good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. another dramatic week in washington. president trump promised his healthcare would be beautiful and ter riff stick and gave tax break force the rich and now that it has failed, will opposition to trump be embold emboldened? will democrats now try to block the gorsuch nomination the supreme court. unpacking so much around the country to restrict further v e voting rights. glad you joined us, a conversation with berman coming up right now.

♪ ♪ ♪ and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. please welcome mr. berman back to this program a senior contributing writer for the nation focusing on politics and voting rights. his latest text out in paperback, ari, good to have you back even though i have no idea

tonight where to start. >> good to see you. a lot going on in the world. >> so much going on. i suspect i should start with the defeat mr. trump and mr. ryan suffered last week. without commenting on it, what do you think happened? >> i think it's amazing for seven years they ran on the principle of repealing and replacing obamacare. they didn't even have a vote. amazing this was their biggest priority and couldn't come close to getting it done. >> what do you think this means for the president? did he learn a lesson or goes to put in his heels or learn a lesson? what will he ultimately respond to it? >> do you think the president learns lessons? i think he's a pretty fully f m formed human at this point and

assume the way he acts is the way he acts. he should have learned a lesson and it is don't do unpopular stuff. he wasn't elected to repeal obamacare. who knows exactly why he was elected. one of the things obamacare did, people are unhappy with it. it enshrined healthcare anz idea of a basic right, you have a basic right to be covered if you have a pre-existing condition, you have a right to stay on your parents' plan until you're 26, a right to some basic coverage. just getting rid of that all together was jarring for people. jump, i think, was caught in two pla places. he was caught with the right flank wanting all of it gone and the moderate flank saying, actually, we like a lot of stuff in obamacare. that's what they didn't realize, yeah, maybe we will lose a few people. this bill they ended up unve unveiling really wasn't a trump bill, a paul ryan bill the worst

of both worlds it made people who liked obamacare unhappy as well. >> when you give the opportunity to credit size the freedom caucus, i haven't reviewed his tweets today, when given the chance to criticize the freedom caucus that made it implode he didn't take the bait, those are my friends, i won't speak ill of them. what do you think he really thinks about that crew and will he make peace with them? >> he tweeted about them yesterday. he said, i want to thank the house freedom caucus, club for growth and heritage foundation for saving obamacare and planned parenthood. >> there you have it. there wasn't too much said about that and he also told people to watch a show on fox news. >> that, i saw. >> where the host called for paul ryan to step down in the first 10 minutes of the broadcast. trump was going lash out at someone. at first lash out at democrats, because they could have all

voted against the bill and it still would have gone through. it was a republican failure. i think he will keep trying to work with them on other issues. it's risky. yeah. we can always count on republicans to cut taxes for the rich. that's been a central organizing principle of the party for deca decades. beyond that there's a lot of stuff he wants to do fairly contentious. stuff on immigration contentious and a lot of his other priorities are contentious issues. i'm not sure he can count on republicans going along with all of it. >> i will get back to those contentious issues in just a second. since you raised it, we have not spent any time on this program covering what he says or does everyday on this program because you can't keep up with it. i don't think that's how you cover a president when it comes to accountability. no different to me in my profession covering campaigns in the wrong way. i've gotten so tired of my own profession covering these races for the white house as if

they're a horse race. we cover the horse race and not the issues. i didn't do that during the campaign and not going to do it now based on his tweets, et cetera. since you said that it is fascinating to me, another example of the absurd, what did you make of this tweet they tried to suggest there was no coordination of it, knew nothing of it and he tweets you should watch judge janine piero 9:00 p.m. saturday night, make sure you watch her show. in the first 10 minutes of the show she does a scathing editorial against paul ryan, calls for him to resign a day or so after trump said, i love the guy, i respect the guy, he did everything he could but telling you to watch a show where the host of the show on fox news is demanding the speaker resign and on his sunday morning talk shows the staff at the white house said there was no conversation an he knew nothing of the fact she was going to say this. what did you think of this sk

scenario. >> they said, well, a white house advisor was on the show, a white house advisor was on every show. hard to believe there's no coordination. we know fox news has been a mouthpiece for the republican party for a long time. now, it's a two-way loop. trump seems to be getting a lot of news from fox news. the idea he was wiretapped seems to come in part from fox news. from very very fringe figures. not like he's getting it from shep or bret baier, guys like napolitano, very fringe figure, it's disturbing where he is getting his information from, the role fox news is playing in his administration. it was fascinating to watch ted koppel tell sean hannity, he was bad for america and he said, you think i'm bad for america? yeah. a lot of us feel that way but

nice for ted koppel to say it. >> back to these contentious issues, talk about jumping out of the pan into the fire. tax reform is not easy to do. there's a reason it hasn't been done in a long time because it's very difficult to do. what do you make of them sugg t suggesting the next big thing is going to be -- you lose on healthcare, go to tax reform. >> if they want to cut taxes for the rich, it's simple. if they want to reform it, that's another thing. for another thing it was the most difficult thing you could do and drew in the most lobby t lobbyists is tack reform. it won't -- tax reform,les it-- unless it's cut taxes for people like trump. it won't be very popular and put us into more debt and trump and the republicans talk about all the debt run up with president obama and now he wants to spend

billions of dollars on infrastructure and cut taxes on the rich and not clear how the math adds up on that either. >> what is your sense on this, not quite there, what is your sense what he has or hasn't accomplished in the fist 100 days? >> he's done almost nothing. for all the talk, what has he done? the biggest thing was the muslim ban struck down by democratic and republican judges across the board. a lot of talk about doing in this, lot of executive orders and talk about how much they will do. you look at the majorities he's had not a lot has happened. in stark contrast to how republicans wielded power in states like wisconsin when they've taken over state government, been very efficient doing all these things off the board. president trump hasn't done that. from a progressive point of view, i'm glad that's happened. if he's doing lots of stuff it's probably not stuff i or you will

agree with. for all the talk about the first 100 days the record is rema remarkably thin. >> to your point of a progressive point of view on that and a few other issues, let me detour for a quick second, i've been dying to ask you this. do you think barack obama looks at donald trump and says at any point in time to yourself, i wish i had been a little more gangster and push ad little harder on this? it can be anything. his approach was so uniquely than trump and nobody is asking him to be bth. do you think he ever thinks i should have been and could have been a little more gangster in the white house? >> i'm thinking president obama is thinking quite the opposite, thank goodness i wasn't donald trump. even if you compare to what president obama did in his first 100 days in office, president obama got so much more. >> no comparison. >> no comparison. and had similar majorities.

it's fairly comparable. no, i don't think so. it's hard to find two guys any more different than these two. interesting. i have to think about it a little more, i can't imagine president obama thinking he can learn much from trump these days. >> guess the contrast i'm drawing, i am grateful president obama wasn't donald trump and didn't have the approach donald trump has. i keep hearing conversations in barber shops and people stop me in hotels and moving around, this attitude he has comes in with a particular agenda and he is pressing that agenda from day one whereas obama tried to be a consensus building and did get some things done and this notion of a consensus builder and this is what i believe and what i will press. >> president obama should have realized he had the majorities and mandate. he didn't need republican votes

to advance his agenda. there was no reason on the stimulus and healthcare and other issues to spend all this time reaching out to republicans that were never going to support him. i think you're absolutely right. the problem is trump has taken it to an extreme degree. the muslim ban was done in such a sloppy way, if he had taken a pretty radical idea and been a little bit more careful about it, that policy might have been held constitutional. he said over and over, it's a muslim ban and then he did it, it's not a muslim ban and judges are smart enough to understand what's going on here. i think trump has been so self-assu self-assured, so swaggering, so cocky, he thinks everything will go on his terms and it hasn't worked out that way. >> in retrospect why do you think they were so hell bent pushing this healthcare thing so early in the process? >> because they talked about it so much. they made opposition to obamacare such a big issue. they voted more than 40 times to

repeal it. they couldn't turn around and say we're not going to do it. i don't know why trump delegated the whole process to the house. >> i think i get that. i think i get that. my sense is because he doesn't know what he's doing. >> of course he doesn't know what he's doing. >> he doesn't know how the legislative process works and let them run it because he didn't know how to push it through. >> he's not an effective horse trader because of that. whatever you make of that photo of the freedom caucus of the white house just a bunch of white men, like a scene out of 1920, they had specific concerns they wanted to address and had policy concerns with the bill. trump can't talk about that. back in the day you had someone like lbj, the reason he was such an effective horse trader because he understood the intricacies of legislation, i'll take a little bit of this and that and the bill will work. trump can't do that because he

doesn't understand that. >> he wrote the book "the art of the deal." >> if you read the news accounts of these meetings all he's talking about is winning. so if you're not on board with the policy of winning he doesn't have anything to offer you. >> oo we could talked a nauseum what this says about paul ryan as a speaker of the house. what does it say about the people around mr. trump? at the end of the day, if this guy is only talking about winning, if he doesn't get it, all those things considered, you still have people around you to help usher this thing through. what does it say about the people around the president? >> look who's around the president. steve bannon, kellyanne conway. these are not people that are going to temper the president's worst impulses. these are either enablers or people with such radical crazy ideas they will send the ship si sinking. when steve bannon says he wants to get rid of the administrative

state, you can't run a government, what is the government if not an administrative state. they're just killing the government by attrition here, the fact there's nobody at the state department, the fact there's nobody at the justice department except at the highest level, the whole government remains unfilled. on the one hand you could say it's incompetence, on the other hand, this is steve bannon's vision. remember grover norquist said he wanted to make government so small you could drown it in a bathtub. this government has disappeared. there's no government to drown in the bathtub because nothing is filled in the first place. it's very worrisome that there are so few people who can relate to trump. you have priebus chief of staff but doesn't have the power to stand up to the president. >> the president had a meeting with the freedom caucus before the vote and said you have no choice but to vote for this.

i can see a bunch of white men offended by this one white guy telling them you have no choice but to vote for this and there was rebelling at the notion you would tell us we have no choice to tell us we have no choice but to vote for it and that's not how you get it pads. -- passed. they're in safe districts where obamacare is unpopular and they want to repeal the whole bill. they're not suffering backlash. the moderates who will vote against it they're in real trouble. they were going to cast a vote that would potentially imperil them. one part of the conversation lost was not just republican infig infighting, democrats got a spine and defended it like never before. all across the country calls were coming in. members of congress tweeting i have gotten 15,000 calls in favor of obamacare or opposition to the ahca and i have none in

support of this legislation. i have 10, 20, 100 compared to 15,000 against it. that sent a very strong signal. that didn't sway the freedom caucus but for the moderates on the fence, that had a galvani galvanizing effect. >> and you i have been progressives a long time and have seen examples democrats can mess up a good thing. everything can be in alignment and they can still mess it up. how can they mess it up or o overplay their hand? how do they move forward after this non-vote last week. >> they have to be realistic. republicans have big majorities and a lot of bad stuff will get passed. this was an extreme bill on a contentious issue. other stuff will happen. healthcare will be weakened in other ways and the trump administration is in charge of a lot of things and can kill this

bill through negligence. i don't think it means the resistance has won, there's value in resistance, don't overthink it. sometimes you have to say no and draw a line in the sand and this is an example of that. a lot of talk in trump's presidency, can we work with him? can we make deals and pick and choose. they're realizing if his whole agenda is this extreme -- >> the flip side of that is these stories you keep reading whether or not the white house trump administration recognizes to get some stuff done it might be wise of them to cross the aisle and do some deals with democrats. >> maybe on a few issues, maybe infrastructure, maybe on jobs, maybe on trade, but most of trump's agenda is going to be a non-starter on foreign policy, immigration, taxes, you won't see very many democrats go along with it. >> today, democrats in the

senate were able to push back this new gorsuch vote another week, a procedural move that happened before. what's your sense what ultima ultimately happens if and when many of us believe he is in fact confirmed. >> this is a tremendously important fight. i don't think you should lose sight how important this is. merrick gar haland should have n sitting on the supreme court by now and the obstruction became normalized during the 321 days merrick garland sat and waited for a hearing and didn't get one. the fact democrats even showed up to neil gorsuch's hearing meant they were showing him more respect than republicans showed merrick garland. there was a really extraordinary pieces by jeff flake who said we treated both of president obama's nominee's fairly, meaning there was faisst nominee

who never got a hearing. -- was a first nominee that never got a hearing. democrats have no choice but to try to block neil gorsuch. based on the way things are going you have to assume he's going through but not without a fight. >> i understand the principle an don't disagree with it but on the principle he is the best they will get. this guy could have been someone else and based on the fact this is the best person you will get and seeing this is the first bite of the apple and will probably get more, how nuclear do you think they want to go? >> i think he is very smooth and poli polished. >> you don't think trump could have nominated somebody more conservative? >> i think is conservative and doesn't seem like it, a brilliant pick. this is one thing in my opinion the trump administration did well was pick neil gorsuch,

because they outsourced it to the heritage foundation who cares about judges and very good doing this in a 40 to 50 year period. the point, he seems very reasonable, straight out of central casting, made a lot of lame jokes before the senate, very personable guy. you look at his whole background he's extremely conservative. he did a lot of what john roberts said, i'm just going to be an umpire and call balls and strikes. when roberts got on the court he gutted the voting rights act and signed onto the unregulated corporate money, so many radical opinions one after another. i think gorsuch will be that way, too, seem like a guy very reasonable but carry out a far extreme right agenda. could it have been worse? absolutely but i don't think we will be a moderate centrist on the court. >> give us the battle for the

modern voting rights in america. you started dune this path. let me push you further down the road. where are we in the fight to save or put another way, to restore that part of the voting rights act that has now been t gutted? >> in 2013 the supreme court ruled those states with the longest history no longer had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. that meant 14 states had new voting restrictions in effect for the first time in 2016. we just got out of the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the voting rights act. i thought this was a huge story. many people in the media missed it. there were 26 debates during the primary and general election without a single question of the gutting of the voting rights acts. these had a big impact requiring strict forms of id, closing down early polling places, disenfranchising ex felons and kept tens of thousands of people from the polls in places like

wisconsin and north carolina and didn't get much attention. now, we're going forward and the problem looks like it will get worse. donald trump saying 3-5 million people are voting illegally, isn't just a lie but lays the groundwork for more voter suppression. you have him saying he will have a presidential committee to study this and probably come out with bad recommendations on the subject matter. already this year there have been 68 bills introduce in 27 states to make it harder to vote. a lot of people are missing the story but both on the national level and state level voter suppression efforts are only getting worse. >> what do we do to push back against that? >> very important to talk about the vote as a right, not privilege. too many people have died for voting rights for it to go backwards and easy to push policies to make it's easier for penal to vote. instead of these laws we coiled be doing things like -- we could be doing things like universal

legislation done in oregon and california. there is legislation in congress to restore the voting rights act. this is a great opportunity to say to republicans, if you're really serious about standing up to donald trump and fighting for human rights and fighting for basic equality, this would be a very good example sponsoring legislation to restore the vo voting rights act to show which side you're on. >> why would they do that? >> they won't do that. that's the problem. it's a hard situation when republicans control the congress and presidency and most of the states in the country. we need to make it a bigger issue. the fact there were 26 debates and not a single question about the gutting of the voting rights act, a lot of people didn't know this was going on. this needs to be a front burner issue, not just a side issue, can't think of the right to vote

is an a fringe issue. the democracy. >> any way you slice it it comes down to the vote. your book in paper book, a fine writer for the nation magazine and i'm always honored to have his intight on this program. thank you, ari. >> thank you. >> thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. for more information on today's show visit taff vick smiley on pbs. tavis smiley.

a. good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. we're just a week away from the start of may know league baseball. for the first time in 108 years, the cubs are the defending world series champions. their fairytale victory forced bob newhart to change his act. the world's second most famous cubs fan was still delighted they made history. we'll talk about the famous season. newhart was just released on dvd. we're glad you joined us for bob newhart. coming up right now.