My guests tonight are co-authors of the political thriller,
The President is Missing,
which is currently the number one book in the country.
Please welcome President Bill Clinton
and James Patterson.
(cheering and applause)
Thank you.
Whoa.
All right.
Welcome to the show, gentlemen.
Thank you. Nice to be here.
Uh, I'm gonna jump straight into it,
because I have so many questions for both of you.
Let's start with the book.
Congratulations on being number one in the country.
This was an interesting collaboration, you know.
Because, James, you have sold hundreds of millions
of books around the world.
You're an accomplished author.
You've always said that you wished
that more people would read.
You're writing a thriller
about a fictional president, and yet, you thought,
"let me reach out to an actual president
to get the facts right."
Why did you think that was necessary?
Well, I usually just make stuff up.
And, uh, I thought it would be--
I-I thought it would be great--
and-and I-I've never read a book like this,
in terms of the authenticity.
If you want to know what it's like to be president,
this will really give you a feeling for it.
Right, but it's an extreme version of what it's like
to be president, because this is a story
-about a president... -It's a bad weekend, yeah.
Yeah, it's a president who goes out--
and I won't spoil how it happens--
but, basically, it's a president who discovers that there's
a giant cybersecurity threat on the U.S.
and he decides to take it in his own hands.
He sneaks out of the White House,
which is mind-blowing.
How authentic was that?
Did you ask the president if he did that?
-Oh, yeah. -(laughter)
Uh, I didn't ask him if he--
-I knew, I knew he didn't do it. -The answer is... yeah.
The answer is I didn't.
What I tried to do is make it
-as authentic as I could if it did happen. -Right.
That is, the Secret Service protects a lot of people.
The-- I explain this in the book--
the law says everybody else-- even, like, when I was there,
Hillary could-- they could sign off
of Secret Service protection for awhile.
There's no provision for the president to do that.
It's like, uh-- but you could maybe do it
for a couple of hours for, purely for privacy reasons.
If a friend of yours was dying or something like that.
But you couldn't do it for very long.
So we came up with a device--
It was his idea the president ought to go missing--
-and somebody said, -Yeah, well, you know, a lot
-"Well, that would be a good idea." -of people agree
with that, right? -But, anyway,
the, uh... (chuckles)
And so we worked out how it could happen.
And why it made sense in the context of the plot
with cybersecurity.
But the authenticity thing, that is such a big deal.
I mean, if the president went missing,
it would happen like this.
If there was a traitor in the White House, it would--
If there was an attack on the presidential motorcade
it would happen that way.
And that was the beauty of the collaboration.
And you're writing, you know, throughout the story
there are so many themes that tie-in to
what America has experienced, is experiencing,
and may experience in the future.
You have a president that in a different way has gone rogue,
a president who's saying "I'm gonna do it all by myself."
When you were writing this book, were there any parts
of the current president that you looked at
and you were like, "Yeah, our president needs
-a bit of that crazy in him"? -No.
-No. -(laughter)
-No. -We started it before, before the election.
-(NOAH): Right. -No, because, in this case,
the president acknowledges
that if he did what his adversaries think he did
it would be an impeachable offense.
And that if he told them, if he told them
why he did what he did,
they would have to back down.
But he didn't trust them because he thought
they would leak it to the press.
And then his chance of stopping
this attack on America would go away.
So that's one part of the plot I'll give away there, just...
-And it-- We say... -Don't give away too much.
-We say here, though... -(laughter)
You cannot run a country
when there is literally no trust,
but we have seen now for...
almost 40 years, on and off,
that demonizing your opponent,
making people hate them,
it's a terrible way to run a railroad,
but it can get rewarded at election time.
It would be very difficult
to write fiction about what's going on now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Actually...
(cheering and applause)
He just gave you that whole riff about how authentic this is,
and it was until recently.
(laughter)
It was, it was a fair description
about how most presidents try to run a White House,
and how, at least what I believe, is that...
you try to get talented people
who know things you don't know,
who have skills you don't have.
You tell them they're not gonna be fired
or demoted or isolated
if they tell you something you don't want to hear.
Then you make a decision,
then if they disagree with the decision,
the honorable thing to do is resign.
I actually gave stunning endorsements
to two people who resigned with honor
from my administration
because they disagreed with a decision I made.
And I think that's the way to do it,
but you want to encourage people to say what they think,
and know nothing bad is gonna happen to them.
PATTERSON: Why didn't you do that when you were writing?
(cheering and applause)
The, um...
(cheering and applause)
The... The threat that faces America
in this book is not unlike a very real threat
-that we've now learned about in real life, -It is real.
and that is the threat of cybersecurity.
Many experts warn that wars as we know them will come to end,
and cyber warfare is the future.
As a former president of the United States,
how real is this threat,
and what do you think America should be doing to combat it?
It is real. It's been building for more than 20 years.
In 1997, when I was still in office,
I issued the first executive order
on cybersecurity.
We set up a division of the National Security Council.
Today we spend $15 billion in...
at least in the public budget.
Maybe it's twice that in some of the intelligence budgets.
It's compared with $630 billion a year
-on every other kind of defense. -NOAH: Wow.
So... And I believe
that anything that is electronic can be hacked.
PATTERSON: This is a thriller,
but what happens in this book is real.
-It could happen, and it's not a case... -Yeah.
People go, "Well, you know,
the lights will go out for four hours."
No, that's not the case.
Everything goes out.
All your... A-And it's erased.
All your medical records,
all of your bank accounts,
Wall Street-- it's all gone.
-Well, a lot of people deny... -It's funny, 'cause there's,
there's some people who are in debt,
and they're like, "That sounds good to me.
-Yeah. -"Yeah, that sounds really good to me.
"Everything is erased?
-Well, yeah. -That sounds really good to me."
-Yeah, but... -Some people will be happy.
But if all the...
If you put the electrical grid out,
-you put the backup out, -Right.
and while they were out, you fried all the transformers,
a lot of people would die before you got it put back up.
Right. And it's-it's a scary place to be in.
Um, the book is a thriller, and in many ways,
I feel like your journey together
as authors has also been a thriller.
I've, you know, I've watched you on the road together.
You've been promoting the book.
-Uh, James, you... -Mostly terrific.
-you... you talk about... -A lot of fun, mostly.
you talk about how traveling around with President Clinton
makes you understand what it's like to be Mike Pence.
Like, no one pays attention to you.
-Yeah. -You're just, like, randomly in the background.
-That's not true. -But I'll tell you,
I picked up a lot of new moves. I got an eye roll now.
-Oh, yeah, we love the eye roll. -An eye roll.
-We've seen that. -I got hold my head.
-Right, right, right. -I got the, you know.
I'm gonna do... If you get to,
I'll just be doing this for no reason.
You're gonna be taking water off the table at the same time?
-Totally, yeah. -Is that, like, you're practicing the moves?
Yeah? But-but is that an interesting dy...
I guess, um, relationship to have?
Because you're working with a president.
-I mean... -It's been a great...
He-He's been terrific to work with.
I mean, we really cooperated.
The first two chapters, we rewrote those six times.
Could you override him, though, as a president?
There never was an argument.
We never had a disagreement. There never was an argument.
-'Cause you were afraid or...? -All of his suggestions...
-Yeah. -Oh, wait.
What do you think, I'm crazy?
-He's got all these... -You know, look...
He's got these Secret Service people everywhere, you know.
They're out there. They're watching us.
-Just two, can you get two hours -Actually...
-and you can handle it together. -You should be a little scared,
now, too, 'cause they're watching you.
In this case, I was the apprentice.
Oh. Oh, nice. Look at that.
-Well, you know... -So you, you were...
This guy, he's written all these books.
-Right. -I've read a double ton of them.
And the interesting thing was...
What I wanted to know was--
since I'm a voracious consumer of thrillers,
have been for 35 years.
Uh, you know, I'd call him and say,
"Jim, it's been 30 pages since we killed anybody."
(all laugh)
You know, you think you have it tough,
and you do doing The Daily Show, okay?
-I do the daily novel. -Right.
-So you're writing every single day -That's it, yeah.
-about... Right, right, right. -No, it's a novel every day.
If you, if you, um...
Let's switch and talk about, um...
what's happening in the country right now.
As a former president, you have a unique perspective
on many of the issues America's facing currently.
Two things I want to talk to you about:
civility and immigration.
The first is what's happening right now in America,
the conversation around civility.
People arguing Sarah Huckabee Sanders
should not have been kicked out of that restaurant,
the restaurant owner did something wrong,
and, you know, it's about being civil.
We should all be nice to each other
even if we disagree.
Now, your daughter tweeted out that she believes
that government officials should be held accountable
or should be spoken to in public
because it does shape how they see the world.
What are your views on this as a former president?
Well, I think that the two are not necessarily inconsistent.
That is, it is true that when we were in church once
and Chelsea was about 14,
we were in a church that was a welcoming church.
That is, they welcomed people without regard
to their sexual orientation or identity.
And this man got up and protested
and said we should have been doing more about AIDS.
And he was absolutely right.
And we wound up doubling funding for treatment and research
and paying for about 25 or 30%
of the global effort at the time.
It still was nowhere near enough.
That, I thought, was fine.
Um, then you ask yourself,
well, should you go from there
to asking her to leave the restaurant?
That's a decision for the restaurant owner to make.
What I'd like to point out is,
would it be better if that didn't happen?
I think it would.
Uh, did I... I worked hard,
and Nelson Mandela helped me work hard
when they were so hateful to me when I was there--
personally hateful--
-not to respond in kind. -Right.
But, you know, a lot of poison
has been poured down America's throat
-since that 2016 campaign started. -Right.
Calling the...
Started off calling Mexicans rapists and murderers.
So it's hard to pour poison down other people's throat
and not have some of it come back up and bubble up.
-So I, uh... -(cheering and applause)
So what I would say is...
I-I read the article
about the lady who owned the restaurant,
and I wound up with a lot of respect
for the way she debated it,
but I also had a lot of respect for the way
Sarah Huckabee Sanders handled it.
I mean, she was very dignified.
She didn't chew them out. She didn't pitch a fit.
She didn't call them imm...
you know, immigrant-loving thugs or whatever.
She just got up and left and offered to pay.
So, maybe what I'd like to see this be the beginning
of something where, you know,
it would be better if we started talking to each other again.
I remember I had three good weeks with Congress once,
-when the Senate... -(all laugh)
Well-well, look...
When the-the Senate majority leader called me
a spoiled brat on the Sunday morning television program.
-Right. -So, as soon as he got home, I picked up the phone,
we called him. He said, "You called to chew me out,
didn't you?" I said, "Yes, I did.
But not for the reason you say. He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "Your staff told you you had to do the Sunday talk show.
"You worked all weekend, you woke up with a headache,
"you were mad you did it. They could tell you were irritated.
They baited you with me and you took the bait."
He said, "That's exactly what happened."
And he couldn't believe I wasn't mad at him.
We had three good weeks. My point is that,
sooner or later... people need to quit
tearing each other down and go to work.
But I think that you can't foment as much hatred
as has been fomented by the administration
without having a blowback. So, if they want to have
more civility, they need to stop the name-calling
and take the lead, like I tried to.
(cheering, applause)
When we...
when we talk about, uh, civility
and treating other people like human beings,
the way we'd like to be treated, the conversation of immigration
is one that has really led to, in many ways,
-the Sarah Huckabee Sanders story. -Yeah, absolutely.
Um, you see these images of children
being separated from their parents at the border,
you see the Trump administration
calling for a zero-tolerance policy.
Uh, what was interesting was then the current president
saying that these were actually your policies
and President Obama's policies that he is, I guess,
fighting against but also enforcing
but completely not for.
First of all: were these your policies?
-No. -They were not. Fine.
So now you go to the next thing, which is: as a president,
how do you balance keeping your borders intact
whilst also treating people
who have come into the country undocumented in a humane manner?
Well, first of all, every country's entitled
to protect its borders.
We have two border threats today.
Fentanyl coming in from China, killing a lot of Americans.
And heroin coming over the southern border
is causing a lot of trouble.
But there's been almost no net in migration from Mexico
since 2010. It's a made-up problem.
Uh, as the mayor of Brownsville, Texas said the other day.
Uh, these people are from Central America,
they're afraid of the narco-traffickers.
The law says that those who have a legitimate fear
can be given asylum in our country.
And those that are disappointed that their countries
have been wrecked by narco-traffickers
and can't make a living are not eligible. That's the law now.
There is a humane way to do that
without taking the kids away from the parents.
There is nothing in the law
that says they have to do this, and it's wrong.
(cheering, applause)
So...
If you... I'll tell you something else.
The crime rate among, uh, immigrants
is much lower than the crime rate of the native-born.
The murder rate of... among Muslims
is about a third that of the native-born.
We need to quit... We need to get the facts straight,
take a deep breath, and say, "Yes, we agree with you--
"everybody's got a right to protect their borders.
Yes, we all care about the victims of immigrant crime."
What I did do when I was president is sign a bill
saying that if an immigrant-- even when popular doc...
uh, properly documented--
committed a serious crime against an American,
they lost their right to stay in this country.
But this idea of zero-tolerance and throwing...
putting these people in cages,
doing this to the kids, it's an outrage.
And we should stop it now.
-(cheering, applause) -We should just stop it.
And reunite the kids.
One-one of the reasons, in terms of the-of the book,
uh, that-that we wanted to do...
what we wanted to accomplish is to remind people
-how important the job of the president is. -CLINTON: Yup.
How... how difficult it is. How impo...
You mention the four days that this...
that the president of the book goes through are very different.
But we wanted people to think about that.
But we want them to think about it when they go to the midterms.
Think how important those jobs are. Think how important it is
in terms of who you're putting into Congress.
And-and when you-when you were writing the story,
was it also important to you to display the relationship
the president has with the people around him?
'Cause that was something that was key in the book as well.
Was that-was that really important to try and find...
Yeah. I worked... I worked hard to... We talked through a lot
to make sure that, at least based on my experience
and my observation of previous presidents,
that this was a pretty good take
of a well-organized White House
where you have strong people who are smart,
who know different things and have different skills,
and they do their jobs, and they make these decisions.
And there's some-some drama in the thing, you know.
And one of the things the president did is he just kept
pushing and pushing and pushing so that it would be...
that these characters would really be flesh and blood.
I mean, there was... We were a week away
from when we had to hand the book in, and we were still
working on, um, the, uh,
one-one of the major characters,
in terms of just making that character more credible.
That's something I've always enjoyed about not just
your writing, but your-but your ideas about the characters.
You know, you-you have one of my favorite quotes,
where you say you believe that everybody loves to read.
Some people say "I don't like reading." You're like,
-"No, they just haven't found the right book." -Yeah.
-Especially kids. -Right. Which book would you think
you need to start President Trump on so that he would
start to read? What would you recommend as a favorite?
(cheering, applause)
Uh... have you got a... you got a good example?
I, uh... that-that's a stumper, I'll tell you.
Any-any... No, I don't want to go there.
I'll-I'll give you... It's a short book.
-I'm civil. -(Trevor, audience laughing)
-No, no, I'm being serious. -Yes?
Uh, in... At the end of World War I,
a German Christian Democrat named Max Weber
wrote a book called Politics as a Vocation.
It's about 120 pages long.
And among other things he says,
number one, politics is hard.
It's a long and slow boring of hard boards.
And number two, if you take a job
where you have power over another person's life,
you should be very humble,
-(applause) -because you put your...
because...
because you are given temporary power
and yet you are not omnipotent, you are not all-wise,
and you are putting your soul at risk.
It was... it's a great description
-Wow. -of the importance of politics
and the joy of it,
but how you can't do it right
unless you're humble enough to realize
that you're holding other people's lives in your hands
-and you should value them and take care for them. -Wow.
-(cheering, applause) -The, um...
I think the greatest lesson for me
in spending a year with President Clinton
is just understanding
how this guy's devoted his whole life
to trying to do the right thing for the people in this country.
Wow, that's a powerful position to be in.
It's... You know, going back to your point of humility
and being humbled,
I have noticed a journey that you've been on
from the beginning of the book press tour,
and that has been the journey of, you know,
being asked questions about the #MeToo movement.
You know, we saw your incident
on-on the morning news where, you know, a journalist said,
hey, you didn't apologize, and you did apologize,
and that got you a bit riled up.
-Wasn't my best hour, was it? -Right.
Wasn't your finest hour, I will say that.
And, um, you know, and over the weeks,
I've watched your interviews and I've read what you've said
on how these conversations have shaped your mind
and your understanding of the #MeToo movement.
Honest question: Has it been hard for you
to reprogram your brain?
Has it been difficult for you to go, "I have to relearn
"something that is happening now,
as opposed to how I've always seen the world"?
No, it means that I need to not react to...
the raw pain of having to relive
something that happened 20 years ago.
And I need to be aware that, unfortunately...
there are still millions of people every day
who face objectification, disrespect,
discrimination, and sometimes outright abuse...
in the workplace, on the street and at home.
And now we're all alive to it in ways we weren't before,
and we're all trying to work our way through---
not all of us, but most of us are--
trying to work our way through how we can use this moment
to build a better country
in person after person after person's lives.
And that should be the number one priority of everybody.
And... you know, I regret very much what I did
all those years ago, and I try to pay for it
and try to atone for it and try to...
You're right, but that...
If somebody doesn't remember what the facts were,
-I can hardly be angry, it was a long time ago. -Right. Right.
And so I shouldn't have been angry--
I should have not taken my eyes off the fact
that there are still, after all these years,
there is actual abuse and discrimination
and objectification and disrespect,
and it happens in the workplace, on the street and at home.
PATTERSON: I mean, one of the checks, though,
is the media, honestly, this should have been dealt with
20 years ago.
Should have been done ten years ago.
It all... I remember being with Ashley Judd
on the set of Kiss the Girls, and she was in her 20s,
and she was talking about the casting couch then.
-Right, right, right. No, no... -The story, it was there.
I'm with you completely, and I guess
the should've-would've-could've goes to everyone,
and everyone has questioned themselves.
But I guess before I let you go, you know, as...
When we strip away "president," when we strip away a man
who was one of the most powerful men in the world,
as a man, you know, the instinct is to go to a defensive place,
as someone, as you said, with your past, your instinct
is to... is to get angry
if someone misremembers a fact or two,
what would you recommend to other men out there
to begin the journey of understanding
and self-reflection?
To become first other-directed.
That is, look at what's happening in people's lives.
Then you have to ask yourself:
How do I think? How do I feel? How do I act?
And...
both try to make sure you're doing better,
even if you think you're a really good person
and you're not aware of ever having done anything wrong,
and then asking...
starting, uh...
asking the women in your life.
Or if you're gay, the other... your partner in your life,
whatever your gender.
And then look at the workplace.
I was really impressed at what Starbucks did
after that racial incident.
You remember when those guys were discriminated against?
-Oh, I remember, I remember. -And that happens...
-(laughter) -Yeah.
It happens to black people all the time.
Something like that.
And... they immediately said:
You know, we're gonna stop this institutionally, we're gonna...
And so I went in the local Starbucks
in this little town where Hillary and I live,
and I asked this young woman who was working there, I said,
"Did you go to your training? Tell me about it."
She said, "No, because I'm a part-time employee
"and I was off that day, but I have to do a makeup,
"and I'm so glad they didn't leave us out, either.
We're all gonna do this, we're gonna get better at this."
That's what we should be...
how we should think about this #MeToo moment.
This is a... We can't waste it.
We got to do better.
Thank you so much for your time, gentlemen.
It's been an honor having you on the show.
-(cheering) -Thank you so much. -Thank you. Thank you.
The President Is Missing is available now.
President Clinton, James Patterson, everybody.
For more infomation >> BRUH...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU...WHAT ELSE SHE NEED TO DO...FOOL!!! SUBSCRIBE - Duration: 15:09. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét