements which would say not necessarily revenue neutral, you need to go look at this one-time tax or fee on profits abroad in exchange for a reduced rate here at home for corporate america and the insertion of territoryality into the system instead of the worldwide tax system that we have now. again, those two things are very controversial and that will have to be worked out in something that again, when i go back to the statement talking to the type of voters that came out this time, and talking to them what matters to them, this

i just went through is not really relevant. but needs to happen in order to produce an infrastructure package that people around the country can understand and enjoy when they see improvements in their homes. >> you work with a bipartisan policy center on infrastructure. what's your view on how much we really need to sort of get to level pegging? so we can drive up 95 and not be frustrated with -- where's that vision? how much money do we need? >> there are estimates $1 trillion plus. a lot of money. but interestingly, when i served on the executive council at bpc, there were eight ceos and i was there. we would go around the country to denver. i took them down to richmond and hosted them there what virginia was doing with public-private partnerships. my sense is there's liquidity out there in the private sector and a lot of the institutional

asset managers ready to deploy capital to really match long-term capital up with their long-term pension commitment. insurance companies, the same way. but what they -- the cal capital keeps saying is there's not first of all a pipeline of projects. we used to call those shovel ready, that exist across the country. and there is a lot of risk associated with that capital, particularly because of politics and permitting. so the work of the bpc executive council -- and there's a report out there about sort of some suggestions -- heavily weighted to the states as to what you have to do to streamline some things at the state level so you can see these projects come forward and the process be more amenable to someone looking to undertake some risk in big numbers to address the need. >> so infrastructure, there's a lot of gar billionees to get to

the new bridge. but let's talk about something that's very hot and emotional and you don't need a lot of jargon, which is immigration. now, you were a supporter of jeb bush and you supported trump when he triumphed in the primary process. you tweaked him on twitter for softening his immigration stance in august. let's talk about the politics of that and where you see a possible consensus. >> well, um. >> long road. >> it certainly play add role in my primary loss. we were trying to do something to move the needle. and if any of you recall and were following it, just as leader i wanted to try to address the kids, because i never believed that our country has a policy or law that allows us to hold kids libel for

illegal acts of their parents. just from a pure legal standpoint, if you don't even want to get to the human aspect, let's see if we can move that way. again, that was too up the middle because both sides got upset because it was stand-alone, it wasn't comprehensive. then it was considered amnesty from my side in many instances. so, look, i think short of the first initial request for authorization to build that wall and the money, i guess there's going -- there's money needed until the chefpblgt we'll see. but short of that kind of egislative action, most of the immigration policy is going to be dealt with at the administration level. i do think it will be executive order. echoing the last panel when they said, you know, one party

doesn't like executive orders when the other does it. i do think that the immigration piece will probably remain in that realm other than, again, the funding and appropriations necessary at the border for building that wall. . >> so what does that mean actually? what does president trump sign? where is he going with that? >> well, we'll have to see. there were things that were said in the campaign in terms of refugee vetting and other things that -- you know, really over from the initial position that donald trump staked out on immigration, it's sort of gravitated back to the center over time. and if you think about the tools and art of persuasion and negotiation, maybe that's what that was. when you say, look, trust me, i am going to be tough on this.

and i have outpaced anybody on this by taking this position out there, and then we'll get somewhere that makes sense over time. who knows. again, that's questions i know all of us are asking because there has not been a lot of definition around the kind of policies that will be pursued under a trump presidency. >> to quote mario cuomo you govern in poetry or in this case maybe limb ricks. and you govern in prose. so where are the softenings? let's talk about the supreme court. isn't that a potential hazard area for overreach? he's got two factions here, which is we have to have a solidly conservative justice. but then it turns into an ugly fight? is that -- he's got a real crossroads issue there. how does he deal with that? >> to his credit he's been transparent about the kinds of

people that he is thinking about and will offer up as justices for the supreme court. so i think pretty straight forward play on his part. yes, there's going to be controversy. there's always controversy. and do the democrats want to filibuster that in the senate? if so, how long will that last? if they try and leverage that for something else, how does president trump react to that? in the end, will that nuclear option that is in place for other appointees have to be applied to confirmation of the supreme court justices? but i think rest assured that will be worked out and we will order full court in good after the new administration in congress is sworn in. >> you're putting that high on the if not the first order of business, up high. let's talk a little bit about the house freedom caucus and your friends there.

are they neutralized because of tuesday? >> i think a lot of the tension -- and i think there probably was not just two but maybe three sort of factions, if you will, or broad movements within the party. i think all that's pretty much gone away now. winning has a way of curing a lot of that. and the former colleagues that i've spoken with since the other night have said we're going to get some things done. so i believe -- again, not being close to it any more. but i do believe that they will do that and given the opportunity with a president elect who does not have a lot of experience in this town. certainly a vice president elect who i served with for 12 years, many have served with and know mike pence well. he certainly understands the process. so there's a potential for good

partnership because of that coming in of an outsider, together with all the insiders here, to get something done. >> i have many questions but i want to start inviting people. we have those two microphones. if you make your way there we'll switch over to you and let you get a question or two in. so if anybody is interested, just go to the mic and i'll point you out. while people are going to the mics, now that you're -- i was thinking what can i ask you now that i couldn't have asked you two years ago? let's start with this one. who are your favorite democrats to work with and who would mike pence be looking for to sort of work more in a bipartisan way? >> you know, there are plebty of individuals that i worked with on foreign policy issues especially as it came to the middle east and israel.

there are a number of democrats that would work on those things. there were other democrats who worked with me on business issues, the jobs act if you remember. even infrastructure. you know, so again a number of people. but as we know and so much -- there's so many people in the house. you know, there's the leadership structure in place so that you can help leverage any conversation that you have to committees and the rest. so certainly committee chairmen. and on the democratic side chuck schumer is the one with the leverage, i assume, when he becomes minority leader. he's the one with whatever leverage there is because he has the ability to stand in the way to stop there being 60 votes on things that are not subject to reconciliation. so i assume that this white house, incoming white house

will be very focused on making sure that he is kept in very close contact and shares with him the intention. chuck schumer is somebody who i met with regularly. i know paul did when he was budget chair and ways and means chair on immigration issues and others. so i suspect that that's the line of communication you should keep the eye on. >> it seems like pence will be the chief legislative liaison at least going in, pending what we know, with the rest of the administration. >> it would make sense. >> i see somebody out there with a question. then ll go to my left and go to my right. sorry, i didn't see you. >> so donald trump broke many of the unspoken rules in the campaign around things he said and things that are not considered ok to say campaigning. and peter teal says listen to what he means. this is the persuasion of politics.

he's also indicated that he would break many of the rules of separating his own personal interests from the office. not putting his investments in a blind trust. curious to see if the leadership will influence him on that to maintain some of the codes that have seemed sack sacrosanct. >> i have no idea what my colleagues are thinking. my own opinion is he needs to do that. he needs to go in and be as transparent as possible. that is the essence of who we are as a country. as i travel the world and see these other governments, whether it is in brazil, in china, europe or otherwise, the middle east, they look to us and know that things work here. and i think so much of that rests on you know what the rules are, people play by the rules, you have confidence in the judiciary, and the transparency of that

institution. and certainly the transparency f our lawmaking process to guard against anything even having the perception of being untoward. and i believe this election showed us clinton foundation and the rest, and all that sort of hung around that controversy did have in it this notion that things were too open pake. so my counsel would be certainly you have to be transparent, must put it in separated out from your official duties. >> first, thank you very much for your comments and inside this morning. we've talked a lot about white middle class voters being instrumental in trump's victory from the rust belt, from the rural areas. in your comments now you said voters have been accepted into the republican party. one of the other thing that is

we saw in trump's rallies from that group of voters were comments that were negative towards people of other races, of people from other countries, people from the lgbt communities. so i would like to know how those beliefs and views and values fit into the republican party moving forward. >> which beliefs and values? >> views that could be considered very racist, negative comments about people from other -- mexico, for example. those kind of negative comments that we really saw at the trump rallies and those people coming out of the rallies. >> there's no room in the republican party for any of that. and i think that you've seen president-elect trump his campaign denounce a lot of that, didn't always get the coverage i think that it should have. and perhaps early on it wasn't quick enough in coming. but i do think you saw leaders

on the hill -- paul ryan, mitch mcconnell and others -- denounce those type of statements, sentiments, as soon as they arose. so my position is absolutely no tolerance for any kind of racism, any kind of nationalism, any kind of any anti-semeticism of which i certainly have unfortunately some experience. so again, just zero tolerance on that. and it should come from leaders when it occurs. >> so we've got just enough time for two questions. start here, and then the lady in red. >> thanks again for coming. it's great to see you. i'm just wondering what you think will happen now with obamacare. just a small question. > how long do we have? no question, i think it's already been discussed and probably in the works. we were in the works with it if

romney had won, is in this ation packages fiscal year geared towards a obamacare repeal and replace. the latter piece is very important and very difficult. and then you will have then next fiscal year a reconciliation package geared towards tax reform. again, we talked about the need for that in terms of the infrastructure funding. there is clearly huge problems. i get to see it now from the business side so companies that we work with, whether it's in the insurance arena, medical provider arena, the hospitals, this is a very challenging environment they're operating in. especially if you look at the exchanges and look at individual whose are receiving the premium hikes which has ripple effect in the private

markets, insurance markets and the rest. so there's a real need to fix something even if hillary clinton were elected she would have had to go to the congress to fix something. these things are spiraling out of control and downward. so there's a great opportunity i think out there for the republicans to step up and finally coales around an obamacare replace. and again the devil is in the details. when i was on the hill worked a lot with many of the physicians as well as committee chairs to try and gain consensus. i think they'll get there. i really do. but it's to me probably going to be for them a priority and should be. >> we're running out of time. i promised the lady over there. >> thank you. i'm congressional correspondent for the hispanic outlook. i'm so glad you mentioned the kids act because i wonder how many journalists know that republicans wanted to pass a

law that would legalize the children who were brought in ill lylely and the democrats completely stopped it in 2013. >> where were you two years ago. >> i was there but nobody wants to write about it. the narrative is such. and that being said there are other piecemeal bills that the republicans have proposed over the years that never get any coverage because it's only about comprehensive. so do you think now that there may be a chance for some of those piecemeal deals, like e-verify or expanding investment pieces or maybe giving green cards to some foreign students? by the way, there's over 1 million foreign students now in the united states this year. they hit the over 1 million mark. so we start legalized foreign students we'd better start talking about numbers. what about those issues? >> i hope yes there is incremental progress abounding

together with some of these larger initiatives that president-elect trump is going to be about. it's always been the challenge because people by definition say piecemeal is somehow a compromise because you've got a vision here. and just because you're not getting all the way there you're getting here, you're compromising the rest. i don't agree with that because i think every day each month you keep going you ultimately get there. i share your sentiment. >> you reflected president obama's remarks yesterday. in the spirit of new day and new hope and now historic phrase, i wanted to present you adds thanks with the roll call make congress great again. >> that's awesome. thank you. [applause] e'll take a short break.

>> it's good to be here. if you were to go back and look at the tape from two years ago when i was on a panel.

i'm excited to be here today not overwhelm because the election is over and we're still living and breathing, but we have a great panel. i asked a group of party strategists, these are real party strategists, not the ones you see on cable news. i'm not sure what they do for a living. but these are the people that have been working on these races behind the scenes, working hard for months now, years going back, but this cycle. i'm excited to bring them in front of the curtain and talk about these races. on my far left, independent expenditure director for the democratic congressional campaign committee. martha, the two-time i.e. director for the democrat senatorial campaign committee. though not this cycle. she's playing that role today. jessica, legal counsel and i.e. director for the national republican congressional committee. and daniel, i.e. director for the national republican senatorial committee. that's a lot of -- i think i got all that right. what i want to do today is really just try to peel back the curtain and talk about how we got here. and the first question for all of you is, looking back, were there any clues that you -- any evidence that you missed or maybe dismissed that would have led you to believe that we would have the night that we had on tuesday night? >> that's a good question. for us, for jessica and myself, that's a little bit hard to answer because our districts are just sort of piecemeal.

daniel and martha would see the whole picture in new hampshire. they would see the whole picture in nevada. in wisconsin. ours were piecemeal. it's a little bit hard to say if we missed something in the data. what i think we did miss, at least i would be curious if this is true in jessica's as well, is how well trump performed in some of our districts. iowa won, for example. we had hillary clinton winning that handily. i think i read today in one of the morning newsletters that trump actually ended up winning that district. there is something that we missed there just in the data. but i don't really know if i would say that we missed something strategically that was sort of apparent or even in retrospect. ou look at the poll and no

poll's right 100% of the time, but you look at what it says and you interpret it to the best of your ability. when it's sort of off by that, it's not that you missed something, it's that the data missed something. that's a deeper question that's going to take longer to try and answer. >> i think ty is right about that. you sort of -- look, the national polling, public polling, the major networks polling, everybody had turnout assumptions. that assumed a higher democratic turnout and a slightly lower republican turnout. it's safe to say based on the numbers from tuesday. so it isn't specific to me, it's not specific to the house or the senate or internal polling or public polling. i think it's safe to say across

the board the majority of -- majority of the research that was done sort of was off on the turnout model. and i think it's ok to admit that sort of we made strategic decisions with the best data we had at the time, but that turnout model was wrong. and i think that is an important thing for us to acknowledge and to learn from going forward. and i also think there is always in these elections particularly in wave elections which we have seen time and time again, this pretty significant group of late deciders n this election we were looking at a lot of data that said we were winning or we were tied or we were down, but that we had a significant group of undecideds. these undecided and late deciders had a very significant role to play in the outcome on tuesday. nathan: i know you two wanted the best case scenario. did you see what happened on tuesday -- >> i think one thing. i hope the story is written about diving into the polling because it was interesting for us as we were watching the olls from very early on. the stories were being written in the media, trump was going to kill us. and we were polling and not really seeing that affected our

house races. i thought am i totally wrong? we weren't seeing t that's in large part, the polling after the 12th cycle, where we did miss the boat quite significantly in a lot of ways. our screens were too tight. we opened them wide up and taking in lot of these people that weren't typically voters. we were doing much larger cell phone numbers than we had previously. our polling was showing us that on the house level that a lot of our folks weren't going to be affected so much by the trump stuff as people thought they were. nathan: what were you seeing? >> the traditional polling had us down the stretch fair enough in the margins. the thing that gave us more confidence going into the election night, not that we would win or in the hunt, was the modeling analytics we had. that showed us trending in the right direction in several key states.

and some. abe data out of certain states. nathan: absentee. >> yeah. we'll know more when the files come back in january and february, but i think there is a serious turnout problem, huge turnout problem on the democrat side in several states. nathan: because the senate map overlapped with the presidential map significantly in some ways, talk about the senate races being in the hunt, what were you seeing with the trump-clinton numbers that may have led you to believe that he could have been elected president? daniel: in pennsylvania and north carolina, wisconsin, florida, ohio we finished ahead of trump. it's interesting if you look at the results between senate and presidential, we got there different paths. pennsylvania, for example, we dramatically overperformed trump in southeast pennsylvania he overperformed us slightly in western pennsylvania. we always knew we were going to run ahead of him in certain

states. it's a matter of how quickly he could -- where he closed the gap. to say that we thought he was going to win, i don't think anyone is going to say that. but we knew he was in the hunt and had been getting significantly stronger over the last 10 days. ty: i don't want to say this is something that we missed, but jess made a point i want to double click on. we made a calculated gamble that political gravity would take over for down ballot. when we would be in like minnesota 3 and erik paulsen would be up by 10 in the head-to-head, up by 12, but donald trump was losing the district by 22 points. history would show that a house candidate can't overperform that much. and so i don't want to say it's like something he missed, but it was a calculated gamble that at some point political gravity would take over.

that's why i think that one of the most interesting things that we'll be able to do and most useful things we'll be able to do when we finally get the data back, find out how the president ended up doing in these congressional districts. to our point, if you were making that john or eric or barbara comstock aren't going to overperform by 20 points but trump only leads the district by six points, that then your gamble will not pay off. nathan: looking back now thursday morning quarterback, is there a strategic -- would you have made any strategic changes? today in today's "roll call" my colleague wrote a story about the house. she had a quote from the director of the house majority p.a.c., she said had we seen more accurate numbers of what that turnout looked like, we may have made some different spending decisions and we may not have talked about trump so much in some of these districts. how does that jive with -- looking back now did democrats

go too much in on trump? particularly on the house? ty: the quote before that was drawn and quartered which is unpleasant as well. look, here is a fundamental point about house races. it is almost impossible to break out from the national narrative. so if you look at a race in new hampshire, right, we were buried under 135,000 gross rating points of television. in week one in the las vegas media market, there were 57 different political ads running. so when you are a house race, much more -- senate races now with the outside money, there was $130 million spent? pennsylvania. $120 spent in new hampshire. they can sort of create their own space and tell their own story. for house candidates, it's almost impossible to do that. to run something outside the national narrative, you need a uniquely disqualifying piece of personal baggage, like danny tarkanian in nevada 3.

and you need millions of dollars. we spent $5.1 million in nevada 3. you cannot do that in every race. for house races you are much more at the whim of what the national conversation is. and we made the conscious decision that you have to lean into that because that is really the only path we're going to take. the nrcc did it as well. a lot of their ads were about the iran deal and more national issues than kind of like local things. for a couple candidates they did local things. you are not going to beat barbara comstock because she voted against the silver line. you have to put your shoulder into some silver line riders out there -- whoa. you have to put your shoulder into that because you are very much at the whim of the national race. i don't think that i would go back and do anything differently by any means. but we just thought that trump would not perform as well in

these districts as he did. if you could go back and say what would you do strategically differently? not have donald trump run for president. all that to say we leaned in and that's what you should do and that's what you continue to do. we're going to get to a point with so much money in the system that house races are basically going to be a parliamentary election. we're going to long -- days of the john barrows of the world are going to be gone because you are very much going to live and die by your party. you just lean into that, i think. i could be wrong. nathan: one of the fascinating things about this election, there are many, is kind of an upheaval at the presidential level by electing donald trump. it's almost a status quo election in the house and senate. we're looking at plus two in the senate. plus six in the house, maybe plus seven. but probably plus six. that's a fairly static

lection. daniel: early in the cycle we do an literal polling. we had a battery of questions. the democratic candidate how much do you think he or she is similar to hillary clinton on a variety of measures? same on the house side. early on that was generic as ty pointed out. as things progressed in the senate side and we did make it very much about local issues, candidate specific issues and get away from the national narrative, both our candidate and the opposition candidate in the senate races, they very much took on their unique brand. i think around plate august or september we were able to separate from trump which is why -- ty: we had the exact opposite. we started off saying some sort of version do you think that erik paulsen and donald trump share the same ideas or policies platform, however you want to do t. something like that. and it was a pair of

chopsticks. originally it was like this then it just kept getting closer and closer. jessica: we were the opposite. i totally agree what daniel said. your point is accurate about the volume of ads. our share of voice in the market in a lot of these places. we realized if we do lean into the narrative we're going to get swallowed. we were looking to differentiate our ad. in florida and iowa we did a lot of testimonial ads. tried to tap into some sentiments the people were feeling there we were seeing in our polling. we talked about how emily king was like hillary which is not something we did a lot of places. we saw that to be a big issue. we did try to bringing these issues back to the local level. that was helpful. nathan: the second biggest story of the night is the senate and what happened. is there anything you think your side could have done differently?

martha: if you look back we have had a number of wave elections. trump's certainly won in a number of places he wasn't expected to. but if you look back to 2008, in the first obama election, republicans lost eight seats, democrats picked up eight seats in the senate. on tuesday night -- guess it took until yesterday, but the democrats picked up two seats in the senate, which is hard to do when you're moving in to head winds. i think looking back illinois and new hampshire, are victories. certainly we have three -- four new women of color -- three new women of color joining the u.s. senate. that's a significant change. if it is a status quo election, i think we're making gains in -- two gains in the night where certainly expectations got away from us. it seemed like people were expecting more. two is a good night. i think that there are certainly going to be things in

each race, maybe, look back and things that you would do differently. i do think that committee deserves a lot of credit for recruiting a big map and putting a lot of seats in play, not all of those gambles paid off by electing a democrat to the senate, but i think having a big wide map and putting a lot of seats in play was definitely to the democrats' senate advantage. winning two seats, i don't want to pooh pooh it, it's a big deal to pick up two seats when the other party wins a presidential race. nathan: one of the many points of strife within the republican party is about expectations. when republicans came in the majority, there was an expectation among some base voters that, all right, now even though president obama is in the white house, we're going to repeal the affordable care act. and then when that didn't happen it created some primary issues. what did you see in your data this cycle, what are base

republicans expecting a president donald trump and republican congress to act on next year? jessica: it is hard to say in some respects because we did try to focus on keeping these things localized. there were certainly places, my first election was the committee was 2010. i was totally a nationalized election. every single ad was a national issue. we tried not to do that. there are places like minnesota 2 where we realized obamacare was deeply, deeply unpopular there. that was the main issue that we ran that race on. we definitely focused on hat. we really did try to look at smaller, localized issues, digging on the research. i wouldn't say our polling told us there was one overarching issue or two that people are angry about and want to change. that wasn't what we thought

this election was about. ty: the issue people cared most about and the substance were totally different. much more so than 2014 and 012. daniel: which was urprising. especially a presidential year. i think seeing that we ran very candidate specific, state specific issues and campaigns. i think the big thing here is economic issues, pocketbook issues, that those americans clearly feel like washington left them behind. nathan: we have a divided country. some tension. i'm going to force you to, all four of you, to acknowledge that strategic decision that your counterpart our counter of the other party made you have to admire. ty: i'll tell the story. i have been in politics for a long time.

it was the -- one of the things the bravest moves, in fact you don't have to comment this at all because i read on the internet. some people in her party might be upset with it. they ran an ad in illinois the national republican campaign committee ran an ad that basically said bob dole is independent. he's going to stand up to hillary clinton and going to stand up to donald trump. that might not seem like a big thing, but for a party committee to say that a member of their party will stand up to their presidential nominee, that is a very politically risky move. polling, it was the right move. it was the right strategic move. that was bob dole's only path. he came up short. his only path was if he gets 10% to 15% of democrats in that district. that was his message. when i saw that come up on the national review and i saw the ad, i was, wow, that is putting

any sort of political calculus or what are the chattering heads in my party going to think? and saying like if we want to win this race, this is a hard path. and this is the only way we get it done. and be damned with whatever blowback i get on the internet, or the right wing sites. this is the path to victory. it was executed well. obviously bob dole came up short, but it was right in the tenor of the campaign. i would encourage you-all to go check it out because it was -- you can say it was sort of like profile in courage. but it was one of those times where i think a lot -- we don't make the right choice and say what is the right strategic choice versus what is the politically expedient choice. we had so many email chains with our consultants, with strategists in our party like wow, they are doing this. daniel: the polling going into

election day in illinois 10 i think hillary was going to win by 20. y: i'm sure she did. look brad ran a great race. think brad will be a great member. again. but that was a very smart ove. martha: i think there is a tendency when you are feeling like you are in the bunker, which i assume that in a number of senate races the republicans felt like they were in the bunker sort of coming into labor day because they were feeling like they were down. there were moments in time, i think we have to acknowledge, there were moments in time where the clinton campaign was riding high. it didn't happen on tuesday, but there were certainly moments coming out of the debates. there were moments when trump would step in a dog pile. there were things that happened during the campaign where democratic candidates moved up

in the polls. and things that were within our control and things that weren't. but when that happens, when you're in the bunker and you're feeling like there is no way out, the very often the knee jerk reaction to that is go to the stove and crank it up to power boil and just go after your opponent with the hottest, most personal ugly negative that you can. and sometimes it works, sometimes it's the wrong thing to do. so i will say in wisconsin where i assumed ron johnson was under water many, many moments in this campaign, he made a strategic decision sometime around labor day to invest more in positive. and although we all sit around talking about elections and i'm sure many of you lamented negative ads and say you wish we -- people had a reason to vote for someone and wish they were more positive ads. when you are in that back and forth and decisionmaking, a positive ad feels like a gamble

not worth taking the risk. i do think that i -- i will give credit in wisconsin in particular and maybe other places, but ron johnson invested in a positive message in september and october that i think was the right thing to do strategically, i definitely felt this coming out of 2014 that when you are feeling the heat, the sort of tried and true path is to turn up the negative on your opponent and sometimes the right thing to do is to actually take a step back and begin to tell a story about yourself because i think we assume voters are paying attention a lot more attention than they really are. so making sure we're always -- making sure not always in every race, but many races, making sure we're taking the time to give that positive story i think is important. and i will say that i think in wisconsin it was a smart move on ron johnson's part that flew under the radar screen.

jessica: i think there are several things. the buying strategy is always so fascinating to me. if you look back at the money that is spent, i think it's interesting they make strategy decisions about which candidates they'll spend money on and which they won't. randy perkins, if he would have come to congress he would have been one of those richest members of congress we would have had. it's clear the detroit made a decision not to spend money in a that race even though from day one it was one of the races. i thought that was a smart allocation of resources, as much money as we ray it's always not enough. i also thought lasts like minnesota 2 some of the strategies they used on the ads ere -- sorry, minnesota 8. rick nolan -- you-all have a lot of members that vote conservatively.

that sort of match their district. it makes it very difficult for republicans to attack them on issues because there are some things they are voting with us on. rick nolan is not one of those people. he voted for the democrats. he votes the party line. it was interesting to see the ads strategy change from this cycle to last cycle where it was the same two candidates. they made rick nolan look like anybody's grandpa. he looked like the nicest man in the world. the ad was fantastic. it made it hard for us to keep on beating this negative ideology, which was true but when you contrasted it with the ads, it was a very tough to break through. nathan: in that minnesota eight district, donald trump won that district i would which would have made rick nolan's path even more difficult. daniel? daniel: i think the decision to cut off patrick murphy in florida.

they went against the bernie sanders base in their party. they spent money in the primary against a popular populist primary opponent. they invested millions of dollars and everything else to prop up a double-a candidate in a major league game. they walked away from him and that took courage. nathan: martha, to put you on the spot, how much tension was there between making that strategic decision of hey, florida, we can better spend our money in north carolina, missouri, to parts of the party saying we have to stop marco rubio now. you have to look beyond. talk about that, the tension between the 2016 realities and what senator rubio might do in the future? martha: you play the game you're playing. and i think it's clear that the committee -- i'll say i wasn't in the room while these decisions were made, but i can look back in hindsight and say that the money that was not

spent in florida and you could say spent in hard money hard money or nevada. these are tough decisions when you are looking at a spread sheet. it feels like a lot of money, but when you are looking at a spread sheet of money and the amount of money it takes to run a week of television in these states on your spread sheet, it goes quick. in a state like florida which is an extremely expensive state, in excess of $3 million a week to run television, and you're balancing that with all the other races that -- where you are needed. it's a tough call. this is a tough business. i think that if the money that wasn't spent against rubio was spent against kelly ayotte, that's the payoff that you have to make. i do think that it's important to run the race that you're in. and this was the 2016 race and not the 2020 race. i think that they made the smartest decisions that they

could with the data and information that they had at the time. so i certainly don't think there's a lot of second-guessing about that. jessica:00 one thing that's unique, having served in other roles of the committee. in large part it's a thankless job because you are making these very, very difficult decisions. we're independent from the committee. we have been working with this group of people and gaining from their knowledge and having group discussions what is best, and all of a sudden the wall goes up and you're shipped off. and you can't have anybody -- you have a team, but the large people and the leadership of the committee you are separate from them. these types of funding decisions are difficult especially knowing we'll rejoin the world. we have to look at the numbers and have their trust and respect. it's a really, really tough thing to do. ty: it's also the most isolating job in washington. if you are in the committee you are dealing with the candidates, the campaigns, the members.

and all their teams. there is a lot of interaction. if you are at a super p.a.c. you are dealing with the others. if you are part of u.s.a., you are working with the senate p.a.c. -- nathan: outside groups can coordinate with outside groups. ty: it's -- there's three separate buckets. the hard side, which is candidates campaign committees. the super p.a.c. world where they can work together. then there's the i.e. we're all alone. you are sort of on the committee island. as jess said, some of that's freeing. but some of it is very isolating. you talk about strategic decision, making decisions on how to spend. we ended up spending $79.4 million. between you and your team. there's a lot there. nathan: i think we'll have time for one question from the audience. whoever gets the microphone i

can see first. my last question is, we had a presidential candidate who won who was dramatically outspent on television. his own campaign did not have a ground game to speak of. how -- are we -- what changes will there be -- has campaigning changed going forward into 2018? ty: can i make one point? donald trump was outspent on aid media on television. his share of voice on television was exponentially larger than hillary clinton's. that is a very important factor when you're trying to extrapolate -- god knows that for colleen deacon and the new york 24th, the today show wasn't doing three segments a day on her. before we start to make this blanket statement about how ampaigns are changing, you

need to realize if you are looking at television as a medium, you flip on your tv the amount of time donald trump was on tv versus hillary clinton need to realize if you are earned and combined is much ore of a complete picture. i want to double down on that. daniel: i think campaigning has totally campaigning changed in 2018 if you have a candidate who has been a celebrity for 30 years, billionaire, and donald made national news coverage. ty: donald trump because of one thing that i think he was very smart with, he realized with 144 characters he can drive the news cycle. not always for the good, but i think that he sort of -- again, that's a following that's been developed for 10 years of the "apprentice" and "home alone 2" and 20 years at miss america. before we start saying, hey, you know, random house guys, who is running in kansas, you shouldn't do television. like donald trump did.

daniel: candidates up and down the ballot that tried to replicate that model failed. nathan: i'm hoping you-all stay involved in campaigns going forward. do you think you will hear from candidates, have to explain all this and say donald trump didn't do this or that. why do i have to run -- why do i have to go through the normal steps that candidates have to go through? martha: we can deal with that. what we had with president obama when he won in 2008 was all democratic candidates thought had you to do to raise money was put up a website and send a few emails. president obama, the big story coming out of that was the online fundraising was the future. it certainly remains a big part of how we raise money for candidates. for a while we had people who didn't want to do any fundraising at all and put out a website and the money would come. i think each cycle there is a moment in time where people take lessons, the right lessons or the wrong lessons, and test

them out the next time around. i just think it's going to be less likely that people who are running think that following the trump model of campaigning will be successful for them or healthy for them. i think that it will be -- what may change is how the press covers the president, right, and how the press covers the administration for the next two years and whether donald trump as president will keep tweeting and go arne the more traditional mediums of -- around the more traditional mediums -- as president. i think it's unlikely that people will say i want to run and i'm going to follow the trump model. nathan: daniel, talk about what the committee did with digital and tv, how you handled those on the i.e. side. daniel: it's pretty technical, but long story short, traditional you have 1,000 points of broadcast television

and then you change your message and however much cable you get behind that great. we threw that model out this time. spent more on digital than we have in the past, and changed our message progression, traffic, based on 1,000 points on broadcast, we reach an aggregate impression level across screen. for the first time totally married our digital and television media plans. which allowed us to buy fewer broadcast points on you higher reach programming and use cable and digital to drive frequency. that ability to deliver that much more of our message to the target audience was a big part of why we were able to overperform trump in certain key areas. jessica: it helped us from the very beginning to daniel's point, we spent more on digital than we have in the past. one thing that allowed us to do that smartly was to create formulas where rather than just give what's leftover, typically what's been done, we looked at how expensive cost per point was, how much money the candidate had, how connected

and wired the district was. then we assigned what we thought would be a logical spend based on factors. so we were looking at digital at the same time. we were looking at our other traditional mediums of the rather than giving it leftover money. there are certain places like maine 2, that is not a wired district. it's hard to get a message across in digital. there are other places like commuter district where you have to have a big presence on line. t nathan: we were years ago in the -- i was quarantined with a andidate from maine. had he a great mustache. i spent a lot of time with john during the anthrax scare. one question. ty: right outside of augusta. dairy farmer. i worked on the farm. not on the campaign. on the farm.

>> looking into the future, i know a lot of new members of congress are -- don't have political experience, but the republicans have done such a good job building that branch at the state legislature level and governorship level. when will the democrats realize thee need to focus on that, especially to cherry pick candidates for congress? martha: they did not have a bad nigh all around. i think we picked up a number of chambers. there were chambers that flipped. it was more -- it was not a clean sweep on the republican side in the state legislatures. i think nevada picked up both chambers. out west -- ty: alaska house. martha: there are recounts happening in arizona that have those chambers on the brink. not to challenge you, i do think that there's still time to sort of sort through winners and losers there. i think that there might be some democratic breaks there. look, i think it's important

for lots of reasons for us to fill the pipeline with people who are strong candidates, represent their districts wisely, take the job seriously. and frankly have ambition. we have a lot of -- as you know, we have these races every two years. we have seen change. six seats flip in the house when the other party takes the white house is not something to look down on. it's a big deal. it's significant. and i think we have to continue to make investments in recruiting good candidates at the state and local level. and then supporting them. i think you're right to say that it's -- congress -- there isn't as much change at the congressional level as our districts, redirecting has made the districts more conservative or more democratic or more republican along the way.

i do think that there is a lot of important work happening at the state level and we have to stay committed to it. nathan: ty? ty: i want to make one point about that and the down ballot stuff. the way that our society is moving in terms of information becoming disaggregated, some of us probably live in communities where we don't have a local newspaper. particularly if you live in metropolitan area, wjla is not covering the state legislature. we're all in politics so we probably know who our state legislature is, but many people don't. what democrats have fallen victim two, there have been two waves in the last four years, 2010 and 2014, with them nobody knows who their state legislature s they see a d and r. they wipe out the d's and bring in the r's. with president trump if there is a bad midterm in 2018 or bad midterm in 2022, you will see

more democrats than republicans. it's not because democrats don't care about it. i think we can always invest more in down ballot. i think democrats a lot of times don't realize the power of state houses. particularly our donor base doesn't realize the power of state houses. what i would say is it's not as much you don't care, it's just that voters don't know who they are and they see and d and r. when the r wave comes there will be more r's. nathan: my mind is twisted enough i'm already looking forward to the 2018 elections. ty: go to hell. nathan: it's going to be huge. stick with "roll call" and politics coverage. i'm also editor of the gonzalez political report. if you want a three-month free trial subscription, talk to beth in the back corner. i really appreciate you-all for being here and giving us a behind the scenes look. thank you very much. [applause]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org] tried as a big issue in 1e6 2016 and whether to expect in ra trump administration. >> snow that the elections are over congress returns next week for its lame duck session. we are joined by scott wong, senior staff writer with "the hill.". you covered donald trump on capitol hill and the headline of your current piece says

trump and ryan signal new chapter in their relationship. how does this play into next week's elections for speaker? how does this bolster paul ryan's chances in the house? mr. wong: i think it does. before the election, the hillary -- the conventional wisdom was hillary was going to win the race. and donald trump had been threatening to make life miserable for paul ryan. that he had not supported them during the campaign trail, he would come after ryan. now that donald trump is the president-elect, the dynamic has completely shifted. the two men, who met yesterday, were praising each other. speaker ryan rolled out the red carpet for donald trump, hosted a lunch for him in the capitol hill club. then brought him back to the capital where he took him out on the speakers balcony and showed him the view of the

entire d.c. skyline, the platform where he would be inaugurated and sworn in on january 20. and so, the dynamic and the relationship, which has been a pretty testy one throughout the campaign, has completely shifted. >> at of that another duration -- ahead of that inauguration, congress has plenty to do. walk us through this lame-duck session next week in addition to the leadership elections. mr. wong: the presidential race has completely changed everything as one leadership source told me today. the thinking before the election was that congress would try to tackle an omnibus bill, perhaps break it up into smaller pieces with a minibus type of approach that would extend funding for the 2017 fiscal year. now the thinking, with republicans controlling both the white house and both

chambers of congress, is that republicans specifically try to push for a cr that will take funding into early 2017, perhaps february or march. that would allow then-president trump and a republican-controlled congress to hash out a much better deal on spending levels than republicans would have gotten in the lame-duck session with president obama. again, donald trump's victory on tuesday night has changed almost everything in washington. >> on that cr, on the spending measure, let's take a look at some reference on where things stand. we'll go back to september 28, hal rogers on the house floor. >> mr. speaker, i rise today to present the senate amendment. for hr-5325. the legislation includes the fiscal year 2017 continuing

resolution and full-year appropriations for military construction and veterans affairs. it also includes funding to fight prevent the spread of the zika virus and assistance to communities affected by recent devastating floods. this is a reasonable and necessary compromise that will keep the government open and operating, address urgent needs across the country, and provide the necessary support for our service members, their families, and our veterans. first and foremost, mr. speaker, this bill helps us avoid the unwarranted damage of a government shutdown by providing the funds required to keep the government open and operational past our september 30 deadline. the funding is provided at the current rate of $1 trillion and last through december 9. the short timeframe will allow

congress to complete our annual appropriations work without jeopardizing important government functions. secondly, the package contains the full year military construction, the v.a. bill for fiscal 17, which was conferenced by the house and senate and passed by the house already in june. in total, $82.5 billion is provided for our military infrastructure and veterans health and benefits programs, $2.7 billion above current levels with targeted increases to address mismanagement and improve operations at the v.a. it is important to note that once the president signs this bill into law, it will be the first time since 2009 that an individual appropriations bill has been conferenced with the senate and enacted before the

september 30 fiscal year deadline. third, this legislation includes $1.1 billion in funding to respond to and stop the spread of the zika virus. this funding is directed to programs that control mosquitoes, develop vaccines, and treat those affected. this funding is spent responsibly, balanced by $400 million in offsets, in unused funding from other projects. lastly, this legislation includes important provisions that address current national needs, including an additional $37 million to fight the opioid epidemic, which has struck my district especially hard, and n additional $500 million in disaster designated funding to help states recover and rebuild from recent destructive

flooding. i believe this legislation is a good compromise that this house can and should support. it is not perfect. but it ensures we meet our nation's current critical needs. i have said many times before, standing in this exact spot, that a continuing resolution is a last resort. but at this point, it is what we must do to fulfill our congressional responsibility to keep the lights on in our government. so i urge my colleagues to vote aye on this necessary legislation so we can send it to the president's desk without delay. >> hal rogers from september 28. scott wong of "the hill," that short-term cr runs to december 9, a couple of outstanding issues. the president requesting additional military spending just this weekend also the house republican study committee wants a short-term cr into the beginning of the trump

administration. who will win out in the end on this? mr. wong: it probably depends on what donald trump wants. he has a lot of political capital right now. of course, president obama still has a few months left in his term and will be the one signing any sort of funding bill at the end of this year. but president-elect trump will be dictating a lot of what happens during the lame-duck session. he had the support of the voters. certainly, members of congress on the republican side are falling in line behind president-elect trump. we have not seen any signals about what he wants, but i xpect that there probably will be a short-term cr into either february or march.

>> on that to-do list, is aid to flint, michigan. he u.s. house passed that in late september. the congressman talked about that package before they resist. -- they recessed. >> this amendment is something i've been working on for some time and it would bring urgently needed aid to my hometown of flint, michigan. for over a year, the flint water crisis has been public. we have not yet been able to act here in congress. it has been even longer since the residence of flint that have been using water that is poison. poinsed with lead, for two full years. to be clear, what happened in flint was a failure of government at every level of government. through this amendment, congress can take its rightful place in fulfilling its obligation in its responsibility to help my hometown recover.

the amendment would authorize $170 million to restore the safety of water infrastructure in communities like my hometown of flint that have lead in their water. more importantly it would create a concrete commitment from both bodies of congress to get aid to my hometown, for my hometown, to the president's desk. the senate passed similar legislation by a vote of 95-3. this amendment would ensure the house also supports communities like flint that are suffering with this terrible problem. we have waited an awful long time for this. we worked very hard to get this amendment. -- get this amendment in a bipartisan fashion to the floor. i want to thank all of our friends. >> michigan congressman. scott wong, he mentioned that

the senate passed their own measure. hat is left to do? mr. wong: the two sides, the senate, house, the negotiators need to come together and settle on a final product and present that back to their respective chambers. that is another item that needs to happen during the lame-duck session in terms of the flint -- session. in terms of the flint funding, the house bill that was negotiated is about $170 million. the senate bill contains a little bit more, $300 million. they will probably have to meet somewhere in the middle. the good news for the people of flint is that donald trump has been very supportive of those efforts. he visited flint back in september, he spoke to a number of the residents and has been

talking a lot about infrastructure spending on the campaign trail. so, i would expect -- everything is up in the air, but i would expect the two sides will be able to come together on flint. >> majority leader mitch mcconnell prioritized getting down the defense authorization bill and this 21st century cures bill. tells about that, briefly. mr. wong: i do not have too much information on what is happening on the senate side. i do know when mcconnell spoke to reporters the other day, one of his top priorities obviously was the repeal of obamacare. i think a lot of the discussion that will be happening is going to be about what republicans do in the first 100 days of the new trump administration. that was part of the discussion that happened yesterday between trump and mcconnell and trump and ryan. reince priebus was there as

well, who is one of the. who is being talked about for chief of staff of the white house. i think a lot of the focus, what i'm hearing from members today, a lot of the focus is going to be on the top priorities of those first 100 days of the trump administration. probably at the top of that list is repealing obamacare. >> we started talking about the house leadership elections next week. let's talk about senate elections. the senate democrats will elect a new minority leader with harry reid retiring. it is likely to be chuck schumer. what is the relationship between chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell? mr. wong: i think schumer is seen as more of a deal maker compared to harry reid. harry reid was somebody who often would throw up roadblocks in the process and accuse republicans of doing the same. he was a fiery leader. obviously, a former boxer.