good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. what a weekend it was, from the fbi fallout following the firing of james comey by president interrupt to a worldwide cyber attack. tonight a conversation with amy goodman. we're glad you could join us. amy good man in just a moment.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. amy goodman has been cover ing politics for 20 years now. her newest book is now available in paperback. she joins us tonight from stanford, california. good to have you back on the program. >> it's great to be with you. >> are there still in fact movements that are changing america or are we up against

something we haven't seen the likes of ever? and if not ever, certainly in quite a while? >> both. i think there are major movements that are changing this country still. in fact, our escalating, you look just at these three. the media played a lot of the first 100 days of donald trump, as we should have. the evaluation of what he has managed to do so far. what wasn't done as much is evaluating the movements, and they've been quite astonishing, the day after president trump was inaugurated. three times the crowd for his inauguration came out. a lot was made of the fact that donald trump's inaugural crowd was smaller than president obama's nine years before. the pictures showed did, you had president trump saying his crowd was larger than any in history.

that sort of obscured what happened the next day, 24 hours later in the same place, three times the number of people came out in protests led by women, it was not only in washington, d.c.. i mean, we covered that for many hours in washington. we ended up going to sundance where we covered the documentary track. i talked to kerry washington of "scandal." she was exhilarated she was in los angeles, she had just addressed 750,000 people. in mont peel yar vermont, the capital of vermont, 20,000 people turned out. the police closed the interstate, the capital couldn't contain that many people. not only here, but around the world, people expressing their deep concern about what they saw already underway. and they were you had had the reaction, because president trump moved very quickly, and

with muslim ban one and muslim ban two. that's not my words for muslim bang. that's what he repeatedly said on the campaign train. banning refugees, the first ban from 7 majority muslim countries, that was stayed by a judge in washington, followed by the second attempt, muslim ban two stayed by a judge in hawaii many but the number of people, thousands of people turn out in this kind of spontaneous uprising in city airports around the country. i mean, you had what, at dulles airport, a senator and a judge manhandled by security. now, president trump in all these protests will say, who's paying them. that's how he thinks, right? when he announced for president at trump tower, he paid actors to applaud. i was just covering the people's climate march in washington on april 29th.

the protester came up to me and said, i'm a professional protester, but i'm doing this probono. people are protesting all over this country. you have the muslim ban protest, the astonishing outpouring at all these airports. and then you had donald trump going after the judges who stayed the ban. and this is extremely important, i mean, donald trump does not like being judged. whether it's the fbi director, who he fired, whether it's the judges who stayed his bans. he called the first, the washington state federal judge a so-called judge. the second judge, the one from hawaii, attorney general jeff sessions said in a right wing radio interview, he said how is it possible that a man in an island in the pacific can stop the president of the united states? you know, tavis, i think this

entire country is engaged in a civics lessen. kindergartners, fifth graders, really everyone in every walk of life. i think jeff sessions and donald trump should be a part of learning about civics in this country. the thigh co equal branches of government. and the fourth, the state. and how important it is that we have these checks and balances. you go from the muslim ban to tax day protests all the over the country. demanding that president trump release his tax returns. this fine information is absolutely critical, when you have, for example, president trump calling up the president of turkey, president erdogan to congratulate him. he was condemned by many countries in europe, and president trump is actually

congratulating him. is it because he thinks this is good for democracy? or because he has twin trump towers in istanbul? we shouldn't be speculating about this, we should know, not only about his finances, but also about his families, because they are his closest advisers and not just his family. they are his business associates. and that's what people were saying when they came out in the streets. and then you have the people's march for science that happened on earth day. thousands of people in a freezing cold downpour in washington, d.c., still came out with their signs that said things like, ice has no agenda it just melts and there is no planet b. they held up signs that said, i'm with her, with an arrow to mother earth, and wore buttons that said science, not silence. and then the people's climate march, we have not seen anything like this intense protest in the

streets all over, but it's not just in the streets. i went to a meeting about two months ago in new york city. nondescript office building, hundreds of people were packed in. not your typical noble activists who protest in the streets. it was elected city officials from around the country like local city councilmembers. mayors of cities and towns, state legislators, and they were all packed into this room in new york to figure out how they can best provide sanctuary, protection to the residents of their communities. with the crackdown on immigrants in this country. it was astounding to see, never assume based on a person's position what position they will take. we're seeing this everywhere. we're on a many city tour, we'll

be coming to los angeles soon, san diego, and santa barbara, we started in denver, colorado. and we went into the unitarian church where jeanette vizguerra had taken refuge. she's been here for years, paid her taxes. she went into sanctuary because she was scared because daniel ramirez in washington state was arrested. he was a dreamer. he was legally allowed to live, work and study in this countried, yet he was arrested. this sends a chill when people are threatened. jeanette takes refuge in the church. and i went to see her and interview her, her little boy, roberto had his arm wrapped around his mother, and he said, my mother can't go outside right now. or she will be arrested by ice.

and he was going out on a ceasar chavez martha day with his little 6-year-old sister. roberto, with his arm around his mother holding a picture of his mother that his denver public schoolteacher had made a lit lithograph of generjeanette. he wrapped his arm around his mother and said, i am my mother's voice. jeanette said she had gotten many death threats. the thousands of people who expressed their support. in fact she said, the denver police chief told her, you know, if she is frightened by these death threats, she should call him. the denver mayor expressed his support for jeanette, the local congressman expressed his support for jeanette. every level of society, we are seeing this resistance growing in so many unexpected places. we need a media that documents

all of this. i think that, you know, the resistance is coalescing in different ways. a few days later, "time" magazine announced that their 100 most important people list, jeanette vizguerra was on that list. she held a news conference then inside the church. she couldn't go outside. she held up her 2016 tax returns, and she said, you know, i -- you are welcome to look at my tax returns, i encourage the president of the united states to do the same. i don't think we've seen anything like this outpouring in this intense short period of time. >> i guess the question is, i didn't want to interrupt, that was an exhaustive list. i didn't want to stop you, i wanted to give you the full measure of opportunity to sort of lay that oust. i'm glad you did. but at the end of all that, the question is, do marches matter?

we continue to see these marches as you laid out almost weekly, daily and in certain instances, certain places, and yet this president continues to act with reckless abandon, including what he did to james comey, and i can run the list on and on and on of things he's done, that just leave people gob smacked. my question is, do marches really matter? >> it's not only marches, i think people are organizing in all different ways. i definitely think that these movements matter, and we can't actually know their outcome. i would say republicans are joining with democrats and independents in alarm. there is no question, you're right, tavis, that what we are seeing now is serious escalation of the dismantling of the regulatory state. there's no question about it. i mean -- and that sounds

bureaucratic. what does that mean. the dismantling of the regulatory state. we're talking about protection of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land that we live in, the communities that we live in. it's extremely serious, i mean, what we're seeing in washington is really the rise of the oilogarcky. you have rex tillerson, president of exxon mobil, that is being sued by attorneys general around the country. i just interviewed at the people's climate march, marra healey, suing exxon mobil. they did the best research on climate change. they knew early on how serious it was. then covered it up. so you have rex tillerson, secretary of state. scott pruett, former oklahoma attorney general with which sued the epa 14 times.

this is a land -- oklahoma didn't used to be -- a land of earthquakes because of fracking. when governor perry stepped down as governor, he immediately went on the board of energy transfer partners, only stepped down to become secretary of energy. yes, these are very powerful positions. and they are doing a lot right now. one of the first actions of president trump was to issue an executive order saying they would grant the permit for the dakota access pipeline, to tunnel under the missouri river, which was the final connecting of the pipeline, what the standing rock sioux have been resisting for so many months. so many hundreds of people got arrested over this. president obama in the last

weeks of his administration put a stop to this, said they would talk about rerouting or stopping this all together. and not only did president trump move forward with this, so that the pipeline was built, but said he's going to renew the efforts to build the keystone xl pipeline, which people fought against and won. years ago, the stopping of the pipeline, this is all extremely serious. and these are very powerful positions. but there is a force more powerful, and we are seeing it all over the country, where it goes right now, well, i think president trump is escalating the opposition to him, right? with the firing of james comey, one senator put it as the interrogatee firing the interrogator. he is destabilizing his

republican support. and yes it has echoed back to watergate, and to another president, president nixon. but the sense that he is trying to eviscerate all of the checks and balances are making a lot of people nervous. >> what do you make of the way the state has covered this president. i had ted koppel on here, how would you grade the mainstream media, the corporate media in america and its coverage of donald frumd. >> the corporate media rolled out the red carpet for donald trump. you have the heads of -- among others, cbs saying it may not be good for america, but it's certainly good for our bottom line. what think tank just did a study and said donald trump got $5

billion worth of free air time. the studies have been shown over and over again, when you compare the air time that donald trump got to the air time, for example, that bernie sanders got. i mean, you couldn't compare. but what you can do is you can understand how this uninterrupted air time really paved the way for what we're seeing today. so donald trump become president. and he starts attacking the media nonstop. calls us the enemy of the people, the enemy of the american people, he was doing that before as well. i hesitate to say this on national television. but i've always wondered, if he just stopped for a few days, i really do think the media would wrap their arms around him, as they do the establishment so often. go back to the iraq war, 2003,

when the media really acted as a conveyor belt for the lies of the bush administration, alleging weapons of mass destruction. we saw that then, and it matters because the lies take lives. and right now -- donald trump is hitting the media so hard, you are seeing people stand up, institutions stand up and say, no. the media, journalists, is essential to the functioning of a democratic society. i don't know if they would go so far as to say, what we say is democracy now. the media has always given us the bad kind of static, criticism, the kind that are lies and on few indication and misrepresentations and half truths. what we need the media to give us is a dictionary definition of static. we need a media that covers power, not for power, we need a media that is the force estate,

not for the state. the media has stood up and is reminding us repeatedly of how important it is to have the fourth estate. and i applaud that every step of the way. but where the media falls down and even now with their opposition and their criticism is when it comes to the u.s. engaging in military actions. i mean, just look at what happened when trump administration -- when the military bombed the sear an air base. hit it with these tomahawk missiles. you had journalists immediately saying, donald trump became president tonight. you have donald trump within a few weeks, a couple months of his administration, dropping the largest nonnuclear bomb in the history of the world on afghanistan.

the moab. what the pentagon has dubbed the mother of all bombs, it has like a mile wide blast radius. it was developed under president obama, and he didn't dare use it. donald trump drops it within a few weeks of his presidency. again the media saying, he became president tonight. even with all of their criticism. the media tends to circle the wagons around the white house when it comes to war or military action. that's when we have to be independent. >> there are two questions that come to find. the first question is, why do you think the media has that particular blind spot? and the second question -- i don't like to ask two questions at once. but i know you can handle it. secondly, if you're right, i've been toying with this for the last few minutes, i think you're

probably right, if trump stopped pummeling the media for a few days, they probably would back off, that's what they tend to do, even though he's been pretty hard on them. if you stop calling them enemies of the american people, fake news. if he backed off, they may back off of him. why doesn't trump do that, why won't he just back off for a few days, if he's tired of the media pummeling him? >> that's a very good question, i cannot explain donald trump's psychology. >> i thought that may be your response, but i'd ask anyway. >> i will say, when he attacks the media as fake news. it takes one to know one. i mean, donald trump has been the font of fake news for so many years. and it's fake news that can hurt and that can kill. and can definitely challenge a democratic society. the way he went after president

obama to try to delegitimize him. there's so much to criticize president obama about. didn't close guantanamo, expanded wars in the middle east. the level, the escalation of the drone strikes from yemen to sew malyarks the support, for example, of saudi arabia, and pummeling of yemen. all of this, i mean, even the immigrants rights activists who are close to president obama inside and outside of the white house, ended up calling him the deporter in chief because he ended up deporting so many immigrants. there is plenty of grounds to criticize president obama for. but to say he wasn't born in this country. to other him, because he doesn't look like donald trump, to say he was a secret muslim. i don't even like to repeat that, because it suggests there's something wrong with being muslim.

it's like saying oh, my god, did you hear he's jewish, or hindu. we shouldn't have to deal with these lies. the message that donald trump was purposely sending with all of this, was to delegitimize a man who he wanted to other. and it wasn't lost on the white supremacists and white nationalists who, you know, endorsed like the kkk, president trump. david duke. he was the source of all of this. why he does this today, why he attacks the media when they could be an ally, i can't say. but why the media circles around the white house when it comes to times of war or military action. why you get these typical pundits on television, who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. why the media brings us the pundits when it comes to

military action. 067 a general or a kournal. they don't tell you retired -- sort of like an elder states man. and they don't tell you about the weapons manufacturer's they are tied to, we should hear all of these voices by the way. we should know if they're representing a weapons manufacturer, and who's profiting from all of this. this is important. and what about having as many peace leaders on. what if the media started with the premise. what if war was not an option? i mean, i think that's where we should be in the 21st century. >> as always, you give us much to think about, i appreciate having you on. and you sharing your insights. enjoy the rest -- maybe enjoy is the wrong word, have a productive rest of the tour, and i'll talk to you soon. >> thanks so much, tavis. >> my pleasure. that's our show tonight. thanks for watching, and as always. keep the faith.

for more information on today's show. visit tavissmiley@pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley, join me next time as we take a deep dive into what's happening around the country. that's next time. we'll see you then. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

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