So letâs just start with the back story, the Steve Bannon kid, the brawler, your brother said. In what way? Well, I mean, itâs aâour neighborhood became, it was kind of, you know, white, working class, lower middle class, old, internal suburb of an old city, Richmond [Virginia]. So I was inside the city limits, very close to downtown, and it became predominantly black in the â60s. And my parents, you know, wouldnât leave; that was our neighborhood. So it was a prettyâyou know, it was a fairly toughâthe north side of Richmond is a fairly tough section of town, and you just kind of, you know, you justâI was raised in a working-class, Irish Catholic family, went to a military prep school, and I was just kind of a, you know, justâjust raised to not back down. If you believe in something, you believe in something. And you canâtâif you show any weakness in a neighborhoodâitâs quite Darwinian as a young person, right? If you show weakness, youâre going to just get picked on and bullied and all that. So youâve got toâyouâve just got toâyou just learn from the playgrounds, and you learn from the schools and the sports. You know, thereâs no big, organized Little League or anything like that; everything was kind of inner-city baseball leagues or basketball leagues, etc. You just learn youâve got to stand up for yourself, and youâve got to fight. And if you fight, people give you some space. And if you donât fight, itâs just⌠you know, itâs not a great life. So it was justâand it wasâand it wasnât any big deal. It was kind of like breathing air. So I remember the story about your dad that you told that almost felt like one switch gets turned on, and young Steve Bannonâyouâre a grownup by then, but it goes to this idea of trust, trust in the government, trust in your company, trust that your dad had in his retirement accounts. Well, look, weâre Irish Catholic. The Catholic Church, the Bellâ my grandfather and father I think are the only two guys in the history of the Bell System to be both 50-year employees. My grandfather worked there 50 years as a lineman and a PBX [Private Branch Exchange] guy, and my dad was 50 years, started in the sewer pulling cable and worked for 50 years. So as a father and son worked 50 years for the phone company. You had these big institutions. I was fortunate enough to be raised in a great time in America, right, the â50s and â60s. But you believed in these big institutions: the Catholic Church, the phone company. And these were, you know, permanent fixtures in your life, and it was kind of that stability. I came from a neighborhood that was a little bit tough, but it was not likeâit was a very solid, great background. As I go throughout the world and meet these very wealthy people I deal with all the time and see their kids, the greatest thing you can give a kid is that kind of basic, core, loving family thatâs there and rock-solid. So the family, the church, the community, the phone company, these are institutions. And so institutions are everything. Itâs a very institutional life when you think about it, and quite hierarchical. But it gives you a set framework that you can grow and beâ you know, get to be an adult, and thereâs a real sense of, you know, something thatâs solid there, something thatâs real. I think thatâs what broke down the financial crisis. I mean, my father would ratherâ he would tell me stories back in the Depression about one of the things about his father working at the phone company is that they never laid anybody off during the Great Depression. My dad was born in 1921, and as a very young person, he remembers all the neighborhood fathers got let go. His dad still had a job; the phone company didnât let anybody go. He also told stories about the, you know, borrowing againstâthey had like one or two shares of stock, which was everything, and they would borrow against the stock to like buy the house and buyâ I think the house cost like 2,500 bucks or something in the â30s to build. They borrowed against their AT&T stock. AT&T, the Bell System, incentivized working-class people to put X amount of their income away and actually become a shareholder. And being a shareholder in the phone company, thatâs where my dadâs entire net worth was. And so, when, after the collapse, a couple days after the collapse, when Cramer went on TV, Jim Cramer went on TV on CNBC and that morning just goes, âHey, if you need cash in like, the next five years of your lifeââI mean, heâs in a full panic. If you watch the video itâs quite shocking. Itâs shocking CNBC actually let him on. But heâs sitting there going, âIf you need cash in the next five years, youâve just to sell everything and go to cash, because we donât know where the bottom of this is.â And two days laterâI remember, Iâd been at Goldman Sachs, and my dad asked me my opinion. A couple days later he sold all of his AT&T. He would have sold his stock in the Catholic Church before he sold his stock in AT&T. And he sold his stock. And thatâthat struck me as that this is a crisis of the institutions of our country, right? This is aâthis is a massiveâwe now have an institutional crisis. When guys like Marty Bannon, who the countryâsâkind of this Steady Eddie guy who the whole thing is to raise a family, to be there for the family, to be there for his community, heâs the kind ofâthese are the kind of building blocks that society, civic societyâs built upon. When guys like that are questioning the system and dumping their ownership in the system, the system canât go on like that. Youâre now in a real crisis. It felt to me when we were watchingâwe made a number of films about it, and one of theâ one of the things that happened in the cascade, because we make political films, we were thinking aboutâ letâs talk about Sarah Palin, for example, somebody who could identify in some way what that was, what that fear and that anger was, probably in your dad and lots of dads and moms all over the country. ⌠Thatâs one of the reasons I came back. You know, I was actually living in Shanghai at the time. I was living in the French Concession, spending most of my time there. I had aâI had a massive multiplayer video game company that had a big Asian presence in Hong Kong, Kowloon, South Korea and in ChinaâŚ. So I was living there. Came back because I thought there were some financial problems. I was going to sell real estate. But then my sister pointed me to this woman, Sarah Palin, whoâd just been namedâwas going to be the vice president. I actually went to the Republican convention asâ just with a filmmaking guy, the guy who produced The Passion of the Christ, Steve McEveety, and went to theâand saw something unique in Palin and saw her go round. People forget. When the financial crisis, when Lehman was put into bankruptcy, which was put into bankruptcy, I think, on the morning of Sept. 15 in London, right, and then it cascaded down, the smartest guys in the room didnât realize that the commercial paper market, the global commercial paper market, which is the way that every company in the world gets its working capital to kind of, you know, make payroll and to pay for the lights going on and for the janitors and for everything thatâs payâ you know, GE, the biggest companies of the world, the commercial paper market, every day youâre selling commercial paper to provide working capital. When that froze up on the morning of the 15th, the whole system froze up. On that date, Sarah Palin and John McCain, I think, were up one point in the Gallup Poll on Barack Obama; that people forget, Palin came with such force out of that thing for the first two weeks before she started to be kind of destroyed, they were on fire. It was, in that sequence of events that week, I think talks about the corruption of our institutions, and I think it talks about how the elites are comfortable with decline. Remember, on that Thursday morningâMonday, it goes into bankruptcy. By Thursday, thereâs a crisis that nobody knows whatâs going on in this commercial paper market. The whole way that the whole entire global system is financed is now frozen up. And thatâs when you have [Chair of the Federal Reserve Ben] Bernanke and [Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson, who are not alarmists, particularly not Bernanke, and heâs an expertâ remember, heâs an expert in the Great Depression. Thatâs his claim to fame; thatâs what his Ph.D. is in. They go to the Oval Office to go see Bush, and they have a meeting, and they tell him, heyâ and we know all of this by congressional testimony later. So these are the facts. They go to him and say: âHey, by 5:00 today, we need a trillion dollars of cash infusion into the system, or the American financial system will collapse in 72 hours. The world financial system will collapse 48 hours after that, and we will have global anarchy and chaos.â And Bush goes: âThatâs interesting, but weâve kind ofâ the White House counsel said weâve kind of checked the Constitution. I donât really have authority to do that. Youâve got to go over to Capitol Hill. Itâs kind of their problem.â And so they go up to Capitol Hill. They go to Nancy Pelosiâs office in the afternoon, and they had the same meeting. In fact, theyâve got to keep theirâtheyâve got to keep their Blackberries outside itâs so confidential. And they talk in there about they need this cash infusion. Thatâs when, you know, Hank Paulson gets on his knees to Nancy Pelosi and makes some sort of pitch to her. ⌠The countryâs in literallyâwhat the Germans and the Japanese military and the Soviets, what nobody could ever do to us, Osama bin Laden, nobody, weâve now done to ourselves. We have literally caused a financial crisis that will bring down the entire system in 72 hours. The biggest revolutionaries that have gone after the United States could never dream of what we had done to ourselves. And so that began a cascade ofâand hereâs the thing. Nobody, nobodyâs ever been held accountable for it. Nobodyâs ever taken responsibility for it. And it just kind ofâthatâs why, you know, we have never recovered. Weâve never recovered from that catastrophe. Somebodyâs been held accountable, which is probably why we have Donald Trump sitting in the White House now. Itâs conceivable to meâand you and I can talk about itâ what happens politically among the group that become the âdeplorablesâ to Hillary Clinton, the âforgottenâ to Donald Trumpâ ⌠The bang that went off on Nov. 9 of 2016 at 2:30 in the morning was lit in the Oval Office on Sept. 18 of 2008. It was lit right in that room. Why? It was lit, that fuse, that long fuse that has this populist explosion exploded. But every financial crisis, I think, in at least modern history is always followed by some sort of populistâright? Now sometimes that devolves into fascism and other things. But every time thereâs a financial collapseâand remember, this is the biggest financial collapse in the countryâs history. This is bigger thanâthis is bigger than the Great Depression. This is bigger than the one in the 1870s that caused such a big problem. This is bigger than the one that caused the Federal Reserve [sic] in the early 20th century. This is the biggest financial collapse in American history. And this was one that was not done just by simple Ponzi schemes. This was done by an organized, thought-through effort of the financial and corporate elites thatâ remember, the scams pulled off here are absolutely outrageous. ⌠And so thatâs why you had this immense collapse. You had so many of the elites making so much money. Then when it collapsed, they wanted the taxpayersâthe whole thing of the trillion dollars. ⌠The Federal Reserve didnât call all the financial institutions together and corporations and say: âHey, boys, weâve got a problem, right? This is a problem, and we need to pass the hat. Youâve got to cough up some cash.â That trillion dollars was from Marty Bannon. They hit âprint,â right? They hit âprint,â hit âprint,â but the guyâs whoâs going to pay for it is the little guy. ⌠We live in neofeudalism. This is not capitalism. This is where you have an underclass, right, a Lumpenproletariat almost thatâs taken care of by the state; you have the very wealthy; and you have this kind of neofeudalist working class and middle class in the middle that pays for everything, and the guys at the top who weâve socialized the risk, that trillion dollars of infusion, right? Remember, the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve on the morning of Sept. 18, 2008, when theyâre in the Oval Office talking, is $880 billion. The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve on Jan. 17, or Jan. 20 of 2017, when Donald Trump raises his hand, is $4.5 trillion. The most progressive president in the history of our country, President Obama, saved the wealthy, and hereâs how they did it. [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner, they just turned on the taps of liquidity. We call itâthe technical term is âquantitative easing.â The not-technical term is called bailing out the people who are guilty, OK? Essentially, if you owned anything, you had the greatest 10-year run in history. Wait, wait, wait. ⌠Letâs move to the TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] vote and whether you thinkâ so now all of that is happening. You have to do TARP, the first one you have to do. You know why? Your fiduciaryâwhen a guy like Bernanke walks in and says, âI need a trillion dollars,â right, you donât have time to debate. Historyâs going to look at you. When he says, âThe American financial systemâs going to collapse in 72 hours and the world financial system two days after that, and youâre going to have global anarchy,â thereâs not a person on earthâI donât want to hear these libertarians and all these, you know, free marââOh, let capitalism take place.â No. When they come in and ask for the first trillion in an emergency, I believe you have to say: âOK, weâve got to do it. I donât know what went on here, but if you tell me this is going to save me and at least get down the road, Iâll do it.â But remember, thatâs the first trillion. We kept on for another $3.5 trillion. $3.5 trillion. This is just bailing out the people that caused the problems. Got to think about it for a second. You know, Goldman Sachs didnât lose any equity. None of the partners really missed any bonus payments. GEâs still in business, AIG. It all still exists, all the donors, OK? The reverse side of this, remember, there is a corollary to this thatâs quite powerful. And we know from the notes of the Federal Reserve, a guy named Richard Fisher, the governorâ the president of the Federal Reserve of Dallas, argued this in the room constantly. He said by doing this quantitative easing, which youâre just flooding the zone with liquidity, we will save the institutions, and we will save anybody thatâs a big real estate holder or hedge fund or bank. But he said, thereâs a huge reverse here. Number one, savings accounts are going to go to zero-interest rates. Savings accounts are going to go to zero. So 5,000 years of the Western traditionâback to the Marty Bannonsâ which is be a good householder, get a wife, get a mortgage, get some kids, and you save your money. Well, now, if you save money, youâre a sucker, because itâs broken the trust. Thatâs the trust thatâs broken. If you save money, youâre a jerk because youâre not going to get any interest paid. In fact, the bankâs going to charge you. So thereâs been noâyou canâtâyou canât put money away to save into the system. Number two, the pension funds. The pensions funds are going to be destroyed. Today we have a $9.5 trillion gap between the obligations of the pension funds and what weâve earned off the pension funds. Why? Because it went to zero-interest rates, and the bonds they can buy have no juice in them. right? The other thing is public schools and all this. Even communities that are not leveraged canât issue bonds because thereâs no juice in the bonds, because of negative interest rates, 1.5%. Weâve essentially put the burden of the bailout on the working class and middle class. Thatâs why nobody owns anything. But the millennials today are nothing but 19th-century Russian serfs. Theyâre better fed; theyâre better clothed; theyâre in better shape; they have more information than anybody in the world at any point in time, but they donât own anything. Theyâre not going to own anything, OK? And theyâre 20%âif you mark in time against their parents, theyâre 20% behind in their income, and thereâs no pension plan in the future. Theyâre all gig economy. Weâve literally destroyed the middle class in this country. OKâ And both political parties, by the way, this is not about Republicans and Democrats. This is the way the system works, and this is the way the system comes together to protect itself and to move itself forward, OK? Because nobody understands even the rudimentaries of finance, right? And they keep the public kind of economically illiterate, right? This allows to go on. And now weâre in that crisis, that crisis, what Trump understoodâ Wait, donât go to Trump yet. So weâve created this world of unhappy people. The middle class is shrinking and destroyed in lots of ways. Weâre going to catch back up with it in a minute. But now letâs go to you, Breitbart, coming here, coming out ofâout of Los Angeles, coming to Washington with what kind of a plan, what kind of an idea? What was Breitbart in Los Angeles, and what does Breitbart become in Washington? Andrew was, had been Matt Drudge editor. Heâd been one of the launch editors for Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post. He always had a vision of what a news site could be. At the time, he was a blog, right? People kind of posted stuff; there were citizen journalists. Andrew had this big vision of what a real news site could be. We were the blog kind of for the Tea Party. This Tea Party energy, you know, right after the financial collapse, in the spring of the next year, in fact, Rick Santelli had this rant, this very famous rant, that took place when the first TARP thing was being talked about. And he was basically saying, âHey, all the working-class people are paying for this, right?â That rant initiated these group of kind of disparate people to have a meeting and basically have people come out on April 15, on Tax Day, April 15 at 2009. That was the beginning of the Tea Party. And Andrew saw very quickly, as I saw, that there was this real populist power in this; that this was something totally different. This wasnâtâthis was not standard Republican Party. This was a whole new deal. And so we started covering that, and Breitbart kind of became the blog site for that. Andrew wanted to do a news site. We were able to raise some money. And in 2011, we closed on the money, and we decided that the center of gravity of our political coverage had to be in Washington, D.C. And we leased this house right in back of the Supreme Court, and we called it the âBreitbart Embassy.â And the reason was, we were an embassy in a foreign capital, right, because everybody told usâ I mean, we were lectured by guys saying: âYouâre not going to have any access. Youâre going to have to play the game to get access.â And we kind of said: âHey, weâre just going to kick down doors. How about this? Weâre going to be totally different.â And so we called this place the Embassy for the simple reason that, you know, we thought we were in an embassy in a foreign capital; that this was owned and run by the permanent political class. And so a handful of people, like Peter Schweizer and others, Matt Boyle and Andrew, we started this news site. Now, unfortunately, Andrew died, tragically, you know, four days before the site was to be launched. He was working 20 hours a day to build the site, to perfect it. He had theseâhe was quite a visionary when it came to new media and how people accessed information. And so the whole site you see today was really his creation. He created every component piece of it, including how news ⌠flowed through the system, how we promoted things, etc. And so that was this kind of rowdyâand remember, one thing, decision we made very fundamentallyâ and I kind of was, I think, a big influence on Andrew on thisâI said, âLook, attacking [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, weâre so far removed from having any influence over that,â because at this time we were a very small site. I said: âWeâre the populist, you know, kind of economic nationalist part of this. Letâs attack the real enemy. And the real enemyâs the Republican establishment. What weâre going to do is just go after the House leadership. Weâre going to go after the [Sen.] Mitch McConnells; weâre going to go after the donors. Weâre just going to go hard at kind of this kind of [Rep.] Paul Ryan philosophy. Why did you think [Speaker of the House John] Boehner and [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor were vulnerable? Because they were vulnerable, because of the huge disconnect. Remember, the one thing the Democrats, they have lined upâ they have actually, at least till here recently, donors and their base kind of line up. The Republican Partyâs totally dysfunctional. Itâs essentially a working-class party. The votes all come from working-class or lower-middle-class people predominantly, right? And it doesnât represent their interests. Thereâs a book written by a guy called Whatâs the Matter with Kansas?, where he kind of walks through how theâ the donor class, the Singers and the Kochs, these kind of libertarians, have this entirely different concept, this kind of Austrian school of economics concept, that the political apparatchiksâ remember, the consultant class, the political class around it and the donors all line up perfectly. Unfortunately, youâve got a working-class party thatâfor instance, trade. You know, mass illegal immigration, which the chamber of commerce pushes all the time, and more legal immigration and trade are just two sides of the same coin, right? The two sides of the same coin, itâs suppression of workersâ wages, OK? Mass illegal immigration is to flood the zone against predominantly black and Hispanic working class so that youâve got unlimited, you know, unlimited labor pool, and you can keep wages down for higher margins. Immigration and the H-1B visas are the same thing in the tech area, that you donât have to hire American citizens; I can do it with these visas to increase margins. Trade is the same thing. Trade is just youâre competing against foreign labor and foreign countries unfairly. And so all of it is to suppress workersâ wages and to have higher margins; therefore, higher stock prices; therefore, more wealth, of which the workers donât own any piece of. And so our thesis was not just the cultural stuff but the economic stuff. You have an ability to re-form this Republican Party and make it a true populist entity. But they werenât going to let that happen. They were going to resist that in almostâ They did, and we took them down. We took down Cantor. Remember, we took down Cantor with Dave Brat. The first time in the history of the republic that a sitting majority leader had ever been beaten. Remember, he was beaten in a primary thatâ Cantor was up here in D.C. on the day of the primary and schlepped down there the last night. Fox News, when they came on last [sic] night, didnât even know Dave Bratâs name. This was an unknown. And we had worked it with Laura Ingraham. I mean, we had beenâBreitbart had been all over this. We had Dave Brat on our radio show, I think, every week for the 10 weeksâ run-up to the election. We saw real vulnerability. Did you know it was coming? You definitely knew it was coming. That wasâalso happened to be my home district, but I could feel it. I knew that that a guy like Bratâthey were very weak; they were very weak. They didnât have a grasp, and this Tea Party revolt was picking up. You had theâyou had theâyou had the huge Tea Party revolt in 2010, which we won 62 seats. The Republican Party didnât see that coming. That was all grassroots-oriented, which played out over time. Remember, today, the 2000âreally, Obamaâs â08 and particularly the primaries in 2010 I think changed American politics pretty fundamentally, because the concept got to be mobilization versus persuasion. I donât believe we live in an era of persuasion anymore. People are so saturated with this all day long, they kind of know where they come out. Youâve just got to motivate them to get out there and vote. Youâve go to motivate them to go door to door. So the â08 Obama primary that completely caught Clinton by surprise was all about mobilization. The 2010 Tea Party, particularly the House part of it, that was absolutely, you know, the biggest in the history, I think, since the Great Depression, 1932, was about mobilization. Thatâs why Romney didnât want to have anything to do with it in â12, right? He washed his hands of it. And thatâs why in this very room in January of 2013, they had this hugeâ this huge controversy betweenâthe Republican Party did the âautopsy.â They said, âOh, the reason thatâthe reason that Romney lost was because we didnât reach out to the Hispanic community; we didnât talk about DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]; we didnât talk about, you know, open borders, immigration policy.â And a young guy named Stephen Miller, whoâs on the staff, heâd been with [Rep.] Michele Bachmann for the Tea Party revolt, we were very close to. Stephen Miller and [Sen.] Jeff Sessions and myself had a dinner in this very room basically the same week that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes had this dinner with [Sen. Chuck] Schumer and [Sen. Marco] Rubio in New York to talk about the Gang of Eight bill. And we just came down and looked at this. There was a lawyer at Hunton & Williams in Richmond, that wrote a three-part piece, I believe it was, for RealClearPolitics. His name is Sean Trende. He looked at the same analysis coming out of 2012, which remember, all the donors thought Romney was going to win in a landslide. He looked at the same thing and said, âThe inability of the Republican Party to connect with working-class voters is the single biggest reason that theyâre not winning.â And thatâs where Sessions and I talked about, weâre going to take trade from number 100, right? Itâs not an issue. The whole Republican Partyâs got this fetish on free tradeâtheyâre like automatons, âOh, free trade, free trade, free tradeââwhich is a radical idea, particularly when youâre against a mercantilist opponent like China. So weâre make trade from number 100 to number two, and weâre going to take immigration number three to number one. The one and two issues will be immigration and trade. And that will be focused on workers, right? And weâre going to remake the Republican Party. In fact, Iâdâ Wait a minute. Thatâs like the anti-autopsy result. 180%. Autopsyâand I told Reince [Priebus] later, to his face, it was a total joke and another donor-driven lie, OK? No statistics in the victory in 2016 showed that. And by the way, all the guys in the verticals, the Jeb Bushes and the Marco Rubios and all these other guys, Chris Christie, all the geniuses and their staffs all bought into the autopsy, remember. They thought we were crazy. You know, we had Palin in â08 and hoped that sheâd run in â12, and she justâsheâit just didnât work out. I actually worked with Lou Dobbs and tried to get Lou Dobbs to run in â12 as a populist, because it was Lou Dobbsâ economic ideas on his TV show all the time, particularly China and immigration and trade, and Lou Dobbs, for a host of reasons, didnât do it. And here I actually tried to talk Sessions into doing it. I told Sessions, just like I told Palin: âYouâre not going to be president of the United States. But remember, if we win the primaryâand you will win the primaryâyou control the Republican apparatus; you take over the RNC [Republican National Committee] for the whole next cycle. You can turn the RNC; you can turn the Republican Party into a worker-based party. The goal is to get control of the party. Youâre not going to win the presidency against this. That will take time.â And Sessions goesâI remember, he saidâit was about five hours. We walked down to his front steps, and he saidâhe turns to me and goes, âItâs not me; Iâm not going to do it,â he says. âBut our guy will come along. Weâll find our guy.â And that guy a couple years later turned out to be Donald Trump. So you go hunting for a guy? And youâre banging them hard. Youâre banging Boehner and everybody else hard on the front page of Breitbart. Constantly. So help me with the understanding of the growth of Breitbart through those two years while youâreâ I think when AndrewâI think when Andrew passed away, the night we opened the site, I think if you go back and check, I think we were at 10 millionâI think we were at 10 million uniquesâexcuse me, we were 10 million page views a month. I think we were a million and a half uniques. I think the total time on site, total time was 90 seconds, and 70% of our traffic was coming from Drudge, OK? At the height of the game. I think later in August, when I left in August of 2016, I think we were, you know, 300 million page views a month, 40 million uniques, people staying on site five minutes. It was a whole different deal. Why? Combination ofâcombination of we wereânumber one, we wereâAndrewâs site, it was news, not opinion. We didnât put anyâour opinion was in the news. Yeah. Well, look, itâs like the editorial page of The New York Times is on the front page. If The New York Times didnât publish, CNN would be a test pattern every day, OK? Thatâs theâlook, itâs all partisan. It all comes from what I call an angle of attack. Weâre partisans, you know? And we putâand we put it right into our news. And people read it and know it. The facts are the facts. You can dispute the facts, but the angle of attack is right in there. So it was going to be hard-hitting, populist, nationalist. We were going to haveâweâre going to have heroes and enemies. Whoâs reading it? Whoâs reading that then? ⌠We caught on with this kind of working-class, middle-class audience. We made the stuff very intelligent. We had these radio shows that were listener-based. We justâwe got people engaged. The comments section, which is not for the uninitiated, I took off almost virtually all controls on the thing. We had monitors to stop the really bad guys, but I got lit up more. The reason that all the conservative media had gotten away from comments is that most of the comments are attacking the writers and the editors. And, you know, we took it off and said, hey, weâll build a community here. And it was the comments section that started to build some of the power of Breitbart, coupled with we were just smarter. We had amazing search-engine optimization. It was a merger of technology and content. Search-engine optimization. And particularly I had an entire team that did nothing but deconstruct the algorithms of Facebook. Without Facebook, Breitbart could have never gotten to the size it got. ⌠You saw the Harvard study where we were the most powerful news organization in 2016. That was all by design. Weâd literally focused on being able to deliver a punch, OK? And we did it, just like the guys at Harvard said. We did it by understanding Facebook, understanding search-engine optimization, maximizing the technology part of it, and also comments to build community, have people have ownership in this, right? Well, and also understanding that there was a division in America, and half the division didnât have a voice. This whole thing on division, too, this isâitâs the taproot of democracy. What you want is engagement, OK? The left was doing it with Talking Points Memo and everything. You want engagement. We just had in â18 a midterm election, 113 million people voted. Democracy in America has never been more robust. And one of the reasons itâs robust is youâve got these sites like Breitbart, and on the left youâve got Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post, that have people engaged; they have people buying in; they have people passionate about this, OK? Now itâs permeated not just political culture, because of Trump and now people like AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], etc.; itâs permeated popular culture. We now have the most engaged politicalâthe country is all about politics. Every dinner party you go to, every conversation you have, Saturday Night Live, all the late-night comics. If you look back at Johnny Carsonâs era and you look back at the Tonight Show and all this, heâd have maybe a few jokes about Reagan and stuff at the beginning, but now the heart of the nightly setup of [Jimmy] Kimmel and all the Tonight Show and all that, is politics. And why is that? You now have people that are engaged. Theyâve bought in. And itâs aspirational. Itâs part of theirâitâs part of their lifestyle. Itâs like you wear a certain brand of shirt, you have a certain brand of politics. And this is what I mean by mobilization. Weâre not in an era of persuasion anymore. Everybodyâthereâs so manyâsince the social media had disintermediated the traditional media aspectsâ and thatâs one of the things Andrew understoodâis that now itâs part of your life. Itâs an aspirational lifestyle brand that youâre either a progressive Democrat, a reactionary Republican, a Trump guy wearing a red hat, or somebody that believes in AOC and thinks Trumpâs a devil. Thatâs all fine. Youâve bought into that, and thatâs where you go. So people say itâs divided. Yes, the countryâs been divided before, and people have got to come at this and make their own decision. But itâs very divided. And the media has definitely added to that by reinforcing and also presenting to people the news in a certain way. Fantastic, so thank you.That sectionâs done. Next section, Trump, the campaign, all of that. Does he find you, or do you find him? Are you two guys looking for each other? What is it? What happens between the two of you? How do you first meet? ⌠He comesâyou know, in 2010, Iâm making these films for Dave Bossie at Citizens United. Iâd just made Generation Zero, which was about the financial collapse. And thatâs where I kind of made my chops in the conservative media area. We were on Fox. That film was about this new generation thatâs not going to own anything, right? So I made that film in 2009. So Iâm making films. Iâm making three films for the 2010 midterm all aboutâand Iâm editing for Bossie. And Bossie calls me up and says, âWhat are you doing tomorrow?â And I said: âWhat do you mean, what am I doing? Iâm at your studio editing these three films that weâve got to get out in four weeks.â He says: âWell, can you go to New York?â I go, âNo, I canât.â He says: âWell, youâve got to go with me. Iâm going to go see Donald Trump.â And I go: âLook, I donât need to see Donald Trump. I donât know Donald Trump. I donât care to know Donald Trump.â He goes, âWell, youâve got to come with me because heâs thinking of running for president.â And I said, âOf what country?â And so I get on the train, and weâre talking. We go up there on Amtrak. And I said, now, Iâm there for one reason. Iâm the Tea Party populist guy. Iâm supposed to explain to himâbecause Daveâs a traditional limited-government conservative. He loves the Tea Party, but ⌠he doesnât quite get what this whole thingâs about. So heâs going to walk through the whole thing of a primary and all the technical stuff; Iâm going to add the juice. So we go there, and itâs amazing. We sit in the same conference room that six years later the Billy Bush weekend and all this stuff is going to play out, the exact same spot. In fact, Trump and I sit kind of in the same location where the final decision on not doing the TV shows about Billy Bush weekend, which is really what saved his candidacy. Whatâs your first read of the guy? Whatâs his aspect? Whatâd you think? Well, I was not lookingâ I had no interest sitting in the meeting because Iâd never watched the show. I just remember him as a guy that was bankrupt all the time and a guy Goldman Sachs would never finance. So heâs not in my radar scope. Just a promoter. I get in there, and I was actuallyâI was, number one, blown away by his presence. People like Palin and Obama and these people, thereâs something about their charisma and something about their ability to own a room. Trump walks in, and he owns the room. Thereâs a presence about the guy that I was notâbecause I didnât take him very seriously. We sit down. Itâs a two-hour meeting. He doesnât know a lot, because heâs not supposed to know. Itâs not that heâs notâitâs about politics and very specific. And he doesnât know any policy, which he shouldnât; heâs a real estate guy and a TV guy. He doesnât know any policy. Daveâs walking through this. But what struck me, we turned toâI talked about populism, and I sayâI goâI give him the history of populism, Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, bring him up to date with Ross Perot and everything like that. And he turns to me, he goes, âThatâs what I am.â I go, âWhat?â And he goes, âA popularist.â I go, âNo, no, no, itâs populist.â And he goes, âYes, yeah, I got it: popularist.â And I go, âNo, no. Itâs populist.â And after I said it the second time, Bossie gives me the kick under the table. He says âpopularist,â I let it go. And then he turns onâhe turns on about China, and we get into this conversation about China. And we talk about trade. We talk about non-trade barriers, talk about the South China Sea; we talk about currency manipulation. Of a two-hour meeting, the China thing is 20 or 30 minutes long. Itâs the one thing he knows. And I realize heâs regurgitating my guy Lou Dobbs, but Iâm telling you, itâs the one thing heâs engaged, and heâs got well-formed opinions. So we leave the meeting. Bossie saysâon the train on the way back, Bossie says, âWhatâd you think?â And Iâm sitting there going: âYou know, Iâve been thinking about it. His thing on popularist, I was wrong, and he was right.â And he goes, âWhat do you mean?â He says, âYou wouldnât let off on that; thatâs why I kicked you.â And I said: âYeah, I was trying to give him the standard thing. He thinks of things differently. He is a popularist; heâs not a populist. He thinks about things from himself.â And I said: âThatâs pretty amazing. He was actually right, and I was wrong.â And Bossie goes, âYeah, I could tell that.â And then he says: âWhat else? What about this China thing? You guys were on China forever.â I go: âDave, hereâs the amazing thing. I canât, in Washington, D.C., outside maybe some noodge at a think tank, have the conversation I just had with this guy on China. Nobody will talk about non-trade barriers; nobody will talk about currency manipulation. They couldnât pick the South China Sea. He talks about the South China Sea.â I said, âItâs amazing to me he actually has what I think is one of the biggest threats, if not the biggest threat weâve got coming, he understands China better than anybody in this city, and that is going to beââand he says, âWhat do you think aboutâ?â I said, âNo chance this guyâll run. Notâit will never happen. Heâll never run for president.â So you sort of park him. I just kind of dismiss it. And laterâyou know, Bossie gave him two things to do. I said, âYouâve got to have two asks for this guy leaving.â And Bossie did. He said: âNumber one, youâve got to give, in the maximum, of the $2,500, youâve got to give to every congressman and every senator whoâs running and make them come to Trump Tower, look you in the eye, shake your hand. Itâs not a marker, but youâre getting into system.â I think that came to $500,000 or something. âThe second is, youâve got to write a policy book.â And so I would tease Dave. Dave says, âWhat do you think?â I said, âThereâs no chance he writes any checks, zero.â And I said, âNumber two, heâll never write a policy book, forget it.â Whyâwhy did you know that about him? I justâI know guys like Trump. I just see Trump. Heâs notâyouâre writing him a check; heâs not writing you a check. Itâs not going to happen, right? Unless heâs got some sort of problem in a city about a casino, youâre not getting a check, OK? Not for some congressman from Kansas. His mind doesnât think like that. So I would keep teasing Bossie. And eventually, I said: âHowâs that 500,000? How many of those meetings have you had? How many hands are you shaking at Trump Tower, right?â And eventually Dave calls me up: âHe wrote a $250,000 check, I think, to Karl Roveâs general fund, like three weeks to go, and bitched and moaned about it the whole time.â Now, hereâs the interesting thing. The guy whoâs the managing editor for me, Wynton Hall, is one of the great ghostwriters out there. Once a year, we give him permission to ghostwrite a book. And Wynton calls me up at like the end of this year and says, âHey, I need time, and this oneâs going to take a little longer.â I go, âFine.â I say, âHow long you need?â He says, âItâs going to takeâit could take up to, you know, four months or five months.â I said, âThis crap you type out for these conservatives takes 30 days.â I said, âWho takes four months?â He says, âIâve got a guy whoâs got the biggest advance in the history of Regnery.â And I go: âRegnery? Advance? They donât give advances. I mean, itâs not their business model. What is this?â He goes, âItâs Trump.â I go, âAre you kidding me?â He says, âYes, to write aâitâs to write a policy book.â I go, âYouâre kidding me.â And that book, I think the subtitle was Make America Great Again. That book, if you read it and look at the 2016âthis book came out, I believe, in 2011. And it wasâitâs an amazing book. Wynton Hall is a fantastic writer. He said Trump was so engaged in this book. This book has many of the foundational issues that Trump ran on later. So itâs quite amazing. But Trump, you know, there was some element of him that always looked at Obama and thought he could take Obama on. But I think he was smart enough to realize he would have gotten crushed going after Obama. He was smart enough to kind of wave off on it. But the seeds of his interest was enough to start taking meetings, to startâ and Dave gave him a very detailed presentation on âDonât worry about the general election. You worry about the election thatâs in front of you. Worry about winning the Republican nomination.â Dave had a quite detailed map of that. So you could tell it was serious. And then later on, what happened is Dave Bossie starts putting on these cattle calls very early on in the system. So Trump showed up at CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference]. He gave a great speech. And then the first one I remember I think was in late 2013 or early 2014; it was in New Hampshire. And I go up, and they had a cattle call. It was Rand Paul; it was Newt Gingrich; it was Ted Cruz. You had all the kind of conservatives around with the media all over Cruz and all over Rand Paul; they were the hot thing. And I think [Scott] Walker was there, too, I think. And Trump spoke. And what I would do when these guys would speak, I would sit off to the side and just watch the audience. And Trump gave a totally nontraditional, nontraditional Republican speech. He talked about trade. He talked about immigration. He talked aboutâand not in politicalspeak. Every other guy came up there, I donât care if itâs Rand Paul or Mike Lee or Newt Gingrich or Ted Cruz, all of them, they all speak in a political vernacular. Now, these were grassroots leaders, Tea Party, the people you have to convince in New Hampshire to work for you. Trump comes up, totally off script, just stream of consciousness. I think he had a speech. Never even looked at it. Stream of consciousness. These people are leaning forward. People are clapping. Heâs getting standing ovations. And Iâm sitting there going, âThis is amazing.â So we were doing our radio show, and Trump was going to come and do an interview with us. We got Sam Nunberg to give us an interview. So Iâm sitting there going, âThis guy is on fire.â Right? And you could tell in the room he was kind of owning the room. And Jeremy Petersâthatâs my buddy from The New York Timesâwe interviewed Jeremy. Jeremyâs beatâhe had covered Andrew for yearsâ Jeremyâs beat at the Times was to cover the crazy grassroots of the Republican Party, right? So we interviewed him. And Iâm sitting there with Jeremy. I go: âHey, Jeremy, Iâve got Trump coming up next. If youâre good, Iâll get you five minutes with Trump so you can interview him.â Jeremy looks at me and goes, âSteve, if my editor found out that I even talked to Donald Trump, Iâd be fired.â And I go, âWhy?â And he says: âHeâs not a candidate. This isâthis is just show.â Publicity stunt. âThis is a publicity stunt; this is a marketing stunt.â And soâand by the way, CNBC, MSNBC, theyâre all up there. The only interview he had all day was Breitbart Radio and then Breitbart News. Nobody would even consider it. And he owned the room. And then I started noticing, as he would go to these things, he was owning these rooms. I mean, you could tell in these grassroots things that Bossie kept putting on. ⌠My sense was, and you go back and look at it, you guys hadnât really decided yet. There was Cruz; there was this; there was that; itâs going to be somebody else. And Trump was never getting the oxygen. We would give him fair coverage, right? But we hadâremember, because look, itâs aâitâs like this whole thing with the âalt-right,â right? To build a massive news site, itâs like sedimentary rockâyou need different layers of it. So we would have the Christian conservatives; we would have the libertarians, the Rand Paul guys; we would have the limited-government conservatives, the Ted Cruz guys; we would have the gay Republican, Lincoln club guys. The âalt-rightâ started as, before it got taken over by these kind of white nationalists, when we originally got involved with it, these were the guys that said: âHey, all this conservatism is allâthereâs no fight in it. We want an alternative that actually fights, right? It was kind of these memesâŚ. So my point is, thereâs probably 20 groups. Of that, we tried to cover everybody. Honestly, if you go back and look at the coverage, probably Ted Cruz is the guy thatâ in fact, Ted Cruz deems to give Breitbart, when he goes to Liberty and announces his candidacy at Liberty University in that massive rally with 15,000 students, only Breitbart is backstage. He invites us to the family quarters. We do his wife, interview his wife. We then have all this private time with Ted Cruz, because weâre like the Cruz site, because part of ourâ part of the sedimentary rock is limited-government, Heritage organization conservatism, right? This whole populist nationalist part of it is a significant part, but itâs not the overwhelming thing. Weâre getting more and more populist every day. Trump comes up, and really the key moment is coming down the escalator. When Trumpâat the top of the escalator, if you go back and look at the polling, I think Trump was in seventh place, right? At the bottom of the escalator, in the speech, and particularly when the media bitesâand Iâm sitting there watching. We have five people up at Trump Tower. We have Boyle leading an entire team. Weâve got wall-to-wall coverage. ⌠And in the speech, when he starts going on to not just the immigration part and trade, which nobodyâs ever talked about, but when he starts doing the over-the-top stuff, and I goâI said: âYou watch. Theyâre going to bite hard. And theyâre going to bite hard and blow this up.â Iâm sitting there watching this thing on TV. When he starts talking about the Mexican rapists and everything like that, I go, âOh, my God.â I said, âThis isââ I said: âHeâs just buriedâtheyâre going to go nuts. CNN is literally going to broadcast 24 hours a day.â By thatâhe goes to Iowa, I think, that night. Itâs all they talk about. He goes from number seven. Heâs at one and never looks back. The next-day polling, Trumpâs gone to one. In fact, I think itâs the next day or the day after, Don Lemon has him on for the most classic Trump interview in human history. Lemonâs sitting there hammering himâ âYouâve got to show us some facts. Youâve got to show us some facts.â And Trump goesâitâs a TVâitâs a phone interview. Trump goes: âDon! Don! Somebodyâs doing the raping,â right? But it was the mainstream media that catapulted Trump fromâbecause remember, when peopleâ at the top of the escalator, nobody still thought, even though he had filed his financial report, right, which in hindsight, you know, is the financial report, but nobody thoughtâ they thought it was a marketing ploy to get a better deal at The Apprentice, etc. The mainstream media catapulted him to the number one. And then it was within 30 days we had the Fox News, the 1st, on Aug. 1, I think it was, was theâ was the debate when Fox News, when [Rupert] Murdoch and [Roger] Ailes, particularly Murdoch, and Ailes, being part of the Bush apparatus, decided they were going to kneecap Donald Trump right out of the box. And thatâs what Megyn Kellyâthey went through his Twitter feed; they went through all The Apprentice tapes; they went through everything and came out and did a hit like the left would do on somebody. And thatâs when all war broke out. Thatâs when Breitbartâthatâs when you had to choose sides. Whoâs in the war? The war was Fox and all the conservative mediaâNational Review, Weekly Standard. The Republicanâbasically, itâs a racket. Itâs a racket, because the people are over here. The voters are focused on illegal immigration, trade deals, jobs, you know, why income inequality, whereâs my pay raise, basic nuts-and-bolts stuff that peopleâthe sovereignty of the country. The National Review, Weekly Standard, neoliberal neocons are kind of at the beck and call of the donors. Itâs a total disconnect on foreign policy. And remember, one of the powers of Trump and the basic thing is that Americaâs in decline, and the elites are OK with that. This is about managed decline. So whether itâs health care, the southern border, NATO, China, Iranâpick it, right?âthe education system, weâre in managed decline, and the elites are fine with that. And whatâs looked at as the Republican elites are OK [with that], because theyâre kind of the junior partner and the punching bag of Obama and these progressive Democrats, and they donât do anything. They kind of agree with them at the end of the day. Remember, after 2014, the reason Obama becomes kind of a hero to the Breitbart staffâ we call him âhonorary honey badgerââbecause weâre humping this thing in â14, Ebola, the border, and all of a sudden, he gets smoked in the midterm elections, OK? What does he do? He calls a press conference for the next day. Press conference, everybody shows upâ This is the shellacking? Yeah, he gets shellacked. He loses the Senate. He shows back up. He gets smoked. He calls a press conference, and all CNN and everybody, New York Times, is he going to listen to what the people are saying? Is the country going in a different direction? Is Obama going to listen? He gets up there and goes: âOK, guys, hereâs how it is. Iâm president of the United States, and youâre not.â He goesâhe has 10 executive orders. âIâm going to sign immediately. And by the way, you know that DACA thing? Iâve got a DAPA [Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents]. Iâm adding the parents on to it. How do you like that?â Iâm sitting there going, âThis guyâs my role model.â I said he just got smoked, and he comes out and hits you right in the mouth. This is a leader! Remember, [Speaker of the House John] Boehner collapses. We get the omnibus. Everything we fought for we just won! We just won! And Boehner does this omnibus bill, gives him Planned Parenthood, gives him DACA, everything heâs wanted and more. Thatâs when we realized the Republican apparatus is the Washington Generals to their Harlem Globetrotters, right? Youâre just set to lose. And soâbut that is this thing that builds up. And so when you get to the Fox situation, Fox has chosen a side. Itâs so evident in thatâin that debate that theyâre there to kneecap Donald Trump, OK? Theyâre there to take him out. And thatâs when we go, OK. So we run 20 stories on Megyn Kelly. I get Tony Lee and Matt Boyle, my two hammers. They go right after Megyn Kelly. Weâre going to Alinsky her, right? Weâre going to cut her out from theâcull her out from the herd and just hit her nonstop. And after about 48 hours, I get a call from Ailes, who was kind of a mentor. But remember, in building Breitbart, I never allowed anybody at Breitbart to go on Fox, ever. I went on a couple of times about filmsâ Because? Because National Review, Rich Lowry, Tucker Carlson at the time, Daily Caller, none of those guys existed unless they were on Fox. Theyâre all on Fox; their guys are on Fox. Theyâre a subsidiary of Fox. Whenâwhen Ailes calls them up, theyâve got to line up in a certain way, and this was the payoff. He calls up; theyâve all got to line up in back of Megyn Kelly. Weâre independent. We donât need Ailes. I donât need Ailes financially. Heâs not going to do anything for me, right? So we never anyâI was never on Fox. None of our reporters were ever on Fox. If you want to come here and get some story and get a Drudge link and go on Fox, youâre in the wrong line of work, because itâs not going to happen. Weâre Breitbart, and weâve got our own point of view; weâre going to do it our own way. And this is where it came down to. All of the rest of them line up with thoseâwith anti-Trump. And Ailes calls me up and says: âYouâve got to knock off these stories. Sheâs crying. Sheâs all upset. Sheâs getting death threats.â I go, âIt sounds like a personal problem.â I said: âWeâre not backing off. Weâre going to put more stories up tomorrow.â And he goes: âYouâve got to calmâwhat do you guys, you guysââsays: âNo, youâre not going to pull what the left pulls. This is the typical drive-by. Youâre going to go into a guyâs Twitter feed? Youâre going to go into 14 years of a show, and this is what youâre going to come up with, is Rosie OâDonnell? It doesnât roll like that, OK? Weâre all in now, OK? And if you donât like it, thatâs your problem, because I donât owe you anything. You have no bearing whatsoever on how we do.â What were the stakes for you, Steve, at that moment? Well, the stakes were the country, the countryâs. To me, itâs about the country. You finally have somebody in Trump that is now giving voice to kind of this voiceless working class and lower middle class thatâs had no representation. Theyâve been voting for Republicans that work exactly against their economic interest. Look at these trade deals. They have all this theory of free markets. These free markets against a mercantilist power is destroying the manufacturing base of the country, right? You have these guys who were chamber of commerce thatâlook, the state of Texas is controlled by Republicans. You have Republicanâwhy canât you shut downâwhy canât you shut down the border? The reason is they want the labor. The Republican Party donors want the cheap labor. Thatâs the point. So you finally have a guy thatâs speaking in a nonpolitical vernacular, and you can tell heâs connecting with people already in the rallies. I said, this is our guy. Heâs a very imperfect instrument, but heâs an armor-piercing shell, OK? And hereâs the other thing: Theyâre scared to death, right? They donât know how to handle this guy. And remember, heâs againstâthis Republican primary, thereâs 16. This is the flower of a generation of a billion dollars put in by the Kochs, put in by the Singers, put in by the donors, the Heritage, AEI [American Enterprise Institute], every vertical. Youâve got [Jeb] Bush; youâve gotâfor the libertarians youâve got Rand Paul. For the neocons youâve got Marco Rubio. For the big-government conservatives youâve got Chris Christie. Youâve got Ben Carson. You look across the board; these 16 in every vertical, itâs the best weâve ever had. Itâs a hell of a field. And youâve got Trump. And Trump is going toâI tell the guys, heâs going to go through this thing like a scythe through grass, right? Because heâs talking about what the voters care about. These other guys are kind of, you know, mumbo-jumbo on all this stuff that you canât win national elections anymore, the kind of the Heritage organization talking points, the Paul Ryan, you know, limited government. Itâs fine in concept. You canât winâyou canât win places like Wisconsin and Michigan and the big heartland states in this country to win national elections. You showed that with [Mitt] Romney. Romney and Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan would get smoked by nine points in Wisconsin, OK? Hereâs a guy that can actually get Reagan Democrats, can actually get low-propensity voters. You could see it line up at the time. So we went toâFox and ourselves went to war. ⌠And I have tremendous respect for Roger Ailes. He just sees the world differently. They think Trumpâs a disaster and is going to blow up the whole thing. And remember, Roger worked for the Bushes. This is a totally Bush mindset, OK? The Bush neoliberal, global economics, neocon foreign policy, which is the elites that are leading us into decline, Trump is a total rejection of that. And theyâre not into the rejection business; theyâre not into disruption. And Trump is a huge disrupter. He sends his lawyer down here the next day, who I know pretty well, his personal lawyer. He come[s] down, and kind of like in the Godfather, give me some bad news. âYou guys have got to stop; this is going to start getting ugly.â And I said, âWeâre not stopping.â I said: âWeâre all in. Weâre a populist nationalist site, OK? And this guy is the populist nationalist candidate. Weâre going to do the news. Weâll do it straight. And weâre going after Megyn Kelly, OK? Because sheâs bad news.â I told Ailes in the second phone call, I said: âLook, youâve created a monster. Donât think that monsterâs not going to turn on you one day.â I said: âSheâs out of control, right? And weâre going to take her on.â And so we kept pounding every day of anti-Megyn Kelly articles. And of course, if you looked at the comments section, these things were getting 10,000 and 15,000, 20,000 comments. The whole Trump, all the Pepes, all these Trump guys were pounding in here. And it caused a problem. But it started to â Fox, I think, started to get the joke, that this guyâs eventually going to be a real guy. And so throughout the fall and winter, it was this intense kind of battle. But we wereâwe had his back the entire way. So let's talk about⌠the Access Hollywood moment, back in that conference room, sitting there, tell me what you said to Trump. Tell me what you thought when you heard it. Take me in there. So we finally had Trump very engagedâletâs say this: When I got there, in August, debate prep was not exactly top of his list. Trump as a student would be your roommateâheâs what I call a game-day player. Heâs not a guy thatâs going to every lecture, getting the books, the textbooks and reading the notes, OK? He comes in the night before with a pot of coffee, learns what heâs got to learn, goes in, gets whatever grade he gets, right? I know that guy. ⌠So we finallyâTrump is very engaged, because this is the second debate, and itâs the one thatâs going to be in the round. This is one heâs not going to be anchored to a podium. He can get out and kind of, you can see the chemistry and stuff like that. So this is the one. And heâs actuallyâweâre actually doing real prep. And that day weâre up in the 26th-floor conference room, and itâs Friday afternoon, about 2:00. And Iâm sitting there going, you know, this isâweâre closing. Weâre still losing, but weâve closedâwe were like 12 points down, or 10, or 16. Whatever thing you take in mid-August, we were way down. Weâve been closing it ever since. So weâre getting nowâweâre competitive. And all of a sudden, Hope Hicks shows up outside the glass thing, and sheâs giving me the signal. And so I step out. I go out, and I read this thing. Sheâs got this transcript, and sheâs like about to cry. She goes, âOh, this is terrible.â I go, âWhat is this?â She goes, âOh, theyâve got some videotape, audio.â I look at it and I read it. The first time I read it through, it doesnât look that bad to me. And I go, I said: âWhat are you so upset about? What is this?â âThe Washington Post is going to publish a story in an hour.â And I go, âWhatâs so bad about it?â And she goes: âWell, look it. He says, âIâm going to grab them by the p---y.ââ And I go, âOh, maybe I havenât focused.â So I look down, I go, âOh, OK, OK.â So I called Don McGahn, whoâs our legal guy. And so Don McGahnâs going to call The Washington Post legal department. Iâm going to call, like, the editor. And I call the reporter: âI donât want to talk to you. Give me your boss.â You know, Iâm the big shot: âGive me your boss.â And I go, and I said: âLook, hereâs the thing. Youâve got this thing right here. Give it to us. Weâll authenticate it. You know, weâll do our thing and authenticate it, and weâll make sure weâll come back to you. And it may take a couple days, but by Tuesday, weâll be back to you, and weâll authenticate if this is really Trump and it hasnât been modified.â You want to get beyond the debate. Thank you. And I said, âWeâll authenticate it.â Iâm like this big shot: âWeâll authenticate it; weâll deal with this.â He goes, âHey, look, dude.â He says: âItâs 3:50. This thingâs going up in nine minutes. Itâll authenticate itself.â Boom! That thing hits, and weâre sitting in the conference room. And on videoâI didnât quite realize it was audio and videoâin video, itâs pretty powerful. So everything shuts down. Pretty powerful? Locker room talk. And so the rest of the day weâve got to figure outânow, Iâve got a little something. Understanding this is the time that heâs going to have Hillary Clinton on a stage with him and Bill Clinton in the audience, what I had done is that months before, with a guy named Aaron Klein at Breitbart, it was about filming and getting the actual women that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted. And even in that we had a special guest: the woman, the young woman who Hillary Clinton hadâ the rape victim that Hillary Clinton defended the rapist. We had them all. And we were supposed to get them up on Fox during that weekâ Fox?! âon Sean Hannity. Like Iâd done this movie, The Hope and the Change, about Democrats who voted for Obama, or not. We do an audience show, and he was going to have all the people up there. We were going to show all the videos, have them cry on stage. Boom. And for some reasonâand Iâm not saying that itâs Fox senior management that thought maybe Hillaryâs going to win so they didnât want to get this kind of down in the mudâ And so Aaron kept filming them at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. And so as soon as I saw that, this is now, I think, 3:00 or 4:00 on Friday afternoon, I call Aaron, and I said, âCheck and see if theyâre available to come to St. Louis,â right? And he checked and said, âTheyâre allâtheyâd love to come to St. Louis.â I go, âFine.â Aaron was going to put these things up on the Breitbart site, the filmed interviews of these people because Fox wouldnât do it, and Drudge was going to link to it. It was going to be up Sunday morning. And somehow weâd get them there. So Iâve got a little thing in my back pocket Iâm not telling anybody about. We go in there, and itâsâitâs kind of a disaster. Weâre trying to figure out whatâs goingâweâre being inundated now by the Republican Party. So the first thing we do is, OK, Trumpâs going to answer this, and weâre going to do a video, right? Have him answer; at least buy us some time. Thatâs the thing they call the hostage video, right? We finally get it done I think at midnight. It is a fiasco. We have a tough time technically. He has to read it off a screen. Heâs editing the thing. And I actually, when I look back on it, I actually think itâs a work of art. Letâs say this. The general journalistic community did not agree with me at the time. Theyâre going like, âWho put Trump in this little box, right, with a fake New York City background in a hostage video?â But I think it doesâthat gets us through Friday. Next day, weâre going to have a high command meeting. Wait a minute. On Friday, Ryan and allâis that when Ryan runs and lots of other guys run away? Theyâre starting to run, but they donât run till Saturday morning. Youâre gettingâbut listen, I can tell the damâs about to break, right? Weâre getting inundated, nonstop calls. And poor Reince is sitting there. In fact, Reince says: âHey, Iâm not going to stay for the shooting of the video. Let me get back to D.C. and calm things down.â And I go, âFine.â And I said: âBut you know, weâve got to be back up here tomorrow because tomorrowâs going to be Dien Bien Phu, right? Weâre nowâweâre going to be under siege. So we set a meeting for 11:00 in the morning. And by that morning itâs starting toâI mean, weâre gettingâCondi Rice, everybody, theyâre punching out of the ticket, theyâre off this thing, out. And Reince isâI call him, and heâs on the train. Fine. We get there; itâs about 10 minutes to 11:00, I think it is. No Reince. And weâre going to have the meeting up in Trump Tower, OK? And this is how serious it is. Jared [Kushner] and Ivanka [Trump], who are very observant, you know, Jewish, observant Jewish people who really take the Sabbath very seriously, haveâin all the campaign have never taken off. They actually, that night, are around for the shooting of the video in [accordance] with their religious beliefs. But they actually do everything and come back up the next day. Everybodyâyou know, so the whole high commandâs going to be there. And thereâs no Reince. And I get Reince on the phone. I go: âWhere are you? Where are you going to be?â He says, âIâm down at Penn Station, but Iâm going to get back on the train.â I go, âWhat do you mean youâre going to get back on the train?â He says, âLook, Iâve talked to the donors. Itâs over. I canâtâif I go there, Iâm going to get fired as RNC chair.â And I go, âDude, youâre showing up.â And he goes: âI canât do it, man. This thingâs over.â And I go: âWhat do you mean itâs over? Itâs not over. Weâre going to power through.â He says: âYouâre not going to power through. This thingâs over.â We get in this huge argument. And Iâm pretty close to Reince. Reince is a solid guy. I said: âYouâve got to show up here. If you donât show up here, youâre going to get torched worse than you ever think youâre going to get torched by the donors. And youâre going to have to do the perp walk. Youâre going to have to come through Trump and that thing with all the TV cameras. Youâre going to have to get in the elevator bank, and youâre going to have to come up and join us.â And he does. And so we get up there, and then, you know, itâs Rudy [Giuliani] and Christie and all the traditional politicians are saying itâs over and youâve got toâyou know, Trumpâs going around and saying, âGive me your percentage and what do I do,â and theyâre all like, you know, 0%, 20%, and they want to have him go on 60 Minutes; they want to have himâ Kellyanne [Conway] comes with an idea that David Muir would come in and do a live ABC News thing, you know, with Melania [Trump] and Ivanka. And they're notâ so the whole thing is kind of a fiasco. So he finally comes around to me. He says, âWhatâs your percentage?â And Iâve told him from the day Iâve taken this job on and thing: âYou have 100% metaphysical certitude that you will win if you just stick to this populist nationalist message and hang her as the representative of the elite. We hang that around her, that she represents the elite, you represent the people, youâre a populist, and we hammer it. Youâre going to win. I donât care if youâre 16 down. It doesnât matter. The key number is 70% of the people think Americaâs in decline. Youâre going to return America to her former glory.â He comes to me and says, âWhat do you think?â I said, â100%.â He goes, â100% what?â I said: â100%, youâve got this. Itâs a metaphysical certitude lock.â He goes, âKnock off with the 100%.â He goes, âIâve got to hear your real number.â I go, âItâs 100%.â He goesâI said: âListen, they donât care. This is locker room talk. They donât care about vulgarity or anything like that. They care aboutâthey care about theyâre losing their jobs; theyâre losing their country. They see their country going away from them. They donât have anything to pass down to the kids. Thatâs what they care about.⌠You know, Jared and I have ⌠weâve basically rented the Hilton Ballroom two blocks over, and at 6:00, weâre going to go out at noon, weâre going to go out here in a half-hour and put up on your Twitter and on Facebook, âWeâre holding a rally for everybody who shows up in a red hat,â and weâll pack it with a bunch of hammerheads, and youâre going to throw down and just go after The Washington Post and the media. And thatâs how weâre going to power through this. No excuses. No, you know, just letâs power through and see Hillary [unintelligible]. Letâs say this. That didnât exactly get voted. There was not a unanimous consent we should do that plan. And we decided to compromise. ⌠So the compromise is David Muir and ABC. So David Muir is like, out in the Hamptons. Theyâre going to helicopter in. ABC gets the whole crew over, 6:00. We take a break and go down to the infamous 25th-floor conference room where weâve had all the big events in my life with Trump were thereâ Trump is going to take an hour, get sorted, come down, and Christie and Rudy are going to write his preamble that heâs going to be able to say on ABC. This is 6:00 on Saturday night, live to the nation. It will be the biggest show in history since MASH, right: Donald Trump addressing the Billy Bush tape. And Iâm sitting at the end of the thing with Stephen Miller. And watching this Iâm sitting there going: âItâs over. If we do this, itâs over. Thereâs just nobodyâyou canât pullâthis is notâyou canât pull this off.â So Iâm sitting thinking, what are we going to do here? And he gets there, and Christie and these guys, itâs not even typedâI think itâs handwritten by Christieâ puts it over, and Trump comes out, and Trumpâs in a bad mood. The time we left him alone up in the tower had not been quality time, OK? In what way? I just donât know, but heâs not in a good mood. Heâs in a bad mood, OK? There were a lot of people in a bad mood up there, OK? The tapeâthe tape was pretty raw, right? And now weâve gotâby the way, now weâve got a full revolt, you know. Pence is nowhere to be found; heâs not out there sayingâhe givesâwe get a letter from him. Paul Ryanâs out of the campaign. McConnellâs out. I mean, now itâs a wholeâitâs a thing thatâand Reince lays up a proposal. You know, Reinceâhe asks Reince, âWhat do you think?â He says: âYouâve got two choices. Youâre either going to lose by the biggest landslide in history, or you step down today, and weâve got a way that we can restructure the ticket thatâ only Coloradoâs out of play because theyâve got to mail in the ballots. Everything else we can get changed, and we can do this.â I go: âAre you nuts? Not going to do that.â I told Reince later, I said: âWhy did you even bring that up? Itâs not going to happen, OK? Itâs not going to happen. Weâll fight this through some other way, but that is not going to happen. Heâs not going to quit. Just even to bring that up is absurd.â That was the donors. ⌠Because they thought they were going to lose the Republican Party. They thought every woman in America will never vote for a Republican again, right, because this guyâs a barbarian. Weâre in the conference room. Christie gives him this thing with Rudy, and he starts reading. Donald Trump says, he gets like two sentences in, and he goes: âThis is crap. This is baby talk. Am I baby? Iâm not going to do this.â He turns around to them; he goes, âItâs got to be better, or Iâm out.â And they go, âWell, make this change.â He turns around to me; he goes, âThis is ridiculous; Iâm not doing it.â And Kellyanne goes: âWell, weâve got to do it. Theyâre flyingâ ABCâs loading up; this thingâs set up. David Muirâs helicoptering in. This thingâs a go.â And Trump just goes, âIâm not doing it.â And you hear fromâyouâre all the way up on the 25th floor in Trump Tower. You can hear on the streets. Trump goes, âWhatâs that?â And you look down. Thereâs got to be 10,000 people on Fifth Avenue. Theyâve blockedâtheyâve got the police on the horses. Theyâve got riot police. You look down, and thereâs literally this mob down there. And he goes: âLook, thereâs my people, my people. Thatâs where Iâve got to do.â I said, âWe canât get to the Hilton; we let it go.â He says, âIâm just going to go down and talk to my people.â And I said, âWell, you know, I donât think all of those are our people.â Of the mob, probably 80% want Trumpâs head on a pike. Thereâs 20% are the deplorables. And most of them are sitting there, angry women that are sitting there wanting to tear Trump apart. I said, âI donât know if thatâs exactly our crowd.â But this is what a leader does. He just says: âNo, no, no, these are my people. Iâve got to go talk to my people.â The Secret Service says: âThis is not going to happen. Youâre not going to walk out there. We have no control.â And he just goes, âIâm going.â He takes off. And IâKellyanne goes with him, and then Christie and I have a sidebar tĂŞte-Ă -tĂŞte off to the side. Trump goes down. Thatâs that famous picture of Trump just walks out there. And if you listen to the crowd, you know, two-thirds of the crowd is âWe hate you!,â right? But he blocks it out. Heâs waving and everything like that and turns it into, I think, a seminal moment. That wasâthat, in that moment, he won the presidency. And I realized all my study of military history and everything like this, campaigns come down to one or two decisions made with imperfect information in the heat of battle and the fog of war. One way leads you to victory, and the other way leads you to defeat. There was 90% chance we were going the other way that day, from the night before, from the pressure that was on him and everything like that. And thatâs what a leader does. Heâs able to reach in and understand something. And I think people misjudge this in Trump. Heâs got a natural leadership ability to basically focus and make the right decision. That was the inflection point. The women we got there the next day and everything like that, but it was in that moment, when he stood up and said, âIâm not doing this,â and âOh, you canât; ABCâs here,â he looks down at the crowd, which was a hostile crowd, but in his mind turned it into âThose are my people; Iâve got to go down and address them.â When he went down and did that thing, the whole thing kind of reverted. And from there on in, we had to still punch it out, but it wasâ if it would change in that moment, if he had gone on ABC, Hillary Clinton would be president of the United States. ⌠Weâve seen the video of you lining up Paula Jones and everybody else, and you have this kind ofâ itâs a mirthful look on your face as youâre going in behind the cameras as that is unfolding. What are you thinking at that point? So we wantedâI wanted to spring the trap on these guys because I thought in the Twitter feeds and everything like that, they were so one-sided. So what we did, we didnât tell anybody. It was just Jared. I got permission from Jared the next day. I sat with Jared and saidâhe and I were kind of partners in the campaignâ I said: âLook, hereâs how Iâm going to bring them, and hereâs what weâll do. Weâre going to get them in a room, line them up with mics, have Trump come down and talk to them, you know, hug them and everything like that. And then weâre going to let the media know that weâre ending our debate prep, which technically we are, and just let them in and spring the trap, and hit them with a full volley of Paula Jonesâ âHe raped me,â right, and just hit them, right? Clintonâs actions versus Trumpâs words, and then have them at the debate, where Clintonâs got to walk by them. Theyâre going to be in the family section, in the VIP seats right there. And Bill Clintonâs going to have to walk by them,â because these ladies are so mad, theyâre going to grab a piece of Bill Clinton on national TV and read him the riot act. And so Trump didnât know about it; Reince didnât know about it. And we got Hope Hicks in on the thing at the last second to get them in and everything like that. So we walk up toâweâre now in the presidential suite at the hotel. Weâre doing some debate prep and everything like that. Trumpâs off to the side. I told Jared, âWeâve got to go tell him.â Walk up and Trump, as often would do, would kind of lean back and almost close his eyes, and I said: âOK, hereâs what we got. We got Paula Jones and all the women that Trumpâthat Clinton assaulted. Plus we got the rape victim, right? And theyâre all fired up. Youâre going to go down. The media assumes youâre in debate prep. Youâre going to spend 10 or 15 minutes with them, hear their stories, commiserate with them, talk to them. Then youâre going to sit in the middle. Weâre going to open the door, and theyâre going to come in, and weâre going to f---ing hit them, OK?â And Iâm sitting there; Iâm making my pitch, right? He goesâI go, âWhat do you think?â He goes, âI love it.â So just Jared and I, we grab Trump and donât tell Reince or anybody, we just slip out of the room. We got a service elevator. We go right down. And the thing isâand as soon asâthatâs when I went over. I had to see when we sprung the door and they allâand of course, the guys that came in were the ones I detest the most; theyâre allâand the doors open, and they go, âIs it appropriate to like, grab women without their permission?,â and theyâre all yelling. And they get in there, and itâs like, âWhat is this?â And they hit a volley. And my girl Paula Jones, the first one, âBill Clinton raped me!,â right? And just, boom! And they hit it. It was perfect. And that got us momentum. Now, what happened backstage wasâ remember, at the other debate, they had put Mark Cuban right down in Trumpâs eye line, eyesight. And I said, âNo, no, no, the deal is Cubanâs going to be back in the dark.âŚâ And the guys at the commission goes: âWell, we canât control it. You know, we donât have security to control it.â I go: âWhat do you mean? Iâll get the Secret Service and take him out, but he canât be sitting right in Trumpâs line. Thatâs not the way itâs going to work.â These guys go, âOh, no, no, no, we donât have security, and heâs got to stay.â So here I go up and tell them, I said, âHey, hereâs actually the seating for the VIPs.â And itâs Paula; itâs all of them. And he goes, âOh, no, no, no, thatâs family only.â I said: âItâs family only? Thatâs interesting, because Claire McCaskill is sitting with the Clintons. So itâs notâitâs just VIPs. These were our VIPs. Melania and Ivanka are going to sit in the first row in back of them,â right? And these guys go, âUhh.â And I said, âYeah, and Clinton, the way we agreed on the stage thing, we walk out here, you walk out there, and Bill Clintonâs going to walk right by them.â And these guys go, âOh, no, no, no.â They come back and said, âIf you seat them, weâre going to have security remove them.â I said: âHang on. We just had a debate two weeks ago. You couldnât move Cuban because you donât have security.â They go, âOh, yeah, yeah, yeah.â So we had this massive fight. And so weâre down now to like 90 seconds before showtime. I go up to theâto Mr. Trump, and I say: âOK, look, hereâs the drill. If we force this, we can do it, but itâs going to cause a consternation; it may embarrass Ivanka and Melania. Your call. We canâI think weâve done enough. Theyâll still be right there giving him stink eye.â And heâs rattled; you can tell Bill Clinton and the whole Clinton thing is rattled. He goes, âLetâs do it that way.â And I go, âFine.â So at the last second we seat the family. And you saw Bill Clintonâthatâs where they had that great shot on Drudge where heâs like lookingâ heâs thinking weâre going to like, springboard theseâbecause these women are worked up right now. They want a piece of Bill Clinton big time. And that energy and having Hillaryâand you could tell Clinton, she was off her game that night. We had rattled them. And so I think that gave us the velocity. That gave us the muzzle velocity to kind of drive home in the last, you know, four or five weeks of the campaign. So he wins. Well, wellâthat ground has been covered. Well, one part maybe hasnât. We say âwins.â Iâm the 100% metaphysical certitude. And we get theâwe get theâwe get the exit polls at 5:00. The exit polls at 5:00 areâwere tied in Iowa and Ohio, that I had us up like three or five points. Tied. Weâre losing everywhere else, including blown out in Pennsylvania, blown out in Florida. This is like aâI forget the total number. I think it was like a 350-electoral vote, 400-electoral vote. This is a landslide. We are blown out. I mean, it is a catastrophe. And Iâm sitting there. We step on the balcony. And itâs so bad that Jared and Iânobody should see these. And we look at them, and I go: âWe canât be that far off. Weâve got this thing. Weâre over top of Wisconsin. I mean, weâre competitive in Pennsylvania. It canât be this bad.â And he goesâJared says, âHang on one second.â He calls Drudge, and Drudge goes: âF--- these things. This is all corporate media. This is all f---ed up. Theyâre lying.â So I feel better. And we call Trump, and Trump goes: âHey, we left it all in the field. Nothing else we could have done.â And we decided that since itâsâwe get the kids, and we got Don Jr. and some others get on talk radio, The Mark Levin Show, and, hey, weâve got toâand it was a big lesson. We heard almost instantaneously, people came to us and said the newsrooms, you know, were high-fiving and people were laughing. This is Trump. Not just a defeat. This is going to beâto crush this thing, right? All this disruption and all Trumpâs stuff and all these kind of guys in red hats, itâs over. And it was a huge lesson for me, because it started to play out exactly likeâ the only thing that concerned me is the Detroit Free Press called, I think it was 8:00 or 9:00, right out of the box, they called Michigan for Hillary Clinton. And they areâyou know, in 150 years, I donât think theyâve ever been wrong. Theyâreâitâs not like some broadcast TV thing thatâs gotâthey wereâtheyâre on it. And I go, man, I said, thatâsâbecause I think weâre going to win Michigan. Michigan, I gotâyou know, we got this. And I think it was around midnight. It was right after Ohio and a couple of others came in. We had like five states that hadnât been called at midnight for the first time in their history. The Detroit Free Press reversed it and said too close to call. And thatâs when I said, âTrumpâs president of the United States.â Did he think he was going to lose? No. Heâs soâheâs competitive. Not that he was going to lose. He was so competitive. But of course, the drumbeatâyouâve got to remember, every day on Morning Joe, every day in The New York Times, weâre the island of misfit toys, weâre theâbecause Iâd never been in a campaign headquarters in my life. You know, Kellyanne had never run a campaign. Sheâs a pollster, right? Weâre just this group ofâ itâs a grab bag of people. Now we could see, particularly in these kind of working-class districts, thatâs why we kept going back to Wisconsin; thatâs why we kept going to Michigan. Remember, in Wisconsin, Paul Ryan wouldnât campaign with us on that Sunday because he says weâre going to lose; I canât take two national defeats. And we donât go to Wisconsin because Ryan wonât be on the stage with us⌠The key thing is that the algoâfirst off, two things. Number one, thereâs a lot of people that vote for Trump that will never admit to voting for Trump. Thatâs one of the reasons the exit polls were wrong, is that they wonât admit it even if they voted for him. The other one was algorithm of the Detroit Free Press was at from the urban areas that they extrapolated out the algorithms of the rural areas, and thatâs where Trump overperformed, in kind of small-town America, right? He overperformed where we had kind of focused. And so those two things had theâhad the exit polls wrong, and that led to this [massive] surprise where the whole media was so joyous at the beginning of the night, and then starting at like 9:00 or 10:00, you could tell that this thing was going in theâthis thing was going in our direction. Letâs go the inauguration, what a lot of people call the âAmerican carnageâ speech. Did you write that speech? No, the president wrote it, but Miller and I hadâthe inauguration speech was theâit wasâ there were two speeches that week, that people donât focus on the other. There was President Xi goes to Davos on Tuesday, I think, and gives a speech on globalization. And Trumpâs speech on Friday, itâs called the âAmerican carnageâ speech. You know, maybe we should have realized in writing it that that would be the takeaway line, but the takeaway lineâ and I donât want this to sound too high-falutinâ, but it was structured a little bit on Lincolnâs second inaugural. Lincoln goes back through all the causes of the war, right? He talks about his previous thing and what had happening in the country, and then he ends with this very powerful phrase, âAnd then war came.â And he stops, pauses, and then he does the rest of the speech. Our whole thing was to build up with the president about how the elites had not taken action, that the country got in this thing. And the punch line was, âNow comes the hour of action.â Boom, you lead down to that, hit with the âhour of action,â and then Trump talks about what heâs going to do. Obviously, we had the âAmerican carnageâ line in there. But it was really, if you look at the two speeches in hindsight, itâs really twoâ itâs one is pitching kind of this globalized, globalist system where you have a center of power that happens to be in China in administrative units throughout the world. And Xiâs speech is very particular of that the problem in the world today is caused by populism; itâs called by nationalism; itâs called by this. Trumpâs is a defense of essentially the Westphalian system. It is a defense of the nation-state as the unit of government, as the unit of how weâre going to govern us, govern ourselves with the citizen, a free citizen, as the basic unit of that. And so that speech, which Trumps works on intensely in Mar-a-Lagoâ and this one, because Trump would not practice the rally speeches. Weâd have it up there, and he would go off script. Here he practiced over and over again, including the night after all the balls and everything. Stephen and I were cleaning it up; we had the exact sameâ because weâd been on the stage to make sure everything was perfect. We went back to Blair House, and we actually had the exact podium in Blair House in one of the old libraries there. The president came back at like midnight and practiced a couple more times. So he wasâhe was very bought into this thing and kind of owned that speech, which I think is still one of the most powerful speeches. He conceived this thing. I remember in Mar-a-Lago, heâs working on the lines âWe will form new alliances and create new ones,â orâexcuse meââWe will form new alliances and rejuvenate old ones. And we will unite the civilized world to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth.â And at the time I kind of said, âHey, thatâs a big check youâre going to have to cash.â But this was his focus on the destruction of the physical caliphate of ISIS to start off with, and he wanted that in there. And I said, âThatâs going to beâthat line is going to be read back to you many, many times as you go forward,â but he wantedâso he was adamant that certain elements of this thing had to be in there. And he got them in there. This was very muchâthis was very much his speech. We went over this thing, and he would edit as we went, change it, recraft it, etc. So the amazing thing, a lot of people talked about, we talked about it in the beginning of one film, at least, which was, there you all are. There's Washington. There's the administrative state in a lot of ways standing behind him. And he's delivering a speech that castigates in some ways, in lots of ways, the elite Washington establishment, and they're right behind him. I fully expected him at some moment to turn and point back at them. ⌠I told Stephen, I said, âThe only problem we've got here, structurally, as you look at it how this whole thing is being built is that we should turn the podium around and he should address the swamp.â That would be the powerful speech. That it was literally addressed â and I knew we hit the mark because you could tell that Bush was very uncomfortable with this⌠The victory night speech was very watered down because in the victory night speech he called the country to come together, right? The first cut that Stephen and I had on the victoryâ because Trump is very superstitious. There was no victory speech and there was no concession speech written on that night. We literally wrote that after, we started it after the Detroit Free Press flipped it back to too close to call. Because that's when we knew we had this thing. So Stephen and I started working on it like at, you know, one, 12, one o'clock in the morning, typing this thing up⌠It was go to Washington, and we're going to burn out the permanent political class. We're going to take a torch to the enemy. Okay? It was fire-breathing. That all got watered down into kind of, let's have a group hug. It's the reason, interestingly enough, you never see the Trump victory night speech ever replayed. Because it's just not Trump. It's kind of like, let's have a group hug. But what it did was start everybody saying, âThe pivot is coming. Like every president pivots.â He gets in the Oval Office; he sits down, and the weight of it all, the responsibility to heal, the inclusion moment or the division moment or the fight-back moment. And everybody said heâs going to pivot; he has to pivot. But he didnât pivot. Because the media doesnâtâremember, the mainstream media is not in on the joke. Hereâs the joke: The American elite have allowed the nation to decline. They are into managed decline. And this is not about political party. This is the permanent political class, OK? Itâs sponsorship on Wall Street and in corporate America. They have this kind of, these political apparatchiks down in Washington. But they are in managed decline to unacceptable outcomes to average citizens, managed decline for unacceptable outcomes to average citizens, because they donât have to bear the brunt of it. They donât bear the brunt of the health care system in collapse. They donât bear the brunt of the education system in collapse. Theyâre taken care of. To wit, they bring about the largest financial collapse in the country, and theyâre better off in 10 years. Why wouldnât you like the system? The system is working great for them. Itâs not managed decline for them. Theyâre making more money in the way down than they made on the way up. And so thatâs where Trump is a rallying cry for that. Remember, the lead-up to the inauguration is weâre going to hit the deck plates running with these executive orders. Weâve got this whole system that Miller has gone throughâ Tell me about that. An outsideâan outside organization had done this theoretical analysis to show that every executive order that was still around from Obama and from Bush, and we had this whole thing; we had a whole tiger team of the White House counsel guys, the âdeconstruction of the administrative state,â which is a huge element. Remember, youâve got two forms of populism. You have right-wing populism; you have left-wing populism. Right-wing populism is about deconstruction of the administrative state. [Sen.] Bernie Sanders and AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] is about more inclusion of the state. Weâre both populists, but they want more state intervention; we want less. In fact, we want to start to take apart certain parts of the apparatus. And so that whole thing is basically focused on the deconstruction of the administrative state at the same time, saying: âHey, weâre nationalists. This is about the nation. The nationâs concerns have to comeâhave to come forward.â We had in the first 100 days, every day weâre going to be hitting with either three executive orders, whatever, number one is that the Democratic Party is shattered. They donât know if theyâre coming or going, right? Theyâve got one group thatâs doing identity politics, another group thatâs the Clinton centrists. I said: âWeâve broken them right now. They have no idea. Theyâre going to have their own internal civil war, right? That will keep them occupied for a while.â So what weâve got to do is just hit, hit, hit, and keep it up. Itâs momentum, momentum, momentum. The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because theyâre dumb and theyâre lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. And the one thing theyâll mainly focus on is either they do the horse race, or whatâs the horse race, whoâs in, whoâs out. Itâs like the high schoolâwho are the cool kids in the cafeteria, right? Because itâs easy. Itâs the reason they do the horse-race stuff all the time, right? They wonât do the basic, what are the core things that are going on in the country. I said, all we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. Theyâll bite on one, and weâll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will neverâwill never be able to recover. But weâve got to start with muzzle velocity. So itâs got to start, and itâs got to hammer, and itâs got toâ What was the word? Muzzle velocity. When you get anything in lifeâremember the house is 5-7 against, right? To get something done, youâve got to go through these certain stages of momentum and keep forcing it. And so otherwise just pure inertia, right, or the loss of energy. So did you know that with the travel ban and lots of otherâthe things that came, just the chaos that appeared to be chaos that wasnât apparently chaos, that youâd lose some, that you might lose many of them? Why do you say âloseâ? Correct me if Iâm wrong: Didnât the Supreme Court of these United States say that the travel ban, as writtenâ and by the way, they would have said the first travel ban was 100% constitutional. Is that not just a fact? Yes, it is. OK? We knew the travel ban was bulletproof, OK? Also look at the other EOs we did that day. The other EO is really what galvanizes everything about border enforcement and about tying together all the laws are out there and giving the Kelly the actual momentum to go do it. So no, theâand the travel ban had been worked onâ remember, this is something that Miller started working on in early November. This was all pushed through the interagency process. Hereâs the thing thatâs so phony about the media. Every time you do an executive order, you have to get basically a legal opinion. The Office of Legal Counsel of DOJ [Department of Justice] has to basically give you a signoff thing that this thing is constitutional. Otherwise, you just have guys doing executive orders all the time. There is a governing unit to the system. That governing unit is the Office of Legal Counsel telling you you can actually do this or not. So we thought we were on very strong grounds constitutionally, and operationally we thought we were on strong grounds, too. And the other thing I would say is that, you know, knock on wood, but there hasnât been a terrorist attackâ there has not been a terrorist attack since the extreme vetting went in. Remember, Trump, and to his credit, wanted to stick with the original. The backing off of the original was because of literally [Secretary of Defense James] Mattis and other people about Iraq being an ally in the war to take down the physical caliphate of ISIS. And there was some, you know, some changes to that. But President Trump, from the very beginning, goes: âNo, Iâve done the analysis. Iâve had you guys walk me through it. I signed this thing originally. Iâm sticking with this. The Supreme Court will eventually back us up after we get out of this crazy 9th District. This is what Iâm going to stick with.â It was the staff that went back. The people kind of blinked, right? Because youâve got some people in the White House that are a little more sensitive than other people, right? Some people blinked, and heâwe got the second version. The second version was proved constitutional after all theâall theâyou know, all the things. And itâs been very effective. Thatâs the other thing. Itâs been a very effective process. ⌠You hit them right away at the Pentagon, of all places. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Your idea? I think a collective idea, the way to do it, because it was about national security. The way to do it was to do it at the Pentagon. Actually, the interesting thing, I think the more powerful of the twoâof the two that day was the second EO that really organized everything, of all the different laws of the country, put it on one document, signed by an EO, that empowered the Department of Homeland Security and the attorney general actually to start enforcing, to enforcingâyou donât need to change one immigration law in the books; theyâre all there. You just need to start enforcing them. Remember, Gen. Kelly was not an ideologue like Stephen Miller and myself and others. He was a guy who says, âHey, if itâs the law of the land, Iâm going to enforce the law.â This gave him, this just brought into high relief, this. And I think it was only the L.A. Times that weekend, the L.A. Times actually wrote the article I thought was so smart. They said: âHey, everybodyâs focused on this travel ban. Actually, the one has much bigger implications is this other one.â So no. But my point is that every day we were hittingâyou know, we were going to hit them with additional stuff. And after that it startedâyou can tell in the White House. We had the two camps start to develop: the more globalist, you know, establishment camp and more the kind of disrupters, populist, nationalist camp. And then everything eventually became a knife fight shortly thereafter. You knew going inâIâve heard the story that you left the parade and went in and secured an office, prime real estate in the West Wing, for your whiteboards. True story? I neverâ I made the pitch to the president-electâI think it was 10 days after we wonâ about the whole inauguration. I said weâre going to takeâgoing to go to Obamaâs and do one dollar less than Obama, purely populist, no balls, no fancy dinners, nothing. No big lunch on Capitol Hill with all the swamp. You do the inauguration address. You immediately get in so that people donât freeze. We go right to Pennâyou go right to the White House immediately. My thing was that we, very first act would be move the capitalâmove the embassy to Jerusalem. And then we come back to Capitol Hill that night and you have a joint session of Congress, and thatâs when you just repeal Obamacare on national TV right there. We just do it. And weâre at work. If thereâs a crisis, treat it like a crisis. And then you have one ball. Itâs a military ball, and you and Melania go dance, and thatâs the inauguration. And theyâll talk about it forever. And everybodyâ And the message is? And the message is, itâs a crisis; weâre at work; everybody, weâre driving this. Donald Trumpâs president of the United States. Now comes the hour of action. Thereâs been enough talk. I won; it wasnât close, OK? Everybody mocked me; everybody ridiculed me. We had no thing. We just won with 300 and what, five electoral votes. Suck on it. Hereâs whatâs going to happen. Now comes the hour of action. No more talk. And the alternative of that was the one that the U.S. attorneyâs now looking at, OK? You raise a couple hundred million dollars. My whole pitch was, you have done something that literally is a miracle in modern politics, that even Obama couldnât do. You have literally come to this office unencumbered. You donât owe anybody anything, because big donors are rational human beings, and they thought you were going to lose, so we didnât really raise any money from anybody. It was all small-dollar, essentially. Youâre totally unencumbered. You donât owe anybody anything. You can have an entire populist program unlike anything in American history. Every dollar you take to have a party, we won with no money. Now youâre going to have a party and borrow money that every dollar is going to have $10 associated with, where some guy whoâs going to have his hand out? Why would we do that? Why would you do that? Why did they do that? I have no earthly idea. I donât know. I think they pitchedâwhat the pitch was is that itâll be very classy, itâll be veryâ itâll be all your followers would love to come to it. I mean, it was a sensible pitch. But from that time forward, I didnât go to one coffee, I didnât go to one dinner, I didnâtâno more Times in the email. I said, âGet it off; I donât want to know about it.â Iâm going to work on the speech with him. Iâm going to show up to see the speech, and then Iâm getting up to the White House, and Iâm going to go to work. Get my office and go to work. Give me someâjust like, you know, put whiteboards up; thatâs all I want. And weâre going to put the campaign promises up there. Thatâs what gotâand weâre going to check off. Weâll have an EO associated with everyâor legislation with every campaign promise, and weâll be fine. When did you know you were in the knife fight? The first wakeup call is when everybody didnât sayâon the on the victory address, âOh, yeah, this is amazing; this is great. Why donât we do this?â It was kind of âMeh.â They said, âNo, no, no, this is like a Trump rally speech.â And it was all, âWe should bring the country together.â To me, look, thereâs times for that, and thereâs times not for that, OK? We didnât win an election to bring the country together. He won an election to basically come after the permanent political class and the elite in this country and hold them accountable for what theyâve done⌠Theyâve then taken off the backs of the taxpayer, the little guy, and theyâve saved themselves with this explosion of the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, which is just free money for them. Theyâve destroyed the pension programs. Theyâve destroyed the ability to save. Nobody owns anything. We have neo-feudalistic system. Yes. Itâs not time to bring the country together. Itâs time to take on the elites in this country. Take the torch to them. Hit them with a blowtorch. And thatâs what the Trumpâand look, my only time in the White House, the only thingâand I never apologize, but the one thing I look back in hindsight, I wasnât tough and strong enough. We should have been much harder, OK? We should haveâI should have fought harder for some of the things, Iâm not saying I compromised on, but I said, OK, if thatâs the way itâs got to be. I should have been tougher. This country has a massive problem, and now youâre seeing it. And what I told the donors, I said, âYou may hate my guts, OK?,â because remember, in the Oval Office, Iâm the guy arguing for a 44% tax on every, all dollarâall income over 5 million bucks, because I told the donors, I said: âIf we donât get this thing sorted, youâre going to have a left-wing populism, and theyâre not coming for your income. Theyâre coming for your assets, OK? Itâs going to be just like Europe.â And Fauxcahontas on her list punches out, what, 2% of $50 million and 3% at a billion, tax on assets which we never had. And thatâs an opening bid, OK? Youâre going to start seeing this be a constant on the left. You know, Iâve told these donors that youâve got to understand something. We have to make fundamental changes to this neo-feudalistic system. People have to start to get ownership. They have to get ownership in the companies. They have to get ownership in real estate. Incomes have to start to rise. The Wall Street Journal canât go through meltdown when incomeâwages are starting to rise, you know, âInflation coming back,â you know, âIncomeâs rising.â So there has to be fundamental change. And so I knew right away that something was going on. There were all kind of knife fights during the transition. But it really got ugly after about the second week in there. And it really started to get ugly, not about immigration; they were ugly. The biggest fights were about China and trade. And thatâs because, the reason is we had so many Wall Street guys. And look, I worked at Goldman Sachs. We had Goldman Sachs guys in there who were basically the IR department, the investorsâ Goldman Sachs and Wall Street is the investor relations partner, you know, for the Chinese CCP, this radical cadre that runs China. This is not about the Chinese people. This is about a radical cadre that runs the Chinese Community Party that has a totalitarian, mercantilist system that is incompatibleâincompatibleâwith the system we have in the West. One side will win, and one side will lose. So very early on, in the first couple of weeks of the administration, this confrontation with Chinaâs economic war became the most explosive thing. Itâs where all the knife fights came, all the [former National Security Adviser H. R.] McMaster stuff, the [Michael] Cohen stuff, [Secretary of the Treasury Steve] Mnuchin, myself, Jared, theâ the nationalist and the globalist divide was because of that. Then many, many other issues, whether itâs, you know, putting stuff inâ because remember, Obama and Bush, the globalists, support this kind ofâ they turned the military into kind of this humanitarian expeditionary force, right? They want to be everywhere, sticking their nose in everybodyâs business. Theyâre just dying to get up into Syria. Syriaâs a place they got to get up into because the Russians are in Syria, right? And my point is, hey, American foreign policy for 50 years has had one thing in the Middle East: Keep Russia out, OK? And Obamaâs watch and [Secretary of State John] Kerryâs, whatever they do with Iran, Russia got a foothold in the Middle East. Well, you ainât gonna get them out of there, OK? Itâs just not going to happen. And so anything that youâre doing, get up there, they want to get it on with Russia. They are manically focused on Russia, a country with an economy smaller than New York state thatâs in a total demographic death spiral, that doesnât make anything, that hasâ it wouldnât exist if Germany and these countries in Europe wouldnât do natural gas deals with them. Yet we have an existential threat. The greatest existential threat weâve ever had in the countryâs history, is this totalitarian, mercantilist society in China which has One Belt, One Road, Made in China 2025 and 5G rollout converging to take away advanced manufacturing in perpetuity. And yet you have the corporatists and you have Wall Street, who have all made money. Remember, the decline of America is inextricably linked to the shipping of its manufacturing base to China. Itâs the Wall Street faction. This is what Donald Trump understood in 2010. Donald TrumpâsâDonald Trump today, when he goes out and speaks about China, you could literally take it from what he said in 2010. He understood the facts of the case then. And itâs been the biggestâthe biggest thing weâve done as a government is in two years, we now are confronting China in the true economic war theyâve been running on us. That is the singleâwhen history looks back on this thing, all the other Twitter madness and everything, they will look at the signal and the noise. And the signal is, a great power struggle as we personified or manifested in the first national security document that ever came out of theâ the first national security plan that came out in December of 2017 said global radical jihad is a problem. Itâs a containable problem; hereâs how weâre containing it. Now the two great threats to the country areâitâs a great power struggle, and they put Russia in thereâ but itâs basically Chinaâs gone from a strategic partner to strategic competitor, right? And then today youâre seeing the secretary of defense say today weâve got three issues: China, China, China. That is what Trump reoriented, and from the very first days of his administration, the nastiest, nastiest fights by an order of magnitude were about trade and about this engagement with China. Letâs talk about Russia Iâm interested in response to⌠the firing of [former FBI Director James] Comey. How did you hear about it? What did you think about it? And what did you say to the president? It was, you know, it was ridiculous. I told the president that. The argument was all the agents hate him. If you fire him, you know, theyâll think itâs fantastic. The Democrats hate him. Itâll be the first time reaching across the aisle because they all hate him; they blame him for Hillary Clinton losing. Theyâll look at it as a bipartisan effort. And the deplorables hate him, and theyâll be great and send money and just be dancing around. And I said, OK, letâs stipulate. I donât agree with the first one. For purposes of discussion, letâs say itâs true. As soon as you fire him, heâs J. Edgar Hoover, right? I said the Democrats, as soon as youâas soon as you fire him, heâs like Joan of Arc, right? And I said the deplorables donât care. I said, institutionally, the FBI has got to bleed you out, because this is a city of institutions; itâs not a city of personalities. There are personalities, but John Boehner, nobody talks about John Boehner as speaker of the House because it doesnât matter. Heâs the speaker of the House. Just like youâre not going to talk about Paul Ryan; just like you never mention Eric Cantor. These are institutions with their own ways they roll, their own institutional logic. You have to understand these institutions. The FBI, institutionally, has to bleed you out. You justâtheyâre not going to allow somebody to fire and humiliate the head of the FBI. And weâre going to get a special counsel on top of it. So I was kind of, you know, dismissed, but itâs notâ What did he say? But it wasâit was very obvious. The argument I made is that, I said, listen, itâs the C-block on Anderson Cooper, I said, the network of pure, raw hate, right? I said, even Anderson Cooper canât keep this thing alive. Thereâs no more squeezing the lemon. Nobody cares. I said, yeah, we got three or four months of this, maybe five months, but thereâs no Russian collusion. Just play it out. If you do this, itâs going to create a firestorm. Weâre going to get a special counsel, and that special counsel is going to have an unlimited writ to go anywhere he wants to go, including your finances, your taxes, everything, everything thatâs ever been discussed. He can do anything he wants. And they will do it. And youâre giving them the weapon to do it. âŚSo no, I think it wasâ What was it about Comey that he didnât like? Do you know? I donât know, but I think ComeyâComeyâs kind of a screwy character. IâIâIâIâm, you know, Iâm known for a guy that said we should fire Comey, like, on the afternoon of the 20th. This should be our first decision. Heâs got to go. Why? Well, because of the dossier. Remember, letâs go back, which is not reported by the mainstream media. Weâre sitting down at Mar-a-Lago, and we see theâwe see the chyron that, you know, the Obama administration has now ordered 35 guys out of the country; thereâs been this whole thing. And the chyron on CNN says âbecause of involvement in the 2016 election.â And Iâm sitting there going, whoa, hang for a second. I said, I was in the Pentagon during the Cold War, right, when weâre 90 seconds away from launching on each other. We never sent 35 of their guys home during that time. This is like, monumental. And the chyronâs saying âfor involvement in the 2016 election.â I donât remember seeing that. I hear some guys talking about that, but Iâve never seen any documents like that. ⌠And by the way, we get the presidential daily briefing every day. Where is that in the briefing? Whereâwhere, where, who, who, whoâwhere is that? And you get the hubbada-hubbada-hubbada. ⌠I said we want to see the exact presentation that Barack Obama saw that caused him to do that. This is a big thing in American policy with Russia. And the chyron says because of involvement thing you sent 35 guys home. We just want to seeâI donât want to see one slide more; I donât want to see one slide less. I want the exact guys that briefed Obama to come and brief Trump. You had not been hearing through the fall about the CrowdStrike and all that stuff in The Washington Post and other places? Itâs one thing to see s--- in theâcome on, dude. Itâs one thing to see stuff in the thing. This is, you pulled the trigger; you sent 35 guys home. In the height of the Cold War, weâre 90 seconds about to launch on each other, we were sending 35 guys home. This is a big deal. Somebody made a decision on this, on things called information. And all we asked for is show me the presentation; show me the deck; show me the decision memo. Who briefed him? Give me the facts. I know this. I see a bunch of guys running around and talking about it, and I see stuff in The Washington Post, and itâs leaked and not leaked, and it may be true, it may not be true, OK? But I havenât seen it in an classified document. You havenât seen it anywhere. Show me. Where is it? You know what youâve got? Youâve got hubbada-hubbada-hubbada-hubbada-hubbada. The whole thing in Trump Tower that took place on Jan. 5, this was all their guys. Oh, no, weâre going toâI said, I donât want to seeâ Were you there? You donât need to bring [former CIA Director John] Brennan and all these guys. You donât need to bring Brennan. Just show the presentation that Barack Obama made the decision for. So they set this big thing up. I decided not to go because there was going to be too many guys there. ⌠I said, fine. Iâve got stuff to do because weâre trying to put together a government. Weâre still going through people. So Iâd be on another floor. Andâbutâwhat happened is you had a presentation of which many peopleâ and after reviewing it later, hey, maybe, maybe not, OK? Definitely not sending 35 guys home, OK? Definitely not sending 35 guys home. And you havenât shown any directâI havenât seen any information that shows that level of direct involvement, OK? And Iâm not talking about a bunch of flakes running some trolling operation in Florida up on Facebook. Please give me a break, OK? But in that presentation, thatâs when Comey comes with the side thing. The Steele dossier. The Steeleâand so they come up to me, and I go: âWhat are you talking about? What do you mean, dossier?â And they goâI said, no, no, it was in the presentation, because the presentationâs got stamped on it âDNI [Director of National Intelligence], CIA, DOJ, FBI.â This is a formal document. Itâs interagency; itâs been approved. Thatâs what we asked for. They didnât have it the first time. And nobodyâs ever asked this question: What did Obama see that Obama pulled the trigger in late December, OK? They donât have it. Theyâve compiled this thing, which I donât even want to see. This is a new thing. I donât care about this. I want to see what he made the decision off of. Theyâve got this new thing. But itâs all got the stamps; itâs all interagency. That means a lot of guys at the working level signed off on this. Heâs got the sidebar thing. I said: âNo, no, no, you canât touch it. We donât do sidebars. Itâs either in the document as an appendix or itâs not.â What was he doing? Iâll tell you what he was doing. I said it right there. I said, âWeâre going to see this in the media,â because thereâs all these rumors this kind of stuff was out there. I said, âYouâre going to see this in the media.â What happened 48 hours later? This is what scumbags the mainstream media are, and how gutless they are. Forty-eight hours later, BuzzFeedâBuzzFeed, the standard of excellence in journalism in our countryâ prints the dossier with the link. And I said, here it goes, because in The New York Times, The Washington Post, itâs up bang, bang, bang, bang, theyâre reporting that it wasâthis was given to the president, right? Theyâre not reporting on the accuracy of it. Theyâve been shopping this thing for months. The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, because they do have editorial standards, they canât back this up; theyâre not going to print this. But if itâs in BuzzFeed and it says that this was presented to the president, then youâve walked into the trap. Thatâs Comey. Donât give me the Comey Boy Scout thing. He knew exactly what he was doing. He set up the president of the United States by giving him that thing and knowing that it was going to be leaked out to BuzzFeed. And then the whole mainstream media could report it just reporting the news that BuzzFeed had this thing that had been presented. Thatâs why he should have been fired. Thatâs why I said this guyâs got to go; heâs a bad guy, bad guy who lacks judgment. Even the guys in the FBI will say this because it was all this thing: He lacks judgment. Under pressure, he doesnât make smart decisions. Thatâs why heâs wavering during the whole campaign, you know, the Hamlet thing: Do I do it? Do I not do it? Do I have a press conference? What are you doing, dude? Youâre the head of the FBI. Act like it, right? Bad guy and makes bad decisions. That whole thing with the dossier was a total setup. And the dossierâs just a collection. Itâs like a raw file on the FBI. Itâs a bunch of guys saying stuff, etc. So thatâs why I thoughtâand I told him as soon as I saw that, I said weâre going to see this, and 48 hours later BuzzFeedâs got it, and then itâs a massive story, because everybody and all those guys thatâs seen it for months as they shopped it around, but no legitimate news organization could verify any of the stuff in it. But they could link to BuzzFeed who linked to the dossier because it was a news story. When you heard that it was [Robert] Mueller, what did you think? Because we have somebody who quotes you in the film we made that said, âSteve Bannon said, âHey, watch out for these guys; theyâre killers.ââ When they fired the head of the FBI, we kind of get organized, say, look, weâve got to get a real director of the FBI now, right? A real guy. And what better way to start than Mueller, whoâs legendary, who passes the first time 98 to nothing. And then they extend his time, and he passes 100 to nothing. Heâs a legendary guy and stuff. He comes over just toâweâre going to introduce him to the president just so he can talk to him about the attributes of who the FBI director would be. And maybe if thereâs chemistry, and since heâs a patriot, maybe, my idea is, maybe we can talk Mueller into being our FBI director, and then weâre good, OK, because weâve got a legendary guy. So weâre sitting there. And Iâm in that little anteroom with Hope, and thereâs some people coming in and out. Weâre trying to clear it because we bringâthereâs no announcement that itâs Mueller. Itâs not even on the schedule. Weâre kind of slipping him in the back door because we donât want to cause some big consternation, right? Iâm sitting there, and Mueller walks right up to me. Never seen the guy in my life. Walks right up to me and goes, âHow could a member of the senior naval service allow his daughter to matriculate at West Point?â I go, wow. I go, âHey, how you doing, sir?â And I said: âListen, hereâs worse news. She actually got offeredâshe got offered a ride at the Naval Academy, too, and turned it down.â And my familyâso we laughed because heâs a Marine. We talked for a few minutes. And he went in, and I said, man, to know that he went through all that stuff just to do that, it was pretty impressive. Of course, everybody had told me heâs a great guy. As soon as heâyou know, he spent time with the president. They visited with the vice president. I think [Jeff] Sessions was in there. I think it was a good visit. And then, you know, a short while later, he was announced as special counsel. And I just go, oh, my God, this is going to be a grind, because this is a guy that doesnât leave any stone unturned. I mean, now weâve bought it, right? And this is going to be just a grind. And itâs, you know, this guy is a relentless guy. Not that weâlook, on the collusion thing, thereâs nothing to hide; thereâs nothing. But you justâitâs just the process is going to suck up a tremendous amount of time, a tremendous amount of energy. Youâre now into theâyouâre now into the whirlwind, right? Youâve reaped the wind. Now youâre going to suffer the whirlwind. So itâsâI just thought it was just going to be bad. And it turned out it, it turned out it has been bad. I mean, itâs been a real grind. Do you see a change in Trump since the naming of the special counsel? No. Same guy? Same guy. Trump doesnât change. Not throwing mush at the moon or anything. Heâs still in it. He hasnât agreed with it from day one. I mean, he didnât agree with it on the Comey thing. He said itâll never happen; theyâll never announce it, andâno, he hasnât changed. He thought it was, thereâs no collusion, so there should be noâwhy do you have a special counsel? And he was very upset when [Rod] Rosenstein picked it. Heâs called it a witch hunt from the very beginning. You know, heâs gone after these guys hard as saying, âWhat do you got?â At leastâI donât know about the leaks, but if what youâve got is Roger Stone and maybe some conversation with Julian Assange, thatâs a pretty thin reed to hang it on, right? But heâs beenâhe hasnât changed. Heâs been adamantly against this. Itâs not like thereâs anything to hide. I think itâs just that he feels, you know, aggrieved that theyâre coming after him on things that are made up. And so heâs been adamantly opposed to this from day one. But I havenât seen any change. The story ofâI know you know Sessions very well, and really closely collaborated on the immigration stuff for Breitbart. The story the day that Sessions and Trump are in the Oval Office and hear that Muellerâs been picked, and the president, by all accounts, loses it onâwhether itâs true or notâloses it on Sessions. Sessions goes to the car and is in tears and resigns. Then heâs brought back up by Reince, I guess. And you talked to Sessions with Reince. Take me in there, can you? I think we got Sessions back. We couldnât have Sessions resigning, so we got Sessions back, and, you know, talked to him and realized that he just put the, you know, donâtâletâs not do anything in haste. What kind of shape was he in? Well, I think he wasâI think heâd had better days, right? I think heâsâyou know, heâs kind of an unflappable guy. Really when you see him, heâs very solid, you know, and really the driving force of this kind of populist revolt for many, many years before Trump came on the thing. And so Iâm not just fond of him; I really consider him a mentor in a lot of regards. And I realized many conservatives are very upset becauseâand even I wasâ he did not seem to be very focused on Hillary Clinton or Uranium One, and heâs just aâitâs just the way he is. Youâve just got to take it the way it is. And I did pull him off to the side into myâinto the war room, and we talked, and I said, âIs there any doubt in your mind?â I said, âYou were there from the beginning.â I said, âYou were the very first guy.â In fact, in this very room, I paced up and down for two hours on the phone with him when he was in an airport in Memphis in an SUV waiting for Trump to show up, where that day they were going to go down to northern Alabama, and he was going to endorse him on a stage. And what Sessions told me, he said: âYou donât understand, Steve. This isâIâm never coming back from this.â He says: âThe establishment will comeâthey hate this guy so much that this willâ and although Iâm kind of outside of this immigration and the trade stuff and Iâm hammering them all the time, this will be looked like as Iâm a traitor. And, you know, you donât come back from this. So itâs either weâve got to win, or, you know, my political career is over.â And IâI said, âWeâre going to win this.â I said, âThis is a huge endorsement.â I think it was right before Super Tuesday. So he was there from the very beginning. And so Iâwe just came in, and I said: âIâve got a question. You were there from the beginning. You saw the whole thing. You rode shotgun with me the entire time.â I said, âIs there any doubt in your mind that this was divine providence that put us here, right; that this just didnât happen; that thisâsomethingâs worked hereâbecause heâs a very imperfect instrument, but weâre here. And what youâre doing on immigration, what youâre doing on counterterrorism, everything that youâre doing, the real work that youâre doingââwhich Sessions and Miller and these guys were on fire about getting stuff done; the deconstruction of the administrative state, all of that, all the real work that we would have never been able to do it unless we won. And we won. There was something that was there, and thatâs why we shocked everybody. I said, âIs there any doubt in your mind?â He goes, âNo doubt.â I said, âYouâre sure itâs no doubt?â He says, âNo doubt.â I said, âAnd youâre never going to quit?â He says, âI will never quit.â I go, âNo matter how bad it gets?â He goes, âIâll never quit.â I go, âFine, I just wanted to make sure weâre in sync, just make sure weâre in sync.â And thatâs why I knew he was going to hang in there. And he had some very, very, very tough days. It had to kill him when Trump let him go at the end ofâmaybe it was a relief. Look, the president has got a certain house style. And I tell guys, some guys Iâve known, they think theyâre friends with the president. I said: âLook, heâs not looking forâheâs got friends. Heâs not looking for friends. Youâre there to serve a function. And the minute you think youâre not serving that function, youâre living in a different reality. Youâre there to serve that function, and when he doesnât think that youâre serving that function, then itâs time to go do something else.â Look, Iâm a huge Sessions guy. I think if people, particularly conservatives, knew all the work that he was doing every day on immigration, on securing the border, on our sovereignty, on that, they would appreciate him a lot more. I think heâs gotten really banged up. But I think history is going to show Jeff Sessions in a pretty good light. Do you want to take a little break for a minute? Iâm fine. Everybody okay? What time is it? I just want to make sure we've got time. Itâs 2:35. Fine. Letâs just keep rolling. I really appreciate your candor on this, Steve. This is great from my point of view. Letâs talk a little bit aboutâso Ryan, right after the election, says: âThis is unified government. This is what unified government is.â We made a film about this as well. They thought they had a pin in Donald Trump. They were going to doâhe and Mitch were going to do whatever they needed to do and wanted to do. And he made some promises, I think, over at the White House about the order of events and how they would go down. The Faustian bargain we madeâand it was, I think, a huge mistakeâwith 10 days to go, not the weekend before, but the weekend before that, we are in North Carolina for the better part of the day. I think we stopped [unintelligible] with Mark Meadows. And Mark Meadows, whoâs the guy that took down John Boehner, right, when he did that in that August, everybody mocked and ridiculed him, and eventually we got Boehner out. It was started by Mark Meadows. Meadows hands me a manila envelope, and he says, first off, he says, âYou donât have to come back to North Carolina.â North Carolina was the state I was most concerned about. We had a very weak apparatus there. The Republican Partyâs very disorganized. And I go: âWhat are you talking about? This is the one I think we got the least.â And he says, âNo.â He says: âThe evangelicals are turning things out. Weâre going to win by a point and a half, and youâre going to pull [Sen. Richard] Burr⌠â across the goal line, too.â I go, âCome on.â He says: âYou donât have to come back. Trust me.â Never went back. He gives me this thing. He says, âAfter we winââbecause Meadows and his wife were with us on Billy Bush weekend. She got on a bus with other House members and Christian wives and toured North Carolina in a prescheduled thing on Billy Bush Saturday. Billy Bush Saturday is the defining moment of whoâs with ya and whoâs aginâ ya, OK? Meadows and the wife are hard-core Trump, OK? He tells me, âYou donât have to come back,â and he gives me an envelope. He says, âAfter we win on Wednesday, the 9th, I want to have a conversation with you, because this is how weâre taking Ryan out.â I goâIâm tearing up. I want to hug the guy, right? We win. Heâs got a whole plan. Itâs completelyâitâs letâs have a groupâitâs the same thing as the victory speech: Letâs have a group hug. Weâre going to have a group hug. Now, look, we did win by bringing the establishment in. We wouldnât have won without them. The first call I made when I was announced was to Reince Priebus. Reince was a great partner. But the decision was made. Weâre not going to go afterâweâre not going to go after Ryan; weâre going to keep him as speaker. We have the whole ability to change it out right then. Weâre going to workâ Whoâs making that decision? Whatâs driving that decision? Itâs certainly not you. No, no, no, absolutely. I was all for: âWhat do you mean? Letâs take all these guys out.â No, but it'sâand listen, youâve got to remember, being a surprise win, right, and letâs say in that whole group, Trump and myself were the only two that thought we were going to win, everybody else is in shock, right? Youâve got 10 weeks to relieve the watch, right, when itâs your responsibility. We donât knowâweâve got the whole national security apparatus of the Republican Party is all âNever Trumpers.â In fact, the core of the Never Trumpers was the national security. So we had no national security guys we could pick from. We donât know anybody, right? Itâs one thing to talk about it; itâs another thing to put it in the pages of Breitbart, and another thing to have Bannon on his radio show yammering away. Itâs a lot different when itâs now looked at, and the whole thingâ remember, the next day, the stock marketâs going to drop 5,000 points; Trump doesnât know what heâs doing; the countryâs divided; you have a civil war; the whole stream on Fifth Avenue, people are down there cutting themselves. It looks very different. The Wall Streetâeverybodyâs goingâyou know, financial markets are going crazy. Nobody anticipated this. Itâs Donald Trump is president of the United States. I think the president and others around him figured, letâs have a unity thing with the Republican Party. Letâs makeâso it empowered Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to have the power they have. Thatâs the originalâif itâs an original sin of this administration, vis-Ă -vis, I think, the swamp and the permanent political class, it is back to the Breitbart. We canât get to the Democrats till we clean up our own mess. We didnâtâwe basically made a Faustian bargain. Thatâs why Reince became chief of staff. And I was fine with that. I said OK, fine. Thereâs so much to do. Thereâs only so much you can fight. This is going to happen. Weâre not going to take Ryan down. I had a long talk with Mark Meadows. And it was a huge missed opportunity. How did he react? Understood. Understood. Heâs a grownup? Heâs an adult, yeah. He definitely understood. Said at the time, âWe will rue the day we donât do this.â I said, âI fully understand; Iâm rueing with you.â But it is what it is. This isâweâre going to try to pull it together. Weâre trying to work as a team. And weâre going to see how this thingâsee how this thing plays out. That was the first 24 hours, the first 24 hours that decisionâs made. And many of the things from itâI think everything you need to know about Paul Ryan, he quit. He essentially quit. He didnât want to defend the House. He didnât want to go through the effort of havingâbecause it was really going to beâ â18 was going to be a referendum on Trumpâs two years. He didnât want to defend it. He didnât want to go around. So he didnât. And he also, in caseâhe also didnât, if he stuck to it, he didnât want to campaign with Trump in â20. Thatâs pretty obvious to me. He has a total distaste for the president, and he doesnât hide it very well. ⌠Let's talk about the repeal and replace of Obamacare. We don't have to go into all the House shenanigans, but let's end it with McCain's thumb down and the President â Well, something more important than that. Remember, in the sequencing of repeal and replace, and that's where the establishment and Ryan says, "I got this." Tom Price is the smartest guy in the history of Congress in this thing he's going to be the head of DHS. We voted 50 times, 50 times, to repeal this. This is something we own. We know this better than anybody. And it was evident in the first two weeks, as Trump kept pressing down and asking questions, that the Republicans, the staff didn't have a solution⌠When he [McCain] put that thumb down in the middle of the night? What did you guys think? Well, it was out of nowhere. Remember, earlier in the evening he was going to vote for it. Right? It was purely a thing of vengeance⌠So in April, in May, in June, with this in death spiral of the first Republican establishment, and they're saying, âHey, this is a great Faustian bargain we made. We get all the deal baggage of the establishment and none of the upside.â Here's why: they're totally and completely incompetent. They're not ready to govern. They're just not ready to govern⌠But that's another ball that Ryan and these guys, after seven years of being so adamant that, "Yeah, we've worked on this, we've got this," that thing evaporates in 90 days. And the repeal and replace becomes a fiasco. ⌠So tell me, McConnell, the president really lets him have it after the Obamacare thing fails in the Senate. ⌠Whatâsâ whatâs up with McConnell from your point of view? Is he the leader of the opposition party? Where is he then and now? Well, first off, heâsâLook, thereâs nobody Iâve had bigger disagreements [with than] Mitch McConnell, because to me heâs the epitome of the establishment. That being said, if youâre a conservative, he essentially saved the country. He fought for all those years and kept 140 federal judges, I mean, and the Supreme Court. This was why the campaign was so important when I stepped in there. The countryâs on the line. Remember, the reason Merrick Garland is not in the Supreme Court is because Hillary Clinton and these guys didnât think he was progressive enough; they were going to have their own pick. He was too moderate. He was kind of like Obama. Heâs too moderate. They want to send more progressives. ⌠If we had lost in â16, youâre done for a generation. They were going to fill those, the court system. And then they had the courts, the legislator, legislative and theâthat was the thing of reason I stepped in, because it looked like Trumpâs potential death spiral could take down theâ you know, we could lose the House. Youâd lose the Senate even more than you lost it. And you clearly lose the executive. And you lose the courts for a generation. Mitch McConnell kept those 140 seats. Remember, the key of this is Don McGahn and McConnell, the deconstruction of the administrative state. That is the mantra of the Federalist Society, and that is the mantra of this thing about taking this fourth [sic] branch of government thatâs kind of metastasized to be all-encompassing. ⌠Thatâs, you know, thatâs what [Brett] Kavanaugh, thatâs what [Neil] Gorsuch, thatâs what these guys are great theoreticians about this. So that is a whole ânother line of work thatâs probably the one legacy, besides the confrontation of China, [Trump will] be known for, to completely redo the courts, right? At both the appellate level and the district level. And not just that. You may have fourâ I think heâll have four picks on the Supreme Court in his fourth [sic] term, so itâs monumental. And Mitch McConnell brought that on. And honestly, that is Mitch McConnellâsâheâs spending more time focused on that than he is on this other stuff. So when you say Trump reads him the riot act, I never saw that. I always saw a level of respect. Disagreement, but respect there, too. Mitch McConnell has, Iâve always thought, looked at Trump as somebody thatâs passing through town, right? Heâs the majority leader. Heâs a big institutionalist. And he is looking at this fundamental change in the courts. And so, no, I havenât seen him, you know, radically support the president. I think heâll do more because heâs up for reelection in â20, so he doesnât want some Tea Party opposition or some populist like [Matt] Bevin did last time to try to go after him. So no, but I havenât seen any. But I havenât seenâLike on the emergency, itâs outrageous to me that 12 Republican senators voted against the president on his core issue. Particularly when over half of those guys are either in the Senate because of Trump, they pulled him across the finish line, like [Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.). Weâve got to remember, at the end of the day, we gave Mitch McConnell his job. Burr in North Carolina, Blunt in Missouri, [Pat] Toomey in Pennsylvania, a couple more wereâ [Ron] Johnson in Wisconsin, they were four or five guys that were down that last week that all won. That was another big surprise, to come across and to win that big win in the Senate. So that was all Trump, 100 percent Trump, in this kind of populist movement. And McConnell, to me, has not been a big support. Heâs been in support of what he wants to support, right? Tax cuts he wants to support. The donor-driven tax cuts he wants to support, right? If he wants to support, it gets done. On the wall, theyâve had no interest in the wall. So the wall, they just willâtheyâll just look, you know, look the other way and now actually oppose the president, which he had to veto. How much do you figure the list from the Federalist Society and Heritage Society that was given to Trump in March helped him with conservatives, brought him across the finish line in lots of ways? Huge. Remember, when I got in, as I said, weâre going to focus on three things. One, weâre going to simplify this whole thing. Eighty-eight days ago youâre down by a bunch, OK? Weâve got to simplify. Number one, weâre going to ⌠stop mass illegal immigration and limit legal immigration to get our sovereignty back and protect our workers. Thatâs one leg of the stool. The second, bring back manufacturing jobs from China, OK? Theyâre going to get that in Ohio and Wisconsin and Michigan. Number three, get out of these pointless foreign wars. Those three. Oh, and weâre going to run Pence for governor of five of these states up in the Midwest. Weâre going to always, every day, hit the evangelicals and Republican establishment with the judges, with the judges, with the list. And we expanded it another 10 to make it 20. Remember, if you go back to the spring of 2016, within 30 days of each other, two lists come out. The national security list slapped together by Corey Lewandowski, right, that has all the problems with [George] Papadopoulos, all these other guys. This list, because the whole national security apparatus is Never Trump. Theyâve got this collection, odds and endsâitâs like the bar in Star Wars, right? I call Corey, I go: âDude, I know this space. I havenât heard of half of these guys. Who are these?â He says: âWell, we had to get something out. Weâre getting heat from the media for not having it.â I said: âItâs better not to put anything out than to put it out, and now youâve reaffirmed to everybody that you donât know anybody in national security, OK? This is embarrassing.â ⌠That list, and then 30 days later the Federalist Society and Heritage come out with those 10 [potential Supreme Court nominees], which is, hey, you may hate Trump, you may not trust him, but itâs got to be this 10. We expanded to another 10, right? That was a massive seller. ⌠One of the ways to close that gap was just hit every day, hit the list, the judges, the judges. The judges are going to bring the Republican establishment back because they realize how fundamental this is and howâ and that wasâso two lists within 30 days. One causes nothing but problems, right? The other is a solution. And I donât think heâd be president without that list. Whoever thought of the idea of itâI think it was McGahn and Leonard Leoâabsolutely brilliant. And then we expanded. And McConnell. And McConnell. Absolutely. Look, McConnell on the judges is golden. He will go down in history, in conservative history of literally changing the court system. This is why we lost the â18 election. Remember, the Republican establishment hasnât accepted Trump as the transformative president and historical figure. Itâs the progressiveâitâs the Netroots Nation; itâs the Timeâs Up movement; itâs Tom Steyer; itâs The Resistance. Theyâre the ones out in Iowa, in Iowa 1, knocking on doors in 90 percent humidity and heat in June and July. Why? They understand that Donald Trump is going to be in their lives 10, 20 and 30 years from now. Itâs a Kafkaesque nightmare. This guyâs never going away. And the one way Iâve got to do it, I got to take the House of Representatives because weâre going to use that apparatus to weaponize Mueller and everything else, and weâre going to have this head on a pike. That is where American politics is. And God bless them, they did it. You know how they did it? They did it like the Tea Party. They mobilized their forces. They knockedâI kept telling them, weâd have conference calls right here in July, and Iâm saying, âHey, you know, today in Iowa 1, theyâve had 500 people knocking on doors, doing voter registration, handing out literature, and trust me, in the last 60 days, theyâre going to be getting all those folks to vote. And weâre going to lose. Thatâs a House Freedom Caucus. I think it was [Rod] Blumâs district. Blown out, right? You could see these people working in the spring, in the early summer of â18 on exactly the things that the Tea Party had doneâmobilization, getting people out. The reason is? The courts and the deconstruction of the administrative state. The progressive left understood that under the hood what was going on, besides all the signal and the noise, they got the signal, and it couldnât have been stronger. And they said, weâve got to stop the signal. You know, the noise is just Trump and the Twitter and all this other madness. McConnell, as much as I detest him, delivered that. And thatâs, I think, what heâll be known for, this kind of Herculean effort not to roll over on Obama, to keep those 140 seats. And then, itâs one of the reasons we donât have any ambassadors. Remember, only half the ambassadors weâve put up have beenâwe went through the first two years. Theyâve all got to be re-nominated. And the reason is, is all the timeâs been spent on the judges because they realize the judges are permanent, and thatâs where the focus has been. And I think heâs done a magnificent job. And this is where real fundamentalâTrump will be known, I think, in hindsight, on China and the courts. Charlottesville. Where are you when you see it happening? And do youâyouâve got the best divining rod of anybody in the West Wing at the time, and you were on your way out. ⌠So on Saturday, Iâm actually having lunch with a member of the media in my office in EOB, my temporary office. And he goesâand weâre sitting there; weâre just having a sandwich because Iâm about to wrap up, it was like my last couple days, and he goesâhe goes, he said, âMan, this Charlottesville thing is really out of control.â And I go, âWhat are you talking about?â He goes, âThe Charlottesville thing.â And I go, âWhat do youââand I look around. And I got the thing with the four screens, and itâs nonstop Charlottesville. I go, âWhatâs that?â And he says, âYou didnât see the march last night?â I go, âNo.â I said, âI knew they were doing something about the Confederate monuments, but whatâs the big deal?ââ And he goes, âMan, you ought to get all over this.â I look at it. And I literallyâhe leaves; I call my guy at Breitbart, the editor, because Iâm about to come back in like in 48 hours, 72 hours, and I say, I said, âHow many guysâ?â I said, âHow many guys you have down there for the march last night?â He goes, âNobody.â I go, âAre you covering this thing?â He goes, âNo.â I said, âYouâve got to get a team.â I said: âGet Raheem [Kassam], and get a team, and get as many people as you can in Washington, D.C., get them in a car and get down there. This is the biggestââI said, âLook at this thing; thereâs a riot down there.â What did you see that lit you up? What lit me up was people, you knowâ I have been a big advocate of stopping these neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates and antifa and Black Lives Matter. When they come to get it on, I think civil societyâI think the police should shut it down immediately. I am adamantly opposed to letting these guys march through towns, have the police, you know, hitâ that theyâre coming with billy clubs or comingâ theyâre all looking for a fight, and theyâre looking for a fight with each other. I donât think we break any constitutional thing around freedom of speech by saying no. You can come and march and do your thing, but you canât come looking for a fight. If youâre coming looking for a fight, thatâs going to be shut down. And it looked to me like there was fights going on. And then I got up to speed with whatâs going on, and this thing was huge. In talking to the president the next dayâand I think Trumpâand this is where the mainstream media smeared him, because he was very adamant about what he said, about the Confederate monuments. He says there are very good people on both sides. There are. I come from Richmond, Virginia. In the commonwealth of Virginia, there is a heated and active debate on about the Confederate monuments, all the battlefields, everything, about cultural heritage, racism, all that, from two sets of people and voters. Democrats and Republicans and Independents are having aâ In my city, Monument Avenue, theyâre having all these discussions about that. There are good people on both sides. I understand the people that want to keep the Confederate monuments, and I understand the arguments of the people that want to them down. There you do have people on both sides, and what Trump said is where does it end? Does it end at the Washington Monument? Does it end at Mount Vernon? Theyâre now talking about Teddy Roosevelt and Christopher Columbus. Where does this all end? And what Trump was saying in regards to that debate, there are good people on both sides. Heâs always condemned the neo-Confederates and everything like that. What I did is I just talked to Gen. Kelly and said, âMaybe I ought to stick around and see how thing plays out for a few days.â He said: âFine, you do what you want to do. Weâre up in Bedminster; youâre down at EOB.â Did you know heâd put his foot in it? I mean, independent of whether the press reacted or overreacted, when did you knowâ I donât think he put his foot in it. I donât think he put his foot in it. I think the press took theâno, look, what he said: When it comes to the monuments, there are good people on both sides. Thatâs what he said, right? âThere are fine people on both sides.â He understands what the argument is, and what the argument is is about the nationâs history, and where does it end? And thatâs where he said thereâs good people on both sides. He immediately condemnedâheâs always condemned these neo-Confederates, KKK, the Klansmen. But also, he alsoâand this is where the mainstream media looks the other way. There is many bad dudes on antifa and Black Lives Matter, segments, not the whole groups, just as bad as some of these neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis and stuff, because theyâre all looking for a fight. I made a film about the Occupy movement, Occupy Unmasked, that Cuban's company picked up and put in theaters that goes right toâthe Occupy thing had these kids, you know, want to do âKumbaya,â but in back of these guys are professional anarchists and âbad hombresâ coming looking for a fight. So if you think this isâitâs on both sides. And thatâs where I think TrumpâsâI donât think he stepped in it. I think itâs 100%âI think heâs 100% correct. Itâs funny how he does that, and then he kind of tries to walk it back in one of the most stilted performances Iâve seen him do, and then he just canât help himselfâ No, because this is why he getsâthis is bad staffing. This is where various elements in the White House, in the West Wing, get in his ear about trying to get him to do something that is not in his wheelhouse, not in the way he rolls. He then has the press conference, and the thing where he said itâs kind of half inâ first of all, he has the thing atâin theâhe flies back and has the thing in the Blue Room or whatever. That is terrible, because youâre not either fish nor fowl. And you can tell, itâs very stilted as he reads it. Itâs not Trump. And heâs going to reverse field on you after that. Thatâs why you canâtâyou canât do that. Let Trump be Trump. The nation voted for it. It is what it is. Itâs just notâif you try to do it, itâll be phony, and everybody can smell the phoniness. And thatâs why I thinkâand I think he was absolutely correct on this. I think he just should have stuck to what heâs sticking to. There are good people on both sides when you talk about the greater discussion on the monuments and our history and what those monuments mean. Either itâs culturally positive for the South, or itâs culturally negative. And that will be worked out by citizens at the ballot box, essentially, OK, which eventually itâll be worked out. Was he⌠These bad guysâfirst of all, the neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, KKK have no place in American political life. And to me, theyâre only blown upâwhat irks me, theyâre only made bigger. Itâs like Richard Spencer comes here, and thereâs three guys marching with Richard Spencer, but thereâs 200 reporters. The Guardianâs got a whole team, and theyâre doing video. They make them seem like theyâre nine feet tall. Theyâre not nine feet tall. Theyâre all losers; theyâre all deadbeats. They donât add anything electively. Theyâre all morally corrupt. Most of them are scam artists just in it to make money, OK? Itâs another racket, right? Itâs a racket. So they should be totally dismissed, and I think Trumpâs done a good job of that. But these guys that make the antifa and make all the elements of Black Lives Matter, thereâs some elements of Black Lives Matter are fine, but thereâs elements of that and almost all of antifa that areâ antifa is fascist, and they want to get it on. Theyâre just as bad as the neo-Confederates and the neo-Nazis and the KKK. Thatâs where I also think Trumpâs correct. But you stuck around for a few daysâ I stayed till the next Friday, I think. âto clean it up, to help clean it up. Well, I was going toâand I was the sounding board for him, and then Gary [Cohn] and these other guys were going to resign. And I kept saying, I told Kelly: âEither youâve got to come out and either have his back or youâre notâ make a decision. Donât play Hamlet. Donât give me this thing, âI want to resign; Iâm going to resign,â and then leak it to the press. Itâs in Politico every day. Come on. Thereâs virtue signaling on the staff that theyâre allâthat theyâre, you know, theyâre so against it, and heâs so bad.â I said, âThatâs not the way it rolls.â I said, âYouâve got to make a decision here and get rid ofâ these guys either got to step up and say, âI support him,â or resign. Itâs fine. Youâll find another guy at NEC. Larry Kudlowâs right there. Heâll be in tomorrow. Itâs no big deal. Itâs not the end of the world. But youâve got to make a decision. But bleating it out every day in Politicoââ So by Friday, I said, âThis thingâs going to go on for a month, and Iâm not sticking around for a month. This is non-ending.â So I talked to Kelly in the morning and said Iâm going to blow out of here byâ I was actuallyâI was already out of the EOB; Iâd already moved my stuff out. I said, âIâm going to announce today.â And he says, âYeah, we can announce it, too.â So I think they put out some tweet that was positive. And by 5:00, I was on the conference call with the Breitbart editorial staff, and we were back to work. When he says stuff like, âYeah, he was important to me, but not really important; he came late; we were alreadyââhow does that feel, Steve? It doesnât matter. Look, if you go in to work for Trump to get a pat on the head, youâre in the wrong line of work. Look, Iâm 63 years old. Iâve been doing this for 10 years, working on this populist nationalist thing, and God willing if Iâm allowed, Iâll be doing this 10 or 20 years in the future. Itâs notâif youâre looking for an âattaboy,â if youâre looking for a guy whoâs going to sit there, âHey, Tiger, what a great job,â youâre in the wrong line of work, and youâre working for the wrong guy. I do not care. If he said I was the smartest, greatest thing that ever worked for him or I was the biggest dog that ever worked for him, it doesnât matter. What matters is the work, OK? He won the presidency, OK? On that weekend in August, it wasnât about the primaries; it wasnât everything. It was about what the reality was then. And he won, OK? And thereâs no doubt, if I was not there on Billy Bush weekend, OK, he would have gone in a different direction, I think, because the pressure was on him from everybody. He had one guy who had his back that day, OK? And in the White House, I think I did what I had to do. I had his back on certain things. On the outside, Iâm the only guyâyou know, Iâve been interviewed these last couple weeks. Iâm the only guy consistently, not for some sort of rah-rah, because none of my income depends on Donald Trump. I donât need Donald Trump to go sell a book; I donât need Donald Trump to go get anything done. I respect him and what heâs trying to accomplish. Remember, he didnât have to do this. Theyâve tried to destroy him, and theyâre going to go after to really destroy him, OK? He was a billionaire buying, you know, open championship courses, a lovely wife, a great family, enjoying life after youâre 70 years old. He didnât have to do this, OK? He did it, I think, and I saw him up close, because he is a patriot, and he did it for the country. And Iâm very proud, and I will always be proud, of the fact that we beat the Clinton junta, OK? I dedicated five years of my life to making sure that that group of mafiosos would not be in charge of this country, and it gives me unlimited pleasure every day to think that when The New York Times does her obituary, in the first paragraph, itâs going âShe was beaten by Donald Trump,â OK? That is, to me, a great payoff; that sheâs not allowed, and the corrupt group of people around her, were not allowed to get back into theâinto the West Wing. And I think Trump has done a tremendous job. I think he isâI think the left gets thisâhe is a transformative president. He is a historic figure. Now, as I told him, you know, Lincoln, Jackson, Reagan, FDR, to getâ to be loved long term, youâre going to have to go through a very dark valley, OK? Reagan was at 83%, or 33% in August of â83. Lincoln was losing the war up until he won it, right? In 1864, heâs going to lose by a landslide until they took Atlanta, right? FDR, all those dark days in World War II and the Great Depression. Andrew Jackson. If you look at all the great presidents that are beloved later in history, they all had to go all in on what they believed, understand at the time youâre going to be not that popular, thereâs going to be a lot of people. Youâve got to be absolute in convictions. Youâll hit the inflection point because youâre right, and this stuff is right. If you want to just be popular like a lot of people around him want him just to be popular, youâre not going to accomplish anything. Youâre going to end up like Bill Clinton. Youâll be kind of popular at the time and then forgotten to history, right? So if you donât want to end up like that, if you want to end up like Reagan, youâve got to stick to it. I think he has stuck to it, to a large extent. I hope he sticks to it more. And I think he can. And I think right now, if he can get through this grinder, this gauntlet thatâs been thrown down because elections have consequences, heâs got through this gauntlet of the House, that I think that, you know, I think that he could be looking at even a bigger win in 2020. Itâs too early to talk about 2020. However, if he can get through the gauntlet, right, I havenât seen the person yet thatâs come out of the Democratic, even the start of this thing, that can take him on, unless heâs so wounded by the process thatâthatâand who knows? The process is the process. We donât know what itâs going to entail. Itâs all law of unintended consequences; thatâs all to come. But I think heâs pretty well positioned for 2020.
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Solid interview!