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>> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president and c.e.o. of the l.b.j. foundation. >> good evening, everybody. on behalf of the l.b.j. foundation and more perfect, our partner, it's my privilege to welcome you to trust news at the l.b.j. presidential lobby. you'll be hearing from john bridgeland later this evening as he introducings our guesses, kara swisher and already awilmore. thanks to our participants in the conference who you'll be seeing over the next couple of days and many thanks to our sponsors without chose support in wouldn't be responsible. including our supporters. the mccarthy foundation. and linda johnson robb and

family. ronald reagan said during his presidency, there is no more essential iningredient than a free, strong, and independent press to our continued success in what the founding fathers called our noble experiment in - government. trusted news and investigation are the lifeblood of a thriving government. without them we will fail. over the next two days we'll examine our fragmented media landscape and the propagation of misinformation and disinvestigation, their adverse effects on our democracy and solutions for a stronger, healthier ecosystem. we couldn't begin more auspiciously as we welcome bob woodward and carl bernstein, beacons of journalistic excellence whose watergate-related archive is in

the esteemed harry ransom center on the other side of this pam cuss. now to introduce the legendary woodward and bernstein is my friend, the executive director of the harry ransom center, dr. steve ames. [applause] >> good evening, it's a pleasure to welcome bob woodward and carl bernstein back to the university of texas at austin for trust, news, and democracy. my name is steve snniss. i'm director of the harry ransom center. carl bernstein and bob woodward became forever linked early in their careers while still in their 20's. they broke the story of a break-in at the democratic party

headquarters leading eventually to the national crisis we know as watergate and eventually to the resignation of president richard nixon. they wrote books -- all the president's men and the final days. it's been turned into a popular film starring robert redford and dustin hoffmann. in 2003 woodward and bernstein placed their watergate files at the ransom center which contained more than 250 of their reporters' notebooks. first drafts of history, if you will. drafts of stories that they developed during those tumultuous years, collected source materials and photographs, as well as materials related to the writing of "all the president's men" and

"the final days." as a result the ransom center will forever remain a primary destination for the story of this crisis in our nation's history. for many people, such extraordinary history making so early in one's career might be sufficient but for nearly five decades, bob woodward and carl bernstein have been chronicling our ongoing national story through insightful reporting and a string of history, each of which has itself made news. carl bernstein is the author of three additional best-selling books, including recently "the life of hillary rodham clinton." he currently serve serves as a political analyst for cnn and is a contributing editor of ""vanity fair"." he was born and brew up in washington, d.c. and began his career in journalism as a copy

boy for the evening star before becoming a reporter at the age of only 19. a history he has recently recounted in the them away "chasing history: a kid in the newsroom." bob woodward remains a close observer of the american presidency and of current affairs. he is the author of numerous books chronicling the deeds and sometimes misdeeds of eight presidents. including the agenda inside the clinton white house, bush at war and obama's wars. most recently he's given us a series of books, each of which has offered a shocking inside perspective of the trump presidency. the titles of which, if you'll forgive me read something like the seven stages of grief. fear, rage, peril. i can think of no better voices to engage on tonight's theme --

trust news and democracy. joining me is dr. mark lawrence, director of the l.b.j. presidential library and museum. mark is also a historianian of united states and taught as a professor here at u. t. at the department of history before coming to the library in 2020. with each passing year it becomes clearer that watergate was not a instant historical event but one that raises still relevant questions about the extent of presidential power and the resiliency of our constitutional system of government. as recent history reminds us, our founding constitution doesn't work on its own but instead requires our constant care and attention. it requires an informed citizenry, full participation in our political process and a system of representative

government that is accountable to the people. few have been as attentive to the role of the press in advancing these obligations as bobbing bob and carl bernstein. please join me in welcoming them to the stage. [applause] >> well, thank you, mark and steve for those terrific introductions and welcome to all of you. what a great sight it is to see this pretty big auditorium filled up and i think that attests to the exciting program that we have ahead of us, both today and all day tomorrow and certainly the star of the our show who are up here with me on

the stage tonight. i'm truly honored to be here with none other than -- i don't think i should even use first names. woodward and bernstein. it's really a great pleasure to be here and there are so many things we can talk about in the short time we have together tonight. of course, i want to talk about watergate, i want to talk about connections between watergate and our present moment. >> oh, child you want to do that? mark: just in case anyone's interested. but i want to start with a little bit about the two of you. how did you get involved in the journalism world, carl? carl: i was 1 years old. i had one foot in the classroom, one foot in the pool hall. one foot in the juvenile court and it was doubtful that i was going to get out of high school and my father had the foresight of recognizing that and he knew i could write a little bit and he knew somebody at the

washington star, the great afternoon newspaper in the cool of the united states and he went to someone and said, hey, could you get this kid a job? more or less as a copy job boy and i got the job. john kennedy and richard nixon were running president when i went to work there. within two weeks i efforts able to cover kennedy because they came to my high school and they used me as an old-fashioned leg man because i knew the territory. i had the greatest apprenticeship. this 16-year-old kid with the best seat in the country learning from many of the greatest reporters in the country at the height of the civil rights movement, vietnam, etc., etc., and thank god my father had the foresight because i never did get out of college and i went to the "washington post" six years after i went to the star. mark: bob, how'd you get into

journalism? bob: i started in journalism looking at things i was not supposed to see. [laughter] i was a janitor in my father's law firm and i could not help but notice the papers on his desk and his partner's desk and i found them very interesting and this was in cheaten, illinois, which is where wheaton college and billy graham reigned so there was a kind of sense of we're doing things right and i then went up and -- one of the lessons is the janitor always knows. don't think that the janitor is just being a janitor.

and in the attic of the lay firm were the disposed files in alphabetical order and i was able to just take the names of my classmates and look at their family history. and one of the basic lessons is that the family history was one of propriority and everything is going fine and then you looked at the disposed files and you discovered that there were i.r.s. problems, assault problems, sexual assault problems and so immediately you see, ah, not everything is as they are telling us. mark: so fast forward to 197, i

believe it was a saturday morning, a call comes into the "washington post." there's been a break-in rat the watergate complex, the headquarters of the democratic national committee. how did you independence you were working on that small story? carl: real quickly, i'd been there at the post nine months and the city editor liked to give me assignments. called me on that saturday morning, woke me up and, go to the courthouse. i'd been covering the police for six months and went to the courtroom where the five burglars were being arraigned and they were all in business suits. now, covering night police for six months, i had never seen a burglar in a business suit and that is electrifying and then the lead burglar, james mccord,

the judge asked where he worked and mccord said c.i.a. and the judge said speak up so we can hear you and c.i.a. and i was sitting in the front row and i think i blurted out, holy shit. [laughter] mark: carl? carl: i was in the newsroom that morning. i was the chief virginia reporter for the paper and i was doing a profile of someone running for governor and i saw this commotion at the city desk and i went up to find out what it was and was told there had been a break-in at democratic national headquarters and i thought to myself well, that's a hell of a lot better story than this thing i'm doing on the lieutenant governor of virginia. that can wait and i said to the

city editor, i'm going to make a few calls and just around that time, woodward had phoned in the names of the burglars and i got the names and i'm began a series of -- and i was kind of known for being able to work phones pretty well and i got the names of the burglars, most of whom lived in miami and i started calling their wives down in therefor and piggens famish in english, i was able to find out, yeah, they work for the c.i.a., as well as a good number of other details about them and bobbing and myself were two of six reporters whose names were listed in the story that went into the next day's paper based partly on what we were doing. bob: there was an important sentence in that first story, which is, it was not known who might have sponsored this and what the purpose was of the

burglary and if you think about it, next two years were answering that question. the sponsor was richard nixon. and the purpose was to destroy the other political party and its candidates, the democratic party. carl: but through an illegal, massive campaign of politicals imagine and sabotage intended to undermine the very system of democracy, the free election of the president of the quiet and now we find ourselveses with two criminal presidents involved in undermining the most basic aspect of democracy. the election of the president of the quiet. mark: so you dug into that story in those first weeks following what the white house characterized at a third-rate burglary. at what point did you know what you were on to something that would lead to richard nixon and

to the consequences that the scandal would already have? bob: it was incremental but tell your story about the thunderclap. carl: we had found a bookkeeper. first of all, we decided it was necessary not to talk to people who worked for richard nixon in their offices and try to learn things from them but to go to their homes at night. bob: that was you. i kind of thought let's go to the offices and you said -- carl: . no so we went and banged on these people's doors at night and very quickly learned from a bookkeeper who saw the books, the finances of richard nixon's re-election committee, that they were paying for undercovertivity, illegal activities, and from that, we learned that one of the five people who controlled the funds that paid for the burglary of

watergate and other undercovertivity against the democrats was the former attorney general, the manager of the knicksen campaign. nixon's former law partner john mitchell. so we wrote a story that, as ben bradley, the editor of the "washington post" said to us, better be right because there's never been a story like this before and the story was that john mitchell controlled these secret funds. bob: and it was a matter of putting the money and connecting the money to the operation and the individuals and, you know -- what's this about? and we finally put it together in an october 10, 1972 story. i remember sitting by your side at your typewriter and we had information and you put it --

you said that watergate was only part of a massive campaign of sabotage ands imagine and -- espionage. it was yeah, we had it but it was a very creative reach. carl: but also we learned something very early and that was that the knicksen white house was out to make the conduct of the press the issue in watergate. our conduct in particular rather than the conduct of the perspective and his men and it was nowhere illustrated better than in that first story about john mitchell which, it made it obvious, nixon's campaign manager, former law partner, but yet the white house would call every time we did a story and give us what we call

nondenial-denial. they would attack us without addressing the facts in the story and i called the white house that night of the mitchell story and i asked the deputy press secretary after reading the story would he respond so it and arc -- to it and he called back and he said the sources of the "washington post" are a fountain of misinformation and i typed in,ibilities yes, go on. he said that's it. ics aside from this guyser going off in our backyard is the story true? did the former attorney general of the united states control these funds? but i had a phone number for john mitchell in new york where i thought i could reach him so i called mitchell in new york about 11:00 at night, 10:30 at night. i identified myself, i said we

had a story for the next day's paper. he said go ahead. i said john mitchell, attorney general of the united states controlled a secret fund and mr. mitchell said jeee-sus. and i kept reading. by which time the drift of the story was unmistakable and the of mr. mitchell said jee-sus. and he said it a third time and he paused and in a really aggressive voice said jesus christ, all that crap you're putting in the paper. if you print that, katie graham, referring to the editor of the "washington post," is going to get her tit caught in a big fat wringer. and then there was a pause and then the most chilling day as a

journalist and reporter i've ever had. he said you wait. when the campaign is over we're going to do a little story on you two guys and it slammed the phone down. it was a kind of threat as well as indicative of the knicksen presidency's view of the press. i called ben bradley at home and he said he really said that? he said you have good notes? i said yes. he said all right, put it all in the paper but leave her teat out. i couldn't resist. couldn't resist. mark: one of the things we want to do is think about the state of journalism, the field of journalism. in thinking back over watergate story what was it that made you successful in pursuing that

story? bob: well, it was the culture of the "washington post." it was go get good stories and ben bradley was the editor and he never -- he had a way -- i finally figured this out many years later. he had two modes. one mold was you go in, we've got this, we're working on this. oh, good, be patient. dig into that and then the other mode was you'd tell him something and he'd say where's the -- storying? ambiguity. he wanted it at that moment so it was sort of a patience and sort of a, ok, deliver now. mark: carl, you've spoken a lot it seems to me about just the

sheer shoe leather that went into it. you talked about knocking on doors. talk about that, the obviously less glamorous part of the investigation that obviously paid dividends. carl: it's what you see today when you see good reporting. that same technique of you have an idea of who has information that you want to seek and you go seek that personout and you do it in a place and an environment where you're liable to be able to establish some kind of notion for the other person that you're there with no preconceived notionings of where this story is going. you're from to find out what bob and i half a century ago started calling the best attainable version of the truth. and really, it works. that's the lesson. you can have an internet, which facilitates all kinds of mechanics that would have saved

us a lot of time. not spent all the hours we did looking up addresses in green phone books. bob: i think the internet would have been an obstacle in a way. carl: i'm just saying to get us out there, not to -- bob: but it's ok to use the phone book, if anyone remembers what they are and that essential notion of one of the problems of the press now is people spend time in the office. they send emails out to the white house and say, will you comment on this story and then three deputy press secretaries sit around a computer and say, how can we answer that without saying anything? and they're very good at that. carl: sources of the "washington post" are a fountain of

misinformation. bob: yeah, but it's -- it's get out, you know, knock on doors, show up, use the phone. it's amazing in this story where we could track people down on the phone. you're down in florida finding in glover 25,000 check that wound up in the nixon campaign and you're calling me and saying it's madeout to kenneth h. goldberg? who's kenneth h. goldberg? we had no idea. we checked the morgue and there was nothing in the clippings and somebody said, well, let's look in the photo file and in the photo file, there was a kenneth h.dolberg pictured with senator

hubert humphrey. so let's go to the library and get the minnesota, st. paul phone book and look up and there's a kenneth h. so i just called him and, you know, there's this check in your name. where -- tell me what happened and he literally said well, i know i shouldn't tell you this. [laughter] carl: words you love to hear. bob: you learn silence. you don't say yes. you let the silence suck out the truth. and he said, so, ok, i'll tell you. and i gave it to maurice stands on a golf course. maurice stands was the chief fundraiser for nixon. what? and i remember -- we were

putting this story together. you're still down in florida doing the legwork and barry sussman the city editor of the post turned to me and he said we've never had a story like this. the idea that $25,000 in campaign money would go to the burglars. it was astonishing. mark: a lot of money. here we sit in 2024 on the 50th anniversary of president nixon's resignation later this summer. i wonder, with all of the thinking and writing that the two of you have put this, the enormous number of other history of watergate, is there a question, though, that still lingers in your minds that keeps you up at night? puzzling other in connection with watergate. what don't we know that you wish

we knew? carl: i think we know the most important thing of all that, one, we had a criminal president of the quiet and that the criminality was vast and was intended to undermine democracy itself and that not only did we have that criminality but that the system worked. i think that what we see now, the difference between that criminal presidency, one of the differences and this present criminal presidency is that we've not seen the evidence that the system worked in the trump presidency yet. and that we had -- the press did its job in watergate. there was a committee established, headed by senator sam irvin of north carolina. after we'd done our stories, irvin had called us, said he wanted to undertake this

investigation. would we tell him our sources. weeks no, but certainly seems to us it was investigation of investigated by the congress. bob: irvin thought about this and wrote about it in his final report and he was asked what was watergate. and he said watergate was a systemic effort to destroy the system of selecting a candidate in the democratic party and then he asked the question, why watergate? and he has a very good answer, i thought. and that is a lust for political power. and i think that you listen to the knicksen take place and so forth. we had this one right after nixon won 49 states and nixon's talking to kissinger and he says, we will outlive our

enemies. the press is the enemy. they just didn't want to say it once. he had to say the press is the enemy. the press is the enemy. the establishment is the enemy. and he said to kissinger, you know, this idea of enemy -- we're going to outlast -- and he said to kissinger write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it. i didn't know kissinger had a blackboard. mark: talk about your emotions. what was going through your heads on august 9, 1974? carl: the day of nixon's resignation, bob and myself were in a little ante room off the newsroom floor. there's a picture of the two of us that shows up every once in a

while and we're watching television while he gives his announcement that he's going to resign the next day and any feeling certainly, and bob can tell you if his is consistent with this, was one of absolute awe. the idea that the system had worked. that we had done, the press had done its job, that the congress of the quiet, including carriage use republicans who had gone to nixon that week, led by barry goldwater, the former presidential nominee of his party to tell nixon that if he did not resign they would vote to convict him of high crime and misdemeanors. all that in these two years and certainly an awareness of offer own role and that now maybe the

country could move on as well. bob: katherine graham, the owner of the "washington post" and publisher, after nixon resigned wrote us a letter on yellow legal tab. dear bob and carl: you have the original of this. i just have the xerox. and she said, now, you did some of the stories and nixon is gone. "don't start thinking too highly of yourselves. and let me give you some advice. and she said, and the advice is beware of the demon pomposity. beware of the demon pomposity. and she's so right about that. i mean, right not just then but

now. demon pomposity infects so many institutions. certainly politics and hollywood and wall street, even academia sometimes it's shocking to hear. and pomposity -- people don't like pomposity. and for good reason. so, you know, my approach to this is try to arrive at a point of self-understanding or to the extent that's possible and realize i'm a reporter. i'm not something else. i'm not an analyst or a theorities. i'm -- theorities. i'm trying to find out, do the

basic laboratory work of a reporter and the laboratory work of a reporter is talking to people and listening and you and i have talked about this so many times, the importance of listening. i actually have a little technique of doing an interview -- taping interviews with people's permission and my wife allison saying you sure talk a lot. she's right. so i take this if i thinker and put it over my little finger and jam it in and it is a memory aid to remind me to shut the f up. and listen. and listen. i tell you, that finger is sore. because it is just a habit to talk. now, you want to be -- silence

is important in reporting. it can suck out the truth. mark: on the subject of -- carl: on the subject of katherine graham, the great publisher of the "washington post" and it goes to the question of, in watergate, the knicksen people had made clear that they wanted to ruin "washington post." they had -- knew that the broadcast licenses of the post stations which were the financial life blood of the "washington post" company were up for renewal before the f.c.c. and they wereout to make sure that those licenses were not renewed and right around the time of that john mitchell story, i got a call from a security guard downstairs at the post saying there's somebody from the committee for re-election on the president here, a subpoena server who wants your notes under

subpoena. i said just a minute. i ran upstairs and i called ben bradley in his office and i said the guard has somebody with a subpoena for our notes down there and bradley said don't let them upstairs. i'm going to go talk to katherine and he ran upstairs to katherine graham's office and then he came back to my desk and he said they're not your notes. katherine says they're her notes and that if anybody is going to go to jail it's going to be katherine graham. it gives you a notion of what was at stake. bob: and ben was ecstatic. carl: he was. bob: he said, just think of that katherine graham, her limb seen pulls up to the d.c. women's detention center. and out pops our gal, as he

called her, going to jail to defend the first amendment and ben got a little excited and said, you know, that picture will run on every -- on the front page of every newspaper in the country, no, the world. it will be, and the end of that story is they backed down. they folded when they saw that she was going to stand up. carl: she did it for the business and was willing to go through whatever was required. mark: i want to call attention to the fact that the two of you teamed up recently on this really brilliant forward to the new edition of "all the president's men that skillfully fused together the knicksen story and the trump story and

highlights a lot of similarities really between the two men and the circumstances that surround them. let me ask you to talk a little bit about some of those connections that you draw between the two and frankly, also the limits on those connections. in what ways might these two men be quite different from one another? bob: the connections or the similarities are obvious. a secretiveness. an intentional distance from what the northwestern people need. i mean, i think the job of the president is to figure out what the next stage of good is for a majority of people in the country and then develop a program. you found in nixon and in trump, the freshman was what's best for me politically, what's easiest. i did three books on trump, and

extraordinary, after doing the first one, "fear, " which said the trump presidency is a nervous breakdown. he agreed to talk and i had an arrangement when we could call me at any time at home. i could call him at the white house any time. so my wife elsa and i are at home and the phone would ring and, you know, was it one of our daughters, is it a friend, is it a robo call or sit donald trump? and it would often be donald trump. and those are all published and you see, again, and particularly focused on the event of that last year of his presidency,

2020, the coronavirus. and i was able to establish fro his national security advisors he was warned that this was coming. in january of 2020. and he kept blowing it off and saying it's not going to go anywhere. and by summer, he's calling -- trump is calling me. now he's five months away from the election and saying, you know, i'm calling to see, you know, just check in and i said well, how are things going? he said great and i said well, how about the coronavirus? 140,000 people have died in your country. because of this and you've been warned six months ago when there were no cases and he said don't worry, don't worry. it's going to go away. and if you listen to the tape of this, i mean, i'm flabbergasted

and i said, you know, but what's the plan? what are you going to do? and he said oh, well, i'll have a plan in 105 days. that was election day. it was too late. he should have had a plan, should have stepped up, and, of course, this is the problem with trump. he does not identify with the needs of others. he's very intensely de voted to his own needs. and that's politically and personally and i, you know, look at how he's back. he's running again. night before last i ran into hillary clinton, of all people and she said, what's going on? in america?

and good question. carl: part of the answer to the question is from in new forward, we did "all the president's men" because we said in there for the first time, donald trump is the first seditious president in the history of the united states and consider jefferson davis was seditious but we was not president of the united states. donald trump was the first seditionist and that is what january 6 is all about and that introduction begins with george washington in his farewell address warning the people of the country that the one thing in our constitution, in our system that could not -- -- they could not grapple with is if we were faced by the character of men who would take it upon themselves to do things outside of the system. bob: and washington said that's

what's going to come. he didn't say it's a worry. he just forecast that, it's going to come and, of course, one of the great things that washington said about the constitution, he said the constitution is an experiment and it indeed is an experiment and if you think back 50 years ago, the constitution really did work. the experiment worked. and i listened to a talk that stephen breyer, former justice of the supreme court, 2 years he served. resigned two years ago and breyer said openly, he said it bean question now is, is it going to work again? and there's a doubt. mark: a major difference it seems to me, one mange

difference between the watergate period and our own moment is the media landscape. you were, it seems to me, young journalists in the watergate era in what i might call a golden age of journalism. there was so much public confidence, it seems to me, in the media and journalists could become superstars. i think i wanted to be like you when i was growing up in the 1980's. that obviously has changed a great deal, right? i wonder if you could talk about -- maybe you don't agree with my suggestion that this was a golden age but perhaps you could talk about what has changed in recent decades that results in so much distrust for the media. making it much less likely that the media -- carl: we can sugar colt -- great

reporting. really great reporting i think has always been the exception, not the rule but i do think that there was a more perfect vasive ethic in the period when i grew up at the washington star and "washington post" to the best attainable version of the truth to go back to that phrase that bob and i used 50 years ago but i also think we need to talk about consumers of news. because what occurred -- and if you look at polls during the nixon presidency, nixon was supported through watergate by most of the people in this country. until the tapes. and once the tapes came out, people saw for themselves, heard for themselves the words of a criminal president and public opinion started to change. i think the biggest difference is not necessarily just there are not enough people doing this

kind of bang on doors and go out at night and get the information that way, which is a big problem. huge problem. but also, more people, and there's no metric that i can give you for this -- but more and more people of all political persuasions are not looking for the best attainable version of the truth. they're looking for information that will reinforce what they already believe. what their religious, political, social values are and that is a huge, huge cultural difference. bobbing: but the media reporting has changed. first because of the internet, the impatience and speed. give it to me right now. summarize it. and so you talk to reporters and they are in the office. why are you in the office i ask

some of them. because i have to update the story six times. i can't do it from a phone booth and i-need my computer and so we have a lot of office reporting and that is crippling to journal etch. you have to go out and i remember doing one of the books on one of george w. bush's wars and there was a general who would not talk. and said -- sent emails, intermediaries, phone messages, nothing. but the old bernstein method, i found where he lived and i went and knocked on his door but i did it just at the best time to knock on somebody's door. that's 8:17 on a tuesday night

because if it's tuesday, it's not monday and it's not the latter part of the week. 8 : 17, 8:15 people will have eaten and this was a time when it was still light out so the bodyguards wouldn't get me so i knocked on the door and he opened the door and he looked at me and he said, are you still doing this shit? and i just was plain faced and -- now, this is somebody who wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't answer an email, wouldn't answer their phone and he -- you know, just the silence and the presence i guess, and he said come on in. talked for two hours then i was able to come back and develop a relationship of trust with this person who was a no -- he went

from a no to a really important yes. why? got to show up. and it's awful when you do this -- and i still do it sometimes, i'm sure not must have, to tell my wife elsa, i'm going out to knock on somebody's door and then i'm back 45 minutes later and then i say i got the door slammed in my face. that's hard. mark: so, maybe you just answered this question but if you were giving advice to a young person who wants to follow in your foot steps to be that investigative reporter who has real impact, what advice would you will give? carl: i would say the first thing is, respect the people that you're talking to. and listen. be a good listener.

reporters tend to be lousy listeners. look at how much you see on television that reporters think their job is to manufacture controversy. so you'll see a reporter were a microphone up on capitol hill running up to mitch mcconnell and asking a question that he knows is going to provoke an answer this is going to be mcconnell boiler bait then he takes microphone and goes up to chuck schumer and he knows the response is going to be chuck schumer boiler plate and then he does a story about this titanic war of words. is that really getting closer to the best attainable version of the truth? no. manufactured controversy is not our job. we haven't talked about social media, which has another huge presence in our culture. in particularly among young people, which has no pretense through its --s the a through

line of the best attainable version of the truth. anybody can say anything they want and pretend that this is real news. but i think in terms of advice, back to what bob is saying, use the old tools. i happen to think that some of the new tools are great in terms of saving some time. you know, to get you out, but once you're out there, and that's the objective is to get out there and then keep going back, methodically keep going back. bob: but what's the common characteristic most people have and that -- carl: get is the truth. bob: well, we wish. yes, often they do in the right circumstances but i think you need to take people as seriously

as they take themselves. you've got to go in in a way and give yourself some time, not be impatient. oh, i've got to run out to another interview or i have to -- sometimes i try to leave four hours of time before i have to do something else and i normally don't get four hours but sometimes you can get two and you don't want to be on a schedule and i think it's insulting to people if you're on a schedule. i'm sorry, i've got to go interview the speaker of the house or something like that. and it's not paint by numbers. it is get -- i mean, and the best example is you going to the book keeper. carl: determined not to leave. bob: determined -- oh, can can i have a cup of coffee? you know, that's you.

you won't leave. [laughter] carl: and here we are. mark: well, friends, let us hope that they don't leave and can or at least make many return trips to the l.b.j. library. this has been a fantastic conversation. i so appreciate both of you being here for this terrific event. i wish we had another hour or two but thank you, bob woodward, thank you, carl bernstein. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy visit ncicap.org]

>> on capitol hill the senate bbles in it tuesday at 3:00 p.m. eastern on senators will teo confirm howard lutnick to be commee cretary and later in the week cash patel to serve as fbi dirto u. hse continues recess over the esents' day holiday. mbers will return for votes monday, fairbury 24th. watch live coverage of the house on c-span, theene on c-span two and all cgrsional coverages available on our free video app, c-span now, and on c-span.org. on tuesday, a look at charges that elite colleges are not committed to free speech and rigorous academic construction here the american enterprise institute for public policy research house. watch at 4:30 p.m. on c-span, c-span now, or c-span.org.

>> democracy. it is not just an idea, it is a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest officers -- offices. it is where debate unfolds, decisions are made, and the nation's courses charted. democracy in real-time. this is your government at work. this is c-span, giving you your democracy unfiltered. >> now journalist charis swisher and comedian larry gilmer -- wilmer talk about the role technology has played in political polarization in the united states. this is about 45 minutes. >> kara, larry, welcome.