." at 1:00 a.m., today's speech and rally for democratic presidential candidate senator kirsten gillibrand outside the trump international hotel in new york city. ♪ >> robert caro, on february 22, 2019, there is an article on the front page of the wall street journal. the headline -- robert caro's new book looks back back on his own career waiting on readers who were waiting on his final volume. have you ever seen a headline like that on the newspaper?

robert: [laughter] makes you feel good in a way that a lot of people were .aiting host: what he think about that? robert: i hope when they read the book they will realize why i .ook a lot more time host: it is called "working, writing, interviewing and the rest of it on the subtitle. hope robert: it is about basically my experiences trying to find out about robert moses and lyndon johnson and about political power. and about how moses and johnson used political power. and what is the nature of political power that they employed to gain their ends. you have new information on here about interviewing. chapter on do a interviewing? robert: people always ask me about that. i have never written anything

about myself. and i suddenly realized that while i want to understand how power works, there are also things i wanted people, not advice, but just from my own experiences, things i have encountered in trying to learn about power. share a fewanted to of those experiences with people . host: you tell us in the book in "the powerbrokers," published years ago, as you have told us before, still selling. how often did you interview him and how did you get the interview? robert: i didn't get the interview -- i didn't get to interview him at all for many years. moses had been in power for 44 years. the man who had more power than mayor, in a

governor, or any mayor and governor combined. i didn't know where he got the power from, neither did anyone else. career, course of his many biographers had started or proposed doing books on him. and they were told the same thing i was told by his public heations people, they said, will never talk to you, his. family will never talk to you they had some phrase, basically -- anyone who ever wants a contract from the city or state in the future will never talk to you. and he didn't talk to me for about two years. so in desperation, what i did drewhrough a series -- a jew

a series of concentric circles on a paper. him, the firstas circle was his family and friends. i said, he can keep those people in the inner circle from talking to him but i bet he can keep the people on the outer circles who have encountered him in one way or another. and i started interviewing them. and i think he learned about that. i later was told, this is complementary to me, i don't know if it is true, but someone once said to me that after about two years, he relies that finally someone was going to do a biography of him whether he wanted it or not. and all of a sudden his daughter called one day and said, she called him poppa bear, she said, papa bear will see you. so i went to see him for the first time. ross where did you see him, and

what was it like? robert: at the far end of jones beach that he created on long island, was a little summer cottage. inent out to interview him may, on a day when it was deserted, all you other cottages were boarded up. i come around the corner and limousine andlong three troopers standing at attention, and a chauffeur. you went up these stairs into his rather modest cottage. but he had torn out the walls of the end so that it was all one big -- so he sat in the center in this big black leather chair. to the left of him out the window was the robert moses bridge, the causeway to fire island. to the right of him was the tower of robert moses as to park. so there is robert moses sitting framed by this -- the robert

moses estate park. there he is sitting framed by this. let me tell you, it was intimidating. andad this wonderful smile charm. still mighty. still at the height of his power. -- he was 78r years old. he said, so you are the young fellow who thinks he is going to write a book about me. we had seven interviews. when i started asking questions, that was the end of it and i never saw him again. host: or dealing by started asking him questions? host: well, the first few interviews were more monologues and interviews -- more monologues than interviews. my only previous experience had been in investigative reporting for newsday on long island.

had won a couple of minor, really minor journalistic awards . when you are young and you win anything, you think you know everything. i thought i knew about political power. as soon as he started talking, if you asked him a question, his answers were monologues, he might go on an hour. he taught me, i know nothing at compared to him. i didn't even understand how political power at his level worked. but at the same time, i am going his correspondence smith, and his correspondence with franklin roosevelt when he was governor. some of the things he is telling

me didn't comport with the facts. in the seventh interview, i started asking him about an incident that i knew he had kept secret for 45 years. mentioned the name connected with it, i could just see his eyes change. just a few minutes later he said, that is enough for today. every time i called after that, he wouldn't see me, host: did he read your book? robert: i believe he did. fact.t know that for a what i know is, this, again, is a compliment to myself, she had a team of investigators. what he would do, if a public thecial opposed him, one of first things he would do was put his team of investigators. bloodhounds," "my

to go look over the guys live to see if there's anything disreputable that he come a moses, could threaten to expose. i was told, because i had become friends with members of his entourage, he has put the bloodhounds on you. and i always was pretty proud of the fact that he issued this attack on me. there are hundreds of careless mistakes, and i replied by saying, name one. and he couldn't. i have always been proud of that, host: you say that as you are sitting there interviewing somebody, you often right two letters down. what do they stand for, and why do you do that? robert: s u, stands for shut up. greatesthat one of the

weapons when interviewing is silence. question, they don't want to answer it, if you helpsst keep silent, that to get them to fill in the gap is saying something is so telling you what you want -- and telling you what you want. so every time i feel like u.king, right s host: tell us the lady bird johnson story. host said in the book, that was the only interview in my life where i couldn't look at the person i was interviewing. i have had a number of interviews of mrs. johnson and they were tremendously helpful. she would take this desk calendar and take it for one

year at a time and she would look to it and say, oh, i see ats night we had dinner hall's restaurant, i remember that dinner, and this is what we talked about. , ier a number of years found in the-- i johnson papers, a telegram that becauseuzzled me johnson was out in australia during the war, at a time when he had to decide whether he was going to -- that the senior texas senator, sheppard, had died. johnson had to decide whether he was going to run again for congress or whether he was granted to run for the senate seat. he wanted to run for the senate seat. you are only allowed one telephone call when you are out there and he had evidently

called someone named alice, i had never heard of her and she sent back a telegram which said, i think the exact text is in the book -- everyone else thinks you , iuld run for the senate disagree. i think you should run for the house. and he ran for the house. so in my mind is, who is alice? thinkout of the blue, you you're good at finding things out, so much of what you find out is sheer luck, nothing to do with you. not long after that, i am sitting up in the reading room of the johnson library, in the 10th floor, and the phone rings and the archival staff says, it you.r the receptionist says, there are two women here who would like to talk to you, would you come down

and talk to them? ? i? had no idea who they were, but of course, i went down. in the first thing, they introduce themselves and said, we want to tell you about alice because we have read the see how you," we work, we know you're going to find out about alice. that might not have been true without them, and we don't want like justyed another one of lyndon johnson's affairs, because she was much more than that. they told me about her. and i found other things in the papers that supported what they were telling me. in a realized that she was not only a woman with whom lyndon had -- their relationship went on for years, in fact, a couple of decades.

i am not sure the sexual part lasted more than a couple of years. politicalve him scale, she was a great hostess in washington -- she gave him political skill. she was a great hostess in washington, very sophisticated. was a youngn he congressman, 29 years old. ungainly arms, so she told him, always wear french cups, with nice cufflinks, so those arms would become an asset and not a liability. she taught him to wear a certain type of necktie which he favored for the rest of his life. she told him, always be photographed from the left side of your face because it looks better than the left side. the reason she was informed, in my mind, was that in a number of crucial point in lyndon

johnson's career, this woman, alice glass, who started out as a smalltime girl from texas -- small-town girl from texas, gave him advice that in at least one case saved his career, -- he was financed in by a huge texas contracting firm. was prepared to keep financing johnson and he was doing favors for them. but then there came a conflict, a real conflict. hermann brown owned a lot of low from which you got a rental input. lyndon johnson wanted to build a , and to doject there

that, he had to condemn most of these buildings. hermann brown was enraged. at the same time, lyndon johnson was getting hermann brown contracts for a dam, and he wouldn't give in on wanting the housing projects there. hermann brown's chief lobbyist was about to turn on the lyndon, and when hermann turns on someone, he never turned back. both glass invites them down to her huge a state in virginia and says, why don't you compromise? hermann, you take the dam, linden, you have the land -- lyndon, you have the land. there were certain point in his career where he listened to her device. she was someone who mattered.

so to find out about her, i was going to her hometown of marlon and interviewing her friends and family. all of a sudden her friend called and said, lady bird knows you have been to marlon. a little town in the middle of nowhere. -- at that time i was interviewing mrs. johnson and her secretary said the next interview should be out at the ranch. and it went out to the ranch, and we sat down for lunch. she was sitting at the head of the table, i was sitting at her right hand, and i had my notebook that i take notes in. without any preamble, she suddenly starts talking about beauty, her and her elegance and her sophistication, and how she taught lyndon things and give him advice but he always followed.

during that interview, i couldn't look at lady bird johnson entire time. i just sat there taking notes. host: did she talk with you ?gain after that robert: yes. the next week we just went back to our regular interviews. to do someed housekeeping. this is about our faith our at least that we have talked about lyndon johnson -- our eighth hour that we have talked about lyndon johnson. if it sounds like we're jumping around today, people can get on c-span.com and watch all of our interviews which go through a lot of the things were talking about. just wanted to mention that. the housekeeping is, you talk about it in the article, you are 83 degrees. i am not that far behind you. how is your health? robert: [applause] [laughter]

so far so good. host: everybody wants to know, are you going to the third book on lyndon b johnson? how many pages do you have done now? robert: the "wall street journal" reporter thought i was almost done. i'm still at the same spot. pages toading the 392 get back into the johnson book. host: would that be 392 pages for a book, or for -- be --: it turned out to my pages, i cut the page,. use the computer, i used a typewriter. when i cut and paste, i cut out paragraphs and scotch tape them. i have a lot of long pages. generally the book turns out to be a lot longer than the number

of pages in the manuscript. host: when did the last book start and when will it end? i don't mean the writing time, but in history? robert: it basically begins at johnson's campaign. it begins in the 1964 which contained things like the gulf of tonkin incident and our invasion of the dominican republic. 23,000 marines to the dominican republic, an episode which is pretty much forgotten by history, but it is a revealing episode. the gulf of tonkin is interesting. it starts when he is embarking on this great program legislation -- the war on poverty, the civil rights act, that he is going to kerry forward. he has to campaign against in 1965,, and then

which is basically where i am up to now, he is passing an astonishing display of legislative genius to get this stuff through congress. the voting rights act, medicare, onicaid, headstart, the war poverty, 70 separate education hels, and at the same time is in secret, basically, trying to keep a secret, escalating the vietnam war. so that is about where i am now. host: he have often said in several interviews we have done that you're going to go to vietnam. are you still going to go to vietnam, and when? --ert: right now i am doing i will go after i finish this section. understand it,ou i have long digressions in my ifks to set the stage,

you will, for something that he is doing. so right now, he is about to pass medicare, which was first proposed decades before health insurance for the poor and the i am doing a section that you might call "what it was like to be old and sick in america before there was medicare and medicaid." is, when thatn section is finished, that is the about the right time for me to go to vietnam he spent three years in the hill country of texas to read how long do you think you will spent in vietnam to get what you are looking for? don't like this answer but it is a true answer, i don't know. the hilloved to

country of texas because i said i don't understand that country, i don't understand the people, therefore, and am not understanding lyndon johnson, who grew up there, i didn't know it was going to take three years. . i have specific things i want to do and see the vietnam because a want to go into it in depth. host: can you give us an idea of what you're looking for? robert: i will tell you one thing i know. as i said, had to do that, but i want to show what it was like for american boys to fight in the jungle. there are a lot of wonderful books, memoirs on the vietnam picture ofive me a

how incredible, how hard, how difficult it was for an american boy suddenly to find themselves in the jungle, what jungle fighting is. i got very interested in that. but i feel that i have to see the sights of various battles in the jungle myself. i really have no idea. you really don't know how long it is going to take when you set out. host: will you take ina with you? robert: yes. host: how is she doing? robert: she is doing fine. host: you always give tribute to her. what did she specifically do during all these years for you? how did you work together? robert: that varies from year to year. in the book you're holding, "working," i talk about one thing she did. [laughter] i was trying to find out about

the lives of the women of the hill country, before lyndon johnson, in the 1940's brought them electricity. these women were nothing like women i had known in new york. there were such an isolation and loneliness about them. sometimes you go to interview one of them and the directions would be, you go 40 miles outside of this town, you turn left, you drive 30 miles on this unpaved road. sometimes you realize you didn't pass another house for those 30 miles. so if you are not used to talking to strangers and talking about -- they aren't used to talking to strangers and they aren't used to talking about personal things. before that, thought i could interview everybody, but i can get these women to talk to me about their lives. thisna, who has thes great gift at making friends,

she learned how to make fake fig preserves. she would help go with me to interview these people and she would bring them fruit preserves. and the women were more friendly to me. but of course, that denigrates what ina does. ina does research for me. she is the only person that i have ever trusted to do research powerbroker" or any of my books. i feel there is something in a section of papers that i ask her to do for me, if there's anything there, she will find it. overlooks said, that the fact that she has written two books of her own on the intersection of history and travel in france, that have become classics in travel

literature. host: let's go to researching, because we are on this topic. you have this chapter on b j.ing," -- l what does that mean? years, it is -- over the his staff and archivists removed from his general office and put in various files which are , confidentialbja file. file, lbjiates pre-presidential personal files, but they are especially significant documents. host: i want to tell the how you found when lyndon johnson changed.

robert: can i say, the reason that i was doing what i'm about to tell you, when i was a young by accidentfell into becoming an investigative reporter. i knew nothing about being an , but agative reporter had this wonderful editor, real got out of the front page, out guy, out20's -- real of the front page, out of the 1920's. the big thing he said to me which relates to this is, just remember, turn every page. never assume anything. damn page. god now, of course, the johnson library, it is so huge. at allaid, i will look the pages for his first four years as congressman because a want to turn the picture --

paint a picture of what it is like to be a young congressman in washington. which is what i try to do in all the books. they're all these boxes and things, and i kept thinking, turn every page. and i began to notice that over the course of these first few years, something had changed. there are these letters from johnson the committee chairmen, pleading letters that a guy without power, a junior congressman without power would write to a senior congressman who had power and who johnson needed. host: this is in the late 1930's. '39,t: we are talking '38, .nd 1940 he came when he was 29 years old from texas. no power. just another nobody on the lower

wrong of congress. but somehow in these three years, when all the letters were most together -- were mushed together, there were senior letters from senior congressman to him asking, can have a little bit of your time? why were there are these two kinds of letters? so i put them into chronological order. i saw there was a change. the letters where he was begging for something all were dated before the month of october, 1940. the letters dated after november 5, 1940, they were the opposite letters. there were people who wanted something from him. what had happened? so at that time, i was interviewing a guy who i think you meant, tommie tom prime corker, may -- tommy

he was in washington lobbyist, fixer, a great source for me. i was interviewing him and he was totally frank about everything. i said to him, what happened in october 1940? kid, thate's to come i saidd to call me, kid what happened after 1940 question what he said, money, kid. but you are never going to be able to read about that. and i said, why? and he said, linda never put everything in writing. and i said, that was probably true. because i would never put anything in my books that i can't document. but i remembered this advice, to turn every page. and i was looking through every file folder that related to

1940. there were a lot of them. and all of a sudden the documentation and writing was there. in fact, one of the things that -- there was one of the most i am interested in showing the sources of political power. there is a document there, a typed list, both john connally, des, i thinkon's ai he typed it. there were two typed columns. on the left column was the name of the congressman. the second column was how much money he wanted, and what he wanted the money for, for the campaign of 1940. the amounts were so small in terms of today's politics, you wouldn't believe it. lyndon needs $1500 for last-minute ads. lyndon to try to cheat at the polls needs $500 for

poll watchers. johnson's own writing was what he decided to do with each request. if he was going to give the guy the money that he asked for, he wrote, ok. he was going to give them part of the money he asked for, he would write, ok, $500, or ok, $200. sometimes he wrote, none. sometimes he wrote none out. what asked john connolly, "none out" meant. john said, he was never going to get in money from lyndon johnson. lyndon johnson never forgot and never forgave. now where did johnson get any of this money to distribute to congressman? i found documentation of that in the papers.

themoney came from contracting firm, from other businessmen who needed favors. politicalnson was a genius. he was a junior congressman without any power. how was he going to get it? what does he have that no other congressman has? he is up on the only congressman that those two groups of people, , many ofongressmen them who needed money for campaigns, and texas oilman and conservatives who wanted federal influence and were willing to give money to get it. give it through me, the money, and all of a sudden he had national political power. host: one of the things i did in preparation for this interview was go back and look at the dates on a lot of your sources. list them pretty quickly. horace buckley died in 2000. john brown, 1983.

sam houston johnston, 1978. 1981, cochran. moses in 1981. the reason i mentioned the death dates, you're still writing about this, they are all gone, do you have any attitude about using what they told him in confidence back then now that they are gone? is there any change in your mind when somebody -- robert: let me correct you. when i talk to somebody, they book.t is for a i am not saying to people, i am only using this as an anonymous source. believe -- i have written so many books -- i don't believe many times in my books,

the sources aren't named, i'm sure there are a few. that is not the concern. andmentioned horace george. i had 22 interviews with horace busby. he became a great friend. for groton buy history now, but for a long time -- forgotten by history now, but for our long time, horace busby was the aide who johnson was closest to in a paternal way. i was able to call busby and .eorge george was his chief aide and strategist for years. we became real friends. one busby had a stroke during this time, went into the hospital, when he got out he

ina, he letter to had a crush on ina, he said all i could think of when it took me to hospital was, now, robert want have anyone to tell them about the vice president. but he recovered. but i could pick up the phone. i am typing away and i could say that thingr busby, you told me about johnson talking to george wallace, was johnson in the rocking chair? he would say, he was in the rocking chair. thanks. and i would just go back to typing. now, they are all, would you jus -- what you just said, they are all dead. i can't do that anymore. host: can you talk about your approach to the fifth book. you're not a spring chicken anymore. what are your plans?

what are you thinking? i remember years ago paul reed wrote the book on william manchester, he was getting older and he was sick, and all that stuff. a lot of people say, we want to know what your conclusions are war.ndon johnson and the do you have a plan if this doesn't go well for you from a health standpoint? that it will be eventually published in a matter at what point you finished it on? well, the one thing i know is i'm never going to let my books, this book, be finished by anyone else. whatever i have written is going to be published. if i don't finish the book, that is it. i have in my will, may literally literary

executors know what is going to happen with my book. people who have read the first two volumes of his churchill biography know that he is just know that they are in the hands of a great biographer. view, younger people who read that book first, william manchester's not such a good writer, they will go back to the first two books. that is a real tragedy. nobody is going to publish his book -- a book with my name on it with a word in it that i haven't written myself. asking me, do i think about dying before i finish? of course, i do. host: by the way, you say that it is several years off. ibert: that is correct, but

am not going to rush that book. or change the way i approach that book from the way i approached the other books. because what would be the sense of that? i am going right along with this book is the same way i did the other book. s. gottlieb has edited every word you have ever written . he is 87 years old. robert: yes. is he still active, and has he seen what you've written until now? robert: of the fifth book? no. i don't ever show bob, i have never shown ball or any other editor anything until the book is done. at an show anyone award of what i have written until the book is done. ina's younger person who is the is a-- will reach the book go along. host: you have written about the difficulty of making money in your younger years.

i want to ask you about your later years. about when you became a success. was a -- there journal article that said you published at least 1.5 million books. would you agree with that? robert: that is the publishers' figure. say you got four dollars a book. that is $6 million. when in your life did you become a financial success and change the way you live? because you had some very difficult years where you had to sell the house to survive. how much of that can you tell us , so that if somebody is looking at the rest of their lives and they want to be a writer, when does it start to be a positive, from a financial standpoint. robert: the answer is, the first

five years or so that i was ,orking on the power broker that was a time of being broke, really broke. book, about that in this "working." my advance for that book was $5,000, of which they give you $2500, and you were going to get the other $2500 when he finished. , i had a grant from a foundation, so i quit my job. but i was a reporter. we basically had no savings. when the grant ran out, we had no money. small house on long island, this is before the real estate boom.

we bought that house, i remember, for $45,000, a big mortgage. and we sold it for $70,000. so we made $25,000 or so. that was enough to move to an apartment in the bronx, which we didn't like. that was a bad time for us. but that was enough to live for a year. and we had a son. money.n we were out of ina went to work teaching. but then i got hurt playing basketball. i should have stopped playing basketball. and ina -- i needed someone to do the research, because it can get out of bed for a lot of months at that time. so ina had to stop teaching and research for me.

so we were really broke. time,e look back at that that was a time of really struggling financially. then, "the new yorker," since you ask these personal questions, after about five house ihe publishing first signed with had very little interest in the book. after about five years, there came a moment when i could leave that publishing house, because my editor left, and i didn't have an agent, so someone gave me a list of agents and i found this wonderful agent. this was 1971, i think. for 48as been my agent years.

and she read the book, and she put me together with bob gottlieb, who has been my editor for 48 years. fights, of better because he is a very strong-willed person. what he is also a great editor for me t. the power broker was never any sort of a bestseller, i mean, it is now, i think it is in 55th books,g, but the johnson i didn't know how long they were going to take, so what is to do was a lot of lecturing. i really didn't like doing that, but you can make money doing that. books,ly, the last three

they have all been number one "new yorks on the times" list, so obviously, things have changed now. but they changed to gradually. host: when were you first paid to give a speech, and what triggered that. paid, at probably was the beginning i used to get paid for hundred dollars. realized,ddenly people seem to think, i know this because there were organizations who would invite me back. organizations, conventions, things like that. there were real electricity's out there. for a while, i gave a lot of lectures -- there were real lectures fees out there.

for a while, i give a lot of lectures. i don't like giving lectures. host: still don't? robert: now, i do very, very few, actually. you are about the only interviewer that i feel -- i feel so comfortable with you because we had all these interviews. don't usually feel like -- [laughter] host: for someone who says they want to devote their lives to ,riting and make a living on it butures, your advances, your advances covered a lot of years. and you have an office. you take thishen trip to vietnam, is that on your nickel? robert: yes. now, things are fine. i get what you would consider an ofzing amount, i consider, calls and emails from young

writers. sort of asking me what you are asking me. themlly have no answer for . for myself, there was never any question. i wanted to finish the power broker. -- i amhe really felt not going to be a little finish that. we are not going to be able to live. that was until things changed. but i really wanted to finish that book. and if you really want to write, if you feel like you have something you want to say, my feeling is you better try to do it, because i would be pretty unhappy if i hadn't tried. host: i want to read you back something you have said in your book -- there is still so much about myself that i don't understand.

all that is certainly the truest thing i said in the book. [laughter] host: why did you write that? robert: you asked terrific questions. relation to is in why my books take so long, if i remember what part of the book that is in, why do i go down these long paths? why do i stay in the middle of the book, i have to go live in -- we have to go live in the texas hill country because it on understand this? ," wetted ier broker say, i have to take six months and research one neighborhood that robert moses destroyed? so what it means to really show, to make -- i don't understand what it is in me.

there are solely things i don't understand in me. but i think in that sense you just read, is i don't understand why when i think of something, i -- i have to show in my books the human cost of highways by showing what happens in theirman beings path, or public officials who opposed robert moses. whenyou say, this happened you were living in the bronx, you didn't have any money. and i would say that at this time, i had stopped fooling myself. this was going to take six months. you have to learn about the neighborhood, you have to read the weekly neighborhood newspapers, you have to find the people who used to live there, and they are scattered along the place. he have to interview them. this is going to take six months. that was a hard decision.

able -- i think this is where i wrote that, that i couldn't go on with the book. i kept trying to do the book without chapter in it. and i remember, i couldn't do it. i would sit there making outlines and throwing away outlines, saying, this is no good. it is not going to be any good. that is when i realized that if i wanted to write about political power, the way that i wanted to read about it, i had show able to show, and to in enough detail so the reader could emphasize with them. i had to show not only the powerful, but the powerless. and it shows a long time -- it takes a long time to learn about farmers in long island or farmers in the texas hill country that you know nothing about. better know how to ask --

i don't know how to ask this. is there a chance that after all these years, and you have been working on this since 1967, books, that you have become the story more than what you are amine, go back to the way we started this, the front page of the "wall street journal," people want to know more about you than they want to know about lyndon johnson or a moses, after all these years. [laughter] that is why i wrote this book. i said i may not have enough time to write a full-scale memoir about my own experiences, but i get so many questions about them that i think i will put down a few of them now. or is why i wrote "working

reason.for that i said, if i don't get to write them a more the johnson books, little glimpse of what it is like to try and find how power works. it is a book about finding out .ow power works, really host: how long did you spend on putting the book together? robert: very little time. last summer, i suddenly was a class had come out to see me and the kids were so worked.ed in how i i never talked or wrote about myself and how i worked. there are no articles really on how i worked. , maybe iy said, well want get to do a whole book and

really say how i worked, so i will give some glimpses. i will show a few interviews, what it is like to interview. something about what i found when you go through papers. not advice, just some glimpses like.t it is host: i think i remember, bill moyers has never talked. is he still saying no? robert: yes. he has said no so many times, i haven't asked him. host: did you ever know what he said no? robert: no. i will say, i don't think it is because he doesn't like the books. he has spoken in public very highly of these books. but he is always said he won't talk to me. he is really the only one, i think. host: i want to shift completely, he has spoken out dust youonald trump

spoke out against donald trump early in the campaign, july of 2016. if you are someone looking at the president right now and you wanted to do just like you have done on the lyndon johnson, study power, is it there, or do we already know everything about how he uses power and what he is , with all the documentaries and everything that has been done on him? robert: another great question. , i have come is across things in lyndon johnson that we thought we knew everything about. let me mention one -- the gulf of tonkin. then he said there and say, i will turn every page of the papers on this. i will interview everyone who was still alive, who is in the white house, who was involved with this.

say, what we knew was just was what i thought i knew, just like the icing on the top of the cake. look at what was going on, that you only find out in later years. think the is, i reporting on donald trump's white house has been great. i follow it with fascination and it is simply great for me as a one, the think, one by story is all corroborated. so the reporting is great. from my own experience that we know the whole story? i would guess, not at all. host: this correctly counted right, you have written about 5000 pages. since 1957. [robert laughs]

book, 200 is a small some pages long. it is called "working: researching, interviewing him a writing or: from our guest, robert caro. thank you for being with us. robert: thank you for having me. ♪ announcer: all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org. q&a, aer: next sunday on supreme court reporter discusses biography on chief justice john roberts. that 8:00 pacific time on

c-span. on the next washington journal, the latest on the mueller report and a conversation with the former senior counsel for the whitewater investigation. as always, we take your phone calls. you can join in the conversation on facebook and twitter. washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. monday night on "the communicators," from capitol senator eda critic markey of massachusetts and republican congressman greg walden from oregon joins us to talk about privacy, mergers and big tech companies. >> if you want us to preempt is thenia, how strong law you are willing to put on the books? that is the debate we will have in the congress this year. and from my opinion, if it is not the strongest possible privacy protection, then there is no point to preempting the states that want to give strong

privacy protections to their citizens. >> if you think about the internet, it is like this superhighway we drive down. but what really happens is eventually you need to take and off ramps to get into the neighborhood you want to go. the off ramps are your search engines, your social media. you think about facebook, google, and some of the other providers really have enormous control over what we see, what we access, how we access it. i think this is right for the public square, for debate. announcer: watch the communicators monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. >> congress received william barr's summary on robert mueller's report. you can read the summary on our website, www.c-span.org.

>> theresa may takes questions from the house of commons and talks about brexit negotiations. eu officials announce an extension for great britain to leave the eu and at 11:00 p.m., another chance to see q&a with an author talking about his book. >> prime minister theresa may announced she is asking european leaders for a short extension of the date on which brexit would take effect. the eu was scheduled -- great britain was scheduled to leave on march 29. this is just over one hour. >> order. questions for the prime minister. number one, mr. speaker. >> the prime minister. mr.