Obama's Advisor Valerie Jarrett Reviews Presidential Films & TV, from 'Veep' to 'Independence Day'

presidents have these moments in the course of their time in office where people are looking to them for leadership they're looking for them for direction for meaning and you have to call upon yourself to not only deliver words that capture your point but that also inspire people to act hello my name is valerie jarrett and i am a former senior advisor to president of barack obama i served in his administration for all eight years members of congress this is beep and the episode is directed by chris addison i'd like to begin today in this scene selena meyer finds herself in a very awkward spot when her teleprompter goes down at the beginning of the state of the union every person who speaks before a teleprompter that is your worst nightmare and usually and certainly at a state of the union the way you protect for that happening is you have a hard copy of the script in front of you there isn't a time president obama went to the lectern where there wasn't also a book right there because inevitably teleprompters go down and i will say it has it went down for president obama at times but not at a state of the union and what you'd see is him just open the book and start to read and oftentimes what you'll do is keep the book open and turn the pages as you're going to try to keep up so that if it does go down you're not scurrying to find your place but i can just imagine what went through her mind when she's looking at a black screen there's a teleprompter operator and usually they work with the candidate you know them you trust them you have confidence in them you want the teleprompter to go at the speed that the person who's reading it is comfortable and you can go too fast or you can go too slow and it loses the rhythm it's really a team effort so today i don't just want to talk about the present i want to talk about the future whatever we have in store and you can see what's on the teleprompter from some of the remote locations you can look right at the teleprompter they now it's beginning to sink in that it's not a current draft but it becomes very clear in a minute no i think this version still has president hughes old spending plan in it we will invest 60 billion in the new n620 submarine fleet it's beginning to sink into everybody that she's announcing a policy that's actually not her policy there's no way president obama would have read something that wasn't what he meant he would have just changed at the last minute on the fly but that's hard to do and i think for somebody like selena meyer who doesn't necessarily know that much about what her policies are to begin with but you could tell on the expression on her face that she thought this isn't what i'm supposed to be saying but she kept saying it anyway you were supposed to take the submarine cuts out not spend an extra 10 billion on them gary after a mistake is made the senior staff come in together with the president and try to figure out how to fix it now we would have also met on our own without president obama in the room first to try to come to him with some options available and give him the benefit of our best thinking president obama was so disciplined and he knew his policies in backwards and forwards that he didn't tend to misspeak that's not to say that everything was flawless i mean i can think of an example of where he was in a press conference on the affordable care act and at the very end of the press conference he gets asked a question about skip gates and police arresting him in his own home my understanding is is that professor gates then shows his id to show that this is his house and at that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct that wasn't according to plan and so then you have to figure out what to do about that but he really stuck to his speeches so we spent a lot of time and effort making sure that we crafted president obama's speeches in his words and reflecting his policies we would send drafts up to him the night before at home and if it was a serious speech like the state of the union he would have received multiple drafts over the course of several weeks and so by the time he actually delivered the speech he was absolutely sure about every word that was in it gary glasses well as the nation's first female vice president i don't think she did right by our gender i think that this show really was a caricature of what a woman would be and not necessarily the best role model and i'm happy to know that reality will be very different i'll be with you in a second this is the american president directed by rob reiner this scene with sydney played by net benning thinks she's in a little bit of trouble when the president asked to see her privately in the oval office sorry to keep you waiting mr president is it all right if i call you sydney of course mr president first of all what happened before this scene is is the president walked in and overheard sydney being critical of the president in a meeting now sydney is a lobbyist and so her trade is that she's got to stay on good terms with everybody while she's pushing for her agenda mr president what you saw in there was nothing more than vanity run amok i was showing off for a colleague who doesn't think very much of me it would be a real injustice for you to hold the gdc accountable for my behavior today on top of which i am monumentally sorry for having insulted you like that so first of all i can't think of a single time president obama was alone in the oval office with a lobbyist you always want to have somebody else in the room with you particularly with a lobbyist to double check and make sure that nothing gets repeated that isn't actually true so it would have been very unusual the gdc is asking for 20 sir it's not gonna pass at twenty percent it's a long shot at ten how do you know that until you put the full weight of the white house behind it we have very strict restrictions on what lobbyists could and could not do because we'd seen far too often where lobbyists use their influence to try to sway policymakers to do what wasn't in the best interests of the american people and so walling ourselves off from them was really important to president obama the president's private time totally depends upon the president president obama always asked us to put on his schedule time during the day where he could just think now i will say when we all saw that time on the schedule we violated that wish all the time because we thought well he's in there on his own we can go and ask him about x y and z but i do think it's really important that a president has time to reflect and to think because otherwise you can just be reacting there were many times when president obama wanted to escape and i remember one time he said what would happen if i just started to walk towards the gates of the white house and do you think the secret service would stop me and i said yeah i don't think you'd get very far but there were also times where he said look i'm going for a walk and there had to be a lot of preparation that went into that walk but i remember he just walked outside of the gates and started walking up to everyday people and they're like oh my gosh there's the president it was unusual though to allow somebody into the oval office particularly a lobbyist to an empty room and the fact that the president was still in his uh private quarters in the back while sydney's wandering around the oval office that would never happen what i like about this scene is that the camera's shooting from the ceiling and i think oftentimes when people see the oval office they don't realize how high the ceiling is and it is a magnificent ceiling mr president did you know the city planners when they sat down to design washington dc their intention was to build a city that would intimidate and humble foreign heads of state is true i didn't know that the white house is the single greatest home court advantage in the modern world i don't know whether the white house was designed to intimidate foreign heads of state but it certainly does i have seen the most confident powerful arrogant leaders walk into the oval office and just crumble before your very eyes it is by design very intimidating and he's trying to figure out well how can i make her comfortable so he's not trying to intimidate her he's really just trying to hit on her are you hungry i skip breakfast you wanna have a donut coffee or something sir i'm a little intimidated by my surroundings and yes i have gotten off to iraqi in a somewhat stilted beginning but don't let that diminish the weight of my message look it's very hard to be a single president for the reasons in this instance in this movie they're obvious which is you have potentially an inherent conflict of interest particularly if the person who you fall in love with is a lobbyist the gdc has been at every president for the last decade and a half that global warming is a calamity the effects of which will be second only to nuclear war the best scientists in the world have given you every reason to take the gdc seriously but i'm going to give you one more if you don't live up to the deal you just made come new hampshire we're going to go shopping for a new candidate so what you were seeing is a negotiation between the president and a lobbyist again unprecedented in my mind in terms of what president obama did while he was in office but people do make deals all the time and i think the point he was trying to make to her is i'm not going to make this happen for you unless you can get a substantial number of votes and if you can get well on the way i will help push it over the top uh so deals do happen all the time but deals change you can't do that sydney with all due respect mr president who's going to stop me well if you go through that door the united states secret service that's my private office ah you have to go out that door over there the room is confusing because the doors uh blend into the wall and there are three doors and i can see she came in one door and she just started heading towards the door and you can't really tell the difference between the door that goes to the outer oval the door that goes to the hallway and the door that goes to the private office and she clearly got confused and so it was a funny way of putting her in check that you can't go out the wrong door or bad things can happen well it's in the bag you have someone here to show off for this is the tv show the west wing directed by alex graves in this scene president bartlett's wife cuts off his tie just moments before the debate by the way i feel bad i don't think i've done enough to help you prepare for this debate why are you telling me this now just cause oh my god you're insane are you you're insane charlie obviously what abby was trying to do is take his mind off of what was about to happen it sent the staff scurrying looking for the tie i'll get you to the stage at that kind of time 15 seconds no one's done camera tests on this i loved it when cj said you know this color hasn't been tested well who cares it's just a tie but it's the kind of attention to detail that the senior staff has paid a lot of attention to and then suddenly it erupts into chaos and it really did achieve what abby was trying to do president obama is really hard to ruffle under any circumstances and so i'm sure he would have just you know leaned over and said to uh reggie love who was his body guy at the time hey reg give me your time but i could easily see how michelle obama would have tried to do something to just distract him settle him remind him that this is just a chance to speak directly to the american people and ignore all the noise the president i knew best president obama prepared very diligently he took it seriously he went through a lot of briefing books to make sure that he had his message affirmative message that he wanted to deliver out and also of course prepare for the inevitable incoming from your opponent americans are tired of partisan politics mr president actually what you've done in florida is bringing the right together with the far right and i don't think americans are tired of partisan politics i think they're tired of hearing career politicians dis dis-partisan politics to get a gig every president does it differently i can say for sure that vice president biden is going through the same process that president obama went through some of the same people who prepared president obama are on vice president biden's team and senator harris's team but ultimately it's the test of the candidate and i know how seriously joe biden takes this as well i can't really speak for his opponent moments leading up to the debate are a nightmare for the senior staff you're trying to think was there anything i forgot to say but you also don't want to let your stress bleed into the president and so i know we work really hard to cover up our anxiety and i can remember sitting next to former first lady michelle obama at several of the debates you know you know the cameras are on you you can't react you can see the look on both of our faces i'm sure we we meant to smile but it's just it's a terrifying moment you've used the word liberal 74 times in one day it was yesterday that's where i can watch anymore most of the advisors are backstage i sat next to mrs obama because in addition to being an advisor i was a close friend we didn't do it in every debate sometimes she would sit with other folks and i would be backstage with the rest of the team but whenever we could we tried to hang out together we did not mix with the opponents team it looks like everybody's team is in one room together we had our own room we had our own communication so that they couldn't overhear what we were saying but the the sense of you know anxiety amongst both teams was apparent rules for tonight's debate are as follows a candidate will be asked a question by one of the panelists and he will have 90 seconds to respond now i will say listening to the rules that were being described and then seeing the candidate follow those rules that's unusual in our current climate but i will say in president obama's races both in 08 and 0-12 his opponents were all pretty respectful of the rules didn't mean that they always stayed within their time didn't mean that they didn't interrupt each other ever but certainly not the kind of food fight we saw in the first debate of this year's presidential race good morning this is independence day directed by roland emris in this scene the president gives a stirring speech to those who are on their way to fight an alien invasion mankind that word should have new meaning for all of us today we can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore we will be united in our common interests this is a great scene in that it shows there are moments where the president is trying to motivate and inspire and convince people to put themselves in harm's way and to lift their spirits up and you can see from the expressions on everybody in the crowd's face they're hanging on his every word as one would do for the president of the united states they're all scared we'll put aside for a minute that they're battling aliens but they're going into battle and the question is is he able to inspire them and i think presidents have these moments in the course of their time in office where people are looking to them for leadership they're looking for them for direction for meaning and you have to call upon yourself to not only deliver words that capture your point but that also inspire people to act the fourth of july will no longer be known as an american holiday but as the day when the world declared in one voice we will not go quietly into the night we will not vanish without a fight we're going to live on we're going to survive today we celebrate our independence day i can remember countless times when president obama gave speeches that were intended to inspire the speech he gave after the shooting down in charleston at the manual church where revenant picni and his a parishioners were murdered and it was a tragic tragic occasion and president obama lifted everyone's spirits by seeing amazing grace and talking about how important it was for us to heal the racial wounds that had been a part of our country for so long and not just by tearing down a confederate flag but by getting rid of the tensions between police and communities of color by rebuilding our schools by making sure that we have places that are safe for people to live by bringing us together and so i think presidents should seek out those opportunities to bring people together as opposed to separate us and show our differences are but rather inspire us the only thing that was troubling afterwards is when the president gets in the airplane himself that that would not happen it would be led by the secretary of defense and it would all be coordinated though through the situation room which is able to communicate across our wide network of military all around the world i'm a combat pilot i belong in the air our global pandemic is a threat on the world and it is certainly a time when we should be coming together and i guess you could draw a analogy between a alien invasion and a virus that's infecting so many countless people across our country and across the world and it is a time to put aside political differences it's a time to listen to science and evidence and develop an honest strategy and speak truthfully to the american people this country is extraordinarily resilient and so are our people but you have to be honest with us okay before we get started uh a couple things i'd like to go over in the budget this is dave directed by ivan lightman in this scene dave played by kevin klein takes over a cabinet meeting in order to figure out how to afford to pay for a children's house in fact the homeless section of the simpson garner works bill mr president i don't believe that's on your agenda today there is no way that anybody sitting in the back bench would interrupt a cabinet meeting particularly with the press in the room it's unprecedented but in this case of course he thinks that he's the one who created this president so he has the right to influence him but i have never ever seen anyone interrupt a president in the middle of a cabinet meeting uh now uh the way i see it we need 650 million dollars in order to keep the project so this is a great scene in that i think it's what everybody's fantasy is that this is what a president should be doing should be working with the cabinet to achieve his goals the sausage being made right out in public with the press there to see it a couple of things strike me about the scene normally a president would say look these are my priorities and then he would ask his cabinet and his staff to come back to him with some recommendations but in this scene instead dave who the only two people in the scene who know he's not actually the president are the ones who are very unhappy with what he's doing changes in our cash management uh for example according to the omb we've got uh 17 defense contractors who are delinquent in their contracts uh is this true frank i believe so yes so even though they're late we keep paying them on time one of the things that struck me as different about this cabinet room than president obama's was the complete lack of diversity around that table it's just a bunch of white guys who were making important decisions affecting all of our lives and very few women that you saw in the back benches it was realistic to see the press all bunched together in one corner always very very close all trying to get that exact same shot bumping into each other the cameraman and the reporters kind of jockeying for position but the the working meeting as you will in the way that this happened is very unusual one of the disadvantages of making decisions on the spot like this is that you haven't necessarily thought through all of the implications of it he's asking his cabinet to respond without the benefit of advice and counsel from their advisors it doesn't allow for the kind of due diligence and thoughtful deliberation that usually leads to better decisions wow instead of giving them money for something they haven't finished we could hold back that cash stick it in some interest bearing mr president yes well as a senior advisor i would have been sitting in the back row where you saw the two guys who were actually objecting to what was going on and it would be very unusual for me to offer my opinion unless the president turned around and asked for it the president runs the cabinet meeting according to his wishes which is why i think everybody turned around because that just doesn't happen in a cabinet meeting this is mars attacks directed by tim burton in this scene the martians attacked the white house theodore i simply do not feel that mr president we're going to need to get you to safety there are enormous precautions that are taken to keep the white house safe obviously i'm not going to discuss a lot of those security cautions but anytime anything comes into the sphere around the white house there are alert systems and the military would have been scrambled you would have seen jets up in the sky there would have been a lot more of a presence of our military long before you saw flying saucers get that close to the washington monument let alone to the white house he would have been swooped out of that oval office long before the very last minute and i can't imagine a situation where you'd see flying saucers so close to the window of the oval office and the president and his family still in the oval office shouldn't we go this way sorry man there's a tour going through here the secret service would have thought about the route that they wanted the president to take long before an attack was underway they have all kinds of plans for figuring out how to keep the president as safe as possible and they would have led the way so there wouldn't have been the case of the president's wife trying to go in one direction there would have been secret service in front of the president and behind the president ushering him in the most efficient way in the safest way possible in fact it is often used by the president to receive guests it is furnished to represent the period of james monroe hey what's that that is a portrait of james monroe if there were any alert systems that were triggered the tours would have been shut down the building would have been evacuated it would have been on lockdown and people would have moved away from the windows and he would have seen a lot more presence of secret service in every room of the white house and so the fact that the martians got that close without any seeming recognition about what was going to happen pretty unrealistic it looked like they were on the state floor going on the stairs i'm not sure how they got all the way from the west wing to the residence building you didn't see them going through the colonnade they missed a whole bunch of steps between where they started out and where they ended up we're in sad shape when we need to rely on the children to keep the president safe the thought that the first lady would have been left standing on her own that would have never happened the president and the first lady have their own details not one detail so hers would have been surrounding hers his would have been surrounding his they would have had a clear path to go there would not have been twists and turns it would have been a straight line to the safest possible place they could take him the bunker is reserved for the president and his family and senior teams so they would have segregated visitors to go into one place and then the president into a secure location and we absolutely did drills to make sure that we were prepared for every possible scenario and there were incidents and i remember once someone came to the west entrance of the white house and i was shooting and we were put on alert and everybody had to go to a safe location so there were actual real examples as well as drills the whole point is to be prepared and to keep both the people who work there mostly the president but certainly the rest of his team and family as well as any visitors who happen to be there safe as well and to protect the outside of the building this is as we said in the beginning a really important building it's symbolic known the world over and great lengths are gone to keep it and its occupants safe we're told you got 24 dead and over 200 injured this is the comey rule directed by billy ray in this scene james coney is interviewed by president barack obama for the position of fbi director good to meet you mr president you too i should confess sir i supported john mccain and romney i know so why should i hire you to run the bureau i was not there when president obama interviewed mr comey the outside office isn't realistic it doesn't look like the area where people are held for meetings and it's interesting because i got the interior pretty well done president obama would say come on in and go out and greet him the way he did it showed his demeanor pretty well and being perfectly willing to consider somebody with whom he might disagree on certain issues if he thought that his character was the kind of character that he wanted in that spot and that he had a great reputation still it might be easier for me to have an fbi director who agrees with me oh that's true but you've always struck me as one of those leaders who gains just as much from thoughtful disagreement you've garnered a lot of attention for uh you know taking on the mob as prosecutor and defending the dojo4 i suppose that's true it wouldn't be uncharacteristic for president obama to say this is what i've heard about you and give comey a chance to agree with it or refute it in this case he agreed with it you need a lot of attention it's not a huge driver for me no uh interest in politics emily none good i can't speak to the conversation because i wasn't privy to it obviously it's jim comey's recounting of the conversation but i think the directness and openness and transparency with which the two talked is probably pretty realistic if you were to get this job conversations like this would be impossible the president the fbi director have to be at arm's length i thought that was a really important scene and it showed president obama's respect for the independence of our investigative units the fbi the cia the justice department all of those were treated at arm's length the president did have a friendship with eric holder but never discussed ongoing matters with him and those important lines of demarcation of responsibility are what gives the american people confidence that those investigations are being conducted with integrity and it certainly was the way i saw those two behave they were absolutely at arm's length comey would have never discussed an ongoing investigation president obama would have never asked him for his loyalty to him personally who asked him for his loyalty to our country and the independence is a way of evidencing that loyalty to the country there would have never been a conflict of interest between the two one day you might be called upon investigate something someone in my party may have done or someone on my staff or you well for those investigations to be credible we cannot be close mr president i hope i can look forward to years of not being close with you president obama wouldn't have had him in the oval office unless he was being seriously considered for the job and so it was really at that point comey's to lose and also president obama to say look is this somebody who i can trust and have an independent relationship with and know that he's going to do the job of looking out for the people and i thought it was really important that president obama signaled to him we're not going to have a cozy relationship and you know we might have gotten along in this interview but we're not going to have any more conversations like this and to my knowledge i can't think of a time he met alone with comey after that certainly president obama may have had a very calm exterior temperament but he did know exactly the kind of fbi director he wanted he wanted somebody who would be independent who would follow the facts wherever they would lie who would not be intimidated or influenced and who didn't have any ulterior motive which is why i think he said are you interested in politics and do you let your own ego get out ahead of you at times and he was looking for that direct assurance that that wasn't the case so that he could trust him to do his job the obamas remain two of my closest friends and so we are in regular contact i spent a fair amount of time helping them with the obama foundation which is going to be an extraordinary beacon of hope on the south side of chicago i'm working with michelle obama on our organization called when we all vote designed to change the culture in our country around voting in the last presidential election 100 million americans did not vote and there are certainly efforts that are out there intended to suppress the vote but don't disenfranchise yourself and in this current climate i would also encourage you to make a plan today whether you're comfortable voting by mail or are taking advantage of an early vote make a plan and execute it right away your voice is your vote our democracy is only going to be as strong as we the people demand that it be that's why our constitution begins with that phrase we the people it's all about us

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 283,964

Keywords: reviews, valerie jarrett, valerie jarrett reviews, vanity fair reviews, valerie jarrett vanity fair, valerie jarrett interview, presidents, presidential review, tv presidents, movie presidents, film presidents, film and tv presidents, vanity fair, president review, presidents review, the comey rule, valerie jarrett veep, veep, independence day, obama's senior advisor, obama's senior advisor reviews, obama senior advisor, obama senior advisor reviews, president

Id: LHRMGewpTKw

Length: 29min 47sec (1787 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020