and former special correspondent for the associated press and author of "ghost flames" discusses the 70th anniversary of the korean war, "washington journal" is next. >> today to declare the silent majority is stronger than ever before. ♪ host: and that message from the president, one of the headlines from last night's rally in tulsa. it's sunday morning, june 21, and we welcome you to "the washington journal." we carried the rally live last night on c-span. this morning we begin with your comments, your reaction, marking the first campaign event with the president since the outbreak of coronavirus forcing a shutdown in this country more than three months ago. give us a call at 202-748-8001 your line for republicans and for democrats, 202-748-8000, if

you're an independent, 202-748-8002. good sunday morning, the first official start of summer and we wish you a happy fathered to the dads and grandfathers. we'll get to your calls in a moment but the president taking aim at former vice president joe biden. the speech lasting one hour and 15 minutes with the president's remarks alone. here's part of what he had to say. president trump: when biden first ran for president over 33 years ago, remember, i used to call him 1% joe, he never got more than 1% until obama took him off the trash heap but he blatantly copied the speech of a british politician, even ripping off the man's personal biography and family history and claiming it as his own. he forgot to say he was born in america. joe biden is a shameless hypocrite. nce 2003, he has delivered

fanning eulogying to the funerals and the funerals three leading supporters of segregation, including a former member of the kkk and yet biden is now smearing his racist, tens of millions of people like yourself, decent, hard-working americans who he's never met and frankly probably doesn't want to meet. america should not take lectures on racial justice from joe biden, sleepy joe. a man who prays and partners with segregationists, shipped millions of black american jobs overseas and everyone else's jobs, too, by the way. if i didn't come along, we're building auto plants, we're building everything and there's never been a comeback like we're making right now. never been. cheers and applause]

president trump: he hollowed out our middle class, including our black middle class with open borders, trapped young children in failing government schools, built cages. those cages were built by obama and biden. look it up. 2014. and the fake news doesn't want to -- remember the picture of a cage, a cage for children. remember the picture of the cage? and they said president trump, and then they realized it was in a newspaper 2014, the same. built by obama and biden. host: from the rally last night in tulsa, oklahoma, this is the headline from "washington post," the president banks on a show of defiance. let's get to your phone calls. jeffrey, first up from beltsville, maryland. good morning. caller: how are you doing this morning? host: fine, how are you,

jeffrey? caller: all right, sir. he called them obama and biden hypocrite. he's the most biggest hypocrite of all. he's standing up there lying about barack and biden and everybody and what i seen yesterday, i looked at it for a little while and the last song they played when he goes off, "you can't always have everything", he like that. he always find people doing good jobs, he hurting people's careers that have been long time career people in the government and other agencies, i just don't understand this man, you know. i don't have no hate for everybody. god says love everybody even when you disagree with them. but i wish our president would act like a president and stop smearing people's names. en people calling y'all, you all fail for the democrats and republicans but y'all want to blame y'all, y'all talking about this and y'all talking

about everybody. i like your show and hope y'all keep doing it, putting your opinion out. but i hope the president stops doing what he's doing and sals calling out bright supremacist and an tearfula and the right ring extremist people who killed those cops in mexico the other day. i hope things change for the best of us. black and white. i'm a black man. i love everybody. thank you, sir. host: next to robert from joining us from hazard, kentucky. good morning, robert, what was your reaction from what you heard from the president in tulsa? caller: i'd like to give a comment about the first caller. i'm in hazard and for black people, also. i think people should come to hazard and check out what we're doing. we get along here so good, the whites and black. i think mr. trump had the rally pretty good. he's got to focus on china.

that first caller, that's sort of what the problem is, i think, together we're not getting the real truth out there. and i think he needs to focus on commean is what mr. trump needs to do. i thank you for letting me talk morning. host: thank you. going to eric next from rome, georgia. eric, did you watch the speech last night? caller: i watched it, but i have to quit watching the sickness of donald trump. what gets me about the media, it's things like you people are -- love this type of foolishness and racism and this rally like he had in tulsa, the same way ronald reagan with philadelphia, mississippi. a lot of you white people, you know, you sit there and don't have nothing to say, you act like this doesn't involve you, we're all citizens of this country. black people really have built this country and the senses of

this country. can you imagine what this country would be all you white people treating each other -- this is the reason world wars happen because you get people like trump in office, mussolini and stalin and these different type of people, hitler. he keeps hitler's speeches on his nightstand. when obama was president, you went to change the birth and trump continue to tell and brought it on tv and the lies he tells you to spread with him. just think about the path of the people who followed him. that's all i have to say. it's sickening. host: thank you for the call. one of the headlines from euters in one of the statements, the president's commenlts regarding covid-19 and testing, reuters writing, president trump told thousands of cheering supporters he asked the u.s. officials to slow down

on the testing of novel coronavirus. later his administration and his campaign spokesperson saying, quote, he was just kidding. here's that moment from the rally last night. president trump: it's a disease without question has more names than any disease in history. can name kung flu, i 19 different versions of names. many call it a virus, which it is, many call it a flu, what difference? think we have 19 or 20 versions of the name. host: that's from the president last night. we'll get back to your phone calls, robert from sarasota, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. i watched it. "facing ee the movie the crowd?"

host: go ahead with your comments? caller: did you ever see that movie? host: i have not, no. i have not, no. caller: shoe see it from the 19 50's, andy griffith played magnificent. deserved an academy award if he didn't win one. donald trump -- host: in other callers referred to that. robert, thanks for the call. we'll go to matt in damascus, maryland. good morning. caller: i just wanted to say trump didn't do too bad. i'm not particularly democratic or republican but trump didn't just do that bad last night. he got up and spoke fine and made his talking points and people rallied behind him. i wanted to say the media presents the democrats astute and well speaking and they present the republicans like clowns and we should be embarrassed to them and really gets us opposed to each other

and we really should be focused on working together and right now with the coronavirus and black lives matter, we could rally together and get some sort of change. i don't know exactly what because i don't -- i'm not educated about these topics but again, the media is presenting things one-sided and turning us against each other when we actually have the opportunity for reform and change and nobody's taking advantage of it. b.l.m. isn't helping anybody. that's my opinion. host: thanks for the call. tina is next, huntington, pennsylvania. good morning. caller: good morning, how are you? host: good, how are you, tina? caller: very much more energized this morning than i have been in the past two weeks. i was on the fence. i'm an independent but last night to see people like me get behind someone who has been slapped down at every possible

chance for the 3 1/2 years he's been in office made me realize what this country really is about. now, when i saw all the people come in and start with their violence, i'm sick of the violence. b.l.m. is a great movement, of course black lives matter. everybody matters. my point with that is, before we get change, before we see anything change, there has to be conversation, not confrontation. i'm tired of seeing our buildings, our monuments, everything destroyed. i'm tired of seeing people get hurt. that's not the way we make change. if you can't sit down and have a conversation -- if i don't agree with you, i don't agree. it's agree to disagree, move on, meet in the middle. i'm tired.

i can't walk into a store these days, and i'm from a blue family, and not get some sarcastic comment because i'm wearing a little rubber bracelet that says blue lives matter. my husband's life matters. you know, it's a profession. you make choices. just comply. god, i pray for the floyd family, i do, every day. that was horrible. but it does not mean that everybody who puts a uniform on is bad. that doesn't mean -- let's take, for instance, two or three years ago that group, that raped that white woman, just because those five black men hurt her and cut her up so bad doesn't mean we should hate the entire race. the reform needs to -- host: how long has your husband been a police officer? caller: a little over 17 years.

and he's thinking about retiring because it's not worth it. his life matters. we have 15 grandchildren. you know, we are proud. he's a veteran. they do more good than bad. yeah, there's bad apples. there's bad apples everybody where. look inside the b.l.m. movement. we have people burning our cities down. and who do you think is going to pay for it? not them. we are as the taxpayers. i would like to see average people, i'm not saying me but i'd be willing to be in on that discussion, to sit around a table and just talk. there's no need for this occupying cities. there's no need for the violence. talk like normal human beings. the problem is the generation that is leading this movement is the generation that got participation trophies and don't understand the american dream. we need to teach --

host: thank for you sharing your story. we're moving on. thank you very much. good luck with your husband. certainly police officers on the frontlines and doing a very important jobo often under difficult circumstances so we thank for you that. the president making reference to the coronavirus in that excerpt we shared a moment ago calling it kung flu getting that response from democratic congressman ted lieu tweeting the following, dear at real donald trump and g.o.p., asian americans make up 11% of the electorate in nevada, 5.5% in texas, 4.7% in georgia. enough to be the margin of victory. keep saying that racist and using the f word like kung flu that e reason your racism the asian americans now trend towards democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to say it's the same old

rhetoric he's been spewing out of his mouth the last four years. i just watched it. there's no substance. he just wants to cut down biden and he's not really giving us a ath. there's no path to what his next four years is going to give us. he's riding on the coattails of obama's economy. he gave me nothing. host: thank for you the call. jonathan martin of "the new york times" reporting last month at the biden campaign and the d.n.c. racing upwards of $80 million, much of it for ad campaigns now on the air including this from the biden ampaign titled "unite us." joe: i know america is suffering. the country is crying out for

leadership, leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together. that's what the presidency is. the duty to care. the duty to care for all of us, not just those who vote for us but all of us. i promise you this, i won't crack in fear and division and fan the flames of hate, i'll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country, not use them for political gains. i'll do my job and take responsibility. won't blame others. we're in the battle for the soul of this nation. we believe most importantly who we want to be. it's all at stake. we stand together, finally as one america. we'll rise stronger than we were before. i'm joe biden and i approve this message. host: that new ad from the biden campaign p. if you missed the rally with the president, it's posted on our website

@c-span.org. we'll go to joyce, good morning, republican line. caller: good morning. first let me say i am a senior citizen grandmother. i'm 87 years old. i voted for trump the last time. i'm voting for him again. i listened to the whole speech and it was strictly fantastic. i really want to talk specifically to my black brothers and sisters. for 50, ted democrat 60, 70 years. biden has been in politics for over 40 years. if he's going to do so much for us today, why hasn't he done it in all those years plus? he was the vice president under black president and we are still suffering and it's stated

we are underserved p. who underserved us? we have been controlled by the all that are and 25 cities in trouble. all of them mostly are run by democrats. if democrats have been so good for us, why are we still saying -- why are the democrats still saying we are underserved. and yes, blacks have been underserved all these years but we have voted straight democrat for years and we have -- our schools are in trouble. our communities. i live in the most dangerous community in houston, texas. it's run by democrats. we will not vote a republican in, and we are suffering and blacks to go to the polls this november and vote for biden. it's going to be the same thing

in the next years. we're still going to be underserved, and we got to understand black america. and i'm a black american, no african-american, i've never been to africa. but we've been underserved by democrats. let me tell you black listeners how they control us by our anger and our emotion and they keep bringing up the past and keeps us mad and under control. stop letting the democrats control you. if you keep on doing what you've always done, you will keep on getting what you always got. please, black america, don't put this man biden in office because we're going to have the same thing. stop letting democrats control us. wake up. host: i'll leave it there. thank you for the call from houston, texas. a lot of attention yesterday on

the crowd because brad tweeted the president was going to for the first time hold a rally outside the venue of the b.o.k. center which by the way stands for bank of oklahoma, and inside that was quickly scrapped because there was no crowd. this is from abby phillips who tweeted, this is what it looks like at the trump rally in tulsa right now. scheduled to speak out in 10 minutes and people streaming in, but not nearly the number of campaign they said they were expecting. that from abby phillips. the venue outside was nearly empty and the stage was taken down and the president and vice president scrubbing plans to do the outdoor rally and instead staying inside where there were still seats available at the time the rally got underway, 7:00 local time and 8:00 eastern and we carried the whole thing live on c-span. joseph is next in boston. good morning. thank you for waiting. what's on your mind? caller: i'm calling from massachusetts, boston is my

home. i'm a black man and support president donald trump 100%. i think america is in trouble because they can't see the goodness in the man. i've been trying to tell black people, this man is doing more for black people since any other president of abraham lincoln. let's break it down. they raided tennessee as a chicken processing plant and they arrested, detained 600 undocumented workers. i'm not a hater but let's be realistic. in 1950 these plants is where black workers worked. they took it to the state supreme court and they changed that. black people started working in the chicken processing plant. now the illegal immigrants working there, no blacks are working there. i feel immigration now they're starting to hire black people. i grew up in the crack addicted era in new york city. i live in texas where george floyd lives. and i lived there and i see how the crack epidemic destroyed

the black city and i lived there in atlanta, on urban avenue and downing street, third ward of houston and in washington, d.c. i seen with my eyes how young black men go to jail for 25 years, maximum, minimum, rockefeller drug war, three strikes and you're out and other people pushing drug, america fighting for the world population, 60% of illicit street drug and deliberately target the young black man like george floyd. i don't care what anybody says, donald trump is doing a perfect job and i hope to hear the whole speech, i only hear half of it. joe biden is an old democrat that take the blacks for granted because over 90% of black people vote democrats and hopefully they'll wake up. i call it a problem with the negros in high places and call them the overseers, black

people feel the good job donald trump is doing for them, first chance, he released over 4,000 inmates, aa lot of them african-american and 800,000 black men locked up, more than the country of brazil with 80 million black peek and more than nigeria with 200,000 black people. america has 40 million black people. the black people are breaking up. moynihan said the biggest problem in the black american, 20% out of wedlock and now 72%. donald trump is doing a good job and nobody can tell me any different. have a nice day. host: joseph from boston, thanks for adding your voice to the conversation. by the way, we welcome our listeners on c-span radio an every sunday morning carried on potus, channel 124 and those watching in great britain on the bbc parliament channel, we're getting your reaction from the president's speech in

tulsa, oklahoma, the first of the maga rallies in more than three months. the president this week traveling to phoenix, arizona, meeting with students this tuesday. of course a number of events with former vice president joe biden that we'll be covering as well. tonight on abc, martha raddatz who sits down with john bolton, "the room where it happened" a white house memoir and we'll get your reaction tomorrow morning on the program but first the president yesterday leashing for tulsa had this to say after the judge said the book can be released basically because the horse is out of the barn and it's already been released by news organizations so it cannot be stopped. here's the president. president trump: the decision in the john bolton book case, the judge was very powerful in his statement going with classified information and very powerful, also in the fact the country will get the money, any money he makes.

i hope a lot of books -- well, i probably don't hope that but whatever he makes he's going to be giving back, in my opinion, based on the ruling, he'll be giving back. i think the judge was very smart and very indignant at what bolton did. i think it's a great ruling. obviously the book was already out and leaked and everything else. but he leaked classified information so he's got a big problem. host: that from the president on a rainy saturday before leaving for tulsa, oklahoma, and also this headline from fox news with coronavirus on the uptick in a number of states including in florida and texas, the story at foxnews.com. and also arizona being hit hard by coronavirus. owen is next from grand junction, colorado. good morning. caller: good morning, thanks a lot, steve. i was going to say a few things. one of them was in the voting thing, colorado is already

going along with voting by mail but maybe they could take the ballots you're supposed to mail out to the polling place and let the polling workers count them instead of them getting lost in the mail and not being accounted for. second thing was, oh, how come al sharpton was in front of the caskets so we couldn't see the uy was really in there, that floyd guy. and the third thing was that the black guy that called about 10 calls ago said the white guys never stand up and do nothing but you know, trying to talk to them they don't want to listen to sense, authentic truth -- they don't want to talk about it. obama went over there, i forgot what country it was but he tried to make them accept gay marriage and they didn't. they're looking better than we are right now because look, we've got a bunch of babies

running around. you ask them to do something and they start crying right away. the other thing was everything is about what trump is doing for us is he's not even taking a salary. the guy is just -- he's going to get an a plus is all i'm going to say. thanks. host: thank for you the call. we'll go to joan from ft. worth, texas. caller: good morning. happy father's day to everyone out there. i lost my father a few years back and father's mean a the world to this country. host: i'm sorry. caller: yes, i watched part of the speech last night which normally i never watch anything he has to say, it's always the same thing over and over, i'm wonderful, i'm great, i'm the savior. but he got on to a pity party about the covid virus and how it had diminished him in some

way by hurting his economy. i didn't hear one bit of sympathy for 120,000 americans , at have died under his watch not biden's or obama's watch but his watch. where was the empathy for those families and those victims? you never hear it from him, it's always just slow the testing down. doesn't the idiot know, those cases are still out there, whether there's testing or not. esting is used to identify and to isolate those covid positives. not to ruin his numbers. they're there whether he wants to admit they're there and tests to see that they're there.

it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. and also, i thought his crowd was lovely, just the right size, just like it was for his inauguration. not there. good morning. thank you. host: joan, thank you. and tim, one of the trump-pence campaign spokesperson that when the president made that reference he was just kidding and the u.s. is leading the world in testing but to joan's point, here's what the president told the crowd last ight in tulsa. president trump: what we've done with the ventilators and medical equipment and testing -- you know, testing is a double-edged sword. we've tested now 25 million ople, it's probably 20 million people more than anybody else, germany has done a lot south korea has done a lot, they called me and said the job you're doing -- here's

the bad part, when you do testing to that extent, you'll find more people and find more cases, so i said to my people, slow the testing down, please. they test and they test. we test and people don't know what's going on. we've got tests. we've got another one over here. the young man is 10 years old and he's got the sniffles. he'll recover in about 15 minutes. that's a case. add him to it. that's a case. host: from the rally last night in tulsa, oklahoma. again, this headline from reuters, the president urging a slowdown in covid-19 testing call it, quote, a double-edged sword. taveras is joining us from athens, georgia. good morning. caller: i want to address that excerpt you just played there and i'll finish up with that. joseph from barrington, massachusetts, if you want to see the complete speech you can go to c-span.org and put in

trump's speech and it will pull right up. but joseph got some information out there. how much do i love that? good morning, sir. host: continue. we can hear you. caller: i love c-span immensely. my first point, you got to move on when the callers are not ready for their opinions and their perceptions out there because we guys like me, we're ready to get on here and ready to discuss the nation on this. [no audio] host: i apologize, we were getting feedback from you and then the call dropped out but we appreciate the call. i should say this program is a reflection of all of you, your points of view and our job here is to moderate the discussion but really make it a chance for you to speak your mind in an open forum, hopefully always respectful. we appreciate that. we'll go to red soxy next in

alabama. good morning. caller: good morning. i'd like to say i love that speech he made. he never made one i didn't like. he's the only president i've ever seen that can do a speech and didn't have to read from notes. i know i couldn't do it. and he keeps getting blamed because they say he didn't hold the virus situation well? what else could he have done? he ordered all the masks and equipment to be made and sent. he tried to do everything he could. he brings up what he has done, his accomplishments, and tells you what he's going to do. he's the only president we've ever had in my way of thinking that does try to do what he said. i always voted democrat, now i'm a republican. i doubt very much i'll ever vote democrat again. like that black lady said, they're tired of being told how to vote. i know you're familiar with diamond silk, i heard them say one night they used to put them on a bus and take them up to

the polls to vote democrat and then carry them out and buy them a cheeseburg foredoing it. she said we're smarter than that now, we don't need nobody telling us how to think. i do admire those two women and really admire that alvita king, she's a good woman and levelheaded and trump is levelheaded. i don't know why people can't see how much he's helped this country. yes, he's got a right to brag. our economy was booming before that virus. he was making some headway but gets no credit for nothing. i give him some credit. i tell you one thing, you heard it here first, get him re-elected because the prophets have already said it, they said it before he'd go in before he ever thought about running and he got that and going to do it again, thank god. i thank you. host: red soxy, thank you. absolutely thanks for the call

from alabama. joining us at the top of the hour, cbs news 60 minutes correspondent john dickerson out with a new book on the american presidency and just how difficult the job can be. he'll be joining us for the full hour. and later in partnership with c-span 3, american history tv we'll look back at the start of the korean war, often called the forgotten war, and show you highlights of some film documentaries from the defense department looking back at that conflict under president harry truman. back to your phone calls, though. rob is next in new york. good morning. caller: good morning. i heard a couple callers just get on and bash trump and say how great obama was because i just wanted to bring up a couple obama's accomplishments, ok, he took us from two wars to seven and was a wall street puppet who bailed out the banks and bailed them out and americans lost their homes. the bank bought back shares with the money. and all during a recession

caused by wall street. he made bush's tax cuts permanent and opened up the arctic to drilling twice. under obama's administration, democrats lost 1,000 seats in the house and senate and that's how unpopular he was. he signed indefinite detention bill into law which repealed habeas corpus which is in the magna carta. he led the pipeline play itself out. he armed al qaeda and isis and syria and turned libya into a failed state. now he makes $400 how giving speeches to big banks. you know, i don't see trump doing any of that stuff. he's pulling troops out of germany and he pulled troops out of iraq and afghanistan. what do the democrats want, just more war, perpetual war? we've had that for 60 years, you know. i'm going to be 60 years old pretty soon. we've been at war my entire life if you count the war on drugs which is a big war. i don't see where trump is such a bad guy. i think obama was one of the worst presidents we ever had,

him and george w. bush were terrible. if it wasn't for those two this country would be in a lot better shape. host: thank you very much for the call. more from the campaign trail and ads now on the air from the biden campaign. joe: the moment has come to deal with the denial and promise of this nation, made to so many because if it weren't clear before it is clear now, this country wasn't built by wall streets, bankers and c.e.o.'s but the great american middle class, health care workers, docs, nurses, grocery store workers, we've come up with a new phrase for them, essential workers. we need to do more than praise them, we need to pay them. as president, it's my commitment to all of you to lead on these issues and to listen. because that's what the presidency is, the duty to care

, he cared for all of us, not just those who vote for us but all of us. this job's not about me, it's about you. it's about us. i'm joe biden and i approve this message. host: that from the biden campaign. back to your phone calls, deb from houston, texas. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you and happy father's day. i just had a couple of musings, i guess you'd call me sort of a lincoln project conservative. yesterday's rally was very disturbing. to me the rhetoric is getting angrier and getting darker, it's more back to that american carnage speech he gave in the inauguration, and in the wake of the recent racial killings and we've pulled the band-aid back and we've seen now they aren't anecdotal things where

they happen to one or two people but that many anecdotals aren't bad apples but systemic. i wish people would get off the anger left and right because it has to be somewhere in the middle that we're all in it together. we had a health crisis and yet the whole arena was full of people with no masks and vice president and president together, many times we don't see that because we protect one or the other in case something happens to both and we had senators there and they're not setting a good example and we can't ask our children to look to them. so i make an appeal to people and watch the reverend's poor people's campaign and am fully committed as a person and it's not black and blue but red me and you and i'm a quaker and gives me a different attitude to see things in a different lens. i pray for the president and had a lot of hope for him,

someone that could come in and never had done it if they got the right people and if they got away from the red and blue script. but what we saw was the right people took advantage and they took every enrichment off trump they could and we just don't have institutions to stand up for people anymore. that's all i wanted to say is that i don't know if biden will be any better but we have to get away from our nastiness. and we can't have twitter as you are presidential platform and even changing that would probably put the country right back in the middle somewhere and that's all i wanted to tell you and thank for you c-span and do more of harris and reverend barber and there's a middle ground there if y'all could promote that. thank you so much and god bless you. host: thank you. we mention it only because the campaign said a million people had signed up for the rally. there had been a planned outside event which was quickly scrubbed because there were only a handful of people outside. this is what the scene looked

like, as you can see the jumbotron screen was put in place, a few hundred gathering at the time of the rally and was a few dozen and they quickly changed that. the rally of course was inside as well in the b.o.k. center and there were empty seats as well. the media pointing out the president canceling the overflow rally in tulsa and was set to have the president and vice president speak to the crowd of people and talking before he gave his media speech. one problem is the crowd never materialized despite the campaign reporting a million rsvp's and the event appeared to be below capacity and the overflow crowd simply did not exist. rhonda is next from fitchburg, massachusetts. good morning. caller: good morning. i'd just like to say the woman that called, i believe her name was alex from texas and joseph from massachusetts.

i just wanted to say god bless them because they spoke the truth. i'm a white woman and was a democrat for more than 40 years when inally woke up trump became president. i voted for him. i will vote for him again and i just wanted to say that i'm just tired of the red rick, the haters. he's done a good job so far. and i hope he keeps it up and i pray for him every day. host: thank you, rhoda. let's go to lou in heiden park, illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. i would say donald trump's trademark is that rally last night. gathering people together within inches of each other during an epidemic shows

america the man lacks common sense. he also lacks common sense when you can see that he weakened our own c.d.c. we had an office in china headed by dr. linda quick, and , her office was removed and that office would have notified the rest of the world, not just us that there was a new epidemic brewing in china and trump is the one that removed her office. and i hold jump responsible for the economic damage now that we're facing in america. host: thank for you the call. the lone confederate statue in washington, d.c. has been taken down. in richmond, the robert e. lee statue is being ordered down by the governor. one of literally dozens of

confederate related statues particularly in the south being removed in light of the death of george floyd and the rally of black lives matter. the president bringing that up last night during his speech and once again the american flag. here's that portion. president trump: the left wing anarchists tore down a statue of thomas jefferson. now we're getting into the real -- [crowd booing] president trump: they decapitated a statue of columbus except in new york when the italians surrounded it. those italians. i love the italians, they heard they were going to rip down their beautiful christopher columbus and all of a sudden they circled that thing. they didn't do too well in hurting christopher, did they? thank you. to our italian population, e're very proud of you, right? two days ago leftist radicals

in portland, oregon, ripped down a statue of george washington. [crowd booing] pierre: president trump: and wrapped it in an american flag and set the american flag on fire. democrats. all democrats. [crowd booing] president trump: everything i tell you are democrats. and you know, we ought to do something, mr. senators, we have two great senators, we ought to come up with legislation that if you burn the american flag, you go to jail for one year. host: the rally lasted two hours and got underway 8:00 eastern time and the vice president speaking before 8:00 eastern time and 7:00 local time and wrapping up at about 10:00. we'll get back to your phone alls, lewisa joining us from fredericksburg, virginia. thank for you joining us.

caller: i want to talk about how we keep referring to the past and i think the democrats deliberately love to talk about the past because it ignores the problems of today. black people are on the streets because there's problems today, not because there's problems yesterday. and democrats control all these cities. hey build housing that's a crime. democrats are behind a law of absolute destruction of this country and i don't see why people don't see that. they have no ideas, no ideas for anything. they repeat the same slogans over and over, decade after decade and we never get anywhere. until the people wake up and see in their own neighborhood who runs your neighborhood and votes them out of office, it's not going to change. but then of course the voting is all rigged, you have to vote

two or three times a year. we can't live politics. that's what we -- they've forced us into living politics. just ignore today and let's focus on the past and that's what they keep blinding people to. they never talk about today, they talk about 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, 150 years ago. they're very good at floating scholars from decades ago. they have no clear idea of what to do in this country. they did start wars all over the place, world war i, world war ii, korea, vietnam, and on and on and on. and that's who they are. they're the warmongers just like hillary clinton said when they went into libya, we came, we saw, we killed and laughed. and that woman is the biggest disgrace, the biggest traiter

this country has ever had. she's full of hate. she's created the resistance. now i see that we have angela davis who was in charge of black, natives, women, lbgtq. angela davis is the president and chairman of a movement, this is the old communism all over again. this is what reverend barber was saying, the right to food, . using, jobs, money they want you to give him everything. who is going to work to give it to you? it's not going to happen. host: thank you for the call from virginia. there were demonstrations last night and friday evening in tulsa, oklahoma. the president making reference to that as well last night in his craly. president trump: americans have watched left wing radicals burn down buildings, loot

businesses, troy private property, injure hundreds of dedicated police officers. these police officers, they get injured and don't complain, they're incredible. and injure thousands upon thousands of people only to hear the cad cal fake news say what a beautiful rally it was. and they never talk about covid. they don't talk about what you see, 25,000 people walking down fifth avenue or walking down the street of a democrat run city, you never hear them saying they're not wearing their masks. you don't hear them say as they're breaking windows and running in and then when i say the looters, the anarchists, the agitators they say, what a terrible thing for our president to say.

what a terrible thing. but you don't hear them talking about covid, covid, to be specific cove covid-19. that name gets further and further away from china as opposed to calling it the chinese virus. host: from last night's rally and this headline from politico.com, president trump blaming the protesters for the disappointing turnout in the oklahoma rally, pointing out the slipping in the polls, the president hoped to reset his campaign with the first rally since the coronavirus outbreak. the full story at politico.com. bako to your headlines. we're joined from south san francisco. good morning. caller: hello, good morning. hello? host: yes, you're on the air. good morning to you. caller: my name is yvonne, i'm sorry. i don't know what you said. host: i'm sorry.

go ahead, yvonne. caller: good morning. i thought it was the same old, same old, making fun of people. it's sad to watch the president have no compassion at all for all the people that died of covid-19 and make light of it and joke and all the people are laughing, and people that call in and act like people are haters. people aren't haters, the only one that's been hating is donald trump. it's terrible. i'm looking forward to joe winning. host: thank you, yvonne. howard from fort lauderdale, florida, welcome to the conversation. caller: good morning and happy father's day. my father passed away on mother's day last year. host: i'm sorry. caller: the rally was great. i thought it was. and i hear all these people calling in talking about how trump is saying all these hateful things and he's up there gloating about all his

accomplishments and stuff, well, you've got to stop and look at something. on the day of his inauguration, there was a group onstage saying that the resistance of donald trump starts now. the impeachment of donald trump starts now. before donald trump even had a chance to tell people what he wanted to do, they were already hating him. these very same people still hate him. they hate him because they could not cheat an election and put hillary clinton in there. they failed at cheating to get hillary clinton elected. now it's joe widen's -- joe biden's term. the whole 3 1/2, four years, every time i see trump tweet or do a news conference and speak, yeah, it sounds like he's gloating. it's not that he's gloating. he's putting his message to the people. they can't depend on the media or politicians to put his

message through because they're not going to do it, they hate him, they hate him because he's standing up for the american people. we the people are the ones that we are fighting for. he's not fighting for his pocket. he's not even working for money, ok? he gives his money away. all these trump haters hate trump because they don't want to do the right thing. they're happy with having illegal immigrants coming into the country. they're happy with everything else the democrats have destroyed, especially the black community. my god, three times of getting pulled over for having possession of marijuana, you get 10 years. so that black father was taken out of the home. there's no discipline. there's no love. that family is destroyed because of that. this is joe biden that did this, ok. that boy, the kids will grow up hating other people because that's what they were taught.

they weren't taught anything better. the reason they were taught that is because the mother knew the father was taken away wrongfully. now their family is destroyed. you want to talk about fixing things, we all need to shut up, look at the world and fix it themselves as people. not depend on other people to fix our problems. i love all people, all people but trump is not the enemy, period. host: howard, thank for you the call. the campaign ad is called build a future. this from the biden campaign. joe: the country is crying out for leadership, leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together. i look at the presidency as a very big job and nobody will get it right every time. and i won't either. i i promise you this , won't traffic and fear division. i won't fan the flames of hate. i'll seek to heal the racial

wounds that have long plagued our family, not use them for political gain. i'll do my job and i'll take responsibility. i won't blame others. i promise you, this job is not about me, it's about you. it's about us. to build a better future. that's what america does. we build the future. the main fact being the most american thing to do. this is the united states of america. there's never been anything we've been ununable to do when we set our mind to do it and have done it together. i'm joe biden and i approve this message. host: that from the biden campaign, the name of the book, "the hardest job in the world, the american presidency." he'll be joining us from new york in a couple minutes. back to your phone calls. crystal in wilkes bury, pennsylvania were, on the democrats line. caller: good morning. i'm a little nervous and apologize for that. host: you don't need to be.

caller: thank you. i want to refer back to the woman who called in and said her husband was a police officer. i have three -- i'm african-american and yes, i'm african-american because my ancestors were from africa. my -- three people in my family are police officers, ok. so we don't hate police officers. we hate the bad ones, ok. and all the stuff that trump spewed last night is the same thing he said the other night, from the woman in galveston, texas, who said african-americans need to change their vote to republicans. i never could be republican and vote for a liar, a man who stands up every day and lies to the american people. i could never vote for a liar. my parents taught me better than that, ok. all trump does every day is put every race down, ok. and including the caucasian

race because they don't know he don't give a darn about them. i'm from the metropolitan area. i watched this man and i'm in my 6 0's. i watched this man whose father wouldn't let african-americans into his building, who when the central five were exonerated he put a big ad in the newspaper. how could i vote for a person like this who don't care about my children? and let me talk about the young people to the woman who called in and said her husband was an officer. young people change this world. young people got out and protested even though they were going to be killed. yes, i'm for black lives matter. and the reason we say that is because we don't matter, ok, because of a man who gets pulled over or a woman who gets pulled over for a ticket winds up in death. that's why we say black lives matter. it doesn't mean any other race doesn't matter. i love everyone but i love good

people. i don't love liars. i don't love people who call other people names, constantly making people feel bad because of their race. this man i could never vote for. he has to go out of office. he is the biggest criminal, talk about he's not getting a paycheck. he's stealing american money. he fires people who don't agree with him. he fires people who don't elect him or who is investigating him. this man must go. host: crystal, thanks for the call. bubba is next, memphis, tennessee, our line for independents. good morning. caller: oh, yeah, good morning. the kind of -- talking about the crowd size. biden couldn't get that big of a crowd in as many rallies as he wants to do. and actually when gorbachev got

out with the vice president, all they're doing is throwing a bone to the black people. they're trying anything they can to get these black votes and once they get them, the black people aren't going to get it until four more years. the crowd size is what gets me. can you imagine biden trying to get up and talk to that many people? he crumbles and bumbles when he's looking at notes. so i can't see people wanting somebody like that to run this country. he is unfit and we need -- trump's done great things, the best economy ever, lowest unemployment. i know people talk about the stock market. there's a lot of small time people that's in the stock market with their 401's through work. so that just -- it's not for rich people. it's for all kinds of people. and host: thank you.

thanks for the call from memphis, tennessee. he's the former co-host of cbs this morning, former moderator of cbs' "face the nation." now a "60 minutes" correspondent and political analyst for cbs news and is out with the newest book entitled "the hardest job in the world, the american presidency." john dickerson will be joining us in a moment. you're watching and listening to c-span's "washington journal" on this sunday, june 21, the official start of summer, happy father's day. we're back in a moment. >> c-span has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public all is the events. you can watch all of c-span's public affair programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app, and be part of the national conversation for

c-span's daily washington ""washington journal program. c-span, created by america's public cable companies, a public service, and brought to you today by your television .rovider area heso what we see with king, starts talking about using nonviolence as early as 1965 to paralyze cities to leverage nonviolence civil disobedience to transform. malcolm x had called for the same thing at the march on washington, which malcolm criticized, you can see one is a display of civil disobedience that was going to be muscular enough to end the racial status quo of the united states of america. ofuniversity of texas history professor joseph on

converging ideologies of malcolm x and martin luther king, junior, and the importance of their thinking of the fight for civil-rights in america. tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> what do you think we can do about that? >> with police reform, protests, and coronavirus continuing to affect the country, watch our live, unfiltered coverage of the government's response, with briefings from the white house, governors, and mayors across the country, updating the situation. and from the campaign 2020 trail, join the conversation every day on our live: program, "washington journal," and if you miss any of our coverage, you can watch on-demand on c-span.org, for listen on the go with our free c-span radio app. >> "washington journal" continues.

york,joining us from new john dickerson. his newest book, "the hardest job in the world: the american presidency." he is also a "60 minutes" correspondent on cbs news. thank you for being with us. guest: good to be with you. host: what surprised you the most in researching this book? , you know, when working on the book, it is hard to know when i started coming either 10 years ago or three years ago, but in the intensive interviews, that began three years ago, including with people who worked in the white house, ceo's, i started all the interviews with the same question -- if you are interviewing a candidate for the presidency like you were doing a job interview, what questions would you ask? what would the first question you woulbe? i assumed answers would be, "i would ask about character. i would ask about

decision-making," and the one that surprised me again and again was, "what is their ability to build a team, to manage people?" almost everybody i talked to was really focused on how a president puts together a management team, because the job is -- the we talk about in campaign as the figure in the presidency, it is really an organization that a president is building, and all of the leaders who i talked to said that in any job of complexity and high-stakes decision-making, you need to make sure you have a team that you have built, that you have worked with, and then that you have tended to over the period of time that you are working with them, because building and operating a well-functioning team requires ongoing maintenance. really aat was surprise, the extent to which people focused on the management part of the job, because we do not talk about that much in the campaign.

host: in the book, you write the following, quote, "the american presidency is the most powerful and overburdened office on the planet, full of demands, possibility, and frustration." its occupant is the most famous person in the world, with the power to inspire generations. the president can launch invasions or, by standing aside, let other countries lunch there but the president also has very little power to make progress in the domestic sphere on the major challenges of a generation." can you explain? guest: sure. so obviously come in the national security realm, a president has tremendous power, and, as i said, it is not just to launch covert operations and overt military -- launch military operations, but when president trump said he would stand aside and allow turkey to move against the kurds, that was a decision that affected u.s.

allies that the president made him according to his aides and those who were advising him, basically made on a phone call and kind of impulsive fashion. so in that sense, the winds of a president or the impulses, instinct, whatever you want to call it of a president, can operate very quickly with very high and powerful consequences on the other hand, when it comes to trying to pass legislation -- think about health care, for example, harry truman tried to pass universal health care for the united states committed took in rations before obamacare could pass, and then when it did, it past and kind of lumpy fashion with no republicans at hadsigning ceremony, and it been the project of the republican party to try to dismantle it ever since it was enacted. so in that sense, you see a way in which a president is captive to the separation of powers

system, captive in just the way -- well, not just the way, but in the way the system was supposed to be designed, which is to say to give power to the minority in making legislation. and then you think of all the other ways in which presidents are hamstrung by the media, by just the sheer number of duties in the office, which we can talk about later, but the number of things on the presidential to do list has ballooned, and, by the way, the complexity in all the realms of presidential life, for example, if you look at the economy, the economy moves faster now and with greater consequence, because of global ago,ctivity, than 40 years when transactions just moved at a slower pace. now the market can buckle the global economy in the space of a couple of weeks. host: we are going to share with our audience and with you some recent interviews we have done with past presidents. this one sentence jumped off the book, and i want to share it

with our audience. quote, "a modern president must be able to jolt the economy like franklin d roosevelt, tame congress like lyndon b. johnson, and lift the nation like ronald reagan." guest: well, those are sort of the star presidents associated with each of those realms of the presidential power, and each one, of course, people can debate, and one of the things i was trying to do with history, though i am not a historian, though i am deeply affectionate of what they do, and study what historians have studied, interview historians, spend time with the original materials of those administrations, to use presidents to illustrate portions of the job. and when you look at fdr and the know,y, for example, you the measures that fdr took when he came into office in 1933, the general consensus is now those were useful, and a lot of good was done, but really the economic repair was done by the

second world war, and america was brought back to prosperity by building the armaments and preparing and fighting in the second world war. so that is obviously not a remedy for economic success that is available to all presidents, but fdr's bold, persistent experimentation on half of a damaged economy has set the tone for what we expect from presidents. ronald reagan's speech on the calendar does a similar -- challenger does a similar thing. in a moment of national crisis, the component parts of what makes a speech so powerful is to pay homage to those who have cause intoft their the story of america, the narrative of america, and in so doing, uplift those who have been left behind, and to do it all at the right moment with a sense of -- with a sufficient talent and skill for delivering

such a speech that it captures the american imagination and le aves the country less wounded than they were before the speech was given. in this instance, richard nixon, we had a chance to sit down with every president, and he spoke to brian lamb in a "q&a " program after he left the white house. this conversation with president george w. bush in which they talked about the role of the media, something you talked about in your book. [video clip] bush: the process, i also made it clear that i started a lot of history. i read a lot of lincoln, for example, and they did the same thing to lincoln and a true mentor it i finish a book on roosevelt. there has always been name-calling in the political process. i also made it a point that the president should never feel sorry for himself. it is an honor to serve, and self-pity is a prophetical quality for someone trying to lead an organization. but politics is harsh.

later on, the advent by 24-hour cable news and partisanship -- pres. bush: and not enough c-span. a sober analysis was people could come on your show -- i'm pandering now -- but people could come on your show and discuss things in a way that is doesighly emotional and not have an edge to it. but politics is edgy. part of the problem is that with cycle, in order for people to gain market share, they have to scream loudly. they have to make a case in an exaggerated way to be noticed. new cycle ise 24/7 great, because it gives consumers a a lot of choice, but in other ways, it creates a

pretty hostile atmosphere at times. host: john dickerson, the media, you write about in your book. your reaction to what former president george bush told brian lamb. guest: he is right. who wasiewed carr, chief of staff for george w. bush, and he also worked for george herbert walker bush. to me what feels like a vise on the presidential had, which, by the way, has been with the job since the beginning. the pressure of the job, president bush said, you know, to whine and be self-pity and is unattractive, and he is no doubt right about that, but nevertheless, presidents from the beginning have felt the pressure of the job, and one of the modern effects of the pressure cooker of the job is what andy carr described, which is during george herbert walker bush's presidency, they knew the press would bring some big story

at most every day that they would have to scrabble to manage , and they would scramble to do so and either knock down the story or confirm the story or give their shape to the story by 6:30, which was when the evening news broadcast started, and once they had done that, they had some period of time before the morning papers hit and before the morning news television programs. what he said happened in between the time he worked for george herbert walker bush and then the son is two things happen. one, the 24-hour news cycle became a much larger driver, and then the standards of the news organizations started to lower. so it one time, when you needed to sources to run with something, by the time george w. bush was in office, you can kind of run with one source -- and this is not the right way to do it, but it is why the standard dropping made their day worse, someone would try to run with a

rumor, and then they would get somebody to bring actuate on capitol hill, and suddenly it was a story, whether it was a story or not. the white house would have to respond to the rumor, and now that the white house is talking about it, it is a story, where in the old days, a rumor could journalistsdown, or would not go with a rumor, because they only had one source, and may be the source they had was not so solid. so it is not only the amount of coverage and the constant 24-hour nature of it, but the quality is also not so good, and we have the social media age, where headlines on individual stories on the web, and those stories may or may not be produced by a reputable news organization, are changed in real-time based on their emotional appeal to the people that are reading them, not based on the quality, not based on the critical thinking, but based on whether people get excited and frustrated and angry and whatever other emotion. well, as eisenhower said, at the

beginning of the book, when i quote him, his anger cannot even think clearly. when everyone is all emotional and enraged, it is not a good posture for good decision-making or good conversation in the public square. host: we have an excerpt from dwight eisenhower's farewell address, which we will get your reaction to. let me remind every buddy that we are talking to john dickerson from cbs news. he is joining us from his home in new york. the book is titled "the hardest job in the world: the american presidency." "it is difficult to distinguish the office from its occupants, because trump is the office, as an extension of himself. he does not believe in many of the job's occupations, and his supporters love him for it. it is also the partisanship that trump has exacerbated. the presidency has become the venue for all high-stakes political combat." let's get to your phone calls.

janice is up from chula vista, california. john dickerson. good morning. caller: good morning. i will support donald trump from the border and everything else that he has ever put in place. he is and has been a president promises ande kept them, unlike the do-nothing democrats who for decades have continued to just give us lipservice. i am so tired of people ragging on our president, bringing him down, when this man has done more for this country than any person in my life. please blow off obama. the rhetoric, the lies, the continual racist commas about him and his so-called ego -- who doesn't have an ego? i don't see obama as lack of

egoism. [laughs] at the end of the day, president trump is a president who gets results. janice, thank you. john dickerson, what are you hearing in that caller? lot a well, you know, a passion for president trump. it is not unfamiliar to us, the fashion for president trump by supporters, but obviously, he exerts a great deal of passion on the other cited as well. heading to an election in which there is going to be a great deal of that passion on a kind of trajectory that we have seen in politics, not a straight line, but a crooked line that looks like a straight line. the trajectory we have been on to engage in harsher and a more emotional campaign, and that has a couple of challenges.

it cork since the country, which means any of the debates about the economy and freedom tend to take on a highly emotional aspect, and what the political scientists have discovered and also psychologists who analyze political behavior have discovered is that when those messages are delivered through medium, whether it is television or social media, that it has a psychological effect on us. to challengesact on our positions as if we are being chased by a snake or a leopard. aat we react in such fundamentally humid way. again, no room for the kind of consideration that you need and compromise that is required to solve some of our biggest problems, and this election is taking place in the context of three enormous problems perhaps, a fourth, but

, therespect to covid economic downturn, obviously the racial unrest and protests and sense of national disunity that is continuing to take place, which is larger than the crucial question of the relationship of the police and the black community, which is what kicked it off. it is much larger than that. these are debates that will take place in this highly emotionally charged atmosphere with the kind of passionate response we heard from the last caller. host: leo is next, joining us from franklin, new hampshire. thank you for waiting period good morning. caller: good morning, gentlemen. janet, you can keep drinking the kool-aid. you are face down in it. the question i have is, i would like to see pictures of before and after a president becomes president and when he leaves office, because what i have noticed in the years, is these men age incredibly fast.

i am not sure if the stress or the hourly days, but we are not going to be able to tell with donald trump, because he is orange all the time, so i cannot tell if he is aging or just putting on more makeup. thank you very much, and have a happy father's day. bye-bye. host: thank you, leo. but you do talk about the aging process of presidents over the years, lyndon johnson, fdr, and others. guest: in one of the chapters, which i call the expectation, is my attempt to kind of write a little bit about that vies i was talking about, kind of squeezing making, at pressure, the often not between a good outcome and a bad outcome, but often

between the timeline that a decision has to be made, you sometimes cannot wait for a sufficient amount of information to make a decision. repeated decision-making that has to be made in the presidency, and then it is hard enough on its own, but then to be in a culture where every decision that you make is second-guessed by your aids, your allies, your enemies, the press, by social media. is the constant watch you are under, and a president can do almost nothing without having being seen and been having wave after wave of responses to it. so all of that creates the conditions, the very unreal conditions for presidents, and you can see why they might age when they are in office. host: one of the questions we asked president barack obama and a 2009 white house interview was whether or not he had time to think, whether he had time to look ahead at president -- problems, not short-term but long-term.

here is that exchange. [video clip] >> when in your day or schedule do you have time to think? what obama: well, you know , i try to make time. usually i have time during the course of the day that i can review materials for decisions that i will have to make later in the day. i tend to be a night out will, so after i have dinner with the family and tuck the girls and, i have a big stack of stuff i have taken up to the residence, and i will typically stay up until midnight just going over stuff, and sometimes push the stack aside and just try to do some writing and focus on not the immediate issue in front of me, but some of the issues that are coming down the pike that we need to be thinking about, and there are a whole host of those issues. i will give you a good example. the kindhave, i think,

of comprehensive plan to deal with cybersecurity that the country needs. now, there's not a cyberattack right now. there's not an emergency virus right now, but that's a big, critical system that is vital to the our economy, to our public health infrastructure. host: john dickerson, that was the nine years ago from white house library. what are you hearing from president obama? guest: it is interesting that he there.ed a cyberattack i spent a fair amount of time in the book discussing what will phase a president, and in my work, i really started to focus on the surprise nature of the job, and that the reason teambuilding is so important in the presidency is two things -- teambuilding and prioritization, the reason they are both so important is just what barack obama, president obama was talking about there, because you

do not know when i challenge is going to hit, and by the time it hits, it is too late to get back up to speed on it, as one disaster official told the "new york times" recently, a disaster is a bad time to be exchanging business cards. what that means is if you do not have a team built and structure in place and habits of working with your team, when a disaster hits, they do not suddenly click in place. and a lot of these challenges that are very important but are not on the front burner right away require putting some things in place, so you need to have those things in place, so you can face them. when i was writing about that in the book, and here is a good example, george w. bush and al gore have three debates in the 2000 campaign. the word "terrorism" came up once, and only in passing. you would have missed it if you blinked. well, that issue became the one that dominated george w. bush's eight years in office. so it is interesting, though,

that cyberattack is what the president was talking about, because in the book, when i'm trying to conjure for readers the kind of surprise event that could be devastating and high-stakes, i mentioned pandemics -- the book was done before covid-19 -- i mentioned pandemics, but the one i focused on a little bit more was cyberattack's, and it is that kind of thing for which an administration has to prepare well ahead of time, and so that is part of what the book is about is how a president has to prioritize, which is the basis of your question there, which is you cannot always be thinking about the thing that is immediately in front of you, because there are very important things that you will only be able to take care of if you focus on them before hand. host: and to take that one step further, john dickerson, here is how you frame it in your book, a quote. "is it on fire or merely smoldering?

is the smoke coming from a burning family heirloom or last week's funny papers? defining a problem is the key to solving it. aguring out what quadrant problem belongs in, and you and your team know exactly what to take. the wrong quadrant, and you waste time or worse, you miss an opportunity to avert catastrophe. system, thatt quadrant system, which may be familiar to people if they read stephen covey's seven habits of effective people or any self-improvement, that matrix, which is based on the eisenhower matrix, which is never leave the urging crowd out. eisenhower thought i about how leaders do what they do, and that maxim was talking about what you were asking president obama about, which is -- how do you find space to think about

those important things in a job which offers you? and what i found in doing my of iis going -- sort housed it in eisenhower, but every presidency is concerned with it. it is not only, do you have the right priorities in your day, but every priority you pick, you are not tending to something else, so every time a president is doing something or seems obsessed with something, we need to evaluate whether this thing about which the president is obsessed fits in the priority matrix in the right part. and then secondly, what about all of those other things that are not being tended to while the president and the administration are so focused on that one thing? because there is an opportunity cost to all presidential priority decision-making, so once you pay attention to one thing, you are not paying attention to something else. so there are two things to be measured whenever a president chooses to spend time on something, and presidential time is some of the most important

and valuable time, really, on the planet. host: the cover of the book is really an iconic photograph of lyndon baines johnson, and i believe it was during the height of the vietnam war, is that correct? right.that is it is a 1968, and the tet offensive had happened, martin luther king had been assassinated, robert kennedy had been assassinated. but what he is doing in that picture, what we know -- we don't know all of it, and we do not know what is on his mind, but he is listening to a tape recording from chuck rob, his son-in-law, who on to be governor charles rob, and he was a marine lieutenant in vietnam sending back audiocassettes to his father-in-law about what was happening in vietnam, and johnson wanted kind of the battlefield perspective. he was worried he was not getting this great story from his general, so he was listening to the tape in that picture, and

so that is the background for that picture. you cannot see the tape recorder on the cover, because the book would have been too long, but it is the kind of agony, conjures the agony and weight of the office. when you open the book, there is a picture of president johnson and edward dirksen, the bubble can later in the senate, in which johnson is much more assertive, kind of on the balls of his seat, what is called the johnson treatment, with everett dirksen, and those identified to me the weight of the office, when you are being mastered by events, and in the picture with dirksen is an example of when you are the master of events, when you are able to use the powers of the office to get things done. host: and of course lyndon johnson succeeding john f. kennedy following his assassination.

john dickerson, in his final public press conference, october 31, 1960 three, there was this >> event to president -- this question to president kennedy. [video clip] >> mr. president, shortly after the bay of pigs, i asked you how you like being president. you said you liked it before the event. now that you have had a time to appraise the job, why do you like it, and why do you want to stay on for more years? worknnedy: i find the regarding, whatever my intentions are, we are still month away, but as far as the job of the presidency goes, it is rewarding, and i have given before this group a definition of happiness, and i will define it again, using your powers along the lines of excellence. therefore, finally presidency offers some happiness. host: john dickerson, three

weeks later, he would be assassinated. guest: he was, of course, already thinking about his next term, so keeping the tradition of being coy about reelection and next term and all of that. the quoting of the greeks is very john kennedy-esque, when you go back and look at his campaign literature, and in his presidency, he was somebody who had studied and thought about leadership, about history. presidency, um, you know, i mean, it is a fascinating thing to look at john kennedy. he brought in the presidency to the television age. of celebrating the celebrity status. teddy roosevelt was the real beginner of this, the kind of celebrity president at the heart of the office, but television kick that into a new gear. and kennedy's mastery of the

medium, in both his campaigning and also in his press conferences, are certainly a part of his office, and yet when you look at the challenges he had getting domestic policy passed, and he preferred foreign policy,, really, to domestic policy. he said domestic policy can lose as an election, foreign policy can get us killed. he thought of a job really in its crucible moments and toughest moments in those confrontations with the soviets, which he had several different times in his presidency, not only with the missiles in cuba but also in confrontations and summits with khrushchev, the soviet leader. he thought of the job much more in it's kind of commander-in-chief role of the job. matter, all ofic his intelligence, charisma, and glamour was not all that helpful

to him in passing any of his domestic legislation, and it was one of the first incidents, and this has been proved really throughout the presidency, is even the charismatic ones, who -- even ronald reagan was not able to kind of sweettalk the nation into doing things that the nation did not want to do. host: "the hardest job in the world: the american presidency," the title of the book by our guest, john dickerson. he is joining us from new york, and keith is on the phone from west palm beach, florida. good morning. caller: thanks. good morning. is -- what for john does he think is the most , most enduring quality that the president or the presidency -- the president should have, you know, to nsurerve the presidency, e that we live to the ideals of the declaration of independence?

based on the rhetoric that i am seeing taking place in america right now, it seems like we are forgetting that we are a democratic republic, and, you know, one man, one vote. every person has their voice, and that is the positive thing about america. we are expected to have opposing someonenot because thinks differently from you, it means you are a bad person. that is the sense of democracy. i do not want to live in a country where we only have republicans or a country where we only have democrats or only have independents. i want to live in a country where there is a mix of people. we talk about our ideas, we get together, and we decide on some kind of resolution, something that is palatable, so that all who are involved can look at the decisions they have made and say, well, i think my interest was well served. sometimes i wonder, the

golden rule -- treat people the way you want to be treated. the president see doing -- of course, not everything he does is wrong, but not everything he does is right. would you be comfortable with a democratic president doing the things you see our president doing, as far as judiciary is concerned, the things he says about, like, firing this weekend, firing people who are investigating him? things like those, i think, or a stretch to american democracy and what we stand for. and the office of the presidency is bigger than the president! host: let me jump in. we will give john dickerson a chance to respond. thank you for the call. a lot they are in the question and comments. john dickerson? guest: well, i think it is interesting to look and think about what one quality is needed, because the quality has to sync up with the times. i think teambuilding and understanding the presidency as

an organization that you need to build and have in place for those emergency moments, which are coming, if you are president , because those emergency moments come, and so you had better be prepared for them. i think those are basic rules of the office. but some of the other parts of the job requires skills that are based on what hits you. if you are a caretaker presidency who faces no wars, then that is different than if you are eight years of two wars and lots of covert operations. it is a different decision making. but on the question of maintenance of american values, because america is an idea and not based on where you were born born, thereou were is a stewardship function of the ideals and values at the heart of the american experiment, and each president is entrusted with those ideals, and at least two different ways. one is to measure the decisions

that the president and their administration takes, and make sure that they are in keeping with those fundamental and underlying ideals, because presidents are temporary occupants of the job, and they have to operate within the confines of a job that was built with those ideals at its center. you can't just reengineer the job when you get into it. you can try to change parts of it, but you still have to stay within the fundamental values of the country. and you want a president who, alone in a room making decisions, is guided by those values and ideals. but you also -- there's a public reason to do that, and i think you see, with respect to the outcry and agony in america and the overwhelming public support for black americans who see themselves outside of the american narrative and see it particularly in the way that they have been treated by the police, and are calling out for those voices and

answer them is the president's job. the president is the only person who represents the entire country -- everybody, those who voted for him and those who didn't. and this is a country dedicated to equality, opportunity, and freedom,, and if one portion of the country was denied a quality, freedom, and opportunity in the founding document of the country asks for a hearing, asks for more than just a tiny responses that they had heard before, it is incumbent upon a president, imbued with those values of equality that the nation was founded on, and whose job means that the president is a steward of those values, must then answer on behalf of those values in a way that those americans who are crying out for a hearing , in a way that they can feel heard. and so that is a way in which, going back to the question, which is what attribute of a president do you want that will preserve the country, that is

one of the attributes, a fundamental connection with the founding values, not just the ability to speak them in a speech, but something that a president feels in their bones when they are making decisions and then also when they are talking to the nation. host: you had mentioned president dwight eisenhower on a number of occasions, certainly focused on his presidency in your book. is january 17, 1961 farewell his reference for to the military industrial complex, but he also had this to say. [video clip] pres. eisenhower: during the long lane come america knows that this world of ours, every building smaller and must avoid becoming a community of dreadful nb instead a proud confederation of mutual trust and excitement. of confederation must be one equals. they must come to the conference table with the same competency

they do ease, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. host: that is from january 1961. let's get back to your phone calls. next up is rachel from forney, texas. good morning. caller: good morning. i am surprised how many people in the media still blames obama, president obama, and i was watching "meet the press," and they asked was he, was obama the he who pushed t.a.r.p., and said no, he pushed it. he was the one who pushed part of the bank bailouts. and the other one i want to ask you, trump had promised these religious groups that he was going to do away with the johnson amendment. do you think him wanting to do away with the johnson amendment has anything to do with these religious groups backing him?

host: thank you, rachel. guest: the johnson amendment prohibits religious organizations from endorsing a political candidate. i think it is certainly part of -- yes, it is exquisitely why some people support him, his position on the johnson amendment. matters, iat really don't know. i'm not doubting that it might matter or not, i just do not have the reporting on that to make a claim. on president obama and the response to the great recession, this is one of the reasons that historians usually wait, you know, 20 or 30 or more years to evaluate presidencies, because t.a.r.p. is part of the process, in responding to the great recession, but the question of whether, you know, president obama had that was -- was facing

a -- even though t.a.r.p. had finally passed, that result taking place while president obama was running as a candidate against john mccain, he was stuck with trying to help the economy get back on its feet, and many people credit him with the beginning of that process in incredibly difficult times, where you are just coming in, and when you -- one of the things that i spent a considerable amount of time on in the book is looking at just how difficult it is for new presidents. you come in, and you are the head of a multitrillion dollar organization. there is no playbook for you. you have done nothing in your life that is even remotely close to it, and you are asked to perform well on day one. a lot of your team is not even in place. the organizational chart is really up to each president. thatu are, to use a cliché is useful, building the plane while you are playing it at the same time.

and president obama, while he is building the plane and flaying it at the same time, had to respond to this massive economic challenge to america. where the historical perspective will be useful is -- and there's great debate on this -- many liberals think that obama did not do enough. he was given an emergency opportunity and should have pushed harder for a bigger stimulus to repair the country. so then the response to that is, well, that is fine and good, but he would have never gotten that through congress, because there were a lot of conservative democrats who had budget fears about the size of the stimulus. budget fears, by the way, they are almost not even a conversation in politics anymore, which is one of the x ordinary things. i spent years and years, probably 25 years of my career, covering people who were obsessed with the debt and deficit, and that has been completely absent from our political conversation. four not completely absent come about by comparison,

it seems completely absent. nevertheless, the response to the great recession includes that obamaher piece is criticized for. himn, many people give credit for responding under incredible circumstances that set the conditions for the economic prosperity that ultimately followed. some of the presidents'critics from the left argue that responses to the wall street-initiated devastation of the great recession were come within the narrow range of responses that were essentially dictated by people who were from or were familiar with wall street, and one argument is well, of course they had to be, because the repair was taking place in the finance sector, so you needed people with expertise who knew how to quickly solve and continue to solve those problems. yes, but they only saw a set of solutions that cap the financial

organization operating as it had been, and that is part of the inequities in american culture. had they been more creative, perhaps they would have been more durable, more widespread, or larger recovery from the economic recession. these all need to be adjudicated by people with actual expertise, and time needs to play out, in sufficient fashion, to be able to kind of adjudicate those questions. but there are -- and it is a fascinating question, but what i -- the reason i look at all of that in the book is, again, it goes back to building your team. the people that are put in place at these agencies and at the white house end up making a lot of big and important decisions that affect generations and challengeseconomic for generations, and again, it is why who a president takes and brings with him to the office is so crucial. host: here is how you frame it in your book, quote, "every

president since fdr has had to account for himself in the first 100 days. meet that artificial deadline. instead, we should encourage a new norm, if the president wants to move fast, then they have to start slow. one of the issues that continues to come up is partisanship in this town, something that we asked president trump in our interview last july. [video clip] pres. trump: i do believe there is a chance that we can do something. probably it would be in our second term. i do think they can do something a lot better. that would be one of the things that i am a little bit surprised. i thought that there would be better unity. we are accomplishing a lot. we are getting what we want. the military is being rebuilt. lot.ax cuts are a the regulations in place are the biggest of any president in history, even in a much longer term of years. but with all the things that we have got, i mean, think of v.a.

choice, think of all the things that we have got, you would think that that would make people happy. host: but read the tweets. do you think you are a uniter as president? pres. trump: i would not have to tweak. it is my only form of defense. if the press covered me fairly, i would not need that, but they do not cover me fairly. host: our interview from the roosevelt room last july with president trump. let's get back to your phone calls. henry joining us from michigan. you are on the air with john dickerson. good morning. caller: good morning, gentlemen, and happy father's day to both of you. ieve, before i get to john, hope that in the last part of today's show, you will ask your people to cue up from donald thep's address last night dark rhetoric that seems to be new civil war,a

especially when he talks about second amendment and what his people could do if they really got angry with black lives matter, and trying to incite violence. i think the poll numbers that book,eadful, the bolton and just the disastrous press that he has been getting from the pandemic really show how difficult things are for him, especially when he saw that crowd size was not what he wanted it to be. john, to you, i would like for you to delve a little bit deeper into how remarkable president barack obama's performance was as president and the achievements of the aca and saving the economy and bringing the automotive industry, saving the automotive industry, all that, given sequestration and the total disingenuous nature of

the dealings that he had to have with congress, because the congress was very -- and the nation -- very ambivalent toward the first african-american president. when they turned down medicare in those confederate states with the confederate governors, and for him to have done what he did for this country, and to perpetuate -- i mean, to reinvigorate an economy that was almost dead and depression-like, i want you to talk about how skillful he had to be in order to navigate those treacherous waters, as the first black president. host: henry, thank you for the call. and john dickerson, he also brought up the john bolton book. i am not sure if you want to comment on that as well. guest: sure. well, that was, you know, a good list of president obama's accomplishments, as those who are fans of president obama would list them.

and it depends on, you know, how you see things, whether you sign up for all of those accomplishments. i think there is no question that what the president face when he came to office, as i said previously, was a set of circumstances that were highly and exhorting a really -- x ordinarily challenging. there is a bridge between the obama years and the trump years in terms of this question of partisanship in washington. the affordable care act, which , was,ent obama passed for a long time, headed over to congress. president obama basically said, "i want congress to work this out in a bipartisan fashion," and a lot of his supporters on the democrat excited said, "what are you doing? why are you wasting your time doing this?" in his view was it would only be a durable document if, in fact, the republicans were given some

buy-in in the congressional process. decidedmately, he the republican's were never going to give him back buy-in, because the structure of politics now, and i go into this in some detail in the book, the way in which the structure of politics has changed leads to a lot of these outcomes. they are the individual choices of individual outcomes, to be sure, but they are on the parties now to stay aligned, to stay within their partisans lane, is very much more, the structural part, more than the reagan administration, when president reagan and tip o'neill were able to get some things done, when reagan was able to pass some things with democrats. it was really the structure of politics at the time that has changed, so i go into that change and where it came from and why it exists in the way we are today, so there is a much

longer story to tell there. nowwe are in a condition where major legislation that passes, the affordable care act passed with democratic votes, and the tax cut that president trump heralded in his view past with only republican votes -- the problem with that is it leads to legislation that is not durable, it is brittle, and the american system in which the minority that eisenhower was talking about gets the feeling that they have a say in the process is making those who are in the minority feel like they do not have a say in the process, which leads to some of the extraordinary frustration. on the question of the bolton book, well, i mean, there is so much to say, particularly the fact that he believes the president is a national security threat, but then waited from the opportunity that he had to say, during impeachment, to bring some of this forward, when that was up for discussion, i think,

is a question that he -- if the danger is as clear and present as possible, why the lapse of time in between? i think there are particular bombshells that he claims and the white house refutes, but there is much in the book that echoes the previous statements of lots of different people in senior levels who were in the white house. and then finally, i would say it comes back to this teambuilding question. the president has been pretty unsparing in his assessment of john bolton and what a disaster nobody but, i mean, forced the president to hire him, nor has the president been forced to hire other people he has gotten rid of or left the administration that he has spoken of so devastatingly as they were going out the door. if teambuilding is crippled to a presidency, the brookings institution has studied the turnover and the turn in the trump white house, and

seniorlarly at the most level, and the president is setting a new record for turn and turn at the highe highest level. it is not possible to run an organization without much turnover and do it well. whatever you may say about john bolton, he is also an example of a management structure that is at odds with those sort of best practices of the presidency, but then also, obviously, anything you see in the functioning corporate world or business world, you would never think that a company that had that kind of turnover at its senior level, with the kind of vitriol from the ceo at the people he had hired, you would not consider that to be a company that was doing well. host: so let me conclude, with only about a minute left, your quick final thought, based on the book, you write the following, "one of the best ways to repair the presidency is to stop focusing on it. we take all of our problems to

the presidential complaint window, but on certain matters, we are going to the wrong office entirely. we should be looking at other institutions -- congress, state and local government, and looking at the electoral process that fix those lawmakers. those are the institutions where we can effectively address many of our national challenges." with about half a minute left, john dickerson, your final thoughts. guest: well, the end of the book has a number of ideas, solutions, and thoughts, but recognize immediately that they are humbly offered, because these are meddlesome and difficult problems. just that one about the office, the structural challenges that i write about, at some length, with congress did not happen overnight, and they will need to be changed at the local level, and the way we pick lawmakers, and the way we try to build structures that break them from the partisan lock that we are in, so this is a long road, and i just hope that people read the book and feel a little bit more informed about what some of the

possible changes may be, and if nothing else, it gives them a filter to sink through these next couple of months, as we had through april presidential election. host: john dickerson, happy father's day. you have how many children? guest: i have two children, who wonderful children, who wish we were asleep right now. host: [laughs] john dickerson, the book is called "the hardest job in the world: the american presidency," john dickerson, we appreciate your time on this sunday. guest: thank you so much, steve. host: you are watching and listening to c-span's "washington journal." we are back in a moment. said what we see is he softly about using nonviolence as early as 1965, after the los angeles rebellion of 19 65, to paralyze cities to leverage nonviolent civil disobedience to transform american democracy. malcolm x had called for the

same bank at the march on washington, which malcolm criticized the march on washington, he wanted a display of civil disobedience that would be enough to e the racial status -- end the racial status quo. >> university of texas professor peniel joseph on malcolm x, martin luther king junior, and their thinking of the fight for civil rights in america. "q&a," tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. ♪ c-span has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events. you can watch all of c-span's public affair programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app, and be part of the national conversation for

through c-span's daily "washington journal" program. or through our social media feeds. c-span, created by america's public cable companies, as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. host: it has been called the forgotten war. it has been 70 years since the start of the conflict in korea, a conflict we are still dealing with today. at the top of the hour, in conjunction with american history tv, i conversation with charles hanley, out with the book, "the korean conflict," but first, some background on the events that led to the war. ♪ korea, a nation divided at the end of world war ii at the 38th parallel. in north korea, the soviet union wasted no time in setting up a communist government. in this outcome of the united

states and the united nations stalls to establish an independent and it didn't credit republic. two years ago -- and democratic republic.two years ago, in ul, a democratic republic was born. in may, 1950, the citizens of this young republic went to the polls again to exercise the democratic right, to choose their government under their democratic constitution. the as the citizens of korean republic voted at free elections, the north korean leaders were boasting of their intention to unify the country by force. target, aas their partly mountainous peninsula and the 20 million peaceloving citizens of the republic of korea. ♪

the attack by the north korean communists came suddenly and without warning. army rallied tog the defense of the republic, improvising quickly to meet the aggression, korean troops met at the 38th parallel. armed with planes, trains, and guns, the republic army were ill-equipped to meet the onslaught. ♪ in the united states, an emergency session of the united nations security council is called. ambassador chang of the republic of korea hears the secretary general say -- >> the present situation is a serious one, and it is a threat to peace.

, i consider it -- the security council to take ce in theessary for pea area. ♪ these tragic and bewildered refugees are always the first fruit of wanton aggression. charles hanley is joining us from florida. "ghostut with a new book flames: life and death in a hidden war." we thank you for being with us

on c-span. very good to be with you. the historical significance of the korean war, the forgotten war, what is it 70 years later? guest: we can see it in the theion that still exists on korean peninsula with the nuclear crisis, but it was sometimes called the forgotten because it came just five years after the good war or the great war and was overshadowed by the vietnam war. we can seek back this was a watershed moment in 20th-century history because it communist ande

capitalist world, and was the first undeclared war by the united states in its history. that is all we have had since. remains the last conflict .etween great powers it really permit permanently militarized the united states. within a few years the defense budget quadrupled in the pentagon never looked back after that. in the nucleary crisis this is really rooted in that war because the united states threatened, in various ways, openly and secretly through back channels, to use

nuclear weapons against the north koreans, the chinese. realized itchina needed its own deterrent and went to work. 1964 the chinese had a nuclear weapon and that we can see the north koreans as well, who suffered such tremendous devastation during the korean war, have their own nuclear arsenal as well which they consider a deterrent against another devastating conflict with the u.s. host: we should point out we do have a line set aside for those of you who are veterans of the korean war, but are you saying the underlying issue in the 70 years agon resulted in the war? guest: yes. the japanese colony was divided by soviet occupation, american

occupation in the north and south and consequently they each followed communist and capitalist. of 1945 we reached the moscow agreement to unify within five years. there was bickering and that was deemed a failure by 1948. the whole idea had been dropped and south and north declared themselves independent nations. we can find the root of the korean war very directly in this hostility between soviet union and united states. , you your upcoming book

really tried to personalize those who are on the front lines including citizens. walk us through what you learned. learned was what i even more than i already knew. i had been working on this as a journalist for many years, but i learned even more about the devastation of notches north korea which suffered such bombardment, but also south korea with the back-and-forth of the war. my characters, the featured individuals -- and these are real people and real experiences, but i call them characters -- my characters witness much of the horrors of the war. from the atrocities to the bombardment of north korea in wayicular and so, this is a

i thought to bring home to the reader the real meaning of any war and this war in particular which is so neglected, it seems, on the bookshelves in america. ahave characters ranging from northern refugee girl, a , who opens atrl the start of the war onto soldiers, civilians, and even americans. on up to people at the chop like general matthew ridgway who ended up as the commander and the commander of china from 1950

onward on the chinese-north korean side. i follow their experiences through the war and through them we get a good overview of strategy and the conduct of the war. in the meantime, many of my ordinary people are going through these battles or fleeing as refugees. guest has won the pulitzer prize for his writing with the associated press. what event led to the initial conflict? anst: of course, there was invasion june 25, 1950 and i believe it was seven north korean divisions coming across the 38th parallel. there had been skirmishing along

38th parallel before then. when the war broke out june 25 in the morning many people in the south thought we hope it is just another skirmish. it turned out to be a full-scale invasion and on the northern side the people in north korea were told south korea had attacked. this fiction is still maintained by the north koreans officially in their museums and such. attack andrprise there was a failure on the south korean and american side, an intelligence failure, to not protect the movements of troops across the parallel.

the north koreans had cleverly maneuver.o-called host: beau is joining us from georgia. welcome to the conversation. caller: thank you. i had a relative that served during the longest artillery with annaval history opposing enemy force. president truman called it a police action even though it was undeclared. the second question is the armistice ended the fighting on the peninsula in 1953, but there has been no formal treaty and too many north koreans the war has never been forgotten even

though we have forgotten the war itself. thank you. points.o very important there has been no peace treaty. politicalto be a 1953.ment in july koreas, butnify the the hostilities were just so 1954 -- they meeting took place in geneva -- it did not go very well. finally, the united states walked out over disagreements over who would oversee elections and such.

the united states proposed the united nations oversee the elections, but of course, the united nations were considered by the north to be a belligerent force in the war. the security council having adopted resolutions urging countries to provide aid to south korea. andook sides in the war that was something the north koreans could not abide and they and the soviets proposed, and neutralese, proposed nations and the americans rejected that. it ended in failure and we continue to have a war on hold, no peace treaty. host: there has not been a

cease-fire in north korea. guest: the caller brought a police action. often, journalist i see that was raised in a question to president truman. would you consider it a police action? truman said yes, he went along with it, but this was not his formulation initially. this was very early on when there was some thought in that this would end quickly and it would become a thatkeeping operation, but proved to be not true. it went on for three years and there was tremendous cost. steve, theioned, americansoll for the included over 60,000 dead.

it is believed between 2000 and and north korean korean troops were killed and even more chinese were killed in that war. approximately half a million, but the real toll was on the civilians of north and south korea. it is believed probably one million civilians on each side were killed during that war. i think it is still considered the war with the most costly casualty toll of any the america has fought. host: we are looking back at the

start of the korean war in 1950. 70 years ago on c-span and c-span3. sam is next from michigan. good morning. caller: hi. reading about the creation and i got so mad to the end i had to stop reading it. it seemed to me the truman clickingation was just its tongue and shaking his head watching this crazy behavior. why did somebody not do something about that? host: thank you. to his point, and maybe a broader question, some of the key players in this. guest: you are asking about the key players? host: he mentioned general macarthur and i was going to mention him, but also some of

the other key figures in the conflict. macarthur'scarthur, behavior came to the fore during the war and not leading up to it. he was the one who ordered troops in after getting the ok from truman in a undeclared war. koreaered the troops into and had a very hard time -- just to summarize the early back-and-forth of the war -- the north korean invasion pushed the south korean army and american troops into the southeastern whichnt of south korea became the northern perimeter. september 1950 macarthur landed a huge

and that cutrce the north koreans from the supply. forces ofe time the south korea and america drove the north korean forces forward. then macarthur sent his forces across the 30th parallel, capturing the general, and onto the chinese border. directives from the joint chiefs of staff in washington were that you should not send american troops to the chinese border because the chinese would consider that a threat, but he disobeyed that. command moved

toward the border and that is when the chinese intervened. at the same time macarthur made a strategic error in splitting his forces of the east coast and west coast. the chinese could pick off the split forces more easily. their attacks were a great surprise to macarthur and his anerals and they went into headlong retreat back to seoul. the real thing that got to president truman about macarthur was that he was speaking out not just militarily, but he kept pushing for a wider war against

ttacking a chinese basis and china itself. taiwanered troops from getting them to re-invade china on a second front in the war. my character, general ridgway, he could see early on macarthur was making a strategic mistake on the ground in north korea. also, he understood when he was told he was taking over for macarthur that macarthur had been fired and ridgway would -- he wasentagon already in korea and that he would leave korea to go to tokyo. ridgeway new that macarthur's people woulderican

not stand for them. became tooly impatient with insubordination. they fired him. host: we welcome our radio audience and those loo listening on sirius xm. our guest is charles hanley. he is a pullets or prize-winning prize-winningtzer author for the associated press. we are looking at the korean war that happened 70 years ago. we go to bob. caller: my brother got killed over there august 5, 1952. most is the me the

fact that most people over here these days do not know china was the biggest part of why we lost that war. the second thing is that memorial day everybody says, happy memorial day. it is a very happy for me, i will tell you that. second, people like colin kaepernick who disrespect the , that is tell you what we can everoint respect the honor of the people that died. that is what memorial day is about, but you get a guy like colin kaepernick or these other celebrities saying this is our flag, and they're disrespecting it.

i would love to disrespect one of their relatives in the same way. host: bob, tell us about your brother. what happened? caller: he waited to get drafted and he was ready to come home and a sniper got him. he was with the regimental combat team and evidently it was behind the lines, but they had the snipers out there picking people off left and right. he had been promised to be able to come home. he had already served his time and he got promoted. they did not know how to manage the peace. everything was quiet, everybody was waiting for the next move. host: how old was he when he passed away? caller: 22. host: thank you for the call and thank you for sharing your story. guest: i am very sorry to hear

about your loss and obviously, the mention of china earlier, there were chinese soldiers left in the war and they were the deciding factor. they saved north korea otherwise we would have a unified force back in the 1950's. viewed the warll as a great victory because they they payth korea and close attention to the history of that particular war. characters isf my

the overall commander of the chinese force. soon after he entered the war hee and set up headquarters is a russiant son translator. soon after the chinese armies entered north korea the headquarters were attacked and the general had just left his son had returned to the cabin. planes came in and they bombed the cabin and killed his son. considered asome

potential successor, is buried in north korea and honored on their memorial day so to speak. the connection between china and north korea is quite close historically. , buthave their animosities the chinese people and north heiran people recognize t relationship is deep and long. host: our guest is joining us from florida and our next caller is from florida. bill, good morning. caller: good morning to you. it is a privilege to talk to mr. hanley. my question is two parts. koread north and south originally become separated?

my second part is do you think north korea thinks in terms of what drives them today is not self-preservation, but the desire to unify the peninsula? host: thank you. first, on the division between north and south korea along the 30th parallel. guest: yes. there was an agreement between the united states and soviet e-unify north and south, but the discussions fell apart after a couple of years because of their growing animosity over so many other matters particularly in europe.

they simply went ahead and fostering separate governments. korea8 the republic of and latered in seoul in 1948 the democratic republic of korea would be declared in north korea. i tend to say the korean people are very, let's say, ofionalistic, very proud their culture, their history, their unity over centuries. in 1950 this was the first time foughtfile korean -- korean. it had been unified for centuries before the soviets and

americans brought about this war. i think in their hearts all koreans would love to see reunification, but i know in the south there are misgivings because of the great burden that they would have to undertake if there were to be reunification and supporting a very impoverished north korea and politically troubled north korea. as far as the north korean attitude, they consider themselves the legitimate and thent of all korea people have been fed propaganda there whole lives. i think at this point they think it is their rightful place to be reunified and be the rulers of korea. war legacyorean foundation putting together a

series of conversations. those on the front lines of the battle between 1950 and 1953 and among them was alan clark. first, this has visit on the on the back and it is real thick. the godsend we had. this was an overcoat and it has an insert which is here. and everybodyog had one of these and everybody wore them. you slept in them, you walked in them. in addition to that we had a wonderful which was

because you could put it around your face and that wind, which was really cold, he could put it under your helmet and have your eyes out. that was wonderful. was blowinge wind we were out near the communicatingwere with our headquarters. as i stood there with the wind blowing and, at the time it was 42 degrees below zero, the wind was blowing like crazy and if i faced the wind, i could not close my eyes. that is alan clark reflecting what he remembers from the war in korea 70 years ago. al is joining us from new york. good morning. caller: good morning.

thank you for the program and your guest. i have two questions. book startsough the in 1950, if he could deal a little bit more with the history of a korean resistance to the japanese occupation that started in 1905, and also the establishment of the greek re-government in the south. the korean independence movement was declared a party very early in september 1945 and the u.s. made thenstituted or re-government come into existence. thank you for your research. host: thank you.

he goes back to the start of the century. guest: history is very interesting as you know. 1905, there was a settlement in which teddy roosevelt played a mediating role. as part of the agreements there was a secret agreement between the united states and japan in which the united states would sovereigntyjapanese over the entire korean peninsula and in exchange the japanese would not interfere with the american role in the philippines. the japanese very quickly turned this into a colonial situation. koreaeclared they annexed and declared a colony. they even tried -- they did

impose -- the japanese language, the required them to take japanese names, and they became a hated colonial power over korea. the caller is correct there was some resistance, armed resistance, but it never amounted to much. there were fairly peaceful protests that broke out, but they were crushed ruthlessly by the japanese. ultimatelynce manchuria andard east where foar there were many koreans. organized as a gurill

guerilla force. they got training part of a rush guerilla unit in carrying out sabotage. so, this also established the dichotomy between people in the caller is correct that people in the south tried to form a south wide

and even ae movement structure for government. the american occupation force simply eliminated that ended in fact, there was a korean worker's party in the south that was outlawed, made illegal, by general hodge who was the commander. there is a deeper history than simply what happened in 1945 with the division by the soviets and americans. i mentioned the with theto my book flame" but "ghost this is what i tried to present.

the hidden aspect of the korean war, many of which did not come to light for half a century. involved mass political executions in the south. , butd several aspects 2010 there were investigations into what happened in 1950. that theened was government had jailed tens of thousands of political prisoners. the north korea invaded military police and civilian

police simply took these people hadinto the outlying areas, them dig mass graves, and then executed them by the thousands. one of my featured individuals journalist of "the london daily worker" and he was the first outsider to happen upon, while traveling with the , to these massmy graves and reported the killing of thousands of political prisoners. reported american officers were present in u.s. truckss were used -- were used. that it wased denounced as an atrocity by the

u.s. embassy in london and no western reporter ever followed up on this. year 2000 until the that it turned out the u.s. army officers at the scene of this mass killing, although there were many over south korea, had taken photographs and sent them to the pentagon. they were a classified secret for half a century until a researcher had them declassified. the reporting turned out to be true and there were other hidden aspects of the war that "ghost flames" goes into. some of my characters were brought up in these atrocities. lostis a young mother who

her two children. they were killed by the american troops in late july 1960. we follow her through that ordeal. andwas badly wounded through the rest of the war she is haunted. the husband began to find out who killed these hundreds of refugees. orders that turned up at the national archives. by theered

division commander that the --ugees [indiscernible] ordering tor was shoot all refugees across the river. there were mass killings of refugees and civilians, not just by bombardment, but by ground forces and aerial strikes as well. we will never know how many. girlaracters, the little with her widowed mother, they are caught in one of these on the road where the girl sees the first people killed in the war

by american aircraft. randomly chasing civilians along the road outside of seoul. i hope this book will bring home, in very real terms, the real people who the reader gets to know. think, theng home, i true horrors of the korean war. host: charles hanley, we have a lot of callers who still want to chat with you, but quickly, who was the president of the republic of korea? guest: he was a well educated christian korean. very early on during the agitated,olonial era

for decades, for korean independence from japan. conference at the end of world war i advocating for korean independence. the japanese were allies of the western powers in that war and so he got nowhere with that. lobbiedquent years he for koreanon independence and also during world war ii. divided two koreas were he had become known to the washington establishment and the .ia in particular they wanted him installed as the

president of the new south korea. tokyo flewarthur in him over to take over in south impetuous he was very and became very unpopular the people who had to work with them, the politicians and members of the general assembly. it is interesting there was a the north before korean election. [indiscernible] the invasion, in effect, had him maintain popularity among the

people because of his insistence on [indiscernible] . . by 1953 reed was so angry over the armistice he began toling stunts that tried sabotage the south. for example, prisoners who were in the south the one to stay in the south. he was a very difficult person for the americans to deal with, but in the end, he had to act west to the armistice -- acquiesce to the armistice. host: our guest is the co-author

of another book. our caller is a veteran of the war. hermann is calling from baltimore. caller: hello. inm 89 years old and was korea for the last three months of the war. as anin the signal corps intercepted radio operator 10 miles behind the line. things i remember -- also, i was stationed right alongside the highway leading north. troops were fresh being trucked north and all night long there were ambulances coming south. that i do remember.

i was not close enough to the line to be shot at, but i could see the flashes in the sky and hear the rumbles from the bombings and artillery. my first question is what is the relationship between north and south korea before the invasion? about thest talk dictatorship. in maybe did he play having the invasion jet started? host: can you stay on the line? i want to follow up with you. can you be with us for a moment or two? hermann, please stay on the line. it is very interesting. is themy characters

north korean general, the operations chief, and i follow him, the reader follows him through the war. war about late in the the genesis of the war. he learned from an old comrade of his who happen to be the russian interpreter. ofwas told that in march moscow andng went to thatsed to joseph stalin to invade and reunify. stalin was extremely cautious

because he was worried about the americans. the occupation army was still in korea and he said that was not a good idea. he also pointed out to kim, the southern president seems very eager to invade you, to invade the north. why don't you just let him do willand the whole world come in your defense? stalin indicated he would support him in that. learned that after to go back told kim and never raise the issue of invasion again. then the american army pulled out of south korea and in communistshe chinese won the civil war in china in october of 1949.

the conditions on the ground were changing. the soviet union had developed its own atomic bomb to match the americans. 1950at point in april of stalin gave the go-ahead for the invasion. it turns out that just two weeks before or 10 days before the john foster for truman was in korea assessing the situation. general was still begging to invade north korea. the told him no because truman administration was leery of starting a war with the soviet union. stage, and as i have said earlier, there were skirmishing along the border

half of which had to be blamed on the south. they were fighting each other for a couple of years before the full-scale invasion occurred. you know, you were there the last three months and we think of the action in the war taking place in the first year from the invasion in june to the following spring. war,hinese entering the but the final two years were quite a bloody, grinding, trench warfare type of war and i not surprised to hear that there were trucks going north with trips and ambulances coming south. the chinese launched a gigantic withinve as punishment

months of the end of the war. there was an attempt to gain one inch more territory and so there and patrols sniping going on. casualties continue day by day. host: hermann, let me go back to you. are you still with us? caller: yes. host: you were 19 years old at the time. what was going through your mind as you left the u.s., traveled to korea, and became part of this conflict? what were you thinking personally? caller: well, i was in college and not doing well. i was at the university of north carolina and after my junior year i dropped out and i had no choice -- other be drafted or

enlist. they said if i enlisted i would not have to go to korea. [laughter] and isted for three years ended up there anyway. i was nonpolitical. you say 19 years old or whatever, i just had to do what i had to do, that was it. i never thought about the war in particular. calling fromou for baltimore, maryland. a veteran of the korean war. let's go to james joining us from michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for the book. 1968 i was is in based in japan when the north

pueblo.seized the u.s. years whoife of 51 was born in north korea in 1949. over the years i had concluded she would not have been in south korea if general macarthur had .ot disobeyed orders host: we are losing you. caller: if you could comment on the number of refugees who were .ble to get out of north korea host: thank you. making reference to his own wife who he met in 1968. caller: i did not catch all of .hat, but he mentioned his wife interesting and sad

situation. kaesong before the war was much fought over, but in the end the demarcation line ends up in north korea. song is an old capital, loyal capital, of north korea. you may note that it is also the center for the inter-korean cooperation whenever it does happen. .here is an industrial park [indiscernible]

the whole refugee story is just one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. it is estimated 10 million fromns were separated their immediate family members. my featured individual, my characters, have many examples of this. is a young medical student in north korea who dodged the draft by the north once the war broke out. his grandmother hit him away and eventually with all of this back and forth over the territory of north and south korea he gets seauated to south korea by and goes into the south korean army. north, this ise

when the chinese entered in the american army had moved to deep into north korea including past his hometown, and he thought korea will now be unified. then he returned from his day and sees one the south korean army marching south. he asks a military policeman what is going on and he says, this is just a technical retreat, young man. he goes home and tells his mother, i better leave. i will be back in three days. this is just a typical example. he never saw his mother again. late 1950 ande this young student survived as a soldier in the south korean army

. school in to medical the south and emigrated to california and became a well-known cardiologist. he was finally able to return to north korea in the 1980's, but by then his mother had died. there are so many stories, so many heartbreaking stories, a family that thought they were temporarily separated just to find out it is for the rest of their lives. this is just another little explored area of the tragic war. host: chronicled in the upcoming " and key"ghost flames sunre in all of this, park

yung. mother in was a young central south korea. she and fellow villagers were chased by american troops from the village as the americans were retreating. this is in july of 1950. road and thewn the regiment made them leave the and very quickly american planes bombed this. in this attack. nearbyed under a concrete railroad bridge. the troops of the seventh cavalry regiment proceeded to

machine-gun these people. this was not confirmed until half a century later in 1999. she lost her two children. her two-year-old girl was killed fairly immediately in the tunnel and the next night she tried to with herark sun-young, and as the sunoy rose an american soldier shot at them pointblank. see it was aearly mother and child. killed the boy and badly wounded her. as with the inconsistencies of war the americans took our away to an army hospital and she recuperated.

she had been separated from her husband who left earlier and gone farther south. it took weeks before they could reunite and try to make a new life back in their home village. host: let me make one final point because we only have about one minute left. this is another individual involved in the war, the korean war resulted in the integration of the armed forces, and james sharp reflecting on what he remembered from the conflict. >> i have a photograph of that. and i am the only african-american in my platoon. been 120 people. >> 120? >> i was the only african-american. company,rrived in fox marinebattalion, seventh

5.had two of them were two of whom were killed. at one time we spent 83 days on line, which was an exceptional online.f time to be while you're onlirningse you're defending the trench line, but you're also out on patrol every night in front of you to cross your own barbed wire, cross your own minefields and go out and go out into the open areas in front of the line in order to protect it. host: from the korean war legacy foundation, and again, joining from us florida is charles hanley. bottom line, with only a half a

minute left, what is the legacy of that conflict? guest: well, it clearly is the on le fact that 38 parallel the peninsula is probably the piece of explosive war on the road still, and we have a nuclear north korea at this point, as pointed earlier, essentially at the rufflet war, and they need to establish a eterrent, and we have an american port, american allied force in the south as well, and it simply remains a tinderbox that we see almost every day along with the 38th parallel north and south. but also, it changed the united states into a permanently

militarized nation. we fought many wars after that, first time the korean war establishing a precedent for everyone that's followed, and it still is not the original piece, we're still at war technically on the peninsula, and so it really was a watershed moment in american istory and global history. host: a pulitzer prize-winning reporter for the associated press, his book "ghost flames: life and death in a hidden war, korea 1950-1953," thank you very much for joining us on "washington journal" and on american history tv. guest: thank you. host: in case you missed any of this program on american history tv, we'll re-air it later today at 6:00 p.m. eastern time. again, at 10:00 p.m. eastern time. looking at the korean war as we

reflect on its 70th anniversary. for those watching on aah-tv, up next, those soldiers who came to battle in the 1970's, this from the u.s. defense department. and here on c-span television, a reminder, we're back tomorrow morning with the "washington journal." we'll look at the history of voting and also speak to a trump campaign advisor on this father's day to the dads and grandfathers, we wish you a happy father's day from. my home to your home, thanks for joining us on this sufpbled enjoy the rest of your weekend. have a week ahead. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] >> what we see with the revolutionary king, he starts talking about using nonviolence

as early as 1965 after the to l rebellion of 1965, paralyze cities, to leverage nonviolent civil disobedience to transform american democracy. malcolm x had called for the same thing at the march on washington, which malcolm criticized the farce of washington, because he wanted a display of civil disobedience that was going to be muscular enough to end the racial status quo in the united states of america. >> university of texas history professor on his bob "the sword and the shield" with the activism and converging ideologies of malcolm x, and martin luther king jr., and the importance of their thinking on the fight for civil rights in america. "q&a," tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> last night president trump held his first campaign rally in