good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. a little over three months into the trump presidency, and the administration is confronting two major world crises -- the civil war in syria and north korea's growing nuclear weapons program, but what are president trump's foreign policy plans, and what about issues here at home like jobs and health care? tonight, a conversation with two-time pulitzer prize-winner, journalist and author nicholas kristof of "the new york times." we're glad you've joined us. that conversation starting right now. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ last week, president trump showed the world he was not afraid to use military force when he launched a missile strike in syria and dropped the mother of all bombs in afghanistan, but now all eyes are on north korea's nuclear missile program and rising tensions with the u.s. so, with mr. trump's foreign policy plans still largely unknown and a confluence of domestic and world crises at his feet what next?

pleased to welcome nicholas kristof from "the new york times" back on this program. good to see you, nick. >> good to see you. >> welcome back to the program, in seattle, for a change. >> glad to have you back on the coast. >> the west coast. before we jump into these crises, i was on the plane back from the coast to see you today, and i was reading your brilliant conversation with president carter yesterday. and the title was, "am i a christian?" a question that you posed to president carter. >> right. >> i love the questions that you ask him. i love even more -- >> some pretty tough questions, actually. >> some pretty good questions. and i love the answers president carter gave. i'm curious what response you got from the column yesterday, because i was in a number of conversations on the way home yesterday. >> i think there was an out pouring of warmth towards president carter, and it followed a previous kind of similar conversation which i had asked tim keller, who is a very prominent evangelical thinker, and i had asked similar questions and he had given a

much kind of a tougher, hardline approach. and he basically said, no, you're not a christian if you don't believe in miracles. and jimmy carter took a very different approach, much less willing to judge and much, kind of much more inclusive approach. so, i think the reaction depended a lot on one's theology. >> sure, sure, sure. >> but there's just so much respect for jimmy carter. and i mean, at least i think that we in the media truly wronged him when he was president. >> yeah. i asked him on this proposal -- by the way, if you didn't see his piece yesterday on easter sunday in "the new york times," google the piece "am i a christian, kristof talks to president carter." i think you'll be impressed with the questions and the responses from president carter. i was moved a moment ago, so check it out if you haven't seen it. i asked jimmy carter, in this very chair one time as a guest on this program, whether or not he thought, as some do, that he was the best ex-president that

we ever had. he's my friend. he took some exception to the question but gave me an honest answer. he said tavis, maybe i am the best ex-president, but i also think i did a decent job as president. in retrospect, why do you think we wronged jimmy carter? and i ask in part because of the one thing he mentioned that night in terms of what he had done that he thought was pretty great was he did not get us engaged in wars around the world, did not fire a single bullet during his time as presidency. why do you think we were so tough on carter? >> i think there was a bit of snobbishness by the media and the establishment. here's a peanut farmer from georgia showing up. so, i think part of it was just that kind of snobbishness. i also think that in the media, we have a weakness for narratives and that once the narrative was started that he was kind of a weakling, that then we in the media looked for bits of evidence to support that. and i don't know -- do you remember the famous rabbit episode? >> of course, absolutely,

absolutely. >> that was s&r worth. you know, he's in a pond, then word spreads that a rabbit tries to jump in his boat, and all of a sudden, we're reporting that a rabbit has attacked him. and he very unfairly became something of a joke when, in fact, looking back, he was really the first president to raise human rights internationally in a big way and in a lasting way. he solved the panama canal problem, which would have haunted the united states for decades to come. and you know, in other hands, we might have ended up in a war with iran. you know, the economy was bad for reasons that didn't have anything to do with him but with the rise in oil prices, and i think we were profoundly unfair to him. >> yeah. so, to my question to him, how good an ex-president has he been? >> oh, he is the best. >> yeah. >> yeah. i mean, he is the best.

diseases like river blindness are about as awful a disease as you can get. it's a parasite that gnaws away at the optic nerve. and because of jimmy carter, more than almost anybody else, it's not eradicated, but it is on its way out. and there have been vast parts of west africa, for example, that people can now farm again that nobody ever could before because they didn't dare to live in these places because everybody went blind by middle age. i mean, he's -- his work on international peace and disease -- because of him, we're about to eradicate a disease called guinea worm, which is one of the more painful, humiliating diseases globally. and it's because of his incredible work that it is -- you know, this may be the last year in human history that guinea worm has bothered people. >> so, let me pivot then from jimmy carter to donald trump. as i said a moment ago, one of the things that carter is most

proud of, president carter, is that he did not fire a single bullet while he was president for four years, which stands in great contrast to mr. trump, who, you know, who theoretically could drop three bombs in a matter of weeks on three different countries. what do you make of what he has done as juxtaposed against the promises that he made on the campaign trail? how do you read this military exploration that he has gone on? >> well, i think that he actually was right to have military strikes on syria after the use of chemical weapons there. i think that one of the important taboos to uphold -- it's lasted 100 years, more or less -- has been the one against the use of chemical weapons. and i think that he, indeed, probably made president assad a little less likely to use chemical weapons. but having said that, i do worry that the lesson that president trump will learn is that if he wants to raise his poll numbers,

firing a few miss yeiles will d it. and while i think it made sense in that context of syria using chemical weapons, i don't think that it would make sense in attacking the port of hadeda in yemen, which is i think something the administration is thinking about, and would make less sense in the case of north korea. if i think of things that could go wrong in the next four years, north korea, a preemptive attack on north korea is just about at the top of the list. >> why so? >> north korea is the problem from hell. it really does present us with a serious challenge, and the path we're on is not sustainable, because they are developing both increasing number of nuclear warheads and missiles that would give them the ability to deliver them to the continental u.s. so, the present path is not sustainable, and so that creates a temptation to turn to a military response.

and the theory amongst some people in washington is that if we were to attack a missile launch, for example, or a nuclear test site and warn north korea that, if you respond, that's the end of your regime, that they would accept that. maybe they would, but the risk is that they would -- they have 13,000 artillery tubes aimed at seoul, which has a metro area of 25 million people. there was one military study in the 1990s that suggested that in the event of a new korean war, there could be a million casualties. and my fear is that we would launch such a limited strike, and north korea would respond by devastating seoul and also by firing missiles at tokyo, which it could hit, that it might apply chemical or biological weapons, which it has several thousand tons of sarin and vx

gas, and it would be an extraordinarily devastating incident for south korea and for japan and for the world economy. we would win the war quite quickly. we would be able to topple the north korean regime very easily, but the human cost, economic cost would be catastrophic. >> so, if you think that trump, president trump was right to do what he did in syria, do i take it, then, you think obama was wrong to have not done more when assad crossed over his line? >> i do. actually, not at that moment. i think that president obama makes a good case that the deal that he struck at that moment to remove most chemical weapons from syria was a good one. i think he makes a pretty good case there. but when hillary clinton, david petraeus, various other people were suggesting supporting the moderate rebels as they existed then, i think that he should

have done more at that time. and i think that also as things went on that we could have taken out some of the air strips in syria that president assad was using to drop aerobombs on the syrian people. i think that the reason president obama didn't was, frankly, that early on, it seemed as if president assad was losing ground, that he would be toppled anyway. and so, it seemed, you know, why get involved? but that was a reasonable thing to think at that time, but it proved to be misjudgment. in fact, assad proved to have more staying power than we had expected, and of course, russia came in to help him in a big way. >> let me do what i should not do on television or in any situation, ask you a three-part question, but i want to get it out of the way so you can handle it. in syria, is it one and done? should it be one and done? and if not, what should be next? because as i'm hearing, the

trump administration, i'm hearing more talk about regime change. >> i think it will probably be one and done. i -- you know, there's a lot of easy talk in washington about regime change. >> yeah. >> how do we go about that? assad -- you know, maybe assad will collapse tomorrow, but we don't -- >> we've done it before. >> yeah, but taking -- >> i'm not bragging about that. i'm just saying, we've done it too many times. >> and hopefully, we've learned some lessons from that. >> yeah. >> taking out president assad would be immensely complicated. i don't think that we have the political will to do that. it's not clear what would follow. and so, i, you know, i hope that we're not going to take on that burden of attempting regime change. now, what i would like to see is something in between one and done and overthrowing the regime. >> okay. >> which is to take out his air capacity by striking some air strips, taking out some of his aircraft so that he won't be

able to drop barrel bombs, and it will limit his air capacity. and then the idea is that then, if he sees that there is no military solution, that he may be a little bit more willing to negotiate some kind of a long-term cease-fire that is a de facto partition of the country. now, will this work? you know, we don't know. are there risks? absolutely. but 400,000 people have died in syria, and there are real risks of doingothing as well. >> so long as vladimir putin is his best friend -- mr. assad -- he might not be motivated to do much of anything over and against what the u.s. wants him to do, which leads me to ask what then you make of the quandary that that puts the trump administration in now with its relationship with russia, which has changed dramatically, but we thought it was going to be just a few weeks ago? >> that's right. it's astonishing. we used to -- you know, not so long ago, we were worried about lifting sanctions against russia. >> absolutely. >> and i thought it was interesting to see rex tillerson's trip to moscow.

i thought for the first time he really did seem to be acting as a secretary of state. and i had been concerned that we basically really didn't have a secretary of state, that he finally kind of emerged in that role. >> there's jared kushner, but i digress. >> one of the larger problems in syria is that issue of do we have a real secretary of state? john kerry was pleading with the white house for some military strikes to give him leverage to achieve a peace deal. well, now we finally have that military power, but we don't have a secretary of state who wants to use that leverage for peace. and i do think that's a missed opportunity. i hope that rex tillerson will grow further into the role, but i'm little skeptical. and where our relationship with moscow goes?

american foreign policy now seems to be, if it's monday, wednesday or friday, then it's this, and tuesdays and thursdays, it's that, and then on the weekends, it's something else entirely. >> yeah. how do we get to -- this is actually the wrong question, how we get to -- will we get to a place where we think we have a clear understanding of what the trump doctrine is? or do you think there are already some signs that are leading us in a particular direction? because to your point, the policy's so schizophrenic now. >> that's right. >> not just in terms of what they do, but in terms of who you're talking to on any given day, that i don't know that there's any sort of cohesive, comprehensive strategy at this point. >> tavis, i think you're entirely right, and i don't think we're going to see that emerge. i mean, i think that the trump doctrine, to the extent it is going to emerge, is going to be based on who the last person was who talked to president trump. and secondly, what seems most likely to promote his poll ratings. you know, he -- whether

domestically or in foreign policy, he's not ideological. i think he's very much shaped by the l last person he talked to d just kind of almost what mood he's in. i mean, you look at his relations with china. we started off with a two china policy, and then somehow, we're back at a one china policy. i mean, it is true that i think there's been some maturation of his foreign policy, and the reality has caught up with him. we are certainly much better off with the foreign policy team today, with general mcmaster as national security adviser, with jim mattis at the pentagon. they're both -- you know, they're grown-ups in the room. steve bannon has been brought down a peg in national security issues. mike flynn, who was a disaster, is gone. so, i feel i could sleep a little more safely at night now than when the trump

administration began in terms of foreign policy. >> since you intimated this a moment ago, let me ask explicitly whether or not you think -- even if you think that president trump was right to do what he did in syria, do you think it was a weapon of mass distraction from all the other stuff that he's dealing with here at home? >> i don't know, but i -- that has certainly occurred to me. and one of the things that, frankly, tavis, i worry about, is that while i approved of that strike, and a lot of liberals did, you know, i fear that that creates an incentive for him or makes him think that the road to greater popularity or approval is to fire off more missiles. and you know, that would be a pretty catastrophic narrative for him to absorb. >> yeah. there are also, as you will acknowledge, a lot of progressives who thought it was not the right thing to do, because, in fact, it would lead

to what we're seeing now, which is this guy become trigger happy. so, to progressives who say, nick kristof, we love you, we read your stuff, but they were wrong about that and we conservatives against it were right because now you have a trigger happy president. >> that's a good argument and i understand that, but having spent time in syria and spent time with syrian refugees, it's striking that syrian refugees themselves overwhelmingly applauded this action. and indeed, i thought that the best thing that president obama did in syria was a military strike that i think few people have heard of. but in mt. sinjar, he had a limited military strike that averted a genocide against the yazidi people. so, you know, the problem is how one conveys the idea that sometimes a limited military

strike, in context, makes sense and can even save lives, as it did at mt. sinjar, and as i think was beneficial in this case, and yet, not see the military as the tool that is going to solve all problems or that is going to elevate one's own damaged popularity. and to those critics who see that as a risk, point well taken. >> to the extent that he has won, what then do these crises -- what impact do they have on his domestic agenda? >> i guess another of my concerns is that i think that in the domestic agenda, there are a lot of checks and balances, and i think he's seeing that it's -- you know, health care turns out to be more complicated than he knew, and i don't think he's going to -- i'd be surprised if we see a major tax reform package, because again, i think it will be really hard to put together a consensus there.

infrastructure maybe is a little more doable, but frankly, will also be tough. those checks and balances largely don't exist in foreign affairs. and so, to the extent that the president feels stymied domestically and is much less constrained internationally, i guess i worry that he might become over time a little bit more prone to adventures abroad for political reasons and partly because it's the path of least resistance. and this -- you know, i -- as you, i've interviewed lots of politicians over the decades, and i can't think of a national politician that i have ever met who has been so unfamiliar with policy details, or even as uninterested in policy details, as our president. >> if these escapades, militarily or otherwise, around

the world end up taking his eye off the ball from his domestic agenda, at least the one that he promised to those persons who supported for him, what ultimately happens to the faith that those supporters had in him when they elected him? >> d does he pay a price for that? >> if the economy doesn't improve, and in particular, if jobs don't come back, then at some point, i think he will pay a price, but i don't think that he will pay a price for a lot of things that, frankly, i think he shou should, and there are a number of policies that he is pursuing that are going to hurt his base, and i think that he's not going to pay that price. i was in oklahoma recently interviewing a whole series of trump voters who were upset about how his budget cuts would hurt programs they really appreciated. yet, every one of them said they still supported president trump

and were still open to voting for him for re-election. one of the problems, frankly is that we're so polarized as a nation right now that trump voters i think feel to some degree defensive and that when democrats come across as patronizing and accusing them of being dumb bigots, that makes it harder to let go of president trump. >> let me go to the other side, hillary clinton, the opponent of one donald trump. she's made a couple appearances of late. i saw her in new york at a signing ceremony with governor cuomo about free education. and then she spoke at the big women in the world conference. and i think, i think you are the only journalist to date who has actually interviewed her. >> that's right. >> you spoke to her at that conference. what sense did you get from her? what did she say to you? what did you make of her? how is she? yeah. >> you know, i thought she was

actually doing pretty well and that she -- she seemed so much more relaxed and at ease than she had in the campaign. >> but they always are when it's over. >> that's right. >> al gore is the best example. >> yeah, yeah. that's actually a good example. al gore as a candidate was stiff and formal and had this shell around him as a candidate that smothered his authenticity and his power as a candidate. likewise, i think hillary clinton had been attacked so much for so many reasons that she developed this protective shell that weakened her charm as a candidate, and it was really good to see that i think she shed that shell and she's back to herself. and i asked her if she was planning to run again. she pretty definitively said no, and she was pretty blunt about some things, about the role of

misogyny in her defeat, which i don't think she would have said if she was planning to run for office again. >> yeah. how did you -- now that you're with her at 3:00 in the morning as she wakes up and sheds tears, i don't know, but how did you sense her spirit to be? >> she said -- and i think i take her at her word -- that she's kind of worked her way through that, that it was really rough at the beginning and that she was spending a lot of time walking in the woods, sorting things out, but that friends came through. spending time with grandkids gives one perspective on what's important in life. and she said that, you know, she's now out of the woods, and it felt like that's true. it felt like she's come to terms with it. she was expecting to win. she was expected to be president. she prepared for it. and then it slipped through her fingers. it's a hard thing to come to

terms with, but at this point, i think she has as much as anybody can. >> as we close this conversation, had she won, at least on syria, there'd be no distinction between what trump did -- >> that's right. >> -- and what she did. that's the ultimate irony. >> absolutely. i asked her about that, and she -- this is a few hours before trump strike -- and she essentially prescribed the same action that trump took. >> i digress. mr. kristof, good to have you on the program. >> good to be with you. >> good to see you. that is our show tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for conversations with james foreman jr. about his latest book and actress maggie siff. that's next time. see you then. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> be more. pbs. >> be more.

- today on america's test kitchen, dan prepares cuban braised shredded beef, becky shows how to make fried sweet plantains, julia makes mango, orange, and jicama salad, and adam reviews grapefruit knives in the equipment corner. america's test kitchen is brought to you by dcs. dcs: manufacturers of professionally styled indoor and outdoor kitchen equipment.