desperation in indonesia to "amanpour & company." here's what's coming up. desperation in indonesia where a massive tsunami and earthquake have killed 1,200 people and likely many more. reporter matt rivers from palu ground zero. plus, good and mad, all ask author and journalist rebecca traister. and a manmade humanitarian crisis in latin america as more than a million refugees surge across the border from venezuela. the colombian president duque tells me how his country is handling this influx. also tonight, "the new york times" fights back. our walter isaacson speaks to

executive editor dean baquet.

welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in london. it has been five days since the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in indonesia and now the big question, where is the desperately needed aid? survivors are still without clean water, electricity or enough to eat. with more than 1,200 people dead, a number that is sure to rise, and over 61,000 people displaced. the government is being blamed for being too slow and compounding the disastrous aftereffects with a tragically disorganized relief response. and this in a country that's seen more than its fair share of earthquakes and tsunamis. meanwhile, crews about the ground still struggle to keep up as search and rescue teams continue their grim work. correspondent matt rivers joined me from the thick of it in palu, end knees, the region that has been hit hardest by these rolling disasters, and i spoke to him about what he's seen.

>> matt rivers, you have been on the ground for a few days now. what are you noticing regarding the rescue effort and the bodies do keep piling up? >> reporter: yeah, that's absolutely right. this is a place, christiane, that did not have the infrastructure to withdraw an earthquake let alone a tsunami on top of that. so as you might imagine, the damage has been absolutely devastating. it's stuff like this that is the visual part, what you associate with these kind of events. but it's the human toll that we've kind of really tried to explore that really is what has hurt the most here. so we've spent the last couple of days going around and talking to those people that have been most affected. rescuers think there's a body in here and believe it should be found. they don't mind crashing through the rubble to search because the house was already gone. around the corner, another

search. a tarp laid in case they find someone. they don't but these guys did. a massive earthquake flattened this area. if you lived here you'd be lucky if you weren't hurt even if you lost everything you own. that's what happened to many of these people, airport refugees awaiting a government evacuation. most trying to leave because they've got nothing left. even some with homes intact get out. >> people are trying to get stuff from my house so i need to get the kids out of here. >> people are looting. >> people are stealing things. they're trying to rob us. >> reporter: for those that remain behind the conditions are horrific. we visited a hospital that set up an outdoor ward because post-quake patients were scared to go back inside. the injured filled beds soaked in sweat, covered in flies, is where we meet this girl who was riding a motor bike with her cousin, her best friend. she lived.

her cousin didn't. at first i shouted, she says, eta, eta, where are you? she didn't respond. in the beginning i thought she would survive but my family found out she was dead. the stories of trauma are as common as they are awful. we meet this bandaged 7-year-old a few minutes later. he was with his mom and little brother when the waves hit. they were swept away and haven't been seen since. he says he sees a black shadow. that's what he said. i think it's him remembering his mother and brother. officially they're missing. in all likelihood they're gone. so what does a poor town do when the bodies keep piling up and there's nowhere to put them? >> matt, it's so sad and so reminiscent of the tsunami i covered back in 2005, that wave that we saw, those little kids who were separated from their parents and so many people dead and the bodies mounting. so to answer your own question, what does a small town do at this precise moment? what is the government doing? >> reporter: well, you know, there is a lot of criticism right now of the government both

locally and at the national level, christiane, for a lack of a response, a slow response. we spent the whole day today walking through different homeless camps basically places that people have gone, and there is a lack of electricity, a lack of water, food, health care, hygiene, and everyone keeps saying where is the government? i can't even get fuel to run my generator. and, you know, you feel for them. because we've been here for a couple of days and there isn't a heavy government presence. we don't know where the government is. the military can and should be doing more and it doesn't appear that they are. so you understand this frustration. so to answer the question, what should they be doing? they should be everywhere giving aid. what are they doing? well, they've been very slow to respond, and this is a country that has dealt with this kind of issue before, christiane. as you know from your own reporting. and yet, as of now, it doesn't seem like they're learning the lessons of the past. >> so just to be clear, often in these humanitarian disaster areas, natural disaster areas, you see plane loads of help landing at whatever airstrip

they can, helicopters, air drops, this and that. is there a problem with the airport? why is it the government or other aid countries are unable to land? >> reporter: well, there was a problem with the airport at first. there was a big crack in the runway, and that was a big issue. but that was one of the first things that they repaired. and so there isn't a problem with the airport anymore. now granted the air traffic control tower was damaged, but planes can still be landing here. so why they're not landing with more frequency, why more international help hasn't been accepted by the indonesian government, we're just not sure. there's rumors at this point the president is going to make another appearance here. we can't confirm that at this point. but there's rumors that he's going to be here and try to show the government is on top of things. that's the question that people are asking here that we don't have a ready answer to is where is the massive government response, the call for international aid, and the reception of international aid? and we don't know the answer as to why they're not here.

>> of course people are going to ask if the president can land why can't aid land as well? but obviously key in these kinds of situations is clean water. you basically can't survive without clean water, as you know. you can survive for days potentially without food. we've been told there's almost no water trucks and the red cross is saying it might take another several days before they can get enough water trucks, and it's already been three plus days in this situation. >> reporter: yeah, and that's exactly what we're hearing on the ground. we interviewed a woman earlier today who has an infant, the baby is maybe 2 months old, and if they had farm la, which they don't at the moment because it was destroyed in their house, even if they had formula the camp coordinators are telling

them there's no enough water to two around for every. and so the number one issue at the camp we were at today with hundreds of people, we don't have enough water. water is being rationed. we brought in all of our own water. we were lucky enough to bring in crates of water for ourselves. we've given some bottles away to people but clearly there is an issue on the ground of not having enough water. it is something that is universal, government officials, everyone is trying to source water and it's difficult for everyone. >> and, matt, lastly, as you alluded to in the report we saw, the bodies are piling up. the initial death toll was relatively low. it's mounting and it's bound to get higher. >> reporter: yeah, without question. it's scenes like this behind me, they're still going through the rubble to find more people. we saw firsthand how inconclusive the death toll is. we were here for about 30 minutes or so, christiane, and we were driving along the road and saw these three guys who had pulled a body out of rubble. they put it in a body bag and were trying to get an ambulance to stop and pick up the body. and four different ambulances drove by and just went right past. the fact that that person we know in that moment was not part

of the official death toll and that was just our experience. how many times did that get repeated over and over again throughout this area? 2.4 million people affected. so that happened over and over again. that's why this death toll keeps going up and it will continue to go up over the next several days and even weeks. >> well, matt, you keep bringing us the story because it's really important the world knows what's going on there. thanks so much. so we've also been inundated recently with images that speak volumes about how men and women express their anger in our culture. as we saw the quiet, precise, yet determined tone of dr. christine blasey ford's testimony, which was very effective but contrasted with the angry and also effective, so far, emotional outburst of the supreme court nominee, brett kavanaugh. it's a reminder that while women have been taught to control their anger, men's anger is embraced and encouraged. but a new book argues that women's rage, in fact, can be a

forceful catalyst for social change. it's called "good and mad: the revolutionary power of women's anger." and the author, journalist and social critic rebecca traister is joining me now from new york. rebecca, welcome to the program. >> thanks for having me, christiane. >> well, listen, you're taking on one of the crucial aspects, right? women are not allowed to be angry. what made you even want to take this on way before we've even seen these hearings and this crucial moment that's under way right now? >> well, i decided i was going to write the book in the months just after the 2016 election, and it's not exactly that may anger was sudden. i've been a feminist journalist for over a decade and a lot of my work has been grounded in anger, but i've always been cautious in the ways i've worked to obscure it to make it softer and more palatable for my readers.

i understood that a woman expressing anger unapologetically, that anger often works to undermine her own point because she's heard as hysterical, emotional, infantile or theatrical. and so i've done a lot of work as i think a lot of women who speak and argue in public work to control that anger. in the months after the election, i found my head just clouded. i was trying to make sense of what my work was and what my job was going to be during a trump administration, and i said to my husband, i just can't even think straight because i'm so angry. he said, well, maybe that's what you write about. this book is not about my own anger. rather it's about -- as soon as he said it, i was like, oh, my god, this is the story that's so -- it stretches back throughout history. i think it's part of what takes us forward. and it's about the way that women are discouraged from voicing their anger and do all kinds of work around controlling it and modulating it so as not to undermine themselves. and at the same time how in the instances when they have expressed anger it has often been catalytic to social and political movements that have transformed the nation.

>> so i definitely want to get to the history of women's anger and what it has actually done, as you say. let's just sort of refer right now to the kavanaugh hearings which is the latest exhibit a of all of this. so how do you assess and attribute the feelings by the two protagonists, the anger or the quiet emotion? >> well, it was very clear as soon as dr. christine blasey ford began to speak that she understood what many of us understand, which is that anger, which she had every reason to feel if you believe her story and anger not only about her alleged -- the alleged assault but also about the way that her name was brought forward against her will, the treatment she's received in the public sphere since her name has been public. she had all kinds of things she might reasonably have been angry about. but we all know instinctively if she had appeared in that hearing room yelling and pointing, it would have gravely imperiled her position.

she would have been read as playing a victim or as being unhinged in some way. and so she understanding a very narrow range of expression women are permitted if they're to be taken seriously expressed herself solicitously. she even said many times, i'm just trying to be collegial. she asked for permission, joked about how she'd like a cup of caffeine, all while telling this incredibly traumatic story about not only the assault but its aftermath in her life. she was just so measured and polite and calm. and then, of course -- and it worked. it worked. this is, in fact, how women are trained to express themselves. and she was by many measures a perfect storyteller. then brett kavanaugh came in, and from the first moment he blustered and raged and snarled and his face contorted with anger and he wept furious tears. and that also ties into a history of how powerful white

men have been encouraged to express themselves if they want to be taken seriously and understood as strong and also as having been grievously injured in some way. the rage -- the publicly expressed rage of a white, powerful man about how he has been done an injustice is one that is written into our national dna in the united states. it goes back to the founding and the anger of america's revolutionary founders who were saying give me liberty or give me death, live free or die, in their break from england. and brett kavanaugh knew that he had that in his arsenal, that he could be angry on his own behalf, and that it might be persuasive for some serious number of americans and certainly for the other powerful white men sitting on that senate judiciary committee. and i think in the immediate reaction it was persuasive to those men. >> it was. as you say, even many of the men were, at least they gave lip service to saying how persuasive, also, christine blasey ford was.

they just had an issue about who it was that she was accusing. so, having said that, and you mentioned powerful white men, this is what tarana burke told me about this precise situation, about kavanaugh's issue. she is the original founder of the original me too movement. let's take a listen. >> she can come to that hearing and be poised and fully present and not angry and not, you know, overly emotional in the ways kavanaugh was and we have to put up with him who is in an interview for the highest court in the land not being able to control his emotion. would he allow anybody to come in his courtroom and act the way he acted? so we have to give him some leeway? that is the epitome of white male privilege. >> so i guess you agree with that. where does one go, then, with this anger thing? >> well, i think we have to think about why women's anger is discouraged, why we're offered such a narrow window of rhetorical options.

and part of the argument i make in the book one of the reasons that a power structure writes off the angry dissent of those who are offered less power within it is because they understand the expression of anger to be a communicative tool and a way for people to, in fact, form coalitions so that if somebody yells, if a woman yells and there are many examples of this in our contemporary politics in the united states, white suburban women who have been in conservative districts and have always kept quiet because they knew that to be angry about their own democratic politics would make them disruptive and unpleasant they would be unpopular in their social circles. after the 2016 election they were so mad and they couldn't keep it in and yelled. and what happened? they became audible to each other, and then they started organizing. they joined groups. they started canvassing, volunteering, some running for office. anger works amongst people who are in some ways subjugated or oppressed. the expression of anger helps to connect them to each other, and that's one of the reasons that a

power structure discourages those expressions of anger. and so notably after the kavanaugh hearings, after what we saw in the chamber, what did we see outside of the chamber? there were masses of protesters. the women who were being openly angry, who were yelling, who were holding signs, and two women who went into an elevator with jeff flake, ana maria achila and maria gallagher, and yelled at him, pointed their fingers in the face of a powerful man, insisted that he look them in the eye and that expression of anger was immediately powerful. it was resonant. it connected to millions around the country who felt their anger expressed by those two women and there is, we don't know that it had an impact on jeff flake's decision to then ask for an investigation, but it may well have. >> well, let's play just a little snippet because everybody has seen it so many times and it has riveted the nation and the world, but he did actually imply that it did actually make a difference, and we can certainly see his discomfort or at least

his avoidance by his facial expression. just a quick little snippet from one of the women. >> look at me when i'm talking to you. you're telling me my assault doesn't matter, that what happened to me doesn't matter, and you're going to let people who do these things into power. >> so that was angry and anguished. the other woman was just as angry, maybe more angry, and it did actually make a difference. whether or not jeff flake admits it out and out, he said something about it in his "60 minutes" interview, and it really did -- it was a clarifying moment on social media that went viral that would have been hard to ignore. so would you say that's maybe the launch pad for anger as a political weapon at this precise moment? >> i think we will look back on that moment in the elevator as one of the sort of catalytic moments of whatever is to come

next. and one of the hard things especially for those of us in the news media we always want to evaluate how things are going sort of every second. was this a win or a loss? was this a win or a loss? and when it comes especially to movements for social change and objections to power abuses which is, of course, what we're in the midst of, not just around the kavanaugh hearings but around me too, the women's march, the objections by many women protesters to the repeal of health care in the united states. the teacher strikes that happened in several states over the past two years. we are in a moment where protest often led by women is very hard to tell simply is this going to work? is it not going to work? brett kavanaugh may well be appointed to the supreme court. i would not be at all surprised if he is confirmed to the supreme court, and that is a loss. however, moments like that moment in the elevator i feel based on looking at history are

quite likely to make the kind of communicative connections and resonate for masses of women who may then be more likely to participate, to protest, to become politically involved in a way that can have an impact way down the road. and i think we saw that after anita hill. that was a loss. clarence thomas was appointed to the court. and yet the fury that people felt about anita hill's poor treatment in front of that senate judiciary committee 27 years ago led women to run for and win elected offices in record numbers. i think it's the antecedent to the me too movement that we are in the midst of right now. these things have long-term impacts we can't predict today. >> and the anita hill moment, as you said, was the big moment for women running and now exponentially, i mean, hundreds and hundreds, nearly 500 women are running in these next elections. so that is sort of a cause and effect and a lot of anger is being expressed.

as you mentioned, the women's march and there's all sorts of marches and journalists fighting back and all the rest of it in their own profession. what i want to ask you because you do refer back to history, just remind us, give us some historical, you know, notes about how this anger and maybe a backlash. you write about the reagan era where women's movements collided with the so-called moral majority, the religious revival as well. >> yeah, one of the things i point out in the book is women's anger isn't always progressive. it isn't always born out of a left politics. it is often anger that is deployed on behalf of a white patriarchy and fundamentally conservative politics. one of the clearest examples was a woman marshaling the anger of women who were furious about the disruptions of the second wave feminist movement in the 1970s and the way it altered relationships and altered gender power relationships.

she took that anger and marshalled it to lead a crusade. the equal rights amendment in 1982. she succeeded in stopping the ratification of that constitutional amendment and dealt the women's movement of the 1990s really its biggest and most deadening and symbolic defeat. we can't -- i don't mean to suggest that every movement that women lead or that is born of their anger is necessarily progressive. women's anger an be potent and i don't think we take it seriously enough as politically consequential. >> and we clearly don't celebrate it in terms of the way women are portrayed. i mean, you know, rosa parks, for instance, is always portrayed as a demure young young woman -- yes, a woman, very demure, with her statutes, the way she's talked about. but you talk about her anger and, of course, go back all the way to the sufferagettes and the

way to the anger at not being allowed to vote. it's erased from history, you write. >> if you go back in the united states nearly every transformative social or political movement, the labor movement, the civil rights, the gay rights movement and of course the women's movement all have angry women at their starts, but those women, first of all, have often been erased from view as in the labor movement which we think of as a white men's movement, coal miners, but, in fact, it was garment industry workers as early as the 1830s in lowell, massachusetts, young women organizing one of the first unions in the country and then the garment industry workers in new york city in 1909 leading the big shirt waste strike. within the civil rights movement there are women like rosa parks who are acknowledged as being catalytic but they are presented to us in somehow palatable forms that she was demure, stoic. in fact, rosa parks was a

lifelong advocate and furious fighter against racist oppression in the jim crowsouth. investigated the gang rapes of black women by white men and the accusations of sexual misconduct against black men made by white women. rosa parks was unapologetic in many ways about her fury, but in order to be presentable and digestible, she was presented to us as quiet, polite, within that same narrow range of expression that we deem okay and respectable in women that we were talking about with regard to dr. christine blasey ford. not only do we have to find the women at the beginning of the movements. when we find them, we have to look kind of hard to see there was also anger. >> today, of course, even something like allegations of sexual abuse have been reduced to the state of a political football. it is incredible, and i'm wondering, you know, let's talk about the latest poll on who believes whom depending on what party they're from and what level of education. the latest survey, 61% of college educated white women say they believe ford over kavanaugh.

58% of such well educated women said the senate should reject his nomination. but just over half of white women without degrees said they believe kavanaugh and the senate should confirm him. so, as predicted, these are the kinds of figures we've been seeing on a range of issues for a long time since this whole populist sort of tribal wave that we've been living under the last couple of years. but, i want to play this for you. the right wing have their own sort of views on this. rush limbaugh says something completely predictable. i'm going to play it and then i am going to read something that steve bannon said. and she considered the real politics of today. let's play rush limbaugh first. >> militant feminism is irrational. these women are angry that something has happened to them in their lives and their rage and anger they take it out on the country or all men or men in

the powerful majority, which are white christian men and so forth, and how do you deal with psychological disorders? >> dear, oh, dear, poor old rush. well, he'll be sorry to know the, as i said, the lion of populist politics and nationalism steve bannon had a quite different view of the me too movement. he saw it for perhaps what it was. he said, i think it's going to unfold like the tea party only bigger. it's not me too. it's not just sexual harassment. it's an anti-patriarchy movement. time's up on 10,000 years of recorded history. this is coming. this is real. and he said that in february. and he knows a thing or two about the political waves. it's interesting, isn't it, to hear him say that. >> it is interesting. i mean, he's correct. i have strong suspicions that his saying that, and this is just my interpretation, is actually probably not so totally

divorced from what rush limbaugh was saying, in that any time there is this kind of angry resistance to the power abuses within a power structure like a white capitalist patriarchy, that white capitalist patriarchy is going to fight back, and that by pointing out that there is a potential insurrection of women, which is what bannon was doing using language that was officially respected that insurgency and was accurate, i think there is also a degree to which he's stirring a base. this is why women talking about me too are referred to as witch hunters, this is a hitch wasn't or mob justice. anytime that subjugated or oppressed masses resist their subjugation or oppression they are cast as the potential threat. >> i just want to play a sound bite from emma gonzalez. it's very short. i wonder whether this anger is the future. >> they say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. we call bs!

they say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. we call bs! they say guns are just tools like knifes and are as dangerous as cars. we call bs! >> angry and obviously after the parkland shooting. in 30 seconds, rebecca, sum up her power and whether that is the future of this movement you're talking about. >> she and the other parkland students, some of them women, have just not been marinated for as long as the rest of us in these ideas of what's acceptable and what's allowed and what you're allowed to voice anger about and her anger has been righteous and it has also connected her issue, gun control, with racism, sexism, environmental abuse. that movement is effortlessly intersectional at the moment. it acknowledges the interlocking of oppression and it is potentially the future of angry resistance in this country led by women and women of color. >> all right. rebecca, anger, don't fear it, embrace it. thank you so much.

as american women surge into the political fray this fall, colombia, which is america's closest ally in south america, can now boast full gender equality in the government's cabinet. it is led by the new president ivan duque. nonetheless colombia is a country under pressure from all fronts, from the east almost a million venezuelan people have poured into the country for basic food, water and medicine as their nation continues its slow downward spiral to total economic collapse. while their president, nicholas maduro, calls the crisis there fake news. from the north colombia faces the united states pressuring it to crack down on cocaine production. which has surged by more than 200% in the past five years. and from within the peace deal that ended decades of war is on shaky ground. the country's conservative new president ivan duque ran a

campaign that criticized the peace deal that had been sealed by his predecessor. when he sat down with me on the sidelines of the u.n. general assembly in new york he told me that he wants to tweak it, not tear it up. president duque, welcome to the program. >> thank you so much, christiane. it's a great pleasure for me. >> you are a young leader, one of a crop of young leaders around the world and there's a lot of promise and potential being transferred to your shoulders. and most of all about the peace deal in colombia. i think what everyone wants to know is that each though you don't necessarily agree with all the parameters of the peace deal, are you going to stick with it? >> i have said it publicly we want to fulfill the world of the colombia state. for the people making the transition to legality, we will fulfill the word. we will help them succeed. people who want to remain in criminal activities will be

brought to justice. we want to bring investment to the places where violence was before and we want to create alternative development for people who have been in illegal businesses like producing crops for cocoa. so, yes, the answer is yes. the thing is the only way to succeed is with legality so there's somebody who wants to go back to criminal activities they will face a punishment. >> what about the fact your mentor, the previous president of your party doesn't like this deal and feels that it should be opened up and renegotiated if at all with a lot more weight on victims and a lot less weight on some of the deals that were offered to the farc? >> we said publicly we didn't want to derail the agreement, but we wanted to introduce some corrections to things that were not going well. one of the things that is not going well, christiane, is that illegal crops have been grown exponentially. >> cocaine you're talking about? >> from 50,000 hectares.

to more than 200,000. we definitely need to do better in eradication and alternative development. we also want people that haven't turned on the weapons or assets to do it for the sake of the victims. and the last thing is that people that have committed crimes against humanity, those people should leave congress if they face punishment and the party can replace them. we cannot people that have committed crimes against humanity standing in the colombian congress. those are essential points that many people voted for in the election. >> so, as you mentioned and as i said, i think there's some huge figure of a percentage of the increase of the cocaine production. i mean, really, really big. some people say even bigger than under the narcos, about low escobar's time. what is it that is causing this to balloon again? is it what you're saying? >> i think there were many mistakes that were made. i think putting an end to aerial

spray was a mistake. i think not putting enough pressure into the emerging cartels was a mistake. that's why in the last seven weeks that i've been in office i have created a plan called the diamond plan. we have confiscated tons of cocaine. we have also dismantled some of those groups. we have changed some of those cartels. i'm asking to have a better coordinated action with other countries so that we can be more effective in interdiction. >> you talked about spraying but, of course, the previous administration stopped the spraying because it was a health hazard, that civilians in the areas were complaining of serious damage to their health. >> that's a very interesting question. where is the demand coming from? it comes from north america, europe, even from the region. and even in our country consumption is growing. we have now more than 800,000 consumers. so that's why i'm also taking a stand. we don't want to see more drugs on the streets easily accessible to kids. we need to do better on

prevention. we want to have the policy working. that's issue number one. and the second part of your question is aerial spray is one of the tools. it cannot be the only one. it has to be part of the strategies. we can be more effective with new tools. there are drones being tried as mechanisms. there are other mechanisms of more precision. >> how much of a problem, and i think it is a problem, is the implosion of venezuela on your border and the, i think, more than a million people who have sought help and refuge and just food and medicine by crossing into your country? >> christiane, it's a big problem. this is the most horrible migration crisis latin america has seen in its history maybe. it's one of the most terrifying humanitarian crises. there's a dictatorship that has destructed all the economy, that

has annihilated liberty, that has destroyed independent powers and people are just running. so i have decided that we're not going to close the border. we have to give them support. the source of the problem is the dictatorship. i think all countries in the international community must isolate the dictatorship and open the ground for return of democracy. >> well, it's no secret that you and president maduro do not particularly have a high opinion of each other. you don't think he's the right person. you've just said. and he has been personally somewhat insulting to you. let me just play what president maduro said. >> translator: ivan duque with his little angelic face is a devil. he puts on an angelic face but he is a devil and he walks around with his little angelic hand asking for money. ivan duque is afraid of me, and i challenge him to a public debate whenever and wherever he wants.

>> so i don't know how you respond to that rhetoric but, also, they have accused colombian diplomats as well as from chile and mexico of being behind the attempted assassination on him last month. >> he accused my predecessor and he accused the past administration and he was supposed to be very close to them. that's what he said in the past. i'm not going to get into a personal discussion with maduro. my criticism is because of the reality. there's a dictatorship, there's an annihilation of all the economic apparatus and there's a humanitarian and migration crisis that is evident in the eyes of the world. so my call is for the international community to do something. the absence of an action in the last years has made that dictatorship stronger. now we need to isolate it and make the venezuelan people return to liberties and have a vibrant democracy. >> does that do something include a military intervention? you saw "the new york times" had some exclusive report just this

month about rebels, people opposing maduro, talking to the united states about a potential intervention and potential plot to overthrow maduro. i want to know what you say about that but particularly because right here president trump talked about it in his meeting with you. can i just play that? first, tell me, is it good or bad? >> the thing is i have never gave favorable opinion to a military action because that's what the dictator wants. he wants to create a demon so he can use patriotism in order to remain in office. that's not the solution. the solution should be a stronger diplomatic and economic isolation of the regime so that people are more empowered to push him out. but not a military intervention because that's what maduro wants in order to get legitimacy and remain himself in office. >> let me play what president trump said on the issue when he was sitting with you. >> it's a regime that, frankly, could be toppled very quickly by

the military if the military decides to do that. and you saw how the military spread as soon as they heard a bomb go off way above their head. that military was running for cover. >> i mean, it could be toppled very quickly if anybody decided to do that. >> if you look at what he announced in the assembly, president trump, he announced stronger sanctions against maduro and his closest circle, and i applaud that. because it's a way of putting sanctions where the necessary action has to be focused, not against the people. it has to go against the ones who are running the regime. so i value that. but at the same time we need to have better diplomatic coordination. >> okay. i want to ask you one last personal question. >> okay. >> were you in a rock band when you were younger? >> i was. i was in the '90s. i had a rock band and i enjoyed it a lot. >> and how did it set you up for being a president for today?

>> well, you know, i have my electric guitar in my office. not too often but maybe sometimes when i have a little bit of stress, i just play a little bit and sing. i enjoy rock 'n' roll. and those were good moments of my life that i want to keep always in my memories. >> great. president ivan duque, thank you very much for joining me. >> thanks so much. it has been a pleasure for me to be here. >> his stress buster in all these difficult times. turning now to our next guest whose job it is to get all that have kind of news down in print. dean baquet is the executive editor of "the new york times." his roots are in louisiana, and four years ago he became the first black american to head up the paper of record. and for the past two years this must seem like a thankless task as that paper is the president's favorite punching bag. on second thought, though, does the president have a love/hate relationship with it? listen to this from trump's u.n. press conference last week. >> you know, all my life i've

had very few stories but i've had some on the front page of "the new york times." now i think i average about three or four a day, right? and up to three or four, they're all negative. no matter what i do, they're negative. you know what? that's okay. i still love the paper. go ahead. >> he loves it. in the thick of this unholy war our walter isaacson sat down to discuss journalism, reporting me too, and that anonymous op-ed. dean, welcome to the show. >> thank you. it's good to be here. >> you grew up in new orleans in a distinguished, large, black creole family. >> yeah. >> what was that like in terms of your concepts of race and class? >> you know, it's interesting. my whole world as a kid was black new orleans. i went to a -- i grew up in a black neighborhood. i went to a black catholic grammar school. i went to a black catholic high

school. in fact, the only people who weren't black that we were exposed to were nuns and priests in grammar school and high school. my experience in terms of race was going away to college. >> you had a great-great-grandfather, a musician. he even passed for white in los angeles. >> he played in jimmy durante's jazz band. if you go online, there is a picture of him and the band and he passed for white. that was pretty common. >> he dropped out of college and went to the "picayune" where i worked as well with you. what did you learn there? >> i learned parts of the city i didn't know before. i learned -- i mean, i made a lot of mistakes as a journalist. i learned how to be truthful. i got exposed to cops. i got exposed to a whole different world than i grew up in. >> donald trump slams you almost

daily, the failing "new york times," the fake news. because trump is so different, does that affect how you have to cover him? >> yeah. you have -- there was a script to covering a president. and the script was if the president said something, that was news. he was likely to do it or try to do it. this is a very different president. first off, you know, he obfuscates, you know, to use a different word. he's not always truthful. he doesn't always carry out what he says. he shoots from the hip. there's tremendous turmoil in his administration. we had a debate during the campaign whether or not to say -- to use the word lie, which i decided to do, and i can't imagine another executive editor of "the new york times" ever had to do it whether or not to call a nominee and possible president of the united states a liar on the front page. i think that was -- that just shows how much he changed the game. >> have you ever talked to

trump? has he ever called you? >> he was called me. he's called me. i'm reluctant to -- he's called me to complain and i've listened to him. he's been to "the new york times" a couple of times. >> at times when the publisher of "the new york times" has a meeting with him, you decline to go because you don't feel like attending off the record meetings? >> i don't think the executive editor is supposed to be in off the record meetings with heads of state. that's a personal issue. when i was a washington bureau chief i never met barack obama because i didn't think the washington bureau chief should talk off the record to the president. my view is whatever the president wants to say my readers should know. so i felt -- a lot of my staff disagrees with me, by the way. i think the publisher has a different job but i wouldn't meet off the record with the president. do you think that "the times" is a little too liberal?

>> it's funny. i actually don't. you look startled. the editorial page is liberal. "the new york times" is made up of a lot of stuff. i would make the case that our business section carries with it the fact that we have a business section. carries with it the view, the obvious view that capitalism is an important part of the life of the country. a lot of people would say having a business section and covering wall street and covering winners and losers is not a very liberal thing to do. i actually don't. >> we're in the middle of almost a category 5 swirl in the me too movement and this latest wave of it was pretty much started when "the new york times" began doing its stories and then eventually culminated with the harvey weinstein story. >> yeah. >> did you have trouble? did you get a lot of pressure on the harvey weinstein story? are there two sides to that or was it just gung ho?

>> you know, harvey weinstein, who i had met once or twice, nobody ever says he was one of our biggest advertisers. when we started working on the story and i was deeply involved in the story, when he called and he wanted -- going back to your earlier point, he wanted to talk off the record. and i said, i don't talk off the record. first off, i don't talk to people who are the subjects of stories without a reporter in the room. first thing. secondly, i don't talk off the record to people who are the subjects of investigative stories. he was upset. he lobbied a lot of people, but -- and it was interesting but there was never any thought about not pursuing the story. >> but you had to pause before you published it until you finally felt you had nailed it. what happened? >> the moment -- we had a little debate in the newsroom. we heard just as we were nearing the end of it we heard that the "new yorker" was working on a story. >> it was ronan farrow.

>> ronan and jane mayer joined him. i don't like getting beat. i called reporters and the editors in, we have to do this now. they argued, they said, look, i know we have the story, but we think it's important to name a couple of movie stars in the story. we had movie stars but they were off the record. i said, wrongly, that's ridiculous. let's just do the story. rebecca corbett, the editor, said, no. if we name stars it will have much bigger impact. me, being somebody who doesn't go to a lot of movies, didn't get that. i'm not going to get beat on the story and kept pushing. there was a wonderful moment where one of the reporters walked in, jodi cantor, tears in her eyes, as i remember it, and said that ashley judd agreed to be on the record. and they were right. the reason these stories had so much impact, i think, and this may be unfortunate but i think it's true, is because these are people people could identify with. ashley judd, gwyneth paltrow, i think that readers read those names and they resonated,

unfortunately, but they did resonate a lot more than the women, for instance, who were in the stories we did about donald trump. >> was there ever a point you said to yourself this is a big deal in america, sexual harassment, aggression? let's make this our big -- >> yes, but i didn't know it was going to be this. i had assigned -- i had remembered a case in which bill o'reilly had been accused of something years and years before and nothing had come of it. so after the election and after we'd done the trump stories about trump and the allegations of harassment, i assigned a couple of reporters to look at the case. it led to the stories of bill o'reilly being forced out. and then me and other editors said we need to put together a team. this is a real issue in the country. and i said find out if there are other cases like this and harvey weinstein ended up coming from reporters that way. i did not know this was going to be the moment that it was in the life of the country.

i had no -- i had no idea. >> every now and then you have to say, okay, i'm not going to publish something. i think you did that with debra ramirez who might be the third person to accuse brett kavanaugh. >> yes. in that case we chose not to publish. partly we didn't have an interview with her. "the new yorker" did. that was the main reason. all we had -- if you didn't have her, all we had were people who knew who, who couldn't quite support her account or disagreed with certain aspects of her account. i felt like i was sitting there with paragraphs 30 through 40 and not paragraphs 1 through 29, which would have been the interview with her. >> you've had to deal with it in your own newsroom, besides reporting on it happening. how did you decide not to fire glenn thrush? >> that was a really difficult decision. first off, i assigned someone who works for me to look into all the allegations.

i put together a diverse team of women and men, and we sat down in my office for -- in an office next to mine for two days and we debated it. and we debated the questions were we did believe the women. that wasn't the issue. the question was, was this enough to drum him out of the profession forever? it had not happened while he was working at the new yo"new york " it had not happened in our newsroom. his behavior was awful. but in the end the group -- actually, even though it's my decision, i did not want this to be one i made alone. the group decided to give him another chance. we took him off the beat that he'd always dreamed of, which i think in journalism -- he's no longer the white house reporter. in journalism people get that that's a big punishment. this guy from the time he was

growing up on long island wanted to cover the white house. we took it away from him. and we did some other things. we suspended him and then we brought him back. i get there are people who disagree with that and it was really hard but maybe it's what's left of my catholic upbringing. i still think people deserve another chance sometimes, and i thought he did. >> the op-ed page did publish something from anonymous, a person in the trump administration -- >> and now i'm going to say who it is. no, i'm not going to. >> that's a question i have. did you sic reporters and say to your reporters, i want you to find out who it is, even though your own op-ed page promised anonymity. >> first off, to this day i'm saying this so people can stop grabbing me on the subway, i don't know who it is. i didn't know -- nd out who anonymous was.to .ish

first off, i didn't think it was that important. it wasn't out of the blue. it was consistent with what people had said in bob woodward's book. nothing is trickier than outing an anonymous source. so it's not like i said let's put together a team. and of all the things in the world we can investigate, let's do this. >> was the op-ed page then right to publish it anonymously? >> i would have published it. whoever wrote that piece actually had something for all of the stories we published about trump inside the white house and even for all of woodward's book, there was something different in that piece. you were actually in the mind of one of the people in the government talking about how they deal with donald trump. you got to see -- there was a subtlety. our anonymous sours -- sources and stories state facts. this person is saying here is how i stay, here is how i regard myself, here is why i do what i do. that was different. i actually found it instructive. >> do trump and "the new york times" need each other? >> i wouldn't go -- we need good stories and donald trump is one

great story. >> does he need you? he needs a foil? the guy from queens who wants respect. >> i do think there's part of donald trump's psyche. i'm not going to use this to forgive him for beating us up, but i do think there is part of donald trump's psyche, the boy whose family made its money in queens, who wanted to come to manhattan, to my mind made his money, made some more money building apartment buildings for people who could not get into fancy east side buildings. wanted to be part of the establishment. we are part of the establishment. i think that's part of it. there's the part he's doing destructive stuff to us and to the press. >> we live in a very polarized environment. "fox & friends" is in a different realm than "the new york times" or whatever. is there any way we can heal that, and what can "the new york times" do to make it part of its mission to heal this polarization especially in our understanding of the world?

>> boy, that's a good question. i should say, i think "fox & friends" is bad for journalism and bad for the country. i think you can say whatever you want about "the new york times" and "the washington post," we don't appeal to the polarizing elements of society. we don't. and they do. i think it's in their business model to do that. what can we do? we can be truthful. the transparency part is a big deal. it's a big deal. it's important for people to know that not everybody in "the new york times" newsroom or "the washington post" newsroom is exactly the same. it's important for people to know what my background is. it's important for people to know -- i don't think there's anybody in my top three or four that has a background that resembles what people would expect. i think it's important -- i actually think that helps -- that will help with some of it. i travel a lot.

i go out in the country and try to talk to people. >> i think that seeing maggie haberman is a parent with kids, i've got to believe that people look at that and say, boy, it's hard to hate that person. boy, maybe i should read what that person has to say. i think all that helps. >> dean, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> and, by the way, i hope in a decade or so you come back home to new orleans. we miss you. >> we'll talk about it. thank you. >> see you later. >> thank you. dean baquet on the resurgence of good journal in these times. tomorrow i speak to author michael lewis. he's had blockbusters like "the blind side" and "the "the big short"." his new book "the fifth risk" documents how the trump administration is undermining its own government. but for now that is it for our program. thanks for watching. join us again tomorrow night.

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