CHARLIE ROSE (CO-HOST): We turn to politics and then the speech, because in this speech, which has gotten so much attention, you talked about American politics.
KEN BURNS: Yeah, you know, you said I was passionate and political. I’d like to say I was passionate and American. As you know, Charlie, I’ve spent my entire professional life being straight down the middle, nonpartisan. Just trying to tell American facts. I try in public television to reach all audiences. It isn’t, you know, the Upper West Side and Russian Hill. We have good ratings in Alaska and Oklahoma and Arkansas and West Virginia, and I love it that way.
But there comes a time when we have to stop and say -- you know, each one of the people here, even Zachary Taylor, who had had no previous experience, was qualified for this office. That is not the case this year. And those of us who know just a little bit about history are aghast at the amount of oxygen this candidacy has gotten.
NORAH O’DONNELL (CO-HOST): Why is Donald Trump not qualified?
BURNS: He is just temperamentally unsuited and we’d like to think of that in a psychological way and that may be true. I can’t psychoanalyze him. But he’s riddled with lies and inconsistencies and will say whatever it takes. He didn’t give us any information on his own finances. But more important, if you’re interested in having a healthy economy, if he does half the things he’s promised, we’re going to make the recession of 2008, 2009 look like child’s play. If you’re interested in world stability, what he said about NATO and what that will then produce with Russia and China, who will become more aggressive and adventurous. And how he’ll react. We don’t want that war.
