 Good, welcome everyone and welcome to Sean Spicer who needs little introduction as the first White House press secretary of the current administration. Less well-known is his very long-term involvement in the machinery of the Republican Party in Washington and elsewhere. He was communications director for the Republican National Commission from 2011 and that was he's added another responsibility as chief strategist from 2015. In the 90s he also had a number of roles with the Republicans in Washington related to both the House and the Senate. I'm very interestingly and something I hope we will touch on. He was assistant United States trade representative for media and public affairs under the George W. Bush administration, logging almost half a million miles, going to ministerial meetings, Brussels, Geneva, etc. So hopefully we'll get to talk about that. Just a reminder the emergency exits are on this side and this side and through the door we came from. So I want to try and cover three things today. One, American politics, how things will evolve, the second presidency itself, and then what it means to the world. So on the first one I'm gonna wrap up at 8.30. We've got a million questions, but let's get through some. I was speaking to an American friend close to retirement age in Florida over the weekend. She said she'd never remembered a time when the country was so divided. If things are as divided as that, what's driving conservatives to feel more liberal? Is it the media? Is it economic factors? Is it demographics and immigration? What are your thoughts on polarization? That's a great question. I mean, you look back through our history in the 1970s, post-Vietnam, we were very divided as a country. It's different though. I think your question is spot-on. It seems a lot more ideological. People have chosen sides. The thing that I find most fascinating isn't necessarily that as much as the dialogue or lack thereof and the lack of civility and respect. And again, which is an entire separate subject in question. But the reality is is that it's not just the partisanship. It's not just the ideology. It's that everybody believes that if you're not on their team, you're against them. That is I think a bad place for our society and a bad place for our country right now. That people feel like they've got to take sides. And that if you're not on their side, then somehow there's something inherently wrong with that person, their views. And I think there's a lot of reasons why. I mean everyone's been studying this for some economic reasons. I think there's some things that have been simmering for a long time, especially on the conservative side where they felt they have felt dismissed and dissed and not respected and not listened to in Washington by their own part. And it's not just so it's not it's not, you know, Republicans necessarily against Democrats or liberals, there are a lot of Republicans saying we haven't had a voice for a long time. No one's respected us. People have dismissed a lot of our concerns and our frustration. So there's a lot of reasons for it. But I also, but I think the bigger issue is from where I stand as an American is how do we sort of turn the tide? And how do we fix it? And how do we stop the current state of dialogue? Do you have any thoughts on how to do that? Yeah, I mean the only thing I think that one of the things that I find when I talk to a lot of groups is the focus tends to be who started it, who's more to blame as opposed to, you know, I have this when people ask me all the time about the Republican Party and I mentioned this to a group of folks that we talked to at lunch, it's as if they're not part of it. You know, they'll say, how is the party going to do this? And I'm like, well, the party is you if you're if we're talking the Republican group. The country is us as Americans. And so for everyone who wants to be part of it, the challenge that I've given groups as I've talked is to say if you don't like the current state of being, then help be part of the solution, not the problem. Meaning the next time that there's a shouting match in your family or in your business where someone's saying, you know, they're an idiot, they're whatever. Stop and say, oh, they have a right to be hurt. But too often, and this goes on on both sides, is that if you talk to someone and say, well, I'm a Trump supporter, I'm a Republican, they immediately fill in the blank with, well, then you're a, you know, and there's a whole host of them. And even for folks on my side, when we're having dialogue with someone says, well, I was supported for Hillary, they'll say, well, then you're an idiot or you're a jerk. And it's like, I think we have to be part of the solution and saying, let that person be hurt. They have a right to believe in that just because, you know, they are on the other side of the aisle, doesn't make them any less American, doesn't make them any less patriotic. We can disagree on politics and policies and candidates, but we should all sort of agree that there's a degree of respect that everybody's entitled to. And do you think that the way the media has gone and social media means that people can tend to listen to the views that they agree with, and they don't actually hear? Yeah, that's actually a really good part of it. I mean, you can literally isolate yourself to the point where you're only hearing voices that support what you believe and further those thoughts, but also then black out the other side. The other issue is frankly, in social media itself, is that you can say things that you never would say in person to somebody and not feel like there's any repercussions for it. I mean, no one would say half of the stuff they say to somebody else in person that they get away within a tweet or post on Facebook. And I think that has led to it. And I think the other issue with the media is it's not just that you can self-program. It's that to some degree, a lot of the media institutions have recognized that then they have to cater to the audience. So on our cable stations, you've got CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. And Fox understands that it has staked out its position, its constituency, its audience, and that they need to continue to grow that audience by putting on certain people, highlighting certain issues, et cetera. But the same is true with MSNBC and CNN. And so there is a business aspect of the media that is also at play. And that's just on the TV side, but I think it's perflates throughout all the other forms and platforms. And just picking up the point about the Republican Party, and it may, in Europe, we have a more sort of centralized party structure. It's a looser kind of thing there. But that said, there were a lot of Republicans who were, as you described, never Trump before the election. You said there were. They were before people who were just Republicans. There was a vocal minority. Those people, what has happened to people who were Republicans who were anti-Trump? Have they been, have they changed their view? Have they left a party? How has Fox like, see all of the above? Okay. You've seen a lot of these folks that, whether they're pundits or consultants that have said, I mean, you saw a lot of people fall in line, right? So President Trump has, by the last poll, 87% approval rating by party. That is the highest approval rating by party of any president in modern U.S. history, save George W. Bush post 9-11. So, yes, there are still a vocal group of those folks. But I think for the most part, it's a small people who have said, I'm leaving the party, I'm going to continue to speak my voice. But it was funny, I talked to a friend of mine who's a political consultant that was sort of in that never Trump camp. Very vocal about it. It said to me the other day, I, he said, you know where I was with respect to the president during the election, but the constant attacks he's under, I can't help but support him now. And there really has been, to your last question, this polarization and this fossilization of if people feel like they've got a two sides, it's tough to be in the middle in America right now. Thank you, Robert. Okay. Tell me, one of the things that jumped out of me at your book was that, which I couldn't really, I didn't have a feel for, was that in the, going into the 2014 midterms, you said there was an energy within the Republican party that you'd never, that you had never seen before. Two questions. What brought that about? And is it still there now? I think six years of Obama brought it about that when you're a party out of power, Republican or Democrat, and you're, you, at some point, and it's usually in that sixth term, you saw that with Bush. I mean, Obama basically after, you know, when, when Obama was running, no one wanted, you know, Bush was sort of, it was tough to be seen around Bush. Eight years was tough. And I think the same, you know, once six years into Obama, the Republican party was like, we need to get focused, get together, and understand that if we want to get any of these policies stopped that we, you know, as a party don't agree with, then we need to mobilize. And there's a difference between mobilizing people in a midterm than a general. So it takes, you know, you have a much lower participation race in a midterm. Therefore, getting people fired up and excited is just ramping up a different notch than, say, a general election would be. And just coming to the midterms and about kind of, as you say, the heightened feelings around politics. Do you think participation in the midterms will rise this time? And more importantly, what do you think the outcome will be? I think participation could is potentially going to be a lot higher in certain places. Remember, it's hard in a midterm because a third of the Senate's up every two years, right? So if you have a ton of competitive races one cycle and not another, then participation may not go up, but not necessarily because of that, but because of which states are in play and the level of competitiveness, right? This year, I mean, if we look at the midterms currently, you've got the Senate, the Republicans have a one seat majority. There are 10 Democratic senators in states that Trump won. I don't think there's any question in my mind that we keep the Senate. Probably we pick up a seat or two. There's, I mean, you look at Joe Manchin's, I think he's in a Trump won West Virginia by 30 points. Indiana, North Dakota, even in Florida, where a long time ago Bill Nelson is, Rick Scott's been a very popular and effective governor and right now he's leaving him. So we could flip a couple seats as well that aren't in a column. I see it's coming out there. On the House side, I admittedly am concerned. And I think to your last question, so just lay it land wise, Democrats need 23 seats since the late 1950s. The party out of power has averaged just over 30 as a pickup. So right there, you're not doing well. You've got 43 House Republicans that are not seeking reelection. And the reason that obviously matters is that when you're an incumbent, you have name ID, you've got some constituency that knows who you are, and you've usually done something with or communicated with an open seat is much more costly no matter what the tilt is. So for those reasons, I'm very concerned about the House. I don't think it's over yet. The economy is sort of the saving grace right now for us. 4.1 percent economic growth, low unemployment throughout so many sectors and constituencies. So I think that that could be our firewall, but there's no question. I think it's going to be a lot closer of a majority. And that's in that perspective, this idea. The problem right now is that for a lot of people who went out and voted for Trump, they don't look at this year's midterms as being crucial to implementing his agenda and policies. So they're saying, well, Trump's not on the ballot. I'm not going out and voting. That's where the Republicans could suffer. And I think that the issue, if you're a candidate for office right now, is you need to make that a binary choice. And we did that. There's a chapter in the book I call Upshifting the Downshifters. And there was about 6 percent of the electorate throughout a bunch of the battleground states. And what we found through a lot of data mining was that these folks were high-propensity Republican voters. They voted for everything. School elections, high school elect, you name it. But they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, but they were uncomfortable voting for Trump. And so we went out and did a lot of focus groups and studies and recognized that if we could make it a binary choice, get them to vote early, absentee, get them in person on election day, that by an overwhelming majority, they'd vote for Trump. If they understood, I may not like them, but I understand the agenda and the policy. I'll do it. And it worked. We need to employ that same strategy this cycle to make people understand if you're a Republican and you don't go out and vote the agendas at stake. So it's not just about this candidate or that candidate. That would suggest that possibly that you don't think it is being implemented this time? I don't think it's one thing to implement. It's another thing to make it resonate. And I think that it's just tough because people look at an election, for the most part, as one person versus another. So you hear a lot of people who say, I don't like either candidate or I don't like this. And what I think you started to see the party do, it's just difficult. It's a hard marketing sell to say, don't ignore the candidates. It's the agenda that's on the ballot. And that's a hard concept for a lot of folks. A, to sell and B, to get through. I might come back to the outcome of the election, particularly if the Republicans lose the House. But let's move on to the second part and deal with the presidency. Can I just answer that one quick? Okay. So if the Republicans were to lose the House, like the House won't name post offices or bridges. They're going to sit around all day and talk to each other. Well, we might as well go, if that is the case, what are the implications for Donald Trump's presidency? It's not. I think you still have the Senate, which gets through the nominations and so much more. And then I think it actually probably strengthens him for reelection because you can say, here's how the agenda stalled. It's a great, I think it's bad for the country. It's good for potentially his reelection. But look, I mean, all Democrats, so if you're not familiar with American politics, C-SPAN, which is our covers, our House and Senate has three channels. I joke not to, funnily, that C-SPAN will have to take out a fourth channel just to cover all the investigations because that's all Democrats will do. I mean, they will investigate the investigations. But they will do nothing to help the President get anything done. It will be completely a focus on 2020. So there will not be an agenda. I mean, there's not a willingness on behalf of Nancy Pelosi to work with the President on anything. So you see that as actually working in Donald Trump's favor when it comes to reelection 2020? I think politically you can make a much stronger case and see what happens if you don't reelect me, if you don't flip passes again. It's not a good policy outcome as much as it is a good political outcome. Just on the coming to the presidency of Donald Trump from your own time there and your knowledge of him, when he leaves office, whether it's 2020 or 2024, what do you think he would want as his major legacy, if there were one, two issues? I think his, what he would want is his legacy is a thriving economy. I think he may get that, but I think his biggest legacy regardless is going to be his work on the judiciary. He will have a second Supreme Court Justice, Kavanaugh is getting Peru, there's, I mean, the votes are there. We're going to go through the motions. But what he's done on the circuit and appellate courts in the federal system has, you know, he's appointing young, strict constructionalist jurists. Those have lifetime appointments. That's going to affect the trajectory of the judiciary for a minimum of a generation. And that's one of the things in your book that you mentioned which I was surprised by. You said that his biggest achievement in his first year was the appointment to the Supreme Court. Absolutely. Over the economics tax cuts thing. And I saw in Europe, we don't, you know, occasional politician, this country makes an issue about judicial appointments, but it doesn't tend to be something that becomes an election issue. Whereas it's a pretty, it seems to be a big thing for Americans. Well, I don't even know. I think it's a big thing for some of them. I mean, I don't think Americans necessarily always understand the impact until after the fact when there's a ruling and saying, oh, wow, that went 5-4. And you go, wow, that, if we had appointed so-and-so, that could have gone differently. For a lot of Americans, it is part of the nexus in their voting. But I don't think it's enough. I mean, like, I truly believe if you think about how the court has been divided lately and how many 5-4 decisions come down, there is no question in terms of shaping the country that it's, the economies can go up and down. I mean, you can, you know, so as much as I think the policy has been great for our country, these appointments and the rulings that they have affect minimum regeneration, if not much longer in terms of the historical precedent they set. So you specifically said that you thought millions of his supporters, that was a very important issue for the appointment. Just comparing that the tax cut package last December, which do you think was more important for his support base between those two? I think Gorsuch to the court was probably more important. I don't know that if you would ask the question prior to his appointment as much as since his appointment. But if you ask any Republican base voter, I think Gorsuch is probably easily in their top three, if not mostly in their top two. And could it just going further into that, the, is it, could it be the case that economics, economic issues are becoming less important to voters, sort of identity, cultural issues are becoming more important? It's not, I don't, I don't know that I want to rank them, but I mean, I think the tax cuts in the economy are there. I just don't, sometimes the issue with Americans is that we get something and it kind of goes okay, what not. And with the economy, it starts to get baked in. It's like, okay, things are good. And you don't necessarily go, oh yeah, I remember that. It's the tax cuts from a year ago. Whereas the Gorsuch thing, every time there's a ruling, you're reminded, oh yeah, 5-4. I remember why we got this. It's, it's much more of an enduring thing. So it's not a question of what had a greater impact. But it just more has to do with what's at the top of mind for most conservative voters. Okay. From your book, you're clearly a pro Trump person and you remain that way. But one area where I thought you were consistently critical was around the, the issue of the job that you did. You know, you said, his tweets caused you trouble, quote, there were costs from those late night tweets. They cut down his own message. You said that he was, by doing this, he was actually working against himself in many cases, and kind of a dry line. You said White House, the White House is not exactly organized for message discipline. Yeah, I mean, I grew up, spent 25 years crafting messages, mostly for candidates or government entities or whatever, where you would plan out, here's how we're going to roll this out. Here's how we're going to execute it. Here's all the tactics that are at your disposal. You work backwards from the effect that you hope to achieve and think about how do we employ all of these tactics to get the result that we want. And I think, look, don't get me wrong. I mean, in the book, I also talk about the fact that, he can be as great. I mean, there is no one that has the ability to message like he does. Hands down. I tell this story, but for a normal candidate in a general election, if you were to have a rally in two Sundays in Columbus, Ohio, you would buy television and radio ads, send emails, post stuff all over Facebook and whatever. I'm coming next Thursday or next Saturday to Columbus Fairgrounds, bring a friend, I mean, you basically spend a boatload of money to create a crowd. Trump sends a tweet and people lined up around the block for hours on end. That is just not how it's ever worked before. And so he can do things that nobody else has, but he also recognizes there's days when we'd be on like an amazing three-day roll, and he would like suddenly the message, you know, he'd put out something and be like, wow, now we're switching gears. But you wouldn't have necessarily maybe gotten the first three days. So it's like anything else. You can't just look at something myopically and say, let's just take all the good. If you're honest, you say, okay, there's some bad too, but you can't, I think in any scenario, just isolate and say, okay, let's just do all good. That's pretty obvious. In the sense that there's the lack of discipline. One of the things that maybe surprised people with a lot of things is surprised people, but conservatives tend to like discipline and restraint. I don't think anyone would accuse this president of being very strange. Is that something that maybe some conservatives don't like about? Well, again, I somewhat dispute the product. I mean, look, and it's not the polling has been clear consistently. There might be some concerns about some of the style, but at the end of the day, look at the approval rating by party. People are more focused on anything else than results. I think where a lot of conservatives are saying, you know what, we're finally seeing things get done that we have advocated for a long time. And okay, I mean, that's the one thing that I think is fascinating. And I know it's the subject of story after story after story in the US, but it's like, okay, despite this, here's what his approval rating is. And I think for most Americans, especially on the conservative side, they're saying, you know what, I'm getting results. That's what I care about. But do you think it's a fair charge that while he's getting very high polling ratings on his own side, he's getting extremely low polling ratings the other that he's actually contributing to the polarization of America unnecessarily, things like getting involved in the NFL, you know, clearly he's getting involved in the NFL. I mean, I think that there's no question the president's standing up for something he believes in, whether you agree with it or not. Look, if what I would love is to be bringing more and more people together, I would love to be growing our party. I would love to, I mean, my style is not necessarily his style. But at the end of the day, the point that I've said to people is that just from an analytical standpoint, I talk about this extensively in the book, I mean, there are plenty of times during the campaign when I was, you know, then this Trump, hey, this is how we should do this. He'd be like, yeah, thanks. And he would go do it his way. And then he'd turn around and go, okay, that, I guess he did it his way. And he would bounce out of it higher than coming into it. And so at some point, if you think about it just from a mentality standpoint, here's a guy who consistently is told by all the experts not to do something, he does it and he benefits. So it's very difficult to turn around someone who time and time again has been told no, no, no, no, no, and comes out higher than they did that suddenly you're right on this next instance. But specifically on that thing of causing or necessarily helping or helping is a wrong word, but adding into the polarization. Yeah, look, like as I said, I would, I would love to see a greater degree of inclusion. But I mean, I can go through several instances in the Obama administration where they either targeted one after conservatives. I mean, I don't, I didn't like that either. But I think that each politician finds their own voice and style that's effective for them. Okay, look, moving on, I'm sure there's going to be lots of questions on that particular aspect of the talk, our discussion today, but let's move on to the more international dimensions to it. Used to work in the trade side of things. And it's a huge, hugely important matter for Ireland, given how open we are independent of trade. I got the impression from some of the things in the book that the current trade policy wouldn't be, it wouldn't be totally in agreement with many of the, many of the things that have been decided. For example, you worked on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, reading between the lines and sandwiches, though you didn't support abandoning Davos. No, I mean, when I, my job as a spokesman has always been to advocate and to speak on behalf of the policies of the person that I represent. There's no one that I've worked for or any institution that I've had 100% unity. I think I'm a much more bilateral trade agreement person than I am a multilateral treatment. We initiated TPP at the beginning or the end of the Bush administration, but I think it was a concept when we walked out of office. I think the one big issue you have with a lot of these multilateral agreements is that they favor the lowest common denominator. So you have these countries at the bottom that agree to the lowest, to the bottom in the US, which has the largest market access issues, lowest tariffs, ends up agreeing to things that favor some of the folks that are the least opening with their markets. At the core, it's not a question of pro or against any particular agreement. I believe that we should have free, fair and reciprocal trade. There's a public attitudes towards trades. Ross Baroque got 20% of the vote in 1992, and he was one of the big things was the giant suffering sound of jobs going into Mexico. Correct. Has there always been a kind of hostility to free trade that Trump's kind of identified and people that was there all the time? Yeah, that's a great question because I have a working question slash theory about this, which is if you look at trade and the evolution of both parties going back well into the 50s and 60s, it was a bipartisan pro trade US policy. It started to slip away from the Democrats as we headed into the early 80s, and there was this sense of it was taken for granted for a long time, especially in the Republican party. The trade vote came up, and everyone just sort of was supposed to vote yes. But if you look at the trade agreements, trade promotion authority that Congress grants to the president, those votes started getting closer and closer and closer. I sort of had started to really believe that the party had stayed solid, and the people started to float further and further away, and to your point about Perot in the early 90s, that there was the issue kept evolving and the party stayed stagnant. I think Trump just to some degree really recognized where the people really were. So are Americans not re-pro free trade? No, there's a difference. I think that, and this is where I think the labels get screwed up. You can be pro, I mean look, if you look at the US, whether it's tariff or non-tariff barriers, we have a fairly open market. And then we agree to these trade deals, we say great, we'll allow you guys to come in and sell your ag services or manufacturing goods into our market, but when you sell your stuff in ours, there's a 15% tariff, there's a 20% tariff, that's not fair trade. I think we have, you know, if it was at 50 and it goes down to 15, in some ways you think you got a great deal, but if you're an American manufacturer that's competing against another manufacturer from, you know, somewhere in Middle East or Asia, is that really a fair deal when you're now facing a 15% or 20% tariff when maybe they're able to get it for 5 or 10 or 0? So the point is that I think one of the things that the president finally did was called the bluff and say it's not fair. If we're allowing you market access at a very low barrier to entry and you're not giving it to us, how is that fair? It seems that we're getting kind of screwed on that deal and I think his view and he's held this well into the 80s was that we need to stand up for American workers. This putting America first thing gives the impression that America is getting screwed by. I don't think anyone who's ever looked at how US trade diplomats work would ever think that they've ever done anything but put America first. Correct, but as I mentioned, I think that when you start a deal and if someone's tariff is at 50% and you get a time of 15, in some ways you think you've got a really good deal and in most cases you probably have. But I think over 5, 10, 15, 20 years you go, why is 15 good? If we're doing zero and you're doing 15, I get it that it used to be 50 and it's lower but it's still not fair. So it's all in perspective at the time. I think back in the day when you cut a lot of these deals and you said, hey, we went in, whether it was tariff, non-tariff, or in some cases partnership deals where you said you have to partner with an in-country host or ownership has to be split in 2015. We have none of those restrictions in the US for the most part with the exception of certain CFIUS regulations in terms of critical national security interests. But if you want to come in and start a business in the US or a franchise, you're more than welcome to do that. A lot of countries don't allow US companies to have that same access in their country. That's bad for them, good for the US. No, it's not. If a US can't, 95% of the world's consumers live outside the US. So if you're a US company and you want to sell your good or services throughout the rest of the world and you're facing stiff tariff and non-tariff barriers to get there, that's bad for them. That's bad for our workers to be able to export their good. Do you think there's a general view that this openness to trade and globalization has been bad for Americans, that jobs have been lost? No, I think generally it's been good. But I think the question is good what we settle for. And I think that's the real question. There's always this question of is it where was it? And as I mentioned, and so it's one thing 20 years ago, if you cut a deal where it was a 50 or 70 in some cases, 80% tariff and you get it down to 10, 15, that's good. But you start looking over the next 20 years and you're saying, well, wait a second, now we're going from zero to 50 or the regulations in terms of ownership requirements or intellectual property, all these other things in the current world make it unfair or currently, yes, it's not as bad as it once was, but that still doesn't make it fair. It's interesting. You look at, and I just, but you look at in the US, we have this big fight for wage equality. And if you look over time, you go, okay, women used to, and I'm making this up, but let's say women used to make 50 cents to the dollar now that one of the averages is like 76. Well, should women just stop and say, hey, that's a better deal? No. I mean, they should say, until we get parity, it's not fair. So the word fairness, you've used it many times on this, it sort of resonates with many of the things Donald Trump himself has said. It's a lot of speculation that the US could pull out of the World Trade Organization. We're going to wake up some more into a tweet saying, we've had enough, the US is leaving WTO. Do you really think I can predict that? What is it possible? Well, I think it's possible. I don't know. I don't know. I have not seen anything of substance that suggests that we're going to get out of the WTO. But I don't know. And I think, frankly, it depends on what kind of internal talks and reforms that we have. You look at some of the makeup and composite makeups of some of the dispute bodies. I think the US does think that the playing field is tilted against them. Hopefully, through dispute resolution mechanisms, we can solve this. Okay, maybe move on to the EU. David O'Sullivan, the EU's ambassador in Washington, who you know, spoke to us recently. He mentioned that the ESO, that Donald Trump had animosity towards the EU. Is that something you've seen? Can you explain why that might be? What's... I would respectfully disagree with David on that. And I do have a lot of respect for David. I've known him a long time since his work with the EU Commission on Trade. Look, and I say this, like, the President speaks glowingly of Europe and the people. But I think, again, this comes down to fairness. And there's a difference between liking somebody and agreeing with the policies. And I don't... I think that there's a difference. Just if you have, just because someone is a brother or sister or friend or relative or co-worker, and you like them or care about them or love them, whatever, doesn't mean you can't say, hey, this situation is untenable, unfair, one-sided, whatever it is. I think that's how he views a lot of the economic relationships that exist in Europe. I don't think it's a... It's not a personal thing. In fact, I think, I mean, if someone didn't like it, he wouldn't come around and build properties and talk about deals. I mean, he clearly has some kind of affinity for both Europe and Ireland in particular. Okay, I'm sure people will come up with the questions about Ireland. So I'm going to leave that. No, I'm not sure. We could be here again for tomorrow with quite a number of questions, I'm sure. Some of the things that people would view as more destructive, Paris Accords, pulling out of the Paris Accords without anything to replace it, the Iran nuclear deal. But this is a precedent in your book, amongst other things, described as erratic and mercurial. How does this help Americans? Does pulling out of the Paris Accords, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, does that make America more secure or less secure? Well, let me just stay at the outset. I mean, just to be completely... I'm not a policy guy. So I'm not here, whether it's the economic stuff or the foreign policy, to get into it. I can tell you that I know from what the President said at the time, is that to use the refrain again, I just... He believes that those two deals, in particular for various different reasons, are not fair to the United States. In the case of Paris, he believes that the arbitrary levels and agreements that were made by some countries, especially China and India and others, didn't put the US at a disadvantage in our ability to grow jobs. That's his view. On Iran, again, he did not believe that it was in the US's best interests from a security standpoint, the deal that was had, and he didn't believe that Iran was compliant with it. Somebody has coined the term diplotainment, that the President looks at diplomacy as a form of entertainment, but to... Oh, okay. That, you know, I don't think anybody would ever accuse them of having a small ego, that this is a guy with a big ego who likes to be at the center of attention, the Summers with the Queen North Korean leader as an example. Do you think there's anything to that? That this is somebody who wants to be at the center of attention and US foreign policy has been decided to some extent by headlines? I think he understands two things. One is, he gets the imagery of a lot of this, but he also gets the relationship aspect of it. I mean, his view is, I give me... Look, I think he looks at a lot of these things and says, okay, for all of you, assistant secretaries and your memos, what have you gotten done? So sit me down with this person. He's a guy that, as a deal maker, is a business person, believes he can sit down with somebody and either decide whether or not that they can come to an agreement or not. But that's kind of how he views a lot of the diplomacy. And if you look at Chairman Kim in particular, when you stop for a second and realize, okay, he sits down with the guy. Everybody says that I can't believe you're doing this. We should have all of these talks whenever. And you go, okay, so let's look at what happened. One, they released our hostages. Two, we got the remains back for our fallen soldiers that have been missing for a long time, which is a huge value in our country in terms of those who serve. And I frankly think it's, I disgrace for the lack of attention that it's gotten in our country. For all the talk that people talk about service in the United States, the idea that these service men were brought back, and this was a commitment from the United States and it happened, received absolute scant coverage. And I found it fairly disgraceful that that was the case after what I believe is a huge get. And then third is that from a security standpoint, you saw missiles flying off over and over again throughout the first year of the administration and they've stopped. That is a security issue, not just for the Korean Peninsula, but for our allies and frankly for our West Coast. So if nothing else, we are at least safer for that meeting. And yet everyone focused on the style, not the substance and the results. President looks at this and says, okay, I did this. I may not have done it the way so it's not my interpretation of anything as much as it is what the results show. Sean, I wanted to ask you about Steve Bannon and his influence on the election of Trump and how much you think he may be missed or otherwise in his election next time round. And also how much of an influence has Steve Bannon in terms of the president's hostility towards Europe? So Steve joined the campaign, I think it was on August 19th. I think he was a good steward of the president's message and Steve's been talking about populism and his website highlighted a lot of that stuff. And the president's obviously was the vehicle to it, but I mean it's not to undermine Steve in any way, but the bottom line is the president beat 16 other candidates, secured the nomination and then in August, September, October, November, less than three months before the election, bottom line. I think Steve not only understood but was totally in sabbatical with this thing. I mean there's a bunch of stuff in the book that Steve helped direct or channel the president's policies and views and statements and messaging in a way that I think in some cases proved to be fairly effective. He did things that I would have never done as a political operative, but in many cases turned out to be highly effective. So again one of the things that I find is it's difficult, it's again more of an analytical discussion than it is a writer. It's like this is what he did and this is how it turned out. I'm not saying I agree with every tactic or message or phrase, but it worked and you could look and say okay well if you had done that then you might not have won. I've not kept up with Steve. I know he's fallen over here a bunch and he's talked to some folks about doing things. I know he's got some projects he's going on in DC. Look the bottom line is though for 2020 Trump knows where he wants to be. The question is do the people around him help channel that in terms of hey here's where the data says to go. Here's the messaging and the advertisements we need to do etc etc. All the political tactics but it's not like he's some candidate that's saying to his consultants hey tell me what I need to think. He's 72 year old. I mean no he tweets on his own. All of that he's not exactly looking at his aides saying hey guys can you draft me something. I mean so I think Steve understood the president's message. He understood how to channel it but I think in terms of going forward he knows exactly how he is. One thing I want to just back up on the last part of your question because I just want to make sure I'm clear. I think I've been very clear about this from a personal standpoint. I used part of my book to write about a lot of the issues that I have with the press but I also talk about a lot of good reporters that are there that do a good and fair job. I don't use the phrase that you use because I don't think it's good for any industry. I think there are good people and bad people. There are good lawyers and there are bad lawyers. There are good doctors and bad doctors etc. There are good whatever and when you throw everybody into one bucket or sweep them with one broad brush you throw out the bad and the good and we should be highlighting the good. In my book I literally go through and name some of the good reporters specifically because I think that there are a lot of reporters in that briefing room and throughout American journalism that are tough to nations but fair and professional. I want to make sure that we highlight those people who I may not agree with every story but I go you know what you are a good fair professional reporter and I think that that is how you know frankly for any industry because I know as a conservative and as a republican I don't like it when I walk out and someone says oh you must be and throw it in so I don't want to use that same tactic back at any other group or industry. I don't think all journalists all democrats all whatever are monolithic. There's good and bad in every group and what I think is the most effective thing is to highlight the good in people the good in a profession the good in a company the good in association and highlight and insult those people and those standards and say let's be more like them than like this. We've run over time just I'm going to take advantage of the chair and I will we need to think about Donald Trump for over two years another six years. Six. Okay. Good. Good. Thank you all for coming. 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