douglas brinkley, what's the parallel here to history?there a parallel here to anything in history? >> well, one is that donald trump keeps enemies list of the press and he has press friends. i mean, it's very nixonian in how he scapes goats and beats up on reporters and then he has the air men choir which coming out of mainly fox news and as we've mentioned ann coulter, rush limbaugh. there has been a weird rule about donald trump, anytime ann coulter chris sizes him he withers. she has his number. it's like -- she challenges his manhood, calls him gutless, other words that i won't say on the air and he folds. he folded the tents -- we had a government shutdown right now -- i mean, with people not -- being furloughed, the national park service alone 16,000 people now furloughed. you can't go visit gettysburg battlefield. i was doing commentary for cnn on bush 41's funeral and telling people to visit the bush library, it's being closed all because of ann coulter as a voice of the hard right and he immediately got rush on the air to say, l

presidential historian douglas brinkley. douglas, thank you very much. i want to get back now to dana bash and jamie gangel. dana is joining us from houston, texas. the bush residence is there. and i believe we have pictures, at least we had pictures of the residence in there, was a memorial being put together there. and i'm sure it will grow over the coming hours. also in washington, d.c. tonight, flags are at half-staff at the white house. and there it is right there, at other government facility, and they will be around the country as we mourn the loss of the 41st president of the united states. dana, you first from houston. the home of the bush residence. give me some thoughts on this president and what we've lost. >> lost a patriot, a war hero, somebody whose global leadership, as doug was just talking about, helped the peaceful transition out of an incredibly remarkable period in time, the cold war, which it was not a sure thing. if there was another president, it might not have happened this way, and lost somebody who was a father and a grandfathe

douglas brinkley is joining us right now.as not happened in a while. the third time of the past four years. what does it say of the level of dysfunction in washington? it tells us how congress has 15% of approval rating and why donald trump are the lowest rating of all time. this is going to be known in history as the trump's christmas shutdown of 2018. he does not have the art of the shutdown pockact. we had a 7% drop in the dow this week and there is all sorts of jitters, he's closing the government and employees closing down parks and memorials around the united states and on and on, it is not good for the trump's presidency. it shows that you can't govern when you do these shut downs. the big question is, is this a five-day shut down or does it move into the january or the stock market continues to go down? >> is this what he promise though when he said he'll shut down washington? >> i don't think it is a promise. all he says is win. i don't see the dow is winning. bill clinton, one was a five-day shutdown in 1995. but in

thank you very much, douglas brinkley.eciate it. >> thank you. >> absolutely. >>> as we continue to remember george h.w. bush's life, we remember that president was not his only title by any means. he was a proud, devoted family man. >> this one was december of '43. my darling barbara, this should be a very easy letter to write. words should come easily, and it should be easy to telling you how desperately happy i was to see the announcement. our engagement. but somehow i can't possibly say all in a letter i should like to. i love you, precious, with all my heart, and to know that you love me means my life. how often i have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours someday. how lucky our children will be to have a mother like you. and then later in the letter, good night, my beautiful, every time i say beautiful, you about kill me, but you'll have to accept it. i hope i get thursday off. still a chance. all my love. i'm ray and i quit smoking with chantix. i tried cold turkey, i tried the patch. they didn't work

host: we would like to thank presidential historian douglas brinkley for being with us this morning and sharing his memories of president george h.w. bush. guest: thank you. host: let's go to sandy, calling for more stint, tennessee. --orriston,en m tennessee. caller: it is sad that i can see why now our country is in the state it is in. when people call in with vile and repulsive remarks, they cannot show compassion for family that just lost a father and grandfather. they want to blame it on our current president, but listening to their comments, our current president does not have anything to do with the hatred in their heart. it is not even to say that not even on one day when we are trying to show respect for former president that passed away, they still have to skew their hatred for the president we have now. host: let's go to samuel calling from new york. good morning. caller: good morning. george w. bush was it -- george h.w. bush was a genuinely decent person. he was the best president ever. why are people saying he is satan? he is satanerves -- incarnate, he was a traitor to th

i'm speaking now with our dana bash, and i want to bring in now presidential historian douglas brinkley. good morning to you. i wish we could be speaking under better circumstances right now, but how will george herbert walker bush be remembered? >> he'll be remembered as one of america's great presidents. he only served one term, but his foreign poly was just amazing, don. the very fact of the matter was he became the president as the berlin wall came down, oversaw in the reunification of europe to make sure it went smoothly, the break up of the soviet union in 1991. he was a wartime president with the gulf war which america won and showed a limit to american intervention and simply liberate kuwait from saddam hussein. and middle east diplomacy -- panama in a successful operation. it's a very large foreign policy record, and he brought together a team of extraordinary people during his presidency to foreign affairs. people that worked for him like dick cheney and coleman powell and others. also, don, he had that great rÉsume of a world war ii hero, the fact he had been with a diplomati

. >> cnn presidential historian douglas brinkley joins me now.was only in 1993 that that exchange of letters or that letter took place. it seems like hundreds and hundreds of years ago on a planet far, far away. >> boy, really does. i mean, the age of civility seemed to have ended at some juncture, but bush and clinton became very good friends. part of it, jake, as you recall in 1992, there was a third party candidate, ross perot, the billionaire from texas, and bush wasn't so kind to ross perot after he lost in 1992 because perot had taken 19% of the vote as a third party and much of that vote, the bush circle, thought came out of 41. he thought bill clinton was the opposition, and he won. he was angry for a long while even until recent times that perot had messed up his re-election campaign in 1992. when they were both out of office in an unlikely but very genuine friendship and did a lot of humanitarian work together, they were political opposites in many ways. two generations, but they reconcile and work together. what do you think was behind

i want to brink in douglas brinkley and neil catiel.se conversations that have reportedly been happening between the attorney general and the president? >> it's devastateingly bad news for trump and for whittaker both. he was installed as the acting attorney general and has always had a constitutionally tenuous claim to that position since he never, you know, was confirmed by the senate. the attorney general is a very very big job. it's a big deal. and this guy was a constitutional nobody, and really the president's lackey, and really the only reason he was put in really for that job was because president trump wanted someone to control the investigation into him. that's what it looks like. and now we're seeing devastating evidence that that is true, that basically whitaker has been the subject of lashing out by trump on two occasions about the professional jobs done by the southern district of new york justice department prosecutors. so look, i think the bottom line here is even if whitaker could have been acting attorney general, even

i want to bring in douglas brinkley and michael de-antonio.does the president actually believe his own tweets? >> you know, i think in the moment when he typing them out, he persuades himself that he believes those tweets. it is almost as if he didn't realize that he has a new nickname, individual one. but that is what i think that we all should call him from now on, president individual one. because he has been implicated in these crimes committed by michael cohen. the documents suggest that he directed cohen. so he is in very deep trouble. when he tweets, he is practicing salesmanship, tells you this is a great car but knows that it isn't. >> but i wonder if he didn't know the truth. he says he hasn't read all the documents. could he be purposely staying in the dark so that he can sell whatever it is he wants everyone to believe? >> i don't think so. i think he is alert to what is in the newspapers. i think the "washington post" and "new york times" are on his bed every morning as he is tuning into fox news. so he is aware of what is going o

here to discuss cnn presidential historian douglas brinkley and michael d'antonio, the author of "the truth about trump." gents, good evening. thank you so much. michael, this entire week people are going to be praising the former president, george h.w. bush. in the presence of this president. so far trump has been gracious. but they're praising the former president for all the traits that trump -- that just don't belong to him. he does not have those traits. restraint. right? humility. >> reticence. prudence. >> how long can he be gracious with this? >> oh, i think he's going to try and hold it together throughout the week. i would be shocked even with donald trump to see him break character. now, he does know how to play a role. i know. i know you're giving me that look. look, the things that mark president bush are things like valor, courage, reticence. the restraint that he showed in the first iraq war. these are you will things that we as americans respect and we know that president trump doesn't respect them. so it is going to be a challenge for him to behave. but the world will

library at mount vernon for the 2018 founding debates program featuring his story and medford, douglas brinkley, and brussel discussing what it means to be american. >> one nation individual was a sense of that we are all together. that is somehow elemental what it means to be an american. >> the american character your and what it means is to be able to improvise. i mean when you look at washington in the dark days of december, 1777 at valley forge. his ability to improvise. to be almost like a guerrilla fighter and live off the land. to do what we need to do to get the job done. >> from the very beginning, not all groups were included in what an american was. certainly, minority groups were not. and women were not. they were not considered citizens. that changes over time. over time, more and more people are brought into the american family. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's you in a. -- q and a. >> former president george h.w. bush has died in houston at age 94. along with being the 41st president, he was a world war ii combat pilot, republican congressman from texas, a party chair

let's discuss, john dean, presidential historian douglas brinkley. come on, guys. imagine -- imagine the witch hunt, oh, my gosh, they started out it's a witch hunt. this never happened. this is ludicrous. it's outrageous. nobody would ever do anything like this, and now, oh, well, if we did it it's just civil. it's not illegal. john, you just heard the evolution of the lines these hush money payments. we've come a long way in one year. the question is, what the hell is next? >> i don't think anybody is going to buy the story, don. just as you've assembled it, others have, too. or will. and it's devastating. i mean it just shows how patent a liar he is and how weak the lies are that he makes. >> doug, what do you make of all this? before i get to you in specs, -- specifics. that's the evolution of just the lies about the hush money payments. there have been lies about so many other things. talk to me here. i mean, you're a historian. this is what you do. have you ever? >> well, there's nothing like him in the sense, i mean, to lie is trump. that's what he does. is

michael d'antonio, the author of "the truth about trump," and douglas brinkley are both here.s just an amazing moment. when i saw that, i choked up at home watching this president. so it is -- i think it's worth, doug, looking at the change in demeanors when we talk about the former presidents, among the former presidents before the funeral started when once president trump arrived, what did you think as you watched president trump greet the ex-presidents and the first ladies? >> i thought it was a little bit odd that everybody had to sit and wait while he did the grand entrance. it may have been smarter if he was there at the same time they were so they could have perhaps milled around although maybe others didn't want to meet president trump. i think barack obama was in the awkward position of sitting next to him, and he had to shake hands. but i don't blame hillary clinton for staring straight ahead. i mean he's chanted lock her up, accused her of all of these crimes in a really brutal, misogynistic fashion, like nothing we've ever seen in american politics of attacking som

. >> so, i listened to an interview with historian douglas brinkley last night and he offered an interestingke on this, that the president will potentially see this shutdown in the context of the 1990s, the '94 shutdown, in which it lasted for almost four weeks -- excuse me -- and historically newt gingrich and the republicans were blamed for it. president clinton went on to win re-election and it kind of bolstered his support. would that be a mistake for the president to see this in that context? >> i think the way he sees it is, there was a recent poll put out that 65% of republicans are in support of the shutdown as long as it means that the wall is sort of the sticking bone at stake. i think this is where he's coming from. he feels like republicans will still continue to support him. another reason why he felt the need to, you know, kind of stand his ground was because of this vocal core of -- this group of republicans in the house who felt like he was giving up too much. i think he feels like this is something that he needs to kind of stand his ground on and that republicans will back h

let's bring in frank bruni, douglas brinkley. gentlemen, good evening to you.ational security adviser on top of 70 hours that he got from his personal attorney. >> right. >> two things. how do you think the president is going to react to this, and if you're in the white house, what are you saying right now? >> well, in terms of how he's going to react, i guess the witching hour for twitter is tomorrow morning, right? maybe we'll have our answer then. i suspect we'll hear the phrases witch hunt and hoax. i think the president has already reacted to this. if you look at what he's done in recent weeks with tweets saying that mueller and his team were bullying witnesses and threatening them and making them say certain things to get off the hook. that's the sort of umbrella prophylactic reaction, you know, advance reaction that's meant to cover the michael cohen situation, that's meant to cover the michael flynn situation. i think he'll just continue that theme of saying you cannot trust whatever michael flynn said in those 19 interviews, and that's a big number tha

host: we would like to thank presidential historian douglas brinkley for being with us this morning and sharing his memories of president george h.w. bush. guest: thank you. host: let's go to sandy, calling for more stint, tennessee. --orriston,en m tennessee. caller: it is sad that i can see why now our country is in the state it is in. when people call in with vile and repulsive remarks, they cannot show compassion for family that just lost a father and grandfather. they want to blame it on our current president, but listening to their comments, our current president does not have anything to do with the hatred in their heart. it is not even to say that not even on one day when we are trying to show respect for former president that passed away, they still have to skew their hatred for the president we have now. host: let's go to samuel calling from new york. good morning. caller: good morning. george w. bush was it -- george h.w. bush was a genuinely decent person. he was the best president ever. why are people saying he is satan? he is satanerves -- incarnate, he was a traitor to th

washington library at mount vernon for the 2018 founding debates program, featuring historians douglas brinkley discussing what it means to be american. >> one nation indivisible was a sense we are all together, right? that is elemental to what it means to be american. >> the american character is what it means to be able to

featuring historians, douglas brinkley, discussing what it means to be americans. >> one nation indivisiblewe are all together, so that is somehow elemental to what needs to be an american. the american character, what it means to improvise, by that i mean when you look at george 1777 at valley forge, they improvise to be like a fighter to do what we need to do to get the job done. includedl groups were and what an american is. minority groups were not. women were not. they were not considered citizens. that changes over time. over time more people are brought into the american family. announcer: tonight at 87, on c-span q&a. announcer: washington journal continues. paul: at the table, sebastian gorka the former deputy assistant and national security advisor staff member good morning and thank you for joining us. we want to get your take on the legacy of late president george h.w. bush. example ofhe is an how it should be done. keyidea you can fill in posts as a bureaucrat and civil servant, whether in china or to become a politician not only the vice president but then president and retain

tonight, on q&a, the founding debates program featuring the heat -- the historians medford, douglas brinkley to discuss what it means to be american. >> one nation individual was in a sense, that we are all together. that is somehow elemental to what it means to be an american. your, american character what it means to be an american is to be able to improvise. you look at george washington and the dark days of december, 1777 at valley forge, the