Hey guys Hey, let me tweet this out first, okay These Millennials in their social media I'm like a millennial 8 another millennial. Well, well you can continue that while I do the introduction ok Good afternoon and welcome to the Commonwealth Club You can find the Commonwealth Club online at Commonwealth Club, org on Facebook and Twitter and on the club's YouTube channel I'm John zipper host of the clubs week to week political roundtable and the vice-president of media and editorial and your moderator for today's program It's not my pleasure to introduce today's distinguished speaker rick wilson Republican campaign strategist columnist for The Daily Beast and author of the book. Everything Trump touches dies Rick Wilson is a seasoned Republican political strategist and self-proclaimed infamous negative ad maker His regular column with The Daily Beast is a must read in the political community and he's widely published in The Washington Post Politico and the hill and everything Trump touches dies Mr. Wilson brings his dark humor and biting analysis to what he calls the absurdity of American politics in the age of Trump We're about to hear from a lifelong conservative who says the Republican Party has abandoned its principles today We'll talk about that and the future of the country, please welcome Rick Wilson Thank you so much And thank you for having me glad to have you here, all right Now this book it's a no holds barred takedown of Donald Trump the Trump administration And every individual in government the GOP the media and elsewhere who have supported him whether reluctantly or enthusiastically well They only gave me a hundred thousand words Well by page 250 it kind of dawned on me that you don't like this guy Much I'm slow. I'm slow but you've known him for years or you've known of him. I've known of him I've met Donald Trump a few times over the years and you know when I worked for Giuliani in New York when he was mayor the Impression of Donald Trump of every single person in the city was basically this guy's a fraud and this guy said this guy's a joke and he's you know, always looking for the greater fool lender to come down the pike and When I started to grow extremely concerned about Trump in the course of the election I run out to see a hedge fund friend of mine in New York and And I'll clean this up a little bit for our family audience. I Said you know We've got to be very careful because if Trump puts his own money into this race He could he's a billionaire. My friend says wait a minute With a few more words in between there Donald Trump's not a billionaire. He looks himself because I'm a billionaire Donald Trump is a clown living on credit and It struck me at that moment the enormity of the fraud we were looking at because this guy has always looked for one scam after another one sucker after another and Unfortunately, this this time the mark was the Republican Party and the conservative movement and about 40% of Americans well before we get too deep into your view of Donald Trump and what he has wrought let's talk about where you came from and How you came to your views now? You were born in Tampa, Florida. I was born in Florida and I'm a fifth-generation Floridian, which is basically like a unicorn and You know raised in an educated family a Middle-class family and service could no actually my parents where my mom was a damn hippie liberal And and I would say that I was raised in a conservative climate But it wasn't and what my parents were were, you know very much civil rights liberals And so I grew up not thinking of that as a particularly liberal position, but as a particularly humane and appropriate position and that and I and I came up in politics working for George HW Bush and for you know, a lot of people who now are are Would be viewed in this Republican Party as people that were to the left of Ted Kennedy and You know, there was a certain fundamental decency about how we approach people and a certain degree where we played very very hard politics And we didn't take a lot of prisoners, but we were also You know mindful of the progress of this country on some very meaningful areas civil rights in particular the environment and in particular that Was precious and we didn't want to see it walked back or rolled back or destroyed? unfortunately, you know, we're now in an era where All the works of the past must be torn down I mean this week the the the president is proposing to eliminate the intermediate forces treaty Which you know that noted liberal extremist Kenyan Muslim sleeper agent Ronald Reagan Signed with Gorbachev to reduce the the threat of nuclear war in Europe So that has to be torn down now because it's an artifact of the non trumpian past We've got to have years zero on everything. Mm-hm What was your year zero for? Seeing that you wanted to get into government get into politics. I mean, where was did Reagan inspire you or what? Well, you know like a lot of kids, uh who were teenagers during Carter? Mmm. There was a perception That the country was drifting and weak and you know You you may not be sophisticated enough to know it when you're 13 years old that a part of this is because Nixon You know basically blew up all the institutional norms in Washington but you start to realize and when you're that age, you you you you you prefer leadership and You know, I was also a nerd kid, so I was already reading You know political History at that point in my in my youth and I was interested in the profiles of leadership of presidents who were both optimistic And and and who had a meaningful impact in In in the world and so Reagan did appeal to a young guy like that He was my first vote when I turned 18 and it may have been 94 I cast my first my first vote was for Ronald Reagan and and As a conservative my views on particularly on things like individual liberty and free markets, you know throughout school I was at George Washington in the in the 80s and it was a hotbed of you know guys who were go ready to go out be the last generation of cold warriors and you know we looked at in in you know in the in the fall of 83 when I got to Drew GW we were in the Absolute depths of the Cold War couldn't have gotten any more. I see I mean that was KL double of seven That was the you know, the the the the we now know it was the death gasp of the the Communist Empire but it certainly didn't feel that way at the time so that you know inspired me on the in terms of Believing it. We had it to have a country that was strong in the world and that had effective leadership in the world And in terms of Appreciating the Constitution and free markets and individual liberty and the rule of law I look at those things as you know as nonpartisan questions I look at them as things that people from every part of the political spectrum can embrace because our founders built a pretty cool machine That while it had its flaws in the beginning It's got some good self-correcting mechanisms, and it's managed to survive over 200 years as an as a going concern Through some pretty terrible things I mean we we overcame a civil war and we overcame a Great Depression and we overcame milli vanilli and We're gonna overcome Donald Trump in the end because the country's got a fundamentally robust ecosystem. That keeps us afloat So the type of conservative you are and the type of Republican you are We've heard from other never Trump errs who have been here David from Charlie Sykes both kind of come to the realization that they thought that they were the majority in the party and They came to realize they were a thin veneer on the party that this this populist feeling and this disgruntlement and the lack of attachment to these Principles that have been argued out in the Federalist Society and all these other conservative organizations right had meant nothing to them well We've learned that and and that's been part of the sort of shock and awe of trumpism For people who you know have a room temperature or greater IQ in the Republican Party this this idea The people that go to a trump rally want to talk about Hayek And want to talk about free markets, they don't give a damn about that stuff. They have a bundle of anxieties and resentments That's being fed every day by Fox You know They have this this enormous anger with the educated part of the party they look at it as something that's held them back or held them down or hurt them or belittles them in some way and that Old model the GOP or the the tripod where you had social conservatives? You had foreign policy conservatives national security or foreign policy conservatives and you had economic and individual liberty conservatives that balance used to keep any particular faction from becoming too powerful and So, you know the guys like me in the in the economic and foreign policy side would keep a check on the social conservatives and The social conservatives would keep a check on the economic conservatives to not be too much of a bunch of heartless bastards But that's all gone now there is only one pillar of the Republican Party today and that's Donald Trump. Mm-hmm. So the party that produced Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush and Jack Kemp and John McCain and a whole host of other people who had a view of the world that that was nuanced and had a view of the world that that spanned an entire area of conservative thought in different degrees and and different flavors It's all gone. It's all been replaced by do you love the Dear Leader enough? Will you sacrifice for that for the Donald enough? And because of that the party is is They've gambled everything on whether Donald Trump is going to be you know Verbally incontinent two days before the election and blow up their entire their entire strategy, they recognize that there one tweet away from disaster at any given moment, but They're also terrified of his base. They're terrified of the people that support him They live in absolute abject here if you guys ever wonder why Why aren't more Republic standing up and fighting back against Donald Trump? I will tell you exactly why Because the minute they do Their Facebook pages and their Twitter feeds and their voicemails fill up with the most vile Horrifying death threats you've ever imagined. I have a member of Congress. Who's a friend who? Right after the election was doing a town hall meeting and he was asked by A guy stands up. He says are you gonna support mr. Trump 100% of the time and He says well, I'm gonna support the president when the president does things that are right for our district I represent you I don't represent Donald Trump and the guy and says are you going to support mr. Trump? 100% of the time and He said, you know, I knew he was popular but I didn't know was gonna be the disaster. He says no No, I'm not gonna support him a hundred percent. I'm gonna support him when he's right I'm gonna work with him when he's right to do things for our district, and this is not some Flaming liberal social justice warrior this is a guy who's from a decently red seat By the time he got off the stage his kids social media pages had threats on them saying things like you better Tell your dad he better stick with mr. Trump or you'll grow up without a daddy and His wife's firm. His wife's business got calls that morning You better fire her because we're gonna boycott you and do all these things and the death threats. They got were ridiculous and I've bought a lot of races against Democrats I've taken your lunch money a lot and they were only been and I've run some ads that really piss people off Every one a couple of times when I've gotten a death threat I thought was credible what I thought it was like I better call the PD about this one since 2015 You know In a state where I can I carry a gun? For a reason I've had enough threats and my kids have had enough threats My wife's had no threats my dogs and cats have had enough threats. These people are bonkers and They feel unhinged by Donald Trump and they feel liberated to do this sort of thing And this is why the projection you're hearing from Donald Trump about mobs is out there This is why Republicans are saying all the Democratic ma the violent democratic and Tifa Well, the people that are carrying torches and calling for black people to be put back in chattel slavery are not a bunch of Democrats That I noticed there are people who supported Donald Trump 100% of the time so, you know, that's sort of that sort of Atmosphere that's built up inside. The party now Trump has in what the Russians would call sample eat their political enforcers by threat of violence You really answered my next question which was to get to Donald Trump Well, not just what the problem is with him that he's wrought with a party but what the problem is with the Republicans and the Conservatives who go along with him and say It's for the supreme court, right? It's you know, what about that? You essentially have three categories or Republicans right now who? support Donald Trump First category it's a narrow narrow band. They're the opportunists. They're the smart guys So the Mitch McConnell's, okay They want to accomplish certain Metta policy goals and they know if they kiss the ring enough and he lets them alone They can do them. That's why Mitch McConnell was the president who appointed Brett Kavanaugh It wasn't Donald Trump That was entirely a McConnell Show Which is why the which is why the nomination was always going to pass because it wasn't dependent on Trump It was all McConnell's guile. Okay, and he's very very good at his work So those opportunists are out there Lindsey Graham Matt gage those guys they're all playing a game to either accrue power in Congress or money for their for their campaigns in the future or stature with Fox News So the opportunities are a fairly small number There's a much larger number of people who I've referred to previously who are scared to death They've it's the fom tea crowd fear of mean tweets Fom tea is what guides all these guys. They're terrified. He will tweet Congressman John Smith may be a Republican, but I hate him He doesn't want to Mogga and then that guy's gonna live in witness protection for the rest of his life the third category It's actually a lot smaller than you think It's the real true believers and in the house there are maybe 50 of them 40 or 50 of them in the Senate There's maybe 10 of them who actually believe in the Trump Nationalist populist worship and they buy into it from top to bottom now that group may shrink a little bit in the next couple of weeks because a lot of the guys in the scared group are going to disappear and and the remainders are gonna say Was this such a good bet after all? Because even though the Democrats structurally were almost never gonna win the Senate just structurally was gonna happen, you know They had eight Republican target seats this year They are gonna win the house still it's gonna be narrow, but they're gonna win the house They only need 24 24 is the magic number. It's you know 24 and it's Pelosi. That's it You need you know, that that's the only number you need and the Republicans have to catch every break between on Election Day so a lot of these guys know that the party's about to stop the music's almost come the music's gonna stop soon and You know in Washington the last thing you want to do is be without a chair when the music stops you You seem confident about the Democrats taking the house for the polls that I've been looking at and certainly Nothing compared to I'm sure though all the info you have but hold up and look in that show You know a still sizable but shrinking enthusiasm gap if you will of Democrats Republicans apparently were super charged by the Cavanaugh hearings What are some of the factors that come into play we talked? Here at the club last night about Millennials voting or hispanics voting or not. Voting. What do you think will be the key? Well, let me say this first off And I told Democrats this a lot. I mean this was love young Democrats are wholistically bad at politics they chase every damn rabbit out there and They cannot stay on target for their lives this entire Caravan issue That is Trump bait. He threw that out there and of course the Democrats crawled all over it and Therefore the news media starts covering it and it gives Fox News something to say every night that the bin Laden family is creeping toward the border to murder you with their Mexican ms-13 allies and Stoke the Republican base into a frenzy so, you know the fact that the selection has been nationalized Republicans are head faking to the Democrats. Oh, this is great for us. We this uh, If it was great for them, they wouldn't have already abandoned 35 Republican House seats they've cut these guys loose they're done They're now defending in the B tier of people who are in are plus seven eight nine seats They're not playing offense You know charles cook came out today with ten new seat changes eight of which were democratic direction they were republican seats that went from lean Republican to toss up or from likely Republican to lean Republican and one Democratic seat that moved from From likely to lean or lean to likely, excuse me and so it just was it's not this the the this idea that the blue wave is completely dissipated is Mistaken those things are baked in the cake already and look a lot of people on the Republican side were motivated by the Cavanaugh thing because it got wall-to-wall coverage on Fox for three consecutive weeks it became something that was that was a Unifying thing outside of trumpism for Republicans. The feeling of the media is treating us badly You know, it's juvenile as that is but Let's also see the flip side of this coin in 2016 Republican women got a trial separation from the party and all through seventeen The divorce proceedings were going on and we saw in all the special elections That Republican women had basically moved to the independent category and we're casting their they'd moved to I in terms of identification They were casting votes for Democrats. I think ed. Gillespie got his ass handed to him in Virginia. He's a moderate Republican he'll he's to the left of me and and He's was a glove fit for Virginia, but trumpism Was poisoned for female voters in Virginia. You've seen the same thing over and over and over again in these special elections and I'll wrap this up real quick a Lot of groups that people think are gonna come out in great numbers are not okay Stop thinking lineal czar gonna save you they're not going to save you You know what? It's gonna maybe be instead of 23 percent 25 percent Even Barack Obama only juiced him of about five points and that was a landslide. That was an epic So Millennials are not going to be the the be-all and end-all to fix politics for the Democrats in America They're gonna help there certainly all identifying as Democrats now, there's no cohort I mean when I was growing up when I was the when I was the age of Millennials, it was basically kind of a 6535 split Democrat Republican now, it's like a 95 to 5 split Democrat Republican among younger voters Hispanic voters are going to come out not in as big a numbers as as Democrats had hope perhaps because they again suck at politics holistically and they're not good at addressing things Beyond, you know, they the identity politics cliches of oh, all they care about is immigration You know Hispanics care about more imposing that I've done all over the country education by far it's way up here For Hispanic voters and the Democrats never give them the answers. They're looking for it's always you know You're the oppressed minority. We're gonna take care of you by fixing the immigration system A lot of these people they care about immigration It affects their lives very directly, but they care about education and jobs more so, you know, I don't read the polls once in a while might help a Question from the audience Shows you we're not all San Francisco liberals here if Trump is so terrible How do you explain his success the economy Supreme Court, etc Well President McConnell has been very successful in naming two Supreme Court justices and Vice President Paul Ryan and and Vice President Paul Ryan the economy, you know when this economy was doing exactly what it's doing right now when it was Barack Obama, I Criticized it because the economy has held afloat on a gigantic bubble of fed equity of zero interest loans to Wall Street, they held after that after the 2008 economic collapse the Fed stepped in and they Inflated the economy that bubble is still underneath this economy. It is still keeping us afloat. There have been no meaningful legislative accomplishments of Donald Trump on the economy at all These manufacturing jobs that were coming along they were coming along in the end of Obama's term they didn't you know emerge Sooey generous because you know There are de novo rather from trumpism because Donald Trump says, you know, I don't like the swamp there have been enough There's been nothing truly accomplished the regulatory fixes He's done have actually been so narrowly crafted because their payoffs to the coal industry and the steel industry and those things have been almost tuned to support individual corporations a Lot of the stuff he's talking about is of course As you know completely false When he comes out and says we're opening 20 new steel plants in this country and him a million people are gonna be working in them. Well, it's one That it planned to reopen under Obama and it's employing 40 more people it's not this this is a this bubble of fantasy of trumps accomplishments is just that it's a bubble and it's it's it's it's great pitching and And nothing there. It's all hat and no cattle. You also target the tax bill from the conservative point of view. Absolutely Tell us why that was not a conservative I mean had a lot of things that people thought were longside conservative goals Would you say no they weren't long saw conservative goals. Actually, they were long sought corporate goals and as a actual economic conservative I believe that if you're gonna pass a tax cut It should go beyond about a hundred and fifty guys on Wall Street and about 65 billionaire's in this country getting 85% of the benefit of the bill I Don't believe in crony capitalism. I don't believe in the government picking winners and losers You know we picked in this tax bill. We picked the hedge fund industry they were the big winners they won and they won big and The build was built in with all these phony predicates one of which was oh the bill will instantly cause economic growth forever To be somewhere around 5% Oh Really? Now, how's that working out? It's not right now We're gonna end up in the two point something three points something range if things continue to go well This has already blown a trillion dollar hole in the budget. I'm sorry I had this thing when I signed up for the GOP that fiscal probity was part of the whole game plan That we working to spend money like drunken sailors so this bill is is Even if you factor in and we can argue this all day supply side effects of the bill and stimulative effects of the bill you still can't make it work financially overtime and The the the baits that was thrown out there this middle-class tax cut. It's gonna Its de minimis. I'm sorry, if our country's economic poor is hedge funds on Wall Street It's a really different country than I think we're looking for to survive in the next century These are these are guys right now who have been given a gigantic amount of Federal Reserve money To play with for a decade and they've played nicely. They've made a ton of money and Now they've been giving a gigantic tax break underneath it They've been given another ton of money and guess what's gonna happen when the drunken sailor? Party ends and they wake up like that morning in Tijuana where you wake up somewhere. Don't know where you are And your eyes are glued shut and you're like I'll never drink tequila again we're gonna have to bail them out again in a couple of years you mark my words he will bail them out again and We're out of money. We're out of tricks The economy goes south tomorrow, you know The Federal Reserve has in the till now nothing The only game they have left is a gigantic inflationary money print and that again is a conservative I don't know It didn't really work out during the Great Depression all that well So I think we need to be very cautious about this tax bill or replicating its effects Okay, you devote a large part of your book to describing the people who have fallen victim to the curse of everything Trump touches guys Let's talk about some of them. Let's start with Steve Bannon well Imagine cancer with legs Steve Bannon is one of the darkest and I use this word advisedly Steve Bannon is one of the darkest and most evil people in American politics if We were a sensible country Steve Manon would be horsewhipped in the street because he is an infeasible Arsonist he is seeking to overturn the republic and replace it with a four eteri in nationalist populous state He's walking treason and One of the most loathsome human beings I've ever encountered in any context whatsoever And the fact that Steve Bannon targeted my kids to get at me He should hope we never meet in a dark alley. Let's put it that way. You do take delicious satisfaction in working against Bannon Oh, you know that infamous Roy Moore Senate campaign in Alabama. I tell our audiences about that. So I've worked against two Democrats in my career one was Donald Trump Actually against Dewey about Republicans. I'll excuse me, you know god, it's like four hundred Democrats. Sorry Oh Two Republic's in my career. Well, most Donald Trump and one was Roy Moore and I Would have done the Roy Moore race pro bono Because I heard Steve Bannon had gone all in Put everything every scrap of his credibility into the race and I thought oh my God He's actually dumber than I thought He's gonna bet his power with the Mercer's and with Trump on a child molester so I took my superpower which is making terrible negative ads that people go I Can't believe I saw that on TV and then they go out and vote the way I want them to Against Roy Moore and I gotta tell you that was like having the greatest hot shower of my life I Could not have been happier to do that I mean they're there it's rare and politics when you get to do the right thing and screw your enemy to the wall and Steve bannon's hide it stacked up on the barn out behind the house right now because he lost everything at that your wife Steve Bannon running around Europe trying to rev up like a low-rent right-wing Hitler right parties because the Mercer is cut off his Sorry My mother is watching this if she okay. Yeah. I know I I have that. Mmm famously famously salty They cut off Steve Bannon at the knees Or above And he's running around now trying to revive his reputation as this as this mastermind of nationalist populism, but he's an evil human being and And you know a healthy political system would purge him and healthy political system would not have him within a billion miles of of its of its institutions of power its influential people its conferences its meetings and yet there is Steve Mann and he is playing a part of the the the Death of the GOP by helping to transform it into this nationalist populist party Even Trump himself last night finally broke the seal came out and said in Texas. I'm a nationalist. I'm a nationalist Well, that's an old song. We know how it ends. We've seen it over the last 150 years over and over again Nationalism is not patriotism nationalism is not conservatism Nationalism is not even populism nationalism is a tool a gateway drug for Authoritarian state ISM that leads to people being stacked up like cordwood and camps and it never ends well so that's that's what that's Steve bannon's great triumph and trumpism and it's also I think Last night we're gonna look back in history of that moment He declared openly he was a nationalist beyond even Charlotte's Ville, which was a moral low point for any president in our history I think I think that the the full embrace of nationalism by Trump last night was something that we're gonna look at as a inflection point in this country we People are gonna have to make a call and then have to make a call very soon about what side they're on the other side of the Republic whether they're Republicans Democrats or independents, or do they favor something new and dark and Unfortunately, it may be a new and dark thing in America But it's something we've seen in the world in Bosnia and in Germany and in Italy and in Cambodia and in Rwanda And and it never ends the way they want it to end. Is it fair to say? More so than Trump's betrayal of conservative views More than his as what he's doing to the Republican Party that at the core is what's dragging you against absolutely Absolutely, because I don't think anyone of goodwill from any political perspective Wants to see the Republic fall and be replaced by authoritarianism I left or right and an authoritarianism left or right is Anathema to what? I believe America represents and what America can and should be and and you know We've always had this sort of broad homeostatic political system in our country Right never gets control for to too long or to too much left never gets control for to too long up to too much We don't always get what we want. We play back and forth. That wasn't the founders designed They designed a beautiful tension in our system. They designed a government that had three co-equal branches They designed a system that that limited executive power and that limited legislative power and limited judicial power they have these careful lanes and balances and we're at the point where the Enthusiasms of the crowd and the mob are going to replace that if we're not an extraordinarily careful as a country You get at that in the book, of course about that there are certain Republicans right now who are making law and policies as if Democrats will never again be In power don't control Congress won't be in the White House would be a long time for the control the Supreme Court, but But that like you're saying that that was the core understanding of even when you do have massive power to understand that Sooner or later you're not going to so you have that in your mind when you're making it and is that because these people are caught up in the fever dream of having the power or because Within the White House as you described in the book so many of them have no experience whatsoever Oh in government guys this is like Rounding rounding up 15 people off the street and saying okay, you're gonna go run the space station One or two might have heard of the space station None of them are aeronautical engineers The White House is stocked right now with people who would never have gotten an interview with George HW Bush in the White House they would never have gotten an interview with George W Bush or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton's White House these these people are are the Tailings the flotsam of the the Republican Party. It's like a friend of mine said this to me he goes if you made a list of the ten biggest Jerk-offs, you can think of in the party. Are they all working at the White House right now? I'm yeah Absolutely, and these people are not There they combine incompetence with the fact that they're on this Lord of the Flies Donald Trump island reality TV show every day and so the fights inside Let's put this way. There were a lot of tensions inside the George W Bush White House there were competing groups There were people who liked each other and didn't like each other and the same thing happened the Obama Administration and the and the Clintons and the and George HW Bush and Reagan and Carter everything These people are an order of magnitude more horrible as human beings all these leaks You see coming out of the White House constantly it is because 90% of their bandwidth is dedicated as screwing the guys They hate not to serving the country So you combine incompetence MAOIs? Stupidity and indifferent education and you've got the Trump White House also You have a guy with the attention span of a gnat Who who does not focus every day who does not think that things like the law and the Constitution Bind him to behave in any way and he was fed a constant diet of you were the great glorious leader you were the Sun King and We end up with a white house. We should be grateful as a country We have yet to face an actual foreign policy crisis or economic crisis because when you can't just blame caste and talk about the swamp the liberal media or crooked Hillary Things are gonna get ugly fast and you know, no one wants a terrorist attack on this country No, one wants an economic collapse, but you know more presidents than not I've had one of those things happen no one wants a natural disaster more presence did not have had these things confront them and This is a man spectacularly unable to confront these kind of things because he is not externally directed He's internally directed about his ego and his his petty needs Was in continuing with the list of people in his orbit and they're suffering Actually, I have some other names but I want to throw in someone and see if they might be an exception to the everything Trump touches dies Rule, what about defense? Secretary James man is what do you think? Well, I love me some Jim mattis, and you guys should every day For whatever religion creed or spiritual practice you follow Get to your knees or look to the heavens and say please Lord Xenu Buddha don't let Jim mattis quit today Because Jim mattis is basically running his own foreign policy and defense policy out of the Pentagon He keeps the president as much at arm's length as he possibly can. I have constitutional reservations about it but as an American, I'm relieved every day that a man who's not an evil man child is running the the defense department He's taken a lot of hits though he's taken a lot of damage and he's he's you know, this is a man who was universally respected in Washington and There are an awful lot of people in the Trump White House John, bolton and his mustache are both trying to take out madis every day every day They're working to take to drop down to drop down the hammer on Jim mattis and get him fired That's that and it's not even subtle. I mean Bolton doesn't really do subtle But you know it is certainly something that we should we should be very Mindful that there are only a couple of adults left in the room Is Stephen Miller one of them? I? Write about - Stephen Miller a little bit in the book and a fun fact that Stephen Miller and Richard Spencer were together at Duke Or just mentioned the white nationalists. They were they were at Duke together and All I can think of as like Stephen Miller sitting in Richard Spencer's room high as hell Talking about how they're gonna you know Restore the white purity of the Rodina The guys who started he is a creepy individual of the highest order I mean Stephen Miller looks like he's got a collection of skin suits in his basement and And for somebody so young The malice inside of him to do the the the the horrifying cruelty theater of putting children in cages To accomplish a political end. I'm sorry I think the Republican Party I signed up for okay, that's not the country I signed up for that is a person who again looks at a He's disguising his white nationalist impulses By pretending it's about immigration. It's not about immigration. If there were seven thousand Canadians marching down here tomorrow, you know, what would happen nothing? It is because Stephen Miller Whatever is broken in Stephen Miller's head Whatever's wrong with Stephen Miller He has an animus toward immigrants and an animus toward brown people that is That is unappropriate for anyone working in the White House or in government Kelly on Conway's husband apparently has the freedom to tweet against the president Kelly Anne Conway on the other hand is his Strongest defender out in the media. What do you make of her? No, she just has no shame. Okay So I've worked in politics for 30 years and Kellyanne had a niche specialty which was female voters great everybody needs a specialty I'm a bad guy from negative ads and she's a dancer specialty But no one thought hey, we gotta have Kelly and Conway. It's okay. She's a woman. That's cuz she's Kelly Ann No one thought we had to for Kelly on Conway in the center of every single discussion in major campaigns She's wasn't that person she got into the Trump World and she realized that In a world of shamelessness in a world where you where being a pathological liar is is not exceptional It's a mon minimum qualification That she was actually good at that on TV and she's you know good at blustering and good at Bellowing the weird thing is he talked to people around the White House. She has no defined job She doesn't do anything in the White House she waits for the phone call to ring and you know for for Jake Tapper or Brian Staedtler or whoever to have her on the air so that she can open her lie hole for five minutes and And and defend the president he loves that One who got away Sean Spicer Who Look Sean Spicer looked like a guy who was blinking out the word torture from the podium in Morse code every day Because he hated it so much. The guy was miserable Sean wasn't from the Trumpy side of this thing He was a pretty procedural DC guy good comms guy, you know nuts and bolts not now You know Sean's not evil he just let himself get you know wrapped up in that thing and you know Priebus brought him into the White House and You know when the first day the president is screaming that the guy doesn't have a good suit Like oh, okay. You want him to lie that there were 47th resilient people on the on the mall But you're worried about his suit the same you could tell Sean Spicer day one was a dead man walking My books all better You've worked for a lot of Republicans as you've pointed out including Rudy Rudy Giuliani now, he is Donald Trump's TV lawyer Do you talk with him? It's either. Oh, no Rudy Giuliani Is he I haven't spoken to Rudy in quite a while now for reasons that may be obvious But I will say this and I know Rudy has a very Mixed perception in the public. I went to work for him in his 1997 reelection race for mayor where he had turned the city fundamentally around in terms of jobs in the economy Public safety and there were some rough things about that But the analogy that I used at the time and I still sort of think of today Rudy was Batman. Okay, Batman sometimes does some ethically shady stuff Batman sometimes works outside the boundaries of the normal things But he's working for the broader good and security. That was the Rudy I knew and the Rudy That on 9/11 when there was no other leadership in the country for a few hours when he stood there and Spoke extemporaneously about what was going on and what they were doing and how they were trying to save the city. Mm-hmm if Rudy at that moment had dropped down dead. He would have been a national hero that we would have talked about for generations and unfortunately what he has done at this point in his career is in her Trump's orbit and All those other things will now be footnotes and what will be remembered is this horrifying? Performative TV lawyer act In defense of an indefensible man, and I it saddens me tremendously. There are a lot of like Rudy alumni that I've talked to over the last several months and all of us are Just speechless and hurt and you can't it's hard to believe what has happened to him But it has and we have to face the fact that it has and is the corruptive and corrosive influence of Donald Trump Okay another question from the audience Do you agree with Tom Nichols and other never Trump errs that Democrats need to win the next two elections to destroy trumpism and affecting the GOP well how I would take a Republican majority if they didn't act like a bunch of junior managers at a Trump golf course, I Mean, I would love a Republican Party that would stand up and do their constitutional duty and uphold their oath of office Which is to be a co-equal branch of government but they have decided that they work for Donald Trump that they're his employees not his peers and that They are his servants not his masters and So I think we've reached the point where the only way we will have accountability for this president is if you have a Democratic majority Now do I love the policy outcomes from that as a conservative? No, do I think Nancy Pelosi is actually gonna get anything done and passed? No the noise problem versus the signal problem here So we have to face the signal problem is that Donald Trump was fundamentally compromised by engagement with Russia The Donald Trump is running an extraordinarily corrupt administration. I mean more corrupt more lavishly curved. It makes grant look Look like George W Bush. I mean it did this. There's no degree to which these people won't sink to sell favor and influence in this country I mean we talked about this with a tax bill briefly the coal industry basically submitted a menu With prices on it and they gave Donald Trump the money to get they what they wanted done For each of the things they wanted done III there are people who have already gotten, you know The the first scorching there are a lot of them who should burn there are a lot of people who should be in jail because of the corruption of this administration so I don't think you're gonna get that with Devin Nunez the Fredo of the GOP Covering up for this president and and and and and these guys for partisan ends looking away from a Russian intelligence And influence operation that seeks to this very moment to destroy our republic It is a form of war in the modern era short I mean, it's it's it's to the left of the boom But it's still a form of war and they look away from it to protect Donald Trump politically on that line Someone from the audience asks if Robert Muller has a smoking gun if he's got some conclusive thing. He releases it Do you think Republicans will go along with? Just getting you to right there now now The magic number is in the Senate you need 2/3 You ain't getting there not before 2020 it's gonna it would take it would take something so extraordinary and so Damning that I can't imagine it wouldn't have leaked already for for a majority of Republicans in the Senate or not a majority efficient of the Republicans in the Senate to to Vote to impeach and to convict rather. I mean the impeachment is not as dubious as the as a conviction the impeachments very difficult, but the conviction is Extraordinary that's it's an order of magnitude higher. Hmm someone asks who owns Trump Russians Saudis others who doesn't the guys I hate to be sexist in everything but the guys got a short skirt and basically it's hey guy want a date He is not a guy who? Who for a moment looks away from money? Everything in his head is always about that one scorpy keeping mechanism that he inherited from his defective relationship with his father Which is are you are you making the bank? They this is a guy whose finality is so unbelievably evident every single day So yes, the Russians did a ton of business with the Trump's ton of business and you know, these were stories we were pitching in 2015 to all those liberal reporters and They would say things like oh well get to me after the primary It might be interesting later and then during the general we're pitching the same reporters. And so and you know, Hillary's gonna win It's okay. Don't worry about it won't follow that money. It's too hard too complicated. Well that Stuff is emerging. The a lot of that data is out there Motors putting that case together The president and his sons are lying when they say they have no business with Russia or Russians The Chinese obviously and the Saudis obviously have Become an ATM machine for the Trump family and Trump family enterprises and businesses including Jared So I think we're I think you know, I think Donald Trump is owned. He's got many masters Will Trump win in 2020. Well, I can have some tough love for y'all now If it's Bernie or Elizabeth Trump's gonna be President, I'm just gonna tell you right now Democrats need something that they're not they're not thinking through right now Right now Democrats have a squirt few mechanisms for presidential nominees. It looks something like this Ideological match so that means are they right with you on guns abortion health care, whatever, okay Then you look at can you put it together raise the billion dollars raise the money do the campaign operational things, etc Then it's can we get through the super delegate mess and all the Democratic internal blah blah blah Get it backwards The last thing Democrats have on their thing is charisma and engagement with the media. That should be way up here They should look for a candidate who can be great on television. That's where this election is gonna be fought It's not gonna be fought out in caucuses and in and in Policy debates, it's gonna be fought out of who's got the charisma to go kick Donald Trump's ass up and down the block every single day now if that's Bernie who is 9,000 years old And who's gonna go out and see the millionaires and billionaires It's not gonna work, it's just that it's just not gonna be there Elizabeth Warren may have many shining merits but I think last week, you know, that whole thing went over like a fart in a hurricane And I don't think she's particularly great at politics That's not me Somebody's on the list well, and I know it's not you it's literally not your job to give the Democrats advice But do you see Republicans who could do that kicking up and down the street of Trump? Look, I think that there are I think that the Democrats seen somebody who's a little bit out of left field I think that a lot of the lineup right now is is A little pedestrian and a little dull and I'm just gonna say this. Here we go For the love of God if you know Hillary Clinton ask her to shut her damn mouth You know what? She should be doing Raising money behind closed doors. She's great at it. But every time she's on TV it reminds everyone of those Trump voters that that Why they voted for him a lot of Republicans who are not Trump fans were just slightly less fans of Hillary Their hatred was still a little higher and I don't think she does any good for the Democratic Party moving forward They are I mean look, what else do you use from the 1990s? You still have your flip phone? No and at the and the Clintons now are a dated product and politics is about Novelty in a lot of ways Trump was a novel candidate. He was a new thin flavor He was something exciting and different and transgressive. So I would recommend to the Democrats, you know Don't feel like the it's my turn person needs to be the person Look at who you who can be a great fighter against Donald Trump and who's great on television That's where that's where the battle will be fought. It will not be fought on policy questions I know that people I know people want the policy to be the like the way you make decisions and then maybe that's Would be a more robust democracy and more robust Republic But you know PJ Roerich once famously said the three branches of government are money television and bullshit Now which one of those is Donald Trump great app all three I Would suggest the Democrats look for somebody who's great at at least one of those Someone asks about if they've turn off their phones or other loud noise making devices husbands, etc I'm the Republican side any chance of you know, John Kasich or someone else who's your challenge sure and there and the you know look, When Pat Buchanan got in the primary against George HW Bush all of us George HW Bush guys were like this guy But Pat Buchanan started the bleeding with 41 and that bleeding led to Ross Perot getting in the race and that led to Bill Clinton winning the race with a plurality of the American vote and With a narrow electoral college when So I do think you'll see somebody on the Republican side. I also think you're gonna see a lot more independent leaning or independent candidates Considering this and a couple of them are actual billionaires who know what they're doing and who aren't incompetent So we'll see how that plays out. But I think there's certainly an opportunity for a very disruptive election cycle With pressures inside the Republican Party and outside on the independent side well one billionaire who has Used to be a Democrat then became a Republican then became an independent and is now a Democrat again Michael Bloomberg said Trump might challenge Democrats in court if they win the house. Do you agree? Sure? Look, I think I think Trump is gonna declare this election to be illegitimate because remember Projection is his central thing He's gonna come out saying the China you stole the election. It wasn't the Russians. It was the Chinese They stole it for the Democrats because they love Hillary Okay, but I really think you're gonna end up with where the president tries to delegitimize the election and why he wants to delegitimize the investigations This is a guy who defies the rule of law with every breath. He takes he is petrified of accountability Which is also why by the way, I think the Democrats if they take command of the house It doesn't need to be day one our one hair on fire. We will now impeach the evil orange one death of a thousand cuts investigative power is magical and They can drag this thing out and salt this salt the earth around him so much and cause so much political cost, you know opportunity costs for him that that's you know, that's part of that should be part of the strategic landscape of holding him accountable is Don't try to jump in and eat the candy first, you know Eat your vegetables go at it and hammer and tongs go after the corruption inside this thing I mean look you could do a whole you could do a Benghazi level investigation just on Jared Kushner and NBS and Saudi you could you could you could spend a year on that and Make Jared sit in the chair under the hot lights over and over again as he sweats Someone asks, how does this end? What are the signs serious people have warned but no one seems to listen and no discussion about what the final straw might be So a cry of despair From the audience. Yeah. Well, how does it end? So you saw Mad Max, right? The guy in the red jumpsuit with the flaming guitar, yeah now that's kind of how it ends Look, I don't think Trump ever goes easily. I Think he fights tooth and nail to the last dog dies. I think he's divided the country so profoundly that we're gonna have to have Almost something on the order of truth and reconciliation at the end of this Almost on the order of some sort of national Moment where we really really consider The damage that's been done. And where we were where both sides have to examine. You know, how we're gonna play this ball game You're a hard-nosed political strategist, you know the game You know the good in the bad to see me the the bright sunny shot outside of it Say Trump either doesn't choose to run or he's defeated in 2020. He retires he Marry, someone else whatever he's gone and and the blue scenario I like to think of is just finishing off a bucket of KFC with gravy And he goes out like Elvis But he's shown that this populist nationalist and racist Group exists there. Why do you think Ted Cruz has continued after Donald Trump? Humiliates him every chance he gets even even in the course of his rally yesterday Because Ted Cruz thinks to himself Hmm. I can be the smart one. I can be Trump with brains I can do this thing and not be crude and capering I can be the clever nationalist A lot of these guys will try to be the what will try to adopt trumpism without being Trump They will adopt Bannen ISM without banning in the room I think that that is a is very fraught with peril for them I don't think it works in the end and the general election cycle for two reasons the First is people who voted for Donald Trump? Voted for the character. He played on TV They voted for the guy they saw on The Apprentice for 15 years. Who was that guy? smart worldly dealmaker billionaire commanding competent knew good people from bad people What they didn't realize is they were voting for his scriptwriters. They didn't realize they were voting for a character. He played on TV So trying to do all the Trump --is-- things that were backstopped. So all the jackass behavior all the insults all the making fun of disabled people and women and Immigrants was back stopped by 15 years of public impressions of Trump that he was a competent billionaire businessman These guys aren't going to have that the ordinary person who acts like Donald Trump you throw them out of the bar Either they're not they're not the people you want to have front and center in your political life. Mmm So there's the nationalist populism in his flavor is self-limiting I think okay max boot who is going to be here on Thursday to insert a second ad into this but he recently was talking with Charlie Sykes and other nevertrump, er And he said he's realized he's not the conservative. He thought he was and that he's certainly not a Republican But both Sykes and boot were talking Somewhat wistfully about a third of a new party a more centrist party And this just gets to in this reflected a number of questions here as well At what point are you trying to save the Republican Party? Can it be saved? What what should happen to the party or to? conservatives who wander a party who can feel good to be a part of you know, when I started the book I still felt more optimistic about saving the GOP about hiving off or preserving or executing a dunkirk maneuver to save the party where the parts of it that were about individual liberty and personal freedom and constitutional fealty and respect for the rule of law and free trade and free enterprise could be Somehow move to the side Somehow we would keep the tablets, you know until until the Dark Age ended I am increasingly skeptical that Republicans Will do anything but excuse their behavior and we'll just we'll just shrug it off and pretend this never happened But You know It's it's it's it's the morning after the strip club And there's a lot of glitter and bad perfume in the air and people aren't gonna be able to get away from it They're not gonna be able to just walk away and go up That was just a passing fancy. That was just a fad that was parachute pants. I'm not I'm not gonna do that anymore and So I think it's it's increasingly difficult to save the the Republican Party brand itself because it's become so infused with trumpism I do think there are still merit for political Programs and platforms that are about those things that I've described. I don't know how you get there While Trump is still on the stage So, you know again the the dunt the idea of Dunkirk is one that was sort of obsessing me during this whole 2015 2016 window of how do you keep the things that have merit and frankly? How do you discard some of the things that that don't work and don't matter I mean I got in a huge fight way before all this with huge fight with Rush Limbaugh in 2014 because I wrote an article basically saying You know, I haven't cared about who gets married for a long time I don't think it's the government's business to tell anybody who two capable competent adults who they can and can't get married to That's the power of the state Being socially engineering on the right if it's bad on the left, it's bad on the right So leave it be let people who want to get married get married and they all lost their damn minds. Yeah You're a RINO liberal shill I'm part of a cocktail party circuit No, I viewed gay marriage as an individual liberty question so if I can if I can help build it a new party or new movement that has left the Evangelicals who have proven by the way that they are Unbelievably hypocritical in ways that stretch beyond even what I knew how hypocritical a lot of them were And I talked about this in the book a little bit, by the way Thank you, I talked about this about in the book a little bit by the way There are a lot of you've angelicus who will go out and they will blast the hell out of people who have had affairs and Oh Man, there's one of them. He is a busy boy. I mean, he's like that king of tinder And and there are others who blasts gay marriage and have and have you know and are on the down-low and so They're hypocritical nature was always kind of grading to the fiscal and - security guys like me and the individual liberty guys like me but now I mean the the Golden Calf in the White House is a demonstrated Adulterer a gazillion times over he's paid for abortions. He supported Planned Parenthood I mean this is everything about him is repulsive but they're like well I want our Supreme Court justices so we can't so those gays won't get married and destroy our families I'm sorry. I don't need this guy's in my party. I don't I'm sorry I don't you know What if you want to be a conservative so a social conservative who believes in the principles of your church god bless go do Go go do good work. And you know, I know a lot of evangelicals who do amazing amazing community service work who are conservative and who work with the homeless and who work with the disadvantaged and we work with with at-risk kids and And I I asked him a lot of the time like how do you reconcile this? How do you how do you have this one thing that you support? No matter what and you do good works in the community Otherwise, what is that? What's the moment there? What's the thing and it's because they feel inferior and they feel they feel put upon they feel like the world is against them and that society has changed around them and it has But if the price tag for them to maintain their political power is supporting a guy like Donald Trump. I'm sorry I don't need you around you do good work go do your thing, but you know, I'm not I'm not comfortable with that And it's not it's not denigrating their religion its denigrating their politics We're getting short on time. I did want to talk to the king of negative ads here about some famous negative ads And so just maybe briefly if you should give me your take on for example, the Lyndon Johnson days eager lad from 64 What a what a killer I mean what a Moute capture a moment exactly and and it it clarified exactly what people were worried about with Goldwater and It's one of the most Stark and simple ads ever made I thought it was one of the I mean you you look back at if you're studying negative ads. That's one where people Stopped at the end. When what and You know took a deep breath, you know, Willie Horton the ad supporting George Bush But when out Moore made it first it was you know Interesting, but it wasn't I never thought Willie Horton was a great ad John I never thought Willie Horton was was a well-done ad it didn't communicate all that much very well Because everybody already recognized in the polling that Mike Dukakis was a Massachusetts liberal. That's all you had to say So Willie Horton was kind of gilding the lily a bit in terms of that race Yeah, it's overtly racial but it also wasn't, you know, it also wasn't very widely aired or very well done okay the Swift Boat Veterans Against John Kerry in 2004, you know when you go at somebody's strength Then they had a lot of trouble going Punching back when you're going at their strength. What's the best negative ad you've ever done that's negative I've ever done I'm gonna say it was daughters in the Roy Moore race, and it was just it was just a montage of young girls White backgrounds straight to camera and it said what if she was your daughter? Your sister what if she was your little girl? What if she was 14 or 15 or 16 or 15 or 14? would you let him date her touch her undress her, you know Roy Moore did and And yeah, it was I'm pretty proud of that work that was not it was not a bad It was not a bad piece of work Well, I mean I moved the needle with that one Well, unfortunately, we've reached the point in our program where there's time for one last question. So if Trump departs before 2020 and Michael Pence succeeds him will the Republican Party revert to its previous character to a large 10th. I Think that that that if that happens, let's take the KFC scenario please If that happens, I think you end up with Mike Pence as the best case scenario for Mike Pence is he's a caretaker in a time of extraordinary chaos Because if Trump drops dead tomorrow and and I Heard you if Trump drops dead tomorrow Washington blows up everything goes off the rails, you know, there are two types of cohesive White House's good and evil and the cohesiveness around Trump is because they're all bunch of evil rat bastards and They're all fighting with one another if he goes and pence became president All those Trump people are gonna try to suddenly become his guys it's gonna be it's gonna be the greatest It's gonna be like watching rats in a barrel It's gonna be fantastic, but I think he'd be a very chaotic time I think you would see a lot of people immediately Moving to run for president on the Republican side and the Democratic side it would unstop a bunch of political log jams in DC But we would be in a period of absolute chaos in the country Thanks to Rick Wilson Republican campaign strategist columnist for The Daily Beast and author of the new book. Everything Trump touches dies we also think everyone here in our audience as well as on radio television and the Internet we want to remind everyone that copies of Rick's book are available right outside this door for signing right after this program I'm John zipper and now this meeting of the Commonwealth Club the place where you're in the know is adjourned
