-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com one of the secrets i think of ronald reagan's political success is that he was consistently underestimated. >> and speaking out about the protests by star athletes. >> i think it's outrageous. there are plenty of ways that you can call into question some of the disgraces in this country. but that's the wrong way to do it. >> welcome to the axe files.

>> secretary baker, we're here in your office at the baker institute at the rice university. wonderful institution you started here. it is good to be with you. we work different sides of the political tracks. we work for different presidents, but man, what a record you have. five presidential campaigns you led. secretary of treasury, secretary of state. so i'm here for your wisdom. i need your wisdom. what is happening in our politics today when you watch what you're seeing in washington? what do you think? >> well, i'm not sure i can tell you exactly what's happening, except it's very regrettable what i see happening. i don't see our government getting things done for the people anymore. back in the days when i was there with reagan and bush, ronald reagan had a democratic house for his two terms. george bush had a democratic

house and democratic senate, and those presidents found ways to work with congress. >> you were the object of a lot of suspicion on the part of the base of the republican party that elected ronald reagan, because he also was someone who challenged the republican establishment, and you were seen as the establishment's man in the white house. those divisions seemed to be even wider today. >> they are wider today. i was the establishment's man in the white house. i had worked for jerry ford. i had run two campaigns against ronald reagan. but you talk about broad gauge. here's a president who goes -- he's so broad gauged, that he can overlook the fact that someone has run two campaigns against him and ask him to be his white house chief of staff. we don't see that anymore. the objective back in those days was to get things done. that always involves, as you well know, having been in there,

involves compromise. it involves sitting down and working things out. we don't see that happening anymore. >> in the alabama senate primary for the seat jeff sessions gave up to become attorney general, the president has endorsed one candidate. steve bannon who was his chief strategist, up until a few weeks ago, went on the day before the election and campaigned for the other candidate. >> right. >> could you have imagined such a thing in your day? >> no, i couldn't. >> and what does it say to you about coherence of the party itself and the ability to govern? because they seem to be running a campaign, at least the bannonites, against the senate majority leader who is a republican? >> i think that's a bg mistake, of course. parties need to unify in order to get things done. the party structure is never really strong.

i mean, i think that happens on both sides. the parties are not what they used to be back in the early 1900s, or the 1800s. but they're still very important. but i can't conceive of a situation where someone would work in a reagan or george bush's white house at a high level and then go out and campaign against a candidate that the president had endorsed. i'll bet you you can't think of -- >> no, it wouldn't happen. >> neither in your white house, no. it's very unusual. >> how would you feel about it if you were the president? >> a lot of things -- well, i wouldn't feel particularly good about it. i would say, hey, wait a minute, pal, i gave you a chance to come into the white house and sit at a very high level in the american government, and i wouldn't ask too much of you, but i would ask that much

loyalty. >> i know that you are -- you're a master diplomat and you can be very diplomatic. but you had a rule when you were white house chief of staff. and that was, don't start any fights you can't win, and win all the fights that you start. that doesn't seem to be the operative theory in this white house. >> well, i don't think it is the operative theory. now, why that is, i can't tell you. except that i think that this president has had a career of accomplishment that required him to strike back at his opponents. and so you never see a situation where he isn't going to want to hit back at someone he thinks has wronged him. i think, as a matter of fact, that that could make it a lot more difficult to get anything done. you need the congressional

leadership, if you're going to get legislation. and we judge our presidents by what they have -- by how much of their policy goals they accomplish. and move into law. so it's very difficult to conceive of getting a lot done if the -- if your own party leadership and the congress is opposed to you. >> one of the things that you got done with president reagan was probably the only genuine tax reform since the income tax was implemented in 1913. back in 1986, how did you pull that off, and do you think it's possible today? >> it was a democratic bill. and our house republicans didn't want to vote for it. and they rebelled against president reagan. and it was not until president reagan went up to the hill and sat down with them and finally got them to agree, okay, so the president went up there and he spent the first 40 minutes

talking about the tragic accident at fort myer and how many -- and the wonderful brave american men and women who had been killed and so forth and so on. and after 40 minutes, he said, now i want to talk to you about the tax bill. and there was not a dry eye in the house. and we've got the bill passed through the house. the democratic bill. and it helped the country. >> i worked for a president who also was very charismatic, inspiring speaker. and when he was trying to pass difficult legislation, the health care bill being one of them, he would go up and speak to the caucus. he never had text in front of him, it was just him. and reagan was, it sounds like, the same. he just went in the room and let it -- >> oftentimes reagan would use note cards, but not on these kind of occasions. he was a wonderful communicator. >> underestimated, i think.

there's a sense that he read speeches well. >> no, no, he wrote those speeches. and by the way, he wrote a lot of his letters. i've still got the rough draft in his own handwriting of his letter to brezhnev of lifting the grain embargo on the soviet union. he did a lot of this on his own. one of the secrets i think to ronald reagan's political success is that he was consistently underestimated. and as you know, as a good politician, exceeding expectations is the key in politics. >> and he knew he was. >> yeah. yep. >> on the subject of letters, the -- abraham lincoln had a habit of, when he wrote a letter in anger, he would stick it in a drawer. and he would not -- and he would look at it a week later and decide whether he actually wanted to send the letter. we live in the age of twitter

now. and the president is an active participant on twitter. how do you evaluate that in terms of his abilities as a president to get stuff done? >> well, a lot of people will tell you they think it's counterproductive. of course, it's worked for him in the private sector, which is why he does it. >> and in the campaign. >> and in the campaign it worked for him, which is why he continues to do it. you know, running the government -- running a business and running the government are two entirely different undertakings. the one thing that i would worry about, if i were one of his senior officials, would be not knowing until 2:30, 3:00 in the morning when you see the most recent twit -- tweet, sorry, what the policy was. because when the president of the united states speaks, he's

speaking policies. >> yes. >> but it worked for him in the campaign. it worked for him in business. who's to say it won't work. but i will tell you this, if i were secretary of state, it would make my job a lot harder, or secretary of defense or whatever official it might be. that's not to say that it won't work for him. it may very well. >> well, you were secretary of state, so put your secretary of state hat on, and you just -- you sort of implied this. let's take north korea as an example. he's been in a pretty brisk exchange of taunts with kim jong-un, the ruler of north korea. >> yeah. >> how would you as secretary of state advise him? and is this a good path to take? >> it could be. but it depends on what else -- what else is going to come with it. there's nothing wrong with

knocking this guy, even though when the president of the united states does it personally himself, it sort of builds the guy up bigger than he's entitled to be in my view. i've got a solution for north korea. but i don't know whether we'll ever get there. but what i think we ought to do is send someone, who is well respected by the chinese government, and who can speak to them on a very private and confidential basis. i know i'm talking about it here publicly, but you could do it privately initially. it will have to be someone who can get in and out of there without -- you can't have all the fanfare and so forth of a government official. and sit down with the chinese and say, hey, you know, you don't want a nuclear korean peninsula. and they don't. and they don't like what this guy is doing there. and we don't want it.

so why don't we make this agreement. we, the united states, will support any government you put in north korea, install in north korea, that renounces nuclear weapons, that it won't seek to develop them or maintain them, and we will agree with you that if you -- if that happens, we will sign a peace treaty ending the korean war, and we will agree we won't station nukes in south korea on the korean peninsula. and you get rid of this flake. and he is a flake. i don't see anything wrong with the president calling attention to the fact that he's flaky. but that's -- >> do you think he's pushing them to a point where there's a misunderstanding? >> i hope there wouldn't be. but i don't think it's a case of our president pushing that -- you don't need to push him very far. look what he's doing. he's firing off these missiles over japan, into -- and

violating their air space and everything. and he's doing it very provocatively. and the chinese don't like it either. nobody likes what he's doing. everybody opposes this. so i -- >> just on the tweet question myself, i identify with you as someone who worked for a president, i don't think i would sleep if my president were tweeting policy at all hours of the day and night. and i asked sean spicer, right before he took the job, about this, and he was about to become presser, and i said, do you know what he's going to tweet? and he said no. he said i get up early to look at my phone to see what the story of the day is going to be. >> that's correct. and you know it, it's like a campaign -- it's like -- running the government is not unlike running a campaign. there needs to be message discipline. now, the president is the one who's going to set the message.

so i suppose you can have message discipline that begins at 5:00 a.m. and runs through that day. but in a campaign, if you don't have message discipline, you may not win, and running the government, it's important to have message discipline. >> in fact, government, yes, there are elements of campaign discipline that's necessary in government. you brought that to the reagan white house. there were plenty of people who wanted him to take up issues that were not the major issues that he needed to get done. and you were pretty steadfast in that. that was one of the reasons why the conservatives thought you were -- >> that's correct. not letting reagan be reagan. how insulting is that. >> it strikes me today, maybe even more so today, that if you were to kind of look for the -- you would be like a poster child for what this activist republican base hates. you know, you believe in global institutions. you believe in trade.

you believe in climate change. you believe in the -- >> now, you're too far there. i think the climate may be changing, but i do not have any idea of the extent to which man is responsible for it. and by the way, i and some of my fellow conservatives have come with a very good proposal with a carbon tax with dividends back to the american people so it doesn't grow the government. but i understand what you're saying. and yes, that's -- >> does it bother you? >> no. does it bother me that i would be a poster -- >> for the group that -- >> no, because while there are four of those things that you said, and i may be in a different position, they're also for getting things done. what we were able to do, and ronald reagan's administration and george w. bush's administration, is get things done for the american people. they're for tax reform.

they are for -- they're for health care reform. they're for some solution to the immigration problem. so they're for these things, which are not getting done. >> can you get things done? can you make deals any more in washington? the president made a couple of deals with pelosi and schumer. >> yeah. >> that created a little bit of uneasiness among his base. i assume you would think that was a good thing. >> i do. i do. if you're going to govern in washington, d.c., if you're going to get things accomplished, you're going to end up at some point having to reach across the aisle to make it happen. and so without judging the specifics of those deals he made with schumer and pelosi, i think that is a good deal. what's wrong with getting things done in a bipartisan way.

that was one of the keys to the success of ronald reagan's presidency, and george bush's presidency. next -- >> on the way to the hospital, we left the white house and went right to the hospital. we just got to take it one game at a time. next question. odell. odell. can you repeat everything you just said? my livestream won't load. (blows whistle). technical foul. wrong sport. wrong network. see you need unlimited on verizon it's america's largest most reliable 4g lte network. it won't let you down in places like this. even in the strike zone. (laughs). it's the red zone. pretty sure it is the strike zone. here use mine. alright. see you on the court champ. heads up! when it really, really matters you need the best network and the best unlimited. plans now start at $40 per line for four lines. can we at least analyze can we push the offer online? legacy technology can handcuff any company. but "yes" is here. the new app will go live monday? yeah. with hewlett-packard enterprise, we're transforming the way we work.

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you're in the white house during one of the most dramatic and unsettling events of recent ris tore. and that was the assassination attempt on president reagan. you were only there for 70 days as chief of staff when this happened. recall for me what that was like. i can't imagine sitting in the white house and getting that news. >> well, it was devastating news, of course. because we didn't know, first of all, whether the president had been hit.

the first reports were that he hadn't been hit. then we get a report that he's not only been hit, he's on his way to george washington hospital. so we left the white house and went right to the hospital. and the president, of course, never lost his sense of humor. you know the quips that he gave as they wheeled him in on the gurney and he looked at the doctors and said, i hope you're all republicans. and nancy shows up, and he says, sorry, honey, i forgot to duck. >> were you there? >> yes, i went to the hospital immediately. i didn't go on the event. i got the deputy chief of staff to take my place because i had a lot of stuff to do in the white house, so i didn't go to the event. >> you were supposed to go. you might have been in the line of fire. >> i might very well have been. poor jim brady got shot in the head, the press secretary. >> what ensued over the next 24 hours was questions about protocol, who was in charge.

there was a newly enacted 25th amendment -- >> yeah. >> -- and you could have incapacitated -- >> we could have invoked the 25th amendment. we made it -- i may have made a mistake here. i got criticized for it in the aftermath. but i don't think it was a mistake. i concluded that we ought not to invoke the 25th amendment. the doctors had told us they were going to -- that they were going to take the president into surgery. they're going to remove this bullet. and that he would be under anesthesia for maybe four, five hours. and so ed nese and i, counselor to the president, and had been his chief of staff in california, and i decided in a broom closet in george washington hospital that we wouldn't invoke the 25th amendment. >> why? >> because -- i was in favor of

not invoking it because i had been george bush's campaign manager. >> the vice president. >> the vice president. and president reagan had asked me then to be his chief of staff. something that i don't think in a way that will ever happen again in united states politics. but i was under suspicion by some reagan people. because i had run these two campaigns against reagan, one for ford and one for george bush. i just thought it would look like usurpation of power. vice president bush was not in favor of it as best i know. he was in texas flying back. and so we opted not to do it. the president was operated on, came out in good shape four, five hours later. and that's the story. >> one of the things that really intrigued me, having worked in a white house was that you cut a deal with ed meese when you became chief of staff. a written agreement as to what

everybody's authorities and responsibilities were. i noticed when i read the document, it's a fascinating document, that you der egated to yourself the authority to appoint, the authority over the president's schedule, the authority over what paper came in and out of the oval office. it struck me that you took every responsibility that went through actual control of -- i'm giving you credit, i think it was a great deal. >> i took the political side of the white house. ed wanted to be in policy. by the way, let me tell you something. i have no better friend really than ed meese. he's a wonderful person and a close friend. yes, there were tensions in our white house between his so-called camp and mine. but it all worked well for the gipper. he got all sorts of views. on this document you're talking about, what happened was, the morning after -- the night of the election when we found out

we'd won, president reagan said, jim, before you go back to texas, i want to talk to you. and so i went to see him. and he said, i would like you to be my chief of staff -- the next morning, i'd like you to be my chief of staff, but make it right with ed. because ed had been chief of staff of california. everybody assumed he was going to be the chief of staff. so i called ed. he was obviously down about the decision. and i said, let's go to breakfast. we went to breakfast, and he wanted to be in charge of policy. and i said, okay, i'll be in charge of politics and making the trains run on time. that's what that document says. >> the truth is, when you make -- i mean, you're talking to a guy who spent time in the white house. the guy who makes the trains run on time has something to say about everything, including policy, because what the president sees and what the president does really reflects his priorities. and you knew that. >> most importantly, press,

communications, and congress. because congress, you've got to get -- if you're going to get your policies implemented into law with any permanency, the executive orders work great, but they can be undone. right now your executive orders are being undone. >> they weren't mine -- >> no, but your president's executive orders. >> my executive orders weren't worth much. there was one incident that you've written about that i thought was pretty interesting that spoke to how fraught relations were. and in any white house there are tensions. but where the national security adviser suggested that all of you take polygraph tests to see if you were guilty of leaking. that didn't sit well with you. >> no. first of all, the president had given me -- specifically given me in an order the authority to order polygraphs if they were going to be ordered, or to recommend to the justice department and so forth.

and so that was done without my knowledge. i was on my way to lunch. i got word of it, and i turned the car around and i walked back in the oval and the president was having lunch with the vice president and secretary of state at that time george schulz. and he had ordered this polygraph on anybody who was in a particular -- >> the president? >> the president had. on the recommendation of his national security adviser bill clark. and, of course, it didn't make any sense at all to do that. you can't strap up -- you're going to strap up the vice president of the united states? he's a constitutional officer. and george schulz quickly said, mr. president, i'll take the lie detector test if you want but it will be the last thing i do as your secretary of state. the president realized this was a mistake. it never should have gone to

him, through bill clark, the authority for that, something that was in my court in the white house. >> you mentioned earlier that your wife had died when you were relatively young. but you came to politics after that. you were older, i was 5 when john f. kennedy came to my housing development campaigning. i thought, this is cool, this is what i want to be involved in. you had no notion of -- >> no. in fact, i expressly -- i had been advised by my grandfather's mantra, if you want to be a good lawyer, work hard, study and stay out of politics. for 40 years of my life i stayed out of politics. and then my wife got sick. the last people to see her, other than family, before she died, were george and barbara bush came to see her. we were close friends. and george came to me after she died and said, bake, you've got to get your mind off your grief.

help me run for the senate here in texas. i said, george, that's great. except i don't know anything about politics. and i'm a democrat. he said, well, we can change that last thing. and i changed -- >> texas democrats were different. >> in those days, i was really a republican. >> you just didn't know it. >> well, conservative democrats which is what i was, were really republicans. it was shortly thereafter that they began to vote republican. now, of course, as you know, texas is a solidly republican state. >> ahead on the axe files. >> he was exercising the rights of the flag. >> you can't tell me that not standing up for the national anthem with your hand over your heart is not denigrating the national anthem. with the flag it is. i love to eat. i love hanging out with my friends. i have a great fit with my dentures. i love kiwis. i've always had that issue with the seeds getting under my denture. super poligrip free. it creates a seal

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let me ask you about that 1988 campaign. because, you know, i always point to that campaign, and i'm not saying this judgmentally, it was a -- there was a brilliant negative campaign run. i know you recoil from that in your book. but the truth of the matter is, as a practitioner, you guys were 17 points behind in the summer of 1988. >> right. >> and embarked on a campaign that roger ailes oversaw. >> advertising with roger. >> yes. and it was brutal and it was effective. and one of those ads, an outside group ad was about this issue -- >> outside group. >> i understand, i understand. the willie horton ad was an outside ad. >> he allowed first-degree

murderers to have weekend passes from prison. one was willy horton, stabbing a boy 19 times. despite a life sentence, horton received ten weekend passes from prison. >> the willie horton ad was very searing, and it ran about the same time. and it clearly was, you said in the book there was backlash, that it was a play on race. lee atwater -- >> guess who wrote them a letter and told them to stop it. me. and they stopped it. >> yeah. after a few weeks. >> david, i know -- you know, i admire what you did in your campaign and you were very, very effective, but look, michael dukakis in a debate when he was asked if someone broke into your house, murdered his wife and raped her, if he would then support the death penalty, and he said no. >> in kitty dukakis were raped

and murdered, would you favor an ir revocable death penalty for the killer? >> no, i don't, bernard. i've opposed the death penalty my whole life. >> we didn't have anything to do with that. >> no, listen, i've thrown hard punches in my career. but i'm -- i'm interested in the issue of race. lee atwater, who was a great political tactician, was one of your -- he was manager before you came back. he was really central to that campaign, said, when he was dying some years after that, that he regretted that. and he said he gretd saying we're going to strip the bark off the little bastard and make willie horton his running mate. so, you know -- >> very colorful language. >> i understand that. the reason i raise it now, the other issue that came up in that campaign was the american flag.

and because dukakis had vetoed a piece of legislation that would have compelled teachers to -- >> that is not a particularly smart political move, wouldn't you agree? >> i would certainly agree with that. >> wouldn't you also agree that putting on that goofy looking helmet -- >> i'm not here to -- >> it had nothing to do with it? >> i'm not saying that the dukakis campaign was a model of strategic achievement. but the flag, race, it seems very current right now. because the president has started this -- has picked up this issue about colin kaepernick. it is racially tinged. the flag, and race. you guys use this as a tactic to win a campaign. but you didn't raise these issues when the president was in office. it wasn't the themes that he picked up and took into office. do you have concerns about the tone -- >> he sure took the flag issue

into office. >> yeah. everybody supports the flag. let's assert that. but i'm just trying to trace back sort of this issue of the manipulation of these kinds of very, very incendiary things. does it concern you that the president is spending his time on these things now? >> well, i think it's important to get immigration reform, health care reform, tax reform, those are the things that i think he ought to be spending his time on. and i'm not saying -- >> is it a distraction from that? >> i don't know. i'm not in that white house. ask that question of general kelly. >> you speak to him more than i do. you should have ask him that. >> who has been in power, ask him that question. but you know, i think this issue that we're trying to -- i watch monday night football. i thought it was handled very,

very well by both teams, by the nfl. they went out, they showed unity with all their players, took a knee, but not during the national anthem. not to denigrate our country and our flag. i just think it's outrageous. there are plenty of ways that you can call into question some of the racism that may still exist in this country. but that's the wrong way to do it. you don't denigrate -- the one thing that used to, and i hope it still will, unify us is that we're all americans. i think identity politics is really bad, david. and i know we play it and you play it. and i think that's one of the problems that's affecting our policy. we ought to get away from identity politics.

we're all americans. >> it isn't part of the -- isn't part of what being an american -- i'm the son of an immigrant. >> so am i. >> my father came from europe. he came here because he had the freedom to worship as he pleased. and to think as he pleased. >> right. >> and to express himself. colin kaepernick was expressing a sentiment that many, many people in the community feel about injustice about the problems within our criminal justice system that are deeply felt. and he drew attention to them. he made it clear that he wasn't protesting the military, the flag, he was exercising the rights that the flag offered. >> you can't tell me that not standing up for the national anthem with your hand over your heart is not denigrating the national anthem. with the flag it is. there are plenty of ways for him to protest. >> yeah, but he chose the way that was effective. because it brought to light a way in which we aren't meeting

our national values, the meaning of the flag. >> well, you know, we don't have time, but we could sit and argue that all day. you were a very effective campaign manager, and white house assistant to the first african-american president. >> yes. >> with an african-american attorney general, two of them. i mean, to say we're not making progress in race relations? come on. >> i didn't say we're not making progress. >> i chaired a committee -- >> i didn't say that, mr. secretary. i know we are. i've felt it. i see it. but if you're a person on the streets of the inner cities of our country -- >> true, there are still problems. >> you're in a different position than eric holder or barack obama. they would be the first to -- >> granted. granted. i guess what i'm getting to is, you know, i worked very collaboratively with president

jimmy carter when i was secretary of state. we would never have been able to end the wars in el salvador and nicaragua had it not been for jimmy carter. he and i were asked to co-chair a presidential commission on a federal election reform, and we proposed -- get this now -- we proposed photo i.d.s to vote. >> i saw that. >> you know why? because president carter said, and i totally agree, if a minority has a government-issued photo i.d., very few voting registrars are ever going to try to deny them the right to vote. but now you'd think that voter i.d. -- photo i.d.s to vote were the worst thing in the world. that's bad that we've done that. >> well, let me back up for a second and put a button on this. i want to ask you about a few other things here. we could talk about this all day. >> yeah, we could. >> you say both sides play identity politics. were you guys playing identity

politics in '88 when the willie horton -- >> i don't think we were. but a lot of people do. and if we were, we were not doing anything that you all don't do either on your side. >> look, like i said, there are no angels in this very, very hard scrabble arena. >> you and i have both chosen it. >> but reflecting back, and on the nature of our campaigns, especially in this media age, do we contribute to the coarsening of our politics? winning is the thing. you can't govern if you don't win. you're very good at winning. and you're good at governing. but is there something that we have to take responsibility for in terms of the nature of our debates? >> well, i think so. but if you compare our debates, our political debates today with those of the 18th, 19th century,

they're mild by comparison. in many respects. >> coming up on the axe files. >> -- >> you're friendly with rex tillerson. how do you think he's playing in the administration? how is his voice being heard? >> i don't really know the extent to which the president has empowered him. why should over two hundred years of citi history matter to you? well, because it tells us something powerful about progress:

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amid everything else you have here, you have this incredible artifact of history that is pretty rare. >> it's a segment of the berlin wall. it's got a plaque on it here,

which i'll read to you. the berlin wall separated the world of oppression from the world of freedom from 1961 to 1989. it was taken down by the heroic people of east and west germany on november 10, 1989 president george h.w. bush and george a. baker iii led american's foreign policy during this revolutionary time and during a subsequently successful effort to unify germany in peace and freedom. >> i read that you were in a luncheon at the state department with the president of the philippines and someone passed you a note. >> what the note said was the east german government has opened up the border between east and west germany. i took my leave from the president of the philippines to meet with the president. >> what did that mean to you? >> it meant that the world as i had known it all my adult life

changed and changed fundamentally. the cold war was clearly over and that's all i'd known. when i was a school kid growing up, we'd hide under our desk, afraid of nuclear war. and by the way, david, nobody saw it coming. nobody saw it coming. a happened, boom, like that. >> the world was dangerous but was easier to navigate in certain ways when there were two open powers. >> foreign policy was easy to navigate. if the soviets were for it, we were against it. let's not make any mistake. there should be no nostalgia for the cold war. regardless of what problems are out there today, the cold war was a terribly difficult experience and every president through harry truman through

george h.w. bush, republican and democratic deserve credit for the fact that we triumphed. >> you were the secretary of state when the berlin wall fell and the soviet union imploded. today our relationship with russia is about as bad as it's been in a very long time. what happened? >> well, i don't know exactly that you can pinpoint it on one thing, but for 15 years after the implosion of the soviet union, the united states and the west generally had really good relations with russia. they were associate members of nato under both yeltsin and putin, by the way, until about 2004 or 2005. and then i don't know what specifically what caused it. i think the russian position changed, i think maybe he got in domestic political trouble in russia. you know you're a good politician --

>> all politics is local. that's what your friend tip o'neill said. >> all politics is local and if you can point to somebody else and say this terrible person in this other country is causing us all these problems, that's pretty good domestic politics. >> how concerned are you about the hacking issue, not just here or -- >> i think that's something to be very concerned about, absolutely. >> accept that the conclusion of the intelligence community that russia was hacking. >> yes. >> do you think the president should just embrace that and move on? >> i'm not going to -- >> that's not hypothetical. >> i don't know whether he should or not. i guess reasonable minds could question that but i don't. i think if all the intelligence agencies say that they hacked us, i think they hacked us. >> and then it's incumbent on the president and the government to do something about it pro actively. >> to do something about it.

it's incumbent upon all of our governments to do something about it. we haven't done it. >> you're friendly with secretary tillerson, fellow texan. how is his voice being heard? >> well, i don't know really the extent to which the president has empowered him. i would hope that he would empower him because that's the way you achieve foreign policy successes. you've got to have one person who is clearly in charge of foreign policy, formulation and implementation of it. the statutes say that's supposed to be the secretary of state. but there are other envoys in this administration, other people in charge of some part of the foreign policy portfolio. so we'll have to see how it -- >> concern to you? >> well, it would be if i were there because i had the -- i had the very best situation anybody

could have ever. my president was a 40-year friend, he was godfather to my daughter. i'd run all his political campaigns. so when i went out in the world and said something, people knew i was speaking for the president. get 4 unlimited lines for just $40 bucks each. taxes and fees included. and now netflix included. so go ahead. binge on us. another reason why t-mobile is america's best unlimited network. let's get the lady of the house back on her feet. and help her feel more strength and energy in just two weeks. yaaay! the complete balanced nutrition of ensure with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. ensure. always be you.

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pretzels! plain, sourdough, spicy, sesame, honey mustard, chocolate covered, peanut butter filled, this one's in german, it says, "reindfleisch?" plain. great. so what are we gonna watch? oh! show me fall tv. check out the best of the best hand-picked fall shows on xfinity x1, online, and the xfinity stream app. thirsty? mr. secretary, we are both very blessed to have had the opportunities we've had, and i feel very fortunate to sit with you. so thank you so much. >> well, you're very kind, david. i enjoy being with you. i was lucky to have the opportunities because i never intended to get into politics or

public service, so for me it was just luck. >> well, and preparation. >> five ps, prior preparation prevents poor performance. >> exactly. >> thank you, david. you are live in the cnn newsroom. thank you for being here. i am ana cabrera. president trump attacking the mayor of puerto rico of poor leadership after she begged for more help to save more people from dying in the wake of hurricane maria. here is the reality on the ground ten days after the storm. 95% of the people don't have power. only 50% have access to clean water.