>> so there is the scene across from the white house in washington dc. a line of pretty severe

thunderstorms is making its way towards the district and our c-span crew is being asked to move along. talks aboutman covering the trump administration and shares her views on the president's use of twitter and the influence on social media. just over one hour and from ohio state university. maggie is an american journalist who is a white house correspondent for the new york times in a political analyst for cnn. she formerly worked for politico. began in 1996 when she was fired by the new york host. in 1999, she covered city hall and started political reporting. she worked for the new york years and for three

covered the 2008 presidential campaign. in 2014, she became a political analyst for cnn and was hired by the new york times in 2014 to be a political correspondent. she was part of the team that won a pulitzer prize this year for reporting on donald trump advisors and their connections to russia. please join us in welcoming maggie haberman. [applause] maggie: thank you for having me. i really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the current white house and the media dynamic because from a distance, i think it looks different than it is. i do not have a slide presentation or statistics to share. but i have 18 months of covering the trump administration.

and covering his campaign previously. thepe to be able to say at end of it how the trump white .ouse and press intersect background as a reporter is not traditional. i spent 10 years of the new york which has an extensive relationship with donald trump. has a nontraditional back rent is a president. it feels like everything works out. at least from a coverage perspective. i want to talk about a recent hire president trump has made. he hired bill shine who was a

fox news executive. he is the fifth person to be announced as a communications director. that is not as technical title, but that is his job, by president trump in the last 18 months. he has never worked in government. he has always remained behind the scenes. foxas struggled after the scandal to get a job. with a typically coveted job in the white house. he has been well received by his colleagues in the white house. he has been described as an adult in the room. largely made house up of people who have never worked in the government.

in appearance as a character mr. trump's first two years in office is indicative of the that people do not have to have relevant experience to the jobs trump is giving them. indicative of this presidency of of how media intersects with almost everything. his presidency has done so at .he highest levels if you follow the news, you are aware that last week trump called the media the real enemy of the state. he has appropriated the term fake news, which is used to talk about twisted headlines.

he has used it to describe reporters and stories -- and andies, but entire outlets things he would rather not have in the headlines. it might surprise you that this is a game to the president. he says he is having "fun" with reporters. privatehold meetings in with executives from news outlets and then undo it with tweets. he will point to reporters out fake news." as "

briefed ourand i washington bureau about what they could expect with the trump. we explained we had never had a campaign that dealt with the media the way he does. donald trump is a candidate would often tell you something and we explained that many of his advisers have ever worked on a presidential campaign. colleagues have said they felt we must be tired after a campaign, it could not be as we described. the first briefing that sean

spicer gave in which he yelled yelledrters, literally about the size of the presidential eggnog. , that is how donald trump has approached everything in his life. it,as been successful at more often than not in the white house. the relationship between this they house and the press from annsitioned adversarial nature to something more openly hostile. it begins with the person sitting in the oval office. to be clear, all presidents are concerned about their media coverage.

george w. bush often lamented press treatment. obama used new forms of media to get his message across, often complaining he was covered unfairly. trump is uniquely concerned and focused on his image and how the image is covered in the media. he has spent more time than anyg in the media president since the earliest days of the nation. he makes not only an opposing

force, but almost treats the media as an equal force. replied that trump used to be part of the media. i was a little confused. explained that between his a time on fox and , hends and the apprentice felt like he was part of the media. so there is part of him to get more frustrated than someone else might get in terms of coverage. his relationship was disorienting for the white house press corps. most polls predicted he would lose to hillary clinton and they were wrong.

that teaches us a different lesson. struggling with how to capture what we are seeing in this white house. frequency canand make stepping back and putting things in perspective difficult. we are not supposed to twitter talking to each other all day long. to understand the current state of affairs you have to understand when they came from. young city as a councilman running and winning races. he did not spend time learning how politicians interact with the media.

boroughup in an outer of new york city as a child of privilege. his and adulthood was spent on a quest of trying to be taken seriously by the elites in new york city. he was frustrated last week during his trip to europe when he had a meeting with vladimir putin and. a media reporter asked him a question about whether he would denounce russia's interventions in the 2016 elections in front of the world. mr. trump complained to advisors later. -- to advisors

donald trump spent decades turning himself into a commodity for the tabloids. . he recognized that the press was vital and valuable to him. he was frequently on the new york city social scene. transactional the nature of the tabloid and was a favorite of picasso pages. -- favorite of the media pages.

something he is still adjusting to is the notion that a press corps is not there to tell his of what is happening. he uses the words negative and unfair. the focus on his image is what drives a large part of what drives the press. -- he hasset sometimes called tivo one of the greatest inventions in history. when he sees on television drives his policy and surprises

people in his administration. in some ways, it reflects a traditional relationship with the media. few have worked in previous administration and the president has thements that he world's biggest press shopping gets the worst press. there are fundamental differences in how this white house interacts with the press. there are some through lines with this presidency and others. era, the clinton

administration has to be more closed and secretive. they are less and less willing to speak for the record and communicate with journalists. distrust in the -- there were obvious exceptions such as scandals, and during the monica scandal, bill clinton would tell different aids different things. different things. there was a concern around his staff of their own credibility and what they were reflecting to reporters. beenush white house has described as very difficult to penetrate.

in the day to day, there was not misinformation but there was inaccessibility. the obama white house was a combination. on one hand, they focused on the appearance of a more transparent administration but they played favorites and lied more than they would ever knowledge. -- then they would ever acknowledge. i spoke with an obama white -- thefficial obama white house also yelled a lot.

it is important to remember the obama administration went after subpoenaingleaks, phone records. it did not spark an outcry at the time. that white house started to move toward things that were on the background as opposed to on the record. that tradition has continued. this administration includes that and other new aspects. there are here a few people who are directly authorized to deal with reporters and those who are are very careful not to deviate from what the president says. they know he is watching them on television. sean spicer one point two the

briefings off camera. he would still do the briefings, but he would close them to tv cameras. performing for the eyes in the oval office and tv reporters were not performing for an audience that was watching. the briefings are important, even when they are difficult. no president in modern memory has had press secretaries as openly hostile. sean spicer and sarah sanders are very different way from cameras. they would argue that the reporters are, too.

there is a consistent approach with the trump white house that turns reporters into the story. it implies that anyone in trump's orbit becomes better-known. officials of the trump white house worry more than anyone realizes about how he interacts with the new cc. sees.now -- the news he i reported he was losing aididence recently in an and they got very upset. said, i do not 100 read

that. i said, but that is what he said. said, yes but he will read it and it will become more real to him. in this white house, because of the president with him they are muching, there is not about being truthful and sharing solid facts. mr. trump has always treated facts and reality is something he can create. the behavior of a lot of people around him relates to that. he is more engaging with the press then recent presidents. he frequently holds off the record briefings on air force one. i have been part of two of them.

thenvited reporters to he bringsbin, reporters individually into the and he is always trying to sell reporters on his view of events. 2015, he wanted me to write that he was going to be declaring his campaign for president in a month and i did not want to write it because i had taken it very seriously in 2011 when he considered running, and he did not run. so my bar was that he had to actually declare this time first. i had lunch with him and all of the cast of characters were around the table.

trump was talking about how much money he was going to spend. and he kept increasing the amount. he could see i was not believing him. it was not moving me to write the story and i could see he was getting frustrated. returns to reporters, even if he fights with them, to see if you can get a good story. his twitter feed is a staple of his presidency. this is a new thing for president. it is often how we learn about policy and his moods and how we as reporters have to engage with him, for better or for worse. had the ability to see thinking on display the way we do with trump, thanks to his twitter feed. ascolleague described it hearing the nixon tapes in

real-time. what somebody would say privately is out there for someone to see. the flipside is that he is very open when he is frustrated with something. to say the least. last year he tweeted something about jeff sessions. -- recuseduited and we from the probe were able to report exactly what the president was thinking. the negative side is that his s often contain information that is not true. most recent one is about

in --l: -- michael co. c taping, it is legal. was aware of the taping, therefore it was legal. it is not clear if the president is aware of the consent law or if the asked anyone. many of the tweets are straight from the president, where he spends his mornings until 11:00 when it comes down against the president a review -- and guess is president daily briefing. to ascertaintrying his intent, it leads also to staff trying to ascertain his intent. there are a lot of people claiming to know what is going on in the white house, and they

often don't. it is distorted to get some kind of fact.ality there is also an ongoing debate how to characterize things that are false. we are all under pressure, journalists, to use the word more" more -- "lie" frequently. times" editor believes -- and he still believes this -- that the word should be used sparingly. i understand and agree with this view. the word "lie" implies motives. we've not know what is in somebody is head at any given moment. but it also loses power and has a numbing affect.

other than the dynamics between staff, thent and his fallout of the press conference of mr. putin, the best way to look at donald trump, in my opinion, and i think this is where things are likely to go, is the same president who is frequently at odds with the presidency, if the presidency is that eventually an institution company is outside of it, despite serving in it. reportersdizzying for to try to understand what the administration is up to. i should take a moment and point that it has changed over time. we used to get beepers. the press office would tell us there was no more news for the day, and it was a bankable statement.

everything is set up dramatically thanks to cable news, twitter, a shortened news cycle, fewer people with good intentions spans. ofis a constant cycle stories -- we follow stories, watch twitter, make calls. it is important to make clear that no president enjoys bubble-likea atmosphere in a modern-day media environment. every president has felt like they were in a bubble and trapped, in recent memory . since security threats increased, presidents stopped interacting with reporters the same way. press,g skeptical of the the campaign, continuing the white house, and as i said, it

is probably a symptom in terms of the frustration of the media as well as the investigation that began. their complaints, while aggressive, were a little more routine, and they ultimately acknowledged -- i do not know whether they believed it amount, but they said -- the advantage to the role of a free press of a democratic institution, the importance of it, the white first white house did the same -- the bush white house does the same, and so did the obama white house. while both presidents agreed the press is undermining them, it is an adversarial process. mr. trump believes you can choose your own new cycle, you can choose your own newsfeed, ,ou can trust in institutions and we have not necessarily helped him along the way.

but we have never had a characterizedhas the press as not just his life him but disliking america. we have never had demonizing attacks the way this president has against individual reporters. and yet we have never had a president who craves the approval of the media. -- who he felt like rejected him years ago, and he continues to seek approval. set, trump's support was low before he took office. the residents campaign or in 2016, covers of the most stolen from hillary

clinton's campaign chairman. there has been a lot of confusion about why the white house does certain things come and there is an assumption everything is part of a larger strategy whatever hope people would understand is after his trip through europe and the helsinki various, there is usually no tremendous foresight into what they do. strategy implies a big discussion of consequences, thought out paths. i have often said that in my donald trump is he a say in what he has to say to get through short increments of time. for instance, he will give interviews when he is feeling frustrated within the white house bubble, or in some instances, as a favor to a friend. he ended up giving an interview with the british tabloid "the sun," an interview in which he undermines the british prime minister theresa may at a time when she was vulnerable, and he had to

essentially apologize to her later, which is something he'll must never does. he gave an interview as a favor to rupert murdoch, the owner of fox news. the media mogul has become a key custom to this president outside -- key touchstone to this president outside the white house. there is speculation that he favored brexit because he fault that it mirrored his own victory in 2016, and that is sort of true, but that is just not why any of this happened. he was very surprised how controversial it was when he got out of that interview and they had landed. but that fact has been very hard for people to absorb. the media covers phone, people feel disoriented. part of reporters into history in ways we are

completely unused to as individuals and as a profession. fbeefedf news have been up security as a result. it is a big deal for the president of the united states to call the free press the enemy of the people. cye aspect of this president that involves trump as president versus his administration. over the course of the last week, you can see the split screen of a president who had been reluctant to approach interference in the 2016 election, or even to appear to accept that it had happened, and his own security administration saying firmly it had taken place and there was a risk that it could happen again, mr. trump appears to equate the notion of russian meddling with suggestions that his campaign

must have been a part of it, and he has been adamant that there was "no collusion." reasonbeen, for whatever -- and i do not pretend to know what that reason is, and i do not think anybody else should, either -- particularly inarticulate and where he is on the spirit or inconsistent, i should say. week,ress briefing last turning over u.s. citizens to questioning to vladimir putin. he called a "incredible offer" that vladimir putin had made him. sarah sanders responded that the president was consulting his team, and she would let us know. i think she thought she was essentially dodging -- is that something i did? i hope not? [alarms beeping]

maggie: oh, that is all of our phones. god love technology. that was my phone into the mic. my apologies. i think sarah sanders thought she was dodging the question, but when i asked a question follow-up, it set off a frenzy. whether they thought they were taking it seriously, the president had praised it, and the press secretary had just said they were talking about it. this is one of the many instances of the listeners we're all grappling with. his staff says one thing, and we hear something else. we are used to people on our side of the divide, on the media site as well is on the governmental side, who do agree on some basic shared facts, and that is vastly harder to do with this administration. we are used to government also

being responsive through accountability. in most other administrations, if you have six months' worth of stories alleging corruption, the epa administrator, scott pruitt, anything comparable in the bush era, obama, clinton, go back to hws, the official would have .een kicked out instead, this president will double down and see it on an attack on the white house until it was not sustainable anymore, and then they pushed him out. there are a couple of cases where it is a violation of norms not only happening but encouraged. this is not a president who cares tremendously about historical record being accurate. briefedcolleague and i our d.c. bureau during the transition on what to expect, we

explained the traditional method of reporting on the white house would not work here. that method as we find one or two people who you know are very close to the president, and this has been done with candidates as well, there is one person who is very good at channeling the principles, and get them to explain to you what is going on. becauset does not work, there is often a dispute about basic facts. trump encourages his sort of in his advisers, as long as i have covered him, his aides will use the press to shape events for themselves in addition to trying to set policy, and that can be very challenging. i think our biggest challenge in this white house is explaining to people what they are seeing

and why it is happening, for all of the reasons that i just said. there has been times of ink spilled, including by me, discussing the president and major events. i think it has stopped being particularly revealing, because it does not always a why something happened. oftenis often repeating contradictory impulses, the specific impulse he is acting on can be really hard. the noise around all of this is becoming all-consuming. it can be difficult to remind ourselves of reporters what matters and what doesn't. white house press releases are worth noting, but they are hardly a major story, and this the twitter feed is important to contextualized. toorters are not used presidents making the clear statements publicly the way this president has. they were done uniformly.

i think the press has become more discerning. every other instance is no longer seen as an inherent story. the fundamental thing that i think people do not understand about this white house is, as one of my colleagues put it, the approach to the press is what people who are much younger than i am would culturally. -- call trolling. he did it to get a reaction, and he was often unsuccessful by taunting us, and he would use it to his advantage with reporters, and he still does. uses the processes of the press against us, such as basic fact checking and correction. the mainstream media uses fact checking, which is something the white house does not, at least not often. he would not be the first person but he wouldither,

certainly be the one to doing the loudest and most often. the press has been trying to combat this in a way few had seen. he has labeled as the opposition party repeatedly, and we are not. reporters have fallen into the position of playing opposition. defines reporters as "they are detestable, -- "they are digestable." it means the only true way to get what he says is to run full isnscripts, something that not always practical. we do it with one-on-one interviews with "the times," but with other outlets, we cannot always do it. that means people, unfortunately, do not always get a full picture. most significantly, mr. trump spent years as a figure in new york media honing skills to conquer new york reporters.

one tablet would offset another. he would give a story to the "new york post," and the new york daily news would have to catch up, and he would get them pitted against each other. he tried doing this with the national media in 2011, and it he not work, in part because went so firmly into conspiracy theories about obama's birthplace, but it didn't work in 2016, and it has continued through the presidency. if one sunday show would not think of my phone, instead of making them come to the studio, he was just do it with a different sunday show until the other one had to capitulate. it goes back to my point about him bending people to his will. he does that a lot more than i think anyone wants to admit. finally, one of the biggest problems in the trunk era is s in the press

corps are taking this on was too much frequency. the era of media cuts pastes, he is using it for the wrong reasons. i think reporters in the white house press corps are trying to and each other's back to treat the collective as more of a fraternity. days, sarah sanders try to ignore a tv reporter. it is a small gesture, but it is a start. we cannot treat every new data point with mr. trump as if it is altering. takethat, i would love to questions if you have anything for me. [applause]

>> do you think there is any overall strategy that this president has terms of foreign policy, economic policy, or is it ad hoc? question is whether you have any kind of policy or whether it is all ad hoc, transactional. i think president trump does not theory in this case, which other presidents have had. he was involved because he wanted or because he was in part because the navy he was being honest, he did not think he was going to win. he was uniquely unprepared when he won. hadad impulses that he has

since the 1980's. placedelect to 1987, he a full-page ad in the "new york times" and a couple of other papers where he talked about japan "ripping us off." he talked about unfair trade deals. if you close your eyes, it is all stuff he says now. so those are consistent. but i do not think that those imply a strategy. because of what i said about his lack of preparation for the job, i think he was aware that he was in over his head, and i think he was more open to being directed by different aides. he was more open to hearing input, and he can be very indecisive. for instance, when he was choosing a vice president, he went back and forth between pence and christie 100 times, to the point that the person he

last talked to thought that is to be was going to pick. he ripped up the plan 100 times. i think at some point earlier this year, he started feeling like he understood the job better. doing the job does give you a sense of what the job is. he felt much more comfortable. i think we have seen him fall into his more natural impulses. whichstance, tariffs, advisers spent months keeping them from imposes, he finally has gone ahead with. this is something i do not think the media covers well. we cover everything from fis between the warring factions -- a lot of it is just him. a lot of it is rolling with whatever. this is more a question in

your opinion, not necessarily the just talking about president trump, you know, but historically, it seems to me in the past when you had an election, obviously during the election, you had your warring sides, but it seems like it was settled down more, and then you had the presidency, and there was still respect for the office of the presidency. what is your take on that now? where do you see that going with how we are now? maggie: the question was historically after a presidential election, there has been more coming together and respect for the office of the presidency, which i think you are suggesting is lacking now. i would say a couple of things. i think political polarization predated president trump by a large factor. we are going back to the 1990's

now. i think he has accelerated a lot of existing trends. there are people against and from the moment he won, and they refer to themselves as the resistance. unity is hard to come by. he has reacted to that by saying essentially i am not going to include you guys. fight for my own supporters, and that is unusual to have a president do. a lot of angeral on the other side after this kind of a presidential contest. outsideit was probably for trump than what we're used to, but usually the president does not do any outage to the other side. i think it is ultimately frustrating to him, because

knowing him, again, i go back to the rolling about him wanting to be taken seriously. office,ind, he won the and now he lives in the most expensive real estate in the country, so i think a lot of his reactions flow from that. where that leads, i don't know. barring a massive wave election by the democrats in the midterms this year, and i think that will tell us a lot, you will either have a very narrow majority by either the democrats or the republicans. what i think that will lead to his very little getting done. so i do not think the climate is going to improve. >> i was wondering if you would talk a bit about how the media handles when he does the walk backs. in particular, the "would" vs. "wouldn't," and "i don't trust

our intelligence on this" vs. "i do trust our intelligence," in some cases coming within 24 hours. maggie: the question was how do we handle the walk backs that the president does, does he trust the intel community or he doesn't? with putin, his own advisers were making fun of it, to be clear. i do not have a great answer for how we handle it other than we cover it. i think the danger is that -- this is what i meant how routine process is not really encapsulate what he says, a typical headline based on the walk back, for instance, would be "relate "president trump says he believes the intelligence community," was that is reversing from a day earlier. we just have to be a lot more on we have to include the

full context in ways we did not used to. it is in ways the collective we are not capable of. but it is whiplash inducing. he says one thing one day and then he says the exact opposite. during the campaign, he was sometimes do that in the same sentence. the difference is that in the didaign, i think the press not do it on demand, and i think that is a shame on us and a shame on people who did not do take it seriously. i think all we can do is to make sure everything has full context. thank you for being here. i am a big fan. this is great. a little biting about us as news consumers.

i am on twitter. i use twitter, i am reading the "new york times" app probably an unhealthy amount. [laughter] maggie: on which one? >> all of them. are offe that you twitter for the most part. as a news reporter, what do we do as consumers to consume news in a healthy way that enables us to be informed, involved citizens? maggie: the question is what advice would have for news consumers, a vigilant news consumer to make sure they are truthful?healthy and there are a lot of nonprofits spending a lot of time right now on how to make sure after 2016,

where a lot of fake headlines were on the internet, how to make sure you are reading something that is trustworthy. there is not a great solution yet. i think that i would take -- in the case of the "times," in particular, it can be challenging because we call ourselves the paper of record. we do not yield to pressures of the internet. so it creates its own challenge. i think that my biggest piece of advice would be -- you raise that i got off twitter -- i still look at twitter. i do not look at it as often as i did. i look at it to make sure i do not see breaking news. and the president uses it frequently. he tweeted about his lawyer, the story that we had broken yesterday. i think that twitter has been really deleterious to the

discourse in general in the way that news spreads. my biggest recommendation is that people do not use twitter, they go directly to news sites, which takes a lot longer. here is why i say that. .to i ot me a a lot i found twitter disorienting when i first started using it because i am a bit of an old lady in terms of news. but what was striking to me about twitter is that literally everything was the same. i cannot tell a link to a five-or investigation on lead in the water in a town looks the same as a link about kim kardashian. you cannot tell the portion, besides, the magnitude, it literally is all shrunk down to the same size.

if you go to the website worth you read the newspaper, you can he based on story placement, can see based, -- on story placement based on headlines the interest or the .tock in 2012, i was writing a blog with a colleague, a friend who i now work with at the "times" also, we had interned, and she had success in a quote by something that was set by romney. which she sentin it to us, it sounded as if making fun of new grai newt gingrich for crying about his late mother. ,hat was not the case at all but the shame was on me, i tweeted about that, and it is a

searing experience that i still get nauseous about it. when one story sneezes, another story catches a cold now. i still think you have to stick to look, if you prefer conservative news, national review is a really good website. the journal is more conservative leaning, but it is still a good paper. i think there are some wonderful reporters at fox news. chris wallace is a great reporter. but i do think the commentary shows they travel less than fact than their news programs do. athink that you have to go to trusted news source at this point. there is so much stuff on the internet that is not true, that all i can say is less time than on a website you are not familiar with. >> i read recently with the

number of news press briefings has been scaled back considerably, and i was wondering how was it decided on, how the different news organizations get called on. maggie: that is an excellent question. the question was about number of press briefings and how frequently they take place these days and also reporters that get called on. the press briefing is up to the white house to decide whether they're going to have them or not. they have had fewer and fewer , because it is becoming increasingly harder for them to engage with reporters on a number of subjects, and that is not just issues like the president's trip to europe, and it is not just about there is anns into

investigation going into the ursuline, that sarah sanders cannot speak to, that is not her role, it is not appropriate. becomes,k that it although sometimes she will answer those questions, and sometimes she won't, which is another issue, but i think that the briefings, as i said before, are in or to, even when we are necessarily getting the information, but it is really important to be able to ask officials those kind of questions in that kind of a setting. i do not think they will totally go away, but they have been reduced in number. in terms of being called on, we have assigned seats. i think it is done by the white house correspondents association. why do reporters get called on

first, and then it is just where the press secretary is. describe the mechanics of getting the information to the press secretary who then gives us the information? maggie: that is an excellent and a very hard question to answer. pressestion is how the secretary gets the information that she conveys to us. the very quick answer is no. [laughter] maggie: the somewhat longer answer is in some cases, she gets it directly from the president. in some cases, she gets it from the chief of staff. in some cases, there are meetings before she comes down to the briefing. whoever does the briefing is him, but that does not mean they are getting -- they are prepping by making to the government,

they are prepping to figure out what questions we might ask and how to answer them best. there are times you will hear sarah sanders speak frequently "i will have to get back to you on that. i have not spoken to the president on that." that is often true. it does not explain why she does not get back to us the next day. my sense for the people in the white house is that they are less and less certain that what they are being told is true, and that has an impact on how they then communicate it to us. i know that is not the most in-depth answer, but it is probably the clearest i can be right now. >>hi. maggie: hi. >> my question -- you had an incredible opportunity to be in the white house to keep raising the hard questions, especially

with what is happening with the immigrants' children, what is happening with our environmental regulations being decimated, what is happening with the nra power. youou get complacent, or do stay strong and keep asking the hard questions? maggie: the question was -- broadly -- whether we get complacent in our jobs, do we keep asking hard questions. it is a good question, because i think part of what president trump's approach to us, certainly in the campaign and now, is to wear us out and to weigh us out. but i don't think that we -- i have three children, and i get fatigued in life, but i did not get fatigued from asking the questions that need to be asked, and particularly on the border crisis, which is really a crisis that the white house is making.

i was thinking about it this -- i feelhat it has like media has done a very good job staying on it. know, thatrry, you the attention span of editors and the media, i think the sheer volume makes it harder. the amount ofbout reporting that has gone into probe,ruitt, the russian it has notcrisis, been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. i think that is great, and i hope that you keep asking the hard questions. maggie: i appreciate that. >> can you take a few more

questions? maggie: sure. >> thank you. to have their hand up? >> i don't know. >> you mentioned that president trump is quite unique and different. i think you mentioned also use the first president we had who is not a politician. you think it is a call for the press to cover him because he is not a politician? and what about his second term? maggie: the question is what about him being a politician and what we covered indifferently in the second term? i do not think the press covers indifferently than a non-politician. i think there are a lot of things that he did not understand about how things have traditionally operated, because he is not a politician. i'm not think it is the job of

the press to be comfortable or uncomfortable. thank you. in what ways do you think the way president trump and deals with the media will in the months next president or future presidents, and how do you see that evolving? the press lingering forntially as an ongoing the president -- that is a excellent question that we ask ourselves a lot. asked ourselves in terms of full access to the presidency what he has changed. i wrote last year that he was trying to bend the presidency to making a and he was draw.

i think now he is winning. i do not think other presidents tweak the way he does. other country i that iso, i think probably unique to him, but i do there are a lot of people who can push the bounds of what is acceptable in terms of telling the truth, in terms of the edits in your numbers, in terms of just the volumes of either misinformation, false information, or lies, and see will have -- it is not that he is not being held accountable by the rest. -- the press.

we are not congress. we cannot hold hearings. we are covering him. and i think we have covered him pretty thoroughly. but i do think that his election taught us how much of our system day, andthe end of the whether that changes. >> thank you, maggie. one more question, and then we will let you get from your. here. ok. [laughter] >> you have covered him for years. in covered him in new york, terms of saying that he was somebody who was on the outside who was trying to get the evidence of those in -- acceptance of those inside.

who is he looking for acceptance from?what is driving this now ? is that adoration? what is the audience that he is playing to? maggie: the question was about when i was in new york, he was playing for acceptance he did not get, and who is he playing to now? it is a great question. i think generally, he is not unique among politicians in terms of craving approval. the funny thing with donald trump is that even when he gets it, it is sort of not enough, and he has to keep going. in new york city, it was people in industry, it was real estate developers who were seen operating a different tier than he was.

inbecame political figures 2011, 2012, getting romney to accept his endorsement was a big thing. and now, i honestly think that a lot of it is certainly everybody. he would probably deny that, but it is the media, it is the people he thinks are criticizing him on tv, it is whatever audience he happens to be looking at at that moment. thank you. >> quick question, why don't pompeo and bolton resign? maggie: the question is why don't pompeo in bolton resigns. rtend to be in either of their minds, so i don't know, and i do not know

if they want to. i think john bolton want to be the national security advisor. i think he pompeo, has a report with the president. who are in people government right now, they believe they are doing more good ence harm by their president there. keynotee will be our speaker tonight at dinner in less than an hour. so join us there. thank you very much. maggie: thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] tonight on "q&a" -- >> what does that sound like? [crying]

what we're hearing are the cries of children, immigrant children, who have just been separated from their parents and a order patrol detention facility and it was audio that i obtained a month and a half ago lawyer,th the help of a a civil rights attorney on the , and named jennifer hear she had obtained this tape and thought it was important and shared it with me and asked what i thought about it, and i told her that i thought we should try to publish it. it was not an easy decision for the source of that tape, who felt that, you know, the tape risk for beingat identified and fired, but the source ultimately agreed to

allow me and pro-publica to publish the article. publica senior reporter ginger thompso tonight on c-span's "q&a." ♪ journaln's washington live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up monday morning, former education secretary and author arne duncan on his book "high school work there a former white house press secretary sean spicer on his new book about the and histhe white house relationship with the president or the surgeon watc -- the president. be sure to watch. >> monday night on "the

,ommunicators," a look at 5g the next generation of wireless technology and infrastructure are joining us on the program, former fcc commissioner and president and ceo of the wireless infrastructure association jonathan adelstein . he is interviewed by bloomberg news' todd shields. todd: i am interested in 5g. i think a lot of us are. why do we care? what will we do with this speed as it builds up? you have smart cities. you will know where to park. traffic will improve. the benefits will go on and on. overall society will be better connected to the overall economy growing faster, if we get it right. >> watch "the communicators" monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span two.

2. booktv is in prime time. keith gaddie talks about his book "the rise and fall of the voting rights act." and danielshermer peterson with "freedom fest." and michael eric dyson on his book "what truth sounds like." brett smith with "the future computer," artificial intelligence and its role in society. bello at 8:00 p.m., adam talks about publishing authors from both the right and left. c-span two. 2. >>