the author is steve kornacki n.b.c. news and this is. horace upon it with great pleasure i welcome him from new york city and steve is a to rethink but you should be very proud larry that's that's really kind to say i appreciate it and i got to say my going back and researching this book about the politics of the one nine hundred ninety s. is a huge part of it not not just not just try to be nice to those here was larry king live you really were the that show in one nine hundred ninety s. was one of the prime movers of american politics back then thanks they will get into the book in just a moment i want your thoughts on donald trump's first term so far how do you assess it it is more than any other presidency obviously that i've seen it's a presidency that is just a total continuation of the campaign. the campaign that preceded it you know there

wasn't that obviously that that typical honeymoon period that you talk about but it wasn't even that it was just from from within days of the election in november two thousand and sixteen you had people out in the streets protesting you had trump fighting back on twitter and in just basically there was no cooling off period really after the election there was no attempt on trump part i think to change his style from the style that he had in the campaign and you set it up there in your intro just total loyalty on one side to him and i think you said absolute contempt or loathing of him on the other side those are things we saw in the campaign those are the same dynamics we have now i wonder how many people have changed their mind at all over the last two years i was against of yours during the campaign you asked me if i thought trump was a racist and i said no he called me to next day to thank me. now i wonder do you want to. you know what i

find so baffling about it in this goes back to the middle of the two thousand and sixteen campaign the moment i always come back to is when he was asked about david duke during the two thousand and sixteen campaign and there's an there's an earlier version of donald trump and it's actually in this book that i wrote because down from ted had sort of run for president in two thousand and david duke was a figure in in the one nine hundred ninety s. and in the two thousand campaign and back then that version of donald trump had no problem coming out and denouncing david duke saying he wanted nothing to do with him no association with him didn't want to be part of any organization that would welcome david duke as a member and you go back to the two thousand and sixteen campaign and there was david duke aligning himself with donald trump i remember i think it was on on my network on m.s.n. b.c. donald trump was on he was asked about it and he was extruding lee has it it stream when i say painfully hasn't to say

a negative word about him he eventually came out it's seem you know later on and said ok i denounce i denounce but there was a big there was a big change there in donald trump between him that it in the one nine hundred ninety s. let's say the early two thousand is when the appropriate to say i think became a big phenomenon there was a change there between that donald trump and the guy who stepped forward to run for president in two thousand and sixteen and i'm curious about it he used to come on my show all its on you know was no room government present member one of the cores you don't want to get the book government shutdown is it ever going to end. this is this is amazing yeah i mean in the gold standard until now if you want to call it that for a government shutdown was was ninety five was clinton gained richen we've had a few others in the thing you've always had with a government shutdown before now was on both sides you had a feeling of urgency that hey this is got to be resolved it's got to be resolved quickly somebody's going to blame who's going to blink and why. i'm noticing here

it really this extends to both sides right now democrats think the politics of this are are breaking their way they are not feeling pressure from their base to end this and trump even though the polls are not breaking his way in this i am not detecting any urgency on his part. to get to the negotiating table to sort of. to bend toward the democrats i know you came up with that offer over the weekend and it was it was immediately shot down and it doesn't seem that he panicked in the face of that the urgency is missing on both sides and i'm starting to wonder if this is not something will go on for weeks more there in the blues your first book what motivated you to write. you know it's i kind of came of age i guess in the one nine hundred ninety s. it's always been a reference point for me just in terms of trying to understand politics as the years have gone on since then measuring things that would that would sort of happen two thousand and four two thousand and eight two thousand and twelve whatever

election i was looking at i always found myself kind of thinking back to the one nine hundred ninety s. as a reference point it was sort of when i. just growing up i kind of first became aware of politics and i started thinking back about it thinking back to that era over the last couple of years as as we've talked about sort of the rise of red and blue culture red and blue america tribalism and it really occurred to me that was the legacy of the one nine hundred ninety s. when i was first watching politics the one thousand nine hundred that was what i was seeing take shape and it all kind of came to a head i think the wars the political wars the one nine hundred ninety s. between bill clinton between newt gingrich clinton and then a republican congress for a lot of the one nine hundred ninety s. all of the political wars that came with that were building toward that two thousand election that election night in two thousand that ended with a thirty six day recount the supreme court you know five to four decision but it was that map it was that map that everybody looked up and stared at for thirty six

days after the two thousand election where the entire south basically was republican the entire northeast and pacific coast was democratic the interior was red and you had it was the first time all the networks it was just by happenstance it was the first time they'd settled on blue for the democrats red for the republicans and that concept of red and blue states that's where it dates to it's not been with us forever it just goes back twenty years just goes back to decades and i think it's the product of the one nine hundred ninety s. and i think we've been living with it ever since to grieve. what we never had rimu nineteen eighty nine. defined tribalism. yeah it's i think tribalism to me and it's sort of the it's the progression we've taken we used to use terms we used to talk about gridlock in the one nine hundred ninety two campaign in this book ross perot you know famously launched his campaign on your show he would always talk about the gridlock of washington then we started talking about you know it was it was polarization that was that was the thing and

now it's the term is tribalism and i think tribalism is just a more a much more deeply rooted form of what we've been talking about since the one nine hundred ninety s. when we used to use terms like gridlock in used to use terms like polarization i think it's become cultural it's become geographic it's become demographic. the parties now mean things very personally to us whether you're a democrat whether you're republican whether you think you're part of blue america you're part of red america it's now part of your identity i think in a way it didn't used to be the poll that really crystallized this for me was in the twenty six thousand campaign they asked folks they asked democrats and republicans they said would it bother you if your son or daughter married somebody from the other political party in both cases democrats republicans you're talking sixty percent plus who said yes it would bother me it's those are the numbers used to get

for interracial marriage and they're now the numbers you get for interpol little party marriage and i think that's that's tribalism we know that it got to be that way how did it get to be that way why did it get to be that way. yet the story i tell in this book is it's the story of it's a collision and it's a collision that basically takes place in early one nine hundred ninety three because two things are happening they're kind of simultaneously two things have been happening simultaneously one is on the democratic side bill clinton got himself elected president in one thousand nine hundred two and that was no small accomplishment for a democrat the at the start of the one nine hundred ninety s. there was this idea that the republicans had a lock on the presidency a lock on the electoral college you know reagan had won the forty nine state landslide bush had won forty states the republicans didn't just win they won big in presidential elections will bill clinton managed to get himself elected in ninety

two so now you've got a democratic president and what he's facing when he comes to office is something that no democratic president had faced before and that was a republican opposition in congress a republican opposition on capitol hill that had been transformed in all those years between democratic presidents in adventurous formed by newt gingrich and newt gingrich was kind of coming up at the same time bill clinton was the late seventy's in one nine hundred eighty s. and newt gingrich he believed in he believed in partisan warfare in congress he believed that was how you define the differences between the two parties because if the white house at the start of the one nine hundred ninety s. was seen as the domain of republicans congress was the opposite they used to call it a permanent democratic congress and gingrich was telling republicans we are never going to get out of prison essentially we republicans are never going to get a prison here on capitol hill unless we spell out clearly in vividly and starkly for americans with the. democrats and that means you don't compromise that means

every day on the floor of the house you are seeking dramatic ways to show gingrich's vision was to show that the democrats are the party of the liberal welfare state that the republicans he said are the parties of the other party the conservative opportunity society it's definition it's contrast it's not compromise . and so bill clinton come to get a democratic president and you've got a republican opposition in congress that's not there to meet him halfway on his agenda that's not there to say hey you won the election you get this we'll take the rest it's there to fight among everything to make contrast as stark as possible and it just sets off it really unleashes a series of political wars over the rest of the decade culminates in impeachment you know one thousand nine hundred ninety eight one thousand nine hundred ninety nine to present i state impeached for the first time since andrew johnson it's that clash between gingrich and clinton that i think basically it forced this country to choose sides who are you with clinton's democrats gingrich's republicans i think

that's where red and blue sort of found their roots steve stay right there we'll be right back with more politicking the book is the red and the blue great read we'll be right back. several from russia and i see. you know world of big partisan movies luxuries and conspiracies it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter

we need to stop slamming the door on the bad shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. aeroflot russian headlights. work little about you the right location but with who will be able through

a. great you'll school in all doubt. because related to story in russia. u.s. veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. were going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either they're already several generations of them so i just got this memo from the secretary defense's office says we're going to attack and destroy the government and seven countries in five years americans pay for the walls with them money others with their lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being killed for a war then surely we can risk some discomfort for an easy mess for us. welcome back

to politicking on talk of the street. problems long before m.s.n. b.c. and n.b.c. news and author of the new book the red in the blue the nineteen nineties and the birth of political tribalism you said that in the story of the ninety's you can hear the footsteps of donald trump approaching. expand on that absolutely happy you can and i think pat buchanan's a big part of the story pat buchanan who challenged you know he was the original television pundit turned political candidate you know pat buchanan got his prominence sort of his national prominence by being on the mic loughlin group in the one nine hundred in the one nine hundred eighty s. by being on crossfire on c.n.n. and then he challenges george h.w. bush in the one thousand nine hundred two republican primaries he does better than expected he runs again in ninety six he actually wins the new hampshire primary the

republican primary in new hampshire he beats bob dole there's this moment where he might actually win the republican nomination the buchanan platform throughout the one nine hundred ninety s. tell me if this sounds familiar at all he said he was he was deeply concerned about the flow of illegal immigration across the southern border with mexico and therefore he wanted to build a barrier a fence or a wall along the entire southern border with mexico he said it wasn't just that he was also afraid of the pace of cultural change that was coming through immigration and so he wanted a five year pause on all immigration including legal immigration the one nine hundred ninety s. remember it was in ninety three bill clinton with with some republican help actually got the north american free trade deal naf that got that through well buchanan said he was against it as president he would tear it up and he would tear up all of those big international trade deals because the american worker was getting a bad deal he said he was he believed in economic nationalism he was going to revive manufacturing he railed against political correctness he was called

a racist by his critics he was called an anti-semite a bigot he was called a hitler lover all these things so that was pat buchanan in the ninety's and he did much better in ninety two in ninety six than anybody and expected he scared the he scared the pants off the republican establishment in one thousand nine hundred six and then he goes out to run in two thousand he leaves the republican party he calls the republican process rig. there's another word we would hear later from donald trump and he goes off to run for the nomination of the reform party which had been created by perot and he gets an opponent in buchanan's opponent the fall of ninety nine in early two thousand for the reform party nomination is donald trump and this is why i said early on there's a there used to be a different donald trump the donald trump who stepped forward to run against pap you can in called him a hitler lover called him a racist denounced him for getting support from david duke all of a so many of the elements that we would now say are trump ism were the buchanan

platform in the ninety's and donald trump back then was calling it racist so it makes his book read by the way in tribalism was the rule of cable news was the rule of social media yeah but i think oh and social media especially but they are they are products of it and accelerators of it and i think both i think that's a big part of the story of this of this book too. you don't really get you know cable news is an invention basically dates back to the one nine hundred eighty with c.n.n. and c.n.n. was a you know it's basically a nonpartisan. place you don't get m.s. n.b.c. and fox until the late one nine hundred ninety s. they don't really have their their full force and influence till a few years later and that m.s.m. be seen its current form doesn't really come around until two thousand and seven or so but i do i do think just that idea that you can wall yourself off from opinions you disagree with you can surround yourself with opinions you agree

with with perspectives you agree with in not hear the other side it is easier than ever through through just the evolution of mass media technology of social media all of these things and i think they go hand in hand with the rise of tribalism absolutely. was agreed heartily recommend that the within the blue. couple of other things we've used him as in b.b.c. and c.n.n. almost constantly slammed by trump. i wasn't used to that news what is it like what's the mood your network and i guess you guess what it's like at c.n.n. to be slammed publicly by the president of the united states here you know to me it's one is like i said at the beginning it's like the twenty sixteen campaign never ended yeah i guess that's part of it is it just it's been going on

it's been his m.o. since he began his campaign since the summer of two thousand and fifteen and it's pretty much been nonstop so it almost that point when he went from being candidate to president elect to president you know obviously it's a huge historical moment it's a major moment american politics but i say that it just to me it's just always felt it's just one long trajectory there. you know where you just you're just used to hearing it but it it's funny too to think back and i think this is in the book to. george h.w. bush in one thousand nine hundred two this is what passed for a blistering attack on the media in ninety two in the closing days of the ninety two campaign bush felt the media had mistreated him i think he said this in an interview with you and then he said he loved the line so much he started using the campaign trail he starts a annoy the media reelect bush. and he was it was annoyed that was that was the word and we took that that was taken as as a harsh rebuke of the news media you know about twenty five years ago and you can

contrast that with with what you hear from the president now we've come a long way what effect do tribalism have on the election of the democrats taking back the house. yeah i mean i think this is this is becoming we talk about the south the old the different places now and in how they identify sort of politically i think the there's a long term trend here that i identify in the book that has really excel aerated in it maybe even reached its completion under donald trump and in the last two years and that's the suburbs that's metropolitan areas all around the country just outside cities it's an area that these are voters generally you know college educated they tend to be more economically upscale they tend to be more moderate maybe it really liberal culturally in the past they voted republican probably on pocketbook issues on taxes on things like that but democrats have been eyeing them

for a long time they've made inroads here and there and to me that's the biggest single story of the twenty eight hundred midterms was it looked to me like there was all this talk that you have a did you have a big blue wave or not what i saw was just a bunch of waves that watched over suburbs. outside cities all over the country whether it was detroit kansas city denver los angeles washington d.c. atlanta dallas you just had one suburban blue wave after another and i think that might be as dangerous to predict things but it's been a thing that's been building for a while i think that might be a thing that for the forseeable future has now just been sort of cemented under donald trump the shift of the suburbs that used to be republican some of them were just republican you know bedrock areas to blue parts of blue america as the biggest single shift our what about tribalism in the twenty twenty campaign. so it's it's very interesting to me trying to ask the question you know can donald trump

get re-elected and you look at his numbers and you look at just the way is his first two plus years of present as president gone and you say it's unlikely when you just look at an approval rating it's in the on a good day a very good day for donald trump in these first two plus years his approval rating has been in the mid forty's on a bad day it's been somewhere in the mid to high thirty's in that range just hasn't budged it's not a range you normally would see a president get reelected in it's also not a president who's he's not taking any of the steps you would normally take to try to break through that ceiling and get to the high forty's get into the fifty's get into those numbers you would normally say a president can win reelection as a tells me he's going to have any chance in two thousand and twenty he's basically already made the decision whether consciously or not he's got to win it exactly the same way he did in two thousand and sixteen and so to me that's the that's the big question going forward i'm not asking myself as much anymore can donald trump get popular can donald trump get a fifty five percent approval i'm not i was asking myself that at the very

beginning of his presidency i'm not anymore the question i'm asking in the open question for two thousand and twenty is can he bring the democratic nominee down to his level his lead that low level in the polls with the high personal negatives all sorts of you know sort of like hillary clinton in two thousand and sixteen if there was one person you know who could have lost to donald trump it was hillary clinton if there is one person who could have lost hillary clinton was probably donald trump i mean you saw how how narrow that path was that he took but i think his his path in two thousand and twenty it basically now involves bringing the democratic nominee down to hillary clinton levels taking everything that red america doesn't like broadly speaking about blue america and getting them to see all of it in whoever the democratic nominee is that to me becomes the question for twenty twenty june point does trump need to suburb. to stay home. yeah it's so that's it's interesting you look at so i gave an example if you look at the map in two

thousand and sixteen pennsylvania obviously an important state for trump he won it by about forty five thousand votes he won statewide in pennsylvania. he did not get routed in the suburbs to the degree. democrats were expecting he would and i think that's i think there's a there is a question there of trump going to lose the suburbs in places like i cite philadelphia or is he going to get crushed in the suburbs outside a place like philadelphia i think that's a key variable because you look at those pennsylvania wisconsin michigan you know the numbers just those three states that made him president his cumulative margin across all three of them was seventy five thousand votes so if you can flip thirty seven thousand five hundred in one in suburbs in those states they could be going for him at the end. can you ever see the ridge in the blue coming

together. well here's here i give you my optimistic in this is not a specific thing this is more just sort of a vision it's it's this if you ask people the one thing ask democrats and republicans right now about america that they seem to agree on is. they both they both say the tribalism has gotten out of control. they both say it's never been worse it's out of control and they both say they don't like it so there does seem to be some consensus that just this culture this political culture that's that's developed right now neither side likes it so i do wonder is there a way that i don't know twenty years from now we can look back and we can say that this period of our political history was an ugly and painful but necessary bridge to something better now what would something better be i've i'm scratching

my head i can't sketch out what that would look like i would only say that if we're hardwired as humans to be tribal and i think we kind of are i think it's something in us we're sort of programmed to think tribally and i think we've kind of gotten ourselves into that mess through our own human nature maybe the fact that we're so unhappy with it maybe there's something about human nature that will help us find a way out of it steve i'll see in the next time i'm in new york thank you so much and it's a great book i really appreciate that larry thank you for having me on steve kornacki the book the red and the blue the nineteen nineties and the birds living through tribalism out now and available everywhere thanks for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at gigs things and don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking.

aeroflot russian and lights. you know world of big partisan movies lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

aeroflot russian and lights. in twenty four to you know bloody revolution to to crush the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it just a lawyer hiccup what if i mean you are liz put the video and put him in the new bill is that i mean you pulling it out of the former ukrainian president recalls

the events of twenty fourteen. those which approach has invested over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. in the united states we proactively require brominated flame retardants to be put into furniture and carpeting among other things and that's resulted in extremely higher levels all the little slimmer curtains in the human bodies of americans as opposed to europeans and that ultimately has affected the cognitive outcomes of literally a generation of american children. and the instant media darling and certainly

a fresh face the newly minted congresswoman alexandria ocasio cortez is rattling some democratic establishment cages she calls herself a democratic socialist and she has some big clients is the democratic party and america ready for a seat. that i'm like i'm sorry. i'm going to. venezuela's president nicolas maduro says he's ready to talk to the opposition need to end the country's political crisis but squandered by their refuses to negotiate . with venezuela torn between my validas and mature reporting executed by washington we look at america's track record of regime change.