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[suspenseful music] - Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour & Company.

Here's what's coming up.

- And so I thought, okay, he's pushing things forward, but I also got to see that, that can be kind of dark at times.

- [Christiane] Biographer Walter Isaacson on the controversial Elon Musk.

Our conversation about his spiraling influence as a billionaire entrepreneur, then... - [Speaker] One in every three women around the world experience physical or sexual violence during her lifetime.

- The never-ending scourge of gender-based violence and ways to tackle it, plus... - The bottom line is Joe Biden is already the oldest president ever to be an American president.

Of course, second oldest was Donald Trump.

- [Christiane] The New Yorker's Susan Glasser on what she calls the dangerous reign of the octogenarians.

But does age really affect the ability to lead?

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- Welcome to the program everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York.

Elon Musk needs no introduction.

The world's richest person, he's a divisive figure, a villain to some and a genius to others.

He's at the forefront of the electric car movement, space travel, social media, and now artificial intelligence.

Along with other tech heavyweights, the Tesla boss joined a meeting with congressional leaders in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the risks and the opportunities of AI.

Here is Musk leaving the meeting.

- I think something good will come of this.

I think this meeting may go on history as being very important for the future of civilization.

The reason that I've been such an advocate for AI safety in advance of sort of anything terrible happening is that I think the consequences of AI going wrong are severe.

So, we have to be proactive rather than reactive.

- Like many powerful billionaires, Musk also finds himself willing and able to affect policy, even war.

Our colleague Walter Isaacson spent two years shadowing him and the result is a 670-page biography that is certainly making waves as we discussed here in New York.

Walter Isaacson, welcome- - Thank you, Christiane.

- to our program.

So here you are authoring yet another genius biography.

What is it about Elon Musk that really peaked your imagination for this?

- Well, when I first started, he was the only person able to get American astronauts into orbit ever since the space shuttle had been decommissioned and he was doing more than anybody to bring us into the era of electric vehicles, to create batteries, to create solar roofs.

So, I thought he was doing these epic missions.

Of course, in the middle, after a year or so of reporting, he decides to quietly start buying Twitter.

So, it became much more of a rollercoaster ride.

It also revealed both the drives that come in his head, but the demons that are sometimes dark and sometimes he can channel into drives.

- What did you go in thinking about him and what did you emerge with?

- I thought at first that he was a technologist who had a really good feel for manufacturing, how to make factories.

Also, that he was a risk taker and, man, in this country, in fact, in all of the West.

We used to be more of the risk takers.

You know, everybody who came to the United States came, whether the Mayflower or across the River Grand taking some risks.

But now we have more referees than we have risk takers.

You know, we have more lawyers and regulators than we have innovators.

And so I thought, okay, he's pushing things forward.

But I also got to see that, that can be kind of dark at times, and it can break things.

It can blow up rockets and then of course, it can really disrupt Twitter.

So, it's about, it's a story about somebody who's a tightly woven fabric of light and dark strains.

- And I wonder whether it's, you know, you talk about referees, but one of the critiques of Musk is that he's such a powerful, private, wealthy individual that he can just walk around the world making policy, you know, replacing NASA, replacing the internet, having a real role in a active war like in, you know, our internet generation in Ukraine.

I need to ask you 'cause it's in the news.

- Yeah.

- How do you explain this discrepancy regarding the Starlink and the activation over the Ukraine attempt to take the war to Crimea in the early days?

You said one thing in your book that he turned it off and he says another thing and you've had to walk it back.

- Well, I talked to him about that.

- How does that happen?

- That night when it was happening in September, he said to me, "Hey, we've disabled and we're not enabling this attack, because it could start World War III."

He was very apocalyptic.

He says, "We're not gonna let him use Starlink to do this sneak attack there."

And I made the mistake of thinking he meant that night he turned it off.

And later he said, "No, it had already been disabled."

But the Ukrainians, all the text messages are in the book.

They're pretty amazing.

Were trying to get him to enable it, 'cause they did not know he had it disabled.

And so, I made a mistake in thinking that the decision to disable it was made that night.

It had been made before then, it's called geofencing, but it's still the main thing was he got to decide that night, do the Ukrainians get to do this attack or not do this attack?

So, it doesn't affect that and it doesn't even affect the larger question is, how come he got to decide?

Why is a private citizen deciding whether or not the Ukrainians can do it?

- Well that was question.

How is that even possible?

Does that trouble you about somebody like Musk?

- Well, I think it even troubled Musk after a while, because he talks to General Mark Milley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks to Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor.

And they work out a deal where SpaceX, Musk's company, will sell some of these satellites to the US Military and the US Military gets to decide.

And that's really the way it should be.

But there's a larger question here, which is, how come when the Russians attack Ukraine, all of the US Military satellites, Viasat, everybody else doing communications gets knocked out.

And the only person in the world who has a communication system that can work, is Musk.

And it's still the case.

And part of the reason is we don't build these things as well as we should.

- So, that's a lesson for American technology and business and science.

- Absolutely.

NASA and the defense agencies, they should not have to depend on one company.

Do you know that all communications, big, big communication satellite, even for our intelligence agencies that have to go into high earth orbit, they're done by SpaceX.

They launched it, because NASA and Boeing have become somewhat sclerotic.

- And what about even this week as he meets with Kim Jong-un, President Putin praised Musk, a great American businessman, a great citizen of the world.

Does that bother Musk that this, you know, act of imperialistic aggression as it's being described?

You know, he's talking to the aggressors and maybe getting a little bit of context for his Starlink availability from what the Russians say.

This idea of starting World War III, is that really a concern right now?

- Well, Musk had somewhat of an apocalyptic vision, as he often does, of what can happen.

And he talked to the Russian ambassador.

The thing though to remember is when Russia invades Ukraine, that night Ukraine has no way to communicate with its troops.

Viasat's out, all the other satellites out.

The only way to communicate would be Starlink and Musk rushes hundreds and then thousands of Starlink terminals over there for free as a donation.

So, he's supporting the Ukrainians, but at a certain point he says to me, "How did I get into this war?

You know, I didn't mean for this to be used for offensive purposes."

- Here's a comparison that you make between Musk and Jobs.

And let me read it.

"Like Steve Jobs, he genuinely did not care if he offended or intimidated the people he worked with, as long as he drove them to accomplish feats, they thought were impossible.

'It is not your job to make people on your team love you,' he said at SpaceX executive session years later.

'In fact, it's counterproductive.'"

Okay, so I get that.

But the sort of companion question about that is, there was a discriminatory sort of working conditions at the Tesla factory, right?

In Fremont, it went to court.

If Elon says he knew so much about all the working conditions, wherever his factory flaws were, how did he not know about the alleged racist language behavior towards minorities?

Is it fair to say his focus was only on that quote, like production, production, production and not on the people and the quality of the working environment?

- Absolutely, I mean, Musk focuses so much on production, getting things done fast.

And he doesn't focus on having a nurturing, or careful, or nice working environment.

That was true at Tesla.

That's why he gets sued.

That was true at Twitter when he takes it over.

He says, "Everybody's talking about psychological safety and sweetness.

I'm talking about hardcore all-in intensity."

So, that lack of empathy we talked about that extends to the fact that, no, I want a really tough workplace and he's not all that sensitive.

And what he should be, I mean this is one of the downsides.

- Are geniuses in your experience, those who you've written about, do they all have that bit of DNA?

- That's a really great question, and I think not all of them, but it is true that when you look at any of the great disruptors or innovators, whether they be the ones I've written about, you know, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, or people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, the ones you know, they can be disruptive, which means sometimes pushing way too hard.

However, I've written about other people, Jennifer Doudna, who is one of the greatest innovators of our time.

She creates CRISPR, the gene-editing technology.

She's nurturing, she's nice,- - She's a woman.

- she's wonderful, she's a woman.

And so, Ben Franklin though, nurturing, nice, wonderful, brings people together.

Biographies aren't sort of how-to books, it's a here's the way you're supposed to be.

They tell you about a particular person.

- Ted Turner, who's the founder, obviously of CNN, - Correct.

- was a phenomenal and is a phenomenal genius, but also, had amazing empathy and do the right thing.

So, there are many people who do the right thing.

- Precisely, but you know, you and I both worked for Ted Turner.

There was a craziness to him too, right?

- Well, that's different than abusive.

- Right, right now.

And it's, you know, definitely he was never abusive, but there are certain drives and demons that sometimes very successful people have, and they channel those demons in different ways, and Ted was one of those.

- So, this gets to the heart of Musk's childhood, his chips on his shoulders, his demons, his dark.

So, Kara Swisher, of course, renowned tech journalist, interviewed you in March about this.

And she wrote on Twitter, X, whatever that means, the review of the biography.

She says, "My mini review of the Musk bio: sad and smart son slowly morphs into mentally abusive father he abhors, except with rockets, cars & more money.

Often right, sometimes wrong, petty jerk always.

Might be crazy in a good way, but also a bad way.

Pile o' babies.

Not Steve Jobs.

You're welcome."

Your response?

- I love that, I love Kara.

- Accurate?

- Yeah.

Yeah, I think almost all those things are accurate.

You know, when I first started this book, Elon Musk's mother, May, says to me, "The danger for Elon is that he becomes his father."

And indeed he had this psychologically rough father who would make Elon stand in front of him as he berated him for more than an hour, but go from light to dark moods.

Well, that happens too with Elon Musk.

And that's sometimes the way he treats people.

You know, he gets stuff done, but that doesn't excuse the behavior sometimes.

- And he, you know, there's obviously, in your book and elsewhere, he's talked about being terribly bullied as a kid growing up in South Africa.

Is that separate from his father's bullying and abuse?

- Yes and no.

I mean, he gets bullied on the playground at school in such a way that they beat him in the face so that he has to go to the hospital.

He's almost unrecognizable.

But when he comes home from the hospital, his father makes him stand there and his father takes the side of the person who beat him up, and berates, Elon Musk.

- Takes the side of the person who beat him up?

- Beat up Elon and said... - His own son?

- Yeah, over his own son and said, "You're stupid."

And you know, this leaves scars that are psychological.

- You did tell New York Magazine that he has an epic superhero savior complex.

- Ever since he was a kid, he read the comic books and he says, "It's weird, these comic book heroes, they're all trying to save the planet and they're wearing their underpants on the outside.

They look ridiculous, but they are trying to save the planet."

And he is a child, he'd sit there in the corner of the bookstore for hours reading these comics and he's developed a role, which is, if Ukraine gets invaded by Russia, I'm gonna send stuff in, I'm gonna come help.

And there's, you know, a cave in Thailand has kids stuck in, I'm gonna send in a submarine to help.

He likes this notion of helping humanity.

In fact, he has more empathy for humanity in general than he often has for the 20 people around him.

- And even the "pile o' babies", as Kara Swisher points it, he has a lot of kids.

- Right.

- Does he own them all in terms of, you know, acknowledge them all?

Where does this come from?

- Well, he believes, I mean.

- It's like 10 or so, right?

- Yeah, I'll give you... - With several different women.

- Yes, I will give you the grand thoughts that he has about it, which is, you know, human consciousness, human civilization is a great thing.

And in order to keep it alive, we all have to have lots of children.

He actually believes that.

- Well, that's weird in this world, isn't it?

With the climate crisis, with the existential crisis,- - Yeah, and I think ... - With the overpopulation.

- Well, I think he would say, no, the declining birth rates are the problem.

- So, okay, so as we talk, it's very clear that your mandate as a biographer is more of an explainer, a fly on the wall.

You know, the people who you've covered have given you incredible access.

And we get an amazing insight because of it.

Pushback has been that you don't make judgements.

You may not push back against them enough, or as others do.

You may not do the sort of deep dive that a, you know, that a Robert Carroll has done for years, decades, producing the very deep biographies of like Lyndon Johnson.

What do you say to that?

- Well, I'll plead guilty, which is I'm a storyteller.

I'm there reporting it, I'm giving you the facts, I'm giving you a narrative.

Although I think I'm giving you a pretty rollicking tale too, but I think every anecdote in that book is revelatory.

Everything tells you something about how Musk works, good and for bad.

And I will cop a plea that I try to tell the stories and let the reader come to some of the deep judgments, 'cause I think where I grew up, they used to say there are two types of people, preachers and storytellers.

I think the world's got a few too many preachers these days.

And maybe just telling the story honestly straight, sometimes you'll be appalled by the story.

Sometimes you'll be amazed by it.

But you get to watch that trajectory with me telling you the story as I saw it as objectively as possible.

- So, let's talk about Twitter, which you alluded to at the beginning.

You know, this massive global town square that he, you know, then bought and, you know, beset by controversy and personal dynamic from the beginning.

I mean, for whatever reason he's changed it to X I can't even fathom.

But do you understand that?

And also, coupled with that, the critique is that he has morphed Twitter from a more communal space to a space where hate speech is unregulated, where the conflicts and the divisions and the discords and the lack of reigning that in that previous owners I guess tried and were forced to do is now, you know, just full blown.

How can that be good?

- I think 20 years ago he had an idea what he called x.com that becomes PayPal, which he thought would be bigger.

It would be a financial services app and social media together where people could post content, make a, you know, money by creating things.

And now, he's trying to recreate that with what was Twitter.

And that's why he's changed the name to X.

And in doing so, just as you said, he turned it from being a pleasant place where people like you and me get anointed with blue check marks and have sweet little conversations among the media elite that we all love.

- Or cancel conversations.

- Yeah, and he wants it to be more hardcore, just like he wants all of his work environments.

So, he wants a broader range of speech there.

And sometimes when you do that, you get some pretty fringe characters.

And what's even worse is when those fringe characters get amplified a bit, when he engages with them and things.

So, it's become a much more contentious place.

But it's also a place a lot more people are using it too.

I mean, it's not just this sweet playground that it was back when you and I enjoyed it.

- Is it financially viable for him, and do you think he'll keep it?

- I think that eventually he will be able to have subscriptions and payments and transfers of money that will be the main source of revenue, because it will not be financially viable, I don't think, as an advertising medium, because it's just so, as you said, controversial for advertisers.

- And so, this is important obviously, as it always is, the attack on the Anti-Defamation League.

A number of notorious antisemitic accounts posted under the hashtag BanTheADL.

And you know, Musk blamed, you know, ADL for most of X's, for X loss in revenue and called the ADL, the biggest generator of antisemitism on X, threatened to sue it, et cetera.

And David French of the New York Times says his claims of the ADL's immense power tapped into classic antisemitic tropes.

A, did you bring that up with him?

And B, is that who he is?

- Yeah, I think he's totally wrong.

I think the problems that X is having now is not because of the ADL trying to stop things.

It is because it's an environment that's so controversial and so messy that advertising brands don't feel comfortable being on it.

It's just that.

If you talk to Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, he'll say Musk is not antisemitic and you know, he defends him in some ways.

But what you have is an environment where a lot of fringe players are getting amplified and advertisers don't wanna be there, understandably.

- All right, Walter Isaacson, thank you very much.

- Thank you very much.

- And next, we turn to the persistent plague of gender-based violence.

The numbers are devastating.

Every day in Mexico, at least 10 women are killed.

And here in the United States, femicide has increased by almost 25% over the past eight years.

Today, the Ford Foundation is bringing together some of the world's leading experts on this subject to discuss the urgent need for solutions.

The Free Future 2023 Forum is taking place here in New York and I'm joined now by two of the speakers, Tarana Burke, Founder of the MeToo Movement, and Maria Mangera, who is a project coordinator at The National Shelter Movement in South Africa.

Ladies, welcome to the program.

Can I start with you Tarana Burke, because MeToo sort of exploded into our consciousness almost exactly six years ago.

And I'm wondering why you think it's still, you know, not done enough to quell this side of the gender equation?

- Well, first thank you for having us.

And I think it's because we don't see sexual violence as a social justice issue.

I think largely people still see associate MeToo in pop culture as a gender war, as he said she said.

And we don't really look, even though the statistics show that sexual violence happens every 68 seconds, that one in 10 children will be affected by sexual violence before they turn 18.

We do not see this as a public health crisis or a social justice issue.

And as long as we don't take it seriously in that regard, we will still continue to see the problem grow the way it is, exponentially.

- And I just wanna ask you to please explain to me this, I mean, horrendous figure of 25% higher femicide in the United States.

Do you know, do you accept that figure, and is it because it's happening more?

Is it because more people are reporting who might not have done before?

- I think it's a combination of both.

You have to also realize that we have seen a rise over the last decade in toxic masculinity and in, you know, things like, you know, the president that we just had.

We've seen a rise in the change in, you know, conversations on the internet.

We've seen all of the mass shootings that we've had across the United States.

Something like 60 or 70% of the mass shootings have the shooters have had a history of domestic or sexual violence.

Those things are all connected.

And so, when we don't talk about sexual violence in connection to things like gun violence and violence in general, we lose sight of the fact that things like femicide are growing and that's lost in these conversations, because we never talk about sexual violence as a social justice issue.

- And I wonder if I could turn to you Mariam Mangera, because is it a social justice issue in your country where we've reported many, many times on the terrible epidemic of sexual violence against women?

I mean, I interviewed for instance, Graca Machel, the first lady of South Africa.

Her daughter, Josina, in 2015, where she described, and of course, it's well known to you all, how she had been beaten up multiple times in the head by a former partner to the extent that she lost sight in one of her eyes.

This is what she told me back then.

- Thousands of women wake up every day as if they were soldiers.

We never know how many of us will be beaten, how many will be raped, how many will be killed.

- I mean it's really stark the way she puts it out.

Is there any improvement in South Africa since that time?

- Good afternoon, Christiane.

Thank you for having me.

So, the stats have actually, been going down over the last quarter, however, over the past few years they have been rising.

I think the reason that the stats reduced over the last quarter is because of non-reporting.

If we look at the way sexual violence has been reported over the last five years alone, you know, the South African Police Department had said that in 2016 we were looking at only one in 23 cases are being reported.

But now, we're looking at one in 36 only being reported.

And the problem is that 40% of all sexual violence that is reported is girls under the age of 18 and 15% are actually girls under the age of 12.

So, the problem - [Christiane] Wow.

- is getting worse, but it's a cultural mindset that actually prevents reporting.

And so, we don't actually have a very clear picture.

And if we look at the one in 36 being reported, we are actually looking at over 2 million cases of rape not actually being reported.

- Wow.

No, I mean that's just staggering figures.

And so, I wanna ask you about the reporting phenomenon, both of you actually.

But first, staying with you, Miriam, those who do report are they then taken seriously, accountability happens, investigation happens, or is we here too often, are they then re-victimized a second time?

- Yes, so that is a very big problem.

Victims of sexual violence, or any sort of violence, are actually, re-victimized in our justice system.

We have a very, very big problem where we have people working in the justice cluster that haven't actually been trained on how to actually, approach victims of sexual violence.

Whether it's the prosecutors in shaming clients, whether it's the police in taking statements, social workers in victim blaming on what a victim was wearing, but even as recent as 2016, we had a judge in South Africa that had been on Twitter talking about Black men raping for fun, or finding a pleasure in it.

So, you know, the old racist Apartheid mindset is still being carried through even into the justice system, and that is hindering access for women of color, and Black women in particular.

- And Tarana Burke in the United States is that the same?

First, the idea of anybody reporting it being, you know, taken seriously or otherwise?

- Absolutely, there's always been an issue with reporting in the United States, with survivors generally.

I think because there's so much shame associated with sexual violence and it's always been an issue with reporting, particularly in communities of color.

There is a stigma attached to talking about it.

And in the Black community in particular, there is a notion of protecting our men, because of the way their sexual violence has been weaponized against Black men historically, Black women are inclined to wanna protect Black men.

So, there is a history of not reporting inside of the Black community with Black women.

And other communities of color, also, you know, for instance, in immigrant communities, there's a history of not reporting, because they don't want to have interactions with law enforcement that might lead to their families maybe being deported.

So, there are different reasons why there's not reporting in communities of color, but either way, not reporting is rampant with survivors of sexual violence.

And it's a problem.

- In South Africa, Mariam, of course, the Black majority, they are the majority.

And I'm wondering whether there is an intersectionality, does race play a part in this crisis?

You touched on it a little bit, but does it specifically, play a part in this crisis?

- So, when we are talking about violence and gender-based violence, obviously it's intersectional.

Violence is faced by all women.

And historically, Black women and women of color did not have access to justice systems.

And you know, when we speak about rape, it was white women that were raped by Black men that actually found access to justice.

However, the laws itself back then did not treat women equally, because as horrendous as apartheid was in terms of racial inequalities, there was also gender inequality.

Women didn't have rights under apartheid.

We didn't even have a Domestic Violence Act until 1998, which was four years after the end of apartheid.

But today, because the population of South Africa is 90% Black, we tend to see the stats showing that more Black women are affected.

However, there is no difference in who is affected.

Everybody is affected at the same rate.

It's just that because of the geographical and the racial demographics of the country that we actually see more Black women reporting.

- Can I turn to solutions, because the forum that you're attending and speaking at is designed not just to look at the past, but to go forward.

So, Tarana Burke, you know, in the United States for instance, are there solutions, have you identified further what is driving this epidemic and what are the most important solutions to it that you could list?

- Well, first of all, when we talk about solutions, there's no single solution to the problem of sexual violence.

It's gonna take multiple interventions.

When we look at how we've solved other issues in this country, it's always taken multiple interventions.

So, it's gonna take legal interventions, political interventions, medical interventions, narrative interventions.

Part of what has to happen, a major thing that has to happen is a culture shift in this country.

It's against the law in all 50 states to commit acts of sexual violence, but the problem happens when people commit those acts.

What does law enforcement do?

We already know that carceral solutions don't work, right?

Especially, when sexual violence is happening inside of law enforcement.

We don't look at the kind of the egregious acts of sexual violence that happens inside of our prison system.

Sexual violence is the second most reported act against police and law enforcement in this country.

So, we know that carceral solutions are not the way.

So, we have to look collectively at multiple interventions, starting with narrative.

We have to shift the way people think about sexual violence in this country.

We have to shift the way people talk about it.

And part of that is, again, looking at this as not an individual act, right?

There's between the two people, just the person who committed the act and the person who is surviving the act, but it is about safety.

We have to reimagine what safety looks like.

So, if one person in your community has survived has dealt with sexual violence, nobody in that community is safe.

Just like when gun violence happens in your community, if one person survives gun violence in your community, everybody in that community wants to think about how we can keep everybody safe.

So, we have to shift how we think about sexual violence in this country before anything else can happen.

That's one of the solutions.

It's a major solution.

We need more research, we need more medical research, political, all of those things have to happen collectively at the same time.

There's no singular solution.

- And resources as well, because we read that gender-based violence, for instance, the stats show that according to a report in 2019, funding for these programs amount to only 12% of a country's humanitarian aid.

And it's not just about, you know, how much, but who gets it.

- Let me just say this.

Sexual violence is one of the most under-resourced issues in the world, and that's everywhere.

It's under-resourced for nonprofit organizations.

It's under-resourced in law enforcement.

It is under-resourced everywhere.

People think that money moved to the issue of sexual violence after MeToo went viral, and it did not.

We are severely under-resourced globally.

And I'm sure you can speak to that.

- Well, Miriam, I'm sure that is the case as Tarana says everywhere, including South Africa is it?

- Absolutely, you know, in 2019 the President did announce that he was reallocating ZAR1.6 billion towards gender-based violence, emergency response.

But you know, at the time, we didn't even find out where the money was being spent, if it was being spent.

We worked on an emergency response plan to actually tell government where the money should go in order to assist.

But we don't even have that kind of input any longer.

So, I think that the biggest issue around resourcing is not just lip service, it's actually, accountability that goes with it.

We can say that we are giving $100 million towards GBV, but at the end of the day, who is the one that actually holds government accountable?

Who is the one that holds foreign donors accountable?

Because a lot of the time what happens is funding that comes from overseas, especially into South Africa, the donor says to you where it is that you need to spend, how to spend, and we don't actually, have the autonomy to actually address gender based violence in the way that we see it needing resourcing, because we are so reliant on external funding.

- And can I ask you both, because stats seem to be showing that transgender people are far likely to be victims of violence of this kind of violence than cisgender people.

Is this reaching an emergency situation?

Has it always been like that or not?

Or we just sort of, you know, seeing it now?

- Absolutely, sexual violence is a public health crisis full stop.

In the transgender and gender expansive community, we are now seeing it for what it is, because they're now starting to collect data and put out data, but it has always been at a fever pitch in that community.

And I'm glad that we now have numbers to attach so that people can actually see what's going on inside of the gender expansive community.

But yes, it has always been that way.

They are endangered around when it comes to sexual violence both inside in the world and inside of law and when they're incarcerated.

But yes, transgender folks are definitely in danger when it comes to sexual violence.

- Can I ask you both finally,- - In all forms of violence.

- In all forms of violence, absolutely.

- what you hope to persuade men to do to help this situation?

And particularly, whether that is also about what you identified Tarana as I think empathy theory?

- Well, it's empowerment through empathy.

But let me say first that men's first role in this movement is as survivors.

And we should, I don't wanna separate them as just the solution to sexual violence.

We have to acknowledge that this is a movement for survivors, not just for women.

- Well, thank you both for telling us, you know, updating us on this and taking part in this important forum.

Tarana Burke, Mariam Mangera, thank you very much indeed.

Age has become a big issue for the 2024 election.

Not just for presidential candidates, but also in Congress.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who's 76, announced that he won't be seeking reelection in '24 to make way for a new generation.

He also strongly urged both President Biden and former President Trump to step aside.

- The times we're living in, really demand the next generation to step up and express their point of view, and to make the decisions that'll shape American politics over the coming century.

And just having a bunch of guys who were around, the Baby Boomers, who are around in the postwar era, we're not the right ones to be making the decisions for tomorrow.

- [Christiane] Well, Susan Glasser's latest article for the New Yorker is called "The Twilight of Mitch McConnell and the Specter of 2024", and she talks about that with Michelle Martin.

- Thanks, Christiane.

Susan Glasser, thanks so much for joining us once again.

- Great to be with you.

- So, a couple of incidents that have just really gotten the public's attention.

Some of it stoked, some of it not.

There was President Biden was concluding his press conference when he was overseas, you know, earlier this week.

He kind of ended it rather abruptly saying, "I gotta go to bed."

Of course, the Conservative media was thrilled to talk about this saying, you know, it was bizarre and it showed, you know, the obvious implication that he isn't quite up to it.

But then, you know, twice now, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has frozen up during press conferences.

Wasn't being asked, particularly challenging in our questions.

And that's raised questions about his health.

So, you recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker about what you call America's fragile Gerontocracy.

How is the age of these leaders, not just these two, but others kind of playing into our current politics?

- Well, you're right, it's a inescapable, unfortunately, framed to a lot of our politics.

And I would throw a third actor in there by the way.

Donald Trump at age 77 is not exactly exempt from these questions, except that there's just so many more questions perhaps about him.

And so, you have this sort of national debate that I think is a legitimate national debate, but of course, it's playing out in the framework of our extraordinarily polarized and in a way paralyzed politics.

And so, you know, Biden could wake up in the morning, nothing eventful happens, and for parts of the country that would be evidence that he's too old to serve.

Donald Trump can fail to even muster a single coherent sentence with a noun and a verb and a period, but somehow that's not evidence of it.

So, you know, partially we're having a national debate about an important issue without real evidence.

You know, where is age actually affecting the ability of our leaders to lead?

And where is it part of the sort of optics of this media-saturated world we live in?

That's really hard.

But the bottom line is Joe Biden is already the oldest president ever to be an American president.

Of course, second oldest was Donald Trump, and if Biden is reelected, he would be 86 years old at the end of his second term.

So, I think it is a legitimate conversation for us to be happening.

I just wish we had a better framework and more understanding of what matters in this case and what doesn't.

- Why is it that Democrats are concerned about President Biden's age in a way that Republicans don't seem to be about Donald Trump?

As you pointed out, Democrats are also concerned about President Biden's age.

It's one of those things that seems to come up in focus groups and it's one of those things that you don't have to scratch very far into the surface to get people to express concerns about it.

So, why do you think it's a concern for Democrats when it isn't a concern for Republicans?

- Well, here's one word for you, electability, and the bottom line is that right now, as you pointed out, is Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans who have these concerns about Biden's age.

And for many Democrats, I think part of the issue would well be, some of it is a question of governance.

Is he up to the job when he's gonna be 86 years old at the end of his term?

But some of it is about this question of can he win?

Because Republicans have fixated on this issue.

Donald Trump remember started calling Biden by the name Sleepy Joe way back in the 2020 election.

Interestingly, polls back then had a very different story on the age issue.

People forget this, but actually, Trump's age was seen as a liability.

And he actually, lost on that question in many polls late in the 2020 election in a head-to-head versus Biden.

It's actually, Biden who came out on the positive end of that.

Remember Biden, to some people, certainly in 2020, he's healthier clearly than Donald Trump.

He is, you know, exercising, he's bike riding, you know, Donald Trump not doing much exercising unless you count getting in and out of the mechanical golf cart to be exercising.

And so, you know, vigor is in sort of the subjectivity of the narrative, first of all, right?

Like, how much of this is really about the objective truth, not very much.

I do think it's a lot about Democrats very worried as they should be.

It's a risk factor in our politics and in our national governance.

When Mitch McConnell had that second freeze up the other day, I'm sure I wasn't the only American who thought, imagine what could happen in our presidential election when the stakes are so high.

If Joe Biden has a Mitch McConnell moment in the middle of a debate in October of 2024.

The stakes are Donald Trump possibly coming back into the White House.

So, I think that, at a minimum, it raises the risks in our system at a time when there's already a lot of concerns about the fragility of American democracy.

- One person that Republicans do seem to be concerned about though is the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell.

Do we know what's going on with him?

- You know, it's a good question.

Transparency I think is one of the issues around health that really matters to people.

And actually, McConnell did move pretty aggressively, at least to try to assuage some of the concerns of his own members.

He serves at the pleasure of his Senate Republican conference.

He has to answer to them.

He had the Capitol attending physician put out a note when that wasn't good enough for some people, because basically, it said, "Take my word for it."

And it dismissed McConnell's episodes as momentary lightheadedness.

I don't think people were really buying that.

Then the Capitol physician actually did an examination with McConnell that seems to at least temporarily quieted concerns inside McConnell's Republican conference.

But my observation is slightly different, which is look at how quickly and visibly McConnell's decline has happened.

We have all had a parent, a grandparent, a loved one, who seems to be a healthy and vigorous age 80, and then something happens, a fall.

That's exactly what happened to Mitch McConnell.

He fell down and got a concussion, while going to a fundraiser a few months ago.

And, you know, his decline has been there for everyone to see.

He just looks like he's aged, not six months, but, you know, several years.

And he seems to be struggling in ways that remind people again of the risk factor of having leaders of this advanced age.

And by the way, advanced age, it's not, my term is not a pejorative, I think that's just that the medical definition of anyone who's been lucky enough to make it to a healthy and vigorous 80 in the case of Joe Biden and 81 in the case of Mitch McConnell.

- So, political reports that Senate Republicans are consulting about whether to call an emergency meeting on McConnell's leadership when the Senate is back in session.

So, I wanna ask two sort of two questions here.

- You know, McConnell is an interesting figure in the party right now.

I mean, it's not a secret that Donald Trump loathes him, I mean, loathes him, because he acknowledged that the 2020 presidential election was fairly run, that it was not stolen.

So, what's the dynamic in the Republican Party around Mitch McConnell's health right now from your reporting?

And then secondly, I wanna ask like the stakes for the country around Mitch McConnell's health.

So, Republican Party first.

- Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's a clear reminder of just how much the Republican party has shifted in recent years.

I'm sure if you asked Barack Obama, he wouldn't think, wow, just a few years later, you know, Mitch McConnell is what passes for the sort of relatively sane Republican establishment.

He's been willing, for example, to work with Joe Biden's White House to pass several bipartisan bills in the last couple years, although obviously, remains a fierce partisan.

He has been what passes for the opposition to Donald Trump within his own party.

It's a rear guard action, clearly.

But you know, Mitch McConnell not only recognized Biden's legitimate victory in 2020, he was very clear in attributing the blame for the crisis in American democracy on Donald Trump.

But to your point about the consequences for the country, right now, it actually matters who is the Senate Republican leader, because look at the House Republicans, look at Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Just before our conversation, Kevin McCarthy unilaterally announced that he's opening up an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden.

Has new evidence been produced?

No.

You know, has there been any specific bill of indictment?

No.

Is Kevin McCarthy able to even put a measure on the House floor to formally open an impeachment inquiry?

No, he doesn't have the votes to do it.

And yet nonetheless, he's proceeding.

He has become, in effect, a hostage of this very narrow majority he has in the House of Representatives.

Right now in September, we are looking at a major confrontation over government funding between McCarthy and his House Republicans and the Biden White House.

They look to be hurdling toward, once again, a government shutdown.

Potentially, the only thing that would stop this from happening would be a deal in which McConnell and his Senate Republicans would work to keep the government open and funded.

Same thing on the additional emergency funding for things like disaster relief and Ukraine aid.

Right now, the administration's asked for $24 billion in additional funding to help support Ukraine against the Russian invaders.

And right now, if that passes, it's gonna be because of Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans.

- You know, we've been focusing on, you know, President Biden, Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and of course, you know Donald Trump, but they aren't the only older political leaders of consequence.

I mean, in July, Senator Diane Feinstein, she'd been in frail health, seemed to be confused during a committee vote.

She's not the only one, though.

The median age in the Senate is 65, which is a record high.

And you've got Senator Grassley, who's a Republican of Iowa, he's 89.

Grace Napolitano, she's a Democrat from California.

Now, she's retiring, she's 86.

But just the median age so high.

Well, how did we get to this point?

- Well, look, I mean, partially of course, you know, life expectancy over the decades has gone up.

People have had longer and longer careers.

They're reluctant, also we have more of a celebrity-based politics where name recognition really matters.

It's very hard in our fragmented media moment, you know, to acquire the ability to run statewide in a state like California where Diane Feinstein is from.

That's a really hard thing to do.

And she's a household name.

So, part of it is the politics of that.

But I do think it does say something interesting about a nation that had long had this sort of self-identity as a kind of the vigorous nation of the future.

That the nation, not just of young John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, you know, was one of our youngest presidents.

And you and in my lifetime, in his early forties.

And yet, I always find this to be really telling.

There have actually been three American presidents, including Bill Clinton, who were born in the exact same year in 1946.

Bill Clinton, we think of him as a young guy, perpetually young, 'cause that's when he was elected.

The other two presidents who were born in the summer of 1946 were George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.

- Why don't the Democrats point out the deficiencies on the Republican side?

I mean, because on the kind of the coverage of it, or at least the public utterances around this, are much more sympathetic to Mitch McConnell.

Much more, you know, expressions of concern than they are, you know, of ridicule and contempt that you see directed, you know, at President Biden.

And of course, President Biden has said publicly whether this is true privately, he considers Mitch McConnell a friend.

But I'm just curious, like why don't the Democrats kind of hammer on their age in the way that the Republicans do on President Biden?

- Well, first of all, because I think there's a genuine fear and I think a realistic fear that, that could backfire and simply serve to call more attention to the overall issue of age right now, at a moment when Biden is perceived to be vulnerable on this point.

So, that's number one.

I think number two is that Mitch McConnell for Donald Trump and his supporters, they're happy to throw Mitch McConnell under the bus.

And in fact, that's exactly what you saw in the aftermath of McConnell's sort of second freeze up moment.

You had Trump allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene immediately leaping into the fray publicly and saying, "Yes, Mitch McConnell is unfit to serve and he should go too."

So, I don't think there's any, you know, love lost between the Trumpists and McConnell.

And so, if it's a question of losing their age issue against Joe Biden versus sticking up for McConnell, or getting rid of McConnell, or, you know, just simply sacrificing him politically, they're happy to sacrifice Mitch McConnell.

They might see that as an advantage.

- There's a Republican presidential candidate, the former South Carolina Governor, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has said that she thinks there should be tests for older politicians.

I just wonder, just, I don't, how do we even talk about that?

I mean, I know that there are people who would find this conversation, you know, inappropriate.

I mean, you know, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who's also 80 I believe, has said that he thinks some of this conversation is ageist.

He doesn't seem to show any signs of sort of impairment.

So, he seems to have, you know, a very good case, but I'm sort of interested in your take on it.

What are the ethics of this?

- Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, in our politics, big important issues can't be off limits.

I think we gotta, you know, stipulate to that.

And I think that Democrats looking to police, you know, what we can or should talk about and what the voters are on their mind, that's not gonna work anyway.

So, let's be real about that.

And we're talking about a situation where it's many Democrats as well as Republicans who are in my view, legitimately concerned about this.

Does that mean that everyone ages like absolutely not.

In fact, that's one of the big problems that we're struggling with.

I don't think we have enough real information.

I think that we live in an optical world in which, you know, the things that we think of as leadership are essentially projections on a TV screen first and foremost.

And you know, Donald Trump is nothing, if not obsessed, with a certain kind of very facile image making where you talk about tests for our leaders.

Remember that it's Donald Trump is the guy who memorably gave us person, woman, man, camera, TV back in the 2020 election.

You know, you can't look at a video of Donald Trump from 2016 or go further back, look at his interviews, say in the late nineties or, you know, early nineties with Larry King.

This is a different man.

He's been transformed.

He has visibly aged in front of our eyes.

His coherence has almost evaporated.

His vocabulary has dissipated to an extreme degree.

His ability to formulate clear cut sentences is almost nil in his public remarks these days.

And yet, we have this narrative around Biden's age.

So, I do think it's important to talk about, you know, the age issue could just as well crop up as a major liability for Donald Trump by the time the actual election rolls around.

He's certainly not immune to it either.

- One area in which one can see the leading figures becoming visibly younger is on the nation's High Court and on the nation's highest court.

But I'm just curious if there were conservative movement can be so intentional about attracting and putting in place the next generation of leaders.

Why don't progressives do that?

- You know, it's a good question.

I think you're right that there are some major structural differences.

Not only do they want someone young to serve for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, but a younger nominee also tends to have less of a record to wade through and to pick through.

And I think democrats have known that theory of the case too.

But you know, look, every generation has to renew its commitment to American democracy.

We are in a crisis moment, not because we have two very old standard bearers in the Republican party in the Democratic party today, but because we are at loggerheads over basic questions.

And neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden is gonna be a long-term leader for the country at this point, right?

And so, I think part of our anxiety and part of why you're asking that question, is because we don't know what's the path forward for the country right now.

And we don't have either party with a clear cut set of new standard bearers and a new direction that is taking the country.

And so, I think it adds to the uncertainty at a very volatile moment.

- Susan Glasser, thanks so much for talking with us once again.

- Great to be with you, thank you.

- And finally, tonight, adaptive apparel as part of New York Fashion Week, models with disabilities took to the runway, wearing clothes designed to meet their needs.

More than 70 paraded and twirled down the catwalk.

The show was organized by the Runway of Dreams Foundation.

It's a charity that works with retailers to design the right fashion for people with disabilities.

Alongside some of the biggest brands, Victoria's Secret showed its first-ever adaptive collection of lingerie.

A wonderful way to raise awareness, and of course, inclusivity.

And that is it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up on the show every night, sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/amanpour.

Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.