[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey welcome back everybody ladies and gentlemen my first guest tonight is the co-anchor of The Today Show and NBC's Chief legal correspondent she's now written a new book called mostly what God does please welcome to the Late Show Savannah [Applause] Guthrie [Applause] Lely so that's lovely for spring thank you for being here thank you for having me I'm so delighted I didn't trip I was a little nervous um so millions of people know you from seeing you daily on The Toda
y Show but I I recently learned that your first TV gig was not as successful well I mean it what it didn't go as planned I started in but Montana I grew up in Tucson Arizona I had never lived away from home and after I graduated College I got a job in a television market Bo Montana that was one of the smallest markets in the country and you know I was hired site unseen for the Tidy sum of $113,000 a year this is 25 years ago sure I drove up I brought all my stuff up there I was my own camera per
son my own editor I would lug the stuff around but I was excited because it's like it was my big break like I was but Montana's Diane Sawyer you have been called for 10 days when they called a staff meeting which was like four people in The Newsroom cuz it was so small and they closed the station so I so you didn't lose your job everyone lost their job all four of us yes in The Newsroom yes and so I was devastated I was like you know as kind of crappy as that job was I was so lucky to get it so
I thought I really thought right then and there like maybe this is it I'm not going to do it but I drove back home tragically and then I started sending tapes around again it ended up getting another job in local news and then a short 25 years later here we are well one of the big stories about NBC and about NBC News recently was the hiring of uh and firing of Ron McDaniel you used to be the head of the RNC and so my question for you is why did you Savannah Guthrie personally make that decision
to hire her I'm glad and I want you to answer for your crimes why did you think that was the best idea I'm glad you've given me this platform let me see if I can make this as boring as possible this answer you know I do still work there you know that right sure yeah you have any openings around here yeah yeah yeah no I mean look it was an unpleasant few days at our network no question about it did you know this was going to happen absolutely not there was no like companywide email saying oh head
s up tomorrow we're going to announce this no no no I was not in the no I knew nothing about it and look the the bosses made a decision they reversed that decision they acknowledged a mistake and we moved on and and the only thing I'll say about it is number one I didn't have anything to do with it but but look I think the instinct to try to have a diversity of opinions and a diversity of perspectives and voices as we cover an election is the right Instinct and it's complex and it's made more co
mplex by the politics that we have right now but you know I went to law school in law school we learned that if you didn't Engage The counterargument if you didn't know what all sides were saying your own position was quite week so I feel that particularly in mainstream media it we need to include an array of voices but there's a line and the line is truth the line is facts and the line is you have to be um someone upholding our democracy and that's that's to me where where the line is I don't k
now about you but I mean I'm not a journalist but I have been making jokes about this kind of stuff since 2000 and this is the seventh president IAL election that I've gone through and aren't you always excited for the primaries because you get to meet all these new characters and there all these surprises you know in this in this state or that caucus or something and this year it's I know you have to report it like you don't know but it's kind of a fate of complete what's going to happen well d
o you think so you know who's going to win the election no the primaries were F the primaries I was like wow you should tell everyone if you know no no no I mean like I always get excited for the primaries no I know we didn't get a primary season where there was this really tight race and you wondered okay who is going to Prevail obviously we have an incumbent president on the other side it's not expected that that would be a contested primary and now we have this rematch I mean it's like Hollyw
ood they just keep rebooting the same it's always like we're getting the sequel exactly the sequel that perhaps most Americans didn't really want but here we are but look it's it's a rematch but we can't treat it like a replay or have an arrogance that we know exactly how it will go or that um that that the same forces will be at play the world has changed changed in four years and so I think as reporters we have to cover it with curiosity with curiosity about real humans I mean frankly fewer Ta
lking Heads would be a good thing more reporting more policy more substance that would be a good thing I know these are idealistic Notions but I still have them Stephen that's wonderful we have took a quick break uh but don't go anywhere we right back with more Savannah G everybody stick around [Music]
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