Speaker 1: But the race is over. He will be Joe Biden's challenger.
Speaker 2: Well before securing a resounding victory in South Carolina over
Speaker 2: Nicki Haley, former President Trump ways did no time sending
Speaker 2: his sits on November, taking center stage at the Conservative
Speaker 2: Political Action Conference commonly known as SEAPAC, Trump's address steered
Speaker 2: clear of any mention of his Republican rival Nicki Haley. Instead,
Speaker 2: though he directed all of his attention squarely at President Biden,
Speaker 2: delivering stark warnings and bold promises for America's future.
Speaker 3: A vote for Trump is your ticket back to freedom.
Speaker 3: It's your passport out of tyranny, and it's your only
Speaker 3: escape from Joe Biden and his gang's fast track to hell.
Speaker 3: November fifth will be our new Liberation Day.
Speaker 4: But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors
Speaker 4: and impostors who have commandeered our government, it will be
Speaker 4: their judgment day.
Speaker 2: Scripts News political contributor and founder of the Warning podcast
Speaker 2: and Substack newsletter, Steve Schmidt joining us now. Pleasure to
Speaker 2: have you on board here at Script's News, and it
Speaker 2: is always good to talk to you, and no shortage
Speaker 2: of news to get to.
Speaker 5: I'm just wondering.
Speaker 2: We'll start there with that SoundBite when you hear former
Speaker 2: President Trump say about Judgment Day and putting this in
Speaker 2: really dramatic terms, your escape from from hell. And we
Speaker 2: said months ago, I will be your retribution. When you
Speaker 2: put together some of these rhetorical flourishes, I guess we
Speaker 2: can call them what do you What do you make
Speaker 2: of it?
Speaker 1: Well, first off, good morning, and it's a real pleasure
Speaker 1: to be joining the scripts team. I think that it's
Speaker 1: important to understand how profoundly these remarks deviate from anything
Speaker 1: that has ever been said by any person who has
Speaker 1: ever been in a positiondition to be elected president of
Speaker 1: the United States. Donald Trump is both a former president
Speaker 1: and the presumptive nominee, and what he did all weekend
Speaker 1: is make a series of attacks comparing the political opposition
Speaker 1: to him in America to the Nazi Germans of World
Speaker 1: War Two, calling for the destruction of his opposition, calling
Speaker 1: for retribution against any American who dares to assert their
Speaker 1: God given rights to oppose him.
Speaker 5: So the rhetoric that we're saying is.
Speaker 1: A threat to the constitution, to the country, to the
Speaker 1: political opposition. When you have a candidate who's talking about
Speaker 1: people as vermin, dehumanizing them and threatening punishment if they
Speaker 1: impede his path to power. Important to understand that we
Speaker 1: are in unchartered territory, and that on chartered territory is
Speaker 1: disorienting people.
Speaker 5: They don't know what to think about it.
Speaker 1: They don't know what to call it, they don't know
Speaker 1: what to name it. But what's gathering is dangerous and menacing,
Speaker 1: and it's coming closer.
Speaker 2: You do believe. And I don't ask this this lightly.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a light matter at all. I
Speaker 2: think actually is an existential matter. Do you really see
Speaker 2: comparisons between what Donald Trump is saying and what Hitler said?
Speaker 1: Well, the language of dehumanization when you look at a
Speaker 1: political opponent, you look at a minority group, and you
Speaker 1: make them less than you promise punishment.
Speaker 5: I think it's very important to understand that.
Speaker 1: Adolph Hitler in nineteen twenty eight high way ter mark
Speaker 1: electorally for the Nazis, excuse me, nineteen thirty the high
Speaker 1: water mark for the Nazis. Nineteen thirty two, the year
Speaker 1: he took power. He ran on a platform of restoring
Speaker 1: order from chaos. He ran against inflation, he ran against
Speaker 1: enemies who were subverting the popular will and the majority
Speaker 1: of the country from his telling. So this language of dehumanization,
Speaker 1: of blaming, of threatening, I think it is important to
Speaker 1: take Donald Trump literally and seriously, or at least explore
Speaker 1: the matter further.
Speaker 5: When he talks.
Speaker 1: About mass mass detention camps, mass concentration camps, think about
Speaker 1: the police state tactics that would be necessary to deport
Speaker 1: the amounts of people that he's talking about. So it
Speaker 1: is very important to compare the speeches that Trump is
Speaker 1: given with those speeches that were given eighty years ago,
Speaker 1: and any academic comparison between the two will find commonalities
Speaker 1: and easy, easy analogies between the two men.
Speaker 5: Remember Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty eight, nineteen thirty, nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 5: Is it to Hitler?
Speaker 1: We remember what built and what gathered. What was unleashed
Speaker 1: was a massive inhumanity. But in the end he did
Speaker 1: nothing that he didn't say he was going to do
Speaker 1: in the first place. And we should listen to Trump's
Speaker 1: words very carefully here because of that lesson from history.
Speaker 2: And back to the role politics of the moment. Why
Speaker 2: is NICKI Haley hanging around?
Speaker 5: Do you think.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to the question. It's really
Speaker 1: a psychological question because at this point, as a practical matter, Nicki,
Speaker 1: who by the way, has not pulled back her comment
Speaker 1: from the first debate that no matter what, she'll support
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. So she's hanging in a race that she
Speaker 1: has no chance of winning in any primary contest from
Speaker 1: here to the end, against a man that she simultaneously
Speaker 1: pledges devotional support to while condemning him as an existential threat.
Speaker 1: So it is an incoherent campaign intellectually morally because its
Speaker 1: essence is undermined every day by her warnings about Trump.
Speaker 5: But the race is over, and Donald Trump has.
Speaker 1: Achieved what he needs to to be considered the party's
Speaker 1: presumptive nominee. He will be Joe Biden's challenger.
Speaker 2: One more question before we go. We know that the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court is poised to play perhaps the most pivotal
Speaker 2: role in a national election since Bush v. Gore back
Speaker 2: in the days of Florida and Hanging chads in two thousand,
Speaker 2: on both the issue of absolute presidential immunity and whether
Speaker 2: Trump can appear on the ballot. Do you have what
Speaker 2: are your expectations for what the Court may do?
Speaker 1: I think that the tea leaves on this are clear.
Speaker 1: The Court will deny the ludicrous notion that an American
Speaker 1: president has absolute immunity for his actions and is incapable
Speaker 1: of committing illegal acts, and they will also not take
Speaker 1: Donald Trump off of the ballot. This will be a
Speaker 1: choice for the American people to make in November. It
Speaker 1: will not be decided in the courts, and that is
Speaker 1: what the Supreme Court is going to rule.
Speaker 2: Script's News political contributor and founder of The Warning, Steve Schman,
Speaker 2: thanks so much for giving us some time again, welcome
Speaker 2: to the Script's News team. Really really good to have
Speaker 2: you on board. I have a feeling we will have
Speaker 2: some robust tosscussions between now in November.
Speaker 5: To put it quite mildly, Thank you, sir, take care,
Speaker 5: Thank you, and.
Speaker 2: We do want our viewer us and know. We're going
Speaker 2: to have Steve on every Monday to talk about the
Speaker 2: latest developments in this deeply interesting and unconventional election cycle
Speaker 2: that we're all in together. You can watch him right
Speaker 2: here on Morning Rush and again listen to him on
Speaker 2: his podcast, it is called The Warning.
Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to my political commentary. If you
Speaker 5: like what you heard today.
Speaker 1: Please also consider subscribing to The Warning daily newsletter on Substack.
Speaker 5: Our democracy hangs in the balance.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty four presidential election is the most consequential
Speaker 1: in America's history.
Speaker 5: It's not hyperbole, it's a fact.
Speaker 1: That is why the mission of The Warning with Steve
Speaker 1: Schmidt is to help readers orient to the currents that
Speaker 1: are shaping our times and the unseen forces driving politics
Speaker 1: are very rarely discussed on cable news. Please sign up
Speaker 1: at Steve Schmidt S T, E V E, S C,
Speaker 1: H M I D T dot substack dot com again
Speaker 1: Steve Schmidt dot substack dot com, or at the link
Speaker 1: in the show notes section below.
Speaker 5: Thank you to each and every one of you for
Speaker 5: listening and watching.