Speaker 1: It's great to have back on the program today. Steve Schmidt,
Speaker 1: renowned American political strategist, commentator, founder of The Warning, a
Speaker 1: popular newsletter, podcast and YouTube channel. Well, Steve, I don't
Speaker 1: know where to start. I mean, I think one place
Speaker 1: is one of the reactions I'm now seeing from some
Speaker 1: on the Trump supporting right is to say that a
Speaker 1: lot of our worst fears are kind of hyperbolic. And
Speaker 1: often they will say, you know, the first term didn't
Speaker 1: actually see all of the things we worried would happen,
Speaker 1: and therefore this term won't either. You put out videos
Speaker 1: before the election, including Steve Schmidt explains why Donald Trump
Speaker 1: will become the next Hitler if he wins, Trump will
Speaker 1: be the end of America. Talk to us. Is there
Speaker 1: a hyperbolic or sensational element to that or are those
Speaker 1: your literal beliefs.
Speaker 2: What I said in the immediate aftermath of the election
Speaker 2: is that I stay and boy, everything that I have
Speaker 2: said about Donald Trump over nine years, I am right
Speaker 2: about who he is. Donald Trump campaigned as a fascist,
Speaker 2: and campaign was repugnant, race bating, dishonorable, and here's reality,
Speaker 2: seventy four million of us voted against it. We said no,
Speaker 2: we have representation in this country. We have rights in
Speaker 2: this country, including the right to oppose, the right to
Speaker 2: assert conscience, to dissent, and to say no. Couple more
Speaker 2: million people voted for Donald Trump, and we can talk
Speaker 2: about that now. What I did say is I'm going
Speaker 2: to be very clear and precise with regard to my
Speaker 2: use of language. Until he governed as a fascist, I
Speaker 2: will not say that Donald Trump is governing as a fascist.
Speaker 2: Campaigning as a fascist is different than governing as a fascist, right,
Speaker 2: But there are no people that I'm aware of that
Speaker 2: have campaigned as a fascist who have not governed as
Speaker 2: a fascist. And when I look at the insanity and
Speaker 2: the desecrative nature of his early nominations, they suggest to
Speaker 2: me tremendous extremism aimed at annihilation of these agencies is
Speaker 2: functional for the purposes of creating chaos in order to
Speaker 2: assert the need for more power to end the chaos.
Speaker 2: He has said that he will deploy the military as
Speaker 2: part of his mass deportation operation, of which we have
Speaker 2: no details except for that some of the parameters call
Speaker 2: for the construction of quote massive detention facilities. So what
Speaker 2: words are we to use to call those what euphemism
Speaker 2: are we going to settle on? So, yes, this is
Speaker 2: a dangerous time. And I don't think that you compare
Speaker 2: Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler loosely, And I absolutely don't
Speaker 2: think if you do it, you go sit down and
Speaker 2: have tea with him at Burchase guarden Ecmi Mara a Lago.
Speaker 1: As far as what now happens both to anti Trump
Speaker 1: Republicans but also what I call the demoralized and despondent left,
Speaker 1: many of whom I'm hearing from regularly, who say, I
Speaker 1: start gagging when you tell me about let's look at
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. It's just I just can't now go.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get them, and let's start figuring out and
Speaker 1: let's talk about who'll run in twenty eight. It's just
Speaker 1: a huge swath of my audience is like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this was so devastating. I'm out for a while. What
Speaker 1: now for those groups of people you.
Speaker 2: Can't get out? Okay, you don't have to charge. You
Speaker 2: can just sit and do less and read and comprehend
Speaker 2: and orient towards what's happening and get ready to oppose it. Right,
Speaker 2: And what I would ask is if any one of
Speaker 2: your great many listeners are fans of politicians. Let that go, right,
Speaker 2: don't trust any of them, be skeptical of power. Understand
Speaker 2: who your allies are, and hold them to account. Now,
Speaker 2: a's some bad news about twenty twenty six, right, Chuck
Speaker 2: Schumer is a disaster, the communications disaster. John Stewart making
Speaker 2: fun of him the Last Night brutal. He's a strategic
Speaker 2: disaster and a tech tactical disaster. Because Democrats have no
Speaker 2: shot really to pick up any seats in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six in the Senate. Right, so there's no chance. A
Speaker 2: less society crators, and there's a turnout that's so violatile
Speaker 2: that it changes the composition of the electorate in red
Speaker 2: states profoundly and historically so absent that the only races
Speaker 2: of consequence of matter. In a federal election of the House,
Speaker 2: Democrats have to get the power of the perspect They
Speaker 2: have to take back the House. And the good news
Speaker 2: is there are only three elections in the last one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty four years where the incumbent president's party
Speaker 2: has picked up seats in the first mid term election,
Speaker 2: and the bottom line is Trump won by three million
Speaker 2: voters and a lot of people aren't going to like
Speaker 2: a lot of the things that he is going to do.
Speaker 2: We are nothing if not a fickle people. So to
Speaker 2: all the despondent folks out there, George W. Bush's approval
Speaker 2: level was a solid seventy seven percent on the day
Speaker 2: of the Iraq War began. Give it six months now.
Speaker 2: You have a right to be angry about being lied
Speaker 2: to by a small circle of staffers around Biden about
Speaker 2: his competency and capacity. You got a right to be
Speaker 2: angry about corporate media and Joe Scarborough and the constant
Speaker 2: bullshitary and the access media. And you got a right
Speaker 2: to be mad as hell about the democratic politicians who
Speaker 2: won't fight, who can't see it coming, who will accommodate
Speaker 2: what needs confrontation, and who will normalize what is deeply,
Speaker 2: deeply wrong. And so there will be leaders who emerge.
Speaker 2: When they emerge, get behind them and understand it. We
Speaker 2: need to build a broad coalition of the americanism that
Speaker 2: tolerates dissent, that accommodates everybody that believes an opportunity for
Speaker 2: everybody that rejects these dogmas of collective guilt, that rejects extremism.
Speaker 2: It makes clear that the purpose of politics is to
Speaker 2: make the lives of ordinary people better. So I've had
Speaker 2: a reading assignment. I'd say go read five or six
Speaker 2: John Kennedy campaign speeches, pick them at your leisure, and
Speaker 2: go read FDRs nineteen forty inaugural. There's going to be
Speaker 2: a moment soon where people are gonna need to be
Speaker 2: on the streets protesting. I've never marched in a protest
Speaker 2: in my life. I suspect we'll be in my first one.
Speaker 2: Because when the military deploys and Trump rolls through the
Speaker 2: US Senate and acts with impunity and immunity, we will
Speaker 2: be in deep crisis. And Americans have an absolute right,
Speaker 2: a god given one in fact, to stand, to oppose,
Speaker 2: to defy, and to say no, rest up, it's coming.
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning, and I invite
Speaker 2: you to join. Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: follow us. Welcome to the community.