Interview with Steve Schmidt, former Republican strategist | What we don’t understand about Trump

(Toronto) The 53-year-old man leans his rugby arms on the table of the Toronto restaurant where I manage to meet him. He orders a Diet Coke.

His blue gaze is intense and serious. Because the hour is intense and serious.

Steve Schmidt has long been a top-level Republican strategist. He made it his mission six years ago to beat Donald Trump.

Before tearing up his Republican Party card, Steve Schmidt had nevertheless proven himself as a conservative.

For three decades he was an ultimate insider of the Republican Party. Advisor to George W. Bush in the White House when the president attempted to push the Supreme Court to the right, appointing Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Organizer of John McCain’s campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, he convinced him to choose the populist Sarah Palin as his running mate to shake up his campaign. (A “terrible mistake,” by his own admission, for which the McCains have never forgiven him.)

Also his spectacular and very public break with Donald Trump’s party in 2018 was a bolt from the blue. In 2020, with three other Republicans, he founded the Lincoln Project, a political action committee that raised nearly $100 million and launched a hyper-aggressive advertising and political campaign against Trump on social media.

“Joe Biden called me after his election and told me that without us, he would not have won,” says the strategist.

He believed Trump’s political career was over after his defeats and the insurrection of January 6, 2021. But here he is again, stronger than ever.

“For three years, there have been hundreds of statements from people at the White House saying: We want Trump to be a candidate! Yet they say Trump is the biggest threat to democracy. I’m going to speak “New Jersey” for a moment: “Eille, fucking stupid, if your plan works, what does that mean?” Trump is still one step away from the Oval Office. So is Trump a threat or a promotional tool for Biden? The people in the White House are primarily responsible for Trump’s political survival. He had to be allowed to survive and threaten the republic again to help Biden. »

“If Biden loses, there will be a catastrophic consequence for the country and for the entire world. And Biden will become the second worst president in history. The worst being Trump, who managed to dethrone James Buchanan [1857-1861, à qui l’on attribue la responsabilité de la guerre de Sécession]. »

How did Trump survive?

“Becoming an adult means being able to entertain contradictory thoughts in your brain,” he told me. Here’s the contradiction that 99.9% of White House correspondents don’t understand: Trump is the most prolific liar the country has ever known. But he’s also the most honest we’ve ever had.

– Ah good ?

– Look at the. He has no speechwriter. It has no artifice. It has no filter. He is. He is exactly what he appears to be.

Look at these protests at universities. With my second wife, we have five children in college between us. If one of them, who is in his second year, is expelled from Columbia for having participated in the “intifada”, we are already on the hook for $200,000. That’s like parents. OK. Politically, now. These are the students that Joe Biden is asking blue-collar Americans to subsidize by repaying their damn student loans?

Last year I worked a little for Tim Ryan [représentant démocrate en Ohio]. We were driving along the Ohio River. There were all these small towns, like something out of a movie, frozen in time, and posters everywhere: “Bankruptcy, call this number”. I asked him, “By the way, how much does your student loan repayment program cost again? Three hundred billion. Three hundred fucking billion. Are you sick? Does anyone in your damn party know that the majority of Americans will never go to college?”

When Trump talks about this, he cuts it bullshit. If these campus occupations and protests get big enough, I’ll tell you society’s response: Trump! »

Steve Schmidt draws an analogy with Germany in the 1930s, where moderates had disappeared politically.

“Every night on Fox News you have these images of people going into stores and stealing everything they can find in San Francisco or Portland. No one benefited Trump more than these prosecutors [progressistes] stupid in San Francisco or Oregon. Much of the country is convinced that Portland is screwed. For them, it’s Nagasaki!

“There is no support in this country for disorder. If you understand the United States, the country in Europe that most resembles the United States is not England, it is Germany. In Germany, as in the United States, there is no chance of a left-wing revolution. Zero. »

The Trumpist Republicans now form a “fascist party,” he says, which aspires to unfettered power. “A lot of people look at the Democrats the other way and say: This is a party of weirdos. The deficiency of the Democratic Party is part of the culture war issues. Wokism. When my 78-year-old father in New Jersey hears about white privilege, he who started from nothing, you just lost him. »

The other analogy with the rise of fascism is the dull atmosphere of violence. Having become one of Trump’s most virulent opponents, Schmidt was the target of repeated attacks in right-wing media, where his name was attached to the word “disgrace”. Fox News showed his palatial home in Utah, suggesting it was financed with money from the Lincoln Project (an Associated Press article questioned the handling of the funds, but nothing illegal). ‘has been advanced). FBI agents came to warn him that he was on the MAGA bomber, a guy sentenced to 20 years in prison for sending parcel bombs to 13 notorious Trump opponents. He began receiving dozens of boxes of “human excrement,” incessant threats.

“I have worked at the highest possible level in American politics. No one received threats. And suddenly everyone is threatened…

“Does the average American feel the chilling effect of threats? No. But it will come. It’s a contagion that’s spreading. »

He cites South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who aspires to be Trump’s running mate. In a recently published book, she recounts how she shot her dog with a .12. “Some say it was stupid to say that, but why did she do it? Because there is a portion of the electorate that thrives on cruelty.

“The rise of the fascist movement historically has corresponded in degree with threats and violence, because it is a fundamentally violent movement. »

There’s talk of saving democracy, but for millions of people, the United States is not a functioning democracy, Schmidt says.

“If you’re part of the 40% who don’t have $400 in the bank for an emergency, you’re not in a democracy because you have no autonomy. You are one ticket away from disaster. Not to mention a broken leg.

“Take the story of this black woman in Ohio. Britanny Watts, 27 years old. 25 weeks pregnant. She’s bleeding. Goes to the hospital. Wait eight hours. They don’t receive it. She leaves again. Comes back the next day. They don’t not receive it. She has a miscarriage. She is past 26 weeks. She is accused of mutilation of a corpse [accusations non retenues par un grand jury en janvier]. Does she live in a democracy? »

Trump is not that complicated to understand, he argues.

“He is the greatest philosopher of fuckyouism. It originated in this small circle that includes Manhattan, Queens, northern New Jersey and Philadelphia. »

“Trust in every institution imaginable has collapsed, but Trump never disappoints. It has penetrated the consciousness of the country. Take NATO. It’s extremely simple. He lies, but still, the message gets across: why do we pay for others? Canada cannot even deploy a battalion to Haiti.

“Meanwhile, the Polish president says to NATO: Put nuclear weapons in Poland, please. Everyone living in a free country should understand what that means. See the danger. The Russian army has half a million casualties, but it continues. Canada and the USA are further away, but if the war extends beyond that, if Ukraine loses, young Canadians and Americans will die. »

The speech seems desperate. He is not. “Fatalist,” he qualifies.

“There is no better time to be alive than now. We are living in a time of historically unprecedented peace and prosperity.

“The vast majority of Americans have no connection with the ideals of this country, its history. They don’t see the fine line that separates a century of darkness from freedom. The simple fact that so many people view our time as the worst shows that they have been immune to the suffering, the hardship, the difficulty, which is the default state of the world. »

This fall, to defeat Trump, we would need a John Kennedy, he said. And there are.

“What was Kennedy talking about?” Of ambition. Improvement. He was so strong that he inspired people who disagreed with him, like Dick Cheney. He managed to convince them to get involved. If Trump wins, it will kill the Democratic Party and there will be an independent candidate in four years. »

Aside from his daily letter, “The Warning,” and his appearances on Substack, Schmidt has not yet decided how he will get involved in the election. But he does not intend to be a mere observer.

“I just know that Biden needs help. »