good evening and i'm lou goldstein and welcome to another edition of open source tonight is my guest is steve going to him who has covered the local national scene for a very long time and steve welcome to the show thank you very much nice to be here could have an eon for those of don't know steve i'll tell you a little about him he's he said a five decade career as a news reporter a writer and editor producer and anchor manager and also talk show host he's worked in washington d c new york rhode island connecticut and virginia for c fox the wall street journal mutual broadcasting independent news and independent network news and other affiliates too but while n b c covered events at the white house the capitol the state department the pentagon he was producer for all of mutuals watergate coverage and also produced the network's election programming steve has been to several national potable conventions he has also completed and did a one hundred part series on the bicentennial and has interviewed scores of lawmakers and presidents including former presidents jimmy carter and jerry ford steve covered the business for markets for twenty two and a half years while at wall street journal radio network and he did special reports on market activity for stations around the country and the world including the b b c he's been in the middle of many news stories and was at ground zero on september eleventh so tonight we're going to be talking a lot about what's going on in the local and gubernatorial race in the national and we talk a lot about what's happening on the political scene in talking to steve about his viewpoints and his ideas and so what we just what we just get right into it stephen start let's talk a little bit about national politics you know national politics over the years  changed a little bit we've seen different types of presidents with different types of styles and the coverage has also varied over the years to so what's your viewpoint right now of what's going on at the national level initial scene she's nice to be here thank you for having me it's kind of interesting if you you go along for a number of years and in the president's and the congress is changing oh republicans in charge democrats in charge and everything seems to be very you know very smooth for the most part you have your scandals that come up and you think this is fairly you know normal what's going on today with all the problems in washington in the the fights we've got the president fighting with his own party yesterday  we had senator flake criticize the president we've had senator corker getting into a personal battle with the president and you think this is horrible and it is and i totally agree and i hope i think it's horrible however if you look back i'm reading right now the hamilton book by ron chernow that ended up on broadway back when the political parties started they were as nasty as you can imagine i would find that our founding fathers were not these wonderful beautiful people that you know that held hands and danced in a circle and looked at democracy fighting for democracy was a real problem for jefferson it takes the book takes the warts off of our founding fathers jefferson thought the french revolution was wonderful despite all the people being killed now he was part of the republican party these parties were just being formed hamilton alexander hamilton the treasury secretary who became treasuries sekret first our first treasury secretary set up the banks and and the banking system that we still know today he was part of the federalist society and everybody said he favored britain over france and the big question at the time was the nation going to survive and so you have all these nasty battles aaron burr who ended up killing hamilton that famous tool in we hock in new jersey enlisted hamilton  hamilton was courting him to be a federalist burr was on the fence between republican and federalist and her without hamilton's knowledge put all these clauses in to try to get a bank for the republicans because the banks were controlled by the democrats only a couple big banks and so he totally lied about everything and so they end up in tools back then so what we you know we haven't seen trump yet yet yet but but if you look back it's it's refreshing to see what happens going back in history how the political parties fought i remember i was in in washington d c at the time of watergate i actually moved down to washington d c i was working for station in rhode island and interviewed lowell weicker who was on the senate committee investigating we had a nice interview and i ended up moving down to washington d right in the middle of it and everybody thought this was horrible you know and it was it was a terrible terrible scandal and i'll go down in history as one of the worst but at the same time we recovered and so i think there is hope and that's why people like me reporters like to go at the truth and realize that if you look at history history repeats itself we just have to be careful how bad it can get i know what he gave and watergate spurned a whole generation of individuals who wanted to be reporters and after it came out all being referred to as you know fake news right so a lot of times people don't know know what's real and what's not real so how can people decipher exactly what is real news and what is fake news these days it is really hard there's no question about it but you've got to look what you've got to do is broaden your interest you can't just get all your news from your phone nowadays the internet you can't get it all from n journalism as much as you do today and i pretty much prefer that you know i one of my you know a number of times i've been accused of being a republican and i'm and a democrat at the same time and i realized if both of them think i'm for them i'm actually doing a pretty good job because i'm being fair and you're in the paper and i'm independent and you know and i didn't vote in primaries for most of my life i've have voted democrat i've voted republican voted independent i don't like opinion journalism so it's much harder today so what people need to do and they're not is looking look at the source of the news say you're a democrat and you're probably going to favor and ice and b c but what they're saying you've got to take with a grain of salt ok what what you should do is go over to fox watch fox and see what they say and put the two together and see if you can come up with something and you'll generally you know  common sense if i you know my wife and i both say if we've succeeded in life it's because of common sense you know don't go off flying you know here and there to look at it and use your own sense you know president  trump you know said it was the best attended inauguration or well if you look at the pictures it wasn't so does that mean you believe him because he said it no use your eyes use your mind to many people let others think for them and that's really the problem if you start thinking  yourself you should be ok doesn't mean you're going to win i'm not going to necessarily agree with you and vice versa and we can have the i have vigorous you know debates with friends you know doesn't mean they're right and i'm wrong you know or vice versa you know but use that and that also helps when you have those debates trying not to be mean spirited vigorous doesn't mean mean spirited you know try to try to beef try to be fair and i understand and sometimes just for the fun of it i will take the opposing view and try to argue those points and and you know i'll tell a friend you've become you know we'll take the opposite sides of whatever issue and then that makes you start thinking about these maybe they do have some good points or maybe by seeing the holes in their you can you can make a better argument on your side well you know it's funny you talk about debates and trying to be open enough being mean spirited we just had two recent debates in new jersey in the gubernatorial race that's happening you know between the democrats so murphy and the republican the lieutenant governor came with them and it seemed that they talked about everything except the issues and they're more intent about leveling charges at each other than really speaking to the issues that most new jerseyans are looking to hear from either one of them and a lot of the commentary afterwards was that people were also and how do i differentiate lieutenant governor good diagnose because she's associated with bridge gate and by just being there with with governor christie so we do have a real choice here and we've had third party candidates on the show you know  the green party and so i guess i want to ask you about you know what you're thinking so far of the campaign in new jersey the debates itself and the positions of the candidates have taken as we get closer to the election i think it's horrible frankly for the for the same reason you know the reasons why you betcha and they don't talk about issues i had a i was attended a presentation by a political science professor from i think it was from writer university and i said why isn't i see on the internet kim guadagno all the time vote for me vote for me and i said why isn't murphy doing the same and he said oh don't worry the last six weeks of the campaign he'll do that and i think that's one of the big problems they just get into arguments and don't talk about issues and they put position papers that out there that don't really say a lot and they will they try to appeal they don't want to appeal they know they're go get but you know for example the democrat is going to get the far left people for the most part except maybe the green party voters are and donna is probably going to get the really committed republican so the middle is where they fight for her and so they try not to really come up with the issues so if you've been happy with the republicans what christie's been doing maybe you like that way maybe you like the republican legislature because that seems to be the way people people seem to be voting more a lot of people have told me i'm voting i have to vote democrat because there are too many republicans in control of the government and i don't like the way the government is running so they're voting democrat whether or not they're voting for somebody who is decent or none and i'm not making any asked you know aspersions to you know murphy or edward why don or anything else but they don't vote they're not finding issues and one of the criticisms which is which i find kind of funny we always criticize politicians for saying all these wonderful things during a campaign and then not doing them now one of the things that i find kind of funny about trump like him or not he says i said i'm going to do this during the campaign and he's actually doing it now you may not like what he's doing but he actually did say you know is trying do some of the things that he said he would do during the campaign it's refreshing and scary at the same time you know it's refreshing that here you've got a guy who said what he's going to do and he's trying to do it whether he's going to or not is another question at the same time if you're not if you don't like his policies you know maybe that's not such a wonderful idea but it is you know nice to see that somebody at least is trying to come up with you know the things he said in the campaign that it wasn't all baloney well does so you really have policies are all his policies just whatever president obama did i'm going to undo and that's what polls it sure seems that way doesn't it no matter what you know they're not looking a lot of big complaint about trump as i'm sure you realize as he doesn't delve into issues whatever comes off that speaker ryan wakes up in the morning the first thing he does is is look at twitter so he can do to nine knowing what was on twitter you know it's terrible you don't know where he's really going you know that is absolutely true you know you don't know what it is but it seems like anything obama did trumps against right you know which makes me wonder if obama did all the things that trump liked would he then be against  you know is that how we want to select people but then again we had another t v president ronald reagan i remember great ronald reagan from death valley days when he was the host and all of a sudden he was a democrat you know if you recall back in the early days was a big union supporter and then broke the air controllers union while he was president and so you know we get you know we get presidents that we don't necessarily want some turn out to be terrific you know whether or not you agreed with ronald reagan he helped bring down the soviet union you know you know and you know it didn't really last but you know you demi know where what you're going to get but trump doesn't seem to he doesn't seem to know the issues he seems to flip on a dime he doesn't seem to be trustworthy at all you know if you you know he agreed on dhaka with the congressional leaders you know giving amnesty to those but you know born of immigrants in the united states and now all this and he seems to be going back on that agreement so if you make an agreement you know can you really trust him and i think that's one of the biggest problems and how do you attack everybody i mean seriously how do you attack democrats you attack republicans it doesn't seem like there's anybody who he won't attack he seems to be the problem really seems to be the biggest ego to ego i've ever seen in my life and i think you know i mean i covered you know capitol hill and herb you know it's a lot of egos on capitol hill but everybody is you know in the minor leagues compared to trump as far as ego i think one of the big things that people are concerned about is the civility of the civil discourse  that has taken shape in many shapes and forms so i was wondering if you see that as far as you know from a former reporter standpoint and how that actually affects people because remember one time i tell you this but you know john f kennedy said you public service is noble thing right there bush go into public service but now we have a president who's basically demonstrating public servants and what they do denigrating the press that a great anybody basic who disagrees with him or what should be you know his thought process so what does that do for the next generation who are thinking about going into public service does it sway them away from it there's a cast do they think of you know government workers in a certain light you know why would they take a call to arms you know to public service that's an awfully good question it's very difficult he appeals to the baser elements of society you know you can see what happened in charlottesville how can you not denounce that i just i fail to understand how you can not get how do you give free speech you know i know we've got freedom of the press and everything else and obviously i believe in that but we fight me you know how many people were killed how many millions were killed during world war two from the nazis and now we've got these fringe right wing elements and he's saying oh they are they're just as bad as the left wing i don't understand that at all how can you be for that you know you know you want to hear them speak you know that's a good it's a good free speech question that all universities should be examining because they you know you had the problem out in california you had problems elsewhere in the country when they invite some of these people to speak you know and it's very very difficult you really want to hear both sides but there has to be some limit and you know the president republicans and democrats have condemned people like that and he doesn't seem to be and i don't quite i don't understand how anybody can not and you talk about he denigrates how can you how can you  be a supporter of the military when you blast up a former p o w senator john mccain during the campaign he blasted goldstar family calling family there during the campaign he's got an argument right now with you know a the widow of one of the four killed overseas how do you get into those arguments i remember when i was down in washington there were a number of people who blasted the president you know sir you know gold star families blasted the president for his policies but you know something the president never said a word you know if they if they have a right to do what they want they have a right to criticize let them criticize you know rise above it and let them have their say and don't fight back how do you fight back with somebody who just lost their husband i don't understand that what kind of civility is that teaching i think that this is where i think the schools really have to step in and say we need to have a discourse and we have to realize that what is capping in washington is not necessarily the best thing for our children and we have to make sure that those kids who you know don't have the best foundation in a family life they have to be taught in school they have to be shown the difference i think it really comes down to in school to teach the kids you know where you know what's going on and show them both sides of the issue show them where history comes in where this is not supportable and it's really something that you're an educator i think that you know i challenge you to do it with with with your students but that really needs to be a discourse you know in school we can't ignore that too many times i got really fascinated by politics in i guess it was ninth grade civics we discussed  know kennedy's cabin and i knew every single one of them and i got i was fascinated by it and that got me partly get getting into the career i did you know just fascinated by politics i really wasn't you know i wanted to find out what was going on i remember when i decided i i wanted to get into t v i was i had this fascination with t v my parents never bought t v guide they'd say steve what's on back then there were only a few stations that was a lot easier than today's hundred you know two hundred three hundred thousand plus stations but anyhow i was fascinated by it and i remember and i just want to get into t v and i went to emerson college in boston and majored in radio and television and they sent me up to beacon hill where the massachusetts legislature meets and there was a hearing on a movie and i kept going every day after class to go cover the hearing and i couldn't decide which side was right you know you know was correct for it and finally one day i'm walking down from beacon hill to the campus which is which which in boston just a couple blocks away in the near the boston  and it hit me what i thought was the truth and i was so excited by that i ran to the station wrote my story and that got me into news and i've been in news ever since you you know it was and it's funny i know that back and back in the days they used to talk about movies banned in boston it was that it was a it was a movie called titicut follies that was that was it was actually taught it was filmed surreptitiously in a mental hospital in massachusetts and the argument was whether this should be you know i don't remember how the name came out came about it was so long so long ago but it was whether it should be serve to it was surreptitiously filmed whether that should be allowed for commercial distribution but but the point is you know you you interview people you know that's one of the fascinating things you know back in college you know that made a big impression on me i remembered trial and some cameraman turns to me says kid if you're going to be in the business start asking questions my wife wishes i'd stop because that just start that was like plugging putting me into the electric socket and most or you really enjoyed enjoyed doing all the things that you did i love covering stories i remember excuse me i was up on capitol hill when vietnam was falling and everybody said you know and all these big fancy reporters are up on up in the in the in the t v studio there you know where people do interviews for on capitol hill and we're all saying everybody saying geez this isn't our story this is not our story well i never think that and i'm thinking of course we're in the capital united states you know we are in the capital the u s capital and all the sudden it hit me and i got so excited i ran downstairs to the senate chamber and what you do is a reporter you take your business card give it to the page and say i would like to speak to whatever senator you want to speak to well by then former vice president humphrey was back in the united states senate and certainly with you know you know humphrey being johnson's vice president was certainly involved in have to you know which is you know you didn't have to worry about a camera back then and i had this incredible interview with senator humphrey on vietnam we talked for a half hour it was just absolutely fascinating you know but there is there's always a story is you've got to figure out the angle and how do you how do you you know as i said i'm repeating myself capitol hill vietnam is not part not your story that not true and so i had this wonderful interview with him during you know watergate i had a great interview i was working up in rhode island and i covered an event with senator lowell weicker of connecticut who was on the  senate watergate committee and i you know had set up though the staff that i'd like to have a private interview with white or afterwards they said ok and so i followed weicker wherever you know i was you know i wouldn't let him out of my sight you know because many times they forget or something comes up and i'm not going to let that happen to me and so i said i went up to him and i had talked him a few times you know since i was working for a station that covered rhode rhode island but i didn't really know me and it had a big guy and you know i'm only five five five six and so he said sure let's do it and we hopped on the hood of a car and talked for forty five minutes  watergate those are funny interviewees you know when you're you know another thing that stands out i was covering this goes back a while always also i was covering an anti shah of iran demonstration on the ellipse of the white house and it was tear gas and everything else going on and it was a chaotic scene and osa and i noticed a cop on a horse chasing going right after me and i take up my press pass hey press press press and i realized that's why he was going after me and i literally dove away so i wouldn't be trampled by a horse money i mean i could go on with our other i'm sure you have any you know i have many other stories you have many stories and we'll be hearing them you know in the weeks to come because i'm getting the high sign from our producers that our time is running to a close but we certainly enjoyed the conversation today steve it was great that you stuff i know you're busy guy but hopefully you'll be here and we'll be having more guests talking about more different issues of politics and hopefully we'll be able to you know really get down and talk more about some of the the basics of politics and how local politics affects national politics and how basically all politics as tip o'neill once said is local absolutely and thank you very much for having me i move both in the thank you for watching tonight please continue to watch us in the next week as we have different newsmakers on to talk about different issues they're going on national state and local pub on the political scene and don't forget to vote the election is november sixth and regardless of who you want to vote for  don't want to vote for how you vote make sure you do vote because if you don't vote then you can't complain and don't ever let anybody tell you that you're throwing your vote away vote for the candidate that you want to vote for a third party candidate democrat republican vote for the candidate that you feel best will represent your interest at whatever level of government so until next week i will go through thanking you for watching open source and we'll see you again until then stay healthy