the comparison with ford that donald rumsfeld makes ita with ford that donald rumsfeld makes it a goodt a good one. what america now needs is a period of relative calm, and a president that can try and speakfor, and a president that can try and speak for, if not all americans but a large number of americans. he's going to have huge difficulties. look at what he is inheriting. packed in the most spectacular way since the cold war, this week. —— hacked. huge challenges with the virus in the us. policy has always been divided, this is not a new development, but it is particularly vicious at the moment. the marvellous thing about american politics is we have just had one electoral cycle and it all begins again. already the republicans are thinking about reorganising for the midterms, coming up, and that is the beauty of the american system. it will move on and it will make it possible to forget, sort of, donald trump. i'm not sure everybody would use the word marvellous! in terms of the challenge joe biden use the word marvellous! in terms of the challengejoe biden faces, all very well for

donald rumsfeld, the former us defense secretary, wrote a book recently, when the center held, in whichped to save american democracy after the turmoil of the late ‘60s and watergate and the corruption of ford's predecessor richard nixon. half a century on, despite donald trump's tirades against the "most corrupt election ever", the electoral college met this week to confirm joe biden‘s victory. injanuary, he will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the united states. jeffrey kofman, you're in spain, as i said, but looking back at what has been happening in the united states, it sounds a strange question to pose, but it's been a very strange period after the election — how close do you think america came to becoming a dictatorship? ask the spirit of francisco inaudible here in spain. there were certainly rumblings. there were moments when trump might have liked something like that, but thankfully, the institutions of american democracy have been tested and have survived. i think it could be overstating it to say that normality will return. the damage to the credibility of the electo

[inaudible] it's on the internet, signed by them by bill kristol, donald rumsfeld, all the people who us involved and they were under war and iraq. why on earth are people inventing conspiracy theories about what happened when you can literally sit there and say here is a group of people who march this argument that after the cold war, america needed to reassert at the world power needed to begin doing so in ira iraq. also heard about donald rumsfeld after 911 commies think that's a conspiracy theory could not a possibly said that. and once we did the research he did he absently said it. it was everywhere was never contested. he always wondered about conspiracy theories. if you want to get really involved in stuff, look at the leverage of power and how things change, it's all right there. you don't have to invent something happening in the basement of a pizza parlor. or the idea that somehow, somebody planted a birth certificate in hawaii. or that anthony found she has started something that was failed by a medical researcher. there is plenty that is right there that you can actually

donald rumsfeld, who literally abandoned u.s.q to do a fool-hearty invasion of a country that led to the death of over 3,000 u.s. service members. this is the guy who said you don't come with the army that you want, you want to come with the army that you have. you know, they were literally welding one scrap armor on their vehicles. dick cheney, another brilliant secretary of defense who first wouldn't invade iraq at the time that saddam hussein had -- there was a u.s. force on the border of kuwait. and then couldn't find a country he wouldn't invade. civilian authority over the military is strictly a positional authority in this sense. general austin will become -- is mr. austin. he is no longer a general. he's a former general. but you know what? we need the care in a guy like that to care and feed and take care of our service members so that we don't have certain situations like we had on the "uss theodore roosevelt" where you had literally thousands of service members sick and it wasn't getting through to the top tier of the

and i think one of the fascinating things, and it's what donald rumsfeld would call a known unknown fort couple of years is to what extent former president trump is going to be a force of active and potentially effective opposition to president biden. >> so that brings me to what he just said. if you want to start his post-presidential time donald trump -- joe biden said, look, personally i don't care. but i think it's sort of an important matter for the continuation of power to have a peaceful transition. do you agree with what you just heard from joe biden that, look, it does matter if he comes to the inauguration in the historical sense? >> i do. i think the way the president-elect trained it it's exactly right. it's both a domestic signal and international symbol these democratic institutions do work. despite the ferocity of the hour, despite our polarization, despite our reflective partisanship and all the social science, all the political science shows how much more polarized we are now than we've been over the last really 40 years or so, that it would send a signal that the syste

american you to reassert its world power and you do so beginning and iraq and that hurt also about donald rumsfeld after 9/11 saying did we get enough to get saddam hussein? .. you don't have to invent something happening in the basement of a pizza parlor or that somehow somebody planted a birth certificate in hawaii or that anthony fauci started something backwith aids who's been uncovered by a medical researcher . there's something right there you can get into. there's an element of it that goes beyond wanting to feel like you know something nobody else does. i think it's partly a sign of people feeling on empowered. i want to say they know more than the experts. that somehow the experts are cheating and they somehow know more just by their own gut sense . that's reallydeeply problematic because as i said to somebody yesterday , experts can be really prickly. they tend to be i think you and i are fairly approachable but certainly i and i'm sure you have had experiences asking what seemed like a simple question to an expert and they treated you like you were the stupidest, dumbest, like you weren