 Good evening and welcome. I particularly want to welcome you tonight. I'm Larry Temple, the chairman of the OBJ Foundation. I want to welcome all of you tonight to this program. It's the last program of the year for the Friends of the OBJ Library, and I want to say how grateful we are to all the people that participate and come to these events. Lyndon Johnson in dedicating this library said that he hoped it would always be a forum for the ideas of the day and the disputes of the day and the subjects of the day. He didn't shy away from controversy and he probably would have welcomed more controversy than we have around here anyway. But that's our goal with the programs here and we're going to continue to do that and look forward to 2018. I hope all of you saw that we've enticed Mark Updegrove to come back and Mark Updegrove and Amy Barbie will team again to continue the great programming that they did in a collaborative way when Mark was here before. So stay tuned for 2018. I think we'll have some good programs for you. Tonight we have one of the premier journalists in this country that'll come on this stage. The people that are experts in the media tend to argue, what's the best newspaper in this country? Is it the New York Times or is it the Washington Post? I don't know the answer to that question. I'm sure they're not an expert, but I will say that Peter Baker has been a star at both. Maybe he'll tell us which one is the better. And I'll leave to somebody else to pose that question. But he was with the Washington Post for 20 years and you'll see he's a young enough man. You see the photograph up there. You're going to wonder what age he was when he started but he was there 20 years and he was the White House correspondent during the second Bill Clinton term. He's the one who broke the story on Monica Lewinsky. He later wrote a book on the inside look at the Clinton impeachment in trial that was very highly acclaimed. After President Clinton's term, Peter Baker was assigned to go to Moscow and he was there for four years. And I think we'll get a chance tonight to hear a little bit about his perception of what's going on in Russia and the Kremlin. But he also wrote another book as a result of his time in Moscow. An inside look on the Kremlin and the development of President Putin. And that was an award-winning book. He came back and covered the second term of the George W. Bush administration. Again, a White House correspondent for the Washington Post. After completing that term, he wrote another book on the Bush administration and a look in at the Bush-Cheney administration. And because of all that, he became a very highly regarded, highly acclaimed writer on the American presidency. As you know, he's now with the New York Times and he has written the book on President Obama, Obama, The Call of History. And he has gotten all kinds of awards for his books and all kinds of acclaim for his work. Historian Michael Beschloss has described him as one of the most astute observers of the modern American presidency. Historian John Meacham said of his book on President Obama that any discussion about the presidency of President Obama has to start with Peter Baker's book. And every other person that's looked at his book gives the same high compliment. So you can see his peers think is highly of him as we do in having him here tonight. So I want to tell you that it's a great treat for us to have him here. And he will be, I won't say interviewed, but he'll engage in a discussion with Elizabeth Christian. Elizabeth Christian is the president of the LBJ Foundation, but she's a heck of a lot more than that. She's one of the leading citizens of this community. She has a very substantial and ever growing. Every time I look around it, it gets bigger and bigger, a public relations firm. And if you look around this community, if you see anything good happening in Austin, you'll see Elizabeth Christian's fingerprints all over it. So would you please welcome Peter Baker and Elizabeth Christian? Well, thank you, Peter. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It's a slow news week, you know, I'm bored. Glad to be in Austin, huh? Yeah, you know, they say, when can you come down? It's not busy. I said, let's just not even bother to try to figure that out. We'll talk about Jerusalem later. You know, friends, I thought about should I kind of bury the lead and talk about the book first or should we jump straight to everybody's favorite topic, our 45th president. But I think I am going to bury the lead just a little bit and we're going to talk about this terrific book. Really, it is, if y'all haven't read it, it's a big, beautiful book. You can see pictures that are just stunning and take you back the full nine years. It is well worth reading. There was a very strong review in the Sunday New York Times book review by James Goodman and he captured your tone so perfectly. He says that Peter is neither a fanboy nor a debunker. And I thought that was high praise for any author but I also wondered how you maintain that tone with about a president whom you clearly admire. Well, thank you, first of all, thank you very much for having me here. It's such a great treat and a great honor to be part of the LBJ Library program. And I've been here before and it's always been one of my favorite places to visit. And because it's such a great team starting with Elizabeth here and Larry was obviously over the top, generous. And I'm very glad that Mark Updegro was coming back, my good friend, who's got his own book, which you haven't, if you haven't read it yet, please buy it. The Lash Republicans, it's on the two bushes. It's remarkable. How do you keep, well, the truth is, you know, I've done this now for long enough that I find that it's not hard to keep a neutral position about a politician because I find them to be fascinating, but also human. I don't look at them as idols or sports stars or people to admire. I look at them as individuals who have their strengths and their flaws. And I grew up in Washington. I've lived in Washington basically my whole life. And one thing I've discovered is in the swamp, there are a lot of swamp dwellers, but the truth is the vast majority of people in politics are good people who want to do the right thing, who also have other motives from time to time, who make mistakes or who are driven by cynicism moments or what have you. But that broadly, I like people in politics. I like Republicans. I like Democrats. And it's my job to tell people the three-dimensional truth, which means that if they mess up, it's my job to write that. And it's my job to try to analyze them as fully and contextually as possible without taking sides. So I look at President Obama the same way I looked at President, George W. Bush in the same way I looked at President Bill Clinton, which is, you know, they're complicated people. Well, you left Trump off that list. Well, I'm working on Trump. He's still there. We're still there, yeah? He's a work in progress. There was a particularly moving sentence in that review. Mr. Goodman said, very likely, not since tributes to the assassinated John F. Kennedy will a book of photographs of a president so recently departed, make millions of Americans want to cry. Well, it's not our goal to make people cry. If you want to cry, that's fine. You may have achieved that, though. But why don't you talk for a minute about President Obama? You call him an enigma in your book. One of the things that makes me really fascinated by President Obama is we don't really understand him. A lot of presidents are open books to some extent. You know, President Johnson, just to cite an example, the larger-than-life character. And one of the things I've always found about Johnson is he's a very complicated, interesting character. Nixon, very complicated, interesting. Clinton, very complicated, interesting. But President Obama holds back, right? He is as a personality. He's reserved. He's restrained. He doesn't show a lot when we were on Air Force One and he'd come to the back of the plane. It wasn't to shoot the breeze with us. He didn't clap you on the shoulder and say, hey, how's it going? There's no chit-chat with him. One time I went and interviewed him in the Oval Office and we sit down and he says, okay, shoot. That's it. There's no, you know, how's it going? How's the Mrs., you know, all business. And I think that, you know, sort of figuring out who Obama is has been kind of a national preoccupation in some ways for 10 or 12 years, right? He suddenly shows up on the stage as a senator for only two years before he starts to run for president. And then everybody begins to kind of like impute onto him what we think we see, right? Either he's this great champion of a new progressive, you know, value, a liberal champion of, you know, the good the government can do in society, or he's a post-partisan bridge builder. You know, we don't have a red America, we don't have a blue America, we have a United States of America. Ultimately, these things, of course, are in conflict and I think people in 2008 when they elected saw what they wanted to see, he himself said, I'm like a Rorschach test. And I think that continued through his eight years and some reason, one reason why people were disappointed with him at times is because they did think he was going to be something that they may have imputed on him that he might not have ever been. So, discovery who he is is part of our, part of what's going to make him an interesting figure in history. Do you, I wanted you to talk a little bit about the kind of poisonous relationship he had with the Republicans and wondering if that, those ramifications are really with us still to this day. Has that set us up for what we've got today? Well, look, polarization is not new in American society. And when people say, look, we're as divided as ever, I say, yeah, that's true, but let's not forget that America has been through periods like this. We had Vietnam and civil rights, which were divisive periods, Watergate, McCarthy. Obviously, you don't have to go back to Civil War to say the most divisive period in American history and politics has never been soft and easy in America. But we are in a period right now where that polarization has really taken hold on the system in a way that I think is more exaggerated and pronounced than we've seen in a lot of years. And it's driven not just by our politicians, we like to blame them and we have every reason to, but it's driven by larger factors too. It's driven by the media. It's driven by the proliferation of outlets and voices and it's driven by ourselves. We should look in the mirror when we increasingly want to be with people we agree with, whether it's on the internet or physically. People now, demographers have come up with a number and that number is 800. Remember that number, 800, if you live in a place with more than 800 people per square mile, you're twice as likely to be a Democrat. If you live in a place with fewer than 800 people per square mile, you're twice as likely to be a Republican. And we don't live with each other anymore. We don't talk to each other anymore. They did surveys back in the early 60s when LBJ was vice president and they said, would it bother you if your son or daughter married somebody from the other political party? And the number was something about four or five percent and said, yeah, that would kind of bother me. Today, the number is in the 40s, almost 50 percent. I don't want no Republican son-in-law at my Thanksgiving table. I don't want no Democratic daughter-in-law messing up my family. We are really, really, really going to our separate corners. And so President Obama governed in those times. He promised to try to bring us together and he would tell you that's one of his big failures. But it wasn't just him. I think it's also us. I think a lot of people would agree with that. I think what's interesting, another thing is here he was our first black president. He dodged that topic for four years and really didn't tackle it until his second term. He did not. Look, he knew the first line in the history book was going to be Barack Obama, the first African-American president. It's inevitable. Of course it is. It's an extraordinary thing. It shouldn't be the first line in any history book. But he didn't want that to be the only thing that the history book said about him. And he didn't want to be thought of as an African-American president. He wanted to be thought of as a president for all people. He did not want to be seen entirely through the race prism. And so you're right. In the first four years, in particular, he really went out of his way not to dwell on that too much, not to call attention to it a lot. And the second four years, it changed a little bit. Partly because he got into reelection and that was no longer a political issue for him. He no longer had to worry about a backlash at the polls. And partly because circumstances changed. You know, we had this series of terrible incidents, these shootings and unrest in certain cities, Ferguson and the terrible event in Charleston. All of these things came along. Even things like the Civil Rights Act event here at the LBJ Library. He came here and talked about the 50th anniversary. I came with him to watch him then. He went to Selma for the 50th anniversary of the march. He went to the mall in Washington for the 50th anniversary of the rally in Washington. And he began to speak out more fulsomely about race in America. But unfortunately, he didn't bring people together much as he wanted it to. And a lot of people were even further alienated. And I think that the numbers in the back of the book, there's some charts in the book along with photos, show this very discouraging numbers of how at the beginning of his tenure, whites and blacks in America were so optimistic about how race in America was. And by the time that he left, those numbers had plummeted. That's a shame. I want you to grade his paper. Early on and when he was running, President Obama made 10 specific promises, fixed the economy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, closed Guantanamo, improved relationships with our enemies, expand health care, regulate Wall Street, liberalized immigration, tackle climate change, end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and change the culture in Washington. Yeah. Okay. How do you do? Well, it's a mixed record, right? I don't know how you have it in front of me. He did, obviously. Yeah. You want to cheat sheet? I want to cheat sheet. I have a terrible memory. Okay. So, you know, he did bring us out of the recession, right? The Great Recession. Now, we can argue about whether the economy he built was strong enough, whether it did enough to end income inequality. But there's no question we took over. He took over the worst economic crisis we had had since FDR and the Great Depression. And on his watch, at least partly through his actions, we can debate how much they were credited with it. We brought us out of the abyss. That's not a small thing, and that's not something that any other president can take away from him. He did not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did pull all troops out of Iraq. He didn't end the war. And I think those two things were conflated. And we ended up back to some extent in Iraq, obviously, because of ISIS later in his presidency. And people argue that his departure of all troops, instead of leaving at least some troops, created a vacuum. That's a debatable point, too. But that was not as clean, I think, and ending as he would have liked. Similarly in Afghanistan, we're still there. There's no sign that we're getting out anytime soon. It's still a problem that eludes easy solutions or even hard solutions. Close Guantanamo, he did not do, obviously, improve our relationships with our enemies. He did arguably do that to some extent. He obviously had the nuclear agreement with Iran. Again, a debated issue, whether it's Gurb Abbott, that he did do it. England didn't tell him not to come over. Sorry? Great Britain did. England would have been more... In England, not only that, I'll tell you this. I had a conversation with somebody that night in Washington who said, watch the invite list for the royal wedding. You're hurrying here first. Watch that invite list. See which president gets invited and which president doesn't get invited. Good tip. I think that's...watch for that. He also did open into Cuba, which is another improved relationship with our enemy. Again, people will debate it, but that he did do what he said he was going to do, expand health care he did, obviously, again, a system that some people considered flawed, regulate Wall Street he did. He tried to liberalize immigration, but because he couldn't get legislation through Congress, he did it through executive power, which is then easily undone by his successor. That's the limits of executive power. Tackle climate change, obviously, President Trump has pulled us out of the Paris Accord and he's reversed some of the EPA regulations. But there's a lot of other things he did. As well, I think they continue to change the overall energy outlook in the country, so it's kind of a mixed thing there. And the Bush cut for the Ritz, to some extent, he had to compromise. He didn't do as much as he... get as much as that back as he wanted to, but he did end them for the richest. And change the culture in Washington, he would tell you is the biggest failure. I suspect that's what he would say if he were sitting right here. Yeah. I want to finish with Barack Obama with a transition because... I don't know if you can answer this, but do you think he would have preferred Joe Biden as the candidate in 2016? Instead of Hillary Clinton? No. I mean, I think in hindsight, obviously, he would have said, well, maybe he would have been better because Hillary had lost. He made a conscious choice that Hillary Clinton was the strongest candidate. He liked Joe Biden. Ironically, that was not true when they first got together. They were not two peas in a pod. They did not get along particularly well. He saw Joe as kind of this goofy guy and why is he saying stuff like that all the time, and it took a while until he kind of warmed up to Biden and came to appreciate that the kind of character that Biden was is just an authentic human being. And I think Biden didn't quite get Obama at first either. They became close. But I still think he thought that Hillary Clinton was a stronger candidate. And she had been through it twice. I mean, she had been through it twice with her husband once on her own. Biden had run twice and only gotten 1% of the vote. And so, you know, she had a better proven record. She had the advantage of being, at least in theory, she would have been the first lone president. So I think he was, I think he was pretty bought in to the idea that Hillary Clinton should have been president. He tried to talk Biden out of it. And I haven't heard anything that suggests he's changed his mind about that. Do you think Biden could have won? Well, in hindsight, you could say that Hillary Clinton was the only Democrat who couldn't have beaten Donald Trump and Donald Trump was the only Republican who could have beaten Hillary Clinton. I mean, Biden is a very, you know, avuncular and likable guy. And so people are today saying, Democrats are today saying, gosh, we should have had him. But he had his weaknesses. And I think it's too easy to try to say, well, maybe he would have won. It's possible. Hindsight makes us all very smart. Hindsight makes us very smart. Very smart. You have a byline, if you all get the New York Times, like we do virtually every day, you're busy all the time. So let's now talk about what you're busiest with. What's happening in the Trump White House? You know, who's the next big exit? What's the next big shoe to fall? It's hard. You have to keep a scorecard. Who's on the outs? Did Tillerson make it through the day? Tillerson made it through the day. But I'm not making any bets about Samara. Samara is a different day. You know, look, we wrote last week that they have a plan for Rex Tillerson's exit. You know, the president took 24 hours until he denied it. The first 24 hours, he didn't deny it. He said, Rex is here, and didn't say anything else. That's not exactly the biggest affirmation you've ever heard of Secretary of State. And then a day later, he said it was fake news. So that kind of reminds me of an LBJ story, right? So you remember LBJ had Hoover as his FBI director. And Ben Bradley, my former boss at the Washington Post one day, he was working at Newsweek, got the tip that Hoover was out. The next day, LBJ calls a press conference and appoints Hoover as FBI director for life. And he walks out of the room. He said, I think it's to Bill Moyers. Do you remember this story? He said to Bill Moyers, you call your friend Bradley and tell him, fuck you. Sorry for that. Larry, do you want to fact check that? I think it might be true. Sorry, language. So it's possible that Donald Trump looked at our story and basically had the same reaction. Yeah. But I still think that Tillerson's position is weak in the administration. It's very likely he's out in the next few weeks. With Flynn turning state's evidence, you know, put your seer hat on, what happens with that? What has he told Mueller that has got him this lighter sentence? Well, one thing you have to say about Robert Mueller is he is not leaking. And so anybody who says they know what he's doing or thinking is not telling you the truth. So I'm not going to tell you something I don't know to be true. I will say that if you look at the charging papers, the papers that were filed, they have a lot of stuff on them, right? They had a lot of stuff that they said he did in terms of his relationship with Turkey and not filing on the lobbying forms and the Russia stuff and so on and forth. And they charged him with one charge of lying investigators, relatively modest indictment in that sense. They're not holding back all that unless they think they're getting something for it, right? And so whatever he has already told them and he had to give them a proffer, I assume, to say this is what I can tell you, must be something that Mueller considers to be important and of value. What that is, I don't know. But obviously, General Flynn was there throughout the campaign, throughout the transition in the first 24 days of the administration. So he does at least have a window into the operations there that might be illuminating. What's your gut? Is it all the way to Trump's desk? Does it include Pence? Does it, you know... I wouldn't want to say any more than we reported on that because I don't know. It just has to unfold. I think we have to wait and see how it goes. Talk about the Trump legal team. I mean, one of them is telling him, you can't obstruct justice. You're the president of the United States. Another one is saying, no, go along. You know, comply. And another one is now claiming to write his tweet. So what is going on? It feels like chaos to those of us reading your newspaper. Well, yeah, and those of us writing it, too. So the other day, my colleague, Ken Vogel, goes to lunch at the steak place next to our bureau called BLT. He sits down at his table with a source, and then the source says to him, you know what's the next table? He says, why? Who? He says, it's John Dowd and Ty Cobb, who are two different lawyers for the president. What a name. Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb. Not the baseball player. And my colleague, Ken, said, really? He says, yes. And so, Ken, of course, is like this. And the source is blah, blah, blah, right? And Ken's like, meh. And he starts taking notes, of course. It's a public place. Yeah. And he hears them basically going on and on and on very loudly about the investigation of what's going on, and just significantly the differences within their own legal team, which is that Cobb has made the case to the president that he needs to do everything he can to cooperate because he's innocent. He hasn't done anything wrong. And if he cooperates, that's the fastest and easiest way to make a go-way. And there are other people in the legal team who are concerned about executive privilege and don't want to necessarily cooperate quite as strongly because they have equities involved in the precedent that would be set for this president and other presidents, whether you give up documents, whether you give up privilege that a president has for confidential communications. And at one point, Cobb started talking about one of the lawyers who had been assigned to him. He says he's a spy for McGann. McGann is the White House counsel. Don McGann. And then he starts talking. And there's all this stuff. And so they're very public in their disagreements to the point where you literally can go to a restaurant and hear all about it. Great time to be a reporter. It's a great time to be a reporter. And this is the second version of the legal team. The first version of the legal team blew up over the summer for all sorts of reasons in which they were fighting with each other and fighting with Jerry Kushner and fighting with various people. So we're on the second generation of legal team at this point. Do you think Flynn gets a pardon? That's a good question. The president, of course, has the right to pardon anybody accused of a federal crime. And there's no limits to that beyond that. But I think he understands that people in the Congress have made very clear that including Republicans, that if he uses his pardon power, they would consider that to be an act of obstruction. Now, you heard this question. Can a president obstruct justice? What the lawyer meant by that is since the president is the head of the executive branch, therefore in charge of the Justice Department and in charge of the FBI, he has the inherent power to decide which investigations should be had and which ones should be stopped and to direct those investigations. Now, most presidents don't do that because we don't believe that presidents should be doing that. LBJ did use the power of the Justice Department, FBI, in political ways. And so did Nixon. Since Nixon, basically, our theory of the case in Washington is we shouldn't do that. The president should keep his hands off. So what the lawyer means by you can't be charged with obstruction means you can't be charged with obstruction for doing what you're allowed to do under the Constitution. But even if that's the case, even if that's the case, impeachment, which is the course of conduct that the Constitution has for, you know, if there's a president that the Congress believes should be removed from office, that is a political action. It's not a legal action. They use the phrase high crimes and misdemeanors. But the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors is an elastic one. It's what Gerald Ford once called, he said in another context, an impeachable offense is what the majority of the House representatives says is an impeachable offense. And both impeachments in modern times of presidents, Richard Nixon, which didn't go all the way, of course, because he resigned, and Bill Clinton, which went through the House and was rejected by the Senate, both of those sets of impeachment charges included obstruction of justice in them. And so to say you can't be charged with this obstruction is to miss the point that obstruction can get a president in trouble. Would firing Mueller be obstruction? Does it seem like he's on that path to try to figure it out? He has under the, as I understand it, and I'm not a lawyer, as I understand it, he has the right to direct the attorney general, or in this case, the deputy attorney general, because the attorney general's accused himself. He has a right to instruct the deputy attorney general to fire a special counsel. If the deputy attorney general says no, then he has the right to fire the deputy attorney general and instruct the next person down in the Justice Department to do this. This is, of course, sounds familiar to anybody who remembers the Saturday Night Massacre, right? So the president has the power to do that. Having said that, this one is a particular hot spot, even for Republicans who have said, very publicly, if he fires Mueller, we would consider that to be, you know, an act of obstruction. Of course they did say, Roy Moore, what a problem. They did say Roy Moore, what a problem. And they still think Roy Moore's a problem, by the way. Well, they are starting to send money to him again, though. Well, the RNC is, which is under the control of the president. But the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is under the control of Mitch McConnell and the Republican senators, is not. They're not, they're still saying, we're not joining that train. Ethics committee. He'll be ethics committee bound. And that they would go, if he gets elected, there would be an immediate ethics investigation, right? I am the daughter of a press secretary, George Christian, and I have long wondered kind of what the White House is like on a daily basis and, you know, particularly, what's it like working with Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Yeah. Well, Sarah is my 11th or 12th press secretary if I've lost count. But she has probably the toughest job of almost any of them I can imagine. She has to try to satisfy a very tough boss and try to at least keep us from, if not being happy, at least from, you know, gnawing at her leg like a dog, which we tend to do. So I don't envy her. I think she's got maybe one of the toughest, if not the toughest job in Washington. One thing she has done, I would say, that has been good, has been to settle down sort of the open warfare that was happening in the early months when Sean Spicer was still in charge. And we were fighting every day over whether the cameras would be on during the briefing or not and whether certain people would be invited to a gaggle or not or whether we might even kick the whole White House press corps out of the West Wing altogether. And that was just sort of unnecessary fighting for no reason, I thought. And that's over now. She put an end to that. Every briefing is on camera, you know, we have them basically every day except when he's traveling for the most part. And she gets up and she answers questions. She doesn't always get the answers we would like. We don't think that the answers are as fulsome as they ought to be. And there is a kind of a friction there, obviously, between us, but there's supposed to be. And so, you know, that's fine. Do you have to work with... Do you get to work? Do you not have to? Do you get to work with Kellyanne Conway much? Do you talk with her much? We talk with Kellyanne, sure, as often as we can. And we try our... We're seeing, I think, more opportunity to talk to people inside the White House than we did in the early months. General Kelly, the Chief of Staff, has been, you know, more willing to talk to us from time to time, you know. And so on. And there are more people who are not talking on the record but are talking to us more frequently than I did at the beginning. I think they're beginning to understand that just doing like that with the press isn't necessarily the only way to handle things and that there is a value to talking to us and giving your point of view. It doesn't mean they're going to like every story. They're not. But the story that has their point of view in it is better than the story that doesn't. Yeah, precisely. So today, big news, Jerusalem news. You were in Jerusalem for a while. I don't think Larry mentioned that. But would you talk to us a little bit about that and give us your perspective on the announcement today? I was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for about five minutes last year. They sent me last summer to go ahead and take over in Jerusalem because we thought that that would be a fun thing to do. My wife was coming with me. She's a journalist as well. And we were looking forward to having a three-year hitch there. And then a couple weeks after the election, I get a phone call from the boss saying, hey, how about coming home? With Trump in office, they needed reinforcements. We needed bulk up. Our bureau has grown in size substantially. Last year, I think we were about 70 people in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. Now we're about 107, something like that. We had four people cover the White House under Obama. We're now at six because it's just such a heavy, high-velocity news environment. So the Jerusalem Newsday is huge. He says that the United States now considers Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel. Now, on the one hand, that seems kind of self-evident. All the functions of government, for the most part, are in Jerusalem. Everybody understands that under any final peace agreement, if there ever is one with Palestinians, that Israel would certainly have at least Westwood Jerusalem as its capital. So on the one level, it certainly seems to be kind of like acknowledging reality. And that's certainly what the Israelis are saying. Why not simply acknowledging reality? Why are you pretending something that's not true? But the Palestinians and the Arabs who support them, it seems like it's prejudging the outcome of something that hasn't been finished yet because the Palestinians also consider Jerusalem to be their capital. And under most scenarios for a two-state solution, if there ever is one, East Jerusalem would be the Palestinian capital. And so there's all talk of protests now and days of rage, and they've upgraded the security at the embassies around the region and so forth. And so there's now a big issue as a result of this. What's curious to me about is not that he did it because he promised to do that in the campaign trail. And again, I think there's certainly an argument as to whether a president should do that. What's curious about doing it is before he comes up with this grand peace plan he's supposedly developing. He wants to have the ultimate deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, and now just taking one of the chips that you have in any negotiation he's taken off the table without getting anything for it. And that's surprising, especially for somebody who thinks of himself as a grand bargainer. Thinks of himself may be the key phrase on that line. I want to turn back to our president for a minute. President Johnson kind of famously took early morning meetings at his bedside, him wearing his pajamas, hopefully the aides having on suits, and then worked grueling 16-hour days. And talked us a little bit about what the Trump day is like. Yeah, that's a great question. He starts off around 5.30 in the morning, something like that, and wakes up, and the first thing he does turns on television. And in some ways there are some similarities in the sense that President Johnson was famous for having the three-set television in the Oval Office. He was very attentive to television. President Trump obviously is very attentive to television too. And he has this sort of like super-duper deluxe DVR thing that takes all the cable channels at all times. And he wakes up at 5.30 in the morning, starts watching TV, and he'll go to CNN for a little while for hard news. Sometimes he goes to morning show, but he just feasts on Fox and Friends. And then he reaches over and grabs that little iPhone. He starts tweeting. And, you know, there's no aid around at that point. Sometimes he'll call an aid first and say, I'm going to tweet this, but most times it's sort of... He doesn't have a cheat sheet from the lawyers? Well, you know, most times not. Like, Ty Cobb, the lawyer we talked about, has tried very hard to convince him not to tweet at least against Robert Mueller. He'd prefer he not tweet about the investigation at all. All lawyers would prefer their client not speak about an investigation. It's really not a good idea. But if you're going to do it, Mr. President, Ty Cobb says, certainly don't attack Robert Mueller and the prosecutors, which he has an inclination to do, the president. And for the most part, the president has gone along with that. And Ty Cobb's argument is, look, you can still get out of this. Why would you attack the guy who's investigating you? Don't do it. So President Trump does actually have a... You know, there is a place beyond which he will not go. And for the moment, that's one of them. That doesn't mean he's not attacking the idea of the investigation as a witch hunt, or the idea of collusion as fake news. He does that all the time. He's certainly gone out there and attacked the FBI. And he attacked the Justice Department with Great Relish in the last week, which, again, is something the president generally do not do. Even when LBJ was unhappy with Hoover, he certainly would never publicly go out there and attack the FBI. It's just... It's not thought to be a good idea for self-preservation, among other things. So back to his day, he's tweeted. So he's tweeting in the morning. Done that? He does that. His aides have tried to get him to come to the office earlier, which would give him less time for tweeting. He says that hasn't happened. They're now coming to the West Wing and to the residence more often in the morning, like you say, in their suits, to meet with him there to get this day going earlier. And then, you know, he spends the day sort of in and out. It's not as rigorous a White House as others have been, but it's more rigorous than it was at the beginning. When anybody kind of came in and out of the Oval Office throughout the day, my colleagues, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, went in there for an interview one time in April, I think, and they're sitting in the Oval Office interviewing him. And over the course of their half-hour, like 20 people come in and out of the Oval Office during this three minutes, including the vice president and the chief of staff. And it's just sort of like... It's like Grand Central Station, you know? This is not a way most White Houses work. That's changed. Under John Kelly, that's changed. It's not quite as chaotic as that was. But it's still Trump's White House. And he still does what he wants to do. And no matter how much John Kelly or his aides would like to have him follow this path or not, he is who he is. He's not going to change. So he goes to the day. He has a TV on often in the dining room off the Oval Office. Even if it's on low or off mute, he'll watch the Chiron's and sometimes get himself all worked up. He'll have his meetings, he'll have his speeches. And by the end of the day, he usually has a dinner back at the residence. And Kelly has tried to organize the guest list so he knows who's there. And if he doesn't organize the guest list at the very least, he's trying to keep track of who is there. And if he's not listened to all phone calls, he tries to go back to people who are called later to find out what was said during the call so he knows what's going on. He's trying to control the information flow. But that's a big challenge for any aide. Does he have the kind of rigor you write about in the Obama book where Mr. Obama tried to be finished at X time so he could have dinner with his family? Does Mrs. Trump join him to the son? Yeah, I think they do. We don't have as clear a picture of that as we do with the Obamas, but yeah, I think he tries to get back there in time for a family dinner. Some kind of family dinner. And his diet's very different than President Obama. President Obama was kind of, you know, he liked arugula and he liked, you know, that kind of food. And President Trump likes a good steak over cooked, slathered with gravy, mashed potatoes, and extra ice cream for dessert. And chocolate cake, right? Wax is poetic about chocolate cake. Like the chocolate cake, yeah. Okay, good. He's my kind of eater, I hate to say. He's probably not. All of us have seen psychiatrists diagnosing from afar that this president has mental issues. I've never seen anything like that. Never has a president had access to social media in a way that the workings of his brain and his personality are just out there for solitude in real time. You know, you're around a lot. What do you and your colleagues think? Is this president mentally stable? And this is when he pivots and starts talking about the Obama thing. Yeah, I tell you about the Obama book, it's a great book. It's a great book. Look, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not a psychologist. I have zero credentials to offer an opinion on that. I will say that, and I think there's a reason why people don't diagnose people. They have never, you know, you're not qualified or if you're not qualified you haven't actually interviewed or treated somebody. There's a real problem with that, I think. There's at least a debate about whether that's a good idea. We have something called the Goal Water Rule, which came up during the 1964 election involving LBJ, in which people said things about Goal Water's mental health and, you know, what was the phrase and the Goal Water phrase was in your, you know he's right, right? Oh, in your heart. In your heart, you know he's right. In your gut, you know he's nuts, right? That was the phrase. And afterwards, the psychological community, the psychiatrist community said, this is not right. We, as a profession, we can't diagnose people we don't really know. So they have what they call a Goal Water Rule, which is that they're not supposed to do that. And there's a big debate today in the community whether that's still appropriate or not because everybody's got an opinion about President Trump. I will say that whatever, I wouldn't presume to judge on that. He is a different personality. He has erratic moments. He is mercurial. He obviously has a sense of fondness for conspiracy theory. I would say he has said more things that are not factually true in his first 10 or 11 months in office than I've seen any other presidents say in a similar amount of time. Not to say, I mean, all presidents stretch the truth or lie, but there is more of all of these things with this president. The Twitter feed is fascinating because, as you say, it gives us a window into his mindset at any given moment. From a journalist's point of view, this is great. We love it. All people say he shouldn't tweet. I'm not among them. I understand why his aides might not want him to. I understand why other people might not want him to. But from a journalist's point of view, we have a greater insight into this president's thinking at any given moment than ever, probably in our history. Think about that. I compare it to the Nixon tapes and maybe the LBJ tapes. Imagine if those tapes were actually played on the evening news every day live in real time. Nixon said things and LBJ said things that at times reflected a pretty dark part of their personality on these tapes that if you go back today and look at them are disturbing. But they didn't say it out loud in front of the public. And the difference is that President Trump does. And it gives us a window in and because of that we all feel free to judge him in a way we wouldn't otherwise. We all become psychiatrists diagnosing from afar. Do you think this presidency is really sustainable? Do you see him making four years? People are all over the board. My friends are making bets. He can be eight years, absolutely. What do you think? I learned a year ago this month that predictions are a stupid thing to make. And I'm going to stick to that. I'm not making predictions. But I would say I could play out all these scenarios. I could play out a scenario where he doesn't finish four years. I could play out a scenario where he finishes four years but chooses not to run. I could play out a scenario where he runs for reelection and loses. I could play out a scenario where he wins. And he finishes out eight years. I think that there's a lot on the left, there's a lot of sort of wishful thinking going on that's not grounded in political reality right now. But having said that, the chances of him not finishing a first term are higher than they are for the average president. One of the most realistic scenarios I've heard is where he actually quits so he can say, well, I quit and then goes and starts some TV station and acts like a martyr. I don't think he's having a fun time or at least as much fun as he thought he was going to have. And so I wouldn't rule that out. But I don't think he would ever do anything that would make it look like he wasn't a winner. This idea of winning is super important to him as you can all see. And I think that any scenario that makes it look like he's being driven out or that he is somehow not successful, he would resist very strongly. So the idea of him resigning in that sense is probably not very high. I'd like to talk for just a minute about something that just seems to be gaining kind of the Me Too movement, the people on both sides of the aisle being accused of sexual harassment and however you want to phrase it. Where do you see that going? That's a very interesting news story. Apparently Al Franken is going possibly to announce tomorrow that he's going to resign. He has scheduled an announcement for tomorrow. We don't know what it is or I don't know what it is. And I think something like 30 Democratic senators have now said he should resign. So that's the floor falling out from under him. It's hard to imagine how he stays at this point. But I'm not making predictions, as we said. It's a fascinating moment. It's we've had moments before where sexual harassment was a big national issue with obviously Clarence Thomas with Bob Packwood with Bill Clinton. I don't think we've had a moment like this where there was such a cascade effect through all sorts of our segments of society. Not just politics but the media, my business, my own newspaper, entertainment business, industry, high finance and it's clearly a moment where everybody is stopping to rethink what we once considered to be normal, what we consider to be acceptable. And I think there's a lot of blood on the floor but I think if overall the net result of this is that in the future people have very clear understanding that some things are not not, not acceptable. That's overall a good thing for people. Now my wife would tell you my wife who is the editor of Politico, she ran a newsroom of 200 people, not a shrinking violet would tell you what she's worried about is the backlash which would mean that women get less opportunity because of this because like are they going to still be invited to a golf game or maybe we don't want this person to be on our team because we might get in trouble somehow and she points out only 7% I think this is the right number, only 7% of 500 companies are women, CEOs are women and so here we are all these years later and we're still so far behind to begin with that does this have a bad effect in the other direction that's a good question. I think it is a good question there was an op-ed in the local business paper that basically said Mike Pence has it right women need to not be with you know men unless they've got other people in the room which I hear is a professional woman, oh cool, good way to keep me from the corporate suite. That would, yeah that's my wife's reaction would be that too is that we were encouraging you know keeping women out of the power structures and that obviously would be a terrible result if that's what ended up happening here. It's early in this news cycle who knows where this is going but it seems fascinating. Isn't it stunning how many of these are out there? How far they fall and how quickly, I mean Matt Lauer is up here and then fired, what happened to innocent until proven guilty but you know he must have done they must have felt that the case was convincing. Yeah they did for kind of our last bid here I'd love to talk about the renaissance that I see happening in American journalism certainly your newspaper the Washington Post under Marty Barron the LA Times is doing superb work I think the Wall Street Journal is doing great work can you talk about that is the cycle of print coming back a lot of the millennials are talking about wanting a newspaper which I think would be great. Did you know what one is? I talk to my child. I say the word newspaper like what is that? Look you know it's I do think we're in a great moment for journalism I think that the Washington Post where I work for 20 years and I will always love the Washington Post I grew up on the Washington Post has made a real comeback and it's a great thing to see they had a couple years where they were having a rough time financially they were in real trouble and their staff was demoralized and slashed and one thing that's happened with Marty Barron as the editor and Jeff Bezos as the owner is they have been reinvigorated in a very powerful way and it's a great thing I say that as their competitor who gets knocked upside the head almost daily but it's a great thing that they are so good it feels like the old time newspaper war the old fashion newspaper war that's a fabulous thing and it makes us stronger I hope we make them stronger and I think we make our democracy stronger you don't want there to be single source of your news it's unhealthy there's no incentive structure to get out good stories and to be more aggressive, to be more ambitious and to be more professional about it so I'm a big fan of what's happening now with journalism and I'll tell you this for the failing New York Times I hope we keep failing like this because our paid readership is up 400,000 this year our stock price at one point anyway was up on like 50% I mentioned how much our bureau staff has gone up so we are failing upwards as far as I'm concerned and I'm seeing it in the ad pages it looks healthy to me now what worries me though is a lot of this is Trump people are fascinated by him they are just absorbed by him and they are captivated by him and it's across the board people are just running to all sorts of news sources because they want to find out what's going on it's like a good reality show he has literally kept the ratings up so that's fascinating but it's also temporary because whether it's in a year or four years or eight years he ultimately obviously will be gone and that does not change the structural problems of our industry and the structural problems of our industry are still there and need to be addressed which is how the nature of information has changed and people getting their information has changed and how we can pay for it so I hope and I know my paper's leaderships are still thinking about that in a big way and trying to be inventive and creative and innovative about how we do our jobs so that we don't suddenly wake up one morning and President Trump is gone and people lose interest and suddenly go away it's bad when you're hoping for a milk toast you know we're all hoping for a milk toast and you guys are saying oh no well we don't take sides we hope for interesting stories and it can be anybody who provides them that's good well this has been terrific thank you so much we really appreciate the time please help me thank you Peter for being here