>> c-span have live coverage of the 2020 presidential candidates at the iowa state fair. we are live tomorrow with leon castro, and saturday with senator jay inslee, amy klobuchar, senator kirsten gillibrand, former governor john hickenlooper, senator is lauren, and senator cory booker. warren, andlizabeth senator cory booker. watch live, watch anytime on c-span.org, or listen live on

the go using the free c-span radio app. host: we are joined by perino & stirewalt, fox news channel's. one half of "perino and stirewalt: i'll tell you what." for someone who might not be into podcasting, how do you describe your podcast? guest: i think podcasts are sort of the magazines of the digital era. it is a different format. we take a very different approach. i work for a 24-hour news channel. so we are pumping it out around the clock. we look at our podcast as an opportunity to catch up for the week and talk about what is going on. we do it every wednesday. it started, quite frankly, out of necessity. they needed somebody to do something for labor day a couple of years ago.

dana and i are friends and we started doing it. like a lot of new media, when you are doing it the best thing is you don't think anybody is listening and don't worry about it. we spent the first year not paying attention to if anyone was listening and use it as an opportunity for friends to catch up. imagine if your closest friend, you had the opportunity. it was scheduled into your book once a week. we catch up for an hour. it turned into something that we were really amazed after a while how big a listener community was, how popular it was, how successful it was. so it was a totally unplanned, unscripted entity. we could not be happier about it. host: what do you know about your audience? guest: i think they are -- well, i know they are thoughtful. they are funny. they are engaged. the inside jokes and trivia, i think because it is in your head , because a podcast is in your head, you feel a sense of

connection. you know the experience and i know the experience of when you're on tv, people feel like they know you. let me tell you, when i travel in promotion of my book or i am giving speeches or going out around the country, the degree of connection i have with people who are podcast listeners is remarkable. it's an intimate relationship. host: remind people what the book is. it i the book is "every man a king: a short, colorful history of american populists." you can see my speech about it

on c-span.org. host: type in "stirewalt" and you will find disappearances. his appearances. in terms of downloads, do you know how many that is? guest: apple makes it tricky. apple is sneaky and that's why you have to get a lot of reviews and people have to go star it and review it for apple to percolate it. i think we are sort of like the "new york times" bestseller list. there has to be some sleight-of-hand involved in how they do it, so people don't game the system. we have pretty consistently been a top political podcast for the past three years. host: do you see your job is to make money for the podcast and make it self-sustaining? is it to drive eyeballs to the fox news content behind it? guest: my job is to catch up with dana perino and have a good time. fortunately, our employers have never interfered with what we are doing. it has just been what it is. the same way i read a daily newsletter. you just make it. there are products -- a favorite podcast of mine is malcolm gladwell's revisionist history. it is a great podcast, and it is deeply researched, deeply reported. it is all gladwellian from top to bottom.

but then there was the moment that happened this week -- actually i was listening to it this morning, and he included a conversation with at&t's chief marketing officer. it is hard to read an ad in a podcast. every time jonah goldberg's talks about sleepnumber beds, you can see it is awkward to make that part of the plug. unlike a commercial on tv. to have to make it part of it, to have gladwell have to do an interview -- here's a journalist doing an interview with a guy talking by how great at&t's phones are, it just feels awkward. we don't have to do that. nor do we have to say, "tonight at 7:00, you can see an amazing interview with elmo from "sesame

street."" that's a big part of what listeners want. if not authenticity, at least verisimilitude. host: an interview with chris stirewalt about his podcast. you can join the conversation. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. you mentioned the halftime report, your newsletter. how do you think president trump did in his trips to dayton and el paso? what did he need to do? guest: he has figured out a way to handle these different than his predecessors. the previous template was there is a tragic incident, and then you wait and go to the memorial service and make remarks at the memorial service. that is not going to work for trump, especially in incidents like these, where he's unwelcomed by many, where it is contentious, where it is angry. that is not going to work. he figured out a different way to do it.

he's done it a few times now. you get in early. you go soon. you meet behind closed doors. you don't do big public events, and then you get out. the president can say i went, i consoled, but i did not do some event. you think back to barack obama speaking about the gabby gifford shooting in arizona. we think about george w. bush in new orleans having to go to jackson square. those are not moments that trump will be able to land. he figured out something that works for him. host: president trump went out, he is also tweeting. he had comments for some of his critics. should he not have been tweeting yesterday? host: look, i don't care with these people do. they are politicians. he is trying to get reelected. there is an interesting debate that goes on in our politics about trump and his tweets. some republicans will tell you it is four-dimensional chess.

he's a secret genius. other democrats will agree and say he's using tweets to destroy the nation. i tend to fall into the camp that says most of it is probably reactive. he watches beto o'rourke cussing a blue streak at him. and he goes and engages on twitter. here you have o'rourke -- basically he's heading for the exits in the democratic process. it is over for him. i think he scored 2% in the latest quinnipiac poll. here is trump throwing him a lifeline by engaging back with him and telling him to "be quiet." this is what o'rourke needs. he needs the exposure to make himself -- not a victim here but at least having grievance. the key attribute, the best thing you can have is grievance, and now o'rourke has grievance

, and trump has grievance with o'rourke. and they can fight with each other on the internet. host: kevin from colorado. good morning. chris. hi, i do watch fox primarily, but more as a student. m a student of journalism, and i'm a media consultant by trade. i have a masters in journalism. i am fascinated by how effective fox is. a narrowcaster rather than a broadcaster. my question is about fox's demographics.

based on what i know, whites account for 63% of the u.s. population, down from 72% in the census. your audience is 94% white. average age is 65, 66. it is national but it's a narrowcaster. narrowcaster and that you actually reach less than 1% of the u.s. population. guest: i have no idea where he got the numbers. i don't know if they are true. the truth is cable news is whiter than -- the audience is whiter and older than the country as a whole, because we are going through -- podcasts are a big part of this.

we are going through a transition. i call it the wormhole. american media is passing through this space. if you look at espn struggling to figure out a way to do sports. they are struggling because cord cutting hits younger people at a higher rate than older folks. baby boomers are less likely to be cord cutters and people who are millennials or zennials. we have to realize where the viewers are and what is going to happen. i think podcasts are part of it. we have a fox nation product trying to connect with younger viewers. it is hard. the cable platform that served us so well for not just us but , c-span and our competitors for the past 20 years does not work in the same way and is not going to continue to work in the same way it does so everybody has to be ready. host: he said he had a masters in journalism.

what qualifications should someone have to be a journalist today? guest: they should work as a journalist. journalist professors almost always regret when i speak. i have a degree in history. getting advanced degree in journalism is great if you want to teach journalism. if you want to practice journalism, practice journalism -- it's a vocation but it's also a trade. you have to go do it. the most important thing i can tell anybody that wants to be a reporter and a journalist is go find somebody who will you money -- i was paid $250 a week at a college. write five stories today and check back in a couple of years. either you will love it and you won't notice you are underpaid for being overworked and you will be underpaid, or you will be selling insurance summer.

host: how did you get to fox news? guest: i covered the statehouse. i had a really stable career. i have carried the title politics editor since i was 28 years old. i am 42 now. i think i'm in a rut. i have been a political editor for a long time. host: what does the digital politics editor at fox news do? guest: i am just the politics editor now. i used to be the digital politics editor, but i'm just a regular politics editor now. i think of the stories. what are the things reporters should be working on. i write the halftime report. i do a podcast. i make regular appearances on the channel. on election night, and i don't say it's my favorite part, but it's really one of my favorite parts -- it's a long process that takes us there, but when they say "fox news can now project that barack obama will

win ohio," or "donald will win pennsylvania," i get to be part of that decision. that's a really cool thing i get to do and i love it. host: for people waiting for those calls, can you explain how you do that? guest: we get them in advance and we wait until the tension is as high as possible -- no. we actually have -- i will not get into the weeds, but that's host: weeds are ok here. guest: weeds are ok? here is the deal. we tried something last year to great success called the fox

news voter analysis. fnva. the fnva is different than an exit poll. we were not satisfied with exit polling. no one is satisfied with exit polling. the way they work on election day is you take a big survey, maybe 5000 humans participate. it is bigger and you also used to have a pretty high rate of confidence that these folks were actual voters, because you were talking at the polling places. election day is now election month. that makes it hard. you rely more on phone calls to homes and doing that stuff. partnering with the associated press, university of chicago, we have come up with the brilliant arnin mishkin, nerd number one. i am nerd number two. we can talk now just about who voted, but who did not vote ny. a big part -- one of the things americans fun and about our system now -- i believe it was geddy lee -- americans are saluting themselves and are just as responsible for why we have as broken a system as we do as those who are voting. maybe more so in a way. knowing why they did not vote in what they want is part of the discussion. i love it. i'm so excited to see what we do in 2020. host: let's bring some more callers in. jess from nebraska, republican. good morning. caller: john, let me say something to you first, if i could.

that lady you had on this last time, it would truly be nice if you could bring somebody in to challenge almost every single point that she made, because it was all very questionable. especially when you start using the southern poverty law center. you know and i know that place is a joke. when they use those numbers, you might as well just be pulling them out of the sky. second of all, if i can talk to chris, i graduated from salem college in west virginia. i love west virginia. guest: there you go. caller: but i have got to tell you, our media is gone. i watched yesterday and cnn, i mean, immediately when they went to dayton, ohio, they never showed or talked about anything other than el paso, because they knew the narrative for dayton was wrong. i really, truly think that it is

not the politicians. our media has turned. you watch. rue the day when this comes back to bite them, because they have thrown away their right to even be called media. guest: do you know the old joke, what politicians like to do with their political base? host: what's that? they treat them like mushrooms. keep them in the dark and cover them with horse manure. a fantastic way to do that, and both parties do that, is that it is the press's fault. i watched -- the "new york times" had a headline on monday. it said trump denounces racism -- or, no, trump calls for unity and denounces racism. it was a one-deck, two-column headline.

but it was the dominant story of the day, they came up with some four-word construction that was 100% accurate. host: "trump urges unity versus racism." guest: yes, yes. most of the president of candidates attacked "the times." they said -- kristen gillibrand said this is killing people and saying somehow "the times" was complicit in mass murder. harry reid's says he's canceling his subscription, because he is disgusted by the complicity in all of this. here is the deal. politicians -- i'm sorry to be all movie quotes. what's the line from "usual suspects"? "the greatest trick never ever played was convincing the world he did not exist." we have a system that is profoundly dysfunctional.

we have politics that is so stupid as to profane the name of the united states. all of that is true. and yet both parties have figured out that the better thing to do was to get them to talk about us. we ain't the story. now, there are plenty of reporters who want to be the story and plenty of folks who will stick their face in the camera and make a story about themselves. there are lots of coverage were people say look at me and my coverage. no question about it. we are not really the story. the story is what people elected to positions of authority are doing. host: lea, good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. chris, i would like to speak about the current climate of our politics. i really appreciate your response to the previous caller and saying that the press is not the enemy of the people. thank you for that. guest: you bet. caller: the climate is where you can't speak about the issues involved in politics like our

, like our infrastructure not being fixed, like our broken health care system, our broken educational system. we don't even talk about those things anymore. we are talking about people's personal lives, whether they are for or against abortion, legal whether they are a legal or illegal immigrant, whether they watch fox or cnn. i think it is petty politics. and i tire of it. but it's important for all of us to still be involved in our political system. what do you think we can do to bring the system back from where we are debating issues and passing legislation to deal with the issues in the country instead of being mired in racist dogma or worrying about our neighbor being different than us , worshiping different than us? the petty things that we are involved in today and that i think are contributed in part to our petty president. guest: first, repeal the 17th amendment. no -- i actually do want to repeal the 17th amendment. that is one of the few -- i

actually think the direct election of senators has been a disaster for the country. one of the most important things -- i'm coming around on this issue. the way that we -- the parties way that the parties choose nominees, we have had about a 40-year experiment with primaries. i think it has failed. i think we can pretty conclusively say that for all the evils of the smoke-filled room, for all of the problems of state conventions -- because this is how it used to work -- they were very few primaries in the country. new hampshire was considered so unique, because so few places actually held primaries. the norm in most places was he you would have county conventions that would choose delegates for state conventions that would then gather to choose nominees. not just for the president but also for the governor and the senate and all of that stuff. the state was not involved, and the elections were not involved. now we have a primary system that sort of got snapped into

place as a post-watergate reform . the consequence is we are much dumber. our politics are profoundly dumber, because the only way for you to really win in a primary is to find a way to get to the right or left of the person next to you. right? the only way to get there very often. for a long time, political establishments did not mind because theyies, had more name identification. the jeb bush factor. have a primary or whatever you want, and i will come in as a megawhale, dump $100 million that marco rubio's shorts, and become the nominee, whether you like it or not. that doesn't work anymore because of social media and because of our atomized media world. you can't do it anymore. i think we have to take a serious look at the primary system.

is that the way we want to do it or something better? host: the top two primary system? guest: ranked choice voting experimenting within maine could be interesting. withare experimenting having states run primaries and having your secretary of state running the effort of choosing nominees for parties is a mistake. i don't think taxpayers should have to find that, and i think the parties should settle their own hash. they are private entities. i don't care how they pick their nominees. i don't care if the democrats have a potato sack race to determine who the nominee is, just tell me who it is, and then have an election. the general election should be administered by the government and administered with taxpayer resources to make sure we have a free and fair process, but i really don't care how the parties pick their nominees. the democraticho party nominee will be. guest: oh, is that simple?

i think the funniest story of 2019 -- the political press you have to think of as a big amoeba. that has little hairs and is moving around. you and i are both part of it. they are 5000, maybe 10,000 people in it. sometimes we are all in the same bakery in iowa on the same day, all wearing hairnets. they are looking at mitt romney admiring a butter cow. but there is also a strong groupthink in the space. right? inside the political press. yes, i would say, and i have mentioned this many times, the press has a liberal bias in the sense that the people who tend to make up newsrooms in the united states come from places like bethesda, maryland and long island, new york. just like you could say that the energy industry has a conservative bias, because people come from oklahoma and houston. yes, there is such a thing is media bias. but the biggest bias in the media is for groupthink. right? for conventional wisdom and received wisdom.

so the received wisdom inside this amoeba was joe biden can't win. he is too old, he is too white, he is too moderate. this guy is out. bernie sanders really won in 2016, and joe biden has not received the telegram yet. i left every day. oh, joe biden is 32%. joe biden is untouched, unharmed. every day there was a new narrative that sets up where today is the day that joe biden will be laid low. joe biden will be crushed by the insurgency inside the democratic party. host: joe biden today will be the iowa state fair, the soapbox. guest: huge ice cream and aviator sunglasses opportunity for joe biden. host: covering it today live on c-span, joe biden and steve bullock 1:45. starting at kimberly is next on

the independent line out of , new york. caller: good morning. i wanted to say i was a republican for 25 years. i have always been a person who , my views have been closely aligned in the last few years and the republican party -- in seems further and further away. i wanted to say -- i don't mean to be offensive but fox media has been relegated as trump tv. playlist. i plan on listening to an episode today. do you feel as a media company you are also responsible for any of the domestic terrorism or any of that? it seems that fox media has been very supportive of, there are good people on both sides and that type of thing.

guest: i don't. i can't speak for my company. look i work in the same , building. i am one floor exactly above our studio 1. you see that view of the capital. you watch fox news you can see the same view from one floor down. later today you will see me do a hit from this video. chris wallace and brett bear practice some of the very finest journalism in washington. i am privileged to work with people like them. i am privileged to work with dana perino. i am privileged to work with people in new york who do fantastic news shows. i'm also privileged to work with hundreds of producers and reporters who fanned out across this country to put themselves in harm's way very often to cover the news. look, in an answer to a previous

caller i said that the temptation is to let politicians shift the blame to the press. it is really the press's fault. if only the press would act the way i wanted it to, everything would get better. if only these people would stop lying and tell the truth then everything would get better and it's tempting to believe that. here is what i know. this is messy. we do not have the system we have because it is easy. you know what is easy? authoritarianism is easy. the reason we have a bill of rights is because those are invasions of personal individual liberty that are so tempting to every government that the founders said we better enumerate them and write them down because these things are near irresistible for government. we say we like free speech. in the united states, ywe we hate free speech. free speech is horrible. it gets in the way. people say things that are

hateful and disgusting and bothersome. people are annoying, all those things. the reason we enshrined in the first amendment and the reason that is there is because it is inviolate. there are all kinds of things said by the press that are upsetting to the president, upsetting to democrats to whomever. we have to do a better job. i place most of the responsibility for what is going on in this country today politically with the citizenry that is not keeping up its end of the bargain. host: just after 9:30 on the east coast. chris stirewalt is our guest. "i'll tell you what" is the name of the podcast. where can folks find it? guest: wherever you listen to podcasts. you can go to fox news radio or go through apple podcast, stitcher, wherever you go and we will meet you there. guest: do you each have a certain role on the podcast? host: we have a certain role in our friendship which is to say michael barone, when he did a political typography of the

united states, he breaks the country into different groups. in the upper midwest, stretching out into the rockies he had rule following scandinavians. the rule following scandinavians are like the woman at the 2008 convention in st. paul. i had a terrible cold and i was trying to go take my medicine in the press bleachers. this very nice woman, very scandinavian woman said no, sir. you are not taking that in there. when i complained that they were people drinking -- this actually happened. they confiscated the beverages of every person who had smuggled them in. those are rule following scandinavians. that is dana perino. i am from what i call the hillbilly firewall of west virginia. we don't follow the rules very well.

we are quick to wrath and sometimes intemperate. dana and i have a very good give and take relationship. host: how often do you talk about jasper perino? guest: jasper is america's dog. i know that her husband peter outranks jasper not by a ton but , he deftly has the edge on jasper. i am beneath. i am lower than that. that is ok. host: tom is next. caller: just a republican this time around. i love dogs. i want to push back on the press. i do believe the press is responsible for the attacks on our police officers. they ran michael brown, michael brown, michael brown.

it was all lies and it ain't never stopped. i do blame the press for a lot of the radical stuff, the racial stuff. that about makes me cry. it is so sad. i do blame the press. guest: we didn't. people at fox news didn't. speaking of podcast malcolm , gladwell did a great unpacking of the michael brown case and the story and his revisionist history. i think it was last week that was really good. sorry to be a malcolm gladwell ad sales this week but. host: you can promote your own podcast. guest: there is a t-shirt on underneath. reporters make mistakes all the time. that narrative i'm talking about, that amoeba that forms its point of view, it is hard to change. when you have a wrong idea that takes root, the idea in ferguson

was basically a police officer hunting a kid was wrong and proven wrong. you know what else was overlooked? that police department was shaking down that community for years. fter fine, they were an oppressive force in the community that was generating revenue for itself and for the city by abusive conduct towards the community. s big tickets for , nothing. the stories tend to be a lot more complicated than we think. we have an opportunity now. there was a time in america for you had three television networks, two newspapers and a couple of wire services that basically that is where you got your information. that was the story to be told. we did it in 30 minutes on the evening news. now it is everywhere. we have to learn to be better consumers. we can't just be passive takers anymore. we have to be intentional consumers that go and ask better questions.

i promise you this will get , harder, not easier. tot: take you home charleston, west virginia. joyce. caller: i remember you almost every sunday morning on "decision-makers." he wanted to turn west virginia. he claimed he only wanted two parties but he was actually very republican. he was very much against justice, but as soon justice was elected governor he is now working with them. that was horrible. he ran as a democrat and then switched to republican. i think everything wrong with this country has to do with republicans. i can remember when there were

very good republican senators and representatives. they were just fine people but no more. it is everything wrong with this country can be laid at the feet of the republican party. i thought when i heard it was charleston, maybe i owe to somebody money. i still hadn't settled up a couple of checks. west virginia politics. manchin runsn -- for governor, which he might. he was not to any back end with the pat toomey bill when he came back out on the background checks. everybody in west virginia is -- every politician is terrified. he is icing the kicker. --manchin goes back and runs for governor, which i would not be surprised if he did we

, liked being governor and was good at it. justice has been a train wreck. west virginia has not been a profile in great leadership of late. i do want to address this think -- thing about laying all the country's problems at the feet of republicans. can you imagine if everybody did that with the other party? my side does not bear any blame. your side bears all the blame for this. this would invite all of us not to fix the things that are wrong with us. you have to clean up your own side of the street first. yes, republicans screw stuff up. democrats screw stuff up. the idea that is in a binary system you can have such a thing as mono causality -- if only the other team was in charge then everything would be better. that invites lazy thinking and we have an era of intense negative partisanship. negative partisanship is the worst kind. there is positive partisanship, here is an elephant, there is a donkey. i like my side and i think we're doing the best. what joyce talked about was the most intense form of negative

partisanship that says the other side is evil and must be defeated. if that is your only threshold, you will not hold your own side to a high standard. host: paul paul, michigan is next. bob, independent. good morning. caller: i would like to take a little bit of a walk back in history here with you regarding president obama and president bush. when they showed up -- you tend to think people don't want somebody to show up at a tragic event like that. of blew over donald trumps private meetings , that is just the president. a president, and this includes bush. for all his faults and obama for all their fault, when obama showed up at sandy hook and bush 1, they allowed themselves to be crying with the american

people at their loss and showed a bit of empathy. unfortunately, your answer is that is just donald trump. i will tell you what. the empathy gene is something the president of the united states has to have, and the one we have now has none. host: showing viewers on the screen some of the scenes from yesterday from the president's visits to dayton and el paso. guest: not a vote for trump 2020 michigan. there. not a trump 2020 vote. it's interesting. we have turned the american presidency into sort of this divine kingship, this magical shamanistic healer, this great father that is supposed to heal the nation's wounds. some presidents are exceptional. we have had some exceptional men serve as our presidents.

truly remarkable world historical figures. when we think about men like lincoln or fdr, when we think about this stuff, i put washington in a different category because he made it the , truth here is we've also had a lot of maladies for president. buchanan, i swear was , president of the united states. it really actually happened. he was the president. we had good presidents and bad presidents and boring presidents and weird presidents. a problem with the loss of local media in the country as we have seen hollowing out on the local level across the united states is an unhealthy fixation of the city and one human being within the city. it's important to the president is. the most powerful man in the world, and he flies in and has the podium. he is a man and he is just one man.

the degree to which people either an occult of personality fall at the feet of the president or despise him with the kind of white-hot intensity we heard from the caller in michigan should be a reflection of the fact we are a little out of whack on the presidency in the u.s. host: is it more intense today than it was for the obama presidency? guest: we have seen a ramping up. whether you market to the clinton impeachment or the iraq war, we have seen this intensification that has mirrored the changing media landscape of the united states. here i am blaming the press. as we have seen the media landscape change the change in , focus about what was going on, and the clinton impeachment was a huge part of that, the 2000 recount we had this escalating , thing that has brought us to trump. the truth is i put a lot of the blame on congress. we have for 40 years -- i blame

c-span a little bit, sorry. if you watch a congressional hearing now, i would get the cameras out. if brian is in the building he , will throw me off the roof. i read about this. aese people, you watch one in and you have congress what do they do? , five minutes of speechafying. you are the most terrible person in the history of the world. full of deep state collusion, lying person. at the end they go do you agree? goes, no, i will go with no on that. our congress is for people who are more focused on their own reelections than they are on regarding the power of the legislative branch. we have seen a whittling away of legislative power. the branches are not even supposed to be coequal. they are article one. congress is supposed to be -- the house of representatives is supposed to be preeminent. congress is article one, the

seat of the center of power. the power to tax, to go to war , the power to levy tariffs. those things are supposed to reside in congress. members of congress figured out it is harder to raise money and get reelected if you do difficult things. what should we do instead? devolve that power to the executive branch and become this sort of weak bang-kneed ridiculous creature congress has , become, differing to the courts and the executive branch is the founders never could have imagined. host: this network has been trying to get cameras into the supreme court. guest: don't do it. the supreme court is one of the last institutions that works in the united states. part of the reason small r republican institutions work as that is they are beyond the prime. they don't have the constitutional convention on c-span. can you imagine wearing woolen

clothes inside a philadelphia -- airlessnd chamber? i bet ben franklin did not smell great. to have these guys packed into this room sweltering for secrecy because they knew if they put the constitution together in public it would not work. we have a house and a senate but , the supreme court is supposed to act in its own special way. i think having justices preening for cameras will not make this -- the supreme court better. host: less than 15 minute left with chris stirewalt. cohost of "perino and stirewalt: i'll tell you what." that is the name of the podcast we are focusing on today, podcast week. darlene in oregon, a democrat. caller: good morning. i was just listening to chris. i have to say a lot of things he was just saying i totally agree with. the senate is just stagnated.

i believe mitch mcconnell owes too much to this president, including his wife as secretary of transportation. i think that should not happen where a senator as powerful as mitch mcconnell, his wife being on the president's cabinet. the other thing is, mitch mcconnell in my opinion gives term limits the reason for living. i also want to comment i agree , about the local news. local news has been broken down. we turned to cnn and fox but they are not truly new stations. they are political commentary stations. so it's a misnomer. occasionally they put the news on when each one decides what's important news to put on. our local systems have been totally broken down by these

three broadcast networks. guest: what killed local news was that newspapers died. the death of newspapers. i say, as you have 500 newspapers strewn over your table. newspapers, they were highly overleveraged -- i was there when it happened. they were highly overleveraged because they were hugely profitable. they made tons of money. 30%, 35% profit margins. people could get huge loans to buy up and consolidate newspapers for economies of scale. the internet walked up and said i'm going to eat you and newspapers said you are adorable, that will never happen. we will be fine forever. five or six years later, done. we are in the process of replacing that. social media is a big part of how we as americans are going to replace that. but we have not solved the problem yet.

it matters more whether or not your county commissioner is a crook than whether your congressman had a very long question for robert mueller. that is more important. it is more important if your governor is a nincompoop then if your congressman had the right feelings in an interview about something. we have to figure out a way together to get local news happening again because we need it badly. host: on twitter, they want to the 2020 do you see senate and house races shaping up? guest: isn't it funny how we do this? we will spend two years -- we are in the home stretch of a two-your process where we hypothetically talk about what will happen. for 45 months we will have an election. the democrats nominate elizabeth warren, i don't think the democrats will take the senate. if the democrats nominate joe biden or somebody -- here's what's happening. we are going through a massive

political realignment. host: i'm assuming it is a he. guest: here what is happening. the parties are changing lanes. the democrats are becoming the party of the suburbs and college-educated people and the party of more affluent people. republicans are becoming the party of working-class white voters, the old roosevelt, lbj coalition. a lot of the fiction is as they are passing each other and is like a nascar race and they are rubbing up against each other's bumpers as they're trying to get around each other. if the democrats nominate somebody who can win in suburban dallas, somebody who can win in suburban philadelphia, that can win in those places if the , election were held today, and joe biden be

will not be at 53% when he gets to election day if he was the nominee. joe biden will trounce donald trump today. he would win 35 states. the democrats would take the senate and expand the majority in the house. the election is not going to happen today. by the time the democratic nominee comes out they will be badly beaten by their fellow democrats. right now they are really into , the part where anything can be said or done in the name of vic erie. it is allowed. republicans have $1 billion it will dump on the head of whomever the democrats nominate. that person is going to be beleaguered and in pretty rough shape no matter what by the time we get to next june. we can index pretty closely the control of the senate and control of the house that how competitive the race is for the president. my guess would be d plus one. if you forced me for the say --

to say. host: the house? me, notou won't make even for a free mug. host: massachusetts. brian, republican. caller: thanks for having me on. i like just about everything you say. when you started putting got governor justice in west virginia, i thought i would give you a call and tell you i think he's doing a pretty good job out there. we go out to west virginia and love west virginia. wheeling. guest: you go to my hometown? he kept the gray sounds -- greyhounds racing and building roads and people people working in west virginia. can you walk back that criticism of governor justice? i kind of like him. guest: thank you for coming to wheeling, west virginia.

wheeling downs that is where my , father taught me math, by how to bet at wheeling downs. the thing about jim justice, the republicans don't like him, the democrats don't like him. he will not come to charleston to work. he is getting primaried by half the people. he is a billionaire -- he tried to follow the trump model. he sold his family's coal company. he owns the green briar and sold his family's coal company to a russian enterprise and then decided he was going to get into politics. as it turns out you need a lot , of go-go juice to be governor of a state, even a small state like our 35th state, west virginia. i don't think justice has the go-go juice and does not want to be in charleston every day dealing with the pecuniary and byuliar requests of politics

cutting ribbons and greeting boy scouts. he is in a bit of a pickle. host: talking about your podcast, do you end every podcast with trivia? guest: we do. jason bonewald. d isn bone walled -- bonewal the director of -- for fox. i think he has a license to kill. he and another producer were the ones that came up with the show and the idea. every week, jason comes up with trivia questions and dana perino, to her credit, does not pretend she knows the answers or does not attend like she thought them up. bonewald crafts truly devilish questions every week. they were passing through west virginia the other day. and my sonh with him

said, can you have a harder trivia for my dad? you are not going swimming this afternoon. host: what does c-span stand for? guest: i knew this. tell me. host: cable satellite public affairs network. guest: satellite was the missing word. host: who was the first elect member to be televised on c-span in march of 1979? guest: i will take a guess and say tip o'neill. host: it was al gore. guest: alvin r. gore junior. host: who in the video archive has the most appearances, elected official with the most appearances? guest: john mccain. host: harry reid with 4000, followed by bill clinton with 3425, and mitch mcconnell with 3477. last one for you, when did c-span2 first again televising

live proceedings of the senate? guest: you are worse than bonewald. 1992. 1986. first president to call c-span was ronald reagan. ronald reagan picked up the phone and called in. i forgot what he wanted to talk about. i think it would be cool if presidents still did that. caller wasirst october 7, 1980. bob from yankton, south dakota. guest: bob, we appreciate you. caller: can you hear me? chris -- john, i have not talked to you in a while. look, i think it's amazing that we can get a microphone, get on tv and go out and tell people how they should think and feel. it's amazing.

most people start off with the statement about what they are going to say as "i think." americans are kind of like lost sheep. they run around and pick out who is saying what they want to hear and vote that way, as opposed to doing their own research. people tell you what they're going to do if they are elect, and make the decisions on their own. give me a mic and i can go around the country and tell people what they should think and how they should vote. that is what amazes me the most. they actually pay you guys for that. that's a job? to get paid to do that kind of stuff. guest: it's a living. it was either this or sell hotdogs. we have a problem, weak parties and because of that, we have strong partisanship. a double whammy conversation -- combination of the mccain-feingold act -- it cut

the guts out of our two parties. it took the money away from them. groups like the nra or planned parenthood or any of the super pac's have filled the roles substantially of the parties. as a result of these weak parties, we end up with pretty bad politics. the parties used to act as a vetting system. you could not get to the top or make it all the way to run for president or run for senate or run for governor unless you had run the gauntlet inside your party of people who were deeply committed and involved. i am a proponent -- i'm an admirer of what the two-party system has done for the united states. i don't thing we understand what the two-party system is and it relies on those two private institutions being strong. right now we have very weak , parties and strongparties andg partisanship. we have those primaries where the people get to go out and say, you think that is crazy,

wait until you hear what i'm about to say next. i think i am closer now. i think we have a great system, which is if the public will for term limits is there, the constitution can be amended. not easily. we have stopped trying. we used to do it with some regularity. we have not done it. we finished off the bill of rights, young cast parts of it in the 1990's. we have not really had for 30 years a serious effort at amending the constitution with something different. if the probably referendum were being held, i would probably be voting for term limits today. host: in michigan, charlie, democrat. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: yes. caller: nowadays we seem to be having a lot of problems with

anti-immigrant rhetoric around our country that leads to problems, particularly from central america. would the best way to be going about this be maybe it's actually trying to treat the roots of these immigrant problems? perhaps that could happened in congress with anti- global poverty legislation and understanding the problem is stemming from these countries, and if we help these countries, less people will be coming to us. gave mexicosically a trillion dollar loan during the clinton administration. nafta is designed to stabilize mexico's economy. addressing what is going on in central america has to be part of how the u.s. deals with the global migrant issue. we have to address that in a variety of ways.

enforcement will never be enough on its own. podcastu can find his wherever you find your podcasts. chris steigerwald is the cohost. appreciate your time. guest: appreciate you. host: c-span's -- >> c-span's washington journal, live every day. coming up this morning, scott hall with the alliance for american manufacturers talks about manufacturing jobs. as part of our podcast week, we talked with jennifer briney. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal," live at 7:00 eastern this morning. join the discussion. mugs areon journal" available as c-span's new online store. go to c-span.org. see all of the c-span products.

several presidential candidates are in des moines this week for the iowa state fair. the fair kicked off thursday with visits from montana governor steve bullock and former vice president joe biden. both candidates gave speeches and answered questions from reporters. [applause] >> hello, iowa. look, i know you will get dozens of people trying to make some attenuated connection to iowa. i am not going to tell you that my great great grandparents in 1850.n henry county that's not why we gather. we gather for the sake of our nation, the state of the world, and for the sake of the country we will pass on to that