openpolitics.com

Steve Schmidt served as a political strategist for George W. Bush and the John McCain presidential campaign. He is a political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News.

Schmidt’s candid, full interview was conducted with FRONTLINE during the making of the two-part January 2020 documentary series “America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump.”

Watch Part One here: https://youtu.be/SnMBYMOTwEs
And Part Two here: https://youtu.be/l5vyDPN19ww

 

 

50:57

And so when you see Donald Trump and you see the servility of the coequal branch of government,

51:05

the absolute unwillingness to confront him, to confront his excesses, his dishonesty, his degradations of the office,

51:14

his attacks on the institutions, is an utter, complete, total abdication of a responsibility and duty that’s historic.

51:26

… The “zero tolerance” policy, the family separation issue, you’ve written a little bit about this, I think.

51:34

What’s at stake here?

51:37

I think you sort of pointed to the fact that this was an important point to understand,

51:42

that Trump basically owned the GOP at this point.

51:45

Explain—explain what you’re thinking.

51:46

This is a question of national honor.

51:49

The United States of America should not separate mothers and children

51:55

and lock the children into cages, into detention facilities.

52:00

Should not.

52:02

And it recalls the worst excesses in American history: the separation of African American mothers and children

52:11

during slavery; the separation of mothers and children who were Native Americans.

52:20

We have had great injustice in the country,

52:26

but the greatness of the country is the ability to make great progress combating it.

52:31

It’s wrong.

52:32

When you see a government official with an American flag on their shoulder committing that act, it’s disgraceful,

52:45

it’s dishonorable, it’s cruel, and it’s inhumane.

52:51

But we have become desensitized in this era of Trump to cruelty, to inhumanity, to indecency, to dishonesty,

53:03

to all of our great detriment.

53:06

Why did you leave the party?

53:08

Because the Republican Party—well, I’ll say this.

53:14

I think the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are both broken institutions, the Republican Party more so.

53:24

But while broken, they also are two of the most important institutions in world history

53:32

for the advancement of human dignity and freedom despite all of their flaws.

53:38

For me, I could no longer be a member of a political party that was so corrupted by Donald Trump

53:47

that he consumed lock, stock and barrel, and the leadership of the political party fundamentally capitulated to him.

53:59

The Republican Party’s not a conservative party anymore.

54:02

It’s a party that’s populist, that’s nonsensical at times, that’s illiberal a lot of the time.

54:12

And all of the things that I’ve believed in and have steadily believed in, I still believe in,

54:20

but that institution is no longer the vessel for them.

54:25

… The 2018 midterm elections.

54:28

So Trump uses the [Brett] Kavanaugh story and immigration as a way to excite the voters.

54:37

The media, Fox, stokes it, supports it totally.

54:46

There are a lot of lies that are told about exactly what’s going on.

54:50

What’s—what’s the result?

54:53

As a man who believes in the system and in politics and the way it needs to—how campaigns are run,

55:01

what was your view of what was taking place?

55:04

Well, there was only one issue in the 2018 election.

55:07

It wasn’t immigration; it wasn’t Brett Kavanaugh.

55:10

It was Donald Trump.

55:11

And the question before the nation in 2018 was, are we going to put a check on Donald Trump and the party of Trump?

55:19

And the answer to that question was a decisive yes.

55:23

And part of that decisive yes were millions and millions of Republican voters

55:28

who voted Democratic for the first time in their lives.

55:31

Right.

55:32

This election was also fascinating in the Democratic Party because there was a split within the Democratic Party as well.

55:37

And you’ve got progressives like AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and others who are—

55:44

who rise up and are elected and become very important voices and define the divide within the Democratic Party.

55:52

What’s going on within the Democratic Party, and in the end, how does it—how does it play out from your perspective?

56:00

Well, you’re seeing a rising extreme in the Democratic Party that is the mirror opposite

56:10

And I think Democrats make a big mistake if they answer Trumpism with dishonest progressivism.

56:16

If you go out and say that we’re going to give everybody free health care, free education;

56:22

give everybody reparations; … we can go and spend hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars—this is all fantasy.

56:30

And in a political contest dominated by dishonesty and fantasy—

56:35

and I would suggest that competing against Donald Trump is the equivalent of running a foot race against Usain Bolt.

56:42

Not going to win a dishonesty contest with Donald Trump.

56:45

And so in this moment, what Democrats, in my view, should be focused on is the assemblage of a grand coalition

56:55

that is fidelitous to small “L” liberalism, to our democratic values,

57:01

that Americans of all different types of political persuasion can come into and feel at home in.

57:09

The progressive agenda represented by AOC, a, won’t pass; b, doesn’t have a national constituency;

57:21

and c, could well be the reason that we see a second term for President Donald Trump.

57:27

You think that’s a real possibility?

57:29

Sure do.

57:29

Trump’s rhetoric has been blamed for rising tensions, white supremacists sort of being more blatant in their demands

57:41

and their marches and such, and it is tied directly to the El Paso massacre.

57:47

What is your overview on the power of rhetoric and the repetition of that rhetoric, especially if it’s based on falsities?

57:58

Well, Trump has debased his office; he’s debased the culture; he’s debased our political conversation,

58:06

and he’s done it thousands and thousands and thousands of times over the last three years.

58:11

He’s a racist; he’s a race baiter; he has worsened racial divisions in this country.

58:18

He has energized the white supremacist movement in the country,

58:22

and we know that’s true because the white supremacists thank him openly for doing so.

58:29

Now, we see a president who divides, who stokes, who incites, who appeals in almost every instance

58:40

not to the better angels but to the worst impulses,

58:43

the worst instincts and the basest, darkest aspects of American history and American life.

58:51

And what does this mean long term for your GOP, your party that you used to belong to?

58:58

Well, the Republican Party will be completely transformed, probably fatally, by its contact with Donald Trump.

59:08

And that may play out over five years, over 10 years.

59:13

But when you look at the demographics in the country, there will always be a market for a conservative message.

59:21

But Trumpism is cancerous, and everything it touches will ultimately be consumed by it.

59:30

But far more important than the effect of the Republican Party is the effect on the country.

59:38

It weakens American democracy.

59:42

And I think it’s also important to understand that the Democratic Party will not remain untouched by Trumpism also.

59:52

How so?

59:53

Well, if crudity, if meanness, if vulgarity, if inhumanity become mainstreamed,

60:02

if the lesson of this generation of progressive politicians is to be like Trump but with different policies,

60:11

then the Democratic Party will be consumed by it as the Republican Party has.

60:16

The—both sides coming up to the upcoming elections warn about apocalypse.

60:26

The consequences if the other side wins are just unfathomable.

60:32

Is this the new norm?

60:35

Each election has always been the most important election in American history,

60:41

and the men and women running for president have always made it clear that their candidacy represents

60:48

the decisive moment and the last chance to avoid the apocalypse.

60:56

It may be true in this election.

60:58

This country will be changed in ways that will be difficult to unmake if Donald Trump gets a second term. …

61:10

Donald Trump is cruel, vile; he’s debased his office; he’s incompetent.

61:17

But it’s a mistake to dismiss him as inconsequential.

61:21

We are at the end of the long life spans of the people who stormed the beaches in Normandy,

61:28

who survived the death camps.

61:30

And what Franklin Roosevelt’s goal when he envisioned the world that we live in today,

61:35

when he architected the post-World War II U.S.-led liberal global order that was maintained

61:43

from President Truman through President Obama, his aspiration wasn’t that it would endure forever.

61:51

What he said is he wanted it to endure so long as every person

61:57

who was living in the country during the war was alive on the earth.

62:04

We’re at the end of that era.

62:06

And we see Donald Trump unraveling that U.S.-led liberal global order.

62:13

We see a regression of democracy all over the world.

62:17

We have an illiberal president who assaults our institutions, our values, our democracy, who debases our culture.

62:29

Another term for Donald Trump will validate his election; it will validate his behavior.

62:36

He will be unchecked, and the damage will be much, much harder to undo if it can ever be undone.

62:44

So we’ve talked about two presidents that were change candidates,

62:51

that the public turned to because they were so angry with the status quo in Washington and in the country.

62:59

What did we learn from that, and where do we go from here?

63:07

Another change candidate but in another direction?

63:12

I mean, as [David] Axelrod says, you always go to the opposite on the next election

63:19

because the people are tired of what the last guy did.

63:22

What’s your take on American politics and where we go from here?

63:29

The Democratic Party’s obligation in this election is to produce a political leader who can defeat Donald Trump

63:40

and to defeat Trumpism, not to defeat Trump by being a mirror of Trump, but to assemble a coalition

63:49

that can inspire the nation to move past this depraved era

63:54

and to face the challenges that the country has to face full-on, head-on.

64:00

And so when we look at the Democratic Party right now, it’s no accident that Trump is labeling Democrats,

64:07

and some of those Democratic politicians are making it easy for them when he calls them socialists,

64:12

because Trump understands this: In America, the socialist loses to a sociopath in every election,

64:21

every day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

64:25

I just have one question about Trump’s use of social media.

64:30

Some have said he’s the first politician to ever do that,

64:34

but it seems that Sarah Palin was really pretty instrumental in using Facebook as a way to reach her audience.

64:39

Can you just connect those two ideas?

64:42

Well, I don’t—look, I don’t think they’re analogous.

64:51

IPhones were invented in 2007, so the ubiquity of social media, the portability of social media, the instant nature

65:03

of social media is something that didn’t exist in 2008 but certainly does now, and he uses it to great effect.

65:12

… One other small thing is the use of divisive issues that he—that he falls back on, like the NFL.

65:24

How powerful is that, and why does he do it?

65:30

Well, Trump understands—Trump understands the power of symbols,

65:38

and he understands the emotional resonance of those symbols to millions and millions of Americans.

65:46

And so he is a—he is a very talented demagogue.

65:55

He is a very skilled liar.

65:59

He is an excellent communicator, and he speaks in a language that people can relate to and that people can understand.

66:10

That’s an important thing for his political opponents to understand also.

66:14

And this immigration issue, which is so central to—I mean, does it remain central in the upcoming elections?

66:22

I mean, why?

66:24

Does the potency wear off at some point?

66:28

Well, what you’re seeing now is a reciprocal extremism from a lot of the Democrats.

66:34

Now you watch the Democratic debates, it’s fair to ask, well, do you believe there should be a border at all?

66:41

And so most Americans, overwhelmingly, Republicans and Democrats, believe yes, there ought to be a sovereign border.

66:50

We should know who’s in the country.

66:52

And so there’s no constituency for the most extreme positions that you’re seeing on the Democratic side.

66:59

Trump understands that.

67:01

And so we have an immigration debate that’s not just venal; it’s completely detached from reality.

67:08

When the debate is we’re talking about Mexican-built walls,

67:12

we are sending military to the border in publicity-stunt exercises as if there was a Panzer division

67:20

about to break through the southern border en route to Washington.

67:24

It’s a theater of the absurd playing out as opposed to an issue that needs to be reckoned with

67:31

and dealt with in a humane, responsible and commonsensical way.