Breitbart's Joel Pollack joins Ezra and Alex to look ahead to 2020, and the election of Donald Trump, the first sitting president to win re-election since 1988, and to debate whether or not to vote for him.
00:01:15.200I tell you, there has not been a dull moment with Trump, partly because he's an entertainer, and everything he does just, you know, is funny or outrageous.
00:02:06.940Yes, and the funny thing is, I don't think they really believe their own derangement.
00:02:11.500It's almost something you have to talk yourself into.
00:02:13.600If you step back a little bit and just allow yourself to examine your own behavior in terms of what you actually do.
00:02:22.080For example, in the same way we ask people to look at their own behavior, if they really believe in climate change, are they really taking fewer flights?
00:02:40.120The question really is, are you really behaving as if Donald Trump is a tyrant?
00:02:43.800Do you really live in fear of your life and your constitutional liberties?
00:02:46.380Maybe in the months after the election when Hillary Clinton's rhetoric was still ringing in your ear, that might have been excusable.
00:02:53.840After three years of a growing economy, expanding opportunity, massive improvements in the lives of black, Latino, gay, Jewish Americans, you name it, fighting for gay rights abroad.
00:03:08.780I mean, do you really think that Donald Trump is a terrible tyrant, Hitler-in-waiting?
00:03:15.920And nobody's fleeing the country and seeking refuge, at least not right now, unless a bunch of us show up at the doorstep in Canada.
00:03:23.460But I think Democrats' worldview is now largely contrived and sustained only by the fact that we rely on media to tell us about what's going on in the world right in front of our faces rather than going out and looking for ourselves.
00:03:47.760Well, that's, I mean, he's the dreamboat of the Hollywood left.
00:03:51.220Well, it's funny you say that because just the other day I was looking at the website of GLAAD, which is a gay and lesbian anti-something-something alliance against discrimination.
00:04:04.100It's like, it's a pro-gay lobby group.
00:04:07.320And they have a whole website dedicated to Trump and the terrible times of Trump.
00:04:13.880And they have over 100 incidents in the last three years.
00:04:18.580And I thought, oh, my God, what's going on?
00:04:52.380And more than that, there's so many examples of Trump doing great things for gay and lesbian Americans, appointing the highest-ranking gay official in Richard Grinnell, who's a cornerstone of our diplomatic mission abroad.
00:05:04.660And decriminalizing homosexuality worldwide, leading an effort to do that.
00:05:10.480So, you know, I think Trump's been great.
00:05:16.000And Trump hasn't been a transgender president.
00:05:20.520But there's also a debate within the gay rights movement.
00:05:22.780I mean, look at someone like Andrew Sullivan, who's been very critical of Republicans over the last decade or more, took Obama's side very strongly in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
00:05:35.220But Andrew Sullivan's been saying, look, we are not allowing ourselves to debate this transgender issue in the gay community.
00:05:42.640And what's happening is young gay kids are being told, maybe you're not homosexual, maybe you're just the wrong gender.
00:05:48.960He says that's actually, in a way, a kind of discrimination against gays.
00:05:51.840So there's a debate going on within the transgender community, and it really affects a very, very, very small proportion of the population.
00:05:59.260So on the whole, Donald Trump is probably, arguably, the most pro-gay and lesbian bisexual rights president in the history of the United States.
00:06:08.120So anyway, the dark totalitarian world hasn't materialized, except in Congress, except among Democrats, who have trampled civil liberties and the Constitution in their rush to impeach Donald Trump.
00:06:23.260You know, it's funny you mentioned the T, because that's what I was doing in the GLAAD website, actually.
00:06:27.700They had a study that showed the acceptance of LGBT was falling precipitously amongst millennials, and my theory is it's because of the T, because of the absurdities there.
00:06:42.380But the points you make about gay issues, I think, can be made about black issues, about Jewish issues, all these groups that historically have been counted on by the Democrats.
00:06:55.720I mean, even labor unions, maybe that's the biggest of all.
00:06:59.220One of the first things Trump did was he ripped up the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that had been such a sticking point for the big unions.
00:07:07.200I remember when Trump gave a tour to union bosses, I think it was his first day in office.
00:07:13.860Here's a clip of that, these big Democrat labor union bosses, and they left stunned by the respect they had shown.
00:07:23.300And here's a quick clip of one of them saying he had never been shown that respect by any president ever.
00:08:15.320Trump isn't just friendly to gays and Jews and blacks and labor unions.
00:08:20.780I think he's doing the ultimate Democrat move of being a celebrity.
00:08:25.200Like, Obama was supposed to be the celebrity, but Trump actually was.
00:08:29.020I think that's one of the reasons he drives the left crazy, is because he's using all their tricks against them.
00:08:37.600Right, and also he's reaching right into the core of the Democratic constituency.
00:08:42.680You know, his political strategy in 2016 was to go beyond the swing states, go beyond, you know, in football terms, the neutral zone,
00:08:51.540and don't fight on the line of scrimmage, go deep.
00:08:54.240And he went right into the heart of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio.
00:08:58.060He went to all of these Democratic states.
00:09:00.460He's doing it again, not just in terms of the electoral college, you know, going to Minnesota, campaigning in Democratic strongholds like that,
00:09:07.000but also by going to all of these groups that form the stars in the Democratic constellation, African-Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and unions.
00:09:18.500And now you've got the AFL-CIO backing the USMCA, Trump's big trade deal.
00:09:24.520So Trump is really going after Democratic voters, Democratic priorities.
00:09:29.880Border security is something many Democrats are concerned about.
00:09:33.780These issues cut across party lines, but Democrats have positions on these issues that are at odds with the majority of Americans and with many people in their own party.
00:09:42.840You know, to take on China is so contrary to the traditional GOP Republican elite, the free trade with everyone.
00:09:54.180And I got to tell you, that's where I came from politically myself.
00:09:58.400The Fraser Institute, the Milton Friedman, pure free trade, declare unilaterally free trade with the whole world.
00:10:05.560So Trump, going back decades, I mean, you could see his old interview on Oprah Winfrey, he was talking about getting tough with, back then it was Japan, and then I suppose it was Taiwan, and now it's China.
00:10:19.400That's a traditional turf of Democrats.
00:10:22.700Here's a clip from Trump, I think this is from the 80s, telling Oprah he wants to get tough with cheap foreign labor.
00:10:46.380Something's going to happen over the next number of years with this country, because you can't keep going on losing $200 billion, and yet we let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets and everything.
00:11:27.440See, that is contrary to the Koch brothers' purist free trade approach, but that's what's going to bring back jobs for blue-collar Americans in those states you mentioned, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio.
00:11:42.160I think he's winning those seats back from the Dems, who are now all about radical grievance politics and identity groups.
00:11:49.120Right, and you can't underestimate the degree of damage that identity politics has done to the Democratic connection with their voter base.
00:11:59.560Yes, there are particular constituent groups and leaders who insist on identity politics, but many Democrats are alienated by it.
00:12:07.000In fact, many Democrats agree with Republicans that political correctness is a big problem.
00:12:10.840And if you're a young and up-and-coming Democrat and you want to make your way in the party and have a political career, or if you're just a voter who's looking for a place to belong, political correctness is a big obstacle because you've got to somehow do this inventory of all these prejudices you supposedly carry with you and privileges that you supposedly inherited from Lord knows where.
00:12:30.840And they make you basically pay an admissions price at the door to get into this party.
00:12:36.540And more and more people are saying, well, that's just too high a price to pay to belong to the cool kids.
00:12:40.840Maybe I'll just sit back and be an independent for a while for free.
00:12:43.900And if they really get upset, they join the Republicans or they vote Republican.
00:13:28.180And in that sense, they're moving away from a national principle, something that's shared broadly by Americans.
00:13:32.440You know, identity politics, we went deep on the issue of the T and LGBT.
00:13:40.480But I think that's actually a big sleeper issue because that's not just some obscure virtue signaling where you, you know, like saying people kind.
00:13:50.580If you use the right language, it shows how fashionable you are.
00:13:53.180I think there's an enormous number of Americans, including, let's say, American mums whose girls are on sports teams.
00:14:01.860And now you've got a guy who can't cut it on the men's team.
00:14:08.340And he goes and he competes against the girls' teams, smokes them.
00:14:12.360And maybe if he's really pushy, he demands to change in a girl's changing room.
00:14:19.260And all of a sudden, what was just an irritant of virtue signaling and political correctness now is actually changing the lives of normal people who don't want politics messing up with their girls' sports or the girls' changing room.
00:14:31.940I think that the T in LGBT is actually, if the Republicans were to pick it up and run with it, I think that could move a lot of those soccer moms, as they call them, into the Republican camp.
00:14:44.520Because I think that's a genuine concern for millions of Americans and Canadians who don't feel like they're allowed to even talk about that in public.
00:14:53.040But if you look, you mentioned the Democrat debates.
00:14:55.920They had an entire debate or town hall that seemed to be only about sexual issues.
00:15:01.340Here's one where someone says, what about the black, transgender, something, something.
00:15:07.320I just want to take a moment before I ask my question to validate the pain of our transgender siblings that demonstrated earlier and that have spoken up today.
00:15:35.680I mean, I'm not, we're spending a lot of time talking about LGBT, but I actually think it's an explosive issue because unlike, you know, other rights that don't really impose upon you, if someone is trans, they're saying, I want to get in your girl's league.
00:15:51.380I want to get in your girl's change room.
00:15:53.000And it's a whole different thing than, okay, so he's gay or okay, so he's black, I think.
00:16:00.980It's okay to champion the cause of a small number of people if in some way it's emblematic of a larger problem.
00:16:07.200So when Donald Trump took up the cause of families who had lost a loved one to crimes by illegal aliens, that's a very small group of people, but it represented a lot of Americans who felt their government was no longer protecting them.
00:16:21.020And what Democrats are doing with transgenderism is choosing a group to champion, rightly or wrongly.
00:16:29.160I mean, I'm not saying in this comment, anything about their cause, but they're choosing a group that has a hard time standing for anybody else.
00:16:37.140They're really standing for identity politics in general.
00:16:39.760They're the next civil rights cause in a way, but they don't stand for any broader purpose.
00:16:46.080In fact, the charge they make is that the entire system, cultural system, not just political system, the entire cultural system is unjust.
00:16:54.840And so by standing up for the transgender movement and the way Democrats are doing it, they're basically saying we want to be a part of changing everything.
00:17:04.320Well, that's really about an abstract ideal shared by fervent supporters of the Democratic Party, but it's not something that represents the majority of Americans or some great, broad, inclusive idea.
00:17:20.400Where Democrats usually have a good footing is when it comes to health care.
00:17:25.580And they often choose specific categories of victims, people with pre-existing conditions, for example.
00:17:30.820That was a big Democratic talking point for a long time.
00:17:33.900And very few people, well, I shouldn't say very few, a large number of people do actually fall into that category, but it's still a minority.
00:17:40.300Most people who have health insurance are not ruled out because of pre-existing conditions.
00:17:43.400But they represent the group most vulnerable as part of a system that doesn't really work as well as it should for anybody.
00:17:53.020Americans like their health insurance, but pay too much for it and everyone has problems.
00:17:57.680So this idea that people are getting excluded from health insurance completely, even though it was a smallish number of people, that stands for a larger cause.
00:18:05.120But Democrats aren't talking about them so much anymore.
00:18:07.040And they're focused on all this impeachment nonsense and on transgender issues and so forth, deciding which pronoun they are.
00:18:14.760I mean, it all is about a narrow agenda.
00:18:17.840Trump is winning because he's going into the heart of the Democratic Party and finding big ticket items and making them his own.
00:18:45.040I look at the field of Democrats who were seeking the presidential nomination, and it feels like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs without Snow White.
00:19:50.660Look, in four years or five years, Republicans are in trouble because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to be old enough to run for president.
00:19:59.000She's the only person who excites the Democratic Party and can broaden it by bringing in new young voters.
00:20:03.980So I think that her personality would dominate the field.
00:22:50.120First of all, if there is another, quote, scandal on Trump, first of all, we probably have heard all the scandals against him.
00:22:57.600I can't imagine there's anything that hasn't been dug up if it was there to be dug up.
00:23:02.900It's not like Justin Trudeau, who wasn't vetted.
00:23:06.080No one even bothered to look through his yearbook photos to see the blackface until he was prime minister for four years already.
00:23:12.340I think if there's anything bad on Trump, it's already exploded.
00:23:14.880And even if there was something new, I don't think it's going to dent the ardor for him by his base, who love him not just despite his flaws, but love his fighting spirit.
00:23:26.140So I can't imagine he's going to lose them unless he dramatically changes course on the core policy.
00:24:25.960I think they're going to, well, Obama used to believe that if he won in 2012, as he put it, the fever would break and that Republicans would become more amenable as if they were the problem.
00:24:42.040Now, that almost happened in a sense because the Republican establishment was certainly eager to make a compromise.
00:24:49.220They wanted to negotiate over amnesty as soon as the election results were in.
00:24:55.480I mean, literally the day after Romney lost the election, the Republican establishment was all in for amnesty on illegal immigration.
00:25:01.860And it may be that they saw an opportunity in Obama's victory to rid themselves of this troublesome political base, this terrible issue.
00:25:09.720So in that sense, the fever broke, although, you know, these were really Obama's co-conspirators in a policy sense.
00:25:16.720Now, Obama mistook the source of his problem as being the opposition.
00:25:23.020Really, the source of his problem was himself, his ideas, his inability to lead the country in a way that unified it and so forth.
00:25:28.780But with Trump, I think there really will be kind of a reckoning, not because they're suddenly going to realize they like Trump and they should listen to him and they should acknowledge his achievements.
00:25:38.840But I think what you see happening around Democrats, my mind is sort of just kind of working this out as I speak to you.
00:26:02.460So they will tell themselves we had terrible candidates.
00:26:05.380They're already telling themselves they had terrible candidates.
00:26:08.360The related complaint will be that the Democratic National Committee mismanaged the debates by having these arbitrary thresholds about donation levels and polling thresholds.
00:27:15.260The Bernie Sanders people blamed the establishment and Hillary Clinton for losing in 2016.
00:27:19.280But the Clinton people, who still represented the establishment and the dominant force in the media,
00:27:24.480they were basically saying, well, this was the Russians and Trump stole the election and all that nonsense.
00:27:28.040So what I think you'll see is not so much a reckoning with where the country is as a whole and why the country is not listening to Democrats,
00:27:35.940why Democrats are distant from the needs of ordinary Americans.
00:27:39.020But you'll see Democrats talk to each other about their own failures.
00:27:43.080They're not going to become more amenable to compromise with Trump, maybe even more dug in against him.
00:27:47.880But I think they'll start to have a real conversation with each other about the way, at least, in which they choose their candidates.
00:27:54.120It's all just going to be talk because, again, it sort of awaits a strong personality.
00:27:58.100Once you get Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez going, and she will get going, then I think you have a different kind of conversation.
00:28:04.260But I think you'll start to see some reckoning among Democrats in the same way there was a little bit of reckoning among Republicans.
00:28:10.380And look, Republicans had a very qualified field in 2015, but perhaps not a very good field.
00:33:34.580I think the country is confident, and we've changed our disadvantageous tax structures so there is no longer the same incentive for companies to park their money overseas.
00:33:45.320And I think it's great for the country, regardless of politics, because recessions are really terrible.
00:33:51.660But I think if it keeps going like this, Trump ought to win.
00:33:56.020And, you know, as I said to you before, Justin Trudeau won, I tend to think that even if you don't like anything a president or prime minister is doing, if they're still presiding over economic growth, they tend to get reelected.
00:34:08.360Now, I know the unemployment numbers haven't been good since then, although they still, you know, on the year are pretty good.
00:34:15.960But who knows, you once were skeptical about those numbers.
00:34:20.740And I thought about you when I saw the last two unemployment reports from Canada.
00:34:24.040I thought, well, I wonder if there was something to that.
00:34:27.200My wife, who's the labor economist, tells me that Canadian unemployment statistics tend to be very volatile.
00:34:32.900So it's very hard to measure after just two reports.
00:34:36.660But, look, in any case, as long as the economic growth number is positive and as long as the economy feels positive, it's harder to lose an election.
00:34:44.920But Democrats are going to try to push Trump out no matter how they have to do it.
00:34:48.700You know, I remember talking to Phelan McAleer, the independent filmmaker, in 2012.
00:34:57.040And he said that one of the things that Obama had going for him, ironically, was that the fracking revolution was creating jobs in places that were really depressed.
00:35:08.920And he really focused on Pennsylvania, for example.
00:35:12.160And he said that, ironically, Obama was against the energy industry.
00:35:16.100But despite that, it was creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
00:35:20.360Well, here we are, four, eight years later, and the United States, and this was unthinkable just five years ago, is a net energy exporter and, for the first time, a net oil exporter.
00:35:42.260Well, you know, that shows you the resilience of the American economy by design, because so much of our economy exists outside of government.
00:35:48.300That even though Barack Obama tried to put the brakes on oil and gas development in this country, he simply couldn't stop what was happening technologically.
00:35:57.180And driven by high oil prices, which were a legacy of the Iraq War and that whole period, the American energy sector invested in new technology, found new resources, created this shale boom.
00:36:09.420And we're still enjoying the benefits of that in a very big way.
00:36:12.620And that shows you how resilient our economy is, because essentially Obama tried to destroy that industry.
00:36:19.540Now, there are industries that are suffering in the energy sector, like coal, but that's also happening in a way, despite government.
00:36:25.580Donald Trump is the most pro-coal president we've had, probably since Harry Truman.
00:36:29.220And yet the coal industry is suffering, and that's because of prices, and it's because of consumer preferences, and a variety of other reasons.
00:36:36.480But again, it shows us that the economy, in many respects, is driven by factors outside of government in the kind of economy we have.
00:36:43.620Now, if we had a more state-centered economy, you could see those policy changes having a much bigger impact.
00:36:48.520There are policy changes that do have an impact, primarily relating to taxes, monetary policy, and things like that.
00:36:54.840But when government decides the future of an industry, it can do some damage.
00:37:00.740But as much power as Obama had early in his administration, as much damage as he tried to do, the market just would not let him.
00:37:07.940The supply and demand for energy would not let Barack Obama destroy the oil and gas industry.
00:37:13.200Now, it certainly cost jobs and probably made electricity and gas more expensive.
00:37:18.320But I think that given the resilience of the American economy, as long as presidents and governments in general are doing what they can do to help that economy stay resilient, and there are key decisions to be made.
00:37:30.460I'm not saying government's unimportant.
00:37:51.720Well, here in Canada, I mean, in my home province of Alberta, it literally has, that one province has more oil reserves than any other country in the world other than Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
00:38:03.36050% of the accessible oil in the world is in Alberta.
00:38:06.560That is, it's not controlled by a state.
00:38:40.200And I don't know if this made sense, but I said it.
00:38:42.360I said, if he only keeps that promise, he's reelected.
00:38:46.480And if he does anything but keep that promise, he's not reelected.
00:38:51.040It seemed that important, not only as a tangible symbol that he actually is who he says he is.
00:38:57.860Now, here he is in his fourth year as president.
00:39:01.340Maybe he's proven enough on himself on so many other things, like appointing great judges and fighting back in the culture wars and the media wars.
00:39:08.580Maybe the wall has been eclipsed by other proofs of his realness.
00:39:14.160But I still believe that wall is such a tangible proof of whether or not he's full of it or if he can be trusted.
00:39:32.740I think Trump voters are sticking with him, even though the wall isn't up, because they sense that he's tried his hardest and the opposition he's faced has been relentless.
00:39:42.340And it's clearer than ever that only Trump can get it done.
00:39:46.780So I think they'll stick with him on that.
00:40:14.360But if Republicans come back in 2020 with a majority in both houses of Congress, I think they'll learn from the mistakes of the first two years of the Trump presidency.
00:40:22.900And I think they'll be ready to roll on the wall, on health care, on a whole bunch of other issues.
00:40:27.740I won't say the election is theirs to lose, but Democrats, by focusing on impeachment, have given Republicans a massive opportunity.
00:40:36.040Joe Pollock, it's great to have such a good talk with you.
00:40:38.800Thank you for spending so much time with us.