nation hyper conflict in the trump error darrell west describes how toxic politics have become in the united states and he warns that a nation whose citizens can no longer talk politics without fighting is a nation with little hope for the future i'm happy to welcome darrell west to the data old joins me tonight from our washington bureau a very well it's good to have you on the show as i was reading your book there was one passage that caught my eye and i want to bring it up for our viewers to see as well you write through all these family university and media conversations it was clear that dangerous forces were being unleashed in american politics the country was becoming polarized and it was becoming harder and harder to have reasoned discussions of national events people were dealt in there and the series and feeling they were not trust worthy now that sounds

there like a perfect description of u.s. politics today but you were describing the situation earlier in this century before barack obama was elected if it was bad then i mean i guess if you know the world's watching the u.s. it has to be really bad now. it is i mean certainly the polarization that we're seeing now did not start with donald trump but trump has made it a lot worse he has made our politics more toxic i mean tonight i expect him to throw a lot of red meat at his conservative supporters talk about how immigrants are bad for america china is stealing our jobs i mean he has debased a lot of the civil discourse around politics and just introduced a lot of negativity so he's made it much more difficult for americans to talk about politics and he's kicking off his relation campaign today how do you see his chances for being reelected we know that the polls are not in his favor at the

moment the polls are not looking good for donald trump right now but we do have to keep in mind that america has a 3.6 percent national unemployment rate if or anyone else other than donald trump we would be talking about an easy reelection but trump's problem is that 60 percent of americans don't like him and it's hard for people to vote for someone they don't like so what i expect trump to do is to try and raise the negatives of whoever his democratic opponent becomes because he needs to end up this race in next november with people disliking the democratic nominee as much as himself in order for him to have a shot at winning india in your book you describe how politics in the u.s. since the reagan era i mean despite zig zagging from the likes of clinton to bush to obama to trump let me despite all of these extremes politics really have

steadily become more divisive and polarizing many would like to see being if not the christian at least the beginning of the end of that trend is that how you see it are we seeing the light at the end of the tongue. i think we are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel in the sense that many americans are fed up with trump they don't like his policies they don't like his divisive rhetoric the irony is just as barack obama made possible trump may make possible the election of america's most progressive candidate in the sense that american politics often has flipped back and forth between extremes and so i think voters are going to be looking for the anti donald trump someone who is nicer probably much more liberal and somebody who will at least try and bring the country back

together and when you see the entire donald trump i do not immediately think of joe biden as the entire download are you in my reading you correctly here are you saying that one of the other democratic candidates is going to be the one to take the u.s. out of the error. i mean right now biden is looking like he is the strongest democratic nominee but if you go back to past presidential elections the person who is ahead a year before the race often is not the person who becomes the nominee so i do believe the 2020 election is going to be a change election and i think that's going to be challenging for joe biden just because he's been on the political scene for 40 years has a very long record and somebody who's a career politician like that is going to be hard to portray himself as a candidate of change and so i'm still looking at some of these other candidates elizabeth warren camilla harris of california mayor people from south bend indiana

like those are the next generation of politicians and so i think ultimately voters are going to want someone who is not a career politician and is very different from donald trump today i heard one analyst say that the winning democratic ticket in 2020 would be joe biden as president and a woman of color as his vice presidential running mate what do you say to that. that certainly could be a winning formula in the sense that it would basically signal that america is changing and biden would be preparing the way for the next generation of leaders but i still think it's a risk for america to go with biden just because trump loves to campaign against career politicians i mean that was really the secret of his victory over hillary clinton he basically said she's been in politics for decades she's got all these deals she's dishonest and you cannot trust her and my concern is he will run

exactly the same type of campaign against joe biden so i think you know it's a long ways before the election next week will have debates among the leading a democrat so that will start to provide some texture to this democratic field it is a long way to member of 2020 and before we run out of time i want to answer how culpable do you think we in the media are. being obsessed with the polling numbers i mean we especially in the u.s. but also all over the world we tend to treat this the campaigns as a horse race we're really not doing any good for the public good with that are we do you think we're actually helping this hyper divisiveness continue. well certainly all of us pay attention to the polls and it's natural especially people want to beat trump they want to see how he's a fairing against a different candidates but we do have to recognize that polls change very rapidly

and if so early in the race right now they're really capturing the fact that joe biden as well know having a high name identification is one of the reasons why he's doing well in the polls but certainly there i think ultimately voters are going to focus a lot more on the substance because they can see there's going to be a huge difference between whoever the democratic candidate is and donald trump the policies are going to be different the visions of the future are going to be different the way that people talk about politics is going to be very different rights darrell west author of divided politics divided nation and director of governance at the brookings institution dare we appreciate you taking the time to talk with us tonight and we appreciate your insights thank you thank you. for today the united states announced that it is sending $1000.00 extra troops to

the gulf as tensions with iran escalate washington released new images today claiming to prove that iran was behind the bombing of 2 tankers in the gulf of oman last week iran has rejected those allegations these are the new images that the u.s. says proves iran was behind the attacks on 2 oil tankers last thursday in the gulf of oman on it the u.s. claims an unexploded mine was being removed from one of the tankers to hide evidence iran denies any involvement the u.s. says that its new deployment includes security forces and troops for additional surveillance and intelligence gathering in the region imagine observers believe this escalation is aimed at deterring the iran and calming allies worried that transit through key shipping lanes could be in jeopardy. iran has announced it will soon breach limits on how much enriching uranium it can stockpile under the international nuclear deal it's signed in 2015 it also says it will be

able to make weapons grade uranium last year u.s. president donald trump pulled the u.s. out of the deal and reimposed economic sanctions on iran and even.