Good evening, I'll mark up to grow over the president and CEO of the OBJ Foundation. And it's my pleasure to welcome you here tonight. First a little housekeeping. I want to thank our generous sponsors, St. David's Healthcare, the Ford Foundation, the Moody Foundation, and Tito's homemade vodka. Are you applauding vodka, is that it? I also want to invite you to our upcoming Friends program on June 14th, when we'll be hosting Linda and Lady Bird Johnson's daughter, Linda Johnson-Rob, former LBJ aide and former president of CNN, Tom Johnson, and historian Kyle Longley, author of LBJ's 1968, For a Conversation on 1968, one of the most momentous years in American history. It will make for a fascinating discussion. I hope you can be with us. We have some great stuff lined up for the fall as well, including a program with Doris Kearns Goodwin on her new book on leadership, and another on the 50th anniversary of CBS's iconic show, 60 Minutes. More to come on those programs and others. And finally, I want to invite all of the friends of the LBJ Library members to a reception in the Great Hall that will follow this program. Tonight, we are delighted to welcome Jake Tapper, whose fourth book, The Hellfire Club, has spent four weeks since its release on the New York Times bestseller list. I hope you picked up the book, but if you didn't, you'll have a chance to do so after the program. Jake Tapper has been in Washington for two decades. He started his career in journalism at the Washington City paper, then moved on to salon and ABC News. In 2013, he joined CNN, where he is the chief Washington correspondent and hosts the lead with Jake Tapper and Sunday Morning's State of the Union. His excellence as a journalist has yielded him as a reputation for being one of the best in his very competitive field and has led to numerous awards, including an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award and three Merriman Smith Awards. The Washington Post recently called Jake the tenacious anchor of CNN, the merciless slayer of alternative facts, and, man, you're going to be clapping a lot tonight, and the dogged deflator of political egos. And Stephen Colbert simply called him the Jake Tapper of television news. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Jake Tapper. You do everything big here. This is Texas. Yeah. And it's LBJ. Right. So you got to go big. Before we talk about the book, I think the one question we all have is, how does a guy like you write a book? When do you have time with your schedule and all you're doing to write a book? Well, the idea for the Hellfire Club occurred to me years ago, and I've been working on it for the better part of three or four years, starting it, scrapping it, starting it again, working on an outline. So it's not like, even though I know it just appeared four weeks ago and people just heard about it four weeks ago, I've been working on it for a long time. So that's one. And then the second thing is actually, it was really fun to write. I was a history major in college. It was fun to do all the research. It was fun to escape from the political world that is nonfiction and go into the fictional one where I could control the politicians and what came out of their mouths and where I knew how it ended. I don't know how this one ends, if anybody's asking. I don't know. So it was a lot of fun. So your first three books are works of nonfiction. They were all nonfiction, yeah. The Outpost, which was a New York Times bestseller. Have you always wanted to write a novel? I mean, is it something you wanted to do? I wrote one in my 20s that didn't get published. But yeah, I always wanted to write one. But I didn't, after the one in my 20s that went nowhere, I didn't really have a good idea for one until I came up with the idea for this one. And then I said, OK, this actually is a decent idea. For those who don't know the basic plot, it's about a young congressman and his wife who moved down to Washington in 1954. And they get caught up in a conspiracy and there's a secret society. But I also have what was really fun also was to have my characters, my fictitious characters, interacting with real people from 1954. So Joe McCarthy is a character in the book. Minority leader, Lyndon Johnson is a character in the book and others. The Kennedys, the Nixons, Dwight Eisenhower, everybody from 1950s Washington. No spoilers, but yes. Right, right. Yeah, I know. I mean, it was a lot of fun to learn about these people and to try to figure out how to write dialogue for them by reading up on them, reading whether it's the Robert Carrow books or others, just to try to get into their heads. If LBJ were to meet my character and his intern on the Senate tram and overheard them talking about Estes Kiefover, who was a Democratic senator. Nobody's ever heard of him today. But back then he, well, maybe this audience because you're a gust and learned, but many a lot of people out there have never heard of Estes Kiefover. In 1952, he ran for president as a Democrat from Tennessee. He won all the primaries, but because back then literally it was rigged, the back room guys nominated Adlai Stevenson instead, and he was a frustrated guy and thinking about running for president again. Anyway, so what would LBJ say if he overheard people talking about Estes Kiefover? That was, I shouldn't make that mistake. Everybody here knows everything. I know that from now on. So you started writing this during the Obama administration? I did. I started it then, yeah. Why McCarthy era Washington? Well, if you're going to write about it, I started writing it and it took place in the 1700s. And that's really tough to pull off. I don't know how many writers are here. So I tried many, many times, but I just couldn't credibly write for John Adams. And then I said it in the modern era, but Charlie, his character is he's a really good and decent person, but he's also kind of naive. And he's not even, it just wasn't believable in 2015, 2016. So then I said it in 1954, which actually brought a lot of things home for me, because then I could write about Washington and really plunge into the world as it was back then, as opposed to if I wrote it to the modern era, it would just be weird. And then also, the 1950s was such a curious time in American popular culture. It's idyllic and serene, but it wasn't, obviously, at all that way.  But beyond that, it was also full of McCarthyism, the Red Scare, the atomic race. Segregation was about to, school segregation was about to be ruled unconstitutional. It was a time of real upheaval and menace beneath the serene surface. So it seemed like a good, it would fit well with the plot I wanted to do. And also, so if you're right about the 50s, you have to write about McCarthy, because he was, you know. He permeates the era. Yeah, he was the character. He's Joe McCarthy at the beginning of 1954 when the book takes place. He enters that year at the height of his popularity. He and his aides are talking about maybe even challenging Eisenhower and the Republican nomination for president in 1956. But he ends the year censured by the Senate and a disgrace. So it was just an interesting time. And the McCarthy parallels to our current history were there were there. And they say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And you can't read about the McCarthy era and not hear a lot of rhyming. And so I played a little bit of that up when I was writing the book in 2016 and 2017. But I didn't really have to, because the parallels are just there. I will confess, I knew who S.C. Koffover was. No, you do.  But I did not know what the Hellfire Club was. That's a real thing. It's a real thing. Talk about the Hellfire Club and its history and how you use it in the book. So the Hellfire Club was an actual secret society in England in the 1700s. And it was on an estate outside of London. And the most powerful men in London, members of the royal family and politicians and business people, would, I should say, business men. But not business people. This was the 1700s. It was just men. And they would come. And they would have these mock, satanic rituals and orgies. And it was just complete debauchery. And it was a secret society where they all forged alliances and all, at the same time, had mutually assured destruction. They all knew dirt on the other. So it served all their interests on one level and also subjected them to blackmail on another. And obviously, these were people who had rivalries. And I first found out about it because Benjamin Franklin, when he was in London in the 1760s, I believe, visited it. If you know anything about Benjamin Franklin, I'm sure he had a good time. Makes some sense. So the conceit of the novel is, well, what if Benjamin Franklin was like, well, I like this. Let's bring it back to the colonies. And then it went on from there. You talked about the protagonist, Charlie Marder, who is a World War II hero, New York professor, writes a best-selling book. He's a historian. He's a historian. A young, tall, strapping historian. Thank you very much. Although he's 33. Sorry. A young historian. But he's sort of this Jack Armstrong 50s idealic hero in this very sinister world of Washington. How did you conceive this character? And his wife, Margaret, who's an incredibly interesting character, self-azoologist, as it happens. So I thought of Charlie as kind of a stand-in for the way I think of the United States back in 1954. He's just been through the war. He is a decent person. He believes in what America stands for. He believes in the founding fathers. He's a little naive about what's going on, but fundamentally a good person. Not really aware of racism. Not really aware about a lot of things going on. But a good man. Margaret is his wife. She's a zoologist. And they met at Columbia University when they were students. And she has career ambitions of her own, which is odd and a bit anachronistic, although not entirely, for the time. And I thought of her as kind of the principles that guide the country, whereas Charlie was kind of just the country itself. And that's kind of how I thought about them when I wrote about them. You've said in an interview recently, I have lived in Washington for several decades. And I have seen good people come here and try to do good works for the American people. And the system is designed to force them to compromise. Sometimes the compromises might be bigger and deeper.  I'm wondering, and you were talking the context of Charlie Marder, your protagonist. Would Charlie Marder fare better in today's Washington or McCarthy Bureau Washington? Oh, God. It's so, you know, it's probably better for you or Doug or one of the professors here to answer that question than for me. But in terms of which era is swampier now or the 1950s? I mean, on its face, the 1950s was swampier because all of the transparency rules and laws that we know about today that require reporting of campaign contributions, so many of those were post-watering. But there's so much more money in politics today. So you didn't have to disclose it back then. But the bribe might be 500 bucks. And today, there's a whole legal bribe system, not to mention the illegal one that politicians still like to avail themselves of, in which it's tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't know. That's a really good question. Charlie is, I mean, one of the things I wanted to capture in this book, in addition to hopefully writing a fun yarn, was the idea of how it happens that somebody comes to Washington who is a good person and finds themselves, before they know it, neck deep in swamp water. And how is it that you go down there to do something good? And within three or four years, you're like caught up in something that is not good. And you see it happen all the time with politicians. And look, sometimes the compromises are just political compromises. And I'm not judging, I'll vote for your bill if you vote for mine, or we'll put this in the legislation so it can pass. That's just how the system was designed. But I'm talking about, nor, by the way, am I talking about, OK, in order to get reelected, I have to spend one third to one half of my time raising money, which is also an unfortunate part of today's politics. But that's also, that's the system. But in order to become part of the party machine, in order to get so much money that you chase off any challengers, so often people, politicians, enter into agreements with corporations, or big donors, or machine bosses, or whomever. And then the next thing you know, they're doing things that are illegal. And that's kind of what I wanted to capture. Would Charlie fare better than or now? I mean, he barely gets out of 1954, so I don't know. But yes, he survives. He lives at the end of the book. He doesn't die. But I don't know. I mean, I know a lot of really good politicians, really good people, rather, who are politicians who you can see that they're struggling with what they go through. So you've been around Washington for a long time. A couple of decades, as I mentioned in the quote I just read, do most of the politicians who go there, like Charlie, want to do good? I don't know. I honestly don't. I honestly don't know if it's most. I know that there are some. I mean, I could name a few that seem like decent people to me. But inevitably, if I do that tomorrow, they're all going to get arrested. But they might not be the endorsement they want. Exactly. Well, it's just bad luck at the moment. If I've learned anything in this business, it's watch out for predictions. But I don't know. I certainly think that there are a lot of good people that go into politics because they think they can do good and they can achieve good things. Definitely. Most, I don't know.  I think it's pretty clear. I mean, like, well, I mean, isn't Farenholt from this state? I mean, what is that? I mean, I think that's unanimous. I'm not going out on a limb to picking out Macau. Didn't Governor Abbott call for him to step down?  And I think that there are a bunch that are in it for power. But I do think that there are a number of politicians who are in it because they are inspired to do good, whether it's because they are active with their church group and they thought maybe they could bring those values to Washington or live those values through public service or their veterans or community organizers or whatever.  I think a number of them go to do good things. I can't give you a number breakdown in terms of most. I really don't know. And I wonder these days. Let me go back to one who was not in it for good, McCarthy, who you draw out so well in the book. You write of him in the book. He's impossible to ignore. He's become this planet blocking the sun. And whatever points he makes that have validity are blotted out by his indecency and his lies and his predilection to smear. And then you write of President Eisenhower saying to Charlie Martyr of McCarthy, he is incapable of stopping, even when it's in his own interests, smearing and lying. It's what he does. One cannot appease the insatiable. So it begs the question here. And you all know the question. What? Let's face you way ahead of me. What are you talking about? How does Joseph McCarthy compare to Donald J. Trump? Well, I mean, there are obvious comparisons. There are obvious similarities. I actually think that President Trump owes much more to McCarthy's protege and President Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn. And that's, again, not invented. That's just real. I mean, if you pick up the art of the deal, and I'm sure this audience has a copy at home, he talks about Roy Cohn. He talks about Roy Cohn, what he learned from Roy Cohn, the importance of loyalty he learned from Roy Cohn. I think he probably also learned about media. And he learned about what the president calls, in the art of the deal, truthful, hyperbole that the rest of us would call lying. So I mean, I think there's, I can't think of a politics. Look, Bill Clinton told lies. Richard Nixon told lies. They all tell lies. Nixon and Clinton told bigger lies. But I can't think of an American politician that is as cavalier with the truth to this extent, unless you go back to McCarthy.  There were communists trying to infiltrate the government. But J. Edgar Hoover was nabbing them. McCarthy was just smearing people in the State Department. McCarthy smeared General Marshall, a hero of World War II and a hero of the post-war. So yeah, they have a lot in common in terms of just an utter and complete disregard for truth and smearing. But what they stand for is very different. I mean, Trumpism and McCarthyism and Donald Trump as a person and Joe McCarthy as a person are very different people. But the lying and the smearing and the indecency, I think, are very similar. And you alluded to this a moment ago. But McCarthy goes down ignominiously. In 1954, when your book ends, although you don't go into this in the book. I assume the reader knows what happens. This audience certainly knows. There are hints as to what McCarthy is about their experience. You get a good sense of what his fate is going to be. But he got censured, as you said, by the Senate for conduct, quote, contrary to senatorial traditions, unquote, after which his influence waned irrevocably and he was condemned to the ash heap of history. What do you think history will say about Donald Trump? I don't know because obviously Joe McCarthy was known for one thing, which was smearing people in the name of fighting communism. And Donald Trump, President Trump is doing a lot. I mean, there are a lot of things he is doing. So I don't know if he's going to go down in history as the man who denuclearized the Korean Peninsula. I don't know. I wish him the best. I hope he does. I don't know if he's going to go down in history as the man who he has so many things that he wants to achieve. Let's say that his, I don't think, if Trumpism is all these different things and McCarthyism is one thing, there are parts of Trumpism that I think are actually healthy. I think it is healthy for the United States to, United States political leaders and the public to rethink its approach to trade. I don't think there's anything wrong inherently with, you know, we have been negotiating our trade deals, the Democrats and the Republicans, thinking too much about corporate profits and not enough about having a thriving middle class in this country. I don't think it's necessarily wrong and I haven't seen him actually live up to his word in this but I don't think it's necessarily wrong for the president, for the public and the policymakers to rethink American intervention abroad because, you know, you hear about people on the left and the right who think that there's just one big party, the Democrats and Republicans are basically the same and obviously they're not. They're two very different parties but when it comes to trade and when it comes to foreign policy, there has been this kind of morphed in the middle, this big borg of just like one American policy and one American party. A fixed paradigm. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, if after President Trump leaves office, there has been, there have been changes there. I don't know what people are going to think about him and maybe there will be achievements in that area. Now, that's policy. In terms of how he conducts himself on Twitter and in terms of the lying and the smearing and the racism and just the basic indecent behavior, just things that are not acceptable. I always get mad when I think about him insulting John McCain. I just get viscerally angry and obviously with that aid recently making a joke about McCain dying of brain cancer, how that person has a job and how the White House has not apologized is beyond me. So all of that that I start to look and sound like my dad when I think about it, I just start to frown. I think that history will judge politicians harshly who didn't stand up to it. You read about the 1950s and there are two people who stood out to me. One is Margaret J. Smith, Republican Senator from Maine who went to the Senate floor in 1950 and gave what was her declaration of conscience speech against McCarthy and McCarthyism in 1950. Now, just for context, Edward R. Murrow didn't take on Joe McCarthy until 1954. So that was incredibly brave and that was a Senator in her own party and she wasn't retiring because I know a lot of Senators find their courage when they're retiring. She stuck around for years and years and years after that in the U.S. Senate. So that she is who I think about when I think about that era and then I also think about Robert Taft. Robert Taft was a Senator from Ohio. I think either the son or the grandson of the president, maybe the grandson of President Taft and he ran for president against Ike in 52. He lost him in the primaries, went back to the Senate, became the Senate majority. I think the minority leader, he became the Senate majority leader after the Eisenhower landslide. Incredibly powerful man. I'm sure he thought that he was gonna run for president again someday and he tried to straddle the worlds of McCarthyism and knowing how awful and corrosive it was and he never took a stand against McCarthy and he never took a stand against McCarthyism. He thought, I guess he thought he could just wait it out and you don't get to write your own legacy. In 1953, he dropped dead and now he's known for not standing up to McCarthy. Right. And so that's what I think about when I think about how our future generation is gonna judge today's politicians, today's members of the media. How did you respond to the indecency? Not did you join the resistance, not did you vote this way, did you vote that way, but did you take a stand when this was said or when this was done? And I think that there are gonna be a lot of politicians who are gonna be disappointed when and if there's a heaven and they're looking down to see how their legacy looks and it doesn't look so good. You talked about Murrow who had a hand in McCarthy's demise, particularly at the end, but he was late. Yeah, he was late. And on his program, The Iconic, see it now on CBS, he did a famous monologue in which he said that we have to stand up for principle. That was at a time though when there were only three networks, there was ABC, CBS, and NBC. And they were all very cautious. Right, right. Very, very cautious. Very conservative, but you didn't have the fragmentation in media that you have today that landscapes changed significantly. The term fake news now really as a result of this fragmentation, to some degree, has become part of the vernacular. And 60% of Trump supporters believe Trump's claim that the media is the enemy of the people. Yeah. So... Is it up to 60? It's up to 60%. I thought it was 51%, which was upsetting enough. You're giving me bad news. Yeah, sorry. I don't like it. Fake news. But... That's what you do now. So as I was saying... If you don't like the news, you call it fake. As I was saying, 51% of Trump supporters he's good, he's really, he's that good. So the question is how do you combat that? How do you combat this notion? It's awful. That there is fake news out there. Well, there are a few things. One is, and I have to say this, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, I think journalism is a noble profession. And I think a lot of journalists are really rising to the moment. But I also get really upset when reporters make sloppy mistakes. Or take positions that I think are debatable. It's debate, like for instance, there became last week, the New York Times wrote a story about whether or not the summit was gonna happen. And they said that a senior aides who said it was impossible, but the timing was impossible. And President Trump got on Twitter and said, this is fake news, this is invented, nobody ever said this, blah, blah, blah. This person is fictitious. And it turned out that the New York Times had based their comment on something said by senior administration official, at an official background briefing. And when you read the quote, what the aid actually said is something along the lines of, it was gonna be really, really difficult to pull it off, pull off the summit on June 12th because that's in like 10 minutes or something like that, blah, blah, blah. But they didn't say it was impossible. But then it became this whole debate about President Trump said this and the New York Times said that. And like ultimately, I kind of feel like the New York Times paraphrase wasn't necessarily fair. Or at least it wasn't as accurate as it could have been. The New York Times story yesterday about Trump's rally in Tennessee, they described an audience of 1,000 people and the fire marshal and the Trump Trump again this morning. Fake news was much bigger than that. The fire marshal said it was about 5,500 people. So about five times bigger than the New York Times and New York Times had to issue a correction. These are just, these are own goals. These are self-inflicted wounds. I don't mean to pick on the New York Times, they're just two of the most resonant in my head. I think it's an amazing newspaper and they do a lot of great work and it's impossible to publish a million facts a day and not have a couple of them wrong. But we just need to be really, really diligent and really, really careful because the most powerful man in the world is trying to undermine us and he's doing so at least according to what Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes says he told her, I do it so that when you report negatively on me nobody will believe it. It's tactical. Yeah. That's why he's doing it. And we just have to be pure than pure and we just have to really make sure that our facts are right. And look, I don't always get my facts right and it's not possible. But I really wish, I had an editor, my first editor, my first job and full-time as a journalist was at Washington City Paper. My editor was David Carr who went on to become a media writer for the New York Times. And I remember every mistake I made at City Paper and I remember David Carr and how he dealt with it and it was not happy. It was not a pretty sight. And I just wish everybody had had David Carr as in their first job in journalism. The fake news phenomenon, calling us fake news is hideous. But it bothers me so much when journalists don't understand how fragile our credibility is and how low our standing is with the American people and how difficult it is to earn it back. So I don't mean to emphasize the New York Times or people who make mistakes and I just guarantee that tomorrow I'm gonna make some big mistake. But we really just need to rise to this moment and because it's hideous what he's doing. He has labeled anything he doesn't, he says, he said one time he described negative news as fake. He did a tweet where he said negative and they put in parentheses fake. That's what it is to him, negative equals fake. He one time tweeted something like all negative polls are fake. Like that's like a quote. I mean, so we know what it is to him and the problem is that there are a number of supporters of his who believe it and we can't help him undermine ourselves. We have to stand strong and make sure that we fact-checked everything. I wanna get back to this moment but let me ask you, why did you get into this business?  I started writing freelance stories because it was, people were not writing the stories I wanted to read. There were things I wanted to know about and people weren't writing them so and I was kind of directionless. I was working in public relations. I had no idea and I started pitching stories to Washington Post or the Washington City Paper or others and I liked it. It just was fun and it's fun. You know, I got a rush from seeing my byline. I got a rush from people enjoying my work but I wrote a lot of different stuff. It wasn't political at first. It was, I did a lot of lifestyle stuff. I mean, you can find stuff on the internet. I did a story about when the Stairmaster was invented about, no, that's not even the premise. The women were complaining that there was a phenomenon called Stairmaster Butt where their butts were getting big from doing too much Stairmaster. This is in the Washington Post, so withhold your judgment. But I mean, I wrote anything.  But I got into the business because people were not writing the stories that I wanted to read and I think now I am in it because people are not asking the questions that I want asked.  Is there anything you've done relating to Trump that you regret? No. I mean, in retrospect, I think we all, everybody in the media, if we had known he was going to win, might cover things differently. Just in terms of policies and trying to get firmer commitments as to what his policies were on a number of subjects because that still remains rather hazy. But no, not really. I mean, he stopped doing interviews with me in June, 2016 because of the interview. I interviewed right before the California primary and the Trump University case was proceeding and there was a judge named Judge Curiel that was about to hear it and the president said to the Wall Street Journal the day before that Judge Curiel couldn't do a good job or be a fair judge because he was Mexican. Judge Curiel is, of course, from Indiana. And so I challenged President Trump, I thought nicely, but persistently about, you know, if you're saying somebody can't do a job because of their race, is that not the definition of racism? And that was the last time I got an interview with President Trump. So it's hard for me to look back and say, well, I should have been tougher because I was, I mean, there weren't a lot of people that were interviewing him that all of a sudden weren't allowed to interview him anymore. Right, right. Has CNN changed its operation in any way to adapt to the Trump era? Oh yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, I think there's an acknowledgement by leadership of CNN and I wish that Fox and MSNBC would acknowledge this as well but that in 2015, especially CNN ran too many Trump rallies, start to finish unedited, gavel to gavel, no editorial comment, no fact checking and didn't do the same for other candidates. I mean, I think Jeff Zooker has acknowledged that he regrets that and I wish that MSNBC and Fox would acknowledge that too. So there's less of that. And I think the fact checking apparatus is much stronger and much more forceful and I think that the way that journalists talk, at least on CNN, the way that journalists talk about lies and statements that are not true is much more clear cut than it used to be. But I mean, there are other changes that we've had to make. I mean, there's more security at CNN because of death threats and the president saying that your organization is the enemy of the American people results in lots of unpleasant people having lots of unpleasant thoughts.  It's not, I mean, they mean the media sucks but CNN represents. You were the poster boys for fake news. And girls, yeah. Right, and I think you are the central figure there and I don't mean that in a negative way but I suppose, I mean, the truth of the matter is that it's so silly. Right. It's just so juvenile. You know, I mean, it's not like the way an adult would have a conversation with somebody and say I really thought that story was unfair and let me explain to you why.  I mean, it's just, what? Do you take it, is it hard not to take it personally? Or is it easy because it's so ludicrous? I think it, I don't take it personally at all. The stuff that offends me is the stuff like making fun of a journalist who has a disability is obscene. It's obscene.  I mean, these, I don't have room to get worried about the stuff that offends me personally. There are like millions of other Americans I'm far more offended on their behalf than when it comes to me. It's, you should not go into, if there are any journalism students here, you should not go into journalism if you don't have at least something of a thick skin because it is not an easy business but it bothers me because he is undermining the concept of empirical fact. That is troubling. Not attacking me or attacking CNN or whatever, but the idea of that facts don't exist or they are what I want them to be or they are what I feel them to be. You know, Barack Obama couldn't get these three hostages out of North Korea, so I'm gonna get them out. Two of them were taken hostage when you were president. How was Obama gonna get them out when he was president if they hadn't been captured yet?  You know, Kellyanne Conway came on the show when I challenged her on that and just, and I said, you know, the president tells so many lies and she said, the president does a lot of things. Right, which is true. I can't dispute that on factual grounds. But I mean, like, look, that tweet is still up. It's still up. It's a lie. It's just a blatant falsehood and there's no embarrassment about it. You know, I mess up an ampersand in a tweet and I'm like under my bed for like a week and there's just no shame. They don't care. It's quite something to behold. I talked about the fragmentation of the media world before. And given the breadth of the landscape, who do you consider your competitors? Oh, everybody. I mean, everybody's, I mean, the media landscape is vast and there's great journalism being done. I mean, on one level, you know, I have a Sunday show. So Chuck Todd and George Stephanopoulos and Chris Wallace and Margaret Brennan are my competitors on Sunday. And then I have a show at four o'clock. So, you know, I'm competing directly with Nicole Wallace and Neil Cavuto. Right. And then, you know, more broadly, there is just a world of TV anchors and we're all trying to do the best show we can and we're all trying to get the interviews we can get. So there's a lot of competition, but the truth of the matter is I have never felt a more collegial time in journalism than now because there's so much animosity towards journalists that, you know, none of us want what has happened to very, you know, when the president, Chuck Todd's a friend of mine and when the president goes after Chuck Todd, I have to stop myself from like tweeting a defense of Chuck Todd. My wife's like, he doesn't need your defense, stop. But your comrades-in-arms. Yeah. You feel a certain... Yes. I mean, I'm competing with him. Right. And I want to beat him and I want to get the guests and I don't want him to get them and, you know, all that, but I want him to thrive and I want him to succeed and the animus is so strong that it outweighs the spirit of competition quite often. But there, I mean, we all have, I mean, look, the New York Times is breaking a million stories a day, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times. I mean, there's a lot of great journals on being done right now. You did this country a great service by going down to Parkland, Florida after the shootings and moderating what ended up being a very constructive, very illuminating conversation after the shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School. What was it like to be in that room that night?  And it was, I remember as a journalist flying into Dender in 1999 after Columbine. And, you know, you can feel grief, right? You must, you go into a house where people are mourning, you can feel it. And when it's a whole city or a whole county mourning and shock on edge, it's something almost tangible in the room. And I didn't know how that was gonna go. The way that went down was, I know the congressman from that represents that county, Congressman Ted Deutsch. He was actually my counselor in training at camp. I mean, I didn't keep in touch with him, but, you know, that would be kind of weird. But years later, when we got elected to Congress, and I'm like, oh my God, we were in camp together. And so I knew him, and he called me, the, I guess the shooting with, I think the shooting was on a Tuesday or Wednesday, or Wednesday, maybe. And he called me the Friday. He called me two days later and said, you know, there are people down here who want to have a town hall. They want CNN to do a town hall. What do you think? And it became, you know, and it, there was, that community was obviously a very political and engaged community, obviously a very progressive community, and they wanted to speak truth to power. And they wanted to vent, and they wanted to get things off their chest, and they wanted to come together as a community. So we put it together really quickly, and we put it together in this big arena, because normally a CNN town hall is like 100, 150 people. We put it together with the school, with Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, and the school had the position, and I'm, you know, I totally get it. We're not turning anybody away. So this needs to be in a big arena. We're not doing 150 people. Anybody who wants to come. And it's a school, I think, of 3,000. So we add it in the local hockey arena. And we worked really hard on it, and we tried to make sure that anybody who lost a family member got to ask a question. Anybody who was wounded got to ask a question. We tried to get a diversity of topics, so it wasn't just only about guns. So there were other topics in school security, mental health, the response of the sheriffs, which we know now and didn't know then, could have been much stronger. And it was very intense, and I thought it was gonna be a much more sad event, and it ended up being a much more mad event. People were angry. And so a lot of conservatives were upset about it, and that's fine, that comes with the job. Marco Rubio, to his credit, showed up. Now, to be completely candid, I don't know what you guys know about Florida politics, but Broward County is not Rubio country. It's a very liberal part of Florida. And so Marco Rubio, showing up two weeks before, would have been razed in that room. But he knew what he was getting into, and I admire that he went there. Governor Scott did not go, and President Trump did not go, and the Republican leaders of the State Senate and the State House didn't go, even though they were all invited. So Rubio was the only Republican official there, and people were angry. And I took some heat for not stopping, I mean, I tried to calm the room a few times, but I took some heat for not stopping students or parents when they went after Dana Lesh from the NRA, or Marco Rubio, or anyone else. But the truth is, I wasn't going to say to some dad who just lost his 14-year-old daughter, you need to have a little bit more respect for the Senate. I mean, he just lost his daughter, you know? If you don't like it, turn it off. What I admired was your restraint.  I thought that was the whole point of it. Letting them talk, letting them vent. It was, we all fancy ourselves as speaking truth to power, people in journalism, but that was the most pure example of speaking truth to power that I've ever seen. 15, 16-year-old kids grieving moms, grieving dads, just unfettered, only a week into their grief, telling politicians how upset they were and how furious they were about what had happened and how come they hadn't done more to try to prevent it from happening to them, to their kids. I'd never seen anything like it. And it was raw and it was uncomfortable, but I don't think I'd change one thing. Did you get a sense of the movement that would grow out of it? No, not really, not until the March.  They're politically active and savvy, but they're kids still. And they obviously had an effect when it came to the law in Florida, a law was passed in Florida that changed how things are done, not in any major way, but the law for purchasing a semi-automatic weapon was raised from 18 to 21. And there were other changes having to do with school security. But, you know, I see them on Twitter and they're still very optimistic and I'm not about to correct them. Will their movement lead to meaningful gun control reform? I don't know. I don't know. Because you saw a very different response in Santa Fe. And a lot of the country, I don't need to tell you, a lot of the country feels the way that a lot of people in Santa Fe do, which is the problem is that's a bad kid or there isn't enough God in our school or whatever. I mean, I was surprised that there wasn't more of a call for a law to require adults to lock up their weapons because the Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, said something along those lines about right after the shooting about how people need to lock up their guns. But then I had him on my Sunday show and he wasn't willing to require it as a law.  So that exists, but not the thing about locking up your guns to begin with. So, you know, I don't think so. But I don't know that your moderation of that conversation is a good example of you getting a sense of the people and journalists, particularly those in Washington don't often get that opportunity. How do you stay in touch with the American people? Well, I read a lot and I travel a lot and I read a lot of people on Twitter who are different from me and I stay in touch with a lot of friends who have very different political opinions than I do. That's not so, everybody has. I don't really have huge political opinions. I'm more like, people passionate on the left or the right, like I'm like, wow, that's nice that you think that strongly, but like, there are a lot of people on Facebook posting leftward and rightward and I'm just like, wow, so all of them are different from me because I'm not out there with political views on much of anything. But I do keep in touch with a lot of Trump supporters that are soldiers that I met when I wrote my last book about Afghanistan and I'm friends with hundreds of troops and their families from that experience. I interviewed more than 200 people for that book and a lot of them are very conservative and a lot of them are Trump supporters and a lot of them aren't. A lot of troops are not Trump supporters too. So I don't, I mean, how do I stay in touch? I mean, the short answer is probably I don't as much as I should or as much as I could but I am aware that I come to the world with a certain viewpoint based on being who I am, raised how I was in Philadelphia and going to where I went to college and all that. So I'm constantly seeking out how other people might look at the same situation. And so it was not a surprise to me for example that Santa Fe dealt with the shooting much differently than Parkland. Right, right. But so that's, and Santa Fe is actually what I'm much more used to. And Parkland's the aberration. Yeah, yeah. Most communities deal with school shootings the way that Santa Fe does. In a very personal way about the loss and there isn't a cry for activism. Earlier today, you retweeted a Donald Trump tweet and your tweet read happy sixth anniversary to this tweet and the retweet from Donald Trump read, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, Barack Obama's major failing as president was not uniting the American people. Hey, bro, six years ago today. Six years ago. If you're on Twitter, there's a great Twitter feed called Trump Hop and it just tweets out things that he tweeted in the past. And I follow it and it's a never-ending source of amusement. Because sometimes you'll just get a whole bunch from 2011 or 2010 and it's just like, come to my new golf course, it's just like selling a product of some sort. And sometimes he'll be talking about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.  It was very odd. Really, he tweeted about it like 30 times. In which he was telling him to move along because she had cheated on him, right? Yeah, I guess. Anyway, I asked President Trump. But can any, but some of them are very poignant politically because he'll be faulting Obama for something that is like now on his watch. Barack Obama did not unite the country, I mean, but it's hard to argue that there's a huge effort being made today. Sure. Which is, I guess my question, can anybody in today's divided America unite us? And we're not meant to be. We're not meant to be united. It's kind of a silly criticism. The best that an American president can do is try to heal the nation in times of division and try to bring people together. There's never gonna be a united States of America. But what I think President Trump does, and he's not the first and he won't be the last, is he tries to divide us often. A good example of this is the controversy over NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality and inequality. I totally understand, and this comes from filing a lot of gold star moms on Facebook, I really truly understand why people are offended by it. They think this is the two minutes in this week where I can think about my son and I feel like the country is also maybe possibly thinking about my son, my fallen son, or daughter, or husband. And to have people, even though it's not what they're, even though that's not what they're protesting, to have people pick that moment to stage a protest is deeply offensive to them. I really do understand it. And I also do understand why an African-American, especially a player in this day and age with the gift of knowledge that we all have because of cell phone cameras, and now we all see what everybody in the African-American community and Latino community has been complaining about for decades that people like you and me just didn't see ever why they feel compelled to do something, even if it's just this one little thing. And if there were a dialogue and a discussion about this, that is something that maybe could be at least helpful. And fruitful, just even if people disagree, you're not gonna convince everybody to join one side or the other. There's no winning in this argument. These are too deeply held beliefs. And by the way, they're both right. They're both right because it has to do with how they feel and their feelings are valid. But what President Trump does is pick a side and demonize the other. The politics of division. Right, it's not new to America. George W. Bush did it with same-sex marriage and plenty of other politicians going down the line and both parties have done it. But that to me is what I was thinking about when I tweeted that tweet, that retweet from 2012 or whatever because I just think he really, I mean, Barack Obama did not unite the country and he did a lot of things that a lot of people found divisive and I'm not gonna take issue with that but I don't think he picked on scams the way President Trump does. He wants to get his base out. I understand it's a political strategy but is it good for the country that he's leading? I don't think it is. So you started your journalism career during the Clinton administration. You've seen the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush administration, the Barack Obama administration, the Trump administration. This is, well, I'm gonna ask you, is the Trump Washington the new normal? Is Trump's America the new normal? Or will we go back to an America that's more familiar to us? You know, I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of people who found, a lot of people on the right who were, and I think it was more policy oriented than it was in terms of the national character and the national dialogue but there are a lot of people who found Barack Obama's America upsetting because they thought it represented big government and if not socialism, more people on the federal dole, et cetera. And the truth of the matter is that every president makes an imprint into this country and makes an imprint on this country and it's very difficult to go back. The country just keeps going in its own direction. Is there gonna be a course correction when it comes to lies? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Remember, this is the American experiment. It's not done. Right. It's a work in progress. We don't know how it ends. I mean, you could, they're interviewing a different person at a different time. You could make an argument about how damaging President Obama was to the, just the notion of what Americans expect their government to pay for. And how that actually means more long-term damage to the United States than anything else because of the amount of money we pay to pay the interest on the debt, not to mention the debt. I don't know. They all put their imprint on it one way or another and I could, you talk about I came down during the Clinton years. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that happened during that presidency that I think had a very negative impact on the national character. I mean, people are very quick to criticize conservative evangelicals turning a blind eye to Donald Trump's behavior. But I remember when people made those same criticisms about feminists turning a blind eye to Bill Clinton's behavior. Do we change irrevocably as a result of those developments? It's hard to say because it really has to do with the Parkland generation and it has to do with those kids and how they think about things because certain things just change and they don't change back. I mean, you and I are old enough to remember when the concept of same-sex marriage being legal in Texas would be insane. Right, sure. Not to pick on Texas, Alabama. But is that better? I mean, I'm just much better. We're in Texas, I think. So things change. I mean, certain opinions about humanity evolve. I don't know where this nation's gonna be on abortion in 50 years. It seems like according to some polls, as a nation, we're getting more conservative on that issue. So I don't know. Let me shift gears, but stay on the same subject of works and progress.  Charlie lives. Lives? Charlie lives. In a very memorable last scene. By the way, and if you are, just to give a little plug for the book, if you are a history buff, which I suspect you are if you're here, I mean, a lot of history buffs have liked the book because there's a lot of history in it and a lot of just what it was like to live in 1954 and actual events that took place that you might not have known about, like in March 1954 when Puerto Rican terrorists burst into the House of Representatives and shot it up and shot five members of Congress. And different little things like that, that's not little at the time, but different things like that appear throughout the book. I mean, let me just, to that point, very few works of fiction have end notes that cite sources. I have end notes in my book. Jake has a very comprehensive section in which he cites his sources and I would, as a history buff, commend the book to you. Yeah, I thought that people would want to know what was real and what was not real because to me, the craziest stuff in the book is the stuff that's real. That, I mean, yeah, I have this conspiracy theories and all that, but like Joe McCarthy, when he drank, which was often, would eat a stick of butter. He would eat a stick of butter. And I put that in the book. I read that in a Jack Anderson biography of McCarthy that I read that was written in 1952. I'm like, if I don't put that in the end notes, people are gonna think I made that up. I need to put that in there. And I will say the last words of the book come after the end notes and they are, that being said, this is a work of fiction. Right. So, will Charlie Martyr come back? Are you thinking about a sequel to the Hellfire Club? I am thinking about it. There's this great story I heard about that takes place in 1962 that's real. That it struck me, this would be an incredible thing to have a plot of a book around, although it's not particularly, it's not a cliffhanger in any way, but it might be fun to have it around, which is in 1962, John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy was about to go out to Los Angeles. And Frank Sinatra, who had helped him get elected and considered him a good friend, was desperate to have John F. Kennedy and President Kennedy stay at the Sinatra compound in Los Angeles, desperate. And he started building extra buildings and this is where the press file will be in this book. And Attorney General Robert Kennedy thought about it, looked into it, turned out there are some things in Sinatra's background that weren't so hot. Maybe you've heard about them. He was friends with some people. And ultimately, John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy stayed at the house of the number one Republican celebrity in Los Angeles, Bing Crosby, and it drove Sinatra crazy. And I just thought that was such a great story. It drove a permanent wedge in their relationship. Oh, Peter Lofford, who was the member of the Rat Pack, who was also married to a Kennedy, one of John F. Kennedy's sister, Peter Lofford was after this happened, because Lofford was the ambassador between the two camps, was after that was banned from Sinatra movies. He was written out of every oceans movie. Like it was a huge deal back then. Anyway, I just thought that was a... It would be like George Clooney dropping Don Cheadle or something, you know? Yeah, you're out. Right, you're out, right? So that structurally is something that might be fun to write about, but I don't know yet. I mean, it was a lot of work to do this one, and so we'll have to see. Well, again, the book is on sale outside. If you haven't already picked it up, I recommend it highly. Jake, I want to thank you so much for being here. I want to thank you for what you do, particularly now in the Trump era. Thank you. Thank you very much. Before the conversation.


So we have to talk about the Starbucks workers and what they're doing across the country I don't even know how to describe what they're doing but I do know for sure that all of their activity demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that labor is back and At this point I feel as if we're on a trajectory to make labor and the labor movement more broadly speaking in this country stronger than ever So it wasn't long ago when Chris Smalls led the first Amazon warehouse to a union But Starbucks workers back in November in Buffalo, New York at a store they voted to form the very first union in the company's history and That was only the beginning because now there is a company-wide effort to unionize now earlier this month the flagship Starbucks location in New York voted to unionize just this week two stores in the Boston area voted unanimously to form unions And we're to the point where 18 stores have voted to unionize since that first store unionized in Buffalo, New York in late 2021 and More than 200 plus stores are now fighting to unionize in 30 different states 200 plus Starbucks locations are fighting to unionize Now all of this is happening despite one of the most intense union-busting campaigns in decades This is according to in these times But since that article was published back in late March the number of stores trying to unionize Doubled so just stop for a moment and appreciate that Starbucks is doing everything in their power even firing union organizers at particular locations closing down stores and The union effort is growing. It literally doubled in the span of a couple of weeks It's absolutely insane and the company at this point is so desperate that they're trying everything Including increasing benefits specifically for non-union workers So as CNBC explains Starbucks campaign to dissuade baristas from unionizing could include extending new benefits Exclusively to non-union workers the company's CEO Howard Schultz told US store leaders this week that he is reviewing the coffee chains Benefit program for its workers. However employees who work at company owned stores that vote to unionize would be ineligible for those Improved benefits Schultz said Schultz cited federal labor law and advice from the company's legal counsel in saying it would be illegal to extend Benefits unilaterally with unionized locations in the equation under federal labor law Employers have to bargain with the union that represents their workers when it comes to changes in compensation Benefits or other terms of their employment, but companies can still ask unionize employees if they want additional benefits So, I mean, this is obviously a deliberate and cynical ploy to get any employee That was considering a union to not opt for a union because if the goal of The union is to get better pay and better benefits Well, then if the company's offering you this anyway, then what's the point of the union kind of makes the union unnecessary, right? except No, this is a union busting ploy see the reason why a union would still be necessary Even if Starbucks did offer better benefits is because what these companies do is they'll say, okay, we're gonna offer you health care but This is only for full-time employees so you've got to work at least 35 hours a week or 37 hours a week and if you Work that much then we will make sure you have health care The problem is that then they'll deliberately schedule employees for like thirty four point five hours And this is what they all do. So when I worked at Walmart They would actually write you up if you went over your schedule time because then oh under law You have to be offered benefits if you cross into a certain hourly Threshold per week. So this is this is obviously what they're gonna do They're gonna say hey here's some new benefits that we're gonna dangle in front of you But we won't actually give them to you because you won't be employed full-time Well, we won't schedule you enough to qualify for these benefits I mean they're full of shit and this is why the employees are unionizing because they see right through it It's an embarrassing attempt to playgate workers that I don't think is gonna work But Howard Schultz is trying to do anything because he's desperate so more from CNBC on this as the union push gains momentum Workers United has alleged that the company has engaged in union-busting activity including firing Organizers cutting barista hours at unionizing locations and other forms of retaliation in March the National Labor Relations Board Filed a complaint against Starbucks alleging that it violated federal labor law by firing organizers at a Phoenix location in his week And a half back at the helm of the company Schultz has already been waging a more aggressive campaign against the union than previous CEO Kevin Johnson Schultz has mentioned the union in public letters and speeches with workers painting the push to organize as divisive and Unnecessary quote and while not all the partners supporting unionization are colluding with outside union forces The critical point is that I do not believe conflict division and dissension Which which has been a focus of union organizing benefit Starbucks or our partners.  I want to play a video This is an interview from democracy now with one of the first organizers of the very first store that unionized in Buffalo their name is jazz Brzech and they basically call Howard Schultz's bluff here call out his hypocrisy and his hyperbole also which I won't spoil that for you But um, they say, you know, Starbucks has this reputation of being this really progressive company They're in favor of you know, LGBTQ plus rights black lives matter But yet when it comes to labor rights, the company literally views labor as an assault They view unionization as an assault. It's preposterous So take a look at what this worker says about Howard Schultz and then when we come back I'll give you the additional context because it truly is just absurd and Howard Schultz is making a fool of himself But let's listen. It's been incredible to see this thrown into this kind of national movement Um, I mean, we've had support from the beginning from partners across the country and the first door to file after Buffalo was actually a Mesa of Arizona store whose manager was retaliated against for telling us exactly what all of these people coming into Buffalo We're actually up to and when Starbucks retaliated against her and fired her before she had the chance to Finish her time at Starbucks after resigning They were the first door to Petition outside of Buffalo, but from there it's been incredible. I feel like it's almost I'm not even able to keep up with how many more stores have been Launching so it's incredible to see so many Folks and the first door in the south one a few weeks ago in Knoxville, which was really incredible The Memphis folks are still not only did Starbucks fire six out of the seven person organizing committee, but they also Have still delayed that vote from actually being scheduled with the labor board It's incredible to see more people Um joining and this movement growing and I think we all know that that's how we're actually going to get the kind of contract that we can sign and that partners deserve is by continuing to get stronger and show that despite everything we keep overcoming that union busting and um standing together in solidarity and I mean, I think it's ridiculous that Howard Schultz is first this threatened By unions because we've said from day one, you know, we're not doing this because we're opposed to Starbucks We're doing this because we want to make Starbucks the best that it can be and the most sustainable that it can be it says it's a progressive company that celebrates You know all of these other forms of activism lgbt rights environmental justice um black lives matter um And then suddenly it's being assaulted by labor rights. So that doesn't make sense That's not consistent with what the Starbucks says it is um But I think, you know, we've seen how we're come to Buffalo and make really inappropriate comparisons to The Holocaust and now we're seeing him say that he's being assaulted So I think, you know, he tries to acknowledge that it's a sensitive subject But he's still really missing the mark on how to talk about it. Yeah, so I love the enthusiasm there I love how optimistic Starbucks workers are because what they're doing is paying off, right? They're making their voices heard They're staking their claim And it's working. It's working. You have two stores just this week vote unanimously to unionize. You know, Howard Schultz is shitting bricks But uh, they were correct So when uh, they said that he used the Holocaust analogy He actually did this. I looked it up. So I'm paraphrasing here But he was talking about why unions are bad and he said, you know in Germany in concentration camps Not all of the prisoners would get blankets and so some of the prisoners would share blankets So, uh, Starbucks wants to be the type of company that shares blankets Okay, so what are you trying to say? Are you trying to say that the union organizers Howard are like the Nazis? Or are you saying that Starbucks and the working conditions are comparable to concentration camps because you can interpret that in a multitude of ways and uh Either way, it doesn't look good for you And he also called it an assault. We talked about this last week. I can't get over that He actually said this is like an assault on corporations absurd So one thing that I love about this isn't just how successful these unionized efforts are But it's to see how these CEOs lose their fucking minds As the unionization effort spreads across the company and is successful And if these Starbucks workers have taught us anything Is that when one domino falls the rest will follow and I hope that that's true with the amazon union All it took was one starbucks store to unionize and now just a couple of months later More than 200 stores across the country Are fighting to unionize Now we had one amazon store unionized while others follow. I'm not sure but what I do know is that this labor movement Is really really encouraging to see and uh any time You see a company lose their shit And fight this hard use all of these tactics and be that hyperbolic to fight unions That goes to show you unions are very powerful And there's a reason why these companies don't want their workers to form unions


Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Voting Village 2019 speaker track.  I'm one of the co-founders of the village. I'm going to be introducing my other co-founders, Professor Matt Blaise and Harry Hurstie to give us the opening remarks. Good morning, everyone. Matt? Come up. All right, so this is the third year when we have the Voting Village. Every single year is a little bit different, different focus. This year we have a lot of new stuff, both in as a voting machine and as a technology. But first of all, let's talk about a little bit how we got started with this. For us, this was, the first year was all about buying from eBay, using the secret powers of eBay, to buy voting machines. The second year, we got a little bit more technology, both from government surplus websites and eBay. We started to introduce another ideas. For example, the cyber range to train election officials, how to defend, to do a red team, blue team exercises, and do a little bit of helping the election officials to pair with the hackers to get help in solving their security problems. This year we are looking to expand that with the Unhacked initiative where we are pairing with the speed dating between hackers and election officials so that you can talk with someone who might be in your neighborhood and can help you to understand the challenges and technologies. So we are evolving and we are here to educate and help. And most importantly, DEF CON is not about proving, or the Voting Village is not about proving that voting machines can be hacked. They all can be hacked. And voting machines, 20 years from now, those can be hacked too. So it's all about making sure that we understand the race. The U.S. elections cannot be run without voting machines. It's too complex. You have to introduce auditability, you have to introduce paper ballots, you have to introduce mechanisms which make sure that the right people win. Thanks. So I'm Matt Blaze. I'm one of the co-founders along with Hari and Maggie and Jake who you'll be hearing from virtually in a few minutes. I just want to talk for a few minutes about what we're doing here, why we're doing this and what we hope to accomplish and how we got here. Almost everything in the Voting Village and almost all the interest in voting can be traced back to the 2000 presidential election. And you may remember that the 2000 presidential election was very contentious. I mean not like today, the country was very divided and it was very stark. And there was a disagreement about who the winner of the election was. So in addition to being a kind of division in the country between ideological aspects of what the best policy should be, there was also a disagreement about the objective question of who won the election. And that was partly due to the mechanism of voting used in a few counties in one state. And the particular mechanism in use involved voting machines that used electricity exclusively for the light in the voting booth. There was no actual computation in the voting booth. The voter would simply fill out a little punch card ballot by pressing a stylus through a card corresponding to their winner. But that technology, in spite of the fact that it didn't actually have any computers involved, had a buffer overflow in it. And the buffer overflow was that the little pieces of cardboard in the punch card would build up behind the ballot and make it more difficult to vote for winning candidates as the day went on. And so by the end of the day, many of the senior citizens in this Florida county physically had difficulty punching all the way through for their candidates and didn't actually make a good hole in the card. The tabulators then had difficulty figuring out what their intention was. This was the issue that united the country. We didn't agree on who the president should be, but everyone agreed that this old-fashioned voting technology needed to be replaced. And what Congress did was they allocated a giant pile of money in the Help America Vote Act, which very quickly passed with overwhelming bipartisan support to update the voting technology used in the states and provide funding for state and local officials to buy new machines. Unfortunately, we didn't know at the time how to build the better machines that the Help America Vote Act mandated. And so there was a funding for buying new machines and a deadline to buy them by, but no actual strong engineering foundation for how to build a better voting machine. And the voting machine industry kind of stepped up and did, you know, you can argue about whether it was the best that they could do, but certainly they didn't understand as much at the time as we do now about how to build voting machines. And almost everything produced to comply with the Help America Vote Act has had terrible vulnerabilities associated with it that can lead us potentially to a situation not merely as bad as what happened in the 2000 election, but potentially worse, where we simply don't know who won the election. And that's partly because we are dependent. We've taken these systems that weren't dependent on software before and made them dependent on software. And as everybody in Las Vegas right now can tell you, software is utterly terrible. And so we essentially took a problem that was hard and we added software to it. And that essentially made the problem worse. Unfortunately, we just didn't know how to do better then. In 2007, Hari and I, along with many other people, led studies sponsored by states like California and Ohio to examine the voting technology that they were using. We were given privileged access to the voting machines.  And we examined these systems and we discovered, oh my god, these are not merely as bad as we feared but far worse. Every system examined had vulnerabilities that would allow you to either change the outcome of an election or create uncertainty about who the winner was. What do we do? Well, an unsatisfying thing to do would be to make a list of bugs and then fix them. But the problem is that list of bugs that need to be fixed is never going to be complete. Fortunately, over the last ten years, we've actually been able to do better than that. Ron Rivest, who is one of the founders of public key photography and incredibly prolific and important computer scientists, came up with a deceptively simple design requirement for voting systems called software independence. And the idea of software independence is very simple. It says that a voting system should be designed in a way that the outcome of the election doesn't depend on software. And if there's an undetected software failure, you can still determine who the correct winner of the election is. And that sounds like it says don't use software, but it's actually a design requirement that allows you to use software as long as you use it in a way that allows you to recover from a software failure. The good news from that is coupled with a technique to do primarily to Philip Stark, who you'll be hearing from later in our speaking track, a statistician from University of California Berkeley called risk limiting audits. There are actually ways to use computerized, certain types of computerized voting systems in ways that meet the software independence requirement. In particular, optical scan paper ballots with optical scan readers coupled with a rigorous system of auditing the ballots by hand after the election using some sampling techniques can achieve this. We didn't know any of this back when the Health America Vote Act was passed. But these systems exist. They exist today. And they are in fact in use in many counties throughout the United States. Risk limiting audits are just starting to get some attention and are starting to be used in different places along with the equipment that can take advantage of them, which exists. It can be purchased today. So what are we doing here? One of the problems is that back in 2007, when Hari and I were given privileged access to voting systems, almost nobody outside of the voting vendor community knew how voting systems worked. And one of the things that we've been able to achieve here, in no small part due to an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is open up the details of voting systems to everyone. Anyone who wants to come here can come into our room and look at the voting machines and play with them and attack them and bang on them. And in fact, our rule is feel free to break anything. Just do it in an interesting way. We've got plenty of equipment in there and we want you to take it apart and we want you to really understand how it works. Because in some sense, we're examining voting systems, but what we're really trying to do here is produce many, many more experts on this problem. And so I want to thank everybody for coming because I think this is one of the most pressing problems in our democracy. Voting technology is a critical part of the integrity of elections and will be going forward far more than it is today. And we need people who understand how this works who aren't simply trying to sell us of the voting system that they designed. We're going to be hearing a number of really exciting things throughout the weekend. DARPA is the Defense Research Projects Agency is introducing here for the first time in public a secure architecture that may be helpful in voting systems along with some demonstration applications of voting systems built on top of it that you'll be seeing in the room, as well as older systems. We'll be hearing from election officials about the problems that they have in actually running election systems. We'll be hearing from journalists about the difficulty of reporting on a really complex set of problems that have very important impact to our society. All of these pieces interact with each other. And one of the things that we're very proud of and very excited about is that we're bringing together not just technologists, but the users of the technology and the people who are depending on its outcome. So thank you everybody for coming. Please stick around, please break things. And let me give it back to Harry for a few moments and then we'll hear from Jake. Oh, I thought that let's have a Jake do it. Okay, if you don't want to talk to him. No, no, I will talk off to Jake. So Village Co-Founder Jake Braun cannot be here today, but he sends you his best via recorded video from the coming from the Iowa State Fair. The 2020 election will be gassed in just four to four months, which I think should bring new urgency to what you all are doing. But thanks to all of you, I certainly feel like the 2020 election will at the very least be more secure than the 2016 election. And again, that's doing large parts of a lot of the great work all of you have done. And I think that the fact that this is only four months away should hopefully encourage all of you to work even harder this DEF CON to identify more vulnerabilities and potential solutions that policymakers can implement to make the 2020 election more secure than the 2016 election was. I also want to thank the dark tangent for having us here again at the voting village. Obviously, I want to deeply thank my co-founders, Matt Blaise, Harry Hurstie, and Maggie McAlpine, and then all the volunteers and staff who made this possible and worked for months and hours and months and months on this, including Mary Hanley, Phil Stupak, Morgan Ryan, Annalise Wagner, Caroline Imel, and a host of others. I know I forgot dozens of you, but anyway, thanks so much to all of you. And so I guess, what are we thanking everybody for here? Well, I think we've accomplished a lot in two years. As many of you know, we were asked for, and believe it's the first time that DEF CON hackers were asked to come to the capital and release their findings on election security issues that we identified. Those things included things like the fact of remote hacking is possible, of not just things like websites, but also databases and even some voting machines. We found that despite people saying that no one would ever notice somebody hacking or that we would definitely know if somebody was hacking a machine, we figured out that somebody could hack a voting machine in two minutes, despite the fact that it takes the average person six minutes to vote. We found out that unfortunately, even vulnerabilities that are identified to the responsible parties can go unfixed sometimes over a decade. We found vulnerabilities last year that were disclosed a decade ago and had yet to be fixed. We also found out from the Mueller report, reinforced a lot of what we identified last year, which was that you can hack a website with a SQL injection and get into a voter registration database, which is exactly what Mueller said the Russians did last year or in 2016 and frankly didn't even go far as what we were saying was possible last year. So with all that, I think the one thing that continues to stick out in my mind was something that Hari kind of quote unquote found, which was he opened up the first machine, opened up the back of the first machine and realized what we all would assume was true, but nobody had known until we did this publicly, which was that most, if not all, the parts are made in other countries, many of whom are unfriendly to democracy itself. And so, you know, that and these other findings had never been known before, but because this is the first and only public third party assessment, although math isn't like that word, tinkering with machines that is done in the world, this is the, no one would know any of these things if it wasn't for us doing this here at DEF CON. So that's kind of what we have done. So what are we going to do? Well, we've got a lot of great stuff coming up this year. DARPA's here, which we're really excited about. We love the fact that folks, especially as reputable as DARPA, are coming to have their technology tinkered with and kind of beat on over the weekend by our guys and gals here. We also are excited to have, what we believe is the first ever attempt to kind of match up folks, hackers and security folks with election officials directly so that hackers can try and provide free of charge their services to help election officials secure their elections. If there's one thing that we all know is true is that there's not enough people in the cybersecurity world to fill all the jobs and nowhere else is that more true than in the election industry. And so we really appreciate the brave election officials who came out here despite not knowing how the media and others may react to sit there and talk to hackers about how the folks at this conference can provide free help on how to secure their systems and networks. So thank you to all the election officials who came out and I'll thank in advance all the very civic-minded hackers and other researchers here who I'm sure will be offering up their services to help secure these networks. Third, we're partnering with the AI Village again. We're really, or not again, we're for the first time partnering with the AI Village to talk about or to better understand deep fakes and things like that and how they can affect our elections. We're partnering again with roots to help get kids more involved in elections and cybersecurity issues. So we're super excited about all the kids that are going to be involved in thinking about election security this year. We've got way more machines than we have in the past so we're really excited to look for new vulnerabilities and let folks go about so that they can be fixed. Oh, and then we've also got three days of speakers this year. Way more election officials, federal officials, and especially members of Congress who really want to thank Senator Wyden and the other members of Congress who are coming here to speak. You guys and gals have to go back and do the hard work of passing legislation to address all the vulnerabilities that we find here and so we thank you all for taking care of us seriously and more importantly taking election security so seriously. So thank all of you election officials for coming up this year. I guess my final thing I want to say is I want to shamelessly plug my book which is for the first time on sale here today at DEF CON and it's the story of kind of us it's the story of all of you and a little bit of my early life in the campaign world and so on but then later goes into how DEF CON voting village started all kind of some of the behind the scenes drama that went on and getting the machines and all the pushback we got from various players and then also I at least try and really kind of celebrate what you all did and how amazing it was that the folks that have been from the beginning you know found so many vulnerabilities they go I tell a long story about Hari that's deeply interesting and I think you all would find quite entertaining as well and then ends I hope on a positive note to talk about how you know maybe all this while stressful and not great may lead us to a better future where elections are more secure for democracies all over the world because of what we've gone through for the past couple years and so hopefully you guys will buy it and hopefully you'll buy one for a friend and it'll make a great stocking stuff or holiday gift at the end of the year and so thanks everybody have a great DEF CON please buy my book and go secure our elections Thank you one thing I want to talk about is what DEF CON is and what voting village is as who we are and how this came to be I think Matt will absolutely agree with me that for my feeling when I come to DEF CON it's not to come to conference this is a meeting of extended family dysfunctional family sometimes but family nevertheless we don't agree on almost anything but we understand what is important and we work towards common goals to secure things which are important whether it's a infrastructure well infrastructure elections medical equipment airplanes, cars, all kind of things this is all a community effort voting village doesn't have corporate sponsors we are non-profit that's how we literally Matt is big help we have verified voting who is big help we have election integrity foundation which is big help but this is a non-profit operation everything you see as in a village has been purchased with pennies we don't have big funding but this is important this is not a issue of partisanship and this is not even issue about United States we have a global community of democratic countries and all the countries have right now facing similar threats to their democracy the threats come from various of different angles if we look what has been published about 2016 election one thing which is interesting is that even when we have published a lot of vulnerabilities in voting machine it seems to be that the attacks were targeting the back end systems and back end networks very old fashioned very traditional attacks nothing new, nothing fancy actually I would argue that when you look at the phishing attack done by allegedly by hackers working for southern foreign state it was a reused malware repurposed malware, recycled it was very low tech and yet effective we have a lot of work to do in various of areas in order to secure the elections also while voting machine hacking village is considering voting machine we have to understand the election technology is really wide you have in United States you have voter registration systems which feed in the electric poll book systems then you have the tabulation of the votes and in the end you have the reporting of the votes each part of this link if it's compromised will cause a havoc with undermined trust to the system we have had our threat model wrong for various reasons when Matt and I started at that time the threat model which everybody was thinking was a dishonest candidate trying to win nobody was paying attention into attackers with other motivations like nation states nation state necessarily doesn't care who wins they might have someone who they prefer but they are not ever supporting something for the kindness of their heart if you look at a nation state attackers who are not democratic countries themselves this is an ideological warfare this is a psyops and the end game is undermined the trust of the people to the system the people are living in so this is all about also rebuilding the trust into the process and maintaining the trust the democratic system is the way to self-govern a population again this comes back to the community when we look at the hacker community we have different day jobs we have different places where we do our influence and when we look at the large population there's a lot of people who are looking for how they can help and the apathy is as dangerous to the democracy as an attack to democracy one key element here is we are improving this no matter what you see and what you look that should never discourage you to vote because democracy is all about participation in society and participation in the community if you really care become a poll worker help that way we have in all the democratic countries the similar problem that the average age of poll worker seems to be going up about one year every year unfortunately having people who have a security background and a poll worker helping people to vote seeing that everything goes smoothly if you see something say something very important the problems we are facing in the United States are not unique to the United States if you look the news in England in France, in Germany in Austria you see a fragments of the same problem manifesting a little bit different way but across the western hemisphere and democratic countries and also to mention we had a there was a significant amount of turmoil in Indonesia with their election and dispute about the winners so these problems needs to be solved and there's no easy way of solving them these are hard problems and I would like to also say something about where we are in technology I said we both believe in paper ballots we are far from neutralized because we are hackers we really, really love technology but there are a lot of proposals out there which are seemingly having a technological solution problem where we don't have a technology for it for example I would like to say simply blockchain is not a solution for this area it cannot be used there's actually a lot of papers which explain why blockchain cannot be used in secret ballot public elections there are a lot of other proposals how an irresponsible way of technology could solve the problems a lot of the western countries for example of Germany have a law which requires that how the votes are cast and tallied has to be understandable for a common person with no special skills or tools software when it's designed the right way is something you can explain I don't remember who exactly was who's quoted is that there's two ways of writing software which doesn't have obvious flaws another one is a simple, clear and it obviously doesn't have flaws other one it is extremely complex and officiated and you cannot find obvious flaws obviously another one of these is a better idea but anyway that's what I want to say is to make everybody to understand we are in this situation together regardless which democratic country you come from we need to try to figure out from all the areas where how to solve that problem area how to make the confidence to say to people to understand this is the way we want to self-govern and make sure that whatever we can do we do that together as a community thanks Harry so I just want to end on two notes one is how hard this problem is in the United States in particular we have arguably the most complex ballots in the world we vote on more things we have more different ballots that different people get elections are extraordinarily complicated the authority to run elections is quite decentralized the federal government has a very limited role and elections are broadly set by states elections are run in almost every state by individual counties who are responsible for buying and managing the election equipment as well as running the very complex logistics of elections and often the funding for elections is competing with things like road repairs and fire departments and things like that and counties that are strapped for budgets don't have unlimited budgets without significant external funding to fund their elections and they often lack the very specialized expertise to protect that infrastructure particularly as we understand state actors as being the threat not just dishonest politicians so it's one thing to think is the US national security agency a worthy adversary for the Russian GRU but ask if your local county registrar of voters is able to defend against the Russian or Chinese military intelligence service it's a fundamentally unfair fight so it's an extraordinarily difficult problem and it's a difficult problem that adds to that all of the political ranker that US elections have associated with them even in the best of times but I want to end though on a note saying that I've been working in this area for about two decades and over the last few years I've actually been more optimistic that we are in a position to make progress than I ever have then I am optimistic that this is a problem that is within our grasp to solve there is finally the background to make voting and engineering discipline what the requirements are for robust voting systems we didn't used to know that but also we're in a position where although we disagree on the next step for making progress quite often and you know there's all sorts of deadlock there is in fact bipartisan agreement that at least in principle this is an important problem and that's actually fairly new after the first I testified in the house in 2017 on the results of the voting system we were invited by at that time the majority the Republican party Will Hurd invited me to testify that would have been unheard of a few years ago voting security was regarded as a partisan issue it's much less so now than it has been so we have this combination of the technology background as well as a kind of social consensus that this is worth solving like we never have before so what I want to say is this is a great time to be interested in this you get to be part of the success you get to be part of fixing this because I'm actually confident that within our lifetimes unless I'm struck down as I fall off the stage this is a problem that we are going to be solved and I want to echo what Hari said one of the things you can do when you leave here is call your local elections office and sign up to volunteer as a poll worker in the next election you'll learn an enormous amount and you'll make incredibly valuable relationships so thank you everyone and with that let me turn it back to Hari who's going to keep talking just a few minutes I make the joke saying that election environment has changed so quickly that a lot of people think there's election office which have an IT department but really it should be IT department which happens to run elections the village is open we will have a short introductory of all the machines in the village slightly after 11 we will have in the village scribes who are documenting every finding we are going to do so we are going to publish as every other year a short presentation of all the findings and report what we had what happened in the village during these days Matt and I are going to be all times there just come whatever you if you have questions don't hesitate to approach and ask us anything and we will be all time until Sunday in the village so come and join us thank you very much for coming


Good afternoon everybody, Roger Emery here, I've got a bit of feedback sorry, Roger Emery here, Moira and Sarah we're here to conduct a treasure hunt so time to get away from your screens and get off your screens for half an hour, take a look around your neighbourhood, good outside in the garden or out on the balcony out in the street wherever you are able to get outside and enjoy some of which one I've got here is sunshine. So the treasure hunt is taking place from 25 past in three minutes time it'll start, we'll put some clues up, there's 12 items of treasure to collect, you can choose four or more and then please submit them using the technology of choice so you can use the social program channel on Discord and using the outside treasure hashtag or through Twitter using the outside treasure hashtag. We'd like to make this as inclusive and open as possible so please be creative you can send videos, images, sound files and even if you want to a text description of what you can see or hear or experience outside of your place of work. The deadline for submissions is five to so we've all got time to get on to the next session and please as you're going through and seeing other people's entries please like them in Discord or Twitter using the hearts and the likes as usual. The three of us as a panel are going to judge this completely subjectively. We will have no rules about how we judge it it will be what makes us laugh, what's the most outrageous, what's the most imaginative and we will publish the results in Discord and Twitter at around five o'clock this afternoon. If the winners, lucky winners will get a goodie bag out, goodie bag of some lovely things that Emma Chains organising for us so I think that's all I need to say. Moira, Sarah is there anything else to cover? No I don't think so I think all we need to do now is to reveal the treasure that you all need to go and find for us and try and synchronise posting this on Twitter and Discord all at the same time. Yeah you'll see us all be oh sorry you'll see us all be frantic as we're trying to coordinate all of this. Can we move on to the next slide? Yep thank you. Oh right on cue that's my postman come to the door. Oh do you want me to take over? No it's okay my husband will get it. Okay so here are the clues that we have come up with as you see there's 12 different bits of swag that you can go and collect we're not expecting all of you to be able to collect all 12 of them because we do realise that some people are in towns, some are in the country so all you need to do is collect four of them, collect them together and I either share them or put them out to Discord and then we'll just have fun judging them. So off you go any question one of us on Twitter or get one of us on Discord I'm nomad wall machine on Twitter and I think that's all we need to do so we're going to keep this channel open I think aren't we but we're actually going to go off and I'll mainly be interacting in Discord and where we'll maybe be interacting on Twitter and Roger's going to go off and get ready for the next plenary panel. Awesome well thank you very much everybody for the introduction we'll leave the screen on and we can all go and join the trial hunt.


This study evaluated the applicability of three satellite rainfall data sets, CMRPH, GPM, and TRM, for predicting floods and landslides in Shaanxi Province, China. The study found that the three data sets provided similar spatial distributions of annual rainfall, with the lowest being CMRPH and the highest being TRMM. The three data sets also produced similar discharge predictions at four hydrological stations, with the highest correlation coefficient being 0.61 for TRMM. Additionally, the three data sets had high accuracy in predicting landslide events, with the highest accuracy being 0.973 for GPM. Finally, the three data sets provided similar results when compared to the classical intensity duration, i.e., rainfall threshold method. Overall, this study suggests that the three satellite rainfall data sets can be used to accurately predict flooding and landsliding in Shaanxi Province. This article was authored by Shang Wang, Kuzheng, Li Junchao, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


There are several systems that can be used to identify goats and sheep. The most common methods include air tagging, tattooing, and air notching. Each of these systems ensure that a unique number or symbol is given to the animal so that they can be identified. In this video, air tagging will be demonstrated. An applicator for the specific type of tag is selected. The air tag is loaded in the applicator as follows. The pointed side of the tag is put onto the pointed side of the applicator. The side of the tag with the hole is put on the other side of the applicator. The tags can be sprayed with alcohol to sanitize them. The applicator is now loaded and ready to use. The air is prepared by cleaning with alcohol or disinfectant. The air is examined to see the blood vessels that run through the air. We want to avoid piercing the blood vessels when applying the tag. The applicator is quickly depressed and the tag is released from the applicator. The area around the tag should be sprayed with an antibiotic spray or disinfectant until it has healed to avoid infections. Air tags provide an easy method for identification.