The Daschle Dialogues brought together Tom Daschle and Tom Brokaw to speak about a wide range of topics, including the 2016 election that elected Donald Trump as president.

“Almost all presidents that I’ve known have not been happy with the press at one time or another,” Brokaw said. “It’s very hard to find very many episodes where Donald Trump’s attacks on the press were really justified.”

Daschle is a former South Dakota Senator and Senate Majority Leader, and Brokaw is a former anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News” for 22 years. The lecture united both men on Oct. 19 on the Larson Memorial Concert Hall stage in the Performing Arts Center.

Brokaw and Daschle spoke about their life experiences in their respective fields and commented on the current state of American politics and journalism in regard to Trump.

“We have a First Amendment,” Brokaw said. “We have the greatest freedoms of any journalists in the history of mankind and it’s an exciting profession and for him to come along and cheap shot us like that I thought was just a step too far.”

Other topics of discussion included a call for respect for those in the military, the 1968 presidential election, anthrax attacks on their offices and where the two men were on 9/11.

The lecture was held in support of the Senator Thomas A. Daschle Congressional Research Study, located in the Archives and Special Collections of the Hilton M. Briggs Library. The study holds more than 2,000 linear feet of materials from Daschle’s career.

This was the third lecture held in the Daschle Dialogues series. Former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott (R) had been a guest of the series in 2014 and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joined Daschle in 2015.