. >> guest: the key one is james buchanan, who had a 32 year public affair. the slave owner and defender of slavery, and james buchanan in the course of the relationship of a romantic notion of slave owners being good. james buchanan brings that into the presidency in 1856 and nothing in the southern states passivity and abraham lincoln is left with a huge mess in 1861. america has to go through civil war. >> are some of the story's going to make their way into

>> yeah, and we've forgotten about james buchanan, so it's a relatively tough, tough statement.of the celebrity political culture, and i think the attention here is not because of views he holds but because of his personality, frankly. and i think that it will shake out. i suspect that governor romney -- if history is any guide, governor romney is the front-runner, right? because in the republican party, the nominee tends to be someone who has run before. the only exception from 1960 is 1964 association you' 1964, so you're talking about almost a half century. and i suspect that will be where the race turns out. trump is an interesting figure, like all populist outbreaks. it tells you something about the frustration with both parties, and frankly, with this conversation that we're having to some extent. >> yeah. >> bottom line is donald trump is laughing all the way to the bank and he's rolling up in the media every single day. let's be frank about it. truth is such a scarce commodity in this town oftentimes and that's the bottom line. he's laughing to the bank and he's playing

buchanan, james was a president before lincoln came in. he was gay. you would think that someone who is gay would sort of identify with people who were being oppressed. but he did not. he was a staunch segregationist. and an advocate of slavery. and lincoln came in to the mess which he left. >> how much of what these persons did or didn't do has to do with the times? i hear people all the time make the argument, it's the times people live in. >> let me give you a better example. woodrow wilson, his mistress at the time actually dictated a letter that was sent to the german kaiser. this was before the united states ever decided they were going to enter into world war one. but later when wilson died or not died of a sfroke, when he had a stroke initially but he was just pretty much comatose after the stroke and edith, his wife, with the help of the white house doctor, hid this fact from congress and from the press for like three months. and during that three-month period of time there was a very important vote on the league of nations which wilson was t