The Tucker Carlson Show - Trump's First Campaign Manager Paul Manafort Breaks Down the Current State of the Presidential Race

00:00:00.000 So, you've been in politics, what, Ford Campaign 76, is that when you started?

00:00:04.260 Started, yep.

00:00:05.560 Who's going to win this race?

00:00:08.000 Donald Trump.

00:00:10.000 You sound pretty authoritative on that.

00:00:11.840 I think it's his to lose at this point in time, yes.

00:00:26.120 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.

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00:00:43.500 Here's the episode.

00:00:44.800 Why do you say that?

00:00:46.460 Well, you look at the composition of the undecided voter.

00:00:49.580 And in seven battleground states, the undecided voter overwhelmingly thinks the country has been going in the wrong direction.

00:00:57.300 They feel like they have not benefited in the last four years.

00:01:01.440 They remember, because Trump was president just four years ago, what it was like when he was president pre-COVID.

00:01:08.820 And so, they can compare his record versus the Biden-Harris record.

00:01:12.600 And you look at the undecided issue agenda, it's the Trump issue agenda.

00:01:20.120 The number one issue is the economy, the inflation.

00:01:23.180 Number two is the border and illegal immigration and crime.

00:01:27.380 And the third issue is safety in the world.

00:01:32.020 And somewhere there's abortion.

00:01:33.800 Somewhere there is fear for democracy.

00:01:38.180 But when you look at how the voters feel on the issue of democracy, it splits 50-50.

00:01:43.780 I mean, half the country is fearful because of what Biden has been doing.

00:01:47.400 And the other half is fearful because of what Biden says Trump will do.

00:01:51.540 Except Trump has been president.

00:01:54.020 So, you can't say Trump will do something beyond what he did as president before.

00:01:59.300 So, the issue doesn't cut with the remaining undecideds.

00:02:02.320 What cuts is the economy, the border, the wars in Ukraine and in the Gulf.

00:02:07.700 And there, he has a 10- to 12-point lead on those major issues over Harris among the undecideds.

00:02:16.300 So, it's kind of that simple.

00:02:17.520 I mean, so, their issues, Harris's issues are Trump's personality, abortion in January 6th.

00:02:27.160 Trump's issues are the economy, the border, crime, and the threat of nuclear war.

00:02:33.220 It seems like he's got a much stronger hand than she does.

00:02:37.700 Yeah.

00:02:38.380 I mean, if she had run a different campaign, it might have been more difficult for Trump.

00:02:42.900 But she basically gave Trump his issues to be the deciding issues of the campaign.

00:02:49.980 She's realized that.

00:02:50.980 I think you've seen now when she talks about, you know, the closing narrative of her campaign is Trump is unhinged.

00:02:58.420 He's unstable.

00:03:00.480 And she's using former Republicans as advocates to make the point.

00:03:07.700 She's doing that because the undecided vote that's left out there isn't a vote that is inclined towards her for the reasons I just said.

00:03:16.400 And so, she's got to peel off soft vote from Trump or people who would not be for her but don't like Trump.

00:03:24.980 And so, they're not going to vote.

00:03:26.640 And so, she's trying to get that sort of, I guess, the old, the rhino Republican, the anti-Trumpers, the suburban women, Republican women.

00:03:38.400 And so, her job is to get those type of people to come out to vote for her.

00:03:45.280 But the people who are undecided and are going to vote in the election are the ones that have the profile that I've described.

00:03:51.520 And so, as long as Trump stays on message, you know, they're going to break into my judgment in favor.

00:04:00.840 It's, you know, because I've been around a long time.

00:04:03.840 In 1980, I was involved in the 1980 Reagan campaign at a senior level.

00:04:08.180 And in that campaign, there were a lot of parallels to this race.

00:04:12.100 You had a failed Democrat president in Jimmy Carter.

00:04:15.960 The issues were economic, and the issues were the Iran hostage situation.

00:04:23.640 But Reagan was an unknown commodity.

00:04:26.840 He'd been governor in California.

00:04:29.500 But the Carter campaign against him was he was a cowboy.

00:04:32.640 He was reckless.

00:04:34.080 There'd be World War III.

00:04:37.180 But the issue agenda was an economic issue agenda.

00:04:40.680 And like with Trump this year.

00:04:43.780 And so, Reagan had to prove himself as being capable of president.

00:04:48.180 Trump doesn't have to do that because he's already been president.

00:04:50.740 So, that first hurdle that Reagan had, Trump doesn't have.

00:04:55.740 Although, Harris was trying to make that into a negative hurdle for Trump.

00:05:01.460 But once Reagan was able to demonstrate he could be president, which he did in the only debate that he had with Carter.

00:05:09.100 The undecided vote just all moved over to Trump in the last 10 days of the campaign.

00:05:15.440 Toward Reagan.

00:05:16.380 I mean, to Reagan in the last 10 days of the campaign.

00:05:18.680 Because they saw Reagan as a strong leader.

00:05:21.420 And they were voting against Carter's economic record.

00:05:26.260 You've got that same kind of dynamic in this race right now.

00:05:29.420 So, 45 years later, I think very few people remember that the Carter-Reagan race in the fall of 1980 was considered too close to call or maybe Carter's to lose.

00:05:42.140 Correct.

00:05:42.940 That is correct, right?

00:05:44.040 That is correct.

00:05:44.940 And it was a landslide victory.

00:05:47.940 It certainly was.

00:05:49.400 I mean, it changed American politics for the next 30 years at least.

00:05:53.260 That's right.

00:05:53.920 So, you were in it.

00:05:55.560 But was it obvious to you that Reagan was going to win?

00:05:59.460 We knew the last week of the campaign he was going to win.

00:06:02.760 Our data was all very clear.

00:06:06.960 And we didn't know the landslide would be as big as it was.

00:06:10.040 But we knew it was going to be a big win.

00:06:12.420 We actually started spending time covertly on some of the Senate races.

00:06:17.100 Because we were looking to—and we won a number of Senate seats that weren't supposed to win in 1980 because the tide was that strong.

00:06:25.840 But what had happened in 1980 is all the polling companies, national polls, shut down the last week of the campaign.

00:06:34.020 Because it showed Carter winning, and they all thought he was going to win.

00:06:39.720 And so, there was no polling the last week of the campaign, except for us.

00:06:45.240 We were doing our targeted states poll.

00:06:50.080 The internal polling from the regular campaign.

00:06:51.580 Right, from the campaign.

00:06:52.780 And so, we saw the break.

00:06:55.580 We saw what was happening.

00:06:57.080 And so, we weren't surprised on election day.

00:07:00.280 Every legacy media account I read of the state of the race today tells me that it's just too close to call.

00:07:10.600 Is that—you don't seem to think that it's too close to call.

00:07:13.520 Why are they saying that?

00:07:14.480 Well, I think it's—no, I think it is a close election.

00:07:17.880 I think that the undecideds, when they break, are going to break 3-2, 2-1 for Trump.

00:07:25.840 He's ahead now in all seven battleground states.

00:07:28.120 And in fact, you know, I'd draw your attention to start watching Virginia, Minnesota, and maybe even New Mexico, where the races have gotten close.

00:07:38.860 You know, close meaning a couple points.

00:07:41.100 And the movement is against Harris in those states.

00:07:43.940 Now, do I think they'll close for Harris?

00:07:46.500 Probably.

00:07:46.980 But we could see happening in those states what we do see happening in the seven battleground states and then decide is the differences in the battleground states were already ahead in every one of them.

00:07:58.220 And so any breaking disproportionately to Trump will enhance the lead, as opposed to Virginia or Minnesota, where we need to take the lead from the breaking.

00:08:09.800 But it's possible.

00:08:10.800 But it's possible.

00:08:11.720 I mean, and the clues you see is when you look at what's happened this past weekend in some of the key Democrat Senate incumbent races in the blue wall states.

00:08:23.200 In Wisconsin and in Michigan and Pennsylvania, you have incumbent Democrat senators running who are in dead heat races with Republican challengers by public polling.

00:08:38.980 And you look, they've all put up ads this weekend, all three races, where the Democrat senators are endorsing Trump policies by name in their political advertising.

00:08:52.700 Using the word Donald Trump.

00:08:53.840 Using the word Donald Trump.

00:08:55.000 They support the Trump border plan.

00:08:57.260 They support the Trump fracking plan.

00:08:59.000 They support the Trump tariff plan, depending on the states.

00:09:04.560 But you have a Democrat supporting the Trump border plan?

00:09:07.640 Yeah.

00:09:09.140 Well, that's like a violation of the catechism.

00:09:11.480 That's a big deal to say something like that, I think.

00:09:14.140 And the Trump tariff plan in Michigan is not something that Harris is supporting at all.

00:09:21.580 And yet, Slotkin is in her advertising.

00:09:24.680 When you see that kind of evidence, you know they're seeing in their private polling what we're seeing in our private polling, which is that the undecideds that are left in the race,

00:09:35.120 probably in theirs and ours, since they're tracking, are on the same issue agenda.

00:09:42.880 And they wouldn't be, meaning on economics, Trump's position on tariffs in Michigan, Trump's position on fracking in Pennsylvania.

00:09:50.320 And so, you see it empirically in there.

00:09:55.840 You see in our data, we feel like watching the shift in the narrative that Harris has taken the past week since her Fox interview,

00:10:06.820 where she now is totally on this personality cult attack and that he's too dangerous to be president, giving up all the issues.

00:10:15.180 She's giving up the issue agenda and making her race all about Donald Trump.

00:10:20.060 Why would she do that?

00:10:21.160 Because I think she believes she sees what we see, which is that on the main issues, she has not sold her case, and Trump has.

00:10:32.320 They view Trump as better on dealing with inflation by 12 points in some of the public polls.

00:10:38.500 They see Trump on the border by over 12 points, over 15 points over her, trusting him to deal with overseas issues by 10 points.

00:10:48.460 She sees that.

00:10:49.660 So, it's too late in the campaign now to change that direction.

00:10:56.260 So, she's got to throw the Hail Mary pass, which was the other core part of her strategy, which is Trump is unhinged and unstable.

00:11:04.680 And she's focusing on the soft vote and Republican vote or the Republican vote that's not voting, which is suburban women, and targeting them on the message and using Liz Cheney and others.

00:11:20.420 So, if you're pulling out the Cheneys as a Democratic presidential candidate in the last moments, I mean, first of all, you deserve to lose more than anything for doing that.

00:11:33.460 But if someone had told you five years ago that the most left-wing American senator would become the Democratic presidential candidate and trot the Cheneys out, I mean…

00:11:45.420 I mean, you can't make that stuff up.

00:11:47.800 Yeah.

00:11:48.100 I mean, no.

00:11:49.420 And the thing is, both parties have got their base.

00:11:55.780 I mean, Trump's getting in all the public polls between 90 and 93 percent of the Republican vote.

00:12:01.860 She's getting between 90 and 92 percent of the Democratic vote.

00:12:06.500 So, this is not a base election anymore.

00:12:08.480 But what she's trying to do is mix up the base a little bit by some of these anti-Trump Republicans who are not voting for the most part and try and peel those votes over to her because she's not confident she can win over the undecided voter in Western Pennsylvania because of where Trump's position over her is on the economy, on fracking.

00:12:36.540 And this is where she failed in her debate with Trump.

00:12:41.560 And her job at that debate was to introduce herself to the country but to also show that she had a plan.

00:12:48.660 She didn't do that.

00:12:49.820 And by going dark with the media for so long, she never defined herself.

00:12:55.520 And what the Trump campaign has done, using her and her public appearances and her recorded statements from 2019 as well as while vice president, we've defined her using her on her positions.

00:13:11.800 And that's worked.

00:13:12.720 And as a result, you have a lot of – he's carrying the independent vote.

00:13:21.840 We could carry the Hispanic vote.

00:13:24.900 Like a majority?

00:13:25.660 Like a majority in a couple of the battleground states, yes.

00:13:28.540 Like a majority.

00:13:29.760 He's getting 25 percent of the vote.

00:13:31.520 So, that's a history-changing change in politics if that happens.

00:13:36.260 Yeah.

00:13:36.660 And, you know, it's for a lot of reasons, but all of them make sense.

00:13:41.260 It's independent on – in Nevada and Arizona, it's because of the border.

00:13:46.760 It's because of the crime.

00:13:47.780 It's because of the impact of illegals on their communities.

00:13:50.780 But it's also cultural values and wokeism, you know, and family values.

00:13:57.620 It's school board issues and transgender and things like that.

00:14:02.180 Where in the Hispanic families, it's a culturally tight-knit family situation.

00:14:08.540 These are issues that bother them.

00:14:10.020 I think Nevada's majority Hispanic now or –

00:14:12.280 It's pretty close.

00:14:13.140 Yeah, close for sure.

00:14:14.400 And so, the idea was that people with Hispanic last names love illegal immigration.

00:14:21.740 But that's turned out –

00:14:22.840 It's not true.

00:14:23.820 At all.

00:14:24.380 No, because they're paying – they're suffering the most.

00:14:28.720 And one, because of their jobs.

00:14:32.480 Two, because of the impact on limited community resources.

00:14:35.940 Three, the crime is in their neighborhoods.

00:14:37.480 And you've had Harris out there for three and a half years saying there's no problem.

00:14:45.300 There is no border problem.

00:14:46.740 They're not recognizing it, not even visiting it and being empathetic.

00:14:51.000 And that has resonated in the Hispanic community.

00:14:55.420 And we're seeing that in the Hispanic community in places like Pennsylvania as well.

00:15:00.180 And so, that framework of the electorate is totally tilting away.

00:15:10.320 And some of this Hispanic vote and a lot of the black vote that's favoring Trump, it's a twofer for us.

00:15:18.320 Because it's one vote out of the Democratic candidate, one vote for the Republican.

00:15:22.740 It's not just a swing voter that's, you know, for grabs.

00:15:28.560 She's losing a vote every time we gain a black vote, you know, that she normally would have had as a Democrat nominee.

00:15:35.320 And, again, the reason these people – the profile of the Trump black voter this time are black men under 25 – I mean under 35.

00:15:46.840 And it's for a reason.

00:15:48.400 They've suffered economically.

00:15:49.860 They've given up on the promises of the Democratic Party.

00:15:55.100 And Trump, in some ways, is an iconic figure to them.

00:16:01.860 But he definitely gets them.

00:16:04.240 And they see that he gets them.

00:16:07.320 So, that vote is not a vote that's going to slip away in the next two weeks as we get close to the election.

00:16:17.440 And that's why she's targeting disaffected women Republicans who don't like Trump the personality.

00:16:25.420 It's just kind of weird that she'd be running on Trump's personality because it's the single most familiar fact in all American politics what Donald Trump's personality is like.

00:16:33.880 Because we've talked about it every single day for 10 years.

00:16:36.620 So, is there really room for movement on that question?

00:16:40.160 Is there anyone thinking, oh, wow, Trump is kind of volatile.

00:16:43.880 I had no idea.

00:16:44.700 I think I won't vote for him.

00:16:45.900 She's already got those orders.

00:16:47.220 Exactly.

00:16:47.960 Yeah.

00:16:48.220 I mean, it's baked in.

00:16:49.760 And that's why these undecided voters, if you look at any focus groups that are out there, you'll see they all are saying, well, yeah, I don't like his personality.

00:16:58.920 But I was better under his when he was president.

00:17:03.060 And I don't know what she stands for.

00:17:05.260 And I don't want to risk four more years.

00:17:07.800 And these are people who traditionally vote Democrat.

00:17:10.920 Because they told us, remember, they would always remember.

00:17:13.740 I mean, it's all they talked about for the better part of a decade.

00:17:17.060 Trump is a racist.

00:17:17.900 Trump is a racist.

00:17:18.620 Let me repeat.

00:17:19.180 Trump is a racist.

00:17:20.100 And now he's like on track to win the majority of the Hispanic vote and a huge chunk of black men.

00:17:26.320 I guess that didn't work, we can say.

00:17:28.920 No, it didn't.

00:17:29.900 I mean, that could have worked if it was part of a strategy, but not work because it's the strategy.

00:17:39.200 And that's all that she's offering people who have had a very lousy three and a half years.

00:17:45.320 Do they even say that anymore?

00:17:46.560 Trump is a racist.

00:17:47.280 Remember, that was the only thing they said about Trump.

00:17:48.980 They're not saying it that way anymore, although I think you will see in the next two weeks they will get that raw again because that's the stage that they're at in the campaign.

00:17:58.920 So I think it's going to be a very ugly close by the Harris campaign.

00:18:03.380 In what way?

00:18:04.100 I mean, they will be tossing around Hitler and racism and things like that as if they were not the kind of powerful words that they are.

00:18:13.920 Who knows you better than you know yourself?

00:18:17.060 Is it your spouse, your parents, your siblings?

00:18:19.860 Oh, someone knows you even better than they do.

00:18:23.200 If you own a smartphone, a computer or any devices connected to the Internet, there are thousands of companies, some of whom you've never heard of, who know you better than you know yourself.

00:18:34.560 Well, how do they do that?

00:18:35.900 Well, because they have your data.

00:18:39.140 And because they have your data, they know everything you've ever bought, even the things you've almost bought.

00:18:43.980 They know who you talk to.

00:18:45.300 You know your private and personal beliefs and more.

00:18:49.120 All of that information turns up in something called a profile of you.

00:18:53.720 And those companies can sell that profile to anyone they want.

00:18:56.940 Marketers, activists, and yes, governments.

00:18:59.920 You have no privacy, and because you don't, there's a $200 billion a year industry feasting on your data.

00:19:09.180 Well, if you find that disgusting and immoral and a violation of your basic human rights, you've got two options.

00:19:16.960 You could, A, get off the Internet entirely and just unplug, or you could start to protect yourself.

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00:20:12.080 Yeah, they're much less powerful than they used to be, though.

00:20:28.980 I remember the first time someone said something like that, called him Hitler, or said he was a white supremacist or racist.

00:20:35.100 I remember being really shocked by it.

00:20:36.440 Now it's like, oh, shut up.

00:20:37.900 Well, people are more immune to it.

00:20:39.880 But again, in my personal opinion, she's got the vote that's going to be moved by that.

00:20:44.980 Right.

00:20:46.540 That's not going to be the last 5%.

00:20:49.520 And so Trump is running a closing campaign that's dealing with what the undecideds want to hear.

00:20:59.800 She is running a closing campaign that's based on fear, trying to make the undecided voter fear Trump and therefore just resign and say, okay, I'm willing to risk four more years of this because I fear Trump.

00:21:15.360 Right.

00:21:15.540 I don't think that's a winning close.

00:21:18.060 And I don't see it in the data.

00:21:21.500 And I don't see it in my experience in politics of being the kind of thing in a close race, if you will, that will allow people to vote against their economic interest.

00:21:34.840 Because that's what these undecided people are saying is, I've had a miserable four years.

00:21:41.800 I believe Trump can do a better job for me, but I'm going to vote against him.

00:21:46.340 I don't see that happening.

00:21:48.020 Do you feel confident enough to bet on it?

00:21:51.200 If I were a betting man, yes.

00:21:54.980 Do you believe in the predictions markets, the betting markets?

00:21:58.060 Well, I mean, I pay attention to them.

00:22:02.160 And if you look at the betting markets today, they're at the highest point in all the years Trump has been in politics saying that Trump's going to win.

00:22:14.000 It's like the average, I think, today is like 58%, 59% of the betting market is saying Trump.

00:22:22.660 And you can track how that betting market has gone since she came into the race, when she was first announced, when we went through the sugar high, and then the debate.

00:22:35.800 I mean, the betting markets followed her and were favoring her.

00:22:40.540 But over the last month, as the campaign strategies have impacted the electorate at the grassroots level, you've started to see it ticking up for Trump.

00:22:52.320 And now it's dramatically up for Trump going into the close, the last two weeks of the close.

00:22:58.000 And I don't see any major October surprise, as we call it, that's going to come up that can change that trajectory now.

00:23:07.500 The hurricane season is almost over.

00:23:09.340 Yeah.

00:23:10.540 The war situation, I think, is they're waiting it out for the next two weeks to see who wins.

00:23:18.280 I could be wrong, but if Israel does something striking in Iran, that doesn't hurt Trump.

00:23:25.000 It could hurt Harris.

00:23:26.880 The economy is not going to get better in the next two weeks.

00:23:29.660 So there's no event that's going to change the trajectory of the race like the debate did in 1980, Reagan versus Carter, allowing the undecideds to vote their economic interest.

00:23:42.560 There's nothing that's going to change, I don't believe, that will allow the undecideds to vote against their economic interest for heirs.

00:23:48.980 And again, Trump is ahead in all seven states right now by the public polling summaries.

00:24:00.760 So the foundation is there, and you also have what we call the unknown Trump factor, where historically Trump is one or two points better than the polls show him to be.

00:24:14.960 And in some cases, dramatically more than one or two points.

00:24:18.920 You look at the national polls today, Harris is up by about a point and a half nationally, and national polls of all voters is not in a good measure any longer of what's going to happen on election day.

00:24:35.100 Plus, you have people voting now.

00:24:40.360 So it's not just voting on election day.

00:24:44.880 The changes that we're all seeing happen in Trump's favor has happened in contemporaneous people actually casting votes.

00:24:53.620 And, you know, one of the, you know, the Harris campaign has had the money advantage, but they've also been told.

00:25:01.140 Big money.

00:25:01.560 Big money advantage, but too much money advantage, meaning that we don't need as much money as she has to win.

00:25:08.760 We were, Hillary Clinton outspent Trump by almost half a billion dollars in 2016 and lost.

00:25:17.740 And so she's going to not be much more than, she won't be that much ahead of Trump in the end.

00:25:24.040 And, but her money advantage and her, quote, field advantage, you know, it was supposed to make the difference.

00:25:32.400 Well, she doesn't have a field advantage.

00:25:34.380 And that's one of the myths that the mainstream media has perpetuated during this campaign.

00:25:38.100 It's that Trump has no ground game and Harris has this juggernaut.

00:25:41.260 Well, the last time I heard that was in 2016 when I was told that the campaign we had put together was, you know, a terrible grassroots campaign and that Hillary Clinton had the most professional field operation in history.

00:25:55.120 Well, we know what happened there.

00:25:57.740 It's the same thing.

00:25:58.900 They're saying the same thing today.

00:26:00.220 We have a very good ground game.

00:26:01.460 I mean, when you look at the early voting that's happening and the, and millions of votes have been cast by now between the early voting and absentee voting and you, where everyone's modeling that stuff and the Democrats turn out advantage on early voting is dramatically less than it's ever been over the last eight years.

00:26:23.540 But guess, and so we're holding our own or doing better than our own in the early voting, but then guess who has an advantage on election day?

00:26:32.480 We do, because that's where we've always had to turn all of our vote out because we always were against early voting until this cycle.

00:26:39.280 She doesn't have as good an organization for the election day as she has for early voting, but she's not winning the margin she needs so far in the first two weeks of the early voting that's happened.

00:26:50.640 So the field organization isn't even an advantage at this point in time.

00:26:54.720 We've got the issue advantage, and we've got more than enough money to do what we need to do in our campaign.

00:27:02.800 Therefore, looking at all the pieces of an election, her race is counting on her getting people to vote against their economic interests because Trump is a threat to democracy.

00:27:16.160 I don't see that happening.

00:27:17.460 I agree with you.

00:27:20.640 Looking back over the last three months, really since June, since the debate between Trump and Biden, what are the things that the Trump campaign has done right, do you think?

00:27:32.340 Well, they were ready for Harris.

00:27:36.540 I mean, we saw going into, after the debate in June, the possibility that Biden might not be a candidate.

00:27:45.020 I didn't believe it.

00:27:45.760 I thought he would never quit, but the campaign saw the possibility, and so they did their research on Harris and on the other potential candidates that could have been the nominee,

00:27:58.720 so that when Biden did drop out, we were ready.

00:28:04.500 We had ads ready, and we knew how we wanted to define all of the potential opponents we might have.

00:28:12.000 We didn't think that they would get rid of Biden and give us Harris because we viewed Harris as the weakest of all the potential candidates because she would have to live on the record of the administration.

00:28:27.840 Exactly.

00:28:29.340 And, but that was Joe Biden's gift to Donald Trump because Biden was so upset with the Democratic coup d'etat against him that he told them he was going to endorse his vice president.

00:28:43.720 And when Nancy Pelosi and Obama wanted an open primary of all the leading candidates so that they could control who would come out of the Democratic convention, they didn't get that.

00:28:56.740 Biden announced on Sunday he was quitting, and announced on Monday he endorsed Kamala Harris, and then it became impossible for anybody to run against Harris.

00:29:04.960 You think that was an act of aggression against his own party?

00:29:07.480 I do.

00:29:08.300 Really?

00:29:09.000 Yeah.

00:29:09.220 So diminished though he is, you think that Joe Biden was angry enough at Pelosi and Obama that he decided to screw the Democratic Party by gifting them Michelle?

00:29:20.680 You've watched his Irish temper enough times as I have.

00:29:23.920 Yeah.

00:29:24.040 And you know how he's always felt disparaged by the Democratic establishment, including Obama, including Nancy Pelosi.

00:29:32.340 Yeah, especially Obama.

00:29:33.440 Yeah.

00:29:33.820 And when, and he didn't want to quit.

00:29:36.060 He felt, and there's a case to be made today, that he could have been a better candidate than Harris because he felt all along that the Democratic base, which was against, which was the reason why he was trailing badly after his debate, would have no choice but to come together after Labor Day and support him.

00:29:54.320 And then he thought he could beat, beat Trump again.

00:29:57.660 And if you look at the, if you want to analyze it through his eyes, he's probably right that the base would have come back to him.

00:30:06.020 The media would have had to come back to him against Trump because they were always going to be against Trump.

00:30:13.520 And he would be a much better candidate in Pennsylvania.

00:30:16.700 He'd be a much better candidate in the Midwest because he's got working class roots.

00:30:23.160 You've got an elitist Democrat liberal as the Democratic nominee when the battleground states are in the Midwest.

00:30:33.460 Yeah.

00:30:33.780 And, and so you could make the case that he would have been at least as strong as Harris.

00:30:39.660 But, but Pelosi strategy was never to have Harris.

00:30:42.800 And it's, they, they, a Shapiro or a Whitmer or even a Newsom could have had, you know, a certain appeal in the Midwest that a Harris didn't have.

00:30:53.440 So you think Obama and Pelosi never thought they were getting Kamala Harris when they pushed Biden to retire?

00:30:58.140 I don't.

00:30:59.080 Really?

00:30:59.960 Yeah.

00:31:00.540 And that was Joe Biden's gift to them in return for the gift they gave him.

00:31:06.880 And so.

00:31:07.780 Knifing him.

00:31:08.560 And so, but that's why Harris, but what we didn't analyze, nobody could have, is how all in the media would be to just, you know, make her into the second Obama.

00:31:25.760 Try to make her into this, except she can't speak like Obama.

00:31:29.400 She's, you know, Obama's much more articulate.

00:31:32.780 Obama stood for something that she can't stand for.

00:31:35.040 Obama was going to be the first black president.

00:31:37.240 Yeah.

00:31:37.440 Now she's going to be the first black woman president, but they, the concept.

00:31:41.240 Who cares at this point.

00:31:41.900 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:43.280 And, and she's not articulate.

00:31:45.620 She, she's afraid of being with the media.

00:31:48.120 If they don't prop her up, she can't hold her own.

00:31:51.040 And I've learned having done enough elections that the American people generally get it.

00:31:58.400 They, they, by election day, they get it.

00:32:00.740 I mean, sometimes we, you know, with the, you know, in 2020, COVID distorted everything.

00:32:07.960 And then the changing of the rules on voting distorted everything.

00:32:11.800 And then Republicans not knowing how to deal with early voting and participating distorted everything.

00:32:17.520 Well, this is a much more normal election.

00:32:20.620 I mean, the rules are the same rules, are settled rules.

00:32:25.580 We fixed some of the excesses of 2020 in a, in a, in a number of the battleground states so that voter identification is going to be important.

00:32:34.980 Republicans are participating in early voting this time in an aggressive way, and we're seeing it in the early voting results.

00:32:44.540 So, in a more normal election, having a California liberal who hasn't been out there running for president and trying to define herself should not be a victorious campaign.

00:32:58.400 The reason she's in play is because the media has defined her for her as the saint and this, this turning the page.

00:33:06.920 Well, again, the American people know turning the page from what?

00:33:10.880 From the Biden-Harris administration?

00:33:13.040 How do you turn the page on yourself and give them something different?

00:33:17.320 And what, especially when she hasn't defined what she's going to do or when she has, it's been contradiction to what she said she stood for before.

00:33:25.160 And, again, she's winning her vote, and most polls show this, because even in the Democratic base that's supporting her, they're anti-Trump.

00:33:36.920 Because a lot of those people who weren't so anti-Trump Democrats would be voting for a Republican candidate right now, not named Trump, because of the economic failures of this administration against theirs.

00:33:50.860 But Trump brings out an additional kind of voter that no Republican can get, and he's changing the composition of the Republican Party into a working man's party, working class party, into a middle American party.

00:34:05.940 I think it's finally happening.

00:34:07.620 It must be weird for you, as someone who's been, you know, top levels of the Republican Party for all these years, almost 50, to see all these people you know come out against Trump and, in some cases, for Kamala Harris.

00:34:22.280 Like, the pillars of the party.

00:34:23.560 Dick Cheney is just one among many.

00:34:25.600 Yes, it is.

00:34:55.600 To how they want the party to look, which is the exact opposite of what the Democrats have done.

00:35:03.160 They don't care what the party looks like.

00:35:05.200 It's principles that drive the Democratic Party, and it's woke leftist principles that are not in the interest of the country.

00:35:11.320 And as a result, you've had the changing of the electorate, of the composition of the two parties, where the Democrats are now an elitist party from the coast, and the Republicans are Main Street and not Wall Street, even though their reputation is still that.

00:35:27.420 And Trump is making it into a really working class party.

00:35:30.720 What do you think of that?

00:35:31.520 Well, I think, well, I think if you want to run a country, you have to have more than elitist as a focus of where your policy should go.

00:35:41.900 Yeah.

00:35:42.120 I mean, that's why I got involved in politics.

00:35:44.160 I mean, as a conservative, back in the 60s, I was upset with what was emerging as Johnson kind of big government, the social welfare program, things like that.

00:35:58.020 And so I was coming from a working class background, and I saw the Republican Party, not necessarily the leadership of the Republican Party, but the principles of what Goldwater was talking about as something that attracted my interest.

00:36:14.460 Well, Trump has taken that to a new level.

00:36:16.640 Trump has made it into the leadership of the party, not just the focus of the principles of the party.

00:36:21.280 And I think long term, that's a coalition that can govern for a long time, especially when you take the negative part of Trump out of the equation and keep all the positives in the equation.

00:36:37.240 I think that the Democrats are either going to have to come back towards the center or we are going to be in power for a long time.

00:36:45.340 I mean, I think it's not inconceivable to think that Trump is going to have a Republican Congress.

00:36:51.960 He's going to have a Republican Senate.

00:36:54.240 He could have 54, 55 members of the Republican Senate.

00:37:00.120 And it's probable with him winning, with breaking the way I think things are going to break, that we'll keep the House.

00:37:06.560 And if we do that, then something very different from 2017 is going to exist.

00:37:12.140 You're going to have an experienced President Trump, who understands Washington a lot better than he did in 2017 when he took the oath of office.

00:37:20.300 And you're going to have a Republican Congress, controlled Congress, that's people that are part of the Trump make America great again agenda.

00:37:29.560 With a Speaker of the House who actually is supportive of the economic policies that Trump wants to enact versus what Paul Ryan was doing as Speaker of the House, convincing Trump not to do the things that he should have done in the first year.

00:37:43.840 And therefore, having immigration reform and economic reforms that Trump wanted put on the back burner to never get to the front burner.

00:37:52.320 That's not going to happen in 2025.

00:37:55.980 And so with those changes, I believe the country is going to get stronger economically.

00:38:01.200 I think the world is going to get better, get safer.

00:38:03.820 I think we're going to have borders again.

00:38:05.620 And that is going to lock in a lot of this new support that is voting for Trump because they think he will be better for them.

00:38:14.680 But then they're going to see that the party as a whole that Trump has put together can also be better for them after Trump.

00:38:21.900 And with somebody like J.D. Vance and even people like Marco Rubio now out there talking about the Trump record, the Trump policies, it's going to make a big difference.

00:38:34.200 And I think Hispanics will be attracted to that.

00:38:37.160 I think working class Americans will be attracted to that.

00:38:39.600 And with Trump having a government of people for him as opposed to a government of people that were not for him but then wanted to be part of the government that he created and then undercut him as president time and time again, that's going to be different this year.

00:38:56.040 The people are going to be put in power that will implement the Trump agenda and be supportive of the Trump agenda.

00:39:01.340 And that's why to all of these former Republican Trump administration people who are now supporting Harris, they didn't support Trump in 2016.

00:39:12.500 They became part of his government after he won, but they were not supporting him in 2016.

00:39:17.980 They did not buy into the Trump policies that Trump was elected on.

00:39:22.720 And so when they didn't follow his direction, he fired them.

00:39:25.840 The difference is Harris' people and her staff as vice president, you know, 95% of the people who worked for her quit on her.

00:39:36.380 They didn't get fired.

00:39:37.300 They quit on her.

00:39:38.080 They couldn't take her because she was such a terrible boss.

00:39:40.860 That's the difference.

00:39:41.660 That's what you can expect under Harris.

00:39:43.360 She can't manage people.

00:39:46.480 Trump had the wrong people in office because he didn't have a team in 2017 because he was an outsider coming into Washington.

00:39:53.860 But he's got a team now, and it's a team that believes in what he wants to do and what he's campaigning on.

00:39:59.540 And so what he gets elected on, unlike what Biden and Harris did in 2020 and then did as president and vice president,

00:40:07.900 Trump is going to implement the policies he's been out there talking about,

00:40:11.360 and he's going to bring people in who are committed to those policies different than 2017.

00:40:15.680 And I think we have a chance to have a very good two years.

00:40:19.220 With that, a lot of these changes can start to take root.

00:40:22.580 What a disaster, if Trump does win, it'll be for the Democratic Party.

00:40:28.220 The second he won in 2016, well, the first thing that was resolved to put the people who got him there, including you, in prison, and they succeeded.

00:40:38.980 Mike Flynn, they tried to put him in prison.

00:40:40.700 I mean, Roger Stone.

00:40:41.840 I mean, they really went and just tried to imprison the opposition, and then they tried to imprison Trump.

00:40:47.420 And I think pretty clear they stole the 2020 election.

00:40:51.640 That's my view.

00:40:52.880 They eliminated free speech.

00:40:54.260 That's theft enough.

00:40:56.380 And it didn't work.

00:40:57.860 And then he wins in 2024 after all of that?

00:41:01.060 What is it like if that happens in the Democratic Party?

00:41:04.740 I think the left takes over.

00:41:08.980 Interesting.

00:41:09.900 Yeah.

00:41:10.160 I think who's going to get gutted here is the centrist in the Democratic Party.

00:41:18.620 Really?

00:41:19.460 Absolutely.

00:41:20.600 Absolutely.

00:41:21.320 I think that the Washington part of the party will be dramatically controlled by the Sanders wing.

00:41:29.720 But I think Sanders, you know, the unspoken story here is the guy with the network in the states, in the Democratic Party, is Bernie Sanders.

00:41:39.040 Of course, yes.

00:41:39.940 And what you saw happen with Ronald Reagan in 1977 after he lost the nomination to Jerry Ford and Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter,

00:41:52.120 Reagan's network of people spent three years building in the states the Reagan organization that elected him president.

00:42:00.780 Because Reagan had foreseen the future, issue-wise, I think the Sanders people are going to do the same thing if there's a debacle in 2024.

00:42:15.380 But they're going to be misreading the future, in my judgment on the issues, unlike what Reagan did.

00:42:21.480 And so as they take control, they're going to push the party further and further left.

00:42:26.460 To the populist left, the economic left?

00:42:28.480 What do you mean by the left?

00:42:29.220 Well, I think both the populist left and the economic left.

00:42:35.480 I think they're going to be driven by the economic left.

00:42:40.000 But the populist left is going to be the way they sell their message.

00:42:43.540 But like the tranny left, the weird kind of rich lady left, the emphasis on the sexual issues, on racial division, does that – I mean, that doesn't seem to have worked.

00:42:59.220 And that's what I call the populist left.

00:43:02.420 I think the economic left is where they will frame it because it's more acceptable to the disadvantaged.

00:43:10.680 And you can make that case to the illegal migrants who may be ending up getting entrenched here in one way or another.

00:43:21.820 But the left takes – so the lesson if they lose to the Democrats will be we didn't go left enough.

00:43:31.020 Well, I don't know that that's the lesson that they – to them, but that's the opportunity to the left within the party, which is the dominant part of the party.

00:43:39.440 Yeah, interesting.

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00:44:45.480 There's got to be some reckoning, though.

00:45:02.040 I mean, they did everything they could to stop Trump, and they couldn't stop him.

00:45:05.940 Look who's on the horizon.

00:45:07.980 You've got Bernie Sanders still.

00:45:10.020 You've got Elizabeth Warren still.

00:45:11.740 You've got Amy Kluberger still.

00:45:13.800 You've got Gavin Newsom still.

00:45:16.760 These are all—they've already—they've sailed that ship, their ships, in that direction.

00:45:23.240 Now, can they change?

00:45:24.240 Yeah, of course they can change.

00:45:25.360 But the power base and the grassroots that they have to appeal to to emerge victorious for 2028 is the left.

00:45:35.820 And they are much more hardcore than Republicans are at punishing their opposition.

00:45:47.980 So I will—I don't think there's any leadership in Washington, with Pelosi being gone now, that brings—sort of moves towards the center.

00:46:02.860 I think Obama, you know, will be where a lot of them go to.

00:46:08.260 But Obama, I don't—this is his last fight.

00:46:11.420 I mean, he—if he loses this—I mean, if she loses, he loses.

00:46:16.920 And he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life, you know, refighting that war.

00:46:22.220 He's a former president.

00:46:23.480 He's made millions of dollars since she's left.

00:46:25.820 You know, it's up to new leadership to take the party over.

00:46:29.700 And so I don't—I don't see him—you don't even see Michelle Obama out there right now campaigning for Harris.

00:46:35.700 I think she will in the last two weeks.

00:46:37.720 But, you know, she hasn't been out there this time.

00:46:40.100 Why do you think?

00:46:42.060 There's something there.

00:46:43.300 I mean, I don't know what it is, but there's something there.

00:46:47.840 Obama even hasn't been that aggressively out there, even though, you know, this was his coup d'etat.

00:46:53.440 I mean, she wasn't necessarily his candidate, but this was his coup d'etat.

00:46:59.620 And—but my point is, I don't see Obama in the future trying to direct the Democratic Party.

00:47:07.800 Pelosi will be gone.

00:47:08.660 Schumer's not a national politician.

00:47:11.080 He's a—you know, he's a Washington politician.

00:47:13.500 Hakeem Jeffries doesn't have any profile of seriousness.

00:47:16.460 The national Democrats in Washington are the leftists.

00:47:20.140 The Sanders, the Warrens, people like that.

00:47:24.300 And—

00:47:24.980 So if Trump gets the majority in two weeks, will the Democrats, including their army of lawyers, just kind of give up?

00:47:35.980 Oh, no.

00:47:36.360 And just say, you won?

00:47:38.700 I think—look, January 6th is their playbook.

00:47:41.940 Right.

00:47:42.500 I mean, I—

00:47:43.280 Well, it was last time, too.

00:47:44.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:47:45.140 So do I think that they're just going to accept the results?

00:47:47.880 As Trump says correctly, Hillary Clinton is still contesting the 2016 election.

00:47:53.200 They will never give Trump the benefit of winning an election, no matter how big he wins it.

00:47:59.380 But he's going to be president in January of 2025, and they're going to have to deal with that.

00:48:06.720 But they'll make it—it'll be a difficult, you know, transition period.

00:48:11.640 There'll be a lot of protests.

00:48:12.900 I mean, the week after, between people running to the—their psychiatrist offices and people, you know, running to the streets to burn things, you know, it's going to be a mess.

00:48:24.540 But—

00:48:25.260 Can you think of any legal mechanism they could use to prevent Trump from being seated as president in January?

00:48:29.760 No.

00:48:30.700 No.

00:48:31.280 I mean, they tried to set some of those things up when they were trying to play with electors for this time around and rules about the states not having to follow the results of the election.

00:48:40.080 But, no, there's—the system works.

00:48:43.420 Our system works.

00:48:44.660 And as far as—against a coup d'etat, if you will, a democratic coup d'etat.

00:48:51.780 And the difference between 2020 and 2024 is you will have the media defining whatever the grievances are of the losing Democratic Party as being fair grievances when, in fact, they're not.

00:49:06.180 I don't know which ones they'll come up with, but they'll come up with stories that are not true.

00:49:12.160 And that's what they're good at.

00:49:14.480 Republicans accept results for the most part, which is why Trump's pushback in 2020 was so out of character for the world to understand.

00:49:27.120 Democrats always contest results.

00:49:28.920 I mean, I can't remember a campaign nationally that they didn't contest one way or another something, whether it was Gore, where they lost.

00:49:38.880 And so it will be a contentious transition period.

00:49:44.680 But I think the difference is if Trump has the results that I think he's going to have, he'll be close to or over 300 electoral votes.

00:49:54.720 And that's hard to turn over for them to fight.

00:49:58.160 You really think so?

00:49:58.800 Trump's going to get 300?

00:49:59.980 Well, I mean, there are seven battleground states.

00:50:03.160 Trump's—if Trump loses all seven, I think he's—it's something like 254.

00:50:08.420 If he wins all seven, he's at 312.

00:50:11.520 If he wins some combination in between, you know, so—and the only one where he's below 270 is where she sweeps the blue wall.

00:50:20.040 Um, and I don't see her doing that.

00:50:24.500 I mean, we could sweep the blue wall.

00:50:26.600 Right now, we're leading in all three of those states.

00:50:29.820 Um, and I don't see—

00:50:32.020 Remind us what the blue wall is.

00:50:33.240 Blue wall is Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

00:50:35.880 Yeah.

00:50:36.400 And, uh, the three Midwestern states.

00:50:38.380 She has to win all—

00:50:39.060 Why are those Democratic states?

00:50:40.120 I've never understood that at all.

00:50:42.280 Those seem like natural Trump states, given the realignment between the parties.

00:50:46.120 Well, labor was—labor's got a big hold on—

00:50:50.420 How corrupt is labor when every member of a public sector labor union overwhelmingly is for Trump?

00:50:55.720 Like, how corrupt are they that they're—

00:50:57.380 You mean for Harris?

00:50:58.740 You know, it's for—the actual—you know, what percentage of the Teamsters?

00:51:02.160 What percentage of—

00:51:02.800 Oh, you mean of the grand confine?

00:51:04.080 IBEW.

00:51:04.560 Yeah, exactly.

00:51:05.440 No, you're right.

00:51:06.660 Well, that's why we're winning those states.

00:51:08.660 Yeah.

00:51:08.820 You know, Trump has made the economic argument to the auto workers that the Biden-Harris administration was the worst administration for them, and she'll be even worse as President Harris.

00:51:21.780 And that's why the local members are there.

00:51:24.580 I mean, yesterday in Pittsburgh, the Steel Union members from Western Pennsylvania endorsed Trump.

00:51:33.500 Now, the senior leadership of the union is for Harris, but the rank-and-file workers, the union bosses in the regions, in the states, are for Trump.

00:51:47.840 And they endorsed him yesterday in Western Pennsylvania.

00:51:51.140 So—but she has to win all three of those states.

00:51:55.000 She's got a problem with the Muslim vote in Michigan, and it's—they're a major piece of a Democratic coalition to carry that state.

00:52:04.520 They're fragmented.

00:52:06.000 There's going to be a lot of non-vote voters in that group, and Trump was endorsed by the largest Muslim Pakistan organization in Michigan last week.

00:52:16.540 So, you know, and they're doing that because they know that Trump is somebody who could bring peace to the Middle East.

00:52:26.600 I mean, he almost did that.

00:52:28.000 If he had had a second term, he would—we wouldn't have had this war in the Gulf.

00:52:31.900 And at the same time, the Jewish support—Trump's getting close to 40 percent of the Jewish support because they know that he protected Israel.

00:52:39.240 And he's—and when he says he's going to protect them, he means what he says versus what Biden says when he talks to being pro-Israel but not—but anti-Netanyahu.

00:52:50.460 Right now in a war, you can't be both.

00:52:52.620 You have to be pro-Netanyahu and pro-Israel.

00:52:57.140 Trump has credibility in the Israeli community.

00:52:59.740 He has credibility in the Muslim community.

00:53:01.700 There's nobody in the Democratic Party like that.

00:53:03.500 And in Michigan, that's a real cross-pressure on Harris at the base.

00:53:10.680 So the three states that she has to win to be president, she's trailing in all three.

00:53:17.520 That will have a long-term impact, I think, on realignment.

00:53:22.420 Because, you know, Trump also understands that the leadership may not be formed, the rank-and-file is, but he makes—if he makes the rank-and-file's lives better, the leadership has to start to open up and be less oppressive.

00:53:41.160 And really, when you look at the public service unions and the private sector unions, there's a real break now at the grassroots level.

00:53:57.080 Oh, yeah.

00:53:57.500 And the public sector unions are going to have a hard time under Trump because he's going to make changes that are going to be—that are going to call government reductions.

00:54:09.640 I hope he extinguishes them, crushes them.

00:54:12.800 We shouldn't have a single public sector union in the United States.

00:54:16.240 The whole idea is grotesque.

00:54:18.520 Well, it's—

00:54:19.280 Tax dollars held hostage by federal employees or state employees.

00:54:23.580 The whole thing's nuts.

00:54:24.880 They pay for their own politicians.

00:54:26.640 Yeah, and they're not union leaders.

00:54:28.780 They're Democrats with union positions.

00:54:31.440 They run copy machines and man some desk at the DMV.

00:54:35.940 I mean, these are not—there's not laborers.

00:54:37.960 These are people living off the public tent.

00:54:40.680 I mean, it's disgusting.

00:54:41.320 And living very well off of it.

00:54:42.080 Very well.

00:54:43.040 Yes.

00:54:43.400 No, that's right.

00:54:44.220 And that's why you had people like the teamsters—head of the teamsters nationally coming and speaking to the Republican Convention.

00:54:52.460 He's a good man, Sean O'Brien from Boston.

00:54:54.520 And, you know, Trump didn't require a litmus test support.

00:54:59.040 He said, come and make your case.

00:55:00.920 Yeah.

00:55:01.460 And that resonates with the rank-and-file people, that when you show respect to the union, when the union is just being—is not taking a pro position.

00:55:12.200 But that's who Trump is.

00:55:14.320 I mean, he recognizes that every day is another day, and you build by consensus and communication, which is why, again, the globalists and the elitists that—the State Department can't handle a guy because he doesn't read from their playbook.

00:55:32.180 That's right.

00:56:02.500 I think most people, if they're honest, think Trump's going to win.

00:56:05.180 What if he doesn't win?

00:56:07.000 Will Republicans accept that result as legitimate?

00:56:12.920 The answer is ultimately yes, I think.

00:56:19.500 I mean, honestly, I don't deal with that scenario now because, in my mind, we're not going to lose.

00:56:25.960 I mean, if we lost, how we lost would be relevant.

00:56:33.220 Heck, yeah.

00:56:34.080 And I don't believe that if you lose, you don't have a right to question, but then there comes a point when you have to move on.

00:56:44.540 So, I don't know—so how we lose would be relevant, but I don't see that happening.

00:56:54.960 A lot of Republicans think that the system is rigged against them.

00:57:02.860 And I understand that.

00:57:04.880 I haven't believed me.

00:57:06.120 I bet you do.

00:57:07.040 Believe me.

00:57:07.480 Oh, do you understand that?

00:57:12.680 But the point is you just can't give up.

00:57:17.520 And you just have to be better than you were before to succeed the next time.

00:57:26.360 And you can't complain about the past.

00:57:30.060 You have to do something about the future.

00:57:31.740 One of the things that I'm actually very proud of what Trump has done in this cycle is he doesn't think you should have early voting.

00:57:41.100 He thinks election day should be election day, but he recognizes that you've got to play by the rules that are the rules today.

00:57:51.560 And what we've done in the past two election cycles of ignoring early day voting is like in baseball having a designated batter, but since he's not on the field, you just don't let him go up to bat.

00:58:07.040 You just, you know, take him out every time that spot comes up in the batting order.

00:58:11.840 That's what we were doing in early voting.

00:58:13.580 We were not participating.

00:58:15.740 And the Democrats were, and it did two things.

00:58:19.100 It energized their people early.

00:58:22.220 It banked votes before the campaign was over so that we always, in 2020, our closing campaign was much stronger than the campaign around the convention and in September.

00:58:35.420 But so many people had already voted that many of whom would have possibly changed and voted differently if they had only been one election day.

00:58:46.360 You know, right now, the reason, one of the things the Trump campaign did very well this time is we were doing a mid-October campaign program in August and September.

00:59:01.320 And so we had to have the electorate's mindset where they normally would be on October 20th there on October 1st.

00:59:13.940 So that means we had to be defining her heavily in September.

00:59:19.100 We had to be defining the differences between Trump and her in August.

00:59:23.980 And we had to be spending the kind of money that was necessary to have the penetration.

00:59:28.760 So that by now, we're focusing on the last 5%, not on the 50% we need.

00:59:37.680 And we've done that well.

00:59:39.800 And that's why the campaign is closing where you're starting to see the race tilt publicly towards Trump.

00:59:47.880 The betting markets are tilting that way.

00:59:49.740 The market, the stock market, I think, is pricing in, if you look at the kind of companies that are going up, they're companies that would do well in a deregulated economy under a President Trump.

01:00:04.240 So all of that's happening because our closing campaign was happening in September.

01:00:09.860 And now we're getting out to vote because they're ready to vote.

01:00:13.900 We've talked to them, and they're now voting.

01:00:15.920 That's all stuff we gave up on last time.

01:00:19.260 We were running our October campaign last time in October.

01:00:23.540 And by September, they had defined us because early voting isn't just who gets to vote.

01:00:31.220 It's how you persuade them before they vote.

01:00:34.680 And they were doing their October close in September, getting their votes banked.

01:00:39.780 And we were talking to people that already voted by the time we did our closing campaign in October.

01:00:46.260 That's changed this time.

01:00:47.840 Trump has done a masterful job.

01:00:50.120 His campaign leadership has been brilliant at this, at putting the calendar of when people vote into the strategy of how we run the campaign.

01:00:59.040 And they've done so.

01:01:00.340 And as you said to your point a little while ago, this is a guy that should have been dead five or six times as a candidate.

01:01:09.340 And he's now heading into the last two weeks as the frontrunner.

01:01:14.020 And cheerfully.

01:01:15.080 And you're doing the same.

01:01:16.600 And it does feel like that's part of the key to living a successful, happy life is dealing with reality as you find it and letting go of the past.

01:01:24.120 And when, you know, you've been in D.C. since the entire time I was there as a very famous Republican operative working in foreign countries and all over all over the world was all fine.

01:01:34.680 Then you become Trump's campaign manager for like 20 minutes.

01:01:38.140 And the next thing you know, they're sending you off to prison.

01:01:40.380 You got sent to prison because you worked for Trump.

01:01:42.640 Nobody, Republican or Democrat in D.C., doubted that for one second, period.

01:01:46.960 So I just think that's a fact.

01:01:49.360 It is a fact.

01:01:50.040 It was Andrew Weissman did this because you worked for Trump.

01:01:52.480 How do you let go of that and stay cheerful and forward-looking?

01:01:56.040 You don't seem bitter at all.

01:01:57.600 We just had breakfast.

01:01:58.340 You weren't ranting about anything.

01:02:00.220 How do you do that?

01:02:02.300 Well, you have to have faith, which I do, have family, which I do, and believe in yourself, which I do.

01:02:11.020 And when you're advising people on all of the contradictions of politics and in the world, you got to recognize that that affects you too.

01:02:21.680 And so if people have got to make adjustments because of contradictions that they see and that they don't like, then I felt I needed to as well.

01:02:29.740 And look, I—

01:02:30.880 Yeah, but that's a lot easier to describe than to pull off.

01:02:34.160 Well, except it's over now for me.

01:02:37.160 I've gone through that crucible.

01:02:38.940 And pulling it off was hard, but that's where faith and family came into account.

01:02:43.620 And that was where the strength was.

01:02:45.120 Did you make a decision not to be angry?

01:02:48.160 Yeah.

01:02:49.340 When?

01:02:49.680 Well, when I was in solitary confinement.

01:02:53.740 When I was in solitary confinement, you know, the biggest part of a crisis like what I went through was before you're thrown into the fire.

01:03:03.500 When you're standing by the fire and you're seeing the fire flames grow, and the fear of being in that fire is overwhelming.

01:03:12.300 Once you're sitting in the fire, you either give up and die, literally in some cases, but certainly figuratively, or you make adjustments to how to live in the fire.

01:03:23.680 And I made the adjustment that I had an incredible family, lots of good friends, some people who weren't my friends anymore, but that was fine.

01:03:34.740 That means they weren't really good friends.

01:03:36.060 And my faith carried me through.

01:03:39.200 And I decided that when I got through it, when it was over, if I then was going to be bitter and angry, then that means I'd be reliving the worst parts of it all.

01:03:51.860 And why would I do that?

01:03:52.820 And so I decided I was going to move on.

01:03:57.560 I mean, my wife said something to me that was very prophetic in the beginning.

01:04:01.520 I mean, I started my career in Washington with nothing.

01:04:04.460 I was being from a blue-collar family.

01:04:06.800 I, you know, I really had no money at all.

01:04:10.460 I made a living.

01:04:11.340 I did well.

01:04:12.520 They took it all away from me.

01:04:13.740 My wife was saying to me in the process, look, we started with nothing.

01:04:17.820 We have, we found each other.

01:04:19.600 We'll still have each other.

01:04:21.020 And that's what counts.

01:04:22.520 And she was right.

01:04:23.720 And that kept me going.

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01:06:14.680 I watched you walk through a crowd at the Republican Convention of Milwaukee this summer and absolutely treated like an old friend and hero by everybody there.

01:06:39.060 And you seemed, there was a lightness about you, and I thought, man, if I were Paul Manafort, I would just be enraged.

01:06:44.920 And you didn't seem enraged at all.

01:06:46.840 You seem...

01:06:47.880 It was like the family welcomed me home.

01:06:50.620 Yeah.

01:06:51.240 And a family who knew that I had given it myself for them.

01:06:57.560 And there was a lot of love in that room.

01:07:00.000 I noticed.

01:07:00.540 I saw it.

01:07:00.900 And it made me really feel validated that I did the right thing.

01:07:08.620 Amazing.

01:07:10.600 Well, with that said, I just, I mean this from my heart.

01:07:14.180 I could not admire your attitude more.

01:07:17.340 I really could not hope that I would behave as manfully as you have and as forgivingly as you have.

01:07:22.340 But that said, the forces that put you in jail because you were Donald Trump's campaign manager, that's the reason, they still exist and they still have power.

01:07:31.420 And so if Trump becomes president, what does he do about that?

01:07:34.460 What does he do about Andrew Weissman?

01:07:35.880 I see him on television.

01:07:37.020 I can hardly believe that guy has any credibility.

01:07:40.920 I mean, what Trump will do, Trump will do.

01:07:43.680 But what I think he'll do, I mean, you remember in 2016, one of the rallying, rally's key campaign slogans was lock her up, lock her up.

01:07:57.560 When he got elected president, you never heard that word once.

01:08:01.000 No, you didn't.

01:08:01.740 And that's because that's not who he is.

01:08:03.760 He's not a vengeful man.

01:08:05.120 No, that's for sure.

01:08:07.040 He could use a little bit of vengefulness sometimes.

01:08:10.780 But he's not.

01:08:11.360 And he put, contrary to what Harris and Biden has said about him, he put the country first as president.

01:08:18.260 And he said that I've got to work with the Democrats.

01:08:21.280 If I try and lock her up, I will destroy my ability to be an effective president.

01:08:27.340 And even when they were impeaching him, he was still working with the Democrats on policy stuff.

01:08:33.900 So what will he do as president number 47?

01:08:39.580 I think he'll do a lot of what he did as number 45.

01:08:43.720 He will focus on things, an agenda that will make the country better, that make America great again.

01:08:49.340 Because he sees, this is his legacy term now.

01:08:52.420 And he doesn't want it to be filled with the kind of anger and volatility of the first term with all the impeachments and things like that.

01:09:05.140 And so I think he understands getting even is not getting smart.

01:09:09.680 And I will be surprised if he does anything but reach out across the aisle and try and pass the legislation that will make the country better.

01:09:16.940 What do you do about CIA and DOJ and these institutions which have been instruments of the Democratic Party's political agenda?

01:09:26.720 Yeah, I think he understands government better than he did in 26 to 17.

01:09:32.880 And he knows the dangers that the wrong people in office can cause, not just at the top level, but inside the system as well.

01:09:44.480 And so I think there will be blue ribbon kind of commissions to, you know, like Carter did with Stansfield-Turner and the CIA.

01:09:54.320 And when the CIA was coming through all the Iran-Contra stuff and things like that, or actually not Iran-Contra, but the Watergate stuff,

01:10:02.940 where he had a commission put together that cleaned up the CIA, neutered the CIA, something I thought was bad at the time.

01:10:12.380 But now I realize it was probably good.

01:10:14.360 Probably pretty good, yes.

01:10:16.160 And I think, not just the CIA, I think all of the departments and agencies where you have bureaucrats who have got their own agendas,

01:10:25.720 not the American people's agenda, I think they will all be tested.

01:10:29.220 And that's really what he's talking to Elon Musk about.

01:10:32.460 I mean, cutting government is getting rid of not just the fat of government, but getting rid of the poison of government.

01:10:39.720 And some of them are not just policies, they're people, or departments, I should say.

01:10:46.920 And the departments are defined by the people.

01:10:50.020 And I think Trump is looking to reform government.

01:10:54.540 Not reform in a getting rid of anybody who doesn't agree with him, but reform government to make the system work the way the system is supposed to work,

01:11:04.680 to protect the American people, not a political party or a political structure.

01:11:09.720 Are you confident that he's got the right candidates for, say, the State Department, for CIA Director, DOD?

01:11:18.860 Well, I mean, I'm not sure who he's planning to put in all those positions.

01:11:23.280 I don't know that he is yet.

01:11:24.960 I think he knows what he needs now versus what he needed last time.

01:11:29.540 And I think there are enough people who have manifested themselves as committed to his Make America Great agenda,

01:11:38.600 which is an agenda that is pro-American, not pro-Trump, that he'll be able to find the right people to do that.

01:11:49.100 But you don't seem worried that the country is going to fall into some sort of permanent conflict after November.

01:11:56.580 There'll be conflict.

01:11:58.000 But I think you can't let yourself be governed by the fear of conflict versus the fear of doing something right.

01:12:05.900 And, I mean, I believe in, I mean, you know, I hear all these things, but I know Trump.

01:12:10.880 I've known Trump since 1981.

01:12:13.820 Since 81?

01:12:15.220 1981.

01:12:16.220 Where'd you meet him in 81?

01:12:17.320 He was one of our first clients when I started Black Men at Fortin Stone in 1980, after Reagan was elected president.

01:12:25.160 What'd you do for him?

01:12:26.640 Well, he wanted, Roger Stone, one of my partners in 1980, handled the Northeast for Ronald Reagan in New York.

01:12:35.540 And in the course of running that operation, he got to know Trump.

01:12:38.780 And Trump was always interested in politics and wanted to have a sort of eyes and ears in Washington.

01:12:46.560 He liked Roger.

01:12:47.940 And so he hired us to just be his political eyes and ears in Washington.

01:12:52.460 And he had things we did.

01:12:54.140 But as a result, we got—

01:12:55.180 Like what?

01:12:57.420 There were legitimate issues that we'd get involved in in government.

01:13:03.500 But—

01:13:04.460 Are you just going to allide right over that?

01:13:07.860 I'm going to allide right over that.

01:13:11.000 But I've known—I know him.

01:13:13.880 I know what's in his heart.

01:13:14.900 I've seen the way people who work for him really respect him and appreciate him.

01:13:21.360 I've seen him do things that you never hear about for people that are the doorman at one of his hotels.

01:13:30.100 Or, you know, somebody who worked on one of his construction sites.

01:13:33.420 Or a family of one of his families that worked for him.

01:13:36.820 He's got a big heart.

01:13:38.940 He doesn't have—he's not motivated by vengeance or anger.

01:13:42.940 He's motivated by getting things done.

01:13:45.600 He doesn't start fights.

01:13:46.860 He finishes them.

01:13:47.680 He doesn't know—sometimes it stops sooner.

01:13:49.920 But he doesn't live a life that's directed at revenge.

01:13:56.680 And he's not the person that the media is trying to define him as.

01:13:59.880 No, no.

01:14:00.140 And so I think the greater good is what's going to move him in his legacy term.

01:14:08.600 What's the relevance of cryptocurrency in this election, do you think?

01:14:12.340 All the crypto people seem for Trump.

01:14:13.800 Is that meaningful?

01:14:14.300 No, I do know Trump feels like the crypto world is part of the future of the economic structure of the world.

01:14:25.200 And he sees the Biden-Harris administration as pushing it offshore into the hands of China and into the hands of the darker side of the economy.

01:14:38.380 And his attitude is the best way to influence the proper growth is to bring it onshore, to regulate it properly, and let it become an American industry just like Bretton Woods did to the dollar in the aftermath of World War II.

01:14:54.280 And it's as simple as that.

01:14:58.380 I mean, that seems like it's going to happen, doesn't it?

01:15:03.340 Yeah, it does.

01:15:04.260 Well, you said that one of the reasons people are voting for Trump or one of the issues on which he has the advantage is his stewardship of the rest of the world of the American empire, which has been in a very different place for the last four years.

01:15:18.600 We have run the verge of global conflict under the stewardship of Biden-Harris.

01:15:24.760 Not an overstatement.

01:15:26.240 If Trump's elected, how is he going to prevent World War III from happening?

01:15:32.740 What does he do?

01:15:34.260 Well, first of all, he knows the world leaders and the world leaders know him.

01:15:38.240 Yep.

01:15:38.980 And they respect him as a strong leader, something they don't feel about Biden or Harris.

01:15:45.380 And so they know they can negotiate with him, they can talk with him, but they also know there's a fine point that there's a real line in the sand, to use the Obama line, red lines, this analogy.

01:15:59.560 And for example, in the Gulf, you know, with this mess in the Gulf, why did that happen?

01:16:06.580 Why is the Gulf in the kind of tumult it's in right now?

01:16:10.760 Because there's no, the countries in the Gulf don't trust the United States.

01:16:16.900 That's true.

01:16:17.520 I mean, that's the bottom line.

01:16:19.640 And Trump understood who the enemy of the Gulf states were, as well as the enemy of the United States.

01:16:26.960 It was one country.

01:16:27.800 It was Iran.

01:16:28.300 Now, Biden is an apologist for Iran.

01:16:33.300 Harris is an apologist for Iran.

01:16:35.420 They buy into the John Kerry theory of Iran.

01:16:37.900 And Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Omanis, none of them buy into Iran as a country of a leader in the Gulf.

01:16:54.320 What Trump was doing with the Abraham Accords was meant to bring peace to the region.

01:16:59.080 What he was doing with Iran from day one was meant to defang Iran, impoverish Iran as a political country, and allow the people the opportunity to rise up against the fascist regime that the mullahs are running there.

01:17:17.600 And it was working.

01:17:21.200 I mean, the Abraham Accords, if Trump had been reelected, Saudi would have signed it.

01:17:25.800 Jordan was, you know, signing it.

01:17:27.860 Israel was bound to it.

01:17:29.080 And that was moving towards a peaceful resolution and an isolation of Iran.

01:17:37.000 When Biden became president, he immediately, you know, reinstituted as best he could the nuclear deal with Iran, giving them even more than they had and wanted.

01:17:49.180 Gave them billions of dollars to then use to fund terrorist activities around the world against Israel.

01:17:55.200 And he told, more importantly, the other Gulf states that they can't trust the United States.

01:18:02.660 So, what did the MBSs of this world do?

01:18:07.400 What did the Emiratis do?

01:18:10.000 They started reaching out to China.

01:18:11.840 They started reaching out to Russia.

01:18:13.480 Why?

01:18:14.080 Because they needed protection against an unreliable United States.

01:18:18.700 And they didn't want to find themselves isolated in some kind of axis of the world against them.

01:18:26.480 That is literally true.

01:18:27.960 I mean, the Emirates was attacked by Iranian proxies.

01:18:30.760 And the U.S. was incredibly slow to respond to protect them.

01:18:35.400 These are small countries.

01:18:36.500 That's correct.

01:18:36.920 And so, this is an area where Trump immediately has credibility as the right leader in the Gulf with everybody but Iran.

01:18:47.280 I mean, I happen to think that Iran is already measuring what it's going to be like to be under President Trump.

01:18:53.240 And they're backing off certain things right now.

01:18:56.980 And they're right to do that because Trump is going to come in and reinstitute the Trump policies on Iran.

01:19:01.660 I mean, there were two countries that were enemies of the United States in Trump's eyes that needed to be impoverished in order to then be brought into the world community.

01:19:13.460 Iran was one of those two.

01:19:15.620 And the other was Russia.

01:19:18.880 And he was – with Iran, he couldn't – the boulos wouldn't talk to him.

01:19:24.740 With Russia, Putin was smart enough to know you talk to Trump.

01:19:28.140 And that's why a dialogue was existing that could grow into some kind of relationship.

01:19:36.900 And for all of these people who accused Trump of being soft on Putin, one, they know that's not true.

01:19:43.780 But two, it's part of a philosophy at the State Department and in the Davos world that if you just ignore your enemy, it's going to get better.

01:19:55.320 And Trump said if you don't engage your enemy or your adversary or your competitor, whatever the case might be, that you're never going to get better and that things will find a way to get worse.

01:20:11.760 And so that's why he would cross over the DMZ to see Kim Jong-un on his own without State Department freaking out that he decided waking up that morning that he wanted to do it.

01:20:23.380 I was with him.

01:20:23.980 I saw that.

01:20:25.040 Yeah, that was a kind of ad hoc trip.

01:20:28.380 Yeah, but he understood, let Kim Jong-un look in my eyes.

01:20:32.720 Let Putin look in my eyes.

01:20:33.940 Let Xi Jinping look in my eyes.

01:20:35.660 I mean, the message he sent to Xi Jinping that was the most impactful message he sent to China during his whole presidency was when he was having the state dinner for Xi Jinping.

01:20:46.060 And he was sitting right next to Xi Jinping, and he leaned over in the middle of the dinner and said, I just want you to know we just killed Soleimani.

01:20:55.320 If you look at the cameras, Xi Jinping's face turned white.

01:21:02.180 I mean, here, the President of the United States, before any of the people in that room who were part of his government, U.S. government knew, President Trump was letting Xi Jinping know this is how we treat our enemies.

01:21:14.260 And the world got the relationship between China and the U.S. under Trump, tens of times, but it worked.

01:21:24.180 The relationship worked.

01:21:25.800 They were dealing with issues.

01:21:27.040 You know, they weren't solving everything, but they were dealing with them.

01:21:32.180 And the same thing was going on with Putin.

01:21:34.180 Same thing was going on with Iran, although he wasn't communicating with them directly, but indirectly he was letting them know that we're going to impoverish you and we are going to do everything we can until you become a reliable nation of the world.

01:21:47.200 But more important than that, the way he was treating Iran was giving confidence to the allies in the Gulf that will be your friend and will be there for you.

01:21:58.420 You know, what is, you know, what do the UAE and Saudi Arabia want in the future?

01:22:04.680 They're trying to bring their countries into the modern world.

01:22:07.340 They're trying to expand the petrodollars into improving their economies.

01:22:11.680 And each of them is doing a different way, but all of it is looking at how do we protect ourselves against our number one enemy, which is Iran.

01:22:23.020 And that's the U.S.

01:22:25.420 What do they want?

01:22:26.400 They want an umbrella of peace.

01:22:28.260 How do they get an umbrella of peace?

01:22:30.260 The Abraham Accord was part of it.

01:22:31.860 The Saudis would like to have the kind of commitment from the United States that we gave to Japan after World War II, where we said that we would, you are under our protection.

01:22:43.420 And that, you know, to have a military force there, not to be fighting wars there, but just to be under our protection, because that sends a sufficient signal to the, sends it in Southeast Asia, and it'll send it in the Gulf to Iran to not mess with the Sunnis.

01:23:03.400 How does he, is he going to end the war in Ukraine, which doesn't seem to be helping anybody?

01:23:07.900 I think so.

01:23:08.560 You know, I think, I think he understands that you cannot have this war continue.

01:23:17.340 And I think he will sit down with all sides.

01:23:21.560 He's got to, I mean, I'm not giving, saying anything out of school, but he's going to make them all understand it's in the world's best interest and their best interest to put this war behind.

01:23:32.320 And he's, there's some tools that he can use to make each side come to the table and seriously negotiate.

01:23:42.000 But he will personally inject himself into it.

01:23:46.260 He won't give it to a, you know, third party person to do it.

01:23:50.380 He will make this, on the front end, his responsibility.

01:23:54.100 And I think he believes that, without getting way too complicated, all the parties at the table, the Europeans, the Russians, the Ukrainians,

01:24:05.300 all have, have reason to want this thing to end.

01:24:11.500 And there's pieces that can, forget the public rhetoric and the public decisions.

01:24:16.380 There are things that can happen that all sides can accept if they know that it's going to be pushed on them by somebody who will enforce it.

01:24:27.680 Biden's not that person.

01:24:29.460 Blinken doesn't scare a person when he sits down.

01:24:31.920 In fact, they were surprised he sits at the table as opposed to in a chair behind the table.

01:24:37.260 He's just not a leader.

01:24:40.440 And so that presence of the president hovering over everything, injecting himself into it, plus his relationships with all of those people.

01:24:51.460 I mean, you know, even Zelensky was there when Trump was the president the first time.

01:24:57.360 We'll have a lot more impact.

01:24:59.620 Right now, there's nobody running the Ukraine peace process.

01:25:04.520 Nobody.

01:25:05.540 The Europeans don't have the vision or the will to take a position against Putin that will force Putin to give in to Ukraine.

01:25:21.620 And they don't have a strong enough position against Putin that will force Ukraine to give in to you.

01:25:28.060 But, I mean, Europe, if you look at Europe, just go to Europe, over the last almost three years now, since this war started in February of 2022, Europe has declined in every sense.

01:25:43.480 I mean, it's just a poorer, more chaotic place than it was three years ago.

01:25:47.640 I mean, this is crushing Europe.

01:25:49.520 So I don't understand why there's no European leader who can, particularly in Germany, but not just, take control and bring this to an end because it's killing their continent.

01:26:00.060 And who's a European leader that has stature?

01:26:04.620 Fair.

01:26:05.840 I mean, and so they're all just enmeshed in their own self-survival inside their countries.

01:26:13.320 I mean, Merkel had a sort of more European-oriented reputation, but Germany's not the one to lead Europe in a way that's—

01:26:21.520 No, it's a disaster.

01:26:22.100 Yeah, and there's nobody else.

01:26:25.980 There's no Thatcher.

01:26:27.300 I mean, there is no one.

01:26:28.560 There's no even Berlusconi who could have, you know, pressed certain things.

01:26:33.540 You know, Schultz is probably on his way out in Germany.

01:26:37.620 McCone is on his way out.

01:26:40.300 You know, the Spanish are, you know, they—you don't even know who's in office these days.

01:26:44.660 Right.

01:26:45.180 You know, the Italians, Bologna is emerging.

01:26:48.400 She's becoming one of the more forceful leaders in Europe.

01:26:52.100 But she's doing it gradually.

01:26:54.680 She has not emerged as a pan-European leader.

01:26:56.720 No, she certainly hasn't.

01:26:58.540 But she's getting—but she is emerging because she's been willing to do certain things.

01:27:03.520 And then the Eastern Europeans are frozen out by the Western Europeans where you have some of the stronger leaders.

01:27:10.920 So there is nobody to solve the problem.

01:27:14.620 Even though it's the European Union, it's really the European disunion because all the countries have their own interests.

01:27:21.680 And they always put their—they use the bureaucracy of the EU to enhance their interest to the diminishment of the other members of the European Union at times.

01:27:32.360 But so none of them have the stature to lead a united front against Putin or against Zelensky, depending on what your position is.

01:27:42.020 Do you think that they sense that their continent is dying?

01:27:46.540 No, because they've created this world, and so they think it's the right world.

01:27:50.460 Yeah.

01:27:50.620 I mean, that's—you go to Davos, and you sit around, and you realize these people live in a bubble.

01:27:56.000 Yeah, they have no idea.

01:27:56.900 No, they have no idea.

01:27:58.200 And—but the bubble is the bubble they created.

01:28:01.520 And so, like you see with the left here in the United States, they think, you know, transgender is the future.

01:28:11.020 They think that women—men should be able to participate in female sports if they're transgender.

01:28:17.080 Well, same thing in Europe with globalism.

01:28:19.380 They think this is the right way, and if just everybody will do what we say, what we say, then they'll be better off.

01:28:26.860 And it's that Davos mentality.

01:28:30.500 Yeah.

01:28:30.820 Well, they're a joke to the rest of the world, and I guess they're always the last ones to know that they are.

01:28:35.980 So you think Trump—what would peace terms look like in Ukraine?

01:28:39.540 And I should say, for those who don't know, you spent, I don't know, at least 10 years—how long did you spend working—

01:28:44.220 About 10 years.

01:28:44.620 10 years working in Ukraine.

01:28:46.400 Almost one of the most powerful outside political figures in Ukraine.

01:28:51.340 Deeply knowledgeable about it.

01:28:52.700 You had an office there.

01:28:53.600 Not on the pro-Russia side, I should say.

01:28:58.340 But what—given your knowledge of that country and region, what would a settlement, realistic settlement look like?

01:29:05.580 Well, I mean, I think they will—a lot of the pieces may not necessarily be a part of Ukraine.

01:29:11.400 It's other things that Russia might feel is important to them in Russia or in dealing with certain other parts of the world or some of their technology needs or things like that.

01:29:22.720 There are pieces to a game that will interest Putin that it can facilitate getting to Russia sooner than later in a peace process negotiation.

01:29:32.520 Do the borders of Ukraine change, do you think?

01:29:35.800 Well, it depends on how you look at Crimea.

01:29:38.220 Ukraine still accepts—it says Crimea belongs to Ukraine.

01:29:42.060 Russia says, no, Ukraine is now a part of Russia.

01:29:46.340 I think Crimea probably stays where they currently are positioned right now.

01:29:52.240 For sure.

01:29:52.840 I don't see that happening.

01:29:54.920 Right.

01:29:55.140 But Zelensky and the Ukrainians say, we got to have Ukraine back.

01:29:58.960 But that's—you cry me out, but that's just silly.

01:30:01.180 I mean, they're not going to give up the naval base, right?

01:30:02.920 I mean, that—

01:30:04.400 Yeah, I mean, you know, Putin thinks one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the Soviet Union was when Khrushchev, who was from Ukraine,

01:30:13.780 Ukraine, in a moment of enthusiasm, gave Ukraine independence from Russia, you know, the independence in the Soviet Union was not really independence.

01:30:26.660 Right.

01:30:26.860 But it gave them the ability to be considered a country on their own, not a vassal state of the Soviet Union.

01:30:34.940 Putin never accepted that.

01:30:36.580 And so when he became into power, one of the first things he wanted to do was get Ukraine back into Russia, where he thought it belonged.

01:30:46.440 As you know, Kiev was the first capital of Russia.

01:30:51.720 And Crimea, which had an important military component for Russia, where they had their bases and where it was an access to the Black Sea.

01:31:04.000 You know, that was—and it was a very Russian enclave, as opposed to Ukrainian.

01:31:18.000 You know, that was the first place he struck when he saw the opportunity under Obama.

01:31:24.740 So I had—and so I think that will be—I will be surprised if anything changes on Crimea.

01:31:32.920 That's too much of a swallow without Russia losing the war.

01:31:37.160 Yeah.

01:31:37.540 And—

01:31:38.420 Do you see that happening?

01:31:39.560 No, I don't.

01:31:40.340 I don't see them winning the war, but I don't see them losing the war.

01:31:43.180 I think that there's—there are economic issues of rehabilitation of the country, reconstruction, because Eastern Ukraine has destroyed both the industry and the whole infrastructure.

01:31:58.860 I think Eastern Ukraine will be, in some capacity, still part of Ukraine, whether they have autonomous zones, but as a part of Ukraine versus autonomous zones, as truly autonomous, you know, that'll be part of the negotiation.

01:32:17.200 Zelensky can't give up Western Ukraine, but Zelensky and the center of Ukrainian universe is Kiev and West, not East of Kiev.

01:32:33.640 And so the destruction allows for some creativity.

01:32:37.200 The destruction of the East will allow some creativity on the resolution of how we define the geostructuring of it.

01:32:44.000 I don't think—I don't think they give it up, but there may be some kind of concessions that can be made that will save face for Putin, save territory for Ukraine, and get money into reconstructing that part of the world.

01:33:01.700 But there's a way—there's a play there.

01:33:04.100 There is a way to get a ceasefire and to get the people talking.

01:33:08.600 And everybody wants that.

01:33:09.920 Just nobody has the leadership to do it.

01:33:12.380 Trump is the leader who can do it.

01:33:14.000 And there's the NATO factor, too, which will be relevant to Putin, and some kind of commitment that Ukraine, even as part of the European Trade Union or Trade Association, would never—wouldn't be part of NATO.

01:33:33.140 I think that's something that's on the table.

01:33:35.240 We did a live tour last month, one of the funnest things we've ever done, coast-to-coast, 16 different cities, speaking.

01:33:42.500 Well, next week, our grand finale.

01:33:45.100 Halloween, October 31st, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona.

01:33:49.200 Our special guest that night, days before the presidential election, Donald Trump.

01:33:54.440 All proceeds donated to Hurricane Relief.

01:33:57.440 We're proud to do it.

01:33:58.380 Hope to see you there.

01:33:59.080 So, for the years that you worked in Ukraine, was Ukraine joining NATO something that most Ukrainians wanted or that Europe wanted?

01:34:24.040 No.

01:34:25.540 NATO is a political issue.

01:34:28.300 Joining the European Union is an economic issue.

01:34:31.280 Right.

01:34:32.040 And what the Ukrainians cared about was the economic issue.

01:34:36.460 Yes, they wanted their independence.

01:34:39.580 But there wasn't—they weren't fearful of Russia invading before at that point.

01:34:47.360 And the Russians didn't want NATO on the border of Ukraine.

01:34:52.340 Well, yeah.

01:34:53.620 And—

01:34:53.980 So, why did the Biden administration—so, if the Ukrainians weren't begging to be in NATO, and NATO didn't want Ukraine in NATO, which I think is all true.

01:35:00.960 Correct me if I'm wrong.

01:35:01.760 You're correct.

01:35:02.200 Then why was the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, specifically calling in public for Ukraine to join NATO?

01:35:09.880 Like, what would be the point of that?

01:35:11.360 Because of their idiots.

01:35:12.960 Yeah.

01:35:13.520 I mean, I can't justify a policy that the Europeans didn't want, the Ukrainians didn't want, and the Russians didn't want, and the U.S. was for.

01:35:20.420 Okay, so then maybe if Putin says, and says out loud, and certainly suggests it again and again, if Ukraine joins NATO, I will move militarily against Ukraine.

01:35:32.020 Everyone knew that.

01:35:32.840 Even I knew that.

01:35:34.100 Living a long way from Ukraine.

01:35:36.560 And the Biden administration says, no, we want Ukraine and NATO, and says that to Zelensky in public in early February 2022.

01:35:46.100 Maybe they wanted Russia to invade Ukraine.

01:35:48.820 Okay.

01:35:50.420 Or maybe they're just stupid.

01:35:55.180 Because there was no, I mean, that was the red line.

01:36:00.040 Yeah.

01:36:00.500 And there was, and nobody wanted it, except for Biden, you know, this macho approach to things, and truly a lack of understanding.

01:36:11.260 It's not like I'm telling you anything that was a secret.

01:36:13.740 This was all publicly known.

01:36:15.460 Yeah.

01:36:15.820 I mean, and.

01:36:17.160 And universally known in Ukraine, right?

01:36:19.340 Right.

01:36:20.420 And very few people would have ever suggested that.

01:36:25.380 And that's what caused, well, the Afghanistan debacle.

01:36:30.880 Right.

01:36:31.120 Coupled with the threat of NATO in Ukraine and the lack of respect that Putin had for anybody, a part of the foreign policy apparatus of Biden that were part of the Obama government was all that was necessary to light this spark that created the fire.

01:36:49.400 And, but there was no reason for it.

01:36:52.420 It was an unforced error of incredible consequence.

01:36:57.120 Well, yeah.

01:36:57.540 How many people do you think have died in Ukraine?

01:36:59.480 All in.

01:36:59.860 I'm told over 100,000 Ukrainians and over 300,000 Russians.

01:37:07.680 I don't know that, but I'm told that.

01:37:09.440 So, so you were there, you were working in Ukraine in 2014 when Maidan happened.

01:37:16.720 We were told by our media that that was just a popular uprising against a Russian-aligned government.

01:37:22.680 It was totally organic.

01:37:24.960 Now it looks like it was a coup orchestrated by the CIA.

01:37:28.280 What was it, and did you know what it was at the time?

01:37:32.740 It was not organic.

01:37:34.140 Okay.

01:37:36.240 It was not organic, so it would be option B then.

01:37:40.600 It was, it was, there were forces that saw an opportunity to unseat a democratically elected president, Yanukovych, who acted in ways that were anti-democratic.

01:37:56.500 Hmm, and where was the Obama administration?

01:38:01.440 What side were they on?

01:38:03.360 They were supporting what was happening, the revolt that was going on in Ukraine.

01:38:08.420 Yeah, okay.

01:38:09.420 So, so the U.S. State Department was on the side of extinguishing democracy, overthrowing a democratically elected leader.

01:38:16.700 Effectively, yes.

01:38:17.460 Yeah.

01:38:18.520 Where, did you ever run into Victoria Nuland?

01:38:22.180 I did.

01:38:23.420 You know, what was your, and she was, I think, living there.

01:38:26.400 Part-time overseeing all this.

01:38:28.260 She was spending a lot of time there during that time frame, yes.

01:38:30.940 Yeah.

01:38:31.220 What was your impression of her?

01:38:32.980 That she should have been back in Washington.

01:38:36.860 You're very diplomatic.

01:38:38.220 So, I think the overwhelming evidence points to her role in a coup against the democratically elected president of that country, Yanukovych, who you work for.

01:38:50.540 And then she comes back to D.C. and gets an even better job in the Biden administration.

01:38:54.860 And then she's now retired, making a ton of money.

01:38:58.360 You, by contrast, went to prison for, I can't even remember why, and some fake reason.

01:39:03.020 And that doesn't bother you at all?

01:39:05.640 Well.

01:39:06.760 That seems very unfair.

01:39:08.280 Well, it is unfair.

01:39:09.340 Yeah.

01:39:09.660 I mean, and not that necessarily she gets rewarded and I get punished, but we shouldn't be meddling in situations that are constitutional republics, that are democratic republics, countries that we don't like the outcome of an election.

01:39:27.060 And, look, Yanukovych proved himself, in my judgment, during the term of his presidency, to be committed to Europe.

01:39:38.760 There were issues he was dealing with that if they had been supported by Brussels to help ease Ukraine's entrance into the European Trade Association agreement, that we wouldn't have the mess we have today in Ukraine.

01:39:55.160 If we had respected the will of the people and the will of the government elected by the people and worked with that government to bring them into Ukraine as opposed to punish them for being the wrong guy to win the election, then there wouldn't have been the environment that Putin took advantage of that cost them Crimea and cost them the destruction in eastern Ukraine.

01:40:19.940 And the billions of dollars that we've spent, you know, in support of the war that could have been spent for much better purposes.

01:40:28.420 How hard is it for you to sit and listen to these exact same people, the ones who overthrew a democratically elected government in a foreign country with a coup using the CIA and Georgian snipers?

01:40:38.760 What's those people telling you that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy?

01:40:43.740 That must be kind of hard to watch that.

01:40:45.520 Well, it's why I got back in the saddle of this election to elect a president, because we can't let those people win the elections.

01:40:54.000 That's how I believe you fight.

01:40:55.840 You fight in elections.

01:40:56.980 And I believe if you – look, I'm a man of faith.

01:41:03.060 I believe that there's a divine hand in a lot of stuff, and sometimes we may not understand where it's leading us.

01:41:10.800 But if you think you know what's right, then you follow the course that's consistent with that.

01:41:16.240 And Ukraine, the mess that was created in Ukraine in 2014, we're still paying the price for today.

01:41:27.780 And the solution is not to have the same people who caused the problem stay in power to manage the issue, but to change it.

01:41:37.020 And by happenstance, there was an interim period between 2016 and 2020 when there was a U.S. president who was strong enough to keep peace in that region, even though there was a screw-up in 2014 in the Ukraine that was supported by the West of changing power.

01:41:56.480 And the opportunity now exists to bring that person back and that focus back and finish cleaning up the mess.

01:42:03.280 And that's what keeps me going.

01:42:08.460 Not what Victoria Nuland's reward was for creating the mess, but just helping to fix the mess and clean it up for good.

01:42:17.060 It's just the unfairness level is at all-time highs.

01:42:21.200 Unfairness, as we all know, is not the way to drive your life.

01:42:24.980 No, that's true.

01:42:26.080 Did you ever run into Hunter Biden in Ukraine?

01:42:28.100 I never did.

01:42:29.100 I heard his footsteps around, but I never saw him.

01:42:31.620 You did?

01:42:31.820 What was he doing there?

01:42:32.640 Or did you know at the time?

01:42:35.500 Well, Joe Biden was the link between the Obama administration and the Yanukovych administration.

01:42:44.040 And Joe Biden was showing lots of interest in Ukraine.

01:42:48.340 And I actually negotiated with his people the dearmament, the removal of all nuclear fission materials in Ukraine as part of the World Conference that was trying to collect all the fission materials from the former Soviet republics.

01:43:14.080 And, but there was always more interest in Ukraine from some of his people, which I attributed to Hunter, although I didn't know it was actually Hunter, but some of the people who was partners of his, in doing business in Ukraine.

01:43:32.180 And I didn't do any business in Ukraine, other than politics.

01:43:37.560 I specifically didn't because Ukraine is, it's a corrupt country.

01:43:42.860 It's not one side or the other.

01:43:45.100 It's a corrupt country.

01:43:46.180 It has a Soviet mentality.

01:43:48.520 It's getting better, but it's still, it's not good.

01:43:52.500 And so I felt that if I wanted to have the influence to help bring Ukraine into the, into the West, if I wanted to do the kind of policy things that I, that got me involved in Ukraine in the first place, that I shouldn't do business, even though I could have done business.

01:44:08.040 I was about to say, it must've been tempting.

01:44:09.680 You must have the energy deals coming across your desk all the time.

01:44:12.240 Imagine the kinds of deals and, and big money, fast money.

01:44:16.220 And I said no to all of that.

01:44:18.480 And, uh, because I knew that would undercut me.

01:44:22.200 And the reason that they had trouble when they went after, when Weissman, when Mueller went after me, finding something to stick me with is because they kicked over every rock they could in Ukraine and they didn't find one single thing.

01:44:35.120 Um, and, uh, and so I thought it was untoward that Hunter's firm.

01:44:42.240 It was openly soliciting business and I was being asked, should we do this?

01:44:46.680 Should we do that?

01:44:47.200 And my, not Hunter himself, I did was, it was more than some of his associates that I, that I was hearing of.

01:44:53.580 And I told the Yannikovitch administration, I said, look, if it makes sense to use them, they're part of a group that is the democratic side.

01:45:03.120 I'm the Republican side.

01:45:05.000 It'll help your country to have relationships on both sides.

01:45:08.680 But I didn't know what they were doing.

01:45:10.280 I didn't know about the Burisma thing at the time.

01:45:12.780 I didn't know some of the other activities they were trying to undertake.

01:45:17.080 But, I mean, it seems by definition like influence peddling, right?

01:45:21.160 What they were doing.

01:45:22.880 Well, they had the power.

01:45:27.300 They were the government in the United States.

01:45:29.020 And, uh, it's one thing to do business.

01:45:34.180 It's another thing if you've, if you're related to the people with power to be doing business the way they were doing it.

01:45:40.200 Yeah.

01:45:40.360 And the Ukrainians, again, because of the corruption streak in Ukraine, were first to realize the opportunity.

01:45:49.400 Toria Newland announced in a hearing, in a Senate hearing, in response to a question from Mark Rubio a few years ago, that we had a bunch of biolabs, quote, biolabs in Ukraine.

01:46:03.740 Apparently been there a while.

01:46:05.440 Did you ever hear anything about that or know what those were?

01:46:08.040 No, I didn't know anything about that.

01:46:09.540 When you were there, when you were working for Yanukovych, um, how vigorous was U.S. government activity in Ukraine?

01:46:19.000 Like, intel agencies, military cooperation?

01:46:22.360 Well, we expanded military cooperation.

01:46:25.160 Yep.

01:46:25.440 We expanded intelligence operations.

01:46:27.960 They had, the U.S. was given a listening post in parts of Ukraine that they were never given under any previous government.

01:46:35.480 Um, the cooperation level was very high.

01:46:38.280 The moving of, allowing U.S. businesses to invest easily into Ukraine was, was wide open.

01:46:47.280 They weren't, Yanukovych had given the word, we want to make the United States a strong partner.

01:46:54.080 So why did the U.S. overthrow him and threaten his life?

01:46:57.140 Because of two things.

01:46:58.640 Number one, he was the candidate of Kuchma and the establishment in 2004 when Yushchenko won the election,

01:47:06.500 or purportedly won the election.

01:47:09.120 And then in 2011, after he was elected president, he did something which I vigorously told him he shouldn't do,

01:47:18.740 which was he arrested his opponent, the political opponent, Yulia Timoshenko, for corruption when she was prime minister,

01:47:30.920 that even Yushchenko acknowledged was corruption and thought that the indictment was appropriate of Timoshenko.

01:47:39.640 Well, Timoshenko was part of the Albright-Merkel-Clinton, you know, clique.

01:47:46.080 And they—

01:47:47.140 Because she was female?

01:47:48.520 Well, that was one way to define them.

01:47:50.460 And they took great umbrage to Yanukovych doing that, even though he made his case, you know, very factually.

01:48:03.480 Wait, so he made Hillary Clinton mad, and that's why he got overthrown?

01:48:11.880 Yeah, effectively.

01:48:12.600 Well, yes, effectively, because if he had not done that, if he had not indicted Timoshenko, I think, which would have been the right thing not to do.

01:48:22.600 He shouldn't have done it, not from a legal standpoint, but from a geopolitical standpoint.

01:48:28.360 And given the history of Yanukovych, it was better, as Trump did with Hillary Clinton, to not lock her up.

01:48:36.620 Yanukovych should have just moved on and not locked up Timoshenko.

01:48:40.520 How many foreign leaders did Hillary Clinton kill or overthrow because they annoyed her?

01:48:46.600 I don't know that. I've never tallied that up.

01:48:50.460 But you really think that that was the key mistake he made?

01:48:53.720 That's what turned the West against him.

01:48:55.740 If Timoshenko had been a man and not friends with Hillary, would it have been a different outcome?

01:49:02.480 Probably.

01:49:03.920 That's scary, what you're describing.

01:49:07.080 But—

01:49:07.800 So she's part of a girls' club, so she can't be arrested for corruption?

01:49:11.140 Well—

01:49:11.480 I mean, it wasn't defined that way.

01:49:14.880 No, but in a fact—

01:49:15.920 But the point is, ironically, Timoshenko was the Russian candidate for president against Yanukovych, which is what was the cause of the corruption.

01:49:25.820 Right.

01:49:26.100 And yet the West blamed Yanukovych and accused him of being the Russian candidate.

01:49:34.000 And so, I mean, I'm sure Putin was just laughing in the Kremlin at the Machiavellian way.

01:49:39.720 He was manipulating the West in this little game.

01:49:42.460 But that was the critical mistake Yanukovych made as president that affected a series of events that we now are still dealing with today in Ukraine.

01:49:57.400 It sounds like the U.S. government was just so way up into the internal affairs of this country.

01:50:04.520 Like, if this country had no sovereignty, it doesn't sound—

01:50:06.340 It still are.

01:50:07.680 Well, of course.

01:50:08.420 Well, now, are you worried that this war, if it continues, could lead to a global conflict or nuclear war?

01:50:15.640 No.

01:50:15.840 No.

01:50:16.040 Why?

01:50:16.320 Because I think it's going to be resolved.

01:50:18.080 I don't think anybody over there wants a global nuclear war, including Putin.

01:50:25.360 I mean, Putin right now is living a good life.

01:50:29.340 I mean, in the sense that his economy is stronger than it's ever been.

01:50:33.680 Paul Manafort, we destroyed the Russian economy with sanctions.

01:50:36.940 I don't know if you've read that.

01:50:38.140 We totally destroyed it.

01:50:38.960 Well, Trump had put the pressure on, and Biden undid it all.

01:50:43.800 And, I mean, when Trump became president, he shut down Nord Stream 2, which was the pipeline that was going to be the solution for Germany to become partners with the energy sector in Russia.

01:50:56.900 And he put sanctions on—some sanctions, economic sanctions on Putin for things that he was doing that were causing problems.

01:51:07.420 And as a result, Putin backed off of everything and was an active player, but not an aggressive player.

01:51:19.520 You know, he was a nationalist leader of Russia.

01:51:21.960 It was when Trump left office that Putin became the aggressive leader he was under Obama that led him to taking Crimea under Obama.

01:51:33.120 And with the same cast of players now in charge of U.S. foreign policy under Biden and Harris, he saw the opportunity to finish the job.

01:51:41.400 And that's what it was—and when Afghanistan happened and NATO became the crazy thing that Biden said was the basic goal for the U.S. policy for Ukraine, that was all he needed.

01:51:56.560 Those two things, the Afghanistan debacle and the NATO threat to justify going back, going to finish the job.

01:52:06.420 It was policy blunder after policy blunder with no forethought of what it might mean.

01:52:13.860 I mean, even the polls were not pressing for Ukraine to be in NATO at that time.

01:52:18.920 And they're the front line after Ukraine, you know, in dealing with Russia.

01:52:26.580 And so Biden, his administration was filled with unforced errors in foreign policy.

01:52:32.800 You know Tony Blinken. How would you describe him?

01:52:35.320 Weak. He's a staff guy.

01:52:37.360 Tony Blinken is a staff guy who, in the old, you know, organization book, The Peter Principle by Dr. Peter, you rise up to your level of incompetence.

01:52:45.300 Well, he's risen to beyond his level of incompetence, as has Jake Sullivan and several of the other people.

01:52:51.960 They seem like midgets.

01:52:53.440 Okay.

01:52:54.020 They seem like midgets.

01:52:55.040 They're staff.

01:52:55.840 They're staff who now have policymaking.

01:52:58.260 They have no creativity, no strategic thinking.

01:53:01.580 And so you get a lot of inconsistent things based on what paper crosses the desk.

01:53:07.300 And then when you have somebody like Biden, who was not in his best health during his years as president, and who, when he was in his best health, according to people like Robert Gates, never made a foreign policy decision that was right, it compounded the dangers that the Blinkens of the world could do.

01:53:26.480 And we're seeing the world as a mess because of it.

01:53:30.220 It certainly is.

01:53:32.880 Second to last question, do you hear people say that kicking Russia out of swift, the sanctions all accelerated the demise of the U.S. dollar.

01:53:43.000 Do you think that's imminent?

01:53:46.220 No.

01:53:47.200 Why?

01:53:47.800 I mean, first of all, there's no competition to the U.S. dollar.

01:53:52.800 I mean, the RMB is less than 1% of foreign trade.

01:53:55.440 You know, and they're the biggest economy in the world.

01:53:59.480 Russia's economy is not at all an impactful.

01:54:03.760 It's a third world economy.

01:54:05.380 The euro as a European currency has value.

01:54:11.480 But there are too many leaders of the European Union to ever have a consistent foreign policy, economic policy.

01:54:19.060 So there's really no competition.

01:54:20.720 Look what BRICS has been, China's been trying to do with the BRICS organization in trying to get a, some kind of digital currency that could be a replacement for the dollar in foreign exchange, in foreign trade.

01:54:33.500 It's failing miserably.

01:54:35.460 Because at the end of the day, nobody wants to hold the weak currencies in their treasury as part of the foreign trade system.

01:54:45.560 So it's never going to work.

01:54:48.300 And so, and this is what Trump is very smart on.

01:54:51.560 Trump's saying, okay, crypto world, this is the future economic policy potentially of the world.

01:54:58.580 Well, we need to have the Fort Knox of Bitcoin sitting in the United States, not in Beijing.

01:55:04.200 You know, and so what happens when Trump makes that statement on the campaign trail, where he says he's going to have a crypto foreign reserve in the United States?

01:55:16.400 Biden immediately sells off 20% of its, of the U.S.'s Bitcoin that it's holding.

01:55:22.180 And guess who buys it?

01:55:24.120 China.

01:55:24.420 It's so, but China and Biden in an attempt to distinguish himself from Trump's new economic policy for the U.S. makes China stronger in the process.

01:55:38.260 That's the kind of mentality that we deal with, you know, in this administration.

01:55:43.520 But Trump understands that having crypto regulated, having a reserve currency here, you know, will make it become a U.S.-based economic structure.

01:55:58.880 And therefore, like the dollar, can become part of the economic power of the U.S. worldwide.

01:56:05.040 So, again, Trump is seeing around the corner ahead of people's vision and has not seen, you know, the blockchain.

01:56:14.460 The blockchain is the most transparent thing you could have, you know.

01:56:18.400 So, if you're worrying about money laundering and things like that, there's so many ways to, you know, uncover money laundering in the crypto world.

01:56:26.900 It's got to be regulated so things are set up the right way.

01:56:30.280 Trump sees that.

01:56:30.960 He doesn't know what the right ways are, but he knows conceptually making the potential future economic means of world transactions a non-U.S. structure is probably not good.

01:56:48.360 No, probably not good.

01:56:49.800 Probably the end of something big.

01:56:51.740 Okay, my final question.

01:56:53.180 You've run all these campaigns your whole life.

01:56:56.240 In the final week, what are the markers, the measurements that the rest of us can look at to determine who's going to win?

01:57:05.880 Publicly available information.

01:57:07.740 Well, the problem is publicly available information may not be publicly correct by design.

01:57:14.400 So, is that true?

01:57:15.380 Okay, so let me just ask that.

01:57:16.500 To what extent are public polls manipulated to sway public opinion?

01:57:21.620 Well, it's not just public polls being manipulated.

01:57:23.980 It's how they're interpreted because what happens is people don't know how to read polls.

01:57:27.960 People know how to read two things.

01:57:29.720 Who's in first place and who's in second place?

01:57:32.240 So, in a ballot, who's winning?

01:57:34.120 That's all they know how to do.

01:57:35.300 And when you have a race that is arguably close and you have one side who may be losing having all of the means to communicate a different message,

01:57:46.960 which it's hard for American people who don't pay attention beyond what they see in morning or night at news of what it means.

01:57:55.980 I have no doubt in my mind that the media until election day will say that Harris is going to win or is leading or can win.

01:58:05.700 Is it going to win?

01:58:08.040 I think what will be signs of what's happening.

01:58:11.340 Why would they say that, do you think?

01:58:12.880 Because by defining things, they're hoping to make it correct.

01:58:18.140 Yeah.

01:58:18.940 And it affects turnout.

01:58:20.900 It affects, you know, for example, it affects motivations.

01:58:26.500 Right now, the public data shows Trump winning all seven battleground states.

01:58:32.100 That's an improvement over the last two weeks.

01:58:36.280 Everybody recognizes that the movement is towards Trump.

01:58:39.280 Yet you've got the media saying, because they need a hook, that Harris's new campaign strategy of just saying that Trump is unhinged, unstable, and unsafe is going to change the trajectory and the undecided votes are going to break for Trump.

01:58:56.300 Well, why would that happen?

01:58:58.160 There's nothing to say why it would happen other than the media is saying it's going to happen because Harris is saying it.

01:59:04.320 There is no evidence that indicates that that message is working with undecideds if you look at the data because they're saying what's important to them is their life has gotten worse.

01:59:15.520 They're not better off than four years ago.

01:59:18.740 They think Trump is better on economic policy for them personally.

01:59:22.320 They think Trump is better for them safety-wise.

01:59:24.760 They think Trump is better for them to secure the border.

01:59:29.460 And they're saying these are the most important issues, but we're going to vote against Trump because he's unsafe and unhinged.

01:59:37.260 That's a campaign message.

01:59:40.440 That's not a direction that things are going.

01:59:42.460 The media provides the campaign message for Harris now.

01:59:46.100 So that's what I mean when I say it's going to be hard to interpret unless the public polling starts to grow.

01:59:55.620 Meaning the 2% starts to be 3% and 4% for Trump in states, and the 4% has become 5% or 6%.

02:00:03.040 Now, interestingly, you didn't see any national polls this weekend.

02:00:08.060 Why?

02:00:09.580 I don't know.

02:00:10.260 Well, maybe because the last two weeks, the national polls and the state polls were all showing movement to Trump.

02:00:19.880 And so, therefore, they take a week off, and then things start to change again.

02:00:27.460 Now, if you're in the polling business, now is a weird time to take off.

02:00:31.780 There was not one national poll.

02:00:32.980 It's the Super Bowl.

02:00:34.400 I mean, I think there'll be some polls.

02:00:36.760 They're going to do polling this week.

02:00:38.340 And then if things are opening up for Trump, the way I think they will start to show, they'll have to start tempering their statements a little bit.

02:00:47.840 But you're not going to be able to tell.

02:00:50.500 Well, the race is close enough that there's not going to be, like with Reagan and Carter, there's not going to be something out there that says it's over.

02:01:01.600 We've got 1984, not 1980, when Reagan won 49 states.

02:01:06.960 So, I think what you watch for is incremental changes in the ballot.

02:01:13.340 But it'll be hard because everybody's methodology is different.

02:01:16.780 So, you'll have, you know, a race where Trump's down one point in a place and up three points in the same place in a different poll.

02:01:25.140 So, you're going to be confused.

02:01:26.700 Are there any polls that you think are consistently more accurate than others?

02:01:31.040 Ours.

02:01:31.400 But they're not public.

02:01:34.820 I think most likely what's going to be important going into the last week is the rhetoric of Harris.

02:01:48.540 If there's no discussion of economic issues, then she knows she's lost.

02:01:53.780 Because that's going to be the deciding vote of the last week.

02:01:56.440 But I think just watching the trend of some of the public polls will give you some sense of things.

02:02:04.540 Paul Manafort, I sure appreciate your taking all this time.

02:02:07.360 Thank you.

02:02:09.480 Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.

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The Tucker Carlson Show - October 23, 2024

Trump's First Campaign Manager Paul Manafort Breaks Down the Current State of the Presidential Race

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