The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens.

So long as Donald Trump is powerful and popular, Fox News is going to achieve an advertising bonanza unheard of in the era of modern cable, because people will pay them to talk to the president.

Normally what happens in a new presidency is the president has a big agenda, and Congress is full of people with human weaknesses. And so the president indulges the human weaknesses of members of Congress in order to pass his agenda. This time it's the other way around. Donald Trump does not have much of an agenda. Congress burns with this intense Republican agenda and so does Congress that has to put up with the human weaknesses of the president in order to get a signature on the things it desperately wants to pass.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

While there is an attempt by the Trump people to say that California isn't really America. California certainly seems like America to me.

One of the things that always drives any practitioner of journalism crazy is you'll run it people who say why doesn't the media cover this or that? Well of course the media covered it. Why didn't you read about it? And, you know, it's, you know, there you are, it's not the journalist's job to knock down your door, you know, punch the URL into your computer and force you to stop watching the Kardashians and to read, you know, a report on integrity in government instead, it's your job.

Democracy requires you to learn how to lose as well as how to exercise power when you win. And that requires restraint all around. One of the reasons it works is because when you win you don't do things that are so upsetting to the losers that they feel like they have less, they have more to gain by turning over the system.