Victor Davis Hanson: Trump—Symptom or Catalyst?

I had a couple people come up to me in the last half hour saying boys it's kind of logical how this whole thing was put together and I'd reply by saying you know that's weird because I had no idea what was gonna happen rich tap land I have been planning this for about nine months and to see it actually come into fruition and to see all of you here and to see the panel's connect and to be able to host a nice conversation with a great doctor Victor Davis Hanson I am so blessed to be here so thank you all it could be said that this is a man whose needs no introduction but I will give one anyway it is great to welcome back dr. Victor Davis Hanson here to Pepperdine in the school of public policy Victor has taught here in the past as our Simon visiting professor and has multiple connections here to the school and it is it is both an honor and pleasure to continue this relationship tonight I thought it was particularly appropriate that dr. Hanson would be our speaker tonight in his wikipedia description under occupation it says and I quote writer historian farmer pretty well descriptive of the kind of people that can support a conservatism of connection dr. Hanson is the writer of over a dozen books the latest of which from last year 2017 is the second world wars how the first global conflict was fought and won he is an incredible writer writes on a wide range of topics but when we were putting together the plans for this keynote night in this keynote conversation and we're thinking about someone who has analyzed and understood not only where we are politically but culturally dr. Hanson was certainly at the top so without any further ado please join me in welcoming thank you very much I'm very happy to be back here at Pepperdine for four years I drove 790 was 16 Mondays Jim and I got to know Kathy powers but I came every Sunday night and taught a graduate course at the school 2009 I really enjoyed it it was a wonderful experience I thought I'd speak for about 30 minutes and open it up to questions you notice that Donald Trump inside civil war in every year at the Hoover Institution we're having a civil war and I think it's every word so I guess it's good I'd like to ask ourselves collectively whether Trump was a catalyst or was the assembly the last 30 40 years project there were people who were not engaged in it and they had they were developing a different view of it and unfortunately when you have ideological divides if they're compounded geographically as we know from the civil war then it's a pulse multiplier and if you look at what was happening on the east and west coast that of course have physical proximity to the wider world you can see that and it's okay with you anybody who had used muscular and labor that task could be xeroxed abroad so if you were a small farmer and you were growing raisins the Greeks could do it cheaper couldn't really do it cheaper in real dollars but because of subsidies and and EU practices and I saw the price of raisins goal $1400 to 400 one year wiped out about 70% of the people that lived on my Avenue if you were a lathe worker if you were a fabricator if you were an assembler anything that could be done elsewhere physically anything that could not journalism academics law finance insurance was not only not Xerox but it was magnified magnified in value because the market went from 300 million to six seven point six billion people and it tended to create a self-fulfilling prophecy it wasn't just enough that people in Youngstown Ohio or Bakersfield California were not as successful as people in Palo Alto wasn't just an Amazon or Facebook or Apple or the Google companies were all in the coast or 20 top universities in the world 17 of them were the United States Harvard Yale Princeton Caltech they're all on the coast it's where all the major corporations it wasn't just that fact that was accentuated through globalization but we created a kind of ethos that we blame the victim as if well because they you're not making that much money or somebody can do something cheaper abroad than it should fall and I really came it struck me about five years ago when I was talking to a person in the farm and he said to me well can't somebody do what you do cheaper and I said what do you mean he said well you ever get up in the morning and somebody wrote a column in South Korea better than you did and I said no and he said well they could don't you think you'd be replaced and I said yes and he really had a point and I don't like to read things but I thought that I would just read you a spectrum of what people said about the interior the people who were not connected in the global project and almost you'll see what I'm I had hundreds of these examples and here's one from my own magazine National Review Kevin Williamson this is a cover story just two years ago the truth about these dysfunctional downscale communities that they deserve - did I economically there are negative assets morally they are indefensible the white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious selfish culture whose main products or misery and used heroin needles Donald Trump's speeches made them feel good so does oxycontin what they need isn't analgesics literal or political they need real opportunity which means that they need real change which means they need a u-haul tell us somebody who has three generations in a farmhouse or he's working on a plant in a community and you just tell them you know you you lost stupid you didn't learn coding get in a u-haul that's a very radical thing to do it doesn't seem to have much Burkean or million support here's one we all remember irredeemable x' and deplorable x' we forgot what hill we said after the election to kind of reified that's earlier statement and prove to us it wasn't a slip but it was by intent if you look at the map of the united states there is all that red in the middle places where Trump won what the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that owned two-thirds of the American gross domestic product this is from a socialism I won the places that are optimistic they're diverse they're dynamic they're moving forward and his whole campaign make American great was looking backward you don't like black people getting rides you don't like women getting jobs you don't want to see that Indian Americans succeeding more than you or whatever the problem is I'm gonna solve that we sometimes forget that when Hillary ran in 2008 remember she said after getting off the plane I have the support that Barack Obama doesn't I have the white working class and they got rock Obama got so angry called her Annie Oakley remember that because I'm drinking Boilermakers and bowling that same class that she tried to cultivate the turned owner apparently she's now turned on them and then there was this is from a conservative Bill Kristol looked to be totally honest if things are so bad as you say with a white working-class don't you just want to get new Americans instead you can make a case that America has been great because it's a free society capital sight after two or three generations of hard work these guys get decadent they're lazy they're spoiled whatever max booth colleague of mine on my military history task force in Stanford kind of trumped that if I could use that term if only we could keep the hard-working Latin American newcomers and deport the contemptible Republican cowards that would make America great and I'll finish with a neighbor of ours at the Hoover Institution Melinda Byerly she was a CEO at a high-tech company and she said after the election one thing middle america could do is to realize that no educated person wants to live a nation shi t whole was stupid people especially violent races miss mister genic ones when corporations think about where to locate call centers factories development centers they have to deal with the fact that those towns have nothing going for them no infrastructure just a few bars and a terrible school system it anybody's been to powwow things it's got some of the worst roads in the united states and if you see the schools the high tech industry have abandoned the public schools and they're going to Parker or Sacred Heart or castilleja or the Menlo School so even their exit Jesus is often flawed but it shows a deep antipathy for what we call the losers of globalization and that was the group that we know was the Tea Party the Reagan Democrats the mysterious 8 to 10 12 million people who stayed home and supposedly cost Mitt Romney the 2012 election and so there was this pool out there and we had the finest I think cadre of Republican nominees that we'd had much better than 2012 I mind there I mean there was Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain and all that we didn't have those people in 2006 we had successful Governor Scott Walker Bobby General senators Rubio Cruz we had outsiders who were really talented Fiorina ben Carson and yet we had this Manhattan real estate developer and he was sort of like you know the Pali pragma of athenian comedy that screams and yells and rushes in and have nobody quite knew what to do with him and what he apparently saw what this establishment group did not that this geographical divide can be leveraged and he he looked at the alternatives to it and what the Republican establishment was basically saying is we need a kinder gentler republicanism we need to play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules when Mitt Romney was in the second debate and Candy Crowley sort of hijacked it he didn't go out rightly Reagan did and said I'm paying for this or something he just allow it to happen or I mean we haven't really had a Republican scrapper since Lee Atwater remember him what he did I mean he apologized for his dicks on this death bed but I mean boy when he got done with Mike Dukakis he the Boston Harbor pollution the tank commercial whatever you fell he was using the type of tactics that the left used and there were people in this Heartland that psychologically were as angry as they were hurting economically and they just wanted somebody to fight back apparently Trump who was a product of the Manhattan dog-eat-dog real estate and development world knew that so he kind of entered up roped in and he saw that the Republican standard boilerplate which we have I mean we're sort of famous at the Hoover for and we're all supporters of free trade free market economics the post-war internationals to order that police is the world and gave us such prosperity we all support it but there was something wrong there that people in the heartland were pointing out and that is if Germany is running a 71 billion dollar deficit with the United States and it can't afford to have more than five fighters in the air and it's on the front lines of supposed enemies and it wants us to contribute more than 2% GDP that won't it will only contribute point six and it will put a tariff on a u.s. automobile at ten percent and we have to put it two point five that's an imbalance NAFTA I'm supported him nap - I thought I was but 69 billion dollar trade surplus with Mexico and did enough to create a kinder gentler Mexico as it is a safer place and 30 billion dollars in remittances go every year back to Mexico and you should see it in my hometown people line up in the western union office and they will put two or three hundred dollars in cash next to the cleaners I go and watch it happen many of them were on most I think I have some sort of social support yet the President of Mexico the beneficiary of trade subsidies thirty billion dollars again is channeled through cartels back in New Mexico and yet didn't have to make him a close friend the United States he said you know I have a sovereign right to protect people who are illegally the United States I want more people to leave and immigration policy it's not it's not your own that wasn't supposed to happen under now just wasn't supposed to happen I thought to myself if mr. Abigor is elected on July first what is he going to do is he gonna say I demand that we could go from seventy billion dollar surplus to one hundred billion dollar trade surplus with you is he gonna say I don't want your stinking thirty billion dollars and remittances it's too much a burden on our expatriate so we're not going to take them I want all our eleven to twenty million people back in Mexico there were Mexican citizens that are proud of people we don't want them in your damn country he's not gonna do that and that his rhetoric if you take it to its logical extension would suggest that and so these issues were right to be manipulated on in the Republican establishment who kept saying don't question NATO NATO is a central to American foreign policy it is but it was never envisioned that countries on the front line wouldn't contribute a merely a meet meager two percent don't question trade but it was never a fair trade was never defined that China had the right to expropriate technology as a as a process of doing business in China and the idea was you started to see that the post-war order it was ossified it was calcified it was predicated on the idea of the United States is so strong and powerful that we can take a hit on trade again on NATO we can take a psychological hit we can intervene we can create all we're served like Rome but there's a Mithra data's or there's a jaggerth those of troublemaker of saddam or Qadhafi we can handle it because we're so wealthy and we're so powerful and yet the country was hollowed out in the middle and these people were saying we're not that wealthy it's not that good for us I don't have a job at the car plant I don't have a job at the as a lathe worker anymore I don't have a 200 acres of corn but it's not so good stop it and nobody in the Republican side on the Democratic side it was identity politics demography the future and it was always we're going to identify you by your superficial appearance forget about assimilation integration intermarriage it's going to be not the content of your character but how you appear and sometimes I mean because we're all linked with those our superficial differences but my gosh if we're gonna was situate them what do you do with my neighbors are my family where people are one-quarter Hispanic or one-half or when I taught at Cal State Fresno I was absurd we needed Hispanic so we bring somebody from Argentina who was a multi-millionaire and suddenly he had three accent marks and a hyphenated name and he was chairman and we felt so good about diversity so you started to see that this whole movement would require a d8 ultimately the ultimate logic of it we would have DNA badges and that would you know ascertain our ethnic purity it's almost the one-drop will the old Confederacy so it was not headed in a it's not headed in a good direction yet when you saw one in a counterpoint to the Republican establishment played by the Marquess of Queensbury rule we don't want to be called a racist we can't be called a nativist we're not a protectionist we had all these words that we don't want to be called but this sizable pool of people what was waiting so Donald Trump came in and he had a populist and that's a dirty word but really in the history of Western civilization there's two populism there's what the ancients called the good populism and the bad populism we flipped it the ancients bad is our good and their good is our bad in the ancient world the city larger urban populist underclass was railing for really two things cancellation of debts a law said like Bernie Sanders and redistribution of property and overseas imperialism the entire Athenian imperial project was built on the backs of the theit's and the answer to that or the answer to Cataline and the late Roman Republic populism of Rome which could to be a million people was the agrarian populism that said no we want a small farming contingency that constituency excuse me that fights in the army they they are agrarian they vote but they have some qualifications to participate in democracy it's sort of what Edmund Burke was talking about the power of legacy and custom and tradition or Tocqueville was talking about an anecdote to radical equality so that populism was there and it was not considered dirty as it is today it was a broad-based idea that a citizen has certain rights and responsibilities and living in the same place or honoring traditions of the past with understandable change when they needed to be changed was not a bad thing and yet we had demonized that group and called them all sorts of name so this was all there to be leveraged there was one final ingredient that I don't know quite how Trump sought if he did see it and that was how do you reapply all of these existing situations into a political agenda that can win and he he focused on I think four issues globalization which I talked about trade which he said is not fair you would call it three but it's not fair and he had a very reductionist simplistic attitude you always would say if you remember the debates well if it's so good why doesn't Germany do you know adopt our policy or it's so good why doesn't tryna do what we do or if it's so good why do these other countries do what we do or if it's so good that we have NATO why doesn't Germany pretend so it was always well wait a minute if it's so if we're doing things so great and everybody else that has it so bad why don't they just switch and they didn't want to switch people kind of made fun of it but it was a powerful argument the second thing was a little immigration and he he really turned that issue to his advantage he basically said what is so moral or ethical about the first thing you do when you enter a foreign countries you break the law and the second thing you do is you break the law by residing in it not just breaking the law for the border and he turned it almost to an ethical view I went back and looked at speeches it was always well these other guys are waiting in line and they're trying to wait legally this is not fair to them and then he got on to the crime issue and people would say well out of 13 or 14 million people there's only a million people so that's less than 8 or 9 percent of committed a felony and he'd say well nobody should commit a felony if guy comes into your house you have a higher expectation of behavior and so he had these arguments that were not answered and when they channel into globalization that why do we lower the wages of Americans of the of the lower classes so to speak or at least the entry-level class and that was an attempt to appeal to people on class rather than racial lines and explains why the house a hostile of journalism just had a poll if you remember 54 percent of Californians want more deportation 41:49 excuse me percent of Latinos poll they want more deportations I was in the bank the other day and a woman said to me a Hispanic woman that I've known since high school she said hey Victor you seen ice lately and I said I didn't see ice lately they just busted six people I'm like half a mile from my house covered with tattoos they you know they came in with the pickups they didn't look like cars they had them all all great we call them all the time they could we tell them what time they're gonna be home and I said well what's the consequences and said the consequences are they call us from Oaxaca and tell us they're gonna come back and kill us within a few hours of arrival so it's a it's not what the media says I don't find from autopsy and personal experience that was another issue that that really resonated that Trump saw that even though he was crude and clumsy and often cruel in the way that he articulated it then there was finally the the post-war order and that was the idea that going to Afghanistan were going to Iraq or bombing Libya and of course he was simplifying and he wasn't going to get we can call him in isolation but he wasn't a Lindbergh isolate we have 800 bases overseas we still have 800 bases 200 years later when he said bomb that blank out of Isis that meant intervening overseas and using military force for the common good thought of it was rhetorical but not all of it and I this really when he started to say these things and I supported the Iraq war I remember I was in in bed for 2006 for a week in 2007 for two weeks during this surge and I remember talking to all these guys over there and they all fit a pattern below the rank of colonel they were mostly from the Midwest or rural upstate New York or places like Tulare California and they they really read the papers and I was thinking that a lot of the people who had really advocated for the war not people who joined it and says it might as well get rid of the SOB he's a genocide war monster but the project for the newest Americans superior all these people I remembered you remember the Vanity Fair in 2006 it was called neat Neil Kahn regrets and here were they're all they're the architects and they all said it was a stupid idea and basically it was my brilliant war was ruined by your terrible peace in other words he just listened to me and not listened to XY and Z and therefore I don't support it anymore and I thought what Matthew Ridgway said after Korea when they asked him why in the hell did he go to Korea to bail out McCarthy said there's only one worse thing than a bad war and that's musiah and that's what it was struck by people there they were we didn't want to over here but once we're gonna go over let's get rid of the SOPs and win and yet the people said go over there and we're gonna remake the world in the image of Carmel as soon as things got bad whether it was Richard Perle or other people you said I don't want any part of it and that resonated - so we had a lot of things going for him that people didn't appreciate and the final demographic reality was a lot of people have written about this yes demagogue demography is destiny but if you start to look at individual rubrics you can see that many of the new demographics were already in blue spades so by that I mean yes New Mexico is flip yes Colorado has flipped yes Nevada's flip yes California's flip that's very hard for the Republican president to start off when you're losing in addition 180 or so electoral votes with states like Illinois New York California Minnesota Michigan against you but Trump had figured that some of these things were not going to flip Georgia has a higher Hispanic population Texas a much higher but they weren't going to flip not yet but what could flip were these purple states Ohio Michigan Wisconsin lot of uh coral votes and a lot of disgruntled people and he made the gambit or the bet that two things were gonna happen he could appeal to those people in a way that Mitt Romney never could so the conventional wisdom that Donald Trump is the only Republican of the six seventeen candidates who could lose is gonna be flipped on its head he's the only one who could have won because he's the only one that would appeal on these issues I just mentioned in these states which had the electoral calculus for victory and nobody quite appreciated that and then second he appealed he thought that the high minority registration and turnout in some communities of black community probably ninety percent of blacks voted for Obama record turnout Asians perhaps 65 Latinos 65 to 70 that vote and that enthusiasm was not transferable to a 69 year old white multi millionaire named Hillary Clinton with a lot of negatives and those were too brilliant deductions that even though he lost the popular vote at one and so Republicans have not had 51 percent majority vote since Michael Dukakis election defeat in 1988 and they bla sixth last presidential elections at a time when they're very successful to local and state level and he understood that I want to conclude his what in the world is even is the chemotherapy that his crew do that can be obnoxious it's necessary to kill the administrative cancer I've mentioned elsewhere I think he's more like a tragic hero before you get angry and said there's nothing heroic about Donald Trump well there's nothing heroic about a tragic hero as we understand the usual term girl the word comes from Sophocles Tomer achilles ajax philip tv's edifice what it means is that a particular individual is facing a tragic dilemma that is that they have the skill sets necessary to solve the problem or to address issues that cannot be addressed because of a calcification or a status in this situation so if you're the Akins on the plain of Troy there's only one SOB that can kill Hector the problem is he's not kingly he's not egging memnon the deep state king or Menelaus is brother but if you want some obnoxious young punk from Thessaly to go in and kill Hector Achilles is your man but then you do what are you gonna do with him movies when you're done with it and if you look at Ajax as Scylla Quizon sophoclean plays there just trumpian to the core I should have got more credit for what I did at Troy they didn't give me a killer easily they cheated me they rigged the election he just overwhelming and we have these deep state characters in real life if you remember Curtis LeMay if you or if it's 1945 and it's Marge and you've spent two billion dollars twice the cost of the Manhattan Project and you have two thousand b-29s that don't work in other words they go up to 30,000 feet beautifully they've dropped bombs on a 400 mile jet stream and that bombs are off target and you're losing 10% of your fleet every month because of the wear and tear of the engines and some nut with a cigar comes in and says I'm gonna take those sov planes and go down 6,000 feet and load them up with napalm and burn the industrial oil then you can win the war put him in sack or you can make in the character dr. Strangelove general surgeon citizen stuff or you can have him run with George Wallace and be sort of going to infamy so we haven't same with George Patton you don't want George Patton this alligator commander of shaved the the invasion force in the elevator that's what you want Eisenhower for you don't want him to get in front of cameras if you want to sober a judicious statement on the other hand you do not want Homer Omar Bradley or Eisenhower controlling this complete strategy of the Normandy you need somebody who knows how to fight and move fast and get to the Rhine with a fewest number of casualties then after the war you do not put in as a Bavarian proconsul which we did and he he lasted about six weeks and then he was stuff of character exactly a person who read Latin spoke fluent French very erudite but he said things and he addressed problems that could not be addressed and said and the way that he did so we I'll just finish with a this genre we know from the Western if you think I don't know most people don't watch westerns anymore we think of John Ford's classic The Searchers with John Wayne remember he has a really bad pass some kind of Confederate business I know he was in the Kansas blood Wars and he we don't really know what he's going to kill Natalie Wood is nice he's looking for but people they want to find the kidnapped girl they're gonna have to bring him in and then when he's at when he's done he's got to open that door and make sure he walks out and does not stay around to civil he's not the kind of people civilizations are building remember them into the Magnificent Seven Yul Brynner says well I guess we're going there very happy now that we got rid of the bandits he said yeah they're gonna be even happier that when we leave and what he was saying is that and then he says we lose we always lose the same thing with Shane Shane is not the person that you want to go into that final gunfire and shoot at Jack Palance and wound him in the hand or debate with him you only be killing and once he's killed him he can't be a part of that society more these are sod-buster civilising same thing if you more of a modern analogy remember Dirty Harry movies at the end Clint Eastwood really commits to so it's two murders he murders Scorpio killer and gives him the more you feel lucky punk and blows him away but my blowing him away he blows away his own career he murdered somebody same thing with Denzel Washington man on fire if you want to find the kidnapped girl then you got to bring in Denzel Washington you bring intense hope I continue get a whole other cargo of things you don't want so the tragic Carroll was usually a person who decides to enter a situation which he's going to lose but he can be of utility and I think that's sort of what Donald Trump did I do not think there is a Republican politician running for office or in office who would have moved the embassy to Jerusalem who would have gotten out of the Paris climate Accords who would canceled the already deal would have told you the North Koreans are dealing with some very serious problems would have opened Anwar up got the tax cut through or tried to deal build what you think they exist I think the fact that somebody did do all those things means that when they're accomplished the people he benefited in this party in the American people at large will be very happy to see well no but I mean metaphorically Trump has done things that are going to make after he's successful I mean even an even happened to Reagan after Reagan really saved the country the first thing George HW Bush said is that when a kinder gentler nation he metaphorically used tools that Bush thought were were not right and so Trump as I said in the earlier metaphor of chemotherapy he's toxic and he's sounded in such a way I mean when he gets to these tweet Twitter wars and he gets goes back and forth he's in that process he's achieving he's neutralizing the left he's making them obsessed he has short term but in the process he's making the people who are as beneficiaries very uneasy if you remember Shane to take your example one of the sodbusters says who was Wilson and changed sizzle said you know I'm changed as well I don't know I don't know how why you should know him or the person should say I'm glad you knowing because you're the only guy in this whole Wyoming territory they can kill him but said he's already is the same thing with that's why Gary Cooper closed down the badge at high noon like oh you didn't want me to have a gunfight in your street but none of you came out to help me and so he doesn't want any part of it when I say that he's not going to end well I much necessarily saying that Trump will be ridicule or destroyed or droppable dead of a heart attack but he might not psychologically can already see he's disengaging in some way I think what would happen is that there were these certain benchmarks that he would achieve that was sustainable one of them I think we just remember Paul Krugman said the stock market couldn't go where it is I remember that Larry Summers said that it was a fantasy to talk that in a postmodern economy you could achieve 3 percent economic I think we'll probably see this will win 4 percent this quarter it's a good chance of it peacetime unemployment's 3.8 I think in next year will be the largest coal natural gas and oil producer in all three categories which nobody ever dreamed though there's no such word in the vocabulary anymore called peak oil at least for now so I think those things are benchmarks what whether he will succeed there's a couple of other things but he's redoing the judiciary and a very radical I think positive way the two things that we'd all like him to address is entitlement reform and the deficit and whether he can do that or not we'll see yes and I think the issue but when he talks about now we're going to keep I think I think that's right I think the reason that it's right it's not only the chief obligation responsibility but chief executive there's only people but there's an inclusive and inclusivity about it the more you start talking about Americans if you notice that Trump is the only candidate we've ever heard that use the first person plural pronoun our it sounds almost corny but he says our farmers our soldiers our vets you think Romney would ever say that don't ever use that word then he uses this weird word view we're gonna have such beautiful steel our beautiful coal plants and it's a nationalist idea but it brings people together and I think that one of the reasons the subtext of the hatred of him is that if he were to be successful in creating sort of a working-class nationalistic movement that would transcend racial categories and I know that I live in a community that's 90% Hispanic and probably 40% illegal not supposedly undocumented but whatever I would imagine that community was about 45% for Trump I see it every day I cannot believe it and I think part of it is he's they see Trump is saying it I'm worried about your job I don't care what you look like I'm worried about your job I'm worried about not sending you over to Afghanistan anymore I'm worried about some guy in China who's ripping you off and boy and the other thing Trump has he's a reductionist so he believes that if unemployment gets down to 3.6 3.7 then employers won't have any choice I'll have to use American citizens if you close the border and they will go into the inner city and they will tell that inner city youth they will communicate to them you have the right region that not me and people will bid for that person's labor and Trump really does believe that there's there's a humanity humanity to that that's one of my problems with a never come pers when I hear all this the crudity that offends their social awareness or their class I get kind of angry because I feel that wait a minute there's six million people that have jobs the African America is children and forty-five thousand two hundred fifty thousand African Americans were working that weren't two years ago that is a humane act he needs to communicate I agree and I think one of the things I did well he I went back that was kind of painful but I did read art of the deal order to come back you can become and they all have a common denominator in the negotiation and it's always you want 90% of a deal you you just demand 90% edge and then you you screaming that's number one and then you quite be happy with a 52 percent edge but you're not going to get 52 unless you demand 90 and then second you aren't crazy and obnoxious so the guy wants you out of the room and three you bring up all sorts of intangible complaints that have nothing to do with the deal you know you're dealing with a bank you say you know what you screwed over my brother the other day all right what's right about that's what he does and he is and so I think that what we'll see is that we're not going to reduce that 360 billion dollar Chinese trip that if we reduce it by a hundred billion in Germany's from 70 69 71 billion down to I don't know 50 in Japan goes from 68 to 50 and if Mexico goes from 71 that will be considered success and then more importantly he's telling the electorate it's not the duty of you in Columbus or in Ann Arbor that's not or Montana or Grand Rapids it's not your duty to subsidize the world for some post-war project at 75 years old now that you have to take an economic or military hit just for them and of course we've been beneficiaries of globalization in that post-war order but I think that if it had gone on the way it was with the Republican establishment but with an establishment was headed I think into oblivion yes you don't seem the company yes I don't I don't know quite what they are but I don't think that any chief executive could do more to be obnoxious to companies than Trump is when he said to harley-davidson the other day I could not believe it he said you're not gonna believe what's gonna happen to you and then he said the next day you got a bunch of subsidies when we were in trouble now you're doing well and you're leaving and he's doing that all the time and I the people that I deal with so a lot of donors that I had made for the Hoover Institution and elsewhere that's what bothers him the most that they feel that he's job owning them and telling them how to run their business based on nationalist concerns I I was a an active farmer for about without teaching or anything just solely and I remember when the price of commodities crashed in the 1983 recession Ronald Reagan we a guy came out to speak to us from the AG department and we complained that this ye you were we're giving $400 a ton why don't the top two any company or bakery er that would buy an EU Greek or Turkish raisin not Turkish but Greek or Spanish rather than our raisins sun-maid went broke they still only 88 88 thousand dollars was I'll never collect 35 years later but the point I'm making was this free market guy who came out said to us that's creative destruction I said it's not pretty I was one of the spokesmen us it's not creative destruction they've got a subsidy we don't well it's gonna be good for us in the long term I said why is that said well number one those subsidies are not sustainable to them you know one day the EU will collapse and he said number two it's gonna be better for you because you're gonna learn to produce raisins at $400 a ton whether 1300 and I said how about you you make a hundred thousand why don't we just pay you thirty thousand you'll be a lot more economical why is it always somebody else that has to be the victim of an abstract economic policy even though it's a sound economic parts and that's what I think the Republican establishment missed the sad thing was they coined a term called compassionate conservatism and it was sort of a boutique I'm going to be trying to be as PC as a Democrat cared for the victims of absolutely right he's the weird ways emulating the Obama model Obama was dumped the doctor and he's the Frankenstein that's because he gave them the model of really expanding the chief executive arrived at it and I have a phone that's what Trump is doing and it's because this Republican the only thing that will change the Republican Congress they're acting as a typical Congress we have clothed the scientists here that know better than I but when you have a president going into a midterm or even after he's elected and he's pulling 40 to 45 percent then you start to see these problems if Trump were to have a big of 4.5% GDP and then in this quarter this ending or he'll have a deal with North Korea some spectacular and he would be a little bit more disciplined if he got up to fifty fifty three fifty four percent popularity I think you'd see that congressional because most Congress people have no idea let's see they're not democrat they just want to get reelected and then whether they get reelected as the presidential polls as they go into a midterm but I feel like the people who are making this extraordinarily elephant case are simply rationalizing the real I think he's impulsive you are according to him a policy and as we've seen maybe it doesn't matter what's inside of him well well I don't think he watched the westerns that I was talking about because I was going to mention also Mike Bishop and Sam Peckinpah's the wild party all the people that I mentioned that were tragic heroes for killers and they had certain skill sets that were necessary to break through but they were not attractive people but more importantly let me get you give you an example I I don't like the way that we'll put it this way one of the key mistakes that has been made was Jeff Sessions acquiescence to be recused there was no real reason would that he should have he could have bought that I think it would've been a promo Gnaeus but had he not recused himself the Mueller investigation and rod Rosen scheme would have been neutralized that being said once he made that decision it would be very hard to remove Rosenstein so I don't like what Trump does when he publicly berates somebody he does have a lock and I don't find that and I said that I wish it he would improve his behavior but I want to make one last point one of the things I get really angry is when I meet never Trump errs is they always bring up Reagan Reagan was a spaceman or I see an editorial by Ron Reagan jr. I lived in this state and I can tell you as you did Ronald Reagan signed the first tax withholding plan Ronald Reagan signed the most radical abortion law that we had up to that point Ron Reagan the senior statesman said right during the people's Park if we're gonna have a bloodbath let's get it over with when he ran for office he said I'm running to make sure that these bums get a job then he said right during the SLA Patty Hearst thing when they had to give the food giveaway he said I where's botulism you know I'd like to see some botulism and I could go on but what happens is once these guys are out of office then we will manis eyes them we don't talk today that george w bush was called a nazi of fascists I couldn't believe it more which said that the other day about the Japanese internment very false historical knowledge because that's exactly what they said about her own husband so I wish that he were more sober and judicious I wish that he wouldn't have these durations that you're quite correctly expired but I think people in the past have done that all I'm concentrating now on basically is what is the concrete result and have the means so infuriated us or been so beyond the pale that they have cancelled out the ends I think we I think that really we have to take a deep breath and say to ourselves who was the person who said take a gun to a knife fight who was the person right during this Maxine Waters thing where who was the first person say get in their faces who was the first person to bring a rapper into the White House whose current cover had a dead white judge with his eyes x-out where black rappers were toasting them while the other rappers ankle bracelet went off in the White House and if he trumped Tribble eise's things he hasn't had glozell yet come in interviewing so I think a lot of it's the perspective that we have and it pump I don't like the things he gets in with Meghan McCain and John John McCain and well I went back and reviewed all this was striking he's a coiled rattlesnake that we Tally's people for all the horrible things he said about John McCain John McCain had just said a very terrible thing he said the people who support Trump are the crazies that come out the crazies he said that about people and a lot of these people he's chemotherapies what understanding and he's a catharsis to the whole thing but he's not an attractive character in many ways yes yeah well he said I actually have said that in a interview I think he is and he's the Caddyshack character especially when if you remember the movie with Ted Baxter Ted Baxter is the Republican establishment and Trump is is Rajee danger no he doesn't and that's why some of the brightest minds in science miss because they couldn't they couldn't score the circle how can a billionaire body a sort of an arrogant guy appeal to somebody that's how they're working the answer is take a look at his tie or take a look at his diet or take a look at his birth or take a look at this yeah I'll give you that one one real brief anecdote and that was I had to meet a very wealthy donor and he said to me a Jewish guy in Palm Beach and he said because I had so much money I made so much money he was like he said when I got down here no Jewish Club would let me have long beach and then I went over so I said what how did you get in tomorrow when he said Donald Trump called me up yeah I hear you've got a lot of money he said I want you to come in here I said did you do it and he said yeah and I personally I asked us how much is it cost and he said depends on how much money you have and he said well do I have to pay more because I have to I'm so rich I said no you paid less because I'm gonna tell everybody that you're in my club so I said what happened he said we played golf for two years every Monday I said so he cheats doesn't I said that I said absolutely and I said then he makes bets I read and he never pays you're sitting with him six times he's lost all six started videos me $5,000 and then he said he can't find his ballers check so I said well why don't mean why don't you dislike him because those are those are really personal traits and difficult to a present he said because just when he does that he walks over to a caddy and hands him $1,000 and says I heard your kid is gonna crack free ones over to another guy and says what you needed to upgrade that cards a disgrace to me and so there's something about that that we haven't quite figured quite figured him out yet but one thing I think we have to really avoid all of us is this post facto puritanical idea that we have of the American Republic that it's never been this tawdry before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was having an affair with Lucy Mercer inside the White House using his daughter and as a conduit to make sure that was happening Harry Truman was drinking smoking cigars playing cards he went after a critic of his daughter and called him it is said he was basically going to emasculate him he said about trummer I Douglas MacArthur five-star exam I should have thought I heard that SOB a long time ago and he was a very crude he said in the 48 election basically Tom Dewey was a Nazi terrible thing about a good man so we've had very successful presidents that had been not very nice I mean so far Donald Trump has not taken his phallus out held it in his hands said to his cabinet is Ho Chi Minh have anything like this that's what Robert Carroll said that LBJ did when he won to humiliate an aide he defecated the toilet while he dictated to it so we had things that have gone on in this country that before the age of Facebook and the internet and globalized instant communication in this crass culture that we're not you know we're we're nowhere of but this idea that you know I just don't think that the presidency and I want it to be good I think Trump Karnas it sometimes but I don't like the idea that we create this artificial well one of the iron is I think of all of this exhibition and you're absolutely right we don't know what the rhetoric is and we do know that Donald Trump ism is a narcissist he's thin-skinned and he wants to be the center of attention I get that but he has assembled the most I think talented foreign policy - if you like Nicki hated that you in and you look at Mike Pompeo at state much better than Rex Tillerson and now you Bolton and matters you've got a unique group of people and so what do they do in why Trump is doing now Trump is not the bad cop and they're in the good conflict Tillerson they're the bad cops and Trump is going around telling Kim you know I got these nuts called bolt and I know this for a fact because I talk to people in the State Department and the Defense Department they told me again and again for the first time the United States is safe in North Korea and China the next round of nuclear proliferation will be Japan and Taiwan and South Korea and these missiles will be pointed at you not us and you broke the convent you let your dog off the leash and knew that we didn't but they're gone they're gonna go nuclear and then they're saying to China there's great ramifications and we're going to keep doing this with Australia and that is the first time a president Spencer anything but to make that work it wouldn't work with mark Mitt Romney as president because if Melanie was asking so I'm just imported by the idea so Trump exaggerated something but beneath all it's same thing with the Iran deal you know putting it out around and do this and this and then under the radar these people are very adept if you've been reading these sanctions around they having protests in the streets are really starting to bite then he's telling people in Europe and in the Middle East as I understand it that same thing Egypt Saudi Arabia will go nuclear if Iran goes and they're gonna be pointing missiles at Iran not us and they're telling China look at your borders you've got a nuclear look at China and Russia at that area you've got nuclear ND you got nuclear Pakistan you've got rid of North Korea you really want in a nuclear North Korean luchador Iran and so what I'm saying is I would be very worried if Trump had a bunch of Steve Berman's oh my know and like but nevertheless I would not want Steve banning doing these negotiations so he's got some very good people there and he seems to understand that and he's comfortable with him so he's playing a role I know it's is a danger always bad cop good cop and you'll have to deliver but so far the country's in good hands people disappointed at state Defense national security and well as the Sun sets this brings us to the end of day one and wow what a day what a day we begin tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning with the light topic of religious liberty and it's connection to conservatism and its importance in building as we've been discussing and making the case for this conservatism of connection and so I hope you've really enjoyed the evening thus far I know several of you came up to me saying well I've never been in a conversation like this before a conference like this and and that certainly was our goal rich right I mean it was our goal to put up together something based on a unique set of arguments and Gary as you said how timely that we're kicking this off today thank you so much for tonight look forward to seeing you all tomorrow [Applause]

Channel: Pepperdine School of Public Policy

Views: 63,138

Keywords: trump, sympton or catalyst, victor davis hanson, martin and illie anderson senior fellow, hoover institution, pepperdine, school of public policy, american project, conservatism of connection, conservative, american politics, 2016 election, 2020 election, conservatism, case for trump, donald trump, donald j trump, tragic hero, the case for trump, gop, republican party, populism

Id: MuVAQdFyQvA

Length: 60min 23sec (3623 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 17 2018