good good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley, russia, syria and north korea have been front and center during president trump's time in the white house. tonight a conversation with malcolm nance. then elizabeth motion joins us to talk about her starring role in "the handmaid's tale." malcolm nance and elizabeth moss coming up in a moment.

and and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like y you. thank you. last weekend, of course, marked president trump's 100th day in august since his campaign. what has his administration actually achieved, more importantly, what's ahead. he's a 35 year military vet who served with u.s. special operations forces and the department of homeland security among other agencies. he is the author of several books including the plot to hack

america. how putin's cyber spies and wikileaks tried to steal the 2016 election. we're honored to have him on this program. good to have you here, man. >> glad to be here. >> the president as candidate. made a lot of promises on the campaign trail, in the first 100 days, what do you most want to draw our attention to that he has or has not regarding foreign policy. a few weeks back i was at a speech of a group of experts, and throughout the entire night all of these litany of experts on asia, south asia and the western pacific came out and said, north korea is going to be the number one problem of the united states. when it came to the end they said, you're the terrorism guy. what's the number one problem in this world? isis, right? no, north korea is going to be the number one problem. you can pay no attention to anything else that has happened over the last 100 days.

but you have to pay attention to the situation that's going on in north korea. because whether donald trump thinks he's doing a power play by using his tweets to speak out to threaten, cajole and now most recently flatter kim jong-un, this is the one place in the world his words could lead to death, destruction. >> what did you think specifically of him willing to meet with kim jong-un, then calling him a smart cookie. president obama caught all kinds of hell on the campaign trail that he would meet with someone. >> open channels to iran. >> but trump's goent further than that and suggested this guy is a smart cookie. >> you're talking about three generations of dictator. for the last 64 years the korean

peninsula -- the northern part of the korean peninsula has been led by dictators who brutally repress their societies, they have been threatening the south, they do provocative incidents. for years, north korean intelligence was a class one terrorist agency, a terrorist group with governmental resources. and now as they're progressing toward the ability to loft their atomic bombs to the western coast of the united states. they do have atomic bombs at work, we have a president who comes out and threatens on one hand. supposedly moves resources toward north korea, which is our own provocation, and doesn't seem to understand the provocation is their number one foreign policy tool, they want to see how far they can push the envelope. when you push the envelope, they're not going to push it to see if it inflates a little bit. to see if it's terror, they will make it terror.

to flip over and try to cajole that leader, just looks unstable. the united states does not do the madman theory very well, you know, nixon's madman theory. when you play with a nation that wants nothing more than for the united states to understand they need to be considered an equal partner, an equal player on the korean peninsula, and now can possess power, south korea doesn't possess. it makes the south koreans wonder what we're doing, it's one thing to send over any ballistic missile systems, it's an entirely different thing to offer a compliment. such a strange compliment. >> what would be the thinking behind it having done that. number one, and number two, that must have driven his military advisers crazy. >> you use the operative term there, which is thinking. there's not much thinking going on here. what we're seeing is reacting, if any of this comes from the art of the deal. tear the book up and throw the copy away. this is not how you deal with a nation that has the ability. not just to explode atomic

bombs, but to put under threat right now, 40 million people are under direct artillery threat of a nation that could unleash any number of ways that they could kill, injure, maim or press that envelope. whether it's special operations troops in the south, and sank a naval vessel killing over 100 sailors. they need the respect that president trump is either going to give them, which he didn't do before. but now to show this almost schizophrenic view of u.s. foreign policy, general mattis and general mcmaster have to be pulling their hair out, none of this is normal. >> senator mccain said if he were giving advice to foreign leaders he would tell them to watch what president trump does, don't pay attention to what he says. good advice? >> it's the president of the united states. his words have the power of

policy and orders, even if they don't actually form into a policy or don't actually give orders. i mean, when he says to north korea, we're sending an aircraft carrier strike group to your shores, north korea may have enough intelligence to figure out -- they watch cnn and can see that the battle is 3500 miles away, that doesn't matter to them. they will take advantage of that, and push the envelope toward provocation in some fashion, which they did. they started a series of ballistic missile tests. one of which exploded soon after launch. it exploded 72 kilometers in space. it's pretty far. they are learning from their mistakes, north korea, and at one point they will affect the ability to loft anatomic bomb to the west coast of the united states and they will expect to be treated the way china is treated. and they will u those systems to get their way like a child.

>> you mentioned two high ranking officials have already been confirmed in the trump apparatus. the overwhelming majority of persons who need to be nominated and confirmed have not -- the train hasn't left the station yet, essentially. how endangered are we as a nation, by not having these important positions filled? >> let's take a look at the state department. which is the most important of all of them. you have to understand something, this administration came in as a wrecking crew. they do not believe in government. they believe the government should operate at a small level, starting with the state department, they want to cut the budget almost 40%. the core component of military strategy is to understand that you don't want to use military strategy first. you have to use the three branches. military, diplomatic and intelligence power to fulfill the united states strategic goals before you go to war. and with the diplomatic

component missing, right now we don't have an ambassador to south korea, japan, i think we nominated an ambassador to china, we don't have an under secretary of state for west asia, the far east. all of these are the lines of communication from the president to all of our partners. this is not just the united states going it alone. we have to speak to other people. and you just can't pick up the phone and say you're going to open up a new hotel in another country and expect that guy to suddenly want to fulfill u.s. policy. we have defense commitments, which have u.s. troops on the pointy end of in a spehere. we have weapons systems which our allies might need, if those are deployed in such a way to appear offensive, there is no communications pathway to all of our other allies to show we haven't lost our minds, right? which is part of the madman theory, this needs to be

finalized, the state department needs to have its people filled out. and the most important component of military strategy is diplomacy. >> i'd be remiss to let you leave without mentioning russia and syria. >> sure. >> take it away. >> well, russia, what more can we say. the legacy of this administration is going to be the relationship between the trump campaign and russian intelligence agencies. i wrote a book about it 7 months ago, it was delivered on the same day as president obama when he received his classified cia report, which showed that russian intelligence carried out a massive influence operation against the united states. and the united states, you know, the dnc did have its servers hacked and a lot of information was taken. we had a second watergate that was perfected. with the release of information around the stigma of the word e-mail and hillary clinton, and that -- believe me, it fundally changed this electction.

you look at a word cloud around hillary clinton and donald trump. hillary clinton's is one word, e-mails. russian intelligence knew this, they carried out this information for months and months and months, and released it selectively, there may have been some form of cooperation, collusion or even co option. where people don't even know that a foreign intelligence agency is pulling their strings. and use those people to effect the result we had in this election. >> with syria, it's what we did, just a one off? >> what we did in syria was kabuki. no offense to kabuki, it's beautiful. what happened in syria was pantomime. i took part in a lot of strikes, starting back in 1983 and foreign targets overseas. you do not strike a runway, you do not strike an air base unless you meet three objectives, you destroy the facilities itself, i don't mean the cafeteria, you have to destroy the runway, we have weapons systems which are

in place, which could have destroyed the chemical weapons that were on that base. we did not destroy the chemical stockpile, we left it there, sitting right there, number three, for a president who said he's not going to transmit his punch and tell our enemies what our objectives are, he literally called the russians and told them we were going to strike, get off the base, they took the syrians and the only people who were hurt and injured in that attack was a radar site that was not near that base. it literally took away the strength of u.s. power. all it showed was, when we aim at something, we will hit it, those people, the defense department was told not to aim add anything which would hurt or injure someone. >> quick question, is there anything that gives you any reason at this point that we are starting to see our way clear to what a trump doctrine would be? >> you know.

no. i'm an intelligence war fighter, my entire career has been set working for presidents and working to keep this country safe. and the number one principle of any president should be. do not make instability in the world, in the markets, in foreign policy your goal. it is to maintain stability. the trump doctrine appears to be destabilize the world. i don't know whether it's just being done because he doesn't understand how the world works. i don't know whether he understands that american power, the ability to kill is not america's greatest power, our greatest power are our ideas and influence. the problem is, now, with the current situation we have with the white house, those ideas are being corrupted. calling dictators and saying that, you know, you approve of them in their re-election, or taking powers that are

dictatorial and form new autocracies, constantly complimenting the world's top dictator. vladimir putin, a person who has influenced and used his intelligence agencies to corrupt the american electorate for the first time in 240 years. our allies look at us, is this the america we've always known. is this -- you know, a nation that will uphold jeffersonian democracy as it was written at the founding -- >> the answer is no. >> his text is called the plot, to hack america. how wikileaks tried to steal the 2016 election. a national bestseller, i highly recommend it, thanks for your insight. up next, actress elizabeth moss, stay with us. pleased to welcome golden globe winning actress elizabeth

mossback to this program. she currently stars in "the handmaid's tale." before we start our conversation with miss moss, you're seeing a scene from episode three. ♪ >> remember your scripture. blessed are the meek. >> blessed are those who suffer for the cause of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heav heaven. i remember. >> what do you think? >> i like it. >> you like it? >> yeah, yeah, i like it. i would watch it.

>> do you have -- another take? >> no comment. >> you would watch this? >> i would watch it. >> i would watch it, it's really good stuff. i'm not just saying that because you're here. it is really good stuff. a few days ago, i participated with tom hanks and a bunch of other people in a wonderful tribute to the nobel prize winning holocaust survivor and we were reading passages from his wonderful text knight. we opened our eyes too late. we opened our eyes too late. margaret atwood has a similar line in this script. >> i may botch it slightly, but basically, by the time we looked up from our phones it was too late. >> we didn't wake up.

>> what do you make of that? >> i think it's one of the -- it's one of my personal favorite parts of the book, statements of the book, and is repeated a couple times in the show, in different ways and it's exactly -- i mean, it's kind of sums up so much of how they got to this, you know. and margaret also talks in the book about how an institution and new regime can't actually be put in place unless it's already existing, you know what i mean? and how it happens slowly. there's another line. nothing changes instantaneously. something about in a bathtub. in a bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. it's that concept of, it's slow. it comes in degrees. it's not all at once. you know? >> you've worked on some shows that had some pretty good writing. >> yeah, yeah. >> hi, matthew. >> pretty good. >> you all do some pretty good

writing. what's it like to target margaret atwood? >> it's extraordinarily, honestly, to have an incredible book to draw on and to be able to constantly refer to it, it's not just an explanation, it's the most beautiful probe. it makes it so much more enjoyable. it's been incredible, it's different than anything i've done writingwise as well. a lot of the reason for that is, because i don't talk a lot. a lot of it, so much of it is internal. >> what's the challenge? >> the challenge is the thing that i love most about acting, i love it, in a way it's not easier, but it is more enjoyable. i love the idea that there's something going on on the outside and the inside, and that people are playing two different things and there's a lot more than one thing going on. for me to have the specific challenge of playing something on the outside for other people to see, having something go on on the inside, but the added

element of letting the audience in -- not the people in the room, not the other actors or the other characters, but allowing the audience in a little bit to see what i'm thinking or feeling. for me, that's the perfect bermuda triangle. >> i watch these first couple episodes and kind of bask in the story that's being told here. my mind went back the other day watching this to the women's march in washington. and for me at least, i think it's probably true for most of us, it's hard not to be moved not just to be impressed, it's a cheap emotion to be impressed. it's hard not to be viscerally moved by what that march represented, what was said at the podium, what the women were there for, hard not to be moved. which leads me to ask, what's it like when you're filming a scene with all of these women? just watching you all, when you're standing in formation or -- it's like a lot of -- all

that women power. what's that like filming? >> it is moving. it really is, i had more experiences in making this, of feeling like i was taking it a lot more personally i think than other things i've done. working with certain actors in some scenes and actually finding myself starting to cry when i wasn't supposed to be crying. there's a scene in episode two where a lot of the women come together for a specific reason, and it's a really sort of -- it's a moment of unity in a tragic circumstance. and we all felt like you could have heard a pin drop. we all sort of had this feeling of here we are, and we're all here for the same reason. you can't help but take it personally. it's a beautiful thing to look around and see all these women supporting each other, it's also, you can't help but feel like, wow! here we are having to do this. here we are.

>> i try to respond to as much viewer mail as i can. >> yes. >> i got a letter from a woman the other day. very kind. i love your show. i watch it all the time, i'm a big fan, it would be nice to watch your show where you stop taking the cheap shots at donald trump. i wanted to respond to her, and i did, what do you mean by cheap shot. the more we got into the conversation, she was saying that -- wasn't that i was taking cheap shots at donald trump. it's that there's so many stories now that are being told in this -- that kind of parallel this universe that we now find ourselves. i said that's not a cheap shot, that's either life imitating art or art imitating life. there is a reason why margaret atwood's book jumped back on the bestseller list last year, that didn't just happen for no reason. >> no. >> i'm sure you've been asked of this before.

what do you make of the parallel between the story, what the story's about, and the maltreatment, disrespect of women? what do you make of all this? >> i feel like it is impossible to not draw the parallel, and i think we should draw the parallel, that's one of the wonderful things about art and literature, it can bring out things you can feel passionate about. i think for -- sometimes my response to this kind of thing was, there was this sort of a right wing people saying at one point we were -- this left wing propaganda show, and it was anti-trump and all of that, i think, listen, it's about -- it is about what it is, it was written 30 years ago, it's about ignorance, it's about stupidity, evil, taking away women's rights and human's rights, if you happen to draw the correlation between -- [ laughter ] >> between that and now, that's on you. we didn't write it. >> if margaret atwood is that prophetic that 30 years ago, she

saw donald trump coming. i have two questions. why didn't you tell us? >> and also, how do you feel about the lottery? >> she was decades ahead of this. >> i think it's fantastic, i welcome that conversation, that's a conversation we should be having. we should be making sure that we're not committing the same mistakes and they're not doing that. >> from a conversation that does matter, to a conversation in my own opinion that doesn't really matter, i've been following this on social media the last few days, i thought it was silly, it's my own word, not yours. this debate about whether it's a feminist story or humanist story. how did those two things get to be different? >> what's your take on this? because i've seen you've been pulled into this conversation. a feminist story or humanist story? >> i've been wanting to talk about it. and i -- first of all, welcome that conversation, i think it's great and so good that we are talking about it, i would say

1,000%, it is a feminist story, it is a feminist book. of course it is. it's a feminist show. there's a four letter word that's very, very important which is also. it's a feminist show, it's also a humanist work. i believe women's rights are human rights. there are people who are not women who are penalized in this show. and punished and so i feel like for me that's a simple answer, and it's a great conversation to have, and i always welcome talking about these issues. i really do. anyone that knows me knows that i'm such a card carrying feminist. it's probably too much. i have to be told to tone it down a little bit. but for me, i think, you know, i take it probably way too personally, you know. it's wonderful, and it's great to be able to go to work and be

like, yeah, i believe in what i'm doing. >> there are worse problems to have. >> there really are. >> you're taking your work too personally. >> "the handmaid's tale" is a great series on hulu. >> it's great to see you. >> i always love to see you. love doing your show. >> thanks for watching, as always. keep the faith. for for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley, join me next time for a conversation with the financial times and trombone shorty.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

goo good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. it's been hard if not impossible to ignore all the talk about president trump's first 100 days in office. he skipped the correspondence dinner instead held a rally touting his accomplishments and talking about the media. ted koppel joins us in a minute.