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AMANPOUR:
Hello everyone and welcome to “Amanpour and Company.” Here’s what’s coming up. He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders, the president on John Bolton, but does his bombshell claim undercut Trump’s impeachment defense? Former Senator Heidi Heitkamp joins me then tens of millions on lockdown in China as authorities raised to stop the Wu Han Corona virus spreading. Can they contain it? And he was family. He was family here in LA. Not just LA, but the whole, the whole world. I grew up watching him play, you know, it’s like he’s a part of our live, our lives of shock and grief as the world mourns Kobe Bryant. Why his influence extends far beyond basketball. Plus sooner or later you bought up against the state and have to decide for yourself where and in the service of what am I willing to compromise the new Yorkers, Joshua Yaffa on what the age of Putin means for everyday Russians.
AMANPOUR:
Welcome to the program everyone. I’m Christiane Amanpour in London, the Senate impeachment trial enters its second week with the president’s lawyers continuing their defense. But when a bombshell revelation finally seal the deal on calling witnesses to the trial. According to the New York times a draft or former national security advisor, John Bolton’s new book says the president told him he wanted to continue withholding military aid to Ukraine until that country investigated the Bidens. So how will this news affect moderate Republican senators like Mitt Romney who supports calling Bolton as a witness?
MITT ROMNEY:
I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will, uh, will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton.
AMANPOUR:
Now, other key senators, including Susan Collins also say that these reports strengthen the case for witnesses. My next guest knows what it’s like to be a moderate in her own party. She’s a Democrat from conservative state, North Dakota and she served six years in the Senate. Heidi Heitkamp joins me now here in the studio. Welcome to the program. We’re going to get to the trial at the moment. Of course everybody even here in England, everybody’s watching it. You’re here to talk Trump foreign policy to a British audience, to the Henry Jackson society. What in a nutshell have you said and have you heard?
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
I basically have been talking about the importance of maintaining our alliances and our and our connections, um, as we have for years and years in, uh, not only the Trump years, but post Trump and talked a lot about what does America first mean? Is that America alone or can we redefine that so that we can recognize our nationalism but also recognize the vital importance of liberal democracy and NATO Alliance Alliance to the future of the world. So president Trump was in Davos just a few days ago, last week actually touting his success. And, and God, by and large are very friendly reception people quite like his economy. At least the top 0.1% do well. I think when you look at the economy, what you’ve got to understand is he has basically said, I’ve done the best job in the history of forever, but if you compare GDP growth, he has achieved 3% GDP growth. He promised us four. If you look at wage growth, yes, wage growth in the bottom core tile has grown in the United States, but it’s because of increases in minimum wage that have been promoted by a lot of democratic policies. He’s a very good marketer of the existing situation without really having proof points that any policy of his actually drove it.
AMANPOUR:
So it’s really interesting because of course you’re here and everybody, as I said, is watching what’s unfolding in in the Senate. What do you make of the latest claim? This revelation in the New York times that former national security advisor, John Bolton has delivered a manuscript or did at the end of the year to the white house for approval and in that manuscript, apparently he says that actually the president spoke to him about withholding that very controversial Ukraine military aid. Until, and unless the new Ukrainian president would investigate the Bible.
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
I am no expert on timing, but you know, and I know these things don’t get leaked accidentally. And so it looks over the weekend, like the president’s team is actually making some headway and, and this thing is going to get shut down very early on. And all of a sudden out of nowhere comes this, uh, this leak, which basically says this is what the report says. There’s, there’s also a lot of discussion about whether in fact his testimony under oath would bypass the NSA process that he will have to go through to publish the book. And so you’ve got to put that off to the side and think about his motivations. Think about the motivations of whoever leaked this, which I think are likely coming from the Bolton team. But you also have to look at the fact that John Bolton, as you know from years of reporting with neo-cons is like the chief neo-con. He is not, um, as they portrayed the whistleblower as a democratic operative. He’s not somebody who the president didn’t bring into his administration and entrust with this information. So in terms of his credibility as a witness, the fact that he was in fact a neo-con, a lifelong Republican, and also someone that the president trusted enough to make national security advisor, I think definitely to the argument that he needs to be brought in.
AMANPOUR:
Um, Bolton apparently says, although he hasn’t spoken to New York times, but his people say it’s the white house that leaked it. And I’m the president of course, denies all of this. Um, he has said, I never told John Bolton that the age of Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book. Okay. So be that as it may. What do you make of the dilemma faced if indeed there is one by moderate Republicans?
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
I think it’s going to be very difficult for Cory Gardner for Joanie earns for a number of these folks who have very progressive groups in their state and have in fact turned purple if not blue presidentially for them to go home and say, look, nothing, nothing to see here, especially in light of this revelation. And I think that at the end of the day when, when, when you evaluate or when we’re in foreign audiences evaluate this, you should look at the impeachment as the indictment. There is nothing in American jurisprudence that says when you go to trial, you can only bring witnesses who were in fact, in the grand jury, you bring in everybody who has new evidence or any new evidence that you can present. It’s interesting to see what will the chief justice do and, and uh, well he play a larger role in trying to make sure that this process looks less like a, like a hurried up, uh, scam and, and more like an actual deliberative process that’s, uh, arranged to achieve the truth.
AMANPOUR:
And I just wanted to play something, you know, um, uh, by Trump’s lawyer who said again, you know, that there were, there was no link, nothing. Um, let’s just play it.
LAWYER:
There is simply no evidence anywhere. The president Trump ever linked security assistance to any investigations.
AMANPOUR:
So his base is obviously very loyal, including in your state, North Dakota. Um, uh, you famously lost too as somebody who stuck himself close, close to Juniper, Donald Trump. Right. Um, what do you think all of this, and not just for this trial, but for the upcoming election in November, what do you think it portends for people in your state, important States like North Dakota?
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
I think number one, North Dakota is not going to vote for the democratic candidate. I think it’s more important. What does it say in Minnesota where Trump barely lost the last time? And, and to me, what you’re seeing right now is you’re seeing a whole lot of people waiting, even people in rural areas. We, we’ve do a lot of social listening and our one country project, which is a rural democratic project, to try and find out what is in fact the buzz or the understanding that people have in those communities. They are neutral and they’re trying to figure out what this is about. I think, I think at the end of the day, if people, they may not be for removing him, but they definitely think they should by, uh, bring witnesses on. If they don’t bring witnesses on, it will forever. I think the process, take the Senate and it will again further divide our country and polarize our country. I think the president’s best defense always was, so what? Yeah, I did it. So what, what are you going to do to me? And, and I think even in, in that, so what defense? I think that the loyalists in the Senate would not have him, uh, voted to remove him from office. So when you say his best defense is so, I mean, you clearly don’t agree with that. In what ways is the best defense? The best defense? Because it’s the only factual defense he can make anyway. When, when, when his lawyers say there’s no proof, of course there’s proof that he did a quid pro quo. We have the statement of Mulvaney, we have the actual transcript. The president keeps encouraging people to read the transcript. Number one, let’s understand it’s not a transcript. As you know, it is simply notes that were being taken. We would love to read the actual transcript if there was one. And and the transcript itself certainly implies, if not directly States a quid pro quo. I want you to do a me a favor though. What does that mean? Every person in America knows when somebody says that, when you’re asking for something and say, yeah, but I need a favor. That means I need a favor if I’m going to do this thing for you.
AMANPOUR:
So are you concerned then that the, the, the, all of this doesn’t seem to have moved the dial people who are entrenched in their original beliefs about the president, what he did, what he didn’t do have not necessarily be moved by either the congressional hearings with the testimonies of Korea foreign, uh, foreign service and civil servants, nor this trial so far. Um, what does that mean? Maybe not in your state, but in the country in general for the Democrats attempt, if not to oust him by impeachment then to beat him at the, at the ballot box?
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
I think that what, what people are thinking is, look, it’s not going to happen. Let’s move on to the November election. Let’s see what our alternatives are right now. The alternative to Trump his pants. And I will tell you there’s a number of Democrats who, who actually might be even more frightened by a, uh, a president pants. Um, the other thing that isn’t talked enough about is the articles of impeachment actually argue that he should be removed and then never allowed to run again. So let’s assume he was removed but still allowed to run. I think that that you would still see the same dynamic among his core constituency groups. And so what, what the Democrats have to do is they have to connect this to ordinary people’s lives. And you know, this idea that we grew up knowing for sure that Russia was our enemy. That’s not necessarily true for a younger generation. And so again, going back to re-establishing the old lines, reestablishing what, what, what we always have believed is in America’s best interest. It is certainly not collaboration with Russia against Ukraine. That’s not in America’s best interest. What about what the America, you’ve started this organization called one country, right? And you’re very concerned about the Democrats and others ignoring rural America, as you see I will caucus is going to be, next week is the beginning of the contest. And you’ve seen Bernie Sanders surging. So the very progressive wing of the democratic party is, he’s doing very well with, with a Warren and Biden, maybe slipping a little bit in certain areas. What is your gut reaction right now to that? My gut reaction is that on clock a stay, people are going to make a judgment on who they think is most electable.
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
Who can take all Donald Trump. It’s the number one issue. It’s not about Medicare for all. It’s not about you know, all of these other policies, free college tuition. It’s about removing a president or nominating someone who can remove a present. I think the more interesting dynamic is the entry of Bloomberg into the race. And you see nationally his poll numbers going up in part driven by an incredibly lucrative, uh, for a bit for a media outlet, lucrative expenditures of Bloomberg on advertising. But Bloomberg’s being smart because he’s not looking at the field, he’s talking about his accomplishments and he is talking about how we can beat Donald Trump. And so I think Iowa will be a test. I think there will be people who won’t survive Iowa. Um, we need 50%.
AMANPOUR:
Who are you supporting?
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
I do not endorse anyone. I love them all. Whoever. I mean there is a great bumper sticker. It says Democrat 2020, 20. So that’s, that’s my, that’s my bumper.
AMANPOUR:
Then what about Democrat and fracking? Um, you’ve had this issue in your state, fracking and fossil fuels. Um, you’ve seen the, the, the Progressive’s Sanders and Warren have said a ban on fracking. If their president Biden has been, it must be trans. There must be a transition. Um, it’s very hard isn’t it, to to call for an overnight ban on something that so many people’s lives depend on.
HEIDI HEITKAMP:
Well, not only that, but, but if you look at the single greatest reason why we’ve been able to curtail CO2 in our country is the removal of coal fire generation and replaced it with natural gas. And so the United States actually is doing a pretty good job meeting even Paris standards. If you drive up the cost of, of extracting natural gas, you will then create a huge problem in terms of raising costs for the middle-class of energy. And so, I mean, I just think that this is all very shortsighted. It doesn’t appreciate that people, you know, it’s that moment that Hillary had where she said a lot of coal miners are going to be out of work. I mean there is a lot of people in States like Pennsylvania, um, especially Western Pennsylvania, States like Ohio that are in the uh, extraction business and their livelihood depends on it and their cities have done very well. And so I just think that number one is misplaced concern for the environment, but I also think that they aren’t looking at the cost benefit and what the cost would be if you eliminate low cost natural gas.
AMANPOUR:
Senator, Heidi Heitkamp, thank you so much for joining me tonight. Thank you. And now we’re going to move on because fears continue to grow over the outbreak of the Wu Han Corona virus. And these 82 people have died, all of them in China and there are 2,700 confirmed cases of infection in China with another 50 people infected around the world. Five of them are in the United States. The Chinese communist government still has 50 in cities under full or partial lockdown impacting almost 60 million people. But will this be enough to contain the spread of the virus? Dr. Thomas Inglesby is the CEO and director of the center for health security at Johns Hopkins university and he’s joining me now from Baltimore in Maryland. Welcome to the program,. Um, okay. So how on this day, how worried are you? Is this people’s worst fears? Is it a pandemic? Is it something that you think is going to spread, you know, like Ebola did or, or in in its own location all those years ago?
TOM INGLESBY:
So I think it is a very serious outbreak and uh, it already has spread beyond China in small numbers, but most of those people seem to have been identified. We hope that most of them have been identified. Um, so it’s not a pandemic. A pandemic is disease that’s really spreading globally around the world, really unchecked, spread around the world. And at this point, really the majority of the vast burden of disease is still in China. But to the question of whether or not this is controllable, I think the honest answer is we don’t know if it’s controllable yet. So I think we really need to be going down two trails at once. The first trail is doing everything we possibly can to help China in its efforts to control the disease and getting people isolated and treated and diagnosed. But on the other hand, on track too, I think we should also be planning for the possibility that it’s not controllable and that it will spread other parts of the world.
AMANPOUR:
Okay. So let’s first take the China piece of this because obviously as you say, that’s the most important at the moment. Um, are you impressed, satisfied, pleased with the way the Chinese or thirties are dealing with this as opposed to how they dealt with, you know, in 2003 and four when SaaS started, are they being more transparent and I mean this lockdown is incredible when you think it affects, you know, close to 65 million people.
TOM INGLESBY:
Yeah, I mean I think they are being much more transparent than in the time of SARS. And there’s direction from the president himself saying that he is directing people to share information with the world, share with the world health organization, with other governments. So there is a lot more sharing. I think information could always be better and we could, they probably could improve the, the speed of information that they’re giving to the world, but it’s also a very chaotic situation there. It’s, there’s a lot going on. As you said. There are these now large scale quarantines unprecedented in size around major cities in China. There is, I think, um, some debate in the public health community around the world about whether that’s likely to help or whether it’s more likely to be a hindrance in trying to get control. But certainly you can’t [inaudible] you have to acknowledge that they’re being very, very aggressive in their efforts to try and contain the disease.
AMANPOUR:
How deathly is it? How fatal is it? Because tell me how him biggest statistic 80 deaths is compared to 2,700 confirmed cases. Is that very deadly? How do you measure that?
TOM INGLESBY:
Hmm. So fortunately the number of people and while tragic, um, that anyone has died, the number of people who’ve died has been relatively small compared to the number of cases. There was even one report out today by distinguished scientists in Hong Kong that said they believed in this university that there could be as many as 20,000 to 80,000 cases that have had taken place in China or that have occurred in China. And still we have 80 deaths. So if that’s the case, then it may be the case with time as we learn more that the case fatality rate is quite low as compared to SARS where the case fatality rate was on the order of 10%. But it’s too soon to say that for sure. I think we’re, we’re hopeful that the case fatality rate will be much lower than SARS, but we’re going to need a lot more information from China to really know that.
AMANPOUR:
Okay, so you’re in the United States. The U S is one of the most prepared, um, in many, many, many instances, particularly medically and with hospitals and, and prevention. Um, how about the, the five cases there? And I just want to know whether you feel Joe Biden who has criticized president Trump over proposed cuts to the CDC and the NIH, the national Institute of health. You know, you said to be blunt, I’m concerned that the Trump administration’s shortsighted policies have left us unprepared for a dangerous epidemic, which will come sooner or later. Is that fair? And are you concerned about America’s preparedness and its defenses?
TOM INGLESBY:
Well, I think that if any country were facing what China is facing right now, it would be very, very difficult. So fortunately were we were not the first country to have these, this disease. We’ve had some time to prepare ourselves. I think the initial response has been very good. People have been isolated. Uh, fortunately people who have gotten the disease outside of China seemed not to be terribly ill and we don’t understand the distinction yet between those in China and those outside of China. So that’s all good news. People have been isolated in the U S there has been an enormous amount of work done in the last 15 years, the last 10 years to build capacity in this country and uh, in other countries as well. Um, but whether any country could really perform well under the conditions that China’s really going through now, I think it’s, it’s a debatable question
AMANPOUR:
and this is a sort of a, a sort of manifest almost as a bad cold pneumonia like symptoms. Um, do, is there any clarity on the source of it? People are talking about, you know, potential animals in the market where it for where in in the town that it first, uh, exhibited.
TOM INGLESBY:
So the sequencing information from the virus looks like it has come from a bat, which is where Corona viruses have come from before, but probably went through an intermediate animal host and then jumped to people. We don’t know for sure. We haven’t found the intermediate animal host yet. We’d so we don’t know exactly what the pathway was, but it looks like it’s following a similar pathway as has happened before, which is bad to an intermediate animal to human. And in terms of, I think your second question was about symptoms.
AMANPOUR:
Yeah. What I was just saying that it’s like a pneumonia type, but I want to ask you because you all did, there was an event, two Oh one uh, epidemic, right? There was a scenario that was a simulation of an outbreak of a Corona virus like um, uh, epidemic modeled on saws and it says the scenario ends at the 18 month point with 65 million deaths. The pandemic is beginning to slow due to the decreasing number of susceptible people. The pandemic will continue at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80 to 90% of the global population has been exposed. I mean that simulation that, that, that you all did is much more dramatic than, than the way you’re speaking right now.
TOM INGLESBY:
Right. Well because that simulation was a fictional coronavirus with different properties that are apparent in the current coronavirus. We talked a minute ago about the number of deaths as compared to the number of cases that have been identified. And so far, you know, we might hope that the number of people who might die from this illness, maybe one in a thousand, maybe we don’t. That’s a very rough estimate. It could be more, it could be less. But in this scenario that we modeled back in October, we had a case fatality rate that was closer to SARS and uh, we, we used a fictional coronavirus that was quite transmissible between people. And so we had a different set of conditions and that number of fatalities was after 18 months and complete failure of efforts to contain that virus. So in no way is it a prediction of anything that’s going on now that was a different virus than the one that’s occurring in China and elsewhere.
AMANPOUR:
Okay, good. It’s really interesting to hear from you. Thank you so much Dr. Inglesby. Now basketball is massive in China and around the world. Kobe Bryant is being eulogized as a legend of the game, a cultural touchstone over a 20 year career playing only for the Los Angeles Lakers. He racked up so many NBA titles, MVPs and Olympic gold medals. That stricken fans started flocking to the staples center as soon as news broke of his death along with his 13 year old daughter, Giana, and seven others who died when their helicopter crashed outside Los Angeles on Sunday. To explain the outpouring of grief and look at his legacy. I’m joined now by the sports journalist Jamal Hill who closed. He followed Kobe’s career. Welcome to the program, Jemele Hill.
JEMELE HILL:
Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR:
I just just explain maybe a little bit more of what Kobe Bryant was beyond basketball or maybe even within basketball, but in retirement, so to speak from the NBA.
JEMELE HILL:
Well, it does start with basketball because he was one of the greatest players in NBA history. Uh, he was once considered to be the true threat to Michael Jordan, who is widely considered to be the greatest player in history. So his talents on the basketball court is what made him a co a cultural phenomenon. Now in post retirement or post NBA career. Rather, he was seeking to be, um, someone who really tapped into creative storytelling. And Coby has overachieved throughout his whole career. And it was no shock to those of us who knew him, uh, that this would, if you had to think of a person who wow the ink on their retirement papers are not even dry yet would win an Oscar, uh, in a category that no other African American has want to ask her. In the animation category, it would probably be Kobe Bryant because we’re so used to seeing him do something magical and special. So this country, this world, in many respects, they’re grieving because, um, this is one of the best to ever do it. And he was proving in his post NBA life that he was, um, on his way to even greater Heights.
AMANPOUR:
So , talk to us a little bit then about “Dear Basketball” and how it had, how it, how it sort of grew out of, of his experience and what he wanted to, you know, cement into his legacy.
JEMELE HILL:
Well, it was his love letter to the sport that he felt like gave him so much and when I say gave him so much, I’m not talking about the money, the accolades, you know, the Olympic gold medals that multiple NBA championships or the MVPs. He just felt like basketball really gave him an identity. Um, it was a place where he had you know, power where he was able to infuse his style. Um, it really was kind of the foundation of his life. And so this was his tribute and his love lever to the love letter to a sport that just meant so much to him.
AMANPOUR:
And in the Atlantic, which you write for, of course today you wrote as outstanding as Bryant was as a player, his growth in retirement was more impressive in a way. Once the epitome of precocious arrogance, he evolved being a true champion for others. Um, you know, there, there is a tendency and people will always criticize the speed with which you talk about the complete person and not just Hey, you know, the Hague geography in the immediate moment. You had an opportunity to see all sides of Coby Brian, the brilliant and, and some of you know what you’ve called the, the arrogance. Tell me a little bit about the conversations you had with him over his career, over your career, covering him and where you, you had issues with him and you called him out.
JEMELE HILL:
Yeah, I mean it was, uh, I love to tell the story, particularly to younger journalists, um, because it is sort of the way I grew up thinking about, uh, journalism the way that I fashioned my career. You were always taught that if you wrote something or said something critical about an athlete that you were to give them the opportunity to have their say about it. Um, you write a column about an athlete criticized and him would go in the locker room the next day and stand and defend what you wrote. And so in 2014 Coby made some comments to the new Yorker that I thought were very tone deaf. Um, I thought they were insensitive and talking about the Trayvon Martin case and, you know, he didn’t seem, uh, I think he was seeing it through the prism, frankly, of his own, uh, rape trial and him feeling as if he were wrongly accused.
JEMELE HILL:
And I thought he provided some cover, uh, for George Zimmerman and for him to be in that position to do that, uh, somebody of his magnitude. Uh, I just thought it was just wrong. And I called him out about it on air. And this was back when I was at ESPN and maybe 10 or 15 minutes after I criticized him, I get a direct message from Kobe Bryant telling me to call him. And even more so he sent some of his reps after me too. So I got the message from multiple angles that I was to call Koby Bryant. And so I called him and I expected him to be angry. I mean, I’ve been cussed out by athletes and coaches before, so I thought this was probably the direction that this was headed. And it wasn’t. We talked for about an hour. He shared his perspective. I shared mine and I felt him make kind of a turn.
JEMELE HILL:
And I think he understood why I thought his comments were kind of inappropriate. And later on what happened was he apologized to the Martin family. He even spoke at a, at a rally for Trayvon Martin as well. And I saw him really kind of dig deeper into making sure that he used his voice to really move the needle on substantive, uh, social and racial issues that he supported Colin Kaepernick, which he also told me, and we talked about, uh, when Michael Brown, um, was, was killed in Ferguson. Uh, he also led his voice there and spoke up about not just that case, but what he felt like, um, was a fate that was befalling too many black men. So to see Colby go, uh, just in a short period of time to really dig deeper into being a socially conscious voice, it was really kind of an amazing thing to see. Cause for so much of his career, the focus is was just on basketball, basketball, basketball. And as he kind of wound down his career, he began to focus on other things and open up to people in a way that he had not opened up to them previously in his career. And that included, uh, some people in the media, uh, myself being one of them.
AMANPOUR:
You know, it’s really interesting because it’s not many world superstars who can be persuaded by a journalist who’s writing about them or somebody who they have a conversation with. You know, even if it was an outlaw, I think it, it seems to say a lot about how he could also accept criticism and change. I mean, you’ve spoken about the rape trial. He obviously always said that, you know, it was consensual. He always denied that it was a nonconsensual. Um, nonetheless, it was settled in civil court. There was a settlement, but he also then, you know, it was also brought up for certain homophobic comments and abuse of an empire. In 2011 he was fined 100,000. But you know, in fact afterwards he became very vocal against homophobic comments and you know, somebody who had, had, had tweeted something bad and then tweeted against him that, Hey, how can you talk to Mikko? But you know, you said those things yourself and he tweeted exactly. That wasn’t cool and was ignorant on my part. I own it and learn from it and accept the same from others. You know, that also seems to be a bit of someone’s legacy. Someone who’s so huge in the public domain with so many people who look up to him. The ability to change.
JEMELE HILL:
Yeah. I think, um, the, one of his most impressive traits is that Kobe Bryant was a learner and a lot of people in his position who have been so excellent at something that they do a lot of times they don’t possess the capacity to really care or learn about others or learn how they can be better. His, his dedication to excellence wasn’t just about being the most excellent basketball player. It was about being the most excellent person, the most excellent husband, the most excellent father. These things meant something to him. And he was the type of person that, um, and I remember, you know, in one of our conversations and it really struck me, uh, when this happened, he would ask me just as much about my job as I wanted to know about his and how he did his, he didn’t really want to talk about basketball. You wanted to talk to me about storytelling and journalism and all these things. And that’s how he was because he was constantly, it was like a computer constantly downloading and there was a genius in the way he approached that, that a lot of people really, really appreciate it.
AMANPOUR:
And he went out on a limb, um, for, for women as well in terms of playing the sport. I mean, it just, it’s heartbreaking that not only did he lose his Zive, but his 13 year old daughter, Giana, who is the big hope of carrying on the Kobe Bryant name in basketball. And all the others who are so devoted to basketball, and they were all going off to this event that he was going to be coaching. I mean the seven others who were killed with him. It was just so awfully sad and such a waste really of potential. Um, and, and I just wonder whether we can talk about his dedication to women play. He even said women should play in the NBA right now, but I want to play just a little clip from what he talked about to Jimmy Kimmel about this issue.
JIMMY KIMMEL:
Do you think your daughter might want to play in the w MBA? She does for sure. She does. I means this kid, man. Happy. Great dude, man.
KOBE BRYANT:
The best thing, the best thing that happens is when we go out [inaudible]
JIMMY KIMMEL:
and fans would come up to me and she’ll be standing next to me and it’d be like, Hey, you gotta have a boy, you and V you gotta have a boy, man. You have somebody carry on the tradition, the legacy. She’s like, Oh yeah, I got this.
KOBE BRYANT:
That’s right. Yes.
JIMMY KIMMEL:
Yes.
AMANPOUR:
It’s so great to hear those words. I see the huge smile on your face. I mean, so sad that Gianna has gone but, but there he was this champion for girls and for women and not just in the WWE NBA play now in the NBA was what he said just recently.
JEMELE HILL:
I’m certainly not suggesting that this wasn’t always the attitude that Kobe Bryan had. But it is interesting and you hear this from men who have daughters very often, is that there are certain issues that they connect deeper with once they have a girl. And I think because he had a daughter who was emerging into a basketball prodigy, that it allowed for him to develop an even deeper respect for female athletes in particular girls and women’s basketball players. He was a huge champion of the WWE NBA and you probably saw him maybe a more Debby NBA games than you did at actual NBA games. And it meant a lot to those players in the NBA as they fight for a pay equity and fight for, um, other, you know, equitable things to have somebody like Kobe Bryant be a voice for them. It really did. The DB did the w NBA proud and it made a lot of those players, um, really feel indebted to him for that because they’re constantly talking about this message of equality and how they should, um, you know, how they should earn more and all these other issues.
JEMELE HILL:
And it’s one thing when it comes from women cause they, people hit, tend to, uh, to block it out because they feel like they hear it all the time. But when a man actually speaks to it and becomes a voice and a champion for those same rights, I think it just resonates sometimes a little differently with people. And so it was great to see him, uh, really use his platform and his name, uh, to give those women even more validation. Not that they needed it, but it certainly, um, was able to give them a boost and made them feel good that somebody like him was a fan of their league. And of course, I mean, how great of a storyline would that have been? Another reason why this is so tough for people to process the storyline of Jianna Bryant playing in the WWE MBA and, Oh, I don’t know, maybe Colby coaching her.
AMANPOUR:
I know. Jamelle Hill. Thank you so much for putting it into such important perspective for us. We turn now to Russia where president of Vladimir Putin has been in charge for two decades, and that means a whole generation of Russians has been dubbed the Putin generation. Joshua Yaffa is a Moscow correspondent for the new Yorker. His new book between two fires reveals how ambitious Russians from politicians to filmmakers balance their own dreams with doing what it takes to survive in this system. He told our Hari Sreenivasan of us and about how Putin maintains his rule and legitimacy in modern Russia.
SREENIVASAN:
So let’s start with a little bit of the current news. We recently had the parts of the Russian government stepped down. What, what does this mean?
YAFFA:
I think what we’re seeing is the beginning of the transition process, if it’s even fair to call it that, because I think in any transition process, Putin himself isn’t really going anywhere. He’s going to stay perhaps in perpetuity as the ultimate arbiter of the system. The one who resolves conflicts, manages relationships between various political clans and interests, but it does seem like he’s at least formally going to leave the presidency what he should do according to the constitution in 2024 so I think this a reshuffle of the government, in fact, the dismissal of the government appointment of new ministers and calls to amend the constitution. It’s not the final arrangement of power, it’s but rather the opening gambit. And what’s going to be a long chess play that should unfold really over the next year is all the way through 2024 as Putin prepares for himself a kind of soft retirement, where in fact he still remains, as I said, the highest and most authoritative political figure, but reconfigures power in such a way that he can leave the office of the presidency, prepare a new generation of leaders, but who in the end are ultimately beholden to his authority.
SREENIVASAN:
So why bother with this almost veil of democracy if he knows the government knows and ultimately the people know that he’s still the guy pulling the strings?
YAFFA:
Throughout Putin’s 20 years in power. What’s been interesting to observe is how much he cares about the veneer of democratic institutions or, or rather the veneer of a kind of legitimacy that comes from an adherence to law to process, to following the rules. Of course that, uh, is often a hollow, if not absurd idea when it is he who gets to set the rules. So following them isn’t so hard when you’re the one dictating what the rules are, but nonetheless Hooten his whole image, especially when he came to power, but really in the years that have followed has been that of someone who has restored order and functionality to the Russian state after the weakness and chaos of the Soviet collapse. And the 90s when the Russian state was a period of, of disorder disorganization and the populace was left really, uh, unsure and disoriented about their own fates and about the fate of the country as a whole.
SREENIVASAN:
You dive into some of the kind of nuances of government and the people and how they’re affected by it and how they affect it. What’s the kind of through line?
YAFFA:
You know, I started to work on the book when I realized as a journalist, there was something about Russia that I wasn’t able to say in the articles I was writing and the reporting I was doing. And I like many reporters and, and this is a very fair and correct prism for viewing Russia, but saw Putin and all the little Putin’s around him versus the people who were trapped by repressive laws, by propaganda in this cage that they couldn’t escape from but would like to. And as time went on, I began to see the, that wasn’t really capturing the whole of Russia as I was living it and experiencing it. And in fact, most people’s lives were lived somewhere in the middle. They weren’t venal corrupt, cynical officials, but nor were they brave quixotic heroic freedom fighters who were ready to Lewis everything to stand up, uh, to that system. Most people in fact, and in, and I started to feel that maybe I would have been in exactly that same position. We’re looking to reach a kind of accommodation with the system. And that act of compromise on the micro scale on the level of the individual was very fascinating to me to understand how that actually works in people’s lives, in practice and also on the macro scale, on the scale of the whole country. It seemed to me that that was a key, uh, and really interesting way to understand how the Putin system functions and why has it proved so durable.
SREENIVASAN:
I want to highlight for the audience a few of the characters that you go through. One of them is an Orthodox priest. What is he fighting? What does he settle on?
YAFFA:
Right. This is a, a priest named father Pavel as a game. He became a priest in the 1950s as a young man, and then the Soviet union, which was a nominally atheistic state, which allowed to a certain degree, the Orthodox church, uh, to exist, but, but kept it under continual pressure and tried to do everything it could to discourage a religious belief. He was eventually sent to a prison camp where he ultimately lost his leg and he emerged from that prison camp some years later with a whole trunk full of poetry that he’d written and a wooden peg leg. He ended up in a small town in Northwestern Russia school near the border with Astonia where I visited many times over the course of my reporting and became a really popular and beloved figure in Peskov who everyone seemed to respect believers and nonbelievers alike. What really worried Pavel and what became his kind of mission later in life was the growing proximity between the Orthodox church and the Putin state. In the years after Putin took power, Putin was very keen to appeal to the Orthodox state as a additional pillar of his legitimacy to somehow absorb or, or, or use the church’s own stature in society to buttress his own, you could say the church engaged in the kind of compromise on a large scale or institutional, uh, scale that I write about in on the scale of the human experience, on the scale of the individual and some of the other characters in my book, the, the church lended its aura of legitimacy to the state in exchange for all sorts of earthly, let’s say, benefits, uh, here and now, uh, state funding, uh, having church real estate that had been confiscated by the Soviet union, uh, return to it, the imprimatur of Putin who would, uh, quite publicly go to Easter services and other religious services. So it became a very convenient union, uh, of church and state and each got something useful out of it, but that really worried, uh, father Pavel adult game. He saw great dangers in that, uh, for the church. And that by tying itself to an ultimately earthly politician who can be popular one day unpopular the other day, who can do things that are perhaps virtuous and just for the population, but can do things that are unjust, uh, for the population that the church, uh, was risking a great blow to its own esteem and own moral and religious authority. And he was just about the only priest, uh, to speak up about the danger as he saw it, of, of that union. In addition to God, the church needs the blessing of Putin. Well, if it wants to, uh, expand and, uh, have the resources to do so, have the, uh, real estate, uh, to do so, to be able to say, get its teachings or lessons into Russian public schools to be able to minister in the armed forces. There are all sorts of, let’s say, earthly privileges, uh, that the church needs in order to do its godly mission. Uh, that’s, it’s that way for I suppose any religion and uh, the Putin state given its monopolistic hold, uh, over life or, or, or many aspects and sectors of life in Russia presented exactly that opportunity. I think what ultimately proved to good, to tempting for the church to resist, especially after decades of repression and marginalization under the Soviet union, the opportunity for the church to suddenly flourish and have all sorts of resources and opportunities it didn’t have for nearly a century I think was, was too tempting for the church leadership.
SREENIVASAN:
You lay out in the book that really there’s no other game in town. I mean the state is such a massive influence on the economy on whether it’s the media, whether it’s the church. What’s the other alternative if you don’t want to play ball with the state?
YAFFA:
You know, it’s a, it’s a good question and one I found myself reflecting on over and over in terms of what would I do, how would I behave in this situation? Would I really be able to say no to the opportunities on offer and pick a much harder and more uncertain life? I often came back to something that someone, um, who was a friend of the theater director could, he’ll sit up in the Cove. He’s another character in the book, really Russia’s premiere, avant garde experimental director of his age who worked not only on the theater stage but also in film, who for awhile benefited from the Putin States. Ultimately temporary interest in supporting avant garde art forms. And his fall from grace was quite dramatic. He ended up later accused of embezzlement and found himself under house arrest facing a number of years in prison. And as one of his friends was trying to narrate his rise and fall. And how did he allow himself to get so close to the state in the first place for someone who in fact had no real enthusiasm for the Putin state? Quite the opposite internally. So that having the Cove was, I think an anti Putnis. It’s fair to say someone whose sympathies lie with the opposition, but nonetheless, he did quite well and accepting large amounts of, of state grants and state resources to make his creative projects. And as this friend said to me, you know, in Russia, it’s not as if you have a choice of making a film with state money or without state money. That would be an easy choice. Sure. Make the film without state money, do it on your own independently. But in Russia, the choice is, do you want to make a film or not? And when I understood it that way, I began to look at Sudan that comes predicament differently, but also the predicament of lots of people I saw all around me. So even the Cove had these talents. He had this vision, he had this experience. Why shouldn’t he want to realize that in the form of films? That’s a totally noble, understandable goal. And to do that though, it required this, uh, unavoidable in some senses, inevitable, uh, cooperation with the state. And I think that’s what makes this notion of compromise, which is otherwise universal, which I see in my own life. And I see in the life of my friends and colleagues, gives it a particular Russian cast because the state is so ever present, uh, really omnipresent. Uh, in Russia, wherever you turn, whatever you are, professional field or interest is, you can be an Orthodox priest like Pavel adult game, or you can be an avant garde theater director. Like could, he’ll sit up in the Cove sooner or later you butt up against the state and have to decide for yourself where and in the service of, what am I willing to compromise
SREENIVASAN:
How much of this do you think is, serves this state to have a class of people or a group of people who are, its critics so that they can point and say, no, I don’t own the press. Look, look at this guy. He writes horrible stuff about me all the time. And the character that you mentioned from the play, he was able to almost create subversive content, lay it out on a stage in front of an audience full of high government officials would just kind of watch it and move on with their lives.
YAFFA:
Right, the early years of Putinism especially were almost defined by exactly that dynamic that you highlight. There was a kind of big tent, aspirational idea behind Putinism that we can have militaristic nationalists and avant garde theater directors. And that’s all somehow part of the overall system because that’s the, ultimately the important thing, right? That this, that the system retains its, uh, stability. And one way it does so is by kind of inclusiveness, of course, to a point, someone who’s an actual on the street rabble rousing a organizer and critic of Putin doesn’t necessarily have a place in that tent. Someone like a Alexei Navalny who is emerged as the country’s, uh, most popular opposition leader. But that dynamic has narrowed, uh, in recent years, and that’s shown in the lives of the characters. I write about someone like Sadana Cove, the theater director, who for awhile was celebrated by the Putin state by given resources and, and, and his plays were put on the largest stage stages in Russia, the Bolshoi theater, uh, and others as the window and tolerance, uh, of the Putin state for these diverse, uh, at some times, uh, seemingly quasi oppositional, uh, voices has narrowed. So to have the opportunities for people like said, having the Cove and other people, uh, in my book, it’s actually become harder to do the kinds of compromises that I write about. You can’t manage your relationship with the state in this kind of nuanced, clever way where you’re a little bit in, but not all the way. Now the Putin state is really forcing people to choose and it’s possible that strategically as for the longterm stability of that system, that’s not really an advantageous, uh, posture for the state to have.
SREENIVASAN:
You know, 10 years ago I might’ve asked you the question, do you see Russia becoming more like the U S and now I also have to ask the question, do you see the U S becoming more like Russia in some ways?
YAFFA:
Sadly, absolutely. Especially, uh, I think here, if my time with Constantine Ernst, the head now of channel one Russia’s main state network, he really narrated to me his own intellectual journey. He said to me in the Soviet times, I like so many people were really frustrated by all the limitations of the Soviet state. We were young people with ideas. And ambitions and we couldn’t realize them. And uh, that angered us. And we presumed that everything in the Soviet union’s adversary, the West America, most of all somehow must be 180 degrees, uh, different there things should be milk and honey. Exactly. But then after the collapse of the Soviet union, the collapse of the iron curtain, he had the opportunity to travel to experience America and the West as it actually existed. He grew disappointed. It wasn’t actually the land of milk and honey, but there all sorts of problems, deficiencies, hypocrisy. He’s a in America and American foreign policy. And his takeaway was to become essentially a cynic about the world at large. Every place, uh, is just as fallen, uh, as the next. And there is no land of milk and honey. And I see that kind of thinking creeping in, uh, to the American political discourse. Uh, each side is equally corrupt. Each side is equally culpable. All facts have equal weight. So what’s the point in even trying to parse them? That’s the great and ultimately successful strategy of channel one and really Russian propaganda in the age of Putin. They don’t try and convince viewers of Russia’s unique in particular greatness. Rather, the message is, sure, the Russian state may be corrupt in certain ways. Sure, the Russian state may commit this or that violation. But look at the violations that America commits. Look at the hypocrisy of Europe. Look at the failures of the Western order. We’re all equally culpable. We’re all equally to blame. Then there’s no real point in trying, uh, to isolate, to identify one state or another for coming in for kind of particular or exaggerated, um, blame and all versions of events carry equal weight. I saw that with how channel one reacted to the shutdown of MH 17. A plane flying over Eastern Ukraine from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was tragically shot down out of the sky. And, uh, the summer of 2014 we now know it seems pretty clear based on international investigations led by the Dutch that, uh, the plane was shot down by a Russian anti aircraft system that was given surreptitiously and covertly from the Russian military to the separatists. It was backing. But on channel one, you heard all manner of contradictory, even absurd versions about what had happened, none of them, uh, holding a kind of coherent logic.
YAFFA:
It couldn’t actually be A and B and C because all the versions were contradictory. The point being to leave the viewer in such a state of exhaustion and disorientation that he or she simply threw her hands up and said, it’s so impossible to make sense of the truth here. I give up. And also that Dutch version of events, which seems to be by far the most credible one, ends up in that same froth, that same informational soup. It has no more or less weight than all those other absurd versions purposely put out on channel one to muddy the waters. And that kind of purposeful strategic campaign of disorientation and exhaustion of the viewer, sadly also is beginning to feel recognizable here in, uh, the American media environment.
SREENIVASAN:
All right, Joshua Yaffa, “Between Two Fires” is the book. Thanks so much for joining us.
YAFFA:
Thanks for having me.
AMANPOUR:
And finally, the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz was liberated 75 years ago today. More than a million Jews and other minorities were exterminated there. The Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel’s mother and sister perished. Against all odds, he survived and he dedicated the rest of his life to ensuring the world would never forget. I spoke with Wiesel on the 70th anniversary five years ago, then too ill and frail to travel, but still astounded that no world leader had warned them or tried to stop the Nazi horrors.
WIESEL:
We came there, of course, in 1944. In 1944 we in Hungary didn’t know that Auschwitz existed. Had we known, believe me, hath [inaudible] had Churchill on their radio stations turned to Hungarian Jews saying, Hungarian Jews don’t go to the train because the trains will lead you to Auschwitz or people. Many of us would not have gone. Many wouldn’t have believed perhaps, but wouldn’t have gone.
AMANPOUR:
Elie Wiesel died a year later. He forever believed “that we must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” And that is it for our program tonight. Tune in tomorrow for my interview with Jared Kushner, senior advisor to president Trump on unveiling the administration’s Middle East peace plan. And remember, you can always follow me and the show on Twitter. Thank you for watching “Amanpour and Company” on PBS and do join us again tomorrow night.