“You can really trace in the post-World war II [Republican] party into two factions, it was sort of an Eisenhower governing boring, but sane faction, and then Joe McCarthy.”
Stuart Stevens is the author of seven previous books, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, including Northern Exposure, Commander in Chief, and K Street. For twenty-five years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns. He attended Colorado College; Pembroke College, Oxford; Middlebury College; and UCLA film school. He is a former fellow of the American Film Institute.
Donald Trump’s political rise seemed like an impossibility. After his improbable primary and general election wins, surely Trump was not a true Republican. That illusion quickly vanished as the party fell in line and offered their unwavering loyalty. “The Republican Party is the party that endorsed Roy Moore and attacks John Bolton. So I started asking myself like, ‘How did this happen?’"
After decades of winning on the major issues that defined the Republican party platform, George W. Bush was tasked with defining what it meant to be a Republican in the modern era. Bush introduced the idea of compassionate conservatism. Speeches like the one given at the 2000 Republican National Covention are unrecognizable compared to today’s Republican messaging. “One of the conclusions I came to, which seems sort of obvious is that leaders really matter.”
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Stuart Stevens
Author
It Was All a Lie
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello everyone. Welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum at the intersection of finance, technology and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series that we started during the work from home period to replicate the experience that we provide at our global conference series, the SALT Conference. And really what we're trying to do is to provide a window into the minds of subject matter experts for our audience, as well as provide a platform for leading investors, creators, and thinkers, to talk about some ideas that we think are really shaping the future.
John Darsie: (00:41)
And our guest today is someone who has had a big part in shaping the future of the Republican Party for the last 30 years, and the picture that he now paints or the party is a fairly dire picture. And That guest today is Stuart Stevens. Stuart is the author of Seven Books, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire and Outside among many other publications. He has written extensively for several television shows, including Northern exposure, commander and chief in K Street. For 25 years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns. He attended Colorado College, Pembroke College in Oxford, Middlebury College and UCLA Film School. And he's a former fellow of the American Film Institute. He's also a member of the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans who have been involved in the party for many years, who have decided to work to elect Joe Biden in this election as a result of what they view as some flaws within our current president, president Trump. Just a reminder, if you have any questions for Stuart during today's SALT Talk, you can enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen.
John Darsie: (01:52)
And in addition, Stuart is out with a recent book called It Was All a Lie that recapped some of what I just spoke about, some of his concerns about the future of the Republican Party. So we're very excited to talk about that book as well. And I think Anthony has it in front of him. And conducting today's interview is Anthony Scaramucci, who's the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. He's also had a few stints in politics as well. He's also the chairman of SALT. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:22)
Stuart looking at, I'm holding up the book, see that Stuart? I've got the pages dog-eared, it is great to have you on.
Stuart Stevens: (02:30)
You'll get a note from my mom, thanks.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:32)
And you're beaming in from where I actually met you. I don't know if you would remember this, but you're in Park City, and I met you in 2012 at that big Romney Conclave. And then ultimately we continued on with governor Romney doing that every year. And that was an interesting time, obviously, because that was June of 2012, as we were heading into the Republican convention. And eight years has made a big difference in Republican Party politics stewards. Before we go to the book, I want you to tell us a little bit about what it was like to grow up in Jackson, Mississippi, and how you got your career arc headed towards politics?
Stuart Stevens: (03:11)
Yeah. You know Anthony, I grew up in the bad old days in Mississippi, kind of the Mississippi Burning Days. The big question that people would ask is, "Are you good on race or bad on race?" And my parents were kind of classic political moderates, but they were good on race. And they were involved in trying to support civil rights efforts. There was a guy named William Winter, who ran for governor in 1967 and he had gone to Holmes with my parents, actually dated my mom for a while, which is still a source of some amusement. And he was running against the last avowed segregationist then John Bell Williams. And my parents were involved in that campaign. And I got involved in the way you do when you're like out of a 13 years old, I walked precincts, I did those things.
Stuart Stevens: (04:04)
And it was a very dramatic campaign, Winter was getting a lot of death threats because he was against segregation. And I just found it incredibly compelling. And I thought, "If this is politics, what else could be more interesting?" At the time, pretty much everybody in Mississippi were Democrats. And the dominant political figures were Jim Eastland, Big Jim Eastland as he was called the Senator and John Stennis, both for segregationist. John Stennis was more genteel version of segregationist, but he was a segregationist. I got involved, I was a young sort of classic Rotarian type do good Republican lawyer who ran for Congress in his early thirties named Ted Cochran. And he ran as an alternative to that segregationist establishment. And I worked in his campaign. So I was actually a page in his office when I was in high school. And that's really how I ended up being a Republican. At the time we didn't really know what Republicans were, but we didn't want to be like Stennis and Eastland, unless you wanted to be a judge in like Yalobusha County or something. So that's the path I started on and I just continued it until recently.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:25)
So this book is extraordinary. I'm a lifelong Republican. I became a Republican in 1982. My dad was in the union, actually David Axelrod got this right. He said to me, "Well your dad was a laborer Nassau County." I said, "Yes." So Joe Margiotta controlled that union. I don't know if you remember Joe Margiotta.
Stuart Stevens: (05:45)
I remember Joe Margiotta very well.
Anthony Scaramucci: (05:48)
And so when I went to the post office, I turned to my pops, I said, "Am I Democrat or Republican?" He says, "Oh no, you're a Republican." So there I was a Republican, I filled out the voter card. And then I learned about Ronald Reagan and obviously fell in love with him and I've been a lifelong Republican. But you write a book about the Republican Party, and it's not really about Donald Trump, which I found interesting about the book. It is more about the system that percolated to create Donald Trump. And I was wondering if you could take us through that, that synthesize that for us, if you don't mind.
Stuart Stevens: (06:22)
Yeah. Anthony, in 2016, a lot of people were wrong about Donald Trump, but it's hard to find anybody who was more wrong than me. I didn't think he'd win the primary. I famously said he wouldn't win a primary. I kind of said that to be provocative but I did think he wouldn't win the nomination. And I didn't think he'd win the general election. Ad after he won, I went through a period, like a lot of my friends, and kind of the side of the party I was on, saying Donald Trump's not really a Republican. And I don't really know how to sustain that. I mean, he's head of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the party that endorsed Roy Moore and attacks John Bolton. So I started asking myself like, "How did this happen?" And really this book began is just a personal exploration of that, and that old high school English teacher way that if you can't write something, you don't understand it.
Stuart Stevens: (07:11)
So that's why I started on this path that led to the book. It really didn't begin as a book project. It began more sort of a personal reflection. And it was fascinating because when you look at the history of the Republican Party, and one of the great things about writing this book was getting a chance to sort of have a good excuse to read a lot of books about the Republican Party. And it's not an obscure subject and this tremendous work that's been done. But you can really trace in the post-World war II party to two factions, it was sort of an Eisenhower governing boring, but same faction, and then Joe McCarthy. And those trends really continued. And I was very involved in Governor Bush's campaign for president, I moved down to Austin in April of '99.
Stuart Stevens: (07:57)
And at the time, you could say that conservatism and Republicans are sort of a victim of our own success. The Cold War was over and I guess we won it. Welfare had been a big issue with Republicans, but then bill Clinton ran on ending welfare as we know it. Crime was a big issue, but crime was going down as it's continued to. Taxes are no longer 70%. So I think governor Bush asked himself sort of what is it to be a conservative in this modern era. And out of that grew compassionate conservatism. And I was very drawn to that. And I think that most of us involved in that felt that we were own as it were the right side of history, that there was an inevitability if only because of the changing country that we were the ones of a more inclusive party, we used to talk about a Big tent party a lot.
Stuart Stevens: (08:47)
So I saw our side as the dominant gene and the other side, I'd call it the dark side, the regressive gene. But I have to say, I think I was wrong. I think we were the regressive gene. I tell you, if you go back and you read George Bush's acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican Convention in your hometown, New York. I mean, it reads like something like a lost document from a civilization, like the Mayans or something. I mean it's all about compassion and service and humility. That message couldn't win 20% in the Republican primary now. So it's extaordinary-
Anthony Scaramucci: (09:27)
So Why is that? What is it? And obviously you write in your book, I just want to point out that the Democrats started out as the segregationist, as you were referencing in the book. And then all of a sudden we're gravitating towards Republican racial division and seeing a phobia. And so now we're here where we are now. So why is that? Because it doesn't make sense for the expansion of the big tent of that party to me, but I'm not in the vein of the party where the leadership is, so why is that?
Stuart Stevens: (10:03)
It's a profound question. And honestly, even been after writing this book, I can't say that I've nailed an answer. One of the conclusions I came to, which seems sort of obvious is that leaders really matter. I think that the country and people can be led in different directions. If you go back to the thirties, there was a huge fascist movement in America. But we didn't become fascist like a lot of countries in Europe, Why? Probably because Roosevelt was president and not say Lindbergh, who was part of the American First Movement. Had Lindbergh been president, we would have been the same country, but we would have gone in a different direction. I mean, why was the civil rights movement largely non-violent? Probably because Martin Luther King, and it's Stokely Carmichael had been head of that, it would have been a much more confrontational, probably violent movement.
Stuart Stevens: (10:56)
So I think that Donald Trump, you know him far better than I Anthony, I think he analyzed Republican Party and said that, "If I give them power, they will not fight me on these values that they've always said that they stood for." Very transactional. And I think that a lot of it ... I look at the people I helped elect, a lot of them. In this book, I didn't want it to be one where I settled scores or name names. I just really wanted to kind of accept personal responsibility and blame myself, but I just don't get it. Because I know these people, and they're good people. I mean if you live next door to them, they'd be great neighbors. If they saw you on the road stranded, they'd stop in a heartbeat. And yet they support Donald Trump. It's really something that baffles me.
Anthony Scaramucci: (11:54)
Let me play devil's advocate for a second. Let me play devil's advocate. Let me say that the country's in a great culture war, my culture, my conservativism, my right to bear arms, my individualism, whatever I've been taught in the Bible, I want to preserve. I only have two people standing for election at any one time. And even though the president has some personality [inaudible 00:12:23] and personality issues, I believe that he is the savior of our civilization relative to the other person. And by the way, that came from a wickedly smart guy into my text and into my phone last night, that exact verbiage, this is a guy that I went to Harvard Law School with, who's a staunch 'Trump supporter', and your response to that is?
Stuart Stevens: (12:49)
My response is that we used to say, "If you only stand for reelection, you don't stand for anything." I think that when we said back in the Clinton era, that culture is the soul of the country, that it is greater than any single issue. I think we were right. I mean, when you read the beautiful stuff that William Bennett wrote. And I think that what's happened now is the conservatism is being destroyed. What was conservatism? And to my view, 90% of us would have agreed on a set of principles, personal responsibility, character counts, free trade, strong on Russia, the deficit matters, very pro legal immigration. I mean, Ronald Reagan announced it in front of the statue of Liberty, signed a bill that made everyone for 1983 legal. And it's not just that we're drifted away from those were actively against those parties.
Stuart Stevens: (13:43)
So to me there is a role to play. You have to stand for your principles. And if it means you lose a race, you lose a race, but you don't lose your soul, and you don't lose the definition of what you believe in. And I think the long-term damage to conservatism by this sort of Faustian bargain that was struck with Trump, it's devastating. And you can see it in numbers, how many young people are being attracted to what we would call conservatism. They're really not. And it's sort of an ankle here in political philosophy now, which I think is going to probably push us toward a center left period of government for a while. Say what you will about Elizabeth Warren, she can articulate a theory of government. You can like it, you can hate it, but she can argue with you. I really don't know what the Republican Party stands for now except beating Democrats.
Anthony Scaramucci: (14:35)
Well I mean listen, there's no Republican Party platform post convention, so that's more evidence of it. You discuss in the book the hypocrisy of family values. You basically are saying that it was the bedrock of the Republican GOP culture war, but they're quite hypocritical. How are they hypocritical?
Stuart Stevens: (14:56)
Look, I think that ... First, you always get into dangerous ground when you start generalizing about large groups of people. And I think there are a lot of people who are genuine. But in a larger sense, this idea that the party would stand for these certain values, I think has just been proven to be false. I don't know how you can reconcile supporting someone like Donald Trump with pretending that role models matter, pretending that character counts. I mean, everything that we're taught from our parents, our coaches, our teachers, our scout leaders, our people we work with, our bosses, that all of these things matter. I don't think you can reconcile that.
Stuart Stevens: (15:46)
And there's always been this strange history, particularly in the Evangelical White Movement of these sort of larger than life, fraudulent figures like Jimmy Schweikert. And I see Donald Trump is one of those, but even weirdly sort of look alike, they all have these kind of larger than life presences. And they're all kind of like manufactured and they look phony. And I think if the heart of family values to me is being a good neighbor, sort of fundamental what we would call Christian values, though they're not only held in the Christian religion, of [inaudible 00:16:22], of compassion, of helping others. And I think what Trump does is, we all have a sod within us that feels aggrieved, that feels like, "Well, I didn't get a good shot here." An angry side. And Trump validates that. I mean, he tells us that's our best side, that that little spurt of adrenaline you feel like when someone cuts you off in traffic, that little moment of road rage, that's your best self. And if you let that person cut you off, you're a sucker, you're a loser, not just to say, "Okay, it doesn't matter?" And I think that's very toxic to a culture. And the long-term effects of that are very dangerous. And I think you see it with racial [inaudible 00:17:05], it's not that Trump made people racist, I just think he made it more socially acceptable to acknowledge this and to embrace it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (17:15)
So all of this stuff you write in this brilliant book, I just want to hold the book up again for everybody to see it, It Was All a Lie, you're saying something in the book that I think is fascinating and I'll give an editorial tip here, I believe it's true. You and I are in agreement on this. One of the central points of your book is that Trump is an outcome of a multiple decades of behavior that led to Trump. And so resulted with, if Trump is removed on November 3rd, there's still a systemic problem with the Republican Party. And so can you elaborate little bit on that? What is that problem and how could you fix that problem? Let's say you were the tsar of the Republican Party, or the tsar of that 35% that continues to vote for Mr. Trump, how would you fix it?
Stuart Stevens: (18:02)
Well I really think this all goes back to race. I mean in 1956, Dwight Eisenhower got almost 40% of the African-American vote, which is extraordinary to think about now. And '64 with Goldwater, when he opposed the Civil Rights Act, it dropped to 7%. Now you could have made a case, I probably would have made a case in '64, that after the Civil Rights Act passed, that a large number of African-Americans would be drawn back to the Republican Party because of shared interest, faith in the public square, basic family values, patriotism, entrepreneurship, but it didn't happen. I mean Goldwater got 7%, Donald Trump got somewhere between seven and 8%. At that rate, we'll be doing better with African-Americans about 30, 50. And I think that like any business, when you realized that 90 plus percent of your market is one share, you get very good at talking to that share and not very good at talking to the other.
Stuart Stevens: (18:58)
And we used to acknowledge the failure of the Republican Party to attract African-Americans and other non-white vote. We talked about a Big tent party, and we tried to address that. Now, we weren't very successful, though with Hispanics in the Bush Campaign, we were more successful. But I think it matters that we acknowledged that it was a failure because I think the first step to change anything is to acknowledge it's a failure. I mean, Ken Mehlman in 2005 went before the chairman of the Republican Party, went before the NAACP and apologized for the Nixon Southern Strategy, which tried to divide African-Americans from the Democratic Party. I just think that that's an important step. And the country is changing so rapidly. I'll tell you a stat that I saw that just blew my mind Anthony, of Americans 15 years and under, the majority are non-white. I mean, odds are really good, they're going to be 18 and still a non-white.
Stuart Stevens: (19:55)
And what does that mean for the Republican Party that is increasingly a white party? I think it's just a death sentence unless the party changes. And right now the party shows no desire to change. On this Trump, there is this kind of other Republican party, governors. Look at Phil Scott and Vermont, Hogan and Maryland, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, I work for all these guys. I love them. And they're wildly successful in very tough markets for Republicans. And yet even as successful and popular as they are, they can't choose their own state party chairman. They're Trump people. For those of us who work in policy, that's like a [inaudible 00:20:37] they won't. I mean it just shows how deep Trumpism has become embedded in the party. And I don't think it's going to change until it's seen as a political necessity to change. I've really given up to being something that blind that Trump would cross the Republicans would rise up and oppose him on principle.
Anthony Scaramucci: (21:04)
Do you think there is a potential rise up of a center right movement, center right party to challenge republicanism or Trumpism, as you're describing?
Stuart Stevens: (21:17)
When I look at this, I really see that there are three parties in America. There's the Republican party. And then there's really two parties inside the Democratic Party. I mean, there's the Joe Biden wing as call it. And then there's the AOC, Bernie Sanders wing. And I think you're seeing a lot of people who 20 years ago, would have run as moderate Republicans running as moderate Democrats now. Look at Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, he was a classic guy. I mean, I worked for Tom Ridge who just came out for Biden. He's the last Republican governor reelected in Pennsylvania. Those are people that would have been comfortable in the party then, but now they're not. And to me, when you look at the future of the country in a public policy sense, it's really going to be largely determined by that battle within the democratic party, which side is going to emerge dominant?
Stuart Stevens: (22:07)
If you take national health insurance, in 20 years, even 10 years, are we really going to be the only Western Country that doesn't have national health insurance? Hard to imagine. And what that's going to be I think will be determined by that fight inside the Democratic Party. And Republicans, I'm afraid what's going to happen nationally, is what happened to the Republican Party in California. I mean, it wasn't long ago. California was the beating heart of the Republican Party, the electoral citadel, and now it's in third place. Third. It's hard to find a big public policy issue that Republicans in California have much say in. And I just find that tragic. I think it's bad for California. I think it's bad for conservatism. I think we need two strong parties. But we're not going to get there with a culture war.
Stuart Stevens: (23:01)
My home state of Mississippi, we finally took down the Mississippi state flag, which basically the Confederate battle flag, a few months ago. It's very moving to a lot of us. And that same week, Donald Trump got in a fight with NASCAR because NASCAR was banning the Confederate flag from events. I mean, really? We're on the wrong side of a cultural issue with NASCAR. How is that even imaginable? We're in a war with Walmart, a cultural war over mask, because Walmart insist you to use masks. So somehow in 2020, Republicans have ended up on the wrong side of a cultural war with Walmart and NASCAR. And man, I just don't think that bodes well for the future.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:42)
I'm going to ask you one more question and we're going to turn it over John, for some questions that I'm going to wrap up at the end. I want to take you back to 2012, the Republican Party commission to study, you're well familiar with it, you contributed to that study. You also referenced a lot of these elements in the book about opening the tent and making the party more demographically acceptable, income strata and making the party frankly more competitive. Now obviously, president Trump went in the other direction, he's selling the party to people that are buying my pillows and catheters on Fox News during commercial breaks. That's what he's decided to do with the party. But you wanted to go in a different direction with the party, tell us a little bit about that direction. And then also is that even possible today, or have we reached the point of impossibility? And then I'll turn it over to John.
Stuart Stevens: (24:35)
I think what's really striking about that So-called autopsy, and Reince Priebus I think deserves a lot of credit for commissioning that because it's always hard for any organization to be self-critical. The conclusions were pretty obvious. We needed to appeal to more non-whites, we needed to appeal to younger voters, we needed to appeal to more women, particularly single women. And they were presented not just as a political necessity, but as a moral mandate, that if we were going to earn the right to govern this big, confusing, changing, loud country, that we needed to represent it more, be more like it. And then Trump came along and it was like, "Okay great, we can just win white people. Terrific. We don't have to pretend that we care about all this stuff." And I think it's just tragic.
Stuart Stevens: (25:20)
And to me, the turning point is when Trump came out in December of 2015 for a Muslim ban, it's unconstitutional, it's really just test. And if Republicans stand for anything, it's constitutionality, and a belief in the constitution. And I just think the party then missed an opportunity to come forward and say, "Look, we don't support Donald Trump. Now we can't tell them not to run. We can tell you not to vote for him. But this isn't who the Republican Party is. And if Donald Trump's a nominee and supports the Muslim ban, we can't support him because it's against the constitution." Now what would have happened? I have no idea. But I think the Republican Party would be in a lot better place now. For years, we criticized Democrats for being-
Anthony Scaramucci: (26:07)
But Stuart not to interrupt, is that the leadership of one man, or is that the whole system that you're describing here in the book?
Stuart Stevens: (26:14)
I think it's both. In 2012, when a Republican Missouri nominee for the Senate, Todd Akin said horrible things about women and rape, Reince Priebus came out and said, "Look, we're not going to support this. No one Republican party that I'm involved in is going to give this guy money or work for him." It probably cost us a Senate seat, but we want something more valuable. I think Chairman Priebus should've done that then. Now at the time, nobody thought Donald Trump was going to win. Trump was also out there trying to leverage the fact that he might run as a third party, and they didn't want to alienate Trump. So I understand the reasons, I just think it's a classic example of how when you negotiate with your basic values, you always end up losing, it's that fast. And when people forget about fast, it's not only Mephistopheles take your soul, but he doesn't deliver. And I think that's what's happened with Trump. We have the worst deficit in history. It's gone up faster under Trump. We're kind of to the left of Bernie Sanders on trade, as far as I can tell. I mean, Sanders went to Russia, but he didn't marry Putin. I just don't get it. And I think that all of that is going to come back to haunt us for a long time to come.
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:40)
All right, let me turn it over to John. John is from North Carolina, so he had the snicker going over the whole NASCAR thing. I don't know if you caught that facial expression from John Darsie, but go ahead John.
John Darsie: (27:53)
Nah, I've said the same thing, growing up in the heart of NASCAR country, the idea that you're going to get into a battle with NASCAR and you're going to label NASCAR as too liberal. It just defies all sense of imagination.
Stuart Stevens: (28:08)
Yeah. I don't think Donald Trump is where the country is, that's a perfect example. Another is we he talks about trying to frighten suburban housewives. Now first of all, I don't know about you, but I know a lot of women that live in the suburbs. I don't know any of them refer to themselves as suburban housewife. I mean, most of them are working three or four jobs and have very complicated, busy lives. And I don't know anybody that wouldn't want their children to look at them as someone who would welcome a neighbor, if they were of a different ethnicity or different religion, they don't want to be that person. And there's nothing in our culture that encourages that except the septic pools on the internet. There's nothing in our music culture, our popular culture that supports racism.
Stuart Stevens: (28:53)
I mean, look at the whole kneeling thing, Donald Trump out there when he was campaigning for Roy Moore saying, "Those that kneel," which were primarily African-Americans, "Get those sons of bitches off the field." How'd that work out? Right now we have entire baseball teams not playing. Before the Holmes Florida game, all the players kneeled. I mean not since Stalingrad has anybody lost a battle like that? And I think it just shows how out of touch Trump is with where the country's going. One of my favorite clients and dear friends is Haley Barbour from Mississippi. And Haley had this saying goes, "You know man, be for the future, it's going to happen anyway." And I just think that's a lesson Republicans seem to have forgotten.
John Darsie: (29:51)
I liked that a lot.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:52)
It's a great one.
John Darsie: (29:55)
You've worked with so many high profile Republican candidates, both people like Bob Dole, George Bush, Mitt Romney, but you've also worked with some people who are in power right now. You talked about some of the governors you've worked with who have spoken out somewhat against Trump, but you've also worked for people who are part of this coalition within the GOP that has enabled him if you will, and has not stood up to the values that they, in private, talk about how they don't like some of the rhetoric, they don't like some of the policy. And I've sat at dinners with Anthony and I'm not going to name names here, because I don't think it's appropriate, but at dinners with very high profile Republicans who say something very different than what they say in public, because they think it's politically expedient to say that other thing in public. Why do you think there is such a large cohort of Republicans who are allowing this to happen? It's not just policy issues, it's an erosion of some democratic institutions. We're talking about de-legitimizing our electoral process without any evidence of it. Why do you think they're not standing up to Trumpism and some of the things that he stands for?
Stuart Stevens: (31:02)
Brother, I ask myself this question about 50 times a day, and I still don't have the answer. What really, really offends me about it is these politicians are heir to the greatest generation. I mean people like my dad spent three years in the South Pacific, 28 island landings, came back, never really talked about it. My uncle, his brother, who was machine gun deep in Europe and never really recovered. That's the legacy they have. Courage isn't standing up to Donald Trump, courage is getting out of the boat when the guy in front of you got shot, and that's the legacy they have. So I just don't understand it, on multiple levels. I mean, I get it if you're working on the hill, you've got a family and jobs are hard to come by and the person supports Trump, okay. Aid the Queen's bread, fight the Queen's war.
Stuart Stevens: (31:48)
But these senators, particularly, they're all going to be fine financially. They're not under any pressure. And what really baffles me is I mean, most politicians have pretty big egos, which doesn't bother me in the least. So do great musicians, athletes, god those writers too. But why don't they see like how they're going to be remembered? I use the example of George Wallace. George Wallace actually did some good stuff as governor. He passed free textbooks, at least for white students, but nobody's remembered as the free textbook George Wallace guy, you are the George Wallace guy. And I think that's how it's going to be for Trump. No one's going to be remembered as I want to lower marginal tax rates for corporations Trump guy, you're going to be the Trump guy. And I don't see it. I don't understand it. I don't understand why even by sheer ego, they would not understand how much more they would be respected and admired with their kids and grandkids would think of them, if they stood up to Trump. It's absolutely baffling to me.
John Darsie: (32:54)
What about the devil's advocate? What about the devil's advocate who says, "Well, we elected Trump on the supreme court issue. We thought there was a possibility of openings coming into the supreme court, that came to pass. And now we flip the balance of the court into a more conservative position, and that was worth all the other noise, all of this erosion of democratic institutions that will pass. All the bad stuff will go away when we have another candidate leading the party. But now we have a conservative court for 40 years." Is it worth it?
Stuart Stevens: (33:29)
I don't buy that. I don't buy the idea that we have to attack democratic norms to preserve democratic norms. I mean to me, it's burning the village to save it, which only ends in ashes. I don't see that. And look, a perfect example is 1964, how'd that work out? We opposed the Civil Rights Bill, and what's happened? We lost a huge part of the country and lost something of our soul. So I don't think that you can undo these things. I think that this is a moment of testing. I mean, most of us certainly, I don't go through life looking for moral crisis. I go through lifetime to avoid moral crisis, just live my life. But this was a moral test, and the Republican Party for the most part failed. And I don't think that that goes away.
Stuart Stevens: (34:20)
And I think the idea that you have to fundamentally go against these institutions of democracy. I mean, there's not one pillar of our democratic institutions Trump hasn't attacked, justice department, the FBI, he supports supreme court justices that are more conservative, but he attacks jurors, he calls a judge from Indiana, a Mexican. I think that's a deeper degradation of the whole system because all of this is held together by trust and faith. I mean, why do we stop at midnight on a lonely road at a red light? Because we're a civic society, not because you're going to get punished. And once we start running through those red lights, where does it stop? And to me, that's what leaders are for. The leaders are-
John Darsie: (35:18)
Anthony gets asked this question all the time, and I'm sure you get asked that as well. And you talked about how you started this book as an exercise in self-reflection about how did we get here and what role did I play in allowing the party to get here? How do you answer that question? How do you rationalize your own role as a Republican strategist and maybe missing resurgence-
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:38)
I am way more culpable than Stuart Because him and I were on a panel in Greenwich, he was yelling at me and I was flying to meet governor Christie to work on the transition. So I'm way more culpable.
John Darsie: (35:49)
I want both of you guys to answer that question, relatively briefly. But if you look at Anthony's Twitter mentions, it's full of people saying, "You have no authority to tell me why Donald Trump is bad because you served on his campaign and briefly in his administration." So to both of you, how do you rationalize your own role in creating the modern GOP or missing this sort of far right element of the party that was maybe louder than you expected?
Stuart Stevens: (36:13)
I mean look, my book opens [inaudible 00:36:16] because there's a certain genre of books in Washington that say, "If only they had listened to me." Well, I can't say that because they did listen to me. And I think that we were naive. I was naive. I can only speak for myself, but we saw this dark side. And we never confronted it enough, and we never sort of asked ourselves, "What does it mean enough?" I was always glad that people [inaudible 00:36:40] work for one. And I was on the side of the party that was mostly fighting those people, but at the same time, I was part of this larger thing. And I think we should have spoken up more. I should have spoken up more and raised more red flags. Would it have mattered? Probably not. But I think all you can do is what you can do. And I think if more of us had done that, it would've mattered. I look at it and I just was naive. I chose to believe, but it was convenient for me to believe that. I mean, I was at the top of a profession, I was doing well in every sense, to go to war with that would have been personally costly. And I probably just chose to look the other way, because it was easier.
John Darsie: (37:31)
How about you Anthony?
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:34)
I'm probably more flawed than Stuart even. I was critical of Mr. Trump, when I was working for a Jet Bush who we're going to have on SALT Talk on Wednesday by the way Stuart, governor Bush. And then I did what a lot of people do, which I wrote about, you critical of him, and you're trying to learn to accept him. And then you're cognitively dissonant about what he's doing. And then you end up where John Bolton is, or myself, or General Kelly, or Jim Mattis, or you can name the litany of people where you're like, "Okay I made a huge mistake." So for me, it was naivety and the flaw and the temptation of wanting to be associated with power. And so I have to always be honest about that and be accountable with that.
John Darsie: (38:23)
So we have a question from the audience about the electoral system in general. And President Obama has expressed his opinion on the Senate, for example being an undemocratic institution because it provides-
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:33)
Before we let Stuart go though, we got to get his opinion on the tax story.
John Darsie: (38:37)
That's an audience question as well.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:39)
Let's do that right now. And then when you can ask that question, because I know we're running out of time, we need your opinion on the tax story that's come out. A lot of people are asking.
Stuart Stevens: (38:47)
I think the tax story is going to really matter because everybody pays taxes. And in my experience, negative information about a candidate, it reinforces a preexisting notion about that candidate is much more effective. So I think this is pushing on an open door, people think that Trump games the system. And I think it really goes to the core for support, which is, I'm on your side, I'm one of you, which has always been a fraud. But I think it's going to hurt him.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:21)
Well let me push back for a second because you and I were involved with governor Romney's Campaign and everybody set their hair on fire over a 14%, millions of dollars of taxes that governor Romney was paying. But he seems to have anesthetized his base or his group of people where he's right. Maybe he can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and it doesn't matter. So if he pays $750 in taxes or no taxes, they don't care. And your response to that is?
Stuart Stevens: (39:50)
My response in electoral senses, right now if the election were held, Donald Trump would lose. So how does he win? He has to have some of these people who are against him now drift back toward him. And there's reason to believe could happen. So I look at something like taxes is like a speed bump, it makes it that much harder for someone who that isn't for Trump today, to go back in the end, like what happened when Trump did very well those last four days of the campaign in 2016 in part because of the Comey letter. But it's just stay where they are now, and that's all Biden needs. He doesn't need new customers. He just needs to keep the customers he has now.
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:27)
Can Mr. Trump, President Trump threaten this system, meaning can he go to the state legislatures and flip the electors, even if he loses the general election and The Electoral College vote?
Stuart Stevens: (40:42)
Well, I was part of the glorious landslide in 2000 of George Bush. And there was a lot of talk about electorates and all that. We're in a different environment now. I think that that ultimately ... The answer is probably not. But you run the 2016 race a hundred times, Trump loses 90. So things unexpected can happen. To me, the real test is the Republican Party. Parties in our system have to form a circuit breaker function. And really the party has to come forward and stop this. It is a destruction of democracy to do that. You just can't allow it to happen. And I think in a larger sense, the best way to avoid it is to crush Trump. I mean, if it's 1964, nobody's going to be sitting up there at midnight saying, "Let's go to the lawyers.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:33)
We agree.
Stuart Stevens: (41:35)
So that's what we're doing in the Lincoln Project. Our goal is to do what we can to make sure-
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:41)
I got my mug. I got my hat. I just want you to know I donated money. I've raised money.
Stuart Stevens: (41:46)
You are a great supporter.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:48)
And I'll be on a Lincoln project 8:00 PM live stream, I think later in the week. John Darsie, I'll turn it back to you. I know we're tight on time.
John Darsie: (41:59)
We are going into overtime here, but we'll squeeze in a couple more questions. The Electoral College system, and even the Senate has been labeled as undemocratic because of excessive representation that provides to rural voters who are sort of the bedrock of Trump's base. Are those systems, should they be abolished? Are they fair? What is your opinion on that?
Stuart Stevens: (42:18)
I would abolish The Electoral College tomorrow. And I think it would be the best thing that ever happened to the Republican Party, because it would force the Republican Party to change. I think minority rule is toxic. And I say that as someone who benefited from it in 2000, when I worked for Bush. I mean in Bush Campaign, we sort of joked like anybody can get elected president when you get more votes, it takes professionals when you lose by half a million. It seemed kind of funny then, it doesn't seem very funny. So I just think it's toxic, it's toxic not to have majority rule. And we don't do it in any other aspects of our lives. And you can take a big state like California and you could make the same case for Electoral College in California as you do nationally. It's dominated by these larger urban areas. The rural areas are disproportionately not represented.
Stuart Stevens: (43:10)
But nobody's saying that. They're saying like, "The more people, you get more votes, you ought to win." I mean when you're on for Cub Scout leader, you get more votes, you win. I think that's just something where ... And the whole system of electoral, if you go back to the history of it, it basically was, "We're going to elect a bunch of smart people and they're going to pick the president." And that's just not where we are now. That's not where the country's evolved. So I would abolish The Electoral College. I would leave the Senate alone. That's just such a profound sort of tinkering, it's way over my head.
John Darsie: (43:41)
So you talked about how you don't know if the party is going to change until it becomes an electoral necessity for the party to change. And I know you're more of a strategist than a forecaster, but if we looked out in five or 10 years, what do you think is sort of the fallout from Trumpism will be for the Republican Party? What do you think the Republican Party will look like, both from a policy and a demographic perspective?
Stuart Stevens: (44:05)
I think it's sort of like the subprime mortgage crisis. It's easier to predict how it ends and how long it takes. Eventually, the Republican Party is going to have to change, just by survival. It's going to have to. How long that'll take? I don't know. I don't think that just nominating someone who's different will make much of a difference. I mean, if you look at African-American republican candidates, they don't tend to do much better with African-Americans and white Republican candidates, same with Hispanic Republican candidates. So there's not an easy fix here. If I had to predict, I think that we're going to have a period of center left government, it's going to go too far. And there will be a rational alternative to it that will emerge. But that's going to be one that's not fighting cultural wars.
Stuart Stevens: (44:56)
I mean, look at gay marriage, 2008, every candidate, Democrat Republicans were against it. Now we don't even talk about it anymore. It's just like over. And I think that that's going to happen with these other cultural issues. Where people love immigrants, is where they live with immigrants. It's where they don't live with immigrants that they're seen as some sort of mysterious negative force. And I think that's a very positive indicator for the country because we're going to change like that. So eventually there'll be a strong center right party, because there's a demand for it in America. I just don't know how long that's going to take.
John Darsie: (45:32)
Well Stuart, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a fascinating conversation. You're somebody who's been in the middle of a lot of these battles within the party for many years. You have unique insights into how we got here and how we move forward. So thanks so much for joining us. Anthony, you have any final words?
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:46)
Just holding up the book, It Was All a Lie. Stuart, great, great book. And a New York Times bestseller. I encourage everybody to read it. And I hope to see you on the other side of this Stuart. And I hope we're part of the future together like the great governor Haley Barbour said. Wish you the best.
John Darsie: (46:04)
Love that brother. All of us.
Anthony Scaramucci: (46:05)
God bless.
John Darsie: (46:06)
Thanks for inviting me.
Anthony Scaramucci: (46:06)
Bye.
John Darsie: (46:07)
Bye.