>> and walter isaacson was my editor at "time." >> it all goes back to that.cedented is this? have you run out of ways? >> there are no ways to possibly compare this to anything. i keep coming back to dorothy parker's description of warren harding, another scandal-prone president, who said ultimately he's just a slob. >> yeah. >> and there is a quality of slovenliness to this entire administration from donald trump on down. but the difference is in the 1920s, america was not a nuclear power. the president didn't have to worry about what was happening on the korean peninsula. now we're in a situation where there is still unprecedented power resting with the president of the united states. and from day to day, we have no idea if anyone in the white house is either up to the responsibilities or fails to realize that they're not up to the responsibilities. >> well, that was the point of senior state department official made on this network tonight, that coming off the european trip, it is clear to her that everyone else is playing chess. the american president is

walter isaacson is in there all alone. hi, walter isaacson. >> how are you?ow would you describe the great walter isaacson? >> they're writing a biography of leonardo da vinci. >> it's coming out in october. he'll have to come back to the table. >> a true wise man. we'll talk with him. bloomberg report this despite incidents on airlines, americans pare happy. airfare fell 8.5% and there was an improvement in on time performance. >> "the wall street journal" reports the united states ran a budget surplus of $182 billion in april. part of the reason, a shift in timing on tax collection and refunds during the last fiscal year. but the long-term deficit is projected to rise on weak corporate profits. slow global economic growth and a rice in spending on medicare as the population ages. >>> the stock price of snap fell more than 20% yesterday after the company's disappointing quarterly report. the firm posted a net loss of more than $2 billion loss. >>> the "san francisco chronicle" reports on a legal settlement with former oakland raider cheerleaders. nooerm 100

walter isaacson gave his take. he is the president of the aspen institute. er: donald trump is a disruptor, meaning he is just going to even with his staff not fully focusing on it, just fire people and do various things without thinking through the consequences. to fire comey in the middle of a russian investigation and invite russian photographers in when you meet with the russian foreign minister's and put henry kissinger on is like what are they thinking? david: and excludes selected members of the u.s. press who have been critical of russia. walter: this is very disruptive. if you were kissinger, you would say they were things we should be doing with russia when it comes to syria and afghanistan that we have common interest. this seems almost like throwing all the balls in the air without worrying about where they will land. david: what strikes me is we have a president who is coming in with a more ambitious agenda then we have seen in some time. time, as we have a lot of these disruptions and it is to the plea to get things done in washington when there

and, walter isaacson, he's a historian and writer and president of the aspen institute. ome to you both. walter i'd like to start with you first. you are a native of new orleans. you were there when they were bringing robert e. lee down off his pedestal today. what do you think of their moves? judge i think it's very, very good. these confederate monument statues was not put up to honor these people, it was you put up in the 1880s, 1890s as a way to try to reassert white supremacy. new orleans has had a history, we have just gone through a hurricane, you should honor people not confederate generals,. >> bryan stevenson how does this sit with you? >> i think it's long overdue and a very important step for one of america's great cities that wants to be open and inviting to all the people in the world. i think this legacy of racial inequality and segregation has put a cloud more than anything. these totems are made of concrete and steel and bronze but they have been screaming at african americans for decades and what they have been screaming is this narrative of racial diffe

thank you so much to walter isaacson. good to have you on the program, alter. -- walter.s been live in boston -- they will be talking to startups and venture capitalists. this is bloomberg. ♪ jon: this is "bloomberg daybreak ." we are 24 minutes into the session. session shaping up like this. a lot softer on the dow this money. dropiggest one-day potentially since april 13. -- a little softer on the dow this morning. month 31 closing highs in 89 trading days. peeling back from those records. with the 10:00 a.m. senate intelligence committee will be holding its annual hearing with witnesses including withbi's acting director the director of national intelligence, the cia director and is a director. -- nsa director. joining us now is kevin cirilli. this will be an interesting hearing today. kevin: interesting to say the least. the acting fbi director will testify before the senate intelligence committee. he is certain to get questions about the firing of director james comey. democrats looking to push for a special prosecutor. as of now, no republicans have joined on board

. >> walter isaacson joins us this morning. walter, you've heard our discussion just now. can we frame this as a select group of companies that will show secular growth even as the economies in this late cycle stage? >> yeah. i think what you're seeing is the fundamental technology companies are very good. i mean the fact that they're innovating quite well. take amazon for an example. two big moves in our economy over the next year or so are going to be how do you deal with artificial intelligence and how do you deal with cloud computing. amazon has led the way in both of those. i think you're seeing the advertising market going more and more to places like facebook and google. so what you're seeing is the underlying technology favoring these. >> what many trick are you using, walter? have we set a may trietric? >> it seems the stocks have groan a little faster than any metrics would have it. when you're talking me trilks, you say where is the growth going to be in the next two or through or four years and it's certainly going to be with companies that bring you out of the

and ceo of the aspen institute, walter isaacson, author of "einstein" now turned into a series on national to get your take, walter on the comey firing. it's stunning. >> totally uncharted territory. it does seem to me that there's one clear solution which is you have to have some form of independent counsel investigation. everybody has been tainted. you want to see what connections were there to russia, how did this start, and then i think people would calm down about it. clearly you can't fire comey and say we're not going to have somebody investigate this. i respect senator burr and warner. i think it's time we get a special counsel. >> joe. >> walter, what are you most disturbed about? you have a lot to choose from. what is the most disturbing, that donald trump demanded the loyalty of the director of the fbi and when he didn't get it, he fired him. maybe he lied, that jim comey cleared him three times of any suspicions in the russia investigation when comey's people say with yesterday work but we don't do it the way russia does. >> i'll throw this to you and everybody else around an i

states says that group that was assembled by marshall but also i have to send, you all know walter isaacson's book the great was the ablesten generation of american leaders in our history since the founding. they were particularly distinguished in his view by the quality of the churchill ranked only second to courage, magnanimity. a wonderful tribute. if you have not read that book recently, and you want to feel good by your country, is a very good book to read. marshall served as secretary of state only for a couple of years. he retired again, and one day he was on a fishing lodge in michigan, the same thing happened, phone call from president, marshall took the call, yes sir. washington and truman says to him -- president truman says to him i would like you to serve now the secretary of defense. the country had been involved in the war in korea for only two months, but we need you there. i don't know how many people here remember vividly the korean war or how it was prosecuted or how it ended. elderly, that time, was and in those days, 70 was considered to be elderly. he was tired, he was w

alice rivlin and walter isaacson. >> as we head to a break here we'll take you to wash warm, john harwoodto sit down with treasury secretary steven mnuchin at the peterson foundation annual fiscal summit. we'll take you there live. "squawk on the street" will be back with the dow up 11 points. >>> q&a portion of the house gop leadership, weekly press conference. let's listen to speaker ryan. >> first of all, we want to work on our schedule not on a schedule of the cbo. sometimes the cbo can take a long time but the legislator's schedule is important to us to make sure that we hit our benchmarks and our time lines. we've done that. we have every reason to believe we're going to hit our mark. it has to save $2 billion. the last score was $150 billion. the last amendment was an $8 billion amendment. again we just want to have an abundance of caution to make sure cbo scores have been unpredictable in cases in the past. we don't think that is the case but we want to make sure we dot our is and cross our ts the right way so when we send the bill over to the senate it is not as we say fatal. i c

for more on this, let's bring in walter isaacson and also jeff richards.entlemen, good to have you both. good morning to you. >> good to be back. >> good morning. >> markets struggling with this debate about some arguing the market is narrowing to this sliver of large cap tech and on the other hand you look at where growth is and where cash balances are and others argue it makes sense. what do you think? >> i do think it's surprising that this entire tech boom in the past few months has really focused on the big companies. we'll see more of it this week with facebook and apple as they report their earnings. i think it's indicative of something larger that we should keep an eye on, which is the pace of wholly new innovation. new things coming along like the uber or whatever seems to have slowed down a bit and you're consolidating around facebook, apple, and the other giants of the industry like google and amazon. >> that's what i'm wondering your thoughts on. there's this euphoria but it feels like we're in between major cycles. the smartphone has slowed. t

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when we come back, walter isaacson on same-stock valuations. the dow in the red down 24 points.ack after a break. >>> naela ellis brown has a botted tea business based in detroit. local customers love her product but she wants to go national. she asked for a "your business" makeover and about to break through with disruptive strategy and big time distribution. hey. pass please. i'm here to fix the elevator. nothing's wrong with the elevator. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy? watson. my analysis of sensor and maintenance data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days. there you go. you still need a pass. >>> talked about ford and gm a few moments ago getting auto sales on thursday but tesla up 1.5%, 329 is awfully close if not at an all-time high. >> tesla is part of this overall money flowing into the nasdaq but the autos are up. i notice i think that this call out of goldman to buy autozone may be getting a little traction. maybe the barron's piece about ford. if you're looking for value this group has it. >> not for tesla from

to the moon by the end of the decade and started working to do it and, of course, in the book, walter isaacsonuntry and we get things like gps and medical miracles and on and on and on. >> mike, this shot, look at this shot, from his speech at berlin. >> would either or both of you agree with the thought that john f. kennedy who would have been 100 years old, may 29th, has been glorified and deified post tu mustily, a man of tremendous talent and tremendous flaw, none of which really became public until later, but he was a president who had the one element presidents must have among many elements, a man of history who understood history and understood the presidency, and thus made a larger mark than people thought he would. >> can i take this? >> go. >> david mccullough wrote an essay about jfk as historian, president kennedy was a member of the american historical society. he actually wrote a very good review of john adams' papers, won the pulitzer prize for his book "profiles and courage" and believed knowledge of history was important to decision making. so i think among our presidents he a