. good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. one of the most challenging years every, and the nightmare of 1968. tonight lawrence o'donnell joins us to reflect on that troubling year, of political assassinations, convention violence and the election of richard m. nixon. all laid out in his new text, playing with fire. glad you joined us with lawrence o'donnell in just a moment.

>> and from con vi tribuplease lawrence o'donnell, back to the program. host of the msnbc "the last word" worked inside the beltway and behind the scenes of hollywood including as a writer for the west wing. his latest text is called, playing with fire. the 1968 election and the transformation of american politics, lawrence o'donnell, good to have you on the west coast and on our program. my friend. >> so good to be in the studio

with you. usually, you're coming on my show. and you i am in new york doing it on satellite from here. and we always get the tavis smiley bump in the ratings, what we are going for. never in the same room. >> sure my ratings will bump that you are on tonight. let me start with, that, since you went there, what is it like being on that network covering this moment in our nation's history? awe up a >> it is a completely changed job. there used to be, you know, a section of the day, good three hours of the day where you were trying to figure out w what you would cover in an hour of cable news primetime. you would do, probably, four completely different stories. total, some times, five different stories. now, there is this, overwhelming flow, of hugely important stories from washington. generally centered around the president. even the tax bill, would not have been happening without, a

republican president. so he is, he it the engine for that. so you have legislative stuff like that. and then this, this, this, cascading scandal. that, that has more moving parts than any scandal in political history or any, any of our history has ever had because -- twitter is both an engine and a reflector of the scandal. you have -- you have -- a president of the united states, up here, as soon as i read the tweet. to confess to obstruction of justice, over a weekend. and i have to tell you in the past my weekends were generally news free. i would ignore news. until monday morning. and, so, and i, i immediately replied to the president's tweet about, saying, that, that you know he knew that, that -- michael flynn had lied to the fbi when he fired him. the idea that that, that twitter

could be part of the engine of the whole thing, is just amazing. so the jurisdiction of, of my hour, of, of cable news, is very, very clear. and, it its sorting out which o the 15 kind of overwhelming stories that have, droonald tru in them if not on the top of them. which are we doing in a given night? >> the part that scares me, not in your seat every night, because, the stuff changes, some times while you are on the air. these stories, morph and, and, and, and -- metastasize, and who knows when trump is going to tweet something. for example conducting this conversation now a few hours from now it will air. i don't know where this paul manafort story will end up by the time the audience sees this later tonight on pbs. >> ankle bracelet might be back on. >> they're recharging the ankle brace let right now.

for those that haven't heard the nutz wh news, what is your understanding? >> the special prosecutor made a certain. they always do when they have indictments and bring someone in, pleads not guilty. there is bail situations they make, make a kind of behavioral agreement with, with -- with the defendant about letting them travel to certain extent or not, and, so, so they, they had a very tight rein on manafort, decided to loosen it as a result of not sure what. decided to loosen their rein on him. now the special prosecutor wants to tighten up again. find out he has been ghost writing as the story its putting it, an op-ed piece that would benefit manafort ghost writing with some one use to be involved or maybe is involved with russian intelligence and, and, so, you know, special prosecutor is, is going to tighten that up a little built. but, a twist like that. we never have seen a twist like

that in any, any stories like thi this. go back into wautergate, nixon stories, they proceeded in a pretty straight line. when for example, you know, nixon's attorney general, john mitchell gets indicted, there aren't stories of erratic, strange behavior on the part of john mitchell. after. they all kind of knew what to do at the spot where they were exposed and in trouble. the people from the president to paul manafort. they publicly seem to be panic while -- under all of this scrutiny. >> john dean in the chair not too long ago. i asked him, having been with nixon. what, what the primary trait was that he saw between nixon and what is the characteristic that they beoth have? >> it isn't intelligence.

>> he didn't say that. he said athere teuthority, authoritarianism. what it the thing they mes haose in common? >> the longer you look at them, the harder it its to do that. nixon became extremely erratic. and we know dangerous. in the final months of his presidency. little really wandering the white house at night, drunk, in the company of henry kissinger who had alerted people that the president its unstable now. they had certain kind of -- precautions about any kind of nuclear, you know, order that the president might give. relatively brief period in richard nixon's life. he was a completely stable person in relation to that.

donald trump has never been drunk in his life, the most worrisome in the history of nuclear weapons. no one we have had to worry more than him having the nuclear codes to me is the single most chilling thing about the trump presidency. everything else, everything else can be repaired, repaired. another ta another tax legislation after the trump presidency is over. you won't repair a nuclearly exchange on the korean peninsula. >> kissinger suggesting nixon was a bit unstable. there are those advancing the notion now that donald trump is mentally unstable. would you go that far? >> i went that far years ago. i went that far on the birth certificate. it its a birth certificate. it is an intelligence test. sanity test. integrity test. all those things. trump failed every one of those. every built of it.

and i don't think there is a thing that is different, about, his behavior, since becoming president. i dent thion't think there was g that wasn't adadvertised. since he became president. >> there are those saying with increasing volume that now is the time to get serious about -- looking at impeachment when nan steep plo nancy -- nancy pelosi and others said, don't go there. is it time? >> distinguish political speech from reasonable speech. nanny pelosi doesn't want to be seen as the party that wants to impeach the president. of course they would go along with impeachment, tomorrow if the republicans, that's how it would have to happen if the republicans were to make a move on it. you can't make a move on it in the house of representatives woult t without the leadership all republican doing that. they simply dent went to be perceived out there in the country as immediately after an election, thinking about

impeachment. richard nixon re-elected overwhelmingly in 1972 is inaugurated in january of 1973. 18 months later driven out of town the he leaves. at this point. we are, we are not 18 months into the, into the presidential term of donald trump. at this point, at the, at the, december, the christmas say period of, of that first nixon christmas after his second inauguration. there wasn't a person in america who thought he could be impeached. there wasn't a person alive who thought he wasn't going to fill ow his term. no one saw it coming. we are sitting here, and we have been, talking about impeachment, talking 25th amendment, since the, since the first month of the trump presidency. one of the reasons for that. people who have a certain muscle memory of the last time something like this happened. which was the neixon time. it feels the same. it really feels the same. it, and that doesn't mean it

will be the same. but we all have one experience like it that's richard nixon. >> to the book. you have a purf fulpowerful lin never processed in the way that your commentary forced me to process. which is there was no, no, paraphrasing, no fellow citizen in the country. in 1968, who was the same person in 1960. so, so, what, what was it about? that period and year that transformed not just the country. the country tried to transform people. people's lives are being transformed. what was happening? >> that, i make that point within the, within the spospot,g evolution of bobby kennedy. i was in high school at the time of the year of 68 campaign. people saw eugene mccarthy get into the campaign first on the left sietd de of the democratic party. gets in second after jim

mccarthy does well in new hampshire. looks like opportunism. it was. it also looked like, this, this, this -- to some people, a false evolution towards liberalism, by, by bobby. who -- had been part of authorizing wiretaps on martin luther king. when he was attorney general. and so, what i, what i, once i staerd staired at th stared at this. not one is the same in 1968 as they were in 1960. it was the 60s, which is a thing tie tried to capture in the book. single most difficult thing to capture. the cultural revolution that goes on in the 1960s. and you can't, i, you know you are tempted to say, beginning with a music revolution. but you don't really know, did it really begin with a civil rights revolution, which then fed a music revolution which then fed an anti-war revolution,

and a peace movement revolution. and eventually, took the end of the decade, you are just seeing the birth of, a women's revolution, women's rights, feminism revolution, so all of these revolutions are happening. at very, at ultrahigh speed. in the 1960s. and, you can watch it, the person you can mostly clearly watch it through is bobby kennedy. who is suspect of james baldwin when he first sits down to talk about civil rights in new york city in the early 1960s. by 1968, he is pretty much where james baldwin is. and that, i don't believe that is opportunism. i believe that is enlightenment. i experienced it as a kid. in boston. which was, as racist a place as you could grow up in, in america. at that, when i was a kid. it was -- you know, all the same language that, that segregation in the south would use was being used in boston all the time.

and you watched that fade out. you watched that, you watched, watched these words become bad words. and, and, i, i, i remember -- you know being in a friend's house. hearing, hearing one of the parents use the n word casually. the guy was a boston cop. i was stunned by it. because, that, that, my, my parents would never allow those words in our house. and it was onl then thaty then noticed my parents would never allowed the word mine house. it could happen in other houses. by the time you get to the end of the decade. the language in my house was the norm. it had become the norm. and so, there were segregationists. who were not in 1968. i don't mean like george wallace who went, who was a segregationist. then when he lost the legal battle on segregation. he says as i quote him in the book here.

he setz ays i don't talk about segregation. i talk law and order. the phrase, law and order became the code. republicans carried for decades. but, boy, i tell you. i probably experienced a little less than people who were in college in the 1960s. i've mean, just, just the pictures, okay. itch you went around to college campuses said i will take photographs of college campuses in 1962. they're going to look like this. going to be the, the men in blue blazers, neckties. at harvard and yale. a dress code. all of that. by the time you get to the end of the decade, there is no dress code. every harvard kid looks like a hippy. looked like they walked out of woodstock. there is co-ed dorms on campuses of the schools. this it the kind of evolution that used to take 100 years. because so much happened in 1968 which is why obviously transformative year in our politics. looking back, lawrence, did 1968

make us more cynical or skeptical? >> that is such a fine line. certainly much more skeptical. but of the thing that made us, that had already made us, intensely skeptical, was, was november 22nd, 1963, was watching the president of the united states, quite literally get his head blown off on national television. dealing with the aftermath of that. simply not knowing. the only thing that could have saved us from the highly sceptical that was going to come from that its a kind of case closed, mystery solved, within the week. kind of solution. they had oswald. watched him get shot and killed on tv. by jack ruby. then we are left with a mystery. so then, and the problem with

the mystery is, it says to us. your country is out of control. it its out of control. because, because, the thing that you would expect to be able to control the most, which its simply the safety and the life of the president of the united states, who is constantly surrounded by armed guards. he's gone. and, oh, by the way, the guy accusing of killing him. he has been murdered. so we don't know what he is going to say. you are left to figure this out. a warren commission, takes a very long time to give an unsatisfactory answer. so everyone is critical, facilities came to play on this. every bed hbody that a theory. by the way they were not called conspiracy theories. they were theories. no one knew the facts of what of this was. so, so -- to be skreepticism no

slide to cynicism. if the became impossible. how many times have you heard the question asked, how different america might be if in 1968, they have have assassinated mlk and rfk. >> yeah, a sophomore question? >> no, no. one thing i do at the end of the bookize go through a series of what ifs. this, this campaign here and this year in american history. has more what ifs than any we can imagine. beginning with the biggest what if of all, what if -- a poet had decided not to run for president. mccarthy was a poet as senator. hiding in his office, writing poetry, not just reading it. while he is, that's the question, is, is, is, you know, what happens at the poet runs for president. because he runs and succeeds in new hampshire, bobby runs. if bobby didn't run. he would not have been assassinated. if bobby had, left the stage on the side of, that he planned to

leave the stage on, that night in los angeles, he wuouldn't hae been assassinated. bobby was to leave this way. he left that way. he is dead. but, mlk, martin luther king jr. assassinated two months before bobby kennedy. we get the most mohorrendous writing in the aftermath of that. if those, ifhose two men could have lived. they were the two people, more than any one else, who could have -- held so many parts of the country away from the cynicism that they were inevitably going to fall into. after the assassination of the people. when you read some of the things, that, that otherwise reasonable men, and i think, genuinely reasonable men and women said after bobby kennedy's assassination. it was a -- it is in this book. it was a real discussed, with

america, calmness, pete hamil saying this is the ugly truth of america. assassination. he wasn't reacting just to bobby. he was reacting to martin luther king, two months before. he was reacting to jack kennedy before that. reacting to medgar evers, malcolm x. the lineup of assassination. it was the assassination decade unlike anything else in, in our, history. and so -- assassination goes to the very core of, of, of the basic things you would like to believe in your citizenship. and the very core of the things you want to be able to work, which is yes, a man can stand up in the country. a woman can stand up. say something that i completely disagree with. completely object to. and not be killed. and not be killed. and that turned out to, not be true. you could sit in this country in 196 #, say if you live the life.

that martin luther king jr. lived. and if you devote yourself to, to the rights of man, the way he did, then, in the most, most powerful way. if you do that, you can be, killed, it was very easy to get the feeling in this country if you do that you har likely to be killed. that defies everything granted to us in the first amendment. to stand up for what you want to. but they would kill you for it too. >> if you were going to draw a line from 68 to round numbers, from 68 to -- 2018. a political line. what does that look like just on the politics? >> all our kcurrent political dynamics were set and hardened every year since then.

just one exam pple at the beginning of 1968, if i said to you i am a republican. you didn't know if i was a liberal or democrat. you didn't know if i was -- for integration or owe pose e oppos. you knew nothing of me. they used to have liberal republicans. beginning of the 68 km pacampai. george romney. nelson rockefeller. it is extinct. gone forever. literally the last liberal republican standing honoring republican convention stage was on the 1968 stage that was mayor john levey of new york city. so you have the over, the beginning of the end of the liberal republicans. it was basically the end. they were never contenders again. ever, in, in national -- republican politics. so they literally just died off.

they're gone. on the other side. democratic side. >> before you go there. hard to find a mid roderate republican these days. >> they're gone. nixon intended to drive the party right in a way that wasn't frightening. because they got the feeling that, that the 1964 version, which i have to cover, extensively in here, with barry goldwa goldwater scared the country too much. in the swing right ward. >> moved rightward. win the presidency by less than 1% of the vote. the republican party ever since then has been moving farther to the right ever since. steadily to the right. democrats were afraid of what happened to them on the left.

challenged on the left. opened up the new path. the left side of the democratic party insurgency against the establishment, bernie sanders who was 27 years old in 1968, living in vermont. watches gene mccarthy doing this. not knowing he will do it in 2016 and run that insurgency on the left of the democratic party against the establishment. so he was running the gene mccarthy play. the democrats lose. part of the institutional establishment of the democrat ek party, blames the, the insurgency on the left. which is actually the only thing that could have saved them. i think. in 1972, they lose even worse with george mcgovern, the most liberal nominee any party has ever had, was george mcgovern. he lost terribly. so the democrats' lesson has been to be afraid of their left edge. and, and you can always see it. how the establishment, always

trying to pull away from the left edge. and the republican lesson of yoir68 was to move closer to the right edge of the party. >> try to do justice -- this powerful, and this dense. in 30 minutes. the book is called "playing with fire" the 1968 election, by lawrence o'donnell. great conversation. wish we had mr. time. thank you. >> that's it for tonight. thank you for watching. and as always, keep the failt. and as always, keep the faith. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ for more information on today's show. visit tavis smiley at pbs. >> gin join me next time for a conversation with legendary newsman, dan rather. that's next time. see you then.

thank you.

good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight, part 2 of my conversation with virtual reality pioneer jaron lanier, his new memoir, and his fears about how technology influences our minds and affects our world. more with jaron lanier in just a moment. ♪ ♪