hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour." here's what's coming up. democracy and rule of law in crisis. an urgent warning from hillary clinton in my exclusive interview at oxford university. nikki haley resigns. as the u.s. ambassador to the united nations. as a diplomat, we delve into the poison story engulfing the u.k., and we ask our hit job on foreign soil a growing phenomenon? and then historian jill lepore on the root of political tribalism, can political civility be renewed to rescue our democracies?

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london. america's role in the world is back in the spotlight after the resignation of nikki haley as u.n. ambassador. but after the bitter brett kavanaugh appointment to the supreme court, the spotlight is also on rule of law and democratic institutions at home. the president appeared uninterested in judicial impartiality on the nation's highest court at an unprecedented event at the white house last night. >> on behalf of our nation, i want to apologize to brett and the entire kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation. our country, a man or a woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. and with that i must state that

you, sir, under historic scrutiny were proven innocent. >> when donald trump won the 2016 election, his opponent, hillary clinton, called on all americans to give the new president a chance to lead. since then she has become more and more alarmed at what she calls an attack on america's democratic institutions. clinton is at oxford university to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights which was negotiated for the united states by her personal hero, eleanor roosevelt. when i spoke with her there, we discussed the crisis in democracy, what kavanaugh means for the rule of law, and for the midterm elections. >> hillary rodham clinton, welcome to the program. >> thank you very much. >> you're here to talk about the crisis in democracy, not just in the united states but also around the world. let me just take you back to election night 2016 when you said we have to give him a chance, we have to let him prove

himself and lead, talking about then president-elect trump. now you say you think you were overly hopeful. what, precisely, about democracy has you rried? >> well, really five things. i started worrying at his inauguration both because of what he said in his speech, which i thought was defiant, defensive, dystopian, it was not a speech to bring people together who had not supported him, but instead it was aimed, as i say in my book, at the white nationalist gut. and then over the course of now nearly two years since the election we've seen him degrading the rule of law, we have seen him delegitimizing our elections. we have seen him spreading corruption, both him personally, his family business, others in his administration. we have seen him also attacking truth and facts, even reason

itself, and fundamentally trying to undermine our national unity. so i was hopeful. i wanted to give him a chance. i think every new president deserves a chance. but every month that's gone by, i've become more and more worried about how he governs and how he treats people. >> we've obviously gone through an incredibly divisive confirmation hearing and now appointment to the supreme court. i'm going to get to that in a moment. but specifically because midterms are coming up, it is an election season in the united states. everybody says elections have consequences. what are your solutions, proposals? how can one get out of this crisis that you identify? >> well, the first step is for democrats to win the house and hopefully the senate in november in these midterms. that's a tall order. it's looking positive but one never knows in an election, as i know from personal experience.

so we have to convince people that whatever they care about is on the ballot. it doesn't matter. do they care about the climate? do they care about the economy? do they care about health care and pre-existing conditions? do they care about our foreign policy? whatever they care about, it is on the ballot. we have seen the unpredictable behavior of this president, and if you want not only to change direction but to hold him and his administration accountable, you have to vote. >> can i ask you what you mean by accountable? i think it's quite important because many people even here i'm sure have asked you, is the president going to get impeached? if the democrats win, will they impeach him? the minority leader nancy pelosi told me that was not her goal to go for impeachment. what do you think? >> what i think is there are many ways for a congress to hold a president accountable. some of them, frankly, should have been exercised by the republican majorities in the house and the senate. the investigation into russia's interference in our election, the senate intelligence committee has tried to work in a

bipartisan way. the house intelligence committee has been turned into a circus. so a really focused, deliberative effort to not only look at what this administration has done, and that's in every area whether it's in how they're regulating or deregulating the economy or the tax cuts, the ballooning of the deficit and the debt, what they're doing to the environment, education. there is so much to be concerned about. so the first order of business for a democratic house and senate should be to get back to regular order and try to impose discipline and accountability on this administration. the question about impeachment, that will be left to others to decide. i want to stop the degrading of the rule of law, the delegitimizing of elections. one of their priorities should be let's protect our elections. let's make sure that we have electoral security. let's end the suppression of voters.

so there's a big agenda if the democrats take over. >> i want to get to rule of law given what just happened in the kavanaugh hearings and appointment but, first, i want to ask you about women, about -- you have said women's rights are human rights, and human rights are women's rights. what do you think the kavanaugh hearings, what impact will they have on the midterms? because at first the democrats were happy it might galvanize them and now the republicans are happy it will galvanize their base. what do you think is going to happen? >> i think both sides will be galvanized. it's just a question of who actually takes those feelings and shows up to vote. and it always comes down to that. we have more voters who favor democratic candidates. one of the tragedies of what's happened in our electoral system the republicans have systematically suppressed voters, probably as many, christiane, as 12 million voters

were purged in republican governments in states between 2012 and 2016. we have all kinds of questions about the security of our voting machines. so we know that democrats have to turn out in even bigger numbers in a lot of congressional districts and states to be successful because they're being pushed back by a headwind that is trying to prevent them or discourage them from voting. but if democrats, and i not only include democrats, i include republicans who are worried about the direction of this administration. independents who want to see more accountability, if they show up, we should win. >> last night president trump had a sort of ceremony for now justice kavanaugh at the white house and he apologized on behalf of the american people for the immense amount of pain and harm the judge had been put through by this system. what do you make of that, and

what message, including the president's mocking of christine blasey ford for her allegations, what message does that send to women? women went for president trump in 2016. >> white women. all women went for me. look. white women have been voting against democratic presidential candidates for decades now. the white vote has only been won twice in the last 60 years, my husband being one of the two. lyndon johnson being the other. so it's not a surprise. it's a disappointment but not a surprise. what was done last night in the white house was a political rally. it further undermined the image and integrity of the court. and that troubles me greatly. it saddens me because --

i don't know how people are going to react to it. i think given our divides it will pretty much fall predictably between those who are for and those who are against. but the president has been true to form. he has insulted, attacked, demeaned women throughout the campaign, really for many years leading up to the campaign, and he's continued to do that inside the white house. >> kellyanne conway, the presidential adviser, talked about this process and she said it looks very much like a vast left-wing conspiracy. it echoes what you said when your husband was being pursued by the investigations back in the '90s, a vast white wing conspiracy. first of all, your comment on that mirrored language and, secondly, do you see any way, even a conservative i was speaking of yesterday said the only way to repair america is try to get back to some civility

and try to make it that even if we have political disagreements we're not going to war with each other, we're not trying to destroy each other. >> well, certainly i would love to see us return to civility. listening to one another. working out our differences. that is not the republican party that exists today, and that is certainly not the administration that we have in power right now. when the republican senate denied the right of president obama to have his nominee for the supreme court, merrick garland, heard -- >> i think you even wrote they stole a justice from the democratic party. >> i think they did. to keep a supreme court seat open for a year, to deny a distinguished jurist -- they could have voted him down. they could have said, well, for ideological reasons, philosophical reasons, we're not going to vote for him but, no, they stonewalled. and that was such a breach of senate ethics and the

constitutional responsibility of the senate to advise and consent on nominations. that you cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. that's why i believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the house and/or the senate, that's when civility can start again. but until then the only thing the republicans seemed to recognize and respect is strength. and you heard how the republican members led by mitch mcconnell, the president, really demeaned the confirmation process, insulted and attacked not only dr. ford but women who were speaking out. look, i remember republican operatives shutting down the voting in florida in 2000.

i remember the swift voting of john kerry. i remember the things that even the republican party did to john mccain in 2000. i remember what they did to me for 25 years. the falsehoods, the lies which, unfortunately, people believed because the republicans put a lot of time, money and effort in promoting them. so when you're dealing with an ideological party that is driven by the lust for power that is funded by corporate interests who want a government that does its bidding, you can be civil but you can't overcome what they intend to do unless you win elections. and so the answer to everything is to get back to a balance, to get back to what is called regular order, they don't even have committee processes. the idea that they wouldn't seek and obtain all of the written record from kavanaugh, that they

would not have done a full investigation, that is not the way they treat democrats. unless we win and say to the people of our country, look, we need to protect the rule of law. we need to protect processes in place in the congress and the government to protect you, to protect what you care about. so this should go both ways and that's what i'm hoping for. >> you talked about the papers and the written rhetoric and the democrats. apparently when elena kagan was being confirmed democrats handed over all her written paper and stuff she had done for the administration and there seems to be sort of a question amongst democrats, should we fight dirty and meet them on the playing field, or should we as michelle obama said when they go low, we go high? rahm emanuel has remembered president clinton saying that,

you know, democrats since the vietnam war have been afraid of using power, reluctant to be a bit more ruthless. what is the answer especially when president trump says about al franken, who was basically pushed out by your senate because of certain allegations, that the democrats folded like a wet rag. are you the wet rag party today? >> look, i think that democrats have a real dilemma. we do believe in making government work. we're not interested in disabling it, cutting taxes so dramatically that it gives you an excuse to raid social security, medicare and medicaid. we try to have empathy for the situations people find themselves in. that's why we support universal health care, why we wouldn't deprive people with pre-existing conditions from getting access to health care, and the list goes on. so democrats come to this current political moment really

torn because, on the one hand, we don't want to model bad behavior. we don't want to act like there are no limits to what should be done in a legislative or executive branch, but on the other hand, if we don't get smarter -- and i include myself in this. i did not know the extent to which there was russian interference. i knew there had been some in my election. i didn't understand the pressures from the right wing, frankly, on jim comey that would cause him to interfere in the election to my detriment. those were things that were almost unimaginable. who in setting up a presidential campaign would say, oh, don't forget, we have to worry about the russians manipulating the outcome. we have to worry about the fbi director intervening into it. we have to worry about

wikileaks which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of russian intelligence. who would have thought that those were the challenges we faced? we do have to get tougher and smarter and stronger. not cross the line into lying. but there's enough truth and facts that should be more widely known about what these republicans stand for, whose bidding they are doing. and where trump really comes from. and at some point the accumulation of evidence about how trump and his father manipulated their business, how they, in so many ways, broke at least the spirit if not the letter of tax laws, how he did business with the mafia, how he's indebted to the russians. at some point that has to matter. but it won't matter unless democrats keep driving this message about what's really at stake with the presidency of someone who admires dictators, who clearly has authoritarian tendencies.

one of the reasons i gave the speech today about human rights, i want people not to think of it as some highfalutin diplomatic endeavor that academics study. i want people to understand human rights are really the freedom that we want to have, the decency we should treat each other with, the respect we should demand for ourselves, the opportunities we should have in democracies. and i want people to realize those are at risk right now. >> you said in your speech in the years since the end of world war ii the universal declaration of human rights, the united nations, all of this world order that the united states built and led has done so much good. there's much, much less war, there's less disease, all kind of that stuff, more literacy. but you also said that freedom seems to be on the back foot and seems to be on the wane. that's a shocking thing to hear. we're sitting in europe. you mentioned the nationalist right-wing governments of

hungary, poland, which are really assaulting the rule of law. and i'm interested how you compare that, again, with what's happening in your own country where i asked you about the left-wing conspiracy. you didn't answer it but judge kavanaugh in his opening statement the other day talked about a vast left-wing smear campaign, was very political and very partisan. so how does the u.s. rule of law in the supreme court with this now political taint to it measure up against actual assaults on independent judiciaries right here? >> i think this is one of the important questions that the press as well as political leaders and the public need to unpack and understand. why is it when the world, and particularly the west, is by any measure richer, safer, healthier, stronger, what

is giving rise to these yearnings not for greater freedom and for a democracy that really lives up to its name, where you don't try to throw voters, but you want everyone to vote. what is it that is motivating? large numbers of people to seek the kind of leadership that will limit freedom starting with the press, academia, political parties, and why is it that so many on the right in europe and in the united states look to putin, a known authoritarian? someone who has journalists and political opponents murdered with impunity. what is going on in the minds of 21st century americans and europeans that would lead them to say, you know, i just want to have security, stability, and i

think we need a strong leader. some of it is traced to discriminatory feelings, prejudice, bias that other people are getting ahead at a greater rate or somehow to their disadvantage of me, and so people look and say, well, these cultural changes, whether it's a woman's right to choose or gay marriage or whatever it might be that somehow they find threatening. and so there are cultural forces at work that are now spilling over into political allegiance that is often described as tribalism. so, yeah, i want my freedom but limit hers. take away her right to choose. oh, and, you know what, i shouldn't have to sell a cake or provide a service to a gay person because that impinges on my freedom. all of a sudden you start to see the fragmentation. i think these are really important questions. >> so what happens, though, if some of these huge cultural

issues which have the potential to rip, you know, the fabric of society apart even further, comes to the supreme court at a time like this when even other justices have been saying we used to have this kind of tacit balance. there was always one of us who potentially would vote either way. that's a sum-up of what elena kagan said at princeton. what happens now, and are you worried, do you believe, that with justice kavanaugh, who, by the way, attacked the clintons saying all of this was revenge for the clintons -- >> yes, i heard that. >> and of course he was on the ken starr commission, i believe. >> yes, he was. >> what do you think, do you have faith in rule of law in the united states supreme court going forward? >> well, i always have had even when i disagreed with decisions. i'm going to wait and see attitude. there will be some important cases before the court. i don't know what private

assurances kavanaugh may have given to certain senators to win their vote. those senators seem to have heard him say that he's going to follow precedent, that he's not going to overturn roe v. wade. i will wait and see. now the bigger question, though, is what does it mean for the rule of law if the supreme court is seen as politically partisan? that is deeply troubling because then people are going to disregard what the court says. people are going to believe that the court had an outcome that it sought to obtain. i know the right has said for many years we had activist judges that democrats appointed. i don't argue with that. but i think in many ways the activism was a reaction to

social changes, so was it activists to find there was a right to an education under brown v. board of education and to order the desegregation of schools? probably. but was it sufficiently rooted in the constitution and in the overall understanding of what the united states has held out as a promise to all of its people regardless of race? i think so. and you could go through case after case. so in some ways is the glass half empty? is the glass half full? here's what i'm hoping, christiane. i'm hoping that now that the confirmation battle has ended, kavanaugh has been confirmed and seated on the supreme court, that the awesome responsibility of that position will affect him and everybody else up there whoever they are, whoever they vote with.

because we're losing faith in all of our institutions. people have a low opinion of the congress, a low opinion of the press, a low opinion of now the church, a low opinion of nearly everything. and if we don't rebuild our institutions, we can't rebuild our checks and balances. and more than any political outcome i worry about the constitutional crisis that this will present. >> to foreign policy quickly. you mentioned in your speech and in some of your recent writings what's happening in china, africans. president trump has a good relationship with president xi. obviously the trade issue right now. there's a surveillance state with a massive internment camp you describe in uigher land and where the chinese muslims live, and putin picking up that philosophy and technology. explain that a little bit. >> i think what china is doing first with respect to the

uighers who are muslims who are chinese citizens, they are pursuing a ruthless campaign against them, setting up internment camps, for example. but it's not only about the uighers. the chinese are engaged in constructing a surveillance state that will surveil everyone. you don't have to live in western china. you can be in beijing or shanghai or any other part of china where the han chinese live, and now you are going to be subjected to facial recognition, to something they call a social credit score where you get points from your government for doing things your government approves of, and you get, apparently, demerits and maybe even punished for doing things your government doesn't approve of. now who is making those decisions? there is a very concerted effort by this current chinese government to prevent the internet from influencing

opinion inside china. now, as they develop these cools, and they're very sophisticated, they're going to sell them and it won't necessarily just be the russians who are competing to apply such tools. the iranians, the north koreans who already have a police state but can actually impose even greater control through this. other countries that are electing pop you liulist or natt leaders who are creating authoritarian regimes even if they were first elected so it's not going to only affect the chinese people. >> to that end it appears that you and your husband, president clinton, are going to go on a big city, 13 citywide speaking engagement around the united states. just been announced. what is it you plan to say? what are you going to talk about? >> well, we were asked to do this. apparently there's some appetite

for it. it's going to be both personal, which is something people are very interested in. obviously i'll talk about my grandchildren, but i think from my perspective it will be also answering questions about what's happening in our country and the world. both bill and i are deeply concerned. earlier in the interview you quoted what had rahm emanuel said about bill. bill had to be incredibly strong first to get elected, then to get re-elected, and to survive. it was not easy by any means, obviously, but he really believes that democrats have to be tougher and have to stand up to the bullying and the intimidation. so i think he'll have things to say about his own experience and how it applies here. i will certainly have a lot to say about what's going on in the world today based on not only my secretary of state years but my

travel. and my book "what happened" which came out in paperback, which has an afterward. i think a lot of people will be coming to see us, to show their support, to be part of a gathering of like-minded folks. but i do want to leave some thoughts as i tried to do in the speech today about what each of us can do. >> you say you'll talk about the difficulties your husband went through, that you went through. obviously you're going to be prepared to have questions about that moment in 1998, the impeachment, the allegations of sexual harassment against your own husband. are you prepared to answer those questions? is he prepared to answer them? and how do you see that similar or different from what president trump is being accused of and kavanaugh and others today? >> well, there's a very significant difference. and that is the intense, long lasting partisan investigation

that was conducted in the '90s. if the republicans, starting with president trump on down, want a comparison, they should welcome such an investigation themselves. >> hillary clinton, thank you very much indeed for joining me. >> good to talk to you. >> and just a note, president trump reacted to the views on the kavanaugh controversy when he was asked during that oval office session with nikki haley. >> what's your response to hillary clinton saying last night's swearing in of judge kavanaugh was more political event than a national event? >> i guess that's why she lost. she doesn't get it. she never did. i knew that a long time ago. >> well, hillary clinton is among many who have raised eyebrows and questions over trump's penchant for playing hardball with allies but not so much with strong man adversaries. he talks about liking kim

jong-un, respecting vladimir putin, embracing the saudi crown prince and the turkish president to name just a few. so who is going to hold them all accountable when necessary? like kim jong-un's nerve agent attack on his half-brother in malaysia. or the suspected saudi involvement in the disappearance of the journalist jamal khashoggi in turkey. and the russian novichok attack on a former spy living here in the u.k. today there's been another possible breakthrough in that skripal case. the british journalist mark urban has interviewed skripal. for his book. it happened over many times last year. now as a diplomatic editor for the bbc, urban is closely monitoring the case and, indeed, all the other developing diplomatic news. mark urban, welcome to our program. so diplomatic editor, you know what the foreign policy establishment is saying.

what do you think will be the reaction to the resignation of nikki haley? >> if you look across europe, she did have a reputation as a straight shooter, a groanup. her line on iran and the nuclear deal and staunch support of israel were not always appreciated in the ideological sense but they knew she was a sensible person, with whom you could have a dialogue. compared to some of the other figures in the trump administration, she had been there for quite a while. i think they'll be regretting the loss. >> quite a while it means not even two years yet, but i take your point. i did say who is going to hold these malfeasance accountable. nikki haley was very strong against the russians and very strong about sanctions. if she's gone, what do you think will happen in terms of holding these people as i listed accountable when necessary?

>> your point is well made. she was a representative of the stable state, let's call it that, very much in favor of holding the russians to account. it will be fascinating to see next month because the state department comes at quite a moment on possible sanctions over the salisbury nerve agent attack as to whether to impose further sanctions on russia. it's an open question. we'll see. we'll see how tough the u.s. wants to go on the issue. clearly there's a question mark over the willingness of countries to endanger key relationships in pursuit of a particular point. and i think the common theme across the issues you've raised in this segment is, you know, with a good or important relationship, saudi arabia, russia, turkey, how far do people want to endanger the wider relationship in pursuit of justice and accountability when there's some flagrant rule breaking? >> i'm just staggered actually. i couldn't believe it when i read all those things out. that's just a few of some of the things that happened by a government on another government's sovereign territory.

why do you think this is happening at this point now? >> with any of these things you have to ask what's the or else? if, for example, the uk were to ask for those two russian suspects now believed officers who are said to have gone to salisbury to do this poisoning to be extradited and russia refused as it did in 2006, what is the uk's position at that point? is it going to try to threaten further sanctions? what other action can they take? it's quite limited. and that presumably was one of the factors playing in the mind of those who okayed the operation. ultimately you have to be willing to go really hard on this. and most countries are not prepared literally to risk war and peace over this type of incident. >> so many have put sanctions on but i do take your point that these are to be evaluated. every so often. regarding the case of jamal khashoggi who's a colleague, a

journalist who used to be very close to the saudi royal family, worked for the government and embassies around the world as well as being a journalist but recently has been a critic of what he considered heavy-handed tactics and the crackdowns under the new crown prince. obviously saudi arabia denies any involvement in his disappearance. what do you think -- i mean, the united states is very close to the saudi regime right now. do they fear being held to account? how do you analyze that? >> well, i mean, if you look at the recent row with canada over the criticism of the saudi human rights record they don't appear to be. they appear to be ready to take quite tough and uncompromising positions. although of course on this one they are denying that they disappeared mr. khashoggi. listen, there are different ways of holding people to account. in this case, president erdogan of turkey is really putting the pressure on the saudis. as it happened on his territory

albeit in a consulate, he's in a position, i think, to put pressure on. >> and it's really unclear what has happened because the clear factor is that he went in and his fiancee has not seen him come out. she actually has spoken to "the washington post." she said i hope we will soon learn what happened to him. i still have hope that he is alive, but i need to know where is jamal. i have to know what has happened to him. after all sorts of leaks and allegations that he may have been murdered inside, even dismembered, people close to him are now thinking perhaps he was maybe sedated and taken back to saudi arabia, something other than his death may have happened. we still wait to see and, of course, as i say, the saudis still deny it. let's just get back to your investigations and the investigation into the skripal case. you, as context for this, jamal said he was worried. he was worried because he was an outspoken critic. he was worried what might happen

to him. you talked to sergei skripal who was poisoned. what was his concern? he was living here in the uk? >> absolutely. i spoke to him in his home in salisbury last summer. i haven't spoken to him since the attack. sergei skripal did express concerns. he put it largely in terms of his son who, sadly, has since died and his daughter who were traveling back and forth to russia quite frequently. and he said to me, look, i don't want to be a big public figure in all of this. we are afraid of putin. so he did express concerns particularly about becoming a public quoted figure. >> so you've heard what the investigative website has said that it believes the second suspect in the novichok case is actually a doctor recruited by the giu to carry out this attack along with the other person who was identified a few weeks ago. where do you come down on this? what do you think about identifying these two? how significant is this potential new lead?

>> i think it's very significant. we've had a whole train of events since the 5th of september where the metropolitan police issued those cctv images and put the names out there, the fake names, and an amazing amount has happened since then. i thought, really, is someone really going to come forward and name these people? and lo and behold today we have someone -- we have reporters going up near the arctic circle arc angel district of russia, interviewing villagers who knew him, talking about what he did when he was a kid, how he joined the military, even alleging that putin personally presented him with the hero of the russian federation medal. now think about that. back a few weeks ago president putin was saying these people are civilians. so that's extraordinary the way this whole naming of these people has just gained its own momentum as a story. remember, an awful lot of this spade work being done is being done by independent russian journalists. >> and president putin has

called sergei skripal scum. he said he believes this will all blow over soon and it's only the media that is fanning the flames on this, that it's nothing, that he had nothing to do with it. but nonetheless he's scum. so you have been, you know, obviously digging into this. what is the mind-set? what do you think was putin's beef with the skripals? >> well, when i was writing my book, obviously one of the key things that came back again and again is a question that talked to people who had been dealing with all the aspects of the incidents since it what happened was why. and a lot of people struggle with this question. so you have to look at it in the context of a long-term campaign against traitors. but actually the people spied for the major western agencies, cia, mi-6, there aren't that many of them. there aren't that many people to be made examples of. when you then try to deal with the practical problems how we're going to reach out and take someone like that or take away their life, the ones in the u.s. in particular are pretty well protected.

sergei skripal because he had been in jail for a while and had a presidential pardon, he didn't consider himself under high threat. he was living under his own name in salisbury, and that just made him mo approachable. if you like, it was a compromise between the aspiration in terms of hitting back at great traitors and the availability. who was actually available to be made an example of? >> and skripal did give information to the british intelligence agency. he doesn't call himself -- he still calls himself a nationalist and a patriot. jamal khashoggi calls himself a patriot. he never called himself a dissident. he just felt he was doing his patriotic duty and raising warning signals. what do you think given the publicity around this now that's going on inside the kremlin in putin's mind? must he be thinking this is all sort of crumbling around him, or do you think he's still sort of, you know, feeling the long arm of his, whatever -- i don't want to say revenge or anything like that but the long arm of his

reach is still very potent. >> well, that's an interesting one because, you know, if he or whoever did this, planned this, the senior ranks of the giu were trying to send a message, you could argue it's still being sent, that if you think can you spy for western agency and go and make a new life in the west, we can find you and we can make you pay. and that remains the fact. sergei skripal and his daughter might have survived but they've been through a terrible time. on the other hand i think, look, if that's the aim of it, what you don't want to do is turn the gru as one of your central intelligence and covert action agencies into an international laughing stock. and with the appearance of the two men on rt, that's what's happened. >> really fascinating. mark urban, thank you for joining us. so as politics in the united states continues to fuel increasingly tribal and divisive, many are turning to the past to look for answers. in her new book "these truths: a

history of the united states" author jill lepore explores how the most polarizing issues such as race, women's rights and hyper partisanship. our walter isaacson sits down to see what it would take to rescue a democracy in distress. welcome to the show, jill. >> thanks so much for having me. >> and on the bestseller list with a sprawling, wonderful narrative history of the united states. >> who knew? >> and your theme is in your title. one of the greatest sentences ever written. what are these truths? >> well, these truths and the declaration of independence that are self-evident, political equality, popular sovereignty, and natural rights. and this is a nation founded on an idea, those particular three ideas. and unlike other countries founded on a common ancestry or

common heritage or a chain of leaders, this is a nation that is founded on those ideas and so the way the book works is to try to figure out where did those ideas come from? they have a particular history. and then to ask whether the course of american history since the founding has belied them. >> the idea of equality, of course, is written by the people who write both the declaration and the constitution, but as you point out in your book if it's madison you also do billy, his slave. george washington you do henry. you weave the slaves in with the people writing the constitution and declaration. why did you do that, and what does that help teach us? >> one of the things i want to call the reader's attention to is the asymmetry of the historical record. we know so much about madison, he's endlessly fascinating. we know a lot less about the people that he owned as property. and yet we are descended from both of those people, from all of those people.

and to struggle for racial equality and political equality in our day means having a richer history and a fuller history and a more integrated history. so people would study presidential history, the history of slavery, emancipation and jim crowe and the civil rights as if they are separate tales. you could tell them in separate books. we know in our own day, black lives matter and obama's presidency and trump's presidency are part of the same world. so how to restore that sense of the interconnectedness and the causal relationships between the two things was a big commitment that i made and, again, giving it a shot, trying to lay out a story that holds together. >> you also weave in women that way. we share a common interest in benjamin franklin and a wonderful book you did on his sister jane, right? tell me how that story wove in and you brought women into the narrative. >> with the history of race,

there's this sort of segregated history in our textbooks. with women they really remain protesting the beauty pageant in 1968. and that's kind of it and it doesn't make sense. it doesn't explain the world we live in now where partisanship and struggles for women's equality before the law are just explosively in confrontation with one another in our contemporary world. i started out wanting to write women's history and wound up writing political history. but trying to write political history that took women seriously as political actors. one way i tried to do that is both with individual characters. we might want to know more about jane franklin, just a compelling person. also all the decades women didn't have the right to vote and yet influenced american politics outside of electoral

politics through the work of moral crusade which becomes just a key feature of the american political style, the moral crusade brought into politics by women as abolitionists, fueled by the second great awakening of evangelical christianity in the 1820s and '30s, working for women's rights, for temperance, later for prohibition. in the 20th century women's moral crusades have generally moved to the right. mccarthyism can really be understood as a moral crusade really run by women. the pro-life movement is a moral crusade. you could think of the me too movement as a moral crusade. women have consequently been denied political power and the way women have tended to try to influence politics has taken other forms that have big consequences for how our republic works. >> you talk about how the women involvement in politics has

often been a very conservative thing. in fact, you highlight phyllis schlafly, the new right movement against abortion and other things. do you feel that in some ways women's involvement, as you said, is a conservative force as well as liberal? >> it absolutely is both. the women were really involved in the populous movement that is a left movement but also a nativist movement. has both liberal and conservative dimensions. those labels wouldn't have applied at the time. prohibition is essentially a conservative movement. schlafly is a good stand-in for how conservative women have aligned over the course of the 20th century. she enters politics as a mccarthy supporter. she's a huge and really influential supporter of barry

goldwater in 1964 and even before, and then she turns her attention to stopping the e.r.a. after it passes congress and goes to ratification in 1972 in part by conflating equal rights with abortion. and she's just the last dying act to endorse donald trump in 2016. she went to the republican nominating convention in cleveland. she endorsed him before he spoke at her funeral just before the election. there's a really interesting trajectory there about women and conservatism that i think we've kind of lost sight of and i wouldn't say that it explains everything in the world but is an important piece of an explanation of the second half of the 20th century. >> it's interesting you say liberals have left out some of the conservative strand in women's politics. is your book, do you consider it ideological at all in your approach to american history, meaning coming from a liberal side or coming from a conservative side? >> so i was actually trying to

reject the highly ideological interpretations of american history that we have been kind of stuck with. on the one hand, we have a sort of polarized past. people line up there. scholars don't do this, politicians do this. there's a conservative version of american history and then there's a liberal version of american history and with this book, i would like to elicit a conversation about whether we can have a shared past because i don't know how these partisan divisions that make it impossible for us, you know, to formulate a budget, to complete a full supreme court, to pass pretty much any legislation. and i think most importantly to think deeply about the need for political reform. we have a lot of conversation in our country about resistance and revolution, and i think there's so much wrong structurally that we really ought to be having reform conversations as well. and that's the spirit in which i tried to offer this account, not to dilute something or be

wishy-washy about things but to take seriously this is a set of things that did happen and here is my interpretation of them. >> now all of this seems to culminate both the strands of women rights both on the liberal and progressive side and as you point out so well in the book on the conservative side in the kavanaugh hearings and the me too moment that we're going through. how do you react to that? how do you see the history leading us to that and where will it go? >> i think that's the intersection of two different developments. one is the changing relationship between the public and the supreme court, but the other is women struggle to gain equal protection of the law. and i think we think about that more squarely when we look at those confrontations. we're thinking about, well, wow, if all the violence against women and sexual harassment laws and sexual assault laws had been passed in the 1970s had been enforced, we wouldn't be here now. we're here because that didn't

succeed and women don't have equal rights and they don't have equal protection. i think that's the visible piece of what's going on now. separate from the partisan piece of it. but the supreme court public opinion is a thing that actually kind of distracts me and captures my attention here because throughout the 19th century generally when a president named a new justice, the decision just went to the whole of the senate which voted up or down and almost always voted up. it didn't go to committee. when it started going to committee, the committee had a few deliberations and sent it to the senate. the first justice nominee to appear before the senate was in 1925. the idea that people were supposed to go and be intergated by the senate judiciary committee, that's a very recent development in our history and was a period kind of one-off until 1939 when the

felix frankfurter was charged that he was a communist and he agreed to go. the only reason he was asked is hugo black in 1939 had been nominated by fdr after he got through the senate. it was revealed he had been in the kkk and the senate thought, whoa, we should have brought him before the committee and asked him about that. it's not until 1955 that it's regular in a nominees appear. since 1987 that is a television spectacle. which was really the last spectacle of the watergate hearings. but now we have this notion ever since the merrick garland situation when mitch mcconnell said the american people will decide our next justice, that's not how it's set up. it's not an elected position. it's an appointment for life that's meant to be insulated from public opinion. i think it's quite troubling to imagine that twitter is decide who go will hold the next seat on the supreme court. >> one of the themes in your work, and einstein once said it, is that in american democracy there seems to be a gyroscope

just when it's tipping one way it knows how to right itself. do you think we have in our history, in our dna in going forward the mechanisms to right ourselves when we seem to become so divided? >> i do. i do. whether that will happen, i don't know. and i work pretty hard to hold on to that hope. i think a lot about the speech that frederick douglass gave in 1894 shortly before his death to an audience of schoolchildren in manassas, virginia, black school children. think about everything that he had achieved that had been undone. he fought for emancipation, for abolition, emancipation and equal rights. and by 1894, the civil war has been won, emancipation happened. but jim crowe has taken over. the south wins the peace. there's violent segregation and an epidemic of lynching. and he tells these

schoolchildren to hope, that what is necessary in challenging times and the more challenging the times are is to do the hard work of figuring out where hope lies. >> jill lepore, thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you for having me, walter. and in these bitter times, it is always instructive to know how americans were able to overcome historic divisions and in the aftermath of today's resignation by ambassador nikki haley join me tomorrow for my exclusive interview with james melville, the respected u.s. ambassador to estonia who has resigned his post because he feels he can no longer defend america's foreign policy. but for now that is it for our program. thanks for watching "amanpour & co." on pbs and joining us again tomorrow night. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bea tollman founded a

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♪ - this week, we travel to paris to make three desserts you may not have heard of. the first is very simple. it's a rustic apple cake-- sliced apples in a cake batter in a springform pan. then blogger david lebovitz shows up at milk street to make a salted butter caramel mousse that's absolutely incredible. and finally, inspired by the rose bakery in paris, we do a chocolate orange tart with a pat-in-the-pan crust.