an inside view of the modern presidency the current and former white house officials. the press secretary jen psaki and former senior advisor to the trump administration kellyanne conway took part in the conversation which was hosted by the bipartisan policy center. >> good evening everyone. i am the president of the

bipartisan policy center. it is a delight to welcome you tonight. it is nice to be with people. this is going to be a great event but it is important to us because we are announcing an initiative of leadership initiative. i want to set the stage for this, it is nice for us all to be here. 20 years ago, when we came to open the bipartisan center we did it next-door at the grange center. it is gratifying to think 20 years later, it has about 150 democrats, republicans who come

together and it is humbling to look at the bitterness and brittleness of our democracy and how much work we have left to do. we are an optimistic organization that belongs in the ark of american democracy and we are a place that prides itself on her mission. the goal today is a new initiative where we are bringing together historians, policy experts and strategies who are committed to working together to make the presidency resilient, effective and a institution that are democracy requires. it is remarkable to start this conversation with the group of people who were inside that room where it happened. we are going to hear from folks on the left who understand how hard it is and to give us a bit of grounding as we set our

sights on helping things work better. it is a pleasure to be joined by our partners with our partners and i am proud to share the stage the current up president -- current president of the association. >> good evening everyone and thank you to the policy center for putting on this event. i am the latest in the long line of reporters who have stepped up to serve. we were started in 1914 to advocate for the working man who were assigned by their publications to cover the white house. the history is relevant for today. woodrow wilson was a hottie princeton university professor who was suspicious of reporters.

wilson viewed the washington correspondence as unimpressive intellects concerned with superfluous things and stirring up foreign conflicts, pushing stories about the president's family members. he found the reporters questions repetitive, but now, and the record shows that on november 17 1913, woodrow wilson had a press conference called is some of the news date. by 1915, frustrated by the reporters who covered him he stopped giving conferences and put together an agency to go beyond the filter. the committee on public information made silent films, since speakers across the country to tout the efforts of the wilson administration and build support for world war i.

as quaint as this sounds, historians have written about this outreach effort as a horrible use of government power, propaganda used to stifle consent. i can't imagine what of those historians with think of twitter accounts today. i cite these examples as part of historian continuum we are all a part of. 108 years after its founding, it advocates for the working men and women of the press corps. in 2020, we dug deep into our history and leaned on our history to institute our social distancing rules to get us through the pandemic. we put on a dinner every year. our fundraising event brings in

enough money to furnish two dozen young people with scholarships. president since calvin coolidge have come to our dinner with only one exception, the tradition will continue next saturday night. everyone will be covid tested and trevor noah will be our headliner. tonight the panelists have plenty to say. here to facilitate a conversation is kelly o'donnell from nbc news. >> thank you steven. good evening, thanks for being with us. it is a thrill to be together in person and delighted to have friends who are watching on c-span and i hope there will be researchers or historians who will look at what we do tonight and look for some interesting insights about the modern presidency. tonight i have on our panel to

members of the biden administration who will be able to take us behind the curtain and tell us about the decision that happens in the white house. join me in welcoming cedric richmond and jen psaki. cedric's senior adviser and director of the office of public engagement and before that, he served the people of louisiana for more than a decade in congress and at that time was also chair of the congressional black caucus. he was a morehouse man. jen psaki has experience that she brings to one of the toughest jobs in washington. she was spokesperson

for john kerry. you are a self-described lover of the olympics and formally a swimmer. i very much appreciate being here tonight and i was asked to do this a month ago. that was before published reports that many of you may have read about your future. you are now the press secretary and there are reports that you may be leaving and going to work at msnbc. i am a reporter, i have no personal knowledge of any of that. can you tell us anything about that tonight since i have you here? is there anything you can tell us about your future? jen psaki: not yet.

there is some point i will not be in this job. i serve at the pleasure of the president. i have not set a date for when i will depart. when i started this job i thought it would be for a year. i have two little kids. i knew that i did not want to miss stuff and it will be time for a new voice. nothing to announce at this point but at some point there will be another person in this job. >> each of you have a role to play to bring the president difficult news, difficult information. we don't get to hear about that much, what is the process in the white house when you have hard news to deliver to the president. is there a way that you do that? is there a way that he processes

when you have the tough stuff to say? cedric richmond: the best thing to do is be direct and don't beat around the bush. don't try to hide the ball or sugarcoat it. just give it to them straight and he will absorb it. i have seen him take bad news in terms of policy and i have also been in there when he found out colleagues that he used to serve with have passed. the best thing to do is be very candid with him. he gives that back to you. it is easy to do. it is not intimidating in terms of receiving information good or bad. it is easier to get it out in the open. jen psaki: when i talked to the president and dr. biden about

this job. dr. biden said please always be direct and always be straightforward with us. if there is something bad coming, we want to know. i don't deliver all the bad news. cedric richmond: all my news is good news. jen psaki: i will say about cedric, sometimes you are in a meeting with the president where you are talking about news stories or prepping for an interview and it will go in a different direction about political races or what have you. he always looks for cedric because cedric has been elected before. he has a legitimacy that none of the rest of us do. he looks to different people for different things. you just have to lay it out and be direct with him. if it is a bad story coming or something that is related to a

family member or someone he cares about, we will either call him or we will go to him in the oval office and tell them about it. there is no collective wincing on the side of senior staff? jen psaki: you take a moment and think, let's see how this goes? we all recognize that part of our job is to be direct about good news, bad news or how things are being digested or received. sometimes it is if you say this, or do that that is how it will be received. >> when you talk about cedric being in the arena as an elected official. given your role, you get a lot of calls from democrats around

the country with lots of good ideas that they want to share with the white house. how do you take in that information from members of your party and decide what should be brought to the president's attention? what should be filtered through white house staff levels? there are a lot of people that have good intentions and have their own constituency that they want to bring to the white house. how do you deal with that? cedric richmond: my official role, i do not have to deal with all my former colleagues. i do receive a bunch of calls from democrats, i receive a lot of calls from republicans to. >> you were the only democrat in louisiana. cedric richmond: i will get calls from republicans that i

served with when they have ideas. sometimes when they have needs, the one thing i will say. i can't go back to a lot of administrations. i have never seen a group that is so complementary to each other. i have never seen someone process information as fast as ryan planes. you have jen that manages press. we will filter information through us and if it is legislative, we will discuss it. we know how the president thinks most of the time so we know how to handle it and what needs to get to him. many times we will pass it onto him because he will process it and give us an answer real quick and we don't have to waste so much time going around it.

we elicit the input from both members of congress. >> for the wider audience, you talked about chiefs of staff, the legislative affairs director. he has around him confidants that have been around him for years. the president has been in public life for 40 years. people that he trusted nose with the need to have new ideas, fresh perspectives, a willingness to say things to the president. how do you balance that? jen psaki: cedric and i are relatively new in the biden orbit. to me, you look around and there have been people who have been working with him for 10, 20 years. he has a dedicated group but i

remember i was talking to ron klain, how will he trust me? he doesn't really know me. how will he trust me and know that i will speak effectively on his behalf and that he can be candid with me? a couple of weeks into the job i was sitting in the oval office, we were chatting and i said, i hope this is not a weird thing to say to a president, i feel extremely comfortable talking to you. part of that is because he loves people. he is an extrovert. it is exhausting to think about how much of an extrovert he is. my experience is that he lets people and.

it is hard in any white house. the next panel can speak to this too, to get outside perspective because it is the difficulty of surviving the day sometimes. >> i want to peel back the layers of what it is like to be in those meetings. it brings to mind the fact that the president is sort of emotional, he is colorful, faulty in his language sometimes. does that exist in meetings? is there space for people to be emotional, colorful when you are debating ideas or is it always more formal? is it on the topic only or does it have a more free-form? jen psaki: it is definitely free-form.

>> i ask because the creative prices in the decision-making process has a connection to how people feel when they are making decisions and when they are offering ideas. is it constrained or a free-flowing environment? how would you describe how that goes? cedric richmond: it is free-flowing and when you have people like ron klain who have been around him a long time. even when it is not senior staff that want to deliver something. they will deliver it to him and give it to him how they exchange ideas. he has an openness even for things he does not want to hear. we get into lively discu ssions about policy. you have to be prepared for him

to get in the weeds about policy. is it appropriate for you to push it and those moments? he can be direct. at the end of the day, it is easy to do it because when you know him, where he comes from, it comes from a place of concern about other people. trying to make a difference. some people think it is a bad thing, i think it is a good thing. he really cares about people so it is easy to be in these conversation, even when he gives you a hard time when you don't know all the answers. jen psaki: he goes into the weeds and sometimes there is information that he wants that is unknowable in the moment which is a reflection of him. how many bridges in this pacific

city need to be rebuilt? even experts don't know that in the moment. and my experience, i am in these policy discussions two, he will quiz me on how i am going to talk about something publicly. his concern is that i am talking about it in an acceptable way. the first time he did this to me, we were doing a remarks review and he said how are you going to talk about the american rescue plan? there is this discussion at the time of how will we get this to people who did not file taxes. he said how are you going to explain this to people? the point is when he often -- he

comes out of church and talks to people and often whatever they say to him or ask him, he says so-and-so doesn't understand our mass policy and we need to explain that better. we need to make our policies come to life for people. cedric richmond: he will cut you off midsentence and say, i am not interested in washington talk. people need to hear it and plain english. that is his driving motto. >> it is interesting to hear you say, people would not always view this president as the most

effective communicator himself. he has, at times, been criticized about not being able to carry his message. at times he is also folksy, but this white house has struggled on the message on covid or the domestic agenda. he has been hit with lots of issues that are not your own making. do you feel that the president is, at times, frustrated about how he is perceived as his own messenger? jen psaki: every president is probably frustrated at moments when they do not feel that their views, passions, policies are being digested. there are lots of reasons for that. i know this is not a panel about

this, are long speeches and effective way to communicate with the public? we know that because a lot of the ways people digest information. he would like to be traveling throughout the country. he is traveling three times this week and in some ways, there are limitations that have been imposed on him because of covid that have not allowed people to see what his magic is which is its ability to connect and be empathetic and talk to people and hear their stories. often a lot of that is spontaneous, and because he has not been traveling it has been limiting. we have done fewer speeches in some ways. you are always trying to think about how to break out of the bubble of things.

it is a constant debate, but also the reality of what we have to communicate about. you have to communicate about everything happening in the world. >> you have been challenged with covid all the way through and ups and downs with that. would you consider it a failure of all of the protocols that have been put in place if the president himself contracts covid? jen psaki: we have said this a couple of weeks ago, we want the public to understand that he could get covid. he is double roosted. -- boosted. it is possible, he could. >> without being national security event?

jen psaki: he has access to the best health care and medical care in the world. they have assessed that the risk is worth him going out traveling this week. they have assessed, and we know that he can be president wherever he is. that is what the united states prepares the president four. >> is there specific plan if he were to get covid? do you have a plan with how you would deal with the fact? jen psaki: we don't know that that would be the case. there are a lot of means to communicate with the public and nothing more to detail here, we want to be clear and transparent with the public that he could test positive for covid. he has access to the best medical care. there is not some secret drug he is taking.

he is not amino compromise. if he tests positive for covid, we will tell everybody that. >> turning to a different subject, one of the highlights of the presidency has been all of the work around ketanji brown jackson. there was a lot of work that happen before we knew her name. could you tell us about how you look to fulfill the president the promise made? to find the names, to be prepared and do the outreach added time where there was no vacancy. there were other pressing issues that were dominating the day. how did you deal with that? cedric richmond: it goes back to two things. if the president has a frustration it is the fact that

too many people make the assumption that things just happen. like we just united the west, we intended to not -- to unite the was. we have put more women on the appellate court than any other president combined. we did it because we were building the bench in case of vacancy came up, we would be prepared. when it came up, we were prepared to vent people. one was judge jackson, we knew who was out there. we knew their backgrounds. kelly: did you feel the urgency on those incremental levels? cedric richmond: we kept our head down and kept pushing more nominees for the appellate court.

looking at legal scholars, legal minds around the country because we knew that the first thing we were going to do was nominate a brilliant woman to the court. she would be a brilliant, black woman. i think the proof is in the pudding of what he did and the result that we got, the caliber of the nominee, it was not something we stumbled upon it was something we were preparing for since january 20 at. the president made up his mind that he would do this before he announced it in south carolina. clyburn said it was important for him to make it public. he recognized early in the campaign that there was a void on the court that needed to be filled and everything we did was around being prepared for that moment. kelly: you raise the point that

so much vote we talk about is the term of the day. white houses, and senior advisers have to work on several threads. we are in a midterm election year, six months away which is a blink you have issues that remain difficult with covid, inflation. ukraine, we have not touched on ukraine and the enormous impact it is on the world. how do you deal with trying to do things that better position the president's party for the midterms when you have something is enormous as his need to be working with valets, talking with the military. you did not plan for that in

your calendar when you started out. how do you manage short-term crisis, long-term planning? cedric richmond: the prediction of our demise is premature . dens are up on the ballot for the midterms. at some point we could tell our story. whether it is reducing the deficit, job increase, meeting challenges that we face. whether it was the pipeline, it is inflation now. at some point, we get to go do that. the president being who he is, when we have so many people with covid, supply chain issues. at some point, you get to go tell the story of how 10 million

people who drink water out of contaminated pipes will get it replaced because this president was able to pass an infrastructure bill that no one else could do. the pivot that we make at some point which is to go out and tell people, the challenges you met and the things you did. whether it is rural america, at some point you have to make that pivot. but right now, this is a president that cares more about people than his political future. and then two, getting credit. we all recognize that some point we will take a deep breath of all the things we are trying to do it once and tell the american people exactly what we have been focused on doing and how we achieved it. we have some really great stories to tell.

jen psaki: what people don't always say, the national security team that is focused on russia and ukraine. the national security team, you have people that are not involved in ukraine but are focused on china and a whole range of issues that are happening all around the world. what also happens in the white house, there are a range of people who are focused on nondomestic issues. sometimes what you see and what is understandably dominating the news it is eating up a lot of the president's time. it is the tip of the iceberg, all of the work that is happening every day. the only other thing i would add on the midterms, i would say

that joe biden has said and others have said, don't compare me to the alternative. what the democrats have not done yet, is doing the contrast and laying out the contrast. inflation is a huge problem. the president and democrats are being blamed for that. we are in charge. we have a plan, you do not have a plan. that contrast is what you will see people talk about over the coming months and we will hope that has an impact. kelly: i would like to ask you one last thought.

today is 15 months since you walked in the door, took the oath. what has stood out most to you that is a surprise about your service in this white house given all the circumstances that have happened that you could not have foreseen when you walked in that day? cedric richmond: it would be how intentional it is. i came from congress where you roll with the flow. in the white house, we have a first meeting at 8:00 in the second meeting as it 8:20. and weeden we are working on a project, -- we are working on a project we meet twice a day. with judge jackson we had meetings for times a day. none of it is by accident and it is mapped out in we meet with

all of the principles and what progress have we made? iao president obama an apology because i know how frustrating members of congress can be. we would call over and ask why this had not been done yet? now i understand there is a process to it. just watching people that have been there before, we just work and that has been the most surprising thing to me being in the white house is how much focus and intentional actions are done and how much you meet all the time. the meetings have a purpose.

jen psaki: this is the second white house that i have worked in. i did not digest things in the same way. i had never been there before. in the west wing, there is a ladies room on the first floor and i did not know that for the first three years because you are just trying to survive. i made the intentional decision to be more mindful of taking things in and digesting them and smelling the roses as my mother would say. what has surprised me is the humanity of all this. you know because you are just surviving, talking to reporters in making decisions on policy.

when you're trying to take in the moment, you see in the situation room where you see the difficulty of things. you see people get emotional when there is difficult news. you see the president responding in a human way and everybody does not get to see that. i try to be mindful of taking it in and experiencing it. cedric richmond: as the new kid on the block, there should be an orientation. january 20 when i got to the white house, they don't give you a map. the offices don't have office numbers on them. and i was like, when do we get paid? how much do i make?

they do nothing. not everybody who is here has not been here before. and i realize, i am the only one that has not been in the white house. there should be a mandatory orientation that happens. kelly: are you planning to be here for a while? cedric richmond: i will be here as long as he wants me to. we have had highs, we have had those. believing in his desire to be transformational keeps me around every day. as long as he is happy, and as long as my seven-year-old is saying that it is ok for me to hop on a plane every week. i am the only one that flies out

every week and i leave washington and go around with people who are not in the bubble. what i hear out there is quite different than what i hear here. when i get home, i hear more hope, optimism and the best way to know what people are thinking is to go out there. when i go home, people do not care that i work in the white house. certainly my family does not care. you get to be around people who are going to give it to you straight because that is of value. when you are a senator, congressman, you go home and talked regular people every day. that is something that is an asset to the white house. people's ability to get out of d.c. and talk to people who are busting their budgets to make in meat.

-- to make ends meet. but that could all change tomorrow. kelly: please join me and thinking cedric richmond and jen psaki. thank you, thank you. and i will turn you over to my capable hands of steve sully who will take us back in time to the presidencies of some of the former members. >> i am pleased to welcome josh bolton. kellyanne conway, who broke the glass ceiling. matt mclarty who was

kindergarten friends with bill clinton. and jay carney, and press secretary to president obama. please sit down. wow, what a panel. the only question i have given in advance is to share with the audience the one-story, the one decision by the president you worked for during the time you were in the white house. josh, the decision that george w. bush made. >> it didn't require much thought of my case. first of all, thank you to the

bipartisan policy council for the great work that you do. not just for bringing this together, but the work you do all the time. josh bolten: the decision that sticks out of my mind. i served all eight years in the george w. bush white house. i saw a lot of consequential decisions being made. the ones in which i was most intimately involved were in the three years that i served as chief of staff from 2006-2009. the one that stuck out to me was a decision that the president made in the midst of the financial crisis to go to congress and seek an enormous

amount of money, over $700 billion to bail out wall street, to rescue the country from a much greater calamity than otherwise would've occurred. it happened at a meeting in the roosevelt room. the financial crisis is kind of a blur. if you want a good step-by-step history of what happened and when, i commend hank paulson's book. he wrote a book about what happened during the crisis. for those of us who lived it it was kind of a blur. from my seat as chief of staff and, hank would call me up and say that this investment bank is

in some trouble but we think they will be ok and they seem to be working it out and i said do i need to tell the president? on wednesday, he would call back and say it is more serious and we ought but everything will be fine. on thursday, he would call and say a group of creditors is getting together, hoping to organize that but we are not worried about the solvency of the institution. on friday he would call, i am heading up to new york to try to rescue our firm. >> so the alarm bells were going off? >> the alarm bells were going off all over the place and there was a cascading, failure of major financial institutions in the midst of global economic

turbulence. it is hard to appreciate today how difficult and dangerous that. actually was. we were putting band-aids on wherever we could. he would go to new york, the president of the new york treasury was tim geithner. hank concluded that the only way to prevent a collapse of the u.s. financial system was to give a bailout to wall street. he asked for a meeting in the roosevelt room. the president, when he was

making decisions always wanted to have hank paulson, the treasury secretary, ben bernanke and tim geithner as the president of the new york fed. they were all lined up across from the president and hank said we need to go ask congress for over $700 billion to bail out the banks. no political support for that kind of thing. all of the republicans were against it because of the bailout. all of the democrats were against it because it was for the banks. the president was well aware of that. he asked hank a few questions, then he turned to bernanke and

said, what happens if we don't do this? and bernanke who had written his doctoral dissertation on the great depression said we are likely headed for situation similar to the collapse in the great depression and possibly worse. there was silence in the room and the president said, i think this makes a kind of easy. he authorized paulson to go ahead and go up to the hill and ask congress for $700 billion to be handed out to the banks. and when the meeting broke up the president walked around and he comforted all of the participants because they were all in shock and the last thing

you could imagine a republican administration doing. he encouraged every body to go get some sleep. we will get through this. when he left the roosevelt room and walked across the hall into the oval office i walked back in with him, along with our communications director. we were quiet for a moment and he looked at both of us and he said, if this were hoover or roosevelt, we will be roosevelt. >> you have the position of being the campaign manager in the transition of four years of the trump white house. the most consequential, most significant decision that you were a part of? kelly: i think you for being

here and everybody at home watching. it was a privilege to be involved in the trump white house. since you mentioned the campaign, the most consequential decision was mike pence. the most consequential decision that stuck out to me was taking out soleimani in the execution and the implications. what it meant for this country and for the world. the one that remains in my mind happened in the cabinet room on march 2, 2020. this is when we had a meeting already set with the heads of the pharmaceutical companies.

a bunch of them were there and they came for a meeting in the president transformed it into a vaccine discussion, quickly. they were not ready for that, but in some ways they had been ready their entire lives for that. he said i don't want to hear that it takes this song. i know how long it usually takes. this is the big one. if you are telling me that, i am telling you, you need to develop the vaccine quickly. it was explained to the president that therapeutics could be developed more quickly. realistically, how much time it would take to develop the vaccine. they said it would take years and years and he said we do not have years.

in less time it took to have a baby, three develops -- three vaccines were developed. i think it is a good example of the velocity at which trump wants to operate. this constant flurry of activity. the worst thing that you could ever say to president trump was that it has never been tried before. he believes that his mandate was to do things differently than they had been done. the therapeutics and vaccines were key. biden had three vaccines ready

to go. 12 million americans received those vaccines, while trump was still in office. i pointed that as incredibly consequential. this president but taking out to terrorists and then of course, months later having katie mueller's parents as guests to show the real people impacted by these decisions. >> we were talking about this, teddy said bill clinton who had

his term during the 20th century. >> is always a pleasure to be with you. thank you for those of leadership in this organization which i think it is more important than ever. james carville said, is the economy stupid. our most important decision was getting the economic plan passed in 1993. we saw that in a way that we had not fully expected in our first g7 meeting in naples. it was obvious that world leaders and they are finance ministers had taken note that this was a responsible, serious plan that had a possibility to ensure growth of the deficit and

simulate opportunity. it was the framework, to be strong abroad you have to be strong at home. to stay strong at home you have to be engaged abroad. the backdrop of that, as josh was talking about the problems president bush phase. the first cabinet meeting we convened in little rock was to talk about the economic plan in december. the problem was, the deficit was greater then had originally be forecast which meant that president elect clayton would have to consider walking back pledges for a middle class tax cut in order to achieve a responsible, balanced budget. that was a difficult decision.

i will always remember before the meeting in december. saying that we have a problem. that is something you remember. and then we did. after about six hours of mind numbing conversations. we went line by line over the budget. but before that, we had to have the framework of it. when we made that decision, it was right outside the oval office. we stepped outside the roosevelt room.

the newly formed economic counsel, we were trying to find just that right spot of tax increases, expense reductions. just the right spot for the economic plan. i think we found it in that hall and president clinton went around the group to ask if you agree, and i said yes this is the right place. he said, i think so too lets get this done. with that, we took the plan forward. we passed it by one vote in the house of representatives and one vote in the senate. you think about the campaign against president bush, who i have enormous respect for. had he not passed that economic plan that early in the process,

that would've been a significant setback to president clinton and what we were trying to accomplish. that was the most consequential decision. the most difficult decision for any president, the most sacred responsibility is the security and safety of the american people. that is sending troops in harm's way. we were fortunate that we did not have to commit troops, but we did have to commit air cover and a number of instances in bosnia and in iraq. that is the most difficult decision. the most consequential was the economic plan. >> you came to this position any unique role as the bureau chief. he served as press

secretary. what was the most consequential decision during the obama white house. >> i have known each of you for at least 20 years which makes me feels like one of those washington veterans that they talk about. i wanted think the bipartisan policy center. it is something we need to strive for. a couple of thoughts come to mind. many people would say, the decision that obama made to authorize permission to eliminate osama bin laden. we visited the seal team and commanders and one of the leaders said, your boss has

balls of steel. he said that because he knew that the president had been told that it was a 50-50 proposition and he authorized it anyway with the knowledge that american lives could have been lost, certainly damage to our international relations. the political consequences of a failed mission in the memory of president carter's attempt to rescue the hostages in iran was something we were thinking about. he believes that the intelligence was solid enough and the importance of getting osama bin laden was important enough to go forward. i can also say that the decision to go forward with what came to

be known as the affordable care act, even after we lost the senate. the wise move would have been to do something scaled-back. he pressed on anyway and millions of americans have health insurance that they would not have otherwise had. obamacare is more popular than ever. my first choice was the decision that he and we made that has been enormously consequential ever since and that is in part one of the factors that has caused some of the increased partisan rancor we feel today. and that is that we did not take birth arisen seriously. --birtherism seriously.

i know that obama feels this way, the polls still show that a majority of self identified republicans do not believe that president obama was born in the united states and they believe he is muslim. think about how corrosive that is for politics. and think about the kind of corrosive politics has contributed to what we see today. that was a mistake. we should have taken it seriously and should not have joked about it. perhaps, it would have ended differently. >> you talk about our polarized country. any white house is getting a lot of comments from social media, how do you filter through all of that?

josh mentioned there was no twitter when you were in the white house. but how do you deal with that? you are getting all the incoming and having to sort through all of that. kelly: i was offered the press secretary position in the 2016 -- and i declined and did many times after that, he said, you would be great at that and i whispered to myself, i would be a terrible press secretary, and not even sure what they do. am>> why? >> lots of reasons, i see what they do at the podium, but i'm sure there's a lot more that goes into that. now i know. i frankly think that the current administration brags about it, i think women get pushed into the scheduling, administration and comms and press in the white house and i wanted to be a policy person. i certainly wasn't going to run away from the goldmine of the life-changing money i was staring at and for kids who are

-- four kids who are crappy ages and then continue to be crappy ages from then on. for mom to be in the white house. i wanted to work on policy and a very proud and glad to have a boss that allowed that to be so. but i was also a very public facing person because the president wanted people out there who were able to communicate the message and communicate to people who may not have the information that day. and that's the key to the trump white house that my audience -- people say, how did you do or go toe to toe with that anchor, how did you push back on that one, i say, it doesn't even matter who sitting across from me on the anchor chair or sitting on the other side of the blank camera. i can see, they can see, in a studio they have all kinds of people talking into their ears and people handing them notes. and i'm looking into a blank camera, and they are never my audience.

the anchor is never my audience, the audience is the people. there are people all across the country, ladies and gentlemen, who don't have access to information unless we provide it. the one thing i will always credit president trump for, i wrote about this in my book, what i call the democratization of infuriate shouldn't. what happened, because there was no twitter, we had an awful lot of it and what happened, whether you liked the tweet or dinner, donald trump needs to tweet, it's about better choices. but whether you liked it or not, the fact is that people received instantly and for free a presidential communication and it cut out the middleman and the middleman did not like it. but a lot of americans did because they don't have to pay money to go to a fundraiser, they don't have to know someone who knows someone to get them the information, it's right there, and if you don't like it,

you could change the channel. the many people felt they learn an awful lot just by having a much more transparent and acceptable press line. how did i deal with it? i was a lot nicer to people than they were to me, and to my family, that's for sure, that will never change. some of you are in that room and we know that, we see you and it is completely inappropriate to become so personal to people who are just trying to do your job. i think that it's very important to make sure that there's not what i call information under load. ok? i think in our country we suffer from information under load and in the white house, in the administration or department or agency you have a unique opportunity to cure information

under load. and of course cure disinformation as well. and in our case, the inclination of wanting to get the president and not get the story, among some, not most and not all. but it's more fun and it's actually easier. so, go for the heat, not the light. but i think information under load is a serious problem in our society where we are all inundated with information, but what did we really learn ? the difference between information and education, sifting through that and making it dive festival for people who are watching. did people ever pay more attention or watch every thing of a presidency? i certainly doubt it. so there is that. i think managing the press also came with having an accident relationship with president trump because, i'm not speaking up now because i didn't speak up

then, god knows i spoke up then. it is being able to be direct, but respectful to the president of the united states. being one of the few people walking and privileges i would never abuse. people would just walk to the back door and it's rude. i was raised by a woman not a wolf. i just intuited it would be rude to walk in without an appointment. but having that access to the president, having a president who is not as high up as maybe other presidents, allowed an exchange of information that was overall beneficial, and i think people having more access to their president and more access to democracy is a positive thing. i will also say this, i never had a agent in my life, i never asked before this book, never had an agent in my life, never asked to be a household name, i don't understand the outside coverage of the trump people.

it was odd, but he was so different and he was so one-dimensional, but this country, twice in a row with senator obama at the time and trump, back to back they went from people who are seen as political outsiders, who ran successfully in the primaries and then the general election in twice against hillary clinton. at being the outsider, that is an identity that many people in this country share. they feel like they have their nose pressed against the glass, looking in, saying, when is it my turn, what's in it for me? and then we went in a different direction and voted for somebody who's been in washington for five decades. the voters will surprise you. it wasn't even my job, but the president wanted me to do it and i was happy to do it and i was happy to do it for the country. don't be fooled, anybody. i stood out on that north long, i don't know why, pebble beach, sometimes for 20, 25, 30 minutes

-- north lawn, i don't know why, it's all gravel, pebble beach. sometimes for 20, 25, 30 minutes at a time taking lots of press questions in full view and i thought it was important to take the questions, even from outlets that weren't particularly kind or fair to my boss or to the rest of us because if i didn't have an answer, i said it, i had no notes, and i have to tell you as a citizen of this country who -- and once any president or vice president to succeed no matter who they are in their already, we could use a lot more of that right now. >> josh, i want to go back to social media. you didn't have to deal that much with it. jen, i would like your perspective because you are fully immersed. has it changed in terms of how presidents and administrations

make decisions and influence that if his -- the decision-making process and that very fractured media today? >> when you and i talked about this before, steve, i said i thought that president was actually the last president of the previous century. because this century of politics really began with the advent of social media and we didn't have to deal with it. you mentioned twitter. it didn't even exist until 2006 and only had a few thousand users. i looked it up. even donald trump have a twitter account until 2009. it was not a factor in the way we went about our business in the bush white house. but the fracturing of the media already was. what we are experiencing with everybody having their own

channel of communication, which i think has been corrosive for our politics, was already well underway. i agree with kelly and that there is a great virtue in being able to communicate directly with the population. that actually we should celebrate that about what technology has brought us. but what technology has also brought is a balkanization of information that has resulted, without, without even a common set of facts. that, i think, has been a very bad development for our politics . it is what it is. that toothpaste is not going back into the tube.

but, but we need to find some mechanisms. i know the bipartisan policy center is focused on it. so that the, the, just of the raw antagonism that comes from communicating in 100 and 40 to 280 character bites, it attracts attention. we need to figure out how to move politics away from that. the trajectory is poor and it is not serving the country well. >> j, you saw this as a reporter and inside the white house? >> when i was at time magazine, right until the very end, it was a weekly. in a real way. one weekly deadline. right when i started as press secretary, i remember my

predecessor, robert gibbs, warned me about this problem, the growing challenge that was social media and twitter. what it meant in a concrete sense is that when you are giving your briefing to white house reporters, you spend some time beforehand prepping with various folks from domestic policy and national security policy and on the press team, the white house counsel's office . you kind of try to imagine anything they might ask and there are some questions you know will be asked because it is the news of the day, the policy of the day, the international crisis of the day. you go over others that you suppose could be asked. but you can only know what you know when the moment. what you cannot predict and what i found quickly is that when you got on the podium and you saw jake capper looking at his phone and raising his hand and saying it says here that, and something had happened for which i couldn't have prepared because

it hadn't happened to be for the briefing or that information had gotten out. i am sure you dealt with this, kelly an. anne. the speed of the information flow was super challenging and it made it a lot harder to not get tripped up and harder to not make a mistake. one of the worst times i went through as press secretary was the failed launch of healthcare.gov. it was one of the worst because most of the crises you deal with and of white house, as jen psaki was saying, they are external. things that you are responsible for out there because you are the white house in your president is responsible for anything. rarely is it a situation like this one where was wholly our creation. the most important piece of legislation in decades and the

whole thing was coming before our -- coming apart before our eyes and i would go up there and say there are some glitches and i would be like -- that's not a glitch because susan in poughkeepsie can't get on and she sent me this email. it was a disaster. that was a case where we couldn't get ahead of the story because it was unfolding in real time. >> president obama told you privately what? >> about that? [laughter] famously even-tempered, but the most angry i ever saw him was in reaction to that. which didn't mean he yelled, i never heard him yell at anybody, but he didn't want to be on the receiving end, for the folks responsible of launching it, it was challenging. >> how did you know? he didn't scream, so how did you know?

>> in a meeting in the roosevelt room there was a series of meetings about what went wrong and what we were going to do about it. they came in to oversee a team with a lot of tech experts, it went on for days and days, weeks and weeks. before we even knew it could be salvaged. i wanted to add to something that josh said, there are all sorts of problems, we'd social media, but we are not ever going to go back to three networks and a few newspapers, the wires, the reuters. i see a couple of fabulous reuters reporters out here. the ap. it's not happening. we all have to adjust. one of the things that candidate and then president trump us is he took it -- took advantage of that in a way that every political professional had to take note of. he was getting right to his

audience immediately. when i started as press secretary in february of 2011, there were two twitter accounts. by the time i left i think there were maybe 30 or 40. they were still used very carefully. certainly president obama never tweeted without some of us getting eyes on it and, you know, vetting it before it went out. so you know, there is risk any time you put too many people up to bat to take swings without any controls on it, but you do get injected into the bloodstream very quickly and we saw how effective that can be. >> did you ever tell president trump my gosh, why did you tweak that out? >> of course, or don't. absolutely, that's a part of the information. part of being a counselor, senior counselor to the president but i did it respectfully and i did it

cogently. i'm always surprised, steve, how people spend what they call presidential time. senior staffer or or members of the press certainly, people who had an appointment with the president for whatever reason, members of congress, i was always shocked how they spent their time. come prepared, have something new or different to say, offer, or asked. he already saw it all, it's on all day long in a loop. i think that this was a president, is a president who is a man who just wants, when he says what's going on, what do you hear, what do you see and you have the opportunity to say something different, i'm a local paper kind of gal and i would try to read all the local papers across the country. we would see the highlights and get a digest of those and i was always ready with something. remember when you campaigned in harrisburg, remember we met the people there, he wasn't like --

quiet, he was like should we call anybody, invite them to the thing we are having next week? on the twitter, you next. there were many times when he, he once called me down to the office, the president would like to see you now, i have my folder, i'm already. i have what was karl rove and valerie jarrett's office. it was certainly then first lady hillary clinton's office. she had that office, nice office on the second or next to white house counsel and i ran down with my folder in the door was opening in the president was looking at his phone and he said did you like my tweet. i look around and i said, you know, it takes me 12 seconds to run down here in 3h -- three inch heels. he mentioned a tweet from the morning that we had all seen and i said that one? it wasn't in my top 1000 most favorites and he

thought about it and said seven so-called come he really liked it. i said so and so is a 89-year-old male billionaire living in australia. maybe i will like it when i'm in 89-year-old billionaire i will like it, to. but i told him the ones i do like, the genre of tweet that is helpful in communicating with the public the facts and figures, who is communicating with the white house. certainly when covid hit, making sure that people had the information. those were heady times, impossible times. we didn't know what was happening and we were there 24/7 for a while. my seat in the situation room, we were trying to figure out and communicate and reflect to the public. but there were many, there is an old saying i learned in junior high school english class, writing can serve one of two purposes. to get something into the mind

of the reader or off the chest of the writer. and that's twitter, as most people in this room know clearly. as a presidential communication at least twitter is right there, probably in the archives now and he's no longer on twitter. but i think that people using, particularly people using it as a news source is problematic. news on twitter is different than getting a column in saying that we are running a story on x, y, z. turns out it's a comment to a tweet. this is not vetted news. you didn't deal with this. it's learning, to go back to your other question, learning what is worth responding through and sifting through and then just letting other things go because you are so busy. i had lunch with valerie jarrett

. ironically on january 5, 2017, before we went in. i asked her and i said to her in the navy mass, what was the most vexing issue that was most difficult or surprising and she said the sheer incoming, the sheer incoming, how to keep up with all of that. delegating and not advocating. my words, not hers. she's absolutely right. on top of that when you have the palace intrigue and the did you see this between, there are no editors on twitter and someone came to my office or a meeting in february of 2017 and i was having a first -- a rough first couple of months. the internal and external, i call them enemies foreign and domestic, they no longer wanted me to work in the white house and i was dammed well sure i was staying for a long time. this person looked and saw my

phone sitting there and he said -- all those twitter notifications, they won't stop. i said i know, they are crazy. he said give me your phone and he turned off the twitter administration. he turned them off and they have never been on again. it's been five plus years. i'm clean. it changed my life. whatever it said about me from people that don't wear pants that snap, button, or zipper, i have never seen. i feel liberated by that. host: barack obama said he had a pen and a phone and one of the things we have seen is the rise of executive orders by a president trying to bypass congress. i wanted to talk just a little bit about how that has changed the dynamics of the presidency and if that is a troubling sign

in terms of the president going above congress. i thought that the exchange between kelly and cedric was fascinating. >> if i may, i'm going to try to put a quick period on the conversation about the, about the, about all the communication . since al gore had not invented the internet before we were at the white house. it's fascinating to me just to watch the threat of this conversation here. if you go back to bush 41, or prior to that with president reagan, where the fight of -- photo op of the day was how the news was presented. if you went through that continuum you would see it accelerating and we thought it was accelerating at light speed in the clinton administration as stories would get in from the side press and then the mainstream press.

that continuum we just saw of the acceleration of the news cycle in different ways to communicate in a weekly versus instantly, i think you really, i think this continuum of that is such a central point of perhaps our discussion, or broader discussion. executive orders, you asked me about. probably my personal feelings will weigh into this heavily. i was in the state legislature at an early age. the governor of arkansas there, a great statesman. i'm just a strong believer in the institutions of our democracy and a strong believer in bipartisanship. that is not solicitous, i think i have had a record there for many years. for me the right way to pass legislation and get support is to try when possible, where possible, on a bipartisan basis,

welfare reform. that was a great example of that for us in our administration, as were some other initiatives. executive order, i think, can be used carefully, sparingly, in certain situations to where you have i think just a really strong number of those legislations or not legislations but decisions and actions. i think it begins to undermine your ability to, to really galvanize congressional support. like all of us who have been in the white house, particularly josh and i in the chief of staff's office, which was a great and rare privilege, i've got a waterford dome from steny hoyer that i kept on my desktop whole time.

anytime a congressman like congressman richmond for example would come in, it showed that we understood it was a two way street between our address and yours. executive orders, you've got to be careful injudicious there, that's my bottom line personal but strong feelings. >> george bush said that, as kelly was talking about, around midterm election politics, go back to how george bush had to deal with midterm election politics and yet also deal with the agenda items that he wanted to accomplish. >> they are not always the same. there is a certain liberation that mac and jay had the opportunity to experience of being in a second term, because the politics are deeply important. they always are. but not having to worry about

the reelect is, it's a great liberator for, for any white house. interestingly in his first midterm, the republican party defied the odds and gained a lot of seat. this was in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, when, when the president upon popularity was quite high. by 2006 his popularity was quite low and i can see the biden people just, you know, crumpled up, the press hounding them because president biden's popularity has fallen below 40% and they are saying it is so terrible and i'm thinking, what is their secret. [laughter] how do you, how do you get anywhere near $.40?

because by 2006, with the unpopularity of the wars in afghanistan and a rack and a variety of other things, president bush popularity was well down in the 30's, it even dipped into the 20's at one point during the end of his administration. that, for someone like george w. bush, it had a kind of liberating aspect. he's a deeply political animal. he cared a lot of the thousands selections. he didn't go into them with any particular pride of place. if some candidate did say it, that it will hurt me if you show up, he didn't take it badly, didn't show up. those who wanted, and when we

took the shellacking of 2006, he didn't, he didn't go into the fetal position. he had seen political cycles come and go. he was always, it was always his style to keep eyes forward and do the right thing. that is why i mentioned the second term in particular. the liberation of doing the right thing, the liberation that's right for the country. politics are about trying to persuade people that you are, that you want to do the right thing and you are acting in their interests. the policy is what's actually doing in the persons interest. i was, i was super proud to be around the day after election day in 2006. bush was at his task looking

forward, thinking about what the right thing to do was. after election day in 2008, when president bush, who had supported john mccain, he wanted john mccain to win the election, but he, he took the remarks that had been prepared for him on the morning after election day and he crossed them out and he wrote a very moving tribute to the american people for the vitality of our democracy and of the historic election of our first african-american president. and so, politics is one thing. what's good for the country is i think in our best leaders, among whom i count george w. bush, what is best for our country is what caught -- counts the most.

>> cognizant of time, i want to give each of you a minute. can you give us a private moment with obama, with president obama and what would stand out in terms of how he made the decisions or how he filled the office of the presidency? a private moment that you can share with us that this audience may not know about president obama, clint, trump, and bush. >> this, we didn't get an advance. >> it just popped in my head. [laughter] flex would help. a story that comes to mind, he always sought counsel. he wanted to know what we thought. he often took our advice. but when he didn't, he was very polite about it, but he would also tell us that he was going to ignore us. when trayvon martin was killed

and famously the president went out and said he could have been my son, we had met with him in the oval, a handful of us before that and talked about what he should end shouldn't say and how personal to make it. basically every piece of advice he got was too worried, too nervous about the political implications. he said i would hear you, but i'm not going to do that. he said he appreciated everyone in their, thank you, but here's what i'm going to say anyway. then he went out and that was the way he made decisions. ultimately as everybody works for new, the decisions were in his case is his alone, ultimately.

but they shouldn't be made in a vacuum. shouldn't be made without expert advice and insight. he saw all that that he made it clear that there were times we disagreed. we spent a lot of time gave him advice on how to win the day, the month, he routinely said no thank you. we often thought he was ignoring great advice, but it wasn't hooked was he didn't think that way, it was more long-term, for better or worse. his decision-making process was deliberate, thoughtful, and in the end very solitary. >> matt mclarty? >> two moments. one, president fenton, this has been written about, but when he

lost his mother, it was a private moment. he told me that night or early in the morning. >> he often did that, right? >> that was not unusual. if it was bill clinton, it would come after 11:00 at night. his words were, mac, we lost her, which we knew was going to happen. the point is, i got over to the white house to be with him, he really reflected about what his mother had meant to him, i knew virginia well, a real character. great force of personality,

tremendous resiliency. but it was a moment for him to take a step back and talk about, i've gotta do better at keeping things in perspective. i know that, but i haven't felt it. and i could just see after that moment is acting and reacting to things in a slightly different manner. and so to me, that was the know how i will remember as inflection points. it was just a very deeply, personal moment that had broader, deeper meaning for his presidency. the second one, very quickly, i had raised with him that his being not always on time was a serious problem. [laughter] and i did it with humor, i thought, kellyanne, how someone could have such an organized speech that was beautiful and so organized, but to be a touch disorganized personally in terms of running on time. it was in the afternoon in the oval office, he looked over his

glasses and i could see the eyes and i thought, i made him mad. it was in the afternoon. i said, i made you mad mr. president, he said no, you just are my feelings. the point being, i was not sure, since i had never worked for him when he was governor, i worked with them, i supported him, but i never worked directly in the governor's office. how he was going to take criticism, which i thought it was my responsibility to give him in the right way or a different point of view, and i thought it could impair a longtime friendship, which could happen in the white house, which we all know and see. it was in the case with him. he took criticism well. i think part of it was because he felt like it would not be in the next day's paper. it was certainly rendered in a

sincere and respectful manner. those were the two moments. >> kellyanne conway, a private moment with president trump. >> i have many to choose from, but i think it's important to say about what he just shared with us. i think that great leaders can take criticism, and they almost expected, not just accept it, but expected. one of the most wrongheaded things we've set about president trump is that he just wants a bunch of yes-men. actually, it bores him because he didn't learn anything new. he doesn't know where he stands with you. you are afraid to tell him the truth, the facts, the news. i'm looking across -- we had a lot of turn and burn personnel, a lot of turnover. i think many white houses face that, this one does as well. looking back, many of the people

who did not know how to manage the job of being direct and fully briefing the president. i think that's important and it leads to my private moment. quickly, one is walking into the oval office, the president was seated there and they could be -- and they all had big stacks of things to sign. they could be judicial or executive appointments and judicial nominations. that particular day he had a a small folder and i said, what's going on and he said, how many times am i going to do this? i couldn't see it from where i was. i said, what is it. it was that month bus -- that month policy -- that month's sack of letters to send to follow and soldiers parents. and he had just had enough of it. he said, do you believe every president has to do this. how many times are we to be so sorry? it really bothered him. i think it came from somebody who is the only president, including this one, to not start a new war, but it also came from somebody who said, during the campaign, if we don't take care of our veterans, who are we as a

nation? here is my 10 point plan or here's what i'm going to do, always a big policy priority for president trump. but that just struck me because it was one of the things were i was walking in early for a different meeting and he was sitting there saying, can you believe what we are doing. i know every president struggles with that part of the job. the other private moment is such a great telling american story of how we change our minds, of how we evolve, of how we surprise ourselves with some of our decisions. i think has to be president trump's agreement to become the first sitting president in u.s. history to address the march for life live. it was shocking to everyone there that 12 years, president reagan and bush had never done that.

the vice president and i had gone the very first time seven days in. but for president trump to do that in 2018, january 2018 and show up in 2020 on the mall, it's just remarkable, given the fact that for most of his adult life he had been a manhattan billionaire pro-choice. but it's very telling because he told me the story in 2011 about how he had become pro-life overtime and what his story was. he shared his story of how it happened, other people have stories regardless of where they stand on that broad issue. i loved hearing his story. he hired me to do a poll for him. he thought he might want to run into thousand 12 and i basically said, it doesn't look like a good pack. i think the pro-life story is very important because he could've have done what everybody else did which is, i'm pro-life, i will be with you, but he thought it was important

to show up and stand up and speak up on that mall with thousands of people who had been for many years, through the snow, sleet, and i give them credit for that. it was a big moment. i believe the decision -- the only other time was the vice president in me, i didn't know we would get that agreement that day. that moment. you never know what's going to happen, and i think voters are very smart, they see something in the men that maybe the rest of us don't at times. they make their decisions. once in a while, something pops up, a decision is made, a statement is issued where you say, that's why we are here, that's why he's elected. >> you've had time to think about this, private moment, something we may not know with president bush. >> first of all i want to echo,

which is good leaders don't just tolerate criticism, they welcome it, and i think everybody wework ford did, and we are all better for it. a private moment, i will mention it. it's one moment, but it happened many times. i worked for a president who did commit troops into battle, and bore a great burden as a result of it. he did the same thing, he had the same experience as president trump, but there was a sheet every morning that during the height of the iraq war where the president would get the casualty reports from the overnight. every morning i saw him circle it. in that's not the moment, the

moment i'm going to refer to -- the moments i will refer to are the ones that we in the white house did not particularly advertise but the president insisted that whenever he traveled outside of washington that the nearest military base be contacted and he was in a certain radius that the families of the fallen be invited to come sit with him on his trip. and he did this well over 500 times that he met with families

of the fallen and they weren't to be vetted for whether they were angry at him were supportive of him, they were to be invited to convene with the president and early on in the war, the first time we did this the proper scheduling way to handle this was, we would arrive at the airfield or whatever and the president would meet with people, for whatever reason, but now here was the particular reason he was meeting with the family of the fallen and then would go on and do the event, and it was a huge mistake because the president came out of that 15 or 20 minutes with the family, weeping with the family, and it was hard for him to do the next event, which might be education or medicare, or something like that. so we rapidly learned that we had to schedule those sessions after he was done for the day, wherever he was traveling to, we scheduled those sessions and it was the only time that president bush would ever allow us to let him run late was when he was visiting with the families of the fallen, and more often than not he would come out of the meetings with the families with tears streaming down his face. it did not shake his conviction

that he was doing the right thing for the country, but i mention the weeping, i am not a fan of presidential weeping, i don't think we should see our presidents crying on a regular basis. but i mention it because i think something that people really need to take account of, and that we have all witnessed is, to be a good president you have to have empathy for the people you are serving, you have to understand them and you have to

be able to weep with them. the and i think those are private moments that were very difficult for all of us, but i think says a lot about the leaders that we serve in that we deserve in this country. >> one final question, there will be a reception afterwards, please join us, jason for your leadership at the bipartisan center, and the white house association for cosponsoring this event. to kelly o'donnell of nbc news on the first panel. you don't get two overs in life, we all make mistakes and try to learn from that, and he probably made mistakes during your time in the white house.

i want to frame the question with what advice you would give to a future press secretary, counselor to the president, white house chief of staff, something you learned on the job that you would apply to a future white house official. let me begin with you. >> i think, straightforwardly, we talked about this over the years, i think it's to have a well-planned transition. in our case, we did not because it was a different time and place, it was well before 9/11, governor clinton was the underdog against president bush 41, and he felt like, as an upcoming governor, we had a big transition effort when he was down in the polls or even when he got up in the polls, worse that some of the press might just write the story.

this is a young overconfident governor measuring the white house. just once or twice i had that happen. consequently after 12 years of republicans holding the white house with reagan and bush 41, we were faced with a very short transition period from november to the swearing-in ceremony to get a full cabinet government in place, and to respond to all the other demands of that period. since 9/11, you see a much more formal process, jason, as you know you see funding by the congress for transitions. i think this is a good example. i think the story about the depression with the chairman of the fed is the right story, it was a famous transition from president bush 43, from obama -- to obama with tim, and them knowing each other, and that is how they should be done. but the national security aspect in the world we are living in, makes a transition absolutely

essential, so that's a lesson learned. >> lessons learned? jay carney? >> from being press secretary, it's being take advantage of your press secretaries of both parties and seek advice from them. i reached out to all my living predecessors and when i left i offered advice to sean spicer and sarah huckabee sanders, i never heard from them but i did offer it. i spoke to most of my predecessors, and he realize there are similarities that the differences in terms of what policies you pursue in the political decisions you take follow way because the decisions are so similar.

i also think that it's very important, and i thought it was important when i was there, it's not just the wrong thing to do, you shouldn't get up on the podium, behind the podium or on television and lie, stays on the you know isn't true. that doesn't mean that i never said something that turned out not to be true, but i never said anything that i need to be false when i said it. and when it turns out i said something wrong, i would corrected quickly. not it's the wrong thing to do, it really undermines the credibility of the president and the presidency and the of -- the administration in the country. it's very urgent. it's better to say that i will take the question and get back to you, better to say that they end to and get it wrong or put some thing out there that is false. that is corrosive and damaging to the body politic. >> josh? >> the advice that i gave to max

and my successors comes from my own experience as chief of staff. part of the job of a chief of staff is to set up the meetings with the president, make sure he is hearing the views of people and that things are well crafted for the president to make a rational decision. something i learned early on in my. is that when people get in the presence of the president, they, they try to take the edge off the problem because he has got a lot of things to worry about and you just don't want to make his life worse. what then happens is people have bitter disagreements outside the oval office. they get in and you know, it's not so bad. [laughter]

maybe not in the trump white house. but they get in there and they, they, they shave the edge off of their advice. they shave the edges off of their disagreements because they don't want the president to have to referee amongst people who have some bitter disagreement and make his life harder. that's a huge mistake. when we made mistakes in the bush administration it's when we didn't reflect the full depth of disagreement to the president. the advice i have given to successors is make it your job when you are in the oval office to sharpen the disagreement. provoke people to say what they said outside the oval office to the president and make his job a.m. hard. -- dam hard.

he should make those decisions knowing what everybody else thinks. >> unvarnished. >> completely unvarnished. >> kellyanne conway, we will give you the final word. >> thank. don't underestimate how much you can get done by this friday. don't underestimate how much you can get done in the next 1, 2, 3 months. there is always this rush to solve, to fix, to do, to make better, to check the blocks off the list. but i think the long view is important when it comes to policymaking and presidential power. from my own perspective, with the gravity and responsibility, in these jobs, there must be a certain amount of humility. don't forget for whom you are working.

your oath is not to the president. the oath is not to a political party or the building. it's not to your perch in the white house. instead the constitution. serving the people. that is very humbling, to realize that a decision this way or that way affect so many people's lives. or can. if you don't feel that way and you are offered one of these jobs or possess one of these jobs, you should think about moving on to other places in raises where you belong where you will be envelope, compensated, and appreciated. but keeping that, keeping the humility and remembering why you are there, but also taking, taking the long view. try to, try to do that time and again. some of those best laid plans don't happen. if you had asked me what one of the greatest regrets was is i

would have said transition. we were all in new york a little too long and this is where transition was and this is where our jobs were going to be, but it was just more efficient to keep the office is going there and the people from the campaign team coming into the white house, etc., but i think it is really important to come through the city and go through those paces. that is one thing i would say, i would give that advice, saying don't delay that, don't take your family vacation two weeks before you are sworn in. get here or you are -- where you are all going to be working together. as cedric pointed out, it was a lot of laughter in the room when he said it, we set it, too, and no one laughed with us. there isn't a lot of orientation or on-the-job training when it comes to these positions of

great responsibility. you can say power but i look at it as great responsibility. i did talk to other counselors. people who held the title. people who would, whose portfolio i was about to assume. the last advice i would give is twofold. your family and your friends, they are your rock. there is no term limit on them. what do they care if you working? they are proud, but they, they will be the most honest with you. get some friends, cultivate some friendships on the other of the aisle. i had many and it helped tremendously. it helped them, to. and it helped me. that is as nonpartisan as it fundamentally should be. where you just have everybody's perspective. even those that don't agree with

you will still love you and respect you and appreciate your company and your wisdom and that is incredibly important for anyone, especially during these times. so thank you. >> heading up the initiative here at the bipartisan policy center, you have done well and thank you for a rich and wonderful conversation, jay carney, matt mclarty, kellyanne conway, and josh vogel. all of you, thank you for being with us and enjoy your evening. [laughter] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022]

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