Bill Kristol: A Trump Second Term is Dangerous

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, many of the divisions, as we said of 1968 can still be felt today in 2020. And our next guest argues that the Republican Party has in fact been hijacked under President Trump’s leadership, leaving it in the hands of party extremists, thus diminishing potential, its relevance. Bill Kristol is a longtime Republican who served in the administrations of both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He now leads defending democracy together, a coalition of ever increasing anti-Trump Republicans. Here he is speaking to our Walter Isaacson about how the party could become obsolete, if its members continue to back this administration at all costs.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thanks, Christiane. And Bill Kristol, welcome to the show.

BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, THE BUWARK: Thanks, Walter. Good to be with you.

ISAACSON: Are you surprised more conventional Republicans and conservatives have not been speaking out against the hijacking of the party by Donald Trump?

KRISTOL: I mean, it’s probably been the most shocking thing in a way of the last four years, you know, could a demagogue win a nomination in a divided field? Yes, unfortunately, could win the election against this somewhat unpopular candidate at the other party when people want to change? Sure. But and I was anti-Trump from the beginning. But even I expected that Republican elected officials, conservative elites, businessmen, donors, intellectual elites, would check Trump that Trump be limited in the damage he could do because there would be all these barriers to him and people would speak up. But he did things that were truly outrageous and that the total capitulation of the conservative elites and Republican elected officials to Trump has been astonishing. And even now, you know, a week from the election when he looks very likely to lose. How many people have really come out against him, a few ex governors and congressmen and senators, very few almost knows people in elective, currently in elected office, obviously, but the most prestigious, the most famous people who’ve served, most of them say nothing.

ISAACSON: Giving some examples of who should be speaking out?

KRISTOL: I mean, some people have spoken out somewhat, Jim Mattis, like their defense, in my respect, an awful lot is made clear that he disapproves of Trump. I implied that he wouldn’t vote for him again. But is it really hard to just come out and say he should not have a second term. H.R. McMaster Service National Security Advisor, John Kelly, who served as Chief of Staff, I’m not asking them to, you know, reveal details of private conversations with President Trump in the Oval Office. They don’t want to do that. I don’t want them to do that. That they just need to say, look, I worked with this person very closely for a year or two years, however long it was. I saw him up close. I think we did some good things if they want to say that, but he should not have a second term because it would be worse, a second term. They all know be worse. They’re gone. The guardrails are gone. The people would stand up to him internally are gone. And then what about someone like that former President George W. Bush. He knows Donald Trump shouldn’t have a second term in office. He knows the country we’d better off with Joe Biden, say it.

ISAACSON: But what do you say to the ones who say we got the judges, we have the economic policies we want. We just ignore the tweets. We’re much better off with Donald Trump is president, which argument against that?

KRISTOL: You know, too many — well, one argument is that his recklessness, his irresponsibility is just like a basic care about governing competently. We’re now paying a huge price for this, obviously, with COVID. And we’re paying a price in other areas where it’s less obvious in terms of racial divisiveness and so many other issues. And again, if people want to defend some of the things that were accomplished in the first term, that’s OK, but it doesn’t justify secretary, you’ve got the judges, right? You’ve got the tax cuts, if you like so much. But now we’re going to have a president reelected without the Jim Madison and the John Kelly’s, without the Gary Cohen’s, if you like the early economic policy unleashed, unbridled with a bunch of sycophants working for him, I’m thinking about Trump reelection. I mean, he’d be emboldened. He presumably would still have Republican Senate that would be even more in his pockets, even less inclined to ever stand up to him than now. He’s made clear. He wants people who will do what he says. He does not want people who will follow the rule of law, let alone preserve kind of institutional norms and standards in the U.S. government. He’s going to get rid of the FBI Director. He’s going to get rid — they get rid of the attorney general who in my view has gone way too far. And accommodating Trump as opposed to upholding the rule of law. A second term of Trump really, I think, would be kind of a nightmare for America. Maybe other people just have to think it’ll all be fine, you know, when he hit. But look at the DHS, look at Homeland Security, look at what happened in Portland. Look at the kinds of people who are running that now. Let’s think of the whole federal government, the Defense Department, the Justice Department, being run in that way, as Trump kind of personal fiefdom.

ISAACSON: Former Speaker Paul Ryan, he probably falls in that category of people you think should be speaking out, has told friends not to speak out against Trump, because once he loses, we don’t want people like, you know, Paul Ryan, to have alienated the trumpets in the party, because they’re going to have to rebuild the party, and they can’t afford to have the Trump is furious at them for losing the electorate. What do you say to that argument?

KRISTOL: I mean, there may be some truth to that. But good luck rebuilding the party, if you’re spending two-thirds of your time looking over your shoulder at not at Trump and trumpist and the legacy of Trump and, I mean, from my point of view, a new — a newly rebuilt Republican Party has to be willing to repudiate at least a fair amount of what Trump did not every policy, but it has to repudiate trumpism. I’m not really personally interested in a rebuilt Republican Party that’s at home where they’re at peace with demagoguery and nativism and xenophobia, and all the rest. And so now, in the real world, it’s not people like me, we’re going to rebuild the Republican Party in the near term, we’re not going to be acceptable. We were anti-Trump. So Paul Ryan’s right, that it will be people who kind of kept their heads down probably, that didn’t pick fights with Trump, and their attitudes going to be OK, let’s put it in the rearview mirror. Let’s move on. Let’s not talk too much about what some of the things that happened in those four years. But a, I don’t know that work. I think the Trump is going to be very strong. And I don’t think they’re going to be interested in for a ride in Republicans. They’re going to want people who embody trumpism, maybe a little different way, maybe without some of Trumps quirks. But I think they will lose that fight in the Republican Party. And again, what’s the point of saving the party if you can’t denounce family separation policies, if you can’t denounce racism, if you can’t denounce conspiracy theories.

ISAACSON: How did the Republican Party get to where it is today?

KRISTOL: Well, it is a huge question. There are a lot of things when one looks back, one sees a lot of elements that were there that sprouted, so to speak in the last few years. My colleague Charlie Sykes says there was a recessive gene in the in the conservative movement, in the Republican Party. I suppose there is what in many movements and many parties when you think about its huge country, every party is going to have its disagreeable aspects and, you know, elements that really, should be fought. And somehow the recessive gene has become the dominant gene. I think it was recessive. I mean, we were aware that there were — there was bigotry. There was nativism, that people like he fought against Pat Buchanan. I mean, literally in 1982. I was in the Bush White House. We campaigned against him and denounced him and I was happy when he left the party the late 90s. Ron Paul, I thought was an unhinged conspiracy theorists. They’re always these elements. I think I thought too much. I was too confident that we had sort of push them back, kept them under control. We probably tolerated certain aspects of them too much or didn’t want to pick fights within the party, though, again, who’s the we, it’s not, you know, we don’t get to sort of choose who the voters nominate and elect and so forth. So I think I underestimated the power of some of those forces. But I also think a lot of Republicans tried to push back against them. We ended up getting overwhelmed in 2015, and 2016, is somewhat Fluker situation, maybe with Trump and Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, and just a lot of things fell into place for Trump. You know, if he hadn’t become president, and do this thought experiment, what if he loses in 2016? I don’t know that the party looks anything like what it looks like today.

ISAACSON: What is a reckoning look like if Trump loses?

KRISTOL: So I’m not sure. I mean, I do think personally, though, there has to be a pretty clear repudiation of certain aspects of Trump and trumpism. For me, the best hope would be a whole new generation, honestly, of people, as I can imagine young people choosing to run in 2022, 2024 for House, for the Senate, Governor, and maybe even presidency who worked very much around even in the Trump years, or maybe were at the state local level, maybe they were in business, maybe they were in the military. And they were sort of not involved either way. And so they don’t have to go through a litany of offenses that Trump committed and criticize everyone for going along with Trump. They don’t have to sound like me, like I have for the last four years. I mean, they can sort of say, look, this was — there’s good things or bad things, I’d like to get into it. Here’s my vision for the future. So I think maybe that’s the best hope, a new generation of officeholders. And I will say I personally talked to an awful lot of people who are Republican ish types, center, right, free markets, strong foreign policy, thought of running for Congress, perhaps in 2018 but jeez, if Trump’s at the top of the ticket, I leave that to support Trump, I don’t want to do, fight against Trump and probably get clobbered the primary and get attacked by Trump and all of his minions who wants that, you know, 2020, they went through the same process. There’s kind of a backlog in the Republican, you know, pipeline, that I think you could produce some very good candidates in 2022. And going forward, so I’m sort of hopeful for the next generation but I think the people who’ve been in the Congress who’ve gone along with so much, it was hard for them to suddenly reinvent themselves.

ISAACSON: You’ve talked about a recessive gene that lingered in the Republican Party, and has now come out and asserted itself, is one of the traits of that recessive gene racism?

KRISTOL: Yes, or bigotry. And I would say, you know, very much of a dislike for the way America is changing the diversity of the New America. And even if they don’t dislike individual African Americans, or Latinos, or whatever, dislike of accommodation to their interests, their concerns, or rethinking of aspects of American History, being more honest about things that have happened in the past. That doesn’t mean tearing down every statue, certainly not, a blanket (ph) and Ulysses S. Grant and George Washington and not even every statue graphs of Robert E. Lee. But it does mean being you’re coming to grips with the past, most serious presidents have acknowledged those, of course, but Trump has this kind of, say, cartoonish version of, of American history and the American past, Make America Great Again. Let me think about that, in this day and age, and what he says that what he means, I guess is the 50s any normal politician, including Conservatives and Republicans very much, but even quite conservative concerns would say, I do think that he could say, one could say, look, there are things that we’ve lost that want to get back. And there were some admirable things about America that we’ve frittered away, perhaps in the last 10, 20, 30 years. But of course, this person would say, you know what I say, Make America Great Again, I also acknowledge the gains of the last 30, 40, 50 years. I acknowledge that. I don’t want to go back to the race relations of the 1950s, the Jim Crow in the south. I don’t want to go back to gays in the closet. And I don’t want to go back to a lot of things of that era that gender relations, obviously.

ISAACSON: To what extent do you feel somewhat responsible for the party going away again?

KRISTOL: You know, I feel some responsibility, I think I made some mistakes of judgment. I think I honestly, I didn’t want to do any of the racism the emergence. I say most of the time I spent the surface (ph) fighting against David Duke in 1990. I’ve ever been proud to be in the George H.W. White House, playing a tiny role actually is (inaudible). In organizing efforts to make sure if you didn’t win in Louisiana, Duke was a Klansmen and they are Nazi. And George H.W. Bush came out against Duke though he was the kind of Republican nominee for the governor then and obviously fighting Pat Buchanan and fighting Ron Paul and all kinds of issues like that, trying to recruit more diverse candidates. Having said all that, there were issues where I didn’t realize that I don’t know what the end immigration, the why supported Bush, McCain must end (ph) immigration, but still, you know, how dangerous what some of the Republican candidates were saying was, what sort of a Fox News I was on to 2012, I think what I said I would defend, I think I express my point of view, and I think I was mostly, may be wrong lesson things but I wasn’t bigoted or anything like that. But again, they had — the change is pretty striking. I mean, I remember when the birther stuff emerged in 2011, 2012. And Trump was pushing it. I guess it was pushing it a little bit on Fox & Friends. I think he was on maybe once a week there, they’re probably watched that, but we all thought it was ridiculous. And I certainly said on Fox that it was ridiculous. And then I guess I didn’t realize in this 2013, 2014, 2015 period, how fast how much that train was accelerating. And Trump came down that escalator in 2015. And it really tapped into something. I remember when he — Well, he attacked John McCain, I said the next day. He said, yeah, we don’t respect people who are prisoners who were captured. And then the next day he’s finished. On TV, I remember this on ABC on Sunday, he’s finished. He can’t be nominated Republican Party. He said this, the race is a Mexican judge. I thought each of these things would just disqualify him. So I don’t want to justify the Republican Party and the conservative, too much there were all kinds of things that were probably in retrospect, misguided, and little to my tolerance for those forces, and just the policy choices that may have been wrong. But I do think it really took off after the defeat of Romney in 2012.

ISAACSON: We, biographers often think that one of the clues is to look at a person’s parents and look at a person’s father and your case, in particular, your father, Irving Kristol was a loyal Democrat for a very long time, but then became the Godfather, the neoconservative movement, and moved a lot of people like himself into the Republican Party. To some extent, you seem to be mirroring his career. Have you thought about that?

KRISTOL: Yeah, people have pointed that out. And of course, it’s occurred to me. I mean, some people say, how hard — I’ll answer this way, some people said to me, how hard is it for you to abandon the Republican Party? You came to — I came to Washington in 1985, to work in the Reagan administration, the Bush administration. And, you know, I’ve been on the Republican side, therefore, in Washington here for what, 35 years. But maybe a little easier, because I had the example of my parents and somebody of their friends started off vaguely they weren’t party loyalists, but vaguely at one party, you might say and ended up in the other. I myself worked for Scoop Jackson as a just volunteer when I was in college, but I consider myself, a Scoop Jackson democratic. So maybe I’ve always had a little more just maybe because of my background, you know, have a sense that the policies matter more than the parties. And above all, what matters. And this has really come home with me in the last few years. And I think the others as well, on the left and the right. What matters is defending liberal democracy. What matters is defending free government, free society. And maybe we all took that a little much, too much for granted as we fought our different ideological fights over the last 20, 30 years. But, you know, it’s — it can’t be taken for granted. There are authoritarians on the left, authoritarians on the right, there’s unhealthy movements on the left and on the right. And they need to be in America right now. A lot of the stronger unhealthy movement is actually on the right, because it’s got the president United States. And so liberal democracy needs to be defended against this kind of demagoguery and hate, you know, the politics of hate, and division, and politics that challenges basic norms, like the rule of law, that allows the system to go on in a way that gives people a feeling that, you know, if you don’t win today, you’ll you might have a chance to prevail tomorrow. But that is not Trump’s kind of conservatism. I think from my point of view, it’s been easier also to support the Democrats this year, because Joe Biden is the nominee, who the center did hold in the Democratic Party, something there’s conservatives now are busy denying that that’s the case, you know, they’re pretending that the nominee is Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren or AOC or something, after Biden defeated the wall, you know. So it’s truly. There’s also a sign it’s a kind of unhealthy movement, not accepting good news, which is it looks like the Democratic Party and that there are huge pressures, but for now, at least, we might get a centrist democratic administration which could restore some stability and some sensible governance to the country. And that’s a good thing.

ISAACSON: Bill Kristol, thank you so much for joining us.

KRISTOL: My pleasure, Walter.