David Cay Johnston 'It’s Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America'

David Cay Johnston is a journalist author and winner of the 2001 pillow surprise for beat reporting his works include a trilogy called beginning in 2003 with perfectly legal on taxes carrying on in 2007 with free lunch on subsidies and concluding in 2012 with the fine print on monopolies his chronicle Donald Trump's conduct in his books temples of chance and the New York time is best-selling the making of Donald Trump from 2016 he's been called one of America's most important journalists by The Washington Monthly and he has acted as an uncredited source of documents and insight for major campaign reports by the Washington Post The New York Times Bloomberg and network television his new book it's even worse than you think what the Trump administration is doing to America is the subject of tonight's talk please join me in welcoming David Cay Johnston well how nice of you to all come out on this rainy evening how nice of the sponsors how romantic you know they turn the lights down so one of the things I don't want to do is make you leave here more depressed than I suspect most of you are so I will I will do my best to have a positive outlook I am after all a provably incurable optimist because I have eight children so if you have been following what Donald Trump is doing in the news you don't know what's in my book in the news business we tend to cover politics and controversy we don't tend to cover government when the New York Times hired me to cover taxes and the IRS I had people who their voice I could just tell they thought oh my god your career is ruined and I said no no you don't understand nobody's covered it right I'm gonna make people think much differently about our tax system and it is substance with Donald Trump that you should care about not so much his tweets his whose button is bigger nonsense even his racism as what he is doing to our government as our employee as our subordinate I I call him Donald and I have people all the time thinking why don't you call him mr. president and I go because I know it and because we're equals we've just temporarily imbued him with the power to act on our behalf but he's not a king he's not special nor is Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter or anybody else the president United States is our employee and where's boss and we own our government and we ought to act like owners while your ownership interests are being damaged because what has happened is Donald who really literally doesn't know anything when he came into office brought with him really awful people the now the ancient Greeks and I used to teach at Syracuse laws Syracuse law and it's graduate business school the law of the ancient world I taught the property law property and tax law one semester and the Business Regulation law the other and one of the things my students learned in both courses was that the ancient Greeks had a name for a government run by the worst of us the least qualified the most venal the least caring about their fellow man they called it a cactus tock recei and it has sort of a nice tone too you know kaká stock receipt and so who did Trump bring in with him well you can see some of these people all the time there Stephen Miller who you know his high school graduation speech in Santa Monica was a racist diatribe he was mentored by Richard Spencer from not that far from here in Whitefish Montana he brought in Steve baman who says I'm a Leninist by which he means I want to destroy the existing order and that's what they're working on doing for example Housing and Urban Development tens of billions of dollars of your tax dollars every year in many cases frankly not very well spent not very thoughtfully spent but the guy who's the head of the agency I kid you not he has said this publicly he believes that the Pyramids at Giza are greeneries they're not tombs they're greeneries and this guy's in charge of Housing and Urban Development Betsy DeVos heiress marries an heir huge fortune I will say this which travels around the country in a private jet at least she doesn't bill us but has never attended the public school but is a huge believer in the benefits of corporate and religious education anybody if you want to ask about the charter school movement and say well let's talk about Detroit they'll be like could we talk about anything else the end of the world because the Detroit set up what she was deeply involved in it's just a disaster she is confronted with the problem of student loans now for most of this audience like to me when we went to college never gonna need student loans College was free at least if you went in California was completely free and a lot of other places it was so cheap it was irrelevant you just get a summer job and pay for school we now have over a trillion dollars of student debt and a lot of it at these creepy not very good for-profit commercial colleges so Nance Betsy DeVos says we're gonna fix this problem so who does she bring in lobbyists from the companies that made the loans that caused the problem by the way she's an investor did that collection company - student loan debt collection now it's an irrelevant amount of money to her multibillion-dollar fortune but the symbolism is pretty awful the Trump when Trump came in he fired every ambassador now legally he can do that he has a right to do it of course just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or as the Mormons like to say he who must be commanded in all things as a slothful and unwise servant and Donald didn't have anybody to replace these people so you guys aren't saying terrorism whether terrorism we have to be alert for the terrorists but we don't have an ambassador in Egypt or Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Libya and in countries like Australia the most lapdog loyal supporter of America we don't have an ambassador either which means when there are important commercial deals being discussed we're not at the table how many people in this room have ever heard of the RCEP couple of people this is really important to the lives of your maybe not yours but certainly your children grandchildren and other heirs Donald ran for president attacked the trans-pacific partnership if any journalists had said well tell us exactly what it is well you know it's it's trade and it's it's like big it's it's big it's it's like it's soap it's Pacific and it's you know really big I was a critic of the TPP I was one of the leading critics of it because needed to be fixed it added monopoly powers it added corporate powers that diminished human powers all fixable problems Donald kills it he doesn't replace it with anything he doesn't know anything about trade so what does President G do he begins promoting his plan the regional comprehensive economic partnership instead of 12 countries in the Pacific excluding China that was the TPP because partly it was designed to contain China's economic military and political ambitions this is 15 Pacific Rim countries plus India but not us and what are the trade emissaries from China telling these countries well when I was in Australia in the fall to lecture everybody I talked to government officials academics businesspeople journalists the chambermaid who made up my room they were all like well you know we're gonna have to get closer to China and pay more attention to China because that's the only option nobody has done more to help China increase its power and authority in the world then Donald Trump and the Chinese embassy emissaries they go around saying listen you need to tilt away from Washington quit pivoting to them pivot to us you want to be wealthy in the future look at our highways look at our airports look at our infrastructure look at the people we're employing look at the wealth we're creating that country that country it's railroads are falling apart it's it's buildings leak they're not fixing anything and look who's in the White House and they're succeeding because you have no choice it's a quote Donald if you want to have a trade partnership that's what you've got to do last summer Donald went to Poland and he gave a speech and he was surrounded by adoring people because the right-wing government of Poland made sure that anybody who wasn't part of their ruling party was kept many blocks away and anybody with a TV camera who tried to go see the protesters many blocks away got stopped make sure there was no negative coverage and Donald gets up and says oh it's so wonderful how you people love me love me because of course we created the presidency to adore the president right at the very day he's doing this at the very moment he's doing this shinzo Abbey is in Brussels signing a Japanese European Union trade deal so we've got two major trade partnerships going on in the world and we're not involved in it at all and what does Donnell do I'm gonna kill NAFTA there are problems with NAFTA and things we got to fix with NAFTA but a lot of things we could fix but that's not his answer and I want to get Mexican to cooperate so I'm gonna make them pay for a wall please veterans nonlin says I love veterans now I pay a lot of attention that my dad was on a percent disabled veteran whole world war two you can imagine the economic circumstances that I grew up in as a result we're sort of less than terrific Donald goes around saying we're going to take care of the vets I'm mom all for the vets so his first budget proposes that for many disabled vets who are getting $35,000 a year not exactly a fortune when they reach normal retirement age they will be cut to $13,000 a year now it hasn't happened and it's not going to happen but the point is someone who's for the vets would never propose that Donald Trump tells you why I love the cops you know there's so important the police you know I'm there the Democrats intellect the police I'm so far the police so what is the new tax bill do well it eliminated miscellaneous deductions so police officers and firefighters and EMTs another uniformed personnel who had to buy a uniform and had to dryclean their uniforms in the case of cops had to usually buy their own guns and bullets they no longer get to deduct that tell me how this is showing you know your love and affection for the cops now a lot of the stuff in my book about what's happening to our government about how Trump's team not Donald personally because he's lazy he spends five hours a day on the job of being president an hour that's having lunch they have loosed into our government I call political termites and I called met because unseen by the public these people are eating away at the structure of our government they are taking the investment that you have made after years and years and years in the State Department in climate science in controlling polluters in improving public health in running the FBI and they are forcing out the people who are competent and diligent and know what they're doing unless they toe the line that you know as Donald said today on climate change well you know it's getting hotter and colder and there's there's record ice in the Arctic it was record lost ice in the Arctic and this isn't what's being covered and this stuff matters Donald's crazy tweets you know there may be insulting there certainly entertaining but it's what's happening to our government that is going to affect your pocketbook the RCEP as an example they're going to affect maybe not you and I in terms of getting asthma or heart disease or cancer from how the companies that produce toxic have been freed up to dump their stuff instead of clean it up like they used to or segregate it but if you have grandchildren or great-grandchildren they're going to be affected and they're going to be affected even if Donald's out of office next week because it'll take a long time to repair these things the Trump administration stopped posting information about workers dying on the job 4,800 people a year die at work in this country from something doing with their job and the fines are so minor that there actually are some awful employers are just as soon pay the fine then go to a safe practices so shaming these people was a project particularly in the last administration well they stopped posting the notices about these deaths we reported about that at DC report dot org singular DC report dot org which is a nonprofit news service my friends and I started it's mostly volunteer we don't sell your name we don't have ads it's public service and they then started putting them back up for awhile I can't prove that cause-and-effect I can only tell you the timeline but this administration has not posted information on the death of an American worker on the job since August 17th and I have no reason to believe they're going to post anymore they don't care if anything it's this is improper for government to do these things now we don't have to put up with this that's the important message how did this happen and what do we do about it those are the questions to ask and out of Donald Trump become president the American people put in there we chose he lost the popular vote even though he insists he really wanted it was all those illegals but he won the electoral college the electoral college that which was created by the framers of our constitution for a very specific purpose we don't even teach its purpose its purpose was because the framers were so concerned about mob rule about zealots getting loose and were ruining our democracy they put in the electoral college as a backstop so that if somehow the public became inflamed with passion and put in an unqualified crazy person the Electoral College would deny them the office well because we haven't used it for over 200 years at atrophied and the electrodes who had the absolute right to vote this way didn't do so a couple of them did about six of them but not enough so the whole idea of this country is that we choose we decide our fate King George doesn't decide our fate somebody else doesn't we do but we've many of us stopped choosing I have sat in blue-collar bars in Indiana and Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin where I don't go dressed like this I go dressed like I'm a blue-collar guy and some event will happen on the screen and I don't follow sports I'm of the school that if Marx had been more than a hundred years later he would have said commercial sports or the opiate of the masses but some play occurs and suddenly the room is alive and everybody's picking it apart and people will they'll cite you know Major League Baseball rule number whatever and and by memory tell you what it says I was once in a bar where somebody argued that the bartender pulls out the rulebook from behind the bar and says no Jake's right I mean his incredible analytical skill then he asked a question about Paulo I don't want it dirty don't want any deal with it you know that's it sad nothing well that's how you get Donald Trump in the White House not having young people be involved how many how many people raise your hand in this rumor under 30 well that's more than I usually get okay and I encourage you the next time you come to an Elliott Bay books event about matters of politics and economics bring somebody who's younger you know bring somebody kid from down the street college student you know you know you don't have a grandchildren or children of your own here somebody's but bring young people get them to come put the five bucks form for people in America we don't very little we don't pay attention to politics and we don't do it because of course that's what we've been trained to do what's one of the sayings you can't fight city hall shrink am I've written about people my whole life who've done it well I don't have any power nonsense you have the vote the social research shows that if everybody voted if we had mandatory voting like the Australians do we would have a totally different Congress people like Paul Ryan would not have a shot because this country in many ways is much more socially advanced and economically concerned about the same things that Europeans are taking away financial shocks from people so they can have decent lives but a lot of people don't vote or is my best friend who is basically a socialist at heart Wall Street Journal editor it's my best friend you always likes to say screw the poor the poor get screwed because they don't vote you go tell him if you'd vote you wouldn't get screwed and they say now I'm not going to vote screw the poor that's our policy in America and we've done it to middle-class people and working-class people you know the average income of the bottom 90% of Americans in 1967 that's the year I finished high school was higher than in 2012 the bottom 90% of people in America are kicked off a lot of them and with good reason you drive across this country and you can go into little towns all over Nebraska and Kansas and parts of Minnesota and you'll find that you know all sorts of people tweaking on math no jobs place is falling apart we don't have to have it that way we chose to do this some of us chose by not being involved some of us chose by electing politicians but whatever the conditions are in this country there is one absolute to them we chose nobody forced us to elect the people who are in office no foreign potentate came and said you have to be this way we chose people turn to Donald Trump because he took the message in my trilogy free lunch about subsidies perfectly legal about taxes and the fine print about monopolies and distilled from it the basic message and I said in 2012 anybody who runs for president on the basic message in these is going to get elected and that message was Washington has been taking care of the rich and powerful and in many many ways they have passed laws and rules you've never heard of unless you read my books where they subtly take money out of your pocket and redistribute to people at the top and if I could get people to read these books and to understand the mechanisms by which without even your realizing it every single day Warren Buffett has his hand in your pocket the pipeline companies have their hands in your pocket the cable television companies and the pharmacy companies and the land title companies have their hand in your pocket through laws and rules that except for the people have benefited from them nobody nobody knew about they'll get elected president and Donald who I know watch me on TV distilled the essence of that message drain the swamp and so what did he do once he got in office well he took the swamp internat of a federally protected paradise for swamp monsters he ran against goldman sachs he brought six people from goldman sachs into his administration did the exact opposite of what he said so what do we do about this well the most important things going to happen in the history of America since the Civil War will occur in this country in November if we keep the Congress we have Donald Trump will do just fine he may get a second term despite all the polls he might get a second term what are the Republicans told us I mean they're crystal clear about what's going on they will destroy the FBI to protect Donald Trump now I've written lots of things negative about the FBI and political spying and I've exposed foreign agents and written about a lot of corrupt police activities but at the end of the day most of people in the FBI are really trying hard you a good job oh there's a cub all you know there with Hillary and yet the man in the White House is deeply involved with a foreign power I mean you imagine when you were in high school - those of you in the audience who are my age or older if you went to high school in the 40s 50s or 60s can you imagine if you'd had a high school civics teacher said the day is going to come when there'll be a Republican president who will praise the leader in the Kremlin he will denounce the FBI the CIA and all the other American intelligence agencies and the Republicans in Congress will take his side and back him up not all about you but I would have go out of the principal's office and said mr. Jones needs to be seen by a psychiatrist but that's where we are what matters is who turns out to vote in this next election gerrymandering which is how the minority party the Republican Party and I'm a registered Republican with many many years standing manages to be in control is based on some simple math that you can overcome you create districts that are 53 54 if you have to 55% your party and then you take everybody you think isn't with you and you Corral them over here in districts that are 70 80 in at least one case that I know of almost 90% Democrats or people you think will vote with the Democrats well you can defeat a district that's 53 or 54 for 55% you just turn out the vote Scott Walker Governor of Wisconsin remember he had a recall a couple of years ago he didn't get recalled the polling data indicated he could have been recalled you know I didn't get recall because the brilliant political strategist from the Democratic Party and the union's decided they were going to try and outspend the Koch brothers on TV it's nothing you can spend outspend the koch brothers on had they instead gone to people and said hey joe or mary i know you're out of work we want you to come to the polls five o'clock Election Day bring your car we're going to put somebody in the car with you we're gonna fill your gas tank at the end of the day we're gonna give you a couple hundred bucks and fill your gas tank again and we want you to drive people to polls they would have spent 10 percent as much money and it would have gotten them out you got to get people to vote now if you live in the district where it doesn't matter either you like your congressperson and you think they're gonna deal with Trump appropriately or you live in the district where there's no possibility of replacing that congressperson get in your car and drive to another congressional district call their contact people there in advance and work on that district and make change yet if you can't go do it get your Aunt Sally or your nephew Jack or your next-door neighbor to go do it but don't just gripe you know posting notes on the internet doesn't do anything it may make you feel good but it doesn't change anything and we have the votes and it's clear that there are plenty of Americans more than enough to change Congress and why do you need to change Congress because the Republicans will never deal with Donald Trump now Robert Muller's report when it comes out I can tell you broadly what's going to show from my thirty years of knowing Donald he's a tax cheat he was tried twice civilly for tax fraud totally lost the cases had now defensible conduct one of the questions I've asked recently is G did he have the audacity to take a deduction for paying off stormy Daniels and stormy Daniels and the Playboy Playmate I assure you are not the only ones out there she's been doing money laundering for the Russians for years he's done all sorts of things with deals with the Russians that make no economic sense when he sold the the disgusting mansion that was torn down a few miles from our logo to dmitri rebel of love the cover story was rebel love love was hiding assets from his wife now you should think about this run you're wealthy you're having a horrible divorce with your spouse and you want to hide money so of course you're going to immediately go out and pay twice what something is worth now if you want to throw your money away that makes sense but Vladimir Putin was investing in Donald Trump the same way venture capitalists do you invest in a hundred potential successes ninety-five of them lose every penny you put into him four of a make up for the ninety five and then you get a grand slam home run like alphabet or Amazon the Kremlin got Donald Trump Donald Trump is not a loyal American and if you doubt that go home look up the email that Rob Goldstone sent to Don Trump jr. in June of 2016 and read the fourth paragraph as part of Russia's efforts to help now that's not a hey we'd like to help you would you be interested email that say we're already in business together we got a new investment opportunity email and this is an email that a month after it was sent Don Jr said didn't exist Jake Tapper asked him about on CNN that when the New York Times sucks this out finally a year later and Don jr. put it out after that the Trump White House and Don Jr told six different stories none of which can be true all of which are incompatible with each other one of which was dictated by the president United States on Air Force One coming back from Paris and all of which show a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Kremlin and why people are not in the streets over this is astonishing to me it's because Donald is masterful at saying first of all collusion I don't care about collusion first of all collisions not a crime it's a conspiracy by a foreign power to put its guy in the White House in which he was a willing participant Muller's reports going to be really devastating but without public hearings the public isn't going to be ready for it when Watergate happened it was dismissed for a long time as and then we had Sam Ervin a senator from North Carolina nice old country lawyer saying who suddenly realized he was going to be in the history books and by golly his grandchildren are not going to read anything about him except that he was an American hero and patriot and those hearings went on night day at well most of us watched him at night on PBS but day after day after day after day and bit by bit people begin to learn what was going on in the Nixon White House and at the end of the day the difference between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon is real simple Richard Nixon's a patriot he's a crook and he's paranoid he made lots of bad decisions and he deserved to be pushed out of office but at the end of the day he did the patriotic thing he resigned as president Donald Trump is pushed out of office I'll tell you what he's gonna do he will travel the country for the rest of his life doing on a bigger scale what he did during the campaign beat that person up I'll pay your legal bills he's trying to get votes and he says this now imagine he's out of office what he'll say he will foment violence and revolution and I have written for almost 50 years now about people who literally believe I've been to their conventions that the government of the United States is a criminal organization needs to be overthrown there are books they write about it there are meetings they had their fringe groups but boy Donald will gonna be right in there with them you have the power to do something the first thing you have to do is get informed which is part of the reason I want you to read my book so that you know what they're doing not just what he's tweeting not just his crazy racist statements not just his flip-flops because he has no principles of any kind except the adoration and the glorification of the world's smartest greatest memory Donald Trump you know a man who says they can learn everything you need to know about nuclear missiles in 90 minutes and who also says he said one of the world's leading experts on the subject on which I am recognized around the world as an expert tax policy a subject in which he says I know nothing of accounting well if you don't any of accounting that's like saying I'm the world's greatest pilot but I don't know a wing is they just don't go together but people have to build a case you can't just say I don't like the guy you got to also have a positive case what am I gonna do we'll get rid of Donald Trump why are we gonna do that why are we gonna have somebody else we're gonna somebody else because hey you know what we want back the clean air and water act that Richard Nixon signed into law because a lot fewer of us have died from cancer and asthma and heart disease we want to have a society in which we're not going to bed worried that we're going to get into a nuclear war we don't want a president who goes around saying of course we're going to use nukes as he did because we want to have a Department of Housing and Urban Development run by somebody who actually knows something about Housing and Urban Development we want to have an FBI that isn't demoralized and where people aren't punished for doing the right thing and you have the power to do that you have the power to do that that means you have to get organized you need to raise the awareness of other people you got to patiently listen to people who don't agree with you and respect the fact that a lot of people have been sold to con they really think that Donald Trump is a demagogue not God God that he is their Savior there are many people like a woman who sent me an email from Indiana who said mr. Johnston I've been watching you on TV and I don't understand now that we have a fine Christian family man in the white house your head reels at that except if you only read breitbart or watched Fox News you'd believe that you would believe that if you want to look at Breitbart and Fox News you know I'm probably the leader of the Sharia loving let's overthrow the government Muslim crowd and the Democrats you know they just want to take all your money for themselves you need to persuade people but where you can't persuade people it's okay you're not gonna persuade everybody on the day Richard Nixon resigned 20 9% of Americans supported it 29% not one member of Congress in either party but 29% of Americans and and that's not surprising if you know old about demographics of America Fox News for years did very very good Polly Roger Ailes may have been a lot of things but he was really understood he needed a good polling it's a year after year after year Fox News did a poll about religiosity about 42 to 44 percent of Americans believe there's an angel following them around about twenty seven eight nine percent year after year believe in witches but in what I think is a pretty good measure of sexism only about twenty two or three percent believe in warlocks well there's gonna be a crowd of people who will always be with Donald people who they don't want to sit next to a Latino in the airplane they don't want an Asian in the cockpit and God forbid they don't want to have to report to a black woman boss they hate the civil rights movement there has been a movement in this country for a long long time to repeal the 14th 14th and 15th amendments we've had members of Congress speak in favor of this gets almost no news coverage but it's out there you're gonna change those people get the people who are changeable persuade them get them to register to vote get them to the polls elect a different Congress and when we get a different Congress we'll get somewhere and there's one more crucial element to this pay attention to who's running I was sent a video the other day that it's sort of like instagramming I could watch it and I couldn't watch it again and it was a couple of young people good-looking earnest clean-cut they're gonna run for Congress as Democrats against Donald Trump and then local TV reporters ask them some questions and it was immediately clear they knew nothing about the government they didn't understand the house from the Senate they didn't understand the Constitution I mean these people were just eviscerated as idiots and they didn't have Donald Trump's skill to Buffalo their way out of the questions you can't run incompetent people if you want to change the Congress you got to get people who know what to do and get them to do it it's our government we own it we need to act like owners in if we don't well tough luck we will slide into becoming a fascist state over time because there are people I assure you I don't know who they are but knowing what I know of human nature and over fifty years of reporting there are people who are looking at Donald and saying boy if you could get a candidate who didn't have Donald's deficits somebody who's actually smart actually educated someone who doesn't speak in word salad it's beautiful it's beautiful it's traffic it's just it's gorgeous it's terrific but can speak in coherent ways and who is organized and can appoint people you can take over this country you could turn us into a fascist state it wouldn't be that hard we're at a real deciding point in this country about what we want in our future now we can endure Donald Trump what we need is to have such decisive action that it pushes back so strongly it is such a powerful political force but we don't have to worry for at least another generation or two about people like Donald Trump coming into office and doing something so please don't leave here feeling depressed there's plenty to be depressed about planning to be down about but energized by the thought that yeah we can do something and I'm gonna do it I want us to have a new Congress I don't expect I'm gonna like everything our new Congress does I don't expect it to be perfect look at the progress we've made in this country this was a country that started off with the great compromise that you could own human beings we got rid of that it costs us the equivalent in today's population of six million of us dying of whom by the way about 15 percent were black Americans but we we got rid of that women got the right to vote because men voted for him the only people who could were men the advocates in the late eighteen late nineteenth century for child labor laws were denounced by the Jerry Falwell juniors and the other you know today's TV preacher types who said it is God's plan that these children work in the factories and those who are opposed who proposed these child labor laws of the agents of the devil we got child labor laws we got laws that allowed the organizing of workers for unions and what does Pope Francis say about that there's no economic justice without unions because workers cannot with the exception of people who are name-brand talent negotiate for their pay at the end of the day if you're a secretary a doctor a lawyer a police officer a firefighter a biologist your commodity other people can do something unless there's something unique and unusual it's a very tiny segment small segment of the populations like that if you don't have a union you're never gonna get paid what you should we had union laws and that we let them fritter away we have these environmental laws that are still on the books we need to go back and enforce them we need to be building a better America in the future not a worse one so figure out what are you going to do and do it resolved and actually do it and if you don't do it don't complain it's as simple as that just don't complain so I want to thank people for coming tonight and I want to take a lot of a lot of questions I'm gonna have one rule when you come up to ask a question if you can't ask a cogent question I'm going to cut you off let you figure out how to edit your question while I talk to the next person and then we'll come back to you not gonna stop you but I let's ask questions all right [Applause] so you have a question just turn the mic you and I and everyone knows the media's diverse and yet it's lambasted and it's a source of doing a lot of the work you mentioned how do you think we can rehabilitate the image too many unthinking people have of the media so that they can go to it in a thoughtful manner well there has been a more than 40 year very well financed sustained campaign from the right in this country to denigrate honest journalism I've been the subject of a lot of it I've tangled with these people a lot and my answer to it is you know you you have verifiable facts that you can prove of the case now that more that is being picked up as a lesson of course the answer is well there are no facts or alternative facts fundamentally though news organizations are going to do with news organizations do especially in this era of much reduced budgets they're going to tend to cover the sizzle more than the steak the New York Times does a great job of trying to get at the steak but even so they do more sizzle anybody else they're going to cover the controversy a lot more than the underlying issue and even at the Wall Street Journal lots of reporters write stories that I read every day where I go boy that's a really interesting story to read and it makes coherent sense except the economics or nonsense because the writer doesn't know economics and we're just not going to be able to fundamentally I think change that but you know when we started this country we had party press and they just made up stories I spend a lot of time studying the early days of our Republican that read literally read reproductions of newspapers from back then it's amazing I mean they just make you know governor so-and-so is having an affair with this this woman and there's no such woman it's not like they got it wrong they just made it up and we survived that okay I do think we need to have a full frontal assault though on the president the United States going around saying fake news but you know I I don't know I I don't I don't you know I'm in the diagnosis business generally not the solutions business so then I talk with solutions but Sir what are your suggestions or what is your solution to for political tribalism how do we learn to talk to one of them well political tribes people know what political tribalism mean it's this notion that we've broken down into groups where there's the other and there's us and we don't talk to the others and we don't listen to the others that's part of the reason I told the story about walking into blue collar bars which by the way I didn't do reasonably this was years ago and there you know when there are big social changes you have to let them run out part of the reason Donald Trump is in office is the same reason the Taliban are on the rise and we see ultra-orthodox Jews with some of the things they're promoting in Israel and we see ultra-orthodox Muslims with some of their policies like the Taliban and it's that there's a segment of the world population that just cannot cope with the incredibly rapid rate of change human knowledge since World War two has been growing I wouldn't be shocked to find out it would be correct to say logarithm attica ly but it's absolutely been going growing geometrically and if I'm correct about this that there are a segment of people who they want their white picket fence and they want minorities to know their place and they want women to you know keep their mouths shut and and fix dinner you can put your hand up but the tsunami is just going to run over you it's a social tsunami that's got to run its energy out so if you're a journalist the only thing you can do is make a record tell everybody what's going on because eventually they will recognize it because the energy will run out and the other is be nice to other people talk to the people listen to other people be nice to other people change the nature of the intercommunications you have on a personal level with people don't cut people off in traffic I mean little thing like that I live in Rochester New York where people do not cut you off in traffic they'll stop and they'll let you turn I mean I've been studies done about this why is Rochester like this because we have a culture that that's what we're gonna do and you know we stop for people and if you you drop your your umbrella on the windy Street there are people who will chase after it and get it for you it's just a cultural phenomenon we've created there you can have everywhere you don't have to have traffic like LA does or everybody cuts everybody off so some interaction but listen to people and respect that people don't have to agree with you people don't have to agree with you we need to agree on what the basic facts are we have to agree with the interpretation of the facts so beyond that I don't know I'm not a sociologist the conman Agent Orange is like now but Michael Pence you've actually addressed what I think is potentially going to be an enormous constitutional crisis and could lead to violence in this country there is I don't want to put on a downer now but there is no good ending to Trump's leaving office we will endure this we will get past this but his leaving office there's no good ending assume he served two terms it's still not going to be a good ending because when he leaves he's kind of claimed he was cheated somehow and the we should repeal the was at the 22nd amendment that says two terms if he's not going to be removed under the 25th amendment that only works when the president has either as with Ronald Reagan was shot and God forbid I don't want that to happen to Tom Trump and he's out of commission he's under anesthesia it works voluntarily it doesn't work to remove somebody it's just not going to happen so assume that the Democrats get control of Congress and they decide to remove Donald Trump and they make a case and persuade the American public that this is the Russians candidate than the Manistee loyal and he's a criminal it won't be hard to prove he's criminal can Mike Pence become president because he is also the beneficiary of the Russians interfering in our election and Mike Pence has been credibly reported to have gone around telling his friends you know that God put him here and God has a purpose and a plan he doesn't know what it is but that's why he's there this case a small-town radio talk show host who should go back to being a small-town radio talk-show host but if the Congress were to remove under the Democrats both men and I think they have to do that if they're going to use the Russians then the Speaker of the House becomes president which means most likely Nancy Pelosi and I can see people already screaming bloody murder on Fox News this is a coup d'etat so if that happens I believe that Nancy or whoever is the speaker has to say I'm a caretaker president I will not be involved in the election in any way I'm just going to put my hand on the tiller to keep us moving forward until the next election we can endure that we're gonna trouble with that but you've got to be Caesar's wife so what happens if the Republicans retain control and the Republicans run a candidate like Mitt Romney in the primaries and they primary Donald and he loses well we know what he's gonna say I really won it was raped they rigged it it was really I won the Republican establishment did this they rigged it it's all corrupt and now you have to worry about is he going to try somehow to do something extra judicial luckily the latest survey show the officer corps the military does not support Trump you know soldiers are willing to go and die but they're not going to die for stupid reasons one of the great lessons we finally got in the American psyche because a Vietnam is you know you're gonna go die die for a good reason and let's assume that he wins the nomination again and then he loses both the popular vote and the electoral college it'll be the same thing it was all rigged I really want it was all those illegals who voted in the there's just no good - this but I do think that if they're going to remove Trump on the basis of the Russians you really do have to talk about content serve and if they say we're not going to deal with that we're gonna let him serve just think about four years of Mike Pence as president especially if you're a woman especially if you're a woman and remember this there are a lot of women who think he should be president because they agree with his what I would regard as absolutely outrageous misogynist views but there are a lot of women who support that sure with the recent special election in Alabama and and Doug Jones beating Roy Moore do you think that pretends good things for this November or was that an aberration you know with I'm a policy person I'm not a politics person okay but it seems to me they're a couple of lessons from Alabama one of them is what a horrible bad candidate they ran it turns out lots of people in Alabama you know they paid attention to know about Roy Moore and I suspect that a question arose and I say this having talked to a few people who are friends of mine who've lived in Alabama about Roy Moore's behavior that's a little contraindicated and that is just you know 32 year-old man gets these 14 15 16 year old girls half naked and liquored up and doesn't try to have sex with them that suggests there's something else very deep going on in that man's psyche that would be death to you as a conservative Republican at Alabama and they went a horrible terrible candidate and when Richard Shelby the senior senator from Alabama said I'm not voting for him what happened he came under attack you know if you run a really bad candidate guess what you're you're gonna lose but there are lots of people who are sort of little bad half bad you know look what happened to senator Johnston from Utah versus when Mike Lee ran against him from the right in principle guy senator Johnston no relation and Mike Lee very unprincipled guy so III don't know it matters a lot who the candidates are that you run right now the Democratic National Committee if you like their finance reports having trouble raising money compared to the Republicans money is rolling into the Republicans and not the Democrats I get these emails every day from Nancy Pelosi well they're not from them but ostensibly from them James Carville and others we need $1 to defeat Donald Trump come on are you serious these are these are a joke and they suggest the Democrats still don't have their act together they have it for a long time there's somebody over here no I guess we're gonna go from my perspective to the right of the room more so I've been very from my perspective I've been very mystified why the Republicans are not rising up against Trump and well that's easy the reason that Rises they're not rising against Trump just look what happens Jeff Flake who is the most powerful though not powerful the most prominent important family in Arizona the people who settled Arizona it's the flakes they get a town named after him snowflake and he can't run so that's done I'm not some Jeff corker he can't run they will in a primary destroy him and they'll run the dirtiest campaign in the world so I don't be surprised Donald Trump has essentially a mafia enforcement gang in the Republican Party led by Robert Mercer the hedge fund billionaire who says literally in the paper in the tape record interview the entire worth of human beings is based on their financial net worth most Americans are worth nothing and my cats are more valuable in most Americans because they give me pleasure and that enables me to make more money that makes me a more important and valuable human being so anyway all right now go on well I've speculated that that McConnell and Ryan that they have a ground plan that Trump and pence go down and then Ryan could be president and what do you think of that and then also what do you think of McCabe retiring today well he's retiring because he's not going to be with us much longer but I yeah somebody who's actually broken up conspiracies I'm not big on conspiracies and either or not what I see Ryan and McConnell doing McConnell is a very very competent legislative practitioner in the Senate and he gets what he wants and he knows what he wants and he plays his cards very very brilliantly and he wants out of Donald Trump certain things he wants this tax bill they just got and he got it by the way how many of you think Apple and a bunch of other companies just paid billions of dollars in taxes you read that didn't you in the newspapers heard it on TV go to DC report org and you will find out they didn't pay it this was a con game they will pay it in the future but you really should go go to DC report organ and read our story that ran yesterday the Apple tax scam because promise you it is we just read the bill and they didn't pay the money so I don't I don't think starter that's their game I think they figure we can use this guy they have been real successful at it I mean they control the White House the House the Senate and the Supreme Court arguably and him none much compared to what you would expect sir should there's somebody over here they'll come back to you fair enough so I had resonated with the political termites point you made earlier and one of the things I've seen as well being from the center of the country is there is a sort of divide between the bigger cities that are really getting a lot of benefit in our modern era so how what policy or what recommendations would you help say would help empower those sort of Middle States areas well the world changes okay if you were born in Dickens England you know life was very different than if you're your grandfather your grandmother had and we're in the middle of an enormous fundamental change in the world that we don't understand we can't understand it because we're in the middle of it but what we're seeing is large numbers of people are being left behind economically Angus Deaton the Nobel Prize mccomus just had a piece in The New York Times about the millions of Americans who live on a dollar or two dollars a day I wrote that story for the New York Times from my analysis of the data about 10 years ago and I wanted to be very cautious I couldn't be attacked and the number I settled on after looking at the various ways to do the numbers was $7 a day and oh you know this is a obviously on-trail I should be fired this is incompetent Deaton's closer to what's right I actually wanted to use a number about $3 from the analysis I did and we haven't figured out what to do about this what do we do about people who we're living in a world where the amount of brain power you have and then your willingness to work with that brainpower is gonna have a huge determination on your income industrial society created jobs through inefficiency when the first steel was made 2,000 1,000 years ago in India or they invented it guys with big muscles would take coal carbon carbon from coal and wood and pound it into red-hot steel and it would take more than it would take multiple years of labor to create one ton of steel in vanquished societies in the ancient world the tribute that was paid to the Conqueror was often not paid in gold or diamonds it was paid in steel if you watch Game of Thrones what is the common thread that goes everywhere oh that's a sword made of Valyrian steel it's the big thing running it all through one of the big things all the way through it and we're now living in a world where you know if you weren't born with a lot of smarts the future doesn't look so good for you and because inefficiency creates lots of jobs as we I'm efficient they're gonna go away and we're not even talking about what do we do about that there are proposed solutions the capitalist manifesto of the 1950's had a solution everybody should be a capitalist the problem with that lots of people when they get capital they don't think long term they don't think about oh I've got a million dollars and I can spend twenty five thousand dollars a year forever they think oh I can buy a sports car and a boat and go gamble and it's so you know human development we're going to go through a real problem here and it isn't one state or another it's the fundamental world economy of what's going on and you know it's it's a it's a big big problem but I don't know the solution of it I've thought a lot about the problems it's going to bring and it may lead to a lot of violence if we don't take care of people one way or another it's gonna lead to a lot of violence there have been by the way a number of very interesting experiments around the world done with the basic income everybody gets an income and the assumption you might have is well then people just sit around drink beer and have sex and not do anything now actually turns out most people if you give them a basic income use that to improve their status they may not work real hard they might decide to work a little less hard but they figure out how to use that income to get an education or start a little business or do something that will improve their lives a little bit so thank you for your patience related question question part a Lindsey Graham said if trunk fire mulher there would be hell to pay so the question that one day he said yeah yeah do you believe that would happen Part B is if Muller's report shows an impeachable offense with the house impeach in the Republican House impeach him and with the Senate convicted okay there's no chance the Republicans are going to impeach Donald Trump barring something really out there okay I mean what I expect to see in the Moller report the Republicans are not going to move on they're gonna explain and excuse it away and everything else and Lindsey Graham has proven to be a slippery on the issue of Muller's position as is you can possibly imagine first of all Chuck can't fire Muller even though I watched sorry old age the the independent prosecutor went after Bill Clinton and was later at Star Ken Starr on Fox News today saying of course he can fire and he should fire him and he went on and on it's not true we have rules and regulations about this he has to get rod Rosenstein to fire arm rod Rosenstein will clearly resign there's another person a woman who's next in line but go for down if you're willing to fire enough people you'll get to somebody who will fire Moeller for him if he wants well when Archibald Cox got fired the people just all came to work now if trump's going to do it the question is again try and shut this down and there's the flaw in the idea of doing that Muller's people were very smart to tell Eric Schneiderman the Attorney General of New York that it was ok to let the public know that he was working with Muller's team because many of the crimes Donald Trump has committed our state crimes in New York as well so pardons won't help him and other things won't help him and I'm sure that Sneiderman has lots of the records through a sharing arrangement and they've got the documents right now if we had the bait stamps on them to sell lawyers track things I assure you that number is well past a million and probably millions of pages of documents witnesses and people you've never heard of and so I don't think the Republicans would act on the firing of Muller some of them would be quibbling but I don't see Ryan and McConnell moving to replace Trump barring something really outrageous I mean if we could come up with the direct videotape where Donald Trump says vladimer I pledge I'm going to turn over the America to you and of course Donald would say that's not my voice why wouldn't they what happened because well but that's we we got rid of that and we got rid of it through Dick Armey the congressman from Texas give me the last guy Dick Armey the congressman from Texas who said and then it was popularized by Grover Norquist bipartisanship is date-rape political date-rape and it used to be that you know members of Congress when they took the train to go to Washington and they were there for months at the time Democrats and Republicans lived together like cats and dogs and they drank together they smoked they played cards they did other things ma'am away from home for long periods of time they've been known to do and they knew about each other that's all gone there is not a single Democrat living in the same house as a Republican today not one if they share a taxicab they thinks that's bipartisanship and at freshly in the house and we need to stop that we need to get that back we need to have people conversing and recognizing that compromise is what democracy is this my way or the highway that's got to go and we can't do that with the Congress we have because it's full of people especially the freedom caucus people who are my way or the highway you know if you're an absolutist about abortion right down to the point where any birth control is it should be illegal you got to get that person voted out of office or are you going to continue that argument you get the lawrence O'Donnell says the last word or at least the last question I'll take it as a Republican what kind of tax policy me I'm a registered Republican that's what does that mean that means I vote in the Republican primaries okay you get to vote in the Republican primaries where I lived those are the more interesting primaries all right that was and be by voting in them you know it means like you can I got the chance to vote for a man who believes dinosaurs and human beings live together and that the cure diabetes is cinnamon buns I mean wouldn't you get opportunities like this okay then then my last my second question yeah so it's not relevant do you see the states rights movement rising in America what do you think about that boy this is one of the great paradoxes right states rights movements have been a way to put Jim Crow in to deny the 13th 14th and 15th amendments and undo the Civil War and where is it that states rights have proven to be most important recent years is with liberals and progressives if if the Democrats during the Al Gore vote Regan and George Bush vote recount had had the courage to say to the Supreme Court under our Constitution gentlemen and you particularly Justice Scalia someone who talks about the original intent have no business in this matter this is entirely for the electors of Florida George Bush probably wouldn't have become president and yet know they were good liberals they couldn't bring themselves to do this I think we're gonna have a lot more discussion in this country about federalism about separate state laws you're seeing a California basically saying you don't want to enforce the federal environmental laws fine we got state laws and now we're going to have a fight over the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution but one of the best things you can do is go home and read the Constitution it's only four thousand words with a basic Constitution and 3000 for the amendments you'll find stuff I'll bet you didn't know was in there letters of marque blood libel all sorts of interesting things so I want to leave you with the most important message here please do read my book okay because my book is about what matters to you and to your children and to your grandchildren and to the rest of the world you want to read Michael Wolf's book which by the way verifies my previous book about Donald Trump please do it's entertaining and it's nice and he's a great gossip writer but if you want to know what's happening to our government and what Trump is doing to you and you want to arm yourself with facts that you are seeing if you've seen them in the news mostly just dis glancingly not as a focus you need to read my book you can give it the library you have to buy it necessarily but read it so that you understand what is being done to our government by this manifestly unqualified criminal cocaine trafficking pal powder cocaine trafficking ignoramus named Donald Trump so thank you thank you David I want to quibble with one point I think you should consider buying the book and the LA Bay tables right back there and he's signing them that way you have a signed copy and it's not just the fantastic reporting but it's the comment as well as you just heard thank you so much for being with us and we'll see you all soon [Applause]

Channel: Town Hall Seattle

Views: 1,803,093

Rating: 4.2788925 out of 5

Keywords: Town Hall Seattle, Town Hall, David Cay Johnston, reporter, journalist, journalism, politics, Donald Trump, Trump administration, federal government, agencies, health care, safety, finances, beat reporting

Id: Azck1jY79cA

Length: 67min 19sec (4039 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2018