Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni with Thane Rosenbaum

welcome everyone to the folks conversation series at the 92nd Street Y you're in for a real tremendous treat tonight our guest tonight Frank Bruni and Brett Stevens I'll tell you a little about them in a moment but it's not just their great writers and their incredibly articulate and handsome but I think you should know that they're friends in fact we're all friends but they're friends which is interesting because Frank as you may know or they're both columnist for The New York Times Frank is a progressive liberal to some degree I would say he would cop to that and Brett is a longtime neoconservative and so now we live in an era in which Democrats and Republicans refuse to speak to each other but yet at the New York Times these guys are pals now I imagined they'll tell me in a second I imagine that one when Brett came over from The Wall Street Journal to the New York Times on a long time ago that first day in the lunchroom was tough it's high school at the New York Times you know Brett went to a table he was sitting by himself the New York Times you know was a little left of center there were people there giggling at him making faces he bared it well Frank walked up to the table and said something like hey buddy is that chair taken and here's a KitKat yeah yeah and that's how the friendship again or maybe you can tell us how the friendship began in a moment well let me introduce our friends Frank as you know has been a longtime writer for The New York Times he's now an op-ed columnist he's had a distinguished career at the Times among other things he was the White House correspondent covered the White House during the George W Bush era he for a number of years was the restaurant critic for the New York Times if you remember this about Frank and he as the author of several books two of which I really adore the one is a memoir that is related to his work as a food critic as a restaurant critic and it's a book also about it's a memoir about his family and their relationship to food and there's this other book classic contrarian book for those who think that it only matters you must go to an Ivy League school in order to achieve greatness and it's a book about debunking that myth and he's also a political analyst for CNN please welcome Frank Bruni and both of them have actually been guests both at the 92nd Street Y and at folks before Brett Stevens again yet another columnist for The New York Times many people don't know that when he was still in his 20s he basically went to Israel and resurrected The Jerusalem Post as their editor-in-chief he was like a Boy Wonder the paper was about to fold and he was working in the Brussels I think office of Bureau of The Wall Street Journal and he took a job and he showed up just on time for the Second Intifada and covered the Second Intifada for The Jerusalem Post and he wanted a back at The Wall Street Journal where he he had a the global view column if you remember that that was a foreign affairs column he was also the deputy editorial editor he was served on the editorial board he's the author of a wonderful book about American and isolationism and the effect that that's had on our foreign policy and he is a political analyst for MSNBC please welcome Brett Stevens so so I made up the lunchroom thing although if it's true but I want to say it's effectively yeah it's effectively true there was giggling that's true but I want to say that on some respects Donald Trump brought you together that he is somewhat response not true not and I wonder why I'm not sure I'm not dating Frank is already saying no I mean I'm not sure Brett would have even been at the New York Times first did you know each other during when you weren't at the time we did a little bit Rachele friends so I would see him at parties and he wouldn't talk to me yeah I'm kidding okay now shaking my head when you said the Donald Trump thing because it is true that a lot of you know people on the right or left side of the centerline have been united in their opposition to Donald Trump but the bottom line on Brett and I don't want to make him blush too much is he's an exquisite writer he is an unbelievably generous and sensitive colleague he loves to gossip and he loves to drink and if he if he proposed to me I'd have to give it serious consideration and you heard that here on the stage of the 92nd Street Y my kids are in the audience otherwise I might just do so there is there is a somewhat of unifying theme with Donald Trump to some degree you're both critics of the president editorial writers what does it like to be in a profession where the president of United States keeps saying that you're the enemy of the people the CPAs are not enemies of the people florists are not enemies I mean this is a very serious thing this is a very serious charge think of all the jobs that the president is not identifying as the enemy of people I mean if it's a lawyers are the enemy of the people that's true but that you knew that but I wonder whether it is is it demoralizing is it incentivizing is it good for your business I mean it does seem to some degree that the readership at the Times is up readership at both of the network that you appear on is up I wonder - some a degree your profession is being completely trashed and on the other hand more people are seemingly interested in what you're doing then perhaps before can you speak to that I mean the answer is all of the above I've been on the receiving end as have many of our colleagues at the times of threats that were serious one in particular that's now being prosecuted and that is a scary thought I mean if you if you know the New York Times building you might have noticed that jersey barriers just went up outside of our building and that's that's not um that's not for aesthetic reasons on the other hand it's a reminder that what we do was genuinely significant that democracy requires more than just the institutional checks and balances stipulated in the Constitution but external watchdogs and that when we are at our best and that is definitely not always the case but when we are at our best we are that we are that watchdog I think I mean it's now become sort of a source of branding democracy dies in the darkness for the Washington Post The Times has won about about truth but the brand's work because they're true because they say something fundamental and it has I mean Donald Trump among his many many extraordinary attributes has done more to revive the news business in the last two years than just about anyone except of course for Jeff Jeff Bezos true-true in many ways possessing but true but Frank we're that's true about the news business but at the same time calling it fake news I mean this is the first time I think in American history that we just keep leaving voguing the language that news is fake facts are not facts truth is not truth there is I guess an irony that Trump was a reality star who believes in fake news but that's a problem that honestly is so much bigger than his charge of fake news about reporting that he doesn't like from the New York Times or The Washington Post or anywhere else I mean that's just part of what I think is a much bigger crisis for us right now which is the way people get their information in their news and the way in which people customize it end up living in these very narrow silos where they're constantly only hearing exactly what they already believe echoed and amplified back at them and that that's the bigger picture and the bigger problem that goes way beyond Donald Trump specific claims of fake news I want to say though I agree with everything Brett said but it has actually been an unbelievably rewarding time to be a journalist because every time he does that from his pulpit whether you're walking through fairway whether you're walking down the street the number of people in this city in particular who go out of their way to tell you I'm behind you I appreciate what you do you know that has been unbelievably touching and I think that's a small part of what we see in terms of the expanded business and all that and I get a little uncomfortable when we have these conversations about what journalists are going through because I think the crisis of the / Trump presidency is for all Americans not just journalists we're a tiny tiny sliver in in the sense that there's a larger danger to democracy I think they sell I think the dangers to democracy are exponentially outnumber the dangers to journalists one my dad look the charge of fake news is corrosive it this kind of demagoguery has been practiced before and it has it has worked before and you know Frank gave a really significant very superb speech I'm thinking back almost about a year ago maybe eight months ago in California the news isn't fake but it is flawed that was that was the title of the speech and we do ourselves no favors when some of the journalism is in fact slanted some of the journalism does contain not fake news but mistaken news there's a there's a big distinction between deliberately faking news and making mistakes which is the same distinction as you know between lying and simply getting something something wrong but when we fall down on the job in public ways and it has happened over the last couple of years that is simply ammunition in the hands of our critics and our best this should mean that we need to really sharp in our game when it comes to making sure that we are being fair that we are being accurate and that we are being responsive to a large segment of America that does feel condescended to buy an East Coast sort of establishment media and feels misunderstood by us as well Frank you actually talked a little about this recently in that essay in your column about remember the story about the kids from a Catholic school that went to Washington DC from Covington yeah yeah and then there was the drummer and they stare at each other down and it was interpreted in Frank's essay was well you know this is a rush the way that we now in fact distill the news itself that there's the speed the immediacy of Twitter that there is a kind of fierceness I think you said of our convictions what a rush to judgment and that's that only burnish is this idea that we can get things wrong when we just don't have the same kind of necessary oversight and I wanna before you answer this question I want to bring out another essay that you wrote it recently did you see Frank's what I now call the Bruni Super Bowl essays there were two columns that had to do with the Super Bowl one had to do with the bad officiating in the championship games and how that that led to a kind of crisis and confidence that we're having less faith in our institutions both pulla and politics and the NFL and then my really favorite one was your Tony Romo one where you said well you know Tony Romo has really now become famous for being able to anticipate the play and that's because he knows stuff and now we're living in an era where everyone with a phone claims to know stuff and a president who really doesn't think that it matters that you read books or read briefing memos and everyone just has an opinion based on knowing stuff and Frank's column was really about no remember the days when you actually had to earn it that you actually have to know stuff before you got it were given a platform to speak so maybe but before he answers the question I just want to give you an insight into Frank Rooney's mind which is when that column appeared he sent a note to me and a few friends saying don't read that column it's so bad I had a million things to do I just rushed it out and what I really said was I was hungover when I wrote it that's what I said but he's editing it and and and and there was and alcohol may have played it played a part and it was one of the very best columns he's written I was just gonna say what does it say about me because I loved that one so because I should drink more so speak to this this response to what Brett said about when we get when we get it wrong no he's I would back up a little bit and I would say in terms of that whole idea of the media Donald Trump came after us with the wrong charges and the wrong ammunition and a fraudulent and a cynical and he knows it's wrong argument but he came after us because we were vulnerable and we are vulnerable for some reasons that are our own fault in making we're flawed not in the ways he claims were flawed but we are flawed in other ways and I think bred to find some of the those ways very very well and what I was writing about in terms of Covington which is among I think our flaws and ways in which we lose the public trust right now is something happens right and before it's entirely clear what's happened everybody's got their brand in their banner I get outraged by this I get outraged by this and they rush to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or whatever to essentially vent the outrage you expect from them based on an opportunity they see for it before they fully digest to the opportunity and figured out whether the outrage is even appropriate to the circuit you're saying it's not just the readers they're the writers themselves are doing it no it's I'm talking about the writer you're saying cuz we as readers we consume what we want to hear right I'm talking about writer reporters reporting in a journalism landscape that is more overcrowded with Punja tree than ever before and that's a whole other discussion because it's cheaper to publish and produce punditry than actual investigative reporting and that's oh don't need a bureau you don't go do research yeah you know you don't need when we I mean the times you know in keeping a robust baghdad bureau forever had security it said I mean very expensive to do that and not the stories that have clicked on the most and it says a great deal about the news organization and its values that it continues to fund things that do not equal cliques but that are about the heart and soul of the news business but what I'm talking about is there are many purveyors of opinion purveyors of things on the on the line between news and opinion who have a particular take they're always giving you and they're out there on Twitter with it and it means they're interpreting all events with a bias but it's not a left/right bias it's a bias in favor of the argument that they're known for and that you press a button and they make and I think the public experiences that as somewhat fraudulent and it doesn't in the long haul or over the long haul earn us the trust of readers and and and viewers and listeners you know one lesson I learned when I was the editor of The Jerusalem Post is that the most stereotyped people in the world and I by stereotype people I don't mean Jews or Palestinians I mean this kind of Jew or that kind of Palestinian they're always going to font they're always going to surprise you if you actually practice journalism you will go and meet settlers who are also like hippie stoners and you know you think oh the settlers they're all these right-wing fanatics but there's always a flip side you will meet Palestinians including Palestinians affiliated with radical organizations that also have their surprises and journalism at its best always has to make large allowances for the capacity to be surprised by the people that you are otherwise most eager to stereotype I think where we go wrong in big ways is when we fall prey to those stereotypes I mean why was for instance the the story about UVA the rape hoax at UVA why was that so readily believed because so many prejudices that we had or at least segments of the media had about white entitled frat kids at UVA behaving in certain ways all of them seem to be confirmed by that by that narrative so people jumped on and said well this has got to be right because this is the classic the classic UVA frat boy and this is how you might expect they would behave and of course this turned out to be one of the big egg on your faces story that not only nevermind damaged the journalists in question or Rolling Stone magazine I think damaged the profession as a whole and it also by the way damaged victims of rape because they would always have to live under the burden well you never know because there was that there was that UVA story and I think this is this is true not simply as journalists but as human beings you always have to look at someone and say I'm expecting this I have to I have to there has to be some large allowance in my mind that they will not be the people who will conform to the stereotype that I had about them and I might add going to the times destroyed a great many stereotypes I had harbored when I was at The Wall Street Journal good about the kind of people are at the times good you know and to add to what Brett's saying I mean some of the most stereotyped some of the most stereotyped people in America by journalists are Trump voters and some of the stereotypes hold true but some Donen I mean I remember him it's one of the reasons why it's important to get out there I remember going to an early Trump rally in South Carolina just before its primary and spending a couple of hours there interviewing the voters who'd come and each of those people their take on reality wasn't the same as mine it wouldn't have been the same as Brett Caesar but each of them had a specific and thought out reason why they found Donald Trump attractive and none of those reasons fit neatly into the stereotype of Trump voters and I think I mean I've always been under the under the position if we want to under if we want to get beyond Donald Trump we have to understand in a real way and not a superficial stereotypical way what made him so appealing to so many voters because we're not going to reach those voters with someone else unless we understand that well sorry Brett you may remember that when you were on Bill Maher a year ago you responded to this point exactly that there is a kind of liberal blue state prejudice about a Trump voter and that in fact there's other ways to see them and understand him and there's the very point that Frank is making I'm gonna get back to that Innes and later hopefully I want to talk about what you think that the cause of Trump how he became our president we'll get to that in a moment but I want to first go back since we talked about two of your columns I want to get to one of yours that just came out today wasn't actually a column it was a much more extended essay and and wanted I think he very frequently read and because this is the Y M H a people in this room might care about this essay in particular and this is really about progressive liberalism and the politics that is not unfamiliar to Frank and its obsession with Israel the deemed Immunization deluded the legitimacy of Israel and how that oftentimes this kind of woke nests progressiveness also slides into anti-semitism and why is it that those people who are who feel most strongly about justice and injustice and fundamental fairness don't feel this way when it comes to Israel can you just sort of briefly set up that s that column for us today in case you haven't read it well let me answer it slightly different way I think the great fissures in politics aren't really between right and left they're between the extremes on either end I feel far more distant from the nationalistic blood and soil right than I do from anyone on the center-left why because I feel that I am United with people on the center-left with a set of core liberal convictions by liberal I don't mean liberal in the sort of Upper West Side way which you would know nothing about because this is the Upper East Side I mean it in in our in our belief in inalienable rights inequality in the centrality of a kind of Human Rights to to the way we think about the world freedom of speech you you know the list and on the Left there's also a fissure between what I think of as the Honorable and essential liberalism a tradition that goes from from Franklin Roosevelt to to JFK to Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Barack Obama people I would disagree with on all sorts of policy issues but I think incorporate that kind of liberalism and then a far left which is calls itself progressive but in many respects aligns with a kind of I don't wanna say a totalitarianism but a certain kind of attraction to totalitarian world views and and a certain kind of fanaticism and my great fear the reason that essay was was written was that I sense that views on the far left anti-israel views shading into anti-semitic views that have existed on the far left for decades and I think are familiar to most people in this audience are bleeding into the not so far left the idea we'll talk about anti-zionism as some kind of respectable political position well hang on a second what is anti-zionism anti-zionism is not I don't like Benjamin Netanyahu ok anti-zionism is not I'm opposed to settlement construction anti-zionism is not Israel should make peace with the Palestinians what anti-zionism says is that one country and usually one country only has no right to exist has no legitimacy is practicing genocide against its neighbors and I consider that form of anti that that form of politics illiberal and almost invariably anti-semitic and people on the Left I don't know if I can do it but people who are on the Honourable center-left have to stand up as fiercely to that kind of prejudice as I have tried to stand up to the bigotry and nativism that has infected too much of the right so something to some degree it's sort of obvious that if anti-santa Zionism essentially means I'm against a Jewish homeland how can it not be anti-semitic cuz what you're really ultimately saying is well I kind of like the way it was before there was a Jewish homeland I was kind of like it was when was there was expulsion Zand genocides and Jews were safe nowhere and that that was the sort of kind of way I like Jews to be as opposed to saying well look why are they not entitled to a homeland as well and I think to some degree that is sort of a I mean look you know it is theoretically possible to be an anti Zionist did not be an anti-semite I mean there's some sugar in a rabbis here and there who are anti Zionist for reasons that are theologically particular right and there are people who just don't believe in the concept of the nation-state at all fine if you don't believe in a nation state for the Jews don't believe in it for the Danes don't believe in it for the Czechs don't don't believe in it for anyone else but if you're then gonna tell me I'm against the concept of the nation-state and the first one that has to go is the Jewish that so happens it's just just oh by by the way because it's a coincidence as someone once said because you have to start somewhere right someone actually said that a member of your profession academia why didn't Trump target the academics I would have said the same thing about them I do think they're the enemy of the people so so this has to be this has to be grappled with before it assumes a kind of mantle of respectability that it doesn't deserve and that is going to taint the good name of liberalism and the honour of the Democratic Party all right let's talk since we have conservative and liberal let's talk and you've both written about presidential hopefuls in the recent some of your recent columns Frank what what is the Democratic Party have to do for 2020 and we don't have to talk about specific candidates although you did write recently about the governor from Rhode Island she's not a candidate I know she's not a candidate but I'm saying just in terms of the politics of the Democratic Party does it have to be the progressivism that we're seeing now where you're talking about a kind of war on capitalism seventy percent tax rates on the richest Americans free education single-payer health care system in you know addressing all of swage stagnation income inequality or is it possible for the Democratic Party in the year 2020 to take a much more moderate position a little like the Rhode Island governor you were talking about it does seem right now that what Brett wrote about with respect to Israel you know progressivism is in right it's not enough to just say I'm liberal now you want to say I'm a progressive we have a new congresswoman from Brooklyn who actually is you invoke right who's invoking the words I'm a Democratic Socialist imagine did we imagine in our lifetime that someone in the United States was going to actually use the word socialist and actually and that would actually get them elected even in Brooklyn well from Queens Bernie Sanders got there before her I mean a lot and a large it'll to a large degree she's a mirror of those positions by Justice Democrats and all of that it is it is undeniable that the energy and the Democratic Party right now is quite far to the left among progressives but there's a lot of variation there so you know you mentioned like 70 percent tax rates for the highest marginal that sounds big today but if you go back to the Eisenhower years and those were not considered liberal years you will find top marginal tax rates like that when you look at what Elizabeth Warren is proposing in terms of her wealth tax and where it kicks in I think it's at ten million dollars or something I mean some of those ideas aren't in an era of income inequality is profound as ours right now some of those ideas actually kind of have a lot of thought behind them a lot of merit they're not quite class warfare but they get lumped in with other things those things compared to some of the stuff you saw in the green New Deal night and day you know and I do worry a little bit you know you ask where this is all going I do worry a little bit that when you give the Republican Party when you give Donald Trump a document with as much pie in the sky far less stuff in it as the green New Deal has you have essentially like it feels to me like a big kick me sign you know there's been a lot of press over the last couple of days to give you one example over the fact that it got edited out at the last minute but when Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and others sent out the fact sheet about the green new deal before the resolution was introduced it had a phrase that said there should be a guaranteed income for anyone who can't work or is unwilling to work right this phrase unwilling to work got a lot of press yet someone had the good sense and people are still kind of doing the investigative work about this somebody had the good sense at the last minute to take it out of the actual resolution but hours beforehand when the fact sheet was distributed it was there I see phrases like making sure there's a job or a guaranteed income or whatever for people who are unwilling to work that's the kick me sign I'm talking about I think the Democrats will end up nominating someone who would qualify as progressive the question is is it going to be 70 percent top marginal rate you know mill you know ultra millionaires tax progressive or is it going to be some of this other stuff I don't think it's going to be some of this other stuff because at the end of the day I think Democrats want to win and I think there are more sensible ones than ones living in a utopia Bret I actually think you've renounced your membership in the Republican Party I don't feel like I can support a party that nominates and defends Roy Moore as a candidate for Senate okay so so for them III really the pedophilia is one of those red line that you will not cross but in order to seduce you back I'm wondering what does the Republican Party need to do and I'm wondering in some ways because there are some things this is gonna be hard you might you may find this upsetting but there probably are some things that Donald Trump is done that you support yeah I mean right deregulation tax cuts the appointment of some conservative justices perhaps you know I would think - up until recently there was a soaring stock market so is it really just a wall that's the problem and a magnet and if we could just stop focusing on immigration we could find a moderate Republican who could somehow unseat this president or is there no chance that this president will not be running for president in 2020 once had a girlfriend who defended mouths a tongue by saying well he got rid of foot-binding and introduced wooden chopsticks which were much more hygena and i was like and he murdered seventy million people so I mean look I have supported Trump when he got out of the Iran deal very controversial II I supported Brett Kavanaugh I supported the move well done now they were that he actually had there's two things there's one thing that I know these guys had in common they're both prep school boys on financial I'll tell you why I wanted to mention because remember in that Kavanagh there was one of those Brett Stevens columns about that now that we're demonizing people that went to prep school let me tell you things that I learned in prep school well I mean the prep school look every prep school is is obviously different I didn't go to go to his at the prep school I attended I was taught by wonderful progressive teachers who were keen to emphasize the importance of tolerance and thinking about the privileges that we enjoyed that so many others did it it was actually coming I came from Mexico City which is a really stratified society with with huge and and almost insurmountable class class differences and that's in that sense my prep school experience was the opposite of the stereotype of white kids sort of you know wallowing in or not wallowing in but sort of enjoying their their unearned privileges but to get back to what you're saying so yeah I supported I supported Trump on a number of things but you know daniel patrick moynihan made a had a wonderful observation he said you know the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals think that politics can save culture from itself and conservatives think that ultimately culture determines the nature of politics and I think Donald Trump is creating a culture in the Republican Party and in the conservative world that is toxic that is bigoted that goes against the kind of conservatism that I espouse which believes in free markets free trade free speech and an open society that favors freedom and free people in the United States and abroad it's a conservatism that believes ultimately in opportunity and ambition and the right of humble people to rise that's my idea of what it's about and we can argue endlessly about what the right tax rate is for that what the right regulatory scheme is for that but I don't think Frank or most liberals in this room would really take vehement objection to what I just described they'd say oh wait that's liberalism right what's this this is the point I made earlier it's the same thing your no I would quibble with one thing go because I think a lot of a lot of conservatives who have found a kind of a moment of great kind of moral pride in opposing Donald Trump and had no problem with any Republican or most Republicans until Donald Trump are not open about how much happened over the years in the Republican Party that was not far from Donald Trump's racism that was not far from some of what he's done and that actually set the stage for him and I think there are a lot of like exes I think there are a lot of extra publicans who look at Trump and say great now I can tell you we've never been anything like that but I think some of those same Republicans with their silence often set the stage for Donald Trump so I don't I don't actually I don't disagree with you and one of the things that the ascendancy of Trump has forced me to do in the service of intellectual honesty is look back and ask myself why was I missing this stuff you know sort of in the belly of the beast why did I dismiss sort of the buchanan it-- strain of conservatism as irrelevant to the movement and I don't think I mean what Frank is saying is absolutely true really or Willie Horton you have or I mean you can go back and look at all sorts of instances and say that was actually a far more significant moment than I then I realized although when I think of Willie Horton that was in the George HW Bush campaign and I think of George HW Bush is also the guy who signed the Americans with Disabilities Act turned and and I think of george w bush as the man who did more for AIDS relief globally than any other any other president so it's important to ask ourselves well what are our what what are its you know and you're right and I wrote I think two very very appreciative things after George HW Bush died one of which made the whole point that we have to start seeing things in shades of grey that yes George HW Bush was really Horton but he was also some of the things that you're talking about and we live in this bizarre political world we have to either not mourn his death because you hated him or mourn his death to know you know to no limit because you loved him and see in these black-and-white turn terms but you know even even w right what did he do in 2004 when he was running for reelection or what did he let the people around him do he let them put anti-gay marriage initiatives on on the on the books of all of these different states as a way of driving the turnout of people who would be moved by that fervor that's I mean that those are the kinds of Republican tactics the predated Donald Trump and we're in some ways a harbinger that is let me make two points the small point it was Bill Clinton who signed the Defense of Marriage in 1996 I'm talking about 2004 things were changing that's true the second point is what you've just heard in miniatur is why Frank Bruni is the best columnist in America and I'll tell you why because at the heart of every column that Frank writes is a sense of the human it is not ideological PAP it is not some effort to come after his enemies with sledgehammers and beat them to death it is not the marshalling of of little bits of evidence that don't tell the whole story but get the column done and I think in every Frank Bruni column you read you're seeing a human being apply real intelligence to problems that are not ideologically easily defined and that's why I love Frank's column going back I'm gonna add another zero to the check yeah I promise do you so given what you've just said did everyone not was there no no one was able to sort of really diagnose or anticipate how Donald Trump seemed to understand that he could become the Pied Piper of a kind of angry resentful anti-immigration rustbelt I mean how did that I know you've written about how well you know the Democrats clearly overestimated the polling they didn't get the polling right but Trump seemed to know something he seemed to see something in those rallies he seemed to be saying something at the at the various debates at the primary debates and you know I don't think we've ever really yet come to terms what it is that he was able to see and harness that in some ways what Frank is saying kind of existed it was always there but he somehow galvanized it and catalyzed it into a movement that had him elected press the part of it is the moment in time so I was thinking as you were saying that part of it is you know there was anger before the people you're talking about were falling behind before but by the time he came along that anger was at a fever pitch those people had fallen further behind they had felt left out of the conversation and left off of people's radars for longer and so something had become ripe at the moment that he decided to pick it and I think sometimes we give him too much credit for the brilliance and picking that fruit when it had just ripened in time for him to do it but I also think you know you have to not only look at what he was doing for lack of a better word right although I think all of it is wrong right you have to ask what the Democratic Party did wrong right I mean how many times Brett in in in covering politics and talking to you know the smartest strategist whatever do people say elections are about the future elections are about the future elections are about the future whatever else you think about her distinctions her talents whatever the Democratic Party put forward someone who all of the everything about her except the fact that she was a woman said the past right okay well we have disagreement there but we almost never get hecklers I mean that that was a problem the Democratic Party was also at a moment in time when I think rather than putting out first and foremost what felt like a unifying message that was saying here is how we represent all Americans it seemed to be putting out almost like pointillist message is this for this group this for this group this for this group and I don't think that resonated with a lot of Americans and finally on top of all of that we talked about we look at Donald Trump's victory and say we and we say like what grand things can we conclude from it right let's just say for the sake of argument that what Comey did in the final weeks hurt Hillary Clinton helped Donald Trump let's say that what the Russians did on social media had an impact let's say the fact that pollsters were telling all these Americans you don't even have to bother to come out and vote Hillary's got this in the bag at the end of the day do we know that Donald Trump got the kind of resounding affirmation that asking what it means implies no we don't but at the same time you know it's also I mean that's there's been a strain in American history I mean this assert was certainly true and was spoken and written about back during the depression of the concept of the Forgotten man and I think Donald Trump spoke to the forgotten man and I use the word man deliberately in America the sense that there was a world of Silicon Valley billionaires who had done nothing really to deserve their riches other than come up with an algorithm there was a world happening on Martha's Vineyard at cocktail parties there was a conversation taking place in New York and all of it was just leaving millions of people out and they were the ones I think who came out for Trump the sense was and I spoke about this on on on Maher the sense was they were neglected they were forgotten and they were being condescended to you in the process and I think as whoever the next Democratic nominee is has to be extraordinarily mindful of that because they are at least sixty million strong but you know even even with that sense of resentment of the Forgotten Miss there was something really extraordinary from first primary debate right or even before it right because there were these endless Trump gasp moments right what he said about McCain what he said about women right Kellyanne kind where there was blood coming through you know her wherever he said that the next day the next day it wouldn't it wouldn't stop it wasn't Kellyanne Conway he said oh right he couldn't make it again Kelly I'm sorry and so there was this endless stream of this and we saw this and of course and after the Access Hollywood tape everyone said now it's over and so there is something that's fascinating about the level of forgotten estat dovetailed with the level of forgiveness because evangelical christians didn't seem to mind about stormy Daniel hell or anybody it seems like how how much resentment was really there that they were over to overlook things like we were talking about Frank did write wonderful little pieces about George H Bush about you know decency and dignity and humanity and we're really not seeing this you know remember early on in this presidency you know there was this well he's not going to be presidential and his audience said yeah and we don't care we still want that's our guy and he knew that the things that you're listing which are the right things to list as so offensive and they are offensive and they remain so and they are joined by new offenses every tweet every day every week you know people experience those things and this is a this is the conventional analysis but I think it's the correct one as authentic right they people had become so cynical about the artificial canned nature of politicians that the fact that Trump was throwing out that script and speaking in these ways that were supposed to be campaign killers I thought his campaign was going to be over the day and this was really early on before any any primary or caucus or whatever I thought the day that he sat on a stage and said that he did not see John McCain as hero and that he preferred people who weren't captured I mean in any other moment in time with any other person that would and should have been the end of his and in a red state right right red states but I think there were two things one of which is it was all offensive and I don't think people thought that's okay but they thought they thought that's something real and that's someone who's gonna take a match to it and I think it I think this whole thing deserves to have a match taken to it the other thing that I think has so benefited Donald Trump is when the offenses when those jaw-dropping head-scratching i popping moments when they come daily they all start to blur together and I think he actually ends up getting off the hook by sinning so capacious Lee you know well you know that's that's precisely right I mean effectively outrage becomes victim to its own ubiquity you know Stalin had that line the death of one man is a tragedy the death of a million is a statistic well if you tell one whopping lie in your life it will haunt you to you until your grave but if you tell a thousand no one will remember which lies I think there's one other there's one other aspect here that that needs to be that needs to be pointed out which is look demagoguery works okay that's why you have the perónist phenomenon in Argentina or air duan in in Turkey I mean I sometimes see Donald Trump as kind of like the greatest striptease act in American political history which is that not that image anything but that well look I'm happy I'm having dinner afterwards bread I gotta you know the more the more he showed the more vulgar he became the more the people liked it and so there is a fact you know Lincoln talked about the better angels of our nature well he was appealing to precisely the reverse let's talk a little about Twitter sorry about that we're living in a Twitter universe Barack Obama I remember this in 2008 because it was a story immediately after the inauguration that the Secret Service took away his blackberry remember there was a thing called the blackberry and he wasn't able to use one again even though he had been it said he claimed to have been addicted yet two of them and he couldn't have anymore that's certainly we're living in a culture now and again this is important to us because twice a week you appear in you know the paper of record with 825 words I guess I don't know what the actual number is eg wait twice a week and now we have the immediacy of Twitter where people are not you and you're both part of that right you tweet I guess tweet that much I think but where are you you've quit you've come back I don't know where you did put them way down I generally tweet my my columns and I tweet the columns of my friends so what about this culture in which we of the immediacy in which I mean one question I have is you know why why if if we know that Donald Trump feeds off than his neediness of an ego why cover every tweet why just blow him off okay well I just say is it purely for commerce because why don't we just say look not gonna give him what he wants we will cover what's necessary our job is our job I almost never get applause so thank you for that you know you know where our job is the Fourth Estate the public trust that we have to report on the news of things of that have a public of public concern but a lot of what he's is is tweeting is petulance it's not about public concern he's just mad at somebody and we're gonna we're quoting that and we're talking about that on CNN and MSNBC instead of saying that's really not fit news to print and it's not really the news of the day although it is salacious and it is provocative and it is part of the age of Trump but it's unworthy of us well I mean I wrote a long piece just I think a month ago or on this very question and what what the media has to try to do differently as we go into the 2020 election from what we've been doing and what we did that perhaps actually kind of had an influence of on events in 2016 you're you're right I think you'll find that bright if you read Brett and my columns I think you'll see us relying far less on Donald Trump's tweets than than many other journalists do but this has to be this is kind of my chance to appeal to everyone here this has to be a collaboration the reason you're seeing all the stuff that you just bummed is because people click on it and we're living in a journalistic and that doesn't excuse it you know we we have an obligation to be bigger than commercial force isn't the times I think more than most publications is bigger than those commercial forces although we're not immune from them we have an obligation to resist that and we also have an obligation to try to create a journalism that you find more compelling than Donald Trump's tweets and that's also in our interest because Trump is going to go away at some point and you know and and and the Trump bump will go away and in media and we have to be ready for that but this is my chance to say to this audience what I've said to others which is your media behavior is being measured more precisely and in real-time in a way like 10 years ago couldn't happen so you're getting whether it's whether it's on on CNN MSNBC whether it's in the New York Times whether it's in USA or whatever you're getting a journalism an apportionment of time and space that more closely resembles what you have shown you want than ever before so we have to try to resist the easy clicks and the easy commerce but we need our audience if you feel like you're reading too much Donald Trump and not enough John Kasich I was getting that question click on John Kasich enough of you click on John Kasich you'll be shocked to be a media star overnight because all of that stuff is measured as never for Frank knocks on wood when he hears the words when Trump ceases to be in office I wondered a couple questions about that one is given how extraordinary the last two years have been if whenever it is 2020 2024 will we ever be able to return to the way it was or we have we now reached a different level of presidential you know in every way vulgarity provocative Ness sensationalism you know we have we lost ourselves not just the fear of our democratic institutions but the way we hold ourselves well I think that I mean this allows me to complete the question on the Republican Party one of the reasons why I am so vociferously opposed even when I agree with discrete policy decisions is I think in terms of our political culture we cross the Rubicon with Trump the sort of behavior that used to be unthinkable will not only be thinkable it will be precedential with a sea well it will serve as a precedent Trump is just Trump 1.0 soon there's gonna be 2.0 and 3.0 and not only on the right but we're gonna get a trump 3.0 on on the left as well and I fear that the only way we can sort of change the culture is to have what my mother likes to call a non fatal catastrophe which is to say some kind of external event which makes us more serious about our political choices and about the the tenor of our politics and the character of our leaders and we're in many ways a very fortunate nation that we can be so flippant as to elect someone like Trump into the Oval Office in Colombia in Israel places that that face existential crises you can't you can't get away with clown time in in the white house here we can but we won't be able to do so forever and I think that that's the only way that that's really going to shift I mean I I I read some of my fellow my former fellow travelers on the right and I remember them from the 1990s when I was starting out in journalism and if they had one conviction it was that character mattered in office and Bill Clinton didn't have the character to be President and they said this a billion times you remember a book by William Bennett the death of outrage well I think they were right as a matter of fact where are those people now they are they are our new Sophists finding ever more elaborate rationalizations for why Trump's authenticity and common touch our greater signs of presidential character than anyone since George Washington and by the way just one final point every healthy democratic society needs a morally healthy conservative party because a conservative party doesn't just represent a set of ideas it represents a kind of psychology in a temperament that run through it runs through about 50 percent of the population and if you don't have that party you are on the road to fascism Muller investigation either you think impeachment is possibly in the president's future do any of you think that a subpoena is waiting for him the moment that he leaves the White House I hate doing this guessing game I don't think any of us know I mean is impeachment possible tell me what's it gonna be in the quote-unquote Mullah report tell me how much of it we're gonna see tell me when we're gonna see it we just don't know I think he has more to worry about for the Southern District everyone understands what that is that's were there this is an Upper East Side audience listen up all right let's see one last question and we'll take some questions from the audience both of you to some degree have taken contrarian positions that make reading your column so interesting I mean I think your whole college admissions articles which conclude your book is something that certainly goes against the grain saying that you know you don't have to go to an Ivy League college you're at your column from just a few months ago or weeks ago about Joe Biden I hope you don't run your position about that Donald Trump was the worst president for Israel given the fact that so many certainly conservative Jews are so appreciative as is moving the embassy and identifying Jerusalem as its eternal capital and my Second Amendment right to write your second amendment call a column right exactly or of course you know the the talk of Brett Stevens as the climate change agnostic is this who you guys are or is this really the what you think columnist should do occasionally step in in a way that is completely counterintuitive not just how the public is feeling but even the way they would think you would normally think we have the same answer to that but I would never write a column that's not what I believe so I mean if you're asking like do I find a position that will surprise people because it's counterintuitive no if I have one of those thoughts that maybe is counterintuitive or a little bit surprising and it's genuine and I may be more likely to write that just to kind of hopefully remain more interesting sure because I think it's I think it's a treat for readers if they do like reading you I don't know and I don't presume they do like reading me if they don't know exactly what you're gonna say if if you write about football one day and gay rights the next I think that's fun I think that's part of what a columnist can ideally do and that extends to if you have a bit if you have a strong opinion that maybe doesn't fit neatly in what people would say your box is but it is authentic and you feel it genuinely yeah I think you should lean into it I mean I endorse everything that Frank said you know leaving the journal for the times was an intellectually interesting experience because the journal the editorial page and I was the deputy editor of it has a way of thinking about the world and although really what I did at the journal was write about foreign policy I would sort of imbibe by osmosis many of the things that the rest of the editorial page sort of said and thought because these were my colleagues and you sort of outsource your thinking on this or that issue when I went to the Times the things that I noticed is I started saying well what do what do I really think about this and let me let me back up and and think anew and in many ways my views remain largely unchanged but I mean I had what you might call a moment of clarity after the shooting in Las Vegas when I said to myself hang on a second this is crazy we have a second amendment that was written at a time when a skilled marksman could load a musket for one shot for maybe about 90 seconds now you have a mentally deranged person who can get off ninety or a hundred and fifteen rounds in a minute thanks to something called a called a bump stock we do we really not have to rethink what this amendment is and you know I I wrote this column that created this huge wave you repealed a second the Second Amendment because I do believe that the Second Amendment kind of says what conservatives say you have a right to own guns and I'm skeptical of discrete gun laws where one is operative in Connecticut but say it's not operative in New Jersey and and it's a matter of an hour's drive to move gun so I am skeptical this kind of liberal idea oh if we only had better gun regulation within the framework of the Second Amendment we would have less gun crime the real nature of our problem is that we have something like 300 million guns running around in the United States and it is just simply unbelievable that we tolerate 40,000 or so deaths a year from gun violence and this happens I mean it happens in Venezuela it happens in Brazil but it happens nowhere else and what used to be called the civilized world and there's no reason it should happen to happen here and there's no reason we should accept the murder of students in high schools across America as a kind of a stacked blood sacrifice for the sake of Wayne LaPierre and he's a conservative all right let's take a few questions from the audience and we'll say goodnight to our guests given the pressure of multiple columns a week what do you do when you have nothing to say Frank this is like a daily problem yeah thank you he said drink we've learned that that works I mean you always have something to say I mean either days when you feel you don't know if something is urgent to say and you you know you you come up with something I mean I don't know that there's there's any kind of great answer to that but it is it is difficult because there are columns that I'm sure I'm sure many that brett's are and there's some that I've written that I had wanted to write for a while or at the moment I wrote them I felt very passionate about them and I was so happy to have that particular opportunity on that day and then there are days where it's like you know I'm tired and the news just seems like bedlam to me and nothing standing out and you just you just do your best and sometimes it's not that great no I mean Charles Krauthammer is great line about colonizing was that it was like being married to a sex maniac because no sooner have you done it then you have to do it again Brett I am noticing a leitmotif - yes - your metaphors and a stripped eat we've got a striptease we've had sex maniacs I don't want that proposal at the end of the test now I think Frank you introduced this idea for him okay now when you write columns you find it turns out that you find that as you dig deeper into yourself you have more to say you can report I mean one of the greatest reporter columnist again is is Frank Bruni that wonderful column governor Raimondo is one of dozens he's he's done that way but you can also expand the ambit of topics that you choose to cover I mean the most the column of which I am proudest from last year was a column I wrote about a climber named Alex Honnold who climbed El Capitan without a rope and it was it was made into a wonderful film and I thought it was a surpassingly beautiful expression of the human spirit and I'm proud of that calm then all the columns I wrote you know pounding on Trump for one thing or another well you should you should all go read that column I remember that column very well it is from first syllable to last it's a beautiful beautiful piece of thing of beauty yeah last question from the audience we'll say goodnight to our guests please comment on the recent firing of 800 plus journalists and how it relates to digital media now we're talking about your business on the one hand we started off by saying well you know Trump is good for business and yet it's not good enough but not good right now and at some times we are hearing about these I think BuzzFeed just recently reported that they've laid off some they laid off a bunch of people HuffPo laid off of oh for sure yeah yeah so I'm wondering whether there's a way to understand this I mean those that's you know they're they're they're budding journalist out here somewhere it is it is a huge concern because we have not I mean there's this all falls under the same problem which is we have not yet found in the journalism business an economic model to replace what print advertising was write print advertising kept-kept newspapers magazines robustly financed they allowed people to get used to like near free journalism because it was all being essentially paid for by Tiffany and Buick and all these other places and blu-ray I mean Ajax right now in the area of I mean now the whole advertising online thing is different and we are you know we're going to a subscription model we're trying to get readers to pay for journalism more and they and they're not necessarily accustomed to that it's it's a real problem because thus far no one has been able to crack that code and it means that we're in danger of having thinner ranks of journalists than ever before local journalism is almost dead I mean it is really scared we don't talk about it enough but in so many communities in this country small cities there is no one reporting on the City Council there's no one reporting on the mayor there's there's absolutely no check of that college not just government not because right you're saying it's not just because there's no bureau from a major paper you're saying there's no local there's no local paper there's no local paper there's no local paper and there's nothing to replace the local paper people have wondered well maybe citizen journalism maybe people sort of filing FOIA requests from home and having little blogs that hasn't really come to be and I think that's a pipe dream and what happens when you have you know governments all over the country that are operating without any scrutiny oversight or oversight from someone independent I mean we I think will be grappling with that in the years to come but it's something that we don't talk about enough I mean we should mourn the demise of local journalism I can say especially mourn the suffering at BuzzFeed or the HuffPo Walker especially Gawker but these are publications that did a couple of things they earn their keep often by essentially piggybacking off of the work of serious mainstream publications and they also did so by not really reporting news but by inhabiting a world of gossip innuendo and often just rank meanness that demean the profession so to see them see their ranks finned I think in the in the overall ecosystem of journalism is not a bad thing you know the papers that are gonna thrive if there is always going to be a need in any country for really serious in-depth thoughtful reporting because that need for the quality of information and the depth of analysis is is not going to go away and the papers that are gonna thrive in the future are going to be the times the journal the Washington Post say The Economist a few others because they are they are they are giving their readers a high protein not an empty calorie and that's the journalism that we really want to invest in which is to say that if you only have one subscription to The Times it's time to have - I'm so happy you're both friends and you're both treasures of the New York Times thank you both thank you thank Frank Bruni and Brett Stevens everyone thank you all for coming thanks for joining us you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 3,273

Rating: 4.4736843 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Bret Stephens, Frank Bruni, Thane Rosenbaum

Id: 0H6IUaWHGqw

Length: 66min 25sec (3985 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2019