Talking to a top Obama speechwriter, CBS This Morning hosts on Monday avoided a potentially awkward conversation about journalists shilling for Barack Obama's Iran deal. While talking to Ben Rhodes, the reporters instead worried about Donald Trump dismantling the agenda of the ex-Democratic president.
Co-host Gayle King worried, “The larger project of believing that America is a better place. when you look at the Trump administration, many people believe that they're trying to unravel and undo everything that the Obama administration did.” She fretted, “ Does he feel that way and do you members of the administration feel that everything you did, the work that you accomplished, that they're now trying to take it all apart? Do you feel that?”
While the co-hosts brought up Trump’s efforts in North Korea, the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal did not get a specific mention. Perhaps the reason for that is Rhodes in 2016 portrayed some in the media as stooges for the Iran deal. Speaking of how they pushed talking points, Rhodes bragged:
All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus.... Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.
One can see why journalists wouldn’t want to talk about that with Rhodes. In another example of the revolving door, the political operative just signed on as an NBC News contributor. Speaking of another connection, This Morning co-host John Dickerson at least informed viewers of connection between a Democrat and the liberal media: “Ben Rhodes is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes.”
To his credit, Dickerson pressed Rhodes on North Korea:
Let’s start with North Korea before we get to the book. The meeting is back on on the12th. I know you're not a fan of President Trump, but doesn't he get his due in getting this to where it’s gotten so far?
A partial transcript is below. Click expand for more:
CBS This Morning
6/4/18
8:33:31 to 8:40:14JOHN DICKERSON: One of President Obama’s closest advisers is pulling back the curtain on U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration. Ben Rhodes was a speech writer during Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. After the election, he became deputy national security adviser for the president. He was closely involved on key decisions on Syria, Iran, and Cuba. In his new book, The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House, Rhodes takes us behind the scenes of the biggest moments during the Obama presidency. Ben Rhodes is the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes. Welcome, Ben.
BEN RHODES: Hi, John.
DICKERSON: Let’s start with North Korea before we get to the book. The meeting is back on on the12th. I know you're not a fan of President Trump, but doesn't he get his due in getting this to where it’s gotten so far?
RHODES: Well, look. I think diplomacy is compared to military conflict. The question is what does that diplomacy produce? What I think is most likely is you’ll see North Koreans made commitments to denuclearize in the future. But in the past we’ve seen them make those commitments and not follow through. The follow through is the question, John.
DICKERSON: Let me turn to the book. Because starting with President Trump, there's a line that has already gotten a lot of press. I know this is about the entire administration, but let's start on this comment from President Obama. What if we were wrong? What exactly does that mean?
RHODES: Well, President Obama wasn't unlike a lot of Americans after the election. He was trying to figure out. We went through different theories. Was it the Russian meddling. Was it the campaign that the Democrats ran? And we were on the last foreign trip and I was sitting with him in his presidential limousine and he read a column that saying Democrats maybe pushed too far in an embrace of globalization and maybe got away from the sense of identity that's important to people, part of which was what President Trump had stoked. But I think, frankly, the reality of any number of causal factors led to President Trump. And what I answer in the book is that question: I don’t think we were wrong.
O’DONNELL: Well, actually, what you say in the book is that you should have seen it, because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the very same message Trump had used. She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to change.
RHODES: Well, I woke up after election night kind of shell shocked, and that's when it hit me.
O’DONNELL: Is that what he won on? A change election? A corrupt message?
RHODES: Well, that was his message. The racism and misogyny was also a part of the message. And that’s important, Norah. But I think — I remember election night sitting there in my friend's apartment, Cody Keenan, who is a speech writer for President Obama too, and President Obama called us to talk about what he was going to say the next day and we're all just absorbing this news and new reality. I do realize in that moment I don't think we had inhabited the likelihood of Trump winning. We hadn’t put ourselves in that place. And You had that shell shock and the next morning you start to analyze it. And the next morning you had to analyze it. And that’s what I’m talking about there in the book.
DICKERSON: This line has been focused on by critics of the President, President Obama, because they say it repeats a flaw that they've seen in him throughout public life, which is he meant in that question, “What if we were wrong,” is not about his own mis-perceptions. But about the electorate. That they were just too slow to catch his kind of change and that’s the criticism. What’s your response to that?
RHODES: Oh, absolutely not, John. What President Obama has said his entire political career is his bet was always on the American people. He couldn't become the first African-American president, two-term president without the confidence of the American people. I think what he's getting at is a bigger phenomena in the world.
...
KING: This book was so personal to it seemed to me about you, Ben. I mean, you really talked about your place in the administration, questioning what you were doing there, when do you fit in, and being a speech writer for some of the most iconic speeches. Hwow do you write for someone you didn't know very well and how you navigated those waters?...
KING: You said we didn't always get things right but the larger project of believing that America is a better place. when you look at the Trump administration, many people believe that they’re trying to unravel and undo everything that the Obama administration did. Does he feel that way and do you members of the administration feel that everything you did, the work that you accomplished, that they’re now trying to take it all apart? Do you feel that?
...
