tv PBS News Hour PBS August 25, 2016 3:00pm-4:00pm PDT
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captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> sreenivasan: good evening, i'm hari sreenivasan. gwen ifill and judy woodruff are away.odre on the newshour tonight, the death toll from italy's massive earthquake sharply rises to 250, while hundreds of aftershocks make rescue efforts even more treacherous.re also ahead, we take a look at the alt-right movement making its way onto the political scene. the history behind it, and how it could impact thisin presidential election.ct plus, we sit down with one of the stars from the rio olympicsh five-time olympic medalist katie ledecky talks breaking records k and boundaries. >> it's just been hard work that's got me to where i am today there wasn't a lot of talent really it was more getting through the work and setting some big goals that has gotten me to this point. >> sreenivasan: all that and
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>> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.hileic >> sreenivasan: rescuers inen italy desperately searched for signs of life amid a sea of rubble today, as the death toll from that massive earthquake climbed to at least 250 people. the temblor leveled a cluster oa mountain communities northeast of rome early yesterday. emma murphy of independent television news is in italy with the latest. >> reporter: it's 36 hours since the first quake and the aftershocks are seemingly endless.s qu this one measuring 5.4 brought
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fear to an already traumatized population and greater danger to those working through what is already damaged.ra and what damage. this is pescara del tronto.. these images are of destruction on such a scale which makes them almost impossible to take in. on the ground, it still seems unreal. i and yet, a closer look gives a glimpse into the lives which were lived here. cwe and for some lost here even the bishop tells me he has no words to offer comfort, relying instead of spiritual closeness on physical closeness and silence to help people through. there were around 1,000 people in the town when the quake struck. incredibly, most were able to escape. but there are others buried deep beneath. there are moments of joy like when this worker shouted that he thought there was a child and called for silence.mo
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they carefully begin to inch her out from the rubble which she has been trapped in for 15 hours. she is 10 years old and pulled out alive. ( cheering )lywhbe it was a moment of hope but w there is much desperation and a feeling that the time for rescues is now passed. >> we use the dogs, they are looking for now at this moment about. no sign of people alive, no. >> reporter: for some, there's been a chance to retrieve a few belongings abandoned as they ran for their lives. >> i'm angry with god. >> reporter: you're angry with god?'md? >> i'm angry with god. >> reporter: it's unlikely these homes will ever be salvaged. and few feel particularly confident about living here now. >> sreenivasan: italy's civilt'l protection agency estimatesla about 5,000 people, including firefighters, soldiers, and volunteers, have provided assistance in the wake of the
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disaster.rs colombia's president formally delivered a historic peace deal with farc rebels to his country's congress. it establishes a timetable for the leftist rebels to disarm an re-enter society, ending five decades of war that's killeded more than 220,000 people. president juan manuel santos hailed the agreement before aef jubilant crowd outside the congress building in bogota. it still requires the colombian people's approval in an october referendum. >> ( translated ): i want to inform colombians that i have ordered a definitive cease fire with the farc, beginning this c coming monday.ng with this ends the armed conflict with the farc.li through this act, we are giving the people the last word regarding colombia's peace and it will be the people on october 2 who will say, "yes, we want peace."es >> sreenivasan: we'll take a closer look at colombia's path to peace after the news summary. at least 13 people are dead 1 after a nearly nine-hour-long siege at the american university of afghanistan on the outskirts of kabul.ri dozens more were wounded. the attack began last night,
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with a car bomb at the university's entrance, followed by gunfire. it did not end until this morning, when two gunmen were shot dead by afghan special forces. students recounted the assault: >> ( translated ): we were at the gym inside the universitywe when the attack took place, there is a safe room inside the men's fitness club. we all stayed there until 1:30 a.m., then the security forces came in and rescued us.ubil >> ( translated ): the militant insurgents threw hand grenadesan at us, but we covered ourselves under the desks in order to savl ourselves from to avoid the shrapnel, then we all jumpedo down from the window of the second floor and escaped. >> sreenivasan: the state department confirmed no u.s. citizens were among the dead. so far there has been no claim of responsibility. in syria, the main kurdish militia is beginning to withdraw from the turkish border, a dayng after the u.s. threatened to revoke its support if the kurds did not do so. this in part due to turkish concerns that the so-called y.p.g. has gained too much ground fighting the islamic state.ai they say the group is tied to kurdish separatists inside turkey.he meanwhile, more turkish tanks
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and fighters moved into the syrian border town of jarablus today, to help syrian rebels secure the area from isis militants. u.s. defense officials have confirmed a series of naval face-offs with iran in thef persian gulf. an iranian vessel approached two american warships yesterday, prompting one u.s. ship to fire. warning shots. the incident came a day after iranian boats steered within 30o feet of an american ship in the strait of hormuz. a pentagon spokesman said iran's naval aggression was a s concerning trend. >> we certainly hope it doesn't continue, because it serves no purpose but raise tensions in an important part of world, tensions we don't seek to have escalated. t we are conducting ourselves as always have, as the navy does around the world, in a safe and professional manner, and our sailors will continue to take the steps they need to protect themselves, their ships and our interests in the region.
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>> sreenivasan: iran's defensese minister warned today they willl continue to confront any vessel entering its territory, even though this week's incidents were in international waters. the maker of the epipen said today it is reducing out-of- pocket costs for some patients, amid a firestorm of criticism. the company, mylan, will issue savings cards that cover up to $300 of the cost of its $600 two-dose package of the life- saving allergy treatment.f it is also doubling the amount of people that qualify for its patient assistance program.ts stocks slipped on wall street today, led by declines in the health care sector. the dow jones industrial average lost 33 points to close at 18,448. the nasdaq fell five points, and the s&p 500 slid nearly three. still to come on the newshour: a colombian peace deal ending a half century of war. the rise of the alt-right andf why hillary clinton is linking it to donald trump. swimmer katie ledecky on her record-breaking olympic golds, and much more.
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>> sreenivasan: as we reported s earlier, the government of colombia signed a deal with the largest rebel group, the farc, that could end the world's longest-running conflict. here to discuss what's in the accord and the road ahead is cynthia arnson. she's director of the latin american program at the woodrow wilson international center forw scholars. , so thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: first of all,n: this deal has been a long time coming. what's? it. >> well, there are five basic agreements that cover the kind of political participation that the guerillas will have, covero ill lisseth economies including drug trafficking, transitionalki just and then the final one on terms for disarmament and demobilization. so it's very comprehensive and detailed. the text is over 250 pages, but there are some provisions of it that are more controversial than
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others and as with any peace accord, the real test comes when it's time to implement, and the government and all of colombian society have to live up to the agreement including the f.a.r.c. >> sreenivasan: the disarmament seems like one of those complicated motions that there is a distrust between people who have been fighting,ht shooting and killing one another for quite some time. what's to keep someone from saying i'm going to wait until the end before i hand in my guns or walk in through this process? >> there is an explicit timetable for the demobilization and disarmament of the f.a.r.c. it's supposed to start the minute the peace accord is actually signed between thed government and the president of colombia, which will probably be some time in a couple of weeks in mid to late set, and then that is considered day one, andd there is a 180 day period, basically six months, for themo f.a.r.c. to go to one of 23
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zones throughout the country that have been designated thatd will be overseen by the united nations monitors in terms of verification. so it's a very detailed thing. and the colombian military will actually be in place to guarantee the safe passage of the guerillas from the variousou places in the country where they are. so the colombian military has also been at the peace table.a that was one of the very unique features of the clinton peace process, so they have been working together with the guerillas to come up with these procedures. >> sreenivasan: this is still a country that has a lot of opposition to the f.a.r.c. what about the feeling that this is perhaps giving them a pass? there have been injustice ande human rights violations on both sides. how do you bring some of the perpetrators to justice while you build this peace? >> it ise hugely controversial and the country is polarized. it will be a chance for the
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colombian public to vote yes or no for the peace accord to be binding and valid. 50% of the registered voters have to come out and approve the peace accord that's been negotiated and the the most strident critic is the former president and the current president santos was his defense minister, so there is a tremendous amount of bad blood and provisions on transitional justice and the political participation of the f.a.r.c. guerillas that are really controversial and there is an expression in spanish about swallowing frogs and i thinknd there are many such frogs in this agreement. >> sreenivasan: is there ahe possibility we could see almost a political style campaign to try to encourage voters to scuttle this accord? >> that campaign has beenca underway throughout the peace negotiations. a lot of criticism, almost daily tweets from the former president
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and mex of his political party. there will be a very, very active campaign between now and october 2 by the government and its supporters to mobilize people to come out and vote in naiver of the accord and an equally vigorous campaign by the opposition to say vote it down,o this is not a good agreement for colombia. >> cynthia arnson, woodrowso wilson center, thank you foryo joining us. >> thank you.in >> sreenivasan: my conversations with cynthia arnson continues online.yn i asked her about the u.s. role in the conflict, and what happens if the agreement to end the war is rejected in thehe referendum. you can hear what cynthia arnson has to say on our facebook page, www.facebook.com/newshour.nd w >> sreenivasan: back in this country, both presidential candidates were in full-onh attack mode today. f at issue? republican nominee donald trump's alleged connections to a fringe conservative philosophy. john yang has the story.
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>> yang: today, hillary clintonl debuted a fresh line of attack against donald trump. >> this is what i want to make clear today: a man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military. >> yang: this comes a little more than a week after trump made stephen bannon his a campaign's c.e.o. he's on leave from his job as executive chairman of breitbart news, a website bannon has called a platform for a something called the "alt- right." it's a movement that lives largely online, rejects mainstream conservative politics, and is linked to nationalist and whitein supremacist sentiments. clinton said trump has echoedru alt-right rhetoric.al
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>> all of this adds up to o something we've never seen before. of course there's always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. but it's never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone.t until now. >> yang: clinton's campaign backed up their candidate's message online, with this new video that includes a ku kluxx klan member expressing support for trump: >> donald trump would be best for the job. >> i am a farmer and white nationalist. support donald trump. >> yang: even before clinton spoke, trump hit back: >> when democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: you're racist, you're racist, you're racist. they keep saying it: you're racist. it's a tired, disgusting argument.
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the people of this country who want their laws enforced and respected, and respected by alla and who want their border secured, are not racists. if you want to have strong borders so that people come into our country, but they come in legally through a legal processa that doesn't make you a racist, it makes you smart. it makes you an american. >> reporter: this exchange between the candidates, shining a spotlight on a little-known movement. >> yang: so what is the "alt- right"?ot and how it is influencing this year's presidential race?.ltg for that, we are joined by? matthew continetti, editor-in-ma chief of the "washington free beacon," a conservative news website.he and in manchester, new hampshire is david weigel, who covers national politics for theov "washington post." gentlemen, thank you both for joining us.r david, let me start with you and
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ask you that question, what is "alt-right," who's behind it and where did it come from? >> well, it's a fair young movement with fairly old ideas.e i'd say what they're against which is easier to define is a philosophy of invite the world, invade the world. they are generally anti-intervention and anti-multiculturalism. they started to grow in 2007 as the bush administration was falling to below 30%, was seen as discredited, was obviously going to help democrats win the next election. rand paul's campaign ceded some of this but grew under the presidency of barack obama. what's worrying for a lot of people on the right, fairly young people under 25 or undern 30 who have only known the republican party as a disappointment and have gravitated toward anti-immigrant, anti-intervention ideas. >> yang: we're getting a lot of attention because to have the
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anti-supremacist rhetoric. how central is that to their message? >> not every "alt-right" thinker is a white nationalist by far, but there's a sense that political correctness is a bigger problem than racism and that racism is used as a tool for silencing what they want to say, what they want to argue about. again, an older idea. before the "alt-right" there were paleoconservatives like pat buchanan who argued this and said what the left wants to do to america, how i want to import lots of immigrants, decrease the number of traditional white americans, what they want to dot is not popular and they have to trudgenned through culturally and we're against that. >> yang: what would you add to what dave said? >> a slightly narrower idea of what david does. there is always been critique of
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conservatives and the non-interventionist and non-multicultural view. i think the "alt-right" takes it a degree further. what you have that yiewn nice the "alt-righters" on the internet is they believe in hierarchies. some of them are racial. even sexual hierarchies. so a lot of them wave thehi banr of the men's rights movement. so you start off from that political conclusion and when you read the rhetoric it devolves into outright racism and outsight misogyny. so it starts with ideas that have been around since the end of the cold war, and a lot now is visceral, hatred for the main stream cultural movement for embracing some version of the galtarianism civil rights quality of the sexes.e
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>> yang: david, is there a link or a connection between the trump campaign athand the "alt-right"? >> there always has been. there been "alt-right" support for trump mostly manifested online or even sometimes the t-shirts and signs you see at rallies. there is a big "alt-right" presence on a couple of sites and good matt mentioned the men's rights movement.me the gamer was a lot of gateway for activists to consider themselves "alt-right." more direction came when stephen bannon director of breitbart joined trump's campaign, breitbart fame a forum of thinking and politics. that's when the connection became harder to deny and when i think the clinton campaign thought it was something to exploit. >> yang: what does this mean for the future of the conservative movement?co
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>> i think it's one more sign conservatism as we understand it is coming under great strainai during the era of trump trump and so you have all of these chriscisms of the mainstream conservatism represented by william f. buckley and ronald reagan. all these critics feel empowered with the rise of donald trump.d anybody who had a bone to pick with the george w. bush administration, congress and the standard says trump is our guy. trump will be at that time of change that legit mates our somewhat fringe marginal ideas. is there a large constituency for these ideas? no. i mean, you can find it on the p internet, but the danger for the conservative mainstream is to say all of a sudden since it'st' on the internet maybe we need to incorporate it into our thinking. as soon as that happens, i think you're going to find conservatism itself
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illegitimated. >> yang: you talk about the days of william buckley who is the one who said he is a conservative. does the conservative movementve bare any responsibility for the emergence of this sentiments, the "alt-right"? >> i think it's bottom-up, really. i don't think you had the same gatekeepers you did in the earlier media major when there were one or two conservative magazines published biweekly or monthly. now we live in the internet age and it's the wild west and anyone can express themselves and put their opinions into thee public sphere. what we found much to the surprise of conservatives like myself is there is a large audience for this type of rhetoric and these types of ideas. one thing that needs to be mentioned with the "alt-right" is they're kind of cyberbullies. we saw with the rise of trump in 2015, groups of these activists on twitter going in many cases
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after jewish conservatives and calling them anti-semitictrop. i think it may displace the main stream conservative that most americans think of.f >> yang: your father, william crystal, they went after them at breitbart. >> i wouldn't have liked them anyway. >> yang: what's the future of. this movement?t you say they feel like this is their moment, with donald trump as the nominee. regardless of what happens tope donald trump in november, what's going to happen to this movement? >> well, the light at the end of the tunnel for a lot of reps is they don't think they're going to win the election. they think trump will lose and there will be i can i think a sincere effort to say the reason he lost is because he embraced a lot of radical ideas that can't win in america anymore, we need
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to get rid of the elements. it wasn't like they were part of the mainstream conservative conversation. they were always on the outs but i think will be actively ostracized after the election yang yang david weigel, matthew continetti, thanks for walking us through this. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: our conversation with olympic star katie ledecky. the national parks turn 100 years old. and ms. wheelchair new york gives her take on rethinking sex and disabilities. but first, trade, globalization and the impact on wages and jobs are issues that have spoken strongly to voters throughoutgh this presidential campaign. both donald trump and hillary clinton are talking very differently about the subjectut than prior nominees. and for trump, it's been a major focus of his campaign. as part of continuing coverage
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of the issues, our economics correspondent, paul solman, is spending the next three weeks focused on those questions. tonight, how donald trump sees it, and some of the concerns about that approach, part of our weekly "making sense" series, which airs on thursdays. >> china.ay china. china. china. china. china. china. china. china. china all the time. china. >> reporter: given donald trump's persistently pointed pivot to asia, small wonder that among his favorite films is "death by china." >> china has stolen thousands of our factories and millions off our jobs, multinational corporation profits are soaring, and we now owe over $3 trillion to the world's largest communist nation. >> reporter: and small wonder the film's writer/director, peter navarro, sounds like the candidate. >> we're going right down the toilet and it's a made in china toilet. >> reporter: navarro, a harvard- trained professor at u.c. irvine, is the sole trump
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economic adviser with a ph.d. so how'd you get interested in and worried about china? >> i teach m.b.a.'s and is noticed starting a few years after china joined the world trade organization that a lot of my students were no longer employed. they were still coming to get their m.b.a.'s but they'd lost their jobs. so i started to ask questions why. and at that point, all roads were leading to beijing. >> reporter: navarro has done plenty of technical work in economics, is a pioneer inom online learning. but he began focusing on china just a few years ago. >> the defining moment inme american economic history is when bill clinton lobbied to get china into the world trade organization. it was the worst political and economic mistake in american history in the last 100 years. >> reporter: in the last 100 years? >> in the last hundred years, yes. china went into the world trade organization and agreed to play by certain rules. instead, they are illegally subsidizing their exports; manipulating their currency; stealing all of our intellectual property; using sweatshops;
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using pollution havens. what happens is our businesses and workers are playing that game with two hands tied behind their back. >> reporter: navarro says you can even see the effects at u.cs irvine, where he says chinese students, paying triple the in- state tuition rate, are displacing native californians, while the chinese parents are scooping up local real estate. >> generally all cash deals. >> reporter: so your argument is unfair trade practices; they amass dollars; they bring the dollars back here; they buy up property, and they drive up real estate prices. >> that's right, they drive up rents for younger people, they, drive up home prices for first- time home-buyers.. so it's not just that we're losing jobs and factories-- we're giving away our homes, ou businesses, our companies, our technologies. >> reporter: but of course we heard the same alarm about japan in the 1980s. a false alarm. but china is different, says navarro... so much bigger. >> we are going to enforce all trade violations against any
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country that cheats. >> reporter: so one of the answers your candidate, donald trump, provides is: we should have protective tariffs on chinese goods. >> wrong word. wrong word. >> reporter: what's wrong? >> donald trump is not a protectionist. all he wants to do is defend america against unfair trade practices. >> well, defend, protect. >> very different. trade is good. tariffs and the threat of tariffs are a negotiating tool to require countries like china to stop their unfair tradede practices. that's the mission. >> reporter: and how much do you imagine it might cost in the increase in the price of goods at, say, walmart? >> any increase would be lessul than the paycheck that all these people would be getting, both in terms of actually having a job, plus wages rising again. >> reporter: if the jobse actually were to actually come
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back, that is.at >> trump trade doctrine is thisi america will trade with any country, so long as that deal meets these three criteria: you increase the g.d.p. growth rate. you decrease the trade deficit, and you strengthen the manufacturing base. >> reporter: but isn't technology responsible for the elimination of american factory jobs? >> certainly technology has played a part, but the dramatic change from five and a halfve decades of 3.5% rate of growth prior to china entering our markets with illegally subsidized goods and the 1.8% afterwards suggests strongly that china has played an enormous role in the decline and downfall of the american economl and i can show on a blackboard exactly why. >> reporter: now your typical economist would hardly agree. but hey, says navarro, your typical economist still believes in the old so-called "keynesian" approach to reviving the
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economy: >> alright paul, the growth of any nation is simply four things... g >> reporter: more "c" for consumption, by consumers andco more "g," government spending. he and trump, however, willr, supposedly flip the script: stimulating more "i." investment, by business, via tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while boosting net exports, with more "x," exports, and less m, imports, through new trade deals. that's exports minus imports. >> that's right.>> >> reporter: of course, if that's a negative number, that is you have more imports than exports. >> this is the big kahuna. this is what donald trump understands.rs this is the trade deficit.ci we run a trade deficit of close to $800 billion a year. and so this directly subtracts from this. this is why we're stuck in lowy growth mode. >> reporter: well maybe. the job of a journalist, a however, is to ask questions. what is us g.d.p. 2016? >> checking on that. >> reporter: happily, there's now siri to answer them. >> it looks like the answer is
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about $18.2 trillion u.s. dollars per year. >> reporter: in that case... g.d.p. is something like $18 trillion, right? and you're saying that the trade deficit is, well, it's less than $1 trillion, right? so this can't be a major factor in total g.d.p.: the size of the economy. >> yes, but when we run these big trade deficits and send our jobs offshore, we hold our wages down and our income down. that feeds right back into the t biggest part of this whole equation, consumption. this drags g.d.p. down as well. >> reporter: or so this story goes. when you hear the criticism about donald trump's own goods being made in other countries, what's your reaction? do me a favor: play dan slane's clip in my death by china moviep it's priceless. >> reporter: slane was a plywood manufacturer in bowling green, kentucky whose competitors moved to china. >> and i opened up three factories in china and delivered
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to the customer in the united states 50% cheaper than i could make it in bowling green.ke >> he winds up selling product back here into the u.s. at cost. how did he make his money? >> every month, the chinese government would send me a check for 17% of my exports, and that was my net margin and my profit. >> reporter: so is donald trump getting checks from the chinesem government? >> that's how the game works. >> reporter: but he could use american companies. there are lots of people who say "made in u.s.a." and use that as a marketing tool.. >> the point here is he can't. the competitive forces that force a dan slane to take his furniture company to china - they're real, okay? and if you try and take the high ground and produce here in america, when china's dumping product in and manipulating their currency, you go out ofip business. you just go out of business. >> reporter: what about the character issues that surround
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donald trump? >> well, look, i don't go there. i focus on policy. that's my job. >> reporter: and you have no problem with the failed companies? >> no one should be surprisedcoh just because somebody isn't successful 100% of the time.% the metric here, he's a billionaire. he's successful. ♪ ♪ >> reporter: and no matter how much money he actually has orac hasn't got, given that donald trump is the republican candidate for president of thefo united states, no can argue with one thing: that he isn't successful. to date, at least. newshour economics correspondenc paul solman, reporting from irvine, california. >> sreenivasan: and next week, paul will look at hillary clinton's approach to trade, and how she has changed over time.
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>> sreenivasan: now, a conversation with one of the biggest stars of this summer's olympics: gold medal winning swimmer katie ledecky, about what's behind her success. margaret warner sat down with her earlier today. >> reporter: she's been likened to a lamborghini, a hard-charging swimming machine,m katie ledecky, won five medals in rio, four gold, one sill vemplet also remarkable is her dominance in her sport. in this 800 race in rio, her close tion competitor was nearly a pool length away. her olympic debut came at age 15 in 2012 london game when she defeated the favorite a british gold medalist to win the 100. now 19, she repeatedly breakss world records, usually her own. (applause) ledecky is known not just for her relentless training, moree
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than four hours a day, but for her friendliness, calm and mod d city. amid her brace since returning to washington, last night she threw out the first pitch at the washington nationals game.am >> a great pitch!i >> reporter: now she's taking an unusual path for such a proven winner, retaining her amateur status, attend stanford this fall and pass for a moment on millions of dollars of endorsement deals. we got together today at the pool where she competed in high school. stone ridge school to have theav sacred heart in bethesda, maryland. katie ledecky, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> reporter: or letting us join you at your old stomping ground. something that struck me watching you swim but also out of the pool, it's just this joy you seem to radiate. >> i always loved swimming. i started swimming when i was six years old for a team and they made it fun from day one, and i never really looked back.
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i started swimming year-round and did it with my family, my friends, and i just have gotten to meet so many great people.e >> reporter: i was sprayed to see in 2012 when you went to the olympic training camp, they gave you an elite athlete test just on your physical abilities and it came back saying remarkably unremarkable. what does that mean? >> i'm not ridiculously tall for swimmers. i don't have very big hands, i don't have very big feet. nothing really unusual. i think it's just been hard work that's gotten me to where i am today. it's not a lot of talent really, it's more of getting through work and setting big goals that has gotten me to this point.in >> reporter: do you enjoyy working hard? >> i do, and it wants fun when you get to do it with some of your best friends, and that's what i've loved. i just love setting big goals and trying to reach them. so a couple of years ago, my coach and i sat down around set
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some goals and, at the tiernlings they seemed pretty big, but i reached them all in rio, and that's the best feeling. >> reporter: and the goals ares about not beating someone else, but about times. >> right. my goals for rio were to go 3:56 or better in the 100 free,e, around then the third goal was to win the 200 in three. i matched the goals. at the time three years ago, they seemed pretty far out there. >> reporter: to what degree are you competing against others versus yourself. >> you are always swimming against other swimmers but i'm focusing on my race.my >> reporter: are you checking out what's going on in the other lanes? >> i sometimes do. sometimes i can tell i'm having a good swim, but pretty much i'm focused on how fast i'm going
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and feeling and pretty much block out the sounds, the sights, just kind of listen to the rhythm of the water and maintaining the same stroke, same rhythm, same tempo and thinking about how i want to get my hand to the wall. >> reporter: david marsh who is the coach of the whole u.s. olympic team said you have an intensity that he'd never seen in a distance athlete. he said you were fearless. another coach of yours said at the begin oflg the race you're like a bull in a stall waiting to get out.to where does that come from? >> i don't know. i think i've always loved the competitiveness of swimming, and i've just had that outlet since i was sixnc years old. it's something that's developed over time, too. i've gotten faster and i've come down to some of the shorter races and sprint events. i've always just tried to have that mindset of attacking the race and treating each race no matter how long as a true race. >> reporter: that's why youwh
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don't pace yourself the way a lot of swimmers do.do >> i like to think of it more as racing than pacing. >> reporter: a lot of top athletes especially when they reach near the pinnacle you have talk about the pressure they feel and they feel anxiety to perform. do you ever feel that?el >> no, i don't. i just focus on my own goals and not what anybody else's goals for me are or their expectations. i just know that my family will always be support meg and my friends and coaches. as long as i put in the hard work and know i'm giving it my best efforts, i'll always be happy. >> reporter: there is a lot of comment about your swimmingt style and your coach at 12 or 13 changed your style so you would swim more like michael phelps. it's been called a half-gallop. explain that and what advantage it gives you. >> it's the most efficient foric me and the fastest stroke for me and i think it was just
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utilizing my strength to the best. >> reporter: what does it r consist of? >> more of a loping stroke, and using my kick more than most female swimmers use. i'm just kicking a lot more and getting a lot of power out of my hips and out of my stroke and i have a really good catch with my arms and, so, it's just kind of putting all those things together. >> reporter: you've always recently practiced with men, and one male athlete said the other male athletes were actually "broken" by having to swimwi against you. how did you feel about that? >> i don't really pay attention to it. you know, when there is someone next to me, i try to race that swimmer, no matter the gender, and, you know, i try to give the guys a run. they need somebody to push them, too. it helps me and hopefully helps them as well. >> reporter: there was also a lot of commentary during the olympicist, sexist comments seen
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about female athletes and one of the examples was the commentators, one said katie ledecky swims like a man. do you found that offensive? >> someone said katie ledecky swims like aed man, and i take t as compliment when somebody says i swim like a man because, as you said, my stroke is kind of taken after what some of the male free stylers have done, but i'm just going as fast as i can go. >> reporter: now you're not going professional. i've heard estimates from $5 million to $15 million you could be making a year. did you even considerr that? what went into your decision not to go pro? >> i didn't consider it at all. i always wanted to swim collegiately and had that experience and i can't wait to o go to class and enjoy that whole
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experience. >> reporter: so if a 6-year-old or 7-year-old or 8-year-old girl were watching you in the olympics and said i want to be theid next katie ledecky, what advicewald you give her? >> i would encourage her to cet big goals because i never dreamed i would go to the olympics when i was 6, 7 or 8 years old. i just started setting goals and all of a sudden when i was 14 years old my next goal was to make the olympics, and i never imagined it and i never imagined i would come away with medals and be able to travel the world and swim. it's been such a greata experience and i hope that young girls will have that dream and we'll have experiences and it might not be in swimming, itng might be in something else. i found a passion and i love it. it's something i love and enjoy and something i'm good at. it's what i have been able to give 400% to. >> reporter: katie, you'reyo certainly an inspiration to that young girl and all of us. thank you so much.an
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>> thank you. one olympic post-script of a different tone. late today brazilian police charged swimmer ryan lochte with filing a false police report. brazilian police said no such crime took place. investigators ask lochte be deposed in the united states. >> sreenivasan: it was 100 years ago today that president woodrow wilson signed what was called the "organic act," creating the national park service.ic jeffrey brown takes our "bookshelf" outdoors. >> brown: terry tempest williams, author, naturalist and environmental activist, grew up in utah surrounded by national parks. >> they were our backyard, and with our family business laying pipe in the american west, it was this wonderful juxtaposition between intrusion in the land
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and protect the land.ot >> brown: the story of the land, right?la >> i feel like the american west is in my bones in the deepest way, and i also felt conflicted at a very young age because i saw my father, uncle, grandfather, brothers, digging trefns in the land and yet i saw prairie dogs on the side of the trenches and my impulse was to protect them from the very destruction that was puttingde food around our table.e. >> brown: 100 years since the creation of the national parks service, the contradictions and controversies over america's public lands continue. but there is no denying the popularity of the parks themselves.es great smokey mountains in the east.ey yosemite in the west. yellow stone, the oldest park, established in 1872, and so many more large and small, natural landscapes and historical monuments.
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some 412 parks and sites in alln and attendance records continuen to be broken with more than 300 million visits last year. in the -- in the hour of land,"a terry tempest williams who still lives in utah, has written part natural history, part memoir and part call for preservation. we talked at the small but beautiful national park service site just 15 miles from washington, d.c., with the potomac river crashes over and through rock formations and turkey vultures circling overhead. what happens when you go intocla park? >> the miraculous. this is about primitive. just seeing this, all of a sudden you say, okay, i remember what matters and i am very, very small and, you know, humor returns, deep breathing returns, and that sense of affection. >> brown: you go to the different parks, tell their
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stories, and you see a lot of the issues of today have been there forever, right? whose land is it, the local versus national governance of the land. >> in the beginning, i thought i was writing a book about our national parks. it became very clear to me it was a book about america.m >> brown: more than the parks themselves. >> i think so, because they aret the soul of our country.o they are a reservoir for our spirit, and they are not only memory wallaces for each of us, but they really do hold our stories, not just one story, but multiple stories, diverse stories. and i think the gift of this for me has been what story are wegi choosing to tell. what stories aren't we telling? and that's been the power ofwe land for me.
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>> brown: terry tempest williams describes in personal terms a visit several years agos to the thee door rooseveltos national park in north dakota with her father. >> we fell in love with it. we also saw in that view sheet shed oil and gas development. we went to see the balkan oilfield when it was at its peak. my father was shattered. he turned to me and said, this is too pretty of a landscape for oil and gas development.oi that was my father who would tell you he's very proud to have the scars he's gotten on the american landscape.am there is little my father and i would agree on politically, but come to a national park, and that is our common ground, and he's the one who gave me this sense of place, this ethical place. >> brown: do you see a way to
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balance needs of preservation and economical development?l >> i was in a state where parks and monuments were fought over, now they are the economic engine keeping rural utah alive. that's in our history, whether grand teton national park, grand stair case national monument, history shows us that it has always been a and 300 million visits in our national parks i think celebrates that idea.ks >> brown: 300 million visits also brings up the notion that we hear about parks being loved to death. that's another issue for our parks. >> i think it shows us our need. i think it shows us our void. you and i both know that, yes, in yellow stone, it's not bumper to bumper, it's chest to back. if you're half a mile off the beaten path, you're in a very, very wild place.
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>> brown: what is your goal for the next 100 years for the national parks? >> it's so difficult to establish a nat >> it's very difficult to establish a national park i think it's going to be even more difficult to keep them and i think we as citizens of thisf country have to fight for them. i think we have to make sure that the public lands stayre public and i think we have to love them and each of us with the gifts that are ours i think we have to give those gifts up in the name of community to think beyond our own species--to think about grizzlies. do we really want them delisted? to think about these black vultures, their power, their foreboding, powerful, beautiful presence that we too will die and they will pick our bones. these are not political issues, ultimately, i think they are spiritual issues. this is where the spirit of america dwells.l
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>> brown: terry tempest williams, thank you so much. >> thank you.>> >> sreenivasan: in honor of this year's centennial, high school students from across the countr who are participating in the c newshour's student reporting labs program will be heading tow the canyons and mountains of their local parks to tell stories they discover about our shared lands.ca the young journalists are part of a s.t.e.m. reportingrt initiative funded by the national science foundation. for more information, visit @reportinglabs on twitter and facebook. we look forward to seeing their stories in the coming year. >> sreenivasan: and now to another in our brief but spectacular series.ta tonight, danielle sheypuk on stigmas and disabilities. a former miss wheelchair new york, she is also a psychologist who specializes in relationships and sexuality among those with disabilities. and a warning, the subject matter is for a mature audience.
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i am a clinical psychologist a and a runway model. i have spinal muscular atrophy type two.ty i wasn't born this way. we could cut to pictures of me as a kid looking cute, but let's focus on sex, relationships, intimacy and disability.in can you handle it? i joke a lot that i'm miss wheelchair new york bych night and clinical psychologists by day. i'm on tinder. i'm out there dating. it really supplements what i do as a clinician because i know exactly what my patients with disabilities encounter. people have asked me many times onlinees dating, can you functin sexually, and i always answer
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back, yes, can you? i remember when i first moved to new york and started dating, ig, was, you know, just being rejected, having inappropriate questions asked about me, like, oh, hi, what's your name? oh, can you have sex? you know, you really don't start out conversations like that. the problem lies in the fact that we don't see a lot of people with disability in the media. one night i got a call from my friend who said, hey, i found this pageant online, the miss wheelchair new york pageant. i thought to myself, let me do that pageant and let me try and win it. if i could wear high heels, then they can. if i can dress sexy or do my hair, then they can do it, too. there are numerous stereotypes that are still associated with disability -- being asexual,l, being unable to have sex, we don't make good romantic
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partners -- so the notion of sex in society that we see on tv often shows these physically fit having traditional forms of sex. you don't have to be able to do the standard, throw-down notions of sex. anything can be sexy. it can be ae fluttering eyelash on a cheek when you don't see yourself in those magazines or o part of those models, then you internalize that image and think that, okay, i guess i'm not sexy. people with disabilities havedi the same sexual needs and desires and appetite for romance and intimacy that everyone else has. it's part of being human. my name is dr. danielle sheypuk and this is my brief but spectacular take on making disability sexy. >> sreenivasan: watch more from our brief but spectacular series on our website. pbs.org/newshour/brief. also online, special o correspondent marcia biggs recently brought you the story of the last remaining doctors of aleppo, syria. y
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tomorrow, join her and others for a twitter chat at 1:00 p.m. eastern about why pro-government forces seem to be targeting medical facilities and physicians with air strikes. all that and more is on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm hari sreenivasan. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. u >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:ur s >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial future. >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention. in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org.hed
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>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.s th t captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org acss.wgborg
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>> this is "bbc world news america." funding of this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation, newman's own foundation, giving all profits from newman's own to charity and pursuing the common good, kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs, and aruba tourism authority. >> planning a vacation escape that is relaxing, inviting, and exciting is a lot easier than you think. you can find it here, in aruba. families, couples, and friends
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