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at 1:00 pm eastern on sunday and watch our live coverage of the savanna festival on sunday on booktv on c-span2. >> tonight we welcome rick wilson, a top political republican political strategist, add man and writer in his new book, "running against the devil," a plot to save america from trump, and the democrats from themselves. rick wilson lays out a witty roadmap to how to dump trump. 's new book builds on his 2018 new york times number one bestseller, everything trump touches dies. rick wilson put forth a

strategy to persuade alienated republicans and democrats who voted for trump in 2016 to change their vote. rick believes democrats should undermine trump's efforts to control america's political narrative with a case that argues our 40 fifth president is a mentally and morally unwell man. being married to democratic senator ron wyden of oregon i take a great interest in politics, i read this book over the weekend and was absolutely mesmerized by it. rick wilson's ideas are important to how to retire a dangerous donald trump in 2020. we have liberal pundits molly jongfass beside him tonight. as a daughter of writer erica

jong and jonathan fast and granddaughter of howard fast she comes from deep literary roots. and the author of two novels, the social climbers handbook and we have normal girl, and the writer of a memoir, girl maladjusted. we are glad to have her book here along with rick. without further a do please join me in welcoming rick and molly to the strand bookstore. >> thank you for that wonderful

introduction. appreciate that. >> then won't let mine be on. i can ask anything but no one can hear me. >> i kind of like that. >> we had a long discussion and are very planned out. what should i ask? we got to regime change, we are not going to talk about that. i was hoping we could start by talking why should people listen to you? why now? >> for 30 years of my long career in this business i was the guy that wrecked progressive liberal dreams all over the place and built a very

sophisticated, very complete machine to go out and win for republicans who did not ideologically or socially match people terribly well. i elected -- helped elect a republican governor in vermont, process that, vermont. i will say i helped talk about rudy giuliani as mayor in 1997 before he became literally the craziest person i know. [laughter] >> in america now. the reason i think, i hope democrats will listen and read this book is we face something bigger than my former party and former ideological preferences. we face an accidental threat to this country from a president who has taken on the mantle of

power and abused it in ways that are a proximate threat to this country and we may not survive another four years of the sky. i don't say that with any sense of exaggeration. i say that with a sense of very cold realization about what he is doing both on the surface and below the surface in washington to corrupt and destroy this country. >> host: i want to know what is wrong with rudy giuliani? can i ask that? just for a minute, what is wrong with rudy giuliani? >> guest: let me say this. when i came to work for rudy in 1997, running for reelection as mayor. the man i met then had some very rough edges but basically my theory of the case even then was rudy was that man. sometimes you hate batman's

methods but you need a batman figure once in a while, bringing out of the cave once in a while to do a tough job and i will never not be grateful that on 9/11 he did something to this country at a moment when everyone was desperate for some sense of guidance and stability, not one press conference and if he would stop rate there they would name high schools after this guy until the sun cooled. he would be viewed as somebody, and showed real leadership. kooky rudy ranting about conspiracy theories. and this educates wellness he was a consultant to and while there are a number of theories about rudy, why he is doing this i happen to believe a very

significant factor in it is the donald trump's influence find the worst aspects of every human being around him, the darkest, most sick part of any human being around him and ruthlessly exploited. when i worked for rudy, donald trump was a figure of mockery. he was a guy, i was in the campaign first and in city hall, donald trump was a guy you would throw a couple pardon passes to but nobody was thinking we better listen to what donald trump says on consequential policy matters. no one ever thought that. i will confess now, i will never say where she is buried - i will confess to something now. that piece of video with donald trump and rudy giuliani in

drag, i felt bad. >> host: will you tell back story for that please? >> guest: i will be haunted by nightmares, post trump sports stress disorder. it was for the inner circle of the press association annual dinner and it was kind of a lark at first. he really likes drag. it was the third time one of his friends said he wants to do the rodeo character, what is he? now hate but seems to be - >> host: >> guest: how can democrats be donald trump? >> guest: there are three things to think about. hard facts, democrats don't like this fact, the electoral college is the only game in town.

love it or hate it, this year it is still there. if your plans don't include winning in 15 or so swing states you are not having a real campaign. if your candidate is going to california for any reason but to take giant sacks of cash you are not running a real campaign. if -- anybody who says -- it is not. you now how california is going to vote. you know how mississippi is going to vote. you know how north dakota is going to vote. you know how oregon is going to vote. they are in the bag for better or for worse, extra voter turnout at those places means nothing. every single warm body, every door knocker, every pair of boots on the ground needs to be in a place like florida or wisconsin or michigan or pennsylvania or ohio or virginia. virginia is not as. as you think yet. or north carolina. they have got to fight where the fight is taking place.

if they don't they will wake up on election day with the hillary clinton problem. we should have gone to wisconsin. they weren't spending time in the philly suburbs, they were spending time in santa barbara, california. they were running in places where the race was already over and they were ignoring places where the race was still going on. it is a game of small numbers. pushing people into states that are fairly low extents and fairly return is a smart way. the 15 state play, a electoral college play is the only game in town.

the second is the election is a referendum on donald trump. our election campaigns whether it is dogcatcher or president are a referendum on the incumbent. it is a question, do you want this guy for four more years or someone else? it is the only game in town. that referendum on donald trump does not come down to what you have a healthcare plan that is 600 pages long or 100 pages long? it doesn't come down to any policy at all. donald trump's policies sit on a trucker hat. barack obama's policy, hope and change, fit on a poster. americans tell pollsters all the time i am interested in policy. i want to know what his plans are to do this or that. in focus groups in polling we call that lying out your ass because american voters consistently tell you they want to talk about policy and they vote based on things in their lizard brain. they vote based on fear, based on love, based on celebrity. they don't vote on paragraph 714 of elizabeth warren's plan of how to recalibrate social security they don't do that.

i love policy nerds. in campaigns over the years i hide many of them and bless their nerdy little hearts, they type all day. you put policy on a cut. against to know you are serious but voters are shallow. most of them are not thinking through complex policy options. they are thinking i scared of this guy or that guy? >> a little disappointing but i will take it. i have a question. >> they elected donald trump. do you have that much faith in them? >> who do you think of the candidate who is best to beat donald trump? >> i say this a lot and i really mean it. i'm not trying to pick the democratic nominee. i don't care what policies they pursue down the line. i just want them to pick somebody who won't get beaten in 44 states. whether that is elizabeth

warren or pete buttigieg or joe biden, it has got to be the person who makes the race if into a referendum on donald trump and consistently take the fight to trump and never blinked and never back down and never have a moment they feel shame or fear or that it is too rough or tough or they think for a moment the other side will show decency or mercy or pity or kindness. it has to be someone tough enough to do this job. if i was still wearing my evil republican hat. >> let's do that. >> i would be waking up every morning praying for bernie sanders. if i was doing what i used to

do, i would make bernie sanders into the greatest comic opera villain of all time. he is an 80-year-old crazy socialist from vermont who basically just had a heart attack. if you think they took hillary clinton and made her into a caricature of who she really was, wait until they get a hold of bernie sanders. i think he has a lot more trouble against biden who is goofy but voters will tell you in focus groups he is goofy and weird but fundamentally decent. they don't fear him. i think warren is probably tapped out as a candidate. she's gotten better than i thought she could be but i think she reached the top of her performance level. bernie is sampling her right now. i don't think she will survive it. you never get the perfect candidate. you go to war with the honor you have, not the one you want and in this case who do i want? i want barack obama 3.oh. you don't get it. that is the problem for the democrats. you have got to be careful about telling voters everything

you want to do unless you have a powerful, generational candidate. barack obama was a once-in-a-lifetime level candidate. every republican who is serious about it looked at barack obama when he started making speeches and went oh -- we are done. he was the greatest natural politician and connector of the media age. bill clinton was the last great organic politician wheeler dealer kind of guy of our age. anybody here think there is a bill clinton or barack obama in this field? there is not. i wish it were otherwise because donald trump has one great gift. he is a master of the reality tv game and that reality tj game will play out, rewarded

generationally powerful candidate. a truly charismatic democratic candidate but right now the field is not comprised of barack obamas. there is very little margin for error. >> getting depressed. democrats wants to fall in love. >> that is a truism of politics the democrats want to follow love and republicans want to get to the goal line. there are things to be optimistic about. donald trump is an endless supply, the human gaffe machine of all time. karma catches up with bad people eventually and 25 pounds of kfc a weekend goggles down magnums of gravy. we may get lucky.

>> what advice would you have for democrats who are listening today, what could they do? >> what democrats can do in places where the election is decided is -- social contact is incredibly valuable in context. in 2008 barack obama discovered when they started applying data science in politics, you need to talk to everyone you know in other places about what you know of donald trump, the story of how new yorkers view him, there is a mythological thing about new york, they love to hate it and hate to love it and they have this idea that donald trump was a pinnacle of new york society and pinnacle of new york business when we all know this guys a clown who couldn't get a table at the worst restaurant in town.

i have a quote from a hedge fund guy, moderate republican and i went to him in august of 15 and said this is bad. job or marco will not make it and will spend billions. wait a minute. he goes by and the billionaire. donald trump is not a billionaire, he has never been a billionaire. he is a clown living on credit and that bloomy away because i was a sophisticated consumer of opposition research, didn't bother to dig through, peeling back the illusion of trump is important. advocating, if you can manage to volunteer in a swing state and knock on doors or do whatever you can that is important and pennsylvania is

down the road. that is one of the key battlefields this year and hitting doors it matters a lot and whoever the nominee is will have a steep hill to climb and not everybody can spend two weeks in pennsylvania or knock on 500 doors. sharing things on social media is part of the currency of this field and being active in the new sphere of political discourse, the health gave that is twitter and facebook has become important for people to do, shootdown lies and fake stories and do the things that are the modern-day equivalent of doorknocking and canvassing. >> you want to talk about the lincoln project? he doesn't. i think you should. >> i will give you 5 minutes. there are a handful of us wish you could have sat us around the table and a waffle house in

the remnants of the old republican party and most all of us started out with george bush 41 when we were bright-eyed idealists and we have either banish ourselves or been expelled from the world of republican politics because what is there today isn't about limited government or individual liberty or loyalty to the constitution. it is a personality cult based around one man. fortunately or unfortunately there's a group of us, h d schmidt, john weaver and other guys who were the architects in some ways of the machinery donald trump stole from us, the car he sold to go joyriding in. i don't even mean the ideological side but the technical political stuff. some people think we are good at negative ads on television

and writing compelling messages and talking to republicans even if it is a game of small numbers to win back those votes, we launched ten days ago and went after one of the targets we've us important which is the evangelicals who support donald trump, we did and add call the maga church which made the president very very angry and evangelical friends extremely angry. this sunday there will be hellfire brought down on me in a variety of aluminum sided religious institutions around the country. today we went after cory gardner who is a guy who should know better. he would be on paper a moderate republican doing his best to polish donald trump's shoes every day and match mitch

mcconnell so we went after him and there will be a series of them going after vulnerable republicans, or find somebody who can. it was a big job to say we will take down donald trump and work our hardest and have a lot of skills. i'm the liam neeson character, special set of skills. and none of us will leave this until then. >> can -- >> we will rip molly into it. >> i am a democrat and they asked if i am an independent or democrat and i was like democrat. >> are you a good one? >> talk a little bit about why -- people -- republicans are

not really on our side. people say george conway is working in a rift. can you talk about that criticism. >> let me talk about those criticisms,. and i had a new york times bestseller last year. there is around the error from what i could have made on one congressional race or a senate race to say nothing of presidential. it was a good business. i gave it up, and every one of us could have, to the background as the minimum thing.

kept our incomes and businesses and very happy practice, went out causing trouble. you work about 5 months every two years, not the hardest job in the world but it was more important to take a position and take a stand because the risk factor donald trump presents to this country is more important, my ideological predicates or preferences and i am not and evangelical, or conservative types. more a national security and individual liberty conservative. >> and i'm not kidding. conservative democrat epicenter. >> guys like steve jackson who were conservative democrats in the spectrum of ideological viewpoint in the democratic

party's. they used to be moderate republicans. there are still, because i live in the world of numbers and math and polling and data science. they are moderate democrats. they are not trying to get to the guillotine. they are not, they are not so far left they would be unrecognizable but they are also not burn it all down. they are not looking for sweeping structural change in the world, they are looking for security and moderation but in the republican party there is no ideological baseline anymore. they are all just trump, that is all it is about.

we are spending money like a drunken socialist as someone said to me, trump produced record deficits, record that, there is no such thing as magical free money, $2 trillion tax cut and trillion dollar deficits every year without an eventual economic consequence. the recession that is coming is going to be brutal. there is nothing in the gop that says we have to be fiscally disciplined, was never very good at it anyway to be honest and nothing in the gop right now that believes in anything but the aggrandize and of donald trump, that is not a political party, that is a cult. >> i think we are supposed to go to questions now.

regime change -- i'm just kidding. >> what is the question you get you don't ever get asked but would like. this is not cheating, this is called sheeting. >> what i like to be asked. i would like to be asked more often how did you do it. there's a lot of demonology about me and people like me, they gerrymandered or did voter suppression, did this or that magical thing. how do you really do it. how we really did these things was found great candidates who were socially and culturally like people in the district they were going to run in and

we ran nuts and bolts campaigns, so much of it, i shouldn't say this, like the magical eva ladd that i would come up with, so much as blocking and tackling, doorknocking politics, get your guy on the phone every day to make donor calls, to raise 500 bucks from people in your neighborhood in your community, get the guy to have a walk plan, wearing shoes every day, 6 or 10 weeks in the campaign cycle to convince people he cares about them. the magic of politics is the brilliant speech or brilliant dad, it is the door knockers, a process thing and you have to be willing to do that work and that includes presidents. donald trump set a terrible example. bill clinton went to new hampshire and pounded doors to come in third to declare

victory. barack obama did walk lines and worked the business of politics. you may hate george w. bush, he would sit in a room and talk to every person in the room until they felt he was there best friend and that is the question, that is a separate book, not as exciting as the dramatic fight of our time but politics is about interpersonal connection and reaching out and finding people, we live in the age of digital voter profiles but there's a lot of work to be done and a lot of the personal connection has to be what you are and what you believe in. >> also running the green party candidate. >> by the way if you do a trick, a lot of times when you see a swing district, a republican and democrat evenly matched, green party candidate gets in the race i hired them.

it is not illegal to find somebody to run the green party line and we will take care of the details and frankly, i say this in the book, democrats are out of their minds if they don't go to arizona, nevada and texas and put a ballot line on the build the wall shoot the mexicans crossing the border thieves, murderers and rapists party because there would be a 2% or 3% lunatic fringe, i will vote for the maga wall parties, that is donald trump. voters are not all that sophisticated. a lot are not paying attention. that sort of shenanigan, if democrats wake up and go i can't believe anyone suggest such an outrageous proposal, that spits on our democracy as if the bad guys are doing that -- you better be ready to do bad --. i'm not saying break the law.

i am saying become law adjacent. [laughter] >> who in the democratic leadership do you want to read this book? >> i would like the messaging people in the campaigns to read it. i would love the candidates to read it. nancy pelosi doesn't need a lot of help from me. she is running a good game. i wish chuck schumer would read it because like a guy who jumped off of the pumpkin truck, just terrible to watch, awful. the democratic speechwriters and add makers and message makers for the campaigns. a loss of this is what would terrify me if i was on the republican side. i write the messages that would terrify me if i heard a democrat deliver them. i told him how to express the

things they believe in and away that - is not ideologically hot. i think it has a broad audience because it is a warning to everybody how much worse it can get. i project forward a lot how trump can spend four more years and more years after that wrecking this country in a fundamental way. i think there is a lot of utility in different parts of the campaign side. >> is this on? for me, one of the elephants in the room you haven't mentioned is bloomberg. kind of the three part question. i am thankful to him for the money he puts to flip the house and he is a real billionaire.

i see a tough thing for him to get the nomination unless he picks stacy abrams for i don't know. i don't know how you would get the nomination but how do you see this playing out? would you work for him? he is throwing money, has a lot of money and is throwing money. would you work for him? have you worked for him if that is not too indiscreet of a question? and that is it. >> here's my regret about michael bloomberg. for the five or six republican senate races mitch mcconnell needs to defend he needs planning to raise $200 million. mike bloomberg would burn that on a bonfire between now and

supertuesday easy, probably close to $300 million. taking the senate is an insurance policy. i would love to see michael bloomberg put $200 million in a voter registration in 15 key swing states and a data project to target those obama trump voters. he may be at this point, he may be at this point but that takes massive resources, real commitment and something i have a long hesitation about vanity campaigns and bloomberg has a ceiling. he is approaching that stealing right now at 15% or so. there is a throttle when it comes to stop watching the ad in their head.

i'm heartened by the fact, the democratic party, would not organizer to card motor pool. tom perez is the worst party chairman in either party i have seen in decades. i have seen some shifty party chairman on both sides. it is astounding how weak perez is as a chairman and how little control he has had over this process. the great gift would have been to we know the field and get to 6 or 7 candidates, a big diverse field to fight through but this clown car 22 people on the stage you can't do. i think mike will have a massive impact, i hope he can keep his commitment to doing all the things he says he is going to do to help defeat trump. i think there would have been a more linear way to get there than putting yourself in as a candidate.

i am out of the business at this point, outside the business. mike and i disagree ideologically on some things. if i thought he was the guy who could take trump out, i don't have a logical reason for this but my gut tells me mike has some deficits that money alone can't repair. >> who hired jill stein? >> his name rhymes with vladimir putin. >> is tulsi gathered the new jill stein? >> jill stein with better hair. >> i know there are republicans who text you or talk to you and you hear their secrets. >> i use to hear more. when the house got blown out a

lot of people who were talking to me who had given up on life anyway were gone. a few folks call me and i to the republican father confessor thing. i put the phone down and scream in my backyard like i cannot believe you - you know. >> i would sleep a lot better at night if i knew you were talking to some democrats. are you talking to any democrats and are they listening to you? >> yes. >> my question is what happens to republicans after trump? i think there will be hell to pay, a big power vacuum and i see it almost getting worse when that happens.

>> trumpism doesn't scale. all these people who abandoned everything they stand for, they can't go back. let's say tomorrow donald trump drops dead at the heart attack. tomorrow he drops dead of a heart attack and paul ryan has to run for president. he is screwed, he is done. he can't say i will run to limit the scope of power of government because the magas love expanding government as long as it is catching brown people, they love expanded government as long as it is to do things that pay off donald trump's friends in the coal industry. they lost their ideological predicate. there will be a reset. there is a politics for a party that is about controlling the scope of government in the lives of individuals. there is a space in our politics for people who are legitimately fiscally conservative and believe the government has to have some

constraints on its spending. that doesn't exist right now. it is going to be a very long road back to create such a party. i don't think it will be the republican party, the brand is destroyed. the brand is permanently done. it is like saying the nazi party really had some good ideas -- doesn't work. >> would you recommend the democratic candidates going on fox? >> sure. absolutely. fox, the genius of roger ailes was roger understood how to build a product that americans wanted that was outside the traditional media space of new york and los angeles media. he understood there was a desire for the service of a television network that address

the grievances of a lot of people who felt like the coastss were elitists looking down on them. roger created that. what do we know about those people? it is wrong here. what do we know about that network? it has twice the viewers of everything else and there is a reason for that. they produce a shallow salty tasty product and the people in middle america like the shallow salty tasty product. i shouldn't eat fried chicken but i would eat popeye's fried chicken every day if i could. they are salty and tasty. that is what they produce. they are not about news. they were never about news. they were about giving people a place to feel their grievances, the merger of trump and fox was so cataclysmic. going on fox for democratic candidates gets to an audience

for shock value because they hear nothing else. they hear nothing else. at all. they will not hear a single word out of these debates other than what is processed for them by fox and the creative team at fox news that debate will be turned from something on healthcare policy and medicare for all into the colonies are coming to kill your doctor and make you go to citizens health center 47 in the manhattan oh blast. >> you talked about third-party candidate. is there room for a sacrificial moderate republican like john kasich just to spoil? >> there may be. the ballot access problem with state parties, many of the states, many of the state

parties get a vote on who gets the ballot law. you could do it. i will tell you we tried to do it in 90 days for evans bowen and it was too hard. we didn't have the legal juice to put it together in time. you may see some third-party sacrificial candidates out there. you may season independent moderate candidates in some key places that could help in that regard. >> talk about this for elections, what you used to do for a living and campaign strategy but seems a lot of this at all. still running scans, wikileaks. >> sure. >> except there is a legitimate process. >> we had a selection with ukraine. >> that is one of the things,

one of the messages the russians are pushing that the election is totally illegitimate. that is a terrifying prospect because there is an argument to be made that this election will be even more deeply influenced by foreign powers, not just russia but russia primarily, russia will benefit more than anybody else out of a broken election here and there is a great fear that americans will not view this as a legitimate election, they will not view this as an honest election. there is a reason for that. the election is being manipulated. i write about the deep fakes in this book, you'll see deep fake scandals this year that are going to blow your damn mind. you will see online manipulation that makes 2016 look like the aol dial-up tune.

>> the question, the idea is to tell voters in middle america who trump really is. how do you convince people who say i know who he is but we have been losing the cultural war for so long. >> you don't convince them. the god squad is lost, they are gone. it is done. you are not going to move evangelicals. we had the shock and are but with evangelicals this week and will continue to do so, there is a small fraction of them in a few swing states that are squishy on donald trump, have reached the limit. how many judges are worth it? is it worth having a fundamentally amoral man, a fundamentally unchristian man in office for the trade-off of executive orders and judges? executive orders even trump supporters are realizing those

are ephemeral. republicans use to lose their minds over barack obama and executive orders. i used to say all the time i don't think it is wise for the president, for obama to govern by executive order because someday a republican will be in office and they will flip that on its head and that is exactly what happened. trump voters are starting to realize that and trump is communicating that to them saying they will overturn my executive orders. the vast majority of executive orders are insane crony capitalist giveaways to the coal industry and trump friends and families but those are a motivating factor. the hard god squad are not moving at this point and we focus group tested some stuff a year ago and their sense of social and cultural inferiority even though christians are the

plurality of the religious population of this country they feel they have a tiny minority crushed under the feet of the godless masses from the coastal liberal elites and that is the message he has used very effectively. >> i have a question. growing up my father was a republican. what happened to republicans? besides money. i understand there is money involved and the are in c is controlled by him but before he won, what the hell happened? they can't all have taken that much nra money? >> i can tell you what happened. in 1996 roger ailes talks rupert murdoch into giving him $60 million to start a new cable television network. it became the most successful cable television network in history. it became the normative force shaping the republican party. that normative force became oppositional.

it became narrowly tailored to tell people that they were hated by the liberal elites, a choice between good and evil. it narrowed the political space of the republicans little discussion further and further and further and things like the tea party rose up after 2008 it narrowed it further and further. it became less important to do things and more important to oppose things. they are chickenshit. they are afraid of donald -- no. they are afraid. it is not the money. it has nothing to do with the money. mcconnell's power comes from any. trump's power comes from fear. they are terrified of him. they almost always there are some yahoos, jim jordan and

those idiots that are real trumpers. almost all of them hate donald trump with the fire of 1000 suns because he is a jackass, however, they love 3 things on this earth, they love their power, they love holding their office, and they love being alive and they are terrified of trump's record. i have a friend, a member of congress, i tell a story in the first book, has a townhall meeting in february or march of 17, not long after the inauguration, gets a couple questions, he said are you going to be with mister trump 100% of the time? he gives the answer that is the true answer. i supported donald trump and i will do everything i can to forward his agenda and i will do everything i can to make sure we can work together with

the president but i'm your representative into something he proposes is bad for the district i will fight for the district. of something he wants is bad for you i will fight for you. he was asked of your questions. by the time he gets offstage his wife and kids had been dlxed on facebook, there were death threats at his kids at school because he didn't support mister trump 100% of the time. these people are goddamn crazy and he knows it. he knows the fear that is generated in the minds of the congressman when someone calls and says i know what elementary school your kids go to. this is a -- these guys are terrified of him, terrified he will say something about them and they will get primary opponent and lose their position, terrified us someone could build a bomb and get them. they live in absolute terror of donald trump. they do not believe in him.

they do not love him. a few jackasses do. you know who doesn't? a great piece of knowledge. matt gates doesn't love donald trump. he is an opportunist of the highest order. i never said that. he is a hustler. he is an opportunist. he of the game player. he thought he was going to ride that pony. he doesn't believe in --. he is like tucker carlson. he believes in nothing. this is a show for them. the vast majority of these guys are not the hustlers, not the true believers. most -- fear mean tweets. it is a constant in their lives. >> could you talk about - >> i don't -- >> in new york city.

if people coming to my house and threatening my kids and my wife and threatening my dogs and threatening to burn my house down i am a concealed carry permit holder and a very capable firearms handler and i carry guns. people walk up to me in grocery stores and wait outside the tv studio and the old joke about 9 one one takes 10 or 11 minutes, how long will the crazy person wait? it is something i had to become very accustomed to. in 30 years of doing politics against the democrats i had the occasional jackass leave a nasty message on my voicemail. now i get death threats with pictures of people taken from the road of my house, i can see your wife through there and draw a bull's-eye on it.

that crazy stuff, you reassess your security after a while. on the subject of guns, the democrats have an article of faith that gun control is the most popular thing and everybody wants gun-control and i can't tell you how many elections i have been democrats in on that one issue. every white mail democrat outside of new york and boston and washington are gun guys. they hunt. go to wisconsin and michigan and minnesota and pennsylvania and ohio and every white mail democrat i can find them, identify them, i can convince them. democrats don't understand guns. [inaudible question]

>> i will tell you i have killed coyotes, that is another story for another day. [laughter] >> last question. [inaudible question] >> it would require people to watch pbs. unfortunately that is the hard truth. americans want to be entertained. news is a narrow product for a limited audience. there are 15 million americans who watch news to watch news. there are 35 million americans

who watch news to watch fox. it is not easy to convince americans to have considered policy discussions, not how they are wired anymore. >> thank you so much for a spirited discussion. request the ground and sign copies of his book so to be continued. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> your programs to watch out for. espn.com senior writer on sports, politics and race in america. charles murray, author of the bell curve offers genetics of human differences in his latest book and the american enterprise institute argue supporting american institutions rather than

replacing them and erika lee, director of the immigration history center in the university visit at looks at zeno phobia throughout american history. you can find a complete tv schedule on your program guide or booktv.org. >> national constitution center president jeffrey rosen sat down with ruth bader ginsburg to discuss the conversations they have had over the years. here's a portion of the program. >> the advice your mother gives you in this letter is advice you often repeat, you told it to me for our conversations and i asked you how you were able to follow that, the advice that says, and it is so important to get the exact words, first she

says prepare for difficulty and stand on your own two feet like eleanor roosevelt. what was the context for when she gave you that? >> my mother's advice was don't lose time on useless emotions like anger. remorse. nv. they won't get you anyplace. so when i was angry was practicing the piano. i wasn't very good at it but it did distract me. whatever useless emotion i was feeling at the moment.

to be absorbed in the music and the useless emotion goes away. >> i have to tell you that when we talk about that advice i since this is the advice of the great wisdom tradition but hard to achieve in practice. how did you do it? if i don't do it i will lose precious time for productive work. i find myself every day, anger and jealousy, what would justice ginsburg do? i practiced this every day and try to restrain myself and find serenity. we know famously you go to the gym to work, how do you practice serenity in your mind?

do you meditate? >> know. [laughter] >> my mother in law's advice, in a home and she took me aside just before the ceremony to say it was a happy marriage. it helps sometimes to be a little deaf. useless advice that i followed in every workplace and even my current job. [laughter and applause. another word is to tune out.

>> i practice that advice as well. >> to watch the rest of this conversation visit our website, booktv.org and search for jeffrey rosen or ruth bader ginsburg to find this program and all of their other c-span appearances. .. [inaudible conversations] please welcome tara westover. [applause].