 Hi, good afternoon. Good afternoon, welcome to New America. I'm Mark Schmidt. I'm the director of the political reform program and director of studies here, and welcome to this program on envisioning a Trump presidency in policy terms and just what Donald Trump has already meant in terms of changing the nature of conservatism and the Republican Party. This is a tremendous event that's been organized by David Gray, who is a longtime colleague of mine here at New America. He's currently a senior fellow and also a lawyer and Presbyterian pastor who's worked on in the Labor Department in the Bush administration and for several members of Congress. I'm just going to do some quick introductions, make a couple of introductory comments, and then let the group go. I will say when David first talked to me about doing this panel, I was initially a little reluctant for reasons I can't fully articulate. Partly it was how much do we want to kind of normalize the Trump phenomenon? But partly also it was, OK, this was three weeks ago. Where are we going to be? Who knows what's going to happen between now and June 8? Who knows what's happened just for each of the last eight days? There's sort of been a different turn here. But I'm thrilled that we're doing it and that the turnout here is so great. We've been doing a ton of events but haven't had quite this turnout for other things we've done. Going to do the introduction super fast. Next to, with one exception, next to David is Dana Milbank, a columnist of The Washington Post, long time at the New Republic. Next to Dana is Norman Ornstein, who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of It's Even Worse Than It Looks, which I think has come out in paperback as I saw somebody reading it on the subway the other day, has come out in paperback as It's Even Worse Than It Was with his co-author, Tom Mann. I do want to make one exception to the briefness of these remarks by just noting that my first job in Washington was I was Norm's research assistant in 1989-90, which is a great, great, wonderful experience. But one of the things I took away from that is an appreciation for Norm's spirit and the spirit of his co-author, Tom Mann as well, that American politics is a system that kind of comes back to an equilibrium, that basically a lot of crazy stuff can happen, a lot of terrifying stuff, but most things kind of right themselves in the long run. And I think in the last few years, Norm's been somebody saying, you know, some things are really off track here and we need to be concerned about them and they're serious and some of the things that he wrote that really foresaw, Trump are in that vein. So I think it's one of the things, there's lots of people who, you know, that's always their mode, but I think when the people who really bring that optimistic spirit to American politics and democracy are telling you that something's gone wrong, it's really important to listen to it. Okay, back to short introductions. Indira Lakshmanan is senior correspondent for Bloomberg News and frequent, you're reading the old bio. I'm reading the old bio. I no longer am. No longer, no longer works for Bloomberg News. I know that you often do the Diane Rehm show. Yes, I'm a contributor to Political Magazine and to the Boston Globe. Okay, great, sorry about that, Indira. Laura Brown is the director of the Graduate School of Political Management's Political Management Program at George Washington University. She was here just two weeks ago for an event about the 1968 election. So we're bringing her back to get into the present. In two weeks we'll do something about the distant future. And Matt Contanetti is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon and a former editor at the Weekly Standard and somebody who's worked on the Abramoff affair and the Tom DeLay's reign was really pathbreaking. I just wanted to say a couple, just get a couple points on the table before we get started. One thing that I think is really interesting about the Trump phenomenon is the tension within conservatism between identity and ideology. And I think one of the things that happened this year is you saw most of the Republican candidates essentially trying to affirm that what cements conservatism is ideology, ideology, and that Trump wasn't sufficiently ideological and others were more pure. And I think they felt that the successes of the last couple cycles had to do with stressing ideology ever more strongly. I think Trump really shows that what people were buying was not necessarily a particular set of ideological positions, but really a sense of identity that's wrapped up in a term like make America great again, a sense of racial and ethnic identity. And it's important to... Seeing that, I think it'll be fascinating to see where the Republican Party goes with that and where conservatism goes with that because ideology is a lot of work and most people have a hard time being deeply committed around ideology. I also think there's a fascinating aspect of Trump that I don't think has gotten enough comment, which is the degree to which he's almost reviving a kind of technocratic view of government, like we will just take care of it for you, which again contrasts with ideology. I often think of the history of some of the failures of liberalism being caught up in that technocratic sense of like trust experts, they'll take care of things. And I think American people came back and said, we're not quite willing to do that. We need more of an anchor in what you're actually gonna do and so forth. And I think it's almost like a parody of 1960s liberalism that says, when Donald Trump says, I'm just gonna take care of these things, we're just gonna make better deals. So those are just my, just a couple thoughts of what I've been thinking about Trump. I know that David will have some other questions and get this conversation going in other ways. So we'll have a good Q and A, really thrilled that all of you are here and I hope this is a great panel. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for all being here. Thanks for any Casey Foundation for their vision and support in thinking about new policy and for the opportunity to gather with these five, just great panelists, it'll be just a terrific discussion. So I just wanted to build on what Mark said and just turn to Norm and just to see if you would reflect on some of the framing that Mark made for us a moment ago, thinking about identity versus ideology, thinking about an activist candidate in terms of getting things done and if that's appealing at this point. So any reflections on this identity, ideology framing that Mark's put forward? It was really interesting what Mark said and let me broaden it in one sense. We all know we have this terribly polarized political system but it's become tribal and it's tribal identity that drives things and it's much more a sense now that the other tribe is the enemy and not just an adversary and there's a lot of that in our politics but it's sort of paradoxical in a sense that in a tribal partisan world, we've seen Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, Trump who became a Republican, heaven knows when but having already been a Democrat and independent and he's been through as many parties as wives and maybe close to girlfriends, maybe not and Bernie Sanders who just became a Democrat to run for president, declined the Democratic nomination for the last time he ran for the Senate that people with anti-partisan identities are the ones who've emerged in a major way, bigger with Trump of course but the other part of this that I think gets to some of what Mark was saying is the angry populism and the distrust and unhappiness with leaders even of one's own party and Trump capitalized on that in a big way and that if you'll pardon the expression trumped ideology in this case as much as anything else. Now there was an ideological element to it which also has a lot of other components that we can talk about. He emerged from 17 candidates because of the immigration issue and it was a brilliant reading of the Republican primary electorate to get to the right of everybody else on immigration. It's when he talked about the Mexican rapists and building the wall, deporting everybody, making Mexico pay for the wall that he vaulted to a prominent position but in so many other areas his views are discordant with those of his major party figures and despite, and we'll get to this a lot more I'm sure, despite what Paul Ryan has said, oh we can work with him, he'll work with all of those things, when there is a disparity between what the party establishment and leadership in Congress wants and what Trump wants, you're gonna find all of those early supporters of Trump rising up and that includes this army of radio talk show hosts and bloggers attacking their own party leaders. So it's a very different world in a lot of ways and a world that's difficult to understand when you have so many people who are not attached to a party or its hierarchy but in a world where it's tribal and party identity. I appreciate that. Jair, let me turn to you for the second part of Mark's question, a bit about the ability to get things done and thinking about results in a way and just in a global context where we think about the United States in many ways losing some of its leadership in relative terms, some of the ineffectiveness of conflict and thinking about things after the Arab Spring and our inability to get the kind of results in many global ways which many people assumed that we should be able to have. Does Trump play into some of that anxiety in our position globally in a way that he gives people a sense he'd be able to accomplish things others have failed to do? Well, he certainly has tried to promote the narrative that he's the deal maker, with his book, The Art of the Deal, he's the guy he could have negotiated a better deal than everybody in the Obama administration and in the P5 plus 100 times better because the negotiation skills of this administration are obviously sad, as he would say. I mean, I think the problem is that, and Micah Zenko of Council on Foreign Relations wrote a really good piece about this informed policy just the other day, in a way it's kind of like magical realist thinking. It's this notion that, well, I'm gonna get everything done that nobody else can get done but without thinking through any of the complexity, particularly in the sphere of foreign policy of what's involved. And I can say that having traveled with Hillary Clinton for four years as she was Secretary of State and with John Kerry for the last three years, well, he was Secretary of State, there was a lot involved in foreign policy. There are a lot of briefing books you have to read. There are a lot of other alliances that you have to manage. There are people, there are the enemies, the ones you kind of have to deal with. There are the allies of the first, second and third degree. There's a lot more complexity than just saying we're gonna do this better than anyone before. And I was struck by listening to Donald Trump's foreign policy speech when he gave it a few weeks ago at the Mayflower Hotel. And of course it was one of the rare speeches, now not the only, but one of the rare speeches where he actually read off a teleprompter. So you had a sense that he understood on some level that he was out of his depth. This is a man, remember, who has really, so far just gone by his gut and has worked for him. He sort of said whatever comes off the top of his head and his followers go to it and he tends to double down on things rather than pull back. Now with this judge of Hispanic origin, we're hearing maybe that he's trying to back off that a little bit. But I will say that in the foreign policy sphere, he gave this speech to the assembled foreign policy establishment of Washington at the same time insulting the establishment, the foreign policy establishment of Washington. And it struck me, well that's one thing that he and President Obama agree on, which is that the bipartisan foreign policy establishment of Washington in both of their minds is just a blob who has this sort of group think mentality. I do think he makes one good point, which is justify it, justify your ideas. If you're gonna say we should have forward deployed U.S. forces in Korea, in South Korea, in Japan, in Germany, well then the foreign policy blob, if that's what this is, needs to say why is that a good idea? Why is supporting NATO a good idea? He has raised a lot of important questions, but I do think that he is applying this magical realist thinking to saying, well I could solve it all. He's been caught in some untruths about what his past positions were. For example, about the Iraq War, for example, about Libya saying, well I never supported the strikes in Libya when of course he did actually. And then he later went back and said, well I sent only surgical strikes. Well that's actually what the Obama administration and NATO were trying to do, were surgical strikes, it just didn't work. So it's sort of like he says, well I would have done surgical strikes but they would have worked if I did it. So it's unclear to me, and yet when you say well where are you getting your ideas from? He says, well the generals tell me, we don't know exactly who are these generals, but the generals tell him that he can do things a different way. Well those are the same generals who talked to President Obama, who talked to President George W. Bush beforehand. So again he seems to have an incredibly strong belief in his own ability, the power of his own persuasion, the power of his ability to stand tough, to not be bullied, to do things better than everyone else before him, but we can see with 44 U.S. presidents that we've had before him were he to become president. It's not as easy as one thing, because there's a lot of complexity, particularly in foreign policy. Let me ask you about where you place some of his views as you look at him on the spectrum here and how we should interpret what kind of, based on his statements and actions and everything else, what kind of president he'd be. Would you say that, in relative terms, a president Trump would be relatively conservative, liberal, a flaming moderate to use things you've written about before in other contexts? How do you describe and look forward in his policy? Well frankly I don't think we really know. I mean I think the hardest part about Trump is that he is sort of one thing one day and another thing the next. In some areas he appears to be very conservative, he talks about sort of doing more to combat ISIS and we don't really know if that means he's willing to go forward with a nuclear weapon or if that just means ground forces, which is more than kind of what the current thinking is on ISIS. But then you ask him what does he believe the federal government should do and other than security his answer was in fact healthcare and education. And if you are running as a Republican that is a very bizarre answer because Republicans typically do not believe that education and healthcare are the province of the federal government. Those are things that states should be doing. So he is in some ways liberal. He also seems I think to Mark's point very technocratic, this idea that somehow the government is going to be more efficient and will do a better job than others. So ideologically I don't know where we would place him. And I think as Norm said, he's gone through parties like he has his wives. So we don't know really where he would be. I think the one thing that's important though is that I don't think it's just an identity versus sort of ideology split. I think there is also this very deep reality among many people in the American public and it shows up in all of the Pew research data where they found that the majority of people believe that their side is losing no matter what side they are on. So there is this also just I think utter desperation and sense of many Americans that not just that our system is broken but that they keep trying to deliver messages to Washington and Washington doesn't listen. And I don't think the partisans fully appreciate that in the last 10 years we have gone through every iteration that our government can go through in the sense of we have had a Republican president and a Republican Congress and then we had a Republican president and a Democratic Congress and then in fact we had a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress and now we have a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. And to most Americans the problems still haven't been solved. We are not out of Iraq and we do not have a better really substantially better economy. So most Americans like that side of Trump that just says I'm strong, I'm a winner, I'm gonna get it done. And I don't think it's all just about sort of identity or ideology. I think it's about posturing and a sense that he has sort of the negotiating prowess that is better than anyone in Washington that he has a deal making and sort of acumen around just working that is much better than anyone else. And it's really a blustery kind of confidence which I think would very quickly dissipate and sort of reveal himself to actually be quite surprised at what does happen in Washington. Let's turn Dana as we think about the Republican party and the impact of this nomination more broadly here. It once seemed like a very safe bet that he would not get the nomination, but here we are. And Dana, you've written about how the party is now a party of Trump, the GOP. And interested what you meant by that and the impact of this nomination, win or lose on the party. All right, well I should begin by telling the audience I'm not sure how well you know our moderator, but he is largely responsible for Donald Trump getting the nomination. We were in college together many years ago, David's younger, much younger than I am, but we were there at the same time. And he debated with Austin Gouldsby against this young whipper snapper from Princeton named Ted Cruz. And I believe it was the cutting remarks given for the record and anonymously to the press about those debating days by gentlemen such as this that caused Ted Cruz to deflate thereby elevating Donald Trump to the Republican nomination. So I hope Reverend, you've sought absolution for this. Are you saying one would have been better than the other? Then we could be having an entirely different but equally frightening discussion right here. So look, it feels right now that if we're just looking at this moment in time like in the last week or so, it feels like everything's changed. The media's become much more aggressive in a conventional way towards Trump. Hillary Clinton is finally has a clear shot at Trump regardless of what Bernie Sanders thinks. And you also see a lot of buyer remorse occurring on the Republican side with the unendorsement in Illinois in this very awkward squirming I watched Paul Ryan do yesterday. And we said, yes, yes, he's a racist or he makes racist remarks, but he's my racist. So you have all those things going on. So I can now state with great confidence that Donald Trump will not win the presidency. And if he does, Norm Orange-Teen will eat my column. So we could get that all out there right now. Right, off or on the table as it were. I'm glad we were making news in every way at New America today. You heard it first. Norm will eat my column. And it won't be in this country if that happens. Matthew, let me shift here to you for some thoughts here. You've also written about the fundamentals not looking particularly good in this election for the GOP and as Dana's teed up some of the tensions within the party, how do you reflect as you think about the impact about where the party's headed of this nomination? Well, David, thanks for having me and to the other panelists. It's all a lot of information to chew on and go through kind of a few thoughts I've had while we've had this discussion. First, to mark this technocratic idea of Donald Trump being a technocrat, we have to remember it's technocracy without the experts, right? So if progressivism, we're gonna have a technocratic approach, but we're gonna have the most rational minds and the most credentialed people figuring out what is good for the populace and then fine-tuning the system of government to give that to them. This is just, Trump says something and it will, it, thy will be done, right? You're saying Roger Stone is not an expert? He's an expert in something, I don't think it's government. Another part about, well, how did we get to Trump? One thing I think it's a few trends that are important to recall. One is the actual base of the Republican Party or even the party itself, the voters of the Republican Party are less ideologically conservative than the people they elect and the people who often represent them in newspaper columns or television shows like myself. And we found that with Trump. So a big mystery was why didn't Ted Cruz take off? Or why did Cruz fail to kind of kneecap Trump when it was just down to really the two of them in casing? Well, the answer is that Ted Cruz is too conservative for the Republican Party, is the truth. He is the conservative movement candidate. He's the candidate of what remains of the religious right. But he's not the candidate of the largest group of Republican voters who identify as somewhat conservative voters. And the candidate of that group, again, the largest cohort among Republicans when you sort them by ideology, has consistently been, with very few exceptions, has consistently been Donald Trump since New Hampshire. So I actually think we could have seen Trump coming from a while away. Another trend to remember, well, two more that led us to this place. One is the aging of our population, and specifically the aging of the Republican Party, which is made up mainly of white baby boomers and older. And that coincides with another trend, which is just a huge explosion in ethnic and racial diversity in America beginning in the 70s. And in fact, it's taking off even more, accelerating even more rapidly at the turn of the 21st century. So you have a population, the Republican population, that is looking around the country, looking at their communities, looking at the cities or the suburbs or the excerpts where they've spent the last 30 years, where they grew up in many cases, and they literally do not recognize these communities any longer. And I think that's led to a great amount of anxiety. And so a few came out with an interesting number just recently where they kind of trying to figure out what are the correlates of support for Donald Trump. And they found one of the largest, in fact the largest, is a negative attitude toward the other, increase in just who are these people, what's happening to my country. So aging, and of course that coincides also with Trump's commitment not to touch entitlement programs. Now we saw that with the Tea Party a little bit, whereas the, and the Brian Budget Plan, which is, hey, look, if you're 55 or older, you're set. We're gonna cut from the people who are younger, which is, hey, if you're a Republican voter, that's great because you're 55 or older. And Trump has kind of taken that commitment and broadened, just saying, look, I'm not even, I'm not touching, I'm not touching any of the entitlements, you're gonna be fine. And by the way, I'm gonna do something about these people that have shown up that you don't, it's not necessarily that you don't like, it's just, it's bothering you, right? And you can look at the primary results in this way too. On immigration question, and I agree with Norm, he immediately got to the right on immigration, but when you do exit polling on Republican voters in the primaries, the immigration question is actually kind of diffuse and abstract. You'll find that some Trump voters actually want an amnesty program, so they don't quite understand the one thing that they're always against by double, by two thirds majorities is, or rather, the thing they're always for by two thirds majorities is the ban on Muslims entry into the United States, which I would also note is again, a segment of immigration in particular that has spiked in the post-2001 world. The Trump announced that Muslim ban, interestingly enough, just looking back on history of the primary, he announced at a time where actually his support with softening, if you recall, this was right around the time when he was, in order to deflate Ben Carson, he called him a child molester and such, really the high-faluting rhetoric that we've all become accustomed to with Donald Trump. The parrith attacks happened, and Trump, again, the first time Trump read from the teleprompter in this campaign, was to announce this ban on Muslim entry into the United States and took a national security foreign policy issue and transformed it into an immigration issue, and I think that's when he cemented his lock with the Republican electorate. So that's my explanation for Trump. Where it goes from here, nowhere good. So let's see, if it does go from here, let's turn to what the presidency would be like for a moment and we'll return to the impact on specific policy. So Indira, let me ask you here, if we think about taking Trump at his word on his views on relations with other countries, trade, immigration, et cetera, his global view, whatever the Trump doctrine might be, how do you think other countries would react to a foreign policy presidency of Trump? Well, we already know what the Trump doctrine is because he's laid it out for us. He called it America first. I found that very surprising and interesting that he would use that term because we know that that is the term that was used in the 1930s by American isolationists and Nazi appeasers who didn't wanna go into World War II. So I don't know who told him to use that term. Maybe it sounded good to him, but maybe he didn't check Wikipedia to see what it meant or maybe he doesn't care that that's the background of what that term actually means. So to me, it was pretty jarring hearing him throw out that term. But the problem with taking Donald Trump on his word with foreign policy, and this is true of many things, but I've been specifically looking at the foreign policy part of it, is that what he says is contradictory. So you can take him on his word on Monday and then you look at his word on Tuesday and it's the opposite of what he said on Monday. So you don't know. I mean, even in the same speech or in the same interviews, he said opposite day things. So in that speech, for example, in his America First foreign policy speech, he said that no foreign policy in America has been coherent since the end of the Cold War and he was gonna have the first coherent foreign policy, but he also said he was gonna be completely unpredictable. So keep your friends and your foes on the back foot so they don't know what's coming. They're gonna be completely unpredictable. He has said he's gonna destroy ISIS, but at the same time he has said, I think it would take 20,000 to 30,000 ground troops to destroy ISIS, but he said those aren't gonna be American ground troops. He has said they're not gonna be Americans. He says they're gonna have to be people from there. So by which I assume he means the Arab world, but people from there are gonna have to do it. He's talked about how he's ready to use a nuclear weapon, but he's also said that we shouldn't have nuclear weapons and boy, but on the other hand, the Japanese and the Koreans, they should get their own nuclear weapons so we don't have to give them a nuclear umbrella. He said he's kind of okay with NATO. I don't really care. I don't care whether Ukraine joins NATO or not, but at the same time, all those guys, they need to be paying more of their share. I don't think we should be carrying the weight for NATO. So again, I think a lot of this is about Trump just flying by the seat of his pants, going by his gut. So he sort of throws out ideas that occur to him as they occur to him that feel right, but they are very contradictory. So I think what it means for what would the rest of the world think, and the rest of the world is terrified. And we know this because on every trip that President Obama has taken in the last couple of months, and not to mention Secretary Kerry as well, but President Obama has especially tried to sort of reassure the world, also tried to talk to them about what is wrong with what Trump is saying and how this administration doesn't agree with that and how Hillary Clinton wouldn't do those things. We already have a very good idea of what her foreign policy would be like because we've seen her four years in action as secretary. But with Trump, I think it's hard because he said a lot of things about China, for example. Like China, he's basically said, they are our enemies. They've taken our jobs. They're our enemies. But at the same time, it's hard to imagine that he's really gonna upset the apple cart economically by trying to renegotiate American debt. He's thrown that out there and nobody has run away from the dollar yet. But the whole point of the dollar being the reserve currency of the world is that it's meant to be the safe haven, the stable home. So everybody puts their money in dollars because that's safe. So so far, countries haven't pulled their money out of the US dollar. But I think were he elected, I definitely think we would see that happening. I think people would be very, very worried. So I think in terms of our bottom line, we all know that having the US dollar as the reserve, stable reserve currency of the world is what keeps inflation low. It's what keeps our economy ticking along fairly well. That would be really, really bad for the United States economy if everybody's terrified and pulls out of the dollar. That's just one example. Trade is another one. He's talked about, I'm gonna renegotiate all of this. The Iran deal, I'm gonna tear that up. I'm gonna renegotiate it. Really, how does that work? Do China and Russia say, okay, yeah, we're gonna tear up that deal that we agreed to? No, that's not how it works. So some of this is just, I think, again, I would go back to the thing it's like magical thinking. That's just not how things work. So I still think, I agree with Dana on this, that I don't think it's gonna happen. Maybe in some ways this whole panel is magical thinking. I don't think we're gonna see a President Trump. But I guess, I was gonna say stranger things have happened, but actually they haven't. So I'll leave it at that. Well, let's take the thought experiment imagination. Just go with it a minute and I'll turn to Norm and Laura on the question now about imagining what those first 100 days might be like of a Trump presidency on a variety of issues. Norm, what would that time in American history be like? Sure, David. Just one little comment on what Indira said. Not every foreign leader has been upset about this. We know that Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese have been very complimentary towards Trump. So just keep that in mind. Now I would say, I've spent a lot of time reassuring people if Trump becomes President don't worry too much because sometime within the first 100 days he'd leave us for a younger country, which may make the Vice Presidential choice even more important. A couple of things to keep in mind that also punctuates what Indira said. I've said this before and I have to repeat it. That in more than 50 years of watching presidential candidates, I have never seen one with less fundamental knowledge about any area of public policy and that includes Pat Paulson who ran as a comedian some years ago. So you're starting with a completely blank slate and I do not think whatever briefing books he gets during the campaign he will read. So start with that. Now, but then we have to turn to it. We're thinking of the first 100 days. The set of circumstances that could get him elected. What would do it? It is, and just keep in mind, frame this election with two vectors. An open contest, no incumbent running. It's an election about change. How much change do you want? How much risk will you take? Trump is big risk while also representing big change. He gets elected if people are willing to take the big risk. Why would they take the big risk? Economic turmoil, foreign policy turmoil including terrorist attacks most likely. Where people might say if there's a panic not let's fall back on the safe one we don't want to have some nutcase there but we'll roll the dice because here's the strong man who might do something. So remember if he wins he is likely to come into office with crises virtually everywhere. There is no set of circumstances I can imagine that are anywhere within the realm of reason where he comes in with a reasonably good economy and even the same kind of world that we have now. And I would mention one other thing along the way. In less than two weeks Trump is taking a foreign trip. Where is he going to Scotland? Why is he going to Scotland? And he happens to be going by the way the day after the vote on Brexit. But he's going because they're reopening Trump Turnberry a big golf resort and he wants to be there to open it. The intermixing of your own personal business activities for a now nominee of a party is something we have never seen before and he said very casually to a magazine that has nothing to do with foreign policy. Yeah, they ought to pull out of the European Union and which has brought even greater turmoil to American Anglo relationships and David Cameron is not going to be a big fan of his. So we know how those things are going. But what all of this means is that his agenda in the first hundred days is going to be driven not by necessarily what he wants which is the wall and abrogating all the trade deals but by what's going on in the world. And that may mean among other things especially if we have a global economy in trouble and the American economy sagging my guess is that Trump's instinct is going to be to do another big stimulus. And he's going to face the same kind of pushback from his own party with Democrats probably willing to deal with him. But the same kind of pushback that Barack Obama got. At the same time if there are terrorist attacks his impulse we know is going to be to take bold action. And there those generals are likely to say well wait a minute here. And remember this is a guy who said basically he's gone along with carpet bombing surgical strikes but it's basically we're going to take them out. And their families and we'll ramp up the torture where waterboarding is a day in the park casually and how well that will fit including with the bureaucracy we don't know. His impulse is I'm the executive I give the orders everybody carries out the orders. We should keep in mind what Harry Truman said when he was about to leave the Oval Office and Dwight Eisenhower the great general was about to come in and he said poor Ike he's used to saying do this and do that and people do it. And here you say do this and do that and nothing happens. What will a Donald Trump who is at one and the same time the most insecure person in the country with the largest ego in the world whose ego will be inflated immensely if he goes through a campaign and then wins. What happens when there's pushback from Congress and from the bureaucracy and the generals and the rest of the world? I don't think he will take it nicely or calmly. Realizing I'll be in Scotland during that time myself. So I'm interested in it. I'm gonna be in Australia. I'm gonna be interested in the city of Scotland. I'm gonna change my travel plans. Laura. Not far enough away Scotland. Laura let me ask you to follow up in particular as we think about the impact of relations with Congress and the executive branch in the first hundred days and everything that would go with the policy agenda that one would try to implement. Yeah so I mean I agree that it is difficult to actually imagine a circumstance in which Donald Trump prevails in the actual election. And yet I would also say that there are aspects of this election namely the fact that it is an open contest namely the fact that for all intents and purposes Hillary Clinton is a third term of Barack Obama and there is a desire in the country for change. I think even the Bernie Sanders supporters would tell you that they would like change perhaps not in the Trump fashion but they would like change because they are disappointed and disillusioned with Barack Obama for not having been as transformational as they believed he would have been or should have been and that he's been far too transactional a president. So I do think there's a deep well of sort of need for change in this country right now and I think that we can't fully walk away from what that means since 1952 only Bush senior has managed to win a third party, a third term for his political party. But leaving that aside let me just say that were he to get into the presidency I think we can also imagine that the house will likely stay Republican. The Senate could easily flip to the Democratic party so I think that could be a close situation. You could see where the Democrats maybe pick up five, maybe six seats but it would be relatively close at the end of the day. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if both parties decide to conspire to make him the least effective president in his first hundred days since we have thought about hundred days as a measure and marker of presidents. Just because at the end of the day neither party it's really in their interest to see him succeed. He is a model that is not sort of either helpful to the party or kind of long-term I think constructive to the party. So I can see a tremendous amount of obstructionism the meetings that I'm kind of dying to be the fly on the wall for the ones where he does sit there with his attorney general maybe Chris Christie and a White House counsel. I don't know who that would be but he actually sits there and says yes I wanna do this, this, this and they look at him and say well actually Mr. President, presidents can't do that and he says what do you mean I can't do that and this constant back and forth and this eventual desire where he's just gonna wanna fire people and that doesn't work very well in our system. So there is a tremendous amount at which negotiation, persuasion, bargaining are fundamental to governance and they are fundamental to how our system works and even though Trump believes he has sort of incredible prowess at this level he also had different kinds of authorities. So I see his first hundred days as being very ineffective to the point where his supporters who believed he would bring radical change would actually become profoundly disillusioned even more than they are because it's much more likely that there would be no change than that there would be radical change. Dana let me turn to you and then Matthew on this point as well. Do you, what do you think the, well in response to any of this here but just your thoughts about what those with the Trump presidency particularly on policy and its ability to accomplish anything would be like. I can say with certainty that there's absolutely no way to know. That's the one thing we can be sure of. This is the second Trump presidential campaign I've covered. The first one was 1999. He didn't declare but he was considering a reform party nomination so I flew around, it was then a 727 he hadn't upgraded yet and Roger Stone was there. But he was thinking of running against Pat Buchanan and he was going around basically running as a liberal but his real thing was that Pat Buchanan was a racist and a bigot and he was going after him again and again for this which and then to think of how this campaign has shaped up in so many ways he's made himself completely the opposite of what he was then and then even think since winning the nomination he's gone in any number of different directions redoing the tax plan, changing his whole claim about the debt, resubmitting his views on abortion and he's got one of his surrogates out there saying well I'm really gonna build a wall, he's not really gonna deport all these people so the very core of it is clearly expendable. I think we've had various attempts to try to define him in ideology here today as technocratic or the magical realist and I think the simplest or most accurate would be to say a fascist. Now I don't mean that in a pejorative way but just that way of thinking saying our problems are based on outsiders, these certain groups and leave it to me, I'll fix it. Well that's actually, isn't that what a Pew study found that the most determinative factor regardless of your party of whether you supported Donald Trump was whether you believed in authoritarianism. I think that is the second one after it actually, the fascist tendencies were the second, racial animus was the largest predictor but right after that, so in fairness it wasn't the first. Authoritarian personnel. Yeah, like authoritarian parenting, how you do things that way. So I think it's a fool's errand to say he's gonna pursue X, Y or Z policy. We have no analog for this in our history, at least in our recent history. I think other countries in Europe may and maybe a best case is we wind up with a Berlusconi who is full of razzle-dazzle and scandal, financial and women, nothing much gets done. The country stagnates. Everybody blames the government, not the strong man. Or he could go the other way and say I'm gonna operate outside of the system and then you have another Italian leader who comes to mind. I'm gonna find out it's Mussolini and Berlusconi with a pinch of Hugo Chavez and a touch of Juan Perón. All right, we'll all be doing some art afterwards, right? Let me bring Matthew into here and then I'm gonna ask one more question of our panel and then we're gonna open up to your questions as a group here. Matthew, your floor. Well, my sense is actually I differ slightly with the panel. I think that if Trump does win and I agree the chance, I put the chances of that under 50%. I think he faces strong headwinds just running as a Republican, much less running as the least qualified, most still tempered, most unpopular nominee in our country's history. So I don't think he'll win. However, if he does win, and I think the norm scenario is right, I also believe he would win with the unified Republican Congress. I mean, I don't think we might, the GOP might lose a few seats and Trump win but it doesn't make any sense to me personally that he would win and yet they'd lose the Senate. I think at the very least they'd hold the Senate. So furthermore, I think that the Republican partisans would shift very quickly to embracing Trump's policy platform such as it is. So that if norm is correct, and I think he is that the next president, whoever it is actually, even if somehow the GOP dumps Trump and you get Kasek or Cruz, the next president would, including Hillary, is gonna have some type of economic plan early on. And Trump would probably weigh very heavily on infrastructure. I think the Republicans would support him. I really do. I mean, I think they would, you find it, for me, if you look back in presidential history, the parties conform to their nominees and presidents so that you have Goldwater lost in a landslide in 64 but basically by 80 when Reagan was elected, the party was a Goldwater type party. McGovern lost a landslide in 72 but really the people who were working for him in 72 came into government in 92 with Bill Clinton or 93 when he was inaugurated. So Trump, if he's elected, the Republicans will feel some loyalty to him. You even see this today, I think CNN's reporting, that despite the I'm with racist comment that Paul Ryan made yesterday, he's trying to shore up support for Donald Trump. They're just institutional reasons why they're gonna support him. What does it look like? I agree with Dana in this sense that it would, how does Donald Trump judge success? The only metric is if we're talking about Donald Trump so that this very panel in itself is confirmation of Trump's greatness to Trump because we're talking about him. That's all he cares about. So if he becomes president, it's all going to be how much are we talking about Trump? And it doesn't matter really what aspect of Trump we're talking, discussing, as long as it refers back to him. And so that's gonna lead to a dysfunctional government, even more than we have now. It's gonna lead to a internecine warfare among his staff, which we already see within his campaign, because no one has any direction because it's directionalist. It all refers back to him. And we're also gonna see, yeah, the geopolitical instability that you have. But there's just, I think, just a sense that among Republicans that this is, we're stuck with this. We can't disagree with the Vox populist, such as it is. Quick follow-up and then I'm gonna ask y'all a question and we'll turn to the Q&A. Norm? One thing to keep in mind, let's say that Matthew is right and that Trump wins and there's a Republican House and a Republican Senate. You're gonna have a lot of Republicans who believe that this is their last hurrah. This is their chance now. Even though they're likely to hold the Senate regardless in the next midterm because you've got three times as many Democrats up. But this is the chance. So one, there's gonna be an enormous temptation under those circumstances to blow up the filibuster entirely. Get rid of it for legislation as well so they can jam things through. Two, they're gonna pack the courts. They're gonna increase the size of appeals courts and put through as many nominees as they possibly can so that you can have an enduring impact for decades after they're gone. Three, they're gonna go for the biggest tax cut that you could ever possibly imagine, which Trump has proposed and they'll probably add on to it. And four, you're gonna see federal voter suppression laws that will use Texas and North Carolina as models. The impact when or lose on the party and its policies, particularly the Republican party and its policies, just looking at some of the words that Trump has used to describe himself and describe the party. And David from writing about Trump representing, underrepresented people generally or others saying, questioning whether the Republican party is a theoretical Southern party if you elect Trump from New York City to be its nominee. Or when Trump was asked May 27th about his views about what the party would be like five years from now, he said the Republican party would be a very different party if I'm elected, but I think even nominated, he said we will become a worker's party, that those people who have not gotten a real wage increase in 18 years will find a representative in me. And that, I'm interested in the panel, is anyone's response to that? As when or lose, is there a disc, does he show in his nomination such a disconnect, he's a big business guy who's taking worker rhetoric as opposed to business rhetoric, and does he show a disconnect between traditional Republican policy and the Republican base or middle class voters? If they lose the election, there'll be three elections in a row, so there's a recalibration if you use 1984 in terms of the Democratic party as historical precedent. Is there such a disconnect that he shows in his nomination between where the country is, where the people are, where the middle class is, that he was able to tap into that the Republican party, Ryan's agenda rollout this week and beyond, notwithstanding, will change its views of policy and that that opens up a moment for more moderate policy, for bipartisan agreement for a different Republican party in policy in 2020 and beyond. Is this a realignment in the party as a result of Trump? Yeah, Laura. Well, let me just say that a lot of what the book that I wrote on jockeying for the American presidency actually does is argue and talk about the importance of winners versus losers and really also winners and losers with respect to the ideological trajectories that they do sort of alter or change or put a party on. I certainly do believe that the trajectory of the Republican party is changing. I don't think we know yet how it's changing. The one sort of historical analogy I would look at is actually what happened to the Democratic party when William Jennings Bryan became the nominee. He certainly lost, but after that he ran again, lost again, but the Democratic party itself became much more populist in its orientation. There was no way they were going to elect a Grover Cleveland type of Democrat anymore. So it is, I think, indicative of the fact that we will see some ideological changes down the road, whether he wins or loses, and how he loses will end up being important. And I agree with Matthew that it's really important looking at this understanding of these somewhat conservatives. I mean, where Trump got his largest support, his greatest percentages, we're in the Northern and Midwestern states, so Northeastern. So Massachusetts, 49%. He did not gain that in South Carolina. When you go to Pennsylvania, it was tremendous, his win. And I think this is where the Democratic party has walked away from that more blue collar. I don't think of them as conservative, I think of them as traditional. When I lived in Pennsylvania for a while, when I was teaching at Villanova, I always used to say, it's amazing to me here, everyone in October puts chrysanthemums on their porch. And I was just stunned at the regularity of the traditions. Because being a Californian, that's nothing that I know personally. And I think that's what Trump speaks to, is that sense of traditional life, I think in some ways, and this is not really a joke, but in some ways he is sort of Archie Bunker. And he does represent all that Archie Bunker was trying to hold on to throughout that entire All-in-Family episode. I would just wanna make one comment about the future of the Republican party. We haven't discussed so far the bifurcation among Republicans according to education, which has become very apparent throughout this entire primary process. And it's just the fact that over the last couple of decades, an enormous amount, a number of whites without college degrees have moved into the GOP. And so our picture of the Republican party has changed over time, from being a very country club type party, to then being kind of the moral majority party slash Reagan party, to now it's becoming, and I think Sarah Palin, who I wrote about and I followed, she was a precursor to this. It is the kind of white populist party. That's I think what Trump is saying when he means that the Republican party is going to be a worker's party down the road. And Raihan Salam, the columnist or slate, wrote a very insightful piece recently that I recommend, where he said there are really kind of two futures represented by two young-ish Republican politicians. One is the Ben Sasse option. So if you think about Ben Sasse, what he's trying to do is kind of take that second picture of the Republican party I mentioned, the moral majority slash Reagan picture and update it toward 21st century circumstances. And the other option Raihan points to is the Tom Cotton option, the senator from Arkansas, where Tom throughout this entire process has been very open to Trump. And indeed, I think, thinks that Trump has tapped into exactly this whites without college degree worldview, which is populist, protectionist, America first. Now- Tom Cotton, the Harvard educated, Tom Cotton, by the way- And of course, the elites always run the anti-elitist campaigns. That's just the way the world works. But I have to say, if those are the two options, I don't think of the future for the Ben Sasse option as very bright at all, because if anything, not only the rejection of Cruz, who was the most ideologically conservative candidate, but also the entire rejection of the whole hashtag never Trump movement and the attempts to lasso Ben Sasse in to the presidential race completely failed. So I do predict a change in the Republican Party exactly more in this becoming the party of whites without college education. Let me out of it a slightly different take, although not radically different. And I'm gonna use the Iraq analogy. I think the Republican Party has a Shiite, a Sunni, and a Kurdish faction, and then there's ISIS out there as well. The Shiites are the Cruzite purists and who are gonna continue to hammer away at the notion that we're losing because we keep nominating these moderates and liberals and people who don't represent what all of those silent majority forces who don't turn out wanna do. And it goes back to Goldwater and it will never go away. The Sunnis are the Trumpite populists and they are gonna have an impact and it'll be a bigger one if he wins, but they're there and one of the things that's gonna create this enormous tension is something that Mark mentioned and something that Matthew mentioned as well, which is the fact is that most of the Tea Party people wanna blow up government except not Medicare and Social Security. And the fact is that for Paul Ryan and most of the conservative intellectuals, their core is built around radically transforming those programs and they're gonna have an enormous problem. Now the Kurds are the party establishment figures who basically just wanna win elections and then accomplish what they want to and they're the weakest right now. And ISIS is Mark Levin and Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity and a bunch of bloggers who are gonna be out there who wanna blow everybody up because they make a lot of money and they can put on more commercials to buy gold because the apocalypse, no matter who wins, is right around the corner. And that's an ongoing struggle that does not end if Donald Trump becomes president and it gets even more intense and enduring if he loses. Democrats have their own internal tensions and it's still not clear what role Bernie and the people around him will play. But I would add just one other element which will affect Trump if he's president. The Republican majority in the House is still likely to shrink a bit. And as it shrinks a bit, the role of the Freedom Caucus, really you could say the Shiite Caucus becomes stronger. They're gonna be a higher proportion and those along with the Trump populace hate their own party leaders. When you look at all along the way, 60 to 70% of Republican support for presidential candidates, when you start with 17 and even as you move down, went to outsiders and insurgents, 20% or less for establishment figures. And that's why it was pretty clear to me back in August that it was gonna come down to Trump and Cruz. And that's not people who like the establishment. There's a sense that the establishment sold them down the river, seduced and abandoned them repeatedly. And this is a self-inflicted wound, but they're not gonna be able to keep all their troops together. And in fact, what's interesting is if Trump does become president, pursues a major infrastructure package, does other things, some of them will go along. But he's gonna have more allies among Democrats than he will among Republicans, which will drive a good portion of that Republican base even more up the wall. It would be an interesting piece if he takes a stimulus package with all the other potential social and economic policies that could be added to that package in Congress. If his allies are Democrats, I think the moment for a bipartisan social policy, economic policy is more likely than we've had in a while. More likely than a Hillary Clinton. What would you wanna say anything more about that? Yeah. Well, I mean, I just agree with you. I think because I think that there is a more, the tendency, I mean, some of Trump's tendencies are they're populist and they're more akin to what the Democratic Party has looked like in the last 50 years than to what the Republican Party has looked like in the last 50 years. So I totally agree with you that there would be more possibility for, I don't know that I would wanna call it bipartisanship so much as sort of unexpected crossing of the aisle in support of a president's policy package if Trump is elected than were Hillary elected. But I still go back to, I completely agree with what Matt said at the very beginning, which is demographically I do not see how he can win. I mean, just the way that the demographics of this country are, and we look at what happened in 2008, you can look at every single district that voted in this country. I mean, just looking at Virginia, I think you kinda, you look at Northern Virginia and you kinda know what you need to know just from that. There is no way, I mean, maybe I could eat your column too. If he wins, but I think demographically, I don't think that they can win. Appendix to that, Trump is underperforming among college educated whites when compared with Mitt Romney. That's astounding. The only way you win with the white vote strategy is if you get two thirds of the white vote, all right, which is even better than Mitt Romney's record number in 2012. He's getting less. So it's very unlikely to me, if he can't turn that around, that he wins. I mean, let me just, real quick. If you actually look at the Collar counties in Pennsylvania, which are actually the counties that really flip that state, if you look at the total number of votes that were cast in the Democratic primary and the Republican primary, and you essentially look at what Clinton and Donald Trump got, interestingly enough, in most of those, they were within about 10,000 votes of one another. So I will tell you that what surprised me was that in a state where both nomination races were active and still going, you could essentially see that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were very much neck and neck in those Collar counties, and that could be very important down the road, because we all think Pennsylvania, oh, it hasn't gone Republican since 1988. Well, yes, but it has been trending Republican, and we shouldn't ignore that. Well, we're more than an hour into this, and I'm beginning to think that some of my fellow panelists are not entirely pro-Trump. So I wanted to make that observation, which I think is why you have me here. That's why we have you here. Provide an alternative here. Let's look at on the bright side of, yes, of course it's gonna change, Trump is gonna change Republican Party forever, regardless of what happens. But on the positive side, there's something good could come out of this candidacy if he does burn the whole thing down, and there is some sort of a debacle, and then sensitive people like Matthew, you can put sensitive as well. You can put the whole thing back together and save conservatism and move on from there. And if the Trump element of the party is successful or continues to be a Senate, well, it's not going to work in the long run anyway, because there aren't enough angry white men in the country to propel this Republican Party much past, probably not this year, and certainly not in future elections. So maybe this is just sort of a venom that needs to, that sort of began in 2010 and just needs to work its way out of the system. I keep going back to the 1988 moment and whether this is the Republican Leadership Council or whatever will form its equivalent comes forward. But we shall see. All right, this has just been fantastic, but it's time to bring in other questions from the floor. We've got a mic or two that are going around here. If you have any question, raise your hand. Eleanor and Cheyenne will come and bring a mic. Please ask a single question, a single short question, but first say your name and affiliation, and we'll just go. We have a hand in the back here and then right here. So those are the first two questions there from Eleanor. Thank you so much. Daniel Huang, the Third Secretary of the Taiwan Embassy. Thank you for this panel of this today, wonderful. I know panelists have touched upon some of Mr. Trump's foreign policy. I want to dig more about it. I wonder that given Donald Trump's foreign policy speech, recently he touched upon his view of China. And we know given the situation right now, that China's aggression and coercive diplomacy in East Asia, East China Sea against Taiwan in the South China Sea, we wonder that when Mr. Trump said that he's going to make a good deal with China, if not, he would just walk away. So what does that mean and what's your view that how he's gonna deal with in regard to Asian situation? Thank you. Indira, do you wanna? Yes. So you say you were from the Japanese Embassy, did I hear that? Taiwan, okay, the Taiwan. Okay, I actually printed out some stuff on him on China. Okay, so as I was saying earlier, he specifically has criticized China on trade and has thrown out some numbers which are not actually accurate based on people who have fact checked them about the trade deficit with China and has thrown out some wild numbers and said that basically, well, I will say one very interesting thing that I think he would do that would be a continuation of what the Obama administration has done, but he would do it more strongly, which is focus on dumping. He's accused China of dumping exports in the United States and as I'm sure you know, the Obama administration has pursued some specific cases against China through the WTO and one has to do with, I think it's called cold rolled steel and so that is one case that they have taken very seriously and I think that that's one place where he's with the Obama administration even though he would never say it and that's a question of fairness. I think that if there were a Trump administration, he would really pursue trade cases against China much more I think in terms of if he thinks there's dumping going on. At the same time though, if he's going to designate China currency manipulator, he's talked about Yuan and said that they're devaluing their currency. I think that some of these things that goes to, I don't remember who on the panel, but someone said maybe it was Norm saying that you have a bureaucracy, you can order people to do something that doesn't mean they're actually going to do it. I think there's some things that he thinks he has the power to do if he were president. That's not actually how the system works and how the government works and he's not going to pull out of the WTO, for example. You still have to follow certain rules. On the question of the islands, the disputes over the territories in South China Sea, East China Sea, Sea of Japan, that's an interesting question because he hasn't really delved into that. He hasn't talked much about it. That's something that the Obama administration as you know for the last eight years has been trying to cope with and has sort of tried to keep it at a low boil. I think he would throw out a lot of tough rhetoric but I'm not exactly sure what he could do differently given that when he's actually spoken specifically about what he would do about our defense posture in Asia, he's talked about forcing Japan and South Korea to get their own nuclear weapons and worry about their own nuclear umbrella. We're not going to do it for you. So that doesn't sound like someone who's going to jump in there full force and sort of take over the Pacific and say we're going to navigate the Pacific for you against China. So that doesn't sound to me like something he would do. And the one thing though is the wild card in this is North Korea. While it is true that a report came out that Kim Jong-un had said he's a great guy, I'm not sure if that report is true and the reason I wonder is because Trump has insulted Kim Jong-un more than he's insulted anyone other than little Marco and low energy Jeb and President Obama and crooked Hillary and all the terms. I mean, he has singled out Kim Jong-un for a lot of ridicule and said he's terrible and he has said that China is connected to this because in his language, he says that China totally controls North Korea and we have to tell China to get North Korea back into line because this guy is dangerous. He's got nuclear weapons and he's more dangerous than Iran. So it's, I mean, he's not wrong that he's dangerous but whether or not China fully controls him and whether we could make China do a better job with North Korea, I think is a question. Well, our ambassador, Dennis Rodman, will. Yeah. We saw this hand in the back went first. So we'll go hand over here and then the lady right here in the front. So Cheyenne. Hi, my name is Luke Phillips. I'm with Action for America, the millennial group downtown. So I think we can all agree that Donald Trump has bad policy, bad character, bad hair, bad everything. But to what degree is his candidacy, if not him himself, a legitimate response to a kind of decadent neoliberal consensus in both parties that has just stopped really working for people outside of the donor class in American politics. Interesting. Matthew or Dana? Perfectly if it is what it is, that's what it is. It's a response to that type of distance between the voters and the people they've been setting to Washington. I think Laura, I mean, you described how we've gone through every permutation of American government and yet people still have this picture that everything is bad. I would just say I don't think that picture is totally true. And I think that there are a lot of vested interests who promote a picture of American decline, by the way, across the ideological spectrum. And so the more people hear that picture, the more they're gonna believe it. Again, to take it to my favorite subject, the aging baby boomers. The future for them is not right. Because pretty soon the big Bruce Springsteen concert in the sky is beckoning. And so I think it's entirely appropriate for them to start thinking, ah, what, you know? And so I think that motivates a lot of the Trump thing, that more so than a decadent neoliberal regime, which by the way has given the baby boomers, made them the richest demographic in human history. And far richer than anyone in my generation or in yours. So. You know, there's another twist on this, which is the campaign finance reform issue. And Trump has basically said, hey, I use this system, I bought and sold these people, and I'm the guy who can blow it up. Nothing matters more to Mitch McConnell than preserving Citizens United and its progeny. And this is one where populists on both sides are united, and it may create some interesting tensions on the Republican side. But it's also important to remember, if you go back to 1992 and what led up to it, we had populism on the left with Ralph Nader and on the right with Pap Buchanan and in the center with Ross Perot. And it was the same sort of discontent with the establishment and the same sets of themes. Populism cuts across those ideological lines. He has certainly exploited it. And it's something that leaders not just in government, but all institutions who are now on the run are gonna have to cope with for some time. And it was all about election with somebody named Clinton. All right, let's do the hand right here, the lady here, and then this gentleman here. We're gonna start asking two brief questions and let the panel respond to two. Hi, my name is Cassidy. I work for Greenpeace here in D.C. And on federal land use, I think that Trump has shifted quite a bit, but I believe his most recent stance is to open it up to oil and gas exploration according to his recent energy talk with Harold Ham. So I'm curious your thoughts on that issue and then also that energy speech and all that was in it. And his quote unquote plan to cancel Paris. All right, so climate change. And we'll stack questions starting now. So a second question here. Hi, Joel Packer, recently retired from the Community for Education Funding. Just on the whole issue of the federal budget is particularly norm and others know. Every year Congress has to do something in appropriations bill. The next appropriations bill is the next Congress. It's gonna have to also deal with raising the debt ceiling again with Trump's plans for $11 trillion in tax cuts which are blow up the deficit to Republican Party, orthodoxy, at least in the House. What do you see about the possibility of a government shutdown, a default, or how those things just gonna impact the overall economy and other country's view of the U.S. economy? Interesting, all right. Two questions. One on energy, one on potential government shutdown as we think it probes. Anything that strikes your interest, anyone on the panel? I don't think Trump has ever heard the term federal land use before. So when you opened your question by that, Trump has a position on federal land. No, yeah, that speech, well, the most important thing, right. He loves eminent domain. And the Trump Post Office Hotel, that's federal land. I have a feeling that when he implements his energy policy, one part of the Trump organization will get into fracking. That will be a big part. Just so he can start reaping the benefits. On the, first, I think, we know we have a serious problem this year and one of the things that could well happen. They can't do a budget in the House or Senate. Something that they said, of course, for years was the most important thing to do. And they can't get appropriations bills moving with the exception of one or two. And they may have to change, blow up the rules in the House to make even that happen. And the Senate may not go along. Remember, the new fiscal year begins October one. So we could have a partial shutdown before the election. But after that, I think if Hillary Clinton gets elected, the debt ceiling issue, which will loom, is going to be a potentially very major crisis for her. And if I were advising her in terms of my first 100 days, one of the things that I would want to do is forge a deal with leaders of both parties to institutionalize the so-called McConnell rule where you can obviate all of this by letting the president raise the debt ceiling and have Congress able to pass a motion of disapproval, which he could veto. So you put the onus on him, but it takes that potential disaster off the table. But the fights over spending in government are gonna be acute and will be chronic for a very substantial period of time. And if you are a bureaucrat working in government, you're gonna have a rough time for a long time. I don't think so, Norm, because if Trump wins, he has said he's gonna be able to eliminate the entire debt in his first term. With the $11 trillion tax cut. With waste, no, no, with waste, fraud and abuse. So I think it's fine, just don't worry. He's got it. I knew there's, this is why we had Dan, it's just for the assurance and the positive. All right, let's, so I see two hands here we'll take. We'll stack these two questions here. Hi, Ian, here with the Close-Up Foundation. So if we're talking about a Trump administration, can we talk a little bit about personnel? Who would be good in the Trump administration if he'd want, and who would actually be willing to serve, including who might be Vice President? Thanks. Yeah, we'll get ready for the second question. I've been thinking about that, too, in terms of implementing some of these policies, and in terms of diplomacy as well. Let's take the second question there. Will people, will the establishment Republicans who would have been in the Rubio administration, will they all serve, or will folks just stay out? Yeah. Hi, there, Sherry Rubio with the Canadian Embassy. So Tom, I have a question about his border policies and immigration stuff. We all know about the famous fence debate along the Mexican border. But what do you think Trump's border and immigration policies have in terms of larger implications throughout the North American continent, and even getting into Central America a little bit as well? Yeah, we need a wall on the Northern border, definitely. Well, Justin Trudeau's going to build it and make us pay for it. Right, Justin, that's right. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Touche, touche. All right, what do we think about the appointment piece here, and who's going to serve? Carl Icott is going to be Vice President, Secretary of the Treasury, trade representative. He's the only one he's ever mentioned, is Carl Icott. I would say that Bob Corker, whose support for Trump's foreign policy speech was beyond astonishing. And then his continued support for Trump. And if you watched his stricken face the other day when he was asked about it, he clearly is having great trouble. But I'll put the best face on it. I think it may be Bob Corker saying, I want to save the country if he becomes president. And maybe you cut a deal where you let a vice president who has some expertise kind of run your foreign policy shop. And remember that what Trump's people have said is he doesn't want to be the CEO. It's astonishing. That's what the president is. He's the chief executive. He's already got a job to be the CEO. He doesn't even want to be the COO, basically. He wants to delegate all of those things. So I think if he wins, you're going to see an establishment that's going to jump all over him and try and get him to pick heads of divisions and let him sort of do his rhetorical thing while they run things. But how much he's willing to do that? I mean, let me just say that actually goes against all the advice in his art of the deal. He is somebody who really believes that essentially, and it's why his campaign has basically no infrastructure whatsoever, has not hired pollsters. He believes he should be essentially the brain trust with no information. So it is a fairly right. It is terrifying at that level. But I also think that this is the part that certainly makes me nervous because I cannot see who would serve in an administration where essentially every minute of the day you would basically be overruled. I mean, because I don't envision him taking advice from anyone on anything. So I think it would be very difficult to serve in his administration in any rational capacity. He wants to be Attorney General desperately or else he never would have backed him. And I agree that I think Bob Corker was, to me, the most surprising of the people, basically, in the establishment coming forward and essentially saying, although, you know, something. No, I don't find that surprising. Immigration is right where Trump is. I think if you had to look at the most important policy advisor Donald Trump has, it is Jeff Sessions, the senator from Alabama, who not only is an immigration hawk, but also an anti-trade and also an American first guy, very much the closest we have to a representative of the Buchananite tendency in the United States Senate. I think he would be a crucial part of any Trump administration. He's his most loyal supporter. Christie, it's clearly a transactional thing. There are two female governors that need to be considered. Mary Fallon, Oklahoma, came out early for Trump. He likes her. And of course, Jan Brewer of Arizona, the former governor of Arizona, who's been a major part and appeared in this great, fantastic piece I recommend to everybody that Bloomberg News reported about the Trump conference call over the judge, where Jan Brewer had the temerity to rebuke the Donald and say, you guys have to get your ducks in a row here. And Donald did not take kindly to that. But Matthew, you bring up a really interesting point, only in the sense that Donald Trump sees himself as also somebody who has promoted women and minorities throughout his business and his construction development time. I think the phrase that he said was that, yes, I always hired women because they seemed to have more to prove. And they work harder than men. So the other thing that would be fascinating would be to see, does he actually surprise everyone by trying to reach into all of these constituencies? Binders is full of women. Although he has, and I have to say, although he says that, that I like to hire women because they have more to prove. And of course, there's the controversial New York Times article about who was he actually helping and not. But the Boston Globe did a really good piece a few days ago, which I recommend people to look at, where they actually analyzed how much Donald Trump's campaign versus Hillary Clinton's campaign were paying, how many women and minorities they had and what they were paying them. And he had very few women and minorities compared to Hillary, which was she, I think she, what did he have? He had something like 7% minorities, and she had 33%. And he also had fewer than half women. And she was paying women and men exactly the same. And he was not. He was paying them less. So I think that tells you what you need to know. What is he doing in practice now in his campaign? But of course, he also just doesn't have many employees. I mean, he doesn't really have a campaign. And he doesn't seem to listen to me. Yes. So that's why I said, could you imagine serving in an administration where you would always be under the threat? His justification for the wall to the person from Canada who was asking about that is the wall with Mexico is that he says that the amount that, even though he says that Mexico is going to have to pay for it, that the amount that such a wall would cost pales in comparison to the amount that we as a nation are spending on free health care, free education, and all these other goodies, supposedly, that illegal immigrants are getting from crawling across onto our border. So Joe Arpaio is going to have what role in this administration? A big one. A big one. And he's going to also, to the Greenpeace woman, he's going to immediately approve the Keystone pipeline. So that was something he said. That'll solve the energy problem. Like that. Let's see if there's any two final questions here as we wrap up here. There's one hand and then a second hand. We'll have two final questions. And then we'll, as you ask the two questions, if any of the panelists want to answer the two or say a final word, and then we'll wrap up for the day. Hi, Eva from Graduate School of Political Management under Dr. Brown. I'm wondering, do you think he suffers from Xanophobia? And if so, what other? From what now? Sitting? Oh, xenophobia. And what other former presidential nomination has suffered to the same extent? Interesting. We'll have the second question here. Yes, the historical precedent would be interesting as we think about what other figures in American history he is most like. President or non-president? Thank you. My name is Fujii from Happy Science Group from Beijing, Tokyo. Our group published the first Japanese work which analyzed Trump Phenomenon. This is titled Trump Cut this January. How to become a card? It's available on Amazon. My question is, do you think all of the OP statesmen can really be supportive to Mr. Trump? Because some Republicans, such as Paul Ryan, is by now criticizing him. A question also about Republican major figure statesmen supporting Trump, given Paul Ryan's unease. I couldn't understand. What's their logic? I think they're making a few bets. And it relates to who would staff a Trump administration as well. I think the first bet most Republicans are making is that Trump will lose. And so the support for him is kind of, you know, it's a token. We're going to throw it out there. Sure, I support him. But I'm going to criticize him or not. Many of them won't go to the convention. Several governors have already said they're not going to the convention. Other lawmakers won't go. But yeah, sure, I support him. He's the Republican. They think you'll lose, and it'll blow over. I disagree with them. The other bet they're making, and this was key to Paul Ryan's endorsement last week, is that they believe that Trump is so without essence and so inverted to himself that they're going to be able to run a lot of conservative policy by him. No one will notice. But Paul Ryan said, is I'm laying up this great agenda, and I want Trump in the White House because we're going to pass these bills, and he'll be so busy picking fights with Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters and Xi Jinping over Twitter that, oh, sure, I'll sign this. Yeah, whatever, and do the thumbs up. That's also a dangerous bet, I think. I'm not actually sure they're right about that either, because there are people with strong ideologies, like Jeff Sessions, who are going to be at the highest levels, and they're going to want to influence policy as well. But I think that's basically the logic of some of many of the establishment Republicans backing Trump now. Sarah Palin get a role in his administration, given her early support. I think she's on record saying that she doesn't want a role. I will say I found this as someone who wrote a book about Palin. Interesting, the person that Trump is designated to vet, his vice presidential nominee, is Abie Culverhouse, who did the vetting for John McCain. Interesting. So the beauty of the Sarah Palin pick is that Abie's already vet her. There you go. Nice. Wow. Easy way to go. She quit within a couple of months anyhow, so great. Let's just come down the line here. And Laura, we'll see if anyone was responding to the two questions or any final comments from our terrific panel. Sure. Well, I mean, in terms of looking back and have we had individuals like this who've been xenophobic, yes. I mean, George Wallace, you could consider him one of those individuals. You can also. I brought up William Jennings Bryan before, but I don't think most people appreciate the Democratic Party in that latter half of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century had several platform debates about whether or not to essentially endorse the KKK. So I don't think there is always an understanding of actually how racist that populism was in the earlier part of our history. And in addition, then, I think, if you talk about his sort of who knows what he believes side. And this, I should say, is something of an insult to the person I'm going to identify. But it is to Aaron Burr. Alexander Hamilton actually supported Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr in 1800 because he deeply believed that Aaron Burr, as he said, talks all around the compass. And that would be much more scary as a president, especially at that time when the Constitution was so new and our institutions were so untried and tested than Thomas Jefferson, who was a certain opponent and one you could predict. And that's how I will tell you that I sort of thought about the Ted Cruz, Donald Trump standoff. From my perspective, as somebody who's long been kind of a moderate Democrat, I would have much preferred a Cruz nomination to a Trump nomination because of what it actually could mean. Cruz would be easy to fight. Trump is a wild card, and that is actually much scarier in politics than someone who is a known opponent. I would probably put Pat Buchanan on that list of predecessors as well. I think he's the nearest analog in recent memory. I mean, George Wallace, for sure, on many, many points, but not on others, so Pat Buchanan, I would say. And as to the xenophobia question, that's a tricky one because look at how much business Donald Trump has done for himself all over the world. He has made a very pretty penny, for example, all over the Muslim world. And so to say, I don't think any Muslims should come in. What about all the rich Muslims who own apartments and Trump Towers in New York and all over America? And what about the Trump Towers in Dubai and those kinds of things? So I think it's really self-serving. I have to agree with what Norm said earlier. I think the idea that it's all about him. It's about his ego and I think it's sort of what he sees as being politically expedient and that he has seen this as a vote-getter for him. That said, clearly his political views have been evolving. If we can say that, I mean, having been a birther and trying to invalidate President Obama on the whole birth certificate issue, it shows that there's definitely racism and anti-otherness, but I do think it's more about him. When it works for him, he's quite happy to do business abroad. So on the question of people supporting Trump, you remember back during the presidential campaign when it came down to Trump and Cruz that Lindsey Graham famously said, it's like a choice between being poisoned and being shot and he chose poisoned. But for a lot of these Republican office holders, especially senators who are up for reelection, supporting Trump or not supporting Trump is just like that choice. It is an extremely difficult one to make. If you repudiate Trump, you are gonna alienate some significant portion of your Republican voting base and you need them all in an election where you're gonna have a headwind regardless. If you support Trump, then you're stuck with his policy positions. And the rationale on the mantra, which we're gonna hear throughout the course of this campaign is anything would be better than Hillary Clinton. But at some point it's gonna be even a racist, misogynist, lunatic is better than Hillary Clinton, come on, it's gonna be a real problem for them. You broke it, you bought it, they've broken the party, they've got their nominee and they're stuck with it and you can just see on the faces of candidates and you see a Kelly Ayotte saying, I'm supporting him but I'm not endorsing him. They're trying to split hairs here and they don't know quite what to do. And Susan Collins has come out and said she's gonna vote for Hillary. She's practically said that. You know, for somebody like Susan Collins who wants to solve problems and who wants a different party, this is excruciating but it's excruciating for all of them. And what Mark Kirk has done now only makes it more difficult for a Rob Portman, a Ron Johnson, a Pat Toomey and look at John McCain who basically, look at the face of John McCain when he's supporting a guy who said waterboarding, that's nothing. We're gonna go for real torture and we'll kill their families. And he said that John McCain wasn't a war hero because he got caught. Right, because he liked guys who didn't get caught. This is a really, really tough choice. And I would just add on the xenophobia front, go back to the Republican candidates in between the wars where you really did have this strong isolationist bent that went away with Pearl Harbor and that included Arthur Vandenberg among others. Then it changed and anti-communism changed it dramatically and now it's another part of the ongoing struggle that neo-conservative muscular wing which has been a dominant one has to fight a rearguard action now against a group of people who basically don't believe anything that they believe. As it should be to wrap us up, Mr. Milben. Well I think Paul Ryan was very honest yesterday when he said it was just a matter of party unity and if we're not together we're doomed. So they're making a short term calculation to project their majority. Whatever else happens in future. So I'd be very interested in seeing what that trump card is all about. My daughter bought a Trump mask and wears it around the house and jumps out from around corners just to keep me on my toes at all times. But I'm not much of a psychiatrist but I do think the diagnosis of xenophobia is not quite right. I think it's a narcissistic personality disorder which is another way of saying what my colleagues here have said. And that is what drives everything else and xenophobia is more of a convenient thing of the moment. I'm grateful to, please join me in saying thank you to Matthew and Laura, Dana, Norm and Indira. Thank you all, thank you all, thank you all, thank you all, thank you all, thank you all.