- [Narrator] This program was funded by the following.

Laura and John Beckworth, BP Ame Joe Latimer and Joni Hartgraves.

And also by... And by... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

- Ultimately, what is good about Americans wil if not prevail, at least give us a fighting chan to build a better world and restore our democracy.

(soft music) (inspirational orchestral music) (pensive music) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidentia Library in Austin, Texas.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

As an author, journalist, television commentator, and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, I've had the privilege of talkin to some of the biggest names and best minds of our day about our nation's rich history and the pressing issues of our t Now we bring those conversations straight to you.

Jonathan Alter has been a leading journalist for over 40 years, a profession that, in many ways, he was born to pursue.

He's also a bestselling author, documentary filmmaker, and television producer.

Tonight, I talk to him about the state of American jour how a fragmented media landscape affects our democracy, and his thoughts on the many presidents he has covered in his career, including our current president, Donald Trump.

Jon Alter, welcome.

- Thanks very much, Mark.

- In some ways, you were born to be a journalist.

You've been chronicling the American experience for 40 years, but it almost is in your blood, given your background.

Talk about your formative years and how they led you to a career in journalism.

- Well, you know, in some ways, I realized pretty that my story started before I w My late mother, Joanne Alter, who eventually became the first woman elected in Cook County in the Chicago area in 1972.

In 1948, she was a student at Mount Holyoke College, and she was assigned to take Eleanor Roosevelt around Eleanor Roosevelt was the most famous woman in the world.

And after she gave her the tour, Eleanor said, "Now, Joanne, where is your dormitory?"

And my mother said, "Oh, oh, over on the other side of campus."

Said, "I must see your dormitory (Mark chuckles) So they go over there, and the most famous woman in the world plops down on my mother's bed, says, "Now, Joanne, where are you from Tell me all about yourself.

How do you wanna make a better w And this, you know, not surprisi it changed my mother's life.

And I think my interest in politics and journalism, which is basically about curiosi asking people questions, being interested in other people the fact that Eleanor Roosevelt was interested in my mother, first person in the family to go to college, you know, a Jewish girl from the North Shore of Chicago, it just...

So after that, my mother then, she took her interest in politic and she conveyed it to my father after they got married, and they worked in Adlai Stevenson's campaigns for president together.

Adlai Stevenson was from Chicago where I grew up, and everything sort of, you know as a child then, I met all of the major politicians in Illinois.

And eventually, you know, when I was eight years old, Martin Luther King came to our h - Oh, less than two decades after your mother takes Eleanor Roosevelt to her dorm room- - Yeah.

- You have Martin Luther King in your living room.

- Yeah.

- He signs your high school, or your elementary school- - Grade school lined paper you had when you're a kid.

- (laughs) Right, a notebook.

- Yeah, yeah.

- What was that like?

That's pretty heady stuff.

- Well, yes.

And I have to say, it kind of, y it changed my life, because I remember the next day after everybody was gone, and he had given a mini "I Have a Dream" speech in our living room, and I went, I was all by myself, I was eight years old, and I went to where he stood, and I remember saying, "I have a (Mark chuckles) Like I was gonna, you know... And I started reading the newspaper very intently.

And this was at that, this was 1966, right?

So then in the next few years, we had all these cataclysmic things happening in Chicago.

And at the 1968 convention, my mother was for Humphrey, working for Humphrey in a pretty senior position.

My father was for Gene McCarthy.

He had been a war hero, flew a B-24 in World War II, and was very anti-war.

And so he was in business, and he was helping Gene McCarthy When they were seen having breakfast together at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, when my father went back to McCarthy headquarters, he said, "You were conspiring with a Humphrey operative," you know?

"It's my wife!"

(Mark chuckles) Then, later that day, this violence breaks out, right?

And my mother grabs him by the h and we go through...

They're clubbing demonstrators.

So I witnessed what happened at the Democratic Convention that then doomed the Democratic arguably, for a generation.

- So you have, through your care interviewed nine presidents from Nixon through Trump, with the exception of Reagan.

What stands out when you look at the many interviews you've done with presidents through the year - So, this was either before, du or after their presidencies.

So obviously with Nixon, it was well after his presidency it was in 1988.

I was working at Newsweek, and I was determined to get Nixon to come to Newsweek I just wanted to meet him before he croaked.

And what I remember from that interview was, it was just before Reagan was leaving office, and I asked him, "How will history view Ronald Re And his answer fascinated me.

He said, "Well, you have to distinguish between history and the historians 'cause the historians are like y If you're a liberal, you go into journalism or histor If you're conservative, you go into business.

So it's up to you, you know, what's gonna happen, what the verdict will be."

And I thought, wow, that's kind of fascinating.

And I realized that even though in journalism and history writing, you know, we make a lot less money than people in business, we do, in some ways, have the fi and Nixon recognized that.

Then with Ford, it was also many years after he left office.

And I was in Vail, where he had a house.

And I was also with my family, Betty Ford entertained my kids.

And I wanted to ask him about th And he, you know, he gave a very spirited defense of having pardoned Nixon.

And then, you know, with Carter, we'll talk about that, but I interviewed Carter more than a dozen times when I was working on my book, my biography of him.

And Reagan, I missed.

George H.W.

Bush, I had a memorable interview with him at Kennebunkport, where it was during the 2008 campaign, and he wanted...

I said, you know, "Barack Obama, Senator Obama is saying nice things about you, Mr.

President."

And he said, "Well, why doesn't he say something nice about my son?"

(both chuckling) With Bill Clinton, I interviewed more than any other print journalist when he was president I interviewed him at least once a year when he was presiden and several times both before and after the presid And the one that stands out for me with Bill Clinton is, as you might recall, Newsweek, Michael Isikoff was very central you know, the Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky coverage.

And so the last year of his pres I was having a hard time getting an interview.

And he finally granted one, this is after impeachment and after it was clear that he had been in trouble for but it was just before he left o And we were in the Beast, the presidential limo, in Hartfo And I said, "You've engaged in very self-destructive behavior.

Are you seeking any psychiatric for that behavior?"

And he flipped out, he got really angry at me, and then he got out of the limo without saying goodbye.

And I was alone in the Beast, yo for what felt like an hour.

It was really just a few minutes before the Secret Service let me But the thing about Bill Clinton is because he needs to be forgiv he forgives other people.

So about a year and a half later he gave me the first interview as an ex-president, and I spent a week with him, and I've had a very good relationship with him since then George W. Bush, fascinating interview the late Howard Fineman and I did with him in New Hampshire.

It was on the day of a debate.

And instead of preparing for tha he was so confident that he, you know, was talking to a couple of Newsweek guys.

And I just remember really being struck by that and his... You know, all of these president they need to have enormous self- or they're not gonna get the pri And then Barack Obama I knew from the time he was an Illinois state senator, I had a lot of family connection My overall feeling about him is not an original tho but you feel like you're talking to the coolest guy in your high school class.

(Mark laughing) And that coolness is just so, that was appealing for, you know tens of millions of people was even more powerful in person this combination of intelligence and magnetism.

- As you look at those president we tend to be very myopic- - Yeah.

- When we assess our presidents in real time.

But as you look at that group of presidents, those that you have interviewed and interacted with, Jon, who's the most misunderstood?

- I would say Jimmy Carter.

And, you know, I spent five years writing a biography of him, which was the first independent biography of Carter.

And I came to believe that the easy shorthand that you can hear from anybody, mediocre president, inspirational former president, was not right, and that his presidency required a reappraisal, and that the assumptions about his presidency were mispla And I ended up concluding that he was a political failure, he was shellacked by Ronald Reag but a substantive and often visionary success who was swamped by events late in his presidency, but did a tremendous amount to change the country and the world when he was president, not just as a former president.

- What do you see as his greatest triumph as president?

- Well, you know, I think the Camp David Accords, the most durable peace treaty since World War II, which prevented war between Israel and Egypt.

Carter did more than any president since Harry Truman to protect the security of the state of Israel, because the Egyptian Army was the only force that could destroy Israel, and they had fought four wars against each other before Carter made peace between And this was just a virtuoso example of diplomacy.

But the human rights policy was tremendously important in ending the Cold War and in moving many nations, especially in South America, from authoritarian states to dem The normalization of relations w which Carter told me he thought would be his most long-lasting accomplishment, because when Deng Xiaoping left his summit in Washington, he went back and legalized private property the following week, and Deng Xiaoping needed this bilateral relationship in order to begin what became the most rapid, extensive economic growth in hum by several orders of magnitude.

So this was, when we look back at this entire era in the, you know, the 20th centu the rise of China's economy is right up there as a story, it's the foundation now.

Bilateral relationship, for better or for worse, is the foundation of today's global economy, and this began under Jimmy Carte So Nixon opened the door, but what Carter did was centrally important.

And if he had lost in 1976, it might have been a number of y before we had normal relations w And then on the domestic side, 15 major pieces of environmental legislation, the first energy policy that we really had in this country.

It was very slow going for Carte he took a lot of incoming, the economy, of course, was terr double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, but that wasn't really Carter's - Yeah.

- And he actually, in some ways, I think one of his biggest accomplishments was ending inflation.

You might ask, well, how did he Appointing Paul Volcker as the chair of the Fed.

And then Reagan benefited from Volcker's harsh medicine.

And I asked Volcker, you know, "In some ways you elected and reelected Ronald Reagan."

And he said, "Yeah, you know, there's something to that."

- Let me quote you from an article you wrote for "The New York Times" last ye around Jimmy Carter's centennial in which you compared Jimmy Cart to the resurgent Donald Trump.

And you wrote, "The contrast could not be starker.

Trump is corrupt, chaotic, and v Carter is honest, disciplined, and respectful.

Trump appeals to the worst in us Carter to the best in us.

Trump is a nationalist and an authoritarian.

Carter is an international, devoted to the promotion of demo Trump told thousands of well-documented lies; Carter promised in his 1976 camp not to lie to the American peopl and, despite plenty of exaggerations, never did."

How do you reconcile us going from Jimmy Carter in 1976 to Donald Trump in 2016 and again in 2024?

- I think of a line from Dr. Kin that Barack Obama famously quote "The arc of the moral universe i but it bends towards justice."

And if you take the first part o "The arc of the moral universe i American history is not a straig and it's always had its ups and And, you know, Nixon was a very corrupt president.

And yet afterward, because democracy has this capacity for renewal, we got Jimmy Carter.

And after Donald Trump, I believe that even though democracy has been dented, that it has not been destroyed, and that if we can get through a very bumpy road over the next four years that we can come out the other e but I'm not naive about the challenges, which are, I think, the greatest in the entire history of this country.

We have never before, since 1789, failed to have a peaceful transfer of power until 2020.

And the consequences of that, and the harm that Trump has done to our democ will take a while before we repa And I have to say, on a personal level, it's very disillusioning to me.

- Hmm.

- And the reason is because I, you know, I always, I grew up like a lot of kids, you know, born in the '50s, worshiping John F. Kennedy.

He was, you know, the gold stand And I, you know, my first really vivid memory in life is when he was assassina when I was six years old.

And Kennedy liked to describe hi as an idealist without illusions - Yeah.

- And I always thought, you know, that's how I wanna define myself.

Not be a cynical journalist.

Be idealistic, hopeful for this I'm a guy who, like, I have a collection of presidential spoons, (Mark chuckles) presidential PEZ dispensers.

I have, you know, I have busts of several presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, in my I grew up revering this office.

And I'm still an idealist, but I feel that with Trump, I've lost some of my illusions about the good sense of the American people, because, just to go back to Bill Clinton for a second, when he was at the depths of his presidency, on the day that the grand jury t played all over TV, where he's talking about not having had sexual intercourse with Monica Lewinsky, it's an astonishingly embarrassi - Yeah.

- And I was able, that evening, he was in New York for the opening of the UN, and I kinda snuck into (chuckles) a reception, not literally snuck in, but I was able to get into a rec a small reception with the president and first lady.

And she was very unhappy to see like, "What are you doing here?"

But Bill Clinton, the president, gives me this big smile.

And I said, you know, "How are you holding up, Mr. Pre And he said...

The 1998 midterms were just a couple of months away.

He said, "Let me tell you someth If you give the American people enough time and information, they always get it right."

And even then, I knew that they didn't always get it right, but I did believe that they almost always got it right and that when it really counted, when, say, Donald Trump was running for reelection, that they would get it right.

And the problem was the caveat that Bill Clinton offered, which was "with enough time and information."

- Right.

- So there was enough time for Americans to get it right.

Although Kamala Harris arguably didn't have enough time to make her case because of Joe Biden's- - She had weeks, right.

- I think, selfish decision to run for reelection.

But they didn't have enough good information to make the right decision becau what Biden quite rightly in his farewell address called, the crumbling of the American me - You invoke Alexis de Tocqueville in your latest book, "American Reckoning," who believed that America was great because America is good.

Are we still a good nation, and are we still a great nation?

- I think we're still, for the m a good and decent nation.

And I think a lot of the people for Donald Trump are good and decent people.

Not all of them, but some, many.

But, you know, for "American Rec I was in the courtroom of the Tr all 23 days at the trial, then I was back for sentencing.

And not only was Donald Trump overwhelmingly guilty, they didn't even need Michael Co - Right.

- You know, he was so guilty that...

He is not just a conman, but he's a cruel conman.

And so the fact that so many people could return who clearly didn't believe in our democratic traditions and clearly didn't care that we, for the first time we had a demagogue playing on people's hatred and fear as president of the United State The fact that people couldn't recognize that does make me worry a lot about t about whether this experiment, which is what America is, can long endure.

- You talked about the wokeism in the Democratic Party, or the perceived wokeism.

It seems like Donald Trump's resurgence was as much, and the support that he engendered among the American people, was as much about cultural disco as it was about economic discont - Yeah.

Well, a lot of Democrats started like they were living in the faculty lounge of, you know, a small college and saying things that just had no connection to people.

And then the Trump campaign brilliantly capitalized on it, you know, that line, that they put tens of millions of dollars behind the tagline "She's for they/them, Donald Trump is for you," will be remembered as one of the great political lines.

And the mistake that Harris made on sex change operations for, you know, illegal immigrants in which if you went into a laborat to try to come up with, like, an unpopular position, that would be it.

(Mark chuckles) So, unlike a lot of the rest of what Trump said, which was based on lies, that pa very, very effective argument was based on truth, which was that the Democratic ca including Kamala Harris, got way out on the left in 2019 in the run-up to the 2020 electi And even though she rejected identity politics in 2024 and ran a very good campaign, she was basically, in many ways, defeated based on some political in hindsight, dumb things that she did in 2019 - As an idealist without illusio - Yeah.

- What gives you hope as you look forward?

- So I think, like Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 said famously at the "We need a government as good as its people."

I have a fundamental faith, even though I believe they made some misjudgments in elections, fundamental faith that we are a decent people, as Alexis de Tocqueville first n when he came to the United States in the 1840s, and that we do have the capacity for renewal, and that, ultimately, what is good about Americans will, if not pre at least give us a fighting chan to build a better world and restore our democracy.

- Jonathan Alter, thank you for being with us.

- Thanks very much, Mark.

(inspirational orchestral music) (inspirational orchestral music - [Narrator] This program was funded by the following.

Laura and John Beckworth, BP Ame Joe Latimer and Joni Hartgraves.

And also by... And by... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(lighthearted flute music) (upbeat music)