not to relitigate the election, but hillary clinton gave very little attention to the policies she would put into effect when she was president. he gave a great deal of attention to the policies he would put into effect when he became president. he talked about immigration. he talked about taxes. he talked about about trade. he talked about foreign relations, the iranian agreement. she didn't talk about any of that. so i think you're giving him a little less credit for the amount of thought that went into what he was saying and what he was doing. i've seen him in many meetings with four, five, six, seven, eight people, whether away talking about foreign policy, military policy, or domestic policy, absorb what people were saying. i told you about his change of opinion on what was more important to american business, taxes or regulation. and he came to the conclusion that regulation was more important.

so i think you're going to find an extraordinarily intelligent man who enjoys public policy as issues. he's even admitted to me about halfway through the campaign, he enjoys it even more than real estate, because it's a lot more challenging. and then i think you're going to see him surround himself with highly intelligent people, because he's not afraid of highly intelligent people. i think you're going to see him surrounded with people of much higher intellect and much higher success than we've had in the last eight years. >> we're really running out of time. >> people who challenge him and are willing to challenge him because he's not afraid to be challenged. >> one more question. there's a lady over there with her hand up. away just got time for one more, i'm sorry, we could go on much longer. >> hi, it's julianna glover, sir, nice to see you.

so i think you mentioned something a couple of minutes ago that would raise the spirits of people in this room, you talked about tariffs. when you spoke about it, you talked about other countries lowering their tariffs rather than the united states increasing theirs in response, some sort of trade war scenario. could you talk a little more about that framework and would it lead to a global lowering of trade tariffs? >> you want me to talk about trade? okay. so i think what you're going to find is that probably -- gosh. probably than any president we've had in a long time, we have a president who has spent his time traveling the world and doing business all over the world, right? our last president had traveled out of the united states maybe three times, four times.

>> we lived in indonesia. >> was he in europe? >> not much. >> not much, right? george bush, not much, right? okay. so we have somebody who has done business all over the world. he understands the world. he's got a terrific understanding of the fact that we are a global economy. that doesn't mean that we're not also our own economy, that we have to protect first. and our own economy, we have to make consistent with the global economy so that we can get our fair share of the advantageos o the global economy. as he has said many times, but it's never been reported properly, he is not a protectionist. he's a free trader. but a prayfair trader. >> but he talks about imposing a 45% tariff on goods from china. >> so let me leave you with the following thought. >> please.

>> if donald trump were going to sell the hotel he just built here in washington, right, which may be the best hotel in washington. >> you're staying there? >> i don't know how much it's worth. give me a price. he would ask for double the price to start with. and then he would probably take less than that. you're dealing with a negotiator. i worked for ronald reagan. ronald reagan cast one of the largest tax cuts in american history. the one he presented to tip o'neill was twice the size of the one that he got. so we're dealing with a man who knows how to negotiate. it's like when he said he wants everybody to pay their fair share in nato, they interpreted that as we're going to pull out of nato. we're not going to pull out of nato. but believe me, he'll get them to pay their fair share of it. maybe he'll do it by, we'll put a few more troops in and in

exchange for that, if we put more troops in, you have to get up to your 2%, like we can't subsidize you any longer because we've got a big debt. i think what you're going to find is somebody negotiating for us for once. i'll give you an example of the difference. when barack obama and hillary clinton came into office, they gave away the nuclear defense of poland and the czech republic to reset the relationship with russia. and i was on a panel much like this, about six months ago, which secretary gates, who was the defense secretary, i said to him something that's always troubled me, i said to him, what did we get in return for that? and he said, the spanish word, "nada." he was opposed to it. now, that is a stupid negotiation. i don't know if we ever should have given way the nuclear defense of poland and the czech republic to start with.

if we were going to do it, we should have gotten something for it. donald trump will probably go to congress, and he'll go to the world with an agenda that's a little beyond what he needs, so he has room to negotiate. just like every one of you do in business. you don't -- you don't -- you don't put your house up for sale if it's a $2 million house and you want $2 million for it, at $2 million. you put it up at 2.5 or 2.6 and then you end up at 2. if you understand business, if you understand how to negotiate, if you understand how to do foreign relations, if you have no experience in doing that, you do silly things like give away the nuclear defense of poland and the czech republic for nothing, and then putin concludes from day one, i can push you all over the world, because your not too smart.

i think when you listen to what donald trump said during the election, and when you listen to some of the things he proposes, please, as intelligent leaders of business, understand, he's doing the same thing you're doing in a deal that you want to make. you don't start at your lowest number. if you do, you're not going to be running your business very long. you start somewhere higher, with a plan b and a plan c and a plan d. and that's the complexity with which he things. that makes a great president. i worked for one. i only worked for one great president in my life. ronald reagan. ronald reagan was always underestimated. ronald reagan always had a plan a, plan b, plan c, and if worse came to worse, he even got a plan c. but he never really got what he wanted. >> mayor giuliani, it sounds like you'll have a very busy

four years. can you please join me in thanking him. [ applause ] thank you very much indeed, mayor giuliani. that was fascinating. we'll be hearing more about these topics over the next few years, next few weeks certainly. moving right along, we're a little bit delayed, this is a fascinating conversation, we have another equally fascinating conversation to come. every successful presidential campaign has an architect. famously, president obama had david axelrod. president george w. bush of course had karl rove, the architect, as he was known. it's fair to say most people in the political business believe our next guest was very much the architect of the recent presidential election success of donald trump. so we are looking forward to a very interesting conversation about that and about -- also about the next four years. ladies and gentlemen, please

welcome kellyanne conway, the campaign manager for donald j. trump and now a special have i seen adviser to the transition team, and my colleague gerald seib from "the wall street journal." [ applause ] >> thank you. we almost didn't make it because there was a transition meeting going on backstage. kellyanne, thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> this is proof that if you hang around long enough, amazing things happen. kellyanne and i first knew each other years ago, when you were working for frank luntz and i was a young reporter. and here we are. who knew? life rolls on in interesting ways. you went through an experience, i suspect you hadn't planned on in the last six months. and we all lived through a night, tuesday night, that i

think it's fair to say was different than the one most of us expected. >> not all of us. >> okay. i'll take your word for that. let me start -- i want to look more forward than backward. let me just start with what did happen on tuesday night and ask you, what was the message, what was the mandate, what was the voice of voters as you read it, now that the dust has settled, from last tuesday night? >> first of all, gerry, thank you for having me, mr. baker, all of you on the council at "the wall street journal," i appreciate the opportunity. the message on tuesday night was there are more of us. the clues and cues were hiding in plain sight. everything that donald trump said about the populist uprising, about people just wanting fairness and an opportunity and a voice, ended up being true.

and we can talk about it being an anti-elitist election. i think that's fine and it has some merit. but it's very core. people were talking about security. it could be security from terrorism, national security. it's also health care security, economic security. it's capital "s" social security but also small "s" social security. donald trump was going to states like pennsylvania and new hampshire talking about opiate use, and ohio, opiate use, that's a kind of insecurity fairly new to our communities. i've been a vocal and long time critic of republican politicians who run around talking about job creation, you didn't build that, and i'm a job creator, i'm an entrepreneur. i think that's wonderful, i've been a job creator for 21 years, i think that's fabulous. however that's about 7% of the country, are job creators, who fancy themselves as

entrepreneurs. there are another 7% who are the job seek remembers the unemployed. the vast majority of households are neither job creators nor job seekers. they're job holders. donald trump gave voice to the job holders. the people, gerry, in this country, who say, gosh, when my grandfather had a job or your grandfather had a job, it was enough to support the whole family. we're white knuckled at the end of the month trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage or the student loan payment, the food and the fuel. and i think he gave voice to those folks who are just trying to meet everyday needs and have a fair shake. people were also talking about fairness. i think hillary clinton's campaign was about equality. and a lot of this country, of course we cherish equality, it's enshrined in our constitution and our other lawyes, but most

people are talking about fairness, which is different. fairness is about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. and when you listen to people closely, what really undergirded their views towards education reform, like school choice or opening up more technical and vocational opportunities for maybe kids who just aren't college material, and that's fine, actually that's good, when we talk about immigration policy, when they're talking about tax reform, when they're talking about -- when they're talking about letting syrian refugees in by 550% as hillary would or not, they're really talking about what is fair. and i think donald trump put issues on the map that no one was giving voice to, like trade, and like illegal immigration. illegal immigration, he articulated it through an economic lens. so that we were no longer only asking what is fair to the illegal immigrant.

all of a sudden we were asking, what's fair to the american worker, what's fair to ask employers to do? is it enough to just enroll in e-verify and wash your hands clean or should we be asking them to do more? what's fair to local communities? what's fair to folks who just -- they would do the jobs that others are doing but they can't do it for $6 under the table, nor should they be asked to. so i think he gave voice to issues that were more a part of the social and cultural zeitgeist than the garden variety, political set of ideas. the other thing is, i read with rapt attention but no surprise that hillary clinton had tested up to 84 slogans years in advance of the presidential race. that's just remarkable. and i certainly hope her pollsters got paid by the slogan. but donald trump basically started and ended with make america great again. and some people criticized that. but at its very essence, it

really was about patriotism and it was about aspiration and opportunity and freedom. and frankly fairness. and the other thing i would just take from all of this, gerry, you said what was the message. a couple of messages. one was that ethics and veracity are a qualification for president of the united states. i think that folks in hillary clinton's campaign, which is filled with brilliant, savvy strategists including her, the candidate herself, but the idea that temperament or what you said 20 years ago is an affirmative criterion and veracity and trustworthy are not, is just not going to be true. you're not going to convince voters otherwise. >> i think it's also fair to say he tapped into an anger that was out in the country. and it produced i think a somewhat divisive campaign, an angry campaign, in some ways i

think it was reflected in the first question we heard tonight. i guess one of the things i wanted to ask you is, what can be done now to heal those divisions? what would you say to a hispanic family that is worried about the tone or a muslim family that's worried about the tone? what's the message to them and what can and will donald trump say to those people in the weeks ahead to sort of tamp down the kind of concerns that we're seeing? >> let me just say too, you went back to 1994 when you met me, when i was working with frank li luntz on the contract with america. the word "anger" was also used in 1994, frank luntz actually had an op-ed in "the wall street journal" before election day 1994, and he said to say the electorate is angry is like saying the ocean is wet. i remember it verbatim. i think that has merit. but i also think anger as a way -- angry as a way to describe the electorate is a little bit of an excuse.

and it was an excuse to not actually listen to voters. and i think many people who were -- honestly, who their day jobs are to listen to voters, to really get to know what america was trying to tell us, i think they fell down on the job, because they missed -- they said, well, they're angry so i can be a wrist flicker, they're angry, they're scary, they're peddling hate and divisiveness when many of them were just legitimately fearful and frustrated, that they can't pay the bills, that they just can't get ahead, there's nothing else they can do, they have a job, they live a good life, they pay their taxes, they pay their dues, they always live by the rules, yet they feel they're in the quicksand of affordability. i want to say there's frustration and fear and not just anger. to answer your question, i would hearken back to what president-elect trump said when he was elected, i guess by then it was wednesday morning not tuesday night.

and he said, and he wrote this speech, i was there, and he said i will be the president of all americans, even those who did not support me. and that's quite many millions. and he means it. rudy and i can tell you, he means it. so let's begin there. he will be president to all americans. you're asking specifically about the hispanic family, the muslim family, anybody who -- i heard he's -- i hope that they have heard him say he's expressed regret for any pain he's caused, particularly if it was done with word and he did not intend to do that and he means that as well, he said that in august, at a speech in north carolina. i would beseech them to at least listen, and at least acknowledge that he is their president. and that's the same message i would have to the protesters. they have a right to air their grievances. but i also just think they were caught flat-footed and unaware.

all the talk about who is angry and who won't accept the election results and who is not appreciating the natural processes of democracy, we're asking the right questions and about the wrong candidate and the wrong candidate's supporters. so give him a chance and see what he does as your president. i know he loves this country. i know he made enormous sacrifices to run for president. a lot of politicians run for power and prestige and status and money and fame. he had all of that. and he and his family, who i've gotten to know very well and respect enormously, have made very big sacrifices to do this. and it's for love of the country and a belief that they can actually make a difference. >> so if you are looking at trying now to move into washington and govern in a city where i would argue that both parties are divided, you've got republicans -- there's a populist strain, gerry and mayor

guiliani were talking about this earlier, there's a popular strain and more conservative strain. the democrats have traditional democratic politicians and bernie sanders politicians. how do you bring that mess to it to make -- create a consensus in washington? it seems very hard to me to be able to move from this campaign, as divisive as it's been in both parties, to a place where you can create policies that bring people together. >> first, gerry, we may want to look at that as a source of strength, not weakness. you mentioned the two major political parties and you talked about the divisions or the differences within them. but it's probably good for the country, and anybody who calls himself or herself a republican or a democrat or an independent leaning toward either party, it's probably a source of strength and comfort for them that their party has different strains within it. so you mentioned the democratic

party. you said traditional democratic party, and bernie sanders sower voters. the bernie sanders voters ended up being a force. it was not nothing. he won 22 states against a woman who we were told for eight years now, maybe ten or 12, is a shoe-in for the presidency and has now lost it twice, first in the primary to president obama and now of course to president-elect trump in the general. and so bernie sanders got millions and millions of votes. and i'm not sure, in fact i'm pretty sure that his brand of you can call it socialism, you can call it democratic populism, but his message was never fully appreciated, respected, and assimilated into the larger hillary clinton message and campaign, which i think is a mistake. i was happy to see as donald trump's campaign manager. i think it was a mistake. so i think there's work to do. i'm also not sure this is the democratic party anymore that i grew up in, when the second

amendment is respected, where there are pro-life democrats, where democrats would daresay i think we should have a flat tax like jfk did, in essence. i don't see them, they're not there. before senator ayotte lost her reelection, the republican party had -- and one of them is here -- the republican party had six female united states senators. but three were pro-life and three were pro-choice. you've probably never heard that before because who would tell you? the democratic party has many, many more female senators but they all have one view on a pretty divisive issue in our country. so the republican party to me seems like the one that's going through -- i would call welcome growing pains, one that's actually expanding its constituencies, and expanding the electoral map by going back into these so-called blue states that haven't gone republican in decades, literally, a third of

the population has been born, maybe more at this point, since wisconsin went red. neither the bushes, who were president, ever won wisconsin, hasn't won since 1984, donald trump won it. that's a sign of a growing party, not a shrinking party. and i'm one who is optimistic about having this large republican party where people feel welcome. and it really depends too, and we try to do this in the trump campaign, our modelling, we look i think in politics and media, we look too often at people just through these demographics. your gender, your race, your ethnicity. but people -- you have to look at them situationally as well. if you have been negatively affected, if you feel like you've been negatively affected by affordable care, obamacare, that's how you're voting this year. it's almost irrespective of your gender or your ethnicity or your socioeconomic status. situationally, if someone close to you has lost a job, then

that's the prism through which you look at this election. and again, it's apart from your gender or your ethnicity. >> there are a lot of things to do in a transition, obviously. i wonder if one of the things that president-elect trump feels a need to do is to somehow reach out to the country in a more kind of formal way to address some of these divisions, to try to bring people together. have you talked about that, is there something planned to make that happen in the next two months before the inauguration which is the obvious point at which this traditionally occurs? >> it has been discussed. and i think you see early signs of it, even though he's enconcentraen skon ensconced in trump tower right now, he's met with leaders of state and leaders from both sides of the aisle, less than 36

hours after being elected president of the united states, him coming here to meet with president obama and first lady michelle obama and vice president biden and of course senate majority leader mcconnell and speaker ryan, especially his meeting with president obama and first lady obama, i think that was so incredibly important to show the country that the sitting president and the president-elect who had really battled it out pretty viciously there for a while and personally, not for a while, i would say up until the last moment -- >> a long while, you might say. >> somehow they were able to lay down the muskets and love their country so much that they want to make sure there's a peaceful transition of power. i think that's the earliest and best and brightest sign that you have about the president-elect donald trump wanting to address the entire country as one. the second one is, frankly his interview with "wall street

journal"'s gerry baker, his interview on "60 minutes" last night where he was asked specific policy questions, where he immediately denounced those who say they support him who are peddling hate and divisiveness, and he just told them cut it out, to stop it, and he means it. so yes, i think you will see that. i think you'll hear a lot of personal flourish in his inaugural address that touches upon that. if you listen closely, i know there was a lot of hurt and pain when he won from people who weren't expecting it. if you go back and read what he said in his words that night, he was already moving in that direction. having said that, the man is not going to become a walking hallmark card, nor should he, rudy. he's a tough guy. he's a tough leader. and america decided it wanted a tough leader. it wants someone who speaks specifically about what he is going to do and does not back

down and is pushing back against this culture of political correctness and is going to put america first, meaning he's going to renegotiate bad trade deals, he's going to bring jobs back from mexico and china, all the things he's talked about. that night in his speech he said, because i remember it verbatim, he said, and to the world community, i will always put america first, but i will work with you, and i will be fair. and he's going to aim to do both. >> i wrote a column at one point during the campaign and it said, those people who wanted an independent presidential candidate for years now have one, his name is donald trump, because he really did run as an independent. you know, i guess the good news, if you're in the position of being the president-elect and his team, which you are, is that you're not really beholden to anybody. the bad news is you probably have a less solid core of support in this town than is normal. i guess the question then

becomes, does he work with republicans in congress? does he accept the republican policy party agenda that paul ryan spent a lot of time over the last year constructing in the house? or do you start over at this point? >> well, this will be his presidency and this will be his vision. he's been very clear about his 100-day plan. anybody can pull it up, as i sit here, pull it up, please, and you can see what he's talking about. it's very specific. before that he talked about great economic minds like steve moore and larry kudlow, he talked about creating 25 million jobs over the next few years, unleashing energy sources, shale and coal and natural gas. he also talked about infrastructure investments, you know, quite significantly. education reform, defeating radical islamic terrorism, reforming the veterans administration. folks, these weren't sound bites

and bumper stickers. they're ten-point, five-point, seven-point plans that the policy wonks among us would enjoy. so you can expect that, gerry, to define how he gets in there. vice president-elect pence met with speaker ryan, they go way back. they'll have to find a way to knit together what was already being worked on and can never really be signed into law because they had a democratic president in president obama and what mr. trump has put forward as his plan. the excuse of divided government is over. and i think it's causation, not coincidence, that americans gave a republican president a republican house and a republican senate a majority republican governors, 69 in the 99 state legislative chambers. i read somewhere the democrats now control 26% of the

legislative chambers. if they lose one or two more, they're lower than the threshold that you need to defeat a constitutional amendment. these are not squeakers. these are not close. it may be a divided country. that was not a divided election in those terms. and so he has been very, very specific in what he plans to do. if people didn't hear it, then they didn't want to hear it because it's there. >> so if you're looking at the republican party you just described, there is a question about whether it is now a populist party or a conservative party. for the ceos in this room i suppose that generates some mixed feelings, the anti-regulatory message, the tax cut message, undoubtedly is cheered, although there's probably concern about the big is bad, the anti-free-freed agreement, the exim bank as crony capitalism, those might cause more heartburn. what would you say to the people in this room as they try to figure out what does this

version, the new version, the trump version of the republican party stand for on the issues that concern them? >> so donald trump has been very clear about his views on all of that. he would like to withdraw our participation in the tpp. he wants to -- his plan to create 25 million jobs over ten years is centered in part in debt reduction, centered in part in energy and infrastructure investment, but also, gerry, it's centered in part in a growth -- economic growth over 3%, not the anemic growth we have now. and people say, oh, again, the wrist flickers, they know everything, the wrist flickers, you'll never get growth. well, let's try. does anybody think the growth rates we have are the best we can do? he doesn't. vice president-elect pence doesn't. the whole plan is there. the other thing is, he doesn't say all trade deals are bad. he's made very clear he believes nafta was a bad deal for the american worker. it sounds like a critical mass

of private union households and certainly non-college-educated households in places like wisconsin and michigan, pennsylvania, ohio, really all the people i grew up with, they agreed. i mean, he won them by two to one. it was a remarkable rout among that group. and in large part because he says, i'm going to renegotiate bad trade deals. he doesn't say he won't have trade deals. he just is pointing out that some of them have not worked for the people they were intended to benefit. he wants to in his hundred-day plan, he wants china to be declared a currency manipulator. having said that, he spoke with the leader of china today. >> how did that go? >> it was fine. i think there's a readout that's been made public, i understand, that's all i'll say about that and other things. in any event, he's made very clear that washington has wanted

for 30 years at least, i mean, i've been in polling for 20, so at least 20 years, they've wanted an outsider, somebody who owes nothing to anybody in washington to come here and just clean it out from the inside out. it's important they finally got that chance. it was an open question whether the 72% of americans who tell "the wall street journal" pollsters and others i want to take the country in a new and different direction, i want change, it's an open question whether they were actually going to vote for it, vote for somebody who's never done this before, and they did, and good for them for actually saying i'm going to follow that through. >> public opinion, as you say, is your business. did the trump movement and the bernie sanders movement proceed from the same head water? >> yes, in large part it did. they also had something else in common, along with the barack obama movement in 2008, which is hillary never saw them coming. that's a problem. and i'm not picking on the loser here, i'm just saying that if you misread america, you really

can't govern america. and the idea that they didn't see senator obama coming in 2008, i know steps away from here in georgetown, a now legendary dinner party, a woman at the dinner party remarked to a big clinton adviser, you know, what about this senator barack obama running, i really enjoyed him in the 2004 convention, i thought he was terrific, they just said, flash in a pan, flash in a pan. two-term president, by the way. hillary clinton would have a stronger democratic nominee if they had not cleared the field for her. if they had had four or five, she would have risen, and they never saw the come back coming. >> would you have been in worst shape if you had run against jeb biden, the guy from scranton? >> he didn't run.

>> this is politics, we get to speculate. >> i actually think not. joe, vice president biden, can you tell i've been around a long time, i grew up in the delaware valley where he is legendary. look, maybe, maybe not. i think that the cultural zeitgeist that donald trump was able to capture was a rebuke to really everybody who is in a position of power and represents some type of -- some type of lobbyist/consultant/politician, media access is what i mean by that. vice president biden, he could have done nothing but own the obama/biden presidency, i would think, that would be weird, joe biden not owning the obama -- and that would have been a difficult thing to do. a majority of americans have major questions and reservations about the affordable care act. she just do. it hasn't worked for a lot of folks. many folks who said, that sounds

good for the people who need it, didn't realize their premiums would increase or their quality or choices would be diminished or that they had been lied to, gerry, two dozen plus times, that if they like their plan, they can keep their plan, if they like their doctor, they can keep their doctor. >> but the president's job approving rating is at 54, 55% now. >> i think they were comparing him to the nominee. and he was -- i would expect that for him. i think he is popular. but that popularity was not transferable to hillary clinton. >> one last question, then i want to turn to the audience. steve moore, one of the brilliant economic thinkers is out there, i want to ask him to kick it off. let me ask you one final thing. so when you campaign pledging to drain the swamp, then you arrive at the swamp, how can you work with the swamp? and i don't mean you, of course, but i mean -- >> that's all right, you can. so for years i've had this phrase, staff infection. it's my way of describing the

consultancy, particularly the republican consultancy. i just feel like candidates often lose and consultants always win. when i say consultants, it's also the lobbyists and opinion elites. oh, they made this excuse, like oh, bob dole, he just seemed too old, and mitt romney, he seemed too stiff, and john mccain, people thought he was -- you know, couldn't do it. guys, the only thing all three of them had in common was you, and please don't come back a fourth time. this time they did not, they got purged from the system early. i think the public, the voters, particularly the republican primary electorate, gerry, were rebelling, again, against the them, not the us. there's a lot more of us, if you will, than them. and i can't tell you how much credibility and legitimacy donald j. trump has to come and say he's going to drain the swamp. a, he's not part of the swamp. b, no one got rich off of his

campaign, trust me. no one got rich off of his campaign, which i think is very fitting for who he is. the article is out today that he won having spent probably even less than half than hillary clinton spent. and if you are surrounding yourself with a small core team, i think brooklyn had seven or eight times our staff, a lot more -- double plus our money. you have the credibility to say, i'm going to come here now and not need all these extra people to tell us what's going on. now, his drain the swamp plan, it's also online, you can look at that, and it does talk about term limits, it does talk about lobbying bans, which will probably weigh on some people's minds before they go into the administration. people in this country are very wise. i really -- my job for years has been how is it playing in peoria. i go on the airplane and go see how it's playing in peoria as a focus group moderator. for years we've said, do we really need five people to do

one job? i would think even before knowing what the job is, no. the waste, the abuse, the duplicativeness, the nonresponsiveness, the labyrinth, byzantine, you can drain the swamp and still have an effective government that works. >> i want to start with steve moore, one of the two co-authors of the obama tax cut plan. steve -- >> definitely not the obama tax cut plan. >> is that what i said? >> that's an oxymoron. the author of the trump tax cut plan. >> it's the other guy. the trump tax cut plan. >> the president-elect. >> the president-elect. steve, maybe if you don't mind standing up for a minute and describing in sort of general terms what it is you guys have done, how it's going to work, and where you think it goes from here. i think there's a microphone right behind you.

>> thank you, gerry. kellyanne, congratulations. mayor, boy, did you knock it out of the park. i was in florida this weekend and saw a bumper sticker that i think explains why you defied the polls and won. it said, vote for donald trump, nobody has to know. that was fantastic. [ applause ] >> by the way, i talked about that, the undercover trump voter, four months ago, and was criticized by is in t"the wall journal." but we're good, we're here. >> a quick story, mayor, it emphasizes a point you made. when we met with larry kudlow four or five months ago, he asked larry kudlow, you know

larry kudlow kudlfrom cnbc, we looked at each other and we said, donald, we can't work for you, we believe in free trade. and this is exactly the point you were making, mayor. he said to us, okay, we can agree to disagree on that, but i want you to work with us on taxes and so on. so on the tax plan which we did work on, you summarized it very well, mayor. the heart of the plan is a business tax cut. and i actually think, kellyanne, we can get this done in the first 150 days, i really do. i think we can do it with democratic votes. senator, we were talking about this, i think we can get a lot of democrats to vote for a business tax plan that actually has some infrastructure spending in it, and basically we want to take the highest business tax rate in the world, by the way, not just for corporations, but for small businesses, and i have to tell you all, when we first met with donald trump on this, he said, when you do this tax plan, i don't just want it to be for the corporations.

he said, i want it to be for the 26.5 million small businesses in this country. wow, okay, we'll do that. so that 15% tax rate that we're talking about is not just for boeing and microsoft and apple, but every single small business in america, including the small business startup in silicon valley and the korean grocery down the street in new york city will get that tax cut. and i believe we can do this. and by the way, you're exactly right, another big part of this is that 10% repatriation. so money that is stored overseas, and we believe there's an about $2 trillion, we got that number from "the wall street journal" so it must be true, we believe we can bring a lot of that back in and raise about $100 billion. and this is me speaking for myself, not necessarily mr. trump, but i think we can use that money for an infrastructure bill and put it in a big package, senator, and we have a jobs bill, a corporate, business tax cut with infrastructure

spending that could be one of the biggest jobs bills in history. and i would love to see it with 15, 20 democrats in the senate and, you know, ronald reagan, you mentioned ronald reagan, when you remember, mayor, when he passed his tax cut, the first bill he passed with many -- remember we used to call them the boll weevil democrats, for those who thing this can't be done in a bipartisan way, when ronald reagan proposed to cut the highest income tax rate to 28%, that bill passed the united states senate 97-3. 97-3. so i hope we can do it in a bipartisan way, kellyanne. congratulations to the two of you, you did such amazing work. the only other quick thing i'll say is, that energy component you're talking about, kellyanne, is so critical. we can be the leading -- we can be the energy superpower of the next century. we have more oil and gas and coal than any other country in the world. we should use it.

and i think this was a big distinctions betwe distinction between where the democrats were and where the republicans were. the democrats' philosophy has been keep it in the ground. i really hope, kellyanne, that donald trump will put those coal miners back in their jobs because that's what they want. okay. i'll stop there. [ applause ] >> questions? one right there. >> thank you. ms. conway, congratulations to you and the trump team. my name is cory benati, i'm an australian senator from the liberal party. i don't want to alarm you, the liberals are the conservatives. >> i know. >> having been an observer of this election for the last two months as i've been based in new york city, i've been acutely aware of the hyperpartisanship of sections of the media, like the broadcast and the print

media. the one noticeable exception i think has been "the wall street journal," and all credit to them, they have sought to present both campaign ideas and ideologies. but how do you see the media as playing a role in your campaign strategy? and ultimately in your assessment, did the pile-on in favor of your opponent work for you or against you? >> thanks for asking that complex question. the question is about the media and the role they played for us. so i happen to be very pro-press. obviously pro-first-amendment. i like the idea that the trump campaign after i came on board restored all the press credentials that had been suspended. i'll tell you at the same time that the media culpas as they're calling it now, how they got it so wrong, it's not just a matter of the wrong methodology

polling-wise, it's the inability to look at real americans. when you look at the by-line, it will say, columbus, ohio. who did you talk to? because all around this country, including if not especially at trump rallies, 20,000 strong at a clip, there were people there, they would have told you why they were there. but what did you learn about trump rallies? you learned that there is some i had idiot with some t-shirt or somebody saying a stupid, pathetic -- people should have listened instead of listening to each other on a tv set, they should have been listening to americans, they would have learned a great deal. that's number one. number two, you are right. your instinct that the complete pile-on helped us in the end is absolutely correct. you can measure it.

so that's different than media bias. that's sort of this -- that's this telling america what's important to them. and i have said on -- publicly on tv many times, somebody would ask me a question for the 18th time and i would very politely say, all right, let's try this again. i looked at your polling, at cnn or "the wall street journal" or nbc or wherever i was, i don't see what your pollsters are telling you. i see terrorism, education, corruption. there's also this lemming-like rush to say, this is what's important and we're going to cover it for the next five days on a running cable loop. if you're saying the same thing for five days, you should take down the breaking news song and

chiron, just by definition. >> to be fair, that benefitted your candidate enormously through the primary season. he was the running loop for three, four, five months. >> and i think because the idea was, let's give him a lot of press coverage and waits until he destroys himself. >> well, maybe. but let's face it, he was the beneficiary of that. >> oh, boy. look, i think jim rutenberg from "the new york times" put it best, he wrote a front page piece and he said, look, this man forces me to suspend objective journalistic standards, i just have to stop the madman, i can't be a journalist. and there were many people following suit. and it's unfortunate because the media are filled with very smart people who spent a lot of time on the road covering this campaign, living out of suitcases. so the other thing i want to tell you is i think it created

sympathy for donald trump in the end, because there were surprises, believe me, in both campaigns, but i did not understand, i did not understand why the clinton campaign stuck with the strategy they did where they basically made the campaign in the end about what donald trump said about one or two or different people, and they ran paid ads about it, went on for six or seven weeks. you know what happens in america, we move on like that. they're like, seriously, this is the 500th time you've been in my living room telling me this is important to me and it wasn't important to them. if it was important to them, they had already assimilated it into their voting score, if you will. but it's missing what is important. i also didn't understand why in the end, in the end, maybe you don't accept it tonight, but think about it, think about it in the shower and get back to me, i'm telling you, think about it and tell me who ran more aspirational, uplifting, positive campaign toward the end.

our closing messages were very uplifting and aspirational and positive. and rudy and i were there, a week ago tonight we were in manchester, new hampshire, then we went backwards, to grand rapids, michigan. michigan. when i found myself eating cheetohs and oreos i'm saying, this guy better win tomorrow. this is crazy. we got home at 4:00 a.m. what was his closing message? it was about the forgotten man and forgotten woman and freedom and opportunity and job creation. and secretary clinton's closing message was about the fact that donald trump takes the wings off butterflies. nobody wants to hear that anymore. this country wants you to talk about what you're going to do for them. and there are people out there who are suffering, and there are people out there who are not suffering but think they can't get a fair shake. any way you cut it, people wanted a substantive, aspirational, uplifting message at the end. and so, yes, i think there's a lot of -- a lot of

second-guessing perhaps maybe in the media, in some places, but a close adviser to donald trump that to president-elect trump that we certainly welcome a different approach. asking them to keep a more open mind. i already saw as of yesterday when we announced our first two senior staffers. what was the stories? all negative again. negative again. back to the same well of negativity. so i think in fairness to the american people, the coverage ought to at least try to uncover some facts and not have conclusions in search of evidence. find the evidence and make the conclusion. >> i think we have time for one last thing. over here. >> while they're finding the question, i would add to that, the polling because the media does its own polling, most of my

polls will never see the light of day. they've been done for private clients. most of them are never public because that's not why you hired me to shout them from the rooftops. i'm the secret keeper. i'm telling someone in a crisis or someone running for president or trying to sell a product or trying to negotiate. i'm telling them what's the data says and not the world. and i think if 98% of your newsroom feels a certain way, your poll is going to end up reflecting that. and what you take from the poll and what you tell america you learned from the poll is going to start reflecting that invariably because the questions you ask, and what you decide to share with people -- i give you a great example. i tell mr. trump, these polls, horse race is one thing. but these polls are not asking about temperament. and are asking about experience as qualification. polls in 2008 avoided questions about experience as a qualification because senator obama was running. now all of a sudden it was the goal standard. temperament and experience as qualification. so there's even subtleties like

that, i think, in the news that if you want to put that in your poll as opposed to how about a businessman with no -- owing nobody anything. i didn't see any of those questions. we certainly asked them. there's a selectivity that way as well. >> one last question right back there. >> much has been made about the data machine that drove this campaign and the influence of social media. as you think about the result and how you guys got there, how much does that play into modern marketing? how does that play into the ultimate result? >> it -- completely. and we had, you know, despite the public criticism that we had no campaign, no digital, no ground game. we had excellent all of the above. it was a combination of the trump campaign and the republican national committee in that the rnc had been developing over the last 3 1/2 years or so. really sound models.

great ground game investments, field operations, and they came bearing gifts for the republican presidential nominee. just so happened it was donald trump. we were able to merge the two to great effect. our use of digital, went everything from running ads to raising money. obviously this won't surprise anyone, to touching the voter. you have to find different ways to touch the voter literally on where they live and how they like to be marketed to. we modelled some of it off of the obama '08 campaign, where he mastered the ability, his campaign mastered the ability to use social media and digital technology, really, to reach voters. and certainly to raise money but really just to touch the voter, and it worked. obviously, the clinton campaign had a vaunted data and digital operation. but i also think that candidates matter. i think the candidates matter. folks out there, i talked often

publicly about the 46 -- that hillary clinton had a 47% problem of her own. different than mitt romney's 47%. her 47% problem is she can never really get beyond it in any of the states president obama carried twice with well over 50% of the vote. so knowing that, we did a combination of digital media, traditional ad buys, digital targeting, modeling of the voters. i think the main use of our digital and data operations within the trump campaign really goes to how we looked at the electorate. we didn't presume the electorate was who we wanted it to be and we didn't presume it was the electorate from 2012 or 2008. we saw it shape the messages shaping up more like 2010 and 2014 but we knew this would be a presidential year. but we modeled the electorate knowing that secretary clinton was going to have a more difficult time pulling together and keeping the obama coalition

than president obama would. it's his coalition. and we also knew that trump was a different kind of messenger with a different message than senator romney or mccain. not better or worse. just different. and we put that elasticity into our digital data modeling which is the way corporate america uses it. i'll end on this. most of my business has always been nonpolitical, believe it or not. i like people who pay their bills, and i like to know what -- i like to know what -- more than the electorate is thinking. everybody eats and sleeps, but not everybody votes or likes politics. this is what i always try to say and it's a very important aspect of data and digital when it comes to politics and electioneering. if crest toothpaste hired me tomorrow and said, hey, we want more people to use crest by next year i'd say, okay, i can do that. but crest doesn't want me to tell them 1,246,000 more people

will use crest. they want to know within their margins what their sales projections will be and how and why. what would i set off to do? i'd do what i've done for corporate america in the past. i'd figure out in this case, why the users of colgate and ultra bright and tom's natural, why aquafresh, why they use those brands and not crest. i'd find all the people who used to use crest and i'd find the current crest users and all this qualitative and quantitative research. you can't do that with politics. everybody uses toothpaste, but not everybody uses politics. and in politics, the way you find new consumers is by -- is not just by going in and grabbing the other side, the clinton or obama voters or bernie sanders. you have to find new users who don't think they needplings at all. it's not a thing they fancy that

they're going to seek out and pay for and be a repeat customer for. in that regard, that's a place where the donald trump phenomenon allowed us to find new customers. and we constantly people, i haven't been this excited since ronald reagan or i haven't voted in years or i'm a registered democrat. we saw that and respected that. that's what i mean by the undercover trump voter. it wasn't that they were just shy. they had either not voted in a long time or had voted democratically. >> kellyanne, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. [ applause ] tonight, hillary clinton is scheduled to make her first public appearance since losing last week's presidential election. she's being honored by the children's defense fund and that gets under way live at 8:00 eastern on our companion network c-span2. also tonight is the national book awards taking place in new york city and hosted by comedian larry wilmore. our cameras are there, and we'll

show you the event sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2's book tv. >> i've always been a great admirer of america, a student of american history. and particularly the history of its african descendant people. >> sunday night on q&a, author okey ndibe talks about his book "never look an american in the eye." >> my uncle formed this impression from watching cinema, western, specifically, where these cowboys would gather together in a bar and exchange a few words, and we never understood what they were saying. but then at one point they'd stare each other down and start shooting. so my uncle found that impression that that's what americans would do to you, shoot

you if you looked them in the eye. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. federal reserve chair janet yellen heads to capitol hill to testify before the joint economic committee. economists are looking for an indication of whether the central bank is likely to raise interest rates at its december 13th and 14th meeting. our live coverage at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span3. now a discussion on new foreign policy challenges faces president-elect's trump's administration. the cleveland council on world