Zero Tolerance: Steven Bannon Interview | FRONTLINE

…But now let's get to you, Breitbart, coming here, leaving—from Los Angeles, coming to Washington with what kind of plan, what kind of idea. What was Breitbart in Los Angeles and what has Breitbart become in Washington? Andrew was, had been Matt Drudge's editor. He had been one of the launching editors of Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post. He always had a vision of what a news site could be. At that time he was a blog, right? People published things that were citizen journalists. Andrew had a great vision for what a real news site could be. We were the Tea Party blog.

This Tea Party energy, you know, right after the financial collapse, in the spring of the following year, in fact, Rick Santelli had this rant, this very famous rant, that took place when TARP was first being talked about. And he basically said, "Hey, the whole working class is paying for this, right?" That rant started this group of disparate people to have a meeting and basically get people out on April 15, Tax Day, April 15, 2009. That was the beginning of the Tea Party. And Andrew saw very quickly, as I saw, that there was real populist power in this; that this was something totally different.

This wasn't... this wasn't the standard Republican Party. This was a completely new deal. And so we started covering that, and Breitbart became the blog for that. Andrew wanted to make a news site. We were able to raise some money. And in 2011 we closed the money and decided that the center of gravity of our political coverage had to be in Washington, D.C. And we rented this house right behind the Supreme Court and we called it the “Breitbart Embassy.” .” And the reason was that we were an embassy in a foreign capital, right, because everyone told us... I mean, we were lectured by some guys who told us: “You're not going to have any access.

You’re going to have to play to get access.” And we said, “Hey, we're just going to break down doors. How about this? We will be totally different.” And so we called this place Embassy for the simple reason that, you know, we thought we were in an embassy in a foreign capital; that this was owned and run by the permanent political class. And so a handful of people, like Peter Schweizer and others, Matt Boyle and Andrew, started this news site. Unfortunately, Andrew tragically died four days before the site launched. He worked 20 hours a day to build the site, to perfect it.

He had them: he was a visionary when it came to new media and how people accessed information. And the whole site you see today was really his creation. He created every component, including how the news...flowed through the system, how we promoted things, etc. And that was a little loud, and remember, one thing, one decision that we made very fundamentally, and I kind of was I think it had a big influence on Andrew on this. I said, look, attacking Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, we're a long way from having any influence on that. Because at that time we were a very small place.

I said, we're the populist, you know, kind of economic nationalism part of this. We attack the real enemy. And the real enemy is the Republican establishment. What we're going to do is just go after the House leaders. We're going after the Mitch McConnells; We're going after the donors. We're just going to put a lot of effort into this kind of Paul Ryan philosophy. Why did you think Boehner and Cantor were vulnerable? Because they were vulnerable, due to the enormous disconnection. Remember, the only thing Democrats have aligned is that, in reality, at least until recently, donors and their base are aligned.

The Republican Party is totally dysfunctional. It is essentially a party of the working class. All the votes come predominantly from working class or lower middle class people, right? And it does not represent your interests. There's a book written by a guy called What's the Problem with Kansas?, where he explains how the donor class, the Singers and the Kochs, these kind of libertarians, have this completely different concept, this kind of Austrian school. of the concept of economics, that the political apparatchiks (remember, the consulting class, the political class around them and the donors) align perfectly. Unfortunately, we have a working class party that, for example, trades.

You know, mass illegal immigration, which the chamber of commerce pushes all the time, and increased legal immigration and trade are just two sides of the same coin, right? Two sides of the same coin: the suppression of workers' salaries, okay? Massive illegal immigration is going to flood the area against the predominantly black and Hispanic working class so that you have an unlimited, you know, unlimited pool of labor and you can keep wages low for higher margins. Immigration and H-1B visas are the same in the technology area, it is not necessary to hire US citizens; I can do it with these visas to increase margins.

Trading is the same. Trade is simply competing unfairly against foreign labor and foreign countries. And then all this is to suppress workers' salaries and have higher margins; hence higher stock prices; therefore, more wealth, of which the workers possess nothing. And so our thesis was not only the cultural issue but also the economic issue. You have the ability to reform this Republican Party and turn it into a true populist entity. But they weren't going to let that happen. They were going to resist that in almost... They did and we defeated them. We took down Cantor. Remember, we defeated Cantor with Dave Brat.

The first time in the history of the republic that a sitting majority leader had been defeated. Remember, he was defeated in a primary that... Cantor was here in D.C. the day of the primary and he was dragged there the last night. Fox News, when they came on last night, didn't even know Dave Brat's name. This was a mystery. And we had worked on it with Laura Ingraham. I mean, we had been... Breitbart had been in all of this. I think we had Dave Brat on our radio show every week for 10 weeks leading up to the election.

We saw real vulnerability. Did you know he was coming? You definitely knew he was coming. That was... it also happened to be my home district, but I could feel it. I knew that a guy like Brat... they were very weak; They were very weak. They didn't understand it and this Tea Party revolt was getting worse. You had the great Tea Party revolt in 2010, in which we won 62 seats. The Republican Party didn't see it coming. All of that was grassroots oriented, which developed over time. Remember, today, the year 2000; actually, Obama's election in 2008, and particularly the 2010 primary, I think changed American politics quite fundamentally, because the concept became mobilization versus persuasion.

I don't think we live in an age of persuasion anymore. People are so saturated with this all day that they know where it comes from. You just have to motivate them to go out and vote. You have to motivate them to go door to door. So the 2008 Obama primary that took Clinton completely by surprise was all about mobilization. The Tea Party of 2010, particularly the House part, which was absolutely, you know, the largest in history, I think, since the Great Depression of 1932, was all about mobilization. That's why Romney wanted nothing to do with it in 2012, right? He washed his hands.

And that is why in this same room, in January 2013, they had this enormous controversy between the Republican Party that did the “autopsy.” They said, “Oh, the reason Romney lost was because we didn't reach out to the Hispanic community; We don't talk about DACA; “We are not talking about open borders or immigration policy.” And a young man named Stephen Miller, who is on staff, had been with Michele Bachmann in the Tea Party uprising, with whom we were very close. Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions and I had dinner in this same room basically the same week that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes had dinner with Schumer and Rubio in New York to talk about the Gang of Eight bill.

And we just went down and looked at this. There was a lawyer from Hunton & Williams in Richmond who wrote a three-part article, I think it was, for RealClearPolitics. His name is Sean Trende. He looked at the same analysis from 2012, recalling that all donors thought Romney was going to win in a landslide. He saw the same thing and said, “The Republican Party's inability to connect with working-class voters is the biggest reason they're not winning.” And that's where Sessions and I talk: We're going to trade from number 100, right? It is not a problem. The entire Republican Party has this fetish for free trade (they're like automatons: “Oh, free trade, free trade, free trade”), which is a radical idea, particularly when you're against a mercantilist opponent like China.

So we're going to make the change from number 100 to number two, and we're going to take immigration number three to number one. Topics one and two will be immigration and trade. And that will be focused on the workers, right? And we're going to remake the Republican Party. In fact, I... Wait a minute. It's like the result of the anti-autopsy. 180%. Autopsy, and I later told Reince, to his face, that it was a total joke and another donor-driven lie, okay? No statistics about the 2016 victory prove it. And by the way, all the guys in the verticals, the Jeb Bushes and the Marco Rubios and all these other guys, Chris Christie, all the geniuses and their staff, they all agreed to the autopsy, remember.

They thought we were crazy. You know, we had Palin in 2008 and we were hoping she would run in 2012, and she just... she... it just didn't work out. I actually worked with Lou Dobbs and tried to get Lou Dobbs to run in 2012 as a populist, because on his TV show it was Lou Dobbs' economic ideas all the time, particularly on China and immigration and trade, and Lou Dobbs, for many reasons, I did not. And here I tried to convince Sessions to do it. I told Sessions, just as I told Palin: “You are not going to be president of the United States.

But remember, if we win the primaries (and you will win the primaries), you will control the Republican apparatus; you take charge of the RNC for the entire next cycle. You can turn the RNC; The Republican Party can be turned into a workers' party. The objective is to take control of the match. You're not going to win the presidency against this. “That will take time.” And Sessions says (I remember, she said) it was about five hours. We went down to the front steps and he said, he turns to me and says, “It's not me; “I'm not going to do it,” he says. “But our boy will come.

We will find our boy.” And that guy, a couple of years later, turned out to be Donald Trump. … Trump appears, and really the key moment is going down the escalator. When Trump was at the top of the escalator, if you look at the polls, I think Trump was in seventh place, right? At the bottom of the escalator, in speech, and particularly when the media bites, and I'm sitting there watching. We have five people in Trump Tower. We have Boyle leading a full team. We have wall to wall coverage. … And in the speech, when he starts talking not only about the immigration and trade part, which no one has ever talked about, but when he starts doing exaggerated things, and I say: “Look.

They are going to bite hard. And they are going to bite hard and blow this thing up.” I'm sitting there watching this on TV. When he starts talking about Mexican rapists and all that, I'm like, "Oh my God." I said, “This is…” I said, “He just got buried, they're going to go crazy. CNN will literally broadcast 24 hours a day.” I think he's going to Iowa that night. That's all they talk about. He goes from number seven. He's in one and never looks back. In the polls the next day, Trump trailed by one. In fact, I think the next day or so, Don Lemon invites him to the most classic Trump

interview

in the history of mankind.

Lemon is sitting there hitting him: “You have to show us some facts. You have to show us some facts.” And Trump says: it's television, it's a telephone

interview

. Trump says: “Don! Don! “Someone is raping,” right? But it was the mainstream media that catapulted Trump from (because remember, when people) were at the top of the escalator, no one still thought, even though he had filed his financial report, right, that in retrospect, You know, it's the financial report. , but no one thought: they thought it was a marketing ploy to get a better deal on The Apprentice, etc. The mainstream media catapulted it to number one.

And then it was within 30 days that we had Fox News, the first one, on August 1, I think it was, it was the... it was the debate when Fox News, when Murdoch and Ailes, particularly Murdoch and Ailes, being part of the Bush apparatus, they decided that they were going to knee Donald Trump from the first moment. And that's what Megyn Kelly: they checked his Twitter account; they reviewed all the tapes of The Apprentice; They went through everything and came outThey made a blow like the left would against someone. And that's when the whole war broke out. That's when Breitbart... that's when we had to choose sides.

Who is in the war? The war was Fox and all the conservative media: National Review, Weekly Standard. The Republican... is basically a scandal. It's a scandal, because people are here. Voters are focused on illegal immigration, trade deals, jobs, you know, why income inequality, where's my pay rise, basic issues that people: the sovereignty of the country. The National Review, Weekly Standard and the neoliberal neoconservatives are at the beck and call of donors. It's a total disconnect. The Texas attorney general took the lead, wrote a very powerful letter and really put the attorney general on notice. Jeff Sessions, obviously a hardliner on immigration, gave his speech, which I think was pretty pivotal at the time, in the fall of 2017.

And I think this is one of the benefits of the Trump presidency, is that it brought ...you know, all of this had gone in different directions, and things never came to a conclusion, or at least got to the place where it could be determined, some determination made. I think that was... I thought that was very helpful and, frankly, that's what we intended to have done from the beginning. …So let me now move on to January 9th and 11th. It's 2018. This is the White House meeting where there is a bipartisan group that came from Capitol Hill and is now meeting in the Cabinet Room.

It is being broadcast on CNN. I'm curious where he stands right now, because it looks like at that meeting the president is about to agree to make a clean deal on the DREAM Act or DACA. Kevin McCarthy has to make me back off, right? Correct. So there's that. And then one day comes. And on the 11th, the president calls Durbin and Graham from the Capitol. They are on their way to the White House because they want to sign something; That's what he told them. They get there and there's a group of hardliners. Representative Goodlatte is there;

Senator Cotton is there. Help me understand what has changed, what has happened in these two days. Yes. Well, once again, I think that's... it shows that... how the president is trying to think about this. Remember, Durbin and Graham don't just show up in January 2018 in the Roosevelt Room. It's the spring of 2017. One of the reasons Kobach comes into the picture and we started talking to the attorneys general is that there is a big movement behind the scenes in the spring of 2017, led by Durbin and Graham and certain elements, certain more progressive elements in the White House, in fact, this is where General Kelly essentially jumped in a hearing and said, "Hey, you know, with respect to this DACA issue, we're way off track," and Kelly didn't. knows absolutely nothing about it.

General Kelly is so upset that he says, hey, he informs the chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and others, right, maybe some of the progressive elements working with Durbin and Graham: “This can't happen again. If you're going to start talking about DACA, you know, this is my area; This is on my vertical; I have to be aware.” So the Durbin-Graham affair is almost from the beginning of the administration. You have this, you know, and I wouldn't do it: It was a kind of moderate element of the Republican Party, the apparatus of the Republican establishment that, to me, has very open borders, almost ideologically linked to the left in a large sector. to the point of giving some light-hearted talk about border security.

But they are very inclined to agree. And I think in January you'll start to see this play out. Kelly gets involved. There is going to be this decrease in DACA. That's what comes out of this. But those two elements... and this is the interesting thing. You call Goodlatte and Cotton, or Goodlatte in particular, hardliners; From the perspective of hardliners, they are, you know, moderates. But those are the voices you are hearing. And President Trump is... he... it's a Socratic process, you know. He's thinking about this as he goes. Remember, particularly with DACA, where he's very tough on the wall, he's very tough on asylum, you know, a lot of these things, like birthright citizenship today, about the ability to get welfare right away, public services, you You know, President Trump is extremely... he has... his default position is tough.

As for DACA, that's where I would say he's ambivalent and looking for an answer that he believes is right, a solution that suits Donald Trump. And I have always respected him. And I was very open about, hey, here it is... and I've always said that, and one of the reasons I seem to take, you know, sometimes extreme positions on issues, is that that's how you can reach a compromise. If you take these extreme issues and positions and clearly identify what they are and the trade-offs, that allows people space to have internal discussion and debate. But I think January 18th will be remembered as that... and it's one of the reasons I think things have dragged on to this day.

I think progressive groups went to court right after that and we still don't have clarity on DACA. But thinking about the early immigration work that you, Sessions and Miller were involved in and that you know so well, when you're watching the meeting on the 9th, are you worried? Re scared? No, I'm not freaking out, but it's... it's part of the process. You just have to... you just have to... you just have to... you just have to work the program. Someone has to get in there, you know? We have to catch Stephen. These things are going to happen.

They also occur in other topics. It's happened, it happens in national security, when people wanted to take kinetic military action and other people who are more inclined to wage economic war, this is the way, you know, this is what happens with Trump, and it's because That's what I think is a stabilizing force: you analyze all the options and you will choose the option that you think is best and one that perhaps has been better argued and has the most support. And on DACA, yes, am I worried? You're always worried, especially when you hear that, "Hey, I want to sign; guys are coming because I want to sign something." So yes, you have to be worried.

But at that point, particularly with Stephen in the White House, and Sessions still around (and even Kelly, who was never a hard-line DACA supporter), I knew there were reasonable voices around me, and I knew everything would work out. . Let me ask you about “

zero

tolerance

.” So we jump now to May. The importance of the announcement to you, to Miller, to Sessions, the message he's sending to the base, but I'm also interested in knowing when the president backs down, what is he thinking? What are you looking at and seeing? One of my concerns with this is that I think

zero

tolerance

is the most humane thing to do, because I think it stops... if you're trying to stop the cartels from this human trafficking, you should end... you know, a safe third country.

You should have ended up, you know, trying to stop trafficking, human trafficking. Zero tolerance, for me, is the policy to do it. What worries me is that this requires a major messaging operation. It needs to be explained: the American people are somewhat removed from the details of what is happening on the southern border. I think they are particularly indifferent to the reality of what is happening in Central America. They are indifferent to, you know, this cauldron, right, that is on the southern border, particularly how it has not only been militarized, particularly in northern Mexico and the cartel wars of the Mexican authorities against the cartels, but also how The cartels are victorious.

You know, in many ways, northern Mexico and even some of the southern United States along the border, as people there will tell you, are like Afghanistan in the sense that it's a real war and an insurgency. So my concern at the time is that, you know, not only had people not thought three moves down, but maybe the message isn't good enough and the battlefield isn't prepared enough to... It just fell. And understanding President Trump, President Trump will always respond to what he sees in the media and what... is a type of marketing. He's going to—he's going to respond.

And if this isn't shipped correctly and people don't understand what you're trying to accomplish, then I think you can get some negative reactions. And in fact, that's what happened. And I think this is due to the fact that not only the White House communications department, but also Stephen, Attorney General Sessions and a broader group, they really had to think three or four moves down to serve the people. American and to make sure that they are doing the right thing in the face of this biblical tragedy that is looming from Central America and now on the southern border of the United States.

But ultimately the president feels the deployment and type of public criticism is confusing; It is fierce; It's quite aggressive. And he has to retire. What are you...what are you feeling at that moment? That, look, is ultimately the correct policy; that you're going to have to do something, and I think that something is now going to galvanize what the real problems are. One is the Mexican government. Think about where we've come in that period of time, since the president reversed himself. I think we now have a third-party agreement with Guatemala, which the Northern Triangle should have.

You are well on your way to having one with Mexico, even though you are not there. We have this, you know, they will: Asylum seekers will stay in Mexico, the “Remain in Mexico” program that I know the courts are involved with. We'll have to see how that plays out. The Mexican government has also brought Mexican marines to the northern border, which has resulted in a fairly dramatic decrease in asylum seekers. We've seen a pretty dramatic decline here recently, compared to other comparable time periods. So I wasn't excited at the time. And the reason I wasn't thrilled is that I think zero tolerance is the right policy, right?

You cannot simply have open and unlimited economic migration. You have to get people through the ports of entry. You have to stick to the political system, you know, the political asylum system. And so I thought at that moment that it had been mishandled. And it wasn't Trump's fault. It was the people around him who had very good intentions, they understood the politics, but perhaps they didn't understand the dynamics of what was going to happen, not only from the means but from the execution. Let me ask you about the midterms and caravans that are covered around this time.

My understanding is that Miller is really keeping a close eye on that and providing that information to the president. Can you take us there for a while? Well, you know, the caravans started arriving from Central America. And look, I thought some things were overrated, you know, Soros is behind this or who's behind this. Look, what is happening in Central America, okay, with those economies in those countries is a tragedy of biblical proportions. Nobody blames the people of Central America. I mean, it's a horrible situation. But the solution to this, just as in Europe, the solution to North Africa is not in southern Italy.

The solution to the problems, to the economic problems of Central America, is not on the southern border of the United States. It's not in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or California, you know; That, we have to find a solution there. And I think the caravans obviously became quite dramatic, particularly some of the media coverage. President Trump got involved. I think the 2018 midterms were totally mismanaged by the Republican Party because they didn't turn it into a full referendum. I think we would have held the House if we had the ground game that came out and turned this into a referendum on Trump's presidency.

I was advocating from the beginning, I got on Fox, I was on a lot of news shows, I toured the country with a movie called Trump at War, in those battleground districts; we more or less knew the 25 or 30 that were going to be in play—and he defended Trump's general policies, not just focusing on immigration, but doing so on China, the economy and immigration, particularly is what he is trying to achieve. I think that part of the caravan was overdramatized. And I also don't think we did a particularly good job of empathizing with the people who came up.

Look, I'm as tough as possible on immigration, and that's protecting the sovereignty of this country, having the rule of law, and particularly protecting, because I'm a populist, protecting workers. Hispanics and African Americans of social class in these border communities and low-skilled workers. The solution cannot be on your back, and that is where it will always be unless we solve this. And that's why I think there are solutions to solve it. I think the first is to end the cartels. That is where you have to have a zero tolerance policy. But I do think he got too involved, and what we can't do is demonize the people themselves, right?

They are in horrible situations in these countries. We understand, but we cannotget into the business of economic migrants, and that is why I think we have to have a greater commitment in Central America to help solve this problem. And the solution to these problems, for me, is on the southern border of Mexico and in the countries of the Central American Triangle. Let me ask you a little bit about this, we skipped it, but, you know, at a certain point you go away and I wonder about that immigration mission. Does that go with you? Do you... you know, do you find that there's more you can do outside?

As President Trump says, I am his best student. So he - look, these are central themes with Trump from the beginning. That's why he ran for president. People forget it. Look, this guy is 70 years old. He is a billionaire. He has a big family. He is buying championship golf courses around the world. I mean, this is... you know, this is not just a life well lived; This is how you live your best life at the end of your career. Now, for him to walk into this cauldron and literally have his face ripped off every day, it's true: he felt it was a calling and a duty.

A big part of that is this whole situation with mass illegal immigration. It was one of the cornerstones of the campaign, all immigration, all immigration, both massive illegal and legal immigration issues. So no, this was essential. I—look, I think when I left, and I went outside because I thought I had more—I took a year out of my life from basically August 14th to go on the campaign trail until August 14th in the administration. I'm not a staff member and I felt like I would have a lot more impact, and I think I've had more of an impact.

I mean, one of the things we're doing is we have this group that is actually building a physical wall on the southern border. Now we are expanding President Trump's program. He and the Army Corps of Engineers are building large swaths of wall, which is necessary, but there are those niches in the mountains, in the deserts, that the Army Corps can't reach or they missed and that are necessary to build. And that is why I feel that I have been more active on the issue of immigration abroad. Now, I admit that you probably lost a little bit of the sting that I can bring to the conversations, maybe to some of the debates that happen internally.

But you have someone who is still there; I mean, Stephen is. And Jeff Sessions was for a long time. Remember all the problems that President Trump had, he and Sessions, over collusion and that part of the Department of Justice. If you look at someone who is actually implementing the Trump program, Stephen Miller's internal task force, okay, who really got under the hood, inside the federal government, into the apparatus. And that's why Stephen has retreated from the public eye, because he's actually running something that's pretty important to getting things done. Jeff Sessions did the same. I mean, when it comes to Trump's agenda on immigration, he would never have had a better attorney general than he had with Jeff Sessions.

I mean, those two, from the dinner we had, those two who stayed behind, at least for a while, really began to execute the president's plan. And that's why I think we've made such enormous progress. I mean, we've made great strides on this whole immigration issue in recent years, many of them unannounced. And that's because of Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions and the people at the work level who have made this work. Yes. And the legacy that Sessions leaves in Justice, for example. I mean, the amount of work he was doing there from day one is extraordinary. Yes, I think you would say that immigration was the central organizing factor in the Department of Justice to bring everything together and help execute the president's plan, I think it has been extraordinary.

And help me a little with that detail of what Stephen Miller is doing now when he leaves the public eye. I mean, we tried to get some interviews with him for this project and it didn't happen. But—but what is the mission? He still represents what you set out to do. Well, I think he's nailing it. I think if you see... I think if you see what's going on, all the work that's being done, you know, and now you see it popping up from time to time in the public sphere, all of that work comes out of the task force. by Stephen Miller.

I mean, Stephen is a very detailed political guy. You know, we hired him on the campaign as a speechwriter. You know, the speechwriter is like his third position. Really...he was a political guy. And that's how he really - and immigration policy has been his thing for many, many, many years. You know, it's... you know, on Capitol Hill, even before he worked for Sessions. So he... and I think this task force that he has has been very effective. It's been methodical and also gone unnoticed, which I think has also been very helpful. Help me understand what you have accomplished in this moment.

Well, I think if you start, look, first of all, we've now put border security at the forefront, and where he's building the wall, there will be 500, what, 500 miles of replacement wall alone. And remember, replacement wall, they made fun of Trump and said, "Oh, you're just replacing." Remember, the wall that was originally there, the Normandy barriers and others, were in the areas of highest crossing volume. That's why it's very important to replace the wall and I think they're actually pretty smart about doing it. Then you have this whole new wall. I mean, in the Trump administration, much of the wall will be built, plus the Border Patrol will have a greater awareness of border security.

Also with ICE there has really been real execution on the issue of internal law enforcement. And I realize that's been controversial and, of course, Democrats want to do away with ICE, they want to do away with Border Patrol, but he's done a real job... he's done an effective job. I don't think they have reached employees (employers, sorry) as they should. But I think they have done a very effective job. I think it's also started to bring up the whole of this controversy over economic asylum, which really wasn't addressed during the Obama administration. Remember, they say kids in cages and all that;

That all started under Obama in 2014. It was Breitbart, because the Border Patrol came to us with the photographs. It was Breitbart who broke all those stories about kids being caged in the Obama administration. We broke it, and then, you know, CNN, Huffington Post, and the BBC rushed to do it right away. And this has been going on for a while, and I think we're now seeing some resolution. The whole achievement of the safe third, of actually getting an asylum system that works, that works for both asylum seekers and the people of the United States. I think that's why President Trump: we now got 29% of the Hispanic vote.

I think that President Trump, because of the economic policies and their implementation, will get, I think, 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2020 thanks to these policies. So I think if you look, we now have a couple of very innovative programs on legal immigration. I don't think they're uncompromising enough, but we're starting to see that debate and discussion with Tom Cotton and other people introducing bills. So now we really have an engaged policy and debate. And I don't... you know, you have Durbin, you have people on the left, they have an opinion. And look, they also have political power.

But now we are really immersed in a debate. For years and years and years and years and years we just let this thing go, and you go down, everyone who watches the show should go down to the border. They should go to El Paso, they should go to the Rio Grande Valley and they should go to some of these border towns as Americans and talk to the people in these border towns, right? And now all the towns in the country are becoming border cities due to the influence of cartels, drugs and human trafficking. But for many years we let this drift.

And this is what I really admire about Trump, whether it's China, the Middle East, or immigration, he's not going to let these issues slide by. He is a business man. Entrepreneurs are interested in offering solutions. He is not a politician. All politicians talk and will let things happen. Right now we're really engaged as a nation, and I think in 2020 it will even be a centerpiece in the national debate, as it should be. You know, I think... look, we're going to... we're going to win something, we're going to lose something. You know, we lost in 2018. We won in 2016.

That's what a democracy is about, but at least now it's a fully engaged debate about what the issues are and what's at stake and, frankly, what direction we want it to go. the country. How important is immigration for the year 2020? I think it'll be like 2013, going back to that dinner, where he said, "Hey, trade is number 100 and immigration is number three." I think 2020 will be determined by two things: China and trade, actually the economic war in China, which brings many elements of Iran, Saudi Arabia and all that into one; and then immigration. And it's really about globalization versus nation-state.

They both boil down to: what is a nation? What is the sovereignty of the nation? What does it mean to be a citizen? What kind of treatment should you have if you are a citizen? For me, this will be the real debate about 2020. I think it's a great debate. And I think I know that people have very different opinions on this. That's what a democracy is about. And I think Trump is the perfect candidate for us to bring up the issue. And I think you'll see it on the Democratic side, when they select someone who goes through their primary, you'll see...

I think they'll become a little more radicalized; I think you already see this. But I think it's a great debate. And for me, those two will be the central elements that define the 2020 campaign. The latest on immigration is that this movie begins with the embassy meeting. Now we're seven years later, but, you know, the moment you look back and think about everything you set out to do in that meeting, everything you dreamed of doing, what did you accomplish? How... If we had sat there that night, because the dinner lasted five hours or more, if we had said that night that in the fall of 2019 we would have done this, these two These issues are the centerpiece of the policy American and, frankly, changed American policy; remember, current American politics, what is to come, there will either be populist nationalism or there will be populist socialism.

But the populist movement... Well, I think it's great, right? Even on the left, I'd rather have a populist than these elites on both sides running things, which is populism. And at that time it was a word that no one knew. You know, "nationalism" was like that horrible word, right? Defend the nation-state. If we had said at that dinner, “Oh, you know what? In seven or eight years, this will be the definition: this will be the nomenclature that people will use and, in fact, trade will be number one, probably over China, and immigration will be number two, but both are inextricably linked, because they are , you already know. "It's two sides of the same coin," that we would have that, and that, and that, you know, networks like PBS would be doing specials to talk about this, I would have said, "Well, then, Jeff, we definitely have... we definitely have You have to run for president." Sessions was very wise that night.

He says, "I'm not the right guy, but that person will come and these problems will arise and they will manifest themselves in that." seen in American political history. I think you said that figure was the “imperfect instrument.” Now, looking back? He's the first... look, Donald Trump, all the pain he gets in the media, already. You know, he knows he has human flaws like everyone else. A lot of it is false bravado. You know, he didn't have to do this. And I think he felt it was a duty and he did it for his country. You know, he's not perfect.

None of us are perfect. But if you look at what he's accomplished, and particularly what I'm most proud of is the stability that he's offered, let's talk about those moments where he comes and goes. . There's still... it's the signal and the noise. The signal is very strong that this is going to be a big problem; We are not going to turn back; We are going to solve it, but we are going to solve it in some way: his default position: we are always going to solve it in favor of the citizens. Whether those citizens are Hispanic, African American, or Muslim, we'll figure it out on the citizens' side, okay?

And that is what a nation-state is, and that is what nationalism is. And so I think that's his default position, although I'm sure in this movie you'll see times he did it this way and that way, if you look, that's the noise. The signal couldn't be stronger. And I think that's what we'll ultimately come to. Look, he moved the Overton window, right? Now we're debating all the issues on Donald Trump's turf, okay? That, in January 2013, seemed like a chimera. Today that is the reality.