My Interview with President Trump
Editor's Note
You cannot win a war if you don’t know you are in one.
Donald Trump has just won a landslide victory, and the people of the United States have decisively rejected both Kamala Harris and Kamalism. Now comes the hard part. The next four years will require a firm resolve and a clear understanding from Republicans — President-elect Trump most of all — about the nature of our enemy and the existential stakes of our cold civil war. Tom Klingenstein reflects on his recent conversation with the president-elect. He observes that Trump is uniquely suited to serve as a wartime leader, but that his success will depend entirely on whether he comes to appreciate fully the reality of our present crisis.
I recently met former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. I had advertised the meeting as an “interview,” but, in truth, I was there to give advice and to bring out some of his underappreciated virtues and his likeability. This was most decidedly a friendly interview, though I hope I challenged him. One of my friends described the interview as a “love fest,” which it was. I wanted to make him relax. I interrupted him constantly, but he showed no annoyance; indeed, he said he appreciated me not letting him go off on tangents, a proclivity of his. It was two New Yorkers constantly interrupting each other. He was interested in what I had to say. Some of it struck him as different but interesting. He did not respond then and there, but I had the sense that he might think about it. What more can one ask?
I know Trump only very casually. I have talked to him on the phone and received a handful of texts. The interview was the first time I had actually met him. But he knows who I am because he has read some of my essays. And he reads my essays, in part, because I praise him through the roof. But more than that, he said he learns something about himself from my essays. This sounds somewhat implausible and rather immodest on my part; but I think he believes it.
As to liking my compliments: If you were Trump, reading non-stop lies and calumnies about yourself, you too would find praise a cool, satisfying drink — a non-alcoholic one, of course, as he does not partake of adult beverages.
In an earlier phone call, I asked Trump what were the two or three things he would do differently were he to get a second term. His immediate answer was “people, people, people.” He knows full well that he was undermined by people in his own administration. I then asked him how he would get the right people. In typical Trump fashion he responded, “I now know the right people.” I hope he does. This time around there are a number of organizations that are identifying people who could serve in a Trump administration. The trick will be to weed out those who are not really committed to the Trump agenda. Steve Bannon might perform this function well.
Trump, unlike your typical Washington pretenders, was a bona fide outsider. It was being a real outsider that made his middle finger to the establishment so compelling. He told me he had been to Washington, D.C., only 17 times before his election. I have no idea how he knew how many times he had been to Washington, and I doubt you can take his number to the bank. Even so, I accept his point. The problem, of course, with being a real outsider is that you have little idea of how Washington works on the inside. This was the case with Trump.
Take the border wall. I think Trump thought about the project as any other construction project that he had encountered in his private sector career where you find the location, develop engineering specs, call for a competitive bid on the project, hire a subcontractor, and coordinate the purchase of materials.
But, as it was described to me by one of Trump’s domestic policy advisors, in the federal government it doesn’t work that way. You have to go through many layers of bureaucracy: EPA, GSA, DoD (Army Corps of Engineers), DHS, DoInterior (including Fish & Wildlife Service), DOJ (legal review on waivers of existing statutory mandates including RLUIPA), and State Department. Each organization has its own lawyers, internal approval process, and appetite for a given project. Each actor introduces delay and obfuscation. And this is to say nothing of the internal staff (picks that Trump made at DHS, for example) who did not think the construction of the wall warranted prioritization. And then there were individual members of Congress, like Senator Lankford, who refused to accede to appropriations for the project for fear their pet issues would be compromised. (Lankford opposes any waivers of existing federal law because he fears waivers will include waivers that allow SOGI expansion).
At Mar-a-Lago, where I had never been, I asked everyone I saw what they thought of Trump, from the man who took us to the house in a golf cart to a senior aide. They all said they liked him very much and loved working for him. I thought these were genuine responses. Although no one said so explicitly, I had the sense they were saying, in effect, “Trump is not the unlikeable man you read and hear about.”
Part of his likability is his considerateness. When I and my associate, Ben Judge, were leaving, Trump noticed we did not have a ride back to our hotel, so he spontaneously commandeered a car. Senator Tim Scott told me that he had once asked Trump to give Scott’s mother a ride on Air Force One. Trump agreed, but Scott didn’t hear from Trump for a while and assumed that he had simply forgotten the promise. Trump is a busy man after all. Then, a year later, Trump called Scott and asked whether his mother was ready to go on Air Force One. Of course, this may not be the norm for Trump, but I would guess it is.
I was recently told that in the Army one is advised to praise people in public and criticize them in private. Trump seems to get this reversed at times. If I had known this pithy bit of advice before the interview, I probably would have asked him about it. I doubt he would have been the least bit annoyed, but, at the same time, he would not have conceded the point. Trump does not apologize. This is not usually an attractive trait, but Trump knows that if he apologizes, he will get his apology rammed down his throat. To understand Trump, you have to put yourself in his shoes.
War is not a time for apologies. Trump is a wartime president. He probably would have been the worst president in any other time in our history, but in these times, he is the best we could have hoped for.
I asked Trump what he would do about the woke military. He said the military wasn’t woke but for a handful of generals at the top. I fear this is not the case. My personal organization in partnership with Claremont Institute, of which I am chairman, has a woke military project that is documenting wokeness in the military. According to our polls and focus groups, wokeism in the military largely explains recruitment shortfalls.
Our folks who are investigating the wokeness in the military received from a whistleblower an Air Force memo that showed participation “goals” for identity groups defined by race and sex. For example, nearly 80% of all Air Force officers are white. General C.Q. Brown, the author of the memo and now President Biden’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wants to reduce that number to 67.5% — a double digit reduction. Today, white males make up 85% of all fighter pilots, one of the most difficult, dangerous, and important jobs in the service; the Air Force wants to reduce that to 65%.
Does anyone really believe that this will make for a stronger Air Force?
There is a much more important question I should have asked. What does Trump say to the charge by Democrats that he is a “threat to democracy.” I am sure he would have said that the Democrats’ overthrow of Biden was hardly an example of democracy in action. He might also have pointed to voter fraud in the 2020 election — again, hardly democracy in action.
The answer he would not have given is, I think, the most powerful example of the Democrats subverting democracy: the effective overthrow of Trump through daily character assassination, patently bogus investigations, lawfare, impeachment, lies, and fraud. This constituted a coup. He and Republicans should say just that. When Democrats say that Trump will effect a coup in his second term, Republicans should say that the Democrats have already effected a coup. Trump should put the coup accusation back in their face. “In your face” is another Trump virtue. “In your face” was in play when Trump returned to Butler after the first assassination attempt. Another example is when he gleefully says “drill, baby, drill.” He is putting Biden’s irresponsible energy policy back in his face.
At one point I told Trump to shut up and attend to my question — not exactly in those words, but that was the spirit of it. I was telling him (not requesting him) to answer my question. As we know, Trump finds it difficult to stay on point. I wanted him to name the movement and/or the ideology of the movement that constitutes the enemy regime. I have been calling the movement or regime, the “group quota regime” (which my intellectual friends don’t care for) and its ideology “Kamalism.”
Once I got him focused on the ideology, he immediately came up with “stupidism.” I laughed, because it struck me as just right and so Trump. Trump is a genius at this sort of thing. He gets to the essence of the thing and then expresses it in a down-to-earth, common-sense way. I think it might be more accurate to name the ideology “destructivism,” but this is probably not as good a name as “stupidism.”
By the way it is never a good idea to listen to intellectuals when it comes to names or anything having to do with marketing. Intellectuals are too literal.
He seemed not the least bothered by my nerve. On reflection, I wondered whether even I, someone with more chutzpah than decorum, would have felt comfortable treating another president in the informal way I treated Trump. I doubt it. He was not undignified; he just didn’t stand on ceremony. I think this is another indication of his authenticity. Can you imagine Trump orchestrating a hunting expedition as did Tim Walz? Not a chance.
He took me to a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. I couldn’t refuse. I was tempted to, but it was a former president asking, and this particular former president has rather great powers of persuasion. I flew on what is called “Trump Force One.” He told me his plane was better than Air Force One. It sounded like, “My plane is bigger and better than your plane,” the subtext being difficult to miss. Trump is nothing if not competitive. The flight was catered by Dunkin Donuts. What did you expect?
I stayed at the rally until Trump started speaking. I had heard it all before. I then found an air-conditioned room where I waited until the end of his 90 minute, mostly ad-libbed speech. His entrance is a show in itself. He walks out on a runway, then pauses and soaks up the adulation and walks a few steps further and does the same; all the while lights are flashing and his trademark patriotic songs are playing. To the Left, I am sure he looks like a demagogue; to me, it is just Trump being the showman he is.
I told him that the high point of the recent Republican convention was his granddaughter’s speech, but it wasn’t her speech itself but rather his adoring, mesmerized, grandfatherly stare as she spoke. This can’t be faked. When she said her grandfather tried to get into her head during a golf match she again exposed a caring, involved (and competitive) grandfather. I asked him how he got into her head. His evasive response made it sound like this was a state secret. His grandfatherly side also came out when his younger granddaughter sat on his lap. Such things cannot be orchestrated. Similarly, at the North Carolina rally, his young grandson said, obviously unscripted, “Vote for grandpa.”
I tried very hard to convince Trump that we are in a war with an ideology, like communism. I think he understands that we are in a war. At one point he said that the enemy within is “far more dangerous” than the enemy without — China and Russia, for example. He says this with regularity. But he doesn’t expand on it. He doesn’t identify the “enemy within” nor explain how it operates. Republican leaders must pick up where Trump leaves off. This is very important. You can’t win a war if you don’t know you are in. The Republican narrative should be, “We are in a war against an enemy that wants to destroy us.”
The number one strategy of the destructive Left is to convince us that every aspect of the American way of life is racist. They teach us that all America’s values, from excellence to patriotism; all institutions, from religion to capitalism; and all policies, from borders to oil production, are racist. They teach us that we were founded on racism and are committed to its perpetuation.
It is this assertion — America is systemically racist — that justifies their attempt to overthrow the American way of life. After all, if America really is racist to the core, then we should throw it out. The best way to respond — Trump’s way — is to dismiss the claim with contempt. Call it what it is: “horse manure.” But virtually no politician does this because he or she is saddled by white guilt and so cowers under the prospect of being called a “racist.” Trump is the exception. He has no white guilt, one of his most important virtues. Trump never cowers and he rarely pulls a punch — still other virtues. He has no problem dismissing the claim that America is racist, and without explanation. He simply asserts it. Trump, as I told him, is the king of manly assertion. I told him that he was not a great explainer, but it didn’t matter very much, because in a war assertions are more important than explanations.
I also told him (I did a lot of telling) that he should say over and over that America is not racist. Most Americans know they are not racist (and know they do not have white privilege), but it would be helpful if their politicians confirmed it. People need to hear such things from their leader. This is similar to his use of the word “fake” to describe the media. We on the Right know it is fake, but he gave us the right word and permission to use it.
Like most Republicans, Trump sees most of the idiocy of the Left: open borders, the “green new scam” (he should use this term more often), manufactured foreign energy dependence, educating our enemies at our best colleges and universities, the intentional destruction of our history and the traditional mother-father family, DEI and quotas everywhere, and so much more. As is true of virtually all Republicans, I think Trump sees these things as a bunch of disparate stupid policies; whereas, in fact, they are a coordinated set of stupid policies, all serving to destroy the American way of life.
He, like all Republicans, must keep in mind that a revolutionary regime must do three basic things: 1. Destroy the existing regime. 2. Put in place the new regime. 3. Acquire the power to do #1 and #2. Almost everything we see from the destructive Left — from transgenderism to open borders to proposals to pack the Supreme Court — falls into one or more of these three categories. For example, open borders work to intentionally destroy our culture and, at the same time, grow the voter base of Democratic Party. If we do not develop a unified theory that makes sense of what is going on in our country, we shall fail to respond in the right way and with the right level of passion. Let me repeat: You cannot win a war if you don’t know you are in one.
This brought me to another point I make frequently: It is not Trump’s policies that are so important; rather it is the rest of him, his character and personality, above all that he is a fighter, bold, sure footed, unforgiving, relentless and a patriot who thinks America is exceptional and that’s the way he wants to keep it. Anyone can copy Trump’s policies, and many Republicans do, but no one can copy the rest of him.
He qualified my assertion:
[A Republican senator] said, “Wait a minute, you don’t understand about the policy. Trump policy doesn’t work if Trump’s not doing it.” And he gives the example of, I have a policy, and then I call up the leader of a country, and I force the policy down their throat. Most people can’t do that, they can’t force policy down — when France put a tax on our country, and they wouldn’t, under any circumstance, for Mnuchin, for all of these smart guys you have working for you, they wouldn’t do anything about it. I called him and I said, “Oh, you’re going to do it, 100%, you’re going to do it.” ‘No, no, I cannot do it.’
To Macron — nice guy, he’s a wise guy, and he likes France, but he’s a nice guy — I said, “No, no, you’re going to do it.” ‘But it was approved already by our — the equivalent of the legislature, by our parliament, but it was approved already.’ I said, “It doesn’t matter if it was approved, you’re going to do it.” I said, “If you don’t do it, I’m going to charge you a 100% tariff on every wine and every bottle of champagne that you send into our country.” And I don’t want to take a lot of time, but he essentially said, “I would be really very much inclined.” I said, “Don’t be inclined, are you going to take the tax off or not?” He said, “I will take the tax off immediately.” So they all had my policy, nobody was able to get it done, but I got it done. So it’s not just policy.
At the end of the interview, he asked me whether I would like to play golf with him. I thanked him but said I would pass. He laughed and noted that after the second assassination attempt on the golf course, fewer people are willing to play golf with him these days.