On this “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” broadcast, moderated by Weijia Jiang:
- Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council director
- Rep. Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York
- Director Ken Burns
Click here to browse full transcripts from 2025 of “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
WEIJIA JIANG: I’m Weijia Jiang in Washington.
And this week on Face the Nation: President Trump gets a big Independence Day win, as his One Big Beautiful Bill is signed into law.
And devastating flash floods kill dozens in Texas. Tragedy this holiday weekend, as flash floods sweep through parts of Texas, killing at least 50, including 15 children, some of whom were at summer camp. We will have the latest.
Then: After a long week lobbying for votes and cutting deals with his fellow Republicans, the president spent the Fourth of July celebrating the nation’s 249th birthday by enacting his signature tax cut and spending plan.
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DONALD TRUMP (President of the United States): It’s really promises made, promises kept, and we have kept them.
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WEIJIA JIANG: But Democrats and even some Republicans are not happy with the bill’s projected debt and deficit increases, cuts to Medicaid and other provisions.
We will talk with the head of the White House Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, and New York centrist Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi about his party’s plan to build on voter apprehension about the new law.
Finally, CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson talks to filmmaker and historian Ken Burns about his new project, as America moves towards marking our 250th year.
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KEN BURNS (Documentary Filmmaker): The American Revolution is the most important event since the birth of Christ in all of world history.
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WEIJIA JIANG: He will explain why the lessons learned by our forefathers still apply today.
It’s all just ahead on Face the Nation.
Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation. Margaret is out today. I’m Weijia Jiang.
We have got a lot to get to, but we do want to begin with the unfolding disaster in Texas, where officials say at least 50 people are dead and dozens are missing after devastating flash floods.
CBS News correspondent Jason Allen reports from Kerrville, Texas.
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JASON ALLEN (voice-over): More than 1,300 state and local emergency responders are still desperately searching the banks of the Guadalupe River this morning, marking cars and homes, picking through piles of debris, trying to find survivors of a historic and deadly flash flood.
The deluge that began early Friday morning caused the usually tranquil river to rise 26 feet in only 45 minutes.
MAN: We’re at Camp Mystic looking for – for our kids.
JASON ALLEN: Much of the focus is on this summer camp, where more than two dozen third and fourth grade girls are still missing. Their parents are desperately searching.
MAN: And then we’re looking for places that they’re going to potentially be alive. There’s over 20 of them still out there.
JASON ALLEN: Kerr County does not have an outdoor warning system. That’s typically the sirens that are used to alert people to tornadoes or other strong storms.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has been a part of discussions about changing the federal government’s role in responding to major disasters, said that the weather alert system needs to be updated to give people more time and more warning ahead of extreme weather.
KRISTI NOEM (U.S. Homeland Security Secretary): The National Weather Service has indicated that, with that and NOAA, that we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal government for many, many years. And that is the reforms that are ongoing.
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JASON ALLEN: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has now signed an expanded disaster declaration order. You can see there is a little bit of rain here in the area this morning, but it’s not expected to be anything like we saw the past couple of days, Weijia.
And although officials say that this is still an active rescue mission, they acknowledge that, as the hours go by, it becomes less and less likely that they will find anyone alive.
WEIJIA JIANG: Our hearts are with all those families.
Jason Allen in Kerrville, Texas, thank you.
We turn now to Kevin Hassett. He is the director of the National Economic Council and one of President Trump’s top advisers. He’s also very popular on that driveway, where I’m usually alongside about a dozen reporters.
So, Kevin, thank you so much for your time this morning.
I want to start with trade, because there’s a big deadline coming up on Wednesday, as you know. That 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs that the president announced back in April is set to end. So far, the U.S. has announced a few deals, the U.K., Vietnam, and you’re inching closer to a final agreement with China.
Do you expect to get any more deals done with America’s biggest trading partners by Wednesday?
KEVIN HASSETT (Director, National Economic Council): Yes.
First, I do have to take a pause and share your thoughts and prayers with the people of Texas. It’s an incredible, heartbreaking story. And Kristi Noem and the president have instructed the federal government to throw everything they have got at helping the survivors and helping clean up that place.
And so, anyway, I’m really heartbroken today to see these stories. And I want you to know that, in the White House, everybody is putting every effort they can into helping the people of Texas today.
On trade, there’s going to be quite a bit of news this week. And I think the headline of the news is that there are going to be deals that are finalized. There are a whole number that Jamieson Greer has negotiated with foreign governments. And then there are going to be letters that are sent to countries saying, here’s how we think it ought to go because the deals aren’t advanced enough.
And the headline is going to be that countries are agreeing around the world to open their markets up to our products and to allow us to put some kind of tariff on their products when they come into the U.S. And exactly what the numbers will be will be things that you will find out in the news this week.
WEIJIA JIANG: And, Kevin, you said there are going to be deals.
For those really important trading partners, if there’s not a deal by Wednesday, is the president going to extend this pause?
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: You know, the United States is always willing to talk to everybody about everything that’s going on in the world. And there are deadlines and there are things that are close. And so maybe things will push back the dead – past the deadline, or maybe they won’t.
In the end, the president is going to make that judgment.
WEIJIA JIANG: And you also mentioned those letters that will start going out tomorrow, according to President Trump. He said about 10 to 12 countries will receive them.
Do you – can you tell us who’s going to get one and what they say?
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: I’m sorry, I can’t, because – because, again, the part of the letter that could be happening, right, is that we’re close to a deal, we’re not really satisfied with the progress that we’re making in the deal, and so we’re saying, OK, fine we’re going to send a letter, but maybe you get a deal at the last minute too.
Until we see everything that plays out, I think that we need to just hold our fire and watch for the news this week.
WEIJIA JIANG: Is it fair to say that those notices are going to go to our smaller trading partners, as you negotiate with our bigger ones?
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: I think that it could be that it’ll be both.
But also don’t forget that, when we have great trade deals, our smaller trading partners could become much bigger trading partners. And that’s, I think, one of the reasons why countries are racing to set deals up with us ahead of the deadline.
WEIJIA JIANG: I have to ask you about the deadlines, Kevin, to make these deals, because you just mentioned you’re always open. The president said there’s not really any flexibility left between now and Wednesday.
Less than two weeks ago, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said that deals would be wrapped up by Labor Day. So I wonder if – how can companies plan if the goalposts keep moving? How can countries negotiate if they don’t even know how much time they have left?
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Right.
Well, the rough outlines of the deals are becoming clear to everybody, because we have some deals, like the U.K. and the Vietnam deal, that are starting to be, I guess, guidelines for what might happen.
But one of the things that we’re seeing that’s really interesting to me is that people are just onshoring production to the U.S. at a record rate. And so we have had record job creation, record capital spending. And this is even ahead of the Big Beautiful Bill. And so I think what’s happening is that people are responding to President Trump’s potential threats to have high tariffs on countries by moving their activity here into the U.S., which is creating jobs, more than two million jobs since he took office, and raising wages.
You know, wage growth is heading up towards the really, really high pinnacles that we saw in 2017. And so I think there’s a race right now to get activity into the U.S. And, in part, that race has been kicked off by President Trump.
WEIJIA JIANG: I remember, after these reciprocal tariffs were announced, you told me that there are about 15 deals that countries were bringing to the president.
How close – if you could give us any number at all, what number are we going to see this week?
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Yes, you will have – you will have to get that from Jamieson and the president. I think that we have seen lots of deals that have been finalized by negotiators, and then the president finds things that can make them better.
And so it’s – I’m not going to get ahead of the president on the number of deals.
WEIJIA JIANG: OK, thanks, Kevin. We will look out for that.
I want to move now to the One Big Beautiful Bill that…
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Yes.
WEIJIA JIANG: … of course, the president signed into law on Independence Day.
You have it, and now you have to pay for it. And there’s a consensus that this bill adds tremendously to the deficit. I know that you are so familiar with these numbers. The Yale Budget Lab estimates it will add $3 trillion to the debt. The Tax Foundation says this tax portion of the bill could also add $3 trillion to the deficit.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which factors an interest on the debt, says it could add up to $5 trillion over the next decade. And on this very program, even Speaker Johnson answered in the affirmative when asked if this bill would add over $4 trillion to the deficit.
I know that the administration says the bill will actually shrink the deficit by $1.5 trillion. Help me understand…
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Sure.
WEIJIA JIANG: … why there is such a drastic difference between your numbers and all those others.
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Well – well, first of all, let’s remember that science is not democracy. Truth is not democracy.
Our estimates are based on modeling that we used last time when I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to say what would happen if we had a bill, how much growth we would get. And we said – and we were criticized soundly – that we would get 3 percent growth.
And we even had the really technical macroeconomic models that said that we would get 3 percent growth. We run the same models through this tax bill, it’s even better. And what we’re seeing is that, if you get 3 percent growth again, then that’s $4 trillion more in revenue than the CBO and these other bodies are giving us credit for.
They have been wrong in the past, and they’re being wrong again, in our belief. But the thing that disappoints me is that, if I put out a model and I say, hey, here’s what’s going to happen, we’re going to get 3 percent growth, and then it turns out it’s 1.5 percent growth, then, as an academic economist, as a scientist, then it’s my duty to say, what did I get wrong? What did my model miss?
These people aren’t doing that. And that’s the thing that I find disappointing, because we put peer-reviewed academic stuff on the table and said, we’re going to get that 3 percent growth, and then we got it right last time. And we believe we’re going to get it right this time.
But if you think that 1.8 percent growth is what’s going to happen over the next 10 years, then you should agree with the CBO number. But there’s another part of the CBO number that you need to worry about. And that is that, if we don’t pass the bill, then it’s the biggest tax hike in history.
And with that big tax hike, then, of course, we would have a recession. The CEA says that we’d have about a 4 percent drop in GDP and lose nine million jobs. If we had a 4 percent drop in GDP and we lost nine billion jobs, what would happen to the deficit?
And so I don’t think that the CBO has a very strong record. I don’t think these places have a very strong record. And what they need to do is get back to the basics of looking at macroeconomic models. There’s a really famous macroeconomist in Harvard named Jim Stock. They should go back and read everything Jim Stock has written for the last 15 years and fold those into their models, and then maybe we could talk.
WEIJIA JIANG: I want to talk to you, Kevin, about another number that I know you and the president disagree with, but that Democrats and many Republicans are worried about.
And that’s the CBO’s projection that as many as 12 million Americans could lose Medicaid coverage because of this law. What is the NEC’s estimate for how many people could lose coverage?
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Well, yes, let’s unbundle that a little bit, because, first, on the CBO coverage, so what are we doing?
So what we’re doing is, we’re asking for a work requirement, but the work requirement is that you need to be looking for work or even doing volunteer work, and you don’t need to do it until your kids are 14 or older. And so the idea that that’s going to cause a massive hemorrhaging in availability of insurance doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.
And then, if you look at the CBO numbers, if you look at the big numbers they say that people are going to lose insurance, about five million of those are people who have other insurance. There are people who have two types of insurance. And so, therefore, if they lose one, they’re still insured.
And so the CBO numbers on that side don’t make any sense to us at all, but, on the other side, go back to 2017, when we had work requirements for Obamacare, and they said that we’d lose about four million insured between 2017 and 2019, and about double that over the next 10 years. And, in fact, the number of insured went up, went up quite a bit, by more than 10 million, over those two years, because the bottom line is, the best way to get insurance is to get a job.
And we have got a Big Beautiful Bill that’s going to create a lot of job creation and a lot of insurance. And the CBO is just not accounting for that.
And, again, they need to go back and look at all the things that they got wrong. You realize that they’re underestimating Medicaid spending by 20 percent. They should look back at all the things they got wrong and explain what they’re going to do to get it right in the future and to do a better job. And if they do that, we will take them more seriously.
But, right now, I don’t think any serious thinker could take them seriously, because they have done so wrong – been so wrong for so long. Even back – if you go back to when President Obama passed Obamacare, they got every single number there wrong about how many people would get private insurance and how few people would get Medicaid and so on.
And so their record in this modeling space is about as bad as it’s possible to be. In fact, you could kind of roll the roulette wheel and come up with a better set of numbers, a better history, track record history, than CBO.
WEIJIA JIANG: Well, Kevin, what about the enhanced subsidies? Is that number wrong too, that the ACA allows about $705 for people to help pay for their health insurance?
That doesn’t sound like the waste, fraud and abuse that I know you and the president have talked about eliminating. That just sounds like people who cannot afford coverage, and now it’s going to be even more so with these subsidies gone.
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Right. Well – well, what – what – if you’re – if you’re looking at the – the change in the tax on the providers, which is something that has been a key talking point for the Democrats, they say that that’s going to close down rural hospitals, what has happened is that, rather than let the states – the states have this game where they give a dollar to a hospital, and then the federal government matches the dollar, and then the state taxes some of the dollar away.
In other words, that we have an agreement with the states that they’re going to match, but then they have this trick where they tax the hospitals after they give them money, so really it’s the federal government giving them money. And that’s why we have been overspending Medicaid by 20 percent since this trick started happening.
And so what we have done is that we have put a haircut on that, but we have also put $50 billion into a trust fund to make sure that the rural hospitals are there to treat the sick.
WEIJIA JIANG: OK.
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: And so I think this is a prudent reform. It’s sound budgetary politics, and I think that nobody’s going to lose their insurance.
WEIJIA JIANG: Kevin Hassett, we will watch for how that ages.
Thank you very much. Really appreciate your time.
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: And if I get it wrong, we will check and we will talk about why I got it wrong, I promise.
WEIJIA JIANG: OK.
Thank you. We will have you back. Thank you very much, Kevin.
DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Thanks, Weijia Jiang.
We now turn to Congressman – Face the Nation will be back in one minute. Stay with us.
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WEIJIA JIANG: We turn now to New York Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi.
Congressman, thank you so much for your time this morning.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI (D-New York): Yes, thanks so much for having me.
WEIJIA JIANG: Well, you just heard from Kevin Hassett.
You know, like President Trump, he said, without this bill, it would be one of the greatest tax hikes for the American public. They say it is the greatest tax cut in American history.
You sit on the Ways and Means Committee, so I have to wonder how you describe it.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: I describe it as the big, ugly bill, not the Big Beautiful Bill.
It’s going to do a lot of things that are going to hurt a lot of people in our country. The biggest one, which you talked about with Mr. Hassett, is increase the deficit enormously in the country. And what that does is, that creates inflation, that keeps interest rates high, that makes it hard for people to buy homes, makes it hard for them to borrow money to do the things that they want to do.
In addition, it’s going to knock a bunch of people off of health care. We know that the Republicans have tried for a decade to undo the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, and this is kind of a backdoor way to take health insurance away from people that really need it the most here in our nation.
And it’s going to cause health insurance costs to go up for a lot of people. One of the president’s biggest issues he campaigned on was reducing prices rapidly. On day one, we’re going to cut the costs.
Well, costs are not going down. Inflation – inflation is going to be affected by this deficit. Interest rates are going to stay high, and this is going to have a negative impact on health insurance costs for many people in our country.
WEIJIA JIANG: I know that you just brought up Medicaid and potential loss of coverage. What do you say to some Americans who might wonder, well, why should the able-bodied not have to work in order to access Medicaid?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: Well, you have to understand that 92 percent of the people that are able to work are currently working, and the 8 percent that are not are often people that are taking care of disabled children.
Remember that two-thirds of the people in nursing homes are on Medicaid. One-tenth of all the veterans in the United States of America are on Medicaid. Medicaid is a lifeline for so many people that are facing such difficult circumstances that we can’t even possibly imagine.
And why would we be taking health insurance and food benefits away from some of the most needy Americans, while we’re providing what I believe is an unnecessary tax break for some of the wealthiest Americans? It just doesn’t make sense that you’re reducing taxes for some of the wealthiest people, hurting some of the lowest-income people, while blowing the biggest deficit in the budget that we’ve had in the history of the country.
Those things just don’t add up.
WEIJIA JIANG: Well, just last week, you said you agree with 75 percent of what’s in this package. That’s a pretty significant number. So why isn’t it worth the 25 percent that you don’t like?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: Because those things that I just mentioned are so devastating.
I like the idea that we’re investing more money to secure the border. I like the idea that we are paying – providing tax breaks to lower-income folks and hardworking middle class folks and people aspiring to the middle class.
I like the idea of providing tax breaks for those folks. But why are we providing – and when the economy is doing as well as it has been over the past several years, why would we be providing a tax decrease, tax breaks for some of the wealthiest Americans in our country, while blowing a massive hole in the deficit?
WEIJIA JIANG: Congressman, I want to turn to an op-ed that you wrote in “The Wall Street Journal” last week saying Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary should be a – quote – “loud wakeup call for Democrats.”
What lessons do you think your party can learn from – from his campaign?
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: Well, you know, I disagree with Mr. Mamdani. I have to make that very clear that, you know, I’m a Democratic capitalist. I’m not a Democratic socialist.
And – but you have to recognize that he tapped into something. He tapped into the same thing that Donald Trump tapped into, which is that people are concerned that the economy is not working for them. Affordability and the economy is the number one issue in the country.
And, too often, Democrats are not perceived as being focused on affordability and the economy and the middle class, and people aspiring to the middle class and their economic concerns. They see Democrats as being primarily focused on reproductive rights and on LGBT protections, which are important issues, but they’re not the issues that people think about every night when they’re lying in bed thinking about paying their bills or when they’re talking about how they’re going to send their kids to school.
So Democrats have got to do a better job learning from both Trump and Mamdani, not with their solutions, which I think are wrong, but with the diagnosis of the problem, that we’re frustrated, we’re concerned. Everybody in America, whether you’re a right-wing conservative or a left-wing progressive, should believe that, in return for working hard, you make enough money so you can live a good life.
You can buy a home, you can educate your children, you can pay for your health insurance, you can retire one day without being scared. People don’t feel that currently, and we have to do a better job of communicating that.
WEIJIA JIANG: Well, I’m glad you brought up the perception, because you also wrote that Democrats must recognize the future starts with a message of economic security for American families.
I covered the Biden campaign. I covered the Harris campaign. That was the center of their messages. So what’s the problem here? Is it the messenger? Is it the messaging? Because they have that message already.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM SUOZZI: It’s a combination.
Number one, the Democratic Party as a whole has to have this platform that focuses on what the people care about. They care about the economy. They care about immigration. They care about taxes. They care about crime. They care about health care.
But then we have to recognize that the media infrastructure is fractured. And Trump figured it out before the Democrats have, which is that it’s not just traditional media, like your shows and newspapers, but it’s social media. It’s podcasts.
Podcasts, the top 500 podcasts in America, 400 of the top 500 are right- leaning, 100 are left-leaning, and of the 100 left-leaning ones, half of them beat the you-know what out of the Democrats. Then you have other national media, and then you have some of this ethnic and underground media related to WeChat and WhatsApp and different types of apps that people use.
So we have to communicate across all those platforms, because people are getting their messages in these fractured environments and living in these echo chambers. And we have to do a better job communicating across all these platforms and getting Democrats as a whole to focus on the economy, immigration, et cetera.
WEIJIA JIANG: All right, Congressman, we are all trying to learn all those new languages. Thank you so much for your time this morning.
And we’ll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.
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WEIJIA JIANG: If you’re looking for more Face the Nation, including extended interviews and special content, you can visit our YouTube page or subscribe to our podcast. It’s available on all platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon.
We will be right back.
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WEIJIA JIANG: We will be right back with an interview with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on the American Revolution.
Stay with us.
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WEIJIA JIANG: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION.
A day ahead of America’s 249th birthday, “CBS EVENING NEWS” co-anchor John Dickerson met up with filmmaker and historian Ken Burns at Monticello, Virginia, the home of our third president, Thomas Jefferson. Burns has a new film out this November on PBS entitled “The American Revolution,” and he gave us a preview.
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JOHN DICKERSON: You call the – the revolutionary period a civil war.
KEN BURNS (Documentary Filmmaker): It is.
JOHN DICKERSON: Was that always your conception of the –
KEN BURNS: No.
JOHN DICKERSON: How did you come to think of it that way?
KEN BURNS: I think because there’s no photographs and there’s no news reels and they’re in, you know, stockings and breaches and powdered wigs there’s a sense of distance from them. I think we also are so proud, rightfully, of the power of the big ideas that we – we just don’t want to get into the fact that it was this bloody civil war, patriots against loyalists, disaffected people, native people, enslaved and free people within it, foreign powers that are in – ultimately engaged in this. This is a big world war by the end.
I think we – we – we perhaps are fearful that those big ideas are diminished and they’re not in any way. They’re, in fact, become even more inspiring, that they emerge from the turmoil.
JOHN DICKERSON: How should we think about the Declaration of Independence this period in America in our present day?
KEN BURNS: First of all, I think the American Revolution is the most important event since the birth of Christ in all of world history.
JOHN DICKERSON: Why?
KEN BURNS: I mean it turned the world upside down, which is the cliche. Before this moment, everyone was a subject. Essentially under the rule of somebody else. We had created in this moment a very brand-new thing called a citizen. And this has had powerful effects. It’s going to set in motion revolutions for the next two plus centuries all around the world, all attempting to sort of give a new expression to this idea that all men are created equal, that they’re endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. And that’s a big, big deal in world history.
So, what happens here is I suppose you could, you know, miss the point and say it’s a quarterfinal between Englishmen, but it is the beginning of something absolutely new in the world. And – and that is something to celebrate. And to understand, too, that it comes out of so much division that’s going on between the states. People in New Hampshire and Georgia are – they’re – they’re from different countries. They believe different things, that you could have the divisions of – of loyalists and patriots, you could have this – all the – the things that are rolling in these colonies and understand that out of that we could still figure out a way to come together.
JOHN DICKERSON: Americans think they’re pretty divided right now. They weren’t nearly as divided as they were during the revolutionary period.
KEN BURNS: Here is the simple thing. We’re always divided. So, it – it ebbs and flows a little bit, but we’re always have big differences.
You know, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal is not met with universal approval. The Civil War kills 750,000 Americans we think over the issue of slavery. We have our own revolution. There are lot of periods. The Vietnam period, when we’re so particularly divided.
So, I think there’s a little bit of chicken little, you know, oh, the sky is falling because now things are always worse now than they ever were. The only – the reason why historians, and God knows I’m an amateur historian, feel a kind of optimism is because there’s something familiar. There’s, you know, the Bible says there’s nothing new under the sun, human nature essentially doesn’t change, and that’s true.
What’s great about the revolution is, for a moment things actually – there was something new in the world. And that’s the thing that we need to use. That’s the leverage we have to bring us back to the ability to speak to one another, to understand how you solve your differences, as opposed to the sort of soup of anger and – and distrust that seemed to be, you know, everywhere now.
JOHN DICKERSON: What is a citizen’s obligation now?
KEN BURNS: A citizen’s obligation now is the same as it’s ever been. And that’s the most important thing. There’s a wonderful phrase, a little bit later from the famous words, where Jefferson says, “all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable.” Meaning, we all kind of have gravitated to be under authoritarian rule. You know, the trains running on time, or we get at least this. But we’re going to require of you to be a citizen something more. It’s got to be active.
The pursuit of happiness is not the acquisition of things in a marketplace of objects, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. That’s what the founders said. To be virtuous, to live a virtuous life, to continually educate yourself is what was required to sustain this republic. And I think that’s what we’ve gotten away from. Everything is sort of all individualized. We’re all free agents. We don’t realize that freedom, the thing that we tout, is not just what I want, but also that’s intention with what we need.
And I think what happens is that when we study these words, we can go back to the sense of newness and freshness that they represented and rededicate ourselves. And that means me, for me, and you for you, to this idea that the pursuit of happiness is about lifelong learning. It’s about becoming ever more educated to the responsibility of citizenship. And that’s a huge, huge responsibility. Not just to take your feed, not just to go with the flow, not just to get your information that – that sort of ratifies what you already thought, but to actually explore what my neighbor thinks.
JOHN DICKERSON: Being an American, as Jefferson saw it, as the founders saw it, was a continuing obligation to engage with its history.
KEN BURNS: That’s exactly right. And – and this is really important, in order to form the government, they had to reach back through the middle ages, through the dark ages, back to antiquity, to bring up these ideas like virtue and temperance and moderation and all of the things that all of them were looking for.
I mean, the amazing things is, we’re here at Thomas Jefferson’s house, but we don’t have a country without his words, but also we don’t have a country without George Washington. And yet we know about all of these men. They’re deeply flawed, in many important ways. And I think today, in our binary culture, you know, where everything’s a one or a zero, or it’s a red state or a blue state, it’s my way or the highway, we’ve forgotten that it’s possible to tolerate, as we do among – with the people we love, their strengths and their weaknesses.
So, heroism is not perfection if we can take an historical view that permits us to see a Jefferson and a Washington in – in these very complicated understanding of them, then it’s possible to then breathe, to have some room to understand who we are now, who we were then, and where we might be, which is, of course, the most important thing. All the anxiety about this present moment is really not so much about the present moment, but about, will we survive.
JOHN DICKERSON: Can you talk about the genius and brilliance of his words without sitting right in the middle Jefferson’s owning of slaves, enslaved people?
KEN BURNS: No. I think this is the important thing. And somehow we’ve – we’ve gotten to the idea that you just don’t want to mess with the good stuff and let’s just pretend – pay no attention to that man behind the – you can’t do that. A good story is a good story is a good story. And this is a really good part of the story. It’s complicated. It’s dark. There are human beings in this house who are owned by a person who has articulated universal rights for everyone. And what’s so great is that the vagueness of the words has allowed everybody to plow through and make it their own. Not just here, but all around the stuff.
So – so, when he says “pursuit of happiness,” that may be the key word. When we say a “more perfect union” in the Constitution later on, that may be the key word, that this is a process that we’re engaged in. And so maybe the – the poetry, but also the vagueness of the words have opened a door that have – have – have allowed women to come through, that have allowed enslaved people to have citizenship, that have expanded in so many different ways. And all around the world, that that’s – this is progress.
And so, I think going back and understanding them for the deep undertow that’s present, and sometimes really discomforting undertow about it, is OK. It’s – nothing is diminished. Don’t make a Madison Avenue version of – – of – of our past, but celebrate the grittiness. And I think in this case, the violence of the American Revolution, we do a service to those ideas that we think need to be protected. I mean, with – this is not ideas that are fixed in amber, you know, this is – this is – this is gritty, gritty stuff. People died. Lots of people died fighting for this in – in just horrific struggles when the main form of killing was a bayonet. That’s not fun.
JOHN DICKERSON: President Trump has issued an executive in which he says basically history has gotten out of balance as of the American government, either funds it through museums or national parks, and he said instead that – that this federal role in history should instead “focus on the greatness of the achievements and the progress of the American people.”
So, President Trump thinks there’s an imbalance in the way we talk about history. How do you see that?
KEN BURNS: I don’t see the imbalance. I think we need to celebrate the greatness of the American people. The greatness of the American people comes from telling these compensated stories. And – and – and that’s a good story is a good story is a good story. That’s what you’re looking for. You don’t want to just say is, otherwise it’s just sort of slogans that are – that are put up on the wall.
We want to feel that we know who Thomas Jefferson is. We need to understand the internal struggles that Abraham Lincoln had. We have to understand what was going through Rosa Parks’ mind when she, you know, refused to give up her seat on the bus. This in no way take away from the glory (ph), it makes the story fuller and richer and – and permits purchase for everyone. You – – you want a – a history to be complicated because it gives everybody a chance to own or have access to it.
JOHN DICKERSON: Diversity of voice in storytelling was important to you. That also is under assault at the moment. The president basically is trying to remove all efforts to keep diversity in mind. Is there something that is lost in that?
KEN BURNS: Well, you know, there’s a strength in the wagon wheel of all the different spokes into the hub. We’re all looking for the hub, whatever the hub is. Meaning, you know, something that pulls us together, that chorus. That’s what we’re all about.
And so that – the strength of that wheel has to do with having the spokes and having a multitude of perspective. The impulse for some is to say there’s only one perspective. And that’s true of many different things. Sometimes say it’s got to be only from this perspective. It’s got to be Freudian or it’s got to be Marxist economic or it’s got to be symbolic or it’s got to be, you know, post-modern, or whatever the thing is. You don’t need that.
(END VT)
JIANG: We’ll be right back with more of John’s conversation with Ken Burns.
Stay with us.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
(BEGIN VC)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A shot rings out. No one knows where the shot came from. That leads to promiscuous shooting. Mostly by the British. It’s not a battle. It’s not a skirmish. It’s a massacre.
Now blood has been shed. Now the man on your left has been shot through the head. Your neighbor on the right has been badly wounded. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle.
(END VC)
JIANG: That’s a preview of Ken Burns’ upcoming new film “The American Revolution.”
Here’s more of John Dickerson’s conversation with the documentary filmmaker.
(BEGIN VT)
JOHN DICKERSON: Going back to this idea of ongoing nourishment of history, part of, go back to the Revolution, to learn who we are now. Do you ever think of this work as an intervention?
People don’t re-read The Declaration every Fourth of July, as Thomas Jefferson wanted. People, in your telling, seem to have lost sight of some of the parts of our founding. Maybe we don’t even know them because we’ve been told different kinds of stories. Is this an intervention?
KEN BURNS: No. Intervention imposes between the storyteller, that would be us, and the story we’re trying to tell and our audience, some sort of larger, high-fluting purpose. A good story is a good story is a good story. And that’s all we’re interested in doing.
The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday because you sit there on a blanket, on a field, looking at these fireworks with all of these other people in the dark and you share with them in common that we agree to basically a sentence in a – in a – in a document, written, you know, by a Virginian who lived here, you know, 249 years ago. That’s really powerful stuff.
So, the fact that it can be misinterpreted by some, this is always going to be the case. Manipulated by others, this will always be the case. Sort of, you know, genuinely embraced but for the wrong reasons, this will always be the case. But we still, we know. We understand that we hold these truths to be self-evident, even though they weren’t, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn’t get any better of that.
JOHN DICKERSON: You’ve told a lot of your stories on PBS. PBS is under threat.
KEN BURNS: All off them. All of them. All of them (INAUDIBLE).
JOHN DICKERSON: Are you worried about the future of PBS?
KEN BURNS: Of course I am. And I’ve always been worried about it. In the 1990s, I think I testified in the House or the Senate, in appropriations or authorization about the endowments are about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting a half dozen times.
JOHN DICKERSON: Make the case for PBS.
KEN BURNS: It is the Declaration of Independence applied to the communications world. It’s a bottom up. It’s the largest network in the country. There’s 330 stations. It mostly serves, and this is where the elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is so shortsighted, it mainly serves rural areas in which the PBS signal may be the only they get. They also have not only our good children’s and primetime stuff, they have Classroom of the Air continuing education, homeland security, crop reports, weather, emergency information. That we’re going to take away? This seems foolhardy and seems misguided, mainly because there is a perception among a handful of people that this is somehow a blue or a left wing thing when this is the place that for 32 years gave William F. Buckley a show. And it’s – I mean it’s – and it’s – – that show is, by the way, is still going on and moderated by a conservative.
So, I just think that maybe we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And I couldn’t do – let me personalize it. And I didn’t want to. John, I couldn’t do any of the films I’ve done without them being on PBS. I – I could go into a streaming service or a premium cable tomorrow and get every one of the millions of dollars it took to do this in one pitch. But they wouldn’t give me ten years. They want it in a year or a year and a half. And that’s – I can’t do that. Same with Vietnam. Same with the Civil War. Same with jazz. Same with the national parks. Same with, you know, the Roosevelts. All these – country music. All of those have taken time to incubate. And that has been under the system that has one foot tentatively in the marketplace and the other proudly out. Kind of like the national parks, or the Declaration of Independence, applied to the landscape.
These are really good, American institutions that represent everybody from the bottom up, which is what it’s always about. That’s the essence of what Thomas Jefferson was talking about.
JOHN DICKERSON: As someone who worked so hard on telling the story of slavery and enslaved people in various different ways, what did you learn about slavery in America from working on this?
KEN BURNS: It’s so complicated and so interesting. I – I think the thing that was most striking that’s come to me is that it was really clear that our founders, even those founders who owned other human beings, knew that the institution of slavery was indefensible. It’s only later in the 19th century that you’ll sort of make – you try to make excuses for why it’s OK. And that they’re really wrestling with ways. But there are human beings that are owned by other human beings. It’s very, very complicated. And you can never say a categorical them about anybody. And that’s all we do.
Look, I have – I have made films about the U.S. for all of my professional life. But I’ve also made films simultaneously about us. All of the intimacy of that and all the majesty and complexity and contradiction and controversy of the U.S. And the thing I’ve learned, if I’ve learned anything, is that there’s only “us.” There’s is no “them.” And we’re constantly being told there’s a them. There is no them.
JOHN DICKERSON: If there is only “us,” and no “them,” it is also a strain in American history, look at them, go get them.
KEN BURNS: That’s right. It’s the simplest thing. It’s the authoritarians’ playbook.
JOHN DICKERSON: There’s a lot of talk about “them” these days. Are you hoping to pierce that with this telling of America’s beginning?
KEN BURNS: I – I don’t have a conscious desire to do this. This implies a kind of agenda, a kind of a political agenda.
We consciously understand, as we’re working on a film, how many – how much is rhyming in the present and it changes a little bit and changes that. But we don’t ever try to put neon signs going, look how much this is so much like today. We just want to let that resonate. And you go, oh my goodness, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, they may have wigs and they may have breaches. They’re very much like us.
JOHN DICKERSON: Because if you put too much of a thumb on the scale, you ruin the story and then you kill the power of the story.
KEN BURNS: That’s exactly right. You have to let it tell the story. Our job is to be a good storyteller, period, full stop, end of sentence.
JOHN DICKERSON: Which means telling a story well enough that somebody might take a conclusion that’s totally different than the one –
KEN BURNS: Oh, absolutely. You – I – you know, I remember watching this and going, oh, my God, there’s – there’s actually places for all different kinds of people to find purchase. You know, this is a big – a good story is a big house with lots of different doors. And we tend to go through the front door and think that’s it. Somebody may be coming in the side door. Somebody may be coming – climbing up and – and breaking in from the second story. However you get in, you’re in. And that’s all you want is the – it – you know, stories are invitations. Like, honey, how was your day, right? It doesn’t begin, I backed slowly down the driveway, avoiding the garbage can at the curb. You – you just edit human experience and that’s what we spent the last ten years doing. We were saying, this story of the American founding, our – our creation myth, is as important a story to get right as anything. And we’ve spent ten years trying to get it right.
JOHN DICKERSON: What is the difference between the Revolutionary War and the American Revolution?
KEN BURNS: Benjamin Rush, who is the great physician of the time, one of the signors of The Declaration, said that when it was over, that the – the American war is over, but the American revolution is going on. I think if you accept the idea of pursuit of happiness, if you accept the idea of a “more perfect union,” you realize, as we do in our own lives and our own work, in our own relationships, that it’s about process. That we’re engaged in an ongoing desire to achieve these things. This perfection is what you want to tilt for. It’s unattainable, obviously. But if you’re not engaged in the active pursuit of perfection, self, relationship, community, country, world, then you’re stopped. You’re static. And you’re not going forward. And I think there’s not an American that does not want to go forward.
(END VT)
JIANG: John’s full interview with Ken Burns is posted on our YouTube channel and our web page. You can also listen to the on the FACE THE NATION podcast platform.
We’ll be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
JIANG: Well, that’s it for us today. Thanks for watching. Margaret will be back next week. FOR FACE THE NATION, I’m Weijia Jiang.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)