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- [00:00]
Christiana Amanpour
Did you know if your windows are bare? Indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees. Turn the temperature down with blinds.com and get up to 50% off custom window treatments like solar roller shades and more during the Memorial Day Mega Sale. Whether you want to DIY it or
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Senator Chris Murphy
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Christiana Amanpour
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Senator Chris Murphy
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Christiana Amanpour
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Claire Duffy
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Christiana Amanpour
Was she brave?
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Claire Duffy
She was tired mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required. Did she have to fight a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying. You'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
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Christiana Amanpour
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up.
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Derek Van Dam
We can make a good deal right now, but maybe not a great deal. And if it's not a great deal, when I'm making it.
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Christiana Amanpour
A peace agreement hangs in the balance as the United States and Iran exchange fire again. I asked Democratic Senator Chris Murphy about how best to exit this stalemate and we discuss his new book, Crisis of the Common Good. Then we are witnessing a dangerous erosion
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Senator Chris Murphy
of respect for international law.
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Christiana Amanpour
The United nations faces financial collapse and irrelevancy. Could a new leader revive the institution? The election for the next UN Secretary General is ahead, and I speak to one of the contenders, Rebecca Greenspan, former Costa Rican Vice president.
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Claire Duffy
Also ahead, we have a very hyper polarized politics and we have a hyper polarized sense of the American past.
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Christiana Amanpour
A divided America turns 250. Historian Jill Lepore joins Walter Isaacson to discuss whether the nation can celebrate as one. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiana Manpour in London. After a lot of diplomatic whiplash this week, there are now new signs that Washington and Tehran may be edging towards a diplomatic breakthrough. U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reportedly reached a draft memorandum of understanding that would extend the ceasefire for 60 days and launch direct talks over Iran's nuclear program. The proposed deal would include Iranian commitments on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and future nuclear negotiations, along with the US Agreements to discuss sanctions relief. But President Trump has not yet signed off, telling his team he wants a few days to think about it. And the risks are growing. The United States and Iran exchanged fire on Thursday, raising fears that the shaky ceasefire could collapse entirely. Iran continues to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical energy chokepoints, while Trump is escalating his rhetoric, even threatening Oman, a key US Partner and mediator in these talks.
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Derek Van Dam
We'll watch over it, but nobody's going to control it. That's part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else who will have to blow him up.
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Christiana Amanpour
That same scorched earth approach is now defining Trump's presidency. At home, the President faces mounting accusations that he's using the machinery of government to target political opponents and personal enemies alike, including Carroll, who won two civil suits against Trump for sexual assault and defamation. In his new book called Crisis of the Common Good, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy argues that Trump is not the root cause, but the product of a much deeper crisis in American democracy. And he is joining me now from Chicago. Senator, welcome back to the program. And can I start by talking about the latest international news? So all of this back and forth, as I outlined, over some kind of an agreement to get out of the war on Iran. I know that you want a ceasefire, but you're not thrilled with the outlines of what seems to be on the table. Where do you stand right now?
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Senator Chris Murphy
Well, first of all, we have no idea whether there is a deal pending. I mean, this has been the news essentially for the last 30 days. Trump signaling that there may be an agreement. I want the war to end on practically terms, because every single day this war goes on. America is humiliated. American consumers are being hammered, people's lives are being ruined in the United States, thousands are dying needlessly in the Middle east, and Iran is getting stronger. This war has been perhaps the most incompetent run war in the modern history of the United States, and that's saying a lot. What is this deal apparently about? Essentially just going back to where we were before the war began. So we end our blockade, they end their blockade, and then we have the opportunity to sit and talk about sanctions relief for nuclear commitments. Well, that's exactly where we were before the war began. The problem is Iran is now stronger. They have more leverage at the nuclear negotiating table today than they did because they have taken America's best shot and they have survived. The doddering 80 year old Ayatollah is gone and a more menacing regime likely is in its place. And now they know that they have this leverage that they have shown to the world, the ability to close and control the Strait of Hormuz that they can hold over us like the sword of Damocles in these negotiations. So he has made negotiations much harder. He has damaged the global economy and the American economy. And it's just sad that we had to go through all of this just to talk about a diplomatic agreement that brings us back to exactly where we were but lowers our leverage at the negotiating table.
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Christiana Amanpour
Senator, there are others who will say, well actually hang on. In the last couple of months the US and Israel have severely degraded Iran's military capability, that its economy is on its knees with this blockade. And you know, it is weakened, although as you rightly say, because that's all the information coming out of Iran, it has strengthened the hand of the hardliners, particularly the military, the, the irgc. Do you think, despite your misgivings, that actually it's militarily weakened and maybe more, I don't know, amenable to further nuclear concessions than even Obama got?
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Senator Chris Murphy
No, absolutely not. We are going to get a worse deal because we have given them all we've got. They, I think, always knew we weren't going to launch a ground invasion, but there was definitely the chance that major air operations could do significant damage. But all the assessments that have been made public show that Iran still has 70% of their missiles, has 70% of their drones. Meanwhile, it's taken an enormous toll on America's security. We have significantly depleted our missile stocks, our interceptors. We have exposed ourselves militarily because of all of the weaponry we have had to use here. Iran is more powerful today, they just are. They are more connected to China than they were before the war. They are more menacing in the region. They have more leverage than they did at the beginning of this conflict. At the negotiating table we have less. And that is why every President has been told, don't go to war with Iran, you are going to end up weaker at the end of it. And every president prior to Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats paid attention and followed that counsel.
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Christiana Amanpour
So what about the Congressional ability to vote on war, the War Powers act, et cetera, the War Powers Resolution. Now you have been trying to get that through for a while and just recently in fact the Senate did approve it. A couple of Republicans came over, including Senator Bill Cassidy, who then was primaried he lost hishe lost his position and he, you know, flipped to a yes vote. Then you were going to try to take it to the House as the procedure demands, but the House speaker didn't call a vote. Where do you think that now stands? And do you think more Republicans are becoming more willing to, to try to stop this war?
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Senator Chris Murphy
So, since the war began, when it became clear that the Republicans who control Congress weren't going to do their constitutional duty, which is to bring a war vote before Congress. A war is not supposed to happen like this without prior congressional consent. When we found out Republicans weren't going to do that, a few of us, Senator Booker, Senator Kaine and myself, got together and said, okay, we're going to bring up resolutions that under the rules, require a vote in the Senate every single week. And we've done that. We lost those resolutions to end the war for the first several weeks, but we just got 50 votes for the first time on a procedural motion last week. And we think it's going to pass the Senate shortly. It probably has the votes to pass the House now. The President can veto it. So we would ultimately need veto proof, majorities. But what we're showing is that as time goes on, more and more Republicans are turning against the President. Why? Because this war is wildly unpopular, except for his very hard base that lives in this pro Trump media ecosystem. Everybody in this nation thinks this is a disaster because they're paying $6 for gas. And the only reason they're paying $6 for gas is because of this war. So pressure is going to mount on Republicans to join us on these resolutions, and we will continue to bring them every single week until we have enough votes to pass them or hopefully to override his veto.
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Christiana Amanpour
Let me ask you, because obviously this is not just the United States. It's Israel and the United States joint operation against Iran. And I want to know how much you consider the Prime Minister of Israel to be. You know, I don't know what the right word is, but to have convinced the President of the United States to still want the President of the United States to continue. He's openly said, and so have his people, and so have his, you know, Cabinet ministers and things, that we don't want this war to end because we don't think the threat is over.
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Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, obviously there's been a lot of reporting about why the US Got dragged into the war. And it does appear that it's pretty simple that Netanyahu and a handful of other hawks surrounding the president convinced him that if he launched airstrikes Iran's government would fall and it would be replaced immediately by a pro US Pro Israel government. Now, whether that was a democracy or just a different dictator, it's unclear. But Netanyahu was wrong, and he's largely been wrong over and over again about the impact of military activity in the region. And now we're left with an absolute mess because they didn't apparently have a plan B. They thought if we launched a couple days of airstrikes, the regime would fall, a pro US Government would take its place and everything would be great. When that didn't plan out, they were scrambling and they've been scrambling incompetently, panicking ever since.
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Christiana Amanpour
So let me ask you then, because I want to know whether you agree with your colleague, Senator Chris Van Hollen and his op ed just recently this week when he basically talked about how the United States must reevaluate the terms of its relationship with Israel, you know, stay big friends, but conditions certainly are military assistance and weaponry on the same, you know, standards that you do to other countries who receive military aid. He said the hard truth my party needs to face. He's actually talking about Democrats right now, blaming Democrats for, quote, reflexive and unconditional support, undermined American values, calls out the Biden administration, he says repeatedly failed to use US Leverage as Israel imposed devastating collective punishment on the people of Gaza. Do you agree? Do you think the next Democratic president should recognize a Palestinian state and, as I said, enforce conditions, the very same conditions that it asks of other countries in receipt of aid and military assistance?
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Senator Chris Murphy
Well, I have not gotten the chance to read his whole piece, so I can't tell you whether I agree with the whole case. But I have long believed that we should treat Israel as we do other nations in this respect. We should only give aid to countries that are obeying and abiding by international human rights laws and the generally acceptable laws of war. And while I've always believed that Israel has a right to defend itself, a duty to defend itself, and did in the wake of the October 7 attacks, there is just no doubt that they have not used our weapons in accordance with generally accepted human rights laws. It is not allowable under international law to essentially eradicate entire towns and cities, as they did in Gaza, as they are doing right now in Lebanon. You have to engage in targeted campaigns against your true enemies rather than visiting enormous pain civilians, as has been happening in both of these theaters. So, yes, I have been voting against arms sales to Israel for the better part of the last year, not because I want to permanently end our partnership with Israel, but because I don't think we can continue it until they start operating differently and causing less humanitarian pain in these conflicts.
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Christiana Amanpour
So let's get to your book, because all of this is somewhat related. You talk about, you know, the common good and the assault on the common good. Let's talk about corruption. You talk a lot about that. And there's a huge amount of criticism, even by, you know, normal Trump allies over this $1.8 billion that's being, you know, termed a slush fund. Tell me how that fits into the paradigm of what you say. Americans are getting fed up and there's a malaise over the, you know, declining common.
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Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, listen, I think everybody in America knows that there was something wrong, something rotten in this country before Trump, that people were feeling more lonely than ever before. They felt like these technologies were spiraling us into lives of isolation, that our work lacked dignity as profit was the only thing that mattered. Everything not nailed down was becoming a commodity. Today, you can place a bet and win money over whether famine happens on the other side of the world. It all feels kind of soulless. And I think that that's the story of the normalization of corruption as well. We live in a corrupt economy today where a handful of really powerful people who run these big companies essentially just grab everything they can for themselves. We're talking about Elon Musk soon being a trillionaire, leaving scraps for everybody else. I think people have begun to think that that's normal in our politics as well, that Donald Trump wins politically, and he's able to use any means necessary to grab whatever he can for himself, including insider trading, including scooping $1.8 trillion billion dollars out of the treasury for his political slush fund. We've just gotten normalized to this idea that if you win in the economy, you win in government. You can take whatever you want. Greed used to be something that we shamed. We wanted shared prosperity. Today, it is something we lionize. And I think that's part of the reason that America seems to be kind of falling apart a bit spiritually and is attracted more than ever before to demagogues like Trump.
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Christiana Amanpour
Well, before I ask you for a solution, I just want to point out that you begin your book, this book, with an anecdote that is not set in Washington, in the corridors of power. It's on, you know, the hockey, the rink, when you're watching your son playing hockey. Tell us about the anecdote.
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Senator Chris Murphy
Yeah, my. My book opens with a personal story that will sound familiar. To people. My son's a hockey player. He's not going to play in the NHL, but he's playing a 60 game season, which is just a lot of hockey games, because his league is owned by a private equity backed investment company. And I've come to find out that there are some pretty bizarre rules in this league. For instance, parents can't live stream the games so that a grandparent can watch at home. Why? Because this private equity backed company has installed a camera system, a streaming system that they charge you for. And what's happening is that even the most sacred things in our life, like our kids youth sports, is being purchased and then sold back to us. And that is part of what is driving, I think, this great anxiety in this country is that everything is for sale, including our kids youth sports. We want some things in our world to just be run for the common good. Our elementary schools, parts of our health care system, our kids youth sports teams. And when everything becomes a commodity, when we construct an economy in which the only thing that matters is profit, that a company is judged to be successful even if it pillages the community in which it lives in, it treats its workers miserably, but it makes a profit, it just feels like something's wrong. And so this book argues that we have got to rebuild a sense of the common good. We've got to build an economy that serves everybody, not just the people at the top. We got to rebuild our democracy so that everybody's voices matter and that if you do that once again, people will be less willing to kind of normalize the kind of scapegoating that you see from Donald Trump.
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Christiana Amanpour
So let me ask you, because you talk about the youth and of course young people are now graduating from university, want to get into the job market, a huge amount of despair about what faces them, particularly in this AI world. And you've called out the cult of technology. Let me just play you a series of quite extraordinary booing of commencement speech speakers when they mention AI at graduation speeches.
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Senator Chris Murphy
This year it was the architects of artificial intelligence. Interesting.
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Claire Duffy
We're using a new AI system as our reader. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.
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Christiana Amanpour
I mean, it almost looks like a meme, but it's happening. That was Arizona, California, Florida. This is really big, particularly for our youth, particularly in what you're calling about, you know, the crisis of the common good. How is that going to be reversed?
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Senator Chris Murphy
So, you know, this book really talks about the spiritual crisis in the country. How are we feeling and how do we craft policies that make us happier. I mean, that's actually what government is supposed to be in the business of doing, is making people happier. And right now, people are less happy than ever before. I think we need to talk about AI not just as a job killer, and that's a big deal for these kids, but what happens to us spiritually, what happens to us as human beings when all of a sudden machines are doing the things that made us human. We're going to machines for friendship, for creativity, for composition, for critical thinking. What's left of humanity if the machines are doing all of that? And so the reason that I think we have to jump in right now and protect people from AI, in particular protect young people from AI, is that it's not just about jobs. It's ultimately about a crisis of humanity. And there is a way to get the good from AI without getting that spiritual disintegration. I gave a very different commencement speech this year. I spoke in Connecticut at Wesleyan University and I gave a speech in defense of inefficiency, talking about why we shouldn't give in to a cult of efficiency and we should just take, we should be okay with slowing down in our lives. We should be okay with the inefficiency of democracy, that we shouldn't be speeding forward to live a life that is constantly maximized, that in the end makes you feel like you are just a cog in a machine rather than having true agency, true meaning and purpose in your lives. So yes, Congress has to step forward and create some clear rules, like keeping kids off of these friendship chatbots, like turning off the algorithms for young children. We need to do that immediately as a spiritual matter and as an economic matter.
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Christiana Amanpour
And the Pope has weighed in as well, of course, this week with his first encyclical on this matter. Senator Murphy, thank you very much indeed. Now stay with CNN because we will be right back after a break.
- [22:12]
Derek Van Dam
Finding a source you can trust for weather forecasts should be easy, right? This is CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, thrilled to introduce the new CNN weather app. Check your daily forecast to plan your day, the weekly forecast to see what's on the way and prepare for any major storm. With our robust real time video coverage. The app is stunning. And if you're a weather nerd like me, you'll love our in depth stories and the photo of the day. Download the CNN weather app on iOS today. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast.
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Senator Chris Murphy
When the Wolverines asked me to deliver
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Derek Van Dam
the 2026 Commencement Medical School, I was honored and I jumped at the chance we have a special episode because I'd
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Senator Chris Murphy
like to share that speech with you all. To all the recent grads, whether it's
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Derek Van Dam
high school or college or maybe, you know, someone studying hard to get in
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Senator Chris Murphy
or just get through medical school, I
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Derek Van Dam
want to share a few lessons that I learned along the way.
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Senator Chris Murphy
Even more than 30 years later, I
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Derek Van Dam
never take for granted that the education
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Senator Chris Murphy
afforded me the chance to say I'm
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Derek Van Dam
Dr. Sanjay Gupta and this is Chasing
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Claire Duffy
Life streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Christiana Amanpour
Now. The United nations is facing a moment of crisis. The organization was originally created from the ruins of World War II to prevent conflict and to uphold international law. Today, the UN is facing a massive financial crisis with billions of dollars in unpaid US Dues. Such things even as wars and humanitarian crises raged from Sudan to Gaza to Ukraine and elsewhere. And now another major escalation. Israel has frozen ties with Secretary General Antonio Guterres himself after reportedly being considered for a UN blacklist of perpetrators accused of conflict related sexual violence, which Israel denies. So at a moment when the UN's authority is under growing attacks, who would want to lead it? Well, one contender is Rebecca Greenspan, the current head of UN Trade and Development and the former vice president of Costa Rica, who's joining me now from here in London. Welcome to the program, Rebecca Greenspan. And I know you've been here with some other contestants and contenders to put out your views and visions for your sort of campaign pitches, if you like. So what is your campaign pitch after I've described, I don't know. Do you agree? A failing organization or one in deep crisis right now?
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Rebecca Greenspan
Thank you, Christian. Thank you for inviting me. And let me start by saying that I believe in the principles of the Charter and I still believe that the UN is a key organization for the stability in a more peaceful world. Now, I am not defending the UN as it is. I am defending the principles of the UN and the need to, to reform and to put the UN fit for purpose in 2026. We were created 80 years ago. So there are things that we have to improve, there are representation that we have to enhance. And there are many things that we have to do in the UN also to be better, more useful, more flexible, more agile to the conflict of today.
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Christiana Amanpour
What would you think ISI mean? You say that reform, many, many UN leaders and contenders have insisted that there needs to be reform only to be pushed back and it just doesn't happen. But on the immediate crisis of underfunding and the potential financial collapse, what do you think needs to happen immediately, either before the election or after the election. What would you do? For instance, your biggest backer is the United States, and it is withholding quite a lot of Jews and has a lot of demands, including cutting back, you know, peacekeeping, you know, human rights work, et cetera, development work. Where do you meet that? In the middle?
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Rebecca Greenspan
Yeah. First of all, obviously, we have to start by the call on all the membership to comply with their obligations. But let's agree that the financial crisis is also related to the political crisis. So we will have to engage with the US but with all the membership to be able to solve this problem and call on the reform and the ability of the UN to deliver, as the US has agreed with us. In the humanitarian field? Yes, in the humanitarian, they realize that the only ones that can bring humanitarian aid at scale is the un and so they started to fund again the humanitarian work. So we need to engage on the other areas and also ask for the membership to give the UN the space in the financial rules to be able to find a solution and to have a stable for the future, a stable budget for the future. And we need some time to do that, some benefit of the doubt to do that. So we are calling also in the membership to give us some leeway in some of the financial rules so we can respond and we can bring back the countries and the countries to comply with the obligations that they have responsibility to. If I may say, Christiane here, I've been in the Ministry of Finance of my country when we were negotiating the debt and where we were under financial restraint. I know numbers. The first thing, obviously, I will do if I am elected is to ask for the actual numbers. But we need the benefit of the doubt, the space from the membership to be able to be back on our feet. We cannot really operate and make an organization that will be useful for its purpose if we don't have a stable budget and a horizon for that to happen.
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Christiana Amanpour
On the issue, though, of what is the power of the Secretary General? I mean, one could say that there's a lot of power, the power of the moral power, the bully pulpit, even though you pretty much are sort of beholden certainly to the five permanent members and all the other members of the United Nations. This is what I asked the current Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, a few years ago about what he thinks his authority is. Take a listen.
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Derek Van Dam
The Secretary General of the United nations
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Christiana Amanpour
has no power and has no money. What we have is a voice, and
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Senator Chris Murphy
that voice can be loud.
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Christiana Amanpour
And I have the obligation to make
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Senator Chris Murphy
it be loud and at the same time we have some convening powers.
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Christiana Amanpour
So, I mean, that was pretty frank. And I just wondered, do you agree? No money, no power, but we do have a voice and convening power. I mean, my first question is, why would you want this job at this time?
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Rebecca Greenspan
Look, Christiane, I am the daughter of peace. My parents were refugees of the Second World War. I know exactly what war takes away from you and what peace allows you to be. And so I really believe that the courage that it took, as you said when you introduced me, the courage that it took to agree on the UN Charter is the courage that we need today to stand by the principles of the UN Charter. And I know that the world will be more stable and more peaceful if we comply with that objective, with that aspiration. And the UN has the power of the voice and the power of the convening, but also it has the good offices of the Secretary General. We have the power of preventive diplomacy, of mediation, of being at the table. And when I go around and I ask about this, most of you people tell me, ask me, where is the un? And that's part of what we need to recover. We need to recover being at the table, being there, you know, assume and accept, you know, the cost of rejection or failing. The only thing we cannot assume is not trying. The only failure we have to fear is not trying to. We have become too risk averse and we have to change that.
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Christiana Amanpour
That's really interesting because you hark back to an earlier era. I was speaking to Thant Mint. Ooh. Who is the grandson of the UN Secretary General, the second one, you, Thant. And he was reminding us with his new book as well, that at that time, you, Thant played a very, very pivotal role in mediating between the Soviet Union and the United States around the Cuban Missile Crisis and helped to defuse the what could have been an end of times catastrophe. So, and only because he had that convening power, that platform, that moral authority, he didn't have any, you know, divisions or regiments. Can you see in today's world all these decades since and all these different wars and all these different, you know, stakeholders, and essentially a little bit of a collapse of the functioning of the Security Council. Do you think you can get back to a world where there's a you Thant style ability to, you know, to use that unique power?
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Rebecca Greenspan
Yeah, but Christiane, you know, when, if the Security Council is blocked, that's the starting of your work, not the end of your work. Your work part of your work is precisely to open up the spaces for convergence. We don't have to agree on everything to agree on things that are important for the world and for millions of people around the world. So that's why I say the good offices of the Secretary General have to be the center. Peace and security have to be the center of the office of the Secretary General in terms of preventive diplomacy, mediation. The good offices of the Secretary General to de escalate before conflict escalate. And today the office of the Secretary General is not structured to do that. We need to do that again, precisely learning from the past, but also looking at the kind of cooperation that we will need for the future. And that is possible to do because it requires leadership, it requires determination and it requires competence. And I think that I can provide that to the un and I'm confident that we can be of use to the conflicts of today.
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Christiana Amanpour
And what would you propose to try to straighten out relations, for instance, between, you know, the UN and Israel? The unrwa, which is the, you know, Relief and Works Agency, which basically is charged with all the humanitarian and education and medical needs of the Palestinians, whether in Gaza or in the occupied west bank, as you know, the headquarters in Israel has been flattened and there's a rupture between the government of Israel and unrwa. So it's bad, the relationship between Israel and the un. They believe the UN is stacked against them. How do you propose to straighten that out, given that it's such a vital necessity and that the UN does vital work that the government there is not doing for the Palestinians, for instance? That's what it was tasked to do.
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Rebecca Greenspan
Yeah. First of all, let's agree that UNRWA is also very important in other parts. UNRWA has vital also work to do in Jordan, in Syria, in the west bank, in Lebanon. And so UNRWA is a very important organization for the Palestinians and for the refugees, the Palestinian refugees now in Gaza. Now there is a resolution of the Security Council, Resolution 2803, that established 20 points for ceasefire that has to be maintained and has been broken many times during this time for unimpeded access of humanitarian aid to Gaza, but also on the reconstruction of Gaza with the board piece for Gaza. I think that we need to make that plan succeed and the UN can be a very important force. As I said before, we have learned very clearly there is nobody that can provide humanitarian aid at the scale needed if it's not the un. At the same time, we know and we agree that humanitarian aid should not be politicized. And that credibility has to be maintained all the time on the ground.
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Christiana Amanpour
And the global south obviously has risen to a much bigger prominence over the decades since the UN was first formed. And one of your rivals or competitors for this job is Macky Sall, President of Senegal. And he is openly demanding reform and expansion of the Security Council, that it's enough already with just the five permanent members and that developing nations should have permanent seats. Would you consider that?
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Rebecca Greenspan
You know that definitely. You know that that's a decision of the Security Council. But I have no doubt and I will agree with Maki Sama that there is a wide consensus that Africa is underrepresented in the United Nations. Most of them were not independent countries when the United nations was formed. When the Charter was signed, there were 51 countries signing the charter. Today we are 193. That means that 142 countries were not present at that moment. And that will require reforms. And the Security Council no doubt will have more weight and legitimacy if it will represent the world of today. And you know, I think that the wider consensus that you can find today is for the representation of Africa in the structures of the UN and in the Security Council.
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Christiana Amanpour
And lastly, there is obviously yourself and a couple of other women running there. Wouldn't it would be a first if one of you was elected. Do you think this is the year?
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Rebecca Greenspan
Well, you know, I have said that we don't need special treatment, Cristiano. What we need is equal treatment. If we will have equal treatment, I think this will be the year.
- [38:13]
Christiana Amanpour
Okay. All right, perfect answer. Thank you so much, Rebecca Greenspan, former vice President of Costa Rica. And we'll be right back after this short break.
- [38:32]
Claire Duffy
I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy this week on the podcast Terms of Service. With me is Nathan Proctor. He's the senior director of the Right to Repair campaign. He'll share some tips for extending the life of your tech. When did you realize that this wasn't just an annoying thing that happens, but actually a systemic problem?
- [38:51]
Derek Van Dam
Frankly, nothing lasts like it used to. Like our clothes and furniture don't last as long as they did. There's a really clear incentive for manufacturers of all kinds to create short lifespan products so that we have to buy more stuff. And that's exactly what's happening.
- [39:07]
Claire Duffy
Listen to CNN's Terms of Service wherever you get your podcast.
- [39:17]
Christiana Amanpour
America is turning 250. A quarter of a millennium is quite the milestone. But as we heard from Senator Murphy, not everyone is feeling joyous about this chapter of The American story, the Birthday arrives amid a war with Iran. As we've been talking about soaring prices and a firestorm of political polarization. As the country looks inward at its history and its future, is a unified celebration possible? Jill Lepore is an American historian and author of we the People. She joins Walter Isaacson to discuss that and to look back at American history. The Good and the Ugly.
- [39:55]
Derek Van Dam
Thank you, Chris. John and Jill Lepore, welcome back to the show.
- [39:59]
Claire Duffy
Thanks.
- [40:00]
Derek Van Dam
In a month, we're gonna be celebrating our 250th, but, boy, we seem like we're in no mood for a celebration. How difficult is it to celebrate at a time like this? Politically?
- [40:13]
Claire Duffy
It really is a kind of perfect storm. There's just so much going on in the country, really, from town to town, city neighborhood to city neighborhood, where people are asking basic questions about the nature of the American experiment, the meaning of our heritage, the direction of the nation's future. I mean, between the 250th, the kind of ongoing, rolling, intense debates that the Trump administration spurs, and we're also in the midst of this AI backlash moment, this tech lash moment. So I think there's gonna be a lot of hot dogs and parades and baseball games and bicycle races and basketball games and a lot of regular old standard Fourth of July celebration. But I think the larger kind of epic moment will elude us.
- [41:03]
Derek Van Dam
Well, you know, 50 years ago, we were going through a period that was very similar to what you just talked about in the sense that we were very torn apart about Vietnam, about the assassinations, Kennedys and King, the urban riots, Watergate, the resignation of president, and, by the way, landing on the moon and letting the Internet become more public. And yet we rang the Liberty Bell and we had the bicentennial, and there was a healing process. Why is that not happening now?
- [41:32]
Claire Duffy
You know, I sometimes wonder how much of a healing process it was. I don't know about you. I was a little kid for the bicentennial, and I remember mainly just being a blast. Like, we had to sew our own colonial dresses and wear tall.
- [41:44]
Derek Van Dam
Ships came up.
- [41:45]
Claire Duffy
Yeah, Girl Scouts. We went out and we painted the fire hydrants red, white and blue. So I have a kind of kid's eye view of it. But I did spend a lot of time researching what the bicentennial meant for a piece that I wrote in the New Yorker. And one of the things I came across that was so wonderful, the National Park Service made a documentary in 1974, 75, where they went and just interviewed people at National Parks like national historic parks, too. Right. So Philadelphia and San Francisco as much as Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and asked people what the bicentennial meant to them. And the answers are remarkably candid and wide ranging. And there is a lot of cynicism. We forget how much cynicism there was about the real commercialism of the bicentennial was mocked as the Bicentennial. The bui centennial, like everything was sold with a bicentennial theme. You bought sanitary napkins. They were red, white and blue that year. Just everything, toilet paper. Anything that you bought in any restaurant came with a quote by Paul Revere on it. So it was tacky and cheesy in all kinds of ways. Although for kids, I think that was fun. I remember thinking those were fun things to collect. But there was a lot of cynicism about the nature of the. What did the country have to celebrate after Watergate in Vietnam? The Pentagon Papers. What really happened, though, with the bicentennial that has not happened this time around is that it was saved by the recognition in the years before 1976 that the planning wasn't working, that the planning had become hyper partisan. So Lyndon Johnson had a bicentennial commission that he had set up in 1965, really early on. Richard Nixon, when he took office in 69, got rid of that whole commission, appointed a bunch of Republicans, was using it really almost like a slush fund, and to promote the GOP agenda. Then there was a kind of big expose about that. The Washington Post, after publishing the Pentagon Papers, published the less well remembered bicentennial papers that revealed kind of the corruption of the commission. And then the commission was basically disbanded. And the guy that was brought in, John Warner, who continued under the Ford administration, he had this really good idea, which was just to say, you know what? This isn't really a project of the federal government. This is something for communities to figure out on their own. We'll fund anything and we'll announce anything and we'll promote anything. They published a newspaper called the Bicentennial Times listing things that were going on all over the country. Country. They kept a calendar, which was a really kind of complicated thing to do in that day and age. And they funded really, I think something like between a half and two thirds of every historic site in the country received funding from the federal government during that era. So little historic houses in your neighborhood, oral history projects in your city, these things, most of them were funded by the federal government for the bicentennial without a specific agenda of what the story of America ought to be. That was for your community to decide.
- [44:43]
Derek Van Dam
As we talk about celebrating anniversaries of the Declaration, it seems to go all the way back to John Adams. I'll read you something. He wrote to his wife Abigail, on July 3, 1776. He said he hoped that the Americans would celebrate every year with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from on into the continent to the other first. Let's take the fact that that was written on July 3rd, kind of quirky. He thought, I think, that July 2nd, when he was the one who got the resolution passed to break away from England, he thought we'd be celebrating July 2nd.
- [45:26]
Claire Duffy
What happened, Americans, decided to celebrate July 4th.
- [45:31]
Derek Van Dam
Is that because the Declaration is such a important founding document, I think that
- [45:38]
Claire Duffy
it was received with great pomp and circumstance. At the time, there were a lot of public readings of the Declaration in Boston. People climbed up to the balcony of what is known as the Old State House that had been the governor's balcony, and read it out loud to great applause and cheers. It was very much part of the effort to convince Americans that independence was, in fact, the right decision and that the war was going to be worthwhile and that the war could be won. So I think that. And also Adams was instrumental in insisting that the document ought to be celebrated in that way. It really doesn't take off the Fourth of July as a big public celebration until the 1790s, but then it is actually quite important at building up a sense of national character and a sense of shared experience as a nation, that the country had been through the war, had been through the elaborate and contentious and very close call of ratifying the Constitution by 1789. This is really not until the 1790s that the really big celebrations begin. And it's, in a way, part of the larger project of constitutionalizing the Declaration of Independence, because, of course, they're two very different documents separated by 11 years. But it's the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that I think Americans care about the most and often think is in the Constitution. But in a way, it gets written into the Constitution. By the way we celebrate it on the 4th of July. We don't really celebrate Constitution day, which is September 17th and wasn't a holiday until the 20th century.
- [47:21]
Derek Van Dam
Well, you wrote a great book about the Constitution. Tell me what you mean when you just said constitutionalizing the Declaration.
- [47:30]
Claire Duffy
So the Declaration of Independence, you know, Jefferson, who was its chief author, although this always pissed off John Adams, Jefferson always said, you know, there wasn't an original idea in it. It was just an attempt to write down what is contained in the American mind. And that was true. There had been many of the states had declared independence. Towns had written Declaration of its Independence. Virginia had written its Declaration of Rights. A lot of state constitutions that were written in the early months of 1776 had language in them that found its way into the Declaration of Independence. So it wasn't like something that dropped out of the sky. It was a document that was produced by the American people. And Jefferson just essentially wrote it down like a scribe. That's how he would have talked about it. So these ideas were constitutional ideas because they're in the state constitution. So Massachusetts Constitution from 1780 insists that all men are born equal to. How that becomes constitutionalized federally is partly because of people seeking emancipation from slavery. It's largely because of people seeking emancipation from slavery even in the 1780s. So, you know, in 1783, there's a famous case in Massachusetts where a woman in western Massachusetts who's held as a slave, you know, files for her freedom, and she says, our Constitution says all men are free and born free, so we therefore are, and therefore I cannot be a slave. And she wins her case. And that's a means of constitutionalizing the ideas that are in the Declaration of Independence. Many of them are also in the state constitutions. How that enters the federal Constitution really isn't until what's known as the Jubilee in 1826, which is the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It's also on July 4th of that year, really spookily, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die that day, the two most important figures in writing the Declaration of Independence. But in the 1820s, and especially around the Jubilee, black abolitionists insist that the spirit of the Declaration of Independence is contained within the Constitution. And they do that constitutionalizing in a way, it doesn't really happen until the Civil War. Lincoln is, of course, instrumental in this. He writes about the Declaration of Independence as part of the Constitution, and that's what the 14th Amendment does, which is ratified after the Civil War.
- [49:49]
Derek Van Dam
Well, speaking of slavery and the Declaration, let's address the complexity of Thomas Jefferson, especially in the early drafts that get edited out. His denunciation of slavery, even as he enslaved, I think more than 400 people at that time.
- [50:09]
Claire Duffy
Yeah, this is a hard one for Americans to wrestle with. Has been a hard one for Americans to wrestle with. Even when Jefferson was alive, Northerners campaigned against Jefferson on the basis of not only his status as a slave owner, but what was kind of a fairly well known public secret at the time that he had had children with Sally Hemings, who was the half sister of his. Of his deceased wife. Jefferson's relationship to slavery was a scandal in his lifetime, and it remains so across time in ways that are really worth re examining. And it's one of the projects of Monticello, Jefferson's Virginia home, to lead a conversation for the nation around the multiple meanings of Jefferson's plea for equality and liberty and universal rights and our need as a country to face the history of slavery and its many descendants and legacies. So I think that it's worth looking at how odd it is that Jefferson, as an owner of human beings, denounced slavery as an institution in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, denounced the slave trade, and then weirdly blamed it on the king. And Congress deleted this paragraph. It was the last and final and longest paragraph in the Declaration of Independence, which, most of which is a list
- [51:42]
Derek Van Dam
of grievances against the ultimate indictment of the king. Right. That's what he meant him to be.
- [51:48]
Claire Duffy
The worst thing the king has done is because there had been some efforts to close the slave trade and he's blaming the king for having made those not happen. So, I mean, it's a very complicated story. But in any event, Congress looked at this draft, the Continental Congress, and said, yeah, we're not going to. No, we're going to just take that out in its entirety. Remember, this is a time at which people in England who were not supportive of the American independence movement liked to point out the hypocrisy of Americans who were crying for liberty while holding millions of human beings in a state of slavery, and that it would call more attention to that hypocrisy. To put this language in the Declaration of Independence is one of the arguments against it.
- [52:34]
Derek Van Dam
You've written in one of your books about how we each try, each side sometimes tries to capture our history and that sometimes, especially when we're looking at our founding, we make it. Either we demonize it or we totally sugarcoat it. Is that happening worse right now?
- [52:55]
Claire Duffy
I don't know that I think it's worse. I think it's dangerous. It's always dangerous when your view of the past maps on conveniently to your political preferences. And I think for viewers, if that seems familiar to you, you should be a little bit concerned. Right. We have a very hyper polarized politics and we have a hyper polarized sense of the American past. And I think that's not worse maybe than it has been in other moments, but more dangerous because of the appetite for political violence on both sides of, of the political aisle that's really been increasingly documented in public opinion research. So when you have a view of the past, the present and the future, that is irreconcilable with the views of time held by people with whom you disagree politically, and you also think maybe there's no possibility that you might be a little bit wrong, and you maybe even entertain the possibility that you are so right that violence might be a proper means to advance your version of these events. That's an insurrectionary political culture.
- [54:16]
Derek Van Dam
Jill Lepore, thank you so much for joining us.
- [54:19]
Claire Duffy
Thanks a lot, Walter.
- [54:22]
Christiana Amanpour
And finally, as we near the birthday bash, we just heard about Donald Trump has cause for joy, though not the man you're thinking of. A rare albino buffalo nicknamed Donald Trump, given their shared distinctive blond quiff, was said to be sacrificed on the Moslem festival of Eid. It went viral and in a last minute turn of fortune, the Bangladeshi government spared him. They moved the buffalo buffalo to the National Zoo where he now roams. Meanwhile, just outside of Rome, Trump's sometime nemesis, Pope Leo, got behind the wheel of Ferrari's new electric car following a disappointing response to the model's reveal. Perhaps some divine intervention could boost its fortunes. Electric horsepower and 700 kilos of Buffalo power. There must be some connection there. That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs and on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online on our website and all over social media. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
- [55:37]
Claire Duffy
From the descendants of history makers involved in the Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark expedition, discover the untold stories of American expansion in the CNN Original series Land, premiering June 7th on CNN.
- [55:52]
Derek Van Dam
I'm Daniel Day Kim. I'm going to South Korea to figure out how this small nation conquered the world with its culture. Join me and meet the artists and creators behind the phenomenon.
- [56:02]
Claire Duffy
K Everything now streaming on the CNN app.