tv Charlie Rose PBS March 4, 2017 12:00am-1:01am PST
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>> glor: welcome to the program. i'm. >> jeff glor:, filling -- i'm jeff glor filling in for charlie rose. i'm joined by karen tumulty and eric lichtblau. >> what is next is what has been going on all along which is sort of the drip drip of more and more reports of contacts of people in the president's circle with the russians or with russian officials. what's really surprising i think at this point and perhaps it is a reflection of the fact that the white house is populated primarily with campaign aides and not seasoned washington hands is that the trump team seems to have not gotten its arms around what the facts are here, you know, who had contacts, how many, and, if they
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don't, this appears like it could be headed toward some sort of outside, even a, you know -- either a select committee or some kind of outside investigation. >> glor: we continue with p.j. o'rourke whose new book is called "how thet hell did this happen? the election of 2016". >> populism can end upping with william jennings brian, incompetent and kind of funny and comic, or it can end up the way it did so many places between world war i and world war ii, it can wind up really, really ugly. i'm hoping we're having, you know, history occurs first as tragedy ad then again as comedy. i hope that's what's going on at the moment, but i'm not laughing really hard. >> glor: we conclude with legendary french filmmaker agnès varda, she talked about her life
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and decades career with filmmaker molly haskell. >> we're doing cinema more than telling that story and another one. trying to make the cinema be like the painting at the louvre. telling stories like coming from a book or from a place. >> glor: politics and agneès varda when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.
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>> glor: good evening, i'm jeff glor filling in for charlie rose. president trump is mired in controversy again. jeff sessions recused himself from any investigation into charges russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. this followed new revelations that sessions met with russia's ambassador to the u.s. in the leadup to november's election. sessions addressed the situation at a news conference late yesterday afternoon. >> i have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigation of any matter relating in any way to the campaign for president of the united states. i went on to say this announcement should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation or suggestive of
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the scope of any such investigation. >> glor: several top democrats called for sessions to resign, president trump remained stoutly behind him. joining us from washington is eric lichtblau of the "new york times" and karen tumulty of "the washington post." thank you both for joining us. karen, let me start with you, what's next on the sessions front? >> well, i think what is next is what has been going on all along which is sort of the drip drip of more and more reports of contacts of people in the president's circle with the russians or with russian officials. what's really surprising i think at this point, and perhaps it is a reflection of the fact that the white house is populated primarily is campaign aides and not sort of seasoned washington hands, is that the trump team seems to have not sort of gotten its arms around what the facts are here -- you know, who had
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contacts, how many -- and if they don't, this appears like it could be headed toward some sort of outside, even a, you know -- either a select committee or some kind of outside investigation. there is talk on the hill, i don't know how far that would get, about the need for some kind of special prosecutor in this. but unless the white house and the president can get ahead of all these revelations it is going to turn into something bigger. >> glor: is this why they're not getting ahead of it is because they're not tin siders? >> i think that is one explanation because, of course, you know, the first impulse, the first rule in the playbook on a campaign is if somebody hits you, you hit them back. i think people who have been around these sorts of issues from the perspective of having
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been in government for them know the first thing you do is get your facts straight. i think the other problem here is the president's tendency to personalize big issues with big implications. so he has framed this in tweets in his statements as some sort of beefing of democrats over the fact they didn't win the election as opposed to an actual threat to the security of the country. he hasn't denounced the russians, he hasn't talked about getting to the bottom of this, he hasn't talked about how the united states should respond. >> another rule is, if you know there is something bad out there, you try to put it out on your own terms in the first place, but, as you mentioned, if you don't know it in the first place, you can't put it out to debin with. eric, let's talk about the circle of russian contact. karen mentioned it obviously is just wider than just jeff
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sessions. how wide is that circle right now? >> well, we're learning more every day about trump campaign people who had contacts with russian officials. jeff sessions was the big one this week. michael flynn two weeks ago was fired for not being candid about his relations with the famed ambassador, with kislyak. carter page was another. gordon. as karen said, drip, drip, drip. that's certainly the daily impact of all this. it's notable i think, mostly, because of all the denials from the white house, from trump himself and his aides that there have been any contacts. they have been categorical for weeks with, even before the inauguration, saying there were no contacts, period,s th,s the e news, this is a ruse. now you have these contacts coming out which, for instance,
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jeff sessions explains as nothing insidious. there is always, you know, the axiom in washington that the coverup is worse than the crime if they had been more forthright and perhaps had let us known as karen suggests that these contacts had happened, they could have gotten out ahead of it. now it looks like they were denying something that's turning out to be true. >> we've all seen the pictures of sergey kislyak. tell me about him, if you could, eric. >> he's a long-time washington president, been the ambassador for nine or ten years. he's known for excellent parties, cognac, et cetera, and knows how to work washington in terms of going to washington events, inviting prominent people, current arounds, past ambassadors, feature ambassadors from the u.s., so the embassy,
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also to the russian version of camp david outside maryland where he hosted fabulous parties. the last few months with all the talking about russia's meddling in the election has caused a little bit of a chill with people being less willing to socialize or take meetings with him and jeff sessions has now found that out himself. >> glor: karen, the word "spy" is thrown around and the russians push back on that severely. how do we describe what cergy kislyak's role and job is. >> well, certainly the rumors have long been out there that he is either a spy recruiter or obviously gathering intelligence himself. let's face it, that is, in fact, part of an ambassador's job is
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to learn as much as possible. so you're right, the russians are pushing back against that. they're saying he is, you know, a topnotch diplomat, not a spy. but again, this has been sort of the reputation he has had in especially in intelligence circles in washington. >> i don't think it matters whether he is really a covert spy and there have been denials he probably isn't, but he's outwardly gathering intelligence. he doesn't have to sneak around in the shadows in alleys. he is meeting with prominent washington people and no doubt passing reports back to moscow. they're going to end up in the hands of intelligence agencies about, hey, i just met with senator sessions who is the key foreign policy advisor for the republican nominee. whether he is officially a spy or not is almost irrelevant.
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>> part and parcel of his job is his meeting with lawmakers, whatever side of the aisle they're on and whether that contact is inappropriate or not. >> the we we're all asking in washington is whether these contacts were evidence of something more sinister, was there collusion was the word the democrats keep using. was there just contact which, of course, has been denied for a long time, or was there some more active engagement during the election season wean, remember, the russians were actively hacking into the d.n.c. e-mails and john podesta's e-mails and giving those to wikileaks and doing serious harm to the election. was there anyone in the trump campaign that knew about or was involved in that effort? that's the ultimate question here. >> because, karen, the one kislyak-sessions meeting in september was at the very end and in the primary heat of this campaign, correct? >> yeah, but i really think that, you know, had he been
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forthright about this in his confirmation hearing when he was, after all, under oath, had he been forthright about this, had he said, you know, i had this meeting, but it was just in the course of my duties as a senator and we talked about foreign policy, it might have caused a stir for a day or two. the real damage right now is being done by the fact that he said there had been no contacts, and then he had come back and tried to parse his sentence and said he said something he didn't which there were no conversations about the campaign. that's not what he said. >> he has the testimony and the response. >> i asked him directly did the campaign or trump's name come up? and he said, well, i don't recall, which is never a good line in washington. and he said, well, you know, these ambassadors gossip about
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politics and the campaign but i don't specifically recall politics to be discussed and that seemed like a somewhat evasive answer. >> glor: karen? i know, especially at that time in washington, you know, basically, people were discussing the election with strangers on the subway. >> glor: karen, one can understand why the administration would push back against a potential special prosecutor. happened to bill clinton and resulted in his impeachment. what might the time frame be or where are the swells going as far as any potential special prosecutor involved in the russian investigation? >> well, first of all, there is no law now that allows the kind of independent counsel we saw during the clinton administration, the independent statute expired, so it could not be again the kind of sweeping wide-ranging, you don't know where this is going kind of investigations that we saw in
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the late '80s and in the '90s. but it's just really hard to say where it goes. if these kind of revelations keep coming on a daily and sometimes practically an hourly basis, there is going to be something. by the way, that isn't the only model we have. there is also the possibility the president himself may want to call for something, some sort of commission helded under bipartisan respected leadership, the way ronald reagan did as iran contra was breaking, the way george w. bush did after 9/11 when there were growing questions about, you know, what had happened to allow the attacks, what could we do to prevent them in the future. there's an argument, you know, that i think that could be made that perhaps the president should step out here and say, look, you know, if in fact -- you know, we need to get to the
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bottom of whether this is >> absolutely. obviously felt jeff sessions recusing himself from the case was not enough. they've called for his outright resignation. they called for investigations into possible perjury and what he told the judiciary committee. they obviously can make some political hay out of this for quite a long time, and having been on the defensive now for as long as they have, i think you clearly see them seeding that. >> glor: karen, this has been a big story that consumed much of the end of this week, at least, a week that started relatively speaking on pretty positive terms for the president after this speech on tuesday night. from your reporting and what you've seen there, how much
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disappointment and frustration is there from the white house right now that the week that they had and the positive notes they had have sort of turned sour? >> i think there is a great deal of frustration, not only from the white house but from their republican allies on capitol hill because, you know, one of the antidotes to all of this is for the president to be seen governing, for the conversation in washington to switch from this to his policy agenda. and, you know, if so many of those initiatives weren't running into trouble on capitol hill, that might actually happen, and that was what he was trying to do with his speech earlier this week. >> glor: eric, what can we anticipate? whether this story tore tentacles that come from it over the weekend and into next week. >> well, i think there probably will be more revelation in the
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media as there have been this week. next week, i think the focus will be somewhat surprisingly on the confirmation hearing for the deputy attorney general, the u.s. attorney in maryland bloo bloomstein who will be overseeing this investigation now that sessions recused himself, so that will turn into a somewhat unexpected event over russia because now that landed in his lap and he's about to come up for confirmation. so i think that will be the immediate focus. you will see ongoing calls from democrats and some republicans like jason chaffetz and congressman mccarthy for further action. the republicans called for recusal which they now got, but, you know, i think the public in general wants answers. i think there is an awful lot of confusion out there and unanswered questions as to what happened, and you see people wanting to get to the bottom of
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that as best you can. >> the twitter account clock has been reset with the president's talk of democrats and what he considers are obstruction on his appointees? >> you know, i think that is true, as well, although he now finally does have a cabinet. >> glor: are there lessons to be learned, eric, from how the appointment process has taken and those who have moved relatively smooth through it and those who have had rough times and in some cases withdrawing, are there lessons to be learned for the trump administration and future administrations? >> the process is more adversarial because to have the growing gridlock in washington the last few years because to have president trump and the feelings he engenders in democrats. you know, we used to, you know,
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four or five administrations ago, you would routinely get cabinet nominees approved 97-0 or 98-1. that ain't happening anymore, and we're now seeing straight party line votes, much more contention hearings, questions about the honesty now of three of trump's nominees and statements that they gave in their confirmation hearings and things that turned out to be untrue. so it's become, you know, much more political theater and really hand-to-hand combat than ever before. >> glor: eric lichtblau from the "new york times," karen tumulty from "the washington post." we appreciate both of your time. >> thank you. pleasure. >> glor: "how thet hell did this happen?," the title of the newest book by political satirest and author p.j. o'rourke, the subtitle the election of 2016. it is a look at the presidential campaign, an across the aisle
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critique of the candidates, press, political punned triand even an analysis of how he a die hard republican ended up endorsing hillary clinton. p.j. o'rourke joins us from new hampshire. i'm pleased to welcome him to this program. p.j., thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> glor: thank you for being there. you say if my book lacks a coherent narrative, it's because i couldn't find one. have you found one yet? >> yeah, i looked everywhere. i looked behind the couch. i looked all the places where i usually leave my cell phone. no, the coherent narrative wasn't there. well, that's not really true. we're in the midst of a world-wide sort of populist rebellion would be maybe putting too strong a term on it, but there is a worldwide sort of -- well, let's call it a rebellion. brexit is part of it. the neo-maoism in china is part
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of it, putin is part of it. as i point out in the book, even the politics of australia -- now, the politics of australia are so dull that the name of the conservative party is the liberal party. >> glor: yes. but they have had five prime ministers in six years. so all over the world there is some sort of discomfort with the elite, rebellion against the establishment going on, manifesting itself in various different ways, and here it manifested itself in a rather baffling man, the president. >> glor: a lot of the book is very funny, but you take a more serious look at populism at the end of the book. what do you make of it?
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>> it makes me streel uncomfortable. populism can ebbed up being sort of william jennings bryan incompetent and kind of funny and comic, or it can end up the way it did so many places between world war i and world war ii, it can wind up really, really ugly. i'm hoping we're having, you know, history occurs first as tragedy and then again as comedy. i hope that's what's going on at the moment, but i'm not laughing really hard. >> glor: what do you make to have the president at the moment now, the speech to the joint session of congress got so much attention earlier this week. people said he appeared more presidential. did you sense a shift or do you sense a shift? >> well, you know, he's a good actor. i mean one thing -- again, i
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talk about it in the book, no journalist ever watched "the apprentice." it's not because we're smart, it's not because we're sophisticated, it's not because this is below us, it's because we're in the media, and none of us need to hear "you're fired" ever again. i mean, we all know what the state of the media is like. so we haven't watched him on "the apprentice." when you watch him on "the apprentice," you realize alec baldwin has nothing on donald trump, he's a good actor. so whatever you call that, the address to joint state of the union except you don't know what the state of the union is because you've only been there a week address. he was acting like a president. you know, doing a pretty good job of it. what that means, if anything, i don't know. >> glor: you started to put together this book, more than just a collection of what you observed during the campaign and, obviously, that changed very quickly from week to week and from day to day.
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in the end, you did endorse, as we said -- by the way, off the top, you would say you're a die-hard republican, but the better term is libertarian and has been for a long time. >> yeah, i'm a libertarian but it's been a long time since i voted for anybody but a republican. >> glor: but you did endorse hillary clinton this time and went through how little you think of her but ended up endorsing her. that's been the case for a long, long time as well. do you have regrets about that? >> no. no, i don't. i did it for -- you know, one of the things about libertarianism, is your political attitude is supposed to be based on reason. there is something in the financial market you probably know about called the volatility index, the vix. you can actually go into the commodities market and buy a
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prdiction on how volatile markets will be. it's called the fear index, and my fear index was, and i think rationally, quite high with trump. i just felt the man was opaque to me, i didn't know what he was going to do. i disagree with hillary about practically everything. i think i said in my endorsement, dorothy ande and ts house fell on her, i would endorse her, the munchkins endorsed her. i knew what i was getting with her. we had eight years of barack obama, a ke kindred, more likabe kindred spirit with hillary. we survived those eight years. we would survive another four. i think four would be all it would be, because americans tend
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to shift parties after eight or at the max 12 years. so i figured we lived through eight years of obama without terrible damage, then we could live through four of hers. whereas with trump, might be okay, who knew, you know. i was talking to friend of minimum in the commodities business about the vix, the volatility index, i said you have all these greek numbers and measures about raising volatility and risk. he said, p.j., let me tell you, if you could measure risk, it wouldn't be risk. >> glor: very true. america does volatility very well, though, no matter where you come down. i wonder, you frame pretty much every candidate in this last election cycle other than maybe rand paul who didn't last for too, too long. >> no, i did like rand, yeah. >> glor: i wonder if you were impressed by anyone other than
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rand, or if you're future casting here, whether you see anyone in the future who you can get behind? >> yeah, actually, there were a couple of people that i thought were fine. i went to see jeb bush at a town hall meeting, really intimate, little town peterboro, new hampshire, close to where i live. only a couple hundred people were there. he was excellent. he was truly excellent and completely believable. onwent to another one in the sae town with kasich. i thought he was very solid. i don't see those guys coming back for another try. marco rubio, aside from not looking old enough to drive, i mean, i saw him actually where i'm sitting at the moment at st. ansilum's college in new hampshire, he was very good. he had a kind of contentious
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crowd, and he was very reasonable, patient, brief and yet substantive in the way he answered questions. i think he just needs a little more time in the -- a little more aging time in the old oaken barrel. he was good -- i heard him today on -- it was jeff sessions, a secret agent of smurf question, or whatever it was, and rubio had a good, measured reply about that, about how we want the truth, not a partisan truth, we want the truth-truth. >> glor: in the book, you talk about how it may well be a long time. even though we've dealt with controverses that have come up, it's been an active time for the dpintry and i've -- punditry.
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when do you think we'll be able to assess what's happened in the last two years? >> when a new president comes into office, there is always a degree of mess. then there is usually a honeymoon. stories from the first month of obama's, i seem to recall repeated reports of his walking on water and so on. but actually even george w. bush was -- i can remember somebody saying something positive about dan quayle right at the very beginning of george h.w. bush's. so, you know, this is a little unusually negative, but the truth is the beginning of all administrations are a mess. we certainly have to give it 100 days. this is a particularly incoherent -- i mean, one of the things that bothers me about having donald trump as president is that it seems to be absolutely intellectually incoherent, ideologically
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incoherent. people are all bothered about steve bannon as the ideological force behind the trump administration. well, there is no such thing as an ideological force behind an administration that has absolutely no ideology. so, you know, maybe after 100 days we get a clearer idea of whether, like, the office and the institution suck him if and make him behave in a more normal passion. >> glor: but do you agree whront he has a view that's more ideological? >> he's ideological, but i'm not seeing a man in trump that listens a lot. i'm just -- he has a pretty narcissistic personality. i have trouble figuring out what -- it's like trump is
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looking so closely in the mirror that when we look at trump we're looking at the back of the mirror. we're not really -- i don't feel like i have any sense of knowing this guy. i mean, you sort of know him because he's the guy that's on the last stool in the bar between you and the men's room and you're kind of like inclined to hold it because you don't want to have to go past the guy, the guy that's sometimes funny, always loud, sometimes has a point, sometimes is really off the reservation, but has always gone on. this is interesting because trump does not drink, so how he got the position as the guy at the end of the bar, i'm not positive. but he's a pretty opaque character. >> glor: you make a pretty good comment at the end of the book i don't want to spoil it for anyone but it's worth checking out. i want to return to the notion of elitism that's been discussed
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so much and populism. in the book you say individual freedom is about bringing things together, politics is about dividing things up. this is not a new concept. >> yeah, i mean -- >> glor: i think it's pretty important right now. >> yeah, well, that's my fundamental -- the reason i am basically a libertarian, i'm a conservative, but my ideology is libertarian because i worry about big government, and i think we have a perfect example here for everybody across the spectrum. i worry, you know -- i watch liberals build a bigger and bigger government, and now i'm watching them when somebody else has gotten behind the wheel of this monster truck government, turned it around and run them down with it, you know, and they're all shocked and weepy, and i'm going, like, make it a kiddie car! shrink the size of the monster
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truck, then at worst it smacks you in the shins. so, yeah, i think private individuals are a creative force, and what politics basically does is take the fruits of our creation and redistribute them, and i don't mean that as an attack on the welfare system. military spending is a form of redistribution, too. even infrastructure, which we're in no doubt in need of in this country, that is a form of redistributing the fruits of individual enterprise and, you know, we don't want none of that, but we have to be careful about the size of the device we create to do that job. >> well, and you mentioned the big dig a couple of times in the book in boston, a project that cost a lot more and look a lot longer than people expected. but you would agree that some infrastructure reconstruction is needed. >> yes, it is.
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although in the case of boston, i remember when they built the expressaway that the big dig replaced, and i was about college-aged and going out and visiting friends who were obviously smarter than i was because they were going to a college in boston and not ohio, so i remember when that thing went up, and it should have never been built in the first place. infrastructure is not, like, just a simple good. it's what you build and here you build it and how well you budget. maintenance is the thing, you know, really needs to be carefully analyzed. >> glor: p.j., what do you make of the media versus trump, whether it's real or not or manufactured to any extent or is
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it -- i mean, why, in your estimation is the president sort of taking the approach he is and what do you think the appropriate response should be from the media's side? >> well, there is, you know, always in the media's relationship with the well world, always an adversarial side. i mean, nobody wants to go to a play with no drama in it or see a movie with no attention in it. i mean, it's part of our job to stir the pot, you know. it's like, i would say about plays and movies, is that i won't go see a play without a sword fight or a movie without a car chase. so part of media opposition to trump is simply the natural order of things. you can get real serious about it and say we're speaking truth to power. i think that's getting a little -- we're getting a little above ourselves when we do that because that's easy.
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i mean, xi jinping, it's easy for me to speak to power when i'm far away enough from the power. but there's an aspect in the media that makes it trump harder for media people to understand than maybe he would have been a century ago, which is, once upon a time, being, like, a newspaper reporter or even as relatively recently as me starting out, still a blue-collar trade. i mean, if you grew up like i did, kind of shanty irish, and you didn't want to get up early in the morning or lift heavy things, you could essentially be a newspaper reporter or a priest. you could be a cop, but then you would get shot at, or a fireman. and that's dangerous. but if you like to read, you
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didn't like to lift heavy things, so -- and then, you know, over the years -- i blame nixon for this. nixon was at fault for a lot of things,, but you know, when watergate came along and all the president's men, a whole bunch of people who should have joined the peace corps became newspaper reporters instead in order to save the world, and i don't think we've ever recovered from that problem. >> glor: p.j., you have a couple of teens, a couple of young kids, at least. you mentioned them a couple of times in the book. >> yeah. >> glor: from their perspective, i know you pay attention to that, what do you think that generation makes of what has happened here? >> well, it's interesting. my 19-year-old is at college, and i'm sure this has something to do with being 19. i mean, what she is most interested in is women's rights
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issues, specifically abortion. i mean, she sees that as fundamental. and i think that that's been a terrible mistake from the conservative side for quite a while. i mean, i am personally opposed to -- to abortion, morally opposed to abortion, but i think it's a very, very private choice. >> glor: on that note, p.j. o'rourke, the book, "how thet hell did this happen? the election of 2016". very good to see you, sir. >> you're very welcome. >> haskell: i'm molly haskell, filling in for charlie rose. agneès varda is here, she's a photographer for individual artists. her work in the '50s and '60s helped pieo knee the french new wave film movement. he's in new york for an art
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exhibition on east off6t off6th street. agneès varda, life is art, a special event presented by rendezvous with french cinema takes place friday march 10 at film society at lincoln center in honor of varda's work. i am pleased to have agnes at the table for the first time. your show is incredible. the first room i went into has a huge photograph of the ocean. then there is a film of the ocean rip -- of the waves rippling and the sound track, and the canvass is almost like sand. it's a transporting moment. >> it is real sand. >> haskell: it is real sand. i wanted a vision of the seaside. >> haskell: because you always somehow manage to combine -- this goes back a long way, but
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the documentary and the imaginary in one. people assume that nobody wanted to leave. it needs a bigger room because people are absolutely fixated. >> because it's based on contemplation and calm, and, you know, we're in a world moving so much, and films and everything is so much action, that i propose the peaceful look, contemplating something that we all know and all love in a way, the seaside. >> haskell: it's a quiet ocean. is the sound track actually from that particular ocean or -- >> we all know what is the feeling being near the sea when it's calm and we hear the small waves. it's something everybody can feel whenever they have seen it or felt it. the peace is seaside and i'm
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pressed when people see it and don't leave. >> haskell: it's mesmerizing. a 1950s photograph, and then you recreated it as a drama. >> i've always been interested in images. what is an image. a snapshot, you come, you see people. >> haskell: family. and maybe people you never met that you see somewhere. i always questioned who are they? how did they happen to be together at the same place? did they know each other? didn't they know each other? so i think about what's possible about these unknown people whether character or fiction.
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>> haskell: that's wonderful. using my imagination, but asking the people who look at the images to wake up their own imagination because each image is a mystery. even things that we know that it is. >> haskell: and you use local actors and gave them a script? >> oh, no, no. it's people, i like them to come into my art project. >> haskell: just ordinary people. >> oh, my neighbor. >> haskell: uh-huh. this one is the plumber of my village. >> haskell: the plumber, uh-huh. >> and his mother and another worm who is a teacher. but i will say, would you like to come into my dream becoming a film? and they say yes, and i told them what i felt. and they became what i was feeling. and i've done that very often. but this is not the documentary. when i do a documentary, i respect their own life, their own world, and that's what i have been doing recently. i just finished a feature
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documentary with j.r., the artist j.r. and we were friends in villages, small villages, and we met people and we asked them to speak about what they feel and see, and we make sometimes big images of them and i make them in their world. >> haskell: this is the first one where you scavenged things that nobody pays attention to. >> nobody listened, the same with the widows, nobody listened. when i did that thing, we were in villages where people were working or a girl was serving in a bar and people working in a factory where there was a lot of danger, we asked them to be with
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us, and we built some strange things. in the harbor we used the container to make a lego construction. >> haskell: yeah. we tell them we want to be artists with them,. >> haskell: they collaborate. yeah, they collaborate, they help, they get involved. they like to feel that they have the right to be artists with us. >> haskell: yeah. because it's not -- i'm not untouchable. >> haskell: you've had a decentralized sense of film. it's not something just handed down and imposed on people but they bring to you. even in something like vagabond, that wonderful film. the idea of different people, it's a young girl found dead and you have different people giving their perspective. >> but you see the installation,
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i'm very excited these people are acting in a still photo. they were people i met again. no actors at all. i say, look at that image and try to imitate it. and the woman acting looking like the dress in the picture. we will act, we will play we are doing that picture and they play the game with us. >> haskell: it's like family photographs on vacation and everybody's taken them and they look back and wonder and try to remember what was going on before and after and why was he holding the baby now. >> i'd like to have known people together. >> haskell: they weren't a family at all. >> does it make history, could we believe that something happened between this one and this one. >> haskell: yeah. so i think i have my imagination, not i wouldn't say working, but alive all the time.
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>> haskell: well, i think even if something like where the guy is a writer and it's a little bit of the same thing where the people in the village become imaginary people. you have the this sense of no boundaries between the real and imaginary. >> reality is so difficult. it's so tough. the whole world is an incredible difficult reality. so if we can reinvent reality, make it more sensible, more near us, so it makes sense that we share with them something, stories or emotion or spectacle, something, not only entertainment but having fun together. >> haskell: you realize especially with the politics now a lot of people feel left out. they feel they're people at the artistic centers of the world and these other people are
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nobodies. you give them the feeling they aren't nobodies, and you've always known that. >> in the center of french cinema, which is strong, now we have a lot of new directors and women directors. a lot of them came here with their french cinema today, event. >> haskell: i met you when you came at 65, i started at the french office, but before you made cleo from 5 to 7, the story of a pop singer waiting for a diagnosis he may have cancer, and so many french films are women walking, beautiful male directors and these beautiful girls on the cusp of womanhood and they're there for the pleasure of the male who is looking and -- >> no, you make it too much. >> haskell: no, don't you think french cinema has a lot of those, women walking --
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>> no, what is the sense of a woman. >> haskell: but yours is a woman whose minds and sensibilities you are interested in. >> when i was trying to find these articles, more than telling that story and another one, trying to make the cinema being art, painting moves, telling stories like coming from a book or a place. >> haskell: you use centered writing. >> from the inspiration that is there in real life and, from real life, invent ago shape of -- invent ago shape of -- inventing a shape of touching people. >> haskell: no drama. very good films are made like this, a lot of beautiful films. but i like to work on something
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which is sensible in which maybe the people watching the film get to feel what is presented, what is proposed. so i have been doing the life of a filmmaker, then i switch from an old filmmaker to a young visual artist. then in the last ten years, i have been doing more exhibitions using all sorts, mixing them, trying to reconcilate digital -- >> haskell: in the beaches, you go back, and you're not even a beach person but you have wonderful installations and movies about beaches, but you find a picture of two young boys and you find they're now old men and you bring them to that. >> we were young persons. this was a long time ago. >> haskell: it was. and what we still share is
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love for movies, love for experimentation, adventure, because trying to invent cinema, and you do work by reading and understanding, sharing what you know and what you understood at cinema, sharing it with people who go to movies, that's what you were. >> haskell: and i knew jacques your husband and you knew my husband, so we both had marriages where love and movies were intertwined and we had tremendous rapport on that movie the director says when he speaks about the film, he pays tribute to jacques and me similarself. >> haskell: yes. e says when he saw jacques he was 17 and changed his life
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and became a filmmaker. when he came to paris, he invited us and said can i come to your place. being in the courtyard where i was with jacques, he was i was so touched. he said he has been so important in my life, this makes my heart break. i said what a nice boy. >> haskell: the effect you and your fellow new wave directors had in the '60s and early '70s on american filmmaking is indescribable and you must know that. i remember when you came and mike nickels came and it was interpreting and your english wasn't as great as it is now and mike nichols was there and was so moved. do you remember that? you were part of the left bank group. that distinction that was you and chris and angel --
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>> we were on the left side of politics, and we lived on the left side. >> haskell: yeah. which is strange. >> haskell: it is strange when you think about it and go to chabral considered the right bank, and they were movie maniacs and they were very influenced by americans and rene, also. >> it has been a time of very incredible memorabilia. >> haskell: what i can't get, it's almost like you've had ten careers. you've kept going with the same curiosity and creativity all these years and just kept going if whatever direction. >> i am lucky to have kept that and the desire. in this exhibition, i never had the experience to put the seaside on his floor, so people in new york forget they have to go -- >> haskell: that's right you
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go up in a tiny elevator and into the room and suddenly the room opens up. >> and that's what you need. i'm here in an exhibition that makes me very happy because i see people coming, people who love films and art, and the young people. >> haskell: they were all young people yesterday. what happens on march 10t march 10th with the rendezvous. >> i don't remember the date what i do, but they ask me will i present, and then i will speak with anderson about my work. because i come to new york, they say i have to do this and this and this. next time, i won't tell anybody that i come. the program, was a delight for me to see you again. >> haskell: you're so great.
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you're just such an inspiration. i went to the show. i thought, my god, if she can do it, i've got to do something. >> are you about to become more of an artist? >> haskell: i don't think so, but i'm soaking up yours and can't wait to see what you do next. >> it's the last part of my life and so many good things happen to me. i work, i do a lot, but -- there is an answer to that. is there an answer from the people coming -- >> haskell: the content and also the people you're making films with, you're collaborators, the energy that comes back and forth between you and them, it's glorious. >> if the energy can be shared and the emotion and talks and spirit -- >> haskell: and the humor, too. people don't talk much about your humor. even in the photographs in the show, there is a sly humor in them. you're a very funny person.
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>> well, i'm glad you've got what i'm trying to propose and it works sometimes. >> haskell: well, congratulations. >> the thank you. it was beautiful to see you. >> haskell: you, too. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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hello. welcome to kqed newsroom. coming up on the program, the state assembly's republican leader talks about why the gop needs to do a better job on messaging. and the university of california released records on more than 100 cases of sexual misconduct across its ten campuses. plus, the all male ballet troupe. we go on point with two dancers from the bay area. but first, as part of our ongoing coverage of the first 100 days of the trump administration, yesterday attorney general jeff sessions recused himself from investigations into russian interference in the presidential election. this after it was revealed that he had met twice last year with the russian ambassador.
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