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Amanpour
Interview with "Separated" Executive Producer Jacob Soboroff; Interview with "Separated" Director Errol Morris; Interview with Brown University Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Omer Bartov; Interview with The New York Times Former Opinion Columnist and Economic Sciences Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired December 19, 2024 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JACOB SOBOROFF, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "SEPARATED": I've honestly never seen anything like that. There are about 1,500 kids in there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Separated, Oscar winning director Errol Morris and journalist Jacob Soboroff spotlight Trump's first term policy to forcibly remove
migrant children from their families.
Then, Israel's war on Gaza continues with more shocking allegations. We get insight from renowned genocide scholar, Omer Bartov.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL KRUGMAN, FORMER OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NOBEL LAUREATE, ECONOMIC SCIENCES: Biden and his team actually managed the
economy extremely well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- Nobel economist Paul Krugman tells Michel Martin he predicts President Biden's reputation will recover.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
As Donald Trump's second term rapidly approaches, one domestic policy seems particularly clear and predictable, mass deportations. The president-elect
acknowledged in an interview with NBC that it's a tough thing to do, but you have to do it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS MEET THE PRESS ANCHOR: Is it realistic to deport everyone who's here illegally?
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: You have no choice. First of all, they're costing us a fortune. But we're starting with the criminals and we
got to do it. And then, we're starting with others. And we're going to see how it goes. We don't have to separate families. We'll send the whole
family very humanely back to the country where they came. That way the family is not separated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Family separation, you'll recall, was a highly controversial policy adopted by Trump in his first term. The practice was driven in part
by his longtime adviser, the anti-immigration activist Stephen Miller, who's promised in the next term we'll see the largest deportation operation
in history.
Forcibly removing children from their families was purportedly intended to act as a deterrent. But it shocked the country and divided even Trump's own
cabinet. The policy was eventually ended. But even today, our next guests report there are more than a thousand children still separated, effectively
orphaned.
I've been speaking with the Oscar winning filmmaker Errol Morris and journalist Jacob Soboroff about their powerful new documentary "Separated,"
adapted from Jacob's book of the same name.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Errol Morris and Jacob Soboroff, welcome to our program. Jacob, can I just start with you in terms of being a news reporter? These new
interventions or predicted interventions by the new administration come January. What is the status right now of the border, the plans, people,
crossings? What are you finding in your reporting right now?
JACOB SOBOROFF, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "SEPARATED": What I learned, Christiane, in covering the family separation policy of the last Trump
administration is that when the incoming Trump administration says they're going to do something believe them.
And in 2016, they said they were going to deliberately separate thousands of children from their parents at the border, and they did just that, what
a Republican appointed judge called one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country. And I reported on the floor of the Republican
National Convention during this period and I was standing in front of the White House presidential election and I stood, you know, feet away as
thousands of people held up those signs saying mass deportation now. It's a part of the policy platform not just of the Republican National Committee,
but of the Trump campaign and now the incoming Trump administration.
And what is a mass deportation policy? It's family separation by another name. It's not taking children away from their parents at the border, but
it is taking parents away from their children in the interior of the country, in their schools and their workplaces, potentially. And certainly,
in their homes.
And I think, you know, how many people are we talking? This would be a supersized policy compared to family separation. There are something like
20 million people in the United States of America who live with an undocumented family member in their household. So, it would be orders of
magnitude greater than what the world was outraged by in the summer of 2018, what Errol Morris so beautifully documents in our film. And I think
that the American people may not be prepared for what's to come.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you both then, I'm going to ask you, Errol, because we led into this interview with some recent soundbites from Trump in a
recent NBC interview, you're probably well acquainted with it, Jacob.
[13:05:00]
When he was talking about it, but he also said, well, no, we won't separate families, we'll just send them all back together.
SOBOROFF: When Trump says and Tom Homan says, we'll send them all back together, what he's talking about is modeling the new Trump administration
plan after what Dwight D. Eisenhower did in 1954. It was an operation, frankly, with the name so racist, you know, we shouldn't be saying it on
television, much less anywhere else. That was an operation that deported a million Mexicans, many who were here legally under the Bracero program, and
some Mexican Americans.
What they are talking about is telling American citizen children of parents of undocumented immigrants with parents who are undocumented immigrants,
that they can get up and leave the country. We're talking about American citizens legally living in the United States of America. That's what the
Trump administration is talking about today.
AMANPOUR: Errol Morris, what was it about this story and how did you happen upon it? What was the trigger point for you to decide to get
involved in doing a documentary about the 1.0 separation policy, otherwise known as Zero Tolerance?
ERROL MORRIS, DIRECTOR, "SEPARATED": Jacob had asked me if I knew anybody who might be willing to turn this into a movie and I said, in fact, I did,
myself. And that's how it all began. I found those policies abhorrent then and I still find them abhorrent. And the shocking part of it is that we've
learned nothing, and it may all happen over again.
AMANPOUR: Where does this fit, Errol, in the sort of compendium of where you know, focus your lens and focus your works? You're so well known for
"The Fog of War," for "Thin Blue Line," and other such things. Where does this issue fit for you?
MORRIS: I'm endlessly fascinated by self-deception. The question of, what do these people think that they were doing? To me, the policies are
unmistakably racist. The campaign, the Republican campaign for president, to me, was also unmistakably racist. And yet, it sells. It has an appeal to
a vast number of voters, myself not included. And how did this all happen in America?
AMANPOUR: But the interesting thing, Jacob, also, is to follow on from what Errol just said, the sort of the culture of deception, including
amongst the officials who you were covering at the time. So, in the documentary, it shows that in June of 2018, Kirstjen Nielsen, she was the
you know, Department of Homeland Security, she tweeted, we do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period. Jacob, was that true
or not true back then?
SOBOROFF: No, that was not true. And you know, self-deception might be a generous description of what she was doing there. They knew exactly what
they were doing. And what Errol Morris lays out in almost a forensic examination --
MORRIS: You could also call it a lie.
SOBOROFF: Yes, that is very true. Errol does what Errol does best in this film, a forensic examination of the bureaucracy that allowed this policy to
happen. I mentioned what the Republican appointed judge called the policy. Physicians for Human Rights, which won a Nobel Peace Prize, said it met the
United Nations definition of torture. The American Academy of Pediatrics said at the time it was government sanctioned child abuse.
And what you will learn when you watch the film is that you see in the e- mails on the screen, people used to say to me as a journalist, how do you say objectively that the policy was intentionally cruel? Well, what Errol
Morris has done in the way only Errol Morris can is lay this out and you hear from firsthand accounts from government officials who were inside and
said harm to children was the point, and then you'll see e-mails on the screen that say things like when families were actively being reunited,
actually put back together after being deliberately separated because Kirstjen Nielsen, with the stroke of a pen, effectuated this policy,
government officials were saying it was a fiasco and undermine the entire point that mothers and fathers and their little children, in some
instances, babies, were being reunited instead of being forcibly separated as government created orphans, potentially for a lifetime.
AMANPOUR: And the numbers are shocking. At the end of your documentary, you, and I'm going to sort of just approximate them. But at the time there
was more than 4,000 separated children. And now, there are still a thousand or more who they cannot match with parents who are still separated, and
their parents are probably not even in the country.
But can I ask you both another question? Because you do bring it up and some of the officials talk about it. The administration openly or amongst
themselves use this policy because they believe that it was a deterrent. And that was their philosophy, that was their political imperative. So,
why, Errol --
[13:10:00]
MORRIS: See, I don't believe it.
ACOSTA: OK.
MORRIS: I actually don't believe. They might have sold it as a deterrent, but I think its main purpose was a dog whistle to the base, to their
followers, to show those followers, look how mean we can be, look how cruel we can be, look how tough we can be with immigrants. To me, that was the
main purpose of it all.
AMANPOUR: I mean, look, there is a very broken American immigration system, and that is absolutely beyond denial, and nobody in Congress has
managed to organize themselves to make it efficient. And so, we have these terrible issues, and we have voters who -- in all over the world right now
immigration has become a main voting issue. So, that is a fact.
When you found the people to speak to in this documentary, for instance, Jonathan White, he's at the heart of the film just about, his testimony
He's a captain, Jonathan white, career government official in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, brave enough to speak out about this whole process.
So, let's hear a clip of some of what he has to say. Here's Jonathan White.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN WHITE, OFFICE FOR REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT: Family separation, though, was not about unaccompanied children. It was about accompanied
children. It's about children with their families. And the unaccompanied children program, which I worked in, was essentially hijacked for a purpose
for which it was never intended nor authorized in law. It was a program designed to be a child protection program for children who entered the
United States without parents. And it was instead used as a tool to take children from their parents.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Errol, how did you find Jonathan White? How did you persuade him to talk? He's obviously very passionate and very, you know, morally
committed to getting this story out. Why did he agree to participate, do you think?
MORRIS: His strong feelings about this policy being morally wrong. He was not really allowed to speak. Most people could not or would not speak to me
at all, because there were restrictions, government restrictions. If they're still working for the government, they're not allowed to talk.
Certainly, they're not allowed to talk without permission.
Jonathan White felt so strongly about these issues, that he was willing to take the risk. The risk of talking publicly about his feelings of outrage.
To me, he's a hero, an American hero.
AMANPOUR: And then, there was another guy, sort of the direct opposite, and that's a white superior, Scott Lloyd. So, he was a political appointee,
unlike White who is a government employee. And he was the director of this Office of Refugee Resettlement. And he describes -- you know, when you have
him on the air and in your interview, he was more concerned with leaks from inside his agency than he was about the lives of the children and the
parents. So, he was pretty evasive.
Well, why do you want to put him in the movie? Did he say much?
MORRIS: I think he tells us a lot. We see a person who's at the center of this program of essentially keeping children who has very little interest
in the children themselves. He has interest in his own reputation.
To me, the most horrific aspect of all of this is not just simply that they separated children, or even some nursing infants from their mothers, which
in itself is shocking, is that they didn't keep records. They didn't keep records of how to ever possibly reunite these families that had been broken
apart.
And when information was leaked to this effect, Scott Lloyd expressed outrage. He did not like that fact that somehow he was getting negative
publicity as a result of all of this. It's a pretty horrific, bureaucratic story.
AMANPOUR: And, Jacob, your voice and your interview is also in this documentary. And you talk about the -- you know, the status of permanent
orphans. Here's a clip. And we're just saying for our viewers that it's your voice a lot under video because, Errol, you did some reenactments to
be able to show using actors what a lot of this policy looked like, what the -- you know, the migration from the southern border into the U.S.
looked like. Here's this clip.
[13:15:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SOBOROFF: What I came to learn after visiting these facilities is that they were all warrant. This is exactly what would happen if you separated.
Creating permanent orphans was the worst-case scenario.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And, Jacob, remind us exactly, I sort of approximated the figures, but there are, right now, permanent orphans in the United States,
right? How many are still out there?
SOBOROFF: You mentioned the number, Christiane, at the end of the movie, which I think says 1,052 at the time we locked picture of the film. Well,
it turns out today, according to the Department of Homeland Security, that number is 1,360 children as they continue to find more who are separated by
this policy without confirmed reunifications, who are potentially permanent government created orphans.
And you mentioned the narrative portion, if I may, of the film that Errol has created here. I just want to stress why that is so important and why
this makes this a story told in the way only Errol Morris can. When I was invited inside those facilities by the Trump administration in the summer
of 2018 as a television journalist, I was invited without cameras, pad and paper only.
And so, that footage simply does not exist. There is no footage. The government did not allow us to take any of them deliberately ripping
children apart from parents because they wanted us, as reporters, to go outside and describe it to the world in order to scare other people from
coming to the United States of America and in order to scare Congress into enacting more restrictive immigration laws.
What Errol Morris has done with Eugenio Caballero, our production designer, and Gabriela Cartol, the actress who plays the mother in the film, and
Diego, and the entire Mexican cast and crew, is get to an emotional truth of what these families have gone through in a way that I hope one day all
the families will be able to speak out and talk about.
But the U.S. government only allowed propaganda images and handout photos to come out of those facilities. And so, Errol Morris has taken that agency
back from the U.S. government, the Trump administration, and show everybody who sees this film what these families actually went through at the hands
of United States immigration policy.
AMANPOUR: And finally, the numbers about immigration seem to be false. President-Elect Trump and President Trump repeatedly pushed a whole load of
false statistics about migrants during the campaign. For instance, 13,000 convicted murderers were allowed into the country by Kamala Harris. He
claimed that's apparently not true. Harris set loose over 600,000 migrant killers to, quote, "rape, pillage, plunder, and kill Americans." Also, not
true.
What impact do you think those kinds of falsehoods have on the body politic, Errol? You've been doing this a long time and you've taken all
sorts of, as you just said, you know, focus on deception. What does that do to society at large in the end?
MORRIS: It has a terribly corrupting effect. The question for me is how did a country of immigrants suddenly become a country where immigrants were
totally vilified? Immigrants are called murderers, rapists, drug dealers. As if everybody coming into this country is some kind of criminal.
I don't know how to describe it. Is how did this country -- maybe, which was always wrestling with elements of racism, how did it turn over into a
society where racism became the fundamental turning point of an election for president? To me it's incredibly sad and frightening.
AMANPOUR: And, Jacob, it's not easy under this current climate to keep reporting in this very tough way about these policies. How do you plan to
keep reporting on this issue?
SOBOROFF: I think we have to do exactly what we did when we were invited into those facilities by the Trump administration in 2018, which is to hold
a mirror up to society to show them what is happening. You know, this movie is really tough to grapple with and the subject matter is, but it's also
for me, inspiring. It's inspiring because of my fellow journalists. We're able to go out there and expose the story for what it was. It's inspiring
because of the career civil servants who were willing to speak up from inside the government. I think it's important to hear those voices because
they did everything they could to stop this policy from happening and indeed prevented it from being far worse.
And it's inspiring because hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, all over the world came out in a, not a bipartisan fashion, but a
universal one. The pope spoke out, as we're reminded in this film, in order to stop a policy that the president himself, President Trump at the time,
said he was stopping because he didn't like the sight and the feeling of the families being separated. Not because of moral opposition, but because
of news media reports and people in the street.
[13:20:00]
And so, I think we have to remember that, remember what ended a policy like this, who was responsible for it, and make sure to elevate those voices
going forward.
AMANPOUR: Jacob Soboroff and Errol Morris, thank you very much. Your book, your film, "Separated."
MORRIS: Thank you.
SOBOROFF: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Such a vital issue. And now, another urgent one facing the incoming Trump administration is Israel's war in Gaza. Palestinian families
are now suing the State Department to suspend U.S. military assistance to Israeli security forces, that's according to nonprofit organization
Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The death toll in Gaza mounts day by day. Civilians continue to face widespread hunger and disease as well. And now, a new Haaretz investigation
speaks to IDF whistleblowers, alleging, quote, "Arbitrary killings and rampant lawlessness in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor." We can't independently
verify their findings, but they join a long list of allegations of misconduct by IDF forces.
Omer Bartov is professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, and he's just back from his own fact-finding trip to Israel.
He's joining me now from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Professor Bartov, welcome to the program.
OMER BARTOV, PROFESSOR OF HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY: Thanks for having me.
AMANPOUR: So, we spoke to you -- I spoke to you early on in this war when the word genocide was beginning to bubble up. And you had a clear, you
know, description then that it had not yet reached that level. I'm going to ask you again later in the interview, but I want to first ask you, what did
you find this trip in Israel? Because it was a while since you'd been there. And I wonder how the war is beginning to percolate and be taken --
you know, be sort of absorbed by people there.
BARTOV: Yes. So, I went to Israel for the first time after the war broke out in June. And now, I went again, I just came back this morning. And I
would say that the difference is that in -- when I was there in June there was huge reluctance to even have Gaza mentioned everything that was going
in Gaza -- that was going on in Gaza, people, when you spoke with them, their eyes sort of glazed over and they wanted to change the topic.
And now, I think there is more awareness of the tremendous devastation that has gone on there. But it does not seem, apart from some very limited
groups, it does not seem to have any effect on how people actually respond to that. So, the knowledge has -- as you said, has percolated. There have
been many reports just recently, also in the Israeli press, not on TV, but in the press.
But people are still, you know, in a kind of state of shock and mourning from October 7th, which is still being recycled over and over again every
day, the Hamas massacre on Israeli media, and I find it very difficult to turn their attention to what is being done in their own name in Gaza.
AMANPOUR: So, obviously, the Hamas massacre was a massively traumatic effect and, you know, war crimes were committed on that day. And so, many
say that -- certainly soldiers, that this was a just war to go into Gaza and try to, you know, get rid of Hamas.
And I wonder whether that is still the case for some of these soldiers who you speak to, for others as well, whether -- because in this Haaretz
report, one soldier says, having said that this was a just war, but people now need to know what war really looks like with serious acts some
commanders and fighters are committing inside Gaza. They need to know the inhuman scenes that we are witnessing.
What are you hearing from soldiers or people who you speak to on that issue?
BARTOV: So, you know, I want to start by saying that, in fact, right now, what we see in Gaza is not a war. We speak about a war, but there is no
organized resistance to the IDF now in Gaza. The IDF is in full control of Gaza. They're obviously some guerrilla units here and there that may pop up
and fire a rocket at a tank and if they're lucky, then they kill some soldiers. But generally, there is no war anymore. What the IDF is doing
there is destroying Gaza.
[13:25:00]
So, the soldiers, those that I hear about, those that I've heard reports about, one thing I would say is that many of them, when they come out,
mostly reserve soldiers, whatever their opinion is about what's happening, say that it's absolutely incredible that they have never seen and could
never imagine such devastation.
People use imagery like they speak it looks like Hiroshima. It looks like Germany at the end of World War II. The whole area is completely destroyed.
And there are horrific accounts of bodies rotting, being eaten by dogs, of soldiers shooting at anyone who moves in particular areas.
Now, soldiers may still think, and we don't know how many of them, they may still think that they're fighting for a just cause. But the point of it is
that there is no real resistance anymore, and the question is then, what is this war about? What is it trying to accomplish? And on the ground, what
you're seeing is, it's actually a war of annihilation of the entire Gaza Strip with a particular focus on the northern part of it, north of the so-
called Netzarim Corridor, which is no longer a corridor, it's really a square.
And similarly, in the south, in the area that borders Egypt, the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, which is also expanding constantly into Rafah and
destroying it, and the population is being run around from one place to another to so-called safe zones, which are then being bombed and shelled by
the IDF. So, this is the reality on the ground
AMANPOUR: The Haaretz report, which again, we can't verify independently, as you say says that large swaths that you describe, particularly around
Netzarim Corridor, have been taken. It also brings accounts of indiscriminate killings. That's their words. And the routine classification
of civilian casualties as terrorists, even children.
Now, the idea of response to Haaretz is, quote, "The attacks are directed at military targets only, with numerous steps being taken before the
attacks are carried out to minimize harm to uninvolved people. So, what do you make of the investigation at this point and this pretty repetitive
statement when the press asks the IDF to -- you know, to respond to specifics?
BARTOV: Well, look, I mean, obviously, I don't have all the facts either. We have to rely on reporters on the ground of which there are not many, and
many of those who were reporting, mostly for Al Jazeera have been shot. So, it's a bit hard to know exactly what's going on. But there are numerous
reports now, including, as you know, Amnesty International and this morning, Human Rights Watch compiling an enormous amount of data showing
what the actual policy of the IDF is. And this report in Haaretz is yet another one, and much of it is based on soldiers reporting what they have
experienced.
The IDF has had a policy of repeating this kind of standard answers to questions about the conduct of the soldiers that are, to my mind,
increasingly not to be believed. Just as they often say that they will investigate this or that incident, and we never hear more about that
investigation. They have lawyers that accompany them where they go, but it seems that these lawyers are not there to stop illegal acts, but rather to
cover them up.
So, by now, with the numbers of those lost, of those killed so high, coming close to 50,000 with at least another 10,000 presumed killed under the
rubble, with over a hundred thousand wounded, with tens of thousands of people who seem to have died because they can get no hospital care at all,
people with chronic illness and so forth, the numbers are vast, and one cannot really any longer take the response of the IDF at face value.
AMANPOUR: So, can I ask you about one of their former civilian chiefs in the form of the defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, who made a big splash when
he put his views across inside Israel. He has not talked to the international press, but he used, you know, terms like ethnic cleansing and
I believe war crimes. Correct me if I'm wrong.
[13:30:00]
But you met him and you actually know him going back a long, long time. You're an Israeli-American and I believe you trained in the same unit as
Moshe Ya'alon and you just saw him and I assume talk to him about all of this. What can you tell us about your conversation? Does he still stick by
what he said?
BARTOV: Yes. So, first of all, he spoke at a TV interview, and he said, look, what is going on in Northern Gaza is ethnic cleansing or transfer or
whatever you wish to call it, he said. And the interviewer who was speaking with him was shocked that he said that, and he said -- and she asked him,
did you actually say ethnic cleansing? And he said, yes. What else do you think is going on there?
So, I actually contacted him. Yes, we -- it's a bit strange, but in 1974 we were in the same platoon training in officer school. He became chief of
staff and I did not. And I wrote him and I said, look, I really appreciate what you said, and I'm coming to Israel. Would you meet me? And he agreed.
And so, when I met him, I asked him about that again. He had since also said the same thing on various other media outlets in Israel. And he said
to me, yes, this is what is going on, and I know about it because officers on the ground have contacted me and asked me to speak about it, to say
what's going on there.
And the extraordinary thing is that, you know, Ya'alon was Netanyahu's minister of defense. So, he became very right-wing, much more than when I
knew him. And despite that, when he came out with his statement, he was not only attacked by the right-wing, who were saying he's crazy, he's gone out
of his mind, but also by the opposition, who said, no, this cannot be.
So, there is this very strong sense in Israel, among many people, across the board, that, yes, maybe some things are not going well, maybe there's
some indiscipline in the army, but by and large, our boys, and these -- the people who are fighting there are the children and grandchildren of most
people in Israel, cannot be involved in this systematic campaign of war crimes and genocide. And, unfortunately, the reality is that they are.
AMANPOUR: So, you've just used the word genocide. What has made you change your terminology since we spoke to you much earlier in the war?
BARTOV: So, what happened was, you know, in early May 2024 the IDF decided to move into Rafah, into the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip despite
the U.S. telling him not to do so because there were about a million displaced civilians there who had been displaced because the IDF told them
to go there for their own safety. And the IDF went in anyway and moved those hundreds and hundreds of thousands of civilians one more time, many
of them were displaced by then for a third, fourth, fifth time, to a beach area, to the Mawasi area, which is along the beach, without any
infrastructure at all. And then, went on -- proceeded to destroy much of Rafah, which is still in the process of doing.
So, at that point, I started looking back, going back to the statements that were made by Israeli politicians and leaders at the beginning of the
war, as you recall, which were genocidal statements, but one could have said were made in the heat of the moment as the blood was boiling, as they
said in Israel, and to look what happened.
And if you look at the pattern of what the IDF has been doing, not only has it been moving the population around and every safe zone that it ends up
in, end up -- tends to get also bombed and shelled and attacked from the air, but also systematically destroying universities, schools, mosques,
museums, anything that makes -- and hospitals, of course, anything that makes for the health and also the culture of a group.
And therefore, by now, we have a population that has been completely debilitated with vast numbers of people suffering -- those who are alive,
suffering from skin diseases from intestinal diseases lack of food, lack of water. There's been systematic destruction of desalination plants, not
enough supply of water coming in from Israel, no energy.
[13:35:00]
And so, it looks like that the goal is to make Gaza uninhabitable, force population, and those who survive, the hope, I think of many Israeli
policymakers in this government, which is very right-wing, is that eventually there will be calls for humanitarian aid to those people to
remove them from that area, which they cannot live in, to other places, and therefore, cleanse it entirely of the Palestinian population.
AMANPOUR: We've got 30 seconds left. It's quite something that you've been saying just now. Where do you think your words are going to land? What
reception, for instance, do you have in the United States, where it's such a polarized conversation?
BARTOV: Well, I mean, it's really hard to say. I have to say that I'm glad to be able to talk about that with you. I think this word has to come out.
People have to know. There has been a response in Israel and also in various parts of the United States, such statements that I make are anti-
Semitic. I'm obviously not anti-Semitic. And I actually care a great deal about the country of Israel.
But I'm hoping that more and more people will know that Israel cannot continue proceeding with impunity as it has because of the support that it
is receiving from the United States to keep carrying out what it is doing.
AMANPOUR: Professor Omer Bartov, thank you very much. And now, a conversation with the Nobel prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, who's
written his last column for The New York Times, after 25 years of sharp and often indispensable takes on major issues that shape America and the world.
He says he sees an erosion of optimism. The cause, collapsing, trust in elites and institutions. And he joins Michel Martin with a fascinating look
back and also to discuss what lies ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Paul Krugman, thank you so much for joining us.
PAUL KRUGMAN, FORMER OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NOBEL LAUREATE, ECONOMIC SCIENCES: Great to be on.
MARTIN: Well, congratulations on this chapter of your very distinguished career. Congratulations on that.
KRUGMAN: Well, you know, I'm not retiring from the world, but I have retired from The Times, and I'm now free to -- I actually do have a
newsletter up and running. And I think there'll be plenty to write about in the next few years.
MARTIN: You've written about everything from, you know, globalization to financial crises, to politics, to public trust. How did you decide what you
wanted to write about?
KRUGMAN: It's kind of a what is looking important in people's minds where I think I can add some value. So, that's -- and that can be -- and
occasionally, you know, there was a period, I weighed in on the Iraq war, which was definitely not anything I had expected to be doing, but nobody
else was kind of saying the obvious, which was that this was a very, very dubious cause for war. And so, I felt I needed to say that. But for the
most part, it's whatever comes up.
And, you know, when the financial crisis came along, I have to say, horrible as it is, that I was actually having -- that was a great time in
my life because it was a perfect convergence of my academic work and my popular writing. This was something, in a way, that people like me had been
warning could happen, had been ready to talk about, and there it was. And then, it became the question of, OK, how do you explain that without any
technical jargon in 800-word chunks?
MARTIN: I was thinking about a recent column you wrote about tariffs. You wrote how Trump's radical tariff plan could wreck our economy, and you go
through all the cons. And then, the last line, for people who haven't read it, is -- and this is not a spoiler alert, you said, pros -- your last line
is pros, I can't think of any. And I just wondered if there was ever a kind of a feeling of, you know, if I could only have been more persuasive.
KRUGMAN: I think I'm realistic about that. You -- you know, Times has an immense readership, which means that it probably reaches less than 1
percent of the U.S. population.
MARTIN: True.
KRUGMAN: People's beliefs on many subjects are just not very moveable, no matter how good your argument is. I mean, that's -- and I learned that a
long time ago, long before I even wrote for The Times.
So, I -- you know, it can be frustrating. You can see something, but no, when we had the debate over social security privatization in 2005, I don't
know if people even remembered that, but that was, you know, George W. Bush having won re-election claim that he had a mandate to privatize Social
Security. And I was part of the group of people saying, this is a really, really bad idea. And I was absolutely shocked when the push failed, because
that was the first policy debate where my side had actually won.
[13:40:00]
MARTIN: You have been critical equally of initiatives on the Democratic side -- Democratic/progressive side, when you thought they were ill
considered and didn't go far enough. And I wondered is that harder in a way?
KRUGMAN: That hurts much more. I mean, I was practically tearing my hair out. You can go back and look at what I was writing just before and just
after President Obama took office, and I was tearing my hair out over the obviously, seemed to me, inadequate size of his economic stimulus plans and
even participated in meetings with government officials, and they didn't do it.
And so, no, it hurts much more when you are -- I mean, you know, I have no illusion that anything I write is that are going to persuade Donald Trump
of something, but when you fail to persuade Barack Obama, it's -- it hurts more.
MARTIN: So, let me go back to when you wrote your final column for The Times. You look back at your first column.
KRUGMAN: Yes.
MARTIN: And you talked about the optimism of the early 2000s and you contrasted it with today's resentment and anger. And, just if you could,
for people who haven't read it, why do you think that is? What do you think happened?
KRUGMAN: I think a large part of it is that the people and institutions that we looked up to just kept failing us. In 2000, if top people in the
national security sphere told us that another country had weapons of mass destruction, the idea that they might not be leveling with us, that they
might be taking us to war on false pretenses was inconceivable. I mean, I did conceive of it, but I got an amazing amount of pushback from people
saying no. Are you really saying that a president of the United States would take us to war for bad reasons? And of course, so it turned out.
People thought that people running the financial, running the financial regulators, economic policymakers, and the bankers themselves knew what
they were doing and could be trusted. And then, came this, you know, horrific financial crisis, and it turned out that nobody knew what they
were doing, and a fair number of people were basically, running scams, you know, and down the line.
I talk a lot -- I talked in the column. It's one of those -- you know, I am to have an international focus and I spend a lot of time in Europe, know a
lot of Europeans and the creation of the Europe was supposed to be a wonderful event, it supposed to bring Europe together. And in the end, you
know, there was a euro crisis, which the currency itself survived, barely, but the optimism, the faith in Europe's future did not.
And again, this was all of the great and the good. We're telling Europeans we have a -- this is a fantastic idea. Trust us. And so, you know, there's
accumulation. And I think it's also -- it's something I probably should have said in that column is the fact that nobody seemed ever to have paid a
price. You know, that in the '30s, you know, bankers got hauled off to jail. In the aftermath of Iraq, there were plenty of arguments that said
that people should at the very least be paying some kind of personal price for having misled us into war. And nobody ever did. And I think that does
contribute also to the feeling that the system is rigged that you can't trust the elites.
MARTIN: It's interesting because people used to look back at the Vietnam era and, you know, the '60s, which a very fractious time, you know, in
American life. The violence in the streets, right? You know, targeted assassinations, millions of dollars in property damage from people just,
you know, furiously lashing out, and the Vietnam War and it became very clear very soon, that there were -- you know, that false statements were
made in connection with that conflict, sort of, too.
But I'm just curious of why you think it is that, in your sense of it, that we kind of -- as a country, kind of clawed our way out, but then after the
2000s, have not been able to, and I'm just curious why you think that is.
KRUGMAN: Well, first of all, it did take a while. I mean, if we're thinking of, you know, when did America get over Vietnam syndrome? They
probably wouldn't be until the 1980s. But the mystery I find looking back is why -- in some ways, why elites were as willing to -- if not exactly be
held accountable, at least to allow the democratic process to work?
[13:45:00]
I mean, there were -- you know, there were a lot -- why during the Gilded Age did plutocrats, despite all of their wealth, they didn't actually try
to subvert elections? And I don't -- I'm not sure why there was more restraint on the part of the powerful in the past. But, you know, if,
Watergate would barely register as a scandal these days, and I don't know why.
MARTIN: You also wrote in your first column that imperialism and saber- rattling nationalism were out of style in 2000. But today, nationalism is surging globally. Do you think it's part of the same phenomenon, people
think, well, you know, elites can't be trusted, globalism can't be trusted, so stick to our knitting here? What's your thinking about it?
KRUGMAN: Well, yes. I mean, part of it was that we did have what these elites that we used to trust did, and especially the U.S. political elite
did was we kind of were a benevolent hegemon. I mean -- and everybody can tell you about all the outrageous things that were done when the United
States was the dominant power of the world. We can talk about 1973 in Chile. We can talk about a lot of horrible things that the U.S. tolerated
or even encouraged. And yet, overall, for countries that effectively were imperial powers, the United States behaved incredibly well for many
decades.
And now, we have both somewhat lost relative power and also just basically lost our own sense of benevolence. And so, stuff breaks out. And so, we
have -- I mean, the war in Ukraine a massive conventional war that actually, in many ways, despite all of the high technology, resembles World
War I more than anything else, who thought that was possible in the 21st century? And yet, there it is.
MARTIN: So, I want to go back to your core discipline, the economy. In 1998, you wrote a groundbreaking paper about how central banks struggle to
manage the economy when interest rates hit zero. I want to go back to the fact that you -- as you pointed out, really, at the beginning of our
conversation, that this country has substantially avoided recession. And I just think -- why do you think that is?
KRUGMAN: Here's the, you know, deeply unpopular opinion that will, I think, become orthodoxy a few decades from now, which is that Biden and his
team actually managed the economy extremely well. It's going to be like Harry Truman's. There'll be a resurrection of his reputation. Because they
learned from the mistakes.
Obama went too soft, too weak on the economy in 2009. And as a result, it took years to recover. And Biden said they understood, which Obama didn't,
that they really had one shot at taking strong measures. And so, they did, they spent a lot of money, which temporarily boosted inflation, although in
the end, cumulative inflation in the U.S. is similar to that -- of the whole rest of the world. But they really did put money behind, you know,
Building Back Better was the slogan, but building back on spending.
And I think that is the secret, that there were other things that went right, but the fact of the matter is that the United States -- the
administration and the razor thin Democratic majority in Congress said, OK, we have a crisis. We are going to throw a lot of money at it because this
is our one chance. And in retrospect, it worked. It worked in every respect except politics.
MARTIN: And why do you think that is?
KRUGMAN: I mean, there is some -- if you look at, you know, who voted which way in the election, basically people who pay attention to the news
supported Harris by a strong margin, and people who don't supported Trump by a strong margin. So, a lot of it is just plain. It didn't filter
through.
And look, but a little bit more to less contemptuous, so -- if you like, you know, that can come across as a really talking down to people, which I
try to avoid doing, but the -- we know, this is one of those things that's been documented again and again, if prices go up and wages also go up,
people think that they earned the wage increase and that the price increase was done to them.
And the -- you know, which is not the economist model. We think about wage price spirals and think of them as being kind of related. And -- but we did
have a shocking, fairly brief, roughly two-year period of elevated inflation, which was probably not even U.S. policies because it happened
everywhere. It was as the snarls and supply chains as the -- we emerged from COVID.
[13:50:00]
But people felt angry. If people -- you know, if we judge by consumer spending, people were doing OK, they actually -- incomes adjusted,
inflation were up. People had -- you know, the -- just now traveling seems like everybody in America has bought an airplane ticket lately. And the --
so, the objective measures of consumer health are fine, but people feel that they may be personally doing OK, but that's thanks to their efforts
and the government, whoever's in power, is responsible for the fact that things cost so much more than they did a few years ago.
I mean, try and find yourself a first world government that is not deeply unpopular right now.
MARTIN: That's true.
KRUGMAN: Right? If we're watching the implosion of Justin Trudeau in Canada. We're watching -- we just saw the conservatives in Britain suffer a
humiliating defeat. Olaf Scholz has just lost all control of Germany. You go down the list and every government -- and what's really funny is since
it's all the same thing, since everybody faced this burst of inflation, you would think that people would look around and say, well, it can't really be
this government's fault if the same thing is happening in every country around the world? But that's not -- you know, most people don't look at
that.
MARTIN: They don't look at it that way. So, before we let you go, is there one piece or two at The Times that you're particularly proud of?
KRUGMAN: Oh, gosh. I mean, I have a bunch of them proud of. I'm really proud of the stuff I wrote, you know, during Iraq, which was not my
department, but needed to do it. I wrote a 2005 piece saying, this sure as heck looks like a hell of a housing bubble and it's going to be ugly. And
that was right. I wrote at -- in early 2009 that, you know, Obama was going to come to grief because his stimulus was too small and he wasn't going to
get a second chance.
Maybe -- actually, there was one -- mostly just for the turn of phrase, but I was mostly writing about Europe, but I talked about people who believe
that you should slash spending in the face of mass unemployment, and many of them arguing that was -- that would work because it would increase
confidence. And I call that believing in the confidence theory.
And you know, you know that you succeeded when a turn of phrase that you invented is widely used without citation. And so, now these days, everybody
talks about the confidence theory. So, you know, those are some of the highlights.
MARTIN: You wrote that while resentment can put bad people in power, it can't keep them there indefinitely. Is there something that gives you hope
that the public will eventually hold leaders accountable for poor governance and move them toward better governance?
KRUGMAN: I mean, I'm a little selective here because, obviously, some bad people have held on to power for a very, very long time. But you look at --
I mean, I do look at other countries. So, we had a highly populous right- wing vaguely Trump government in Poland, and they lost power. The Polish public finally said, we've had it with these people. Now, it's still
tenuous, but it does show it can happen.
If you believe the opinion polling, I mean, a lot of the -- the role model for a lot of our fears is Hungary, which is a democracy on paper, but where
things are so heavily rigged, that's really, really hard to see the ruling power party lose power. But if current polling holds, which, you know, God
knows, but even with all of the rigging, Orban might be about to be on the way out.
So, you know, people do. People are -- it takes a while, and there's always excuses. But I -- as long as there is -- there's always hope. I mean, since
-- I've been in this business for a long time. I mean, I've seen various kinds of, you know, freedom revolutions happen in many countries, and
sometimes they come to grief. Sometimes you have a great uprising of popular outrage, and then it turns out that meet the new boss, same as the
old boss, and it's -- it all goes bad again. But sometimes it really does transform. So, sometimes things do go right.
MARTIN: Paul Krugman, thank you so much for talking with us.
KRUGMAN: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And we all benefited so much from his wisdom and his columns. Long may they continue wherever they are.
[13:55:00]
And finally, justice for Gisele Pelicot. In a historic and horrifying trial that caught the attention of France and the world, a court finally today
sentenced Pelicot's ex-husband to the maximum 20 years in prison for systematically drugging and raping her for nearly a decade. 50 other
defendants were also convicted for joining Dominique Pelicot's criminal ring.
Gisele has become a hero after waiving her anonymity and courageously revealing in public what happened to her. After the verdict, she thanked
her supporters from outside the courthouse.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GISELE PELICOT (through translator): I'm thinking finally of the unrecognized victims of stories which often unfold in the shadows. I want
you to know we share the same fight. I would like to express my most profound gratitude to everyone who supported me throughout this lengthy
trial.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Pelicot's bravery will go down in history, and also prevent this kind of thing happening in the shadows again, as she wishes.
That's it for now. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
